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#65: Enshittifcation 2025 pt 1 – progressing well

Posted on by ewand

A computer on a table AI-generated content may be incorrect.

The “word of the year” for 2023 was “Enshittification” – as defined by author Cory Doctorow:

“Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.”.

Similar concepts have been written about previously.

An Australian dictionary summarized it nicely in 2024 as “The gradual deterioration of a service or product brought about by a reduction in the quality of service provided, especially of an online platform, and as a consequence of profit-seeking.”

There are numerous variants of enshittification which we’ve all observed, usually concerned with improving revenue streams for the service provider at the expense of the quality of the service or organizations failing in some way.

· Changing the business model of the service because the original premise isn’t sustainable

· Killing products or removing features which cost too much to provide

· Failure to adapt with technology, stifling innovation, leading to stagnation and irrelevance

· Decline of a service or community due to poor leadership, user behaviour or rise of another

· Trapping customers, making it inordinately difficult to cancel or migrate from the service

Sometimes these moves are long planned – capture the market by operating at a loss then pay back your investors later by reaping the rewards of early market advantage, potentially even turning the screws on your customers (see Amazon, Netflix). Companies might be overaggressive competitors, looking to quash alternatives (Amazon, Microsoft), and it’s just a fact of life that some things don’t work and walking away from them angers or disappoints customers who used them (see Google, Microsoft, many others).

2025 In

This year is barely 20% over but we’ve already seen numerous changes to popular online services. Netflix is cranking up subscription pricing again (among others); Microsoft has added Copilot features to Personal and Family plans, jacking the cost up significantly to pay for it. Spotify has been teasing a lossless service for years, but might get around to launching it this summer. Hands up who thinks it will be an extra cost over the standard tier?

Even if a service provider puts out notice that they’re going to make some degrading change (or if, as WindowsForum.com does about all the upcoming Microsoft cuts, others collect the news and report it), it can still feel like a shock when you notice it’s not there any more. Microsoft calls it “deprecation”.

As mentioned in ToW #62, there are lots of occasions where a feature changes very much for the worse (from a user’s perspective) but there’s nothing much you can do about it other than seek an alternative.

Search caching

One relatively quiet change that happened in both Google and Bing during 2024 was the removal of cached pages in search results. This was a handy way to find a web page which, for whatever reason, wasn’t online any more … though could be used to find out how a page looked before some recent change. “Link Rot” means that lots of pages link to sites that have disappeared.

Both Google and Bing used to have cached copies of pages that could be viewed by clicking an icon next to the item in search results.

A screenshot of a computer AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Google discontinued it without notice in February 2024, so people who noticed would turn to Bing, Yahoo or Baidu as they all still offered the cached feature. The reasons for removal? “It was meant for helping people access pages when way back, you often couldn’t depend on a page loading. These days, things have greatly improved. So, it was decided to retire it.”

Bing followed suit in December, saying, “This week, we’ve removed cache links from Bing search results. As the internet has evolved for better reliability, and many pages aren’t optimized for cache viewing.”

Both reasons smack of “we’re doing this because it makes your life simpler and the feature wasn’t needed any more anyway”, but in reality there will be cost savings and potentially legislative reasons too. Why offer the service if you can’t monetize it? What’s next?

Google has since wired in a link to the Internet Archive – a free, useful resource though sometimes a bit slow and not always complete – if you click the “:” to the side of a search result, then click through to “More about this page ->”.

A screenshot of a computer AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Turn to specific addins

One of the use cases for looking at cached results is to see how something was previously described before it was updated; or maybe to see how much something was being advertised for, previously? Have you ever seen a product marked as “SOLD” and wondered what it had priced at before?

It may be worth looking at the various extensions / app stores to see if there’s an enterprise developer who’s built something that might help. One such is the excellent AT Price Tracker, for the UK Autotrader website.

A screenshot of a car AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Who’d want to be trying to sell luxury 3-ton EV-SUVs at the moment?

AT Price Tracker will show a summary of what the same advert has been listed at previously; traders could remove it entirely and re-post to fox the logic of the app, but it’s presumably under the radar enough for most not to even notice it.

Unless Autotrader decides to get some enshittification in and block whatever access the addin has.

#64: Tick, Tock, Time is up (nearly) for Windows 10

Posted on (Updated by ewand

Designer (16)

Microsoft developed a reputation for having a couple of shaky versions of anything before the one that you’d be actually happy to use came along. Just as many people do with phone releases, it often seems to make sense skipping a few and just get the latest whenever it’s time to upgrade the computer.

There’s that old joke: “How does Bill Gates count to 10?” The latest answer is “1, 2, 3, 3.1, 3.11, NT3.1/3.5, 95, NT4, 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10, 11”. Windows 3.1 was the first to be what you might call mainstream, and XP, 7 and 10 were the versions which got the most users.

Returning to the compelling Statcounter site (as mentioned in ToW #62); it bases its research on which machines/browsers are seen being used to access a host of websites. There are still a lot of people using older Windows versions. Surprisingly, 0.27% of all browsing being done by Windows users was by brave souls still on Windows XP. Vista is barely above 0.

Data from Desktop Windows Version Market Share Worldwide | Statcounter Global Stats

Windows 8/8.1 (the dark green line which peaked in mid-2015) never really took off – maybe because of corporates who had rolled out Windows 7 as an upgrade to XP (having steered well clear of Vista) and user resistance to the touch-centricity of the whole thing, especially useless if you’re on a desktop PC.

