Ask Paul: August 26 (Premium)

Happy Friday! There’s some interesting news buried in here, so let’s kick off the weekend with some great reader questions. And a bit of spelunking.

New comments system feedback

Because so many of you asked, we’ll probably post something more formal soon. But with a week or so of experience with the new OpenWeb comments system here on Thurrott.com, I wanted to at least provide a quick bit of perspective on what we’re seeing, what you’re seeing, and what we’re doing to fix the issues.

Most important, at least to me, is how much of an improvement this new commenting system is compared to what we had in the past. I don’t want that to get lost here: yes, we have tweaks to make. But my god, what an improvement.

So let’s quickly examine the issues.

Scrolling lazy load. The OpenWeb comments section won’t load unless you scroll, and when you do, it does a sort of lazy load where it doesn’t appear immediately. This is a problem on Thurrott.com because one of the ways you can get to the comments for an article from the home page is by clicking the “x comments” link instead of the article title; when you do, you go right to the comments. Which don’t always load automatically. They should, but we’re working with OpenWeb to make this happen more automatically and more quickly.

Notifications. We were really excited about site notifications because they worked great when we tested this feature staging. But it’s not working now at all. We’re investigating this with OpenWeb.

1500-character limit. The default amount of space for comments is 1500 characters, which some are running into. There are two issues here, really: it doesn’t warn you of the limit, and it could perhaps be bigger. For now, we’re going to leave this where it is—1500 characters is about three good-sized paragraphs of text—but we’ll respond to feedback if you think it’s not enough. And, let’s remember that you can all create a forum post of any length if you need more space to discuss some topic.

Extension/reader mode issues. Lots of the issues people are having with comments are related to browser extensions and/or reader modes, especially ad-blockers. I’m personally having an issue with the Dark reader extension I rely on because it hides some UI elements in comments that I need from time to time. We are hoping to implement a dark mode on the site soon which should fix that, but I guess the advice here is to examine whatever extensions you’re using with the site if you have issues with comments.

Moderation. There are lots of questions about moderation. We started with the same OpenWeb best practice default vocabulary that’s used on major websites, but we will tune this for our vocabulary and to be a bit more adult. Also, right now all comments with external links are goes to moderation, and we’re looking at fixing that as well; what I’d like is for people who I’ve OK’d through moderation to be able to publish links without moderation in the future.

See more. By default, OpenWeb doesn’t display all of a comment that’s over a certain length and it instead displays a “see more” link that lets you expand the comment to see all of it. I hate this, and we would like all comments to be fully expanded and viewable by default. We’re working with OpenWeb to see if this is possible.

I think that’s most of it. If I missed something, please let me know. And if you have any other feedback about the issues I raised above, ditto. We’re going to do what we can to make this as good as it can be.

Thanks!

Somewhat related to this…

Newsletter issues

helix2301 asks:

Paul, I just want to say I love Ask Paul one of best parts about being an Alpha member also I some how got unsubscribed from the premium newsletter and if you could drop the link to resubscribe it would be appreciated.

Thanks, and my apologies. You can always resubscribe to the newsletter here. If this doesn’t solve the problem, please email me ([email protected]) and we’ll get it fixed.

Thanks!

You are the product

JustMe asks:

What can we do about the proliferation of ads in Windows and apps?  A Pi-hole is certainly an option and is definitely in my future, but I feel until we can convince Chris Capossela and the marketeers that what they consider ‘not ads’ are in fact ‘ads’ and are making the user experience horrible, any success we have will simply make Microsoft and the other tech companies redouble their efforts.

It’s probably not a coincidence that I just wrote two things that directly address this concern, though you can only see one of them right now. One is the privacy settings configuration “chapter” in the Windows 11 Field Guide, which I’ve significantly shortened when compared to the previous book because so few of the settings in there are even meaningful. And the second is an article I just posted, Enough Already: First Steps (Premium), that describes the minimal work I’ve done so far to combat tracking and ad proliferation, and what I’m now experimenting with to take that further.

