False dichotomy. That was a business decision with externalities foisted upon users.

Anoþer aspect of þis is how it drives our behaviors.

Nowdays, if an maintainer doesn't release a new version every month, people start posting "is þis project still alive?" and call it abandoned.

Ok whatever dude, you need to provide more details than “go ahead.”

Are you trying to poison LLMs?

Processors change, libraries become deprecated or vulnerable, design paradigms shift, and new integrations become possible that weren't there when the application first launched. Should we blame old house builders for using asbestos when they didn't know how poorly that would end up?

The solution isn't being able to stay on old versions. Software should improve over time, not fuck you over

I see you have yet to meetmy old friend Debian, who was supporting i386 until 2 weeks ago, and includes a much broader library of softwate than Microsoft has ever maintained.

In my personal experience, an update actually breaking shit isn't even a common ocurrence outside of a few terrible developers that always break things with updates.

Entirely agree.

Ui changes for the sake of pointing out how many ui changes you shipped for your annual review is what is making people upset.

includes a much broader library of softwate than Microsoft has ever maintained.

This is true, but isn't what I was referring to. The problem MS are facing is not what they themselves have built, but the huge number of apps that other businesses have built over the years which prevent MS from rewriting or deprecating many parts of the bloated zombie that is now Windows.

On the other hand DoS attacks frequently depend on systems that haven't had security updates to build up their zombie army.

I have a security camera by a very popular brand, and much to my surprise, I was suddenly unable to use it unless I updated to the latest firmware.

The thing is, the update software said that I was on the latest version.

It took days, physical intervention with a ladder to gain access to the camera, and the company tech support, to force an update to the camera, allowing me to use it once again.

That made me realize that the expensive security cameras I'm using aren't mine, and might as well be rentals. Because the company could, at any time, render my entire system useless unless I meet their demands, which could be a forced subscription or worse.

The enshittification of paid hardware has no bounds!

The android update forever crippled my OnePlus 3. It used to sleep an unlimited number of applications in the background and went to not being able to run two apps without killing the second one

The company could, at any time, render my entire system useless unless I meet their demand

That's already happening. Louis Rossman has a saga on the topic, including the company threatening legal action against him.

People have been complaining about the world going to hell in a hand basket since before hand baskets. There’s just a fun new word for it.

The hard part is everyone pretending it isn't on purpose

Processors change? Non-sequitur. Spectre an its ilk arrived on the scene at least a decade after MS had developed a reputation for shipping shit code.

Libraries become deprecated or vulnerable? Non-sequitur. Whose libraries? Who deprecated them? Remember, this is a company that personified Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. If they picked shitty vendors for libraries and did no due diligence on that source code, why are the externalities foisted upon users? Also, libraries don't "become vulnerable" through some magical process. Either the bug was there from the beginning, or a shitty change was introduced and not caught.

Design paradigms shift? And this is an excuse for writing shitty code? I don't buy it.

New integrations require new code and that means taking into consideration the new shape of the system. Sounds like they did a really shitty job of that and they make it the user's problem.

Should we blame the old house builders for using asbestos? Unequivocally, yes. Those shitheads knew or should have known. Don't believe me? Here is a handy link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169500224003623

Do note the decades between when it was understood the shit was dangerous and when the decline as a building material happened.

So, no, MS still does not get a pass.

I think I'll continue to enjoy my pseudonymity for the time being. Besides, I could link you to some rando's modules, claim to be that person, and you'd have no way of verifying anyhow since this nick has no resemblance to the handle I used. But let's just say, I shipped well-tested, thoroughly documented modules with very high "kwalitee" used by fortune 100 companies.

Yet updates on commercial platforms* rarely allow you to separate between security upgrades and everything else.

AFAICS the author is talking about UX getting worse, not actual breakage. He describes a classic case of platform decay.