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Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update

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Re: Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update

#311

Post by digi_owl »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #273
viraptor wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're generalising over a whole bunch of devices with different specs. Sure, there was a problem with updates on the 8gb devices. But that was few hardware cycles ago, around 2.3. Now, those devices are around 1% usage, mostly have dead batteries and other components and it's hard to find a new Android device which lacks space for upgrades. What to do? Upgrade the hardware. It's not supported anyway. Modern Android…

I had this problem all the time on a Galaxy S4. I don't remember now whether this was a 16GB or 32GB model; either way, it quickly filled up pretty much entirely by system data and apps. Having an external SD card for everything else didn't help much, and I spent over a hear with phone storage hovering barely above 500MB (if you go below, half of the stuff on the phone refuses to work).

Another interesting tidbit is that as storage fills up, Android slows down.

I suspect this is an artifact of using the Linux kernel. As said kernel puts a focus on IO ops, and the EXT file systems spend a whole lot of time looking for contiguous free space before committing a write.

Thus if your app do a bunch of writing (say syncing local data with the cloud) at start, it will start quite slowly on a near full Android device.

Re: Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update

#312

Post by harrygeez »

sangnoir wrote: post #68
CydeWeys wrote: post #4

I love the way he's compared the people who tell you to turn off auto-updates with anti-vaxxers; it's quite an apt analogy. Microsoft shares part of the blame here for pushing features that the user clearly doesn't want through updates (especially to the major OS version). Look at the recent ads in Windows file explorer for one example. A lot of the advice to turn Windows Update off is a misguided response to Microso…

> Microsoft shares part of the blame here for pushing features that the user clearly doesn't want through updates (especially to the major OS version). Look at the recent ads in Windows file explorer for one example. A lot of the advice to turn Windows Update off is a misguided response to Microsoft's own bone-headed moves in recent years to install bullshit that the user doesn't want. Vaccinations are awesome, but M…

Alright man. Can you tell me which consumer-facing OS doesn't do those that you mentioned by default? Apple downloads setup files for major OS upgrades as well as system updates automatically without my consent too. I don't want Siri on my Mac too. How can I get back the enlarge window button without holding down alt on the Mac? Google Chrome is the software that pioneered the whole silent update thing. If you want to call out any company at least try to be equal.

Re: Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update

#313

Post by post_break »

kristianc wrote: post #8
chrisacky wrote: post #2

I was on a internal Slack call with team the other day, I ended up having to restart to Windows to do a screenshare and switch to Skype. I ended up having to delay my working day by about 45 minutes while Windows decided to do a mandatory update without any granularity of choice on when is convenient for me. That's what is frustrating. I ended up being unproductive for a whole hour because Windows forced an update on…

The article points out that you can set hours when Windows will update.

I run two OS's on my computer. Sometimes the clock gets out of wack. Guess which OS decided to update during working hours because the clock got it wrong.

Re: Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update

#314

Post by mtgx »

CydeWeys wrote: post #4

I love the way he's compared the people who tell you to turn off auto-updates with anti-vaxxers; it's quite an apt analogy. Microsoft shares part of the blame here for pushing features that the user clearly doesn't want through updates (especially to the major OS version). Look at the recent ads in Windows file explorer for one example. A lot of the advice to turn Windows Update off is a misguided response to Microso…

Yes. Don't tell people to not use Windows updates. That's bad advice from a security point of view. Tell them to not use Windows, period. That's (typically) good advice from a security point of view (of course you still have to install updates on other other operating systems.)

Re: Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update

#315

Post by digi_owl »

Tarean wrote: post #150
phr4ts wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The degradation is intentional. In Windows phone, speech to text and quiet hours doesn't work, and the accuracy of shape writing is significantly reduced, when Cortana is switched off. Ms is trying to turn Cortana into the Google play services of Windows So they can consensually(forcefully) collect data from every windows device.

I'd guess that means speech to text and shape writing run at least partially on servers? Not hugely surprising but it seems really bizarre that quiet hours would need it. Probably some integration with cortanas contact database so that some people's messages come through? Even that seems incredibly lazy and ill thought out.

I suspect it is in part MS office politics.

Some years back Google went through a period of trying to hitch every new, and a bunch of existing, services to Google Plus.

It just so happens that the guy in charge of G+ was a former MS exec. And over at MS it was typical to attempt to hitch your project to any other project coming down the grapevine (the Google people actually called this "cookie licking" on stage after he had left the company).

And if you look back you could see this going on with .NET, you can see some semblance of this with Surface, and now with Cortana.

I guess it can be seen as some kind of in-office bandwagon politics.

Re: Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update

#316

Post by Posibyte »

jakub_g wrote: post #304
CydeWeys wrote: post #4

I love the way he's compared the people who tell you to turn off auto-updates with anti-vaxxers; it's quite an apt analogy. Microsoft shares part of the blame here for pushing features that the user clearly doesn't want through updates (especially to the major OS version). Look at the recent ads in Windows file explorer for one example. A lot of the advice to turn Windows Update off is a misguided response to Microso…

It would also help if Windows 10 didn't restart the machine automatically in the least favourable time, when you just went to make yourself a tea while having a zillion of programs opened, and the process didn't end up with a blue screen (both happened to me in the last few months; ok ok they allow now to choose "inactive hours" or whatever it's called, but initially you had a choice between "restart now" or "restart…

This is the main reason I highly considered turning off updates as well. Twice in the last year I've had to go on-call for work to fix a critical issue some point in the late evening for Windows 10 to close all my programs, progress unsaved, without warning and spend several minutes (half an hour on one of them) doing updates.

At that point, Windows 10 became a liability, and that laptop still doesn't have automatic updates turned on anymore. (It still gets routine manual updates, but it's definitely not ideal.)

Re: Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update

#317

Post by leifus »

CydeWeys wrote: post #4

I love the way he's compared the people who tell you to turn off auto-updates with anti-vaxxers; it's quite an apt analogy. Microsoft shares part of the blame here for pushing features that the user clearly doesn't want through updates (especially to the major OS version). Look at the recent ads in Windows file explorer for one example. A lot of the advice to turn Windows Update off is a misguided response to Microso…

    Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

    [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Search]
    "AllowCortana"=dword:00000000

Re: Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update

#320

Post by mjw1007 »

digi_owl wrote: post #298
sangnoir wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft shares part of the blame here for pushing features that the user clearly doesn't want through updates (especially to the major OS version). Look at the recent ads in Windows file explorer for one example. A lot of the advice to turn Windows Update off is a misguided response to Microsoft's own bone-headed moves in recent years to install bullshit that the user doesn't want. Vaccinations are awesome, but M…

Sadly MS is hardly the first to have done something like that, but they are the biggest and most prominent name right now. People avoid doing firmware updates on various devices for the same reason, as there is no indication what will change or go missing (never mind that it likely will reset the device, and thus require a full reconfigure before being useful again). The basic problem of our world is that it is ruled…

Microsoft may put a great deal of effort into supporting old APIs and old ABIs, but it turns out that that effort has not been enough for us to be able to tell everyone "Yes, go ahead and upgrade to a new Windows version, nothing will break".
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