The short answer to your Windows 10/11 question is grim: there is nothing you can do, directly via the Windows UI, to disable data collection and tracking. There are small steps you can take to minimize it. But since the book isn’t available yet, and because it’s a separate paid thing, I’ll just throw out a few things I might have otherwise sat on for a bit.

First, I can and will make that part of the book available as an article on the site. It’s just good (if depressing) info. That will happen soon.

Second, and I will formally announce this later so everyone can see it, we will be making the Windows 11 Field Guide available for free to Thurrott Premium members when it launches (in incomplete form at first, to be finished over time). I’ve spoken with George about how this might work, and one of the things we’re looking at is making it available separately as a massive set of Premium articles on Thurrott.com in addition to the normal PDF/ePUB/MOBI downloads via Leanpub. We’ll see. But either way, if you’re a Premium member, you will be getting the book for free. More on that soon.

I feel like the primary driver behind the ads (other than money) is telemetry as it give the tech companies insight into what we use and how we use it.  We have essentially become the product.  For me, behaviour like we are seeing now is driving me away from Microsoft products, not to them.  From the proliferation of ads to the dumbing down of the OS to simply not respecting my choices as a user, I am getting fed up.

This is correct, and I am as well. (Hence, the new “Enough Already” series.) From the perspective of companies like Apple and Microsoft, which have to date sold products and services directly to customers, the ad-based/subscription-based models have finally become irresistible as new and “cheap” (meaning low margin) revenue drivers. They look at companies like Alphabet/Google and Meta/Facebook and see how little they do to rank among the world’s largest companies and naturally want in on that easy money. What they don’t see, in my opinion, is how this shift is and will continue to negatively impact their customers. And that they will increasingly drive us away.

Legacy vs. new

helix2301 asks:

My question is about Microsoft legacy businesses that they do not talk about like internal Windows Servers, Exchange, SharePoint, Project, SQL, SCCM, SCOM, IDM, Terminal Services and many others. I mean these products make Microsoft billions a year in revenue and there are still so much of it out there being a consultant I see it everyday. But they don’t acknowledge it in earnings report. Yes, its a legacy business but it built and is the backbone of the company.

Yep. This is something I struggle with. Microsoft isn’t the first company to basically subsidize new businesses with the legacy businesses that actually drive all the revenue—one famous example is how the Apple II line subsidized the money-losing Mac business for Apple during all of the 1980s—but given how business reporting has changed in recent years, and my obvious Microsoft focus, I feel this one a bit more personally.

This is a topic Mary Jo and I discuss, both privately and on Windows Weekly, regularly. And our take comes down to this: Microsoft, like other companies, does not provide a complete accounting of where its revenues and profits come from, and it hides businesses—-well performing and not—by comminglingly them in three basic business unit buckets. And then it incessantly markets anything cloud related because this is all that Wall Street—meaning financial analysts and the investors who listen to them—cares about. So it doesn’t matter whether Microsoft’s server business makes up a reliabily significant portion of Microsoft’s Intelligent Cloud business unit. What matters is that Wall Street only cares about Azure and the cloud. And that is the focus. It’s all they talk about. The stock price soars, and Microsoft is one of the biggest companies in the world by market cap. And they will not risk that by being more open about how they really make money.

This system exists because the U.S. government has not taken any steps to hold these firms accountable to their shareholders. Who you’d assume would be plying the company for more granular data about what really is and is not successful. Except for one thing: why would they? Microsoft is going gangbusters right now, so why rock the boat? The story is selling the truth gets buried. There is not a single responsible party standing in the way. And why would there be? The truth about Microsoft’s finances—and those of other firms—would likely harm the company’s reputation, kill its stock price, and possibly harm the economy. It’s a self-replicating reverse virtuous cycle. Or whatever.

Isn’t this sort of how the Roman Empire fell? Not exactly. But seriously.

Group Policies

SherlockHolmes asks:

I recently noticed some new possibilities in Group Policies in Windows 10 Pro. It looks like some previous deactivated entries can now be activated with Windows 10 Pro 22H2. Like the group policies of what kind of data Windows sends to Redmond. Have you heard anything that Microsoft did adjust this in some ways? Thanks.

