> Later that year, though, the right-to-repair movement scored some big wins. […] The very next day, New York’s legislature passed the bill that would later become the nation’s first electronics right-to-repair law.
It's hard to call it a "win". It has been sabotaged by the governor Kathy Hochul at the last minute, a year after it passed with supermajority. She was waiting a whole year to sign the bill and at the end decided add loopholes which made the bill worse than useless. People now think that the problem is solved when in reality nothing has been done.
Lobbyists butchered this legislation. Many of the suggested edits[1] by lobbyists to weaken the original - made it into the bill verbatim [2]. How do New Yorkers feel about unelected parties writing their laws?
Most people don’t care and definitely don’t pay nearly as close attention as should be required to have the right to vote, let alone those who are payed massive amounts of money to manipulate corrupted politicians. Corruption is now or at the very least is well on its way to becoming systemic.
I wish HN would add a new reply button, "It's hopeless and people don't care and its only going to get worse" because it would save a great deal of time for everyone involved.
It's never been less true. Humans have never been more capable of coherent action, and this fact has not been lost on the sociopathic no-upper-limit-to-greed manipulator types who've done well in this nascient internet with its aging, nostalgic noobs. The modern zeitgeist is dominated by the heat from a thousand battles happening in the info-sphere, fought by PR mercenaries and state-sponsored labs duking it out. They must win their battle because that is what they are paid to do, and saying the word "externality" is a good way to get fired.
But. If we can act coherently on one way, we can do so in another, and I take great hope in that fact.
> Corruption is now or at the very least is well on its way to becoming systemic.
It's now clear we have a critical vulnerability in our political operating system. IMHO, the simplest solution is single-term limits. Obviously, there are upside and downside trade-offs to such a policy. However, I think the upsides might be worth the downsides, especially since the system is so clearly being gamed by well-funded adversaries to the public interest.
Based on the sky-rocketing increases in net worth after becoming a long-term career politician, the incentives are simply overwhelming. It's now attracting people with poor, or at least conflicted, motivations to the career. Another under-appreciated upside would be limiting the influence of entrenched, 'permanent' political parties, as seen in the now-eternal two-party duopoly we have in the U.S. No matter which 'side' you may be on (if any), we'd all be better served by a system more able to evolve and adapt to meet changing conditions.
In New Hampshire, state reps and senators are paid only $200 per two-year term.[0] There are also more reps (total, not per capita) than in any other state. Reps end up representing <4,000 people on average--a number someone can actually represent.
And they have to consider every proposal.
You know what the most common decision is? "ITL," or "inexpedient to legislate." In most cases, no, there really shouldn't be a law.
Is it the best system out there? Probably not, but it certainly solves some of the commonest problems.
Requiring politicians to be (essentially) volunteers does NOT insulate the system from corruption. It also seems likely to guarantee well-off people will become members, but perhaps that's not a change from what you see elsewhere in the country.
>IMHO, the simplest solution is single-term limits. Obviously, there are upside and downside trade-offs to such a policy. However, I think the upsides might be worth the downsides, especially since the system is so clearly being gamed by well-funded adversaries to the public interest.
The people in power are the ones to vote on enabling that, but they will never vote against their own power. We already have the power to do this collectively and that is to vote out the incumbent every election as a default.
> IMHO, the simplest solution is single-term limits.
What makes you think that every politician being exposed to the public spotlight for a very limited period is even a solution, rather than an accelerant, to the problem of political corruption?
>IMHO, the simplest solution is single-term limits. Obviously, there are upside and downside trade-offs to such a policy. However, I think the upsides might be worth the downsides, especially since the system is so clearly being gamed by well-funded adversaries to the public interest.
Do you think the government is less complicated than the average software project? Does the idea of firing all mid-level and senior developers strike you as good practice?
Although I don't think the person you're replying to is in the right. There are three branches of government, legislative, executive and judicial and replacing the legislators is probably the easiest out of all and the one that's going to bring the most benefit as well. I think your example is more akin to replacing people in the executive and people who generally "work the ropes" in government.
Systemic corruption is very much a thing, but I think it's mostly concentrated in the legislative branch of government, than the executive or the judicial. I personally think it's easier to add to a system than remove from it, and maybe we ought to rethink the bicameral system for one that is more capable of representing the interests of the general population.
Now, the real problem is that any changes to the system need to come from the system itself :) so there's obvious interests at play that might not be touched.
Most lawmakers are lawyers. Meaning most of the time when they are writing laws in things, they are not th experts on such things. That the purpose of public comment periods, Publix hearings, and lobbyists being able to help craft laws.
Now, this seems to be a failure where there were not protests raised to this amendments or the lawmakers ignored such things. Either way, the point of lobbyists is to allow industry experts to provide input. If there is nothing wrong with their suggestions, I don't see a problem with verbatim including of their wording.
(I disagree with how the NY law was changed, but there are reasons lobbying exists).
??? There is no "point" to lobbyists, its literally a guy paying to play. Take any industry expert from any industry and unless they themselves are a lobbyist I can near guarantee they would be happier if lobbying was illegal with very harsh punishment
"if lobbying was illegal with very harsh punishment"
I suppose you mean professional lobbying, with the purpose of influencing laws to make money?
Because when a environmental group tries to block some dirty mining project for example, than this is also lobbying. It is just people using influence. You cannot really make that illegal.
You can force the parties involved for transparency and punish bribery, but you cannot make it illegal for people to talk to politicians.
Even when it is done "professional". The problem in reality is, that when you look closely, in effect lots of lobbying is indeed bribery. (most of the indirect kind, like informal promising lucrative jobs after their terms are over, or giving overpaid talks). And that is and remains illegal.
>Because when a environmental group tries to block some dirty mining project
Which is also usually driven by financial interests under cover of virtue. It is most obvious in Europe where many people now have become multi millionaires, largely of government imposed enrichment schemes.
So far, I have never before seen an environment group trying to block a mining project referred to as "lobbying". Is the term really that generally used in practice?
Media focuses on the corrupt side of lobbying because it sells rage clicks.
The fact is without the non-corrupt side of lobbying, the lawyers whom make up most of the legislature wouldn't have the first clue how their legislation interacts with complex industry specific real world systems.
Lobbying in exchange for any kind of favor (money, influence, etc.) should be illegal. Why would you want to focus on the almost inconsequential lobbying "for free" regular people can do, instead of the society-changing lobbying "for money" that is accessible only to the advantage of a few?
Lobbying for money is a form of legalized corruption, almost identical in form and function to the illegal one, except designed to protect those who already have a lot of money and power from any legal consequences.
Hiring someone to lobby on my behalf is an important part of our political process. If there’s an issue I care about, my ability to show up at a random time in DC to lobby “for free” should not be my only recourse.
If I donate money to the EFF or Louis Rossmann for a cause I care about, that should not block them from lobbying on my behalf.
Everyone complains about professional lobbying that they don’t like. That’s hardly shocking.
> Everyone complains about professional lobbying that they don’t like.
I think you picked the laziest understanding of both the issue and my answer, and made my point in the process.
I'm not talking about you paying someone to represent your ideas to lawmakers, regulators, judges, etc. but about paying those people to directly enact your interests. They're both big problems in their own way. Straight up buying laws or legal decisions happens even if the incentives move from the interest groups to the decision factors through so many lobbying laundromats that they look completely clean and disconnected.
The other problem is not better. As you confirm, real representation in democracy is not with your vote but your donation power. Even when your chosen lobbyist isn't buying anything directly, just having a voice and representation takes money rather than a vote. The EFF or Louis Rossmann have to struggle so much to be heard because other people pay more to be louder. If you have problems being heard for money, imagine the people hoping to be heard for free.
The large majority of people can only spend one vote every few years to choose a representation that a small minority will spend a lot of money to hijack: either drown out everyone else's voice, or directly purchase exactly what they want. If you can't see why "everyone complains" maybe you're too disconnected from the problem to even understand it.
No problem, I was thinking "nobody will get this" as I was writing it, but I figured the payoff would be big for someone who did get it. I didn't realize it might look like an attack, partly because it's such a random thing to say in a thread where kids aren't mentioned and the spelling is correct, but I was wrong.
