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Comment by fjsofkjdsfkos | Hacker News Reader

I think people are somewhat misunderstanding what's going on in this story. MSN's AI isn't generating stories wholesale like GPT-3 -- it's selecting other publications' stories from across the web for syndication, but doing it automatically after the company fired the team previously responsible for that curation process in 2020. Unfortunately, this new system is clearly not exercising good judgment about what articles or publications are credible, because of the ridiculous stuff that it's republishing from fake news sites about bigfoot, mermaids, monsters on Mars etc.

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I’d like to point out this extends to the actual Windows 11 OS because they relentlessly push National-Enquirer calibre news to users. Want to get something done? Hit Windows key and start searching for that app you want to use—only to be force-fed a bunch of celebrity gossip because it prefix-matches the search term and they want to sell Ad impressions.

I used to have high hopes for some of Microsoft’s innovations like Zune, Windows Phone, connect, Rosalyn—that glimmer of open-source-hope from the Evil Empire.

But it’s obvious now they are not really good at anything in the consumer space anymore: Hopping on the ad bandwagon because that’s what Google does; stealing the OS X taskbar placement for no good reason; turning the OS into the spyware folks used to dread at the turn of the millennium; now we need apps to remove Windows features just to use our computers.

I recently bought a Lenovo windows PC to run some software I needed that was windows only. It shipped with windows 11 Pro. Figured it wasn't going to be any worse than the win 10 Pro I have to eat on my corp laptop. So I fired it up and was disappointed and though all the crapware was vendor installed. So I did a clean install of windows 11 pro from microsoft. Actually it was WORSE than the vendor shipped version.

It is supposed to be a professional operating system but really you're being force fed dog shit because you have no choice.

I spent a couple of weeks migrating all my stuff away and will sell the bloody thing on ebay when I get around to it.

So - my Win11 journey has been spotty.

I'll spare you the details of my work machines.

But, I bought an Aya Neo as a mobile gaming PC, which never worked right with Win10. Like, really fucking weird shit that should never happen. External keyboards and mice not being able to load a driver kind of weird shit. I considered doing a fresh install of Win10, but decided, hey, Maybe I'll upgrade it to Win10 Pro via my ample MSDN licenses I get through work, and then do the Win11 upgrade.

Worked like a charm. Fixed every issue I had. Who knows why!

Anyways.

Win11 isn't bad after a year+. The stuff that gets in the way is the dumb shit they do with Windows Explorer to move options out of the way for power users. Think: All the cool shit you have set up when you right-click on something in Explorer.

I have also turned off all the telemetry options using WPD. No ads anywhere, and some of the stuff which is built in is pretty great: Windows Terminal, Tabs in Windows Explorer.

I find it to be a mixed bag. I don't hate it. I still prefer Win10 so far, but far less so than a year ago when compatibility issues were there.

Registry hacking is a moving target. They will auto update you into "accepting" spyware again. You need Windows Enterprise to actually disable that stuff.

If I needed a Windows machine I would stick to 7. That feels like before MS went Google.

Yeah sorry. I said Pro, but realized I used an Enterprise key.

Lenovo Thinkpads are the gold standard for Linux laptops. So you could install Linux on it, since you've got it anyway.

Given that their first sentence says they only bought the laptop to run windows only software, that probably isn't an option.

It’s a desktop and I’ve got a MacBook Pro already. I quite frankly despise Linux on the desktop after trying to use it yearly for the last 25 years. Server fine. Desktop no thanks.

Also OpenBSD.

> Hit Windows key and start searching for that app you want to use—only to be force-fed a bunch of celebrity gossip

I, too, found that start menu has degraded in utility, mostly that it's not deterministic anymore so I can't just type windows key + prefix + enter to open the program, but I have to type more letters in and wait for the AI to stop re-ordering entries before I hit enter. Jeez. Found this solution, good way to spend 5 bucks:

https://www.startisback.com/

Or you could use https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu for free

When is someone gonna compile projects like this into a reasonable "distro" for Windows?

;-)

maybe?

https://zone94.com/downloads/software/operating-systems/123-...

