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ThrowawayB7 commented on Windows 11 is a minefield of micro-aggressions in the shipping lane of progress   theregister.com/2025/07/2... · Posted by u/beardyw
zamadatix · a month ago
The last I looked into this these were the conclusions I reached (depending on individual situation):

- If you're looking to do this 100% to the letter, then you'll need to enter some form of VL agreement with an authorized reseller. This will come with a minimum purchase of 5 licenses.

- If you're looking to do this with a "real" key, but not by the book, then one of the gray market sites.

- If you're looking to do this morally (by paying Microsoft), but don't care if the actual activation is completed with the license you purchase, then purchase a Windows 11 Pro license but use https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts/ to activate your Windows 11 LTSC. The ISO itself can still be sourced from Microsoft.

- If you don't care about any of this, then the same as the above except don't buy the Windows 11 Pro License

- If you absolutely want to buy a single license "by the book"... there is no official offering available.

ThrowawayB7 · a month ago
If you're looking to do this by paying Microsoft, I think(?) an MSDN subscription still includes access to various Windows editions. What you probably want is Windows 11 Enterprise edition, meant for large corporate deployments, but not LTSC. The last I recall, the Windows license keys don't expire even if you let the subscription lapse.
ThrowawayB7 commented on I've Had It with Microsoft   disconnect.blog/p/ive-had... · Posted by u/speckx
AdamH12113 · a month ago
The real money-grab was turning Microsoft Office into a subscription service in the first place. SaaS is a cancer on personal computing.
ThrowawayB7 · a month ago
People can still buy non-subscription versions of Office if they want. MS doesn't really advertise their existence but they're happy to take your money for MS Office 2024 if you insist.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/office-home-...

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/office-home-...

ThrowawayB7 commented on Microsoft: Recommitting to our why, what, and how   blogs.microsoft.com/blog/... · Posted by u/Buildstarted
ThrowawayB7 · a month ago
> "Security and quality are non-negotiable."

Must be really getting out of hand if he's mentioning it as a higher priority than even his AI blitz. Well, bless Satya's heart. Somebody should clue him in that not dismantling the QA orgs would have helped with security and quality. Just sayin'.

ThrowawayB7 commented on Matterport walkthrough of the original Microsoft Building 3   my.matterport.com/show/?m... · Posted by u/uticus
abeyer · a month ago
The blog post is right that the double x-wings were the worst. I _never_ got the hang of 9 the whole time I sat there.
ThrowawayB7 · a month ago
Another exasperating thing is that the signs on the wall that were supposed to provide directions by listing which office number range was down which direction were somehow of no help whatsoever. I'd be looking for office number xxx or whatever and following the signs and somehow they'd never take me to the right hallway. People can smirk and say "skill issue" if they want but I swear it's true. Judging by the number of other people who had problems navigating those buildings, I wasn't alone.
ThrowawayB7 commented on Matterport walkthrough of the original Microsoft Building 3   my.matterport.com/show/?m... · Posted by u/uticus
ThrowawayB7 · a month ago
That brings back memories. Seeing that all too familiar office layout, furniture, scribbled notes on whiteboards, and whatnot somehow evokes both homesickness and PTSD at the same time.

The offices were nice though. Back in the early days, it didn't take that much seniority to get a single person office and a little more to get an office with a window.

ThrowawayB7 commented on The Broken Microsoft Pact: Layoffs and Performance Management   danielsada.tech/blog/micr... · Posted by u/dshacker
Arainach · 2 months ago
>almost 8k people were gone back in 2015

That wasn't a traditional layoff - it was a reimagining of the development process and the elimination of SDET which was overwhelmingly a good thing - I also joined in 2009, and SDET was an utter disaster. All the good SDETs got out of that job - either to SDE at Microsoft or to SDE at another company. Those that were left were largely a waste of money, and the entire culture of "this person writes the code, this person writes the tests" meant that a lot of devs got high recognition and rewards for writing untestable unmaintainable garbage that someone else had to try to cover.

ThrowawayB7 · 2 months ago
Meanwhile, outside of the Redmond bubble, people keep hitting bugs in MS products that never would have gotten past the STEs and SDETs back in the day. Microsoft was forced to build its QA discipline in the '90s and early '00s because they were being torn to shreds by the press and public for the legendary bugginess of their products. Now we're seeing that bugginess creep back in thanks to Nadella.

Whenever it comes up among my co-workers as a Microsoft product falls on its face yet again, most recently MS Project Online screwing up something as simple as completion percentages during a meeting, I just sigh and quip "Maybe Microsoft ought to consider hiring a QA department."

ThrowawayB7 commented on The Broken Microsoft Pact: Layoffs and Performance Management   danielsada.tech/blog/micr... · Posted by u/dshacker
ThrowawayB7 · 2 months ago
This overlooks the 2009 and 2014 layoffs and the notorious Mini-Microsoft blog, still up over 15 years later(!), where they were discussed. The notion of a "Microsoft Pact" is absolute baloney but, had there been one, it was broken back then, not anytime recent.
ThrowawayB7 commented on Google is building its own DeX: First look at Android's Desktop Mode   androidauthority.com/andr... · Posted by u/logic_node
runjake · 4 months ago
I'm not aware of any Windows Phone implementation like this that existed commercially. Can you point me to it?

The first modern thing like this that I can recall is the 2011 Android-based Motorola Atrix phone[1] that presented a DeX-like desktop (well before DeX!).

It used an Ubuntu-based desktop. It was really, really good, but never got traction.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Atrix_4G

ThrowawayB7 · 4 months ago
The HP Elite x3 had it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_Elite_x3 . The phone came with a docking cradle with desktop ports.
ThrowawayB7 commented on Ask HN: Is Windows ever going to suck less?    · Posted by u/CppPro
ThrowawayB7 · 4 months ago
Windows will happily do whatever you want as long as you pay for the right edition.
ThrowawayB7 commented on Googler... ex-Googler   nerdy.dev/ex-googler... · Posted by u/namukang
swiftcoder · 5 months ago
> Google is just really bad at this, but seems to think it's not bad at this

The BigTech firms have been doing this intentionally for a very long time. I started hearing about Microsoft doing the security-escorts-you-straight-out-the-door all the way back in 2012.

It's not that they are bad at this, it's that they think the trade-off works out in their favour. And it probably does - what's a few but-hurt former employees, versus one disgruntled former employee who had enough warning to snag critical data on their way out the door?

Though it's probably our fault, since we're all so trusting of our mega corp employers, and/or so optimistic about our chances of surviving layoffs, that no one is stashing the incriminating data ahead of time.

ThrowawayB7 · 5 months ago
> "I started hearing about Microsoft doing the security-escorts-you-straight-out-the-door all the way back in 2012."

Are you sure about that? Microsoft's 2014 layoffs, which were large enough to be reported in the tech press, let employees keep network and building access until the actual layoff date.

u/ThrowawayB7

KarmaCake day320December 11, 2018
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