“Lobbying, which usually involves direct, face-to-face contact in cooperation with support staff that may not meet directly face-to-face, is done by many types of people, associations and organized groups, including individuals on a personal level in their capacity as private citizens, it is also practiced by corporations in the private sector serving their own interests, by non-profits and non-governmental organizations in the voluntary sector, by fellow legislators or government officials influencing each other through legislative affairs (legislative assistance) in the public sector, and by advocacy groups (interest groups).”
Just because something is lawful doesn't make it good or desirable. I'm sure you can think of many historical examples of lawful actions that are now considered a crime. The opposite is also true.
Many laws are a product of the time they were written and in turn, a product of the people who have written them. Why is lobbying legal in the USA? Why is it coded in law? These are genuine questions that people can and should ask.
It’s a very important distinction, if lobbying is not lawful lobbyists are crooks. If it is lawful it’s just a practice that does not agree with your personal preference.
The idea that lobbyists are ‘the man’ corruptly influencing bent politicians is tiresome and to paint it as the truth is not productive. If you want to stop lobbying vote for politicians that want to stop it or run for office yourself. However once you are in office you might note why it exists, as did many before you.
But if the lobbying laws have been passed by the people who were previously unlawfully doing lobbying then what kind of validaty do they have to begin with?
I mean to me the big issue is that these are laws that corrupt democracy (in the sense that they benefit the few powerful over the many powerless). And your solution of "just vote them out" is not really feasible because both democrats and Republicans (the only two realistic options you have given the electoral system) are pro lobbying!
But is the general population in favour of lobbying? I don't know but I don't think so.
I personally advocate for a new way of doing politics altogether. As I don't think the current system really works well to properly channel the will of the majority of the people in responsible ways.
And lobbying is much, much stricter in pretty much every other country in the world. So the US is an outlier here.
It’s not possible to ‘unlawfully do lobbying’ if by definition lobbying is ‘the act of lawfully …’. You are describing the second option, it’s just a practice that does not agree with your personal preference.
You appear to have strong ideas about politics. Arguing on forums gets them nowhere, you can either preach to the choir or try to convince people who will never change their mind. If you want to change things, get involved in the political process yourself.
Reading about the topic of lobbying about every day for work. The more common term to see is "advocacy" but i would not raise an eyebrow if I saw the saw the verb lobby used to describe an environment organization's activities.
Politics is just filthy business. I know I’m being short changed and should pay attention, but it is unsustainable with the more I know.
This is probably how corruption takes over a society. Something I thought I’d only ever read in history books, but now I have the privilege of living through it. Oh joy.
You know how we have this image that eastern countries are corrupt? Once you recognize the blatant corruption that is “lobbying” America doesn’t look so pure.
Chinese state officials don't have to look far when they want to point out the hypocrisy of the charges the US levies against their country. I've seen them take easy shots on Twitter just like the left vs right partisanship, "haha your side is hypocritical!" "Well so is yours!" and on and on...
I wish we had a better example to show to the world.
This is like saying any engineer would like it to be illegal to have people paid to write documentation. There's an art to communication, especially in niche area like getting the ear of the right legislators and translating a topic in terms they will understand. Louis Rossman hired lobbyists to get right to repair legislation passed. If hiring a lobbyist is illegal it wouldn't prevent lobbying, it will keep occuring just in wink wink nudge nudge smoke filled back room quid pro quo sort of channels and less accessibly.
Yes, but making it illegal would mean well meaning groups also can't bend the ear of politicians when they need to. The heavily moneyed interests don't really need professional lobbyists so much when they can offer high six figure consulting salaries to politicians once they leave office, have former company people in govt positions, can communicate through campaign funding etc. Bigger broader problem. Meanwhile a right to repair advocate very much could benefit from hiring a guy that knows the office hours of the legislator and who the best staffers would be to float an idea with.
So what you are saying is that we should allow people with bad intentions the ability to influence politicians monetarily (literally bribery), so the few morsels of good money that can buy any influence may have a chance to also be considered for inclusion?
Edit: I see your point wrt alternative bribery schemes existing, and isn't the solution perhaps for those schemes to also be shut down, instead of allowing it because some good might come of it?
Hmmmm, it's difficult not to assume you are yourself a lobbyist or politician if you take this position, given that the coffers of those with ill intent are vastly more lined than the alternative...
> Hmmmm, it's difficult not to assume you are yourself a lobbyist or politician
Well, it probably is difficult if one is not very good at thinking.
Regarding your edit, sure, but that's not the content of the post I replied to. That was about banning lobbying and I'm making the point that consequences of that could be counterproductive and make for an even less level playing field.
Lobbyists lobby for causes, for money, that is their point.
If you run a small solar company, it is in your best interest to support SEIA, the member association (lobbyist) for the solar industry.
You might think the system is dumb, and it is, but if you don’t understand why it exists, you can’t design a replacement.
Lawmakers and their teams legislate on topics that they are far from experts in, so they regularly need to consult with experts. Those experts, no matter how you select them, will harbor biases.
How do you get the relevant expertise to the lawmakers? I’ve talked to a chief of staff for a senator and at that level it is a lot of responding to what is next on the agenda, and less deciding.
The point of lobbyists is to have someone talk to the elected representatives to let them know what their job is. It would be kind of silly to go to all of the trouble of electing a representative and then never talk to them again. They most certainly are not mind readers.
Same reason you talk to your representative on the regular so that your position is known. It's why you hired someone to represent you, after all. As before, the person you hired is not a mind reader. You have to talk to him. Like any employer, if you don't keep in regular touch with your employees they are not going to do the job you expect of them.
"Redress of Grievances" to the government is specifically why the First Amendment was written giving us Freedom of Speech. I don't really care if someone is "happy" about it or not.
Are you really asking someone how they would rephrase their statement so it expresses a different point of view?
Traditionally in an debate, it is your responsibility to convince the other side of your view. You can't just get the other side to make your argument for you.
Whatever they are they should be representing the people first. If that involves learning more about whatever they're in charge of, then they should do that, since that's what we pay them to do. Plato said our kings should be philosophers, but what we have are sophists.
Likewise programmers are not experts on the things they write programs for so it is acceptable for them to just do the bare minimum of translating business requirements into code and see what bugs pop up.
> How do New Yorkers feel about unelected parties writing their laws?
I'm all for right to repair laws, but I would hate to see a law concerning even slightly technical topics written only by elected parties. It would be a disaster.
The legislators approved the editing of the laws and voted for the text as written. They are responsible and should be held accountable.
> I'm all for right to repair laws, but I would hate to see a law concerning even slightly technical topics written only by elected parties. It would be a disaster.
Specific to the US.
They're rarely if ever written by elected officials directly. Rather legislative aids do the bulk of the authoring and reading of bills along with input from lobbyists.
Laws may be problematic due to the unfamiliarity the authors/sponsors have with technical details and nuances but overwhelmingly the difficulty lies in creating legislature that cannot be interpreted in any other way than it's intention when challenged by an army of highly paid and highly skilled attorneys.
Hey, why so negative! Lobbying is a hard work requiring coordination, expensive lawyers and tons of money. It's the only layer of protection for the society from a thoughtless legislation!
> She was waiting a whole year to sign the bill and at the end decided add loopholes which made the bill worse than useless.
Pardon my ignorance on this, I'm not American, but how can the governer do this? How can the governer change the laws the legislature made? Or does it mean it was sent back to the legislature and they were forced to make changes as the governer was not signing? But it passed with super majority, the governor cannot fight a supermajority, right?
In this case, I believe subtle changes were made to this bill just before the NYS legislature was going to be on recess and it passed and signed into law.
But the bill had a supermajority, how can the governor veto it at all? Is there no way for the legislature to force the governor to sign the bill? What if 100% of the legislature voted yes on something, can the governor still block it?
Because the ability to veto is a separate step in the workflow, not a precondition of how the vote to pass breaks down. If the hypothetical 100% of the legislature voted yes, the governor could still say no, and then it is upon the legislature to formally override with another vote.
So the legislature amended it, not the governor. Why is the governor getting the blame then? The governor could say whatever they want, the legislature could have just sent it back as is with the override of the veto. It is mind boggling that the legislature changed anything in a bill with a super majority.
> "The legislation as drafted included technical issues that could put safety and security at risk, as well as heighten the risk of injury from physical repair projects, and I am pleased to have reached an agreement with the legislature to address these issues."
