My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns
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This is the long-ass story of my Odyssey with fixing Skype, also known as Microsoft are retarded ass-clowns!
It all started with my mom trying to use Skype today. I've set it up for her some years ago and she's used it before, so in theory it should work. She tells me she's having problems ("it doesn't work"), but since she's not very computer literate I figure she's probably doing something wrong and it will be an easy fix. So comes "he knows computers" son to the rescue (which usually means I turn it off and on again).
She shows me how she tries to log in, then Skype says "Skype cannot connect". I check the internet connection, which works, so I just assume there's a problem with the credentials. I click "Forgot password" and reset it. Go back to the client, enter the new password, still get "Skype cannot connect". Hmm, well that's weird.
So I go to their website and log in there with the new password. It works and presents me with a web client of Skype. Bingo! This is where my little story could have ended without much of a fuss.So whatever the problem was, doesn't really matter, I tell my mom "just use this instead". She searches her contacts, everything seems to work out, and clicks the call button.
Your current version of Firefox doesn't support making or receiving calls on Skype for Web. In the meantime, please use a different browser such as Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome.
Yeah, it's the latest Firefox version, tyvm. The computer is kind of old, still running Vista, so I don't think Edge is even available for it. Besides this,
So I go back to the stand-alone client and try my own account. It also doesn't work. Now it dawns on me that the client might be an old version, they're too stupid to remain backwards compatible (used to be MS's selling point), and just say "no worky, fuck off!" instead of a reasonable error message. Maybe something like "you're using an old version of Skype, please upgrade your client".
Okay, idiots, I go to
check for updates
and it downloads 55MB of updates. Then it tells me "Sorry, that didn't work. Try Again?". Sigh, sure. Downloads the same thing again, still doesn't work.
I go to their website and download the update manually. It installs for what feels like an eternity, then this screen pops up:
Translated: Oops, there's a problem. [...]. Go to "Internet Explorer" > "Internet options" and check if TLS options are active.What. The. Fuck?!
I'm not even using IE you idiots! I actually roughly know what TLS means, I'm sure my mom doesn't though. But ok, I know that the "internet options" dialog in the system settings is actually the same one as shown by IE. Anyways, have you seen that dialog? Where the hell do I enable TLS there? Googling for that error message was faster than actually reading every single option in there.Now how about instead of showing a stupid frowny you go check that setting yourself and instead give me a message saying: "Hey, some techno mumbo-jumbo (details here...) that I need is not active, want me to enable it for you?"
But I guess that would be helpful.Anyways, it finally works, I can log in. It shows me a screen filled with ads and a small message saying (roughly) "You have disabled JavaScript in Internet Explorer. Skype needs JavaScript to work correctly".
Sigh. Well, of course that's disabled, because I. Don't. Fucking. Use. Internet Explorer. It's locked down as much as possible, not caused a problem before.
Easy enough to fix.Now it works, my mom can Skype and I'll go to the hospital to check for aneurisms.
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@topspin said in My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns:
Microsoft are retarded ass-clowns!
And this differentiates them from the rest of the industry how?
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@topspin Does Vista have TLS < 1.2? Because most sites no longer support older vulnerable TLS versions.
Also Vista itself has been out of support for like 5 months now.
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@blakeyrat It has an old version of TLS.
Also Vista itself has been out of support for like 5 months now
Who cares, I'm no going to throw the computer away because of that, it still works fine.
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I've had so many problems with Skype since its incarnation, and I only use it reluctantly if someone else insists on using it. All the problems have been so varying, too. It's not like just one little problem. Sometimes it's connecting, others it's getting notified of new messages, still others is screensharing or voice (usually fixed by just restarting).
Skype truly is shit.
@blakeyrat said in My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns:
@topspin Does Vista have TLS < 1.2? Because most sites no longer support older vulnerable TLS versions.
Exactly my thought.
Not sure what else your mom does, but other things should have started to break if this is the case, like bank websites, as they stopped supporting older versions of TLS over the past year or two.
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@blakeyrat said in My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns:
@topspin Does Vista have TLS < 1.2? Because most sites no longer support older vulnerable TLS versions.
Exactly my thought.
Not sure what else your mom does, but other things should have started to break if this is the case, like bank websites, as they stopped supporting older versions of TLS over the past year or two.
Nope, everything else works fine. Maybe Firefox ships its own implementation of TLS, I don't know.
