Reminder: Windows 10 is malware

Was it only two days ago that I was writing that WX still had quite a way to go, in spite of its brand-new Diagnostic Data Viewer? How nice of monopolist Microsoft to provide me with a timely demonstration of exactly what sort of issues WX still suffers from, as reported by WindowsReport:

Many Opera users recently complained on Reddit about Windows 10’s pushy behavior when it comes to using the Edge browser.

More specifically, users reported that the OS opens a new tab on Opera aimed at advertising Edge. Using the browser of choice of many Windows 10 users simply to promote Edge is indeed a bit strange.

After unlocking my Windows 10 computer, I discover that Windows has decided to open a tab in my Opera browser solely to advertise Edge browser to me.

This unexpected Edge ad made many users angry. They asked Microsoft to stop telling them what browser to use.

MSFT need to stop this nonsense, no one should be forced to use edge period.

Yep... that is some bullshit.

Windows 10 can still be had for free, weeks after they claimed to have closed the last free-WX loophole

BTW, I've just decided to start abbreviating Windows 10 to "WX," which is both shorter and consistent with GWX branding already used by Microsoft. For brevity and consistency, I'll also be using "W#" for earlier versions (i.e. W7, W8, W8.1), and simply adding the appropriate suffixes for other flavours of WX when needed for clarity (WX-Home, WX-Pro, WX-Core, WX-S, etc.).

It took Microsoft until two full weeks after their Dec. 31st deadline, and change, to finally close the Assistive Technologies loophole, which allowed users to upgrade to WX for free if they were willing to say that they used any kind of Assistive Technology... up to, and including, hot keys. You might thing that the end of the last of the Microsoft's officially free WX offerings would mean the end of stories about how you can still get WX for free.

Well, you would be wrong. Check out the "most relevant" result that Google News returns for "Windows 10."

Yes, that's Forbes, with yet another piece on how WX can still be had for free, now two weeks after the last free WX window was allegedly closed.

Windows 10 was free for a year after launch for anyone who had an older version of Windows. For those who missed this transition period it was possible to get an upgrade right up until the end of 2017, a loophole Microsoft has now closed - although it wasn't much of a loophole, as the company knew all about it.

However there are other ways to upgrade to Windows 10 that don't involve getting the upgrade assistant from the official site.

Yes, apparently this has always worked... meaning that this also isn't much of a loophole, since Microsoft clearly also knows all about it, i.e. working as intended.

It's unclear as to why this works, but if you have a product code for an old version of Windows 7, 8 or 8.1 you should be able to enter this into a copy of Windows 10 and get an activation. You will be given access to the version of Windows 10 that matches the original product key. So Windows 8 Pro will get Windows 10 Pro, while Windows 8 Home will get, you guessed it, Windows 10 Home.

Hmmm.... so it's possible to upgrade from W7-Pro to WX-Pro? It's a shame the GWX app didn't work the same way; I might have been tempted to switch.

Right about now, you might be wondering why Microsoft would still have a WX upgrade left open that's large enough for an auto-truck to drive through? Well, Microsoft themselves are pretty quiet on the issue, but Forbes' Ian Morris has some ideas:

As I pointed out in my article about the closing of the accessibility loophole, I don't think Microsoft really cares about end users getting free upgrades. It makes more money from OEM sales of Windows 10 on new laptops and revenue from corporate users than the slender pickings of home users. Indeed, Microsoft makes more money - and more margin - on selling cloud offerings these days.

Windows isn't a cash cow when it comes to home users, so I suspect there's a lot of give built into the system.

Which makes a lot of sense, actually. It's just a shame that Microsoft are being so disingenuous about it all. I mean, they could easily partner with PC-OEMs to promote new PC sales ("Get the most out of Windows 10 with the latest AMD/Ryzen hardware!"), while also continuing to let tech-savvier users upgrade for free if they still want to... and without the fucking hard sell, this time. Because, honestly, the hard sell of the GWX campaign was a big part of the continued appeal of W7, which culminated in Microsoft simply switching over users who didn't take active steps to avoid the unwanted "upgrade," even after they'd repeatedly refused Microsoft's malware-laden Home version of WX.

Hell, Microsoft even have a better product to give away than they did a few years ago, with more features and (crucially) better privacy protections, and even better privacy tools due to be added to the platform in a couple of months. And if I can also use my W7 Professional license to upgrade to WX-Pro, rather than the gimped Home version, to gain even more features and even better privacy tools... when, that becomes one hell of a sales pitch, doesn't it?

So, what's the problem?

This is why I ad-block...

...and why I'm not relying on Google's built-in ad-blocker, which (naturally) won't block ads served by their own sites.

ArsTechnica reported on this first, but Gizmodo has a really good article about the problem:

As Ars Technica first reported on Friday, users on social media started complaining earlier this week that YouTube ads were triggering their anti-virus software. Specifically, the software was recognizing a script from a service called CoinHive. The script was originally released as a sort of altruistic idea that would allow sites to make a little extra income by putting a visitor’s CPU processing power to use by mining a cryptocurrency called Monero. This could be used ethically as long as a site notifies its visitors of what’s happening and doesn’t get so greedy with the CPU usage that it crashes a visitor’s computer. In the case of YouTube’s ads running the script, they were reportedly using up to 80 percent of the CPU and neither YouTube nor the user were told what was happening.

[...]

Gizmodo reached out to YouTube for comment on Trend Micro’s claims, and a spokesperson acknowledged the problem:

Mining cryptocurrency through ads is a relatively new form of abuse that violates our policies and one that we’ve been monitoring actively. We enforce our policies through a multi-layered detection system across our platforms which we update as new threats emerge. In this case, the ads were blocked in less than two hours and the malicious actors were quickly removed from our platforms.

The part of the statement about the ads being blocked in less than two hours doesn’t align with Trend Micro’s assessment that the ad campaign has been a problem for at least a week. When we asked YouTube about this discrepancy, a spokesperson declined to comment any further.

But a source with direct knowledge of YouTube’s handling of the situation told Gizmodo that the two-hour measurement was just being applied to each individual ad run by the hackers, not the ads en masse. YouTube approves a clean ad submitted by a clean account set up by the hijacker. When the ad goes live, the attackers use various cloaking methods to subvert YouTube’s system and swap the ad with one that includes the malicious script. A couple hours later, the ad is detected, taken down, and the user who submitted it gets their account deleted. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

I was actually going to give Chrome another try, in part to see how its newly upgraded ad-blocking feature stacked up against uBlock and AdBlocker, but I think I'll be holding off for a while longer. Forget the desirability of the thing, when even sites like YouTube, run by companies as large as Google, are delivering ads loaded with malware, it simply isn't safe to let ads of any kind run in your browser window.

Of course, the more that I become accustomed to ad-free internet, the harder it becomes to ever turn the ads back on. I don't know what sort of an experience Chrome's built-in ad-blocker delivers, but the fact that users like me aren't less and less interested in even trying it anymore, thanks to egregious abuses like cryptojacking, probably spells real trouble for the advertising industry.

