Microsoft duplicates data from Firefox without asking
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Lately, however, I've considered letting Windows 10 run in a fairly locked down VM, so my family can use some apps and games that don't function well in Wine/Proton. I reckoned that the combination of VM isolation, and limiting Windows 10's internet access to a handful of whitelisted domains, is a reasonable compromise. I.e., I had a technical solution to a technical problem.
But this news story reminds me of another reason to keep Microsoft out of my network: they piss me off. Regardless of whether or not I'm currently ahead of them in the arms race. I don't want to reward Microsoft with even one more installation, and I don't want to be perpetually pissed off about something on my network. I crave Schadenfreude for everyone who conspired on this.
(Yes, I realize this sounds like the backstory for the least-compelling super-villain character ever.)
What data do you think they will exfiltrate that's so important that you go through the effort of setting of VMs and whitelisting?
Do you ban your family from using social media as well due to data collection?
But an example that I once used to explain to my wife why I don't trust TikTok and whatnot:
Some time ago (I obviously won't say when) we interacted with a person, that had a bounty on his head, setup by Boko Haram, and people DID tried to kill him before. What if for example we had filmed him and that information leaked or got intercepted?
Me, and my wife, have no enemies, done nothing illegal, and so on, nothing to hide personally, but about other people we interact with? What if some day a friend on internet, maybe a gaming buddy, tells me a important secret out of the blue because he needs urgent help, and that secret gets intercepted?
Suppose you will forevermore remain a boring person who never has anything to hide. So you knowingly use spyware, because you're an open book.
That enables common software to be spyware. If people are willing to use it knowing full well what it is, it continues to exist and be popular. Then people who do need privacy for legitimate reasons don't realize that, or don't have any good alternatives because the better options are niche and make them stick out like a sore thumb. And then dissidents get killed.
Don't get dissidents killed. Just Say No to The Cloud.
Would you find comfortable if while eating at the restaurant with your SO, a waiter sat at next table constantly staring at you two, and taking notes on what you eat, how you do it, in how much time and how much you appear to have enjoyed it, possibly also by analyzing your words? Stupid example maybe, but that would be just one of the many exact equivalents in real life. Don't tell that to toilet manufacturers:)
- The Finnish army did not have doors at their toilets before they got a female defense minister who obviously shocked by that practice ordered that doors need to be installed.
- In 2008 I visited New York City while suffering from stomach problems (We had bought the tickets months before.) While strolling around near Washington square I urgently needed to visit a toilet. I run to Washington Square and into the public restrooms there, to make the shocking discovery that there were no toilet cabins. It was just a big room with several toilet bowls and of course I was not alone. But there was no choice: It's the pants or the (semi-) public toilet bowl. (It remained unclear whether the setup was a result of vandalism or a prevention of vandalism or what)
I'm neither Finnish nor American and I found both learnings pretty shocking. But obviously it's just a cultural thing what is shocking and what not.
That said I am not happy that spying on users, whether its Android apps or Microsoft telemetry is seen as culturally acceptable instead of shocking by a majority of the public today.
You can be curious, but it's not on the OP to have to argue why he cares. Microsoft should not exfiltrate anything without asking for explicit permission, and honor a blanket refusal without exception. That the OP has to go through extreme countermeasures to prevent this leeching is unacceptable.
>Do you ban your family from using social media as well due to data collection?
This logical fallacy rhetoric is known as a whataboutism [1](an attempt to discredit an opponent's position by charging them with hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving their argument)
I'd like to say I have a rational justification based on risk/reward analysis, but I don't have enough information or time to really do that.
Honestly, it's more visceral. They repeatedly try to deceive people to pry away their private information. I want it to stop, and (probably to my discredit) I have strongly vengeful fantasies against the perps.
> "Do you want to eat some cake?"
> "No"
That's a very reasonable question and answer.
> "Why don't you want some cake?"
You might think it's reasonable to ask why someone doesn't want cake. I think it's prying. The first time it's asked, okay, fine.
> "Would you want some cake if it was chocolate?"
You're still asking about cake when the person said no.
> "Do you not like sprinkles?"
Why are you trying to conflate sprinkles with cake?
> "I can help you eat it better if understood why you didn't want it."
Seriously. You're building a pattern of abuse here.
"No" is a complete answer for permission. Trying to get around that "no" is malicious and abusive.
