Ask Paul: November 19 (Premium)

Happy Friday! Here’s another great collection of reader questions to get the weekend started a bit early.

COD DOA?

christianwilson asks:

Something is wrong with Call of Duty. You have expressed disappointment with the series in recent years and the sentiment I hear from others online echos what you’ve been saying. There seems to be a collective “meh” surrounding Vanguard.

Yeah. And understandably. After trying for years, unsuccessfully, to start new franchises, Call of Duty has settled into a predictable rhythm in which each game is either part of the Modern Warfare, Black Ops, or World War II series. It’s the only thing that’s worked for them.

This is a series that has been released annually for nearly two decades. I know Activision won’t do this for all of the obvious business reasons, but from a creative standpoint, do you think Call of Duty needs to go away for a few years and come back refreshed? Are they out of ideas? Are players getting tired of the formula? Or is there a different problem that needs to be addressed?

Yeah, I do think they need to make some changes. And I think their recent experiences, with COD: Mobile, Warzone, and the general failure of the single-player experiences when they’re even available, point the way. What Call of Duty needs is less Call of Duty. This could take various forms, but it’s not hard to imagine forgoing a big bang release every year in favor of Warzone updates. Or just accepting that COD Multiplayer is its own thing, like Warzone, that could exist outside of whatever annual/semi-annual release they do. That is, this notion of seasons is one that could extend beyond Warzone to Multiplayer.

I’ve said this before, but all I really want from Call of Duty is new multiplayer levels. And that what they should make is an annual $60 subscription to something called Call of Duty Online that would ship with the best classic maps from every COD game over the years but updated with the latest graphics technology and then continually add new and classic maps over time. It should have all of the game types, weapons, perks, etc. from all of the games, and let you play in customizable playlists. So WWII fans could have playlists of just WWII maps, load-outs, and perks (or whatever). Modern Warfare fans, ditto. There could be crazy playlists that mix and match. It’s endless.

Anyway, that’s my idea. Whether they actually come out with a new game each year kind of doesn’t even matter to me.

As for Vanguard, I’m happy it doesn’t have the same lag/latency issues that made the new MW and BO: Cold War multiplayer experiences unplayable to me. But it’s the blandest looking COD ever, it looks like a previous-generation title. And the levels are just boring and all very similar. I don’t mind the WWII bit, and I may still play through single-player when I get bored. But I spend all my time in multiplayer, and this isn’t doing it. I hope Activision at least releases COD: MW2 Multiplayer Remastered this year to give me something I actually want to play. This game isn’t it.

The future of publishing

seattlemike asks:

I’ve recently started following a number of excellent journalists and writers on SubStack and it got me thinking. What do you think is the future of journalism, self-publishing, and what I’ll call “less mainstream” platforms? Also, do you follow anyone on SubStack? If so, who?

I don’t, not yet, but I have been looking at this. My wife and I both subscribe to Medium, and my wife experimented with writing there for a year or so, but she’s scaled back because it didn’t pay well and she has actual paying work to deal with. But the two of us have been talking about doing something kind of travel-related something (blog, I guess) now that we can travel again. As you may recall, we originally thought of this as a home swap-focused publication/book/whatever, but now we’re looking at being more mobile and moving around, possibly internationally, and that might be the primary focus. We’ll see.

Anyway, Substack is definitely on our list. But this would be kind of a side-thing to my normal day-to-day work.

As for the future of journalism, it’s bleak. I’ve already ranted about the diminishing ranks of quality writing and journalism, and that it’s sort of the dark side of the democratization of the Internet. So many blogs, YouTube channels, and so on are created by people who are not experts in whatever subject and it makes it hard to find sources you can trust. Things like Medium and Substack are kind of an Internet-era attempt to correct that, and I like that people are still trying to figure out a way to fund quality work. But Medium, at least, is as hit or miss as anything else really. There’s some good writing there. And a lot of dreck.

The best thing we can do as consumers is pay for high-quality content and ignore all the idiots and listicle nonsense. And … I don’t know. It’s just going to get worse.

