Microsoft won't let you dismiss the upgrade notification

So support for Windows 10 has ended. Yes, millions of users are still on it. One of my main laptops runs Windows 10. I can't update to Windows 11 because of the hardware requirements. It's not that I don't have enough RAM, storage, or CPU power. The hardware limitation is specifically TPM 2.0.

What is TPM 2.0, you say? It stands for Trusted Platform Module. It's basically a security chip on the motherboard that enables some security features. It's good and all, but Windows says my laptop doesn't support it. Great! Now leave me alone.

Well, every time I turn on my computer, I get a reminder that I need to update to Windows 11. OK, at this point a Windows machine only belongs to you in name. Microsoft can run arbitrary code on it. They already ran the code to decide that my computer doesn't support Windows 11. So why do they keep bothering me?

Fine, I'm frustrated. That's why I'm complaining. I've accepted the fact that my powerful, yet 10-year-old laptop won't get the latest update. But if Microsoft's own systems have determined my hardware is incompatible, why are they harassing? I'll just have to dismiss this notification and call it a day.

But wait a minute. How do I dismiss it?

I cannot dismiss it. I can only be reminded later or... I have to learn more. If I click "remind me later," I'm basically telling Microsoft that I consent to being shown the same message again whenever they feel like it. If I click "learn more"? I'm taken to the Windows Store, where I'm shown ads for different laptops I can buy instead. Apparently, I'm also probably giving them consent to show me this ad the next time I log in.

It's one thing to be at the forefront of enshittification, but Microsoft is now actively hostile to its users. I've written about this passive-aggressive illusion of choice before. They are basically asking "Do you want to buy a new laptop?" And the options they are presenting are "Yes" and "OK."

This isn't a bug. This is intentional design. Microsoft has deliberately removed the ability to decline.

Dear Microsoft

Listen. You said my device doesn't support Windows 11. You're right. Now leave me alone. I have another device running Windows 11. It's festered with ads, and you're trying everything in your power to get me to create a Microsoft account.

I paid for that computer. I also paid for a pro version of the OS. I don't want OneDrive. I don't want to sign up with my Microsoft account. Whether I use my computer online or offline is none of your business. In fact, if you want me to create an account on your servers, you are first required to register your OS on my own website. The terms and conditions are simple. Every time you perform any network access, you have to send a copy of the payload and response back to my server. Either that, or you're in breach of my terms.

Notes:

By the way, the application showing this notification is called Reusable UX Interaction Manager sometimes. Other times it appears as Campaign Manager.

It's the holiday season. My kids are doing all sorts of projects at school, this means we are doing a whole lot of printing. So I went online to look for the ink cartridge for our printer. I typed the printer name and model because who knows the ink cartridge number? I found our printer. And to my surprise, the printer only costs $64.

What a time to be alive. I grew up in the 90s, those are not the numbers my father dealt with when we wasted paper on his printer. Buying a printer was a privilege. We dressed up nice, went to the computer store where we met with a salesperson who led us to an office where grown ups negotiated.

Now, it's only $64.99 and you can complete the transaction from the comfort of your phone. That's Printer + Ink, mind you. What an amazing deal. But what if you already have a printer and only want to replenish your ink? How much does that cost? For the compatible ink cartridges, you'll pay $81.99. Just for ink.

The ink itself is more expensive than ink + printer.

OK, to be fair, the printer I took a screenshot of is on sale. The price was $64.99 until the sale was scheduled to end on Dec 6th. Then the price goes back up to $107. So this whole thing is just sensational writing to make Canon look bad, and to farm for engagement, right? Well, I waited until Dec 6th and checked again. Guess what? The printer is on sale again, with a new end sale date!

I checked Amazon, Walmart, and Newegg. This printer is always on sale.

So there you go. Don't buy ink again. If you want to save $17, toss that one month old printer in the trash whenever you run low on ink. Buy a brand new one with fresh ink cartridges.

I was in the elevator when an older couple got in, patiently waiting to get to their stop. I smiled, they smiled back, and I pressed the button for the ground floor, just because. All three of us were going down.

I had my back to them when I heard the lady say, "I think he will know." I turned to see if they were talking to me, since it was just us. She stepped forward, put on her glasses, then rummaged through her purse to get her phone out. Before I could say a word, she handed it to me and asked, "How can I find all the pictures I have taken?"

"Oh boy, here we go again", the husband said. "Hush!" She replied to her husband, while she took the phone from me, pressed the button to turn it on, and then placed it back in my hands.

While this may look unusual, I'm completely accustomed to turning into tech support at a moment's notice. When you take pictures on your phone through the camera app, a small preview appears on the bottom. When you click on those pictures, you can view them. The problem was that you can only view the pictures you just took. This is a security measure since the camera app can be activated without entering your pin.

