#and all of the stuff about timelines merging even if it was just digital it still really confusing to me

[hopetatic]

i had no clue i would draw him again. but well, what am i gonna do with 3 hours of newfound knowledge about this one arg? Nothing? AS IF

Close ups below

[altersidearchives]

[Alterbits] The Slime-Encrusted Rabbit Hole (Part Uno)

So, yeah, while I'm mainly focused on video games for this, I am pretty big into cartoons too. So while I was writing up the Nintendo stuff, I decided to look up Nickelodeon and see what I got.

...and I IMMEDIATELY had questions with one of the first things I saw. Robot Jones, on Nick? With a third season?? That's readily available??? And it was also one of the first image results on Google when I searched "Nickelodeon." Taking a guess that it was recently put on a streaming service or whatever. Looks like an Amazon icon or something.

It was being hosted on MySpace of all things. I went onto the site and found it was some kind of watch party feature where you can buy seasons of shows to add to a digital collection, and they had a bunch of Nick ones, which is where the Robot Jones icon came from. On top of a bunch of others.

A page full of Nickelodeon shows on “MySpace Play.” I guess MySpace had a form of success in this timeline. Seems to be a watch party type service, makes sense.

Even more questions started ringing through. There was a show next to the Robot Jones seasons that looked like Elinor Wonders Why, y'know that PBS Kids show? But Elinor looks like a teenager or something. I was able to pull up the show's page, and I got greeted with this.

Getting a bunch of Stranger Things vibes from this. Wonder if that exists in this timeline as well.

I won't keep making comments, I'll let the cap speak for itself on this one, but that's when I decided I had to look into it further. Obviously I couldn't buy the show, I doubt I could put in a credit card from a parallel universe and I was NOT about to try it. I caught a glimpse of a Glove and Boots character too, if you can see it in the first screencap. So I was definitely having my curiosity peaking at that point. So I went to the Wikipedia page for Nickelodeon, and started to dig.

Hoo boy.

Now at first this didn’t seem all too crazy. The logo was different but I already got a glimpse of that on the MySpace thing. The first big difference was the “Paramount Universal” thing. I didn’t look much into that, so my only assumption is that Viacom merged with Universal instead of CBS and Comcast eating them up. At least I HOPE that’s what happened instead of the potential monopolistic nightmare that all four combined would be, but I digress.

Next up, looked like Nick Jr. died at some point, interesting, and there’s a full-on NickRewind network that seems to have taken over Nicktoons. I read on and it sounded not too crazy. The “Elements of Harmony” bit caught my eye, but I wanted to keep reading onwards, save it for later.

....The last paragraph caught me RIGHT the fuck off-guard. Two YouTube channels getting full-on shows on Nick, let alone rather, niche ones. I mean yeah, in our timeline we got FRED and ReactToThat (ew), but those channels were HUGE back then and were practically controlled by big companies anyhow. I dunno if JacknJellify and the GaB guys were bigger in this timeline or what but, wow. Shit’s getting weirder.

Didn’t bother reading the History bit, I thought that’d be way too much to shove into this anyway, but there were more interesting tidbits, I’ll spare the redundancy and not comment here, buuuuuut I did see a mention of Pikwik Pack and Let’s Go Luna (and what I think might be Xavier Riddle? That’s one of the ones I didn’t look at), so what happened to PBS Kids here? I thought the Elinor bit I saw was just a coincidence, but no I guess?

So I clicked on the list...

[aftermathdb]

DEATH BATTLE Review: Mega Man Battle Royale.

Cue the Mega Man 2 theme!

Five robots. All with the name Mega Man. Time to find out which one is the strongest one there is!

Mega Man Classic Preview.

We all know this story. Doctor Light created several robots to try and help out the world at large. But then that dastardly Doctor Willy took them, and made them evil. To combat this, we got the first, the classic, the original… Mega Man.

And we even get to go over his many… many weapons. Thanks to his variable weapons system, Rock has a plethora of firepower to work with, and a lot of variety to utilize in a fight.

From his trust Mega Buster, to his various elemental weapons, Rock has an answer for everything. And his Gear System from 11 can give him an extra edge up.

And if he’s ever in a pickle, Rock can call up his trusty companion, Rush to give him an edge up.

And if you’re wondering about feats, Rock has plenty to work with.

Though, of course, he does have his fair share of weaknesses. He’s not necessarily invincible, his weapons have limited ammunition, and he wasn’t designed for combat.

But in the end, Mega Man is a power house. If a crazy German is trying to take over the world, there’s only one man to call:

The Mega Man.

Mega Man X Preview.

And we fast forward into the future, where Doctor Cain, discovers a new kind of replicated human called a reploid. These beings had A.I.s so great, that they were practically human. But then some of them ended up going… Maverick.

In order to combat this new threat, Cain called in Sigma. But, we all know how well that went. So he went with the backup plan: Mega Man X.

X, surprise surprise, has a Mega Buster, and the ability to copy other weapons. And he’s specifically built to be better than the OG Mega Man……… So we already know two of the combatants that are going down, right?

But, he’s still got weapon energy to worry about. But he’s got plenty of weapons to choose from. And if he needs some extra firepower, X can call upon his Ultimate Armor.

This gives him extra firepower, and channels his inner Street Fighter fan and lets X use legendary moves like the Hadoken and the Shoryuken.

And of course, he’s got feats. That healing though… That would make him hard to put down.

But in the end, if a nutball virus that’s controlling a powerful robot is trying to take over the world, there’s only one man to call:

Mega Man X.

Mega Man. Volnutt Preview.

So, fast forward again, and we land in a new year where the Earth has flooded. And we all basically died because we got that shitty. Hey, if we had a bunch of wars that ended up killing everyone, and kept letting the top 1% run the show, I’d say that we deserve it.

But the humans on a space station were basically running the whole thing. But then they died too. Except for one, called The Master. And his Carbon known as Mega Man Trigger. And The Master decided that the Carbons deserved to run the planet, since there are more of them. But then a bunch of crazy stuff happened, and left Trigger without his memories thanks to a being named Sera, and left him on Earth. This left him stranded, and the new natives gave him the dumbest name they could think of: Volnutt.

God this is weird.

So, he decided to battle evil, stop the Master System, and try to regain his lost memories.

The downside to his special weapons is that they all draw from the same power source, and that they have to be swapped out manually.

But he’s got a list of feats to pull from to win the day.

In the end, if you need a man to be stranded on the moon for nearly two decades, there’s only one man to call:

Mega Man Volnutt.

MegaMan.EXE Preview.

In an alternate timeline, Doctor Light, now known as Tadashi Hikari, focused on the internet and digital A.I instead of robotics. His work would create an entire universe known as the Cyber-World that would be managed by A.I systems called NetNavis, and one kid named LAN would get one of the strongest Navis of all: Mega Man.EXE.

Like all the Mega Men before him, Hub has a Mega Buster, and can even grab enemy weapons for his own weapons system thanks to the Battle Chips he has on hand.

And with over 1,500 Battle Chips, LAN and .EXE have basically an army’s worth of weapons to choose from.

And since .EXE is a digital program, and not an organic being, he’s survived a ton of punishment.

And in case you’re wondering “Wait! He’s digital. Can he even fight in the real world?”- The answer is “Yes.”

.EXE has been able to come to the real world on a few occasions, and has even fused with LAN through Full Synchronization. And with Perfect Synchro (No relation to Yu-Gi-Oh), .EXE can even retain his weapons and abilities. This is a good thing, considering all the crazy feats that .EXE has on hand.

And as it turns out, .EXE is actually LAN’s stillborn baby brother turned into a computer program, which helps with that whole “Perfect Synchro” thing. Which means that the planet-busting Cybeast exploding comes around to that number you see up there.

But at the end of the day, when a bunch of evil viruses are trying to destroy an entire cybernetic universe, there’s only one man to call:

MegaMan.EXE.

Starforce Mega Man (Geo) Preview.

Going ahead a few more years (Give or take a hundred or two), humanity has moved past cyberspace and onto radio waves. But then a guy named Kelvin Stellar got kidnapped by a bunch of FM-ians, or FM Aliens… God what the fuck happened to this franchise?- What’s wrong with a young robot fighting evil robots to save the world?- Was it not big enough?

Anyways, to fight back against these… FM-ians, Geo ended up merging with another form of these guys who is apparently an AM-Ian named Omega. Because a cyber-being named after a Greek letter of the alphabet is always someone you can trust. But they merged into a brand new being known as Starforce Mega Man

(Wow. First Hub, and now Geo. What do these guys have against ghosts?- I know what jooke I’m using whenever Danny Phantom shows up (And for those of you wondering, he’s not in the next battle)).

But, as a being that is composed of EM waves, Geo can effectively be unseen, unheard, and untouched by any other human beings.

And thankfully, this Mega Buster has some differences from the others. Like how it automatically charges up on its own, but it can be modified to change it’s power, speed, and status effects.

Anyways, onto the rest of the weapons. And with 600+ equips, Geo has an arsenal on his hand at all times.

And he can even control “Noise” a term used to describe excess energy created by EM Beings. He can even absorb a lot of it to access a super form known as “Red Joker” who can scatter your remains across the atmosphere after he uses a blast that turns you into EM Particles. Yeesh, remind me to never piss off any aliens made up of EM Particles. You never know which ones might end up having that form or ability on hand, er… appendage?- What would an EMbeing call those anyways?

With all that power, Geo and Omega have a resume to boot. They’ve taken on plenty of enemies. Including a being that could move a  black hole that was 4 million times bigger than the sun.

And Geo tanked attacks from Sirius (The one that did that)! In order to pull off a feat like that would require over 4.6 Decillion Megatons of TNT. Looks like Optimus now places second for how largest amount of force one can output to Geo.

And since other EMBeings can move from the center of the Milky Way to Earth in about three days. Putting them over three million times the speed of light. Considering that Geo could basically survive a black hole like it was nothing, this means that it’s likely that he could do the same.

And unlike all the other Mega Men, Starforce managed to make sure that his world ended up peaceful.

So, at the end of the day, when the world is in danger of being destroyed or overrun by alien beings made up of Electro-Magnetic waves, there’s only one man to call:

Starforce Mega Man.

I gotta say: Doing all these callbacks to the end of Classic’s rundown from Mega Man vs. Astro Boy was kinda fun.