When Windows 10 came out in mid-2015, it took 2½ years for it to overtake Windows 7 in usage, at least according to this data. Windows 11 was released in October 2021 but in well  over 3 years since, it still has less than 2/3rd the usage of Windows 10.

Support Lifecycle

Microsoft took a view some years back, that in order to be credible in the Enterprise, you need to support your stuff for a long time. As a result, the standard lifecycle is for every product to have 10 years of life, usually split 50/50 into Mainstream and Extended support. Extended means you might get security fixes but there will be no more updates to add features, make it better, jam adverts into places you don’t want them etc.

On 14th October 2025, Windows 10 hits that decade milestone – at which point it will go out of support, there will be no more security updates and if you get hit by a cyber attack then that’s too bad. In future, you’d be ridiculed for it when anything goes wrong.

Performing an operating system upgrade can be a big deal – especially if you’re doing it on behalf of a company or large organisation – as some of the existing hardware and software might not work under the new OS. Windows 11 complicates things further by having some fairly specific hardware requirements in the worthy name of security; but even some expensive PCs from a year or two before COVID are now excluded. Many of Microsoft’s own Surface range are upgradeable, but the flagship $4K Surface Studio sold from 2016-2018 is not one of them.

If you have a Windows 10 PC then it’s very likely it will have been offered Windows 11 as an upgrade; if in any doubt, then try the PC Health Check app and see what it says.

How to run Windows 11 on unsupported hardware

tl;dr – don’t.

It’s worth noting that the majority of PCs which can happily run Windows 10 would also be able to run Win11 if they were allowed to. The hardware requirements dictated, though, that you need a certain level of processor and a TPM 2.0 security module, or you get denied.

There have been various tricks and tweaks to fool Windows 11 into running through the upgrade process and letting it continue; some of them even offered up by Microsoft itself. Lately, however, the signal has been that even if the unsupported machine made it to Windows 11 now, it could be blocked in future from getting subsequent updates and therefore would be in limbo. Microsoft’s own advice if you have followed one of these unofficial workarounds, is to revert now to Windows 10.

The previously-toted registry key to bypass the hardware validation has now been removed, in order to prevent any more unsuspecting souls from going down that path.

Some complainers have doggedly stayed on Windows 10 because they don’t like the look of 11, but if you are still using Windows 10 because your hardware can’t make the leap, then you’re in something of a quandary. Microsoft will let you pay $61 to extend support for Windows 10 until October 2026, with that sum doubling every year. So to keep Win10 until the absolute drop-dead deadline of October 2029, it would cost you over $400.

Or time to fork out the readies and buy a new machine before the October bell rings.

If you fancy a Surface, then Intel variants of last year’s ARM-powered Copilot+ machines are now available (at least for business customers), though it might make sense to wait until the summer and see what arrives, given that the current gen Surface Copilot+ machines were unveiled in May 2024.

#63B: It’s Your ISP

Posted on by ewand

A miniature city with many people working on a cable line AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Following on from last week’s missive on finding problems in your home network, this one turns its attention to network of the internet service provider (ISP) itself. Just like any other utility provider, there is a lot going on behind the scenes before the pipe or cable that shows up at your property delivers its stuff. As UK Gov CTO David Knott says, the simpler something looks, the more complex it probably is.

If you think there are problems with your internet connection’s speed or reliability, and it’s not your fault, there are a few things you can do to try and pinpoint where the cause lies. Being quite specific can also help short-circuit the early stages of the supplier’s support desk, where they’ll be getting you to clear your cookies and restart your browser.

Let’s assume that any WiFi devices are working and the home router itself is connecting OK – the lights on your device are behaving like they should be connected.

No photo description available.

I bet none of you losers has their own named port on their broadband router

Sometimes the connection to the ISP might be ropey – even if the lights are on, it could be worth logging into the admin page on your router to see if there are any tell-tales or warnings. There’s probably a log of events that might show repeated disconnect/reconnect loops, or other tell-tale errors. If you have a fancy-pants NAS device or similar, you might even be able to collect the logs and give better reporting.

A screenshot of a computer AI-generated content may be incorrect.

It’s worth checking a public speed test site, like www.speedtest.net, to see if it thinks you should be getting decent performance. Pay attention to that Ping ms number – as mentioned previously, latency is the enemy of anything that needs real-time communications like a Teams/Zoom meeting or online gaming. Streaming video can often deal with poor latency since it will buffer at least a few seconds in advance, though if it gets really bad then it might still be unworkable.

HOW NETWORKS WORK

Without grossly oversimplifying things, when you try to connect to a remote resource (say, www.google.com), your computer will use the magic of DNS (short for the Domain Name System) to figure out what is its actual address on the internet, then will attempt to reach it.

Imagine going on a journey with tens or hundreds of junctions along the way; at each turn you don’t need to know all of the directions to the destination, only that it’s further along this road rather than the other way. When connecting to a remote internet site, there will be many “hops” that your data will take – and the connections between each of those points could be a cause of problems.

Given that the internet was conceived to survive a nuclear war, traffic should find a way but sometimes there’s a single link that can throw everything off. If a single website is slow but everything else works, it’s probably that site. But if everything seems slow or unreliable, it’s more likely there’s a problem with your ISP’s network, or possibly the network it connects to.

