Windows 10. Nah mate.

[Zetetic]

This wasn't through modding to be clear: there's a whole bunch of MacBook Pros where the thermal setup around the discrete GPUs was a disaster and they'd almost inevitably kill themselves. (What makes this a massive pain is that they were also setup to try very hard to use the discrete GPU on boot.)

I think the real loss with the 32-bit stuff was games and little utilities that had been published years ago. (Irrelevant to both of us, I'm sure.)

[touchingcloth]

Which brings me round to begrudgingly admitting Microsofts VS Code is actually relatively nice as it's more than a text editor but slightly less than a full-fat IDE and well supported plugins you can add yourself to bloat it up if you wish. Works well on Linux and OSX too. It's UI is pretty nice and doesn't feel exactly 'microsofty' either.

This isn't entirely relevant, but I hate it and certain colleagues who think it's imperative to write code it can understand so its code completion works, even if that means writing code that is objectively less functional, egregiously verbose or less readable.

Isn't VSCode something Microsoft bought rather than developed from scratch? It's good, though, probably the best IDE-style text editor I've used that works on any platform you care to mention (except Big Sur on Apple silicon for now, it seems).

Some of the stuff I do at work would benefit from VSCode implementing IntelliSense, but I guess that's part of what they use to justify the VS licence costs.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I think it provides it with per-language plugins?
https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/intellisense

If not there's plenty of code (and markup) plugins that'll do completion/suggestion.

It's great for some stuff - config files, markup, quite strict verbose languages. The problem comes when it doesn't play well with more dynamic/functional stuff at which point it encourages the problems it claims to solve.

[touchingcloth]

I think the real loss with the 32-bit stuff was games and little utilities that had been published years ago. (Irrelevant to both of us, I'm sure.)

I think there might have been some emulators which we lost to the 32 bit coup, so I can definitely see how it would impact some uses there's nothing that I do personally that has suffered. My home computer is used for browsing, video and photo editing. One of the biggest benefits of not really being into gaining any more has been laptops getting smaller, lighter and cheaper as my resource needs have essentially plateaued whilst hardware has kept getting faster. I switched to an Air recently, which was unthinkable a generation or two ago. Some of the photo editing applications I use are running in compatibility mode rather than having been compiled for the ARM chip, and they're barely any slower than on my old Intel Mac, which is confusing. I might try installing Crysis at the weekend.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I think the sad thing with dropping 32 bit support is the little utilities as you say, and adjacent to that the fact people might be relying on them for other peripherals, which may now be turned to e-waste. But maybe that's less of a problem for macs anyway, it'd definitely be the case for weird esoteric things on pc's.

[touchingcloth]

I think it provides it with per-language plugins?
https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/intellisense

If not there's plenty of code (and markup) plugins that'll do completion/suggestion.

It's great for some stuff - config files, markup, quite strict verbose languages. The problem comes when it doesn't play well with more dynamic/functional stuff at which point it encourages the problems it claims to solve.

Completion, yes, but it's the syntax highlighting for some stuff which doesn't seem to exist outside of proper Visual Studio. Losing it has made me pay more attention to how I lay out my code rather than relying purely on red squiggles to flag a dangling/missing bracket, which pays off in readability compared to my formerly sloppy code (I'm by no means a dev).

[touchingcloth]

I think the sad thing with dropping 32 bit support is the little utilities as you say, and adjacent to that the fact people might be relying on them for other peripherals, which may now be turned to e-waste. But maybe that's less of a problem for macs anyway, it'd definitely be the case for weird esoteric things on pc's.

Before snipping tool in Windows gained rulers, I used a tiny bit of freeware which would lock your mouse cursor to only being able to move straight left and right or up and down, which let you highlight without looking looking like a child had scrawled on your screenshot. That's the kind of stuff which people just stop maintaining because their niche usefulness doesn't lead to profitability.

