That’s the thing I’ve been most worried about. The media have largely capitulated out of (justifiable) fear of reprisal and violence. The fear is legit, but we depend on the media to speak truth to power especially when democracy is on the line.

This is why I no longer believe this will end without violence.

Literally have the opposite experience. Fought with my old Brother printer constantly. My Epson Ecotank is rock-solid.

Why is this weirdo so obsessed with the letter X?

I’m shocked! Shocked! Well, not that shocked.

Headline in six months: Salesforce Hires Software Engineers After Realizing Middle Managers Don’t Know How To Turn AI-Generated Code Into Actual Applications

Being a software engineer is a hell of a lot more than just the actual act of writing code.

Not many, but plenty use various corporate applications that are Windows-only.

It’s some kind of locked-down version of GlobalProtect that’s integrated with a TPM module to prevent machines that aren’t running our corporate image on corporate-approved laptops from being able to connect.

There’s probably some kind of workaround, but I’m lazy and it’s easier just to power up the Windows machine now and then.

I only ever use Windows on my work computer, and only when I need access to a resource that requires our Windows-only VPN.

But seriously, “just use linux” is worthless advice. Lots of people use Windows for specific applications that don’t exist in the Linux ecosystem. For example, there are no Linux applications that come close to AutoCAD, and it simply doesn’t work on Linux.

Better advice would be to get new (or newer used) hardware if possible, if you absolutely need to use Windows, since this workaround will inevitably be “corrected” by Microsoft. Then you can do whatever you like with the old hardware, such as install and learn Linux at your own pace.

If DAW means Digital Audio Workstation, have you tried Ardour?

I’m more worried about the weird white bump on her right cheek, and the short left arm on the blurry person standing in the background boat.

The best thing about this is that it’s also on the x-axis.

Nope. It’s a lower level kernel API that has to be accessed at boot via a driver. The API I was thinking of - and I use the term “thinking” loosely, here - is an API that userspace applications can take advantage of to scan files after boot is already complete.

I stand corrected. For some reason, I was thinking they used the actual Windows Defender API, which can be called programmatically from third-party applications, but you’re correct, it was a driver loaded at boot. Microsoft isn’t at all at fault, here.

The thing is, Microsoft’s virus-scanning API shouldn’t be able to BSOD anything, no matter what third-party software makes calls to it, or the nature of those calls. They should have implemented some kind of error handler for when the calls are malformed.

So this is really a case of both Crowdstrike and Microsoft fucking up. Crowdstrike shoulders most of the blame, of course, but Microsoft really needs to harden their API to appropriately catch errors, or this will happen again.

I’m an idiot. For some reason, I was thinking about the Windows Defender API, which can be called from third-party applications.

Ah. Yeah, I don’t know of a way to get ACC on Linux.

Regarding Linux, what commercial software are you dependent on? More and more, it’s all online, even Office.

It’s incredibly short-sighted of them. Windows is the gateway to easy integration, especially with 365. Drive people away from Windows, it could ultimately start driving people away from Microsoft services.

If Microsoft would just recognize that at this point, operating systems are a commodity and loss-leader, it might inspire them to de-enshittify Windows and focus exactly on the services you mentioned.

Microsoft has become such a bizarre company. On the one hand, it’s trying to be super developer-friendly, with tools like Typescript, VS Code, and DotNet Core being easy to use and multi-platform. On the other hand, they seem hell-bent on making Windows itself - their bread-and-butter offering - as hard to use and annoying as possible.

It just doesn’t make any sense.

But what if they want to notify you about great deals and coupons? DON’T YOU WANT TO KNOW ABOUT GREAT DEALS AND COUPONS?!?

I remember when Adobe was a cool company that built art tools. Now it seems like the art tools are an afterthought, tacked onto a money-siphoning scheme.