The battle itself.

Luis is lead on this battle and he’s backed by Zack and Kiid. Brandon on the music, Mega Mania. Jerky on Spriteart, and Chris Kokkinos on sound. No voice actors (thank goodness. I’m not in the mood, nor do I have the time to look up their twitter accounts).

So, for those who saw the preview, we know that the main reason they fight is because they all just show up in the same location. Eh, it could be worse. There are some fights that could have been improved without a story to them.

So, as the preview showed, Classic, Volnutt, and X all kinda… Get to the ground while Geo and Hub kinda just… duke it out up top.

Unfortunately for Classic, X is canonically his superior in every way. This puts him at a disadvantage against the Maverick Hunter. However, Rock has a trick up his sleeve.

His Super Adaptor armor.

But, it’s not like X is a stranger to having a super form as well, and he breaks out his own armor.

And the Black Hole Bomb is launched, but it’s not like X is a stranger to this, as he breaks out rather menacingly.

(Anyone here watching DIU?- I’m excited to see the Highway Star arc dubbed)

So, spoiler alert: Volnutt is the first to fall. Without any fancy tech, or FTL capabilities, he’s not escaping the Black Hole Bomb.

But, as stated before, since X is Rock’s superior in every way, Rock goes down next.

(Don’t worry, X gets better).

And after X pulls himself back together, he opts to blast his opponent with the Mother Elf attack.

But…

Star Force is made up of EM waves, which means he can physically fight back.

It also means he can hack X and basically knock him down.

So the final battle is between Starforce Mega Man, and MegaMan.EXE.

Which means the finishing blow comes in

5…

4…

3…

2…

1…

And the winner is MegaMan.EXE!

Verdict + Explanation.

So, as it turns out, it really boils down to Starforce and .EXE.

X’s Mother Elf attack wasn’t much to do either, as both Starforce and .EXE were experienced with that kind of attack.

But you might be thinking “Starforce held back in his fight with EXE so to not cause a paradox! Shouldn’t that mean that Starforce is stronger?” And to answer that… No.

Both combatants were holding back in their fight.

And at best, Starforce’s speed is 3 million times that of the speed of light. But remember that time when EXE traveled the entire Cyberworld to find something that could help him save Bass.EXE?- Since the Cyberworld is an actual cybernetic universe and not just a hard drive or a file on a computer, it means that it’s comparable  to our own. Since MegaMan.EXE couldn’t have been gone too long, on account that Bass.EXE didn’t have a lot of time to survive an attack, this means that MegaMan.EXE’s best speed would have to be…

……… Remember when Darkseid, a literal GOD, had the best speed feat recorded?

Also, unlike X, who is explicitly stated to be better than Mega Man Classic, Starforce isn’t stated to be better than EXE despite coming after him in canon material. And his healing and defensive powers gave him a leg up.

And if you’re thinking “Wait! Wouldn’t EXE’s speed feat be an outlier without anything to back it up?”- There’s a popup for that too.

And with moves like Uninstall and Interrupt, EXE could basically just steal or stop any of Starforce’s attacks. He could do it to all the other Mega Men’s weapons with it too……… Except for Volnutt, interestingly enough (Hey, gotta throw him a bone after Legends 3 was cancelled).

In the end, all the Super Fighting Robots had plenty of firepower. But if you want a Mega Man to rule them all, there’s only one man to call:

MegaMan.EXE

Overall impression

Too many zeros. Like, I can’t really concentrate on this fight with that many zeros on one little programing droid!

I mean… Yay?- Now I have an excuse to make it so that Ultron is a non-problem in the story, but still? That’s a lot of zeros on EXE.

I like the fight, and the jokes are pretty good, but I can’t get over those zeros.

Like… the music is great, the animation is solid, and the research is sound, but still.

Those zeros…

8.5/10. Ah, goddammit. More zeros.

Next time…

Someone’s husband is dead.

So, a ballerina turned (literal) cold-blooded assassin against a super-spy trained by who knows how many people? I was honestly expecting Nat to fight Huntress or Black Canary. And for Widow to fight… Literally anyone else with a sniper. I would have honestly had taken Ruby Rose vs Widowmaker.

Whatever. Join us next time as we cover…

Redhead Spider-Lady vs. Purple Spider-Lady.

Is there a fight that you want me to review? - Send an ask/request, and I’ll look into it!

Do you want to read my fanfic based around DEATH BATTLE itself? click here!

Thank you for reading, and I hope to see you next time for…

Spider-Lady vs. Lady-Spider.

So many zeros… *insert whimpering noises here*

[firebirdsdaughter]

Okay...

... I’m exhausted and I should have been in bed a while ago, but...

ZI-O 16!!!

Ahem. Anyway. This’ll be quick-is, but it’s going under the cut anyway.

(no order)

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! MY BABIES! THEY LOVE EACH OTHER!

Poor Geiz cares, he’s just awful at showing it. This poor child is very bad at feelings.

This is just gonna be the Zi-Ot3, isn’t it? One of us is in trouble, other two just coming running.

No idea what the Time Jackets are up but it’s WEIRD.

Well, that’s probably why Woz was making that face when Sougo said it was up to other people to decide who was king--but I don’t think this is gonna end up going that way for you, prophet boy. Sorry (not sorry).

Aw, Sougo, don’t worry. Tsukuyomi and Geiz will have your back. They’re not gonna let you go evil. Promise. (or maybe their presence will prevent it, something like that)

Ya know someone mentioned a possibility of Puma Zi-O being an alternate version of Sougo from another timeline? That’d be interesting, I think... Or just in general the idea of Puma Zi-O creating a time paradox cycle to ensure his power by sending his past self dreams and sending the Dai Mazines?

And then while I was thinking about that, I was like ‘what if Junichiro is actually also an alternate version of Sougo?’ (semi-serious), which then moved to ‘what if everyone is just an alternate version of Sougo?’ (not serious at all).

Oh yeah, Tsukasa. Sorry, got nothing on that right now. Still think he’s being a semi-trickster mentor, semi-himself.

Also my first thought is that the man they filmed that dream sequence with was a stand-in--like w/ how the first time we saw Zamigo in LuPat it was actually a suit actor wearing the costume.

Also, bc Build now makes me over think tiny things... Puma Zi-O said that getting rid of ‘that’ Driver would prevent the bad future (though this was clearly all according to keikaku for him). ‘That’ Driver was the one Woz gave Sougo. But the Driver Sougo uses to transform back into Zi-O is... Geiz’s Driver. Is this going to change something?

Yeah, they literally switched belts. Does this mean something?

(Also pretty sure Geiz said ‘I believe in you’ in there at some point or something along those lines--I love these three, they’re beautiful, leave me alone)

At this point, I’m not even surprised that Woz has a ladder in his pocket. I have other things to be surprised about with Woz.

(They’re at the docks, he probably found it lying around, but this concept was funnier)

Also Geiz and Sougo just totally ignoring Woz’s speech to continue the dramatic eye contact was awesome, love it, too. And then Geiz hates Woz so much, he doesn’t even try to use the ladder Woz brought. Even though Woz LEFT IT IN THE HOLE.

Woz is being creepy again, but you know what, even that doesn’t top this. I EXPECT that from him.

Yeah, yeah. We get it, Puma Zi-O, you’re evil. You’re gonna bloody lose, dude. So laugh now, I guess.

(Oh, yeah, I guess those things did go into the ground? Which brings up a point--if throwing away the belt completely negated the bad future, shouldn’t Kisshan and the Dai Mazines have just vanished? Rather than shutting down? SUSPICIOUS.)

Aw. Yeah, I bet Geiz and Tsukuyomi have never had christmas or any kind of holiday before. CUTE.

Woz apparently picked up the clock from the shop. That’s decent of him. Where the hell is the recap room, anyway? Also, does he notice that it’s, uh... Glowing? Also... That ending really made it look like his alternate self was there to do him in...

SPEAKING OF. WHY ARE THERE TWO WOZ. ARE THEY ROBOTS? CLONES? TWINS WITH THE SAME NAME? Does Keisuke have a twin? Bc tertiaries usually, ya know, hang around for the full show. So... Is he gonna be switching back and forth each ep? Are we just gonna have two Woz? It seems like a long time to have one actor play two people but maybe they can pull it off. They have gotten better at it (still curious how they do it). Still... Are they gonna merge in the end? Is one Woz going to kill the other and take his stuff? Are they on different sides? Was there once one Woz and he split in half? Is he from an alternate future? If so, does that mean there will be other alternate versions of our heroes? Augh! My brain!

Digital tea with any trappings you like if you read all that.

I need to go to bed.

[micarocks101]

Hi I've watched jack for a few months now and I absolutely adore him but for some strange reason I've never watched any anti videos until the most recent one he did and it was amazing. I've been trying to catch up on those vids through tumblr and stuff. I read your post about his recent vid and you cleared up a few things so I was wondering if you could possibly explain the whole of anti and where he came from or possibly link me to some kinda masterpost that greater explains things. Thanks

Well welcome to the community pal, it’s good to have ya with us!

The main things to know about Anti is what he is. Supposedly a digitally based “virus/infection” who was created and thrives with the attention the community gives him (the more attention he is given, the more powerful he becomes). Supposedly he is another side of Jack who lives in his head of sorts and is constantly trying to vye for control of Jack’s body. Whenever he appears he is glitching all over the place, surrounded by static and his voice jumpy and scratchy to give off more of his chaotic/insane personality. Even since the Say Goodbye video, he also wields a knife and has his throat slit and constantly bleeding. His eyes occasionally go completely black as well. He is known to be very rash and impulsive, as I said, chaotic and insane, yet that does not mean he is completely without sense. Anti knows how to put on a show and on multiple occasions manipulatives the audience by saying his slitting Jack’s throat was all their fault. It seems his goal is to remain in control, eliminate the other egos, and live like a king on the attention we give him.

