Nobody's ever going to call it that Microsoft continues terrible naming streak with XBox Series X, and the memes are already starting

From Kotaku:

That didn’t take long! The next-generation Xbox was announced last night, and people online already have nicknames for it.

In the English-speaking world, it’s either being called “Xbox Sex” or simply “Sex,” a shortening of “Series X.”

Of course, it's always possible that someone at Mircosoft saw this coming, and figured that it wouldn't be entirely negative for their new console to be called "The Sex," but given their long tradition of terrible console names, I somehow doubt it. And so "The Sex" will become the most awkward product name ever to be put on a child's Christmas wish list to Santa, right after the XBone. 

Hell, at least the XBox One X acronymized to XBOX; Series X is just a bizarre choice. And I don't want to hear about how they have multiple consoles planned for this generation, which is why they're all going to share that "Series" monniker. It's still confusing and weird, and can only serve to confuse consumers... and, occasionally, amuse them.

Yes, I forsee a lot of very strained birds and bees conversations between clueless videogame-seeking pre-teens and their suddenly-very-concerned parents, as to why their children are requesting "The Sex" for XMas. Another solid job done, Microsoft! GG!

Plus ça change...Microsoft proves, once again, that they refuse to learn from past mistakes

I had to shake my head at this report from betanews:

Windows 7 may be an aging operating system, but there are still plenty of individuals and organizations using it. With the end of support date of January 14 fast-approaching, Microsoft is getting twitchy and is eager for everyone to upgrade to Windows 10.

Having already started to notify Windows 7 hangers on that support is due to come to an end, the company is now ready to get a little more aggressive. If you haven't moved on from Windows 7, soon you will see full-screen notifications warning you that "your Windows 7 PC is out of support".

The messages are due to be displayed from the day after support ends. So when January 15 rolls around, anyone who has doggedly stuck with Windows 7 will find that they not only have no support and no security updates, but also that they are pestered by an invasive message delivered by a program called EOSnotify.exe.

[...]

The good news is that it will be possible to dismiss the message and opt to never see it again.

Where do I even start with this shit?

From the "what took you so long?" file...Seriously, The Verge, what took you so long?

Without further do, I give you this post from The Verge:

YouTube has been pissing me off for weeks. I’m starting to feel like I should pay $11.99 a month to subscribe to YouTube Premium just to get rid of the annoying pop-ups Google sends me almost daily. Google has decided to place pop-up ads in its own YouTube app for Premium subscriptions. This feels slightly acceptable at first, but Google has also decided these should spam you to death, sometimes full-screen, with no option to permanently dismiss them so you see them all the damn time.

It’s a classic growth hack designed to get more people to use YouTube Music or YouTube Premium because, honestly, who cares about either of those services? I already subscribe to Spotify, which is far superior to YouTube Music, and I’d never pay $11.99 just to have fewer YouTube ads and background playback of videos on my phone. It’s a pointless subscription that Google is trying to lazily ram down my throat instead of improving its offering, competing fairly with others, and, most importantly, focusing on its customer experience.

Google’s efforts here have made sure I, and I bet many others, will never touch YouTube Music or YouTube Premium. I absolutely loathe both of these services to the point where I’m left swearing at my phone like an idiot, simply because these stubborn ads keep appearing on top of the YouTube videos I’m trying to watch.

Where to start? How about with the fact that YouTube's mobile app hasn't been exhibiting this behaviour for mere weeks. YouTube has been pissing me off with this bullshit for months. Or with the fact that feeling like making users feel they "should pay $11.99 a month to subscribe to YouTube Premium just to get rid of the annoying pop-ups"is the entire fucking point of the pop-ups.

Ubuntu dethroned by Manjaro/Arch as top Linux gaming distro

It wasn't too long ago that I'd posted about how Ubuntu seemed well on its way to becoming the top choice distro for basically everything, including gaming. That was before Canonical shat their own bed, though, announcing that they were dropping support for the 32-bit libraries that PC gaming generally, and Steam particularly, depended on. Valve, which had been recommending Ubuntu as the preferred distro for Steam, withdrew that recommendation; and while Canonical apparently walked back their decision on those 32-bit libraries, Valve's recommendation was not restored.

And now, just a few months later, we're starting to get a good look at exactly how much damage Canonical/Ubuntu did to their own cause with PC gamers, thanks to a great post at Boiling Steam, which sums up the trend with this chart:

Is Half-Life: Alyx the killer app that VR has been waiting for?Spoiler Alert: No, it probably isn't. But it does look cool.

In what has to be the biggest hype/news to hit the VR scene for quite some time, Valve Software have finally released another full-blown game, for the first time in forever. But that's not even the big news -- the big news is that the game is a Half-Life game. And while it isn't Half-Life 3 (it's actually a prequel), Half-Life: Alyx is not only a new Half-Life game, it's a VR-only game.

Oh, and it looks pretty good, too.

The stakes couldn't be higher; TechRadar called Alyx, "a gambit where the very future of VR gaming is at stake." And while that might sound hyperbolic, it might not be wrong, with the announcement of Alyx prompting some VR evangelists to dub this the "killer app" that VR has long been lacking.

But, while some of the gameplay we're seeing will clearly need either Oculus Touch controllers, or the Knuckles controllers that ship with the Valve Index, I'm not convinced that the experience on offer here is different enough to convince skeptical consumers to suddenly jump onto the VR hype train; and I'm not convinced that the Half-Life IP, iconic as it is for the video game industry, is actually broadly popular enough to prompt non-gamers to buy VR headsets just to play it.

This is going to take a lot of work...Stadia's launch plagued with missing features, sparse game selection, and unplayable lag

When Google announced Stadia, their first-to-market (if you don't count Sony's PlayStation Now) video game streaming service, there were lots of questions. What would its subscription model look like? What would its game selection look like? What features would the service have? Could even Google get the thing to work? And would Google stick with Stadia for the long haul, even if it wasn't an instant hit at launch?

Well, we now have the answers to those questions, and they're... un-good. One might even call them double-plus un-good. Let's break it down.

John Carmack jumps from VR to AI

I'm calling it right now: VR is dead. It's not, as someone tried to convince me recently, five to seven years away from breaking out, once they figure out exactly what socialization and spatial computing are and how VR can make them happen. No, VR is over; this generation of VR has failed.

For proof, look no further than John Carmack, who left id Software for Oculus because he was just that excited about the possibilities of VR, and who is now jumping off the VR ship before it sinks and takes him down with it. As reported by The Verge:

John Carmack, the chief technology officer of Facebook’s VR subsidiary Oculus, is stepping down this week. Carmack posted the news on Facebook today, saying he plans to focus his time instead on artificial general intelligence. He will remain in a “consulting CTO” position at Oculus, where he will “still have a voice” in the development work at the company.

