Skype for Windows is broken | Hacker News Reader

Skype for Windows is broken

medium.com

50 pointszatkin42 comments

"Skype for Windows takes advantage of Internet Explorer and Flash to display advertisements in the client. This means that in order for advertisements to work correctly, Internet Explorer and Flash need to be working correctly."

As if Skype spying on you wasn't enough, requiring mshtml.dll and Flash this now makes Skype a malware vector from compromised ad networks.

This seems especially bad for IT environments where Internet Explorer is not the primary browser due to "security" and has Flash built-in (like Chrome used to) or disabled, so any outdated version of Flash attached to IE becomes an unpatched vulnerability possibly outside of IT package management scope.

There are other good videoconferencing/call solutions today. I see no reason to install Skype anymore. I personally have not used it in years. (FWIW, I also haven't used Windows as my primary operating system since the days of XP.)

Most medium sized professional environments aren't utilising Skype, they're utilising an entirely different product called, uhh, Skype (Lync), but it doesn't show ads and is a completely different product with Skype branding (even the executable is still Lync.exe).

Thanks for the correction; I didn't know this existed and that's somewhat comforting. I guess my point still stands for personal users of Skype, small businesses and startups.

Oh definitely. You're right on base, it is a massive concern.

Lync... what a piece of... although latest version (Skype for Business) is a bit better than before. But that's not saying much.

Microsoft doesn't seem to have any clue how to make a working chat app.

In the old days, people paid for cable TV so they could avoid ads. Now you pay for cable and get ads too.

I pay for Skype, but they think they can bombard me with annoying, irrelevant ads anyway. And now the ads actually break Skype itself. Unacceptable.

I'm now blocking Skype ads by editing the hosts file. More info here: https://gist.github.com/eyecatchup/ba7dc7a50d90cbf6377d

After I bought some Skype credit and still had the ads I thought it was a joke. Some of the ads are really shady, the "earn 3000 Euro in one day!" kind.

Then after half a year where I didn't use my Skype credit I got a mail that my credit will be "deactivated" and I had to log in on the Skype website to "activate" it again which I consider scamming. They want me to think my credit is empty when I need it and to buy more. It's almost as bad as the prepaid SIM cards where the credit expires. This was already forbidden in Germany.

I'm really not sure what Microsoft is thinking here.

> In the old days, people paid for cable TV so they could avoid ads. Now you pay for cable and get ads too.

Cable TV was invented to distribute tv to areas where antenna reception was not possible. It was just regular channels rebroadcast with the same commercials. Superstaions emerged like TBS that were once local channels but now became regional and then national cable channels. Still with commercials. Premium channels like HBO and showtime were the only commercial free stations and you paid extra for them.

By paying a premium, we're indicating to advertisers that we have buying power. Which is exactly who they want to target. So in a way, paying tends to attract ads?

Skype is fundamentally broken. I use it on iPhone and my laptop (Mac) and neither are remotely trying to adapt to my use case, which seems to be the vast majority: I use it to talk to a handful of people (two, maybe three) I need to have a button to call each, and access the history of the conversation. Instead, I have unending lists of lists of contacts, annoying recruiters, people who failed an interview 5 years ago, spammers, and I cannot de-list any of them. And violently loud, impossible to remove, alerts for each of those thousands of people’s birthdays, for no apparent reason. Best of the best: they somehow cannot filter Larsen loops (the annoying high-pitch wobble that comes & goes becomes louder: it’s an acoustic loop between mike & head-phones), so I have to mute every 5 seconds for a second to take those out…

I've been using Skype since around 2005 and, since the Microsoft purchase, every update has made the product slower and more resource hungry.

Running Skype for Linux here, and what are these "updates" you speak of? I'm still getting 240p quality video when my friends try to screen share, which means I can barely see what they're trying to show me. Also Skype sometimes randomly mutes my mic. I guess one good point is that they never updated it to run ads...

Oh, and watching two video feeds at once? That's "not supported".

I am glad I am not the only one.

Only good Skype version I know is for OS X. Issues seem to be rare. Even it is not as good as it used to be.

Skype on Windows 10 freezes and crashes pretty often. It doesn't seem to like RDP with multi-monitor setups.

Android version doesn't always seem to update latest messages. It's presence indicators are also not agreeing with desktop Skype and often just plain wrong. Annoying when you're talking to someone who is 'green' and should be present and turns out they were not.

Overall, Skype has gone downhill for at least the last five years. No positive changes.

What would be a good replacement? Must be zero configuration, grandma usable, with good voice quality, ability to chat, to share screen and send files.

Google Hangout? It works on all major platforms, and it can call landlines / cell phone number too.

I think Google Hangouts would be much more used if it was not initially broken (or non existant) for Google Apps users for a long time.