To test a single connection, there’s a built-in command (again, on Windows, press Win+R an enter cmd) called tracert, which will basically ping everything between you and that remote site:

In this case, it sends 3 requests and measures the round-trip time of each; sometimes you’ll see an isolated spike or a drop out but that’s not unusual. In many cases, for popular sites like Google or Bing, you’ll only really be connecting to a nearby node anyway. Look up the IP Address on whatismyipaddress.com and you’d see, in this instance, that Google.com lives in a Datacenter in London, but if the same experiment was repeated from a PC in LA, the IP address and therefore final destination that corresponds to www.google.com would be different.

If you think your network problem is a bit more transient, you could try an old bit of Windows software called WinMTR (or a lightly refreshed version called WinMTR Redux). This will repeatedly run TraceRT probes and show you the results over time; if you see one particular hop which spikes a lot and it looks like it’s part of your own ISP’s network, then it could be worth sharing this info with them in the hope they go and switch that router off and back on again…

A screenshot of a computer AI-generated content may be incorrect.

In this instance, the first hop into the ISP network – 217.47.72.122 – appeared to be the problem as it and everything later had terrible latency (almost a whole second where you’d normally expect a few milliseconds). This above example was presented to a well-known UK national telecoms provider some time ago, as proof that the problem was with them, and to stop ordering the end user to faff about with ADSL microfilters or get engineers out to test the phone line.

Another example shows that while there’s no cataclysmic issue, there appears to be a delay in some of the connections further up the line – probably not worth escalating but it might explain why some sites feel slow while others don’t:

A screenshot of a computer AI-generated content may be incorrect.

The nice thing about WinMTR is that you could save it to OneDrive / Google Drive and run it directly without needing to install anything. If you’re happy to add some troubleshooting software in advance of having a problem, another alternative could be PingPlotter:

A screenshot of a computer AI-generated content may be incorrect.

WHAT IF IT’S DNS?

Ask anyone who has worked in IT support and at some point, the DNS infrastructure or your connection into it will be the thing that breaks everything else. Moving everything off-premises to a cloud-based environment merely means that DNS is someone else’s problem, but if you can’t figure out how to connect to the cloud, it’s yours.

Stack of blocks below text 'All modern digital infrastructure' made precarious by single small block near the bottom labelled 'DNS'

Normally, when your ISP gives you a connection, they also provide the address that your computers will use to make DNS queries. Your broadband router might act as a proxy, so the devices on the home network just ask it to resolve DNS queries, then it will connect to your ISP’s DNS service and relay the response back.

If everything else appears to be working but your connection is still flaky and slow, it may be that your ISP’s DNS service is stuffed. To the end user, you’d try to connect to www.google.com and it would spin for a while and eventually get an error saying it had timed our or could not be found; this could just be that your PC asked the router, which passed through the request to the ISP’s own DNS server(s), but if there’s a problem connecting or they’re not working properly, then a reply might not come.

Fortunately, there is an option to sidestep this – temporarily, maybe – and use somebody else’s DNS service instead.

Google operates a free, public DNS service, on addresses 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. If your ISP’s DNS is not responding well, try substituting the default automatic provisioning of DNS server addresses that your machine will likely have, with hard-coding Google’s DNS – see Get Started  |  Public DNS.

A screenshot of a computer AI-generated content may be incorrect.

If all else fails, you might just have to endure the ISP’s support desk to get someone to check the connection back to you, or just give up and go outside instead.

#63: Trouble with your network?

Posted on by ewand

buffering

We’ve all been there. Just when you need it to work, your home internet connection goes down or huffs off in go-slow mode. You’ll have seen others who, even 5 years after enforced home working, haven’t quite figured out how to make their networks, er, work. Or the colleague who always appears to be having trouble with their internet, so they can’t switch on the camera…?

What to do if your network appears to be up the swannee?

STEP ONE – THE THREE-FINGERED-SALUTE

If you’re lazy and uninterested in the root cause of a problem, then a quick way to resolution might be the have-you-tried-turning-it-off-and-on-again trick. Most broadband routers have a button to reboot them, or even just pull the power for 10 seconds and then put it back in.

Sometimes, service providers will tell you to reboot your router if you are getting an error – streaming apps on smart TVs appear to be adept at this. Technology gurus will scoff that there’s no way that could be the problem, it must be something with the app provider (until they reboot the router as a last resort, and the app starts working).

The original “Three Fingered Salute” was a moniker applied to CTRL+ALT+DEL, the unmaskable hardware combination on early PCs which forced a reboot. Nowadays, Windows handles it with more grace.

STEP TWO – CAN YOU SEE OUTSIDE?

Once you’ve waited 5 minutes for your broadband router to restart (and assuming that hasn’t fixed the problem), the next thing to check is if your computer can talk to the outside world. If not, that means the problem is somewhere between your keyboard and the internet service provider that the modem connects to. Trying to log a fault with your provider’s support desk will generally mean they’ll make you try unplugging and restarting everything in your house first, so be prepared.

Make sure you’re actually connected to the network and have a valid address; in Windows 11, go to Settings / Network & Internet and look at Properties of whatever the connection is. You should see the local network address of your machine, and the gateway through which everything is sent and received. The format of the numbers might vary but should look something like:

A screenshot of a computer AI-generated content may be incorrect.

