Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Category: Computers and Internet

  • A Supply Chain Story

    I’ve just purchased a Microsoft Surface Pro 12 and keyboard to replace my aging Surface Go 2.

    The experience of buying the Surface tablet has been illuminating of just how complex, and data-driven, supply chains have become.

    The Surface comes in three available colours: platinum, violet and ocean-blue. The online Dutch Microsoft store only offers the platinum version, with a black keyboard with the US International layout. Naturally, I wanted a violet Surface and keyboard… So I went looking for other online sources for that combination. All the alternative online stores in the Netherlands were only offering the same combination as the Microsoft store. The online German Microsoft store did have both items in violet – but the keyboard was the German QWERTZ version – not what I wanted at all.

    I returned to the Dutch store and explained what I wanted to a Dutch support person via Chat and after some research he confirmed to me in an email that we could source the Surface from the German store (because it was 50 euros cheaper – special offer) and the keyboard from the Irish Microsoft store. The only snag was that the keyboard would be the UK layout, rather than US international, but at least it would be better than the German QWERTZ layout. I replied to his email confirming that I wanted to place the order.

    I attempted to reach him again via Chat, but that was not working, so after I sent him my phone number, he phoned me. After verification checks, he proceeded to place the order via the German and Irish online stores on my behalf. I got email order confirmations for the tablet (in German) and the keyboard (in English).

    Because we had placed the orders in two different EU countries from where I actually live (the Netherlands), I was expecting shipment and delivery to take at least a week. However, the following day I got emails from both Microsoft and the courier that the goods were on the way and would be delivered the same day.

    Bizarrely, although the orders were placed in the online stores of different countries, they both turned out to be fulfilled by the Irish operation. Even more bizarre, there’s apparently a warehouse in Venlo (in the Netherlands just 80 km from here) that bears the title Microsoft Ireland Operations Ltd. That had the items in stock and so they were shipped locally to me…

    And a coda to this story is that before I had even set up and signed in to the Surface with its keyboard, Microsoft knew that I had bought them and had included them in the list of my devices in my Microsoft account. I think they must immediately track their serial numbers from the moment of placing the orders.

  • Microsoft’s ICC Blockade

    Techzine reports that Microsoft has blocked the email account of the International Criminal Court’s Chief Prosecutor.

    This is an extremely worrying development and shows up the risks of European governments relying on Microsoft’s infrastructure services. Trump’s baleful influence comes in many forms.

    Carole Cadwalladr’s prediction of a digital coup would seem to be spot on.

    Addendum: John Naughton’s article on the whole affair is worth reading – he may well be the canary in the coalmine of what is to come.

  • A Digital Coup

    Carole Cadwalladr has a warning for us all…

    Addendum 21 April 2025: And in this piece for the Observer newspaper, Carole gives the backstory to that TED talk. It’s worth reading, but depressing in that, once again, it shows that AI is being driven by Careless People*.

    *From the Great Gatsby:

    They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

  • Normal Service Will Be Resumed ASAP

    Long-term visitors to this blog will probably have noticed some changes in the past couple of days. Namely that whilst the content remains the same, the look of the blog has radically altered.

    I’ve been using the same WordPress theme since 2010, and I thought I would freshen up the blog by replacing it with the 2025 version.

    Alas, there’s many a slip ‘twixt cup and lip…

    The new theme uses a completely different way to display the site. The old WordPress “Widgets” have been replaced by WordPress “Blocks” and there is now a “Site Editor” to manipulate them. So the “Comments” widget has been replaced by the “Comments” block.

    Unfortunately, I can’t get the Comments block to work properly. At the moment, on the Homepage, all posts that had comments from people earlier are displaying those comments, but the “Leave a comment” link to add new comments is not working – it’s just text without the comments form.

    If you want to add a comment to a post, you can’t do it on the Homepage, you will have to open the post in its own page and then you can add a comment there.

