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Don't wanna buy the latest stuff? Here's your watermarkThose running Windows 11 on unsupported hardware are getting an update, though not the kind that low-end hardware and VM users might be hoping for.The latest Release Preview of Windows 11 adds an undocumented feature that slaps a line of text in the lower right hand side of the Windows desktop and a similar warning in the Settings app for any system that fails to meet Windows 11's exacting standards.The message is short and to the point: "System requirements not met. Go to Settings to learn more."It's also far less obtrusive than...

ANAHEIM, CA—In a controversial move, Disney is bowing to the radical gay agenda by adding a statue of Walt Disney—a straight man—holding hands with Mickey, a character also traditionally seen as straight, in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland. "Are there no depths to which Disney will not stoop to satisfy the radical gay agenda?" said Sharon, an angry park guest upon hearing the news. "I have KIDS with me! And they have to see that? A male holding hands with another male? What a disgrace! I will be taking my business elsewhere, Disney!" In addition to the...

WEST OF EDEN—A double-blind study conducted by angel scientists has confirmed that 100% of men would eat any fruit given to them by a naked woman. The study seems to suggest that the fall of Adam and Eve was unavoidable. "Our results were conclusive," said the angel Gabriel, who led the study. "Of the 30,000 male test subjects we studied, we found literally 100% of them would happily accept and eat any piece of fruit handed to them by a woman who was naked. Even in cases where it wasn't fruit—or even edible—all the males gratefully accepted every single...

Purveyors of rumours, flirty teens, dodgy infomercials, or bloody violence all told to get in the bin – yet againThe Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) has shared its spring-cleaning plans with the world – and suggested it's time to make the Middle Kingdom's web sites sparkle with wholesome content.The Admin's edict lists many net nasties that it wants removed. But there's not much new on the list – most of the items have already been the subject of warnings or bans.At the top of the list is violent content, which China has never wanted online.Fake news and rumours are next,...

It's coming. Microsoft is preparing to start shoveling the latest version of Windows 10 down the throats of refuseniks still clinging to older incarnations.The Windows Update team gave the heads-up through its Twitter orifice last week. Windows 10 2004 was already on its last gasp, have had support terminated in December. 20H2, on the other hand, should be good to go until May this year.We started the first phase in the Windows 10, version 21H2 rollout for machine learning (ML) training. We are targeting devices on Windows 10, version 20H2 that are approaching end of servicing to update automatically to...

[Dayglored note: This is about an "Insider" build, not the version most users get. The "Insider" releases are for developers and eager-beaver Windows fanbois who want to try things before they're done, knowing they might break.] Is nothing safe from the dead hand of the Windows 11 design aesthetic? Windows' murderous Task Manager looks set to get a makeover in Windows 11 after a work-in-progress turned up in the latest Insider Dev Channel build.Remembering the good timesThe build, 22538, is an otherwise relatively mundane emission from the Windows team.Sure, there was great excitement among the community when the volume control...

Microsoft just purchased Activision and wasted no time in unveiling a bunch of promising new upcoming titles. Here they are:1. Minesweeper: Modern Warfare - An action-packed first-person mine defusing game. You'll even get to play multiplayer, where 13-year-old kids will insult your mother for not defusing the mines quickly enough.2. Tony Hawk's Excel - Forget spreadsheets: it's time for SHREDsheets! Basically just Excel with Tony Hawk instead of Clippy.3. World of Warcraft: Wrath of Clippy - This exciting expansion has Clippy take over Azeroth, but he's just a minor annoyance really. He's no Lich King.4. Bill Gates' Divorce Simulator -...

NEW YORK, NY—Sources in Washington confirmed today that the National September 11 Memorial will be filled in and replaced with a new January 6 memorial that commemorates the zeroes of people killed on that fateful day. The memorial will be a 50-foot-tall bronze statue of Nancy Pelosi's stolen podium. "Yes, 9/11 was bad, but it is time to make way for an even worse attack on our nation: that terrible day one year ago when Trump supporters walked through the Capitol building," said the designer of the statue, American artist Laslo Parkinson. "I've designed this statue to give people...

If it's not broke, don't f- ... never mind Microsoft's long-suffering unpaid testers are to start seeing some improvements in the Windows 11 User Interface. Build 22509 arrived last night for Windows Insiders on the Dev Channel and, as well as making things a bit more accessible by improving the web browsing experience with Microsoft's Edge browser and the Narrator, there were some much-needed tweaks to the Start Menu and Taskbar. Starting with the most jarring change in the user experience for Windows 11, the Start Menu, some easy-to-access options were added. One can opt for more pinned applications or...

Dayglored comment: Remember, this is about Corporate Business computers, most of which are managed by corporate IT groups and the uptake of new software, especially a new operating system, is glacially slow, often only happening when new hardware is purchased. Even so, 0.21% is notably low. The uptake on consumer/personal/home computers is, of course, much faster because consumers buy new computers much more often, and are much more likely to upgrade to the latest-and-greatest OS. Lansweeper stats make grim reading for MicrosoftMicrosoft's Windows 11 adventure is going swimmingly. IT asset management outfit Lansweeper has published the results of a 10...