First thing with the timeline is that Anti was actually around before he started appearing in videos. I’ve been watching Jack for years now, and I believe my first time seeing art of Anti was about two and a half years ago, alongside some of the older Darkiplier art, before the suit and VHS effects. At this point he had not yet been named Antisepticeye, he was just a fun concept fans thought up, many playing off the idea of a darker side inspired by Darkiplier. At this point there was no solid design, no green hair yet, no slash across the neck going by names such as Darksepticeye or Jackevileye. I rooted through some of my old deviantart likes and this appeared to be one of the oldest I could find (Posted on August 22, 2014, drawn by the lovely limelightdim):

http://limelightdim.deviantart.com/art/JackEvilEye-475132927

I’m not entirely sure when the name Antisepticeye started being accepted as his name, unfortunately. But this concept continued floating around in the community for a long time, taking tons of different designs. It was pretty much in the background for those two and a half years until October of last year, when Jack played Sister Location .)

He named these videos with cryptid titles such as “Something doesn’t feel right“, “They have awoken”, “Something inside”, and finally “Merged together”, as well as leaving strange things in the description in zalgo text, including ““Y̡o̶͢u̸̵̧'̨͠vȩ̵ ̵̧w̸a̡͢i̕͞t̶è̀d҉̧̧ ͠a̴̷͝ ̶͡l̶̨o̴̡ng ̴͝t̶̷̡i҉̢m͢͠͝e.͞ ̛No̸w̡̕ ͡Į ҉̡͢wàk̶e͡͡.̸ “ and “F̢̡͡ò͞llơw ̧t̕h̀e҉̧͘ s̨̀i̕͘g̕͡n̷s҉̕.̀ ̸̢R͟e̡͘͡l̛ȩ̸͝a̷͜͏s̢͝e͢ ͡m̧̛e̢͏.̕”. In the final video the description is “We are together as one now in Five Nights At Freddy’s Sister Location” and puts a link to a video simply titled “Soon”. Throughout the videos the facecam would glitch in a flurry of green static with no explanation or recognition of it happening or with disturbing images such as this:

Here is a lovely video with all the Anti appearances in Sister Location playthrough.

Jack gave no explanation for this at the time, but there were a couple of fans who, like myself, knew about the whole Antisepticeye concept and excitedly shared on it. Soon the large majority of the fandom knew that Anti was the reason behind this and art was being made, theories were being written, people were making posts. This kept up throughout the whole month of October, Anti also occasionally appearing in other videos (such as SCARIER THAN IT LOOKS: The Cubicle, The Temple Of No!, BULLETPROOF CHEST: Mr. President #3, and throughout the Layers of Fear playthrough.)

Throughout the month he kept the hype rolling by posting strange things in zalgo on social media, changing his bios, reblogging fanart of Anti and changing his profile pictures to glitched versions. Until finally the day of Halloween, Jack released a pumpkin carving video like last year, titled “SAY GOODBYE”.

I suggest watching the whole video if you are unfamiliar, but in short Jack makes his yearly pumpkin carving video. But throughout the video there are multiple Anti appearances, Jack once getting up claiming he’s hearing things and even gets a nosebleed. Then when he is about to finishes the pumpkin, he stops, and raises the knife to slit his own throat. Anti takes over and talks directly to the camera, laughing and telling the audience that it is their fault this happened and they could have stopped him but just watched. The video ends and Anti is not seen from until February, where he appears a few times in Detention.

Anti did not show up in another video at all until with no warning he appeared in a video showed at Jack’s PAX panel on March 10th, 2017.

I highly suggest watching this video, which I believe is the best video of his and the best portrayal of Anti.

Anti once again does not show up in a video for a long time after this sudden appearance, though Jack continued sharing fan art of him and such.

At the same time, other characters Jack has created in the past began gaining popularity, characters such as Chase Brody (From Teabag Edition: Bro Average, a play off the youtube channel Dude Perfect), Doctor Schneeplestein (Here is a playlist of all videos he is featured), Marvin the Magician (From The Jacksepticeye Power Hour - Marvin’s Magic), and Jackaboy Man (From JACKABOY MAN RETURNS: Welcome To The Game).

About a month ago word began spreading of Anti “corrupting” and “infecting” these other characters, particularly Chase and Schneeplestein. Jack reblogged a few of these, effectively sending the fandom into turmoil again, and the idea of Anti holding much more power over all the rest of the characters became widely accepted, also spawning protection squads for Chase Brody (Check out the lovely @chase-brody-protection-squad) and art of Anti ‘infecting’ the other characters.

He continued to reblog these things until on August 1st, just two days before the most recent Anti video, he posted this on his instagram:

(On a side note, I would suggest following his social medias, as it’s the best way to see more Anti art and other related things.)

At this point, Jack had once again thrown the fandom into chaos with Anti pictures on social media, posting cryptid messages in zalgo text, and even changing the tags on videos that featured Anti in the past. It was about a month of steady losing shit until two days ago the Kill Jacksepticeye video was released, which you have seen already.

And that’s where we are currently! Admittedly this is not as in depth as I could go, but for the sake of time I can direct you to @anti-support-group if you want to see other Antisepticeye theories and wonderful fanart by the community, as well as ask any other questions that I am sure they are much better fitted to answer. Once again, welcome to the community and hope you have an awesome time!

[tonsecure67-blog]

Your music software goes modular: builder-friendly Bitwig 3 beta is here

It may have been in the temple of wires and racks, but Berlin’s Bitwig chose this weekend’s Superbooth to launch a public beta of their all-modular DAW, Bitwig Studio 3. It lets you wire together with hardware, or just inside software, or as a combination.

It’s called The Grid – and it’s all about patching inside your music workflow, so you can construct stuff you want instead of dialing up big monolithic tools and presets. And that sounds great to builders, I’m sure.

Going modular was really the promise of Bitwig Studio from the start – something to rocket the software from “oh, hey, I can run something kinda like Ableton on Linux” to … “wow, this is something really special.”

The idea is, get a music making tool that not only behaves like a set of tracks and channels, or a bank of patterns and samples, and more like a toybox that lets you built whatever you want from various blocks. And before anyone tries to launch another of those “hardware versus software” debates (yawn), a friendly reminder that computers used a modular generator model for digital audio in the late 1950s – years before any recognizable hardware modular was even a thing. (Okay, granted, you needed a stack of punch cards and access to an IBM mainframe or two and the user base was something like ‘people who happen to know Max Mathews,’ but still…)

Bitwig Studio 3 is in beta now, so you can toy around with it and see what you think. (Bitwig are very clear about not putting important projects in there.)

I wrote about this at the start of this year.

Bitwig Studio is about to deliver on a fully modular core in a DAW

But now there’s a friendly video to walk you through how it all works:

Basically, think friendly musical blocks for pattern and timbre, pre-cords so things are patched easily, and powerful features with phase.

With Beta 1, we also see some specifics – you can produce your own stereo synths and effects with the two Grid devices:

Patching may be a nerdy endeavor, but Bitwig’s design makes it much friendlier – and there’s already great tutorial documentation even in the beta.

Poly Grid: “for creating synthesizers, sequenced patches (like a beatbox), droning sounds, etc.”

FX Grid for effects

Signal/modulation I/O – including pressure, CV (like from hardware)

Visualization (labels, VU, readouts)

Phase – loads of stuff here, as promised: Phasor, Ø Bend, Ø Reset, Ø Scaler, Ø Reverse, Ø Wrap, Ø Counter, Ø Formant, Ø Lag, Ø Mirror, Ø Shift, Ø Sinemod, Ø Skew, Ø Sync

Oscillators (including Swarm, Sampler)

Random

LFO

Envelope / follower

Shaper (ooh, Chebyshev, Distortion, Quantizer, Rectifier, Wavefolder)

Filter (Low-pass LD, Low-pass SK, SVF, High-pass, Low-pass, Comb)

Delay types – need to dig into these; they look promising

Mix – Blend, Mixer, LR Mix, Select, Toggle, Merge, Split, Stereo Merge, Stereo Split, Stereo Width

Level – Level, Value, Attenuate, Bias, Drive, Gain, AM/RM, Average, Bend, Clip, Hold, Lag, Sample / Hold, Level Scaler, Bi→Uni, Uni→Bi

Pitch scalers and tools

Math operators

Logic operators

— all in all, it’s a really nice selection of tools, and a balance of low-level signal tools/operators and easy convenience tools that are higher level. And it’s also not an overwhelming number – which is good; it’s clear this should be its own tool and not try to replicate the likes of Max, SuperCollider, and Reaktor.

More improvements

Also in this build:

Reworked audio backends for every OS (good)

UI overhaul

Ableton Link 3 support with transport start/stop sync

And – a little thing, but you can view the timeline with actual time (minutes, ms) …

More on this soon.

Beta users will find a really nice, complete tutorial so – you can start practicing building. Have fun!

BITWIG STUDIO 3: NOW IN BETA

Tags: bitwig, bitwig-studio, CV, DAW, Linux, Mac, modular, patching, production, Software, Superbooth, Superbooth19, Windows

Source: http://cdm.link/2019/05/your-music-software-goes-modular-builder-friendly-bitwig-3-beta-is-here/

[oblivionspeakk]

You Will Never Thought That Knowing SEO 2019 Could Be So Beneficial!