Cake is a personal taste. Are technical choices a question of taste. Your arguing against debates and technical discussions.
It's telling that many examples given were using video feed or pickpockets as an analogy to telemetry. These are not interesting explanations. Going to extreme arguments is not illuminating.
I've mostly stopped this approach though, because it makes people doubt that I'm having the discussion in good faith.
Nonsense. Using cake instead of privacy is making it less extreme than the original.
To me, his/her first question just showed interest in the perspective I'd posted.
I took @jonax's later questions as a kind of Socratic questioning. Which can come across as either a way to help sharpen one's position on a topic, or as an unwelcome display of skepticism, depending on the audience. I assumed the former.
If I had to criticize that post for something, it would be that it made wrong assumptions about how I'd answer that first question. So the subsequent questions weren't really on point.
Asking "what data do you think they will exfiltrate?" assumes that the only reason to oppose telemetry is "they might see something I want to keep hidden". But, as it's often said when it comes to other people attempting to cross your personal boundaries, "'No' is a complete answer".
I love that, so important!
Have people seen the Tea consent video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQbei5JGiT8
Eh? Why would that be ok? I think it's worth asking them why they don't want it anymore. If they continue to say no, do you really think it is ok to start pouring it down their throat?
Consent can be revoked at any point in time.
For what it's worth I think most cultures today are crap at consent. I think many of us are victim to a pre-#MeToo culture where sexual harrasment was somewhat more socially 'acceptable' or 'accepted' [1][2]. I think of the memes of women who seem uncomfortable when Biden touches them. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk talks about his desire for a 'trauma-conscious' society.
To me there is no denying that often we have been hurt, and that there is not enough support for many people out there. I believe we don't get the support that we would need to heal from these things. Walking around hurt and unhealed is unfortunately the norm.
> That's a cute way to talk through the ideas
Rape and sexual assualt are very common, so I think this video is more than 'cute'; it's essential. I hope we start showing this to kids at a younger age, to help them grow boundaries early on. This also concerns consent for non-sexual contact such as hugs, or just any other type of physical contact with another person.
[1] women: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWoP8VpbpYI [2] men: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc6QxD2_yQw
I mean that "come on, you got me to make this tea, at least have a sip" is perfectly fine to say about actual tea. In the analogy, doing that is not good.
(Assume this is a situation where they don't have a specific reason, so asking why they don't want it is completely nonproductive.)
> DECIUS BRUTUS: Most mighty Caesar, let me know some cause, Lest I be laugh'd at when I tell them so.
> CAESAR: The cause is in my will: I will not come; That is enough to satisfy the senate.
Now that I use "no" though, I still have people that ask "why" after it. Can't really tell them "this is the way" :)
Blur your face if you wish.
There is no danger for you. No data I can use against you.
Will you do it?
Most people would not.
What you decide to be private is, just because you decide it.
MS doesn't get to decide that.
These days it's a grown-ass market with competition and much more advanced toys involved. You turn on water, they know timings and how much you used. You use more electricity, they call you to suggest a different plan. You used drugs and flushed, they find metabolites in sewerage sensors (I heard that on news, dunno maybe bs).
So I think it's basically about bills; cameras in toilets are different market.
I probably won't run for anything, but just in case.
And yes, this analogy is admittedly a weak one, because while your particular brand of car does have locks on its doors, the manufacturer didn't give you the key.
Personal data.
It's not okay for them to take data like this.
No-one (at least yet) is running FacebookOS.
(my Windows VLAN even has its own separate external IP)
Whenever I need to use Win10, I create a clone, remove the network adapter, and attach a VDI containing my data. And once I'm done, I delete the clone.
Disclosure: I work at Microsoft on the Windows accessibility team. But this is my own opinion, posted on my initiative, and I do try to have nuanced positions even when it comes to my employer.
Not the OP, but given how Windows 10 treats the privacy of its localhost user, I can't rule out it trying to obtain information about other hosts on my network and sending it back to Microsoft.
Can I truly rule out the possibility of it sniffing network traffic to see what DNS queries are posed by other devices on the network? Or telling Microsoft about the count/timing/type of cellphones connected to my network?
If I told you that an operating system has just been caught doing that, would your first guess be Windows or Debian?
And I'd be more worried about malware than the OS. Especially phone malware.