The whole bill was altered by the legislature and governor such that assemblies satisfy the requirement to have parts available. So if Samsung glues the battery to the screen and sells it to you as a $300 part, that satisfies the requirement of having the battery available. So the whole bill was sabotaged and used a press release by the government to pretend they were doing something for the people when in fact they were neutering the bill.
I had an iPhone repaired under warranty; it was the logic board but the Apple Store dude was proud to let me know that the display and camera would move over, but everything else was part of the logic board (including the battery). I guess a phone with three parts is better than one with one part.
it was an iPhone 13; I don't know if the battery is "really" connected or it's just how they do the repair; he just mentioned that the back cover and battery would be part of the logic board replacement.
(I still am not quite certain why they didn't just give me a refurbished phone and later repair mine as a refurb, but whatever)
>While the Legislature is in session, the Governor has 10 days (not counting Sundays) to sign or veto bills passed by both houses. Signed bills become law; vetoed bills do not. However, the Governor's failure to sign or veto a bill within the 10-day period means that it becomes law automatically.
most likely there was some shenanigans within the legislature to hide exactly who did what, which shouldn't be possible given freedom of information rules, but if it was vetoed that would leave a record that doesn't exist. Most likely it was never officially submitted until after changes occurred.
I find the shock / surprise / "but isn't this the same Microsoft that ..." reactions quite interesting. It happens with lots of topics, but Microsoft doing ~anything is a very reliable trigger.
Yes, it's the same company. No, this isn't obviously part of their <insert classic Microsoft internal email subject> strategy. Yes, they can take actions that align with your interests. No, they're not "good now".
I guess I read the headline as "Business did business activity to further goal of doing business".
I mean clearly they failed to beat Apple in mobile markets for decades and could also do to have less new Macs purchased while not having much skin in the game with computer hardware. I'm not sure right to repair would be more challenging to any tech company's business model than Apple--seems like a straightforward strategy for Microsoft?
It's contrary to their 'recent' actions though -- Win 10 obsoleted millions of computers. Win 11 looks to be doing the same. That looks strange if the same company then says "hey we're against unnecessarily making e-waste". You've got to admit that lack of consistency suggests a subtext?
So, Microsoft should never allow their OS to evolve beyond existing hardware? Doesn't seem a realistic expectation. The hardware is still usable with an older OS or Linux/BSD. No one is being forced to throw out old computers.
Pre-win 10, windows said my dad's computer couldn't upgrade. That it needed replacing. This was relatively common IME. As it happened, I managed to install it anyway and it ran at least as well as the previous Win 7 did. (Two other family computers were the same; a couple of computers at my dad's work I saved from the dump too [just by upgrading them, they continued to use them]).
Now they say he can't upgrade [that 'last ever version' thing didn't last, huh] ... I've not found a way around the current restrictions yet?
It's quite good at the moment, there are a flood of good second hand systems from businesses who are upgrading.
There's no problem with MS developing beyond their current systems. Indeed it feels like they go too far with backward compatibility. But lying (or putting in false requirements) in order to get hardware scrapped is just wrong -- do home users really need TPM2, seems more like a nice to have to me.
The reality is that most people will not repurpose a computer, they throw them out. Rarely (in UK) the device might make it to a computer recycling place. Heck, I've seen people throw out computers because the "you're low on disk space" warning came up.
After msft's experiences with Win10, they decided Windows wouldn't become more secure unless they enabled features by default. And the majority of high-impact features depend on a TPM.
I'd argue that home users do need these features in the current security environment. TPMs have been required in new devices since 2016, so people are more likely to have thrown out incompatible devices already (CPU/RAM if not disk)
The limitation does seem quite artificial (at least currently while they're not making use of the features), and the cutoff is a bit too recent as well (I'd understand if it was 10 or 20 year old hardware but it wasn't)
Windows 10 is still officially supported by Microsoft for another year or two, it hasn't "obsoleted" anything. When those computers do lose support, you can continue using Windows 10 on them or switch to Linux for modern security updates. These machines are fine, and if the Windows 11 upgrade was offered for free then I struggle to see what you're mad about here.
Microsoft indeed sucks, but it's silly to pretend that these devices are instant e-waste because they aren't officially supported by Windows 11. The majority can run it, but aren't allowed to by-default because of the new security policy. Whether Microsoft is using security as an excuse to promote perverse incentives is up to you.
This does some good, but Microsoft’s ever-increasing Windows system requirements is creating quite a bit of eWaste anyway. If Microsoft really gives a shit, they should slim down and optimize Windows rather than adding more telemetry, more ads, and random features no one wants or asked for.
Unrelated: They should also rejuvenate offline Office and bring back Works.
Unrelated, one other area where MS could make a big splash is hobbyist boards. An x86 SoC with BASIC would probably sell like crazy right about now with nostalgia cycle being where it is.
I tried to create a local user account the other day and it was so unnecessarily obfuscated to me.
I had to say I was creating a guest account and I didn't know their email - that is apparently what a "local" account is now in Windows, if either of those things aren't true you need to use Authenticator or Live or Passport or whatever it is called.
And if my internet is spotty, I get a 10 second delay logging into my computer because my login screen needs to show me a picture/ad. I finally cancelled my annual 365 membership because the invasiveness had gotten to be too much and they don't deserve my money.
I am sure if I upgraded to Windows Business Professional Home edition, I could pay for a Microsoft certification course to learn how to disable all these features, but I'd rather just switch to Linux.
> Microsoft supported legislation to make it easier to fix devices
Is this the same company that manufactures permanently glued shut Surface tablets and "surface books"? One end of the company is clearly not talking to the other.
Go look at ifixit teardowns for any Microsoft surface product.
> One end of the company is clearly not talking to the other.
They've been like that for a long time. To be honest, most big companies I've worked at/work/for have had that going on to some extent or another.
I'm just happy someone at Microsoft is at least advocating for Right to Repair.
> Go look at ifixit teardowns for any Microsoft surface product.
Newer ones are better. And even old surface machines were mostly awesome, premium devices. (My main gripe was an unacknowledged design flaw, which was well known among users, but not the designers - I hope I complained enough that it finally found its way on someone's radar. Haven't heard the same issue in newer surfaces - but I had the issue across 3 different Surface Book 2's)
> Like other consumer tech giants, Microsoft has historically fought right-to-repair bills while restricting access to spare parts, tools, and repair documentation to its network of “authorized” repair partners. In 2019, the company even helped kill a repair bill in Washington state. But in recent years the company has started changing its tune on the issue.
This surprises me. Microsoft legendarily succeeded on the back of "IBM PC compatible" copycat hardware. Their whole concept is that you run their software on whatever machine you have. What were they trying to protect?
I would say different people would have a different understanding of "Right to Repair for Software".
My personal take is mainly focused on more verbose diagnostic outputs(like for people stuck in "just a moment" screens alike) and more management tools(like some basic control and logging for BackgroundTasks of UWP apps).
You certainly do not have the rights or access needed to repair bugs in current software like Microsoft Office or obsolete software like the original WordPerfect. Copyright law blocks those rights and Microsoft/etc block access to the source code and information about compilers etc. Also the DMCA allows companies to technically block access to updating software on devices.
Long as the only way in is by ungluing the screen, I don't consider it repairable. Unfortunately, most DIYers will probably not have a great track record ungluing fragile touchscreens. I feel like the only reason this got a 7/10 is because ifixit has experience doing that, and maybe discounted the liklihood that someone inexperienced would have success.
Glued screens are a big part of why we get to enjoy the level of water resistance we have today, and while I agree it's tricky, I can tell you I've successfully changed the batteries on two different phones with nothing but a hairdryer and a suction cup scavenged from a bathroom mirror.
Sure, like repairing a car, you won't be able to fix or maintain certain things without the right tools, but being able to use the right tools without voiding your warranty is a huuuge step in the right direction. I mean, imagine if your car insurance company refused to cover you in an accident because you changed your own oil once!
> Glued screens are a big part of why we get to enjoy the level of water resistance we have today
Sure glue helps, but is it really necessary? I haven’t designed any product but I would expect that rubber seals with screws to be good enough for consumers goods.
The glue isn’t used for water resistance, it’s primarily role is to bond the screen to the chassis, so the entire bonded unit forms a box structure . Which is an extremely strong and rigid structure, requiring very little material (hence the reason they’re used in construction all the time).