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) could be the process of getting visitors from organic search results upon Search Engines. While her business, web traffic, plus customer base grow, Sue can require some outside support regarding keeping her SEO on observe so she could sell the particular best shoes on the stop. Whilst links continue to be essential and it's incredibly difficult in order to rank well without links through other websites, content and on-page SEO has become increasingly essential. For businesses searching to raise their search search positions, what this means is that will a comprehensive social media technique may be in order - within addition to all of the particular usual SEO tactics. Because of formula changes and the trend in order to more local searches, it actually is no longer an huge cost to implement good SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. Whether you're killing it along with SEO, or struggling to break the very first page, a good SEO audit can assist give your own rankings a shot within the particular arm. According to web marketing experts, the impact associated with AI and Voice Browse SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION can be expected in 2019 after that. Which it. If you'd like in order to speak to us about a good SEO campaign, or even multilingual SEO marketing and keyword analysis then get in touch associated with just start a live conversation if we're around. Moreover, Google will carry on to elevate the importance associated with usability and technical SEO elements, for example site security, page acceleration, mobile friendliness, and navigability. As a consultant, this individual has helped many different businesses—including, Lonely Planet, Zillow, Tower Information, and literally numerous medium plus small businesses—with SEO and online-marketing advice. Link building is a type of off-site SEO where additional sites link back to your own site if they feel a person offer something of value in order to their audience. In many important areas they overlap; if SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is more technical and provides to a narrow sphere, articles marketing takes a holistic strategy. Equally, right now there is no point in spending your SEO marketing efforts simply by delivering lots of traffic in order to your website from highly appropriate search queries, when the consumer experience upon landing on that will website is poor quality. On web page, SEO relates to keywords. In addition to the over search engine optimization solutions, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION services provide other Internet advertising services, which includes: search-friendly internet design, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising promotions, backlink programs, SMO services, blog site optimization and marketing, targeted regional search engine marketing, and cellular marketing optimization. A successful SEO effort wants to move beyond building joyful to rank on highly explored keywords and should have the heavy focus on providing solutions for genres of unique concerns that many people might research by voice. Learn the particular strategy behind great SEO, which includes keyword planning, content optimization, hyperlink building, and SEO for e-commerce, local search, and mobile viewers. Seo or SEO is usually the simple process of making sure a website can be discovered in search engines for terms and phrases relevant to exactly what the site is providing. SEO focuses upon rankings in the organic (non-paid) search results. SEO therefore helps you get traffic coming from search engines. With Ahrefs, a great kick off point for keyword research with regard to SEO is the Keywords Explorer tool. Topics: SEO, backlink, articles marketing, social media marketing plus advertising, analytics, and more. 60+ sessions on hot topics, accomplishment stories and strategies in SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, SEA, PPC, Social Media, On the internet Marketing and SMX Future Observe. 2018 (I believe) will be a lot associated with catch up on current SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION themes, with the biggest trends” occurring around voice queries to look results. Therefore, SEOmonitor tracks all of the appropriate data that could influence SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION performance and displays it within the Keyword Events Timeline. If you forget that will quality content is a best priority, then you can definitely forget about having an SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION strategy. The particular way we asking the device is different from person in order to person. therefore, optimizing your site 100% mobile friendly to perform cellular voice search is very essential to SEO 2019. We am just newbie and significantly i do get frustrated whenever articles doesn't rank on best or near top, but individuals like you and many various other also inspire me to in no way give up. There are a number of points that i wasn't identified up to now but say thanks to to you, you are constantly make us learn important items about seo.

Businesses with multiple websites and SEO-agencies can set up report web templates. Its search engine marketing group provides expertise in Pay-per-click marketing services, organic SEO and sociable media optimisation. The particular ads that you often discover on various web pages proven and those that also show up on the rightmost side associated with search engine results are inorganic SEO examples. While I nevertheless see this trend in have fun with with many enterprises still within the midst of their electronic transformation, the convergence in the particular MarTech space is creating several synergies and opportunities and this particular should be seen as the welcome development for brands plus agencies who are looking with regard to an edge in regards in order to their SEO driven content marketing and advertising or outreach strategies. Along with the only complete certainty that SEO's, Website owners may have a lot of adjustments to make to sites under their care in the particular mobile and voice search panorama. The basics of GOOD SEO hasn't changed for years - although effectiveness of particular elements provides certainly narrowed or changed within type of usefulness - a person should still be focusing upon building a simple site making use of VERY simple SEO best practices - don't perspiration the small stuff, while all-the-time paying attention to the essential stuff - add plenty of unique PAGE TITLES and lots associated with new ORIGINAL CONTENT. Keyword research is definitely THE first step of any kind of SEO campaign. To get a better SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, helps your website can obtain on the top among well-known search engines like Bing plus Google. On the some other side, you can ensure a good effective content marketing campaign just when you apply the SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION techniques properly. SEO : Search engine optimization: the procedure of making your web site better intended for search engines. The purpose of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION writing is to make your own company more visual, more attractive in website search engines. SEO is usually the practice of increasing this quantity and quality of visitors to your website through natural and organic search engine results. 31. SEO data can notify a smart social media technique. Solid keyword & marketplace research assist SEO strategy plus allow us to offer realistic projections and forecasts of opportunity inside your market. Nevertheless, when this comes to developing and doing an audio SEO strategy with regard to your business, just creating content material for the keywords your clients are looking for is each arduous and, well, wrong. In this situation, in, the article ranks correct after the official Google suggestions (and it makes sense that will Google should be number one on their own branded query) but Smashing magazine is proven as a position 0” little of text on the issue Google pop up guidelines” within. Search Engine Land, a top quality SEO blog this is the pillar of the community is definitely ranking after Smashing (which occurs to be really a style blog than an SEO one). By merging a whole new way to work along with SEO and prioritized lists associated with recommendations—not to mention competitor evaluation and keyword monitoring—Siteimprove SEO will be your all-in-one tool to develop traffic, prove ROI, and easily create content. All the SEO styles listed here may have started in late 2017 or earlier 2018, but their true advantage could be reaped in 2019. Google's David Mueller said on Twitter, along with the disclaimer of him placing his user hat on (ofcourse not Google hat), that relabeling older content as new, with simply no additional changes is a poor SEO hack. All of us associated with creatives, designers & developers function alongside our SEO & content material teams to ideate, research, style & create remarkable infographics and interactive content for brands that will get shared across the internet. Contemporary SEO strategy may be the process associated with organizing a website's content simply by topic, which helps search engines like yahoo realize a user's intent when looking. Page loading time is dependent upon Page Load speed, Web page loading time is one associated with the important factors in Cell phone SEO 2017. Sociable Media as a platform are not able to be ignored in any SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION plan. Seo stands intended for search engine optimization, when a person are searching for an SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION or Search Engine Optimization Organization then you needs to appear for various factors which may have a favorable and undesirable affect on your business. UnGagged Birmingham is really a 2-day SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING & Digital Marketing conference of which takes place June 11-12th, using one-day intensive masterclasses on 06 13th. These ‘quality updates' are very reminiscent of Search engines Panda updates and often influence many websites at the exact same time - and often these types of concentrate on demoting similar ‘low-quality' SEO techniques we have already been told Panda focuses on. I think savvy SEOs are going to utilize AI content generation (text and pictures especially) in 2019 to generate a whole new kind associated with search algorithm gaming, that might almost be viewed as dark hat. This course covers how in order to build strong links for much better SEO. SEO companies ensure that will your site has all associated with the SEO Internet marketing like as business improvement, localized item sales, high quality online era and the rest. 2018 brought many adjustments to the world of SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING, including a few new criteria evolutions through Google. An expert Seo agency may help any dimensions of company take full advantage of web marketing and boost the likelihood associated with actual sales while simultaneously boost brand awareness one of the particular audience segment. Recently we were speaking about the subject with the friendly agency in Valencia plus we directed to this access of Search Engine Journal along with the 20 questions that need to be done to any SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION or SEO agency that desires to hire. Content written simply by customers gives sites legitimacy plus it earns SEO juice each from manual and automatic ranking systems. Throughout 2018, this trend is upon the rise and if a person invest in making your site mobile friendly you will delight in higher ratings in 2019 as well. When making a web site for Google in 2018, a person need to understand that Search engines has a long list associated with things it will mark websites down for, and that's generally old-school SEO tactics which are usually now classed as ‘webspam‘. Besides getting social plus having a good time, your own social media profiles can favorably affect your SEO efforts. Since so many people rely on voice search being the craze in 2019, I, Nicole Bermack (this article's author), am coining the word VSO - voice lookup optimization. Clever brands and agencies are changing new SEO, social and articles marketing strategies to join their particular customer conversations. Search engine search engine optimization (SEO) is the art plus science of getting pages in order to rank higher in search motors such as Google. A person can audit your page's SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION health, compare SEO metrics intended for a number of pages, plus analyze both external and inner links on any given internet page. Content companies that will offer SEO content creation providers are experts in creating content material that are not only enhanced for search engine rankings yet also add value for your own business in terms of brand name awareness, customer engagement and enhanced sales.

You discuss core SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION strategies and tactics used in order to drive more organic search qualified prospects to a specific website or even set of websites, as properly as tactics to avoid in order to prevent penalization from search motors. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Smart links allows you in order to specify a word, like 'SEO' and then link it in order to a post on your web site. It's great for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION to feed the search motors a good amount of keyword-rich links. Sites making use of organic SEO in the strict sense is going to become much like organisms, meaning these people will grow, expand and adjust over time according to readers' desires. No matter the business, the age of business, or even status of competitors, every company should at least implement fundamental SEO strategies to help their Ten Reasons Why You Cannot Learn SEO 2019 Well own offerings get found on Yahoo and google. So your SEO if your own thinking mobile, needs to become either responsive or app-store technique with the right dimensions, style, user-friendly, UX experience. Dark hat SEO methods, such because the use of keyword filling and link farming, can furthermore boost organic SEO. SEO is definitely important in every area associated with advertising, marketing, design, optimization, movie, content, mobile and e-commerce, regarding without SEO all is untuned in need of synchronization, such as an orchestra of musicians without a good experienced conductor. Unfortunately, 95% of links through SEO link building never provide a single new visitor in order to your website. Ultimately, simply by the end of 2018 or even mid-2019, we'll see a golf swing back to natural” content created by real humans who may produce valuable content that in fact provides value. Hiring experienced SEO experts will certainly ensure that your website climbs the search engine ranks with no using any illegal practices or even short cuts that could generate temporary spikes in the home page's ranking, but eventually lead in order to your website having to spend penalties. Official Site Associated with BlowFish SEO - Professional Search Motor Optimization Services operated by Robert DiSalvo SEO Located in Hand Beach Gardens, Florida. The takeaway here will be that if you might have got LOTS of location pages helping A SINGLE business in a single location, then those are quite probably classed as some type of doorway pages, and possibly old-school SEO techniques for these types of type of pages will discover them classed as lower-quality -- or even - spammy web pages. CRAWL this, like Google does, with (for example) Screaming Frog SEO spider, plus fix malformed links or issues that result in server errors (500), broken links (400+) and unwanted redirects (300+). SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION gives you a go at rank for the terms which your own customers use, so you may do better business. The job of the SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is to create high-quality content material and after that win the attention, the particular love as well as the particular link from a blogger or even editor. The keyword difficulty or even keyword SEO difficulty is the very useful metric for key word research.

