alt.hn

5/22/2025 at 10:59:46 PM

In 3.5 years, Notepad.exe goes from "barely maintained" to "it writes for you"

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/05/in-3-5-years-notepad-exe-has-gone-from-barely-maintained-to-it-writes-for-you/

by CharlesW

5/23/2025 at 4:43:55 AM

I miss the original notepad that was barely maintained. I always knew if I just wanted to view something just as quickly and plainly as possible I could use notepad to open it, if I wanted more features, I'd use something like notepad++ or something specific to the type of file.

I do like that the new notepad remembers what you have open in unsaved tabs, but only because I use it mostly at work. On my home pc, I don't really want the "generic text file preview app" to remember every random thing I've ever pasted into it after I reboot.

by Suppafly

5/23/2025 at 2:07:03 PM

“Barely maintained” is a rude way to say mature, stable, and functionally complete.

by peacebeard

5/23/2025 at 12:20:02 AM

Our end users have the same text file open in 22 consecutive tabs now. So I tweaked away that option.

And as long as I'm disabling stuff that wasn't asked for, copilot is gone too.

by WarOnPrivacy

5/23/2025 at 3:27:10 AM

You can tweak away the new notepad entirely. It’s just an execution alias which you can deactivate. The win32 notepad will always be shipped with windows in two copies[0].

[0] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20060328-17/?p=31...

by xeonmc

5/23/2025 at 2:32:12 AM

Thank God for Linux...

by ciconia

5/23/2025 at 2:23:24 PM

And editors without AI features integrated.

by RetroTechie

5/23/2025 at 5:47:13 AM

And systemd

by 0x073

5/23/2025 at 2:08:52 AM

data collection funds everything, extinguishing anything that doesn't snoop.

by m463