Like with snipping tool, loads of those little utilities end up getting baked into later versions of OSes. I've used loads of different utilities on Windows and Mac over the years, for example, but both OSes have oficial implementations which arguably work better because they're more effective at doing things like tracking changes in ambient light.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I find it baffling no operating system seems to include a clipboard manager by default. If either Microsoft or Apple suddenly bought it in they'd be heralded inventors of something that isn't a new idea.

I also find it baffling how many technically adept people don't know they exist.

[Zetetic]

I think Windows 10 has its own Clipboard History implementation. (And there was some weird relationship to Office at some point, I think.)

[touchingcloth]

I knew someone at university whose PC was running one of those OEM versions of Windows with a load of pointless bloatware on, one feature of which was flashing CAPS LOCK on screen every time the key was pressed, and through this we realised that he used caps lock rather than shift for starting sentences. A computer science course.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Completion, yes, but it's the syntax highlighting for some stuff which doesn't seem to exist outside of proper Visual Studio. Losing it has made me pay more attention to how I lay out my code rather than relying purely on red squiggles to flag a dangling/missing bracket, which pays off in readability compared to my formerly sloppy code (I'm by no means a dev).

Formatting doesn't bother me generally unless it's very bad and will leave my own code up to an autoformatter if possible to minimise pedantry about it in review.

Intellisense can struggle with languages that lend themselves to more dynamic code and this all ends up in a philosophical debate over brevity and the finer points of functional vs Object-Oriented patterns whose logical conclusion is "but why do you need the ide to suggest anything when the code is already writing itself?".

[evilcommiedictator]

It's this sort of thing which makes Windows feel like it's been stagnant. A lot of the most important admin features haven't changed one jot (well, half a jot perhaps) since 95, so no matter what the main OS looks and feels like, as soon as I need to remove a program or update a driver or partition a disk I feel like I've been transported back in time three decades.

It's already kinda been covered, but it's still supporting software from 25 years ago that can run on the platform, including *cough* 32-bit stuff.
The new "Settings" hides a lot of the old Control Panel, but most of it is still accessible when you need it

[touchingcloth]

It's not usually software which I'm writing in VSCode, but I used to do bits of SSRS in Visual Studio proper until we realised that we didn't have a licence for it. VSCode isn't anything more than a text editor for me in that context as I have no way to debug stuff, which gives checking for those dangling brackets a little frisson of excitement. Parts of it involve writing VBA as well, it's hyper modern.

[touchingcloth]

It's already kinda been covered, but it's still supporting software from 25 years ago that can run on the platform, including *cough* 32-bit stuff.
The new "Settings" hides a lot of the old Control Panel, but most of it is still accessible when you need it

I've just had a quick google and it looks like my remaining 32 bit needs will be covered when and if the time comes.

[seepage]

Windows search is bafflingly shit

I was going to have a moan about Windows 10 search reverting to the 'Content' view each time, but just found an article with some registry fixes to make the 'Details' view the default instead, like Windows 7.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Letting the index build on that server still didn't work and the search was so shit I ended up just googling how to find by extension in Powershell. The system works!

[RenegadeScrew]

I think Windows 10 has its own Clipboard History implementation. (And there was some weird relationship to Office at some point, I think.)

It does, although you need turn it on in settings.  Then Windows key + v brings up a windows letting you choose from the history.

I think these things come as standard with most linux distros.

[MojoJojo]

Yes, my work machine with the corporate Centos has klipper. It's a bit crap and sometimes breaks clip and paste completely when using remote desktop stuff.

I'm a big fan of VS code. The remote ssh extension is excellent, and the clangd extension means I finally have code completion/reference following working properly for C++, since it's relatively easy to get the build options out of your build system for it.

[Sebastian Cobb]

It does, although you need turn it on in settings.  Then Windows key + v brings up a windows letting you choose from the history.

I think these things come as standard with most linux distros.

The way it could become ubiquitous is if it were packed as part of the desktop environment. Gnome doesn't seem to come with it but there's a good enough extension for it. Of course distros can add what they like.

The fact it needs to be turned on seems quite daft. I can't see it being a feature most people wouldn't want, and Microsoft have opted people in to far worse things without consent under the guise of 'helpfulness'.

