Ask Paul: March 5 (Premium)

Happy Friday, and welcome to March: Spring is not quite in the air yet, but it will be soon, so let’s kick off what I hope will be our last cold weekend of the season.

Settings header in Windows 10

MartinusV2 asks:

During last week Windows Weekly, you lost your Windows Settings Header. Since then, did it came back? Or are you are like many of us that never had this feature when opening Windows Settings?

It didn’t come back on my NUC, no.

Mary Jo did get the story on this feature, however: The header is the new interface, and it will be rolling out to all users. People who had the header and then lost it are experiencing a bug that will be fixed. But the header is the correct/new UI.

Related to this, JustMe asks:

Regarding the Windows settings header – is there an official word as to when or what version of Windows you should see it in, and do you know if there is a mechanism within windows (group policy?) to turn it off. There are at least a couple methods of turning it off on the web, but they are inconsistent (as in, a tool will turn it off, Windows gets updated, and it comes back on so you have to use the tool again).

My understanding is that the new header should appear in any supported Windows 10 version, but I only have 2004 and 20H2 on my PCs now. Microsoft told Mary Jo that it was “slowly rolling out” the new Settings UI that includes the header, and that the experience differs slightly between those who sign-in with a Microsoft account and those who do so with an Azure Active Directory (AAD) account.

I’m not aware of any method, policy-based or otherwise, for turning this off, sorry.

Missing Edge feature

MartinusV2 also asks:

And talking about features that are there or not. Edge on my work computer had the coupons notifications features but not on my home computer that have the same version of Edge. And today, after upgrading my work computer with the new version 89 of Edge, The coupons feature is no longer available. Why is Microsoft doing this? Why removing feature that you have added in the previous version?

The shopping features in Edge are generally available, so it’s not clear what’s happening here. Oddly, I just upgraded to Edge 89 on my desktop and I’m also not seeing coupon offers, though I can see the shopping option is toggled on in settings. I did install a Rakuten extension recently to test it, and I wonder if that is somehow overriding it? (And perhaps similar extensions like Honey.)

This is most curious.

Dialing back on social media

SeattleMike Alpha Member #105 – 17 hours ago

My wife and I have been going through what I like to call a “social media diet”. Meaning we’re dialing back significantly on using or consuming social media during the next couple of months. I was curious what your view of your social media usage is, how much an impact it has on you and your work, and if you’ve ever considered something similar (i.e. dialing back your usage/consumption)?

First of all, good you for you guys. Seriously.

And yeah, I think about this all the time. I currently engage in three social media networks, and each has its own issues. I use Twitter for work-related discussions mostly, and while it’s the most toxic of the networks I use, it’s kind of critical so I can’t leave it. I use Instagram to post and view photos, and while I’m not a fan of the Facebook connection, it’s still the least stupid of the social networks I use. But I do occasionally wish I could turn off comments globally or only let people who I follow comment. I feel like it’s heading towards toxicity.

And then there’s Facebook. This one is tough because 99 percent of the people I’m friends with on Facebook are people who are family or are literally friends, and while I’d love to walk away from it, I can’t. So I just don’t post there very often, and rarely visit. But it’s too crucial to drop.

Given all that, I’m kind of stuck. Twitter and Facebook are terrible, but I can’t drop either, and Instagram, which I prefer, is starting to get uglier. All of these things in some way contribute negatively to my life. And it’s a problem.

Interestingly, one of the things that I miss is your tweets. Have you ever considered adding a widget on your site that would link your tweets on to the site front page?

No, but that’s a great idea. I will ask the team about that. (And for Brad as well.)

Downsizing options

bschnatt – 17 hours ago

Paul, your opinion on being forced to stay home more than usual is well known. Have you ever thought about downsizing to: a) An RV? b) A boat (a sailboat, a houseboat)? You could wander the world and still work from home (there are various Internet options for each scenario).

