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Comment by dend | Hacker News Reader

Author here. Yes and no - the title here reflects the problem. Basic functionality is locked behind an arbitrary requirement for MDM. I’m not asking to define custom restrictions - I just want a blank new page. Functionality that has existed in most browsers for a long time (IE included).

This is like locking Start menu customization behind MDM. Sure, you can do this, but it’s weird stance to take.

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Can't you just insert a GPO registry entry to simulate a corporate policy to set the new tab page as blank?

In fact if that works, a small tool to build/set fake GPOs for Edge would be quite useful.

That is very similar to the solution he used in the article.

This approach from Microsoft encourages the build of crapware tweaking tools that go on to hurt those using home computers. Instead of having a proper place in Windows to change something that is configurable users would be expected to download and install a tweaking utility - a practice that has for the longest time been accompanied by a higher than usual amount of bundled crap and malicious actors.

I'm almost at the point where I will either abandon Windows (since I don't really use proprietary software) or where if windows offered a paid subscription to be a super user and have the functionality of windows 7 alongside the security of 11 then I would fork over $20/month for that.

For Win 10 the Pro version allows disabling more telemetry than Home does and I pay extra to get computers that have Pro. I haven't yet researched Win 11 Home vs. Pro though and I will put off "upgrading" to Win 11 as long as I can as all I need Windows to do is run a web browser and the few programs I actually need without the hassles of reading the Arch wiki to fix desktop Linux issues or the hassles of Apple's non-upgradeable non-repairable computers that regularly break old software. "Oh, you spent all that time learning OpenGL did you? We're deprecating it pending future removal. Oh, you were using bash for 20+ years? Sorry, you're using zsh now."

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