[If you’re getting a 169.xxx.xxx.xxx address then something is going wrong with your computer and getting an IP address; if it’s in your house, try removing and replacing the network cable, or rebooting the PC and/or router. If it’s in a hotel or public wifi area, give up and set your phone up to do Tethering].

PING!

Now, fire up a command prompt (press WindowsKey+R then enter cmd) and enter ping 192.168.1.1 (or whatever address your default gateway is).

A screen shot of a computer AI-generated content may be incorrect.

The ping command literally bounces a short piece of data at the address you’re looking for; if that location is available (and not being blocked by some firewall or other) then it replies, and the fact that you got a response and the speed it took are displayed.

If you’re going to be playing with cables and stuff, you could enter ping -t 192.168.1.1 – the -t flag makes it continue pinging until you close the window or press CTRL+C. If you’re getting a reply at all, and the latency (time<1ms) is stable and low, then your connection to the router is just fine.

Latency is the enemy of a stable and reliable connection – when you see people having problems with Zoom/Teams meetings and their audio or video is garbled and choppy, that’s almost always a latency problem, either within their home network or somewhere further up the chain. Some networks suffer from it inherently – satellite connected, like in-flight WFi, are a good example – and anything that needs a stable, real-time connection (video calls, multiplayer gaming etc) is best avoided.

STEP TWOa – ARE YOU WIRELESS?

If you’re using a wireless network, it’s worth checking that something isn’t getting in the way unexpectedly. IT bods troubleshooting a problematic early business WiFi network found that it kept dropping out randomly, but more often around lunchtime – until they realised their neighbour in the office block had a kitchen on the other side of the wall, with a microwave oven that nuked their WiFi whenever it was used. Some home electronics could do the same, or even things like wood burning stoves.

Maybe your household is near other users who could be getting in the way? Try scaring them for a laugh but it’s also worth making sure your WiFi network isn’t clashing with theirs. It could be worth trying the ping -t trick above and move the machine around the place to see if there are some spots where you’re getting really high latency numbers, or to see if the ping reply doesn’t come back at all.

Try the WiFi Analyzer app from the Windows Store (if you’re on a PC; there are many others for iOS/Android and Mac):

A screenshot of a graph AI-generated content may be incorrect.

This app will show you all the neighbouring networks and which channel they’re operating on; if you’re sharing the spectrum with too many others then it might be worth reconfiguring your WiFi network to lock to a different channel; time to RTFM for the router.

An alternative to WiFi Analyzer is the long-established inSSider. The latest version needs you to register for an account, but the old one – which still gives a lot of useful info – is still available, if you’re careful to dodge the many links to other unwanted stuff:

A screen shot of a computer AI-generated content may be incorrect.

IT’S NOT ME, IT’S YOU

If the internet connection is still not playing ball, but initial signs are that the local network is OK and you’re fairly confident you don’t have sporadic hardware problems or similar, then it’s pretty likely the fault lies elsewhere. Get ready to face the inertia of service provider helpdesks who will assume that the problem is at your end… to prevail, we must arm ourselves with evidence and above all, keep calm.

To avoid over-doing things, we’ll pick that one up next week.

#60: The problem with coupons

Posted on (Updated by ewand

Lots of online shops have promo codes that can be entered as part of the checkout process, to get a discount, free shipping or similar. Sign up to their newsletter and get 5% off your first/next order, they might say. It’s usually a reward for or enticement to repeat custom, or if you believe in more sinister motives, a ploy to get you to hand over your data and expose your very living soul.         

Use one of the many “coupon lookup” sites and you could easily find codes that can save significant amounts of money, especially if you’re buying expensive stuff. To the end user, it looks like free money but there’s a deeper and darker subtext. As we’ll learn, there’s never really such a thing as free money.

Don’t click the bottom one…

Sites like Coupert, Vouchercodes and more sometimes tell you what special offer codes are currently active; be wary of any which offer to “automatically apply all codes” or you’ll end up installing a browser extension, which you almost certainly don’t want to do.

1st party coupons

Microsoft has shoehorned “shopping” into Edge (similar to what Google does with Chrome, though Edge’s is a bit more internationally inclusive and somewhat easier to use), and has a Bing shopping site that’s similar to Google Shopping too.

If the feature is enabled in Edge, you’ll see a little shopping label icon in the address bar when you’re browsing something that the browser might have more insights on, and possibly be able to keep a track on the price too.

Both browser tools are convenient way to find coupons and codes, alongside price comparisons, price history etc, even if you could probably find keener deals and info by looking around yourself.

For vouchers and deals, the browser is basically scraping other sites which purport to offer them, though anyone who has tried such sites previously will probably find out many of the codes don’t work anymore.

Margins to share

Retailers typically have a high markup on stuff they sell, expressed often as a margin – if a clothing outlet sells a shirt for $100 and they are buying it from their supplier at $40, then they have a 60% gross margin. That seems a lot relative to the cost of the actual goods, but then the retailer has to run premises, pay staff, deal with returns and annoying customers – all of which will eat into that margin and give them a much lower %age of profit. So far, so good.

When dealing with online transactions, especially if the delivery cost is charged additionally, the overheads will be a lot lower and therefore the margin could afford to be less – that’s why many online-only retailers can sell the same things at a lower price than you’d find in the shops. But at least in trad. retail, customers might be browsing – they could be wandering through a mall and decide to drop in to a store and end up seeing something they didn’t know they wanted. In online retail, that’s so much less likely, therefore they try to attract buyers in other ways.

