Ask Paul: December 29 (Premium)

Happy Friday, and welcome to the ultimate installment of Ask Paul of 2023! Let’s kick off the New Year a bit early with some great reader questions.

Bitwarden

jrzoomer asks:

Paul, glad to hear you use Bitwarden as your password manager and I’ve adopted the same for my own use. I had a couple of follow-up questions on it.

I’ve started an article I hope to publish soon explaining how to properly configure Bitwarden on PC and mobile, mostly because it’s too easy to continue using the passwords from your browser even if you’ve disabled auto-fill, but also because I noticed I have this thing configured differently on different PCs, and it’s really hard to make it work consistently. (Or maybe this is just me.) This is probably my biggest gripe with Bitwarden. That and its reliance on a master password. That’s a single point of failure right there unless I’m missing something.

Anyway… These questions kind of skirt around the edge of what I’m documenting and maybe will make for useful inclusions there. My

Do you also use the other features available besides passwords, like storing secure notes, or storing documents (like copies of passports, etc.) or do you the cloud like Google Drive?

The only other thing I use it for right now is to store credit cards, which is really just another auto-fill feature, really, and I do like the “copy security code” feature for that. Right now, I’m still using the Personal Vault feature in OneDrive for some secure document storage (things like passport photos, legal document scans, etc.), but part of my wife and I’s to-do list includes consolidating that stuff and figuring out where it belongs. I will eventually write that up as part of a digital decluttering series article, I bet.

Besides passwords, do you use 2FA or do you feel that the strong secure password is enough? And if you use 2FA do you use it for every single site that has that feature, or only a few important ones?

I use 2FA everywhere I can. Passwords are never enough.

(Semi-related, I just added a chapter to the Windows 11 Field Guide called Secure Your Microsoft Account that is specifically about enabling 2FA, or two-step verification, on that account type, and the article Tip: Properly Secure Your Microsoft Account came out of the work I did for that. There’s a coming chapter about passkeys and security keys that led me to write The Secret Lives of Passkeys (Premium), but I will likely write up a tip about using passkeys in Windows 11 as well.)

Also would like to know, since you set up so many devices, what method you’ve settled on to store the QR codes for the 2FA time-based token, so that you can access them when getting a new device?

To me, the hardest part about switching phones to date has been switching over all of the account security code generators in my authenticator app. And because I switch phones multiple times each year—granted, not a common problem for most—this is even more painful. So this past year, I switched to Google Authenticator for most accounts because it syncs through your Google account now, and so when I switch to a new phone, all I have to do is install the app (and sign in once).

I still use Microsoft Authenticator for my Microsoft accounts and my one Microsoft work or school account because I couldn’t figure out how to get Google Authenticator to work the same way as this app when using these accounts. This isn’t a huge hassle: I only have and handful of them, and I can switch them over to the app on a new phone pretty quickly. (As per the article linked above, properly securing these accounts helps with this since you always have readily available alternative verification methods.)

Bitwarden can be used for this purpose, of course, but I would have to experiment with that.

Writing tools

MichaelMDiv asks:

Paul, if you didn’t need a plain text editor, would you use Google Docs?

I don’t really need a text editor. I do vaguely prefer using something that generates documents that are easily human- and machine-readable, using an open format. And I do really like Markdown, and know the language well if I need to read or write in code. But I just want to use something simple that works. And that’s the tricky bit: As I wrote in Following My Own Advice: Writing Tools (Premium), I have very specific needs from an output perspective, and this not going to be an issue for most people. So when I write something like that, it’s not a general recommendation for others beyond a high-level “use the right tool for you“-type message. (That’s what I mean by following my own advice.) It’s also not part of a perceived and growing anti-Microsoft change on my part at all. I’ve been trying to move to something simpler for many years, and changing your core tool is very difficult. The timing here is semi-coincidental.

But yes, I could and maybe would use Google Docs otherwise. It’s a newer, simpler tool than Word, and it obviously integrates tightly with the Google Drive storage I’m now using.

I ask because I would like to switch to Docs myself, but I think my issue is offline support. I live in an area where the internet connection can be spotty. I know Google has an extension to handle offline files, but I am not sure I am ready to trust it yet. Is Google Docs ready to challenge Word, Excel, and Powerpoint for most people?