But getting that strong structure only works if you have good, continuous, bond between all sides of the box structure. Hence the use of glue. Replacing it with screws would require either a huge number of screws to achieve the same quality of bond as glue, or substantially thicker walls to make up for the poor bond between screen and chassis. Each screw then becomes giant stress riser, focusing all the forces applied to the device into the material around the screws.
You really get to have devices like a surface that very thin, with huge screens, without glue the screen to chassis, because the screen and its bond are crucial structural elements.
Obviously there’s room for improvement, I think they just didn’t have a lot of hardware experience initially and were using a lot of outside design firms who didn’t have a ton of direction.
On one hand, I would avoid personifying corporations, they’re going to do what makes the most money.
On the other hand, I do think the current leadership at Microsoft has correctly realized there are huge long term benefits to improving the industry you operate in for the consumer.
Hard to believe they really care about right to repair when they added random CPU requirements to Windows 11 just to make existing CPUs obsolete and keep Intel in business.
IIRC, it was due to spectre/meltdown [0], where a rather obscure design flaw in Intel CPUs of the time made it possible to slowly read the kernel memory space from an arbitrary process.
Microsoft added software mitigations for it to Windows 10, but they came with a price of a ~20% slowdown.
By the time of Windows 11, Intel fixed the issue in the newer processors, so instead of supporting both old CPUs (with slowdown) and new CPUs, Microsoft just scrapped the mitigations altogether and limited Windows 11 to new CPUs only.
Spectre and Meltdown are two vulnerabilities unlikely to affect the normal home usage of a computer. Are surely a concern for computers that are employed in companies or where you have to manage sensitive data, but surely for the desktop user is not a concern. We are talking of very elaborate attacks that are not something you find everyday. It's something to the level that a government agency could do, not the random attaccker that only wants to encrypt your data and ask you for a payment.
Beside that in most desktop settings is even useless, you don't even care about elevating privileges with a vulnerability, since most users work with the administrator account anyway (yes there is UAC to ask for privileges but let's face it, 99% of users always click yes because they are used like this).
I usually disable mitigations on my personal computers and I'm not concerned about it.
>Spectre and Meltdown are two vulnerabilities unlikely to affect the normal home usage of a computer.
It was found to be exploitable via a website in your browser. This would have been dire for any kind of user unless they literally only used the computer for gaming and did no web browsing.
I saw some big fights about Infra guys insisting on enabling their mitigations for every device, including the most latency sensitive ones running only in-house software.
Whiskey lake (8th gen) is affected by spectre/meltdown, but is is fully supported by Windows 11. There are also a couple 7th gen cpus supported, that by pure coincidence are the ones used, in at that time latest, surface studio. There are also many unsupported cpus that even with ~20% slowdown are twice as fast as the supported ones.
Would have been a fun exercise to get Intel and AMD to replace (or properly fix) their defective product, instead of just shrugging their shoulders and telling people to buy new cruft.
Especially with win11 claiming to be eco-friendly in various places ("reduce CO2 footprint") it's somewhat annoying to force a hardware refresh cycle like that.
"Defective" seems harsh here in that every product will always have issues of this degree no matter how hard one tries to make a perfect product. We're talking about a very subtle side channel attack. I promise you every computer system today still has some undiscovered side channel vulnerabilities. Meltdown-like vulnerabilities most likely existed since speculative execution was invented, likely decades before researchers discovered it. To my knowledge, Meltdown has never been exploited in the wild.
Lawmakers could make chip designers replace all the chips but,
1) that's not very environmental either
2) it would be pretty disastrous for everyone when Intel and AMD go under because they can't actually afford to replace every chip they had in existence at the time
3) assuming this was somehow done in a way they could afford, the costs for these replacements ultimately get passed on to customers. For replacements that were never necessary to begin with. It's just kind of wasteful.
It seems defective and in need of replacement enough that Microsoft decided to not support these products in their operating system that would otherwise be well-enough supported by those chips.
Right now, that argument seems to be simultaneously "It's critical enough for Microsoft to explicitly deny running Windows 11 on it" and "It's not critical enough that Intel and AMD should do something about it, except to sell more stuff."
You're going to have to go back to the 1990s if you want to undo the "risky design technique" of speculative execution.
You're ignoring half the equation too here. There are benefits to having faster and more efficient computers for the past couple decades that could execute more instructions per clock cycle.
These vulnerabilities are subtle, hard to predict, and can take years or decades to discover. Anything that makes computers faster is a risky design technique. If you want safe chips, you'd better say goodbye to caches, multithreading, and hyperthreading as well. You'll be left with a slow, inefficient chip. Non-American companies that aren't forced to take zero risks would take over the market and be miles ahead.
> Right now, that argument seems to be simultaneously "It's critical enough for Microsoft to explicitly deny running Windows 11 on it" and "It's not critical enough that Intel and AMD should do something about it, except to sell more stuff."
The first part of that isn't right. Microsoft decided it wasn't worth it for them to support 6 year old chips on their new OS. People with older hardware can continue to run Windows 10. The two operating systems are almost the same anyway.
Microsoft's decision is not an indicator that you're in much danger from Meltdown.
Intel voluntarily recalled the processors. The cost was about equivalent of $800M today, which is quite large, but nowhere near the cost of replacing every Meltdown-susceptible CPU. The FDIV recall probably didn't have any benefit for the majority of customers who used it.
> Would have been a fun exercise to get Intel and AMD to replace (or properly fix) their defective product, instead of just shrugging their shoulders and telling people to buy new cruft.
If people want extensive warranties like that on their electronics, they can already buy extensive warranties on their electronics.
Having a warranty on CPUs wouldn't have saved the environment. It probably would have made things worse as every user returned their computers for a new one.
Gotcha, so you are also against electrical regulations like requirements to use tested insulators etc?
Because some regulation is actually useful in a world where consumers cannot be expected to know everything and be able to test everything.
And some assumptions about a product should hold true as well. E.g. the assumption should be that if I buy a desktop CPU today I should be able to use it for at least n years. Because how would you know this beforehand?
If Intel made an optimization that turns out to be a security flaw, that is totally their fault and they should cover it. This is nothing any consumer could have known (and rherefore avoided buying) beforehand. This is the cost of taking risks in business.
It seems to be a popular stance these days to shill for corporations and protect them from ever having their risks realized. But that makes the products and the world we live in worse for everybody and gives you nothing at all.
If that sidechannel attack that has not been seen in the wild leads to me having to throw my CPU/computer into the bin because it is unsopported on a up to date OS for that reason, there isn't.
How should I, as a consumer, have voted against this with my wallet, before it happened?
We can argue whether this is the fault of the hardware manufacturer or the software company that sells the OS, but I am 100% sure that no consumer should take the blame for "not doing their research".
I happily resell you Intel processors at a 10x markup but you get a ten year warranty that I'll replace your processor with a new one of no worse specs, if similar vulnerabilities get discovered.
Details to be negotiated.
(More seriously: you don't need a new manufacturer. Someone else can do the warranty at a price.
That's actually what eg Apple Care: if a part inside your device catches on fire, Apple will replace it, even though they did not necessarily manufacture that part.
I have no clue whether their particular policy covers the vulnerabilities we are talking about. But you can easily imagine a variant of such an insurance policy that does.)
> And some assumptions about a product should hold true as well. E.g. the assumption should be that if I buy a desktop CPU today I should be able to use it for at least n years. Because how would you know this beforehand?
You ask the manufacturer, duh? If they lie, that's fraud. If you don't like the answer, you don't buy.
> If Intel made an optimization that turns out to be a security flaw, that is totally their fault and they should cover it. This is nothing any consumer could have known (and therefore avoided buying) beforehand. This is the cost of taking risks in business.
Customers and suppliers should be able to allocate such risks between themselves however they like.
You can fiddle with what the default should be, in case they haven't negotiated anything.
But if both customer and supplier agree, the customer should be allowed to bear such a risk.
> It seems to be a popular stance these days to shill for corporations and protect them from ever having their risks realized.
Why? I have nothing against any particular allocation of the risks, as long as all involved parties agree. (Otherwise, they just don't make a deal.)
> Gotcha, so you are also against electrical regulations like requirements to use tested insulators etc?
If you claim they are tested, you better not lie. Otherwise it's fraud and you should be held liable.
If a customer wants to buy untested insulators, who am I to keep them?