The number one particular reason for using video upon your site to improve SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is to increase the quantity of time users remain upon your site. Search engine optimization has been but still is fascinating in order to me. The SEO placement intended for any size business begins along with proper web site optimization, a good excellent link building strategy plus a well planned online marketing and advertising plan. One part of focus for higher marketing and SEO performance within 2018 is the confluence associated with content, influence, and social. This can be advantageous for SEO, as it helps avoid search engine crawlers from becoming confused by syntax or affirmation errors, and leads to even more accurate indexing. Stop thinking in terms associated with SEO vs. content marketing” plus start exploring how well they will perform together. (Give it a try tone of voice search using OK Google through your cell phone and inquire "What Is BlowFish SEO" ) In case all remains as it is usually, Google will read out loud almost all about my company in the short to the point method, These cards are formatted in order to fit the screen of your own cell with no scrolling upward or down. Although SEO is really the time-consuming process but believes me personally, if you work well along with dedication and trendy techniques, the particular combined results of on-page plus off-page SEO holds you upon the top with rank #1 for a specific search outcome. Fairly lately, I've seen a resurgence associated with on-page SEO factors making the difference searching engine rankings.

You will become introduced to the foundational components of how search engines such as google work, how the SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION landscape is promoting and exactly what you can expect in the particular future. The SISTRIX Toolbox consists associated with six modules 1) SEO, 2) Universal, 3) Links, 4) Advertisements, 5) Social and 6) Optimizer. Low-quality content can severely impact the achievements of SEO, within 2018. When your own SEO starts building strong coffee grounds, competitors can start maligning your own SEO backlinks. ” With content marketing spend likely to reach $300 billion by 2019, this statistic is worrisome. Now the electronic marketing companies know how in order to use AI for SEO, plus in coming years AI may dominate in developing the SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION strategies of the digital advertising companies. Ray Cheselka, AdWords and SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Manager at webFEAT Complete, the design and SEO agency, states that in 2019 search objective will continue to become even more important. Expert writers of SEO articles will certainly take the time to study the particular industry or specialized niche market. 2 tools to help with nearby SEO are BrightLocal (for rankings) and MozLocal (for local lookup optimization). Concerning on-page SEO best practices, I usually link out to other quality related pages on other websites exactly where possible and where a individual would find it valuable. It includes a well known Regular Table of SEO Success Factors”, a 9-chapter guide to SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION basics, and links to several from the site's most useful blog posts. A greater number associated with people will stick to tone of voice search, so SEO specialists will certainly need to adjust to this particular relatively new kind of lookup. Seo or SEO is usually a powerful method to generate targeted traffic to your internet site and hopefully increase your bottom level line. Whilst many marketing tactics rely upon you reaching out to your own audience, SEO gives you the particular power to achieve people whenever they are actively searching away information related to your providers and products. White colored hat SEOs the actual suggestions of Google and other research engines like google. As Google's search engine outcomes become increasingly monetized and additional platforms such as Amazon plus YouTube gain more SoV plus search volume, I think wish overdue for the focus associated with SEO to shift far through Google. Traditional SEO is usually focused on building (keyword relevant) links and (keyword relevant) articles. The main reason these kinds of are sometimes misunderstood is because which whole Internet underbelly of alleged SEO companies that you may pay to link to your own site on their networks associated with low-quality articles. However, before we obtain to our main event, We must note that after the 2017 edition of SEO tendencies launched last year on Research Engine Journal, we heard the couple of complaints about simply how long it was. After that your boss tells you if you're accountable for search engine marketing (SEO), too. Michael jordan Harling, SEO Specialist at Roman Blinds Direct, agrees with the particular consensus that voice search can be the trend in 2019. PeepCon (which stands for The Individuals Conference”) seeks to teach doable SEO and digital marketing classes. See how Matthew got a website from zero in order to one million visits in much less than a year, using the mix of blogging, content marketing and advertising, and SEO. Solid knowing of the keywords, questions, plus phrases your ideal customers work with to find your products and even services is critical to successful SEO. 34. Applying SEO practices (such keyword optimization) to social media marketing improves discoverability when users search interpersonal platforms like Facebook and Youtube . com. Onsite SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Guide — If you the particular actual link, you will observe a opt-in button where a person can download the Onsite SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Guide. ” Matt Diggity will a lot of testing upon his own sites, which means Blog9T this guidebook reflects what on page strategies are working best for your pet. One important aspect associated with taking care of SEO is usually identifying issues that are harming search engine ranking positions plus reducing the traffic you receive through SERPs. User-generated content like reviews assist SEO through SMO, because this often comes in the type of social shares, likes, or even commenting, or common threads such as hashtags that point back toward a brand. Local SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION services offer a very focused online marketing approach, (it's not really like dropping off brochures upon front-porch steps or paying for a good ad in a local newspapers that could or may not really be seen by a feasible client that is actually fascinated in your products or services). If you speak about search ranking in SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, you're talking about the placement of your content on lookup results pages (SERPs). Kent Lewis, Creator, and President of Anvil, the performance-based firm based out associated with Portland, says that in 2019 voice search and Amazon lookup will end up a lot more notable than they were in 2018. Google Search Console (Webmaster tools) is one of the particular SEO basics. If you desire to find out how I actually actually do it, visit Content Czar for the free gift plus details of the way i use write-up marketing and SEOcious to acquire top Google listings. It really is geared towards SEO professionals (in-house and agency), marketing managers, and business people. But now SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION considers tweets, retweets, Google+ authorship, along with other social signals. Besides rank the site, the SEO team gets fault Client's marketing or product sales team by converting surfers or even visitors into buyers. Because therefore much sharing now takes place on major social media systems, social signals may become mainly because important to SEO as period on page, editorial linking, plus content quality. Using social press marketing in PA with SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION tactics can help boost the website's ranking and popularity. This may create friction and the impact that most well-designed websites are usually very poorly optimized for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. They have impacted SEO in past times as well by bringing inbound links, and today it's even even more.

[redconfidential-blog]

It’s the final quarter of the year, so following my previous journal entry; If We Were Having Coffee…or Not, I thought this would be a good time to take a break from reviews to do a somewhat personal update.

First off, I’m quite happy with the progress I’ve made with this blog, my photography business and certain aspects of my personal life.

Regarding blogging, I have succeeded at posting at least once a week, often more, and this year’s total views and visitors have exceeded all of 2017, and the year isn’t over yet. WordAds revenues aren’t were I’d like them to be, but they are slowly picking up. On the down side, I haven’t got any paid ads running or sponsored posts. A few Nigerian businesses have contacted me to review their products or include their website links in my posts. But, they want me to do it for free.

Here’s the thing, I shouldn’t have to explain that I don’t pay for web-hosting with shawarma. Search Engine Optimisation cost money. Internet Providers will not accept food in exchange for Internet Access. Writing and photography take a lot of time. I’m not about to spend 5 hours, shooting, editing, uploading, writing, proofreading and publishing, all for free. Now I’m happy to negotiate rates with a business but nothing at all? That’s just not fair.

Stock Photography has been phenomenal. My brain is constantly flooded with inspirations for saleable shots, and since my earnings have exceeded my monthly salary at work, it’s safe to say my product and growth strategy is working. I’m actually creating products people want to pay for and this fills me with such a huge sense of personal satisfaction, the late nights are worthwhile and I’m eager to put in more work.

blogging and photography cost money

In my personal life, I’m happy to tell you that in 2 weeks I’ll be resuming at Henley Business School for a Masters in Information Management and Digital Business (Big Data in Business). It’s my second Master’s Degree and the goal is to update and merge my Computer Science and Business backgrounds, while acquiring research experience for a PhD.

I’ll admit I’m a little concerned that I may be too old for school and end up as the “Olodo” of my class. Regardless, I’m excited about this year long challenge and have been preparing for it using Big Data Courses on Coursera. Guys, I want a Distinction, so be prepared. I might bore you with my coursework and assignments in Data Mining, Business Intelligence and Business Informatics to name a few.

You’ll find updates on my Academic Journey here: Reading Living. My hope is that blogging about my courses will be useful to other students in the field while improving my assimilation and making studying slightly more enjoyable.

On the extracurricular side, you already know how much I love to travel. I’m looking forward to the adventure of living in a new town in a different country. It’s not my first time in England but I haven’t made any blog posts in this regard since Bath. I’m looking forward to exploring London, visiting the British Museum and Lake District National Park, and finding the Stonehenge. So, expect some travel blogging.

I don’t expect I’ll be able to do as many movie reviews with my new lifestyle but, I’m ecstatic about Netflix on that high-speed internet connection.

I might sneak in some British food and fashion reviews, even though I’m concerned that they might not interest you; my Nigerian friends. Brits have the most interestingly named meals like Toad in the Hole, and Bangers and Mash. Is it me or does Bubble and Squeak sound a lot like a bath gel?

Even though I am not looking forward to my first full winter come December, I’m excited about British Winter Fashion. I’m mentally putting together my Winter Wardrobe including a pair of Ugg boots and Dr Martens. Winter Outfits look so chic on social media, with the plain dull colours and interesting layering techniques and I’d love to try it out, even though part of me is concerned I will look like a ball in so many clothes.

All images are from Pinterest

All images are from Pinterest

All images are from Pinterest

That said, I don’t think I’ll be doing a Christmas Give-away this year. Mailing stuff home to Nigeria from the United Kingdom cost an arm and two legs. Plus, your girl has got “student loans” to worry about.

blogging, photography and studying

Summarily, my immediate future is bringing significant changes to my lifestyle and consequently this blog. The idea behind this blog was to share information that might be helpful to a reader, and I’ll stay true to that as much as I can. I hope you find a way to put up with the coming changes and stick around till things pen out.

Next time we have coffee, it will most likely be to keep me from falling asleep and failing a test. But, till then. Now, about you.

Since we’ll soon be having coffee, how are you? Really. What have you been up too? What’s new with you? I’d genuinely like to know in the comment section below! As always, thank you for reading! *** Liked this post? Do share it on your social media wall, timeline or feed. Want blog updates and promotions in your inbox? Sign Up Now

Since We’ll Soon Be Having Coffee… It's the final quarter of the year, so following my previous journal entry; If We Were Having Coffee...or Not…

[enterinit]

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17063 for PC

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17063 for PC.