Carmack will still work on some VR projects at Facebook, a spokesperson told Variety. In addition to general advisory tasks, for example, he will keep working on projects that maximize VR visual quality on lower-powered mobile hardware. However, he says that VR will “only be consuming a modest slice of my time” while he works on AI. “I have sometimes wondered how I would fare with a problem where the solution really isn’t in sight,” he said of the subject. “I decided that I should give it a try before I get too old.”

It was unclear whether the problem with no solution in sight referred to VR, or AI, or both.

People, if John freaking Carmack can't figure out what VR is good for, or how to convince skeptical consumers to buy in, then VR is probably doomed. Palmer Luckey, who founded Oculus, couldn't solve this problem, either, and finally said that VR could be free and still not find any takers.

In case you missed it...

... Windows 10 finally managed to hit 50% market share, according to NetMarketShare.

Some takes on this development were, sadly, predictable, such as Computerworld's, "Windows 10 user share surges as loafers heed impending deadline." Others were more balanced, though, such as Mike Sanders at eTeknix:

It’s been around 4 years now since Windows 10 launched and if one thing has been made abundantly clear, it’s that people have been very slow in adopting the latest operating system platform. In fairness, there has been good reason for this. Firstly, it’s hard to ignore just how hard Microsoft shoved this down our throats. We got the option to update to it for free, but this was part of a huge campaign that saw Windows 7 and 8 users badgered for months to do it.

Since then, following more than a few problematic updates, Windows 10 doesn’t exactly have a glowing reputation with a lot of the PC community. As such, many have stubbornly refused to make the update.

Following the latest figures from Netmarketshare, however, it may have taken 4 years, but Windows 10 finally has a 50% operating system market share!

[...]

Microsoft is likely more than a little embarrassed that it has taken this long for people to adopt Windows 10. Particularly given how hard they pushed it. Like it or not, however, we fully expect that number to really start spiking towards the end of the year with that end-of-support for Windows 7 looming in the not too distant future.

If you haven’t updated to 10 yet, you’re likely going to. So, try and make the best out of a bad situation?

Oh, I plan to, Mike. I'll be switching by the end of the year... but to Linux, not Windows 10. All that remains is to pick the most AMD-gaming-friendly distro; I'm currently leaning towards Pop!_OS, but Manjaro and (naturally) Ubuntu are both in the running.

This week in Facebook

It's been a while since I've done one of these, eh? Let's get right to it.

Do you remember when I said that Facebook's ongoing and ever-deepening scandals were going to end with someone from the firm doing jail time? Well, it looks like those wheels of justice may just be grinding slowly in the direction of no less a figure than Mark Zuckerberg, himself.

From arstechnica:

Mark Zuckerberg has "repeatedly lied to the American people about privacy," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) said in a recent interview with the Willamette Week, a Portland alternative weekly newspaper. "I think he ought to be held personally accountable, which is everything from financial fines to—and let me underline this—the possibility of a prison term."

Zuckerberg, Wyden said, has "hurt a lot of people."

[...]

Technology companies, Wyden argued, have "done practically everything wrong since the 2016 election." He said he recently told technology companies: "If you don't get serious on moderation, you're going to have a lot of people coming after you."

Yikes.

Here's how Valve should "fix" Steam Because Steam ain't perfect, either...

Having gone on at length about the problems with Epic's storefront, and with their profoundly consumer-dismissive approach to... well... everything, it's only fair to spend some time and words on the issues that Steam actually does have, which GabeN should probably attend to. Because after 16 years in service, it's fair to say that Steam's pipes have some rust and corrosion on them, and really could use a good cleaning.

Gabe! Buddy! My nearest and most excellent friend (that I've never met in person, and who doesn't know me from Adam, but whatevs don't@me)! I have some advice for you; a five-step process that will clear a up a whole bunch of that embarrassing clutter that's causing so much agita, lately. Take these ideas, and use them in all good health.

This is how it's done Darq's developer shows the right way to handle Epic's brand toxicity

In my last post, I laid out a seven-point strategy for how to announce your Epic exclusivity deal. That post ran long (and, really, which of my posts don't?) but if there's a single big point that I wanted people in the video game industry, and in the media that cover the industry, to take away, it is this:

When dealing with a subject that you know to be sensitive, be sensitive to the people who are going to hear your message.

Learn to read the room. Comedy is hard; making jokes about subjects which you know other people not only take seriously, but are likely to get angry about, is a high-wire act best left to professionals. Don't open discussions with sarcasm when you want to elevate the overall level of the discourse. Just be straight with people, and be transparent with people, and those people will reward your straightforward honesty with respect.

And now, right on schedule, we have a case study in how to handle the touchy subject of Epic exclusivity the right way. We have Darq.

PR Communications 101: Sarcasm = Mockeryor, Glumberland and Ooblets: A case study in how not to do any of this

Anybody who's been watching the F5 internet shitstorm that is Ooblets ill-considered EGS exclusivity announcement should be familiar with the framing that's been emerging in the last day and a half or so, one which paints the Ooblets developers as essentially blameless victims who are receiving an utterly undeserved tidal wave of inchoate rage and hate from "entitled" gamers whose fragile egos simply can't withstand a simple joke.

However, much as I hate to engage in anything that even resembles victim-blaming, I feel compelled to point out the flaw in this framing of the story: Ooblets' developers are not blameless victims here. Whether knowingly or not, Glumberland picked this fight.

No, they should not be receiving death threats. The people who are forging Discord chat logs and faking videos of Discord chat sessions that never happened, deliberately and for no other reason than to discredit the husband and wife duo that basically are Glumberland, have indeed gone beyond the pale. The level of vitriol on display is wildly disproportionate to both the Glumberlanders' initial offense, and to the Epic Game Store in general. But make no mistake: what Cordingley and Wasser initially did really was offensive, and it's very hard to believe that they weren't aware of that.

Devolver Digital was actually the best thing about E3 2019

Once again, Devolver Digital has scored a big win (with me, at least) with their third-in-a-row, batshit-insane, totally satirical takedown of all things E3, disguised as an E3 presser.

If you've never watched one of Devolver's "Big Fancy Press Conferences" before, I highly recommend that you watch all of them, immediately.

2017:

2018:

2019:

Devolver Digital wins E3... again. A+

Keanu Reeves wins E3 Everyone else was just.. meh

I know that we weren't expecting much from this year's E3, what with Sony not being there at all, and with EA doing several single-game announcements rather than a press conference, but even I was expecting more than this.

Cinelinx looks to be first off the blocks with their list of winners and losers, but the consensus of opinion seems to be that the only real winner was Keanu Reeves... and even he was only OK, with a stilted, obviously unrehearsed presentation that Reeves basically overcame through sheer charm. The double reveal that a) Reeves had actually done mo-cap and voice work for am NPC in CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077, and b) that he was not only appearing in the game, but at E3 to announce when the game would be coming out, was probably the most scene-stealing moment of Microsoft's conference.

The second most scene-stealing moment of E3 was probably Ikumi Nakamura's instantly meme-worthy appearance as she announced her game, Ghostwire Tokyo, during Bethesda's presser. Nakamura was sincerely enthusiastic, and charmingly goofy, and has become something of an overnight sensation on social media as a result; her game looks pretty decent, too.