I mean, in the most extreme case, a customer can buy bread and try to use it as an insulator, if they really want to. There's nothing the supplier can do about that.
Not put words in OPs mouth, but saying they “just want to control people” is perhaps not what they’re going for.
Since you raised the valid point of “why make everyone pay”, it seems they (OP) are concerned that currently _everyone_ is paying for the externalities of shitty electronics and the associated ewaste.
Of course these kinds of externalities are impossible (or just really hard?) to rectify at the individual-action level, its a collective action problem.
So they raised the interesting point why not target the specific companies who manufactured this faulty product and require them to clean-up the problem they’ve created.
If nothing else, it’s a useful conversation to have?
Assume for the sake of argument, that I agree that there are externalities and that we should do something about them.
The economics textbook tells you the simple solution: tax the externalities. In our case, you might want to tax e-waste (or directly tax whatever is bad about e-waste, like heavy metals or so.)
Then let the market figure out how to deal with it. Perhaps offering extended warranties is the way to go? Perhaps developing compostable computers is the way to go? Perhaps using fewer computers is the way to go? Perhaps just sucking it up, doing nothing and paying for the externalities is the way to go?
It's not at all obvious to me which of these (if any) is the best solution. And I don't have high hopes than any government would figure out the best solution either.
Different people might even have different answers, and suppliers can provide for this diversity.
This simple tax avoids a lot of regulatory complexity. Remember, that regulatory complexity leads to loopholes and regulatory capture and endless lobbying.
The tax you propose is not as simple as you suggest :
Do you tax on material weight ? But bigger sized systems tends to be easier to repair/recycle than nano electronics. They also often last longer.
Do you tax on raw materials ? That would exclude all the junk made abroad. Or on components ? That would make a gigantic and perpetually changing list to maintain, creating an incentive to always create alternatives only needed to game this tax.
Hope does that address the externality “not infinite material rarefaction” ? Making thinks more expensive just make them less affordable for a part of the population while the other part can not care much especially for cheap disposable(!) small devices.
I don’t have the perfect solution but IMHO we need regulations, not tax. Creating an obligatory (long) warranty would push the society in the sustainability direction. I don’t need 2$ led lamp, an even slimmer keyboard or a 120hz screen, just want it to last way more (or being able to make repair) that 2/3 product cycle time frame defined by the corp business team. Who want to say to their children “enjoy this tech while there’s still some rare earth left” ?
> Do you tax on raw materials ? That would exclude all the junk made abroad.
You can adapt the tax to fix that problem. See how VAT systems handle imports and exports. If your stuff needs eg lead, you either prove that you dispose of it properly, or you pay the tax.
> I don’t have the perfect solution but IMHO we need regulations, not tax.
Why? Wouldn't your argument also work for a 'good enough' tax?
I agree that a tax also needs some careful thinking about what the exactly the externalities are that you want to tax. But it still leaves more flexibility to consumers and suppliers than a blanket regulation like 'mandatory long warranty, whether you want it or not'.
> Making thinks more expensive just make them less affordable for a part of the population while the other part can not care much especially for cheap disposable(!) small devices.
I don't understand this objection. Could you please explain?
Obligatory long warranties also raise the price of goods.
> Who want to say to their children “enjoy this tech while there’s still some rare earth left” ?
Are you suggesting we are going to run out of rare earth elements? Fat chance. We are sitting on a giant ball of matter, we are not going to run out of any elements. We might be running out of easily mine-able deposits of something, but either the price will go up a bit or someone will invent a new technique. (The former often leads to the latter.)
> I don’t need 2$ led lamp, an even slimmer keyboard or a 120hz screen, just want it to last way more (or being able to make repair) that 2/3 product cycle time frame defined by the corp business team.
That's a valid preference, and I suggest you put your money where your mouth is.
> See how VAT systems handle imports and exports. If your stuff needs eg lead, […]
It is way harder for a customs officier to distinguish if a package contains some trace of lead, gold, bore, cobalt, disprosium, neodyme… in some micro chip than classifying in “raw material, “alcool”, “processed food”, “weapon” etc.
Making thinks more expensive to prevent usage is pointless and that’s why countries put speed limits in place. Speed is dangerous (see ek=1/2mv2) and a “speed tax” would only reduce a road accidents to the proportional inverse of its users wallets. As the e-waste and elements rarefaction have impacts that last way longer than a road accidents, we need to absolute regulations to avoid those externalities. Relatives regulations (taxes) are good to balance some parts of the economy, not to prevent problems.
Of course I would stand for tax it can do a “good enough” job.
> We might be running out of easily mine-able deposits of something, but either the price will go up a bit or someone will invent a new technique.
What makes you suppose the price will go up only a bit ? What makes you expect a material price will stay bellow the economical threshold of its extraction ? I dream too of new clean techniques but the history showed us those inventions relies on way more energy and/or also have externalities on resources and environnement. I’m sure you’ll find plenty in battery material alternatives and oil replacement/new extraction techniques. Fracking [0] is my Favorite one.
Many countries effectively have a speed tax at least for small amounts of going over the speed limit.
I'm not sure why you keep harping on about people's wallets? Yes, rich people can afford more stuff. What else is new?
The economic theory of taxing externalities does not rely on all people having the same size wallet.
Have a look at eg London's congestion charge: it's not a problem for that system, that some people are richer than others.
You can also look at Singapore's congestion charge or Singapore's Certificate of Entitlement system. Or look at the very successful US sulphur dioxide cap and trade programme: it's not a problem that rich people can in theory just pay to emit more sulphur dioxide, the system still works.
> What makes you suppose the price will go up only a bit?
> What makes you expect a material price will stay bellow the economical threshold of its extraction ?
Sorry, I don't understand. The price will generally be above that threshold, otherwise why would anyone bother extracting the stuff?
> Fracking [0] is my Favorite one.
Fracking is great, yes, I agree. One my favourites as well:
The extra natural gas that the US got from fracking allowed them to reduce their carbon emissions in the 2010s, despite lack of political support for such a goal! Holier than thou Europe meanwhile increased their carbon emissions, because fracking is verboten over there, so they burned more coal and oil instead.
Protection against being sold a defective product is considered 'extensive warranty' now? You're free to argue that this isn't a big enough defect to make the transaction fraudulent, but don't try to argue you need to pay more money to get the most basic protection. I mean, if you're not even getting the most basic protection than what on earth are you paying taxes for?
If someone promises you that the product will do something or eg 'not be defective', they should stick to that promise or face prosecution for fraud or false advertising or similar.
I pay my taxes to eg fund national defense or make sure that poor people get some welfare. I don't pay my taxes so that the government can decide how much warranty I need. (They do some of that anyway. But I'd rather they don't.)
Specter and meltdown are part of a class of problems that exists in all processors Intel and AMD have in their lineup and the fixes are just papering over the published exploits.
These problems can’t be fixed without large sacrifices in performance, perhaps it’ll happen in specialized products but it hasn’t happened yet.
Intel/AMD Model N is affected and therefore banned for use with Windows 11.
As per your assertion (that I agree with, btw) Intel/AMD Model N+1 is affected (just slightly less so) and can be used with Windows 11.
So, either this is fixable, then it's on Intel/AMD to replace defective hardware (or offer a fix that is worth unlocking Windows 11 over, e.g. through microcode) or it's not fixable in which case, why prevent the older chips from running Windows 11 if they're in exactly the same situation?
Either way, Microsoft's decision seems arbitrary, and puts the onus on their customers instead of the culprits, the chip vendors, who even get rewarded by encouraging new sales!
Speculation: Windows 10 end of life's in 2025. It's entirely possible that by the time that year rolls around, they throw in some backwards compatibility with some asterisks around performance.
Right now, Microsoft is not officially supporting the older processors but Windows 11 runs on 7th gen intel processors without any real issues except that it's a little slower than how it would run with Windows 10. But no work stopping issues at all if you were to run it yourself. I believe Microsoft even has a published way to do it if I'm not mistaken. It's manual and a little messy for now, with some asterisks around risks for automated updates, but it works.
Given all of this and MS's outlook towards backward compatibility I can see them eventually allowing older generations to upgrade after agreeing to some risks/performance degradation.
That was absolutely not the rational they provided. Which was more a meaningless thing like: we got telemetry measures that show that modern computers are faster and crash less, so we are randomly requiring them.
