10 ms·

They can't be throttling based on user-agent... right? I thought this was the New Microsoft. Any other hypotheses?

dsr_ 10y ago
It's not throttling based on user-agent. It's just a bug that happens when the user-agent parser falls off a cliff when it exhausts the values that it knows about. A bug that Microsoft won't fix, because Linux is not supported. </charitable>
- ainiriand 10y ago
  But user-agent parsing should be blazing fast, a one-liner regexp or similar, isn't it?
  - Eldt 10y ago
    That was sarcasm
    - mijoharas 10y ago
      I don't think so, I think the person was utilising Hanlons razor[0]: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - marcosdumay 10y ago
        Gotta create a good name for the "never attribute to stupidity something that makes the perpetrator rich" maxim.
    - dsr_ 10y ago
      Yes, I intended it as sarcasm.
  - ohitsdom 10y ago
    The user-agent parsing is fast, it's the server-side rendering logic specific to Linux user-agents that is somehow terribly slow.
    - soundwave106 10y ago
      Anecdotal experience... but when I use Chrome and switch user agents to a random one that probably wouldn't be too common (in my case, Mozilla/5.0 (X11; OpenBSD i386) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/36.0.1985.125 Safari/537.36), in Chrome Network tools it seems that there were several Javascript pages that were being loaded through a "StaticLoad.aspx" (namely WordEditor.js and Hermes.js scripts), that simply hung while downloading. Changing the version didn't seem to matter (I couldn't find the latest one for any Linux style OS easily, but I tried "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; OpenBSD i386) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/56.0.2924.87 Safari/537.36" with the same results). However, Android type user agent strings like "Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 4.0.4; Galaxy Nexus Build/IMM76B) AppleWebKit/535.19 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/18.0.1025.133 Mobile Safari/535.19" load fine. Not knowing the code I have no idea what this could mean, but I suspect you're 100% right here, there's some server side rendering that does different things based on user agents, and it's having trouble on the "other UA" category for some reason.
  - rhizome 10y ago
    It seems something more like: case @useragent when 'Windows' send file fast when 'OSX' send file fast else sleep 3600
    - Rantenki 10y ago
      More likely something like: resolve_renderer_module(user_agent.os) where the osx/Windows ones are already loaded in RAM, but it has to try (and fail) to load the linux one every time somebody tries. This is classic Hanlon's razor stuff.
      - cname 10y ago
        Is it possible that companies, teams within companies, and/or individuals might exploit "Hanlon's Razor" to their own benefit? It's easy to say "Oh, whoops" and often there's no easy way to prove incompetence vs malice. And because people are aware of this cliche/meme, they may be more susceptible to it. I wonder if people said "Hanlon's Razor" when they first heard about the VW emissions scandal. NOTE: I'm just thinking out loud here. I don't have any particular bias against Microsoft.
        jdmichal 10y ago
        > I wonder if people said "Hanlon's Razor" when they first heard about the VW emissions scandal. I don't think that was possible, because the engine specifically performed [0] better during the test and worse during normal operations. So what would Hanlon's Razor be? Whoops, the testing procedure accidentally happened to make our engine perform better? [0] With the definition of performance being emissions output, not power or torque.
  - metaphorm 10y ago
    yes, but the hypothesised cause is an unhandled exception when it doesn't find a UA string from its list of expected UA strings, and that case might just hang until a timeout of some kind.
ainiriand 10y ago
Throttling is the only thing I can think of. This is the New New Microsoft then, similar to the first.
- Spoom 10y ago
  "And sometimes there's a third, even deeper level, and that one is the same as the top surface one. Like with pie."
  - aruggirello 10y ago
    Like with onions.
ctrl-j 10y ago
I read in a comment on Reddit (lost the link at the moment), that it doesn't appear to be nefarious. Basically, they're trying to do feature detection based on UA instead of.. actual feature detection.
- karrotwaltz 10y ago
  Google is also doing this with Universal 2nd Factor working on Chrome but not on Firefox (which supports U2F with an addon). Can't tell if this is intentional though.
  - gsnedders 10y ago
    Plenty of parts of Google have done UA-sniffing all over the place. Opera, even after being Chromium based, have had plenty of problems as a result: the UA doesn't match so therefore they get an "unsupported" or "degraded" experience.
    - therealidiot 10y ago
      Even basic Google search seems to do some UA sniffing. I run Firefox but usually browse with IE or Chrome user agents, and clicking the results on a search won't actually navigate to them
tankenmate 10y ago
I have no direct understanding but I have a hypothesis; - different generated html / js depending on user agent (UA) - bug fixes are rolled out on a UA by UA basis - bug fixes have been rolled out for Windows and Mac (supported) - but not for the "generic" HTML / JS output If this is true it will mean that anything other than the supported platforms will fall further behind as time goes by.
- tyingq 10y ago