My ideal Windows 10 setup would be basically Windows 7 + a wizard of 'Do you want this feature / telemetry' that actually respects my answers.
Rationally any device you allow unisolated on your network is a potential threat. Rationally you'd be more worried about infectious malicious packages or applications the user might have unknowingly installed and active than the base system/OS itself.
Empathically people will tend to tar with a bigger brush, like banning all Windows machines of the network, or not allowing any Huawei devices etc.
While these may not be 100% rational trade-offs, there are underpinnings in some if not all of these cases that can have some merit. The US lenience with regards to surveillance and their gagging laws, same for the Chinese etc.
So once that trust is lost, you will be hard pressed to convince people otherwise. What measures if any they are willing/capable to implement in light of that lack of trust will of course be different from person to person. One person's 'extreme overreaction' is another person's 'healthy caution'. One person's 'Calculated Risk' will be another person's 'Callous Neglect'.
For example because it stores WiFi credentials without explicit permission, and even hides the passwords?
https://superuser.com/questions/1498494/where-does-windows10...
That is not reserved only for guests, thought.
My wife is now working from home, and follow best practices when it comes to device separation, so she uses her company given Windows 10 laptop for work. That computer can only connect to the isolated network.
At this point, I would argue anyone should do the same.
Any new device on my network other than my own logs on to guest network.
The password for the isolated network has been randomly created using apg[1], so I just share a self-destruct link from a self-hosted PrivateBin[2] instance. The bin part is totally overkill, as long as you create a typeable password using the diceware technique, but since I have the instance running, why not use it? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Using apg to generate the diceware password for you is as simple as:
apg -n 1 -m 12 -l -c /dev/urandom | awk '{print $2}'
Okay, maybe not simple, but you get the idea.
[1] https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/disco/man1/apg.1.html
That would be better phrased as "malware (Windows or otherwise)"; your phrasing makes it sound like you don't know that Windows itself is malware.
But yes, network security that depends on the good behaviour of everything on the network... isn't.
All of them will betray your trust, either through maliciousness or incompetence. All major Linux distributions ship Firefox as the preferred default browser, which would be considered spyware if it were held to the same standards that Microsoft is held to. And even if they didn't, odds are you'll screw something up and get hacked (nobody, not even DJB, is perfect).
If you really want privacy, don't use a computer.
- portal detection is a plain GET request - no actual data is sent - Google Analytics is used on Mozilla Web pages, not Firefox itself - default search engines are meaningless, as you can pick which one to use and not even suggestions are requested without opt-in - FHR I believe is still opt-in and also contains no PII - Pocket does absolutely nothing unless you manually register and log in - Auto updates are only on Mac and Windows, but if you're using either of those, you really can't complain here
That site is a good resource, but it is extremely exaggerating the situation - and that's not ok. Once you label Firefox as "spyware level HIGH", what do you call something like Windows 10? Firefox has a few opt-out points of telemetry that share no PII and aren't correlatable by design, whereas Windows 10 has no opt-out and automatically sends everything from local search queries to full binaries back to the mothership.
Saying everything is bad isn't helping anyone. We need to work on getting people off the things that actually violate their privacy (Windows, most Google products, FB, Web trackers...) and only then start working on improving the lesser offenders.
Which is why anyone truly privacy conscious would use a distro or OS that isn't mainstream. My personal preferences for obscure OSes are Void Linux and OpenBSD. Void has a barebones installer image without any desktop software, you can build that up into whatever you want with whichever browser you prefer. A good simple setup would be something like i3 or dwm with the Surf browser.
With OpenBSD you do get a basic desktop window manager, but no browser is installed by default and the authors of that project are extremely privacy aware and security focused.
> If you really want privacy, don't use a computer.
I would amend that to "...don't use the Internet". A computer without a network connection isn't giving away your secrets, but even the most locked-down device can still leak data as soon as it's on a network, especially the Internet. Your ISP is fingerprinting you right now and there's not a damn thing you can do about that.
And for some reason they always feel the urge to name drop the current CEO.
Microsoft is the General Motors of computer software. They rode high and then rested on their laurels. They learned that they can't sell an operating system directly to consumers, so they're trying to steal users away from macOS and Ubuntu so their spyware OS can make them money that way.
Playing that game isn't a good faith negotiation.
