Tech | Steve Woods

Evolution

30/11/2025 Steve WoodsSocial Media, Tech

Life forms are not the only things that undergo evolution, i.e. a change in characteristics over generations and/or time.

This is also true of technology. One only has to compare and contrast one’s present operating system and its applications and what was in use twenty years ago, for example.

That brings us neatly to the graphic below acquired from social media, which sarcastically tracks the progress of the trash icon on Microsoft’s Windows desktop over the decades.

For those unfamiliar with the final icon on the bottom right, it’s that of MS’ Copilot generative artificial intelligence chatbot, which has not been without criticism. Indeed, one Microsoft Tech Community post has even called the software a “frustrating flop in AI-powered productivity“.

More specifically, the post states:

Here’s the problem: when you ask Copilot to alter a document, modify an Excel file, or adjust a PowerPoint presentation, it’s practically useless. Instead of performing the tasks as requested, it often leaves you hanging with vague suggestions or instructions. Users don’t want to be told how to perform a task—they want it done. This is what an AI assistant should do: execute commands efficiently, not just offer advice.

If the MS tech enthusiasts are less than impressed, your ‘umble scribe need say no more!
Commission eyes up Microsoft and Amazon – again

27/11/2025 Steve WoodsPolitics, Tech

Last week the EU Commission announced it had opened three market investigations into cloud computing services under the Digital Markets Act (DMA). Two of these investigations will assess whether Amazon and Microsoft should be designated as gatekeepers for their cloud computing services, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure under the DMA, i.e. whether they act as important gateways between businesses and consumers, despite not meeting the DMA gatekeeper thresholds for size, user number and market position. The third market investigation will assess if the DMA can effectively tackle practices that may limit competitiveness and fairness in the cloud computing sector in the EU.

Market investigations into Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure

Recent analyses of cloud markets seem to indicate that tMicrosoft Azure and Amazon Web Services occupy very strong positions in relation to businesses and consumers. The Commission will also assess if certain features of the cloud sector may further reinforce the position of Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services.

If the Commission finds that Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services qualify as important gateways under the DMA, these would be added to the list of core platform services for which Amazon and Microsoft have already been designated as gatekeepers.

Market investigation on the DMA’s application to cloud markets

Furthermore, the Commission is also gathering information from relevant market players to assess whether the current obligations under the DMA are effective in addressing practices that limit competitiveness or are unfair in the cloud sector. Amongst other things, the investigation will cover obstacles to interoperability between cloud computing services, limited or conditioned access for business users to data, tying and bundling services and potentially unfair contractual terms.

Next Steps

Should the Commission conclude Microsoft and Amazon meet the criteria to be designated as gatekeepers for their cloud computing services under the DMA, Amazon and Microsoft would have six months to ensure full compliance of their designated cloud computing services with the DMA obligations.
The market investigation on the DMA’s application to cloud markets will result in a final report to be published within 18 months, which may propose the update of DMA obligations in respect to cloud by way of a delegated act pursuant to Article 12 and 49 DMA.
Core VLC developer receives European SFS Award 2025 at SFSCON

07/11/2025 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Tech

The VLC media player is a great piece of software which your ‘umble scribe has been using since he was rookie on Windows 9* machines

What makes it greater is that it’s open source software and is one of the recommendations on my free and open source software page.

It’s just been announced that the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) and the Linux User Group Bolzano-Bosen-BUlsan (LUGBZ) have presented VLC president and core developer Jean-Baptiste Kempf with the European SFS award at the Bozen Free Software Conference (SFSCON) for his long-term dedication to the project. What began as a student initiative has, through his continuous effort, evolved into one of the most widely used media players with hundreds of millions of users worldwide.

Picture by NOI Techpark – Marco Parisi CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Born as a student project in 1996, this software has evolved into an essential, all-in-one media player that plays almost anything effortlessly. Originally a simple network streaming client, it has grown into a powerful universal media player that continues to evolve and impress.

“For many people running non-free operating systems, it was the very first Free Software they ever installed. For many people running Free Software, it saved them from installing and booting into a proprietary operating system”, declared FSFE president Matthias Kirschner during the award ceremony.

Jean-Baptiste Kempf joined the project as a student and when it was in danger of dying after the graduation of its original developers, he took the reins. With the help of other core developers, he transformed it into the indispensable media player we enjoy on today.

Over the years, Mr Kempf has become not only the president of VideoLAN, which hosts the project itself, but also one of the lead developers of VLC media player and the founder of VideoLabs. “It’s small, fast, friendly, and seems to understand everything you throw at it. I have always thought of it as the program that eats everything”, said Raphael Barbieri, a member of LUGBZ, during the winner’s announcement.

Accepting the award, Mr Kempf said: “I am extremely honoured to receive the European SFS Award. The Free Software multimedia community is quite niche and unknown, but we work hard so that video content can be free, can be played and processed. The work done around the VideoLAN community has been tremendous, despite its little resources. I want to thank the whole VideoLAN and FFmpeg teams, who spend their time on those projects, often with little recognition“.

