Weekly Tech Insights: Issue 15
Table of Contents
Introduction
News
Windows
Linux / FreeBSD
Mobile
Browser
Privacy and Security
Software Updates
Gaming
Other
Editorials and other articles
A world without cookies is still an advertising world
Microsoft needs to improve Nearby Share to include mobiles
Software review of the Week
Links
Introduction
Welcome to the 15th issue of Weekly Tech Insights. Yesterday’s Windows Patch Day was the last for Windows 7 and 8.1. It will be interesting to see what all users and organizations will do that still use the operating systems on devices.
Google released the last Chrome Stable version for Windows 7 and 8.1 as well this week, and Microsoft will follow shortly with the last Edge release for the two operating systems.
Things are slowly picking up again news-wise.
Enjoy the new issue. If you have not already, feel free to subscribe below to never miss a newsletter issue. It is free.
News
Windows
Microsoft released security updates for all supported client and server versions of Windows yesterday. It is the last time Windows 7 and 8.1 receive security updates, as support ended yesterday officially.
A total of 98 updates were released, 11 of them critical. All Windows versions are affected by at least 8 critical security issues.
You can check out my security overview here for a rundown and additional information.
Microsoft confirmed one and is investigating another Windows 11 2022 Update issue. The confirmed issue affects provisioning packages (again). These are used to configure new devices in business, Enterprise and education networks.
The issue may prevent the installation of expected apps. Microsoft recommends the installation of the latest Windows 11 2022 Update update before provisioning devices to avoid the issue. A workaround suggests to install the apps after the provisioning completes.
The second issue, which is currently under investigation, may affect multibyte character sets conversions. Languages such as Korean, Japanese and Chinese may be affected.
Microsoft published another article last month about how it rolled out Windows 11 to 190,000 company devices over five weeks. The upgrade was “fast, easy, and without disruption to productivity”, according to Microsoft. The article should be taken with a grain of salt, considering that Microsoft pushes Windows 11 on all fronts.
Windows 11 had a bad year is a two-part series by Michael Niehaus. Niehaus tries to find answers for Windows 11 not doing so well usage share wise in 2022 in the first. He mentions the major changes to the hardware requirements, Windows as a service changes, a lack of major features and an LTSC release, and application compatibility.
In the second, Niehaus fires a barrage of links from around the Web, which provide further clues on the operating system’s lacking gains and also an outlook.
Linux / FreeBSD
Mobile
Browser
Support for Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge on Windows 7 and 8.1 ends with the release of Chrome 109 and Edge 109 in January 2023. Point releases may still be created but the next versions of Chrome and Edge won’t support the then out-of-support operating systems anymore.
Google Chrome 109 was released today. The browser update fixes 17 different security issues in all supported desktop versions.
Privacy and Security
Intel Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager (Intel HAXM) has been discontinued. Intel states on the project’s GitHub repository that the “project has been identified as having known security escapes”.
A security researcher discovered a fatal flaw in Facebook’s web and mobile application that allowed for account takeovers and two-factor authentication bypasses.
Proton Mail found out that “nearly 50% of all emails contain some kind of tracker” after introducing Enhanced Tracking Protection for customers.
Software Updates
The Thunderbird team has added Sync support to the latest Daily version of the email client. The team plans to launch a major version later this year that features Sync support and more.
Paint.net 5.0 final is out. The new version of the image editor for Windows drops support for Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and 32-bit. It features major performance improvements, support for pressure sensitivity, and a lot more.
My favorite password manager KeePass was updated to version 2.53 this week. It includes a number of improvements to the history feature among other things.
Gaming
Gog is holding a Fresh Indie Sale from January 10 to 25. The sale focuses on indie games only and includes excellent games such as Kerbal Space Program, Steamworld Dig 2, Broforce, or Limbo. If you like indie games, it may be worth checking out.
Other
AMD released a first batch of Ryzen 7000 processors (without the X). These processors are less power-hungry than they Ryzen 7000X counterparts, but still offer great performance, according to German computer magazine CT’s test (which is in German).
Performance drops just slightly in most benchmarks the site ran. It concludes that the Ryzen 7000 series offers better value for the money for most users and applications compared to the Ryzen 7000X series.
A report by KrisFix-Germany (in English) on YouTube suggests that AMD could be facing a new issue with some of its video cards after the company confirmed issues with reference design 7900 XTX cards.
This time, it is Radeon RX 6000 series cards that may be affected. More than 61 Radeon RX 6800 and 6900 series GPUs were analyzed by the repair channel, and 48 of them were completely dead and not repairable. All dead cards had in common that the latest WHQL signed 22.11.2 driver was installed on the device. While it is too early to tell if there is a link between the driver and the bricking of the card, it is suggested to skip the installation for now until more information becomes available.
Microsoft announced the acquisition of Fungible this week. Fungible, “a provider of composable infrastructure aimed at accelerating networking and storage performance in datacenters with high-efficiency, low-power data processing units (DPUs)”, joins Microsoft’s datacenter infrastructure engineering teams.