And then, of course, there's the problem that advertising doesn't even work anymore:

Sorry, advertisers. It's too bad that you all didn't decide to behave sensibly and ethically, before we developed the ability to simply shut you out completely. Now you have to come up with an ad that can go viral as a stand-alone piece of content, which ad-blocking users will choose to watch, and which still doesn't sell the product it's supposed to be flogging. That Vitamin Water ad may well have introduced the world to Feel It Still, but I it's probably done more for "Portugal. The Man" than it did for Vitamin Water sales, and how much did it cost to hire Aaron Paul for that thing? GG.

What does this mean for the internet that we're used to, filled as it is with "free" content from sites that can only keep operating if they're supported with ad revenue? Honestly, I have no idea. I suspect, though, that we're only a few years away from finding out.

Microsoft makes it official

It looks like the "Diagnostic data viewer" is, indeed, going to be a thing, as Microsoft have announced on their own blog:

To kick off the new year ahead of Data Privacy Day we are giving our Windows Insiders an early preview of the Windows Diagnostic Data Viewer coming in our next release of Windows. Our commitment is to be fully transparent on the diagnostic data collected from your Windows devices, how it is used, and to provide you with increased control over that data. This is all part of our commitment to increase your trust and confidence in our products and services.

This brand new commitment of full transparency is, of course, new - up to now, Microsoft have acted in the privacy interests of Windows 10 users only when threatened with regulatory action, and have consistently done just enough to keep regulators at bay, while continuing to harvest users' data. So, call me cynical, but I have to wonder what regulatory action was in the offing here, that we don't yet know about, and which Microsoft is trying to mitigate by bolstering Windows 10's privacy regime.

Windows 10's "Redstone 4" update (actual name TBA, but hopefully better than Creators Update) should be rolling out in March or April, if Microsoft stay on schedule, and these new changes are supposed to be part of it, so Windows 10 users should get the DDV at the same time that they get Timeline... which was supposed to roll out two updates ago. Moderate those expectations, folks!

That said... this is an improvement, and a long overdue one, so I'm going to go ahead and call it a win for consumers. Now they just need to restore Cortana's off switch...

In a long overdue move, Microsoft might finally tell you what data they're collecting, and let you delete it, in Windows 10

File this one under "It's about fucking time, Microsoft." As reported by TechRadar:

In a move that will certainly please privacy-conscious users, it seems that Microsoft is about to introduce the ability to view and delete the telemetry data that Windows 10 collects, according to new options that have popped up in the operating system’s latest preview builds.

[...]

Last April, after taking what seemed like endless heat on the issue, Microsoft clarified what personal data Windows 10 collects on a basic level (the minimum amount of telemetry data you can elect to send).

But as Ghacks spotted, the most recent preview builds of Windows 10 (released this month and last month) have a pair of new options at the bottom of the Diagnostics & Feedback screen: ‘Diagnostic data viewer’ and ‘Delete diagnostic data’.

At the moment, these are merely placeholders which don’t function or do anything when clicked, but hopefully they will be live for those testing Windows 10 soon enough.

As a result, it’s not clear exactly what their function is at this point, but it seems obvious enough: the former should allow the user to fully view all the diagnostic data being collected on their system, and the latter should facilitate its deletion.

It's important to note that Microsoft haven't announced anything about this themselves, yet, and nobody's seen this feature in action, either, so there's a lot of assumptions in this report. In particular, there's no indication yet whether this functionality would be available to all Windows 10 users, or whether Microsoft might end up restricting it to high-priced SKUs of the OS, as they've previously done with tools like the Group Policy Editor, or the ability to turn off the "Microsoft Consumer Experience."

Still, assuming that Windows 10 Home users get access to these tools, too, it could be a long-overdue addition to the privacy and personal information management tools that the OS should always have included. Honestly, giving users a greater degree of control over Windows 10's telemetry bullshit is the kind of thing that might have convinced me to switch, had they done it back when switching was still a free upgrade.

Now, of course, upgrading will cost extra, which means that I still won't be switching until the time comes to buy a new PC... which won't happen for me until AMD releases new, Spectre-free CPU designs, which is about the only "feature" that I'd really consider switching PCs to obtain (and, no, I'm not even considering switching to Intel). In the meantime, regardless of which version of Windows you're running, you should still be running an anti-telemetry application like SpyBot's Anti-Beacon as well. Don't forget, Microsoft's telemetry bullshit isn't restricted to Windows 10 anymore.

Finally asking the question, then completely missing the point

This article from We Live Security asks a really good question... and then totally fucks up the answer:

Last year, CES 2017 heralded the age of ubiquitous Virtual Reality or VR as the cool kids call it, but now CES 2018 has come and gone and you probably still don’t own or use a VR system. So why not?

VR has been a slow burn. The problem has been to create realism to the extent that the brain can stop nagging you that you’re not in a real environment and just adapt, and learn whatever’s being presented.

Yes, that is the question. But a lack of realism is not the problem with VR.

A quick search of YouTube will turn up videos that show people falling over while wearing VR headsets after trying to climb on, or sit on, virtual objects. Yes, VR sickness is still a thing, caused by signals from your vestibular system that conflict with the visual information that your VR headset is providing, but that's not the same thing as saying that VR doesn't look realistic enough to fool your brain, because anyone who's tried a VR headset will tell you that simply isn't true.

So, higher resolution images aren't the silver bullet that VR is waiting for. And passages like this one are simply nonsense:

Even if you have high-definition displays, they don’t emulate moving through a real environment. This is because you overlay a flat image onto a surface, but when you “pass by” that object, your peripheral vision doesn’t detect the other side of the image being displayed on the other side of the object.

Again, I direct to to YouTube for thousands of videos filled with evidence which rebut this argument. And, for the record, I don't think that AI is the answer to VR's problems, either:

However, due to the strong strides and commoditization this year in AI cores that “know” or can infer more about your changing environment, the overall experience can seem far more real. AI has come a long way in recent years, especially around integrating it into other environments through hooking APIs and such.

Talk about whistling past the graveyard. Notice how there isn't a single sentence in there which talks about the current state of AI research in any detail, or any specific claim about how application of AI to VR would help. Instead, the claims are nearly identical to those that VR advocates have been making for the headsets themselves: vague, nearly limitless, and somehow due to arrive any day now in spite of a total lack of anything resembling a relevant detail. AI is not magic; you can't simply wave an AI wand at your failing technology to make it magically relevant to consumers are almost entirely uninterested.

VR is not catching on with consumers because VR's advocates do not have a value proposition that it good enough to sell the tech. It really doesn't matter how low the price goes; VR still isn't useful for anything that can't be done without VR, which means that it will continue to be too expensive at any asking price. VR does not suffer from a lack of realism, or a lack of AI, or a lack of content, or an excess of sticker shock. I mean, yes, all of those things are issues with VR, but they are not the issue.

No, the issue with VR is that it fails to provide sufficient value for money to be worth buying. And nobody connected with the VR industry seems to care to tackle that fundamental issue, thus ensuring that it goes unresolved.

Barcelona goes Linux

While Munich spends €100M to migrate from Linux to Windows, cities like Barcelona are going in the other direction, as reported by FOSSBytes:

According to a report from Spanish newspaper El País (Via: It’s Foss), the City of Barcelona is moving away from the proprietary software products from Microsoft. This move is important in the wake of Munich’s recent decision to again adopt Microsoft’s products.

