9 ms·

Amazing that such a simple bug made it all the way through testing. Just goes to show that testing isn’t foolproof!

setquk 8y ago
Their QA is nothing short of shitty at the moment therefore I suspect this is business as usual going forwards. Windows 10 is literally death by a thousand paper cuts for me.
- Pica_soO 8y ago
  Imagine a car-repair men standing besides your car, smiling "Your car will no longer spontaneously combust and kill those inside!" like that is a achievement to the previous incarnation. If you want your files to be save, switch to linux. This - for lack of a better term - company obviously considers deleting them a case that can occasionally happen. And all those additional backups, the time invested into that- makes windows to expensive as a system- even for free.
- m_mueller 8y ago
  I've switched from macOS to Win10+WSL as my main dev machine this summer, mainly because I like Thinkpad hardware much more (and wanted to give the standard OS there a try), but I'm close to giving up on it and switching to Linux. It's crazy how much crap it throws at you at a daily basis. * explorer, and even in general file operations are dead slow for some reason. an expand of a zip from explorer with a couple of 10s of thousands of files can take an hour, while in WSL takes maybe a minute. explorer also takes its sweet time to load, including in open dialogs. This being on a near top-of-the-line 480s with 24GB Ram and 1TB SSD. * windows don't remember their previous position on multi-screens. * copying in terminal sometimes seems to work, sometimes not. * terminal beeps at you on every tab with more than one option, always have to keep sound muted. * bluetooth menu is glitchy and there's no standard quick way to connect to a previous device. * no idea whether that's win10, spotify or thinkpad software, but hitting a media key produces a NON DISMISSIBLE big overlay for spotify that just hangs there for a good 10 seconds and blocks the stuff I want to click. * solution for a full taskbar? just make it scroll with very small scroll buttons... * some older Logitech mouse I connect has buggy assignment of forward/back keys - does a completely random operation instead. Windows doesn't seem to have a GUI-way to set this stuff up * terminal has no tabs and crappy colors and I don't wanna go down the rabbit hole of trying to integrate WSL with a non-default terminal emulator. I've installed the spring update, won't touch october one for a while at least. * there's no integration of WSL & windows GUI layer. Have to start an X-Server separately and have Linux GUI-tools instead. If I seriously need that I will simply switch to a Linux distro instead (which given the above I start to suspect I should have done from the beginning).
  - andai 8y ago
    When I first tried W10, I noticed a distinct lag before the start menu opens. Often, menus would pop under the taskbar, instead of over, being unreadable and unclickable. I assumed they pushed it to market before it was ready, allowing users to find the bugs to save on testing costs (helping justify why it was free). Only, now, years later, the start menu still lags, and things still open behind other things. Combined with all the mysterious data it sends to various IP's, I think that when you press Start, those first 300 ms are spent as part of some sort of distributed computing effort.
    - setquk 8y ago
      The slow start menu is awful. I want to press start then type what I want to open but it is so slow you have to wait nearly 2s to type or it will lose the first few characters. Add to that the search result quality is dire.
      - Jaruzel 8y ago
        Just press Windows+Q, and start typing. Much faster.
        setquk 8y ago
        Hey that works pretty well. Thanks for the tip! :)
        Guillaume86 8y ago
