Ask Paul: January 6 (Premium)

Happy Friday! Here’s another great set of wide-ranging reader questions to help kick off the weekend a bit early.
Site issues
Because this is such an ongoing concern on the site right now, I wanted to address this first.

GT_Tecolotecreek and bleeman write:

Please, an update on the login issue so many are seeing!

George addressed this in a forum thread so it’s likely many didn’t see it. But here is his latest reply regarding the login issues:

“There has been a lot of feedback regarding the need to frequently log in. The settings for the site are configured to require re-login every 30 days. There was an issue with the ‘remember me’ function. We believe we have addressed that issue and a bit more tuning to address the login frequency issue. Would appreciate feedback from the community days on what you experience. Thank you so much!”

Please provide that feedback in the original thread, not here: it’s unlikely that the people who can fix these issues will ever read this post. But know that we are racing to fix the issues that have come up as quickly as possible. Thanks!
EOL
ggolcher

Windows 7 ESU and Windows 8.1 end support next week. Any plans to look back on these products and the consolidation for Windows?

Yes, I do have something planned. I’m not sure what else to say. :)
Paint
lwetzel asks:

Did Paint get Dark Mode?  I wasn't clear from Windows Weekly what the keystroke you were trying was, nor if it put Paint into dark mode.

No, it didn’t.

For those who don’t understand this question, I was comparing the modern makeovers that Microsoft gave to both Paint and Notepad on this past week’s Windows Weekly. The basic gist is that where Notepad retained all of its previous functionality and picked up support for Dark mode/Light mode configuration, Paint did not. And worse, Paint lost functionality, including its previous support for a full range of keyboard shortcuts. I brought up Paint while describing this, and was surprised when a keyboard shortcut that previously didn’t work---ALT + F to open the File menu---now worked. So it must have been quietly fixed. But no Dark mode yet, no.
It’s a culture thing
sabertooth920 asks:

Why do you think that Google has never been able to supplant Amazon in the voice assistant market?  It seems like it had all the pieces in place.

Right. I’ve written about this topic in the past, but I do feel that some recent developments could hint at what’s happened here. And to be fair, it’s likely that the rise of Matter as a standard may somewhat render this issue less problematic.

But yeah: how is it that a company with Google’s AI expertise and resources, and the automatic usage that comes with owning Android, could be outmaneuvered by Amazon, a company with heady resources too, sure, but also a distinct low-end strategy when it comes to hardware? How is this possible? I had assumed for years that it was only a matter of time before ...

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