As per the report, Barcelona city plans to replace all user applications on its computers with open source alternatives. After finding a proper replacement for all proprietary software, the final step would be to go ahead with replacing the operating system with Linux.

To achieve this goal, the City’s administration has begun the process of commissioning IT projects and hiring developers on software programs. As per the plan, in 2018 about 70 percent of the City’s software budget will be spent on developing open source software. It’s being expected that the transition will be completed before Spring 2019.

[...]

According to Francesca Bria, the City Council’s Commissioner of Technology and Digital Innovation, the taxpayer’s money should be invested in the open source code that could be reused by the public as well.

To start with the same, Exchange Server and Outlook will be replaced by Open-Xchange; Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office will be kicked out in favor of Mozilla Firefox and LibreOffice.

Spain is no stranger to this sort of FOSS-migration, , which may may be partly why Barcelona is willing to save money on Microsoft licensing fees, avoid MS's other anti-consumer bullshit, while also taking back control over their own computers and investing in a portfolio of free, open-source software that their taxpayers can then access at no added cost.

With Microsoft seemingly determined to continue pushing Windows-As-A-Service, at a pace of two major updates per year and a monthly update schedule on top of that which corporate IT departments are struggling to keep up with, we may start to see more of these Windows-to-Linux migrations over time, rather than fewer, especially in the taxpayer-funded sphere, where costs can't necessarily be easily recouped from customers, what with raising taxes being an unpopular sort of thing to do. Whether Microsoft's lobbyists salespeople can prevent that from happening, and you know they're working hard to do exactly that... well, I guess only time will tell.

Bitcoin conference stops accepting Bitcoin?

This is how you know that the Bitcoin bubble is about to burst. As reported by Bitcoin.com:

Next week the popular cryptocurrency event, The North American Bitcoin Conference (TNABC) will be hosted in downtown Miami at the James L Knight Center, January 18-19. However, bitcoin proponents got some unfortunate news this week as the event organizers have announced they have stopped accepting bitcoin payments for conference tickets due to network fees and congestion.

[...]

“Due to network congestion and manual processing, we have closed ticket payments using Cryptocurrencies — Hopefully, next year there will be more unity in the community about scaling and global adoption becomes reality,” explains the TNABC ticketing page.

Yikes.

It's no wonder that Forbes had this take on Bitcoin, about a week ago:

My opinion about Bitcoin – and now its johnny-come-lately imitators and competitors – remains largely unchanged. In accordance with Carl Menger’s subjective theory of value, the market prices of “cryptocurrencies” still will depend on how much value individuals choose to attach to it. Also, Bitcoin and the others still have the speculative potential to produce mind-boggling profits.

On one crucial fundamental point, though, I now disagree with my earlier assessment of Bitcoin and its cousins: I no longer believe that one can legitimately call them “currencies.” That is a fallacy, a falsehood, or an inaccuracy, and I’ll let you debate the proper semantics. My point is this: The primary definition of a currency – “money” – is that it serves a society as the generally accepted, routinely used medium of exchange.  Neither Bitcoin nor any other so-called “cryptocurrency” does that or is capable of that in its current stage of development.

Bitcoins are not coins, and they're rapidly becoming useless as a medium of monetary exchange. If you're already playing the Bitcoin market, or have joined the Bitcoin "gold rush," then I wish you luck. I have the feeling you'll need it. For those that were slow to jump in, though, or who simply thought better or chasing the latest tech industry "bubble" trend... good for you, for having learned the lessons of history.

RIP, Cortana? (UPDATED)

When I read earlier this week that some OEMs were adding Amazon Alexa functionality to their new PCs, I really didn't think much of it. Apparently, though, I was very, very wrong about that, as this piece from ZDNet explains:

If Microsoft's Cortana can't win on a Windows PC where can it? At CES 2018, Amazon's Alexa assistant is being added to Acer, Asus and HP systems with more likely to follow.

A year ago, Amazon's Alexa everywhere strategy rolled out. At CES 2018 (see latest via CNET), Alexa's footprint is expanding throughout the smart home and via partnerships.
Cortana's future has increasingly been looking shaky as a front-end assistant. To wit:

• Microsoft has dropped plans to integrate Cortana with its Dynamics 365 ERP and CRM platforms. Microsoft did say that integration with Cortana and Dynamics 365 would happen at a future date without offering details.
• Cortana has 230 skills and that tally is well behind Alexa's 25,000.
• Microsoft and Amazon announced a pact to co-mingle Cortana and Alexa. But Alexa for Business alters the business focus for Microsoft's Cortana.

Microsoft, for their part, have started pushing back against this narrative, as reported by ZDNet:

Microsoft is trying to fight back against perceptions that Cortana may be its next consumer-centric technology to face the chopping block.

On Jan. 9, the company issued a press releasing touting recent wins for Cortana. Among these are the officially unveiled Johnson Controls' Cortana-powered thermostat (which goes on sale for $319 starting in March).

A Microsoft spokesperson I contacted said there are additional new Cortana partners not listed in the Jan. 9 blog post that are going public with their Cortana wares at CES.

"In addition to our currently supported home automation partners, we are announcing new partnerships with Ecobee, Geeni, Honeywell Lyric, IFTTT, LIFX, TP-Link Kasa, and Honeywell Total Connect Comfort. Cortana currently supports lights, outlets, switches, and thermostats across all providers," the spokesperson said.

Ah, yes... the Internet of Things. Which really isn't a thing yet, because consumers are (so far, anyway) largely uninterested in internet-enabled fridges and toasters, but whatevs. It rather begs the question, though... is a trickle of IoT/Cortana devices enough to keep Cortana alive, when even PC makers are abandoning Cortana in favour of Alexa due to a lack of demand for Microsoft's digital assistant?

The Reg didn't think so:

Torn between wholesaling and retailing Cortana, Microsoft ended up doing a bit of both, and failed badly. It's also torn between what the brand actually means – an Alexa voice assistant, or an IBM Watson-like brand for analytics, covering a multitude of products and technologies.

It's probably unfair to make any kind of pronouncement until 2017's Amazon-Microsoft deal bears fruit. Echo owners will get access to, er, Cortana – or whatever Microsoft decides Cortana is this week.

And that's the trouble.

Less than two months ago this was the Cortana Intelligence Suite, we noted. Only now all mention of the Cortana brand has been removed from everywhere except the URL.

It would be negligent not to point out what a great thing Microsoft has squandered. Cortana is another case of Microsoft failing to make the most of outstanding lab work – it has done speech very well for a very long time – and shrewd acquisitions.

Time will tell, I suppose, but the fact that Microsoft find themselves spending PR time during CES 2018 trying to convince people that Cortana isn't dead, rather than announcing new and actually interesting things themselves, probably isn't a good sign.

Personally, I'm hoping that Cortana's demise actually is imminent, because that actually mean that Windows 10 users will finally get the option back to simply turn Cortana off entirely. Even if Microsoft keep Cortana on life support for another year, it's becoming clear that Microsoft have somehow failed to shove their spyware digital assistant down consumers' collective throats, in spite of having total control over the Windows 10 platform. Perhaps their "sales" approach was a touch too ham-fisted?