        Just the Windows key do the trick for me, have been using that since they started adding more crap to the start menu (Vista?).
      - stinky613 8y ago
        I disable web search and Cortana, and it makes all the difference in the world for Win key + type the first few characters of an app: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Search] "ConnectedSearchUseWeb"=dword:00000000 "AllowCortana"=dword:00000000 https://pastebin.com/ApnfB7wC https://pastebin.com/ApnfB7wC
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  It's been okay since I upgraded to Windows 7. The lack of updates may become an issue at some point. On the other hand, the lack of updates can also be a boon. I really want to swap to Linux, but can't let go of Visual Studio. The second WINE can get Visual Studio running, I'm out.
  - Jaruzel 8y ago
    You've got until January 2020, which is when Windows 7 goes end of life, and at that point updates will probably stop. If you can get your hands on Windows Thin PC (Cut down Windows 7) you can eek out the support until November 2021.
  - saiya-jin 8y ago
    Windows 7 is the best OS M$ ever made. If it had DirectX 12 (and subsequent updates like raytracing support) i don't think I would ever update. Thinks work, OS doesn't get in my way anyhow, its fast and takes relatively little RAM (well not compared to XP but these days its OK). Never tried Win10 because everything seemed worse, but I had hope they would polish things over the years. When I read comments here, it doesn't seem so. Sad story...
    - vbezhenar 8y ago
      Windows 10 works fine for me, much better than 7.
      - saiya-jin 8y ago
        Care to explain please? This is the first time hearing such an opinion. I require OS to just not get into my way, make hardware and software work flawlessly, take as little system resources as possible and ideally make me unaware of itself. I don't spend time in OS and what it provides, I spent time in software running on it. Files-related operations done in Total commander, way more efficient tool than anything MS ever created in past 30 years (once you get used to it). Anything else is also 3rd party.
- bwat49 8y ago
  They no longer have QA. Their 'QA' is the Insiders program
- SippinLean 8y ago
  "death by a thousand cuts" is used figuratively in this instance
breakingcups 8y ago
From an earlier Ars article: "Compounding this issue is that Microsoft's rollout of version 1809 was already unusual. For reasons unknown, Microsoft didn't release this update to the Release Preview ring, so the most realistic installation scenario—someone going from version 1803 to 1809—didn't receive much testing anyway. And all this is against the longer-term concern that Microsoft laid off many dedicated testers without really replacing the testing that those testers were doing." And from this article: "In response the company has promised to update the Feedback Hub tool so that the severity of bugs can be indicated. Many people reported this data loss bug, but none of the reports received many upvotes, with Microsoft accordingly disregarding those bugs. If the bugs had been marked as causing data loss—the highest severity possible—then they may have received the additional attention that they deserved. Microsoft hasn't, however, explained why this update didn't receive any kind of "release preview" distribution or testing. There are no guarantees that this would have caught the bug, but it would have meant that an extra round of people would have installed the update onto their systems, and who knows, one of their bug reports might have gotten lucky."
- izzydata 8y ago
  As a dedicated tester for a large-ish company I can't even imagine how many problems would go unreported if they even got rid of half of our department. It's hard to quantify the exact value of SQA so I can see some manager over-looking its importance, but this is Microsoft. They should know better.