Very common practice in politics which serves both sides (assuming the most common 2 main parties context) as both of them can tell voters they accomplished part of their goal after hard fighting.
What you described is how almost all negotiation is done, in good faith or otherwise.
But it's only a negotiation if both parties can propose changes and, if they don't like the deal, walk away.
Isn’t this exactly the kind of thing that would bring their hallmark antitrust case back to life?
It's default behavior in Windows 10 to ask the user to confirm the default handler for certain URI schemes after a new application capable of handling them is installed. The same would happen after installing any other browser.
I can't verify now, but IIRC if you dismiss the dialog the default handler doesn't change, basically it gives you an opportunity to change your default without delving into Settings. Android does something similar.
IIRC no browser currently force-selects a default browser via private API, except for new Edge if you had old Edge as default (since old Edge is uninstalled at the same time).
I.e. If Firefox switched to Chromium I would expect the exact same behaviour "New Firefox" and "Old Firefox" is not a distinction.
You can make a consistent explanation for either side, as you have just done.
If it's the same browser, then transferring the default status is correct.
If it's a new browser, then asking what should be default is correct.
Chredge is doing both, depending on which one advantages them more.
Saying this as someone who mainly uses firefox and occasionally brave.
As you say, they have responsibility to their users;
If the URL handler was old Edge, and they didn't change it while removing old Edge, the user would have broken internet access and not understand why. That's no good.
If the URL handler was updated to quietly move to new Edge, they just swapped out a major piece of software for one which looks and behaves differently, with a different icon, without any introduction or warning or confirmation, which is an awful experience for users. Microsoft get accused of special-casing themselves and their browser, and it breaks the work Microsoft has done for years to stop programs changing file/protocol handlers without confirming it with the user. [see Raymond Chen writing about it here https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20181016-00/?p=99... ]
If they decide a browser is not part of Windows and you have to install new Edge from the app store yourself, tens of millions of computers are now stuck on the last version of old Edge basically forever - because there's no Windows 11 on the way to replace it - and it becomes the new IE6 millstone for web developers. If they also remove old Edge at the same time, millions of people lost their browser and don't know why - and the only default one remaining is IE 11.
There is a new thing, the hypothetical user who had settled into Edge does need to know, however it got installed.
Well, afaik from 98 to XP it was just ‘put your shortcuts in the Quicklaunch folder’ (dunno about Vista and later).
I'm tempted to run Win10 just to see what happened to it in the past decade.
To be clear, an API for pinning apps now exists[0], but it asks confirmation to the user
[0]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/design/shell/pi...
Your IT department can tell Edge to open intranet sites in IE so even if you open Edge, you’ll get to the site.
I personally suspect Microsoft will argue that reverting certain system settings to defaults every update is SOP because they've been doing it elsewhere.
For example: sound settings. My physical Bose headphones show up as 2 different logical bluetooth headphones, one with sound that sucks, and one with sound that doesn't suck. Whenever Windows chooses the one with sound that sucks, I go into sound settings and disable it. This prevents sucky audio for a few months until an update lands, the sound settings get reverted, and the sucky audio returns. Ugh.
The fact that I've been able to figure out what's going on and am therefore able to work around the problem with only minor inconvenience is neither here nor there. Most users with the same setup will not be in a position to understand or do anything about the problem. Microsoft will degrade their audio, and they will live with it. Same with Edge.
I had to unprotect a deep registry entry and clear out my audio devices, at which time the relevant entries came back after a reboot. Any normal user would have been stuck with reinstalling.
It’s quite amazing how many “edges” Windows still has. I’m very close to figuring out how I can have a Windows VM w/ graphics card passthrough just for games on top of Linux. It might have warts too, but at least I can fix it.
As of today I think no operating system performs this switch correctly. It's been broken in desktop Linux for a couple years now.
It used to work much better in the bluez4 era, about a decade ago, than it does now.
Do note these are Bluetooth profiles. This is irrelevant to ouput device switching.
Agree with you that I never got it working consistently in Linux. Just getting normal BT headphones to use A2DP rather than HSP was always a bit tricky. I've not dared try my gamer headphones...
When you install Chrome or Firefox something similar happens, they ask to be default. Same thing happens on Android.
What's different here is that the user already has old Edge installed. This is new Edge which is arguably a different app so why not?
