Thursday, November 15
Daily News Stuff 15 November 2018
Quick one today, as the time I usually spend on this got eaten up fighting back the horde of rampaging web spiders.
Quick one today, as the time I usually spend on this got eaten up fighting back the horde of rampaging web spiders.
Tech News
- Windows 10 October 2018 update is out. Again. (AnandTech)
This version does not conjure quantum black holes indiscriminately into being, nor does it summon 5d6 small venomous snakes that immediately attack the user and his or her allies.
Really.
- Amazon's Corrretto is OpenJDK LTS because fuck Oracle.
- Gravity is caused by sharks with laser beams. (Quanta)
I think. I admit to having only skimmed the article. There might be some nuance to it.
- One in five sites infected by the Magecart malware (such as, oh, Infowars yesterday) promptly gets reinfected after being fixed. (ZDNet)
This is a painful problem; once hackers have burrowed their way in, it can be very hard to shut them out for good. The solution is to not collect credit card information. Just don't.
- That rogue interstellar probe seems to have disappeared. (Ars Technica)
Social Media News
- Noted satirical site complains that PayPal unfairly banned violent far-left groups along with violent far-right groups. (The Guardian)
Video of the Day
This is why airlines keep plane cabins cooled to below 30C.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
07:50 PM
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1
The first issue that caused MS to pull the update was a nasty one, but it only affected a few people--and it was one of those things that would not happen normally, as it involves an action a user had to take manually, and it wasn't something you'd do at random, as it involves moving what are known as "known folders" like My Documents. Not exactly people's fault it happened, as there's rare-but-good reasons to do so, but it wouldn't affect the vast majority of people. (I only know one person who ever used Known Folder Redirection, and it was because he had a tiny primary hard drive on his corporate laptop for some reason--most of his folders were redirected either to a second drive or to a network share, I forget which.) It's good that MS pulled the update and fixed it, but it feels like the issue was blown all out of proportion. The odds it would happen to you were infinitesimal.
Posted by: Rick C at Friday, November 16 2018 02:39 AM (Q/JG2)
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If I'd known about Known Folder Redirection, I'd have used it on my gaming PC to get that stuff off of the SSD and onto the Big Slow Disk. "Small fast disk and large slow disk" is a pretty common configuration these days.
Wouldn't matter now, since I replaced both of them with bigger SSDs a while back, but I likely wouldn't have remembered to switch it back off afterwards.
-j
Wouldn't matter now, since I replaced both of them with bigger SSDs a while back, but I likely wouldn't have remembered to switch it back off afterwards.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at Friday, November 16 2018 05:30 AM (LGSd2)
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I use folder redirection. 
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, November 16 2018 08:54 AM (PiXy!)
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Pixy, you're hardly a typical user. (Personally, I've known about KFR for a couple of years but don't find it useful for me, so never looked at how to set it up.)
But it's not just using it that makes you vulnerable to the bug--you have to, apparently have left some files behind in the original location, so that some of your files are in the original c:\users\pixy\documents (or whatever) and some are in the redirected d:\documents. If I understand correctly--and I'm not sure I do, only the left-behind files could be deleted. And there may be an interaction with OneDrive as well necessary. I can no longer find the links that at the time described the problem in detail. So first, if you didn't get the 1809 update the first time, you're safe now, because supposedly the problem's fixed, but second, if you didn't have left-behind files after enabling KFR, you'd be safe, too, as I understand it, and third (if I'm remembering that last part correctly) if you weren't using OneDrive to sync a redirected file, you'd still be safe.
But it's not just using it that makes you vulnerable to the bug--you have to, apparently have left some files behind in the original location, so that some of your files are in the original c:\users\pixy\documents (or whatever) and some are in the redirected d:\documents. If I understand correctly--and I'm not sure I do, only the left-behind files could be deleted. And there may be an interaction with OneDrive as well necessary. I can no longer find the links that at the time described the problem in detail. So first, if you didn't get the 1809 update the first time, you're safe now, because supposedly the problem's fixed, but second, if you didn't have left-behind files after enabling KFR, you'd be safe, too, as I understand it, and third (if I'm remembering that last part correctly) if you weren't using OneDrive to sync a redirected file, you'd still be safe.
Posted by: Rick C at Friday, November 16 2018 10:25 AM (Iwkd4)
5
"It's good that MS pulled the update and fixed it, but it feels like the
issue was blown all out of proportion. The odds it would happen to you
were infinitesimal.
"
About this--yeah, it would really suck to be bit by this bug, especially if you had no backup. But the thing is, probably 99.999% of users would never be susceptible to the bug, which is why I said "blown out of proportion." Pixy, you're only the second person I've ever known who uses KFR.
About this--yeah, it would really suck to be bit by this bug, especially if you had no backup. But the thing is, probably 99.999% of users would never be susceptible to the bug, which is why I said "blown out of proportion." Pixy, you're only the second person I've ever known who uses KFR.
Posted by: Rick C at Friday, November 16 2018 10:27 AM (Iwkd4)
6
Yeah, if you follow the typical process, all your files get moved to the new location if you redirect a Known Folder, so this wouldn't happen to you. (And like you I seem to recall OneDrive being a component as well.)
But Rule 1 is Don't lose user data so they really did have to pull the update and fix it and test the fix.
But Rule 1 is Don't lose user data so they really did have to pull the update and fix it and test the fix.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, November 16 2018 11:24 AM (PiXy!)
7
I just wish there were an easier way of killing off "Libraries". Like we need a part of the file system that is slower, and can put duplicate files in the same level, and not let you do anything with them half the time. (Also annoying is how frequently used folders always jump to the library version of them (Like my Memes folder in my Pictures folder). And how some apps like to make the libraries their default folder for saving, instead of the actual folder you're saving to...)
Posted by: Mauser at Friday, November 16 2018 02:28 PM (Ix1l6)
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1. I completely agree the update needed to be pulled. I'm just saying the hysterical reaction in the press probably made a lot of people think it could happen to them, when it couldn't.
B. Libraries have apparently been unofficially deprecated; for some time now--I don't know how long exactly--they've been hidden by default in Explorer. (Note, tho, they're not a new concept. VMS had the ability to join multiple physical directories into a single virtual one decades ago.)
Γ. That RX 590 looks nice, but I already bought 6GB 1060 this summer to replace my 950, and my son's got a top-end XFX 480 that overclocks to IIRC 1590MHz so it looks like there's probably not a lot of value in him upgrading.
Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, November 17 2018 12:50 AM (Q/JG2)
Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, November 17 2018 12:52 AM (Q/JG2)
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