StatCounter has had multiple gaffes with their data recently (the spike in fake Windows 7 users, and now miscounting iOS 26 users), and I don’t recommend trusting it, at least for now. They had months to test if iOS 26 was detected properly, and didn’t. The Wikimedia data seems far more trustable.

Unfortunately this was to be expected. It’s by design. The market is limited to certain regions, with no ability for even power users to opt into it. Developers can’t test their own app if they aren’t in the region. Fees still eat into already tight margins. You can’t build a business on this.

I would call this heavily inspired, but even Microsoft eventually figured out stringing a bunch of qualifiers in a row is just awful product naming

With “Wikimedia Enterprise”, AI companies have to use (and pay for) dedicated APIs to scrape data, which helps to limit the strain on Wikimedia servers. (See eg arstechnica.com/information-...) This is a good thing for Wikimedia and for its readers.

Sure. AI companies have ALWAYS been training their models on Wikipedia content, which under the free and open access model is available to anyone — including AI companies. Agreements like these require AI companies to limit and offset the strain they place on Wikimedia infrastructure.

Look at this fucking cat dude More people need to look at and be thinking about Scribble the Microsoft Office Assistant immediately

There is some real irony to Microsoft giving the longest servicing life to Vista/Server 2008, the operating system that has the most issues with servicing. We’ve spent the most time working around issues that only exist in Vista/2008’s rewritten update system. Basically all issues were solved in 7.

Today, Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2 (based on Windows Vista and 7) finally, truly reach end of support. Windows Vista and Server 2008 is the longest supported version of Windows, at 19 years. Behind it is Windows XP at 17 years, and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 at 16 years.

You’ve been asking me for years, and I finally did it. Windows Live Essentials was a suite of free add-on software from Microsoft. It’s a perfect fit into the Windows 7 experience, but it’s been hard to find official download links. Now, we have them easily accessible on a dedicated page:

Realised I forgot to mention this a few weeks ago, but sorry if you messaged me here and I didn’t respond. Because of *gestures at Australia’s social media thing*, Bluesky wants my ID to gain access to my DMs tab again, and I’m not normalising handing out ID to social media as a thing we’re doing.

What is the Silverlight logo supposed to be, anyway?

Someone took my spot as the top NSIS developer on WakaTime in 2025. Whoever you are, I’m sorry, this wasn’t a challenge. Nobody should be subjected to this much NSIS.

Aw man 😞 Rest in peace Mr Cheifet, host of Computer Chronicles: obits.goldsteinsfuneral.com/stewart-chei... What a legend. His work in both presenting and preserving the early days of computer history has been (and will continue to be) deeply appreciated! My condolences to his family and friends.

I don’t think anyone here needs more proof Grokipedia is a terrible idea, but here you go: • SSE2 works on any OS that supports SSE1, so, Windows 2000 • SSE2 is a mandatory feature of AMD64, so it didn’t “emerge” with Vista • The Legacy Update page it references makes none of the claims made here

We’ve reached a point in dead internet where AI is replying to support threads from 14 years ago with `sfc /scannow`. Even if this is intended to summarise the thread, it’s hallucinated things that weren’t discussed. Nobody mentioned reinstalling DirectX, and Legacy Update didn’t exist 14 years ago!

Today marks 10 years since Chariz launched. procursus.social/@chariz/1157...

Spiderman pointing meme but it’s Apple warning me that Apple is trying to paste from Apple

I keep getting a podcast ad for MongoDB that says it’s “built by developers, for developers”. This appears to imply that Postgres is built by garden landscapers, for car mechanics. Interesting

Haven’t seen such a trainwreck of a thread on this website as the Firefox Web Devs thread about the AI features. This place is so rabidly against AI in such an irrational way. It’s ok to not like/be frustrated by AI, but the tone is off the rails as compared to the matching Mastodon thread.

Merriam-Webster’s human editors have chosen ‘slop’ as the 2025 Word of the Year.

Just a little update after getting a lot of attention from the Download Center archive v2 launch. Thanks to everyone who helped to spread the word about it!

Legacy Update expands archive of vanished Microsoft downloads

AV1 won an Emmy! We're proud to be part of the Alliance for Open Media, where the codec was developed. But the story's not over… AV2 is just around the corner. https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/av1-video-codec-wins-emmy/

What's the deal with specifically PCIe Wi-Fi cards having ginormous heatsinks? These chips barely get warm. Is it entirely to justify selling it for $45? If this were necessary, we would see them heatsinked in laptops, but nobody does that.