Again, IE isn't actually being used.
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@topspin said in My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns:
@blakeyrat It has an old version of TLS.
Also Vista itself has been out of support for like 5 months now
Who cares, I'm no going to throw the computer away because of that, it still works fine.
Clearly it doesn't .
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The one nice(?) thing about Windows 10 is that the UWP Skype client is a complete rewrite with no ads or JavaScript requirements.
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@topspin said in My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns:
Who cares, I'm no going to throw the computer away because of that, it still works fine.
Until the next ransomware comes along, then your mom is fucked. What a good son you are.
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@blakeyrat said in My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns:
then your mom is fucked. What a good son you are.
The NSFW Thread is
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@blakeyrat because that never happens to Windows 10.
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@topspin said in My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns:
because that never happens to Windows 10.
... has it?
I'm honestly asking. I thought Windows 10 (when updated natch) was immune to the last two ransomware attacks.
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@blakeyrat said in My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns:
@topspin said in My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns:
because that never happens to Windows 10.
... has it?
I'm honestly asking. I thought Windows 10 (when updated natch) was immune to the last two ransomware attacks.
Nope, IIRC because the first method of infection if failed would fallback to using psexec, so if you're using shared creds (i.e. A domain, or just using the same username/password across boxes) it could still get in.
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@tsaukpaetra "could" meaning "in theory", or "could" meaning "did?"
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@blakeyrat said in My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns:
@tsaukpaetra "could" meaning "in theory", or "could" meaning "did?"
Dunno. Wasn't stupid enough to try infecting my own PCs out of curiousity, previous statement made from anecdotal reporting off another researcher's potentially misremembered claims.
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@tsaukpaetra According to this blog: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/mmpc/2017/06/29/windows-10-platform-resilience-against-the-petya-ransomware-attack/ Windows 10 blocks the attacks assuming you don't fuck around with the default security settings. It says the majority of successful attacks were on Windows 7.
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@blakeyrat said in My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns:
@tsaukpaetra According to this blog: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/mmpc/2017/06/29/windows-10-platform-resilience-against-the-petya-ransomware-attack/ Windows 10 blocks the attacks assuming you don't fuck around with the default security settings. It says the majority of successful attacks were on Windows 7.
According to that article, the mitigation is provided by Device Guard, Credential Guard, and App Locker, all of which are disabled by default...the first two of which require Windows 10 Enterprise...
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@blakeyrat said in My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns:
It says the majority of successful attacks were on Windows 7.
Good thing I didn't update to 7 then.
No, seriously, if the computer would become unusable because of your hypothetical ransomware attack, that would be no worse than a sudden hardware failure. Which, in turn, would be no worse than just throwing it away now, because that amounts to the same thing.I fail to see how any of this is relates to the terrible user experience.
Working on the very latest Firefox version? Nope. Telling me to update the client instead of "cannot connect"? Nope. Working update function? Nope. Talking about stupid settings in an unused browser? Hell Yeah.
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@topspin Right; God knows it's impossible to upgrade a computer. You just have to throw them away.
@topspin said in My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns:
I fail to see how any of this is relates to the terrible user experience.
It doesn't.
What it comes down to is: OSes that are out of support are out of support. Cope.
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@blakeyrat said in My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns:
God knows it's impossible to upgrade a computer. You just have to throw them away.
The MS update tool says it's not compatible with 10. I haven't checked if it's compatible with 8 (and have no intention to).
So that leaves me with staying on Vista or putting Linux on it.out of support
I'm almost 100% positive that, aside from the latter TLS issues, the former issues would have been just the same on W10.
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Bonus usability WTF with the new client:
You put in your username in the text field, then realize you got it wrong. Say you put in "top-spin" instead of "tspin". Okay, navigate the edit cursor right after the dash and click backspace three times.
Oh no, it deletes one character, then jumps to the back of the text, then edits there. So you repeat the process of going back where you want to edit and delete one single character at a time
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Now that Discord supports video calling, I can safely remove Skype from everything I have ever owned.
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@topspin I've noticed that in the other input fields of UWP apps too, even Edge. Sometimes they just bug out and do weird things with your typing cursor.
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@topspin said in My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns:
@blakeyrat It has an old version of TLS.
Also Vista itself has been out of support for like 5 months now
Who cares, I'm no going to throw the computer away because of that, it still works fine.
