Windows 10's allegedly superior security

It seems that Microsoft's bad month isn't over yet; even as their beleaguered 1809 update continues to crawl its way back to re-release after two data-deleting bugs came to life, MSFT have yet another Windows 10 problem. As reported by TechRadar:

Windows 10’s security woes appear to continue, with a bug apparently found in the code for UWP (Universal Windows Platform) apps that could allow hackers to access your hard drive and steal your data without you knowing.

What’s particularly worrying about this bug, which is explained in depth by Sebastien Lachance, a senior developer who specializes in Windows apps, on his website is that Microsoft has been extolling the security virtues of using UWP apps in Windows 10 (as opposed to regular programs and applications) due to them being run separately from the rest of the operating system.

While UWP apps should run in what's known as a ‘sandbox’ mode, so that they don't have access to your files and folders, the broadFileSystemAccess API allows apps to access your hard drive and files. In legitimate apps, this is necessary if it needs to be able to open, edit and save files to your PC (such as with an image-editing Windows 10 app).

When an app uses the API and makes use of this feature, a window is supposed to appear alerting users and asking for their permission. However, the recently-discovered bug means this doesn’t happen. So, users don’t get asked for permission or alerted to the access, and the apps are granted full system access by default.

Don't worry, though -- it gets worse! Because this isn't even the only Windows 10 security issue that came to light today.

Microsoft's "fixed" 1809 update has another data-deleting bug

Have your facepalm ready, and then read this reporting from Jason Evangelho at Forbes:

Apparently I'm not done beating this dead horse yet. That's because yet another file-deleting bug has surfaced in Microsoft's Windows 10 Build 1809 update. The same update Microsoft pulled from public circulation because it was wiping entire user folders from existence. The new bug centers around Microsoft's Unzip application, and seems to present itself in two distinct forms.

There are entirely too many situations where this could lead to data loss with varying degrees of severity. Here's how one Reddit user describes the issue:

"The issue is that in 1809, overwriting files by extracting from an archive using File Explorer doesn’t result in an overwrite prompt dialogue and also doesn’t replace any files at all; it just fails silently. There are also some reports that it did overwrite items, but did so silently without asking."

Other users are confirming the same issue, and there's currently an entry about it on the Windows 10 FeedbackHub.

Really, what were we expecting?

No word yet on whether Microsoft will actually delay 1809's redeployment over this issue, as they've yet to issue a statement on the subject that I've been able to find. Unlike the previous data-deletion issue, this one can be worked around by simply using 7zip, or some other third-party unzipping application, rather than Windows 10's built in archiving functionality.

Still, there's really no way around it; for an update that's already been pulled due to another (much more serious) user data deletion issue, and which has also been plagued with reports that users are having BSOD issues, it really seems like it's time to simply pull the plug on 1809 entirely. Just admit that it's not ready for release, cancel the fall roll-out, finish fixing the fucking thing, and then re-release it in the Spring. The current 19H1 release can be pushed back to next fall, if necessary, thus benefiting from extra development and testing time -- time that Microsoft clearly needs in order to deliver reliably bug-free products.

Yes, that would mean delaying the much-hyped "feature" that allows users to delete more of Microsoft's own bloatware, but MSFT clearly didn't think that was much of a priority before now, and are only making half-hearted efforts in that direction, anyway (when they start allowing users to remove Edge and Cortana, in addition to Groove Music and Paint 3D, let me know, but until then, I'll continue to say they're not really serious about bloatware). And delaying both 1809 and 19H1 would allow them to make the necessary internal changes to focus their team's attention on the quality and completeness of these releases, something which is sorely lacking now.

I welcome our new robot overlords...

There's been some debate between rival economists about the potential impact of new automation technologies. On one side, there are people who see the combination of machine learning and automation as being capable of replacing most or all of the people who do simple or repetitive tasks, or even more complex tasks like driving. CGP Grey's video, Humans Need Not Apply, gives a solid and unsettling summation of this viewpoint.

On the other side, of course, are those who have been clinging to the very convictions that Grey's video spends fifteen minutes dismantling: that automating grunt work will free up humans to do other, more intellectual work, improving life for displaced workers once they've all been retrained and reentered the workforce as higher-skilled, better-credentialed high-tech workers.