> force-fed a bunch of celebrity gossip

The weather widget now also serves this and stock market tickers. Making it slower and annoying.

Works in Win10, yay.

>But it’s obvious now they are not really good at anything in the consumer space anymore: Hopping on the ad bandwagon because that’s what Google does

"The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste. And I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don't think of original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their products."

-Steve Jobs

Now of course everyone steals stuff, and Jobs did do his share of stealing, but I suppose people can agree he had a sense of taste.

I think with MS it's like when people write stories, a lot of what people write are ideas taken elsewhere littered with stuff that is original to them. But some people you get the idea that they are cookie-cutter writers, they think stories about alligators are big in the market right now (no idea why that is) so I am going to write a story about an alligator that attacks (spins wheel) people on a plane! And then because they know something about writing they identify parts where they need to put some kind of thing in and they sort of choose at random between many things other people have done.

And that's how MS works I think, although things are not totally random because they're a corporation so are decisions weighted to "can it make money?".

So they think "we need something here in this area that is dynamic, not always the same" what do we put in there? (spin the wheel) News Stories and Ads!

Its a rather classless society in that non of them have class.

maybe they're functional.

Holy shit, I can't believe what I'm reading. Imagine buying a house and the seller comes in and starts nailing adverts to your wall. Here I am complaining about Ubuntu's use of snap and I don't even realize how good I have it.

Accidentally mousing over the unsolicited weather widget in the Task Bar, and having Alex Jones' face plastered over the screen, was the lowlight of my last week. It wasn't on even my computer and I was appalled by it.

Oddly enough the thing driving more advanced users to linux now isn’t that Linux is so good. It’s that MS and Windows are so bad.

Linux isn't bad, especially Ubuntu with the Mate interface but every time I use my employer's Windows machine, it's like "holy crap, if I was dependent on this at home, I'd be like serf or something".

I disagree. Ubuntu with the MATE interface feels familiar for people coming from windows as it's a very traditional veneer on the surface but it quickly breaks down. Pretty soon your hacking some random text file config that you'll forget about in a month and will be incompatible with your next upgrade.

I'm a long time Linux user but I've recently started using Windows for development. It's actually surprisingly decent. It's disgusting all the spam you get in a fresh install but after 5 mins of turning that off youre left with a clean feeling OS

The biggest thing that brings me back to windows is that Linux _still_ completely halts when hitting low memory situations. It's just embarrassing. Accidentally add an infinite memory leak to a program I'm building or open one to many tabs and your system grinds yo a halt while thrashing pages in and out of memory. Windows is capable of figuring out which processes I'm actively trying to use and somehow prevent trashing from making the system unusable.

> Pretty soon your hacking some random text file config that you'll forget about in a month and will be incompatible with your next upgrade.

Sure, but at least you can hack the random file, and you can easily document and back that up.

I much prefer that to having to edit some weirdly named registry key that has unexpected interactions with some unrelated settings panel, but only in one of the two settings places. Oh, and bonus points for that key being removed and / or changed by a random upgrade.

Most Windows GUI stuff breaks down badly when you try to do more advanced things. You quickly start needing to edit at least the group policy, if not applying powershell scripts.

> Most Windows GUI stuff breaks down badly when you try to do more advanced things.

Define "more advanced."

I hear what you're saying. The upgrade path in both can be very broken when you change things. But I find that in windows more of the options you need are provided by the settings GUIs and handle upgrades well. Most linux packages and OS settings start and stop with the text file config, or provide GUIs as loose wrappers over text configs which rarely support upgrade flows.

Providing upgrade support for user's arbitrary text configs is significantly harder than for a more restrictive and structured settings database.

> Define "more advanced."

The most basic: tell Windows the hardware clock uses UTC because I dual boot with Linux (registry).

A bit more advanced: Enable TPM + PIN for BitLocker (group policy).

At work: set up split-view DNS on a Windows Server (PowerShell).

> But I find that in windows more of the options you need are provided by the settings GUIs and handle upgrades well.

