Open-Sourcing Windows Calculator(blogs.windows.com) |
Open-Sourcing Windows Calculator(blogs.windows.com) |
XAML is just a markup language, it's used across multiple frameworks and languages.
This particular technology is called UWP, it's mostly rebranded WinRT.
Historically, XAML was also used in Silverlight, both desktop/web, WinCE, and Windows Phone.
what?
Kind of like the people who comment "embrace, extend, extinguish" on every Micro$oft article, forgetting that the one person to who the phrase has been directly attributed (by a third party who was paraphrasing) resigned from Microsoft 19 years ago and when obliquely referenced (like during lawsuits) the documents used as exhibits in the lawsuits all date from the mid-90s.
It kind of makes me roll my eyes, like people ask "did you know coca cola used to have COCAINE in it?"
I think this applies in exactly the same way to the wrongs of corporations. Out of decency, if not out of being consistent with the idea of treating them as legal persons.
If you know any XAML, you’ll have zero issues using the rest of them. Speaking from experience, I started with Silverlight a decade ago, had no problems switching to others.
But the underlying tech is very different. Early Silverlight rendered on CPU, WPF is based on DirectX 9, UWP uses Direct3D 11. Silverlight and WPF are .NET based, WinRT and UWP are not, they’re 100% native code, exposed to .NET through COM interop.
https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/true...
"This project collects usage data and sends it to Microsoft to help improve our products and services. Read our privacy statement to learn more. Telemetry is disabled in development builds by default, and can be enabled with the SEND_TELEMETRY build flag."
Even on a simple calculator.
One which might be cause for concern is LogInvalidInputPasted() specifically because pastedExpression is included in the Telemetry Event.
I also have questions on LogConversionResult(). Why is that recording NetworkAccessBehavior or the raw conversion values? Wouldn't knowing the FromUnit/ToUnit be enough to know how much something is being used?
fields.AddString(L"AddSubtractMode", isAddMode ? L"Add" : L"Subtract");
LogTelemetryEvent(EVENT_NAME_DATE_ADD_SUBTRACT_USED, fields);
Separately, I question whether anyone looking at the telemetry on the backend. In my experience, developers add this stuff because they think it will be useful, then it never or rarely gets looked at. A telemetry event here, a telemetry event there, pretty soon you're talking real bandwidth.
Why not? If they're paying people to build this software, they presumably want to make it good. With this data, they can learn all kinds of things to help improve future versions: when/why is it crashing, what features are people using most/least, are there patterns of clicks that suggest people are mis-understanding or mis-clicking certain features, etc, etc.
edit: Another one that's often useful is looking at different usage patterns across countries. For example, if nobody in Israel is using COSINE, then there's likely a problem with the right-to-left internationalization that you should fix.
There's a lack of user control and a lack of transparency. Even if you are a Windows 10 Enterprise user (lucky you, you can turn off system telemetry, unlike the plebes who run Windows 10 Professional), and you turn off telemetry for Windows as a whole, does that include the Calculator or not? Maybe it does. It's really unclear to most people.
I find it more likely that the real answer is they're trying to "maximize shareholder value." If Microsoft wanted to make good software, there are several thousand other things it could do other than collecting information on people using a calculator.
Even from people who Do Not Want their data collected for this purpose?
So it's OK, then. Jimmy jumped off a bridge, so it's OK if Johnny does it, too. No harm done!
but suddenly when Microsoft does it it's a Big Deal
No, it's a big deal because Microsoft feels entitled to collect information about people using... wait for it... a calculator.
using anonymous data
It's not anonymous. We know it's going to at least get a timestamp and IP address.
I don't see the issue with refining UX
Neither do I. Do it by bringing people in and testing the program on them, the way it was done for decades before "telemetry" became one of those SV euphemisms.
Every high quality commercial app does this.
No. They don't.
Apple does not collect data at anywhere near this granularity, e.g. which buttons were pressed.
One interviewer told me that keystrokes were being measured by conhost.exe. Not just for internal testing. He clarified that it was done on customer machines. It wasn't clear if they collected individual key presses because we were discussing something you could infer by knowing keystroke timing.
