Ask Paul: February the 13th ⭐

Happy Friday the 13th! It’s been an unexpectedly crazy week, but we have a weekend to get to, and it’s not going to kick off on its own.

?️ Gaming update

justme asks:

Have to ask: how are you finding Fallen Order?

I’ve played it for three hours or so, I guess. I really like it. The graphics hold up nicely, the plot seems solid, and it captures that Star Wars vibe nicely. I’m still easing (back) into making single player games like this part of my time playing games, but this is a good choice for me. My only issue is that you get tossed into this place and it’s not always clear where to go next so you can keep going. And that is not unique for me, I think it’s my only limitations.

Epic Games is having a winter sale now so I also bought Silent Hill 2 Remake for half off. I’m into horror but it’s been a while since I’ve played a scary game that I’ve liked, and Silent Hill f isn’t quite cutting it. (There’s also a new Resident Evil game coming out at the end of the month.) This one started off better for me (than f) but after a couple of hours of wandering around a mostly empty city, I keep running into that same issue, which is familiar and unwelcome, which is figuring out where to go and what to do next so I can keep progressing. There’s one segment where you’ve spent a lot of time running around and there’s never been any way to go between any of the houses, but in this case there is one way through between two houses, and it’s like seriously. I’ve stopped even looking and now there’s one way through?

I feel like my brain isn’t wired correctly for this kind of thing. But I will try to move forward with both of these games. Even if I have to look up walkthroughs every once in a while.

Anyway. Yes, Star Wars: Fallen Order is solid, and I assume they will finish this as a trilogy at some point. But I will keep playing this and Silent Hill 2 as possible. And Call of Duty, of course. I need to work out my frustrations somewhere.

?️ Discord and rhyme, I howl and I whine, I’m after you

christianwilson

Have you ever considered a Discord server, even if it was restricted as a Premium subscription perk or is the comments section and forums enough to deal with?

I hadn’t, but I guess I’m not against it per se. It would almost have to be the Wild West, though, there is no way I could keep on top of that or moderate it in any way. I feel like there was an OpenWeb chat capability I was considering for the future, but I stopped even thinking about that. And now, of course, we’re moving on, so I guess that doesn’t matter anymore. But I don’t even know where to start with this or whether there is any broader interest. I’m listening, of course.

Speaking of which …

⭐ To premium or not to premium, that is the question

Tiny asks:

Not a big thing, but I’ve always been curious on how you determine if a post is premium.

When we started Thurrott Premium, we were probably a year or more into Thurrott.com and the ability to sustain a website using just advertising had collapsed thanks to enshittification by Google. This was a different company, owned by George, and he had contracted outside help from Tina and her company, and we would meet a few times a year and brainstorm about ways forward for the business. And that’s when the idea of a paid service came about.

These things are tricky. As a writer, I want people to read what I create, which sounds obvious enough. But when you put content behind a paywall, you severely restrict the audience size, and I had difficulties with that for a long time. So did Brad, and he never really wrapped his head around it; I had to keep telling him that specific articles should be Premium, etc. But that’s normal.

Anyway, in debating what should and should not be Premium, I tried to get some concessions so that non-Premium members could still access my content. Originally, Tina/George (I don’t remember the specifics) argued that, if I wrote it, it would be Premium, whereas if Brad or Mehedi (at the time) wrote something, most of it would be non-Premium. I didn’t like that, so I pushed for what became three tokens per month. And obviously news stories would not be Premium, but less obviously I fought to keep hardware and software reviews non-Premium, mostly because I felt that their value to the companies making that stuff would be nearly non-existent otherwise. And interviews, though there aren’t many of those.

One thing I kind of stepped into inadvertently was posts were perhaps more personal in nature and, in time, often had nothing to do with technology. This is a weird gray area and also, for me, an instance of great hypocrisy as I don’t like to read non-tech articles on other tech blogs and sites. But this is sort of what led to what are now (many of) my From the Editor’s Desk editorials.

Today, it’s roughly as described above. The news, whether it’s written by Laurent or me, is not Premium. Reviews are not Premium. Podcasts are not Premium. Those things I would describe as commentary or editorial are Premium. Certain columns or series, like Ask Paul, which you might think of as a form of access. As I create different books, I try to position them as perks for Premium members, as with the Field Guide books, of course, but also the De-Enshittify Windows 11 book I’m now working on.

Speaking of which, I spent a big chunk of yesterday (and the previous two or three days) working on what I think of as the Setup chapter, but it will most likely be called Starting Fresh With a New Install of Windows 11. I also had to record three episodes of Hands-On Windows in the afternoon, and while that usually takes only an hour, the prep time is off the charts because it’s all live demo stuff. I had hoped to get that De-Enshittify Windows 11 published to the site by the end of yesterday, but I just ran out of time. It will definitely happen today. So I’m getting closer to the point where I can go live with this on Leanpub. But the landing page is sort of there. And I feel like I can finish it all this month, at least. And then figure out how to get codes for the book to Premium members.