We got confirmation that George R. R. Martin really has teamed up with the makers of Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice to make a video game; Elden Ring has a terribly generic name, and a meaningless, moody cinematic trailer that hints at an epic scope and dark tone (very much on-brand for both GRRM and From Software), but told us basically nothing about the game itself. Oh, and Forza is getting Lego content added to it, which actually looks surprisingly fun. 

And that... was basically it for genuinely memorable E3 moments, this year. Oh, sure, some stuff happened at E3. It's just that most of it wasn't all that memorable or noteworthy.

Google Stadia is an even worse deal than I thought

It looks like I may have one crucial detail of the Google Stadia package completely wrong.

Like many people, I was thinking that Stadia was basically "Netflix for Games," but if the team at Techlinked are correct, then Stadia may closer kin to XBox Game Pass, with a monthly fee that only gives access to a few free games, with major AAA titles being something you'll need to purchase separately in order to secure access outside of that free period.

This means that the US$1090 over 8 years cost of Stadia that I had calculated as being comparable to the average 8-year cost of console ownership is wrong. The Stadia actually costs US$1690 ($1090 for the service, plus $600 for the games), which amortizes over 8 years to US$211.25 per year, compared to the US$112.50 annual cost of console ownership over the same period. With the added disadvantage, for Stadia, that you own nothing at the end of those 8 years, compared to the console experience which leaves you with a console and 10 games that you own.

Much of Stadia's marketing is still deliberately vague, so clarification on these details could still emerge and magically make the whole thing suddenly awesome, but I doubt it. If this is indeed how Stadia will work, then Stadia... sucks. Even the free version won't actually be a new gaming paradigm; it'll just be a new digital distribution channel. Which nobody wanted. Mazel tov!

Google Stadia is a bad deal for the average consumer, and you should avoid it

Like many people, I was immediately skeptical when Google first announced their Stadia video game streaming service. Details were sparse, and questions abounded, from the technical (several previous efforts at video game streaming had failed because of latency issues), to the basic economics of it all. How much would it cost? Would it be worth its asked-for price?

Well, as of today, we have a few more details, and while the technical issues are still awaiting some hands-on "in the wild" experience to be adequately assessed, we can certainly assess the economics of it all. So here's my ake:

Google Stadia is a rent-to-own scheme, with the added disadvantage that you never actually end up owning anything, and the average gamer should stay far, far away from it all... at least for now, while the "Founder's Pack" is the only version of this thing available.

This isn't based on any subjective aspect of the Stadia "experience," either, even if Google clearly wants consumers to make decisions based on exactly this sort of nebulous, emotional criteria. No, my objection pretty much comes down to simple math. For consumers, the Stadia numbers simply don't add up.

RIP, UWP We hardly knew ye, and never cared.

Way back in 2017, I wrote a post that I titled, "UWP is a failure, and Microsoft knows it."

Nearly two years after releasing Windows 10 and UWP into the world with dreams of marketplace dominance dancing in their heads, Microsoft themselves are only now bringing their 2nd-biggest software product [i.e. Office] to their own store. And it isn't a native UWP version of the program, either; it's a port, brought over via the Project Centennial Desktop App Bridge (henceforth referred to as PCDAB).

That's right: Windows 10 and UWP have flopped so hard that Microsoft themselves can't be bothered to develop natively for the platform.

If Microsoft can't be bothered to develop natively for UWP, then nobody else is going to, either, ever, and that means that UWP is effectively dead on arrival. The only programs that Microsoft will see on its storefront from here on out will be PCDAB ports, none of which will perform as well as Win32 executable versions of those same programs, and even that assumes that developers bother to do that much; with the Windows 10 store being such a shit-show, and the added costs involved in maintaining a 2nd version of their software, all in service of lining Microsoft's pockets, I suspect that most developers simply won't bother to port their programs over in the first place.

Worse yet, a dearth of quality UWP apps means that Windows 10 users are spending this crucial time in the platform's life-cycle locking software-buying habits that exclude the Windows store almost entirely. That's not reversible; if even Windows 10 users are thoroughly trained to buy their software elsewhere, then developers have even less reason to develop for UWP, and that is self-reinforcing. It's a vicious cycle, with the lack of adopters resulting in a lack of apps, which ensures not only a slower rate of adoption, but also ensures that new adopters of Windows 10 don't adopt the storefront along with the OS, resulting in ever fewer apps...

At this point, Microsoft would probably love to be faced with a simple chicken-and-egg problem, rather than this rapidly increasing inertia [...] It seems to be that only one question remains: is this vicious cycle now so well-established that Microsoft is simply unable turn it around?

That was then; this is now. And here in the now, we have the answer to this 100% rhetorical question, as reported by The Verge:

Microsoft had a dream with Windows 8 that involved universal Windows apps that would span across phones, tablets, PCs, and even Xbox consoles. The plan was that app developers could write a single app for all of these devices, and it would magically span across them all. This dream really started to fall apart after Windows Phone failed, but it’s well and truly over now.

Microsoft has spent years pushing developers to create special apps for the company’s Universal Windows Platform (UWP), and today, it’s putting the final nail in the UWP coffin. Microsoft is finally allowing game developers to bring full native Win32 games to the Microsoft Store, meaning the many games that developers publish on popular stores like Steam don’t have to be rebuilt for UWP.

“We recognize that Win32 is the app format that game developers love to use and gamers love to play, so we are excited to share that we will be enabling full support for native Win32 games to the Microsoft Store on Windows,” explains Microsoft’s gaming chief Phil Spencer. “This will unlock more options for developers and gamers alike, allowing for the customization and control they’ve come to expect from the open Windows gaming ecosystem.”

That's right; UWP is definitely dead, and I fucking called it, two years ago.

Who's the man? I am.

The truth about nuclear power and carbon emission reduction

[Reposted from my other blog.]

It turns out that there are better ways to reduce carbon emissions than risking meltdowns, or managing and securing tonnes of weaponizable radioactive material for decades. Who'd have thought?

These totally obvious insights come courtesy of Gregory Jaczko, who once served on the United States' Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and who had previously been a big believer in nuclear power's necessity when it came to combatting global climate change. It took him a while, but he's since come to exactly the opposite conclusion, as he writes in this length article on CommonDreams:

For years, my concerns about nuclear energy’s cost and safety were always tempered by a growing fear of climate catastrophe. But Fukushima provided a good test of just how important nuclear power was to slowing climate change: In the months after the accident, all nuclear reactors in Japan were shuttered indefinitely, eliminating production of almost all of the country’s carbon-free electricity and about 30 percent of its total electricity production. Naturally, carbon emissions rose, and future emissions-reduction targets were slashed.