Online retailers find it sometimes helps to share the margin they make; hence the deals with cashback sites or credit cards, and by issuing voucher codes to incentivise customers to buy now while the deal is there. They may also have referral codes or links that give a small discount to the end purchaser and a kickback to the referring source as well.

Influencers and other “content creators” can earn money by talking about stuff and linking to places where you can buy it, potentially earning $thousands for driving extra buyers into the waiting arms of the online sellers. Sometimes they’ll have a voucher code that gets money off (and which the retailer can track so they know how much extra business is coming from that source). Sometimes the code is built into links on the blog or website, that when you click through (and subsequently buy), will share some margin back to the referrer.

Honey: The sweetest deal?

Along with the features browsers have built-in, there are loads of addins which can be used to help the shopping experience. Honey was a pioneer, so much so that PayPal shelled out a cool $4B a few year back.

Recent investigations have shown Honey’s business model to be on thin ice, though – ostensibly telling users that they can find the best deals with Honey, while getting retailers to pay them to offer only a limited set of the deals which might otherwise exist… so instead of Honey telling you of a sweet 10% deal you could get, they might be taking 2% off the retailer and showing you a 5% code.

Addins like Honey also sometimes pay to have their offering promoted – including paying money to influencers to have the Honey extension featured. To the chagrin of some – even leading to legal action – it appears that Honey has also been rewriting the referral links from other sites too.

So, Honey pays Spongebob Influencerpants to say nice things about them and feature on his site; all Sponge’s users run off and install Honey and are happy they’re getting something for little effort.

Later, when a user clicks on a link to buy some tat in the description text of Spongy’s latest video, instead of him getting the kickback from the retailer, the Honey addin is intercepting and rewriting the URL and pocketing the referral fee for itself.

Even if you think most influencers are gopping eejits, do check out Marques Brownlee – who is one of the smartest and most balanced of the oeuvre – and see what he says about the “Honey Scam”. Unsurprisingly, he recommends uninstalling the Honey addin with all speed.

Whatever the reality of this situation is, it’s certainly not cricket.

#59: Emulation of things past

Posted on by ewand

A black box with a keyboard AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Many people of a certain age (men, mostly?) may have spent a good amount of time over the holiday season indulging in a recherche du temps perdu, harking back to their own childhood or teenage years. Late in 2024, a company called Retro Games brought out a faithful-looking £90 / $100 replica of the 1982 Sinclair ZX Spectrum.

The “Speccy” was the first home computer in the UK to really take off; worldwide and across several iterations, it went on to sell 5 million units, way before the advent of home PCs or modern gaming consoles (apart from the earlier cartridge types like the Atari 2600). More importantly, the Spectrum was hugely influential in launching careers of thousands of technologists who got their first taste of the computing world at the hands of its dead-flesh rubbery keyboard. They even made a film about it.

This new machine dubbed “The Spectrum” differs from the original in a number of key ways – powered through a USB-C port and with HDMI output to a modern display in place of the old RF out to a portable telly, and it comes with 48 built-in, licensed original Spectrum games to enjoy. But it looks and feels very similar to the original – making erstwhile fans somewhat weak at the knees.

Pump the garish, blocky colours and frankly horrific opening-screen soundtrack to Manic Miner through a big TV and you might wonder what the fuss was all about, but persevere and you might recall just how fiendishly addictive and difficult some of these games were. There’s even a “CRT mode” to make the graphics a bit more blurry for extra vintage feel.

A video game with a red background AI-generated content may be incorrect.

You can add other games via the huge archive at World Of Spectrum, by copying them to a USB stick. Thankfully, most of the programs will start in a blink of an eye rather than the several tedious minutes of loading from a finicky tape player. It’s amazing what clever programmers could do in 48K of RAM; that the image of Eugene’s Lair above is 4 times the size of the whole of the Manic Miner game.

The Spectrum starts up in a kind of home screen allowing for easy selection of what you want to run, though for true Old Skool vibes, you can revert to the original blank screen / BASIC programming UI..

A screen shot of a computer

Hardware

The original ZX Spectrum had a total of 64K of memory (16K reserved for the system, hence why 48K was available for use) and used an 8-bit Zilog Z80A processor running at 3.5MHz. The Spectrum is based around an ARM chip (isn’t everything?) and emulates the original Z80 and the custom silicon chip (the ULA) which hung it all together.

An emulator basically translates – in real time – between the environment the software thinks it should be running in, and the hardware which is actually available today. It’s not unlike reading a book in a foreign language, translating each word into English by looking it up in the dictionary then figuring out if the phrasing of the sentence needs to be rearranged… all in real time.

Emulation used to be seen as a poor way of building compatibility as it is quite expensive in compute terms, as the resulting programs will be slower than they would be otherwise. When Apple moved the Mac from its original Motorola 68000 architecture to PowerPC, a built-in emulator made sure that most old programs would still run, and even though they were slower than if they had been developed for PowerPC, the fact that the new machine was more powerful than the old, made up the difference. In this kind of instance, it is translating one radically different hardware architecture to another.

Another good example is how Microsoft allowed the Xbox One to be able to run Xbox 360 games, even though Xbox One was based on an Intel chip and Xbox 360 on PowerPC. Since the Xbox basically runs each game in a custom version of its own operating system, every “backward compatible” game needs to have a package built specifically to emulate not just the 360 hardware but the version of the OS that it would normally expect.