? Windows 12?

helix2301 asks:

Any idea what the plans for windows 12 are yet? I saw article on Windows 11 26h2.

Aside from what I wrote earlier this week in Something Happened ⭐, I have a couple of ideas.

First, Windows 12 is just a convenient name that may or may not be accurate. It’s possible that this thing is just Windows 11 “something,” and that we never move forward to 12. It’s possible we drop the number and it’s just Windows. I guess anything is possible from a branding perspective, but I like to keep it simple. So I think of the successor to 26H1 as Windows 12.

That said, Windows 11 version 26H2 is not that. This is the next version of Windows 11, a feature update. What ties 26H1 to 26H2 and Windows 12 is that most of the features will be identical across all supported versions of Windows (sans 10, which is only available now as an ESU).

Second, I believe that what separates Windows 12 from its predecessors is the core of the operating system. This is difficult to describe because Microsoft obfuscates this purposefully, but there have been two major “core” changes to Windows 11 since the original release and two major hardware requirement changes, and Windows 12 will bring a third to both. These things are related.

On the “core” front, the original shipping version of Windows 11 (21H2) was literally just Windows 10 with the Windows 10X user interface slapped on top of it. This was what made the then-arbitrary new hardware requirements feel so artificial. But Microsoft quietly changed the core of the OS with version 24H2. This was the first LTS version of Windows 11, it was the year of CrowdStrike and the Microsoft corporate hack, and when it announced the Windows Resiliency Initiative. It was when the Windows 11 hardware requirements were no longer artificial or arbitrary. But it also had major compatibility issues that took months to sort out, too.

2024 was also the year Microsoft introduced Copilot+ PC, first on Snapdragon X-based PCs. This introduced another new level of hardware requirements, with only the very latest processors, 16 GB+ of RAM, 256+ GB of storage, a 40+ TOPS NPU, Windows Hello ESS, and whatever else. There are lots of complaints around that, of course, and while I do feel that Copilot+ PC features should work on other PCs, especially those with powerful GPUs, I also appreciate seeing more realistic requirements. The base Windows 11 hardware requirements are ridiculous for mainstream users.

Given all this, I feel like Windows 12 represents another break. 26H1/Windows 12 will require new hardware, yet again, another generation of chips. It’s not clear when or how this happens, but I am curious, looking at the Snapdragon X2 specs, what exactly differentiates this from the previous generation X chips, aside from the 80 TOPS NPU and the normal advances elsewhere. My guess is that there are security features tied to this silicon, which will be present in current and/or next-generation x64 silicon, that Windows 12 will require. And that this, plus the change to the core of the OS Microsoft did reveal (vaguely) represents both the Windows 12 hardware requirements and why these are requirements.

Put another way, any supported versions of Windows 11 in the future will have the same user-facing features for the most part, but they will have different cores. There is the out-of-date core from Windows 10/Windows 11 23H2 and prior, the 24H2 core that is also in 25H2 (and will be in 26H2), and then the new/coming core in 26H1/Windows 12. So once 26H2 ships, it will be 25H2 and 26H2 on the previous core and 26H1 on the new core. And then Windows 12 on the new core whenever that happens.

We wait on the details. And on confirmation/denial of the speculation. But that feels like the real differentiator for Windows 12: The new core, a new quality and security baseline. And then there will be some features that are unique, of course, but I feel like Windows 11 will move forward with a lot of that, at least at first. This is sort of what happened with Windows 10 after Windows 11 came out.

I just bought an MSI laptop. Great laptop for creators have you ever used one. Great machine.

Nice! I’ve never used an MSI laptop, but that looks solid. A modern AMD processor plus Nvidia graphics is as good as x64 gets these days.

Related to this, NickTech asks:

Paul, you had reported on Microsoft’s announcement to improve the quality of Windows 11. It feels like Microsoft has made promises like this in the past, but never delivered – for example, it’s taken years for them to look at moving the taskbar when that function was removed with the “new” version in Windows 11.

So, two things. Microsoft has never made promises like we’re seeing here, not with Windows 11, but it has made several notable quality/security changes to the OS in the past year or so, so I feel like this is notable. And with regard to the Taskbar, the official stance has always been that few people use this feature and the engineering required to support it would be problematic. So if they do in fact update the Taskbar to once again support all sides of the screen, that, too is new. Either way, it’s good news.

AI is also still a major focus for Microsoft, so my concern is that we will get some half-baked AI “improvements” that are solutions looking for a problem Do you feel that the company will genuinely work to improve Windows, or is this just another way to introduce new “features” nobody asked for or wants?