Would shutting down plants all over the world lead to similar results? Eight years after Fukushima, that question has been answered. Fewer than 10 of Japan’s 50 reactors have resumed operations, yet the country’s carbon emissions have dropped below their levels before the accident. How? Japan has made significant gains in energy efficiency and solar power. It turns out that relying on nuclear energy is actually a bad strategy for combating climate change: One accident wiped out Japan’s carbon gains. Only a turn to renewables and conservation brought the country back on target.

What about the United States? Nuclear accounts for about 19 percent of U.S. electricity production and most of our carbon-free electricity. Could reactors be phased out here without increasing carbon emissions? If it were completely up to the free market, the answer would be yes, because nuclear is more expensive than almost any other source of electricity today. Renewables such as solar, wind and hydroelectric power generate electricity for less than the nuclear plants under construction in Georgia, and in most places, they produce cheaper electricity than existing nuclear plants that have paid off all their construction costs.

In 2016, observing these trends, I launched a company devoted to building offshore wind turbines. My journey, from admiring nuclear power to fearing it, was complete: This tech is no longer a viable strategy for dealing with climate change, nor is it a competitive source of power. It is hazardous, expensive and unreliable, and abandoning it wouldn’t bring on climate doom.

The real choice now is between saving the planet or saving the dying nuclear industry. I vote for the planet.

[Emphasis added, by me.]

The entire piece is much, much longer than this excerpt, and definitely worth a read -- the details of Jaczko's journey towards this conclusion are quite compelling. It shouldn't surprise anybody, though, that he finally reached this conclusion after analyzing the available evidence, since almost everybody who wasn't already inside the dying American nuclear industry had already done exactly that, years ago.


I understand why the United States, in particular, are still clinging to the nuclear illusion. America ushered in the atomic age, and can still look nostalgically backwards to a time when an atomic-powered version of 1950's America looked like it might be the future. But it really wasn't the future; it was, and is, nothing but an expensive dead end. And it's high time for the last adherents of the nuclear delusion to admit that those rosy 1950's visions of an atomic future should be relegated firmly to the past, where they belong.


Nothing says "the past" quite as strongly as something that once screamed "the future." Maybe one day, we'll get fusion power, clean and plentiful energy based in nuclear physics that doesn't come with the costs, dangers, and long-term waste management problems of fission technology. But that day is not today, so for now, let's just all put down the Vault-Tec, shall we?

Steam continues to confound

If there's one thing about the OS market share numbers which has remained reliable from one month to the next, it's that Steam's numbers almost always move in the opposite direction from the OS market over all, and last month was no different. That's right -- Windows lost overall market share among Steam users, with MacOS and Linux both posting gains, all of which is backwards when compared to the broader OS marketplace.

As expected, Windows 10 continued to gain while other Windows versions lost ground, pretty much as one would expect given that gamers are the one group that continues to buy new PCs, all of which come with Win10 installed. I wasn't expecting MacOS and Linux to be gaining in popularity among Steam users, though; one can't help but wonder if Steam Play/Proton isn't playing a role there.

But I'll be honest: I have no real idea what this might mean, if anything. I'll keep watching, though, in the hope that some sort of clarity emerges from the statistical soup.

Watch this space...

Victory! Microsoft surrenders and PC users win

File under, "It's about fucking time," I guess.

As reported in Forbes:

Microsoft has a major announcement today: Windows 10 will no longer automatically install those big feature updates every six months. Home users can pause smaller updates, too. In fact, Windows will even let you pause updates after checking for them!

This is huge. It’s Microsoft’s biggest change in Windows strategy since the company released Windows 10. Microsoft is giving up on “Windows as a service” that is automatically updated outside of your control.

[...]

Microsoft is giving us—and PC users—a lot of what we asked for here! We said Windows wasn’t a service and Microsoft should give PC users more choice. We called for Microsoft to test updates more thoroughly than the botched October 2018 Update, which deleted some people’s files and had other bugs. We warned people not to click “Check for Updates”because Microsoft would treat you as a “seeker” and force updates on your PC before they had gone through testing. We said Home users should get more control over updates, including the ability to pause updates when desired.

Microsoft's insistence on treating Windows 10 Home users like guinea pigs was one of the most contentious issues that still plagued the OS, and was a big part of the reason that I decided to switch to Linux instead. I'm still switching to Linux instead, of course; Microsoft's belated move in the direction of what they should always have done with the OS is just too little, too late, at least for me. But for the millions of Windows 10 users who felt like they had no choice but to adopt Microsoft's new OS, or who were switched after repeatedly refusing the "upgrade," this is definitely good news.

A new normal?

It's the first of a new month, which means that NetMarketShare's new OS market share numbers are out, and the predictable drumbeat of the coverage is all about how Windows 10 is gaining at Windows 7's expense.... even though Windows 10 gained more than Windows 7 lost last month. Never underestimate the extent of tech media's devotion to the pre-established narrative, I guess.

The reality of the current numbers, however, looks a little different to me. To me, it looks like Windows 7 is holding on remarkably well for an OS that's due to officially exit support in only 9 more months, continuing to be the OS of choice on 36.5% of the planets personal computers. That's not 36.5% of Windows PCs, mind, but of PCs overall, a remarkable feat considering that its successor's successor OS was released nearly four years ago, and was free for three and half of those years. To me, the fact that Windows 10 is still only 43.6% of the OS market looks more like a sign foretelling a long, Windows XP-like life for the older OS.

Let's be real, though; "Ten-year-old OS loses market share to four-year-old OS" is basically a dog bites man story. It's expected, and would be dead boring if not for the fact that it's happening a lot more slowly than expected... which is also boring. The more interesting story of the past year has been the movements in the overall OS market.

This week in Facebook

Do you remember when I said that Facebook's ongoing and ever-deepening scandals were going to end with someone from the firm doing jail time? That outcome just became a lot more likely.

As reported by CNN Business:

Federal prosecutors are conducting a criminal investigation into Facebook's data sharing deals with a number of large technology companies, according to a new report in the New York Times.

As part of the investigation, a New York grand jury has subpoenaed two well-known smartphone makers for records related to the investigation, according to the report.

[...]

The grand jury inquiry was on behalf of the US attorney's office for the Eastern District of New York. When contacted by CNN Business, the Eastern District did not have a comment on the case.

Add this to Facebook's big outage of yesterday, and their incredibly stupid decision to block the campaign ad of Democratic Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, apparently because it talked bluntly about the need to break up companies like Facebook (way to prove her case, Zuck), and you end up with a week that a New York Times op-ed describes as "biblically bad."

Microsoft's mixed messaging Windows 7 users to get GWX upgrade nag screens again... and also DirectX 12. WTF, MSFT?

Before we get started, I just want to point out that Microsoft announced both of these Windows 7 developments on the same day.

First, from The Inquirer:

THE NAGS are back, and we're not talking about the invasion of the killer horses that we dreamt about after a particularly cheeky late-night cheeseboard.

Microsoft has confirmed that starting next month, Windows 7 users will start to see pop-ups warning them that their beloved operating system is reaching end of life on 14th January 2020.

