Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Ben Hutchison @aldaviva.com · 3d

The root cause seems to be editing %SYSTEMROOT%\System32\IntegratedServicesRegionPolicySet.json, not uninstalling Edge. I did not change its ACL, but rather launched notepad or VSCode as TrustedInstaller, so it's not failing due to changed ACLs, but rather changed file contents.

Ben Hutchison @aldaviva.com · 3d

The differentiating factor seems to be uninstalling Edge. I had used the IntegratedServicesRegionPolicySet.json trick (without the ViVeTool feature flag hack or Control Panel\International\Geo registry changes) from winaero.com/uninstall-mi.... I wonder if that action is reversible.

How to uninstall Microsoft Edge in Windows 11

You can now uninstall Edge from Windows 11 using two methods. The first one unblocks the uninstaller under Apps > Installed apps in Settings. The

winaero.com

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Ben Hutchison @aldaviva.com · 3d

The issue reproduced easily in a virtual machine.

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Ben Hutchison @aldaviva.com · 4d

A third machine that is configured similarly installed this update fine. All three are fairly ordinary Windows 11 Pro or Home installations. I did the EU trick to uninstall Edge on all, but that didn't break update installation on the third machine, so that's probably not the culprit.

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Ben Hutchison @aldaviva.com · 4d

Things I tried that didn't improve anything:
- verifying file hashes on MSUs to disprove update corruption
- checking AV logs for false positive deletions
- DISM and SFC repair to fix any OS file corruption
- installing both September preview and October non-preview updates to avoid a one-off bug

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Ben Hutchison @aldaviva.com · 4d

The particular error on both computers is 0x800f0983 PSFX_E_MATCHING_COMPONENT_DIRECTORY_MISSING with the Microsoft-Windows-SmbDirect and Microsoft-Windows-EnterpriseClientSync-Host packages, neither of which are actually installed. This makes it seem like the OS or update file is corrupt.

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Ben Hutchison @aldaviva.com · 4d

I'm celebrating the end of (free, non-EU, non-ESU, non-Backup, non-MS-points) Windows 10 updates with two Windows 11 computers which have mysteriously lost the ability to install Windows Updates with some error I don't understand yet.

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Ben Hutchison @aldaviva.com · 7d

That's certainly better than letting broken versions linger in production for 11 days while rolled-forward fixes are slowly reviewed. It's insane and irresponsible that the braindead amateurs at Mozilla refused to allow this for 20 years.

BleepingComputer @bleepingcomputer.com · 27d

Mozilla has announced a new feature that enables Firefox extension developers to roll back to previously approved versions, allowing them to quickly address critical bugs and issues.

Mozilla now lets Firefox add-on devs roll back bad updates

Mozilla has announced a new feature that enables Firefox extension developers to roll back to previously approved versions, allowing them to quickly address critical bugs and issues.

www.bleepingcomputer.com

Ben Hutchison @aldaviva.com · 8d

As others have pointed out, MSN is separate from XP, and the butterfly predated XP by 1 year. Clippy is from Office 97, not Windows XP, predating XP by 5 years.

Ben Hutchison @aldaviva.com · 8d

Also, that butterfly isn't the "original MSN logo," Tom.

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Ben Hutchison @aldaviva.com · 8d

Not very Windows XP. That trapezoidal Recycle Bin and My Documents are bastardized versions of the icons from 98, and the black mouse pointer is from Mac OS. As official products go, this is garbage for idiots by idiots.

The Verge @theverge.com · 9d

You can now buy Microsoft’s Windows XP Crocs for $79.95

The limited edition Crocs include Internet Explorer and Clippy shoe charms.

buff.ly

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Ben Hutchison @aldaviva.com · 10d

It's even better on an ultrawide monitor, for a truly immersive wrap-around confirmation dialog box.

Do you want to save your work?
There are unsaved changes in "Untitled".

Ben Hutchison @aldaviva.com · 10d

NBC managed to hit a new record low with a spelling error in the very first word of a headline. www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/r...

Mayor injury crash closes road in San Jose

Ben Hutchison @aldaviva.com · 11d

Incorrect, Firefox isn't adding profiles, it's already had profiles for decades using "firefox -ProfileManager". Next are you going to claim that Mozilla is adding bookmarking?

The Verge @theverge.com · 11d

Firefox is adding profiles to separate your browsing sessions

A boon for organizing browser clutter.

buff.ly

Ben Hutchison @aldaviva.com · 12d

That Google Meet integration is very lame: placing a mouse on the hook disables the camera instead of muting the mic or hanging up. I built my own video conference pulse dialer in 2018, where you physically dial a meeting ID, and return the receiver to the hook to actually hang up like a real phone.

Rotary phone connected to a Raspberry Pi

Ben Hutchison @aldaviva.com · 12d

I found this while I was researching mistakes in this article. For example, today's keyboards obviously aren't descended from touch-tone phones, but from typewriters, which predated rotary phones by about 60 years. www.theverge.com/news/793136/...

Google Japan’s concept keyboard is inspired by rotary phones

Speedy touch typists might want to look away.

www.theverge.com

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Ben Hutchison @aldaviva.com · 12d

The painful part is that the person who posted the photo of the British version, with its unnecessary special cases, called the American version "confusing." There's no fixing stupid, especially with those people.

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Ben Hutchison @aldaviva.com · 12d

I just learned that British rotary phones mapped the letters O and Q to the number 0, instead of to 6 and 7 like we did in the US because it's consistent and monotonic, and because the mapping isn't based on glyph congruency. Does S look like 7? Their logic is why we fought the Revolutionary War.

British rotary phone dial (GPO) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rotarydial.JPG#/media/File:04c093_rotary_dial_abc.jpg

American rotary phone dial (Stromberg Carlson)

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Ben Hutchison @aldaviva.com · 15d

For a real challenge, I tried taking a telephoto night picture of a spider swaying in the breeze above a neighbor's backyard.

Ben Hutchison @aldaviva.com · 15d

I saw a cool bug just now.

Little green insect clinging to a screen.

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Ben Hutchison @aldaviva.com · 15d

I think of my usage of these unmonetizable boondoggles as simply hopping from sinking lily pad to sinking lily pad of Jack Dorsey startups.

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Ben Hutchison @aldaviva.com · 16d

Why did lots of people decide to start calling 2560×1440 "2K"? We already have perfectly good names for it, like 1440p and QHD. It's also inaccurate because 2560 is closer to 3K than 2K, while 1920 is closer to 2K. There's no argument against rounding up either, since 3840 already rounds up to 4K.

Ben Hutchison @aldaviva.com · 17d

UWP Paint has the best dialog boxes. This isn't even a computer that ever changes screens or resolutions or densities.

The Paint WinUI modal dialog box that warns about unsaved changes has gigantic incorrect dimensions, taking up most of the screen.

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Ben Hutchison @aldaviva.com · 18d

Found a cat on my backyard fence at midnight.

Ben Hutchison @aldaviva.com · 24d

Figuring out lazy asynchronous chunked wire logging with connection reuse/Keep-Alive was annoying, but not as annoying as manually reconstructing 1MB of chunked JSON. Now I'll never have to do either again! Except I already had to fix this in different libraries in 2016 and 2020, but this is it.