    I’ve tried to resolve this by having a dialogue with the WordPress chatbot without success. Eventually I got hold of a human via chat and he/she promised to check out my Homepage template to see if it can be fixed. That was four hours ago, and I’ve heard nothing since.

    So, comments on the Homepage are broken for the moment. We’ll see whether Support can fix it for me. In the meantime, as I say, if you want to add a comment to a post, open up the post into its own window and do it there.

    Sorry for the inconvenience.

    Addendum 21 March 2025: As I still hadn’t heard anything further from Support, I tried the Support Chat again and got connected with a human. They investigated my Homepage and found a bug that prevents the Comment Form from being displayed.

    The issue will be escalated within WordPress and hopefully a fix will be forthcoming at some point. In the meantime, I’ll see if I can add a workaround text to the Homepage Template that asks people to open the blogpost in a separate page if they want to leave a comment…

    Addendum 18 April 2025: Well, I think it has been fixed – the Comments Form block now seems to be working correctly on my Homepage. Hurrah!

  • OneDrive Is Now Useless For My Photos

    I’ve been using Microsoft’s cloud storage service to hold a copy of my photo library since 2007. In those days the service was known as Windows Live SkyDrive. As a result of a lawsuit brought by the British television broadcaster Sky UK, the service was rebranded to OneDrive in 2014.

    While the PC application, Windows Photo Gallery, supported photo metadata tags it wasn’t until 2015 that OneDrive also supported them.

    At that point, the combination of Windows Photo Gallery and OneDrive was useful – I could search my photo library using tags in both and both supported using geo tags. The road to get there had been pretty bumpy, Windows Photo Gallery in particular had some bugs that caused havoc to my library and its metadata, but the issues were eventually (mostly) resolved.

    Alas, Microsoft dropped Windows Photo Gallery in favour of the Photos app that was first introduced with Windows 8 in 2012. The Photos app, to this day, does not support photo metadata tags, which meant that searching my photo library using tags could only be done in OneDrive.

    Since the Photos app is useless, I’m using Photo Supreme from IDimager on my PC as my digital asset management application for my photo library. It supports the industry standard photo metadata schema published by the IPTC. I can manage technical (Exif) tags, descriptive tags, geo tags and region tags (for putting names to faces) using Photo Supreme. The resulting photos are then synchronised with the copy of my photo library held on OneDrive, where the technical, descriptive and geo tags in a photo can be displayed (region tags are not supported in OneDrive).

    After 2015, I could also use OneDrive to search my descriptive tags (for example, display all the photos that have been tagged with the name of our dog “Watson”). However, I got a nasty surprise in October last year when I discovered that searching for tags in OneDrive no longer worked.

    The reason appears to be because Microsoft has drunk the AI Kool-Aid. OneDrive uses AI to tag your photos. There’s an option switch to enable this:

    You will note that it says “You can also add tags to your photos manually to organise and find them more easily”. Originally, this switch just turned on the AI tags function – my tags were always being indexed by OneDrive’s Search engine independently and I could search them.

    Now, it appears that Microsoft has tied the indexing of my tags to this option, so I have to turn it on to enable searching of my tags. I don’t want to do this for two reasons:

    1. I don’t want to use Microsoft’s AI tags; a) they are too error-prone and b) they would pollute my controlled vocabulary of metadata tags.
    2. I discovered that with this option turned on, as OneDrive was assigning AI tags to my photos, it downloads versions of those photos with no tags at all to my PC. This is a complete turnabout to the old OneDrive, which preserved tags in downloaded copies.

    I am a strong believer in the adage “The Truth is in the File” – that is, that an image file must contain complete and accurate metadata. For OneDrive to deliberately strip out my metadata from my image files is a complete showstopper for me, so there is no way that I’m going to turn this new incarnation of the Photo Tagging option on.

    With the option off, then the Explore page is useless to me, because OneDrive will not display either my descriptive tags, nor will it read my geo tags and show me “Places”. I simply get, what is, to all intents and purposes, a blank page:

    Thanks, Microsoft – you’ve destroyed OneDrive as far as I am concerned.