  That sounds highly likely. Intentional throttling doesn't help Microsoft in this case. I don't think they view Linux desktops (aside from Chromebooks) as a serious threat. Why wouldn't they want more OneDrive users?
  - yebyen 10y ago
    This reminds me of the article about the OneDrive team being allowed to introduce ads into Explorer because they don't care at all about the experience of using Windows and they just want more OneDrive users. (Supporting documentation of the position "why wouldn't they want more OneDrive users"...) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13903701 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13903701
  - cmdrfred 10y ago
    A company has an IT director who upon review has determined that Linux workstations would be acceptable for some of his users now due to the fact he uses onedrive. He tests this solution, finds it slow and decides to stick with Microsoft. This is probably a happy accident but one they won't move quickly to fix.
  - polotics 10y ago
    Throttling does help if they can get away with it. Now where did I put my windows phone...
  - polotics 10y ago
    Throttling does help if they can get away with it. Now where did I put my windows phone...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
drzaiusapelord 10y ago
>Any other hypotheses? Other than the obviousness of the new MS being worse than the old MS? Between the major issues Windows 10 has in almost all respects but not limited to shocking privacy issues, the very poor quality of updates, and the hamfisted way Win10 was forced on some users, I suspect we'll be missing the Gates/Balmer years more and more. As someone who has to roll out 100 Win10 workstations, I can't believe the shit I have to jump through to get basic funtionality and how the defaults in terms of start menu items, included apps, privacy, gpo limitations, etc is highly business inappropriate, even with professional volume licenses. I'm not sure what the "New Microsoft" really means, but from what I've seen its something that has only added hassle to enterprise and chased more people into the loving arms of OSX. Everyone in my social circle now has a mac after toughing out on 7 and giving up on 10. Nadella's run is starting to look like a Marissa Mayer-like run to me. A welcomed change of leadership from the tech press but one that was unable to fix historic problems and also introduced their own new set of problems.
achikin 10y ago
You can't teach an old microsoft new tricks.
yread 10y ago
Well obviously they're trying to prevent the year of linux desktop.
- DonHopkins 10y ago
  They're still trying to get even for Marc Andreessen sabotaging NCSA Mosaic's cross-system portability stuff, in an attempt to prevent the year of the Windows Web Browser. https://github.com/alandipert/ncsa-mosaic/blob/fd11fb7c900e850ff24b6b8c6548324190c335ac/libwww2/tcp.h#L22 https://github.com/alandipert/ncsa-mosaic/blob/fd11fb7c900e8... Much of the cross-system portability stuff has been intentionally REMOVED from this version of the library by Marc A in order to discourage attempts to make "easy" ports of Mosaic for X to non-Unix platforms. The library needs to be rewritten from the ground up; in the meantime, Unix is *all* we support or intend to support with this set of source code. And of course for this remark: https://ontechnologyandmedia.com/2009/07/12/the-return-of-the-webtop/ https://ontechnologyandmedia.com/2009/07/12/the-return-of-th... Netscape co-founder Mark Andreessen boasted that Netscape would reduce Microsoft Windows to “a set of poorly debugged device drivers.”
untog 10y ago
> They can't be throttling based on user-agent... right? It can be, but not for the motives many would assume. I can imagine them white-listing clients that they've thoroughly tested with advanced functionality, and blocking it for others. I'm not for a second suggesting this is a wise course of action, but I also really don't think it's a cynical attempt to make Linux a less viable platform. It's just cover-your-ass behaviour for a corporate-focused product. User agent sniffing is usually a bad shortcut for feature detection, and little more.
jpfed 10y ago
Some parts of Microsoft are newer than others.
mtgx 10y ago
It is the "new" Microsoft, in terms of PR. Kind of like AT&T's "Gigabit to the press release." Tons of positive press for the announcement, but nothing real behind it.
rplnt 10y ago
There can be a feature that is only tested on Windows and so is only enabled there. Does it make sense? Not really, but that can happen. Google does this everywhere, blocking features on browsers that are not Chrome.
shmerl 10y ago
New outside, same old inside.
stinos 10y ago
I thought this was the New Microsoft. Any other hypotheses? Yes: there is no single 'New Microsoft'. I don't even know where the term originated. Instead there are a couple of departments within MS which have been heading in a new direction (see the open-sourcing, VSCode, ...) but others seem still to be stuck in <don't know what to call it>. Mismanagement maybe?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
aendruk 10y ago
It's just a very heavy page render due to the way asset preloading is implemented; details at [1]. Seems Linux user agents get a legacy method and Windows get a modern one. You can see it yourself by viewing [2]. OneDrive renders several of those pages simultaneously. [1]: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/chrome/x-B5T7tnVuc/YXOnb4p2EAAJ https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/chrome/x-B5T7tn... [2]: https://powerpoint.officeapps.live.com/p/StaticLoad.aspx?wx=p&wv=e&usescript=1&ui=en-US&WOPISrc= https://powerpoint.officeapps.live.com/p/StaticLoad.aspx?wx=...