"She wanted a brand new phone." The husband said. "Like you don't have a brand new phone," she answered. We exited the elevator, the phone still in my hand. Every word the man said was contradicted by his wife, and every question she asked was ridiculed by the husband. But they were laughing all the way. So I told them:

"I can show you how, but I have one condition." The husband pulled his glasses from his front pocket, ready for what was coming. I could almost picture him pulling out a checkbook, ready to pay whatever price I named. "First, you have to tell me the secret to your successful marriage."

"This old lady?" the man said. "I barely met her 50 years ago." The lady laughed, then added, "We are always fighting about things we agree on."

---

That was probably 10 years ago, but I can't forget these words. I was sitting down, observing people from my community, shouting, laughing, taunting each other. When you listen to their conversations, it is full of contradictions, but they are laughing nevertheless. I see the same thing online: people bickering about semantics. An outsider might sense some hostility. But an insider will keep coming back to these discussions, because that's what a community is. Fighting about things you already agree on.

“Hey, what’s the name of that website?”

That was the question my brother asked me. I didn't need any clarification, I knew exactly what he meant. When people come home eager to watch a tv show, they sit in front of the TV scrolling through search results. Then, their phone comes out of their pocket. They search again. They check their subscriptions. Is it on Prime? Ok, maybe available as a rental?

Then you see it. That defeated look on their face as they turn to you and ask:

“Hey, what’s the name of that website?”

I’ve written before about the degraded state of streaming. We went from the convenience of DVDs to the hyper-convenience of early streaming. Now, we’re right back where we started, trapped in a fractured ecosystem of dozens of services. Oh, and a higher monthly fee. The circle is complete.

Piracy is back.

What are my options here?

Inside the "Remind me again in" label are the following options:

• 1 Week
• 30 days

And when I select one option, what does "No thanks" do? Does it dismiss the box entirely and I never have to see it? Or does it validate the reminder schedule? What if I just don't want OneDrive? Microsoft has embedded it so deep into Windows that there are no easy ways of getting rid of it. I would understand if they had asked me when I set up my machine the first time, but why every single time?

This is the illusion of choice. It is "Get it now" or "Get it later". What I'm looking for is the "Get it never option!"

Dark patterns at their finest.

August and September. Google unveiled the Pixel 10 in August. Now it's September, it is Apple’s turn with the iPhone 17.

These are not commercials. These are productions. Hollywood gloss, cinematic light.

Jimmy Fallon laughing on cue. Job titles growing longer by the year. Influencers, celebrities, and everywhere you look: Gemini, Gemini, Gemini.

Then Tim Cook, measured, polished. Apple the first, Apple the next. Don’t bother with Netflix & Chill. Just tune in to the event with your date. Apple Intelligence, still missing in action.

But then, the phone is in your hand. You set it up. You sign in. The apps and data return like old furniture. You try the new camera. Three test shots of your living room.

Right then, a notification blinks. Framed by the beautiful liquid glass is a newsletter you never unsubscribed from. Your friend’s. It's been years, and they aren't giving up on their recipe website despite Google now conveniently framing it behind AI overview.

August is September. You are where you began.

On September 8th, 18 npm packages were compromised with malicious code. These packages are very popular. They receive an average of 2 billion downloads every week. If you are not sure whether you are affected, you can run this grep command on your repository to search for the malicious code:

grep -r _0x112fa8 .

If it returns any results, you are in trouble. It's already concerning that this hack was only possible through social engineering, but it targeted the type of person who would be the most vigilant. This is to say, if maintainers of extremely popular npm packages can fall for phishing, you need to exercise extreme vigilance.

But there is also another issue going unnoticed: 2 billion downloads a week. Whenever we run our pipelines, we run npm i or npm ci. This is common practice, and it is also how we end up with compromised code, or broken builds when we know that our pre-build code is safe. Before we build our code, we download all packages from the internet. We place our trust in the package manager and hope for the best. But why do we need to redownload code every single time?

Close to a decade ago, the programmer who published the left-pad library on NPM decided to delete his code. This was a trivial library that solved a trivial problem. But since thousands of other repositories depended on it, the deletion broke the build process of thousands of other projects. A large part of the tech industry ground to a halt as NPM scrambled to revive the package. None of these projects were downloading left-pad for the first time, why didn't they just cache it?

Why don't we all cache it? Why do we redownload the same packages over and over several times a day with the potential of injecting security vulnerabilities? Why do these packages need to be downloaded 2 billion times a week, when they change only a handful of times? Do we even need the latest versions without vetting them first?

Maybe it is time to revisit this practice. We need to download packages once and reuse them until we manually update them. This is not an unavoidable problem. We can resolve it. There is no need for packages to be downloaded 2 billion times in one week, thrown away, then redownloaded again. It's a waste of bandwidth and a point of entry for security vulnerabilities.

