Andrew McNaughton

Sounds like they’re just bringing hot patch updates to the masses. It just means they can sneak more updates onto your PC and because there’s no disruptive reboot, you won’t even know when it’s happened… that is, until something suddenly breaks. It’ll buy them more time because it’ll take people longer to realise.

BREAKING: Microsoft just announced several major changes to Windows 11 in an effort to win back user trust and evolve the platform into something people will actually want to use over macOS and Linux! It's a huge announcement that addresses Windows 11's biggest problems today, tackling core fundamental issues such as unreliable system performance, UX consistency, AI bloat and general enshittification. Microsoft has confirmed that this year, it WILL be reducing where ads and Copilot appear throughout the system, including in Start, Widgets, Notepad, Photos, and more! File Explorer and Windows Search will be upgraded with improved performance and capabilities that make finding apps and files much faster and easier. The OS will become lighter with less RAM and system utilization at idle, making it smoother to run on low end hardware with limited memory. These improvements will also benefit high-end PCs too. Windows Update will be improved with more granular controls and the ability to postpone updates for longer, along with reducing how often the OS needs to restart to install an update. Microsoft has also confirmed that it's bringing back fan favourite features such as the ability to move the Taskbar! It's also working to update more areas of the system shell with modern WinUI designs, which should make Windows 11 feel more coherent and complete. There's much more in the announcement, and it honestly all sounds too good to be true. Microsoft really is listening to feedback, and is eager to make Windows the BEST desktop OS on the market. More details including when these changes will arrive in the link! windowscentral.com/microsoft/wind…

@EconAdept @zacbowden @Microsoft Gen X here… do you know how many times I’ve heard these predictions before? Never gonna happen.

Dude... its over. Windows wont ever be able to bring back any Linux users. Its all downhill for @Microsoft as the youth are polarizing. Mac for the kids that dont understand computers and Linux for people who actually due stuff. Windows is just for an office... until they realize that Linux is $18k-$36k a year cheaper than Windows, for 100 employees. (Assuming ONLY email and various levels of office suite) Stepping in to Azure dev ops? Holy fucking shit what a dumpster fire. Like a chain of permission gates hidden behind walls literally no one seems able to string across your list of barely connected services. I mean holy shit. My office is tiny and spend about 25k a year on @Microsoft products, and im slowly, working to switch us over to pure Linux machines, and a much smaller custom domain mail host to save $20k a year most of the remaining $5k a year of which would go to @github to handle what dev ops shits the bed doing.

@ID_AA_Carmack That’s what “Spotify Connect” is for? If you care about this then you shouldn’t be streaming lossily It is what it is. These codecs are so old. The workload is literally nothing to modern processors.

When you stream Spotify to Bluetooth speakers or headphones, the audio comes over the network lossily compressed with Vorbis or AAC codecs, is then decoded on your device to 48 Khz raw samples, then the Bluetooth stack lossily re-compresses it with SBC or AAC codecs before sending it over the airwaves to the speakers. I don’t have “golden ears” to pick apart audio quality like I can with, say, missing gamma correction on texture filtering, but that still hurts my system optimization soul. It is likely over-optimization, but It would be cleaner if there were a way to send bluetooth-ready, compressed audio directly.

@cljack This is because until memory foam mattresses, this is the best way for one partner not to disturb the other if they move around/toss-and-turn. Old spring mattresses meant one couldn’t move without the other knowing about it.

Do Europeans know you can just buy a big mattress instead of smushing two small ones together

@DrSiyabMD @cljack I’ve had AC for 7 years already. Experienced home AC first in Florida in 1993. We’ve had AC in offices my whole career. Since 1998.

@cljack It’s okay, they haven’t even discovered AC yet!

@LutzSchueler This tired old rhetoric doesn’t work anymore. We now have a plethora of alternatives. Your competitors have already shifted to fairer pricing for all. They’re giving a gift or bill credit to new customers now. They’re also denouncing legacy introductory offers making you look out of touch.

Hi there Andrew, thanks for reaching out. As with all providers, we have introductory offers to new customers. At the start of all of our customers' time with us, they will have benefited from such a deal. Once this expires, we'll always do all that we can to offer the best existing customer deal that's available. We also send out an end of contract notification to all of our customers before their minimum agreed term comes to an end, highlighting both the new package price and any other offers that may be of interest. We're always happy to review your package and cost to help find one that best suits your needs and budget. This doesn't always mean a downgrade.

@LutzSchueler @VirginMedia when are you going to start letting existing customers downgrade to broadband only at competitive prices? I'm getting near Gig1 from Vodafone for £30/month. The best your people could offer was £42/month. Your new customer price is £27.99. It's 2026. Why are you still treating existing customers like this when they can just switch to someone else? I've been a customer since 1999 and now I'm moving to Vodafone because you can't keep up with the times.

@kylieminogue “If Only” - Wish it had been a single. Even the lead single!