There are a list of Xbox 360 and even Xbox Original games (the OG ones are mostly Star Wars ones, tbf), and in some cases they have been enhanced to take advantage of later hardware; the game thinks it’s talking to an Xbox 360 and asking it to draw graphics at HD resolution, but on a Series X it could be up-frame-rated and upscaled to 4K.

A video game screen with an object and a couple of buses AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Run on your existing device

The romance of “The Spectrum” is really all in the classic package; in reality, you can run a free Spectrum emulator and all of its software on your phone, PC, Mac, build your own on a Raspberry Pi or even run in a browser.

A screenshot of a video game AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Since most of the games for early consoles and computers were either ripping off an arcade game (see Hungry Horace vs Pac-Man) or were licensed versions which were nothing like as capable, what about emulating the original arcade machines on modern hardware?

MAME

Originally “Multi-Arcade Machine Emulator”, the MAME project set out to build an emulator platform that could take on any number of arcade machines from the 1970s – 90s and maybe beyond. Since arcade games were essentially bespoke hardware in the early days, there’s a lot to do to emulate whatever processor and other chips each one might have come with, but again, modern computing is way beyond what a mid-1980s arcade machine could muster. MAME is an open-source emulator platform which aims to be able to preserve any kind of old computer and its software.

Find out more about MAME; there are even ports to run in a browser too, so you can relive the original Space Invaders in your morning coffee break.

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#58: Tales of Yuletide cheer

Posted on (Updated by ewand

A tradition of Tip o’ // of the Week at the end of each year, has been to post some completely non-tech related stuff to help transition from “work” mode into the general lethargy of the festive season. Here’s something of a greatest hits, along with some new nonsense. Top tip if you’re reading this on LinkedIn: hold the CTRL key as you click on links, to pop them into a new tab rather than lose your place on this post.

Drink!

As if the festive season doesn’t present enough opportunities to over-indulge, making some cocktails to ease into the evening can be an effective way of doing it. Clearly, drinking responsibly is to be advised or you never know where that might lead.

One of the most popular of all Tips arrived 2 years back; it was certainly the most fun to write.

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662 – How to make the perfect martini

Some of the ingredients to the ideal martini might take a bit of sourcing, so you may need to stop reading this immediately and go shopping. Recommended gins include Berry Bros no 3 or Tanqueray 10, vodka is Grey Goose or Belvedere, use Dolin for vermouth or Lillet Blanc is you’re Vesper-ing (with a few drop of Angostura bitters too).

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The two brothers who took over the Angostura bitters company decided it was time to rebrand; one designed the bottle, the other the label. They didn’t think to consult each other and the label was too big. 150 years later, it still is.

For espresso martinis, fill a cocktail shaker of glass with ice cubes and add one measure of vodka (even cheaper stuff – save the Grey Goose for better cocktails), one measure of coffee liqueur (Kahlua is OK, if a bit sweet; make your own if you have time, or Mr Black’s if you can find it). Just before serving, add the same measure again of hot, strong espresso and shake it like crazy. Pour into waiting glasses to get a nice crema. Top with a few coffee beans (three: definitely not an even number).

IMG_20230604_183317For more cocktail related fun and games, check out Richard Godwin on Substack.

Eat!

For delicious snacks to go with your cocktails above, try roasting some spiced pecans – in fact, they make a great accompaniment to a small salad with pear and blue cheese.

Spiced pecans

  • Pre-heat oven to 200C / 400F / Gas Mark 6
  • In a bowl, mix up 1.5 tsp of salt, 3 decent pinches of cayenne pepper, 3 tsp of Worcestershire [pr. Wooster] sauce and a good slug or 3 of Tabasco.
  • Add 225g of pecans and toss them well with the mixed goo.
  • Pour onto a baking tray and arrange in a single layer
  • Bake for 5 or 6 minutes, turning halfway through so they don’t get burnt on one side
  • Try to not to eat them all before they’re cooled. Put what’s left in an airtight tub and they’ll keep until the New Year (hah).

The above also works well with almonds or a mixture of the two. That way, you can save the pecans for…

Maple roasted pecans

  • Pre-heat the oven to 160C / Gas 3 / 325F
  • Mix 170g pecans with 2 tablespoons of maple syrup and 1 tsp of almond essence
  • Pour onto a tray and arrange in a single layer
  • Bake for 12 minutes, turning halfway

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Green soup

For something more healthy, perhaps a starter on a big-meal day or a quick turkey-free lunch before the port and cheese of betwixtmas, how about a simple 3-ingredient green soup from a blue-mouthed celebrity?

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658 – Sweary 3-ingredient soup

Chef Gordon Ramsay covered this simple recipe back on a show called F-Word (F for Flash…?) but the online videos showing you how to make it in 5 minutes have been taken down. He published it in the book, Gordon Ramsay Makes it Easy too. Or just follow the approach above; combine with a bit of goat’s or blue cheese for unctuousness and a couple of bits of walnut or pecan for extra texture.

Steak

The most popular (by some margin) post on an old TechNet blog called “The Electric Wand”, was how to cook a perfect fillet streak (and applies to other types too), later repurposed to the ToW hosting site – How to cook the perfect fillet steak.