UPDATED JAN. 12th:

Paul Thurrott has an interesting take (login required) on Microsoft's push-back:

Google’s presence at the show is particularly impressive: After adding two Assistant-based devices at CES 2017, the firm this year unveiled a stunning array of partners creating Android TVs, Smart TVs, smart speakers, smart displays, smart headphones, automotive solutions, and more all running off of Google Assistant.

By comparison, Microsoft’s partners released exactly one device in 2017, the Harman Kardon Invoke. And we’ve been tantalized by a second device, the JCI Glas thermostat, which will allegedly arrive this year. (To be fair, the device is at CES.) That’s it.

For 2018, Microsoft says it has “partnered with industry leaders including Allwinner, Synaptics, TONLY, and Qualcomm, to develop reference designs for new Cortana experiences.”

Sorry. Reference designs? Guys. This battle is already over. Reference designs should have happened two years ago.

Microsoft told Mary Jo Foley that more is on the way.

“In addition to our currently supported home automation partners, we are announcing new partnerships with Ecobee, Geeni, Honeywell Lyric, IFTTT, LIFX, TP-Link Kasa, and Honeywell Total Connect Comfort,” a Microsoft spokesperson told her. “Cortana currently supports lights, outlets, switches, and thermostats across all providers.”

The delusional nature of this work is astonishing. By comparison, Google Assistant now works with over 225 home control brands and more than 1,500 devices. That’s the bar.

[...]

Brad and I were so stunned by this push for rival Microsoft technologies, that we asked representatives of several PC makers at CES about Cortana. No one uses the technology, we were routinely told. And they are simply delivering the functionality that their customers actually want.

RIP, Cortana (May 2015 - January 2018). Apparently you will not be missed.

VR's ethical concerns

OMG, am I ever happy to finally start seeing articles like this one, from VentureBeat:

Virtual reality (VR) has a great deal of potential for the betterment of society – whether it be inspiring social change or training surgeons for delicate medical procedures.

But as with all new technologies, we should also be aware of any potential ethical concerns that could emerge as social problems further down the line. Here I list just a few issues that should undoubtedly be considered before we forge ahead in optimism.

Preach, sister!

Now, some of the list are (IMHO) relatively minor things that should not be as highly ranked as they are (e.g. #6, "Unpalatable fantasies," or #9,"Appropriate roaming and re-creation," which both feel like first-world, corporate-boardroom concerns even in a world where VR porn already exists), and others (e.g. #10, "Privacy and data") are not unique to VR, but some of them are very much VR-specific and definitely concerns that I've written about before, including:

1) Sensory vulnerability

When we think of virtual reality, we automatically conjure images of clunky headsets covering the eyes — and often the ears — of users in order to create a fully immersive experience. There are also VR gloves and a growing range of other accessories and attachments. Though the resultant feel might be hyper-realistic, we should also be concerned for people using these in the home — especially alone. Having limited access to sense data leaves users vulnerable to accidents, home invasions, and any other misfortunes that can come of being totally distracted.

Remember when BestBuy closed down their Oculus Rift demo stations after discovering that their customers didn't really want to strap on a VR headset and leave themselves feeling horribly vulnerable in the middle of a public space? With "VR 2.0" apologists pushing portable VR as the natural next phase of the industry, this one has obvious relevance.

And then there's:

2) Social isolation

There’s a lot of debate around whether VR is socially isolating. On the one hand, the whole experience takes place within a single user’s field-of-vision, excluding others from physically participating alongside them. On the other hand, developers like Facebook have been busy inventing communal meeting places like Spaces, which help VR users meet and interact in a virtual social environment. Though, as argued, the latter could be helpfully utilized by the introverted and lonely (such as seniors), there’s also a danger that it could become the lazy and dismissive way of dealing with these issues.

There is also the question of whether forums like Spaces may even end-up “detaching” users by leading them to neglect their real-world social connections. Studies have already demonstrated that our existing social media consumption is making many of us feel socially isolated, as well as guilty and depressed. There’s also plenty of evidence to show that real face-to-face interactions are a crucial factor in maintaining good mental health. Substituting them with VR without further study would be ill-advised.

With Colorado already running VR experiments on inmates, this sort of thing is an obvious concern. Granted, Colorado is starting small, testing the usefulness of VR in acclimating possibly-institutionalized prison inmates to the outside world prior to release, but the potential for "VR solitary," and the permanent neurological damage that can result, has to loom large over any prison-system application of this technology.

Which leads us to:

5) Psychiatric

There could also be more profound and dangerous psychological effects on some users (although clearly there are currently a lot of unknowns). Experts in neuroscience and the human mind have spoken of “depersonalization”, which can result in a user believing their own physical body is an avatar. There is also a pertinent worry that VR might be swift to expose psychiatric vulnerabilities in some users, and spark psychotic episodes. One investor has even warned that virtual reality gaming could cause real-life post-traumatic stress disorder.

Needless to say, we must identify the psychological risks and symptoms ahead of market saturation, if that is an inevitability.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: there's a reason why new therapeutic devices are generally required to prove themselves both effective and safe before being approved for widespread use on patients. It's unlikely that a device as human-centric as VR will ever have an animal testing phase, but closely-controlled and -supervised, double-blind human trials should definitely be done before we start prescribing VR for mental illness. Yes, there's potential application here, but there's also a strong whiff of snake oil about it all, and no data yet to show that VR does more good than harm as a therapeutic tool.

The list also includes at least one item that I hadn't considered before:

8) Manipulation

Attempts at consumer manipulation via advertising trickery are not new, but up until now they’ve been 2-dimensional. As such, they’ve had to work hard compete with our distracted focus. Phones ringing, babies crying, traffic, conversations, music, noisy neighbors, interesting reads, and all the rest. With VR, commercial advertisers will have access to our entire surrounding environment (which some psychologists argue has the power to control our behavior). This will ramp up revenue opportunities for developers, who now have (literally) whole new worlds of blank space upon which they can sell advertising.

Commentators are already warning that this could lead to new, covert tactics involving product placement, brand integration and subliminal advertising.

Again, this may be more of a first-world, corporate-boardroom concern at the moment; consumers are mostly kicking advertising's ass right now, and there's no data yet to suggest that VR ads will be any more effective, or that consumers won't quickly find (and adopt) VR ad-blocking even before VR manages to achieve widespread adoption. It's probably still worth keeping an eye on, though, and it's heartening to see articles in VentureBeat (which is aimed at potential VR investors, remember) that are exploring issues like this one.

And that's my take on the entire piece: a heartening dose of sober self-reflection for an industry that's seemingly built entirely out of hype. The entire article is worth a read, and well worth supporting just on principle, so go give them some clicks.

And the award for fastest-selling video game console in US history goes to...

It's the Nintendo Switch. Of course it's the Switch.

As reported by TechRadar:

Once upon a time there were pundits who thought the Nintendo Switch was going to be a dud, because – after all – what would be the appeal of a portable home console in this age of smartphones and iPads?

