Cactus Codex

Pony blogger, actual cactus, artist, writer, computer scientist, and linguist. New Jersey / Pennsylvania | 21 | male, he/him/his | asexual hispanic | Cereus repandus, or Peruvian apple cactus

Making Sense of Wi-Fi Sense

Guh. This Wi-Fi Sense crap is confusing when the argument for it doesn’t tell me exactly how it works. So I took the liberty of reading an FAQ about it and well, here we go.

You invite a Skype friend over to your house, covered with a Wi-Fi connection with a password the length of the Articles of Confederation.

Both of you have Windows 10 devices, doesn’t matter which kind.

You want to share you network access with your buddy without having to dig out that dumb post-it. So here’s where Wi-Fi Sense comes to work.

You have to turn it on yourself. Then allow it to share the network you’re connected to to your contacts (Skype, Outlook, Facebook). So what happens now? Here’s the iffy part:

The password is sent to a Microsoft server in an encrypted file (so they say :v). Then they send it (still encrypted and over a secure connection, so they say :v) to your buddy’s devices.

If your friend has Wi-Fi Sense on and allows it to connect to a network shared with Sense, and also is in range of said network, then they can connect without needing to copy your password. Just to note, they’re only given internet access. Any locally shared files or printers on your net are still invisible.

If you turn Sense off, then the password stops streaming around and your friends can no longer connect.

So in short.

Yes, you’re sharing your password with people you choose with Wi-Fi Sense turned on and activated. And also with Microsoft itself. The password is supposedly encrypted so neither party theoretically can’t see it.

Compare it to typing your password into a login screen. That text is, hopefully, encrypted and sent over the air to the company’s servers and responds back with access granted. Only this time, it’s giving approved people access, namely your friends, if they’re around.

Again, only with people you choose and only if you turn it on. None of this “sharing with absolutely everyone behind your back” sensationalism.

It’s pretty darn convenient if you ignore the whole middleman thing. If any of this makes you feel a little uneasy, then perhaps you should turn it off.

Potential Windows 10 upgrade fix?

So I’ve heard that some people have had bad experiences with upgrading to Windows 10. Namely, the computer just refused to boot after the thing restarted during the upgrade, a sign that their hard drives were probably nuked to hell.

Well, this just happened to my dad.

But, not all was what it seemed! I think the upgrade messed with some crucial partition table stuff and just made it look like all was lost. But after digging in with a recovery tool, it turned out that the drive wasn’t wiped and the upgrade was merely unfinished.

Perhaps the same happened to those people or anyone you know.

If your computer refused to boot up after restarting once for the upgrade to Windows 10, this might help you out.

  1. Download the Media Creation Tool for Windows 10 for your architecture. System Info should tell you if you’re on 32-bit or 64-bit.
  2. Run the MCT and select “Create installation media for another PC” and click “Next.”
  3. Choose your language, any edition (you’re not installing anything) and your architecture.
  4. Have an empty flash drive ready and plug it in. Select “USB flash drive” and select your flash drive on the next screen. After that, a W10 installation file will download onto your drive.
  5. When that’s done, take the flash drive and plug it into the plagued computer and turn that on. Some may boot automatically into the USB drive, or require a keystroke to show a boot menu (F12 in my case). If you get a boot menu up, look for the option labeled USB and select it.
  6. When booted into the USB drive, a Windows 10 installation screen will pop up. Select your language and continue. Do not click “Install now”. Instead, click on “Repair your computer.”
  7. In the “Choose an option” screen, click on “Use another operating system.” It should be there if all is well. If not, then RIP.
  8. Finally, click on “Windows 10.” Or “Windows Rollback” if you figured all of this was just plain old ridiculous.

Voila! The upgrade should resume and the world has not ended! (and you also have a neat recovery flash drive in case other things go awry.)

So if you tap and hold on the New Post FAB on Android and drag it around, this happens. Also, reactionarily relevant Octavia.

So if you tap and hold on the New Post FAB on Android and drag it around, this happens. Also, reactionarily relevant Octavia.

Oh right, XKit.

To be honest, I had no idea what happened to the guy until now. And now I’m upset.

Then I stumbled into the #xkit guy tag and got even more upset. >:c

Guess the lesson is, don’t ever get involved with Tumblr on a large scale. Ever.

Has there ever been any claim on Tumblr that hasn’t been proven to be a fear-mongering and/or unfounded farce?

Maybe. I just don’t remember seeing one o-o

Hello!

If you’re reading this, I am currently on an extended vacation in Maryland/Tennessee and completely forgot to mention it here. ‘ 2′

I shall be returning Saturday night soooo yeah.

The only reason my artblog is called razethisbarn is because when “Apple Family Reunion” came out with that song, I thought I’d be real fucking clever by hogging this name.

Buuuuut I think I’m gonna relinquish the name. Maybe for something more boring, but descriptive.

postmoderncactus came to mind. Maybe? I dunno. Or just cactus-draws.

pvryohei once mentioned that alternatively, PC updates can be held until daytime hours before posting instead of immediately posting them right after exporting at 2 AM.

As logical as this might be, it just wouldn’t be a PC update if it weren’t at 2 AM, you feel me?

Welp.

I was gonna write up a history of the word “queer” in response to nitrus-baro but I fucked up and closed the Tumblr app process on my iPad, losing the whole thing.

Bluh.