Legacy Update has significantly expanded its archive of the Microsoft Download Center all the way back to 2012. It now indexes 41,000 downloads, of which over half have been deleted by Microsoft. More about what went into this, and what we’re still planning to do:

If by some miracle the whole AI industry falls apart because some tech bros decided to spend trillions on compute without spending maybe tens of millions a year on licensing art, I will laugh so hard I'll be in danger of a ruptured spleen.

Happy Amazing News Day opensource.microsoft.com/blog/2025/11...

Oh if you insist.

Ed has honestly solidified himself as a name that will be referenced as an authority after this AI bubble bursts and they write the Wikipedia articles and textbooks and documentaries about it. Huge respect for the guy.

For how crazy advanced iOS can be, it’s infuriating it turns off the screen while I’m actively scrolling through my lock screen. You recognised my face, and you know the same face is still looking at the screen. The phone hasn’t moved significantly since unlock. Why kick me out like that?

Suddenly had the urge to watch this 7 year old Cathode Ray Dude review of Kid Pix that I probably haven’t watched since back then. An absolute classic. No notes. Why did it print the date?! youtu.be/NK6-ZSaBzjc

Things that are known to be certain in life: 1. Death 2. Taxes 3. The certificate icon in macOS remaining unchanged since OS X Tiger

Australia sues Microsoft for allegedly misleading ~2.7M Microsoft 365 users into accepting a price hike for Copilot plans while hiding cheaper non-AI options (Sneha Kumar/Reuters) Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

Just a friendly reminder that, particularly when coming from search result summaries, AI only knows as much as it can glean from sources it deems to be authoritative. Often, those are news outlets that use clickbait, and put writers under pressure to push out articles without much critical thought.

After 10 years, Windows 10 has reached end of support. Don’t panic. Your Windows 10 computers will not explode. You will not catch every piece of malware in existence. You should enrol in ESU, or switch to Windows 11 or Linux, but this is not the end of the world. Our guide on what to do now:

we need to bring back fuckass graphics card box art like i need to browse the boxes and see which one has the absolute most awe inspiring 00s 3d render of a hot girl and then pass over it to buy the mechafrog gpu

Wait, Windows 10 is legacy now? 😳 Windows 10 reaches end of support in a few days’ time, and there’s been an increasing number of questions about what will happen to Windows 10 and Windows Update. We put together a new guide to answer your questions:

I accidentally glitched out an animation I was working on and created a perfect example of what the passage of time feels like to someone with ADHD

So long, Windows Update website 🫡 This week, Microsoft took down the old Windows Update v6 web app entirely. It was a time capsule locked in the Microsoft.​com design from 2005. It’s been broken since 2021. You can still see it preserved through Windows Update Restored.

Good news! Bending Spoons, who has produced nothing of value for this world ever, will be acquiring a dead brand that nobody has paid attention to in 20 years

Say what you will about Epic and their motives with this whole App Store thing, but for anyone sure Apple would never possibly implement the DMA in bad faith, here’s some real data. Dark patterns work because you don’t realise they’re making you answer in a particular way. This was no exception.

Legacy Update updated – so your old Windows can be, too

🌎⬆️ Legacy Update 1.12.1 fixes some issues from 1.12. (Surprisingly few issues for a big rewrite!) github.com/LegacyUpdate... More on 1.12 in the quoted post below 👇

there’s a project that bridges Bluesky with the Twitter API v1 so you can just point an old Twitter app at the proxy and boom it’s 2011 again babyyyyy

Steam powered? No no, *Windows* powered

🌎⬆️ Legacy Update 1.12 is a huge rewrite release. We switched from compiling with Visual C++ 2008 (and 2010, and 2017, and 2022…), a setup which Microsoft recently broke, to a streamlined open-source MinGW/GCC toolchain. The result: 1.12 is 50% smaller than 1.11, which was already below 1 MB!

root: boring, not scary at all, can just access it with sudo NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM: loud, asserts dominance, requires service hacks to access, shows The System is in charge

Here’s a bonus episode of Better Offline. I talked to software engineer Colt Voege about how AI isn’t 10xing the productivity of software engineering, the truth about LLM coding, and what we can actually expect AI to do for software. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/b... Linktr.ee/betteroffline

This really ain’t it. macOS Tahoe RC. All of the tinted modes look pretty bad, but did they completely forget to check contrast on the iMac default colors?