10 ms·
This is my favorite part of this story. Do you want remote code execution? Because [fixing things that aren't broken] is how you get remote code execution.
by j2kun 8mo ago
This is my favorite part of this story. Do you want remote code execution? Because [fixing things that aren't broken] is how you get remote code execution.
- 0xy 8mo agoI think it's more likely that Microsoft is vibe coding slop garbage to replace their core apps that were literally better. Windows 10 explorer.exe is 100x faster than Windows 11 explorer, it's not even close. It also signals the death knell for Windows native apps. Microsoft can't make them anymore. It won't be long until even Excel is a Electron sloplication.
- steve1977 8mo agoThe best example is probably the new "Outlook", and I put that name in quotes intentionally.
- password4321 8mo agoIn case anyone is not aware: 20231109 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38212453 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38212453 Windows 11 Update 23H2 is stealing users' IMAP credentials (666 points, 278 comments) > the new Outlook is a thin wrapper around the cloud version, so the IMAP sync happens in the cloud, not locally
- ruszki 8mo agoThis was one of the most outrageous data grab in the past years. They replaced the completely working simple Mail app, which I used until that point, with this garbage, and I was just lucky that I paid attention, and I stopped for a sec what is that warning which tells you that they grab literally all of your emails. Btw, just before that I found this page regarding Edge, and this is why I paid more attention to these things: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/microsoft-edge/privacy https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/microsoft-edge/priva... That list is way too long for my taste, and it really indicated me that Windows became completely adversarial.
- throwaway85825 8mo ago[flagged]
- UqWBcuFx6NV4r 8mo ago“Diverse”? Wanna expand on that one, buddy? You think you’re being subtle?
- bubblewand 8mo agoIt's been so weird to watch over the decades as team sizes, budgets, and timelines have exploded even as we've abandoned once-normal things like native GUI applications as too hard in favor of "more efficient" webshit... even as the aforementioned stuff with growing team sizes, budgets, and timelines have happened.
- nextaccountic 8mo agoWhat's weird is that AI is supposed to make development easy enough that native applications are just as fast to build than web apps Somehow in this timeline AI can only be used to make things worse and sloppier
- throwaway85825 8mo agoSoftware used to be built for users, now it just has to look good as a screenshot.
- assaddayinh 8mo ago[dead]
- mapontosevenths 8mo agoThe user is not the customer. Microsoft builds software for the enterprise now, so Windows 11 is full of new features for the enterprise and has nothing for the User. They forgot that Enterprises are made out of Users.
- throwaway85825 8mo agoAll the enterprise users I know are extremely unhappy with the direction of development.
- mulmen 8mo agoIt’s also weird that the productivity increases of AI lead to layoffs instead of hiring. If we can do more with AI why are companies scrambling to maintain the current output? Does leadership lack the vision of what to do with the additional productivity?
- dataflow 8mo ago> Windows 10 explorer.exe is 100x faster than Windows 11 explorer, it's not even close. I have a hard time believing this. I'm pretty sensitive to performance losses and I haven't noticed any difference between those. It wouldn't make sense either, given they should both host the same shell icon views. Are you sure the difference you're seeing is in explorer.exe? As opposed to something else, like a new shell extension or a new filesystem filter driver on Windows 11?
- 201984 8mo ago> As opposed to something else, like a new shell extension or a new filesystem filter driver on Windows 11? Ultimately, what difference does it make? The file explorer in Windows 10 is much faster than the one in Windows 11, and it's very noticeable. Turn on the old context menus, and try right clicking a file. Instant in Windows 10, visible delay in Windows 11.
- mapontosevenths 8mo agoI measured once. It uses about 50% more resources and offers less feautures (or at least hides existing feautures). You may not have noticed if you had resources to spare. It does offer some new features for businesses. Nothing useful for the consumer, and nothing to justify the massive performance loss
- protocolture 8mo agoIts not faster bereft of context, its just bloated. If you have enough resource to throw at it, its roughly the same. Theres some specific things that can themselves be slower, the Windows 11 Start Menu has had a lot of words written about its new implementation.
- maccard 8mo ago> if you have enough resource to throw at it An i9 with 128GB RAM isn’t enough resources to open a menu?
- protocolture 8mo ago
- coffeebeqn 8mo agoIf everything is electron then there’s literally no reason to pay for windows since superior OSes can run everything exactly the same
- pooploop64 7mo agoIf I have to view an image on Windows, I've long been in the habit of right clicking it and choosing "edit" to open MS Paint because it's so much better and faster than the stock image viewer. It's instant. I can't think of a metaphor that sounds worse than this in regards to how low the bar has fallen. It's just an image viewer. How hard could they possibly be making it for themselves? Literally the best parts of Windows have been the parts they forgot existed for 10+ years and never changed.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- zadikian 8mo agoMeanwhile TextEdit on Mac always rendered HTML. Which seems useless until you realize it can also edit and save as HTML. So there's casually a wysiwyg web editor built into macOS that idk how many people use.
- sysguest 8mo agoidk maybe TextEdit DOES have some rce not discovered yet? maybe we should separate "real origianl text-only editor" from "fancy text editor"? windows already got wordpad... why even lay a finger on textpad?
- LtWorf 8mo agoIf it also allowed me to type what I want instead of changing every single word due to "spell check" it would actually be a useful tool!
- perching_aix 8mo agoI thought it is by introducing an RCE vulnerability that you get an RCE vulnerability. I'm being facetious of course, but this recent rhetorical trend of people confidently vouching for "pet" in "pet vs. cattle" is not a sustainable decision, even if it's admittedly plain practical on the short to medium run, or in given contexts even longer. It's just a dangerous and irresponsible lesson to blindly repeat I think. Change happens. Evidently, while we can mechanistically rule out several classes of bugs now, RCEs are not one of those. Whatever additional guardrails they had in place, they failed to catch this *. I think it's significantly more honest to place the blame there if anywhere. If they can introduce an RCE to Notepad *, you can be confident they're introducing RCEs left and right to other components too **. With some additional contextual weighting of course. * Small note on this specific CVE though: to the extent I looked into it [0], I'm not sure I find it reasonable to classify it as an RCE. It was a UX hiccup, the software was working as intended, the intention was just... maybe not quite wise enough. ** Under the interpretation that this was an RCE, which I question. [0] https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/blog/2026/2/19/cve-2026-20841-arbitrary-code-execution-in-the-windows-notepad https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/blog/2026/2/19/cve-2026-20...
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- Rohansi 8mo ago> * Small note on this specific CVE though: to the extent I looked into it [0], I'm not sure I find it reasonable to classify it as an RCE. It was a UX hiccup, the software was working as intended, the intention was just... maybe not quite wise enough. Most people seem to see "CVE" and "RCE" and assume the worst here. As you saw though, Notepad is just making totally valid URIs clickable! Web browsers allow it too - why is it not an RCE there? Sure, they usually show a warning when the URI is going to something external but most people just click through things like that anyway.
- shakna 8mo agoThats not the case here. Web browsers warn you about opening arbitrary protocols. And you have to select the program that will open it. This Notepad vuln, allows you to click things like ssh://x....
- stevefan1999 8mo agoWell this is what we call it opportunity cost
- krater23 8mo agoMaking automatic updates mandatory is another name for 'Give M$ remote code execution'.