Having most users support it is largely just a matter of time. Screwing over a ton of people people because you want to make "most" happen a year sooner is not a good thing. Tens of millions of people are going to be forced out of perfectly good hardware years before they would have normally switched. Or left without necessary patches.
Intel Coffee Lake and AMD Zen+ came out around 2017/2018, that's 5 to 6 years ago. I'm not even getting into processors that precede them.
I'm well aware computing power for practical use cases has plateaued since around 2011, but those Coffee Lake and Zen+ systems (let alone older) are coming due for replacement/upgrade soon for anyone inside of a lifecycle cadence whether Windows 11 demanded it or not.
For anyone who isn't who cares about hanging on to old hardware, it's perfectly fine to just keep running Windows 10. All those guys saying "yOuR sYStEM iS iNSeCurE!!1!1!1" are snake oil merchants wanting to sell you something.
> Intel Coffee Lake and AMD Zen+ came out around 2017/2018, that's 5 to 6 years ago.
You're (probably unintentionally) exaggerating, but that's not how it works. When a new CPU comes out, all the machines on the market don't magically replace their CPUs with that one on day 1. The machine I'm typing this comment on right now was a pretty high-end one I got after those CPUs came out, and its CPU is from an older generation. In fact, I don't even recall having seen machines with newer CPUs on the market (at least not with the minimum specs I was looking at) until quite a few months later, though my memory might be hazy here. Sometimes the price points are also a factor here too.
> those Coffee Lake and Zen+ systems (let alone older) are coming due for replacement/upgrade soon for anyone inside of a lifecycle cadence whether Windows 11 demanded it or not.
That's by no means universally true; there are plenty of good machines out there that work just fine and that people want to keep using. Again, speaking from personal experience, I know my machine is perfectly good and I hope to keep using it for several more years. An older one I had from several years before that, which I gave away for unrelated reasons, was also great, and I would still use it if I had it and my current one somehow broke. There's been literally no reason for me to throw these away anytime soon other than Microsoft forcing me to. Lots of people are being forced to throw away perfectly good hardware because Microsoft/Google/Apple/etc. force them to, often via software.
I have a Sandy Bridge machine still serving me dutifully as a sub computer to my main computer, so I know all about old hardware never really dying from impracticality especially since 2011 onwards. Hell, I still have a Pentium 4 machine running XP for the stuff that needs/wants that too.
As I already said, if you want to keep running Windows 10 (or 7, or XP) it's perfectly fine. Tell everyone who screams "SECURITY!" at you to screw off, they all want to sell you something.
Even if you do upgrade to a new machine, why does someone have to throw away their old one? Keep it as a sub computer, or give it a new role in your life. Windows 11 mandates TPM2 and SecureBoot, but it doesn't mandate throwing your old machine in the trash.
I think we're mostly in agreement (?) but (1) XP isn't really practical nowadays, and (2) as to "why does someone have to throw away their old one" - well you don't have to, but having your files haphazardly spread/duplicated across N machines is quite a pain for most people.
> For anyone who isn't who cares about hanging on to old hardware, it's perfectly fine to just keep running Windows 10.
Increasingly hard to get this days, especially through official channels. Currently, Microsoft actively prevents you from getting a Win10 installer/image, by redirecting all the relevant links to Windows 11 pages.
> All those guys saying "yOuR sYStEM iS iNSeCurE!!1!1!1" are snake oil merchants wanting to sell you something.
You mean like Microsoft? Saying that the new system is more secure is equivalent to saying your old system is insecure, given everyone's insistence that you either are fully secured or not at all.
> Increasingly hard to get this days, especially through official channels. Currently, Microsoft actively prevents you from getting a Win10 installer/image, by redirecting all the relevant links to Windows 11 pages.
Really? I used this just a few weeks ago and definitely got a Windows 10 ISO.
For context then, some two-three weeks ago, I wanted to upgrade my wife's perfectly good Windows 7 to a Windows 10 (mostly because Chrome has been whining for the past half a year, but also because Spotify plain old denied to start playing music until we upgrade the OS). I went for the in-place upgrade path, which involves downloading a Win10 media creator tool from Microsoft. Links to various Windows 10-related information all redirect to Windows 11 landing pages now.
Additionally, I suspected I'll need a new product key. I couldn't get that from Microsoft - every link I've managed to Google also had a redirect to Windows 11.
(In the end, I purchased an electronic license from some local software shop. Then it turned out that somehow, Microsoft considers my wife's Win7 license still valid for Win10 Pro, which is nice. I used the key to upgrade another machine, which I thought was on Pro, but actually was on Home.)
I find it quite interesting how they whitelisted their own Surface devices but not, say, Thinkpads, despite them having the same CPUs. [1] Surely there's no conflict of interest here.
Could you explain in what way "DCH driver support" is a "hardware security mitigation" as you wrote?
Moreover, doesn't basing this on "DCH driver support" basically let the hardware vendors decide which otherwise-capable CPUs they'd like to make obsolete through software updates?
And furthermore, note that the OS isn't even turning on the CPU features they require by default, as the article also mentions.
(I'm probably going to just leave it at this, but suffice it to say the evidence doesn't seem in their favor.)
> I find it quite interesting how they whitelisted their own Surface devices but not, say, Thinkpads, despite them having the same CPUs
Because Lenovo did not bother writing DCH drivers, given DCH drivers are the baseline requirement.
> Could you explain in what way "DCH driver support" is a "hardware security mitigation" as you wrote?
I was recalling a 2 year old blog post in my head, but the point is still that much of the requirement is around baseline security. If you watch the video I linked, the speaker does go over all of this.
> basically let hardware vendors decide which otherwise-capable CPUs they'd like to make obsolete through software updates?
I'm not sure what you're getting at. DCH drivers were already the default for current-gen hardware _before_ W11 even came out, W11 just made it a requirement. Vendors clearly aren't going to go write some greenfield drivers for a years-old 6th gen intel product just to support W11, as those devices will be 10 years old by the time W10 support ends.
> note that the OS isn't even turning on the CPU features they require by default
Note that you're still referencing a blog post from 2021. W11 22H2 enables core isolation by default for new installations, and HVCI is enabled by default when using the Windows Enterprise security baseline.
I have in fact. It's a nice talk about security in Windows 11, but I haven't seen anything in it answering these issues. He says absolutely nothing about DCH and doesn't give any explanation for the minimum hardware requirements. The closest I recall was he was mentioned of integrating Pluton on chip and making its firmware directly updatable, but I don't believe for example that the 7820HQ and the 7700HQ are any different with regards to Pluton.
> I'm not sure what you're getting at. DCH drivers were already the default for current-gen hardware _before_ W11 even came out, W11 just made it a requirement.
No, they didn't even make DCH a requirement; Windows 11 runs with standard drivers too. [1] And, again, DCH doesn't imply anything about hardware security mitigations, which was purportedly their reason for this.
> Note that you're still referencing a blog post from 2021. W11 22H2 enables core isolation by default for new installations, and HVCI is enabled by default when using the Windows Enterprise security baseline.
Because the situation is fundamentally the same since 2021. Core isolation support is not a distinguishing feature between (say) the 7700HQ and 7820HQ, as far as I know. And the Windows Enterprise security baseline seems kind of irrelevant for the millions of average consumer devices out there. A company that cares about consumers or the environment is telling consumers across the planet to turn perfectly good devices into electronic trash now because they might add something that helps security years later?
I'm going to let my comments rest here; people draw their own conclusions.
Declarative:
Install the driver by using only declarative INF directives.
Don't include co-installers or RegisterDll functions.
Componentized:
Edition-specific, OEM-specific, and optional customizations to the driver are separate from the base driver package.
As a result, the base driver, which provides only core device functionality, can be targeted, flighted, and serviced independently from the customizations.
Hardware-support-app:
Any user interface (UI) component associated with a Windows Driver must be packaged as a Hardware Support App (HSA) or preinstalled on the OEM device.
The D and C parts of the description appear to be what you're looking for here.
No special hooks or modifications of the system paired with independent modules.
> He says absolutely nothing about DCH and doesn't give any explanation for the minimum hardware requirements
The hardware security baseline is one of the first topics he covers as part of Windows 11 security strategy, with mention given to features that require hardware support and how they intend to enable these by default going forward as not doing so was a failure of the Windows 10 strategy. He even mentions "virtualization extensions" aka HVCI-related features which would be non-performant to enable by default in older hardware.