The European SFS Award recognizes individuals whose work has made a significant and sustained difference in advancing Free Software across Europe. Since 2023 it has been presented jointly by LUGBZ and the FSFE and honours those whose efforts strengthen software freedom, community building and the ethical foundations of technology.
Australia initiates consumer protection proceedings against Microsoft

02/11/2025 Steve WoodsLanguage, Tech
The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission, which is responsible for ensuring individuals and businesses comply with Australian competition and consumer protection laws has announced that it has initiated proceedings in the Federal Court against Microsoft Australia and its parent company Microsoft Corporation for allegedly misleading approximately 2.7 million Australian customers when giving notice of subscription options and price increases after it integrated its Copilot AI assistant into Microsoft 365 subscription plans.

The ACCC alleges that since 31st October 2024, Microsoft has told Microsoft 365 Personal and Family plan subscribers with auto-renewal enabled that to maintain their subscription, they must accept the integration of Copilot and pay higher prices for their plan, or else cancel their subscriptions.

Following the integration of Copilot, the annual subscription price of the Microsoft 365 Personal plan increased by an eye-watering 45% from $109 to $159. In contrast, the annual subscription price for the Microsoft 365 Family plan increased by a mere 29% from $139 to $179.

Microsoft’s communications with subscribers did not refer to the existence of the “Classic” plans without Copilot integration and the only way subscribers could access them was to begin the process of cancelling their subscriptions. This involved accessing the subscriptions section of their Microsoft account and selecting “Cancel subscription”. It was only on the following page that subscribers were given the option to move to the Classic plan instead.

Click on the image for the full-sized version

Maximum penalties

Should Microsoft lose the case, the maximum penalty for each breach of the Australian Consumer Law is the greater of the following three options:
- $50 million;
- three times the total benefits that have been obtained and are reasonably attributable; or
- if the total value of the benefits cannot be determined, 30 per cent of the corporation’s adjusted turnover during the breach turnover period.
For Microsoft Australia, not to mention its parent company, the emphasis in the word consumer is firmly on its first three-letter syllable.
LibreOffice 25.2.7 released

31/10/2025 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Tech

The Document Foundation (TDF) has today announced the release of LibreOffice 25.2.7, the final maintenance release for the LibreOffice 25.2 family, which is now available for download. Users of LibreOffice 25.2.x should update to LibreOffice 25.8.x, as LibreOffice 25.2.x is approaching the end of its support period.

LibreOffice 25.2.7 fully supports two ISO document format standards: the open ODF or Open Document Format (ODT, ODS and ODP) and the closed proprietary Microsoft OOXML (DOCX, XLSX and PPTX) formats.

Products based on the LibreOffice Technology are available for all major desktop operating systems (Windows, macOS, Linux and ChromeOS), mobile platforms (Android and iOS) plus the cloud.

For business use, TDF recommends a LibreOffice version optimised for businesses from one of its partner companies, with dedicated value-added features and other benefits such as service level agreements (SLAs) and security patch backports for three to five years.

Manuals for the LibreOffice 25.2 family are also available in many languages for download. Furthermore, end users can get first-level technical support from volunteers on the user mailing lists and the Ask LibreOffice website.

Finally, LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation and the LibreOffice project by making a donation.
ICC to ditch Microsoft

30/10/2025 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Politics, Tech

The International Criminal Court (ICC/CPI) in The Hague wants to become independent of US technology out of fear of reprisals from Donald Trump, the vindictive and bullying forty-seventh president of the United States (who is on a mission to Make America Grate Again, or something similar. Ed.), German news site heise reports.

The International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The institution plans to replace the Microsoft software currently used in its workplaces with OpenDesk, an open source software suite currently being developed by Zendis, a company owned by the German Federal government.

The decision was taken due to the sanctions imposed by the current US Trump regime against court employees such as Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan, under which Microsoft simply blocked Mr Khan’s access to email account. He was therefore forced to switch to the Swiss email service Proton. Back in May the ICC/CPI stated its work had virtually been paralysed due to its heavy reliance on service providers like Microsoft.

Furthermore, it is believed the US government in Washington is considering further measures against the International Criminal Court, which could also severely restrict its ability to function.

Achieving Digital Sovereignty

While the International Criminal Court only has 1,800 employees that need to be freed from dependency on US software, this can be regarded as a sign that geopolitics is increasingly concerned with technology. Business and politics recognise the dependence on US tech companies is a problem, particularly because the current US regime is using technology as a bargaining chip.

The ICC/CPI is not alone in moving away from the Beast of Redmond: for example, the German Army has also concluded a framework agreement with Zendis for “sovereign communication and collaboration solutions” such as OpenDesk.
Local rag treats bereaved like software

19/10/2025 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities, Tech

Yesterday’s Bristol Post featured a report of a man found dead at the scene of a camper van fire at the Hengrove Mounds nature reserve in south Bristol.