Never mind that we have no way to retrain anywhere near 10% of our work force, let alone 25%, 40%, or more, or any clear idea what new jobs we'd be retraining them to do; never mind that the rise of high-tech industries hasn't actually succeeded in doing this at any point in the last thirty years. We should just stop worrying about a future where those workers who are still employed are also largely disposable, and where everyone else gets to take on enormous debt loads in the form of college loans, often as middle-aged students who'll have little hope of paying off those debts. Once these technologies start rolling out in the real world, the argument goes, we'll have a better idea of the impact they'll have on the employment picture, and we should all just chill out until that happens.

Enter Uniqlo, who have just rolled out this technology in the real world, as reported by Quartz:

Today, in Facebook class-action lawsuits

Taking a break from their security- and privacy-related legal woes, Facebook is taking some time to relax, unwind, and be sued for basically fraud instead. Mazel tov!

From The Mercury News:

Not only did Facebook inflate ad-watching metrics by up to 900 percent, it knew for more than a year that its average-viewership estimates were wrong and kept quiet about it, a new legal filing claims.

A group of small advertisers suing the Menlo Park social media titan alleged in the filing that Facebook “induced” advertisers to buy video ads on its platform because advertisers believed Facebook users were watching video ads for longer than they actually were.

That “unethical, unscrupulous” behavior by Facebook constituted fraud because it was “likely to deceive” advertisers, the filing alleged.

The latest allegations arose out of a lawsuit that the advertisers filed against Mark Zuckerberg-led Facebook in federal court in 2016 over alleged inflation of ad-watching metrics.

Facebook's watch-time shenanigans were something that I'd actually heard about before; among other things, YouTubers have been complaining that Facebook does nothing to prevent videos from being ripped from YouTube and uploaded to Facebook, fully monetized, by parties other than the original creators; that Facebook counts as playtime videos that have automatically started, and been playing silently off to the side, from the moment the page can load them, whether you've paid any attention to them or not; and so on. This isn't #lyingwithstatisics; this is just plain lying.

I hadn't paid much attention to the issue until now, but it seems that others have finally taken notice. And not just YouTube creators, either, who have been relatively powerless until now to do anything which would influence Facebook's behaviour; the two platforms are rivals, after all, and FB have proven pretty conclusively that they don't care at all how much harm they do, as long as they prosper in the process. Even Google hadn't been able to do much to curb FB 's obvious bad-faith "efforts" to address the issue, which basically amounted to them saying that they'd look into it, and the doing not much of anything to actually address the problems.

Microsoft's "fixed" 1809 update still has serious problems

Faced with the rapidly-escalating PR nightmare of their data-deleting 1809 update to Windows 10, Microsoft first halted the update's rollout, and then hastily patched it before continuing onward. It looks like they once again skipped crucial testing phases, though, because the updated update has issues of its own, including an apparent BSOD issue. That's right, years after Windows 7's stability had largely succeeded in relegating the Blue Screen of Death to Windows history, MSFT's cascading Windows-as-a-Service failures may now have resurrected it as a modern reality.

From Neowin:

Earlier this week, Microsoft pushed out its monthly set of updates to various versions of Windows 10, including version 1809. It seems, however, that this patch carries its own major problems. Users all over the internet are reporting that their devices are getting into a blue screen of death (BSOD) after the update, preventing them from booting.

[...] 

The problem doesn't seem to affect just the feature update released last week, but users on the April 2018 Update are apparently facing similar issues. While most people reporting the error are using HP devices, Neowin user Mike Steel heard from Microsoft's support that it actually affects other brands as well and that the patch has since been pulled from Windows Update.

The number of issues found in the latest release of Windows 10 seems to suggest that Microsoft needs to rethink the way it deploys its updates. It also may leave some wondering if the Insider program, which is meant to help shape the operating system, has lost its way over the past four years.

Yes, Microsoft, you've also earned a facepalm. Congratulations?

To say that the Insider program has "lost its way" seems to be overly generous; it's increasingly clear that the Insider program is simply not an adequate substitute for the sort of disciplined, rigorous testing that MSFT  simply doesn't do anymore, having laid off their product testers.

It's long past time for MSFT to simply admit that their Windows As A Service strategy simply doesn't work, and that using their WX 10 Home user base as involuntary guinea pigs, trouble-shooing the OS for the benefit of Microsoft's valued Enterprise customers with no choice or compensation, is not only unethical, but actively damaging. And that damage isn't limited to WX Home users; MSFT's brand and reputation deteriorate further with each new failure of their WaaS regime, and especially undermines their efforts to convince potential Enterprise customers that WX+WaaS is just fine.