This will send shudders of resigned recognition to all those who lived through the saga of nag screens that plagued Windows 7 and 8.x users when Windows 10 was rolled out as a free upgrade and made it very difficult to opt out.

The good news is that these "courtesy reminders" contain some learnings gained from that whole debacle, with a promise that this time you'll see far fewer, and that there'll be a definite "don't remind me again" checkbox to get rid of them.

And then, from The Verge:

Microsoft is making a very surprising addition to Windows 7 this week, with the support of DirectX 12 for the nearly 10-year-old operating system. While Windows 7 support will end in less than a year and Microsoft will start sending notifications to PCs next month, the company is allowing some game developers to implement DirectX 12. The first game to appear with DirectX 12 support on Windows 7 is Blizzard’s World of Warcraft.

Microsoft heard feedback from Blizzard that features like multi-threading in DirectX 12 were bringing substantial framerate improvements to World of Warcraft on Windows 10. Blizzard wanted these same features on Windows 7, presumably because it still has a large base of players on this older OS. Microsoft originally launched DirectX 12 as part of Windows 10, and has not made it available for Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 users.

This is just baffling, even for Microsoft. I can see bringing the new Chromium/Edge browser to Windows 7; Microsoft have a significant number of large-volume license-holders to whom they're trying to sell additional years of Windows 7 support ($300 USD per PC for three years, and only if you have a volume license), so adding new functionality to the platform for them makes a certain amount of sense. But WoW players? In a year in which they're trying desperately to convert individual Windows 7 users into Windows 10 Home (or Pro) users, for Microsoft to be giving those same individual W7 users additional reasons not to switch makes no obvious sense.

Oh, and these same PC gamers, who've mostly rejected both of Microsoft's ecosystems, i.e. Windows 10 and XBox Live? Microsoft has more goodies in the bag for them, too, even if they don't play WoW.

Windows 7 gained market share last month, while everybody else lost ground.Seriously, WTAF?

OK, I'll admit it... I have no idea what's going on with OS market share trends this year.

Last year seemed to have a clear pattern. With few exceptions, Windows consistently lost share each month to MacOS and Linux, with Chrome staying steady. This year, though, Windows is growing while everyone else has started to slip. That would seem to be the perfect story for Microsoft, who have been waiting for Windows 10 to finally start taking over the desktop/laptop OS market for years, and for tech punditry, who have mostly been expecting business and government deployments to finally make that happen as Windows 7 winds down to end-of-service in January of 2020.

But that's not what we see happening. Instead, Windows 10 is slowly sliding along with all over OS versions, while Windows 7 and 8.1 together posted gains that are strong enough to raise Windows' overall user market share of the desktop/laptop space. It's demented... and yet, it's also happening.

So, what the actual fuck is actually happening?

Comparing last month's numbers with this month's, by same OS version.

I could understand if some Windows 10 users were rolling back to Windows 7, or if some newly-minted Linux users had switched back to Windows 7 - after all, I've done that before, my own self.

But it's not just Windows 10 and/or Linux that are being cannibalized by Windows 7; according to NetMarketShare's numbers, MacOS users are also switching to Windows 7, apparently having already spent the Apple Tax to buy their (expensive) new Macs.

Only one possible explanation occurs to me, and I have no idea whether it's reasonable or not. I'm starting to wonder whether NetMarketShare's are being skewed by something which they themselves claimed to have dealt with before: botnets.

It matters who pays the freight The phenomenon of video game piracy looks very different in independent studies than in industry studies

Various entertainment industry trade and lobbyist groups, including the RIAA, MPAA, and ESA, have all spend boatloads of cash and plenty of time trying to make copyright infringement appear to be one of the biggest threats to the fabric of democracy since lying. And their campaign been largely successful, culminating in the U.S. with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which criminalized copyright infringement for the first time, and included a raft of draconian provisions which have been limiting competition, creativity, and innovation ever since.

As part of this campaign, these industry trade groups have paid for any number of "studies" over the years, all of which painted piracy as rampant, and the costs of piracy as enormous. Oddly, though, independent researchers have been studying the same phenomenon for years, and consistently reaching different conclusions. And today, we got another example of the way independence, and freedom from pressure by the lobbyists who are commissioning the study, result in profoundly different results.

As reported by Motherboard:

Study after study continues to show that the best approach to tackling internet piracy is to provide these would-be customers with high quality, low cost alternatives. For decades the entertainment industry has waged a scorched-earth assault on internet pirates. Usually this involves either filing mass lawsuits against these users, or in some instances trying to kick them off of the internet entirely. These efforts historically have not proven successful.

Throughout that time, data has consistently showcased how treating such users like irredeemable criminals may not be the smartest approach. For one, studies show that pirates are routinely among the biggest purchasers of legitimate content, and when you provide these users access to above-board options, they’ll usually take you up on the proposition.

The bare minimum, done under duress Facebook's anemic new pro-privacy measures don't impress me much

In a week which started with the UK Parliament condemning Facebook as "digital gangsters," it appears that Zuck & Co. have decided that they have to do something to turn back the tide of negative PR, and have chosen to make a couple of changes that, frankly, should have been made months ago.

First, as reported by TechCrunch, they're finally going to shut down their spyware-disguised-as-VPN "service," Onavo:

Facebook will end its unpaid market research programs and proactively take its Onavo VPN app off the Google Play store in the wake of backlash following TechCrunch’s investigation about Onavo code being used in a Facebook Research app the sucked up data about teens. The Onavo Protect app will eventually shut down, and will immediately cease pulling in data from users for market research though it will continue operating as a Virtual Private Network in the short-term to allow users to find a replacement.

Facebook has also ceased to recruit new users for the Facebook Research app that still runs on Android but was forced off of iOS by Apple after we reported on how it violated Apple’s Enterprise Certificate program for employee-only apps. Existing Facebook Research app studies will continue to run, though.

With the suspicions about tech giants and looming regulation leading to more intense scrutiny of privacy practices, Facebook has decided that giving users a utility like a VPN in exchange for quietly examining their app usage and mobile browsing data isn’t a wise strategy. Instead, it will focus on paid programs where users explicitly understand what privacy they’re giving up for direct financial compensation.

Second, as reported by TechZim, Facebook are also making changes to their app which will allow users to opt out of having Facebook collect their location data even when the app was not in use:

To address user concerns about the extent to which Facebook’s Android app can access location data, Facebook has now updated its location controls. The new privacy settings will enable Android users to opt out of location tracking when they aren’t actively using the app and have greater control over how much of their location data is saved by the social media giant. With a new option in place, Android users will now be able to decide whether or not they want Facebook to be aware of their location at all times.

Again, while both of these are good changes, they're also obvious changes which should have been implemented months ago. If they'd announced these changes immediately after these scandals broke, I'd have been impressed with the speed of their response, even if it took them a little while to actually patch the changes into their app; instead, I can only cynically assume that they've been keeping these in their back pocket, ready to deploy in a week where Facebook desperately needed some good PR.