dsr_ 10y ago

It's not throttling based on user-agent. It's just a bug that happens when the user-agent parser falls off a cliff when it exhausts the values that it knows about. A bug that Microsoft won't fix, because Linux is not supported. </charitable>

ainiriand 10y ago
But user-agent parsing should be blazing fast, a one-liner regexp or similar, isn't it?
- Eldt 10y ago
  That was sarcasm
  - mijoharas 10y ago
    I don't think so, I think the person was utilising Hanlons razor[0]: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - marcosdumay 10y ago
      Gotta create a good name for the "never attribute to stupidity something that makes the perpetrator rich" maxim.
  - dsr_ 10y ago
    Yes, I intended it as sarcasm.
- ohitsdom 10y ago
  The user-agent parsing is fast, it's the server-side rendering logic specific to Linux user-agents that is somehow terribly slow.
  - soundwave106 10y ago
    Anecdotal experience... but when I use Chrome and switch user agents to a random one that probably wouldn't be too common (in my case, Mozilla/5.0 (X11; OpenBSD i386) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/36.0.1985.125 Safari/537.36), in Chrome Network tools it seems that there were several Javascript pages that were being loaded through a "StaticLoad.aspx" (namely WordEditor.js and Hermes.js scripts), that simply hung while downloading. Changing the version didn't seem to matter (I couldn't find the latest one for any Linux style OS easily, but I tried "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; OpenBSD i386) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/56.0.2924.87 Safari/537.36" with the same results). However, Android type user agent strings like "Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 4.0.4; Galaxy Nexus Build/IMM76B) AppleWebKit/535.19 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/18.0.1025.133 Mobile Safari/535.19" load fine. Not knowing the code I have no idea what this could mean, but I suspect you're 100% right here, there's some server side rendering that does different things based on user agents, and it's having trouble on the "other UA" category for some reason.
- rhizome 10y ago
  It seems something more like: case @useragent when 'Windows' send file fast when 'OSX' send file fast else sleep 3600
  - Rantenki 10y ago
    More likely something like: resolve_renderer_module(user_agent.os) where the osx/Windows ones are already loaded in RAM, but it has to try (and fail) to load the linux one every time somebody tries. This is classic Hanlon's razor stuff.
    - cname 10y ago
      Is it possible that companies, teams within companies, and/or individuals might exploit "Hanlon's Razor" to their own benefit? It's easy to say "Oh, whoops" and often there's no easy way to prove incompetence vs malice. And because people are aware of this cliche/meme, they may be more susceptible to it. I wonder if people said "Hanlon's Razor" when they first heard about the VW emissions scandal. NOTE: I'm just thinking out loud here. I don't have any particular bias against Microsoft.
      - jdmichal 10y ago
        > I wonder if people said "Hanlon's Razor" when they first heard about the VW emissions scandal. I don't think that was possible, because the engine specifically performed [0] better during the test and worse during normal operations. So what would Hanlon's Razor be? Whoops, the testing procedure accidentally happened to make our engine perform better? [0] With the definition of performance being emissions output, not power or torque.
- metaphorm 10y ago
  yes, but the hypothesised cause is an unhandled exception when it doesn't find a UA string from its list of expected UA strings, and that case might just hang until a timeout of some kind.