[touchingcloth]

Microsoft have opted people in to far worse things without consent under the guise of 'helpfulness'.

Worse than Songs of Innocence?

[RenegadeScrew]

The way it could become ubiquitous is if it were packed as part of the desktop environment. Gnome doesn't seem to come with it but there's a good enough extension for it. Of course distros can add what they like.

The fact it needs to be turned on seems quite daft. I can't see it being a feature most people wouldn't want, and Microsoft have opted people in to far worse things without consent under the guise of 'helpfulness'.

Yeah its not part of my DE (lxqt) but it comes with qclipper already installed and setup.  Maybe I shouldn't have said as standard tbf.

To clarify my windows comments actually, I have it on my work laptop which has the corporate Windows 10, so I am not 100% sure it's a thing on other versions.  I suspect it is though.

Not sure if you were referring to stuff like incessant Cortana and UPDATING...but for me they have made some incredibly poor decisions since W7 with some of them bordering on trolling.

It makes small errors far more infuriating.  The clipboard history is turned off by default to save cpu/disk/ram.  Fair enough.  Then don't by default try to show me the weather/etc/etc every time I click on start.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Yes I don't really buy the ram argument given the gb's to tens-of-gb's machines have now and all the unnecessary stuff windows does in the background. I remember I used to do frugal stuff like not have desktop backgrounds, animations etc.

[Zetetic]

I'd guess that the clipboard history being off by default is more likely to be about not surprising people about information being unexpectedly easily retrievable. (Which is always a difficult balance, given that the only serious improvement that computers have ever offered most users is "Undo".)

[Zetetic]

I confess that I probably don't remember consumer Windows 10 as-is, so perhaps I'm minimising the routine default annoyances.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Yes I'm a little out of touch as I've not used it much, I did recently install it on a spare pc to try something out and I intentionally didn't connect to the internet while setting up to avoid creating a Live account (thanks to seeing Wilbur mention it recently) and declined a lot of "helpful" stuff that I thought might invade privacy, I also said no to Cortana stuff as much as I could, I don't know if it's disabled or merely restricted enough not to bother me. But I guess that's not the experience a less discerning/accepting user will get.

[RenegadeScrew]

I'd guess that the clipboard history being off by default is more likely to be about not surprising people about information being unexpectedly easily retrievable. (Which is always a difficult balance, given that the only serious improvement that computers have ever offered most users is "Undo".)

That only works if it popped up for crtl+V.  As it only shows clipboard history when you do WindowsKey + v, it would just be another feature people didn't use.  Albeit one that actually had some worthwhile function.

[Zetetic]

No, it's more of an unexpected risk if it doesn't pop-up with Ctrl-V, not less.

(Meanwhile, popping up with Ctrl-V without deliberate prior user action would interrupt what is now a well-established flow.)

[Sebastian Cobb]

There's some validity in the idea it's a potential security risk, especially if people are using it to copy secrets but you'd think implementation at the OS-level would also mean it can employ some access control to protect the historic elements.

I'm sure some tools aren't secure at all and might be holding things in memory or sqlite databases for all I know, and all that's really protecting them are their relative obscurity.

I worry by making it opt-in and not making it common knowledge it's something that doesn't develop, or gets sacked off through lack of take-up.

The most pragmatic way of making users aware of it as a new feature would be a clipboard icon in the tray that brings up the history, rather (as well as) than burying it under a keystroke.

[RenegadeScrew]

No, it's more of an unexpected risk if it doesn't pop-up with Ctrl-V, not less.

I didn't realise you meant a security related surprise.  I suppose any clipboard history is a security risk, but it shouldn't be difficult to separate it from the clipboard in terms of access. 

Unless you mean in a real life/non-technical sense like on shared computers, where the current setup is a little known feature that doesn't showcase it is on.  If MS were worried about the security of it, they should've redesigned it before turning it off by default.

[touchingcloth]

Are Power Toys still a thing? I remember a few of the better ones making it into production.