    Addendum 29 July 2025: Well, good news – it appears as though Microsoft has reinstated the indexing of our own tags. So now I can search my photo library once again. Pity that Microsoft didn’t bother to tell us.

  • Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here…

    So Mark Zuckerberg has just announced that he will be getting rid of all his factcheckers on Facebook and joining Elon Musk on the race to the bottom in social media. He’s clearly kissed Trump’s ring.

    To reuse a particularly powerful turn of phrase: “they are swirling in a human cesspit of their own making”…

    As Chris Stokel-Walker writes:

    This is an extinction-level event for the idea of objective truth on social media – an organism that was already on life support, but was clinging on in part because Meta was willing to fund independent factchecking organisations in order to try to maintain some element of honest fact, free from political bias. Night is day. Up is down. Meta is X. Mark Zuckerberg is Elon Musk. Buckle in for a turbulent, vitriolic, and fact-free four years online.

  • One Step Forward, Two Steps Back…

    Sigh, once again Microsoft ruins a product – it is no longer possible to search tags in photos stored in OneDrive.

    When it was first launched in 2007 (under the name Windows Live SkyDrive), it was not possible to search for tags stored in photos’ metadata. This was finally made possible in 2015.

    The OneDrive Search function still claims that it is possible to search tags in photos:

    However, when I attempted to search for any of my tags in my photos, this function no longer works. Microsoft appear to have silently downgraded OneDrive, presumably to match their abysmal Photos app, which has never had the ability to support photo metadata tags since it was introduced.

    Once again Microsoft snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.

    Addendum: Here’s an example… My Pictures folder is backed up to OneDrive. Using Windows File Explorer to search for the tag “Watson” gives 1,895 photos as the result:

    OneDrive knows about the tags for each photo; for example:

    But searching for “Watson” in OneDrive only finds photos with “Watson” in the filename; all the tags are being ignored…

    Addendum 17 February 2025: I tried once again to contact Microsoft Support to report this (all my previous attempts disappeared into the ether). This time I actually got a link to a Community Post describing the same issue. The post was dated October 5th 2024. The issue was acknowledged to exist, but a few replies further on was this:

    FYI, in the past week I’ve been told by Microsoft this issue had been fixed, then that it would be fixed by the end of December, and finally I was told that the feature is being removed from One Drive altogether. Yes, you read that correctly: Microsoft is removing the search feature for photo tags.

    Un-f*cking-believable…

    However, a few posts further on, someone discovered a workaround, which is to post a query of the form:

    Try this link, https://photos.onedrive.com/explore/things/thing?id=testmytagsplease and replace “testmytagsplease” with your tag.

    Well, great that I can search for a single tag, but I used to be able to search on multiple tags in an AND operation, e.g. show me photos that have both our dogs in them (search for the tags Watson AND Lexie). Microsoft has simply removed this functionality and neutered OneDrive.

    Addendum 26 February 2025: I think I’ve discovered what Microsoft has done. They have indeed removed the ability to search our photo tags. Instead, OneDrive relies on their bloody AI engine to assign tags, and then group them on a new “Explore” page. It appears that your own tags are totally ignored when building these categories and Search now only searches photo filenames.

    Well, that’s a pile of Dingos’ kidneys – it renders OneDrive totally useless to me as an online resource to manage and search my photo library, and the AI is not much good either. There are many errors, and I simply haven’t the will to keep correcting its mistakes.

    Microsoft – you’ve ruined OneDrive for me.

    Addendum 28 February 2025: Just when I thought this couldn’t get any worse, Microsoft has managed it in spades. I turned off the Tag option in OneDrive, because Microsoft’s AI tags were poor and not what I wanted; I just wanted to have my own curated tags present. I checked that my tags were still present in the photos up on OneDrive (even though the Search function no longer works) and they were, and could be searched using the workaround I showed earlier.