How exactly would a strategy of enabled-by-default work if the hardware wasn't there to support it? You seem to be looking for some hard "gotcha" statement to refute your argument instead of considering all of the information available in front of you.
> No, they didn't even make DCH a requirement;
By setting the minimium CPU requirement to systems that use DCH drivers, they effectively did.
> Core isolation support is not a distinguishing feature between (say) the 7700HQ and 7820HQ, as far as I know.
That's not the issue here. The 7700HQ lacks Trusted Execution support (aka TPM), whilst it's included in the 7820HQ, thus it does not meet the minimum requirements.
> electronic trash now because they might add something that helps security years later?
No, it's giving people the heads up that Windows 11 security strategy requires these features and gives people & companies time to adapt. For example, motherboards now ship with TPM 2.0 enabled by default, so as Windows 11 rolls out more features that require it (some aspects of Windows Hello already do), users aren't stuck with a system that needs a BIOS update or are unable to use the new features. Windows 12 will very likely make these requirements hard-enforced rather than soft-enforced and thus it'll make the 11-to-12 upgrade a smoother experience.
Is it time to bring up the old "TPM is a good thing for you only if you're holding the keys - which almost nobody on the non-enterprise level is, so it's actually bad for you" discussion?
> How exactly would a strategy of enabled-by-default work if the hardware wasn't there to support it? You seem to be looking for some hard "gotcha" statement to refute your argument instead of considering all of the information available in front of you.
I'd say the core issue here is of priorities. Microsoft may be treating aggressive enabled-by-default approach to security as a good thing. A lot of other people don't. If you don't, then the high-level summary of the issue is, essentially, "By making some relatively recent hardware features a requirement for Win11 in the name of sekhurity, while also aggressively pushing users to upgrade and actively preventing them from continuing to use Win10, they're forcing people to destroy perfectly good machines for bullshit reasons".
Just to follow up if anyone reads this far down, an interview with David Weston from Windows 11s release also validates what I've said in this comment chain:
> I find it quite interesting how they whitelisted their own Surface devices but not, say, Thinkpads, despite them having the same CPUs. [1] Surely there's no conflict of interest here.
That statement seems misleading at best. According to Microsoft's page[0] on that processor, the Dell Precision 5520 is supported as well, which means this support is clearly not limited to Microsoft's own hardware.
Depending on how Lenovo configured the BIOS, it is entirely possible that they disabled certain features that Microsoft deemed critical later on with Windows 11. Vendors do plenty of weird things with BIOSes, which can have far reaching impacts on what an operating system is able to do with the hardware. Or Lenovo didn't provide a necessary driver, or whatever the actual problem was here. Dell managed to meet the requirements just fine, apparently.
Yes, obsoleting a bunch of hardware sucks, but your claim that this was to help Intel sell more chips is extremely dubious. Your claim that Microsoft isn't doing this for security reasons because they're exempting only their own hardware doesn't mesh with the reality of that Dell laptop. None of the evidence here supports some grand conspiracy here, as far as I can tell.
I also found a forum thread[1] where at least one person was struggling to update their Surface Studio 2 to Windows 11, so even that hardly seems cut and dry.
Any responses to the other things I listed? Like how DCH driver packaging is a hardware security mitigation?
> Depending on BIOS settings, it is entirely possible
"Entirely possible" is quite a big umbrella that covers planned obsolescence quite well, too. It's not like using software to make hardware obsolete is lacking in historical precedent.
> There isn't some grand conspiracy here, as far as I can tell.
Well, it's "entirely possible", as far as I can tell. Though I'm not even claiming there is one - there isn't a particular need for a conspiracy here.
> I also found an entire forum thread[1] of people struggling to update a Surface Studio 2 to Windows 11, so even that hardly seems cut and dry.
All of those comments were posted in the span of the first 4 days Windows 11 was officially released. If you dig a bit more you see people have succeeded afterward. [1] So that was most likely just a bug on their side, which isn't surprising given their own device was an edge case they were trying to make an exception for.
> Any responses to the other things I listed? Like how DCH driver packaging is a hardware security mitigation?
No, someone else responded to that. I was just here to look at a specific claim and see what your evidence showed. If that claim had been supported by the evidence, it would have been scandalous, but it wasn’t. I’m not an expert in the Windows security model, so I don’t claim to know anything about DCH drivers.
If you're going to complain about people not responding to every single thing in your comments, then why didn't you respond to the main point I was making? The Dell laptop was supported as well. Clearly Dell put in the effort, where Lenovo did not.
> Though I'm not even claiming there is one - there isn't a particular need for a conspiracy here.
Your previous comments absolutely are making claims that there were large conspiracies at play. You claimed that Microsoft did this to help Intel sell more chips, which would be a huge conspiracy between Microsoft and Intel. Claiming that Microsoft lied about their reasons for obsoleting old processors by trying to present evidence that Microsoft wasn’t following their own stated reasons naturally also requires the existence of a significant conspiracy within Microsoft. Perhaps you didn’t mean to claim those things?
No amount of reasoning is enough to justify that on consumer PCs, where the users don't know any better, TPM and other software side requirements were this necessary and not optional.
So suddenly, all the Windows 10 computers are insecure or what?
A normal person looking at "Windows 11 is not supported on your device" WILL think that their hardware is not good enough to run the authoritative OS.
This is less about security and more about planning a strategy to sell more devices. Anybody denying this possibility is just ignoring on purpose.
Here, I am not actually arguing against the addition of TPM or anything. I am arguing against them being a fixed requirement to run the OS that would otherwise run without any issues because it quite literally is a Windows 10 reskin, nothing more.
This is proven by the fact that they broke their own requirements on their own surface devices. Which tells me that this is less about them being serious about security and more about declaring most fairly recent hardware obsolete.
It's anti-consumer at best and deceitful attempt to sell more computers to non-tech folks at worst.
> It only added 7th gen processors that have DCH driver support, which is the absolute minimum baseline for W11 support.
I'm typing this on a T430 with an i7-3632QM running Win 11. The stupid thing is I never wanted Win 11 on it. MS suckered me into installing Windows 10 update ver 22000 (just after ver 19043) which didn't mention anything about Win 11.
>just to make existing CPUs obsolete and keep Intel in business.
This isn't the main reason, I'm not even sure why they would do that, Microsoft will cheerfully build for whatever hardware is available. They're not indebted to Intel.
The real reason is to finally close the circle of every mainstream OS supporting hardware-backed remote attestation. Once that is in place digital controls ala DRM become extremely reliable and virtually impossible to crack. Pirating locally-ran software will be as difficult as extracting the private key from a Trezor or YubiKey.
They do not. What they do care about is making it less profitable for their competitors, by attacking in spaces they no longer compete.
They lost the phone business, they've just now pulled out of making mice and keyboards. Their MS Surface line is not something people buy - it's something companies buy, with a support contract. Since their consumer hardware business is gone, they now can at least use that to hurt companies that still have a consumer hardware business.
But for selfish reasons and anti-competitive self-interest, they are doing something good for us against a greater evil. It's pretty much the DePanties/Disney thing where we cheer for a large evil corporation.
This is the case for almost all companies. When something is in their best interest, but that interest aligned with yours then the company is good.
See Google. Do no evil was easy for them when their business model made that look easy. Once privacy became a big deal then they became evil. But really its just interests we’re no longer aligned.
If you want a Mac, go for it. But if your opposition is to Microsoft requiring newer model CPUs, that seems like a weird turn to take. You can't even upgrade RAM or storage on any of the Mac laptops; you're supposed to just go buy a new machine.
Don't try to reason with people in these circumstances.
"I hate big cars and they increased the size of my favorite midrange SUV. I wanted to buy the latest generation but because it's too big I instead bought a Ford F150".
You wouldn't believe how often an equivalent scenario happens with laptops, phones, Linux distributions.
It's largely emotional aka spite. Plus an excuse of sorts for a guilty pleasure.
It is spite! I hate Microsoft putting ads into the OS, and pushing me to throw away a perfectly fine i7/32GB RAM computer. So a Mac it is. My first one btw. But it's not really a guilty pleasure - it's the best money/performance you can get now, especially if you do ML (thanks to Unified RAM).