Turns out, they were very, very wrong. Today Nintendo announced that the Switch is the fastest-selling home video game console in US history, soundly thrashing the previous record held by Nintendo's own Wii console. Within 10 months, 4.8 million Switch units were sold compared to the 4 million moved by the Wii.

[...]

It's an impressive start for a console that still doesn't have a dedicated online service or even a way to store game save files in the cloud. 

Yet the Switch, in many ways, has reminded audiences (and developers) that game players seek fun above all else, which is an important lesson at a time when competing consoles like the Xbox One X and PlayStation 4 Pro are focusing heavily on graphics.

The Switch is almost laughably far from the impressive specs of those devices, but that graphical power doesn't seem as necessary when you realize you're playing Skyrim on the Switch while in the back seat on a road trip.

The Switch's blockbuster year has some trying to suss out exactly why it's doing so well, as in this piece from Polygon (their first reason: it has no competition, being the only console/handhold hybrid system on the market), and others wondering if Nintendo can keep the momentum going (the lack of 64GB cartridges until 2019, combined with a lack of onboard storage space, having been flagged as potential problems for the coming year), but there's no doubt that the Switch is a success, and will be around for a long, long time.

Now, if only there were a handheld that let me access my Steam backlog collection while on the go. That is something that I'd pay good money for; sadly, the only thing currently in the pipeline that would quality is SMACH Z, which is looking more and more like vaporware.

Google to the rescue!

First, Google's Project Zero researchers found the CPU-level security vulnerabilities known as Meltdown and Spectre. Now, they've found the cure... or, at least, a more efficient workaround, as reported in The Verge:

Google just gave chipmakers some much needed good news. In a post on the company’s Online Security Blog, two Google engineers described a novel chip-level patch that has been deployed across the company’s entire infrastructure, resulting in only minor declines in performance in most cases. The company has also posted details of the new technique, called ReptOnline, in the hopes that other companies will be able to follow the same technique. If the claims hold, it would mean Intel and others have avoided the catastrophic slowdowns that many had predicted.

“There has been speculation that the deployment of KPTI causes significant performance slowdowns,” the post reads, referring to the company’s “Kernel Page Table Isolation” technique. “Performance can vary, as the impact of the KPTI mitigations depends on the rate of system calls made by an application. On most of our workloads, including our cloud infrastructure, we see negligible impact on performance.”

[...]

That assessment is consistent with early reports from Intel, which had said slowdowns would be “highly workload-dependent and, for the average computer user, should not be significant.” Those claims were met with skepticism, with many seeing them as an effort by Intel to downplay the impact of the newly public vulnerabilities. At the same time, some early benchmarks saw slowdowns as high as 17 percent.

More recently, Intel announced it had deployed patches that would render chips immune to the new attacks, and restated that the performance impact was not significant. It’s difficult to confirm Google and Intel’s claims until the patches are deployed, but it’s significant that Google has joined the chipmaker in reporting minimal slowdowns.

As someone who met Intel's early minimal-impact claims with skepticism, I can honestly say to all Core i5 users that I'm glad to learn that the picture is looking less grim than first thought. I'm still glad to be an AMD man, though, and even more glad that Google were awake at the switch for this one. People give Google a lot of grief for sometimes acting like they've forgotten their original mission statement, but this, folks, is what they meant by "don't be evil." Not only were they not evil, they used their powers for good, and are extending help to anyone who needs it, for free.

Intel, meanwhile, is claiming to have finished patches for 90% of their products released in the past five years, which sounds a little weaksauce considering that Meltdown affects Intel products released in the last ten years, much like the firmware issue that was reported a few months ago. And there's also the small matter of Intel, who were notified about Meltdown and Spectre back in June, being led by a CEO who sold off a bunch of stock in October, before either flaw became public knowledge, as reported by MP1st, among others:

Suspiciously, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich sold off $24 million worth of stock late last year before the vulnerabilities became public knowledge. An Intel spokesperson said the stock trade was “unrelated” despite Intel knowing about the issue for five months.

Oops! I predict that the SEC will be investigating that piece of business.

Intel's stock price has, naturally, dropped as a result of all this news, while AMD's has risen, but I suspect that Intel's problems over these problems are only beginning.

UPDATE:

One minor correction: While Jann Horn at Google Project Zero (GOOGL.O) came to similar conclusions independently, it looks like credit for discovering Meltdown actually goes to an independent researcher named Daniel Grus, whose feat of security research is described in this article by The Verge:

The 31-year-old information security researcher and post-doctoral fellow at Austria’s Graz Technical University had just breached the inner sanctum of his computer’s central processing unit (CPU) and stolen secrets from it.

Until that moment, Gruss and colleagues Moritz Lipp and Michael Schwarz had thought such an attack on the processor’s ‘kernel’ memory, which is meant to be inaccessible to users, was only theoretically possible.

“When I saw my private website addresses from Firefox being dumped by the tool I wrote, I was really shocked,” Gruss told Reuters in an email interview, describing how he had unlocked personal data that should be secured.

Gruss, Lipp and Schwarz, working from their homes on a weekend in early December, messaged each other furiously to verify the result.

“We sat for hours in disbelief until we eliminated any possibility that this result was wrong,” said Gruss, whose mind kept racing even after powering down his computer, so he barely caught a wink of sleep.

Gruss and his colleagues had just confirmed the existence of what he regards as “one of the worst CPU bugs ever found”.

Damn, Daniel! (Sorry, I couldn't resist.) Seriously, though, congratulations to Mr. Gruss for some solid detective work.

UPDATE #2:

Cue the lawsuits! As reported by Gizmodo:

It’s been just two days since The Register first reported that all Intel x86-64x processors were subject to a severe security vulnerability, and already Intel has been hit with at least three separate class action lawsuits related to the vulnerability.

The Register first reported the news on January 2nd, noting that the solution to fixing the vulnerability could result in slowdown of the affected computers. Intel has since claimed that any performance penalties would be negligible, and today Google, which has implemented a fix on its affected servers (which host its cloud services, including Gmail) wrote that, “On most of our workloads, including our cloud infrastructure, we see negligible impact on performance.”

Plaintiffs in three different states disagree. As Law.com first noted, a class action complaint was filed January 3rd in United States District Court for the Northern District of California. Since then Gizmodo has found two additional class action complaints filed today (just eleven minutes apart)—one in the District of Oregon and another in the Southern District of Indiana.

All three complaints cite the security vulnerability as well as Intel’s failure to disclose it in a timely fashion.

That's some fast work, and I have a feeling that there are more to come.

Munich's €100M migration back to Windows

Sometimes, I love The Reg:

Priceless.

From the article itself:

Those supporting the anti-Linux cause claim Windows 10 will solve perceived compatibility issues with applications and hardware drivers. They contend that quitting Linux will remove the need to also run a bank of Windows computers as some kind of backup.

Opponents, however, say it's crazy to pay twice for a costly migration that takes years to complete. Why not just fix the internal IT disorganisation?

What Munich does is defy reliable research. Large organisations successfully deploy free software in far larger numbers than Munich ever did. See here for a list maintained by The Document Foundation, the organisation behind LibreOffice.