💋It’s Kiss Me Once day💋 What’s your fav from the album??

@powcampsurvivor Dude also wonders why he’s on dialysis. Nuromol/Advil-Tylenol combo is my saviour… but even that stops at 400mg Ibuprofen. Hospital dose here is 800mg.

my favorite thing about ibuprofen is you can take like 3000mg and it still doesnt work

@dimenpsyonal Proposal agreed. But I’m not for Sansa Stark being Queen of the North. Cersei was supposed to kill that bitch. The North shall be a republic.

My proposal for the nations of Great Britain

@the93percent The man-bag is killing me. I can’t.

Girl why was he buying so much wine? 💀

@Barnacules @Apple 🤓 Actually 🙋‍♂️…

Dear @Apple, I don't think restarting Windows 11 is going to magically solve my low disk space issues... 🤣

@beyoncegarden OMG… now God is trying to groom and emasculate everyone!

imagine getting mad over kids’ shirts i’m crying😭

@CDawgVA Are you sure… it doesn’t have any SPF 5000. You don’t go outside without that Mr Cullen.

Found my new lip balm

@WinRAR_RARLAB @rubenjromo Done.

@mcnaugha @rubenjromo Letting you know it's now! Here's the link for you to give us your money: shop.win-rar.com/16/uurl-dcv2d5…

Who else got paid today? Why not treat yourself to a WinRAR license too! 😂🤑🥳

@Priggione That's what trained kitchen/wait staff do in hotels to stop steam from the toast wetting the other slice if piled-up. It keeps the toast crisp/crunchy. I'm not sure about the heat. I'd guess that loses heat slower.

Mate's just sent me this, she's making toast and this is how she cools it before buttering it 👀👀 wtf is that all about?? 🤔🫣👀🤣🤣

@flconstruct @dtweetsss1 @nxd1979 That is my own words dude. I'm a 48 year old well-educated Scottish/British IT consultant. 28 year career in high-end IT. First 10.5 years working with Apple.

@mcnaugha @dtweetsss1 @nxd1979 I'm gonna be real w u homie Im gonna need you to rewrite that in your own words and not use AI

people kept telling me to do this so i did, and there's literally zero difference in sound quality. meanwhile spotify is way better at literally everything else

The loudness/quiteness and filter reference were two separate digital recording issues. It's never been about sounds beyond the human hearing range. That's the misunderstanding I was talking about. It's about the "damage" digital audio processing can do. For example, downsampling from 96kHz to 44.1kHz requires a steep low‑pass filter and a reconstruction of the waveform at the lower rate. Even with excellent sample rate converter algorithms, this step can introduce: Phase shift Pre‑ringing Transient softening Subtle smearing These are tiny effects, but they’re real and measurable. The Hi-Res version simply skips that potentially damaging process. The word psychoacoustics is used in relation to codecs to hide the human decisions made about what is thrown away. It's not necessarily true psychoacoustics. Algorithm designers made choices, where some of them could actually be destructive. With that term, the marketers use it to excuse increase bass loudness to give an "entertaining" sound, i.e. a distraction from the missing high frequencies they dropped. Average consumers don't know what they're missing until they are [self-]trained to detect it. AAC 256kbps sounds like a muffle is over the speaker to me. A bit of the "life" is drained from my favourite tracks. Different tracks could be affected in different ways. If your track has less high frequencies then you might not miss anything.

@mcnaugha @dtweetsss1 @nxd1979 I understand the importance for mixing and mastering in the studio, but once you have a final track you can just eliminate all the stuff outside human hearing ranges and it will be transparent. That’s psychoacoustics, not the loudness filter you were describing

@flconstruct @dtweetsss1 @nxd1979 prostudiomasters.com (lost the o there)

Hi-Res is generally misunderstood. 24-bit supports more natural “departures” of loud and quiet sounds outside of the human hearing range. They’re relative rarely present in recordings. When they did HDCD’s circa 2000, only about 5% actually featured recordings which could benefit from the format. Without 24-bit, it’s possible some people can hear an unnatural cut off that somehow diminishes the experience. Have no point of reference myself. Higher sample rates are for tackling a digital filter phenomenon that occurs during recording at 16/44.1 where artefacts are generated in the upper frequencies of the human hearing range. These artefacts can manifest as audible distortion. So, recording never happens at 16/44.1 in professional production. The higher the sample rate used, the further up the frequency range these artefacts appear. So, they can be mostly pushed out of the human audible range. Again, I couldn’t site a comparison to demonstrate the effect but the artefacts can be seen on oscilloscopes. Hi-Res can be like an insurance policy if you want to get the closest thing to what was recorded by your beloved artist. Only looking at the frequency data will reveal if there’s anything there to be experienced. Some Hi-Res products are also remastered and in some cases sound better than ever but it’s nothing to do with Hi-Res. Sites like Prostudimasters.com give you the measurements that reveal whether there was something in the recording that exceeded the limits of 16/44.1.