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Seeing this from Charles Petzold is incredible, and I share his anger at the the adware-ification of the Windows platform.

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Agreed- Crazy that this came from him. In the last 2-3 months Ive noticed a few pretty annoying things happening with my MS account- First the weather toolbar was added to my system tray and it looked very much like one of those spam toolbars that have plagued Windows ad/malware. Next I started getting memories from OneDrive. I use my 1 drive for dev backup and as such I get an email from MS with a bunch of icon images as a memory.

> Next I started getting memories from OneDrive. I use my 1 drive for dev backup and as such I get an email from MS with a bunch of icon images as a memory.

I'm sorry, but that sounds hilarious.

"Your memories on OneDrive: Remember this bug from 4 years ago?"

Although, they should add that feature on GitHub. (No I'm not serious, Mr/Ms. GitHub PM!)

I got the same weather toolbar. I cant seem to get rid of it.

I dont even know what weather its picking up or how to change it

Its very frustrating

Right click on it (or some other blank space in the taskbar), "News and interests" -> "Turn off"

Total garbage.

Thanks!

Yeah. When I saw the link title I was wondering what half-baked clout chasing blogger was trying to stir the shit for clicks.

When I saw it was Petzold, I was just flat out shocked. This is the guy when it comes to developing for Windows. He is deep in the Microsoft ecosystem. For him to come out this strongly against a product means it's probably worse than even that.

I’d understand the anger way more if you couldn't just turn the offending feature off.

The anger stems from the exhaustion of having to opt out of yet another decision a megacorporation has unilaterally made to explicitly manipulate, correct, or badger you about your personal behaviors.

By dropping windows 20 years ago? Yup.

How many offending features do you think is too many to reasonably expect people to have to turn off?

"Just turn it off" until the next update "helpfully" turns it back on for you "to improve your experience."

Or when they add in the next "helpful" feature. Then you can turn that one off too.

"We strive to make the best OS possible." vs. "Install Candy Crush! Free lootbox if you install now!" (Not genuine quotes).

What a joke of a company...

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