PC shipments were down 28.1% in the fourth quarter of 2022 compared to the fourth quarter of 2021. 67.2 million PCs were shipped according to preliminary results.All major manufacturers saw a decline, even Apple, although the company’s negative growth was the smallest.
Editorials and other articles
A world without cookies is still an advertising world
Third-party tracking using cookies is coming to an end. While the death of cookies has been delayed several times already, there is no doubt that cookies won’t play a role anymore in the future when it comes to advertising.
Google, being an advertising company, needs to get it right though, as most of the organization’s revenue depends on advertising. Good news for Google is that it owns Chrome, which more or less determines through an update when cookies are no longer usable.
Google and other advertising and marketing companies work on several systems to replace cookies.
A prominent example is Google’s attempt, or better attempts, to push its ideas into the market. Broken down, Google plans to move away from individual user tracking to group tracking. Chrome plays an important role here, as interest groups are determined by the web browser.
That is a step up from letting advertisers and ad-tech organizations define what interests a particular user has. It also means less data exposing.
The main downside to this is control. The organization that controls the browser controls advertising, which suits Google just fine but has other advertising companies up in arms.
Replacements for third-party cookies may also attempt to stay very close to individual user tracking, albeit with more privacy sprinkled on top to appease privacy-rights groups and users alike.
One of the dominant ideas here is to replace third-party cookies with encrypted email-based IDs. As Digiday points out in an August 2022 article, the main issue here is not security or privacy, but getting user consent.
Publishers would need to get their users onboard with the system, and most might not have the means to convince a large part of the userbase to do that.
Another approach moves the data gathering to the first party. While third-parties may no longer receive data about user visits directly, they may receive the information from the site’s the user visits.
All in all, it is not clear right now how
Microsoft needs to improve Nearby Share to include mobiles
Microsoft introduced Nearby Share in Windows 10 as a way to quickly transfer files between PCs that support it wirelessly. The system uses Bluetooth or Wi-Fi for the functionality and is supported on Windows 10 and Windows 11.
Microsoft improved Nearby Share on Windows 111 by adding sharing over a private Wi-Fi network to the functionality.
Here is an overview of what is supported:
PC that is shared from runs Windows 11: support for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.
PC that is shared from runs Windows 10: support for Bluetooth only.
The Windows 11 2022 Update added support for sending files to desktop systems that are in the same private network, even if these do not support Bluetooth or Wi-Fi.
While Nearby Sharing works between Windows devices, better on Windows 11 because of the extended functionality, it lacks when it comes to smartphones.
The elephant in the room is that Microsoft is not in control of one of the two major mobile operating systems. Apple is in a better position, and AirDrop shows why that is such a powerful position to be in.
There is Phone Link for Android, but it is limited to transferring photos from the mobile device to the Windows PC, and it is a usability nightmare.
A third-party app, called Nearby Sharing Windows 10 / 11, exists that promises to do better (found here). It adds support for Nearby Sharing on the Android device when installed, and allows users then to send files from the Android device to the Windows PC.
It lacks support for sending files from Windows to the Android device, however. The developer of the app is working on receiving functionality currently to allow for true two-way file transfers between Android and Windows 10 / 11 devices.
It is unclear why Microsoft is ignoring mobile devices for the most part. Nearby Sharing has been improved by the company, but only on Windows 11. Lack of mobile support removes several common use cases, such as sending photos from the mobile device to the PC without using cloud storage or cable connections, sending audio or video files downloaded on PC to the mobile for listening and watching, and more.
It is possible that Microsoft is working on such an app, or has plans to improve the Phone Link app, but the company has not revealed any plans of that sort publicly.
Software review of the Week
Eleven Clock’s main purpose is to add more customization options to the Windows clock. The default Windows clock is very limited, as it may display the clock and date only. Microsoft is working on bringing seconds to the clock in a future update for Windows 11, but it would still be limited with support for seconds.
Eleven Clock supports six different formats that users may enable. Besides the default Windows format, Eleven Clock supports adding seconds, displaying only the time or date, adding the week number, or displaying the weekday.
That’s not all though. Besides customizing the clock, users may also change the appearance of it. Default is available, but there are five additional options to choose from, including a classic MS-DOS or Windows 95 design.
The application’s settings include even more customization options, from changing the default action when clicking on the clock to changing the position, size and appearance.
Some features may require a bit of finetuning to make sure that the clock displays fine on the Windows taskbar. All in all, Eleven Clock is a well designed open source program that adds numerous customization options to the Windows clock.
Links
99% Efficiency: Princeton Engineers Have Developed a New Way To Remove Microplastics From Water
Riddle solved: Why was Roman concrete so durable?
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/share-things-with-nearby-devices-in-windows-0efbfe40-e3e2-581b-13f4-1a0e9936c2d9