Obviously, some have specific needs in which the Office apps may make more sense. But yes, generally speaking, most people could easily use Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides instead of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint and be very happy with that. They can read and edit Office documents pretty well if needed. And they are much simpler.

And they work offline, too: I don’t use them enough to know how well that works, but enabling offline mode on a PC is as simple as clicking one switch in Docs settings, assuming you use Chrome or Edge (in which case you just need to install an extension).

Somewhat related: I know you have written in the past about using your Workspace account for your personal Google phone, and how it is was not a great experience. Do you have any updates with that? Has Google made it better/easier to use a Workspace account on a personal phone?

Overall, Google Workspace has been a terrific experience. Google Drive is faster and much more reliable than OneDrive (and in Windows, too, which makes no sense), and from a small business perspective, it’s much easier to manage than Microsoft 365 commercial. I also very much prefer Gmail to Outlook. It’s not even close.

The issue I had was very specific to my own little situation, in that Google used to offer individuals using Workspace to buy additional storage in the same way that consumer Gmail users can through Google One, and at the time the pricing was very similar. For a variety of reasons, the key one being that my Workspace account, for [email protected] is pretty much my online identity, I had thus stored all my photos there, and as part of my late 2023 digital decluttering work, I moved my work archives there and then my day-to-day work documents. And then Google pulled the plug by eliminating that additional storage capability, putting me several hundred GBs over the new storage limit.

The bad experience I had with Google Workspace came out me contacting Workspace support to see whether I could just convert my one account—we have several for Thurrott.com—to the next account level up (basically doubling the monthly cost from $6 to $12) because that account type has 2 TB of storage (I had been paying for 1 TB). They said yes and … then never made the change, ignored numerous emails for updates, and only replied to me 2 or 3 more times over two months, each time nonsensically. So I never got that issue fixed and I ended up switching my photos and documents over to my personal Gmail account, for which I now have a 2 TB Google One plan.

I can’t explain the bad customer service I got there. But I will also point out that this won’t happen to most individuals who choose Google Workspace (probably mostly to use the custom domain). Just get the Business Standard account type (which is $12 per month and gets 2 TB of storage) instead of the Business Starter ($6/30 GB) account I’m using.

Also, thank you for sharing your personal health journey this past year. I loved how you have integrated personal technology with making positive changes leading to better lives.

Thanks! This kind of thing never really ends, and I’m certainly no expert, but I do feel very strongly that we should advocate for ourselves everywhere, health/fitness and elsewhere, and that no one is going to do it for you otherwise. And I try to be as transparent as possible about what I do. Hopefully it can inspire others here and there.

Time is a cruel mistress

will asks:

I wanted to pose a question that I personally have deal with in a dramatic way in the past month and that is gaming. Specifically how today’s games, the big AAA titles and even smaller ones, can take hundreds to thousands of hours and dollars a year from you yet in the end you have nothing to show for it. Last month I got rid of my Xbox Series X and everything with it because it was pulling me further into something that had no benefits to the real world. Now this is not anything against Xbox or gaming, but in looking back this past year Xbox said I had over 700 hours with games. That’s almost 2-3 months of gaming all day with sleeping and eating added. I know others that have thousands of hours a year in gaming. I can see how todays games are more seasonal and micro transactions than ever before, with CoD being one if the tops in this area. I have to think they have cracked the code to keep people invested in something that gives only dopamine as a reward. I am curious how you have adjusted away from gaming? While fun, it can quickly become an addiction for many people.

Yeah, Microsoft sends out this annual “Your year in Xbox” thing and I’m sure it’s meant to be this nice end of year recap, but it can read like a horror movie in which you are confronted by the time you spent—or maybe wasted—playing games. And I am all over the map on this one.