Introducing Timeline

Timeline is here! We know that it can be difficult to get back to stuff you were working on in the past. If you’re like us, you might sometimes forget which site or app you were using or where you saved a file. Now you can finally close apps without worrying—with Timeline, you can get right back to where you left off. Timeline introduces a new way to resume past activities you started on this PC, other Windows PCs, and iOS/Android devices. Timeline enhances Task View, allowing you to switch between currently running apps and past activities. The default view of Timeline shows snapshots of the most relevant activities from earlier in the day or a specific past date. A new annotated scrollbar makes it easy to get back to past activities.

There’s also a way to see all the activities that happened in a single day—just select See all next to the date header. Your activities will be organized into groups by hour to help you find tasks you know you worked on that morning, or whenever. And if you can’t find the activity you’re looking for in the default view, search for it. Activities In Timeline, a user activity is the combination of a specific app and a specific piece of content you were working on at a specific time. Each activity links right back to a webpage, document, article, playlist, or task, saving you time when you want to resume that activity later. App developers are working hard to enhance their apps by creating high-quality activity cards to appear in Timeline. In this Preview release, you can see and resume web-browsing activities in Microsoft Edge, files you opened in apps like Microsoft Office including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, and updated UWP versions of Maps, News, Money, Sports, and Weather. The new activity history settings page allows you to control which accounts appear in Timeline. This is most relevant for users with multiple accounts, such as a personal Microsoft account, and a work or school account. Settings here also let you disable activity collection and clear your activity history.

Cortana In addition to resuming past activities through Timeline, your personal digital assistant Cortana will suggest activities you might want to resume to help you stay productive as you switch between your phone, laptop, and other Cortana-enabled devices. This experience is powered by the same activities that appear in Timeline. Getting started Use your PC normally. After a while, select the new Task view icon in the task bar. (You can also open Task view by pressing Windows logo key + Tab.) Below your running apps, you’ll see past activities in Timeline. If you have more than one PC, try using Timeline on all of them—you’ll see the same activities no matter which PC you’re using. And if an activity from one PC used a modern app that you don’t have installed on another PC, Windows will help you install that app. We’d love to hear your feedback, so please press the feedback button in the upper-right corner of Timeline if you have any problems or suggestions.

Microsoft Edge Improvements

Fluent updates in Microsoft Edge: Microsoft Edge now supports an updated Dark theme, with darker blacks, and much better contrast with all colors, text, and icons. This addresses many accessibility contrast issues, making the Microsoft Edge UI easy to navigate and more visually pleasing. As well, Microsoft Edge now supports Reveal on our navigation buttons, action buttons, buttons in the tab bar, as well as on lists throughout Microsoft Edge (such as in the HUB: Favorites, Reading, History, Downloads), making navigating Edge UI even easier. We’ve heard your feedback and have also updated the Acrylic in the tab bar and in-active tabs, allowing more color to show through. Bookmark button and flyout become one: With this build, Microsoft Edge has also simplified adding and managing bookmarks for EPUB and PDF books. Based on your feedback we now allow you to add bookmarks and manage your list of bookmarks from the same location. This provides a very consistent experience across the different book formats and makes it really easy for users to manage their bookmarks from one location Offline web sites and push notifications: Microsoft Edge now supports Service Workers and the Push and Cache APIs. These new web standards allow web pages to send push notifications to your Action Center or refresh data in the background, even when the browser is closed. In addition, certain web pages can now work offline or improve performance, by using locally cached data when the cache is up to date, or when your device has a poor connection. Web Media Extensions Package: This build installs the Web Media Extensions package for Microsoft Edge, which extends Microsoft Edge and Windows 10 to support open-source formats (OGG Vorbis and Theora) commonly found on the web. Try out your favorite OGG content (such as Wikipedia videos or audio)! We will be monitoring feedback from this feature in Insider flights to eventually expand to broader availability to Microsoft Edge customers in the Current Branch. Gesture Improvements for Precision Touch Pads: This build introduces a new gesture experience for Precision Touch Pads (found on Surface and other modern Windows 10 devices). You can now use gestures like pinch and zoom, or two-finger panning, to achieve the same interactions on web sites that you can do with a touch screen today. For example, you can now pinch-to-zoom on a map in Bing Maps to zoom in the map without zooming the entire page.

Sets

A few weeks ago, we announced a new Windows 10 feature called “Sets” (we may end up calling it something else by the time it ships) which would be coming to Windows Insiders as a controlled study. The concept behind Sets is to make sure that everything related to your task: relevant webpages, research documents, necessary files and applications, is connected and available to you in one click. Office (starting with Mail & Calendar and OneNote), Windows, and Edge become more integrated to create a seamless experience, so you can get back to what’s important and be productive, recapturing that moment, saving time – we believe that’s the true value of Sets. Starting with today’s build, Sets will be available to Insiders however because it is being introduced as a controlled study, not all Insiders will see Sets.

Cortana Improvements

Cortana’s Notebook has a new look: Notebook has undergone a UX transformation to be more responsive to Cortana’s evolving capabilities and allow users to easily complete their tasks. Your content has a new home called Organizer that lets you access your lists and reminders with ease. And all Skills are together, so you can easily configure Cortana to suit your needs. Configuration experience has also been significantly simplified. Tabbed view to cleanly segregate your content and configuration and single page to manage Cortana’s Skills and easy way to discover more. Simplified configuration experience page with easy interest management. This is a server side change currently rolling out for those using English (United States) and will be rolled out to other markets with time.

Account entry point in the navigation menu: To improve discoverability and consistency, we’re moving the account entry point out of Cortana’s Notebook and into the navigation menu (that’s the side bar that contains elements like Home, Notebook, and Collections). Lists and Collections – better together! Cortana Collections have been merged with Lists, so you get personalized suggestions and help with List creation – all in a rich, attractive interface. Cortana helps you track your To-Do’s and manage Grocery lists. She also suggests items of interest –  restaurants to try out, recipes to make, books to read, movies & shows to watch, things to shop for – and makes it easy to add them to your lists.  See and use your Lists and suggestions in the List home:

For now, this feature is only available for Insiders using English (United States), who are logged into both Windows and Cortana with their Microsoft Account. A note about Collections: We’ve made an underlying breaking change to how Cortana’s Collection works – if you’ve been using this feature in previous builds we need to migrate your data to our new collection APIs. Because of this, once you upgrade to this build you’ll notice all of your existing saved list items have moved under suggestions. If you want to keep these suggestions, please drag and drop them back into the list. Thank you everyone who’s given us feedback so far about the Collections experience – please continue doing so! Cortana loves music: You can now use Cortana to control music playback on more of your favorite music apps (EN-US only). Starting with this build, we are enabling natural language compatibility for Spotify just like the Harman Kardon Invoke! This will work on both, above the lock screen (PC is locked) as well as below! You can try queries like… Play Christmas music on Spotify Play my discover weekly playlist on Spotify Play on Play some Drake Play focus music Play rock music Play my tracks Once music is playing you can ask Cortana what’s playing like this: Hey Cortana, what’s playing? Cortana will keep you posted on your tracks. To start rocking to your favorite tracks just get the latest app update and sign into Spotify in the notebook under the music section. NOTE: For the above to work, you need to have a Spotify account (free or premium).

Windows Shell Improvements

Bring on the Fluent! Today, Start and Action Center support acrylic to align with Fluent design principles. And now we’re bringing the next wave of Shell UI to the party by applying acrylic to the taskbar, Share UI, Clock & Calendar flyout, Network flyout, Volume flyout, and Input flyout. Try it out and let us know what you think!

Note: The acrylic background is disabled if you enter battery saver mode. We’re also investigating an issue where if you have scaling > 100% the blurred background may appear distorted. Save notification drafts: Notifications are inherently transient – one thing we’ve heard from you is how it can be frustrating to have started writing a response into a notification (such as one from Skype), only to have the response disappear if you didn’t submit it before the notification went away. Well, no more! If a toast gets dismissed with unsubmitted text, we will now save the draft; open the action center and your text will now be saved with the notification. Simplified letter grouping in Start for East Asian languages: One of the top feedback items from our users is that it’s too hard and takes too long to find apps in the all apps list because of the way the apps are grouped when using East Asian languages. We hear you, and we’re happy to announce that with this build we’ve simplified the grouping of apps in the all apps list for Chinese (Simplified), Japanese, and Korean. This change is most noticeable for Chinese (Simplified) and Japanese, where we’ve reduced the number of groups by 29 and 36, respectively. If you use Windows in these languages, please take a moment to check it out once you get the build and let us know how it feels.   Cloud states for the Navigation Pane: In an effort to further keep you informed about the state of your OneDrive files and folders on demand, we’re looking at adding a state icon to use in File Explorer’s Navigation Pane. If you’d like to turn this off, there’s an option in the File Explorer ribbon View tab – click the Options button, then in the dialog that appears go to the Navigation Pane section of the View tab and uncheck “Always show availability status”. A consistent Network flyout on the login screen: Continuing our work to modernize all the elements of Windows 10, we’ve now updated the network flyout on the login screen to use the same familiar network flyout you’ve grown to love in the taskbar. Improving your update experience: In an effort to keep you informed about the state of your PC, if Windows Update Settings shows a warning or alert, we will now echo that via a new Windows Update system tray icon. If you right click the icon, you will see options relevant to the current state, such as restart, schedule the restart, or go to Windows Update settings. If visible, this icon can be turned off from within Taskbar Settings.

An improved My People experience

Based on your feedback we’ve been working on evolving the My People experience and taking it to the next level. This build brings with it a number of requested features, improvements and changes including: Drag and drop rearrange: Checking off one of our top feedback requests – you can now drag and drop contacts to rearrange them in the taskbar! You can also drop contacts into and out of the People flyout. Note: as part of this feature change, when you upgrade, if you have multiple contacts pinned to taskbar you will notice that their order will reverse direction on the taskbar. You decide how many contacts to show in the taskbar: With the Fall Creators Update you could have a maximum of 3 people pinned to the taskbar, with any additional pins appearing in the People flyout. We’ve heard your feedback and today’s build brings a new setting so you can decide how many you’d like to show – from one to ten, or you can choose to show them all in the overflow. You can find the setting with the other People settings under Settings > Personalization > Taskbar. Animations for people in overflow: To improve discoverability you’ll now see an animation across the People icon to let you know when someone is pinned to the overflow list in the flyout. In addition, previously you could only receive emotive notifications from contacts that were directly on your taskbar – with today’s flight this experience is now available for people pinned within the People flyout as well! Here’s a glimpse of how it looks (showcased using our favorite “windows10” Skype emoji). Want to try it? Get one of your pinned contacts to send you a “(poke)”, or add, pin, and ping our emoji bot. Fluent in the flyout: As part of our larger ongoing effort to reach our Fluent Design goals, you’ll notice that the People flyout now makes use of acrylic, reveal, and light effects. Improving app discoverability: As developers work to integrate My People support into their apps, we’ll now suggest apps that you might be interested in. There’s an option to turn this on or off in the People settings under Settings > Personalization > Taskbar.