"Digital gangsters"

Facebook's had a relatively quiet couple of weeks, with no major new scandals breaking and not much news on the investigation front. That period of calm appears to be drawing to a close, though, with the UK Parliament firing the starting gun on the race to end Facebook's current status quo, as reported by Gizmodo:

The UK Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee was spurred to launch an investigation of social media in 2017 following revelations regarding Russian election-meddling and later, the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The resulting 108-page report takes Facebook to task on numerous issues including violating its own privacy agreement with users and participating in anti-competitive practices. “Companies like Facebook should not be allowed to behave like ‘digital gangsters’ in the online world, considering themselves to be ahead of and beyond the law,” the committee wrote.

[...]

One of the report’s more interesting details is that it claims the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) shared the names of three “senior managers” at Facebook with the committee who allegedly were aware of the Cambridge Analytica data breach prior to the 2015 date that Facebook has claimed it first learned about the incident. The managers’ names were not revealed in the report but the committee found it unconscionable that the issue wasn’t brought to Zuckerberg’s attention until 2018. “The incident displays the fundamental weakness of Facebook in managing its responsibilities to the people whose data is used for its own commercial interests,” the committee wrote.

That sounds... potentially actionable. I wonder if the names have been withheld because active criminal investigations are underway?

Epic's other other problem

When Epic announced that their digital storefront would be opening itself up to games from other publishers in a bid to eclipse Valve's Steam service, the general reaction from developer-friendly games media outlets was positive. People who spent a lot of time talking to developers, and none at all talking to average consumers, were convinced that Steam was desperately in need of a new competitor, one that would somehow succeed where GoG, Origin, Uplay, and even Microsoft's built-in Windows 10 storefront had not.

The assumption, one which even Epic seemed to share, was that Fortnite had given Epic a large enough base of customers that could be leveraged to take market share away from Steam, while their richer-for-developers revenue cut would necessarily pull disgruntled indie devs away from the more established platform. I have doubts about both points, of course, but it turns out that we're didn't need to wait all that long for the loyalty of Epic's customer base to be tested. The test has come in the form of a competing game: Apex Legends, which combines Battle Royale and Hero Shooter gameplay into a package that's become the top game on Twitch, dethroning Epic's Fortnite less than a week after its launch.

This is the customer base on whose loyalty the success of Epic's storefront depends, already abandoning Epic in favour of a newer, shinier game that is every bit as finished and polished as Fortnite, but with the more conventional look and gameplay of the Titanfall series. These are the customers that are supposed to abandon Steam, which they've been happily using for years, and buy into yet another ecosystem, even though that ecosystem offers nothing by way of features that are absent or inadequate on the platform they already use.

Why platforms aren't your friends

I tripped over this video on YouTube, and couldn't help but think of the recent Epic/Valve drama. The video, by Dan Olson a.k.a. Folding Ideas, was all about aspiring YouTube competitor VidMe, but made some pretty salient points about how a young, growing platform needs small content creators in order to add content and value to their platform, but that the interests of those small content creators diverge from the interests of the platform owners as the platform's popularity grows.



I couldn't help but think of Epic Games' pitch to indie developers, with revolves entirely around giving them a bigger cut of revenue, but proposes nothing by way of structural codification of those developers' actual needs vis-à-vis better long-term discoverability and promotion of their games. Epic Games are doing for video games exactly what VidMe was attempting in the online video hosting space: it's effectively providing a clone of Steam with no additional functional or structural improvements beyond, effectively, a tip jar.

The fact that Epic are already struggling with customer service, refunds, and other basic functions that any online competitor to a well-established digital storefront is expected to have in place at launch is...a bad sign, frankly. To paraphrase Olson's video, the most charitable reading is that Epic are unprepared, which is already not a good look.

Less charitably, it makes Epic look like grifters, deliberately exploiting vulnerable indie developers to grow their own market presence, all the while knowing full well that the promises of better discoverability and long-term partnership are hollow, since Epic's storefront isn't going to be any more beholden to any single indie developer than Valve's is, or Nintendo's.

Disney's different take on EA's lack of Star Wars games

After days of sustained criticism from numerous quarters over EA's handling of the Star Wars license, IP owner Disney has finally weighed in... and their take on the situation was surprising, to say the least. As reported by WIRED:

One of the most uneasy partnerships in games is the one between publisher EA and Disney. For several years now, since the shuttering of LucasArts games, EA has had an exclusive deal with Disney to make Star Wars console titles. That's all well and good—except for the fact that none of those games have been unmitigated successes and there haven't exactly been a lot of them, either. As a result, many have speculated that Disney's deal with EA might not be long for this world—but apparently the Mouse House is fine with things as they are.

In a recent earnings call, Disney CEO Bob Iger replied to questions about the company's relationship with EA by saying that the deal works well for both parties. "We've had good relationships with some of those we're licensing to, notably EA and the relationship on the Star Wars properties, and we're probably going to stay on that side of the business and put our capital elsewhere," Iger said. "We're good at making movies and television shows and theme parks and cruise ships and the like, we've just never managed to demonstrate much skill on the publishing side of games." Welp, at least Disney is happy. Because, uh, no one else is.

Now, I'll admit that I was as surprised as anybody, at first. Even if Disney didn't have a great video game track record, LucasArts did, at least up to the point when Disney acquired and then gutted their operation. Surely, given how aggressively Disney planned to push the boundaries of the Star Wars franchise, it would have made more sense to keep that team in place, along with their solid track record of doing exactly what Disney needed, rather than reducing them to a skeleton crew that would struggle to oversee anything much... and then outsourcing all responsibility for this huge part of the Star Wars portfolio.

After taking a few days to think about it, though, I've come around to Iger's way of thinking, and not only because Disney doesn't have a great track record when it comes to video games. EA's problems putting out decent Star Wars games are only one symptom of Disney's larger problem: that their entire strategy for Star Wars has been wrong-headed, basically from the very start.

First, the planned pace of Disney's Star Wars releases appears to have been simply too aggressive. True, the flopping of Solo: A Star Wars Story could easily be partly attributed to the boycott espoused by the Star Wars fandom's most toxic and misogynistic elements, but I don't believe that Star Wars fandom as a whole is that virulently toxic or blindly bigoted. After three lacklustre prequels, two more main story films (both of which received decidedly mixed responses from fans), and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, a lot of Star Wars fans were simply suffering from Star Wars fatigue.

This is how Facebook's week ends

It's been something of a roller-coaster week for Zuck & co. With the revelations of their creepy teen-surveillance Facebook Research app and their complicity in teen credit card fraud book-ending their strong financials and resulting share price gain, it was a little tough to tell whether this week should go on the books as a win or a loss for FB.

Well, it turns out the week wasn't over yet, and the latest report resolves that question in style: this week is definitely an "L" for Facebook.

From Gizmodo:

Amid the constant scandals swirling around social media giant Facebook and its questionable handling of user data, at least six state attorneys general have launched their own investigations of the company, Bloomberg reported this week.