I beg to differ. I feel like every other month I have to go back and tell Windows that no, I don't want it to consider tabs in Edge as different windows when I alt-tab. It's one of the first things I change. Yesterday I had to go do it again on my gaming PC. Sure, this can be done comfortably in the settings GUI, but it doesn't seem to stick for some reason.

> Providing upgrade support for user's arbitrary text configs is significantly harder than for a more restrictive and structured settings database.

Oh, I definitely agree with this, and I think that Apple's approach to configuration (as in "there's none") is probably based on this.

But I think that Windows is pretty much the poster child for configuration broken up in a zillion different places. I mean, the registry is a meme for a reason, right?

Large compiles on Windows make the system unusable in a way I never saw om Linux. Process crearion time spikes and chrome tabs to different domains begin gaking 10+ seconds to open.

> The biggest thing that brings me back to windows is that Linux _still_ completely halts when hitting low memory situations.

Had this issue on a low-memory laptop but it got better after I enabled zram. A leak will eventually exhaust memory, but I guess it should compress well depending on the leak.

But it is not a complete solution (once exhaustion is reached it a freeze would probably still happen) and not very user-friendly either.

Yeah as a developer I can't guarantee that I'll never write an infinite loop that leaks memory, and I really don't want my only recourse to be restarting my machine. That's a pretty brutal dev cycle lol.

You can do that on windows, with GPU compute shaders and syncs - at least in that case on Linux, you can switch to terminal to kill the process. On windows, can't click, to kill a process you need the GPU to render your process managing window...

I mean sure, but that's pretty edge case for me, I'm not developing GPU compute sync.

I've not had that as a problem in a while.

Either the the kernel oom or the systemd oom-killer take care of it.

Does cgroups help here?

I'd agree that the decline of windows is a bigger boon for Linux that Linux itself. While Linux isn't bad it certainly isn't good.

The combination of Ubuntu and Mate is one of the worse to start with. Sure, it feels familiar but it's just Linux kiddie edition. Users tend to out grow it quickly or get frustrated with it breaking down from all the Linux goodness.

Don't get ne started on trying to use Ubuntu on any hardware released in the last 3 years...

Have you tried Garuda MATE?

Ubuntu has a few very serious problems, coming from a normal user from windows (wouldn't call myself a power user):

-No obvious way to make a filetype .xxx be opened always by program YYY

-An update can easily break things. Sometimes everything.

-Mouse doesn't work properly by default: sensitivity seems so weird, and there is no option in Settings to adjust number of lines mouse scroll skips. I have spent hours in the past (some years ago) to try and make mouse just like windows, but I wasn't able to do it.

-Not a single good alternative for notepad++

I'm gonna try windows 11 when I have the time. Dual boot is not comfortable at all and maybe I can stop using ubuntu interface forever and use Windows Terminal to do the stuff I need linux.

- No obvious way to make a filetype .xxx be opened always by program YYY

Answer: In Caja, Go to properties dialogue and choose the "open with" tab. You can edit the option there. This is a method consistent basic GUI guidelines as they've existed for 20 yeas.

-An update can easily break things. Sometimes everything.

Answer: I've used cheap laptops with Ubuntu for 10 years. Literally never had that problem.

Answer: Pointer speed is set in the control center, under mouse preferences. The control center is a standard menu option. It sets most simple UI choices.

-Not a single good alternative for notepad++

Answer: Pluma is default for editing simple text files. Many commercial programmers editors are available (I use QT Creator). Notepad++ is halfway between simple editor and programmers product that doesn't come with Windows but some people. Lots of people swear by vi and emacs too, standards of the Linux world. And naturally, someone actually has setup notepad++ itself for Linux: https://itsfoss.com/notepad-plus-plus-linux/

Right click file, Open with another application. To set default Right click file, properties, Open With, Set As Default

"Not a single good alternative for notepad++"

I had the same pain, using np++ in wine was not really working, but maybe this has improved.

SciTE works and is what I used years ago, but was not on par with Notepad++.

But Sublime Text works on linux and it works nice, though it is not free, but when you consider windows, that seems not to be a problem.

The UX of UI on Linux can't compare with Windows, at least for me and I use Ubuntu with KDE (tried other GUI's as well) on my hope laptop and workstation and Windows 11 on my work laptop.