Windows 11 and 12 will be full of AI advances, of course. It’s a mistake to believe that this focus on quality and security somehow means that Microsoft will back off its AI push. That is still central to the company’s strategy, as evidenced by the $150+ billion they will spend this fiscal year on that. Whether the features they add are half-baked or whatever is something we’ll debate. We’ll see.

Do you know if Microsoft has actually looked at getting real life feedback from Windows administrators and users to see what they can focus on to improve the platform? It feels like it would be absurdly simple to improve their reputation by actually listening to us!

There’s feedback and then there’s noise, and while we all sort of accept that Microsoft and/or Windows is somehow immune to feedback, I think what we’re seeing right now is the result of feedback from the customers that matter most to Microsoft. And that is the Fortune 500, essentially, all of which have managed environments with IT and admin staff on the frontlines. So in that sense, yes, I think they are listening to that feedback. I don’t think it’s going to ever be like the old days again where we had this direct feed to the product teams through beta programs and the like. But when Microsoft references its “feedback channels,” this is what they’re talking about.

? An open secret

train_wreck asks:

Do you know if any of your internal Microsoft contacts read your site? I would be curious to know what they would think of your “De-enshittify X” articles. Like I have to think at least some people on the inside don’t like what they see happening with Windows.

Honestly, no. My lists of contacts/friends at Microsoft has dwindled over the years, and I don’t have any solid contacts in Windows at all these days. Just the normal PR relationships, and while they will occasionally reference something I’ve written, no one there has ever commented on or asked about any of my editorials about Windows 11 or whatever else.

The people I do know at Microsoft still are all outside of Windows. They are either high up in the company (Mark Russinovich) or just in other parts of the company (Rick Claus, Donna, Scott Hanselman, etc.), often in technical roles. No one is asking me about this stuff, but part of that is that Windows is just outside their areas or whatever. And part of is that I try not to abuse my relationships to probe for insider information or whatever. We just do what we do.

What I do know, for sure, is that, yes, the people who work on Windows, and the people who work at Microsoft, by and large want this product to be as good as it can be. I think there has been a level of acceptance over the years that Windows, as it fell out of being central to the company, needs to conform to the broader strategic goals that Microsoft. But that acceptance turned to fear and self-preservation for many in 2025 as multiple rounds of nonsensical layoffs made so many there question their futures for the first time. That fear continues to today.

One thing I tried to point out in writing about this earlier is that we, on the outside of Microsoft, digest things as they happen (for us) in real time. But these things all started earlier inside Microsoft. And so the quality/security push we’re seeing and the recent news about 26H1/Windows 12 feel new and sudden. But this has been brewing for a long time, and little bits of it have occurred already. I have to believe that those fretting over Windows internally were relieved to see this happening, just like us on the outside. There are still questions about how far this will go, how good it will be and/or when or where Microsoft will screw it up. But for now, I view this all very positively.

There is nothing but coincidence in this world, but nothing would make me happier than me spending/wasting time throwing this new book together only to have it rendered moot by Microsoft actually fixing all the problems. I’m realistic enough to know that will never happen. But I just want this thing to be as good as it can be. Others do too. And we’ll see where they go with it.

? It’s all just an act

vladimir asks:

I was wondering if you’re familiar with the AI Act — the EU regulation that will come into force next summer. There’s been a lot of debate around it, with many strong and opposing opinions. Some people believe regulating AI is necessary and long overdue, while others worry it could hamper innovation and make it harder for EU companies to compete globally. Since I really value your perspective on these topics, I’d love to hear what you think about it.

This one is simple. AI absolutely needs to be regulated and not just in the EU. Aside from the hyperbole–AI will or will not destroy our society if not mankind, or whatever–this is really about the world’s biggest companies–mostly U.S.-based Big Tech–retaining and extending their dominance, much of which was obtained illegally and/or is now being maintained illegally. Regulating AI, to me, isn’t really an extension of existing regulation, it’s the same regulation. These companies require oversight. They will not do the right thing on their own.

The counter to this argument, of course, is that AI is a national security issue of sorts since the Chinese are pushing ahead aggressively and will not need to deal with the same kinds of regulations we see in the U.S., the EU, and elsewhere. I get that, but the point of the AI Act isn’t to hamper EU- (or U.S.-) based companies, it’s to protect EU governments, businesses, and citizens. This is the role governments already play, and the reason regulation exists. In some ways, it’s unfortunate that we even need something this specific. If a product or service is dangerous, it’s dangerous. It doesn’t matter whether it’s AI or some poorly-made toy that might harm a child. It’s all the same thing.

We can always debate whether the law can move quickly enough to deal with new technologies. But I’m not sure there’s even an example of some new technology that isn’t already covered by existing laws. I don’t see AI as being any different, for sure.