Two distinct groups have formed, according to Bloomberg’s report: Pennsylvania and Illinois have joined Connecticut in an investigation of “existing allegations,” though the report does not mention what those are. Officials in New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, “which were already known to be probing Facebook, are seeking to uncover any potential unknown violations,” a source told the news agency.

Oh, my. That doesn't sound good.

EA: The fun is about to end

It the process of writing my post about the Epic Games/Metro:Exodus mess, I came across this SeekingAlpha article on what the future holds for EA Games, and OMG is it ever a must-read.

EA needs to change its business model fundamentally. Its current model alienates players and makes EA more susceptible to competition. A significant source of profits, lootboxes, are being regulated away. Players are moving to mobile and free to play, where EA is weaker than its competitor Activision Blizzard. We believe that EA is currently heading towards another inflection point where players will start leaving en masse. EA could've already crossed the inflection point. Either way, things aren't looking good.

EA has a very tiny pipeline ahead, with Anthem and Respawn Entertainment's Titanfall 3 and Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order being the only major non sports games EA is planning to launch. This is after releasing a bunch of old games that are not selling well. This is the perfect recipe for a massive revenue shortfall in 2019. This situation isn't helped by EA's terrible reputation, the upcoming lootbox bans, or increasing competition from developers around the world.

Although downside is reduced by the low valuation, we believe this valuation will look high when considering the secular decline in EA's revenues and profits. We believe EA will make a good short candidate if the market continues running up and brings EA up with it.

"Good short candidate" refers to the investment strategy of short-selling, essentially selling stock that you've only borrowed for just that purpose. It's basically a bet that the stock's value is about to drop; if it does, they you pocket the difference between what the stock was worth when you sold it, and what it was worth when you had to buy it back to "return" the shares that you'd "borrowed."

The quoted passage, BTW, is the conclusion from fifteen pages of analysis, all of which are worth reading if you're at all interested in the video game business. Seriously, go read the whole thing, because it's fascinating in a way that stock analysis normally isn't.

The various section titles in the article should give you some idea what to expect, though:

• Lootboxes: Regulation is coming
• Destroying franchises
• FIFA - How long can it last?
• Star Wars: An unmitigated disaster
• Battlefield V: Soldier up, EA!
• Competition: A quickly narrowing moat
• Dubious tactics: Denying valid refunds
• Significant insider selling
• Anthem: Not looking good

The "Star Wars" section features one of the most glorious EA Star Wars memes I've ever seen, too:

EA's Star Wars games in a nutshell.

Did I mention that this article was a great read? Seriously, go read the whole thing right now.

Metro:Exodus proves several of my points about Epic's new marketplace

When I posted at length about Epic Games' new storefront, and why it was a much bigger gamble than a lot of people were assuming when it was announced,  fair chunk of that post was about two big points:

1. Steam has a very loyal customer base, who will not be happy if strong-armed into buying into any other ecosystem. Nobody uses Microsoft's storefront, either, remember.
2. Individual indie games, no matter how good, are simply not big enough to act as system-sellers. Yes, having indie games on their platforms did wonders for Steam (and later for the PS4 and eventually Nintendo Switch; even Microsoft's XBox division belated came around to the need for them) but no one indie title or indie developer was responsible for that, and none of them are individually essential to any platform's success.

The sole possible exception to point #2 would, of course, be Fortnite... which launched on Steam, and arguably owes its success to Steam's existence. It's also the only reason that Epic Games have a hundred million or so customers with Epic accounts, customers who don't want anything from Epic except more Fortnite.

The fact that Fortnite players are likely not looking to Epic to satisfy their hunger for varied, non-Fortnite gaming experiences, something which Fortnite can't offer many of anyway, was a clear weakness that Epic needed to address, so it's no surprise that they were actively trying to lure other developers to their storefront, up to and including "poaching" them away from Steam after they'd already announced planned Steam launches. None of those early indie exclusives had moved over to Epic after already selling their product on Steam, but it really was the obvious next move.

It should be no surprise that Epic found some greedy indie dev willing to screw over their Steam customers in an ill-advised "hardball" power play, but I will admit to being slightly surprised that the makers of Metro:Exodus volunteered to be exactly this kind of test case so soon. The problem? Up until five minutes ago, the game was being advertised as a Steam launch, and has been available for pre-order on Steam.

Oh, and the move to Epic came with a $10 price drop, which wasn't immediately offered to customers who'd already bought the game on Steam.

And then there's the fact that the makers of Metro:Exodus are still advertising the game and its DLC on Steam, even though neither the game nor its DLC can be installed from Steam.

Screwed-over Steam consumers are, naturally enough, pissed, and threatening to boycott the game's launch entirely... which, in a world where The Pirate Bay exists, means that they're planning to play the game anyway, but just not pay for it, because fuck Epic and fuck the makers of Metro:Exodus for this egregiously anti-consumer bit of bullshit. All of which has the makers of Metro:Exodus threatening to boycott PC gaming entirely in the future... because that's going to help, isn't it?

Statistics are weird

After losing market share for six straight months, Windows managed a very slight uptick last month, gaining 0.03% to 86.23%. This very slight gain appears to have come at the expense of MacOS and Linux, both of which ticked down slightly, by 0.06% and 0.33%, respectively; ChromeOS gained, though, climbing 0.05% to sit at 0.37% overall, its highest point in the last month.

Windows' slight uptick didn't help its 6 month average decline, which actually worsened as last July's 0.55% increase finally moved out of frame:

This month's 0.03% increase is unlikely to have the same salutary effect in Windows' 6mo average, though -- it's just not large enough to have much of an impact, falling below the ±0.05% threshold for actual significance. ChromeOS and MacOS changes this month were right on the significance bubble, too; only Linux' 0.33% drop was large enough to have a long-term depressing effect on its 6mo average tracking.

The picture gets even muddier when you dig into the different OS versions. Sure, Windows 10 gained last month, from 39.22% to 40.90%, but Windows 7 also gained, from 36.90% to 37.19%; these gains were offset by losses by Windows 8 (-0.06% to 0.82%), 8.1 (-0.11% to 4.34%), and XP (-1.78% to 2.76%). On the Linux side, the generic "Linux" category declined 0.28% to 1.72%, but Ubuntu only declined by 0.03% to 0.68%, while the "Unknown" category gained 0.30% to reach a whopping 0.35%, which sure looks like NetMarketShare had trouble detecting peoples' OS versions this time around.

So, with statistical anomalies all over the place this month, I'm going out on a limb to call this a case of sub-optimal data, and putting a great big asterisk next to the whole mess until next month. If this month's numbers truly do represent some sort of inflection point, then we'll see similar changes in coming months, too; if these are just July-like blips in the data, then we should return to the trend lines of the past 6 months.

Either way, I want more data before I even try to guess at what's happening here.