WX+WaaS is not fine; it's broken, a fact which is becoming more evident as each new failure is triggered by MSFT's failure to recover from the last failure.

Oculus Quest, revisited

It probably didn't surprise you that I wasn't impressed with the Oculus Quest. I was listening to the Dad & Sons Podcast on the weekend, though, and they collectively came up with a counter-argument to my initial skepticism, which basically boiled down to a couple of points:

1. Facebook/Oculus are selling this as basically a VR game console, meaning that its US$400 price tag, with two VR controllers included, is in pretty much in line with their intended competition.
2. People who weren't interested in Oculus' Go or Rift products might just be interested in a US$400 VR gaming console, especially since it won't require them to pay for expensive PC upgrades anymore while still providing acceptable performance.

That got me thinking. The argument still felt wrong to me, but I couldn't put my finger on exactly why. I found myself mulling it over on the bus yesterday, though, and I think I've figured out exactly what my objections are.

As I see it, in order for FB/Oculus' latest product to succeed, it needs to clear all of the following hurdles.

Because misery loves company, I guess?

After a summer of shit for Facebook, and a week from hell for Microsoft, I guess Google must have been feeling left out, or something, because they've now shit the bed, too.

As reported by Futurism:

Remember Google+?

Me neither. But while we were blissfully ignorant of its continuing existence something predictable (and quite commonplace in 2018) happened: private user data leaked.

Here’s what happened. There was a bug that allowed hundreds of third party applications to access user’s personal data, according to a Google blog post. We’re talking user names, employers, job titles, gender, birth place and relationship status of at least half a million Google+ users, according to the Wall Street Journal.

As the Wall Street Journal points out, the bug has been around since 2015. Google says it only discovered and “immediately patched” it in March of this year — the same month Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal started to blow up. In the same blog post, Google announced it will shut down Google+ entirely.

So why are we only hearing about this now, seven months later? Don’t Google users have a right to know if their personal data was vulnerable to hackers over the last three years? Internal memos obtained the Wall Street Journal suggest Google was trying to avoid triggering “immediate regulatory interest.” In other words: avoid fines and penalties.

Where do we even start?

The fact that the breach happened at all is already bad, but failing to disclose that breach to affected users, specifically to dodge regulatory action? That's beyond sketchy. Do you remember when Google's mission statement started with "don't be evil?" Yeah... apparently, neither do they.

Extremely. Bad. Timing.

To say that Microsoft isn't having the best month would be quite an understatement, at this point. With Windows 10 (WX) losing ground yet again to Windows 7 (W7) in global usage share, and MSFT pulling WX's 1809 update because it was permanently deleting user's data, it's turning into the roughest month that the Windows team has notched in years. So.... what better time for people to discover that MSFT stealthily increased prices a few weeks ago?

That's right, dear readers, in a move which was obviously planned months ago, and obliviously enacted at the start of this increasingly terrible month for Microsoft, they really are hiking the price of WX's Home version. Yes, you read that correctly: the Home version. Yes, really.

From MSPoweruser:

If you are one of the rare buyers of the OS (e.g. you want to install it in Bootcamp on your Mac) then you will find the Windows tax has just seen an increase.

Windows 10 Home will now set you back $139, a $19.01 increase over the earlier $119.99 price. It is not 100% clear when the price increase went into effect, but near as we can tell it was some time in early September.

[...]

Given the recent quality issues with Windows 10 recently do our readers think the price increase is justified?

That's a really good question, MSPoweruser! Let us spend several hundred words exploring a very detailed answer to it... jk, the answer is obviously no. Hell, no. Fuck, no. Are you kidding me? No!

That this change was rolled out quietly, rather than receiving any sort of announcement, is not nearly as surprising as the fact that it happened at all. What are they smoking in Redmond, and can I buy some locally? Because stuff like that is about to become legal in my neck of the woods, and I'm thinking that Satya Nadella's team must really have a line on the good shit.

What Microsoft should have done... but will never, ever do

In the wake of the bungled 1809 update rollout, people are already asking what Microsoft should have done differently, or could/should do differently going forward. PC World has some pretty reasonable-sounding thought on that subject:

Microsoft strives to make milestone upgrades sound as innocent and painless as possible. But as any PC enthusiast (and our Windows upgrade guides) can tell you, tinkering with the very core of your operating system carries inherent risk.