Content recommendations

seattlemike asks:

With the holidays upon us, will you be posting your recommendations for books (audio or otherwise) and games? I always look forward to that and would love to see them again this year. We’re planning on spending the whole holiday season at home and will definitely want to take advantage of some quiet time to catch up.

Yes, I will try. Books/audiobooks are easy enough, as they’re in my library. Podcasts are a bit tougher: I sometimes will listen through an entire show, enjoy it quite a bit, and then move on and unsubscribe. And then two months later, I can’t even remember what the name was. I need to be a bit more organized around that, because my listening habits change over time, and I have listened to some new-to-me shows this year. I’ll see about compiling those soon.

The future of Firefox

helix2301 asks:

What do you think the future of Firefox is? As the only browser not based on Chromium I think its a necessity in the security world one zero day in chromium will effect every browser but Firefox. I just do not see these new services taking off like the vpn or the new anti tracking. Even if these new services do take off I can’t see it making enought money to keep Firefox going. Apple offering the anti tracking email stuff already with icloud customers and companies like Nortain and McAfee are bundling in VPN with the Anti Virus to add more value. I wonder if Firefox down the road might be an open source project.

This has been sort of an interesting week along these lines. Mozilla released its Firefox Relay service with a premium option, 1Password released a major update, and DuckDuckGo started going after trackers on Android. Privacy.com is another option, in this case for protecting your credit and debits cards. These all speak to companies that exist below the Big Tech level that are trying to clean up the messes caused by Big Tech, and I think they should all get our support. This stuff needs to be more of a focus, both for me as a work/professional thing, and for us collectively as consumers.

With that in mind, I agree that Firefox is important, and I wish it had better usage share. But I’m not sure whether it not being based on Chromium is an advantage per se: there is a great case to be made for standardizing on a single, high-quality, open-source web rendering engine that all browser makers can use. And Firefox’s dwindling usage share means that web developers could be wasting time and effort even supporting it. I understand Mozilla’s stance on Chromium, but it’s going to be what kills them.

Ultimately, what this is really about is whether it makes sense to trust a few big companies for everything or to choose individual solutions from smaller companies piecemeal. I go back and forth on that, but the debate has shifted recently because of tracking, privacy, and security concerns. And with a few exceptions—say, Apple, for those that stick within that ecosystem—choosing Big Tech increasingly seems like a mistake.

I could go on for hours on this topic, but to give a quick example, Windows exists as a way to run apps and access online services, but Microsoft is now overburdening Windows 11—and Microsoft Edge and Microsoft Teams—with deep links to other Microsoft products and services. And we know that it is actively thwarting attempts to bypass these links in Windows 11, and that it is bloating Edge with unnecessary revenue-generating features that in some cases could do more harm than good for users. The correct response to this isn’t to bow down to our Big Tech corporate masters and assume they know best, but to resist these efforts. And to choose alternate solutions that respect users. Whether this extends as far as replacing Windows itself is a big and controversial question. It’s not one I’ll be taking, certainly not anytime soon. But these things surely trigger some internal debate in any thinking person. This is perhaps the central debate of this time.

I think we’re going to be discussing this topic, generally and specifically, a lot.

Living room set-top boxes

helix2301 also asks:

My other question is Roku I know they are very profitable but where are they in the mix when it comes to Apple TV and Chromecast who is the dominate player in that space is it Roku?

Yes, Roku is the number one living room set-top box (for lack of a better term) solution by usage, though I suspect that varies by country.

That said, Roku is my least favorite of the mainstream set-top boxes because the UI is terrible, slow, and full of ads. I have been using Chromecast with Google TV for most of 2021, and I like it quite a bit aside from its insane lack of internal storage expansion. And the Apple TV is quite good too now that it has a reasonable remote. Amazon’s Fire TV is similar to Google TV, and it’s quick, but it’s also very Amazon-centric and a lot of that feels like advertising to me.