Reports about unexpected or unexplained deaths are not exactly uncommon fare for the local press anywhere.

However, what made this particular incident unusual was the manner in which the reporter chose to represent the subsequent action of the police after attending the incident, as quoted directly from the piece itself.

Efforts are currently ongoing to identify him in order to update his next of kin.

Update?

Use of appropriate language is just as important in writing for the local media as it is to a scientist writing a paper or an author penning a work of fiction. The poor man’s next of kin are not like software or kitchen cabinets!

For the benefit of any passing media studies graduates pretending to be journalists, you would have been told by any half-decent sub-editor that relatives and the next of kin are either notified or informed of their loved one’s untimely demise. Lumping grieving family in with software that needs a bug fix is not only very bad English indeed, but abysmal writing not worthy of being classed as journalism.
Auntie’s hardware malfunction

29/08/2025 Steve WoodsMedia, Oddities, Tech

Back on 2nd February 2004 singers Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson issued a statement attempting to explain the 38th Super Bowl half-time show controversy, during which Jackson’s right breast was exposed. In that statement the phrase wardrobe malfunction was coined.

Fast forward to August 2025 and it would appear that the nation’s quasi-state broadcaster has had what can only be described as a hardware malfunction in which the wrong sort of device was exposed.

Earlier today BBC Breakfast had a long segment about the 30th anniversary of the release of Microsoft’s Windows 95 operating system.

As this is TV there were some visual props on hand, as shown in the screenshot below.

Observant readers will have noted that the hardware used is in fact a Macintosh SE, a machine manufactured and sold by Apple between March 1987 and October 1990.

That’s right! It was discontinued five years before Windows 95 was introduced.

Furthermore, the Macintosh SE also ran on Apple’s Classic Mac OS, not MS-DOS and Windows.

In bygone times, the BBC used to brag about the accuracy and trustworthiness of its broadcasting. It still does, but that boasting appears to be on very shaky foundations indeed.

Who else likes the smell of facepalm in the morning? 😉
Gemsbok

15/08/2025 Steve WoodsLanguage, Social Media, Tech

One neoligism (posh for new word. Ed.) that has become prominent in recent times is doomscrolling, defined as the activity of spending a lot of time looking at your phone or computer and reading bad or negative news stories.

This can naturally be extremely depressing, hence the tendency of folk to seek comfort in online content not concerned with people’s inhumanity to their fellows to alleviate the feelings of despair, be this fluffy cat and dog photos, even fluffier photos of sheep (yes, I’m looking at you, Mastodon! Ed.). These are joined by wildlife and avian photography.

One of the sources of wildlife images that turns up in your ‘umble scribe’s timeline comes courtesy of Namibia Weather. This features a live webcam at a waterhole in the Gondwana Namib Park, which claims to be Namibia’s first live webcam and regularly posts stills from the feed on Mastodon.

The wildlife varies by the minute if you watch the live Youtube feed. Besides wildebeest, other large mammals that regularly visit the waterhole are South African oryx, otherwise known as gemsbok Note the striking monochrome facial markings.

Sometimes cats, dogs or even sheep are just not a good enough antidote… Happy browsing! 😀
First… for greenwashing

25/06/2025 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Tech

First Group has a virtual monopoly on public transport in Bristol via its buses and GWR Trains. However, its inability to run any service to timetable – no matter how important – has earned it the nickname of Worst Group.

First Bus was all over the local media at the start of June when it announced the opening of a new bus depot in the city’s Hengrove area for servicing its fleet of electric buses which will eventually total 74 vehicles.

Your ‘umble scribe recently tried out one of the new double decker electric buses on the Number 24 route, which runs between Ashton and Southmead Hospital. On the whole the experience was very positive. The bus was clean, the ride silent and smooth. However, at this point a significant however enters the picture, namely that your correspondent was less than impressed by the greenwashing on the sides of the bus.

According to Wikipedia, greenwashing may be defined as follows:

Greenwashing (a compound word modeled on “whitewash”), also called green sheen, is a form of advertising or marketing spin that deceptively uses green PR and green marketing to persuade the public that an organization’s products, goals, or policies are environmentally friendly. Companies that intentionally adopt greenwashing communication strategies often do so to distance themselves from their environmental lapses or those of their suppliers.[6] Firms engage in greenwashing for two primary reasons: to appear legitimate and to project an image of environmental responsibility to the public.

Whilst the engines of the new buses produce zero greenhouse gases or particulate emissions, that does not necessarily mean the vehicles are entirely free of emissions, especially when significant elements of the vehicle produce particulates due to wear and tear caused by their function. The two components involved are the brakes and tyres.

Until First acquires vehicles with zero tyre and brake wear, they should continue to be called out for being less than honest with the (travelling) public.