ainiriand 10y ago

Throttling is the only thing I can think of. This is the New New Microsoft then, similar to the first.

Spoom 10y ago
"And sometimes there's a third, even deeper level, and that one is the same as the top surface one. Like with pie."
- aruggirello 10y ago
  Like with onions.

ctrl-j 10y ago

I read in a comment on Reddit (lost the link at the moment), that it doesn't appear to be nefarious. Basically, they're trying to do feature detection based on UA instead of.. actual feature detection.

karrotwaltz 10y ago
Google is also doing this with Universal 2nd Factor working on Chrome but not on Firefox (which supports U2F with an addon). Can't tell if this is intentional though.
- gsnedders 10y ago
  Plenty of parts of Google have done UA-sniffing all over the place. Opera, even after being Chromium based, have had plenty of problems as a result: the UA doesn't match so therefore they get an "unsupported" or "degraded" experience.
  - therealidiot 10y ago
    Even basic Google search seems to do some UA sniffing. I run Firefox but usually browse with IE or Chrome user agents, and clicking the results on a search won't actually navigate to them

tankenmate 10y ago

I have no direct understanding but I have a hypothesis; - different generated html / js depending on user agent (UA) - bug fixes are rolled out on a UA by UA basis - bug fixes have been rolled out for Windows and Mac (supported) - but not for the "generic" HTML / JS output If this is true it will mean that anything other than the supported platforms will fall further behind as time goes by.

tyingq 10y ago
That sounds highly likely. Intentional throttling doesn't help Microsoft in this case. I don't think they view Linux desktops (aside from Chromebooks) as a serious threat. Why wouldn't they want more OneDrive users?
- yebyen 10y ago
  This reminds me of the article about the OneDrive team being allowed to introduce ads into Explorer because they don't care at all about the experience of using Windows and they just want more OneDrive users. (Supporting documentation of the position "why wouldn't they want more OneDrive users"...) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13903701 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13903701
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  A company has an IT director who upon review has determined that Linux workstations would be acceptable for some of his users now due to the fact he uses onedrive. He tests this solution, finds it slow and decides to stick with Microsoft. This is probably a happy accident but one they won't move quickly to fix.
- polotics 10y ago
  Throttling does help if they can get away with it. Now where did I put my windows phone...
- polotics 10y ago
  Throttling does help if they can get away with it. Now where did I put my windows phone...