    However, Microsoft has pulled a fast one on me – when the option was on, as OneDrive was assigning AI tags to photos, it appears to have downloaded versions of those photos with no tags at all to my PC. This is a complete turnabout to the old OneDrive, which preserved tags in downloaded copies.

    I discovered that I now have 32,000+ photos in my library that have had all my tags stripped out.

    Fortunately, I have my photos replicated in a shadow set of folders safely out of the reach of OneDrive, but now I have a lot of work to do to replace the castrated photos in my Pictures folder with curated ones.

    There was a time when the Microsoft software developers working on photo applications lived by the mantra that “the truth lives in the file” – i.e. accurate metadata and its preservation were paramount considerations. Those days are no more.

    Addendum 30 July 2025: Well, it appears as though the ability to search our tags has been restored to OneDrive. Pity that Microsoft didn’t bother to tell us…

  • Bye, Bye, Hue…

    I’ve been running a Home Automation system here at the Witte Wand for the past 8 years. I started out using Domoticz software, but three years ago I switched to Home Assistant, which I felt was a much superior open source system. I’ve not regretted that decision, HA continues to develop and improve – it’s a very well-managed project.

    One of the reasons I chose HA is that all my data is held locally, it does not depend on cloud services for its operation.

    Most of my devices use the ZWave standard, but a few years ago I added some Hue devices, together with a Philips Hue Bridge that was easily integrated into HA.

    Then, a few weeks ago I started getting messages in the Hue app on my smartphone that I would need to create an online account with Hue in order to continue using the system. It turns out that Signify (the company behind the Philips Hue products) have started forcing accounts on all users and upload user data to their cloud. For now, Signify says I’m still able to control my Hue devices locally as I’m currently used to, but I don’t know if this may change in the future. The fact remains that their privacy policy allows them to store my data and share it with partners.

    Needless to say, this blows a hole in my desire to have all my data locally stored and not be dependent on cloud services.

    It turns out that Hue devices use the Zigbee standard, and Home Assistant supports it. So I’ve purchased a Home Assistant Sky Connect to interface with my existing Hue devices and to replace the Philips Hue Bridge.

    Migration of the devices was easy – simply a matter of removing them from the Philips Hue Bridge network and adding them to the Home Assistant Zigbee network. HA automates the addition process, so I just sat back and watched as the devices were discovered and added to the network. It was also an easy matter to edit my existing automations replacing the old Hue names with the new Zigbee names of the devices. Everything was done in an hour and all seems to be running smoothly.

    The last step was to uninstall the Hue app from my smartphone and delete my Hue account.

    Bye, bye Signify and Hue; hello to Home Assistant and Zigbee.

  • Rubbing Salt Into The Wound

    I recently blogged about the fact that Google was pulling the plug on the Premium Lite membership tier in YouTube.

    Today I had the following email from YouTube:

    Which translates as:

    Your Premium Lite membership has been canceled. Too bad you’re leaving. From November 24, 2023, you can no longer use the benefits of your Premium Lite membership.

    “Too bad you’re leaving“? WTF is this? You lot pulled the plug. I’m not leaving of my own accord, you’ve whipped the rug out from under me…

    Bastards.

  • The Rise of AI

    I blogged about Microsoft’s Copilot recently, and I had the comment that this AI technology was “exciting”.

    I’m more of the opinion that it (AI in general) is “concerning”. A) because of its limitations leading to false impressions and conclusions, b) because of the fact that it can be so readily abused, and c) because it could pose an existential threat and destroy the concept of trust as we know it.

  • Pulling The Plug on Premium Lite

    Back in June, I blogged about the intrusive adverts that are infesting YouTube videos these days. While YouTube Premium offers ad-free viewing, it also includes the ability to watch content offline and stream music ad-free. However, it also comes at a hefty (in my view) price: €11.99 per month. I’m not prepared to pay that price.

    Back in June, YouTube introduced a Premium Lite membership tier that made viewing YouTube content Ad-free. At €6.99 per month this was a proposition that was somewhat more attractive.