"There are many examples. Munich was definitely not the only one," says Italo Vignoli, a founder of The Document Foundation.

[...]

Also consider Rome, which is installing the LibreOffice suite on all of its 14,000 PC workstations across the city. In 2018, Rome will run a pilot to test the use of workstations running Linux.

It would appear that Microsoft's lobbyists in Munich really earned their keep on this one.

The Reg's whole article is pretty good, and there's quite a bit more of it, so go give it a read.

Still alive...

Months after announcing that they would tighten requirements on the Assistive Technologies upgrade path for Windows 10 on Dec. 31st, effectively closing the free upgrade path for people who didn't use a very limited set of accessibility devices, it appears that Microsoft has now missed that deadline. Yes, the morally challenged among you who still want to upgrade to Windows 10 for free can still do so, a situation about which Microsoft apparently give zero fucks, as reported by TechRadar:

Microsoft’s offer to upgrade Windows 7 or Windows 8 to Windows 10 for free for users who need assistive technologies was supposed to run out at the end of 2017, but according to reports the method is still valid right now.

The assistive technologies upgrade page is indeed still live, and allows you to download the Windows 10 upgrade executable, despite the page stating that the offer expires on December 31, 2017.

According to Ghacks, and other sources including readers who tipped MS Power User, you can fire up that file and still upgrade, so you haven’t missed the boat yet.

The caveat is that you may run into an error message during the upgrade process, but this is easily fixed as discussed by Ghacks (essentially, you have to copy a specific DLL file across).

[...]

It seems that the other route of upgrading to Windows 10 – using an existing Windows 7/8.1 product key to activate the installation of the new OS – also still works as we’ve headed into 2018.

Ultimately, Microsoft probably isn’t too fussed about closing these loopholes because pumping up the numbers of Windows 10 users is obviously not a bad thing for the company.

At this point, I would add only that I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!

Of course the loophole is still open. Of course Microsoft are taking their own sweet time about closing it, now two and a half years after Windows 10 was released, and counting. By some projections, Windows 10 adoption may not surpass Windows 7 until November, even with this free upgrade path, and Windows 7 may well retain at least a 39% user share when its extended support window finally closes in 2020. With those numbers staring them in the face, the only thing which is at all surprising about Microsoft's indifference to "abuse" of the Assistive Technologies loophole, is that anyone is at all surprised by it.

If Microsoft want my advice (which they don't, but I'm going to give it anyway), not only should they continue to allow free Windows 10 upgrades indefinitely for all users, but they should allow free upgrades to Windows 10 Professional for users who have Professional licences of Windows 7 and 8/8.1 tight up until Windows 8.1's end-of-life date in 2023. No more cute games and sly winks; just do it, already. MS should either admit that they're still giving it away, or close the loopholes, in exactly the way they said they would, and clearly have no intention of doing. Because there's really no excuse for not having tightened up this policy loophole after a year and and a half of watching people abuse it; at this point, we have to assume that continued abuse is the desired result.

Of course, all of this assumes that there are Windows 7 and 8.1 users who (a) want to "upgrade" to Windows 10, and (b) haven't already done so, neither of which appears to be the case. I expect to keep reading about this on Windows-friendly tech blogs and media sites for months to come, though, which is something of a disappointment; I really was hoping that the high-pressure Windows 10 sales pitch would finally be over, but apparently, that glorious day (may it soon come) is still months away.

Le sigh.

UPDATED JAN. 4th:

It looks like Microsoft have finally, officially, extended the deadline on the loophole to their loophole, as reported by Winbuzzer:

We’ve been advising assistive technology users to grab a free Windows 10 for several months. It was due to end on December 31, but the new year came and the offer remained. A new update to the webpage reveals that Microsoft has extended the offer to January 16, 2018.

“If you use assistive technologies, you can upgrade to Windows 10 at no cost as Microsoft continues our efforts to improve the Windows 10 experience for people who use these technologies. Please take advantage of this offer before it expires on January 16, 2018,” says the webpage.

You can upgrade from versions of Windows 7 and 8.1, avoiding the regular $120. The only requirement is the use of some form of accessibility tech, but Microsoft doesn’t check. As a result, anyone with the earlier OSes can upgrade for free.

Winbuzzer end their piece with this knee-slapper:

It seems unlikely that the company will extend the deadline again, so make you take advantage of it.  

Really? Because, from where I'm sitting, Microsoft have done nothing but extend the deadline on their free Windows 10 giveaway, every chance they've had. Why would anyone believe that they really, really, double-pinkie-swear mean it, this time?

Le sigh.

Meltdown and Spectre - much less sexy than the James Bond movies they sound like.

Yesterday, The Reg reported that Intel CPUs going back ten years had a fundamental design flaw which compromised the security of users. At the time, it looked like only Intel chips were affected, but Intel has been quick to claim that AMD and ARM chips have the flaw, too.

Here's the thing about that, funny story.. it's actually not true. Not Pants On Fire, mind you, but still Mostly False, or at best Half True, according to this report from Gizmodo:

Originally, the Register reported, only Intel processors (which dominate the U.S. market) were believed to be subject to the flaw. But it’s become clear that a wide range of processor types could be affected, with Google writing that AMD, ARM, and other devices were also vulnerable—though only partially and with less performance impact following a fix than Intel-based devices.

In a statement to Gizmodo, AMD said that of the three attack variants, one was easily resolved with “negligible performance impact,” while the others have “near zero risk” or “zero risk” due to “architecture differences.”

ARM told Gizmodo that it has been working “together with Intel and AMD to address a side-channel analysis method which exploits speculative execution techniques used in certain high-end processors, including some of our Cortex-A processors. This is not an architectural flaw; this method only works if a certain type of malicious code is already running on a device and could at worst result in small pieces of data being accessed from privileged memory.”

I don't believe Intel's spin on this one; there is currently no evidence that AMD and ARM have anywhere near the same kind of fundamental design issues that Intel have with this, and users of AMD and ARM products will not see the same kind of slowdown post-patch as Core i5 users. Sure, AMD (and ARM) are also engaged in a little PR over this development, but right now, I'm inclined to trust them a lot more than I trust Intel, for whom this is the second such wide-reaching security problem that comes built right in to their Core i5 product line. 

Right now, it looks like AMD and ARM are acting from an abundance of caution, here (better safe than sorry, right?), and not trying to "work the refs" in advance of the inevitable flood of class action lawsuits by which Intel will shortly be besieged. So, yeah... I'm still glad to be an AMD man, at least for one more day.

Is Windows 7 the new Windows XP?

Or is the situation actually much, much worse than that for Microsoft?

Well, according to this piece at Computerworld, it's looking like the latter:

In April 2014, when Microsoft rescinded Windows XP support, that version accounted for about 29% of all copies of Windows worldwide. Currently, the best-guess for Windows 7 at its end-of-support is a full 10 percentage points higher.

But that's not even the half of it.

In 2012, two years before XP shuffled off the support scene, Computerworld, using the same 12-month trend that produced a 39% user share for Windows 7 in January 2020, figured that XP would have a mere 17% in user share at retirement. The fact that Computerworld's back-of-the-envelope forecast for XP was off by 12 percentage points does not make for much confidence in the 39% mark for Windows 7 in 24 months.