Windows 10 is the most prolific malware in the world.
There are a couple instances where we trace API call timings, but only that of API calls initiated by an attached console application.
From looking at conhost.exe in IDA Pro, there are some references to telemetry in a function HandleKeyEvent: https://i.imgur.com/MwaBLcW.jpg
But looking more closely it's just used to increase some counters when Ctrl+C or Ctrl+V are used: https://i.imgur.com/29e2qLD.png
There is another one for Ctrl+A elsewhere in the function as well.
Seems these are for when clipboard operations happen, there is other telemetry nearby for when key activity causes a paste: https://i.imgur.com/xONKrGJ.png
So Microsoft are indeed collecting keystroke telemetry in conhost.exe, but it's just some boring old counters to measure clipboard usage.
https://github.com/Microsoft/calculator/blob/057401f5f2b4bb1...
Surely Microsoft has an accountant or two on staff. Let them test it in-house.
Like, what the hell do they even track? I guess the obvious ones are things like application crashes, but now I'm curious if they have the data on the most common calculations, folks' favorite numbers, etc.
So it's not ideal from a privacy perspective to have to worry about usage telemetry in a calculator. But at least there is the silver lining of having telemetry disabled by default _somewhere_, even if it is only for dev builds.
Obviously one option is just a dev build flag in your telemetry payload, but I can see the logic in just turning it off altogether.
As it stands, though, Calculator is not something I've particularly cared about in the Windows world; pretty much anyone here could write a simple calculator app in an afternoon.
Still, I am glad MS is slowly becoming more OSS-friendly; I doubt anyone installs Windows specifically for the calculator app, so as a result, why the hell not open-source it?
I've always found the "App" version of Calculator lacking compare to its Win32 predecessor. In particular History. On the old Calculator you could double-click the history and edit the equation, and get a new result, no go on the App.
Plus the Programmer UI, while being more powerful is actually harder to use since the information is now split between two screens rather than one.
Oh and you cannot paste in currency ($10) is now invalid. The old one just stripped the currency symbols.
I don't know if it has the features you're missing, I use it because I don't like the look and feel of the new apps.
(Why the downvotes?)
It's 2019, I have a multi-gigahertz processor, it's a calculator app, and it takes a few seconds to launch!
[0]: https://github.com/Microsoft/calculator/issues?q=is%3Aissue+...
https://help.github.com/en/articles/helping-new-contributors...
It's the Open Source issue tracker equivalent of the "Welcome mat". It doesn't necessarily mean that Microsoft's employees here need help, but it certainly shows that they welcome it.
(Which is a very useful indicator for engagement and shows presumably some stake in actually continuing to develop Calculator out in the open, as opposed it being a one time or rarely-if-ever code drop.)
https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2018/04/04/annou...
Please some example, I'm curious, as Microsoft claims that they use the "infinite" precision library there.
What's next? Notepad, Ms Paint?
Shall we see anything bigger than VS Code?
two weeks later
"Show HN: I added transparency support to MSPaint"
two (more) weeks later
"Adobe shares plummet as users cancel their subscriptions to Creative Cloud by the thousands, analysts baffled"
In 7.5MB, it offers most of the features casual users need from a graphics program: layers, transparency, curves, etc. - all in a footprint (and startup time) comparable to that of MSPaint.
.NET framework?
I appreciate you're probably referring to things such as the Windows kernel (just for an example), but this reads like an oxymoron. :)
For an example of OS code that uses C++/WinRT, check out the native UI controls library, WinUI: https://github.com/Microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml
Was this source previously in the Windows repository? Has all development moved to GitHub? If it was in the Windows repo, are they mirroring it back?
Do they still have the old history? There are multiple ways to deal with this in git (grafts, replacements) I wonder if they're using anything like this to get full history, internally.
I like to calculate stuff from time to time, so I use the default OS calculator app a lot.
The Windows one is actually pretty decent, except maybe for the shortcuts - e.g. raising to the power is under "y" for some reason.