Southern hemisphere

hrlngrv asks:

Not tech: any interest in traveling to the southern hemisphere? FWIW, some day I’d love to go to Montevideo for a week, take a boat across the mouth of the Platte, and spend a week in Buenos Aires, then another week drive through the countryside.

Yes. We’ve had our eyes on Buenos Aires, Argentina for years, and more recently on Bogota and Medellin, Colombia. The trouble is travel time, especially for Buenos Aires: That’s a 10- to 11-hour flight from the New York area if you could swing a nonstop option, but more often it’s a multi-leg journey that could take 13-17 hours for one stop or even more than that. And it’s expensive, too, of course. By comparison, our flights to Paris were 7-8 hours depending on the direction.

But flying to Colombia isn’t terrible (from here): a non-stop flight is under 6 hours, which is terrific, and I see low-cost deals on flights there all the time. The only reason we’ve not done this yet is that we’re currently focusing on Mexico. But it will happen.

When you consider these (non-Colombia) distances and the time/effort/cost involved, and this would be true of anywhere in Asia, Australia, or New Zealand as well, you pretty much have to go for two or more weeks for it to even make sense. But you could go to Mexico or Colombia for shorter time frames and for less money. Mexico is also only one time zone off from our time zone, and the flight is just 5 hours or so, making it very easy.

Oh, Microsoft

martinusv2 asks:

With the way Microsoft handles the default browser fiasco, don’t you have the feeling that Microsoft didn’t learn from their past mistakes of tightly integrating Edge deep in the OS?

Yep. Some have argued that Microsoft is a different company now, or a different generation, or whatever, but history is history and you know what they say about those who don’t learn the lessons of the past: they repeat it.

But here’s the simplest way to look at this: Microsoft’s behavior with regards to default browsers in Windows 11 is as bad or worse than what the firm was doing in the late 1990s. The only difference is that it now impacts a much larger audience. And if you agree that it was right for the DOJ and EU to go after Microsoft then, and I do, then you must think that they should do so again now. And I do.

Password management

martinusv2 asks:

Do you use Edge password management on your Android device? I am a bit confused on how Edge on Android and the Microsoft Authenticator works. Does Edge only work on the web part, and the authenticator on the application part?

Technically, the Edge/Authenticator password lists are the same, so, yes, you should be getting the same options on the web and in apps.

I have used Edge in the past, and I’ve used the Microsoft Authenticator solution more recently, on both my phones(s) and iPad. The issue I’ve had is that it’s inconsistent. Sometimes you tap a username/password field and you’re prompted to auto-fill correctly. But sometimes literally nothing happens, which is frustrating.

What I’ve been doing more recently is what I’ve typically done over the years, which is to use whatever system is built into the platform. I’ve replicated most of my password list between Edge, Chrome, and Apple so many times, most passwords are everywhere now anyway. And I don’t really add new accounts/passwords all that often these days.

But I think I’m going to just switch to a standalone password manager in keeping with the discussion above in “The future of Firefox.” I’m most likely going to go with 1Password.

Browsers and Windows 11

Justme asks:

Given the way Microsoft seems to be intent on forcing you to use Edge – will this hamper future development of alternate browsers on Windows 11? If users start to uninstall widgets via winget – do you think Microsoft will make that impossible so that they may continue to enhance their MSN/Bing numbers via the ‘Halle Berry Effect’ (for lack of a better way to describe it)?

Given what they’ve done, and how it doesn’t mesh with what PR told the media when we complained about the Default Apps interface before the Windows 11 launch, I would say that there’s no way to predict what they’re capable of doing at this point. The only hope here is that limiting winget/PowerShell-type solutions to these issues would impact Microsoft’s biggest and most important customers, and thus might prevent that from happening. So there will always be an out for power users.

Related to this, harmjr asks:

I think it time for Microsoft to start thinking of a ads free paid version. Would you buy?

I assume you mean Windows 11. If so, yes.

In fact, I’d pay a subscription fee every year not to put up with this nonsense.