I don’t really agree that is conceptually okay. TVs and computers have drastically different life cycles. That TV will still be kicking probably a decade after the internal Smart TV computer is uselessly underpowered. This same problem is arguably even worse with cars.

Windows progressively worsening and Microsoft’s dubious practices are entirely independent issues from whatever is going on with Linux, though.

People interested in and well-suited for Linux use may take that route, given the situation, but even users with no inclination toward or intention to switch to Linux can and do still have legitimate grievances with the company and its software direction.

Almost everyone has to interact with Windows and Microsoft at some level throughout their lives whether they like it or not, so it is natural and constructive for them to make their opinions known. Microsoft may not respond to these criticisms in a sane or useful manner, but that is their failing, not a failing of the criticisms themselves.

I find it helpful to consider the substance of the complaint and evaluate it on its own merits, as it sounds you may have already been doing. For example, someone that is solely spouting negativity with no concrete examples of what they dislike about this company and its products is not constructive nor contributing to the conversation, but if someone states specific grievance with a software or company behavior is contributing, whether or not Microsoft takes the contribution.

If you, personally, have not encountered any problems with Windows or Microsoft that give you any pause or problems in your life, go nuts and use Windows, but knowing that alternatives exist is empowering. At the rate of decline in the quality of the Windows OS, it is not impossible that Linux could become superior in every meaningful metric without even improving. However, it is also conceivable that a user’s needs are such that those quality declines have not impacted you specifically.

I had a Windows 7 machine for like a decade without a single crash or BSD, and now, a decade later, I have multiple brand new PCs with Windows 11 installs that came on them that have lockups, crashes, and other buggy behaviors right out of the box. It is not unusable, but its stability is more reminiscent of the Windows of the 90s than an improvement on the Windows of 2010. Again, if that’s not your experience, count yourself among the lucky ones and continue to use Windows and be lucky.

I think the rabid evangelism for Linux around here may have convinced you to try it because of their fervor, rather than their reasoning. I hope you continue to have luck with Windows, but if not, feel free to switch any time! The angry nerds don’t have to impact your decision one way or the other.

The management will say something else when they realize their plan makes them uninsurable.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer pack of jackals.

Are you reading the hate on Windows?

Microsoft is a multi-billion dollar international mega-corp, and their software is meant for enterprise use as a tool to get a job done–a means to an end. All of its other uses are distantly secondary to that.

In that context, the tool becoming progressively less reliable, fast, and predictable makes it ever less fit for purpose. Sure, you used that time for something else productive, but when you need your computer for something important right now, it failing to work because its maker broke it when you weren’t looking is a lot to take. Dollars and jobs can be lost because of Microsoft’s cavalier attitude toward quality.

Contrast that with Linux, a free program made by volunteers in their spare time. Its own updates can cause problems like Windows, but they are ever less common, while the opposite is true for Windows. Furthermore, if I have important upcoming use for my PC, I can delay or ignore updates as long as I want, even forever. The owner gets to control the computer’s use, because they’re the owner, a fact Microsoft does not respect at all, and seems to be taking measures to change.

People do not like to be told what to do, nor when or how to do it. People that know how computers work and use them heavily understand how to maintain their computer, and those people are heavily represented here. They are getting their skilled PC management replaced by forced, shoddy, automation of that task and it causes them unnecessary problems, often at inopportune times.

That’s why Windows gets hate here–Microsoft keeps kicking them in the balls and they hate that.

Ooh, does that mean that we’re in for a big “actually we’re restructuring our licensing all the sudden and everyone owes us 10x, effective as soon as you renew” rug pull? All the cool silicon valley mega corps are doing it!

If they get Windows 95, they can also play Hearts to their Solitaire’s content.

I think the inverse might actually be preferable. If there’s slop in the code base, that will be harder to avoid than whole modules that you can just not install.

While neither is preferable, putting it in the development is more insidious.