Idk... I think the full screen unescapable "Ad" that you have to click through for Edge pisses me off more than all the other crap.
Possibly the liberties they take in presuming to know better than you?
I think were the guided tours really annoy me is when they know who I am but insist on showing them to me across all my devices with no escape.
I actually got this update a few weeks ago on one of my machines and immediately rattled off bug reports to MS about the fullscreen BS and the importing of FF history. When I received the update on another machine a few days ago, the importing didn't occur. I assumed this was MS correcting an err in judgement but based on the reports that's not the case.
The just don't appear to be doing the import step to the same account twice across machines, that's nice I guess... but it's like not having diarrhea gravy poured on the second serving of shit sandwich you're being fed nice.
If that behaviour is observed in Europe I suspect they'll get the European Commission on their back pretty soon.
Anyone can confirm / deny my hypothesis?
All it is is some text that says:
Are we going to get treated to spam popups advertising Edge and having it duplicate our data from Firefox without asking every time Microsoft decides to update it from now on?
Love rebooting my computer to get treated to a forced tour of a browser I'm not going to use that I have to force close through the task manager to escape, and then finding out it's been copying over my data from Firefox without permission.
It's not that I have trouble believing this. It's definitely something they might do. But when did some random redditor become a reliable source?
Christ, people.
The shame is I want to love it. The engineers made some great improvements under the hood. But the product decisions are a disaster. It's like an out of control dog with an owner that just doesn't care, who shits in the middle of your meticulously maintained PC and pisses your privacy all over the neighborhood.
This would be a good reply anytime someone goes the generalist 'Microsoft does this and that and that and that and it's all bad' way. I've always found it somewhat strange how many people don't seem to realize there's x different divisions within Microsoft, and that's it's somewhat unfair to call all of it crap just because some lame in-your-face management-crap. Not that the latter is acceptable, but as you say: other divisions have been doing some neat things for the past decades..
But it's OK - Microsoft <3 open-source :)
"I was immediately annoyed at how invasive this. I'm a software developer so I'm sensitive to these sort of UI tricks. What MS has done this time:
Hit the user with a maximized Edge, with a modal roadblock window that only has one button that says "Get Started"
No option to get rid of the window, you cannot close Edge with the mouse and you cannot escape the modal window.
The only option if you don't want to "Get started" is to use task manager to kill it
Even when you do, it pins itself to your task bar
It puts an Edge icon on your desktop
It unsets your default browser, so next time you click a URL from a shortcut, you'll have to re-choose your default browser.
Apparently it ingests data from other browsers without your permission
Your parents and grand parents are probably using Edge now. They didn't mean to, they just couldn't seem to get it out of the way unless they agreed to "Get Started"."
And when I open Edge, I see no personalization.
1 https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-fined-731m-by-eu-in-...
2 https://venturebeat.com/2020/03/16/windows-10-now-runs-on-1-...
GPO: After installing[0] the Edge Group Policies (because of course they aren't included with the installer!), set the "Automatically import another browser's data and settings at first run" policy to "4: Disables automatic import, and the import section of the first-run experience is skipped". This works on any version of Windows 7 or later. Note that if you already enabled the "Hide first-run" policy, Edge will take it upon itself to import from the user's default browser anyway without asking, so you'll still have to set the other policy as well.
Registry: Go to Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Edge, create a new DWORD called "AutoImportAtFirstRun", and set it to 4. Auto import will not happen when Edge (Chromium) is launched for the first time, and you won't be asked about it during setup.[1] If you want to disable the first-run wizard entirely, create another DWORD called "HideFirstRunExperience", and set it to 1.
If you've already opened Edge (as described in the article), these policies being applied will not clear your browser of already imported data. You'll have to delete your Edge profile (edge://settings, -> profiles, delete) to get rid of it. If you haven't installed Edge, note that new Edge becomes mandatory in version 20H2, so you'll want to set the policy now before you get overtaken after a system update.
Guess this is another thing to add to the "new-install checklist"...
0: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/configure-micros... 1: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/microsoft-edge-p...
The current title is ambiguous: "Windows duplicates data from Firefox without asking". The fact that this is user data is an important distinction. Also, the word duplicates has a sense of having a purpose of redundancy, which is not the case here.
People just don't get it.