In other words, today's calculation may be significantly lower than the reality of 2020.

Microsoft has at times resorted to some of the same name calling it used in 2012 for Windows XP when it has talked about the venerable Windows 7, which remains the stock enterprise OS. A year ago, for example, the head of Microsoft Germany said Windows 7 was "long outdated" and argued that the operating system did not meet "the high security requirements of IT departments."

Expect Microsoft to ramp up that line of attack as Jan. 14 [2020] approaches, when Microsoft is almost certain to remind customers that the Windows 7 drop-dead date is two years away and closing fast.

Worse yet, comparisons with Windows XP seem to be ignoring another important trend in personal computing: the  end of Moore's Law as personal computing's driving principle. When Windows 7 was released in 2009, Moore's Law was still driving the tech industry, with shrinking dies resulting in the shrinking size and increasing power of, e.g., smartphones, even as the PC power growth curve was already levelling off. Now, though, even smartphones' computing power has plateaued, and PC and laptop sales have been decreasing year-over-year for six years and counting.

All of which means that new PC sales will not drive Windows 10 adoption with individual consumers, in the way that it did for Windows 7. Even if large corporations and institutions adopt Windows 10 in a yooge way this year (something which isn't at all certain, IMHO), Windows 7 is clearly set up to hold its user base much, much longer than Windows XP did, with a dug-in user base that distrusts Microsoft's every utterance just on principle. Trash talk from Redmond is unlikely to yield any more positive results in two years' time than it's yielding now.

It's unclear what, if anything, Microsoft can do to earn back the trust and goodwill of those Windows 7 die-hards. GWX damaged that relationship pretty thoroughly, and their ongoing efforts to push Bing, Cortana, Edge, and other Microsoft products on consumers that simply aren't interested are probably not helping. Two years is a long time, but the clock is ticking; if Microsoft really want to win over Win7 users, then they need to start work now on some positive messaging that will appeal to these consumers, rather than continuing to rely on the same tired negative messaging which has clearly not been working, up to now.

Given Microsoft's track record (going all the way back to 2012, remember), I'd say that it's unlikely, but the Redmond team have managed to surprise me once or twice over the last couple of years, so I guess we'll see. Either way, though, I think that Microsoft's master plan to take over the computing world with Windows 10 is in something of a shambles, and people are clearly starting to notice.

Microsoft moguls name privacy and surveillance as major issues needing attention in 2018.

Apparently they're oblivious to the irony of taking a position like this one:

The past 12 months brought another important year in a decade filled with milestones relating to privacy and surveillance. And there is every reason to believe that 2018 will offer more of the same. Two specific topics rose to the top in 2017.

The first involves a sea change in privacy regulation, marked by the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation. It moves beyond the European Data Protection Directive adopted in 1995, enough so that “GDPR” has become a well - known word across the tech sector. The new EU regulation takes effect on May 25, imposing added requirements on companies that have the personal information of European consumers, regardless of where the company is located. While many regulations tell companies what they cannot do, GDPR also tells firms what they must do. Among the changes, the regulation requires that companies ensure that European consumers can learn what information businesses have about them, change the information if it’s inaccurate, move the information to another provider if desired, and delete it if they “wish to be forgotten.” In effect it prescribes new business processes and even product features.

Gee... does that mean that Windows 10 users will be able to opt out of telemetry at some point in 2018, or have an option in the control panel to turn off Cortana without a fucking registry edit? Or is Microsoft planning to continue doing the absolute minimum required to avoid (more) regulatory action, while continuing to treat users' PCs and personal data like Microsoft's pseudo-feudal fiefdom? Place your bets!

Microsoft, naturally, quickly move on to talking about government surveillance, while blowing their own bugle about the handful of court cases they're currently litigating to prevent the U.S. Government from encroaching on their big data fiefdom, but you shouldn't be fooled into thinking that Micrsoft have your best interests at heart, because they don't. This is all about protecting their interests; any benefit that you receive in the process is incidental.

Did I ever mention how glad I am to be an AMD man?

Because right now, I really, really am, thanks to stories like this one, from The Reg:

A fundamental design flaw in Intel's processor chips has forced a significant redesign of the Linux and Windows kernels to defang the chip-level security bug.

Programmers are scrambling to overhaul the open-source Linux kernel's virtual memory system. Meanwhile, Microsoft is expected to publicly introduce the necessary changes to its Windows operating system in an upcoming Patch Tuesday: these changes were seeded to beta testers running fast-ring Windows Insider builds in November and December.

Crucially, these updates to both Linux and Windows will incur a performance hit on Intel products. The effects are still being benchmarked, however we're looking at a ballpark figure of five to 30 per cent slow down, depending on the task and the processor model. More recent Intel chips have features – such as PCID – to reduce the performance hit. Your milage may vary.

Similar operating systems, such as Apple's 64-bit macOS, will also need to be updated – the flaw is in the Intel x86 hardware, and it appears a microcode update can't address it. It has to be fixed in software at the OS level, or go buy a new processor without the design blunder.

[Emphasis added.]

Yikes.

With a 5% slowdown as the best case, and 30% as the worst, I'm thinking that the modest performance hit that I took by getting an AMD FX-6300 at half the price of an Intel Core i5 is looking like a better and better deal all the time.

Details of the exact nature of this new flaw are naturally embargoed, given that it's a hardware-level security issue affecting everyone who bought an Intel CPU in the last decade, although The Reg's report includes those details of the flaw that have surfaced, if you're interested in what details are available. The fact that this is being described as a "fundamental design flaw," though, the second such flaw to surface in the last few months, seems especially egregious. Intel had been beating AMD in performance benchmarks for years, but it now seems like they were cutting some serious corners along the way.

Cue the class action lawsuits in five.... four... three...

Steam's software survey continues to confuse

Steam's software survey has a long history of bucking the trend when it comes to OS market share numbers. When Windows 10 was struggling month to month, and often losing market share to older Windows versions, the Steam community were racing to 50% adoption. And when Windows 10 was actually growing, albeit slowly, the Steam survey showed surging popularity for Windows 7.

Some speculated that this was being driven by PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds' popularity in China, a market where Windows 10 isn't even available and Windows 7 is still king. So, does this month's Steam survey, which shows almost every OS version except Windows 7 gaining market share at Win7's expense, mean that PUBG's Chinese bubble has burst?

Betanews has this take on things:

Depending on which analyst firm you believe, Windows 10 is either a whisker away from overtaking Windows 7 as the most popular desktop operating system, or still quite a distance off.

Steam’s monthly usage survey, which shows usage share from the gamers’ perspective, paints an entirely different picture however. It has consistently reported Windows 10 as the top operating system of choice, until recently, when Windows 7 roared into the top spot.

At the same time that Windows 7 gained in popularity, so did the growth of Chinese gamers on the service, which was clearly not a coincidence. If you want future [sic] proof of a link between the two, December’s updated stats help prove it.

In the last month of 2017, Windows 7 had a share of 56.45 percent (made up of 54.79 percent for the 64-bit build, and 1.66 percent for the 32-bit version). In November, its share was a whopping 71.3 percent, meaning it fell 14.85 percentage points in a month.