    I decided that I would sign up for the trial, and after a month of blissfully watching content Ad-free, the experience was so pleasant that I decided that I would carry on paying for Premium Lite.

    Alas, it was too good to last.

    Last week I got the following email from Google:

    Your Premium Lite membership will be discontinued
    Hi Geoff, ‌ Thank you for being one of our first Premium Lite members. ‌

    We’re writing to let you know that after 25 October 2023, we will no longer be offering your version of Premium Lite. While we understand that this may be disappointing news, we continue to work on different versions of Premium Lite as we incorporate feedback from our users, creators and partners. ‌

    We will cancel your membership on 25 October 2023. Your Premium Lite benefits will expire at the end of your billing cycle and you will not be billed further. ‌

    To show our appreciation, we’re offering a one-month trial of YouTube Premium (even if you’ve had a trial before). With YouTube Premium, you can watch videos ad-free, offline and in the background. Plus, stream music ad-free in the YouTube Music app. ‌ If you’d like to redeem this offer, you’ll need to cancel your Premium Lite membership or wait for it to be cancelled for you. ‌
    You can find more information in the YouTube Help Centre. ‌

    Kind regards,
    The YouTube Premium team

    Sorry, Google, but €11.99 per month is not an amount I’m prepared to pay for simply wanting to watch content without your damn adverts.

    I’ll go back to cursing you and your adverts as from the 25th of October.

  • Microsoft Copilot – Missing in Action…

    On the 21st September, Microsoft announced the inclusion of Microsoft Copilot (“your everyday AI companion”) into Windows 11. In the announcement Microsoft stated that “Copilot will begin to roll out in its early form as part of our free update to Windows 11, starting Sept. 26”.

    Since I am running the Release Preview versions of Windows 11, I assumed that I would be getting it pretty quickly, ahead of the general release.

    Well a week has passed, and no sign of it heading towards my PCs so I went back to the release notes for the version of the Release Preview that came on the 26th September – the one that includes Copilot.

    It was there that I discovered the footnote:

    ** Copilot in Windows will start to release in preview to select global markets as part of our latest update to Windows 11. The initial markets for the Copilot in Windows preview include North America and parts of Asia and South America. It is our intention to add additional markets over time.

    Ah, I see, so screw you Europe – you’re not getting it now, and we’re not going to tell you when, or indeed whether, you’re ever going to get it…

    Thanks a bunch, Microsoft.

  • Surface Duo – It’s Dead, Jim…

    I predicted back in July that the end was nigh for the Surface Duo line of devices made by Microsoft. I think we can now categorically state that the plug has been pulled and it is well and truly dead.

    The reason being that Panos Panay has announced that he is leaving Microsoft after 19 years at the company. Panay was the power behind the Surface line of products, and the Surface Duo was his baby.

    The timing of the announcement is also interesting – coming as it does just three days before Microsoft’s annual Surface event where new products are announced. It seems almost inevitable that a Surface Duo 3 will not be in that lineup.

    Panay himself will also not be at the event. Perhaps he didn’t want the embarrassment. I remember the strained performance of Steven Sinofsky, the champion of Windows 8, at its introduction event. He left the company very soon afterwards which led to the question of did he fall or was he pushed…

  • YouTube and Adverts

    I don’t think it’s just me, but I feel sure that adverts on YouTube have become a lot more intrusive than they used to be. These days, I rarely manage to complete watching a YouTube post without adverts, both long and short formats, frequently interrupting the flow.

    YouTube also keep trying to push me to subscribe to their YouTube Premium service, but since this costs €11.99 per month – well, I’m damned if I’m going to pay that much. I’ll just continue to curse YouTube and their adverts.

    Today, however, I noticed something interesting: they’ve introduced a “YouTube Premium Lite” tier for €6.99 per month. This does not include the YouTube Music service or the ability to download content for offline viewing, so it seems to be aimed specifically at providing an Ad-free experience.