For example Cyberpunk 2077 has no official mininum requeriments listed for PC yet, and I noticed in their official forums a couple people are asking if it will support Win7, a lot of people replied to these questions along the lines: "Of course not you loser, Win7 support from MS ended, noone is going to be retarded and support a game that uses Win7" and this just makes me sad.
I really hope Linux will "take off" before I am actually forced to ditch Win7.
We've made massive strides in the last 2 years, but we need everyone who is Win7 Main to at least run Linux for some games to get used to the differences and to get the numbers up. This will help bolster the efforts of all those who are switching from 'some usage -> dual booting', 'dual booting -> Linux main' and 'Linux main -> leading edge'.
If all take one step forwards then overall the scales start to tip!
Often we play games with each other and whatnot.
But it is still obvious Linux is behind in some senses.
1. Some interfaces are just awful, Ubuntu default one took me ages to figure how to type addresses on the file explorer thingy it has (seemly you have to type Control+G or something).
2. If you use nVidia, you are screwed, nVidia drivers just suck.
3. Often even native linux games do weird unexpected things, like refusing to close, and the kill interface on Linux is generally awfull, it is hard to track why the hell the game just doesn't close, my wife reboots her computer much more often than me because of something going wrong with a game and make the system go into a weird state of some kind.
4. Installing wine and whatnot is a pain, for example when I tried to install Magic Arena I ended somehow, with many, many copies of wine on the system, and NONE worked. There are multiple game launchers and wine wrappers too, all of them trying to fix this issue, and none of them succeed completely.
That's GNOME. Which regular Ubuntu ships by default. If you like Win 7, use Plasma (formerly known as KDE).
>2. If you use nVidia, you are screwed, nVidia drivers just suck.
That's just Ubuntu again. On Arch or Manjaro you just install the "nvidia" package, reboot and you're done.
>3. Often even native linux games do weird unexpected things, like refusing to close
You should have a task manager to list your processes and kill them. But it's true that the failure handling mode for some games that do weird shit isn't as nice as on Windows. I recommend htop, because when the graphical system hangs, you can switch to another tty (Ctrl+Alt+an F key like F2) and use htop.
>4. Installing wine and whatnot is a pain
Don't. Use Lutris which handles installations of many games automatically for you, or if it doesn't have an install script (MtG: Arena does: https://lutris.net/games/magic-the-gathering-arena/), helps you anyway in managing Wine for you.
In response to his response as a response to my response, I'd add that if he wants to see progress on these issues, Linux isn't ever going to burst into the room, take him by the hand and whisk him away. At some point he's going to need to take the leap and start using Linux in anger in order to escape W7 or W10.
His wife running Ubuntu is encouraging though. I'm much happier if someone has at least tried Linux rather than just assuming it's terrible.
But as I say, everyone needs to take a step forward of we want to move the front line.
RE 4., have you tried using something like Lutris (https://lutris.net/games/magic-the-gathering-arena/) or Proton (via Steam)? These two have essentially obsoleted all of the crazy wine wrappers and whatnot - many games are now plug-and-play :)
I've a number of friends who are like "but now I don't need to use Linux because I have WSL", which in concert with some of the improvements MS has made to it make it seem increasingly like a honey-coated embrace-extend-extinguish move.
You can chose to live with it and bitch. Sorry, dont expect anyone to care, you preferred it over the alternatives.
You can mess with the registry/ group policy/ whatever. It will take you a few hours, and in a few weeks you'll have to do it again. You'll never be in the lead. If that's your choice, so be it, but be honest: you wanted this more than any alternative.
You can go to linux. Things will be better, but not perfect, and there will be an uncomfortable learning curve of a few weeks. Bonus points if you reclaim the money for the license. More bonus points if you give some money to the linux ecosystem.
You can go to OSX, and deal with the walled garden. Life will be good, as long as you can live with whatever apple thinks is best.
You can contact local politicians, consumer groups, etc...
You can sue microsoft. Really. Especially in the EU, if you thoroughly do your homework, you have a reasonable chance of winning. Somebody complained about seeing the license only after having paid for windows, sued and won. After that ms printed the url to the license on all their EU windows boxes.
You can contact ms support and complain. They will notice if their decisions make their support costs raise.
Each non ms option causes some short term discomfort, but each small drop eventually wears down a mountain. Make your choice and live with it.
