Windows 10 nagging users with Bing advertisements (push alerts)

But at the end of the day, I don't think it's Corporate Memphis' fault - it just happens to be the design aesthetic which is often paired with this kind of shitty behavior which nobody likes. If somebody is constantly feeding you bitter medicine on a silver spoon every day, you might grow to hate the spoon.

And for this I blame Google who was big enough to afford nagging everyone to use Chrome whenever they set foot on Google turf. Youtube, Maps, Gmail, Search? "Hey, try Chrome instead of whatever you're using now". They even went a step further and shot their competition in the foot on those Google owned domains in order to make the value proposition of Chrome feel better.

So I'm not surprised at all that other companies now feel comfortable with pulling the same stunts. Especially since there's no regulatory agency that didn't have it's backbone softened to mush by lobbying and bribery.

On the Apple side, I find the “free” (continues as paid) Apple TV+ nagware on settings menu is much more offensive than the nagware on Apple Music.

The OS showing ads is worse than apps showing ads.

Also, some of my apps have some play store popups asking me if I want to update the app every time there's a new version, even though I explicitly turned off auto updates and update notifications, again, with no way to turn off their friendly reminders.

I hate modern «you better do what we think you should be doing» software.

I'm happy that I have LTSC version of Windows that just works and doesn't have those popups (but Windows Defender still has some annoying notifications that can't be disabled AFAIK).

Recently, Whatsapp forced me to update it because it refused to work if I don't. Meanwhile, there are open source IM clients that were made 10+ years ago and still work without any updates just fine. I wish all software was like that.

> MS is looking at other tech companies that do this without any backlash and keeps wondering why they are singled out ... Why shouldn't they try if evey other company gets away woth it?

Since when is MS late to the party on this one? They lost a huge anti-trust action for privileging their own browser decades ago. If anything MS invented this.

on a side note, it does not make sense to anthropomorphize a corporation, and a corporation does not deserve consideration on fairness grounds.

Fry : So, you're telling me they broadcast commercials into people's dreams?... But how is that possible?

Professor Farnsworth : It's very simple. The ad gets into your brain just like this liquid gets into this egg. Although in reality it's not liquid, but gamma radiation.

Fry : That's awful. It's like brainwashing.

Leela : Didn't you have ads in the 20th century?

Fry : Well, sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games, and on buses, and milk cartons, and T-shirts, and bananas, and written on the sky... But not in dreams.

Below "search the web", there is always a "search in sidebar" option. "Sidebar" basically splits your window and loads your search in the new pane. I assume this is some custom webview, but it looks very, very similar to a new window/tab.

The kicker: only Bing search can be loaded in the sidebar. So when you change your default search engine away from Bing, the text changes to "search Bing in sidebar" -- because they didn't implement the sidebar for anyone else, but wanted to keep the option there.

Yikes.

If you want to be 100% legit.

https://softwaremedia.com/shop/microsoft-windows-10-enterpri...

Many people will find themselves happily hoisting a jolly roger with a KMS emulator (several on github) given that they very likely already paid for a retail license of Windows and LTSC is basically just Windows 10 minus all the horrible annoying shit.

"With the LTSC servicing model, customers can delay receiving feature updates and instead only receive monthly quality updates on devices. Features from Windows 10 that could be updated with new functionality, including Cortana, Edge, and all in-box Universal Windows apps, are also not included. Feature updates are offered in new LTSC releases every 2–3 years instead of every 6 months, and organizations can choose to install them as in-place upgrades or even skip releases over a 10-year life cycle. Microsoft is committed to providing bug fixes and security patches for each LTSC release during this 10 year period."

From sibling comment's link, it is actually "LTSC": Long-Term Support Channel.

For instance, VSCodium is not available as a native download for M1 processors because GitHub Actions don’t support M1 yet.

Would Microsoft potentially delay supporting CI/CD for M1 because it’s not in their strategic best interest to support Mac as a development platform? It’s not out of the question to imagine this kind of thing could enter their prioritization process

Yes, definitely they are. But with strings attached, in the form of WSL.

I'm patiently waiting for the day when they will announce that some big software/service from them (Office? GUI? Outlook?) will be finally integrated into Linux, but sadly it has to be WSL to work properly/faster/better/with support, that is, Windows, and not the real thing. The next big Linux distribution, the one that every business will take as the standard to make their products (and drivers!) compatible will carry the Microsoft brand. Microsoft attempted to kill Linux in the past, and failed spectacularly, so they're now aiming at controlling it by becoming a Linux vendor, possibly the biggest one.

One doesn't become Platinum Member at the Linux Foundation just for the lulz, especially when it costs about $500000 per year. https://blog.desdelinux.net/en/microsoft-joins-the-linux-fou...

Also VSCode is already set up to enable this type of garbage. The "recommended extensions" popup is a great vector for getting programmers to use the tools MS decides are best for them, and the features for working on remote codebases are great for blurring the lines between a codebase that you actually control, and toolchains which depend on an Azure server somewhere in the middle.

I ask as even at home, my different devices all use the same browser/extensions, VPN and browsing habits. I use established FOSS where possible and the only problems I have had since Windows 98 are from data breaches (nothing I could have prevented with different OS/software).

Or are we talking about business/corp usage?

List the last known remote exploit that will work for someone behind a NAT, and that doesn't involve visting a malicious site with all the default settings of IE or downloading and running an executable (at which point nothing will save you but the most authoritarian of walled gardens.)

Don't forget, the new stuff is not free of attack surfaces either.

Now I have to admit the GPS device itself is also pretty low-quality, so probably I should just return it to the store, but still... What were they smoking? No 3D accelerated map updates for me, I guess.

[1]not IMAP IDLE and leaving a socket open, that's not allowed anymore. the app servers connect to the service and if there's new data it must be relayed through the OS vendor's push server which the OS leaves a connection open to and will cause a notification to appear on the "end user's" device.

It's technically possible to tweak pro such that it's mostly the same thing, but LTSC comes that way out of the box, fully supported by Microsoft, and that's not going to change because they don't want to lose these lucrative enterprise customers.

Apparently the minimum for getting a VL agreement is 5 licenses, and the other 4 can be padded out with cheap/filler licenses. https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2167558-explicit-inst...

rather than downloading some third party app that attempts to break the functionality without (hopefully) breaking other features

(also hoping some new update doesn't re-enable what you thought you disabled)

Patched stock Debian Linux is less secure than a 6mo out of date W10 machine: change my view.

Google Android ≠ Android (AOSP)