> Skype on Windows 10

Skype (for Desktop) continuously changes the sound settings (sampling rate etc.) on Windows 10 causing sound to no longer work; until I go and reset the settings to the defaults.

Why the hell would it need to change the system-wide sound settings, just to play a notification tone?

Lately every Mac user in my office has had massive issues with Skype. It has become a horribly unstable application in the last few months. We absolutely cannot rely on it for communications anymore.

Is it worth noting that Flash should only show those errors if you have a debug version of the player installed? If you aren't developing Flash content; get rid of the debug player and those errors will go away.

[Although I 'm not sure if that will fix the problems w/ Skype]

Exactly, usually only a flash dev would install the debug version. But maybe he still needs it for development.

Skype is one of the very worst pieces of software I have ever used, the UI is so incredibly unintuitive it absolutely blows my mind.

Not only that, but the Skype UI is totally different on every platform. I run the Windows client at home, the Linux client at work, and my boss runs the iOS client for team meetings. Each one of them has a very different look and feel, and even different context menu options. Such bizarre inconsistencies. There are too many to list them all here, but it's the most chaotic mishmash of user controls I've ever seen on a desktop app.

Skype : Microsoft :: iTunes : Apple

I wonder why in general this kinds of things happen.

Well, I wholeheartedly agree that the current Skype is in that category. Sadly, that is only because it has become that way. It used to be nearly the opposite, a great example of what chat could be.

Very early versions of the Mac Skype client (like 2.x or so) had a completely different UI layout that was multi-window and multitasking, and the program worked absurdly better back then.

Around version 5.x they started making mind-bogglingly stupid UI changes and I stubbornly held onto an old 2.x client just so I could keep the interface that was actually sensible.

So then, what does Microsoft do? They start screwing with the protocol itself and making everything refuse to work at all unless it is running the latest version. Then they introduce more ads and a generally scummier experience from one release to the next.

Even all of that was almost tolerable. Then they made a major "update" to the iOS client that must have removed about 50% of Skype's features for no apparent reason, and added annoyances or random breakages to whatever was left. Fortunately though, the release notes made it clear that they had flattened some buttons so we could all feel good about Skype's usefulness having been mostly obliterated.

Microsoft has, quite simply, ruined Skype. There is no more suitable word than that. It was a very promising protocol and the clients worked well, and Microsoft just completely destroyed it. It's honestly hard to believe the team is being paid to enhance Skype because it really does seem that the team is instead being given instructions to damage Skype in any way possible.

Running skype on Linux, I was hoping the Skype web client would become a good alternative, but nothing really happens there...

Edit: I wanted to use the Skype app on my modern Android devices but last time I tried it didn't even work.

I have a really standard Win10 machine, nearly new, nothing fancy, and Skype just updated itself to whatever the newest version is. About a minute after the update the machine BSODed (or whatever the BSOD is now on win10) and rebooted, saying it had a problem with an app had had to restart. Kind of worried to start Skype again now. Those adverts drive me absolutely mad though. How much could they possibly make off those ads that they're even worth running in Skype?

BTW it's super unlikely Skype would cause a BSOD. BSOD is akin to a kernel panic. Most likely you have a hardware issue.

BSOD is indeed impossible without kernel or more likely driver bugs.

That said, Skype on Windows 10 does do weird things.

Windows 10 now has a built-in "Skype video" app which is much more bare-bones. Once I confirmed it worked for calling the few people I need to video chat with, I uninstalled the desktop app right away.

Also a long-time Skype user. I pay for the $29/year plan that gives me an inbound number and outbound calls anywhere in the U.S. and Canada. I agree that the UI has been getting worse, but I don't see those ads, which I presume don't display for subscribers? I also obstinately continue to use the minimal interface format, so that might have something to do with it. I actually use Skype much, much less these days. Pretty much everything happens on hangouts or Slack.

Author of the article doesn't seem to understand the word "fundamentally". This is most definitely an ancillary flaw, not a fundamental one

Why is anyone still using skype?

Network effect. I'm a freelancer and clients frequently demand Skype conversations. Asking them to join some Skype alternative site/app X does not work, they just complain about the need of too much tools to get job done. I cannot cause too much pain for my clients as I would lose them.

I use Tox-im. What do you use?

Google vid google chat, aim chat, both from pidgin client.

Do the ads disappear if you have Skype credit? If they don't, that's abhorrent.

I have Skype credit and the ads are still there.

I don't see these ads. But I purchase a phone number through Skype - maybe they don't show if you're a subscriber?

I tried using Skype on Windows 7 but found it simply impossible. It does work passably well on my Note 4.

Someone who reads HN and hasn't blocked Skype ads yet? LOL

Reply on news.ycombinator.com