Add a new dimension to what you capture in Snipping tool

This build brings a new “edit in Paint 3D” button to the Snipping Tool so you can take your snip to the next level via Paint 3D.  Move (or remove) objects with Magic select, augment and annotate with a variety of options, bring in 3D objects from Remix 3D, and more!

Windows Settings Improvements

Settings gets a new look: You’ve already seen we say “bring on the Fluent!” in other areas of Shell, and Settings is no different. With today’s build you’ll find not only have we refreshed the Settings UI leveraging Fluent Design principles, but we’ve also taken a look at the Settings homepage and redesigned it with an eye for visual acuity. As you explore the plethora of new and improved settings below, take a moment to get a feel for the updated design as a whole and let us know what you think.

Security questions for local accounts: With the Fall Creators Update, we started working on self help solutions for password recovery from the Lock screen. Today, we’re adding this functionality to local accounts as well, through the newly available use of security questions for local accounts. If you already have a local account, you can add security questions by going to Settings > Accounts > Sign-in Options > “Update your security questions”. If you’re installing a new PC using a local account, setup will walk you through adding these questions and answers right there in the workflow. Once your security questions are set up, if you find yourself unable to remember your password on the lock screen, you will see a link to reset your password, whereupon clicking you’ll be prompted to enter the answers to your security questions.

View your display info in one convenient location: Beginning with Build 17060, you can now view detailed information about your display by visiting the new “Advanced display settings” page linked at the bottom of Settings > System > Display. Most of the information should be self-explanatory, but here are a couple of pieces that you might want more detail on: Desktop resolution vs active signal resolution. Typically, your desktop resolution and your active signal resolution will be identical. To provide a smoother experience, Windows prefers to keep your display running at its native signal resolution. If you change your display resolution under Settings > System > Display > Scale and layout > Resolution, you may see a difference between your desktop resolution and your active signal resolution. The mysterious 59 Hz refresh rate. Display enthusiasts may remember this conversation from the Windows 7 days. You may see 59 Hz listed as your refresh rate even though you have set it to 60 Hz, but rest assured that this is by design for monitors and TVs that report only 59.94 Hz but not 60 Hz. Improving your scaling experience: In this flight we’ve made it easier for you to fix apps that become blurry if you dock/undock, RDP, or change display settings. Some desktop apps can become blurry in these scenarios. When this happens, you have to log out and back in to Windows to have these apps render properly. In this flight, you can turn on a feature that will enable these apps to be fixed simply by re-launching them. There are three components to this feature: A new setting in the Display Settings page: Under Settings > System > Display > Advanced scaling, you’ll find a new section called “Fix scaling for apps” where you can enable a setting to let Windows try and fix apps so they’re not blurry. A toast that pops up when we detect that you might have blurry apps on your main display. A per-app override of the global setting. By right clicking on the exe for a desktop apps and choosing properties, you can select “Change High DPI Settings”, then “Override System DPI”, then configure the behavior. NOTE: This won’t work for all desktop apps and it only improves blurry desktop apps while they’re on the main display. If you’re using multiple displays with different scale factors and running in “Extend” display mode, these apps might still be blurry on secondary displays. A new Keyboard Settings page: We’re introducing a new Keyboard Settings experience on PC! Now found under the Time & Language Settings, you’ll be able to easily add new keyboard layouts, switch between Japanese 106/109 and English 101/102 keyboard layouts, turn on and off settings like key sounds and autocorrect, and other advanced keyboard-related settings. Additionally you can now change the default keyboard independently of the display language, for example using the French display language and having English as the default keyboard (this option was previously available in Control Panel, but has now been moved to Settings). Duplicate settings from Control Panel have been removed. A new and improved Region & Language Settings page: As part of our ongoing effort to converge Settings and Control Panel, as well as improve Settings usability, you’ll find with today’s build that we have reimagined the Region & Language Settings. We’ve added icons to each language entry to indicate when language support is installed for display language, text-to-speech, speech recognition, and/or handwriting. We’ve also added an entirely new language selection experience – enabling you to quickly identify available language features per language. This also marks the initial integration of Local Experience Packs, native AppX packages, that with Microsoft Store to enable us to regularly update language resources with translation improvements collected from Windows Insiders and other feedback channels. We’re still fine-tuning the UI, so expect some small changes over the next few flights. Set data settings to prefer cellular usage: In Cellular Settings you can now choose to use cellular instead of Wi-Fi always or when Wi-Fi is poor. This updated Windows feature allows people with fast LTE connections and large/unlimited data plans to favor cellular whenever available and avoid being stuck on poor Wi-Fi connections. NOTE: The Cellular Settings page will only be visible for people using PCs with cellular connections. Improved Data Usage Management: You can now configure data limits and/or place background data restrictions to Wi-Fi and Ethernet connections, in addition to cellular connections, in the Data usage page. The updated settings page aims to support a diverse set of devices and users. Whether you have a PC with cellular connectivity or a metered ethernet network connection, tailor your data usage to your budget and needs. Want to see your data usage at a glance? Right click on the Data usage tab in Settings and pin it to the Start menu to see a data usage live tile. Reset your Game Mode Settings: Under Settings > Gaming > Game Mode there is a new option called ”Reset Game Mode Settings” that allows you to restore Game Mode settings for their PC back to the default values for the feature. Improved Per-app Settings: When we added a new context menu option to go straight from the app in Start to the per-app settings in Settings, we mentioned turning this page into a one stop shop for settings related to each app. In today’s build you’ll notice that we now bubble up any permissions the app has asked for, along with an easy option for you to toggle them. We’ve also added links to check background usage, lock screen notifications, and defaults, and options to terminate and/or uninstall the app.

Windows Defender Improvements

Windows Defender Application Guard (WDAG) update: You spoke, and we listened. Microsoft is bringing Windows Defender Application Guard to Windows 10 Professional in the next feature update of Windows 10. Now, like Windows 10 Enterprise users, Windows 10 Pro Users can navigate the Internet in Application Guard knowing their systems are protected from even the most sophisticated browser attacks. Windows Defender Application Guard provides unprecedented protection against targeted threats using Microsoft’s industry leading Hyper-V virtualization technology. Check out this recent RSA talk on Window Defender Application Guard if you’d like to understand this feature in some more detail. It is available now to our awesome Windows Insider community to give it a try and we would like to hear your feedback. Quick access from the context menu: You can now right-click on the Windows Defender icon in the notification area and get an updated context menu that lets you quickly do a quick scan, update your Defender definitions, change the notifications and open Windows Defender Security Center.

Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)

WSL can run background tasks: Processes that set themselves up to run in the background such as sshd, tmux/screen, etc. will now continue running after the last console window has been closed. Elevated and non-elevated WSL instances can run simultaneously:  Previously WSL instances all had to all run as elevated or all unelevated.  Now you can run some elevated and some non-elevated instances.  You can also use Scheduled Tasks to run WSL. WSL runs in remote connections: WSL is now supported when connected via OpenSSH, VPN, Enter-PSSession, and/or other similar Windows remoting tools. Previously this would only work in cases where the user logged in interactively and started a WSL instance before connecting remotely. to the remote host and then launch WSL. With background processes you can background sshd in WSL so it persists in the background without having any open windows. Tool to convert Linux paths to Windows-friendly paths: Wslpath is a tool that allows you to convert Linux paths to their Windows equivalent. Here is a quick reference for how you can use the wslpath tool: -a    force result to absolute path format -u    translate from a Windows path to a WSL path (default) -w    translate from a WSL path to a Windows path -m    translate from a WSL path to a Windows path, with ‘/’ instead of ‘\\’

New tools available to developers on Windows

Windows Command line Toolchain includes bsdtar (tar) and curl. bsdtar and curl, two popular command line tools from the Unix shell, are now available in Windows and Windows Server.  bsdtar provides handy extraction/creation of compressed files and curl offers data transfer capabilities so you can download files from a remote location.  Read this blog to learn more about the addition of these two new tools and see how they’re shaping the developer experience on Windows. Unix style sockets (AF_UNIX) are available on Windows AF_UNIX is an address family which has enabled inter-process communication on Unix for countless years. The windows equivalent is named pipes, which offers similar facilities. Based on user feedback, we heard that you’d like an easier path when porting tools relying on AF_UNIX to Windows. As a result, two Win32 processes can now use the AF_UNIX address family over Winsock API to communicate with each other.

Control Windows legacy apps access to your camera

Camera privacy settings under Settings > Privacy > Camera give you fine control over the apps that have access to your camera. Prior to this update, the toggle marked ‘Let apps use my camera hardware’ only applied to apps installed from the Windows Store (think Skype from Store). This meant that you could have the toggle set to off, but still have legacy apps use the camera (think Skype for Desktop). With this update, we are changing the toggle’s behavior to include all legacy apps. Note that each legacy app will not appear individually in the list today like Store apps do, but they will respect the toggle. Another related change that is also part of this update will include the Windows Camera app in the list of apps that can use your camera; it was previously exempt from this list. If your legacy camera application stops working after taking this update, please check your camera privacy settings and ensure that the toggle is enabled. Please try the new camera privacy features & remember to file all feedback via the Feedback Hub.