Also in December, Simplified Chinese -- currently the most popular language on Steam -- fell 15.31 percentage points to 49.04 percent. (Second placed English grew 6.40 percentage points and now sits on 23.42 percent.)

I've been waiting for the PUBG bubble to burst for a while now, as the game's buggy, unpolished reality caught up with the breathless hype of its gaming media coverage, so it should be interesting to see just how closely PUBG's fortunes track with Windows 7's fortunes on Steam over the coming months.

VR 2.0? Seriously?

Was it only four days ago that I was blogging about VR advocates'/apologists' attempts to rebrand VR as something other than VR, and saying that it was clear evidence that this generation of VR technology had already failed?

Well, just to prove that "XR" wasn't some sort of isolated incident, I give you VR 2.0, courtesy of Fast Company:

In the two years since consumer virtual reality hardware first hit store shelves, it has struggled to catch on. There are numerous reasons, but one is that all current VR systems work only when connected to an external computing device—a gaming-quality PC, smartphone, or game console.

In 2018, that dynamic will change with the release of several standalone VR systems. Get ready for VR 2.0–an evolution that could help the technology fulfill some analysts’ predictions of it becoming a $38 billion industry by 2026.

Horse hockey.

Fast Company's entire argument is predicated on a single, outdated assumption: that "computing systems of all sorts inexorably get smaller, cheaper, and more efficient." That might have been true ten years ago, but it really isn't anymore. The simple reality of computing today is that new computing systems aren't getting smaller, cheaper, or more efficient. There's a reason why sales of new PCs have declined year-over-year for six years now, and counting; there's a reason why even smartphone sales are levelling off.

As the size of processor elements shrinks below the micro-, and towards the nano-, quantum mechanics replaces classical electromagnetism as the dominant force governing your designs' properties and performance. This "quantum threshold" translates to an increase in the cost and difficulty of reducing the size and efficiency of processors, rather than a reduction. With costs increasing exponentially, and sales decreasing, the economics of processor design all trend in a single direction, which is why my seven-year-old PC sports a six-core, 3.4 GHz AMD CPU which can still keep pace quite nicely with the six-core, 3.6 GHz Ryzen processors of six months ago.

Moore's Law really has stopped being a thing, and tech writers need to start thinking about what that means, rather than reflexively repeating decade-old common wisdom which no longer applies to the current reality of tech development. VR headsets are not poised for a leap forward in onboard processing power, which means that gear which leverages more powerful PCs for their processing will continue to provide more varied and better-performing experiences than their standalone cousins. Which means, of course, that the likes of Oculus Go are unlikely to supplant the likes of HTC's upcoming Vive Focus as the main drivers of VR innovation.

Which brings us to "VR 2.0," which, much like "XR," is an attempt to convince consumers and investors that weaksauce, crippled VR is somehow much more appealing than the higher-performance, PC-driven VR experiences that haven't exactly set the world on fire, either, up to now. Which is why Alphr and Fast Company are trying to rebrand VR in the first fucking place, and using exactly the same M.O. to do it: weak arguments, vague promises, and a goalposts which are perpetually moving down the field.

VR is not useful, and it's not new anymore. Until the VR industry grapples with these fundamental facts, it will continue to struggle to catch on with consumers who haven't been awed into dumbfounded compliant consumerism by vague promises and a few neat tech demos. It's not enough to build them, and hope that customers will come. Consumers aren't coming now unless you convince them; it's time to figure out why they should come, so that you can tell them why they should be spending money on VR... whatever initial consonant or version number you choose to stick on it.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Windows 10 gains market share, while Windows 7's share continues to remain the same.

There's both good news and bad news for Microsoft in NetMarketShare's latest market share statistics. On the up side, Windows 10 has gained nearly a full percentage point, moving from 31.95% to 32.93%. On the down side, those gains seem to be coming almost entirely at the expense of Windows 8.1, which dropped 5.97% to 5.71%; and Windows XP, which dropped from 5.73% to 5.18%. And Windows 7 stayed pretty much stable, dipping from 43.12% to 43.08%, a change which drops below my ±0.5% "noise threshold."

So, Windows 10 is still growing slowly, mostly at the expense of the and the least-popular Windows versions, while the most-popular Windows version, 7, continues its run as the new XP. With the new numbers being such an arguably mixed bag, it was really anyone's guess whether tech media sites would continue trumpeting Windows 10's modest gains as if they were some sort of triumph, or recognize that Windows 10 has failed to close the gap for yet another year, in spite of being freely available for the entirety of that year.

You can colour me slightly surprised, then, that MS Power User are taking the latter route, first out of the gate:

Around the middle of last year, we predicted, based on the then trend, that Windows 10 will overtake Windows 7 worldwide by the end of 2017.

Now the latest Netmarketshare numbers are in, and at least by their numbers, it appears that date may be pretty far off still.

It appears in the last quarter of 2017 the decline in Windows 7 numbers stabilized, while Windows 10 lost some momentum.

[...]

Last month Microsoft revealed there were 600 million active Windows 10 users, and we expect it would take around 800 million Windows 10 users to overtake Windows 7, something which may be achievable by the end of next year as enterprise users switch over in increasing numbers to Windows 10.

The change in tone, here, from confidently predicting that Windows 10 would overtake Windows 7 in 2017, to describing that same feat as something that "may be achievable," but isn't certain, in 2018, speaks rather eloquently to how much momentum Windows 10 lost as the year went along. Again, it's good news/bad news: Microsoft (mostly) stopped stepping on the self-laid rakes in their own yard as the year went along, but with no bad news to report, people also (mostly) stopped talking about Windows 10 entirely.

Windows 10 isn't new anymore. It isn't interesting, or exciting; consumers (and tech writers) seem to have tired of the relentless updating cycle, and now greed new feature announcements with a collective shrug, and the resigned knowledge that it means another round of problems while Microsoft tries to manage yet another updating cycle, even before the last one is complete. At least this time they'll at least be half-way there, which beats the Spring Creators Update's 33.7%, but still.

I've still got two more months to go before I can call it, but I'm still feeling pretty good about my Windows 10 prognostication.

UPDATE:

It looks like StatCounter's numbers show basically the same trend, according to Betanews:

While NetMarketShare’s monthly usage share figures show there to still be a fairly significant gap between Windows 7 and Windows 10 (in the older OS’s favor), rival analyst firm StatCounter has long reported the battle for the top spot to be much, much tighter.

So close is the race in fact, that in October it looked as if Windows 10 would easily pass Windows 7 at some point in the following month. Surprisingly, that didn’t happen, although the gap did narrow. It seemed all but guaranteed that Windows 10 would claim pole position in December, but incredibly it didn’t.

Unlike NMS, StatCounter show Windows 8.1 gaining market share over the past month, to 9.16%, which is exactly the opposite of NMS's result, leading me to suspect that something is up with StatCounter's methodology. Considering that NMS recently revamped their entire product offering to filter out bots and botnets, which were skewing their results, one has to wonder if StatCounter has done the same, or if there's some other reason for Windows 8.1's popularity in their data sets.