My dad uses Windows 98 for the same reason. Actually he used to use Win3.1 but last year that mouse broke.
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@topspin said in My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns:
@blakeyrat because that never happens to Windows 10.
It's less likely to happen as Windows 10 receives updates, patching the holes used by the ransomware badguys. Unlikely to happen on Vista now, while it's very comparable to Win7/Win8 which do get fixes.
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@blakeyrat said in My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns:
@topspin Right;
GodApple knows it's impossible to upgrade a computer. You just have to throw them away.FTFY. đź‘Ť
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@topspin said in My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns:
Again, IE isn't actually being used.
Yes it is. I know because we do it in our product too. By using the inet classes for internet access (because then the system takes care of proxy shit!), you're using IE.
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@dcon
Not actually being used by the user as a browser.
Quite obviously, Skype uses some IE components now that it didn't use before, which is why it worked before and then broke after the update. Why does it need that when it previously didn't? Probably because the new version is just a thin wrapper around their web client, whereas the previous one did all the things it needed itself. Also, more ads.
That doesn't change the fact that Firefox is still the default browser.
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@the_quiet_one said in My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns:
I've had so many problems with Skype since its incarnation, and I only use it reluctantly if someone else insists on using it. All the problems have been so varying, too. It's not like just one little problem. Sometimes it's connecting, others it's getting notified of new messages, still others is screensharing or voice (usually fixed by just restarting).
Skype truly is shit.I used Skype for a long time and never had any problems with it. Like... at all. I would recommend Skype to friends because of that: "other IM clients give you all sorts of hassle and break for no good reason, but Skype is the one that Just Works."
Then Microsoft bought it. And you all know the rest of the story...
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@masonwheeler said in My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns:
Then Microsoft bought it. And you all know the rest of the story...
The guy who did The Rest of the Story is dead.
And now you know the rest of the story.
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@blakeyrat said in My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns:
@tsaukpaetra "could" meaning "in theory", or "could" meaning "did?"
Certainly susceptible to the new variants of Locky as one of my users found out. Of course we have full, cold, backups so it was simply annoying. He was a limited-permissions user too.
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@topspin said in My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns:
I fail to see how any of this is relates to the terrible user experience.
You're using the software in a state that was never anticipated - namely, a TLS connection can't be made because your OS is too old to support it. This is beyond what the UX can be expected to handle, and, in fact, it attempted to handle it in the most sane way possible, by telling you it couldn't connect (it couldn't). As much as Skype sucks, and oh man, Skype does suck, this isn't Skype's fault.
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@sloosecannon said in My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns:
You're using the software in a state that was never anticipated - namely, a TLS connection can't be made because your OS is too old to support it. This is beyond what the UX can be expected to handle
Is it really? Shouldn't the operating system requirement be the first thing you check during the installation?
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@sloosecannon said in My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns:
a TLS connection can't be made because your OS is too old to support it
And somehow, Firefox on the same machine can do TLS, without the OS "supporting" it.
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@topspin said in My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns:
Bonus usability WTF with the new client:
You put in your username in the text field, then realize you got it wrong. Say you put in "top-spin" instead of "tspin". Okay, navigate the edit cursor right after the dash and click backspace three times.
Oh no, it deletes one character, then jumps to the back of the text, then edits there. So you repeat the process of going back where you want to edit and delete one single character at a timeNo one's made a Community Server joke about this yet? What's wrong with all of you?
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@adynathos Because Skype uses Windows Secure Channel, and Firefox uses Mozilla Necko. Different strokes for different folks.
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@adynathos said in My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns:
And somehow, Firefox on the same machine can do TLS, without the OS "supporting" it.
Different
SSLTLS implementation libraries. Also, switching between libraries is deeply annoying to do. Not impossible, but… annoying.
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@sloosecannon said in My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns:
@topspin said in My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns:
I fail to see how any of this is relates to the terrible user experience.
You're using the software in a state that was never anticipated - namely, a TLS connection can't be made because your OS is too old to support it. This is beyond what the UX can be expected to handle, and, in fact, it attempted to handle it in the most sane way possible, by telling you it couldn't connect (it couldn't). As much as Skype sucks, and oh man, Skype does suck, this isn't Skype's fault.
But the OS does support it, as proven by the fact the connection could be established after I found the right checkmark to click on. Somewhere in the system settings for the internet component they use, even though they tell me I should change the "Internet Explorer" settings for it (which just so happens to be the same)
Although, I would expect the old version of the client to tell me "your client version is too old to connect, please upgrade" instead of "cannot connect, bummer".