[...]

The Microsoft’s Windows 10 upgrade prompt whitewashes the severity of major updates, and doesn’t make it obvious that significant surgery will occur underneath the hood, let alone the risk that major surgery entails. It just sounds like you’ll wait a little more than usual after you reboot and get rewarded for your patience with cool new stuff. And to be fair, that’s all that happens in the vast majority of cases.

[...]

As the disastrous October 2018 Update proves, there’s enough risk present in major operating system upgrades that Microsoft needs to make users aware of it. Milestone upgrade prompts like the one cited above from the Fall Creators Update already get custom text, so all Microsoft needs to do is add “We advise backing up your data first” to it. A handful of words can prevent a heap of headaches.

That sounds pretty reasonable. Hell, it is pretty reasonable. It's also never going to happen, because Microsoft's future plans all rely on Windows 10 being delivered as a service, and on pushing cloud versions of everything on users who have been reluctant to adopt them.

WX 1809 update negligence gets worse

So, do you remember that "bug" in the 1809 update, that finally prompted Microsoft to pull it yesterday? Well, here's the thing about that... funny story... it's not new. As reported by ZDNet:

As ZDNet reported yesterday, the Windows 10 October 2018 version 1809 upgrade hasn't gone well for a bunch of users who lost documents and photos after updating.

What's worse, it appears that Microsoft may have let this bug slip through testing with Windows Insiders during the preview of Windows 10 version 1809.

As noted by MSPoweruser, Windows insiders hit the exact same snag during Microsoft's preview phase of the Windows 10 version 1809 when updating from version 1803.

For some unknown reason, moving up to Windows 10 version 1809 may delete all the files in user folders. The folders remain, but the files within them are gone, leaving users in potentially a worse pickle than ransomware victims experience.

WX's spring update was delayed from its originally planned April launch into May by an unspecified-but-serious issue, but Microsoft never did say what the issue was. Apparently this was the issue, and it's certainly enough of an issue to have justified the delay of the 1803 update's rollout. The fact that WX still has this issue, though, and that Microsoft didn't think it important enough to delay the 1809 update's rollout, elevates this from incompetence to malice. It's simply mind-blowing.

And the only defense against this happening to you, both with this update and with and and all future updates, is Microsoft's OneDrive cloud storage service, which is not free if you need to back up more than 50GB of data. It's as if Microsoft is engaged in a low-key shakedown of the entire WX user base. Holy ransomware, Batman! Except this ransomware is your OS, and thus can't be avoided.

I've said it before, I'll say it again, and I'm not alone in saying it: I don't care if it comes from Microsoft, Windows 10 is malware.

Windows 10 update pulled by Microsoft

In a completely uncharacteristic move, Microsoft has done an abrupt 180° on their aggressive Windows 10 update regime, announcing that they were pulling an October update which was deleting users' files. This is a marked contrast to their approach to the spring update, which was causing no end of problems for users but which Microsoft kept on rolling out, anyway; I guess a full day of headlines about their data-destroying update was finally enough to make them blink.

Windows Latest appears to the first site reporting on Microsoft's confirmation of the move:

Windows 10 October 2018 Update was released on October 2 and some users reported that the update is deleting their files and document. Today, Microsoft updated the Windows 10 download page and the company has removed the ISO files and Media Creation Tool no longer downloads Windows 10 version 1809.

[...]

When you will visit the Windows 10 download page, you’ll be greeted with old “Windows 10 April 2018 Update” heading. Upon checking, we discovered that Microsoft has also removed the ISO links and the Media Creation Tool is not downloading the October 2018 Update (version 1809) anymore, at least on your end.

[...]

“We have paused the rollout of the Windows 10 October 2018 Update (version 1809) for all users as we investigate isolated reports of users missing some files after updating,” explains Microsoft in a support document.

The support document itself is a terse bit of understatement:

We have paused the rollout of the Windows 10 October 2018 Update (version 1809) for all users as we investigate isolated reports of users missing some files after updating.

Those are the facts. Now let's get real about them.

1. Microsoft's support document note does its best to downplay the problem, but bearing in mind that they kept rolling out the spring update in spite of widespread reports of significant issues with it, I think we can safely assume that there was nothing "isolated" about this problem. They would not have stopped the rollout for anything other than a major issue with the potential for widespread liability.
2. Users were not reporting "some" missing files; they were reporting the loss of everything not backed up to Microsoft's OneDrive service, specifically. For those that were affected by the issue, the loss of data was total, with no absolutely no way to recover the lost data.
3. Microsoft has not issued any other statement about this issue so far, and have not yet attempted to explain why an otherwise routine OS update would be designed to delete users' files for any reason whatsoever.

