MystikIncarnate

I was diagnosed with ADHD a few years back... Just shortly before I turned 40.

I'm lucky that seems to be the only thing my brain struggles with. After about a year and a half, I found a combination of drugs that works for me, and I've been doing ok, as far as my ability to think, concentrate, or focus at work goes....

I'm in Canada, so we have similar issues with our social support programs. I know this because, while I got off light in my diagnosis, my brother has far more severe ADHD symptoms, and he has other medical complications that make treatments difficult at best. I won't go into his medical issues since that's not my story to tell, but from a high level, most of the problems root in the fact that he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in his mid-teens.....

He's actually registered in the disability system and I've helped, or at least tried to help him navigate it and get to a point where he can do anything and get any support at all. Needless to say, I get it. Our system isn't super different from the UK system. Personally I think it's shameful that we give such a hard time to people with diagnosed disabilities, it's not like those disabilities are going to... Idk, stop being a thing? It's kind of a life long problem.

I'm lucky in the fact that if I continue taking the meds, I'm more or less "normal". I have a steady job and I help my brother as I am able.

None of this is to detract, compare or "one-up" your challenges. The purpose to saying all of this is that I get it, I emphasize with your situation. I hope you are doing better and that the UK disability system stops fucking up your coverage so you can get back to living your life.

All the best, from across the ocean.

I'm an "elder" millennial.... I'm 40+.

Pretty much everything went to shit right after I got to the workforce. It was somewhat subtle at first, but it's only gotten far worse and far more obvious as time has gone on.

Kids? Nah bro. Have you seen the world? I don't want to live here, why would I subject someone that I care about to a life, living in this hellscape? Like all parents, I'm sure I would love my children if they existed and even though they don't exist, I still love them enough to not subject them to gestures at everything this.

I haven't gotten a meaningful raise since starting work. I was originally hired at basically minimum wage, a bit better than it in my area (ironically, my starting wage in my career is now below what minimum is now), and the only time I went up in salary is when I changed jobs.

With more than half a dozen years of experience (this is a while back) I was fighting for anything over $60k/yr (it gets worse), while housing in my area was skyrocketing above $400k for a modest home....

After the usual expenses of food and rent, I've been robbed blind by being given no choice but to buy things "as a service" and own fucking nothing. I've pushed back against it as much as possible and after years, I paid off my vehicle and absolutely, positively, 100% own this now 13 year-old car. Whoopee....

I've lived through everything from 9/11, to Trump... Twice.... And nothing has ever quantifiably gotten "better" without getting worse in some other way.

Better, faster, more capable computers? You're obligated to run software that spies on you. Better cars with fancy tech that makes them basically drive themselves? Only if you subscribe to activate the seat warmers for a nominal yearly fee.... Phones are more capable, better, faster, more connected and overall significantly improved? These are now devices used by companies to harvest every meaningful ounce of information from you, selling it to the highest bidders (multiple times, I might add), and giving you nothing for your contribution. Congratulations, someone has monetized your existence via an app on your phone.

Everything is worse. You never have time off work anymore. Even if you take vacation, the expectation is that if they call you, you'll answer, then you're working for free. But if you don't answer, then your job is at risk.

Fuck everything. This world sucks. I'm fucking sick of all of this shit and I'm mad as hell about it.

Dunno why it's even rated M. Seems high for what it is

.... But why?

I would pivot to W10 LTSC to avoid Windows 11.... So why would I move to the LTSC version of the OS I'm trying to avoid?

Makes zero sense.

While I get why they want to do all online accounts, no. Just no.

Ironically, for business users, online accounts are basically the way the industry is moving. Some integration with Azure active directory (now known as "Entra ID" - a useless rebranding of the exact same product), you can connect systems using someone's email, and it can tightly integrate with your work email account on Microsoft 365, and everything just kind of fits together.

This prevents admins from having to go and do prep/setup on each system and/or maintain a library of system images with all the standard settings for the organization, since connecting with AAD/Entra can also enroll the device into Intune and those policies are just as powerful, if not more powerful than what you can do with images and prep; just now is entirely automatic.

For home users, it's less about the convenience of system management and more data harvesting of their clients. The irony is that a lot of the business versions still have an option to bypass the online account (usually by selecting an option that you will be joining a classic domain).

So business has the option and largely, business is moving away from it, and home users don't, but that's something that a large number of home users want.

The only thought I have on it is that: bitlocker is enabled by default on many newer versions of Windows, by signing in with your M$ account to the PC, those bitlocker keys are backed up. If you don't use an online account, it's up to you to back then up, and users either don't do that, or do it in such a way that it's ineffective, like saving the recovery key to the very drive that needs that key to unlock it in the event of a problem.

I've seen more than one person fall victim to their own lack of knowledge and understanding when bitlocker is enabled, and Windows update screws their boot sequence to the point where they need to do a recovery, which requires the recovery key, which they do not have. It basically makes all of their data inaccessible, and gigabytes of data, just from the people I've known affected by this, has already been lost as a result.

I hear what you're saying, but, there have been some pretty significant improvements to Windows, generation after generation.

