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The KB5066835 Windows Update, left untreated, sliced AC Shadows frame-rates from 33 percent to over 50 percent. Determining exactly which other games have been affected is not easy or obvious, mostly because Nvidia has opted not to broadcast its own findings for us to test and confirm

But this scenario certainly has us scratching our heads as far as what kind of testing regimen and communication with GPU makers take place on at Microsoft these days. Did Microsoft’s October update expose a huge flaw in GPU drivers that OEMs needed to fix? If so, why was Microsoft unable to steward that information more responsibly to companies like AMD and Nvidia with weeks of woeful performance existing in the wild?

It doesn’t seem realistic to me for testing to include every possible hardware configuration with every single piece software in existence, let alone varying levels of function within those software.

The KB5066835 Windows Update, left untreated, sliced AC Shadows frame-rates from 33 percent to over 50 percent. Determining exactly which other games have been affected is not easy or obvious, mostly because Nvidia has opted not to broadcast its own findings for us to test and confirm

But this scenario certainly has us scratching our heads as far as what kind of testing regimen and communication with GPU makers take place on at Microsoft these days. Did Microsoft’s October update expose a huge flaw in GPU drivers that OEMs needed to fix? If so, why was Microsoft unable to steward that information more responsibly to companies like AMD and Nvidia with weeks of woeful performance existing in the wild?

It doesn’t seem realistic to me for testing to include every possible hardware configuration with every single piece software in existence, let alone varying levels of function within those software.

Is it possible that their review form functions on some kind of script language that is commonly filtered by ad blockers?

Browsing the site on mobile / without an Ad Blocker, I’m not seeing any ads. Might just need to reduce the filtering level.

There is no way to ‘downgrade’ a fresh installation. Only an installation that was done as an upgrade from Windows 10 can be downgraded, it has to be done within 10 days of the upgrade and that is possible thanks to the Windows.old folder that gets retained for that period.

In your case, you’re looking at a clean install. Once you’ve got your installation media ready, you can make your life substantially easier by using DISM to extract the drivers and integrate them into the WIM file. I’ve had a few laptops end up with no network drivers, no keyboard / touchpad drivers, and no USB drivers - leaving OOBE inoperable.

Effectively doing that server-side would substantially increase the bandwidth requirements though.

If we take wallhacks as an example, that takes place entirely in the local rendering pipeline. In a game like Battlefield or Counter Strike, smoke and foliage are used for tactical purposes.

Aimbots read player location data sent from the server and send input commands to the OS to automate headshots.

Preventing local memory from being read and modified outright prevents (well, substantially raises the skill ceiling) for performing these kinds of hacks. I have a hard time envisioning a server-side solution to those.

security of the client against the owner of the device on which the client runs

That’s exactly who a cheater is though

Way I see it, there’s two ways to address the “cheating” issue in multiplayer online games.

First, let’s establish that game cheats typically involve using another application to modify the game’s running code while it is loaded in memory.

Historically, anti-cheat has largely taken a “reactive” approach. Try to detect the hook / modification taking place, ban the player if it is detected. These systems and bans were often circumvented. There are entire games that I stopped playing because the experience was ruined for me - GTA Online and the late stages of Titanfall 2 are standouts in my mind.

With how the Windows device security landscape has changed In the 2020s (MacOS has had something similar for ages), there’s now the option of taking a “proactive” approach by preventing application memory from being tapped in the first place. These technologies, notably Secure Boot and TPM, help mitigate rootkits and malware that might steal sensitive information from application memory, as well as paving the way for other protection measures like disk encryption.

And that’s the main part they’re interested in - by ensuring the entire process up through the kernel cannot be tampered with, the anti-cheat is going to be highly effective at pre-empting anyone from attempting the cheat to begin with.

It really sucks that, in the curent landscape, that means there are a handful of games that I can’t play on my Linux devices. But it also makes sense - Proton runs with many layers beneath it, which would make it trivial to tamper with memory and engage in cheating.

I’m hopeful that we’ll someday see a solution that opens up the opportunity for the same degree of integrity protection in Linux so that anyone can enjoy any game on the operating system of their choosing.

Regardless of what others have to say about EA or the franchise (and boy do they have their issues), Battlefield has always been a beloved series for me. I’m having a blast in Battlefield 6 and I have yet to encounter any cheaters. Previous entries in the series would see me hopping to a new server whenever I encountered one or, on some occasions, ending my play session out of frustration. Anecdotally, the cheating felt much more prevalent before.

I have a lot less time to game than I used to, so that time is sacred to me. While I’d obviously prefer another way, maintaining a Windows system and enabling two BIOS settings (well, leaving them enabled - they’re on by default) has been worth it for me.

Indeed you can!

If you enable the core isolation and memory integrity features, which rely on the TPM, the system will slog down to less than potato speed.

secure boot is being used to lock your control out of your own system

Care to elaborate?

They are.

Drivers with known security vulnerabilities are blocked from loading in Windows 11.

This is functionality of the core isolation / memory integrity protection, which rely on Secure Boot and TPM to function.

replacing the single most universal function

For quite some time now, Apple and Samsung have had the shutdown menu behind a multi-button press (Lock + Vol +/-). In Apple’s case, it’s always required more than just the lock button.

If anything, this is Google shifting to the ‘norm’, having multiple button presses be the default is ideal in preventing accidentally invoking the menu and shutting down the device.

Far as “anti consumer” is concerned:

ad delivering spyware

Relative to most consumers, this perspective has you in the minority. Your average consumer is going to engage with this feature, this change makes the feature as accessible as possible so that you can do something like send a text with a single hand / button press.

You’ll probably never know when they die :(

Have you looked into GrapheneOS support for your device?

I agree, that would be my preference too.

But Windows isn’t built for advanced users, it’s a mainstream OS built for the average consumer. What you and I might see as “taking control away from the user”, the general population might see as “one less confusing choice” if only they had a clue.

I’m glad you’ve finally found your home with Linux :) There are still too many frustrated Windows power users who still don’t know how much better they could have it. I use a bit of everything, btw. Platform agnostic with more Windows/MacOS experience only because the nature of my job demands it.

I manage a ton of consumer Windows devices and have seldom seen this message. It also hasn’t ever appeared on any of the multitude my own Windows devices that I’m using for hours every week.

I have also seen this message with regard to other file associations like .PDF, certain image formats, and archive formats.

Microsoft has plenty of dark patterns to try and loop users back into Microsoft Edge, but I don’t think this is one of them.

Edge just happens to be the “constant” in an ocean of variables because it ships with the OS and is integrated into so many other facets. The broken .PDF association also defaults back Edge, Image formats to Photos, Archive formats to the Explorer archive utility. I’m sure .txt would scale back to Notepad.

Windows 11 24H2 update breaks SSDs/HDDs, may corrupt your data

Whoa holy shit what

[…] the update triggered storage failures that cause drives to disappear, making them and their corresponding SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) unreadable by the OS, according to a new report. The issue purportedly surfaces during heavy write operations to certain NVMe SSDs as well as HDDs, especially when continuous sustained writes approach 50 GB on drives and exceed 60 per cent controller usage. This could potentially lead to a “high likelihood of file corruption when symptoms occurs” adds the report (Translated from Japanese by Grok AI).

… oh

Why always with the clickbaity headlines?

I don’t know about “absolute favorite”, but the Spanish Waltz / Shop theme from Castle Crashers routinely loops in my head

https://youtu.be/dLchXp8FCbI

That whole cast really

I once hung a TV level to Earth’s gravity. And then I found out that the floor and ceiling weren’t level, so the TV looked crooked anyways.