Remember those class actions lawsuits that I predicted yesterday? I'm standing by that prediction. We won't hear anything about them until next week at the earliest, so the class action land speed record set after the recent Facebook data breach is safe for now, but I'm fairly certain that enough people were affected, and their losses significant enough, for lawsuits to be an inevitable thing.

Don't get me wrong; I think that Microsoft's decision to pull this update was absolutely the right call. To ignore the harm that they were clearly causing by pushing this update to users (who, once again, cannot refuse it, at least if they're running Windows 10 Home) would have been indefensible. The fact that reversed course to stop the rollout of an update which was causing untold amounts of damage to users is a good thing; it doesn't, however, excuse the fact that this made its way into the update in the first place. That still needs an explanation; I'll be watching with interest to see if we ever get one from Redmond.

Windows 10 update deletes users' locally stored data permanently, because fuck you

This sort of bullshit is exactly why I'm still on Windows 7:

Microsoft this week kicked off the Windows 10 1809 rollout, and now some users have found the update is wiping important files, including photos and music, reports MSPoweruser.

Several early adopters of the Windows 10 1809 update have reported vanishing file problems on Reddit, Twitter and Microsoft's Community forum.

One poor Windows 10 1809 user, Robert Ziko, claims to have lost 220GB of data after updating.

"I have just updated my windows using the October update (10, version 1809). It deleted all my files of 23 years in amount of 220GB. This is unbelievable, I have been using Microsoft products since 1995 and nothing like that ever happened to me," he wrote on Microsoft's user forum.

"Files were located at C:/Users/rober/Documents/. This location is still present, with no files. All files deleted."

Fortunately, he did back up his system two months ago and was able to restore those deleted files, but lost everything since that snapshot. Rolling back to an earlier build also did not restore the deleted files.

As noted by one Windows 10 user on Twitter, documents saved in the user directory and not OneDrive will be deleted.

This is simply not acceptable. I don't care how badly Microsoft want people to switch to OneDrive, deleting their data because they haven't done so is abusive.

There is absolutely no reason why a routine OS update would need to automatically delete anything to save hard drive space, in an age of terabyte hard drives; even if that were reasonable, deleting data that was saved in users' document folders is ridiculous. Deleting their temp files and their internet cache is still something which you shouldn't do without asking first, but in what parallel universe does it make sense to delete the contents of a user's deliberately saved files folder (but not the folder itself), and then wipe the recycle bin so that the files can't be recovered?

Count on it, the class action lawsuits are coming; people who lost weeks or months of work as a result as the result of an update that they can't delay or refuse (the other part of the bullshit, here) should absolutely be seeking compensation for those damages. Microsoft are still talking about wanting to win back consumers, but bullshit like this is unlikely to help their cause.

In the midst of another huge data breach, Facebook adopts Comcast-style loss prevention strategy

I am surprised only that people are surprised. From Gizmodo:

Facebook is currently dealing with the fallout of a massive attack that compromised site security and allowed hackers to seize the access tokens of roughly 50 million accounts, potentially giving them full control of both the accounts and linked apps. It is still sorting out what user data might have been stolen. Amid all this, Facebook is also extending its grip on how long it can keep account deletion requests in hiatus from two weeks to a month, the Verge reported on Wednesday.

Here’s what that means. When a user tries to delete their Facebook, the site holds on to all of their data for a period of time in case they decide they want to come back. That used to be 14 days, and now it is conveniently a month, right around the same time users might be getting antsy that hackers were able to get past the site’s core security measures.

[...]

It’s not clear when the decision was made, or whether it predates September 25th, when the company says it became aware of the hack. (Gizmodo has reached out for comment, and we’ll update this post if we hear back.) Even if the updated data retention policies have nothing to do with the security incident, that still doubles the amount of time Facebook is able to hold user data after they decide they want out—essentially making it harder for users to manage their own privacy and security so that the company can try to retain them at a time growth is stalling.

Le sigh.