Windows 10 finally seemed like they were on the right (and hopefully final) track with the direction of the operating system. Probably the last big improvement was to bring basically everyone to 64 bit.

XP moved us from the 9x kernel to the NT kernel that's used in Windows today. Vista introduced security features and driver updates that help to keep systems free from many common root kits. 7 brought in a very standard UI, that would be the basis for things going forward, 8/8.1 existed..... Then 10 basically uplifted everyone to 64 bit as a default.

Of course this is far from a complete list.

What did W11 add that we didn't have before? A TPM requirement? Ads? AI slop/shovelware/spyware?

The military helped develop the technology, but they run their own "Internet" networks that are completely segregated and independent from the public Internet.

They helped with protocols and standards and such more than anything else. Military interest in Internet technologies relates to the ability to have redundant, interconnected sites so that if one site goes dark for any reason, the other sites don't lose their connection to eachother as a result. Obviously this world help with keeping the military operating and orders flowing in the event of an international incident where some of their sites are taken down or otherwise disabled.

The public Internet, while following similar models, isn't nearly as decentralized as you may expect. Almost all of the connectivity and data is warehoused in datacenters at, or near Internet exchange locations, or "IX"es. IXes and their locations are not secret and taking out a few IX sites is a good military tactic to disrupt communications, at least for the civilians in a country, which would create significant issues trying to keep everyone calm and safe. Almost all telecommunications today are Internet based, regardless of all other factors. The only somewhat decentralized civilian communication technology is radio, specifically broadcast radio (like FM), but even getting a message to an emergency broadcast FM station would be a challenge if the Internet was disabled, taking out phones (both cellular and landline), and all data communication. The only way to get an emergency message to an emergency broadcast station in that circumstance, would be to physically send someone there with a military communications system (generally two way radio), to relay the messages for broadcast to the public. There's enough FM stations and emergency broadcast stations that effectively disabling all of them is strategically difficult.

All of your communications, whether landline, cellular or Internet is basically all routed through your local IX before it can go anywhere; so if that goes down, you can kiss all of your methods of communication goodbye, unless, of course, you're a qualified amateur radio operator (or HAM).

Ham radio has a bit of an image problem as an obsolete hobby, but it really isn't. There's continual efforts to develop new and interesting wireless technology to run on the radio bands. Hams also have a network of repeaters and radio relays that can be brought online in geographically diverse locations for the purposes of enabling communication when commercial networks (like cellphones) become unavailable. Hams have saved lives and relayed critical information to and from first responders in natural disasters like hurricanes and tornados when all other communications have been disrupted.

But if you don't know how to use a radio, like a ham radio, then even having the gear is useless. The best way to understand enough to be competent in using a radio when it matters is to get certified. Unless you have, or seek that certification before there's a major incident, natural or otherwise, you may be shit out of luck when it happens.

🚩 nice try FBI agent.

I haven't had faith in humanity for a very long time. I'm just glad my father isn't alive to see what's happening. I'm sure he would have been sucked in by the right-wrong propaganda and started crying foul about trans people or something. Look, dad, I love you, but trans people are not the problem.

May that crotchety is bastard rest in peace.

I won't be doing pretty much anything about it. I have 10 pro, I don't really give a shit about what Microsoft thinks I should do. My computer is behind a firewall, and bluntly, it'll be a while before the security issues become such a problem that I need to go and upgrade.

However. I already did the legwork. I went out and upgraded the hardware TPM 1.2 in my system to TPM 2.0, and I picked up some (relatively cheap) Windows 11 pro product keys. I can upgrade if I want.

I also have access to W10 LTSC, so I can always pivot to that if I need to.

I get the security and other concerns with Windows 10. I do, but the windows 11 changes, to me seem like they're changes for the sake of things being changed. Windows 10's user experience was already quite good, apart from the fact that every feature release seemed to have the settings moved to a different location (see above about making changes for the sake of making changes). IMO, as a professional sysadmin and IT support, the interface and UX changes have made Windows, as a product, worse; it is by far the worst part of the upgrade process and I don't know why they thought any of it was a good idea. I also hate what M$ has done with printers, but I won't get started on that right now.

For all the nitpicking I could do, Windows was, for all intents and purposes, exactly what it needed to be, between Windows 7 and 10. There hasn't been any meaningful progress in the OS that's mattered since x86-64 support was added. Windows 10 32 bit was extremely rare, I don't think I ever saw it (where W7 was a mixed bag of 32/64 bit). Having almost everyone standardized on 64 bit, and Windows 10, gave a predictability that is needed in most businesses. The professional products should not follow the same trends as the home products. If they want to put AI shovelware and ads into the home products, fine. Revamp the vast majority of the control panel into the settings menu, sure. But leave the business products as-is. By far the most problems that people have with Windows 11 that I hear about, relate to how everything changes/looks different, and/or having problems navigating the "new look" or whatever the fuck.

Microsoft: you had a good thing with Windows 10, and you pissed it all away when you put out the crap that is Windows 11.

Stop moving shit around, making controls less useful, and stop making it look like the UX was designed by a 10 year old. Fuck off.

If you insist.

I'm just some Internet person, doing Internet person things.

I also would not know about that.