
What’s new in the Windows 10 May 2020 Update - aspenmayer
https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2020/05/27/whats-new-in-the-windows-10-may-2020-update/
======
Jaruzel
> _Stay on top of your numbers. Keep the calculator close by—now you can
> choose to keep the Calculator app on top of everything._

This would be brilliant... if the Windows 10 Calculator app wasn't the size of
a small country.

~~~
miles
An "always on top" option for... a single app.

Chris Rosa wrote Push Pin almost 25 years ago to keep any window on top of
other windows. He even included the source code, which should give Microsoft a
head start ;-)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20011031015225/http://rosafamily...](https://web.archive.org/web/20011031015225/http://rosafamily.org/software/pushpin/)

Here it is in action under Windows XP:

[https://imgur.com/a/KDHEtPO](https://imgur.com/a/KDHEtPO)

~~~
Barrin92
>An "always on top" option for... a single app.

pretty much the single feature I miss the most when I switch between linux and
windows machines. It's so ridiculously usful to have available across the
entire desktop.

~~~
contravariant
This is why I've got a 'toggle always on top' action mapped to Ctrl+Win+A with
Autohotkey. Not sure why Microsoft chose to hide that particular functionality
when it's natively supported by windows.

------
graycat
On my HP laptop with factory installed Windows 10 with the latest updates,
opening or closing the CD/DVD device consistently causes the screen background
to change from the Autumn scene to black. Hitting the keys Start-Tab shows
small version of whatever screens (sessions, whatever they are called -- can
have multiple such _screens_ ), each with its proper background and a left
click on one of those will give a correct screen. In addition the background
of the screen from Start-Tab has Autumn, and a left click on part of that
background give a correct screen.

When this error first occurred, just after a Windows 10 update, in Firefox a
Web page caused Windows to display a pop-window about a security problem. The
Autumn background went to black, and the desktop icons were scattered across
the _desktop_. I ran a "quick scan" and a "full scan", and they found no
problems. I put the icons back where they belong, and they have stayed there.

Looks like the most recent Windows 10 Home Edition update has a bug that
causes the screen background to go to black.

Starting Firefox puts up a pop up window asking if I want to permit Firefox to
"change" my system or some such. As this popup is displayed, all other windows
have been _minimized_ , and the screen background is black. If I left click on
the push button "No", then Firefox runs and the background and all my windows
are restored.

~~~
londons_explore
Black desktop usually is a sign of a Windows licensing/activation issue.

I'd guess when your DVD drive opens, the driver somehow reloads, and windows
sees a different serial number, so the windows license is no longer valid. It
then auto-re-licenses itself a few minutes later, provided it has an internet
connection and the desktop background returns.

~~~
aspenmayer
That’s interesting. I would have guessed something like an unsigned driver or
malware. I don’t think just one device change would be enough to cause a
reactivation, but maybe repeated ones. I’ve changed CPU, GPU, optical drives,
RAM on a system with no reactivation. Motherboard seems more likely to trigger
it, but that doesn’t seem likely in this case. More info would help, but in
the meantime OP should scan for malware with RogueKiller or at least ADW
Cleaner/Malwarebytes/ESET or another decent alternative. Not affiliated, just
use the product as a free user.

[https://www.adlice.com/roguekiller/](https://www.adlice.com/roguekiller/)

------
8fingerlouie
> Go passwordless. Did you know—for improved security and a simple sign-in
> experience, you can sign in with your face, fingerprint or PIN

How on earth would a 4-6 digit PIN be more secure than my 20+ character
password ? In the end, an PIN is just another password. They may employ a
million iterations to their KDF, but 6 digits is still a lot easier to
bruteforce than 20 characters.

As for the rest, fingerprint and face, they're not secure. Convenient yes,
secure no.

~~~
gbba
PIN is probably not the best term they could've chosen since the term implies
it should be a number.

However in this case, the Windows 10 "PIN" can actually be a longer password.

~~~
8fingerlouie
>However in this case, the Windows 10 "PIN" can actually be a longer password.

So why is it better to have a longer PIN instead of a longer password ?

If a PIN is just another password with the same length/complexity requirements
as a regular password, why should i bother ?

------
pnako
I can't wait to find out what's going to break this time.

~~~
viewer5
The last big update replaced my user profile with the temp one, that it
apparently makes normally during the process, but also is supposed to swap it
back before the update process finishes. Took me a couple days of googling and
chanting to figure out how the hell to fix it, and it still left marks, like
the start menu has "computer (1)" and "Control Panel (1)", because the temp-
profile-owned ones are still out there occupying the "computer" and "Control
Panel" names.

~~~
aspenmayer
I see that problem at work every few weeks. It’s simple enough to fix if you
know how, if you have the easy path.[1]

There are some corruptions I’ve seen on failed Windows Updates where the user
profile was entirely gone and had to be recovered from hard disk with data
recovery software. It’s fairly rare. For what I do, I don’t usually have the
justification to find out why this happens when it does.

The system is hardware and software. Some software problems have an underlying
hardware problem causing them. Relatedly, drive failure is very common in the
field, especially on laptops. SSD failure is also a thing, but nearly an order
of magnitude less frequent in my own workload. Neither here nor there, just
trying to say there’s a lot of ways a computer can break. In my opinion it’s
great they work as well as they do considering what I’ve seen them put
through.

[1] [https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/145678-fix-user-
profile-...](https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/145678-fix-user-profile-
service-failed-sign-error-windows-10-a.html)

------
aryehof
Name your virtual desktops? I'm underwhelmed. How many years will it take the
get the ability to have different desktop backgrounds, which is what users
_really_ want?

~~~
hanasn
You can always install CDE :)

------
fomine3
Happy to use WSL2 in stable!

------
Iwan-Zotow
Any news wrt WSL?

~~~
withinrafael
This is the first release of Windows 10 that includes WSLv2 (the full linux
kernel) [1].

[1] [https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/announcing-
wsl-2/](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/announcing-wsl-2/)

------
bni
Is the Chromium-based Edge part of this update?

~~~
withinrafael
That's unrelated and can be downloaded at [https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/edge](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/edge) for Windows 7 and up.

~~~
aspenmayer
Do you know when Vertical Tabs are coming? I really hope it gets upstreamed to
chromium because I have yet to find a great extension solution that works well
on Windows 10 and macOS.