    Apparently, Google are testing the waters here; Premium Lite is only available in a handful of European countries.

    Well, it is certainly cheaper than Premium, and I am primarily interested in an Ad-free experience, so is it worth it to me?

    I pay WordPress €30 per annum to keep my blog Ad-free for my readers. That, I think is acceptable, and all my readers experience this for free. To ask every consumer almost three times that amount to experience an Ad-free YouTube does seem to be pushing things a bit far. I suspect I’ll just continue cursing Google, YouTube and their intrusive adverts.

  • Pareidolia Strikes Again…

    Some people see the face of Christ on a piece of toast, others see sentience in a piece of software. (and he was trying to teach LaMDA transcendental meditation? Says it all, really).

    Addendum 23 July 2022: What a surprise – not.

  • Is That A Threat Or A Promise?

    I see that Meta (the company formerly known as Facebook) is saying that it may have to abandon the European Union.

    “If a new transatlantic data transfer framework is not adopted… we will likely be unable to offer a number of our most significant products and services, including Facebook and Instagram, in Europe,” Meta said in its 10-K filing.

    Stand not upon the order of your going, but go at once…

    And good riddance.

  • Facebookland

    An excellent, and chilling, article in The Atlantic by Adrienne LaFrance about the power and dangers of Facebook. Worth reading.

    I left Facebook, with absolutely no regrets, over six years ago. One user down, only another 2.9 billion to go…

  • Another Day, Another Microsoft Rant…

    As I predicted a year ago, Microsoft is dropping Skype, and trying to persuade people to move to a version of Microsoft Teams intended for home users. It will come as standard in Windows 11, but it is already available for Window 10 as a download. Actually, it’s been available for some time for iOS and Android devices, with support for Windows having been added in the past few weeks.

    I’ve been using the business version of Microsoft Teams for some time, but I thought I would check the personal version out in view of the likely demise of Skype in the not too distant future (if Microsoft has its way).

    For years, I’ve had two Microsoft Accounts, each associated with its own separate email address, and for years, both accounts have had the same mobile number associated with them because I have a single mobile phone.

    I’ve just tried to set up the personal Microsoft Teams application with the second Microsoft Account.

    I get to the stage where it asks for a phone number to be added to the Microsoft Account. But, hang on I think, that account already has my number – why is Teams asking for it again? Oh well, no harm in giving it again I think.

    Wrong.

    I get a message saying: “That number is already taken”, followed by a message from the Authenticator app on my phone telling me that my phone number has been removed from my account. Er, what?

    Could it be that the developers of Microsoft Teams cannot conceive of a use case where someone can have multiple email addresses, but only has one mobile? Please say it isn’t so.

    Gah!

  • Microsoft: Opens Mouth to Change Feet Yet Again…

    I see that Microsoft is demonstrating its endless capability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory yet again.

    Last week they proudly unveiled Windows 11.

    Their web page for Windows 11 includes an App to check whether your Windows PCs are ready for Windows 11. Naturally, I downloaded it and ran it on all my PCs and tablets.

    I had expected that my old desktop PC would not meet the requirements, but I was somewhat flabbergasted to see that my 1 year-old Surface Go 2 also failed to pass the tests:

    The Surface Go 2 has an Intel Core m3-8100Y CPU, which is actually on the list of supported Intel CPUs for Windows 11.

    It turns out that the PC Health Check app is a load of dingos’ kidneys. And that Microsoft don’t seem to be able to agree amongst themselves what, precisely, the actual requirements are.

    Oh, and I see that while Microsoft says Windows 11 “will be coming later this year”, the fine print later on the same page qualifies that to “The upgrade rollout plan is still being finalized but is scheduled to begin late in 2021 and continue into 2022. Specific timing will vary by device”.

    ‘Twas ever thus for Microsoft. Plus ça change…

  • The Robots Are Coming

    I don’t know whether to be amazed or terrified…