Ubuntu/Linux(es) has by far the best one. The shortcuts are obvious and the whole expression is visible at all times.
The one for macOS is surprisingly lacking.
Why?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NumPy
"Internally, both MATLAB and NumPy rely on BLAS and LAPACK for efficient linear algebra computations."
As far as I know BLAS and LAPACK are still based on the decades old FORTRAN code.
I hope they continue down this road. I doubt we'll see the NT Kernel on GitHub in my life time... but, one can dream.
Does anyone have a suggestion for a replace on Windows 10?
The only place where I found it where it is publicly "browseable" -> http://www.codeforge.com/article/148667
I'm not sure the source of notepad is that much interesting, though. I mean, yeah, nice to have out of curiosity, maybe, but I'm not sure I would get anything from looking at it. I'm even more interested by monstrosities like historical version of conhost, or of cmd, because it is both simultaneously horrendous and bizarrely not extremely buggy (probably was debugged by some kind of brute force effort, then... :p )
Although a version of the Notepad source under a free software licence would at least permit to strip it of the new ridiculous shits, like "Search with Bing" and maybe some spying features.
There are a ton of good reasons why this is unlikely to ever happen, though (third-party licenses mainly).
There are a ton of VB6 applications out there running, and Microsoft so far has continued to keep the runtime around, but that won't always be the case.
When it is finally EOL'd, people aren't going to be happy at all about it...
What I'm talking about is actual RGB alpha channel support
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RGBA_color_space
But what you have here is still a neat function of MSPaint.exe
- Rectangular Select part of an image
- Move it one pixel or more
- With Transparent Selection enabled Rotate -> Rotate 90 Degrees
This is the result: https://i.imgur.com/HlAkHM1.png
If you disable Transparent Selection it works as expected. I reported this to Microsoft twice over the last ten years, no fix yet...
Only "might"? If you just accidentally paste your password to the calculator...
Additional telemetry points include whether the "Find" dialog is being used (explicitly, whether "find next" has been clicked, and how long the search string is -- no other user-generated search content is included in event logs), when a process detaches from the console, and when the window is resized.
Today. After the next (forced?) upgrade...?
I don't even want them knowing when I'm using my computer.
“What gets measured gets managed.”
All the concerning privacy issues with Facebook or any other company should be seen rigorously by its users. Telemetry at OS Level is one of the worst offending practices IMO.
It's always good to trust but verify, although here the the safeguard is pretty strong.
[1] Very little to not at all.
A small selection:
constexpr auto EVENT_NAME_INVALID_INPUT_PASTED = L"InvalidInputPasted";
constexpr auto EVENT_NAME_VALID_INPUT_PASTED = L"ValidInputPasted";
constexpr auto EVENT_NAME_BITFLIP_PANE_CLICKED = L"BitFlipPaneClicked";
constexpr auto EVENT_NAME_BITFLIP_BUTTONS_USED = L"BitFlipToggleButtonUsed";
constexpr auto EVENT_NAME_ANGLE_BUTTONS_USED = L"AngleButtonUsedInSession";
constexpr auto EVENT_NAME_HYP_BUTTON_USED = L"HypButtonUsedInSession";
constexpr auto EVENT_NAME_FUNCTION_USAGE = L"FunctionUsageInSession";
constexpr auto EVENT_NAME_BITLENGTH_BUTTON_USED = L"BitLengthButtonUsed";
"You provide some of this data directly, and we get some of it by collecting data about your interactions, use, and experiences with our products."
"Microsoft uses the data we collect to provide you with rich, interactive experiences. In particular, we use data to:
...
Advertise and market to you, which includes sending promotional communications, targeting advertising, and presenting you with relevant offers."
TL;DR: AdvertisingID handles ad tracking in windows and can be opted out of during install, in settings and globally on your account. AFAIK you can also wipe any previously tracked data. AID tracking is unrelated to telemetry.
Telemetry does not contribute to advertising at all unless "tailored experiences" is enabled in settings, and even then the data is mostly used for Microsoft to suggest features and fixes for problems.