WASHINGTON, D.C.—With the pandemic still ongoing, the White House has been on the alert for anything that might cause resistance to the vaccine mandates. And they just realized that there was a constant anti-vax sentiment right under their noses: the national anthem. The last line of “The Star-Spangled Banner” is “O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave,” implying that the U.S. is a place where people are free to make their own choices and aren’t motivated by fear — pretty much a call to ignore the government during a pandemic. “So basically, at the beginning...

Next version of Windows 10 looms around the corner Microsoft's Windows 11 OS has notched up a respectable near 5 per cent of PCs surveyed by AdDuplex, as another Dev Channel build was unleashed with new features for the favoured few. With less than a month of General Availability under its belt, Windows 11 now accounts for 4.8 per cent of "modern" PCs (Windows Insiders running the OS account for 0.3 per cent) according to the ad platform. The figure is up from the 1.3 per cent in September, which was Insider-only and points to some migration to the production...

Names November as the month for Win 10 H2 update – then reveals major new feature won’t arrive on time [Dayglored comment: My bolding on the paragraph below about the PowerShell bug.] Microsoft has released a build of Windows 11 that it claims addresses performance problems the new OS imposed on some systems.Redmond's announcement of OS Build 22000.282 lists over 60 "improvements and fixes" on top of a lucky 13 "highlights".One of those highlights is described as fixing "an issue that causes some applications to run slower than usual after you upgrade to Windows 11 (original release)".Another addresses an issue...

The Chromium team has finally done it – File Transfer Protocol (FTP) support is not just deprecated, but stripped from the codebase in the latest stable build of the Chrome browser, version 95. It has been a while coming. A lack of support for encrypted connections in Chrome's FTP implementation, coupled with a general disinterest from the majority of the browser's users, and more capable third-party alternatives being available has meant that the code has moved from deprecated to gone entirely. Support for fetching document resources over FTP was stripped from Chrome 72, proxy support for FTP was removed in...

Dayglored's TL;DR: Microsoft created the "Universal Windows Platform" (UWP) to unite Windows 10, Windows Mobile/Phone, Xbox One, and HoloLens. It failed because Windows Phone died the gooey death in competition with Android and iPhone, and the many shortcomings and restrictions UWP imposed on developers and end-users impeded adoption. It has taken MS a long time to admit that it's dead, but they finally have done so. Microsoft continues to baby-step around the obvious, but it has officially deprecated the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) as it pushes the desktop-focused Windows App SDK (formerly called Project Reunion) and WinUI 3 as the...

Microsoft wants 20,000 likes in return for Clippy, and it got themMicrosoft is threatening to bring back its annoying loveable Clippy character. The software giant claims it will replace the paperclip emoji in Microsoft Office with Clippy if the tweet below gets 20,000 likes. The tweet has already surpassed that number, so it seems Clippy could be about to return as a more innocent emoji — but Microsoft is being coy about what might happen next. Born in Office 97, Clippy originally appeared as an assistant to offer help and tips for using Microsoft Office. You either loved or hated...

Although Chinese laws forbid kids to play video games at night, minors have been using different tricks to bypass these restrictions. However, they probably won’t be able to do it anymore with the deployment of Tencent’s new facial recognition system. According to the Chinese website Sixth Tone, Tencent has officially launched its controversial facial recognition system on July 6. The initiative, which was previously dubbed “Midnight Patrol,” uses AI and big data to detect kids who try to bypass the restrictions. “We will conduct a face screening for accounts registered with real names and that have played for a certain...

Too big a price to pay for decelerating your epigenetic clock?If you're a gentleman looking to counteract the effects of ageing, a new study on sheep may have the answer – but you're going to have to say goodbye to your family jewels in return for a slowdown of your DNA's ageing process."Both farmers and scientists have known for some time that castrated male sheep live on average much longer than their intact counterparts," explained first author Victoria Sugrue, an anatomy PhD student at the University of Otago. "However, this is the first time anyone has looked at DNA to...

* Local residents say a power plant is heating Seneca Lake and emitting huge amounts of greenhouse gases. * The gas-fired plant is used to power at least 8,000 computers that are mining bitcoin. * The plant's CEO says it's operating within the law, and has created 31 jobs. Local residents have blamed bitcoin mining for heating up the largest of the Finger Lakes in upstate New York, with one saying it's "so warm you feel like you're in a hot tub," according to a report by NBC News. Their complaints centre on a gas-fired power plant that's being used...

[Dayglored Note: This is primarily for Windows Administrators, but is of potential concern to ALL Windows users.] Also see:Leaked print spooler exploit lets Windows users remotely execute code as system on your domain controllerPrintNightmare: Windows Zero-Day Accidentally Disclosed by Chinese ResearchersPublic Windows PrintNightmare 0-day exploit allows domain takeoverPrintNightmare, Critical Windows Print Spooler Vulnerability Original release date: June 30, 2021 The CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC) has released a VulNote for a critical remote code execution vulnerability in the Windows Print spooler service, noting: “while Microsoft has released an update for CVE-2021-1675, it is important to realize that this update does not...