Australis13

That’s my point. I feel like they have been sitting on this for a while and didn’t release it ages ago because it would be one more thing to reduce the odds of people shifting from 10 to 11.

Right, so they wait until just after Windows 10 reaches EOL to release the patch for this annoying bug. Typical. They’ve probably had the solution ready for ages.

That’s quite possible, unfortunately…

I have several use cases, a big one being that it gives me an alternate storage medium for backing up home photos and videos. Obviously there’s caveats on how long BD-Rs last (although M-discs should outlast me) and the issue of needing a player in future, but it gives me more peace of mind knowing that I can backup these sorts of things to different storage types (external hard drives are all well and good until they’re corrupted by power issues or user error, or you want to keep a copy at a relative’s place and it’s a multi-hour trip… with optical media you can just keep adding discs to the offsite backup as needed and update the external HDD less frequently).

The other major use case I have has already been mentioned - backing up Blurays that I’ve bought (or, in the case of a few shows I like, being able to compare the DVD vs Bluray frame by frame).

Interesting to see that demand for optical drives is increasing, although apparently it’s only in Japan: https://www.tomshardware.com/software/windows/optical-drive-demand-surges-amid-windows-10-retirement-japanese-users-switching-to-windows-11-are-buying-up-blu-ray-drives

Still, hopefully that means Bluray writers stay on the market for a bit longer.

Oh, I definitely agree. We need better privacy and data protection laws here in Australia too. In the meantime, however, I do what I can to minimise my footprint. I’m well aware that other people are going to be the weak link!

Fortunately not… I’m generally the one responsible for IT maintenance with my parents’ as they get older. Disabled OneDrive long ago since they don’t use it.

Probably right on the money, sadly.

If I hadn’t abandoned OneDrive already, this would make me do so.

The desktop application (both Windows and Linux) allows free users to pick tracks. The mobile application does not.

The mobile application has always had this restriction for free users (as far as I know), but the desktop application has not.

Ouch. Glad I don’t run Windows 11…

In the undertaking, Google commits to removing certain pre-installation and default search engine restrictions from its contracts with Android phone manufacturers and telcos.

This ought to be interesting. At least it will hopefully mean one less bit of bloatware on Android phones.

I’m not sure if this is petition is actually helpful. It is 4 years old and hasn’t been updated to note the renewed focus on this legislation: https://www.techradar.com/computing/cyber-security/the-eu-could-be-scanning-your-chats-by-october-2025-heres-everything-we-know

Yeah, that’s got my attention too. Definitely going to try them out now since I need an alternative for remote support for family.

This will be handy for those couple of Windows-only applications I have that need an Internet connection and don’t yet work under Wine. Gives me a bit more time to try to debug them and see if a fix is possible.

Something doesn’t quite add up for me, though, with the “free” option of “Use Windows Backup to sync your settings to the cloud” or a $30 payment instead. Is Microsoft really that keen to get everyone’s settings, or is this an error in the press release and what they really want is everyone to use Windows Backup to transfer all their files to Microsoft’s cloud (OneDrive) in preparation for Windows 11?

Thanks.

Really appreciate you taking the time to explain that. Unfortunately the journalism issue is one of those that I haven’t had a chance to look into. I like to think I’m aware of the Murdoch propaganda (and the other major “news” outlets here) but there’s still clearly some topics which don’t register as problematic until I dig into them.

As an Australian, my government can go for it. None of the tech companies have appreciated the Australian government’s attempts to regulate them (e.g. trying to make Google and Meta pay for using our journalism). (edit: not a good example)

That said, we have had idiots in power from time to time that definitely have worked against us, usually arguing the “security over privacy” nonsense (metadata collection laws, encryption backdoor legislation, etc.).

This is precisely why all the banks I am with use their own app for 2FA rather than send codes via SMS. Even our government services system (myGov) has an app you can use instead of SMS.

Of course, none of these are completely secure, but it’s a significant step up from plaintext SMS.

Interesting, I hadn’t seen news about that Apple feature before… There seems to be a lot more press around Recall, which in turn amps up the amount of consumer attention and backlash.

That said (and I wouldn’t want Apple’s “semantic search” even if I had an Apple device), I’d still trust Apple more to manage the dataset securely compared to Microsoft. The Apple ecosystem is far more strictly controlled, whereas in Windows it’s more of a free-for-all (most people just used XP as an administrator, the UAC could be easily disabled on Windows Vista and 7, etc.). Especially with Microsoft’s move to put advertising in Windows 11 and complete lack of security measures in the initial version of Recall, it is very hard to trust Microsoft in this regard.