Their QA is nothing short of shitty at the moment therefore I suspect this is business as usual going forwards. Windows 10 is literally death by a thousand paper cuts for me.

Pica_soO 8y ago
Imagine a car-repair men standing besides your car, smiling "Your car will no longer spontaneously combust and kill those inside!" like that is a achievement to the previous incarnation. If you want your files to be save, switch to linux. This - for lack of a better term - company obviously considers deleting them a case that can occasionally happen. And all those additional backups, the time invested into that- makes windows to expensive as a system- even for free.
m_mueller 8y ago
I've switched from macOS to Win10+WSL as my main dev machine this summer, mainly because I like Thinkpad hardware much more (and wanted to give the standard OS there a try), but I'm close to giving up on it and switching to Linux. It's crazy how much crap it throws at you at a daily basis. * explorer, and even in general file operations are dead slow for some reason. an expand of a zip from explorer with a couple of 10s of thousands of files can take an hour, while in WSL takes maybe a minute. explorer also takes its sweet time to load, including in open dialogs. This being on a near top-of-the-line 480s with 24GB Ram and 1TB SSD. * windows don't remember their previous position on multi-screens. * copying in terminal sometimes seems to work, sometimes not. * terminal beeps at you on every tab with more than one option, always have to keep sound muted. * bluetooth menu is glitchy and there's no standard quick way to connect to a previous device. * no idea whether that's win10, spotify or thinkpad software, but hitting a media key produces a NON DISMISSIBLE big overlay for spotify that just hangs there for a good 10 seconds and blocks the stuff I want to click. * solution for a full taskbar? just make it scroll with very small scroll buttons... * some older Logitech mouse I connect has buggy assignment of forward/back keys - does a completely random operation instead. Windows doesn't seem to have a GUI-way to set this stuff up * terminal has no tabs and crappy colors and I don't wanna go down the rabbit hole of trying to integrate WSL with a non-default terminal emulator. I've installed the spring update, won't touch october one for a while at least. * there's no integration of WSL & windows GUI layer. Have to start an X-Server separately and have Linux GUI-tools instead. If I seriously need that I will simply switch to a Linux distro instead (which given the above I start to suspect I should have done from the beginning).
- andai 8y ago
  When I first tried W10, I noticed a distinct lag before the start menu opens. Often, menus would pop under the taskbar, instead of over, being unreadable and unclickable. I assumed they pushed it to market before it was ready, allowing users to find the bugs to save on testing costs (helping justify why it was free). Only, now, years later, the start menu still lags, and things still open behind other things. Combined with all the mysterious data it sends to various IP's, I think that when you press Start, those first 300 ms are spent as part of some sort of distributed computing effort.
  - setquk 8y ago
    The slow start menu is awful. I want to press start then type what I want to open but it is so slow you have to wait nearly 2s to type or it will lose the first few characters. Add to that the search result quality is dire.
    - Jaruzel 8y ago
      Just press Windows+Q, and start typing. Much faster.
      - setquk 8y ago
        Hey that works pretty well. Thanks for the tip! :)
      - Guillaume86 8y ago
        Just the Windows key do the trick for me, have been using that since they started adding more crap to the start menu (Vista?).
    - stinky613 8y ago
      I disable web search and Cortana, and it makes all the difference in the world for Win key + type the first few characters of an app: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Search] "ConnectedSearchUseWeb"=dword:00000000 "AllowCortana"=dword:00000000 https://pastebin.com/ApnfB7wC https://pastebin.com/ApnfB7wC
TangoTrotFox 8y ago
It's been okay since I upgraded to Windows 7. The lack of updates may become an issue at some point. On the other hand, the lack of updates can also be a boon. I really want to swap to Linux, but can't let go of Visual Studio. The second WINE can get Visual Studio running, I'm out.
- Jaruzel 8y ago
  You've got until January 2020, which is when Windows 7 goes end of life, and at that point updates will probably stop. If you can get your hands on Windows Thin PC (Cut down Windows 7) you can eek out the support until November 2021.
- saiya-jin 8y ago
  Windows 7 is the best OS M$ ever made. If it had DirectX 12 (and subsequent updates like raytracing support) i don't think I would ever update. Thinks work, OS doesn't get in my way anyhow, its fast and takes relatively little RAM (well not compared to XP but these days its OK). Never tried Win10 because everything seemed worse, but I had hope they would polish things over the years. When I read comments here, it doesn't seem so. Sad story...
  - vbezhenar 8y ago
    Windows 10 works fine for me, much better than 7.
    - saiya-jin 8y ago
      Care to explain please? This is the first time hearing such an opinion. I require OS to just not get into my way, make hardware and software work flawlessly, take as little system resources as possible and ideally make me unaware of itself. I don't spend time in OS and what it provides, I spent time in software running on it. Files-related operations done in Total commander, way more efficient tool than anything MS ever created in past 30 years (once you get used to it). Anything else is also 3rd party.
bwat49 8y ago
They no longer have QA. Their 'QA' is the Insiders program
SippinLean 8y ago
"death by a thousand cuts" is used figuratively in this instance

breakingcups 8y ago

From an earlier Ars article: "Compounding this issue is that Microsoft's rollout of version 1809 was already unusual. For reasons unknown, Microsoft didn't release this update to the Release Preview ring, so the most realistic installation scenario—someone going from version 1803 to 1809—didn't receive much testing anyway. And all this is against the longer-term concern that Microsoft laid off many dedicated testers without really replacing the testing that those testers were doing." And from this article: "In response the company has promised to update the Feedback Hub tool so that the severity of bugs can be indicated. Many people reported this data loss bug, but none of the reports received many upvotes, with Microsoft accordingly disregarding those bugs. If the bugs had been marked as causing data loss—the highest severity possible—then they may have received the additional attention that they deserved. Microsoft hasn't, however, explained why this update didn't receive any kind of "release preview" distribution or testing. There are no guarantees that this would have caught the bug, but it would have meant that an extra round of people would have installed the update onto their systems, and who knows, one of their bug reports might have gotten lucky."

izzydata 8y ago
As a dedicated tester for a large-ish company I can't even imagine how many problems would go unreported if they even got rid of half of our department. It's hard to quantify the exact value of SQA so I can see some manager over-looking its importance, but this is Microsoft. They should know better.