Rather: I have a perfrctly gine computer but cannot upgrade it to Windows 11 for free, because Microsoft came up with random requirements. They want me to buy a new computer and pay for Windows again.
Also "security" is not a real excuse. If someone can physically grab my computer they will be able to break into it few days after Windows 11 is life since there will be some exploit like there always are.
Is it? I haven't seen any ads or a requirement to sign in with Microsoft/Apple account in macOS, there's no Pre-installed TikTok nor Angry Birds returning on every update and I haven't seen Apple discontinuing support for 6 years old computers.
It might be restrictive in all the ways I don't care about, but oh well.
> and I haven't seen Apple discontinuing support for 6 years old computers.
You mean the way macOS Ventura is only for their hardware released in the last six years? [1]
Apple’s absolutely do discontinue support for older hardware all the time when they release new macOS and iOS versions.
You can keep running the older operating system but it will stop receiving updates. It doesn’t seem hugely different to having to stay on Windows 10 instead of Windows 11.
I have noticed that people love their operating systems, especially in the Mac camp, even if switching to a different operating system would make almost no actual day-to-day difference in experience to them because they would be using the same applications/visiting the same websites anyway. And they like to make false claims about the other operating systems that they don't use.
There is a section of Apple users/fanbase that, if one day Cook instructs someone at Apple to run a remote command and wipe every single piece of data on their devices and nuke backups in iCloud as well, they will find a way to feel grateful about that and advocate and defend Apple in hordes even before Apple had the time to speak about it.
From the top of my mind it seems they would start with "I was struggling to get into the zen mode, disconnect, and seeing Apple failed to do with with ScreenTime their latest effort helped me perfectly. It just works!".
You can still find those people right in the Apple community forums.
When I switched to Mac many years ago I was so surprised at the attitude longtime users there had with technical questions, just turning them over to the user asking why would they even need that change. Anything that deviated from the standard "expected" experience, even if it was an evident bug, was just treated with hubris by them. Many of those answers are still voted as best answer.
Yes. Whenever someone says 4chan is a bad forum etc, and 4chan is bad in many ways imho, then I remember https://discussions.apple.com - the Mariana Trench of intellectual decadence. So much that it seems a necessary requirement to be a member and user there is to dislodge your brain and store safely in the fridge before going there.
I mean that forum is hard to believe to be real - in short and politer terms.
Neither 24 GB nor 32 GB are base model specs; they're fairly expensive upgrades that you have to decide in advance because you can't modify the machine afterwards. You really need to know what your usage is going to be, otherwise you overpay for hardware you don't need or have to replace a machine because it's insufficient. If you have the money and inclination, max out the specs and be done with it. But, doing that because you're upset you're going to have to buy a new CPU doesn't make sense to me.
For anyone else in this predicament, I was able to get around this by editing some registry keys and installing from a lightly modified ISO on the one Windows machine in my fleet.
Linux, as should be most sensible people’s solution. Especially since 80% of PC users just use their operating system as bootloaders into a browser. 80% of that remaining 20% use PCs for gaming, and that is only getting better on Linux. Not to mention more adoption = better native ports. The final 4% of users are people who understand enough to choose their OS with a purpose in mind and/or use a specific OS for work purposes.
Wouldn’t it be nice if a somewhat “positive” thing “leaks” just to give the people something to talk about? All that chatter about antitrust, sucking personal data without permission etc doesn’t give a very positive image. Right to repair on the other hand... oh that fixes everything.
Not entirely surprising. It harms their frenemies and doesn't really hurt them because it's not a large fraction of their business (Xbox and Surface notwithstanding). If one can make things more expensive for other companies and win points with customers, it adds to brand goodwill. I don't believe it's entirely realpolitik and there were likely legitimately interested Microsoft personnel who wanted to push some sensible change.
So what? Surface is what Microsoft manufactures and sells...
If they were just an OS company, they can support whatever hardware legislation they want... but to sell a locked down turd on one hand while crying about openness with the other really takes the cake.
>just to make existing CPUs obsolete and keep Intel in business.
AMD also "benefits" with their minimum being Zen+ (aka Ryzen 2000 series and certain 1000 series processors) to Intel's Coffee Lake (8th gen) and certain Kaby Lake (7th gen) processors.
The only people who say this are the ones who HAVEN’T tried it. Tbh it’s just like every other boring windows OS. Slapping a new coat of paint on it barely qualifies as “hot pile of excrement”.
There were Windows products people were genuinely excited for. 95 being the obvious one, but WinXP did really deliver the promise of modern, NT-based windows for the home desktop, and Win7 felt like we finally broke free of the stagnation of XP (worsened by the bad press Vista got).
I willingly went out and acquired a legit copy of Windows Vista (at the time, the pre-pre-predecessor to Bing Rewards let you grind some crummy games for a few weekends to earn enough tokens for a copy) but even being told Win11 is free and will be delivered directly to my desktop, I just go in and slide the TPM option to "off" in the BIOS to make sure it doesn't prompt it.
Windows 11 is like Ghostbusters (2016 film). It wasn't as bad as I was expecting it to be, not by a long shot, but that doesn't make it good or something I want to subject myself to again.
But my perspective is unusual. The friction increase for Windows 11 over its predecessor is, for me, slight; but I've used so many WMs and DEs that adjusting to a new one is hardly noticeable. To a normie, Windows 11's pebble-in-shoe UI changes -- the start menu location change, the right-click menu change, the emphasis on connecting you to Microsoft and third-party apps and services rather than getting things done -- would be sources of profound aggravation.
Anyone's first experience with Windows 11 is clicking on the start menu and discovering their virgin install is fully leaden with crapware - ala 1999 Packard Bell.
That sells you on Windows the same way stepping in cat barf sells you on your new pet.
That really is a big issue, for me, with Windows 11 and Edge.
The entire experience is cheapened.
MS Edge, for instance, actually has an excellent base UI. But the UX is destroyed by plastering horrible tabloid news and ads all over the first launch experience.
The engineers are MS are obviously very good at what they do. But it feels like the rest of the product and marketing departments get ahold of things and jam in trashware and ruin it.
Windows 11 is fine. It's fine. The graphical changes to the UI are in improvement to my eyes, and they are slowly adding back utility. Such as right-clicking on the task bar and being able to launch the activity monitor!
They even have tabbed explorer windows now!
Still, MS did such a bad job of launching W11 that my two gamer teenager kids and their friends have sworn off it for as long as they can!
I have tried it. And it feels like windows 10 with more advertisements. I really dislike ads and avoid them by paying for ad-free services and/or using Adblock applications. In windows 11 it is seemingly impossible to remove the advertisements, so I will be choosing not to use it.
While I don’t agree at all with "hot pile of excrement", W11 requires more 3rd party tools to make it usable than before. One to remove the telemetry and ads (OO Shutup), one to put the taskbar in a sane position (StartAllBack).
I have tried it, and while it's not "shit", it's not good, and certainly worse than Windows 10. It basically is Windows 10, but with more ads and a much worse UI. And it's full of stupid, niggling things, like burrying context menu options in Explorer.
I'm staying on Windows 10 until EoL in 2025. If Windows 12 is out by then, I may switch, otherwise, I'm moving to the long-term support version of Windows 10.
Windows 11 brings support for Intel Thread Director (perhaps not relevant/important to the AMD fanbois here), better support for variable refresh rate and high refresh rates in general, and tons of other kernel and system improvements in the backend that Windows 10 will not get.
The frontend UI still sucks, but it's overall better than the nonsense known as Metro and regardless it's all nothing that can't be addressed with sufficient will.
Somehow both of you are strongly validating my point without realizing it, and it's rather perplexing why you're making it sound like a rebuttal.
When you deny ordinary people the easy path of an upgrade and force them to do a clean install (because "security"), you induce the vast majority of them to avoid the migration pain and just buy new hardware, with the new OS preinstalled. If this isn't a way to force people to buy new hardware via software, I don't know what is.
Forced is a strong word here because, do we absolutely know a straight up upgrade might not corrupt something hence they're expecting a clean install? Else you are right.
It's hard to call it a "win". It has been sabotaged by the governor Kathy Hochul at the last minute, a year after it passed with supermajority. She was waiting a whole year to sign the bill and at the end decided add loopholes which made the bill worse than useless. People now think that the problem is solved when in reality nothing has been done.