Yes. But neither would be a long-term solution. My wife and I discuss the next move a lot and our opinions about what that might look like change all the time. The two big but temporary issues are our kids and the pets. The kids are both in college, and while our son Mark is inclined to continue his life in Rochester, New York primarily—if he can’t get into a ,aster’s program this year, until he can find a job—Kelly will be coming home during breaks for at least a few years and maybe longer. And the pets. All three are getting up there in age and won’t live forever, but we can’t really be as mobile as I’d like to be right now until they’re gone. I’m not driving around the country in an RV with a menagerie.

Beyond those issues, we obviously have concerns about connectivity. Both of us have worked from home for a long time, me since the mid-1990s and Steph since 2002, and that helps. But we need to be connected. So that rules out some things, or at least makes them more difficult. This is an area that has gotten a lot better over the past 20 years, obviously. Still a worry.

Long term, our goal is to split our time each year between two places. But even that could take many forms. Part of the year international, part of inside the US. Or maybe different places in the US. Maybe it changes over time.

One thing we have discussed is taking a year or whatever to drive around the country in an RV and watch at least one Major League Baseball game in every stadium. (We’ve already been to several.) But that would be temporary, I don’t think I could live out of an RV for more than that.

I’ve been researching (non-beach) Mexico and Latin America a lot lately and we may shift our international attention away from Europe post-pandemic to focus on these issues. I was talking to Steph the other day about what it might look like splitting time between Mexico and the U.S. and how we would still need some base in the U.S. regardless of where we spent the most time. But she pointed out that the permanent home could very well be in Mexico since it’s so much less expensive and that we could AirBnB it (or whatever) when we came back to the states. And … yeah, sure. That could happen. But it’s years down the road.

And as she also said, a lot of what we do may be based on what the kids do, and where they end up. If they were on opposite sides of the country, it won’t matter where we are since some of us will be traveling to see each other regardless. But if they both ended up nearby—I’ll make up New England as an example—that we may just want to live there too.

The future is uncertain, basically.

Linux

hrlngrv asks:

You’ve tried using Chrome OS in the past. Any plans to use Linux for a few weeks and write about it? Actually, it’d be interesting to get your impression of how close Edge under Linux is to Edge under Windows. As for relying on OneDrive, there’s a commercial tool, Insync, with a 15 day trial period which would give you filesystem access to OneDrive. Which leads to a different question: could you use Office web apps rather than desktop Office? If not, what’s missing?

(Related to this, JustMe also asked, “You have mentioned previously that you pay attention to Linux more than most realize. Have you used Edge in Linux (even in a VM) and how does it compare to Edge in Windows.”)

Yeah, I’ve got a few experiments planned around just using web apps and Linux, and those may actually merge into one series. I have a few streaming game services posts to do, and then I’ll start that up, or one of them.

I haven’t used Edge on Linux yet, sorry.

I could use the Office web apps, yes. It’s not so much what’s missing, though I’m sure I’ll run into that one Word feature I rely on that’s not in the web app. The problem is the workflow. I’m so used to my particular file management system and the way I sync certain folders locally, that moving to web apps and relying on those tools to file documents is different enough to be inefficient. But aside from some quirky things I need around the book, in particular, I feel like I could do it. I’m always willing to throw that wrench in the works and change things up.

I’ll try to get to all this soon.

Brave

erich82 asks:

What is it about the Brave browser that makes you tempted to use it, and yet makes you hesitate?

There are two key aspects to this. The first is just this general sense that Brave is the new Mozilla/Firefox and that they are standing up to the bad parts of the web, like tracking and other privacy violations, in ways that even Microsoft won’t ever do. And then there’s this … I’ll call it a self-destructive streak … that I have that makes me want to mess with things that are working fine. That comment above about wanting to test web apps and Linux, and not use local OneDrive sync, falls into that category somewhat too. I like to test things, and sometimes I stumble on better ways of doing things.