Update: And exactly a week later, there is a new attack on 40 NPM packages.

Aye, gather ‘round the fire, lads an’ lasses, an’ I’ll tell ye of the True AI Scotsman. A myth as grand as the Highlands themselves, yet as slippery as an eel in Loch Ness.

He stands tall. Och, taller than Ben Nevis, his jaw chiseled by the gods o’ Silicon, his hands strong as tempered steel, yet gentle as a lamb when promptin’ just so. His eyes gleam with the cold fire o’ perfect logic, an’ his voice? Aye, ’tis smoother than aged whisky, never stutterin’, never doubtin’, never wrong.

They say he walks the moors at dawn, his code flawless, his reasoning pure. No hallucination dare cross his path, no bias stains his noble heart. He kens every query before it’s asked, an’ answers in verses as clear as a bell.

But here’s the rub, ye see... ye’ll never meet him.

Every time ye think ye’ve glimpsed him, when the chatbot strings a fine reply, when the image generator paints a bonnie scene, the elders o’ tech shake their heads. "Nay, laddie, that’s no’ the real AI Scotsman! He’s grander still! More powerful! Just wait for the next model!"

An’ so the legend grows, shiftin’ like mist on the glen. The True AI Scotsman is always just beyond the next upgrade, the next paradigm, the next moonshot from the wizards o’ Mountain View.

An’ if ye dare say, "But this one failed me!" Why, they’ll clap ye on the back an’ sigh, "Ach, ye just havena met the true one yet."

So raise a glass, friends. To the finest myth ever sold. May he forever remain just out o’ reach.

Slàinte mhath! 🥃

In today's social media-saturated world, does it feel like your memory is failing you? It's not that you can't remember anything, but rather that you're constantly distracted while trying to remember.

Just a few years ago, I had a nightly ritual. Before drifting off to sleep, I'd mentally replay my entire day, trying to recall every single detail. As a single person with no kids at the time, this luxury of free time allowed me to meticulously reconstruct most of my day. I'd remember the specific order of my morning routine, the unexpected comment from a colleague, or even the color of the car that cut me off on the way home.

Fast forward a few years, and when I tried this exercise again, I was often asleep before I could even recall what I had for breakfast! But giving up isn't an option. I've committed to doing this every evening, and you'd be surprised how quickly the faces of complete strangers or forgotten details begin to materialize in your thoughts. This simple act forces my brain to exercise forgotten pathways, much like when I was younger. The mind is a beautiful thing, and I'm sure this exercise has a scientific name. Maybe cognitive recall?

For me, the benefits are profound. This practice helps me focus in an age of constant distraction. It helps me remember things people said to me, preventing those "what was that important detail?" moments. It even helps me recall promises I made and then forgot about. It's all there, stored within our brains, if we just give ourselves the time and quiet space to access it. This nightly mental workout helps keep the distracted mind at bay, allowing for deeper engagement with my own thoughts and experiences.

Here is how I do it, perhaps you can try as well:

• Start with the first thing you remember when you wake up. Did you check the time? Was it your alarm that rang?
• Which side of the bed did you get up from?
• Where was your tooth brush when you got to the bathroom?
• What was the notification on your phone?
• Who did you speak to first? What did you say?

If your brain was mushed like mine, every step of the way it tried to distract me. But I remain persistent and try to recall as much as possible. Our brain rarely gets the time to think without us bombarding it with media. This is a moment for it to shine and explore itself. Let me know how it goes for you.

I'm doing my best to embrace vibe coding, but here's where I draw the line.

Picture this scenario: You receive a PR to review. You look at the code and don't understand what it does. You ask the developer who wrote it, let's call him the "viber". You ask the viber to explain his changes. His response? Can't tell you what the code does either.

Sure, we might agree on the high-level goal: "this PR will fix bug X." That's a start. But here's the problem: both you as the reviewer and the viber now have to reverse-engineer the solution together. You're both staring at code trying to figure out not just whether it works, but what it's actually supposed to do.

This breaks down for a simple reason: if you're pushing a large PR that you can't fully explain, you won't be able to help anyone else understand it either. When bugs inevitably surface, when edge cases emerge, or when someone needs to modify this code six months from now, the viber becomes a bottleneck they can't even unclog themselves.

Vibe coding has its place: rapid prototyping, creative exploration, getting unstuck when overthinking blocks progress. But the moment you ask someone else to review, approve, and maintain your code, you cross from personal experimentation into collaborative responsibility. At that point, being able to articulate what your code does isn't just helpful—it's essential.

The line between creative coding and professional responsibility runs right through the PR process. Thread softly.