I have written a bit about this here and there, but related to the proactive helping yourself stuff I mentioned above, I explicitly decided to try something I’d been thinking about for years and just walk away from Call of Duty specifically and see where that took me. This was a game to which I was clearly addicted, and I do think there is some weird connection between the repetitive nature of playing the same multiplayer levels over (and over and over) again and my ADHD because I see how this type of thing exposes itself in my ability to do boring, repetitive, rote tasks like the crazy photo consolidation work I’m doing now (I’ve completed through 2016 since the last update). Maybe there are healthy ways to utilize this thing (which is either a super-power or a handicap depending on your perspective), maybe not. I don’t know, but I know that when I start dreaming about things, especially in oddly repetitive ways, something’s off.

Anyway. In my case, I ended up turning off my Xbox in early March and then never using it again all year. (I did buy and install the latest COD game and looked at it briefly, but never really played it.) We went to Mexico City in March, and I’ve noticed over years of travel that when I go away, short trips or long, multi-week trips, I don’t miss video games. And I wanted to see if I could come back from a long trip and either not play games at all or perhaps just play different games less frequently. And while this wasn’t a plan of any kind, the way it worked out is that I played several games, mostly classic games (Halo Infinite being the one exception), and all on the PC. And not that much of it. I’ve been playing through the Half-Life remake Black Mesa recently, but not all that often and never for long periods of time.

I feel like this is healthy for me and I’m lucky that I don’t have to “try” to do this. It’s just happening. This reminds me of the first time I did keto back in 2017, where I slowly moved to eating normally again (which turned out to be a mistake), but I never drank beer again. I literally lost my taste for it. And in this case, it’s like I lost my taste for COD. We’ll see if that continues, but I think it will.

It seems like you believe you have a similar problem with video games. And maybe you do. But I do think that people can have a healthy relationship with video games, and that there are positives associated with spending time this way: It’s interactive, unlike watching TV, and it activates parts of your brain that would be asleep otherwise, for example. It’s also good for dexterity and that brain/body link. But as with alcohol, carbs, and anything else that can be addictive, this probably depends on the individual. And all you can really do is evaluate what it is you’re doing, determine whether there are changes you’d like to make, and then see if you can make them. If you can have a healthy relationship with video games, perhaps one in which this occurs at set times on set days for specific amounts of time, I think that can work fine. But maybe you can’t.

Everyone has heard some variant of the phrase “no one ever looks back on their life and wishes they worked more.” This has always bothered me on several levels, but in my case, I feel like work is personally rewarding, and engages my brain, and that while I’m not curing cancer or anything, I am at least helping people in some small way. So I don’t regret that time, and you don’t have to look too closely at my family photos over the years to see that it never took me away from important personal events. I work a lot but I also manage to achieve some form of balance.

I mention this because maybe we should view video games the same way. You have to spend your time somehow, after all, and there are less healthy ways to do that. My wife and I watch two hours of TV every night during the week, for example, and I suppose you could argue that “we’ll never look back and wish we had watched more TV.” Sure. But you can’t always be engaged. Sometimes you just need to wind down. Everyone is different, but don’t judge yourself too harshly. It’s not a contest, you just need to find whatever balance that makes sense to you when it comes to using your time. It won’t be what I or others would do, maybe.

But there’s no way to balance an addiction. One of the key insights in the latest Gary Taubes book is some people can’t just eat fewer carbs, they literally can’t eat any carbs because they will gain weight or develop other bad health markers. This doesn’t mean that no one should ever eat carbs: In this way, too, we are all different, and some people can eat carbs with abandon in the same way that some smokers never get cancer. The trick is knowing yourself: If you’re an addict, you need to stop. If you can get by with doing less and be healthy with that, then do that. With carbs, I’m pretty close to that “can never eat carbs, ever” end of the spectrum. With video games, I feel like I can play games sometimes and it’s fine. That I don’t want to all that much is just fine with me.

Music industry evolution

helix2301 asks:

On Netflix there is a show called playlist it’s about Spotify and how they saved music business what do you think would music business been different if not for Spotify we still had iTunes and Microsoft groove and many others.

The issue here is that the music industry was going to change regardless. And whether it was Spotify or something else, we were always going to move from physical media to digital downloads to streaming. It was inevitable.

I’m sure Apple promoted them “saving” the music industry with the iTunes Store in the same way that Spotify does now. But iTunes was really just an interim step to the logical endgame and there’s no real market for “owning” music anymore beyond niche groups like hipster vinyl fans and oldsters who hang onto their MP3 collections on hard drives. I can assure you that my kids and everyone else of that generation could not care less about owning anything like that, and never will.