Now I am free tech support for quite a few people in the neighbourhood, so I know what goes on in the windows world. I mean it when I say linux isnt perfect, but windows is worse.
My wife and parents got linux. A local school got 20 debian PCs for corona remote classes. If you want my free support and you have to call me once to much, you'll get linux or no more free support.
And it works. Normal people can do as much or more with linux as with windows, gaming being the major hold out. Power users complain, but then they son't get support from me anymore. There's a lot less trouble with my linux users as with the windows club.
There are more valid OS choices now than ever before: iOS, Android, Chrome OS, Windows, OS X, Linux. And you can get them at any store regular people shop at like Costco, BestBuy, Amazon, or Dell.com.
And there are more cross-platform options for software than ever before: native multi-platform, native-ish (ReactNative/Electron), PWAs (Twitter's Windows client is just a PWA), web (Office 365, Google Apps), etc. Most of the core apps I use every day (Outlook, Office, web browser, Teams, Skype, Netflix, Prime Video, etc) are available 5+ platforms (Windows, OS X, iOS, Android, Chrome OS, or web). 10+ years ago you'd be lucky if something was on Windows AND Mac.
If you don't like Windows, quit bitching and switch. It is your fault if you are somehow surprised by Microsoft's Windows 10 telemetry behavior for the 20th time.
That's nice for you, but not everyone is so lucky. It's definitely becoming more viable to move off Windows, but there are still many useful applications that are native to Windows and not available on most or all other platforms. Pretending that simply migrating off Windows is a practical option for everyone isn't going to solve this kind of problem.
I write this as someone whose businesses really have so far refused to adopt Windows 10, other than for specific testing purposes. But again, we recognise that we were able to make choices that newer businesses who are buying their hardware and software today don't have any more. What we do would also be impractical for larger businesses where realistically you need a consistent desktop deployment across many users, whereas just about all of us here are technically literate and have a customised system anyway so we already use a diverse range of hardware and software.
One of these days either Excel for Windows will work with Wine or they’ll get it working in a browser. Then I’ll go to Ubuntu and be happy with it.
Also massive inequality, rising productivity, declining real wages, increased debt, global warming, and a complete lack of opportunity for most people.
What a time to be alive!
Damaging the fragile environment in so doing.
>We have medical treatments for diseases that would have killed millions a year 75 years ago.
Thus exacerbating global overpopulation and all the problems this causes
>We can communicate openly and freely with people all over the world.
Not for much longer. There's a push everywhere to centralize communications into silos owned by tech giants with zero accountability. How many times have I seen on HN that "email is deprecated" and the way of the future is to just buy into $proprietary_messenger that the user happens to work for?
>We can go to motherfucking space!
If you're a CEO, sure. The privileged overclass enjoys many perks as a consequence of its dominance.
>The world is more at peace right now than any other time in recorded history. The power of religion to control people has slowly degraded away.
Replaced by massive media and tech corporations controlling public discourse via social media, the new opiate of the masses, and fomenting identity politics to stave off the realization of class consciousness.
We live in a corporate dystopia.
The others are valid, but not this one. You don't get to be cross about people not dying.
You aren't the referee of what I can and can't do.
CEOs can't go to space quite yet. However, it appears that space is about to get far more accessible. Not only that, cheap space launches are enabling things like Starlink, which may provide worldwide internet and get around national firewalls and make the world that much more transparent.
The average person has many incredibly cheap amenities available that were unthinkable not that long ago. What does a CEO have that is that much better? A bigger boat than other people? They get to fly in an airplane that has less people in it? A more expensive car? A slightly bigger TV? There are rapidly diminishing returns for being rich.
Sure they can[0]. They can also afford to live in luscious gardens patrolled by private security while inner city kids struggle with things like lunch debt because they didn't have the foresight to be born to wealthy parents.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Garriott#Spaceflight
Time becomes less of a sticking point as they can buy a waiting limo and direct connecting flight, other people become less of a concern as they can rent any Penthouse suite with bodyguards in any location.
Influence over others becomes a matter of spending - donations, philanthropy, employment, high status connections.
The returns on being a (sufficiently) wealthy (American) person are much more than just the material stuff they can buy and own.
But, they also become what they likely spent their life hating: a non-worker. Worse yet, they get the added distinction of becoming a leech on the human network, gaining further wealth through usury. The welfare recipient at least puts all the money they’re handed back into the economy. The capitalists can never claim that, and mostly horde.