The depths of Facebook's asshole-ery really should not be at all surprising, at this point. Holding your delete request in a "hiatus" state at all is already bullshit; I can understand that it might take some time to effect the deletion, and that there might be other deletion requests in the queue ahead of a newly submitted one, but that was never why it took two weeks for Facebook to complete a deletion, something which they have now confirmed. This is a loss prevention strategy, plain and simple; it is Facebook simply not doing what you've clearly told them to do, simply because there's benefit to them in stalling as long as possible.

Increased streaming service bullshit = Increased piracy and torrenting

Every independent assessment of the causes and "costs" of piracy have come to same conclusions:

1. People who torrent content also buy a lot of content;
2. The easier it is to access content, the less likely people are to torrent that content;
3. The lower the cost is to access content online, the less likely people are to torrent that content.

In other words, cut a deal to distribute content on, let's say, Netflix, and people will happily pay for Netflix (who pay content owners, in turn) for access. Insist that people subscribe to six different streaming services, however, all of which cost the same as Netflix, but none of which provide the same value that Netflix used to, and you can count the days until confused consumers decide that your content is just not worth what you're asking, anymore, and start torrenting that content, instead.

So with everybody and their dog having decided that they can be Netflix better than Netflix, and starting their own streaming services because dollar dollar bills, y'all, what consumer response would you predict to all this naked, greedy, corporate cash grabbing? If you guessed increasing torrenting, then give yourself a no-prize, because it looks like that's exactly what's happening.

Back in 2011, Sandvine stated that BitTorrent accounted for 52.01% of upstream traffic on fixed broadband networks in North America. By 2015, BitTorrent’s share of upstream traffic on these networks had dipped to 26.83 percent, largely thanks to the rise in quality, inexpensive streaming alternatives to piracy.

But Sandvine notes that trend is now reversing slightly, with BitTorrent’s traffic share once again growing worldwide. That’s especially true in the Middle East, Europe, and Africa, where BitTorrent now accounts for 32% of all upstream network traffic.
One major reason for BitTorrent’s rising popularity? Annoying exclusivity streaming deals.

“More sources than ever are producing "exclusive" content available on a single streaming or broadcast service—think Game of Thrones for HBO, House of Cards for Netflix, The Handmaid's Tale for Hulu, or Jack Ryan for Amazon,” Sandvine’s Cam Cullen said in a blog post.

“To get access to all of these services, it gets very expensive for a consumer, so they subscribe to one or two and pirate the rest.” Cullen said.

Surprise! It turns out that people are simply not willing to spend the equivalent amount of a Netflix subscription, for less content than Netflix provides, to each of Netflix, CBS, Disney, HBO, and Hulu, all at the same time, especially when they're only watching maybe one show on each of the last four entries on that list.

OS usage share stats for end-September (Yes, there actually is news to report.)

Okay, yes, I know, I said that I was all done following Windows 10's monthly crawl to parity with Windows 7. That declaration is looking to have been premature, however, since this appears to be the month when things actually got interesting again.

First, Windows 10 (WX) vs. Windows 7 (W7). Last month, WX looked to finally be on pace to equal W7 by November, to such an extent that even I was willing to posit that they might actually make it this time. That was then, though, and this is now, and in the now, WX has once again lost ground to its much, much older cousin. As reported by Wayne Williams at Betanews:

Usage share monitoring service StatCounter saw Windows 10 overtake Windows 7 back in February, and its latest figures put the new operating system on 50.07 percent, well ahead of Windows 7 on 37.2 percent.

Rival monitoring service NetMarketShare disagrees however. While Windows 10 gained significant share in August, at Windows 7’s expense, the latest figures, for September, show a reversal of fortune.

According to NetMarketShare, in September, Windows 10 went from 37.80 percent to 37.44 percent, a fall of 0.36 percentage points.

In the same time frame, Windows 7 gained 0.61 percentage points to sit on 40.88 percent, 3.44 percent ahead.

Based on last month’s figures, I predicted that Windows 10 would take the lead by November, or possibly as early as October, but that no longer seems to be the case. It's now more likely to be the start of next year, but we shall see.

In case you're wondering what that looks like, here's the graph from NMS:

W7/WX still leads everyone else by a large margin, but Linux now clearly leads the "everyone else" pack.

I'd previously pegged ±0.5% as the threshold for significance, which these changes just barely exceed. That said, it does mean that the "by November" prediction for WX/W7 parity will likely be missed for a third straight year, which has to be slightly embarrassing for Microsoft.

This development isn't nearly as interesting as the month's OS usage changes among Steam users, though.