Sheryl Sandberg's here to make it better worse

It looks like Facebook's creepy teen-data-collection app is not going away, mainly because Facebook can't help themselves. Sheryl Sandberg, who I once praised for having better communication skills than Mark Zuckerberg, only to be proven 100% wrong about that during the whole Definers Media business, has once again stepped forward to try to direct the narrative, and her defense of Facebook appears to be almost entirely composed of lies.

As reported by Gizmodo:

Chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg’s defense? The teens “consented.”

“So I want to be clear what this is,” Sandberg told CNBC’s Julia Boorstin on Wednesday. “This is a Facebook Research app. It’s very clear to the people who participated. It’s completely opt-in. There is a rigorous consent flow and people are compensated. It’s a market research program.”

“Now, that said, we know we have work to do to make sure people’s data is protected,” Sandberg added, repeating a thoroughly unconvincing line that has been rolled out so many times amid Facebook’s constant scandals that it has barreled into self-satire territory. “It’s your information. You put it on Facebook, you need to know what is happening. In this case the people who chose to participate in this program did.”

“But we definitely have work to do and we’ve done it,” Sandberg said, just to hammer home that line.

Here's the problem, though: the teens that Facebook bribed into accepting this app on their phones almost certainly didn't know how comprehensive the data collection would be. They didn't know that Facebook was behind the app, either, since Facebook took pains to hide their involvement:

Facebook had users sideload the app and avoided submitting it through TestFlight, Apple’s beta testing system, which requires Apple review.

And Facebook didn't do anything to protect the privacy of these teens; Apple had already blocked the app before Facebook made a show of "voluntarily" taking it down.

U.S. lawmakers, naturally, are furious, as reported by The Verge:

Tuesday night, a TechCrunch investigation revealed that Facebook had been secretly paying teenagers to install a VPN that let the company see nearly everything they did on their phones. Today, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are lashing out at the tech giant, raising new questions about how the company might fare in future privacy legislation.

“Wiretapping teens is not research, and it should never be permissible.” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said in a statement. “Instead of learning its lesson when it was caught spying on consumers using the supposedly ‘private’ Onavo VPN app, Facebook rebranded the intrusive app and circumvented Apple’s attempts to protect iPhone users.”

Blumenthal said that he would be sending letters to Apple and Google to probe them on their involvement by hosting the apps.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) tweeted, “Wait a minute. Facebook PAID teenagers to install a surveillance device on their phones without telling them it gave Facebook power to spy on them? Some kids as young as 13. Are you serious?” This is Hawley’s first year serving in the Senate, and he has already positioned himself as a strong conservative voice on tech. At his first Judiciary hearing in January, Hawley lambasted President Trump’s attorney general nominee with questions regarding his stance on regulating Silicon Valley companies.

Yes, folks, that's bipartisan agreement that something needs to be done about Facebook, in a country where it took the two major political parties over a month to agree that government was something that needed to exist, and be paid for.

It's not all doom and gloom for Facebook, though. Advertisers have apparently decided that they don't care how terrible Facebook's image is, leading to a 61% jump in earnings despite the firm's bad press, and Facebook managed to gain a few users over the quarter, too. The result? A surge in their share price, of course, meaning that the company's new, more combative media strategy is likely to be the tone we hear from them going forwards. And why not? It's working for them, at least in the near term. And if there's one thing on which you can rely, it's that bad corporate behaviour that gets rewarded with increased share prices and executive bonuses is guaranteed to continue.

All in all, it looks like this year in Facebook is going to be an even bumpier ride than last year, with #deleteFacebook having stalled, Facebook's soul-less advertiser clients having returned, and Facebook's increasingly defiant tone in the face of a continued litany of scandal having finally got the attention of U.S. lawmakers, who are already proposing legislation to put Facebook back in its place.

Buckle up, sunshine. It gets even rougher from here.

This week in Facebook

Facebook's headlines this week are all about the children, and how Zuckerberg & co. are knowingly exploiting them.

First up, this piece from TechCrunch:

Desperate for data on its competitors, Facebook has been secretly paying people to install a “Facebook Research” VPN that lets the company suck in all of a user’s phone and web activity, similar to Facebook’s Onavo Protect app that Apple banned in June and that was removed in August. Facebook sidesteps the App Store and rewards teenagers and adults to download the Research app and give it root access to network traffic in what may be a violation of Apple policy so the social network can decrypt and analyze their phone activity, a TechCrunch investigation confirms. Facebook admitted to TechCrunch it was running the Research program to gather data on usage habits.

Since 2016, Facebook has been paying users ages 13 to 35 up to $20 per month plus referral fees to sell their privacy by installing the iOS or Android “Facebook Research” app. Facebook even asked users to screenshot their Amazon order history page. The program is administered through beta testing services Applause, BetaBound and uTest to cloak Facebook’s involvement, and is referred to in some documentation as “Project Atlas” — a fitting name for Facebook’s effort to map new trends and rivals around the globe.

Pro tip: If you're cloaking your involvement in a shady project because you know it's too shady to be publicly associated with... you should probably be rethinking the whole enterprise. Just saying.

Facebook's "Project Atlas" shenanigans should sound familiar: it wasn't that long ago that Facebook's Onavo app was removed from the iOS app store for violating Apple's terms of service. And the new app is pretty comprehensive, potentially allowing the collections of "photos/videos sent to others, emails, web searches, web browsing activity, and even ongoing location information by tapping into the feeds of any location tracking apps you may have installed." And, while Facebook apparently pulled an about-face at "at 11:20pm PT" (when TC's piece was updated), announced that FB was removing the app from Apple phones, they apparently have no plans yet to do the same on Android phones.

Also, it should be noted that most jurisdictions don't allow 13 year olds to sign legally binding contracts, which means that Facebook's use of just-barely-teens for this effort may be not-quite-legal. Which is when we get to the second piece of Facebook's sketchy and dodgy teen-involving bullshit, as reported by arstechnica:

Two Democratic senators have asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to explain why the social network apparently "manipulated children into spending their parents' money without permission" while playing games on Facebook.

"A new report from the Center for Investigative Reporting shows that your company had a policy of willful blindness toward credit card charges by children—internally referred to as 'friendly fraud'—in order to boost revenue at the expense of parents," US Sens. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) wrote in a letter to Zuckerberg today. "Notably, Facebook appears to have rejected a plan that would have effectively mitigated this risk and instead doubled down on maximizing revenue."

Because parents didn't know that children would be able to make purchases without additional verification, "many young users incurred several thousands of dollars in charges while playing games like Angry Birds, Petville, Wild Ones, and Barn Buddy," the senators' letter said.

What, did you think that Facebook had dodged responsibility for this one? Well, think again, Apple fan, because the Democratically-controlled U.S. House of Representatives aren't about to let this go, and their colleague in the U.S. Senate look to also be keen to get in on the regulating-of-Facebook action. I told you that Facebook's troubles were just getting started.

And so, with two different Facebook-exploits-teens stories in the headlines, we can now head into Wednesday... and the rest of the week. That's right, folks, Facebook's week isn't even over yet. Winning!