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Comments is a _secondary_ component to the core of what I am talking about - long-form content. I can still post a link to my blog post on Twitter and have all the commentary from my audience without donating the content itself to Twitter.

I think ultimately you're getting to the _why_ of the equation - there is a big desire to keep you, the customer, within the app rather than let you abandon the feed. Going back from a note to scrolling through Twitter is easier than jumping back from your browser app to the Twitter app.

I haven't had issues with link previews on my own content, but that very well could be the case for other sites.

You don't need to look far for this. To be fair, my comment was much less about decentralization and more about the existence of tools for content portability and control. For example, you can have Markdown + Ghost + custom domain. Worst case scenario, you move to another hosting platform, but you're not locked to one particular service and its own goals of growth.

My reaction to this is that it's an effort to keep users within the "walled garden" of Twitter, which is not the best thing for those that write.

Recall the story with Medium - yes, you get broader reach with less effort, but at the cost of giving up control of your content.

I know that I am talking with an overly developer-focused lens (a-la "you can reimplement Dropbox in a weekend"), but self-hosting blogs outside the "walled gardens" is not super complicated even for non-power users. Ghost has existed for years and is a very user-friendly experience. Want to be a bit more technical - go the static site route.

It might be a lost battle to convince the majority of the social media audience of this (after all, can't beat the convenience and the cost of $0), but I really do not see this as beneficial to those that deeply care about their long-form writing accessibility and sustainability.

Twitter already has login walls to just read tweets, so I'd imagine the same is likely to apply to long-form content as well.

Also would recommend this: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/awake

Disclaimer: I built the tool.

Hey - developer of PowerToys Awake here. Would be happy to investigate. Feel free to open an issue in the GitHub repo (https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues) and I will look into it.

Also, things like collections have been on sites like docs.microsoft.com[0] for some time. I find it somewhat odd personally to gate documentation-related features behind a membership fee, but I do not have full context on MDN product decisions or roadmap.

[0]: https://docs.microsoft.com/azure/app-service/quickstart-node...

This is an interesting take on documentation - mainly because I fail to see the value proposition in paying for the functionality provided.

Speaking from my own experience:

- Notifications. I am not sure that I've ever needed to know when a doc is updated, because if there is anything radical coming on the market (or in a spec proposal), there are other avenues to find out about it.

- Collections. That is already a functionality in the browser that is not locked into just one documentation site.

- Offline mode. There is Zeal[0] if you like client-side software and devdocs.io[1] if you like browser mode.

Combine all that with the fact that it's just for MDN, and the appeal kind of disappears. YMMV, of course.

[0]: https://zealdocs.org/

[1]: https://devdocs.io/

It's all about contrast to everything else. If my house roof is leaking and instead of fixing that I put a limited amount of resources I have into repainting my office and installing a fancy new European faucet, and then go and tell everyone about it - that says a lot about my priorities.

Yes, I am fully aware of the fact that different teams do different things at a big company, but funnily enough when asked about high-priority issues the answer is almost universally "We don't have enough time and/or developers to tackle this right now." But there is magically time for MSN toolbars and Notepad tweaks.

It's not ideal, but to be fair, a lot of them (not all) that don't require funky DRM APIs (a-la Grand Theft Auto IV with Games for Windows Live) do work decently. Some might need to have a right-click, run in compatibility mode check done.

Ah, but you see - there is a difference in how theming works in Windows 11, in that it's different from the high-contrast mode. So, you can get a control that swaps the theme to high-contrast (you need to use the native Windows API for that), but you can't get one that works with the Windows 11 style of dark theme out-of-the-box without re-writing it from zero.

Thank you for the note. Because the worldwide topic touches directly on me and my family, I've decided that this was the right approach for my own blog.

As I mentioned in the blog post - both Notepad and Task Manager aren't that inconsistent with the rest of the OS. Notepad is just a giant text box. Task Manager is a compact, tabbed view (tabs didn't go anywhere in the latest version of Windows) that now became Fluent-ified and in the process now looks very wasteful of vertical space.

Above all, I think the problem is in priorities - Notepad and Task Manager _should_ be consistent with the OS. But when so much focus is assigned to those instead of the core pieces of the OS, it's fair to start raising some questions.

That's true, but then you start running into weird compatibility issues, where a specific game won't work because an Xbox Live component is not installed or DirectX SDK is not at the right version (and you can't install the right version because it only works on the consumer OS).

Wholeheartedly support this. I want my OS to be as boring as possible so that I can do all the interesting things I want.

There's that, and there's also the limited access Enterprise SKU. Last I checked, the Pro versions will now also require[1] a Microsoft account.

[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/18/22940517/windows-11-pro-r...

I don't disagree with this. It's the unfortunate reality that I hope changes, but that change needs to come from _a lot_ of dissatisfied customers.

I would pay extra to buy a "Signature Edition" (kind of like they had with PCs) of Windows that has none of the ads and whatever other "value-add" pieces are integrated in it. One would say - I want LTSC accessible for customers like myself, without the kneecapped ability to run latest Windows software.

PM lead for Ecosystem @ Netlify. It's currently free while in beta. We haven't yet announced any pricing for the feature.

PM lead for the Ecosystem team @ Netlify. Thanks for the feedback! This is precisely the balance we are trying to strike - simple enough to solve core problems that are routine, and yet offering an exit hatch to go and code some additional stuff that you might need in your applications.

PM team lead for Ecosystem @ Netlify here. Thanks for the feedback - this is exactly what we're trying to address with Netlify Graph. There is a lot of variability as APIs change, and there's a lot of value in abstracting out that complexity behind a consistent data model.

Similar wavelength, wrote this in August: https://den.dev/blog/user-hostile-software/

This statement is not accurate. There are games that ship as licenses rather than binary blobs on discs.

I recently wrote about this very topic: https://den.dev/blog/software-rentals/

Oh absolutely - there is zero reason this can't be on the web, considering that all you need to do is just use the same protobuf-based API through a web app. I am considering actually implementing something just for myself that does it.

Challenge with that is you lose access to a bunch of “nice-to-haves” that enable you to use Visual Studio or play games due to missing dependencies. LTSB/C is great for isolated environments that are somewhat frozen in time, but for consumer scenarios those can be full of gaps.

Fair point. However I don’t know any casual users with easy access to AD.

Author here. Yes and no - the title here reflects the problem. Basic functionality is locked behind an arbitrary requirement for MDM. I’m not asking to define custom restrictions - I just want a blank new page. Functionality that has existed in most browsers for a long time (IE included).

This is like locking Start menu customization behind MDM. Sure, you can do this, but it’s weird stance to take.

Here’s the thing though - even if you are running a Pro or Enterprise SKU, you still are forced to not have this functionality unless you enroll the machine into MDM. Even if you paid you’re not getting the right experience.

This is part of the problem - I shouldn’t rely, as a user, on a third-party extension (which does who know what in my browser) to activate functionality that was already implemented and is intentionally kept away from users unless they enroll into MDM.