No, but to be fair, this is the sort of thing I don’t follow closely enough these days. I feel like there is a record of Group Policy additions (and removals) on docs.microsoft.com, and looking into that, I of course find this deprecated page that has a link to the version 2004 group policy reference but nothing newer. This has to be an ongoing concern. Does anyone else know of public Microsoft documentation describing the ongoing changes to Windows policies?

Mexico City smart home

jchampeau asks:

Now that you have the place in Mexico City, do you use any tech to monitor whichever place at which you’re not?  I’m thinking cameras (doorbell or otherwise), thermostats, leak sensors, etc.

Nothing at the moment, but that will change. For now, we simply turn off the gas, unplug the TV and leave it sitting there. There’s not much chance of water damage from above as we’re on the top floor, and the building has 24/7 security, and a key to our place if we need work done, there’s a delivery, or the like.

The focus to date has been on the basics: beds, couches, a TV, and on. But the first major change we will make in that direction will be to install a smart door lock of some kind. We were visiting with the neighbor we’re closest with on the last trip, and she has a Samsung smart door look that’s a 10-inch-ish tall panel that looks attractive, and I’ll be looking into doing something similar. She sometimes goes away for long weekends and rents out the place on Airbnb, apparently, so it’s nice for that as well. But right now, we just juggle several keys, and it’s not a good system because the door auto locks and we could walk out of the apartment without a key and get locked out.

I’m not a huge fan of security cameras, but I could see putting one in as well, at least for when we’re not there. (What I’d rather have is a camera mounted outside the apartment and facing Mexico City’s Reforma skyline. It’s a beautiful view.) We will be getting a smart display of some kind as we have at home. And I think water and gas sensors in the laundry room, where we have the water heater, a sink, and a washing machine, make sense, especially given that we’re often going to be away for several months at a time. We don’t want to discover a problem after the apartment below us suffers some damage from whatever issue.

Better Call Paul

ggolcher asks:

Happy Friday! I’ll be that guy with an unrelated-to-tech question. Now that Better Call Saul has ended, and the ALBQ universe is finally wrapped up, I wanted to ask: Did you watch Breaking Bad and/or Better Call Saul? If so, what did you think of each? If not, why not?

We watched both and just finished binge-watching the last half-season of Better Call Saul two nights ago. Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul are two of the best TV shows we’ve ever watched, and I’m amazed at the consistent level of quality. That said, the last half-season was terrible, and we just spent half of last night discussing this with my sister and her husband, who both just finished it as well. It was doubly disappointing given how good the show was overall, and it makes me wonder why it’s so hard to end shows well.

Without ruining it for anyone, the central point of this show was to see the journey that Jimmy McGill went on to become Saul Goodman. And that was exactly what they don’t show. It was hugely disappointing.

I do recall specifically not watching Breaking Bad when it first came out because I couldn’t understand why on earth anyone would want to watch a show about a guy making meth. But, after enough people begged me to watch it, we did so and were immediately hooked. We were just talking about rewatching Breaking Bad, actually. But we have a lot of shows to get through now, plus that new Game of Thrones series and the upcoming Rings of Power series. We are living in TV’s golden age.

Google Home

yoshi asks:

Are you still using Google Home as your smart home solution? If so, are you happy with it? For me, it seems like it’s gone downhill with having to repeat commands regularly. Curious if you experience the same issues.

Yes and no. We have a single Google Home device that we interact with, the Lenovo smart display in our kitchen, but we don’t use it for much beyond photo slideshows: we ask it about the weather, random questions, and, most often, “where was this photo taken?” and, when that fails, “when was this photo taken?”

But we aren’t using some other assistant in its place. We just don’t like talking to things. But you may be onto something. I’m not sure if I wrote about this anywhere, but I recently tried to text my wife using my voice via a Pixel driving experience and it was a complete disaster, where I had to keep repeating who I wanted to send the text to. It never worked.