random tech rants

Windows 11: The road to insanity

Or death by a thousand cuts, if you prefer.

I have a new PC. It’s mere months old, and yet already Windows 11 is bugging out and acting weird. Some examples:

  • The context menu you get by right-clicking will randomly switch between the new Windows 11 style and the older version used in Windows 10.
  • Snipping Tool will sometimes fail to open, producing a dialog to find another app in the Microsoft Store (trying again usually works).
  • Other random applications will just stop working, needing to be ended via Task Manager. The main culprit remains File Explorer, which will occasionally stop responding, even when opening a window with as few as two files in it. Sometimes it eventually recovers, sometimes it just needs a full restart.
  • General snappiness is already eroding as Windows does whatever it does to make everything slower.
  • Even the usually sturdy PowerToys sometimes has its tools fail to work (like Preview) until you recite the proper incantation.

Anyway, rather than just complaining, this may finally inspire me to move the drives from the old PC into the new one, and get a proper dual boot system going again. That way I can install Windows XP, a stable operating system.

Just kidding.

(Although it wasn’t bad once you had all three service packs and patches installed.)

I’m going to install some Linux distro. My short list is:

  • Linux Mint (I’m most familiar with it)
  • Kubuntu (because I like KDE Plasma and this is one of the more mainstream distros to use it)
  • ??? A lot of others could go here. My bootable USB stick is ready.

Why is UI design so terrible now?

In version 7.51 of Signal (desktop version) they changed how you access stickers. Before, you clicked on a sticker icon in the text box and chose a sticker. One click, simple.

Now you click the emoji icon, which makes no sense because stickers are not emojis, they’re stickers, then you have to click over to the Stickers tab and choose a sticker.

In simpler terms, what took one click now takes two. This is a regression, no matter how you look at it.

Here’s how the Signal team looks at it on their Github page: “Now you can experience the pinnacle of human technological advancement in Signal Desktop with a brand-new selection interface that makes it easy to quickly find an emoji, sticker, or animated GIF that’s perfect for the moment.”

They could have left the sticker button in the text box and still implemented this change. They could have made the sticker button customizable for “quick access” to stickers, emoji or gifs, but no, instead they just made adding a sticker two steps instead of one.

They have also taught me to never update Signal again. Good job, you clowns.

Flesh-coloured microphones bother me

You’ve seen them, usually when people are on stage in some kind of televised conference setting, sitting in comfy-looking chairs and chatting with each other while wearing wee boom mics that have flesh-coloured pieces of foam on the tips instead of the usual black. Like this one below, which I grabbed from a current Ars Technica article:

To me, it just makes it look like the person has a large skin growth either on or hovering weirdly just above their face. It’s unsettling. To me.

That is all.

Googled, The Verge Edition

No, I have not Googled

Google may have a monopoly on search engines, but that doesn’t mean writers at major tech websites should be greasing the way for Google by using “Googled” as a synonym for “searched”. This is the kind of thing that used to give Xerox fits when people said they “Xeroxed” something instead of “photocopying” because if Xerox didn’t fight back against the use of its name as a verb (or noun), it could eventually be declared generic and fall into the public domain.

On the other hand, Google probably doesn’t care because they are a mega-company and don’t fear consequences over things like trademarks or copyright. They know they’re in no danger of “Google” becoming a generic term, and actually like it when people say “Googled” because it further cements “search” as being synonymous with Google.

And this is why writers should do better than to help Google along. Other search engines exist (I use DuckDuckGo and Kaigi) and it’s presumptuous to assume everyone uses Google.

(BTW, the editorial is otherwise well-stated and worth checking out!)