In short, get the meat to room temperature, dry it with kitchen paper, apply oil and seasoning to the steak directly then cook it quicky on a searing hot pan for a short time on each side. Let it rest on a warm plate for at least as long as it cooked.

Rest

That’s it for Tip of the Week in 2024 – have a Merry / Happy whatever-you-call-it, and see you in the New Year!

#52: The Power of the Cloud

Posted on by ewand

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Being shown around a modern datacenter is a pretty awesome experience. The huge rooms full of servers, networking gear and storage can be reminiscent of that last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Dig a little deeper, though, and it’s the power systems that are truly jaw-dropping; how much power the DC uses when it’s running and what to do if the power supply goes away is a big part of building these operations.

At one point, Microsoft used huge Caterpillar diesel generators, each of which could generate several megawatts and was kept ready and waiting by continually pumping hot oil inside, so the machine could be started and running at full tilt in a fraction of a second in the event of power failure. Moves are afoot to use hydrogen fuel cells or other means of storing and generating backup power.

AI and Datacenter boom

As much traditional computing has moved into the cloud over the last decade or two, and faster and more mobile internet access drives end-user demand, datacenters have been getting bigger and more numerous. They almost can’t build them fast enough. About 1/3 of all worldwide DCs are in the US, and together they soak up about 6% of all electricity.

Datacentres worldwide used about 460 TWh of electricity in 2022; that’s 460 billion KWh, or enough to run 35 trillion lightbulbs continuously – about 4,300, 24×7, for each person on the planet. That’s quite a lot of power. Expect that amount to double by 2026. Google and Microsoft reportedly consumed 24TWh each in 2023.

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[source – Electricity 2024 – Analysis and forecast to 2026]
https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/6b2fd954-2017-408e-bf08-952fdd62118a/Electricity2024-Analysisandforecastto2026.pdf

Generative AI is VERY power hungry: estimates vary but research showed that generating one image used as much power as over 500 smartphone charges, averaging around 3KWh per image. Better make sure your ChatGPT / Copilot / Microsoft Designer usage is worthwhile and not just creating stupid images of cats and dogs.

To put the commensurate CO2 output into context, however, 1,000 of such images would be the equivalent emissions of driving a car for 4.1 miles. It’s thought that Generative AI on its own could well consume 100TWh or more by 2027.

DC providers are also looking for ways to ensure they can get enough power into the datacenter – Microsoft has even committed to restarting one of the Three Mile Island nuclear reactors and buying all of its power for 20 years. A nod to the old commitment of being carbon negative by 2030, perhaps, but the massive DC expansion to fuel demand for AI makes achieving that target seem increasingly unlikely.

Maybe new governmental administrations will incentivize clean power and reward efficiency?

Local PC power usage

There is something of a dichotomy in power usage on a local computer, especially if it’s powered from the wall rather than using a battery. You want to buy the highest performing, most feature-laden machine you can afford, so (apart from preserving battery life) why would you deliberately knobble its performance to save power? Like buying a Ferrari and driving everywhere at 20mph.

Some quick wins, especially on laptops, could be to reduce the brightness of the screen and use Dark Mode. Check the Power settings on your PC for recommendations on how to lower its energy use. Reduce the number of background apps and trim the ones which start automatically.

If you have an Intel-powered computer (PC, Mac or Linux), they have a free power usage gadget which might give you some idea about the total power consumption of your system, though doesn’t really shed much light as to what’s making it do what it’s doing…

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You could try firing up Task Manager (CTRL+SHIFT+ESC) and adding a couple of columns to its default view (right-click on the column headings); useful to know which apps or processes are causing the power usage to shoot up, but devoid of actual numbers for the more data-obsessed.

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Edge browser has an Efficiency mode – click the … settings menu in the top right and look under Browser essentials.

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If you need more data on overall system performance, try GPU-Z – it gives detailed stats on the Graphics Processing Unit and other main components of your system, including current, maximum / minimum / average power consumption …

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In the screenshot above, the Power Consumption (%) shows how much of the graphics board’s maximum power consumption is currently being used. A similar utility, CPU-Z, can give data about the TDP of the main CPU and how it’s doing too.

#48: When I’m Updatin’ Windows

Posted on (Updated by ewand

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Long-time users of Windows will doubtless be familiar with the occasional need to restart because some update or other has been sent to your machine. These days, the “your computer needs to restart” prompt normally gives you a chance to do it later, but there have been times when you literally get a few minutes’ notice to save all that important stuff you’re doing before the update/reboot cycle begins.

Particularly important updates might warn you of an impending restart and give you the chance to take the hit right away, or to wait until the middle of the night. You can set the Active Hours in Settings | Windows Update | Advanced Options and it’s possible to pause updates for up to a week if you need to do some important stuff and avoid a reboot, but the advice is generally to take them as soon as you can.

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Social media users love to share examples of prominent PCs displaying errors, or notices about needing to restart, even if they’re not all that they seem.

It’s That Tuesday

21 years ago, Microsoft started using the 2nd Tuesday of every month to push out updates, informally known as Patch Tuesday. They have flip-flopped to some degree over whether these updates will be security/reliability only, or if unsuspecting users will get new features and changes. Big periodic rollups – the modern-day equivalent of the Service Pack – tend to contain loads of fixes along with some changes in the way Windows (and some of the standard apps) works.