So why haven’t I already switched to Brave? A few reasons. It still feels rawer than mainstream browsers like Chrome and Edge. I would need to adopt a password manager if I switched. I’m not a fan of how it handles sync, though that did get a lot better recently. And while this is less important, in some ways, I do have a work-related requirement to keep up on Edge, not just on the site but for the book. Don’t take that the wrong way: I really like using Edge. But even if I didn’t, I’d need to stay up-to-date on it.

Like I said on Windows Weekly this week, I feel like I’m orbiting Brave, and that they may eventually pull me in. Every announcement they make is an opportunity for me to reconsider it, and some of their recent moves, like the Brave Search announcement, are very interesting.

We’ll see.

Microsoft v. Samsung

bigfire asks:

While setting up a new Galaxy phone, I ran into two bugs with Microsoft software on Android that I’m hoping for help with:

1) Onedrive won’t sync photos with a personal account if you also have a Onedrive for Business account. I set up Onedrive with my personal account, and set up gallery synching. Everything works as you’d expect. Then I add my Onedrive for Business account. The photo synching turns itself off. When I try to turn it on again, it asks which account I should use to sync, with the only option being the Business account. I think I speak for most people when I say that I never want to sync my photos with my business account. Any ideas? It’s been like this for quite some time, and it’s driving me crazy I can’t use both accounts with gallery synching.

Hm. That I’m not sure about. I have a personal and work account configured in OneDrive on my Google Pixel 4a 5G. But it’s set up to sync photos to the personal account, and it seems to be working fine. I certainly don’t see what you’re seeing.

I have to wonder then whether this is related to some weird work-related policy. And I can’t imagine why anyone would want to sync photos to a work account either. Does anyone else have this problem?

2) Do a search from Edge’s title bar. Now click the video tab, and click any of the videos there from Youtube. It takes you to what looks like the Youtube page, starts trying to play, and then before any video occurs immediately goes to a “Hmmm…can’t reach this page.” If I go directly to Youtube, everything works fine.

Do you have the YouTube app installed? When I click a video link in Edge search results, it opens the video in the YouTube app. I can’t recall if it ever asked me in the past whether to choose between the browser and the app, but I assume it did.

Edge and CNAME tracking

wright_is asks:

Firefox + uBlock Origin and Brave both block the heinous CNAME tracking that is popping up. Given Microsoft is constantly banging on about its privacy features in Edge, is there any news on how and when Microsoft will deal with it in Edge?

I don’t see anything about this in the Edge roadmap, but I’m reminded of the experience I had last year where I could see that I was being tracked by ads while using Edge. The problem is that Edge walks a line between true privacy protection/antitracking and usability, and it’s a more conservative line than that offered by browsers like Brave and Vivaldi. For this specific issue, the obvious solution for Edge users is to use an extension like uBlock Origin that you know blocks CNAME tracking until/unless Edge adopts this functionality natively.

Researching this, I see that some other browsers, like Safari, block this behavior, so it certainly seems reasonable for Microsoft to do so.

Link riding

Bschnatt asks:

I don’t think you’ve ever commented on Microsoft’s recent(?) use of “link-riding” in links in Hotmail / Outlook emails, by which I mean if you hover over a link, you see something like “https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=click.somewebsite.com…”. (I’m simplifying that a bit…) I realize Microsoft probably puts those in there to scan links for potential malware sites, but I don’t like the fact that Microsoft can use these links to track people around the web and/or snoop on what articles people are following up on in their emails! They should give users the option of opting out of that. (Correct me if they already do – I haven’t seen it in the settings, but I haven’t looked in a while…)

Just so I’m clear, you’re worried about the possibility that Microsoft could use this feature to track its users’ activities?

I’m not sure that I share that concern, but you can turn off this feature—which is called Safelinks—if you want. Go to Outlook.com settings > Premium > Security and change the option “Outlook.com provides real-time protection against links that point to phishing scams and viruses. You can turn off this protection (not recommended)” to Off. But I don’t recommend that either.

You can learn more about Safelinks here. It looks like Safelinks is only available to Microsoft 365 subscribers.