The issue for the music industry is the same for any other content creator: The Internet dramatically eased and expanded the spread of content, which is theoretically nothing but good news. But it also democratized the creation and spread of content, giving people a nearly infinite supply of it, which dilutes the value of that content and leads to situations in which we no longer have the same experiences with TV shows, movies, music, and other content types like we did when the choices were fewer. And sorry, everyone, but this is a natural and inevitable shift, one that will not reverse.

For music specifically, that means that very few artists make money on song recordings, which is bad in some ways, but also good in others: Thanks to the Internet, artists no longer need record labels and they can easily distribute their work without involving these companies, saving money. But it also means that they have to make money in other ways, and here, the natural order of things steps into help, because talented artists can go on tours and make a lot of money. What you find with legacy bands that were big in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, is that they often make a lot more money now than they did when they were current and on the radio all the time, and they do that through touring, which involves not just ticket sales but merchandise.

Anyway, streaming overall is “good” for music fans in the sense that we all have access to whatever music we want, and it’s “bad” because too much choice is a nightmare. There’s no easy answer here. But there’s no going back. Perhaps the next step is simply better curation. Maybe AI could do that! 🙂

Highs and lows

yoshi asks:

Looking back on 2023 in the technology world, were there any instances that shocked you? If not, maybe something that happened that delighted you? Broad questions I know, but just curious if anything in 2023 stood out to you.

I realize that AI is still controversial to some and that many feel it’s a hype cycle that will go nowhere fast. But leaving that aside—I do think AI will be the biggest improvement to personal productivity since the invention of the personal computer—my key takeaway from 2023 is absolutely AI-related. And it’s both the most surprising and delightful thing that happened this past year.

And that thing is Microsoft’s explicitly aggressive decision to literally bet the company on AI. The Microsoft of the past 10 years or more was a lot of things, but it was mostly a curiously quiet and agreeable giant that respected regulation and its competitors, didn’t step on any toes, and was about as inoffensive as a company of that size can be. And I hated it. It’s a bit of a stretch to claim that I missed the aggressive, belligerent, who-gives-a-F Microsoft of the 1990s, but I kind of did (within ethical and legal limits). And seeing this company wake up this year, boldly proclaim exactly what it was going to do, and then actually do it, was breathtaking. I never saw that coming.

The other event that followed this same trajectory was also Microsoft-related, go figure. Rather than just give up on its insanely expensive Activision Blizzard acquisition in the face of regulatory push back that would have halted any other company, Microsoft kept fighting like it was the late rounds of a Rocky movie or something. I cannot believe they kept it up, and I further can’t believe that they actually won in the end. It’s incredible.

So yeah, this one was all about Microsoft. Welcome back, I missed you.

I mean, come on

christianwilson asks:

Sheetz or Wawa. Answer carefully.

This one is easy. Wawa, obviously.

But I have a huge problem with what’s happened in Pennsylvania over the past few years. Wawa used to stick to the eastern half of the state and Sheetz stuck to the western half. But businesses are like sharks, I guess, in that they have to keep moving (or growing, in this case). And so they have inevitably been encroaching on each others’ territories and we actually have some Sheetz locations in the areas now.

I will never visit one. In the same sense that one does not drive by a Dunkin’ Donuts to get to Starbucks, friends don’t let friends go to Sheetz. I will die on this hill.

That said, Turkey Hill is fine.

DRM, the multi-headed dragon

ianceicys asks:

Any thoughts on the DRM scandal for Trains in Poland? Reminiscent of Microsoft’s Play Anywhere Hardware scandals?

I was only vaguely aware of this, and so I may be off a bit here, apologies. But this seems like a clear-cut safety issue, and I am not a fan of technology companies holding customers hostage (like a silly jsub-plot from Single White Female), especially when it’s a public utility or other essential service. And this seems like an antitrust/legal issue that Poland in this case needs to resolve. I will read up on this over the weekend to learn more.

I feel like Play Anywhere should be renamed to Play Anywhere*. I’m sure they meant well.