Input Improvements

Personalize the handwriting panel: In this release you can now change the font that your handwriting converts to in the handwriting panel! Go to Settings > Devices > Pen & Windows Ink > “Change the font of the handwriting experience”, select your preferred font from the dropdown, then write in the handwriting panel to see your chosen font. You can now use the Emoji Panel in more languages! Based on your feedback, we’ve been working diligently on more added support for more languages and as of today’s build you can now use the emoji over 190 locals – 152 of which have tooltip support when you hover over each emoji. This includes English (Great Britain), French (France), German (Germany), Spanish (Spain), and more! You can open the Emoji Panel by pressing Windows logo key + period(.). Currently you can only browse and use mouse/touch/keyboard to pick an emoji in these languages, however we’re working on adding search. Stay tuned! Single or multiple emoji at a time – you choose: With the previous flight we added support for inputting multiple emoji at a time. Today we’re adding a setting so that you can decide which behavior is best for you. Simply check or uncheck the new “Don’t close panel automatically after an emoji has been entered” setting under Settings > Time & Language > Keyboard > Advanced Keyboard Settings. Emoji data update: Last flight we shared our initial emoji data update across multiple languages for this release – as promised with today’s flight we have the second bulk of the payload. We’ve added a number of additional words you can use to find the emoji you’re looking for in your language – use the touch keyboard and search for things like hedgehog, vampire, and pretzel. Hardware keyboard suggestions update: Since our first flight with this new feature, we have two updates to share with you: Firstly: We now support dark theme! Use Color Settings to switch between light and dark and see how your text suggestions will now follow suit. Secondly: We’ve moved the settings for how to enable this feature, you can now find it under Keyboard Settings > English (United States) > Options > Hardware keyboard > “Show text suggestions as I type”. Split layout comes to the touch keyboard: As many of you know we redesigned the touch keyboard to be XAML-based for the Fall Creators Update. We’ve been hard at work addressing your feedback, and are happy to announce that with this build the touch keyboard now supports the split layout – an ergonomic layout designed to be used with both hands, one on each side of your tablet. The standard touch keyboard layout for Japanese, Korean, Quick and ChangJie for Traditional Chinese: Now the standard keyboard layout for East Asian languages are available except Simplified Chinese and Bopomofo for Traditional Chinese (which we’re still working on). Japanese Kana layout is also supported. If you want to switch between wide, one-handed, and the standard touch keyboard layouts, just tap the button in the top left of the keyboard.

New features for IT Pros in Delivery Optimization

We’ve added multiple policies in this release (both Group Policies and MDM Policies) that provide Admins with means to throttle bandwidth at certain times of day (for both foreground and background traffic), restrict peer selection to the same subnet, automatically join devices into peer groups by using a DHCP server’s User option or the connection’s DNS suffix as well as the ability to increase the usage of peers by delaying the use of the HTTP source. To view the list of new configs, open the GP Editor and checkout the new policies under Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Delivery Optimization:

These features were added based on feedback from IT Pros who rely on Delivery Optimization to reduce the bandwidth consumption on their network. The throttling policies can be useful to you if you are looking to throttle Internet bandwidth during critical business hours while allowing update traffic to flow faster at other times. The new peer selection policies address feedback we’ve received from customers who are using AAD and Modern Management (Intune, WUfB) and needed more options to automatically group peers in each site they manage.

Registry Process

In recent Insider Preview builds, you may have noticed a new process labelled “Registry” in Task Manager. The purpose of this process is similar to that of the memory compression store process in that it is a minimal process whose address space is used to hold data on behalf of the kernel. However, while the memory compression process is used to hold compressed pages, the registry process is used to hold registry hive data (e.g. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE, HKEY_CURRENT_USER). Storing registry hive data in the registry process gives the registry access to more powerful memory management capabilities which will allow us to reduce the registry’s memory usage in the future. Today’s Insider Preview build is the first to store hive data in the registry process and this is visible in Task Manager as increased memory usage by that process. Since this data was previously in kernel paged pool there is also a corresponding decrease in paged pool usage so overall there is no net change in hive data memory usage.

Other notable changes

A note about HomeGroup: Easily connecting to and sharing the important pieces of your digital life with those who matter most has never been easier with today’s Modern PCs and the cloud. Whether it’s connecting PCs and printers on your home network via the Share functionality in Windows or using OneDrive to share a photo album of your last vacation, Windows 10 makes connecting multiple devices and sharing content streamlined and simple. And it’s because of that evolution that with today’s build you’ll start to see us retire the HomeGroup service. HomeGroup was terrific for the pre-cloud and pre-mobile era, but today this functionality is built right into Windows 10 and apps. Starting with this build, the HomeGroup service is no longer operational in Windows 10. The user profile used for sharing and the file/folder/printer shares will continue to work. Here are recommended alternatives to HomeGroup for you to get the best file-sharing experience in Windows 10 going forward: File Storage: OneDrive is a cloud-first, cross-device storage and collaboration platform for all of the pieces of data that matter most in your life – like your files, your photos, your videos, and more. OneDrive Files On-Demand takes cloud file storage a step further, allowing you to access all your files in the cloud without having to download them and use storage space on your device. Share Functionality: For those who prefer not to use the Cloud to connect their devices, the Share functionality for folders and printers allows you to see the available devices and connect them to and from other PCs on your home network. Easier Connection: No more remembering cryptic HomeGroup passwords in order to connect to another PC. You can now simply connect through your Microsoft Account email address across devices.

General changes, improvements, and fixes for PC

We fixed an issue where all types of dynamic volumes listed here wouldn’t mount properly or be accessible from Windows (the data remained intact but inaccessible on the volume on impacted builds). We fixed an issue where after opening and closing the People flyout notification toasts might stop appearing until the computer had been rebooted. We fixed an issue where Cortana’s notification settings were unexpectedly missing in Settings after upgrading to recent builds. We fixed an issue where when there was a problem with Cortana’s speech resources not being available, she could end up blocking Start. We fixed an issue resulting in potentially not receiving all of your notifications from Cortana in the last first flights. We fixed an issue where when using Windows in Hebrew no search results were shown in Search until a space was entered. We fixed an issue such that Recycle Bin will now show up in the search results when typing in Cortana. This was a server-side change so you will see it outside the bounds of this flight. We fixed an issue where opening the Action Center while there was a notification toast visible could result in the Action Center unexpectedly animating in from the bottom corner rather than the side. We fixed an issue where if you reinstalled or reset your PC without internet in the last few flights the default tiles in Start could get stuck as downward arrows. We fixed an issue where if the system was low on memory context menus might display in a narrow width missing all text. We fixed an issue with the File Picker dialog from recent builds where saving file names that included an additional period in the name (like A.ver2.exe) would result in the file extension not being included with the saved file (A.ver2). We fixed an issue where certain videos when watching in Microsoft Edge would stop playing and become unresponsive upon altering play speed to 4x or 8x. We fixed an issue resulting the expected tooltip not appearing when hovering the mouse over images on certain sites in Microsoft Edge. We fixed an issue where no search suggestions were displayed while typing in the Microsoft Edge address bar if the PC was set to a region not currently supported by Cortana. We fixed an issue that could result in an error message saying “device does not respond” when attempting to use Near Share. We fixed an issue where nearby devices that had near share enabled might not be listed in Share. We fixed an issue resulting in cursor lags on some devices when night light was transitioning. When you use the split gesture to add more space between two words in the handwriting panel (a caret, as showcased here) that space will now close back up after a pause. We’ve added a top level link to Storage Settings to “free up space” now, so you can get at it faster if you need it, rather than having to open Storage Sense first. We’ve made some small tweaks to the design of the Windows Update Settings page and subpages. To improve discoverability, when you have an update pending reboot in Windows Update Settings, beside the restart now button you will now also see a button for selecting other restart options. We fixed an issue resulting in some Insiders finding that Outlook 2016 crashed frequently on the previous flight. We fixed an issue where the group policy to set a custom lock screen image wouldn’t work if you had also set a policy that disabled the image on the login screen. We fixed an issue resulting in docker not working in the last few flights. We fixed an issue from recently flights where the Emoji Panel’s most frequently used page wasn’t updating. We fixed an issue where the touch keyboard showed a very small size on large monitors. We’ve updated the touch keyboard to now have an animation when invoking and dismissing. We fixed an issue where keys on the full touch keyboard might become stuck in a visually pressed state. We’ve updated the wide touch keyboard such that if you double tap the Shift key to turn on caps lock the key will now stay in a visual pressed state so you can see that caps lock is engaged. We’ve updated the full touch keyboard so that you can now use keyboard shortcuts that contain 3 keys (for example, WIN + Alt + D). We’ve made some small design changes to the dictation UI that appears when you press WIN+H. We fixed an issue where the Chinese (Simplified) Pinyin IME might hang when typing quickly into Cortana. We fixed the issue where VPNs that used custom pop-up windows during connection were failing with error 720 when attempting to connect. We fixed the issue causing users that have enabled the legacy console to be unable to launch any command line application.

Known issues

Popular Tencent games like League of Legends and NBA2k Online may cause 64-bit PCs to bugcheck (GSOD). Deploying an x86 app to a x64 PC remotely result in “FileNotFound” deployment failures if the target PC is running Build 17040. Deploying an x64 app to a x64 PC remotely or a x86 app to a x86 PC will work fine. Microsoft Edge may not receive Push Notifications from websites in this flight, due to an issue saving permissions on a per-site basis. We expect this issue to be resolved in the next preview build. Launching an immersive 360 degree video from the Movies and TV app within Windows Mixed Reality will result in the video facing the wrong way. Subsequent launches of 360 degree videos will work correctly. When users try to create a Microsoft Edge InPrivate window from inside a Mixed Reality headset, a regular window will get created instead. Users won’t be able to use InPrivate inside Mixed Reality in this build. InPrivate on desktop is not affected. We’re preparing for the inclusion of OpenSSH Server as a deployment mechanism in Developer Mode. However the UI code got checked in ahead of the components, and so while there is a “Use OpenSSH (Beta) for remote deployment” switch in the UI under Settings, it won’t work, and turning it on will break remote deployment to that device until the switch is turned off. If you’re using any EUDC fonts Microsoft Edge, Cortana, and other apps that use a webview won’t launch. You can resolve this issue by deleting the HKCU\EUDC key in Registry Editor. Note, if you do this, you won’t be able to see EUDC characters. We recommend you export this regkey before deleting it, so it’s easy to reapply the key in a future flight once the issue has been fixed. After upgrading to this build you may find touch and pen to not work on the non-primary display. Related to this, mouse, touch, and pen input might not happen in the right place after an orientation change or if you’re using a non-native aspect ratio. We’re working on a fix. Read the full article