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

drzaiusapelord 10y ago

>Any other hypotheses? Other than the obviousness of the new MS being worse than the old MS? Between the major issues Windows 10 has in almost all respects but not limited to shocking privacy issues, the very poor quality of updates, and the hamfisted way Win10 was forced on some users, I suspect we'll be missing the Gates/Balmer years more and more. As someone who has to roll out 100 Win10 workstations, I can't believe the shit I have to jump through to get basic funtionality and how the defaults in terms of start menu items, included apps, privacy, gpo limitations, etc is highly business inappropriate, even with professional volume licenses. I'm not sure what the "New Microsoft" really means, but from what I've seen its something that has only added hassle to enterprise and chased more people into the loving arms of OSX. Everyone in my social circle now has a mac after toughing out on 7 and giving up on 10. Nadella's run is starting to look like a Marissa Mayer-like run to me. A welcomed change of leadership from the tech press but one that was unable to fix historic problems and also introduced their own new set of problems.

achikin 10y ago

You can't teach an old microsoft new tricks.

yread 10y ago

Well obviously they're trying to prevent the year of linux desktop.

DonHopkins 10y ago
They're still trying to get even for Marc Andreessen sabotaging NCSA Mosaic's cross-system portability stuff, in an attempt to prevent the year of the Windows Web Browser. https://github.com/alandipert/ncsa-mosaic/blob/fd11fb7c900e850ff24b6b8c6548324190c335ac/libwww2/tcp.h#L22 https://github.com/alandipert/ncsa-mosaic/blob/fd11fb7c900e8... Much of the cross-system portability stuff has been intentionally REMOVED from this version of the library by Marc A in order to discourage attempts to make "easy" ports of Mosaic for X to non-Unix platforms. The library needs to be rewritten from the ground up; in the meantime, Unix is *all* we support or intend to support with this set of source code. And of course for this remark: https://ontechnologyandmedia.com/2009/07/12/the-return-of-the-webtop/ https://ontechnologyandmedia.com/2009/07/12/the-return-of-th... Netscape co-founder Mark Andreessen boasted that Netscape would reduce Microsoft Windows to “a set of poorly debugged device drivers.”

untog 10y ago

> They can't be throttling based on user-agent... right? It can be, but not for the motives many would assume. I can imagine them white-listing clients that they've thoroughly tested with advanced functionality, and blocking it for others. I'm not for a second suggesting this is a wise course of action, but I also really don't think it's a cynical attempt to make Linux a less viable platform. It's just cover-your-ass behaviour for a corporate-focused product. User agent sniffing is usually a bad shortcut for feature detection, and little more.

jpfed 10y ago

Some parts of Microsoft are newer than others.

mtgx 10y ago

It is the "new" Microsoft, in terms of PR. Kind of like AT&T's "Gigabit to the press release." Tons of positive press for the announcement, but nothing real behind it.

rplnt 10y ago

There can be a feature that is only tested on Windows and so is only enabled there. Does it make sense? Not really, but that can happen. Google does this everywhere, blocking features on browsers that are not Chrome.

shmerl 10y ago

New outside, same old inside.

stinos 10y ago

I thought this was the New Microsoft. Any other hypotheses? Yes: there is no single 'New Microsoft'. I don't even know where the term originated. Instead there are a couple of departments within MS which have been heading in a new direction (see the open-sourcing, VSCode, ...) but others seem still to be stuck in <don't know what to call it>. Mismanagement maybe?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

aendruk 10y ago

It's just a very heavy page render due to the way asset preloading is implemented; details at [1]. Seems Linux user agents get a legacy method and Windows get a modern one. You can see it yourself by viewing [2]. OneDrive renders several of those pages simultaneously. [1]: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/chrome/x-B5T7tnVuc/YXOnb4p2EAAJ https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/chrome/x-B5T7tn... [2]: https://powerpoint.officeapps.live.com/p/StaticLoad.aspx?wx=p&wv=e&usescript=1&ui=en-US&WOPISrc= https://powerpoint.officeapps.live.com/p/StaticLoad.aspx?wx=...