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@heterodox said in My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns:
No one's made a Community Server joke about this yet? What's wrong with all of you?
Filed under: fuckinghellwhydoesitdeletetwocharacterswhenipressbackspaceonce
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@topspin said in My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns:
Although, I would expect the old version of the client to tell me "your client version is too old to connect, please upgrade" instead of "cannot connect, bummer".
Alas, it can't see that the problem is a wrong version, especially as the version problem is mostly not in the code itself (but actually rather in the configuration of cypher protocol suite and accepted certificate authorities). It just sees “that didn't work”. And security code is notorious for being next to impossible to debug in the first place as the people who write it tend to make the git maintainers look like the epitomes of fine customer service and thought about usability.
I hate working with security code.
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@dkf The problem is that they made an API-breaking change by updating the protocol or whatever. So you need a new version of the client, and they don't have any provision in the old protocol to "return E_NO_LONGER_IMPLEMENTED;" when you try to use the old client.
There should be a way that the server detects that you try to use a once-perfectly-valid API and responds with a string saying "That's the old Skype, go get the new Skype"Filed under: 301 - Moved Permanently
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@twelvebaud said in My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns:
Firefox uses Mozilla Necko
They don't use NSS anymore? Did they make that change this year?
Filed under: fuckinghellstopreinventingthewheelyou'regoingtocreatevulnerabilities
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@topspin said in My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns:
There should be a way that the server detects that you try to use a once-perfectly-valid API and responds with a string saying "That's the old Skype, go get the new Skype"
But if the client wasn't built with a way to detect that then there's not a lot the server can do
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@jaloopa Of course not. Which explains the horrible user experience.
Either prepare for changes or don't break the API.
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@topspin said in My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns:
There should be a way that the server detects that you try to use a once-perfectly-valid API and responds with a string saying "That's the old Skype, go get the new Skype"
Sure. Except, if you're MITMed, there's no way to prevent someone from intercepting that message and blackholing it. Meaning you can easily be MITMed on the old, vulnerable protocol without knowing the difference.
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@topspin said in My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns:
Either prepare for changes or don't break the API.
The guys who wrote your version of Skype never anticipated their version of TLS being broken and deprecated. The server side has to break the "API" because that's the only secure option.
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@sloosecannon said in My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns:
The guys who wrote your version of Skype never anticipated their version of TLS being broken and deprecated.
<blakeyrant> Well if you're going to use a shitty program glommed together by idiots instead of one actually designed by designers, you're gonna have a bad time.</blakeyrant>
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@sloosecannon
Geez, obviously they didn't. Doesn't make for a sane user experience, though, does it?How about this: They see me click "connect" with correct username and password 3 times, they send an email to my account and say "We noticed you can't log in. Here's the problem and how to resolve it".
That happens when their legal API changes, too (i.e. the bullshit everyone clicks through without reading)
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@topspin said in My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns:
They see me click "connect" with correct username and password 3 times, they send an email to my account and say "We noticed you can't log in. Here's the problem and how to resolve it".
But they don't. They see an unknown user attempt to connect with an old, deprecated TLS version and get blocked due to being unable to make a secure connection.
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@sloosecannon said in My Skype Odyssey - aka MS are retarded ass-clowns:
They see an unknown user attempt to connect with an old, deprecated TLS version and get blocked due to being unable to make a secure connection.
Also, all the user sees is “Computer Says No” with nothing really beyond that. OK, some programmers try to make that a bit more user friendly, but the impression that users tend to get is that all failures result in the same set of thoroughly useless suggestions about what to do, even if in this particular case the suggestions would actually work. (I think it's the legacy of those stupid diagnostic wizards.) All of which is part of some crusade to never ever let a user see a real error message; after all, a real error message might let them (or a tech-aware friend) say “oh, this case I can find an explanation of online, and yes, it really does require a system update to resolve this time”.
I hate working with security code. I hate working with security systems too. The experience when something goes wrong is universally awful.
I'm assuming that the real underlying cause is removal of some of the cypher algorithms in the cypher suite, resulting in older clients being unable to negotiate a matching crypto profile with the servers, meaning that neither side ends up trusting what the other says at all. Which wouldn't matter except that some clients haven't been receiving updates for quite a while…