The OP is correct in that materially, the capitalist and the worker are largely equals. We all use the same phones, TVs and computers now. When I was a kid in the 80s a car phone was something only in movies, I never actually saw one.
> Giving him all his time back, which is priceless.
It's valued at "a livable wage", which isn't always but ought to be, "minimum wage". That's how much money you need to have every month to not need to work and still be considered living.
> "The OP is correct in that materially, the capitalist and the worker are largely equals. We all use the same phones, TVs and computers now."
Which is why I was trying to point out that's a sham measure, it's like saying "King Richard is your equal because you both speak English!". That might be true, but it's certainly not true that we are equals, it's a distraction from all the things which aren't equal. If nothing else, it shows that using a smartphone, TV or computer has lost its significance now we all have it, rather than we all gained signficance by having it.
>A (large company) CEO has the wealth to give them the freedom to not be an employee.
Yes but I didn't read that as "giving him his time back", I read that as "could be a manager, start a new company" etc.
I thought your post was excellent, apologies for misunderstandings. Cheers!
It’s a perversion if what a contract is supposed to be: negotiable, but it’s what it is right now.
I play computer games. Because maybe 30% or so of the games I play work badly or terribly in Linux (anything from screen tear to crashing on startup) I have a licensed copy of Windows 10. I tried setting up a KVM / QEMU-based VM with GPU passthrough, but apparently Windows detected it because it locked up (somehow, I don't remember the details) after I entered the license key, and I ended up having to dual-boot.
Maybe have a look at the Archwiki about OVMF Passthrough That's how I got it to work.
Somehow it displayed the Chrome logo when it started automatically and it had all my Firefox bookmarks.
Right after an update.
Was really scary.
And before it is mentioned; I do realize I can play on Linux, but frankly I dont feel like sysadmining every time I want some escapism.
I might just toss my Windows partition overboard in due time.
This week alone I've managed to play Titanfall 2, Doom Eternal, Elite Dangerous (with full HOTAS and VR support), and Some sniper game I picked up for a couple of quid. All Windows titles with no Linux support. I only needed to "fix" one (TF2) to get working but that was a weird tiling window manager and Origin bug which was fixed with 2 minutes of Gooling and a single line of config for my WM.
Valve have knocked it out if the park with Proton (as well as the community of course) and 99% of things "just work". If you're unsure if your favourite games will work check protondb.com and have a search.
Yes, this type of thing is not the general case, but it happens, and the last thing I want to do is introduce yet another layer of tech weirdness that could potentially cause problems.
If you have the time/hardware (a spare HDD/SSD) I would heartily recommend giving Pop OS a go, it's geared towards running games out if the box (without being at all GAMER!!!1) and is very pleasant to use IMO.
https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/microsofts-bing-uses...
Immediately after reboot, Edge goes fullscreen and pops up a unclosable modal window.
It also puts an icon on the desktop and pinned itself to the start menu.
Attempting to remove Edge via powershell results in errors and warnings about it being a required system component.
So...a bit more than chrome.
"You never sent me a response on the question of what things an app [application] would do that would make it run with MSDOS and not run with DR-DOS," ... "Is there [sic] feature they have that might get in our way?"
and 1992 one:
"What the [user] is supposed to do is feel uncomfortable, and when he has bugs, suspect that the problem is DR-DOS and then go out to buy MS-DOS,"
This sounds.. familiar.
For example, the auth0 SDK for WPF uses the Spartan one for login screens
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
It is now very common, yes.
The Edge popup asks you if you want to import data from other browsers and set the default browser (like what happens when any browser is installed). If you just press cancel a bunch of times nothing gets imported or defaults changed and only some icons get added. That dude just killed it in the task manager so it used the popup's default settings.
Complain about getting the chromified Edge popup as part of a regular update, not about it copying data.
What if you reboot without engaging with this weird unclosable window? What if you lose power? That's not agreement to the terms!
When you have a dialog to choose between yes and no, it is not acceptable to copy data without 'yes' being clicked. Justification about "they didn't 'just press no'" is not okay.
He did nothing in terms of giving the program any kind of input.
It never changes its spots.
If I went to a restaurant and they kept bringing me something I didn't order, I wouldn't go there anymore.