Fining companies that commit a crime a small portion of the money they gained by committing that crime is not progress, that is the problem here. Meta still made more money, after the fine, than if they had not perpetrated the crime. This is more of the status quo, which is why people are complaining about this the same as they had about the previous million times this same thing happened.

I call BS! I have it on good authority that Bilbo Baggins is at least eleventy-one.

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Trident was such a cooler name than WebKit, too. A rare instance of Microsoft giving something a name that was neither confusing nor lame.

I mean, those ActiveX controls were a little… well… Trident was a cool name!

There is never anything fundamentally bad about more choices, but that doesn’t mean that some of the choices are not fundamentally bad.

While that’s true for some of those, you never know when there will be a paradigm shift, and neither do they. Also, off the top of my head, I know that Yahoo! and IBM caused their own undoing through long periods of mismanagement. The world was in their hands and they couldn’t stay out of their own way. Standard Oil was broken up in direct response to the establishment and enforcement of federal anti-monopoly regulation.

So, again, don’t give up hope! If the pendulum does not swing back the other way, it will the defy the sum of all human history. If you think about it, believing otherwise doesn’t even make sense, like believing if I keep throwing a ball on the air, eventually it will stay up there.

Try not to give up hope! People said similar things about IBM, Yahoo!, AltaVista, AOL, Blockbuster Video, Standard Oil, The Dutch East India Company, and more! All of those are either in the dustbin of history or ghosts of their former selves.

The reckoning will come to these companies that continue to seem successful in spite of providing objectively bad and worsening products; nothing has ever stopped the pendulum from swinging. When you see your chance to help, give it a push.

Unlike Pandora’s box, though, a lot of the dumber applications of this stuff will go back in when the VC money dries up.

When I refer to improvements, I mean fundamental improvements to the underlying technology, which appear to be at a stubborn plateau.

I believe the improvements you’re referring to are better guardrails. They are still improving the interface with regard to context and scope, as those functionalities are separate from the underlying technology, bolted on top of it to keep it on task and more continually aware of and operating within the defined context.

Underneath, though, each new model appears to be a refactoring of the previous one to get different sometimes better results, but the methodology is the same, and its strengths and weaknesses remain largely unchanged.

So, essentially what my objection to this practice is this:

This technology has led to companies leaning harder on their current people to get more done with the same amount of time with AI tools. That doesn’t seem to be successful at any sort of scale so far, but that’s the plan nonetheless. As a result, new talent is coming into the industry at a much slower rate than before–hiring is on hold while everyone waits to see if these tools really can replace bodies in the workforce in a serious way (again, super inconclusive at this point).

So, looking forward even one single generation, we will have dramatically fewer experts in the field than before, because so many fewer people were able to start in that field last generation. Since the need for programmers is greater every year, either these tools will be a wild success and meet all these business demands, or there will be a crisis of demand with no easy ways out.

Since both of the foreseeable outcomes are detrimental to the workers themselves, what and who exactly are we rooting for? I think that most people, given the choice, would choose the existing cycle with a proven track record, rather than gamble on something so uncertain with no clear economic benefit to the workers themselves.

Right, but aren’t the interns in training specifically to get better at that than they are today, and eventually surpass the abilities of the AI?

These LLMs are at best OK at this stuff, and are not improving at any sort of convincing rate. If you don’t train anyone to be better than the LLM, the retirement of your generation will make the whole industry you’re in at best, OK at its job.

There is hate because this is business encroaching on art, which is always abrasive to artists and art appreciators. This tool adds content to the art that was not put there by the artist, making it a different derivative work.

Furthermore, it can be regarded as frivolous waste. Using AI in real-time to add new details to graphics as they are rendered dramatically increases the amount of energy it takes to run that game. If the gamer had to bear the real costs of these technologies, there would be no gamers.

Its good that you have enough self-control to hand over your keys when you’ve had too much to drink.