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If you’re looking at someone’s desktop in person or on a Teams/Zoom call in the coming weeks, and see that little double-arrow update icon on their system tray (though maybe they’ve hidden it), it could be that their poor PC has been waiting to restart for ages. That might tell you something about their standards of hygiene and organisation.

If you’re seeing the update symbol on your own taskbar, going into Settings | Windows Update will tell you what needs your machine to restart, and you could determine if it really needs to happen right now or if it could wait until a bit later.

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Search online for the KB number to find out more about what a particular update does. The Knowledge Base has been around for decades; delve into the archives and there are some crackers, like the one-time warning that Barney (remember him?) might self-engage.

In October 2024’s Patch Tuesday, the latest big package of updates to Windows 11 was pushed out – taking the platform to version 24H2 – ushering in a bunch of changes and improvements. To find out more about what’s new, see https://aka.ms/windows/insidethisupdate.

To see what specific version of Windows you’re running, press WindowsKey+R and enter winver. Some earlier versions of Windows 11 – 22H2 – have reached “end of service” so won’t be updated anymore; you’d need to upgrade to 24H2 to continue getting any updates and fixes.

If you’re still on Windows 10, the clock is ticking – it’s due to go out of support in a year’s time, meaning it’s worth either upgrading to Windows 11 (or getting a new PC which already has Windows 11 installed). Some of the hardware requirements of Windows 11 – especially around security hardware – left plenty of users grumbling as some recently bought (even high end) PCs didn’t cut the mustard. Even Microsoft’s own Surface line had some notably glaring exceptions on the compatibility list – the previous flagship $4,000+ Surface Studio is not Win11 compatible, having been launched 5 years before Windows 11.

If you have an otherwise perfectly usable Windows 10 computer which is being blocked from upgrading to Win11 on hardware compatibility grounds, there are unsanctioned workarounds that might allow you to install and happily run the latest version.

Just be careful…

#38: Get ahead: get a proper monitor

Posted on (Updated by ewand

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As WFH became normalised during the pandemic, a lot of people went from having access to a reasonable working environment in an office, to sitting on the sofa or camping on a kitchen table. A trend of working from a laptop in coffee shops had already been underway and got additional legitimacy when things opened up again.

For the lucky ones with space at home, the increasing trend for WF there sometimes means they have a better environment than in the office – no desk sharing, putting up with co-workers’ smelly/noisy/annoying habits, perhaps even a faster internet connection. This doubtless contributes to the reported reluctance to return to the rat-race in the office.

Make the most of your screen

One huge downside of working off a laptop is that the screen – even for the biggest ones – is small.

There’s little doubt that productivity gains can be had by having larger monitors or more of them. Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch from gave a seminal talk on time management in 2007 – prescient, since he was dying of pancreatic cancer at the time and had only months left to live (his Last Lecture is also worth watching). In that session, he advised that maximizing screen real estate is one of the best things you can do.

The simplest way to improve screen area for a home office desk is to buy a decent monitor. Find one with adjustable height (so you can be looking straight at it, not down at a laptop screen) and position the laptop in front of you, below the monitor.

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Extend the desktop to the big screen and make that your main display (so new windows, the task bar, Start menu etc will appear there rather than on your laptop).

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Side-to-side

It’d be even better if you can use a proper keyboard and mouse, maybe with a suitable docking station, then park the laptop to the side. Ideally you should prop it up so that its display and your monitor are similar in height – there are plenty laptops stands available, or you could even just put it on a pile of books…

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Big screen x little screens

If you’ve had a home office setup for a while, it’s possible you’ll have one or two old monitors that won’t be worth much at resale so you could always bring them into action in a true “multi-monitor” setup (without delving into additional hardware to allow more, Windows 11 supports up to 6 displays).

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Then again, a single large monitor might be a bit more feng shui, and there are plenty of good displays out there. A single, widescreen, curved monitor could give you the same kind of functionality as having two side-by regular widescreen ones, with less cabling and fuss.

Modern displays often have USB hubs and lots of other features such as display modes where two inputs are shown side-by-side (so you have two different PCs on display, or a PC on one side and an Xbox on the other half, or take two inputs from one PC into one physical screen – the computer would see it as two side-by-side monitors, which might have benefits when it comes to app layouts).

Managing the placement of windows is a lot easier with the groovy window snapping stuff introduced in Windows 11 (hover over the maximize icon on the top right of your window, and you’ll see options for where to snap it onto the screen… it’s more than just left/right since if you have a mahoosive screen, you’ll likely have several windows side-by-side). If you need more control, or you’re running Windows 10, try the Fancy Zones utility as part of PowerToys.

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Dell Ultrasharp and Display Manager

Dell have long made some of the best PC monitors; particularly their more expensive Ultrasharp range. If you’re shopping for a new screen, there are various ways to save money too – they have a Dell Advantage program where you can get specific vouchers (eg Microsoft employees can get theirs by entering their work email here), and they have an Outlet store for refurbished goods.

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If you have a Dell monitor already, there’s an app for Windows and Mac which could make your life a little better, especially if you routinely switch between inputs / PiP modes etc – the Dell Display Manager. Connect your PC and the monitor with a USB cable, and you can use the software on the PC to control how the monitor works, rather than monkeying around trying to press tiny buttons to drive the On-Screen Display menu. You can even set up shortcut keys to make it easier to dive in.

Tidy.