Windows just feels smoother and applying settings is more straightforward in most cases.

UX of UI on linux is usually just not consistent, because it is often a thrown in mix of different styles(from different projects) and the pro users don't use the UI for config, but the terminal, so don't notice or care too much.

The UI of current Windows editions is an extraordinary mess. I use a new, low-end Windows machine just to play DVD for a disable person I'm working for. It not up to the task out of the box and without VLC things would have been problematic.

And just consider Windows has two different command bars.

Tellingly, those pro users would never choose to migrate back to Windows for a more consistent UI.

I think you can disable a lot of this using https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 - it’s amazing you can disable so much of this but it’s a shame that Microsoft’s defaults have so many ads and clutter. Not to mention, the first thing I do when installing a fresh copy of Windows 11 is move the start button back to the left where it belongs…

Microsoft is always finding new peaks of bad ideas. Its a sum of multiple smaller decisions along down a chain but clearly no one along the way decided to ask if it was a good idea before it got combined into the whole.

I sometimes think about going from 10 to 11. Thanks for steering me straight.

I was actually considering buying a windows computer instead of a mac (which has it's own set of problems), I'll pass after hearing this.

Buy a Windows computer and then put Linux on it. If you need Windows stuff just boot up a VM. It's the only way to own your hardware and your OS.

I have several Linux computers, I need a native way of running MS Office for work so I need either a Mac or Windows machine. I haven't looked at a local windows VM, is that something I can do legally? Does it mean I need to buy a windows license?

The other option, which I'm lukewarm about is what I think is called Windows 365 where I can pay monthly to access a windows VM in a browser. The challenge is needing constant, good internet access to access trivial stuff like Word.

> I haven't looked at a local windows VM, is that something I can do legally? Does it mean I need to buy a windows license?

Yes, you can do it legally and yes, you need a license. I'm not sure how that works if your physical computer came with a license (like moste PCs do).

> The other option, which I'm lukewarm about is what I think is called Windows 365 where I can pay monthly to access a windows VM in a browser. The challenge is needing constant, good internet access to access trivial stuff like Word.

I've never tried that, but for my basic Office 365 needs (for work) I've found that the actual apps running in a browser are great. I actually find outlook works much better than the local version.

IIRC, Windows licenses are tied to processors, and assuming the license allows it, running a Windows VM on computer that shipped with a Windows license shouldn't be a problem.

A Windows OEM license is tied to motherboard. A retail license can be transferred to a new computer if you uninstall the old copy.

> The challenge is needing constant, good internet access to access trivial stuff like Word.

Microsoft 365 is prolly what you're thinking of. It's all browser apps or PWAs (or whatever you may call online cloud shit), not a windows VM. If you've heard of Google Workspaces you have the right idea. Comes with Windows versions of the office apps that can be installed and run locally instead of using the online cloud shit, they tend to be more feature complete than the online cloud shit, and, unlike the online cloud shit, obviously don't work on Linux without some creativity.

Microsoft provides VM images that you can use for free.

Take a look at https://github.com/casualsnek/cassowary. If your license key doesn't work/you don't have one, they really aren't that expensive. Might also work without any activation at all.

I have a Win10 Lenovo Thinkpad. I want to switch to Linux, but I'd like to keep my Win10 system. Is there a way I can install a VM underneath this pre-installed Win10 system, so that I can still launch Windows while I'm transitioning?

Installing a VM, and then installing licensed Windows over that, isn't an option, because I don't want Win11, and you can't buy Win10 licences any more.

You can just dual boot/install Linux alongside Windows

No one is going to make a movie about this, but they should probably make a warning documentary

Worst of all is seeing people defend these unacceptable practices and even Microsoft as a company. When will people understand the importance of having a computer system that doesn't answer to corporate interests? A system that is truly ours?

To me their biggest sin is senselessly ruining previously available and adequate functionality and usability. The aforementioned taskbar is a typical example. It not only force grouping icons (instances) of the same program but makes it mandatory, eliminating the choice of turning off grouping. This copuled with sh&t, truly sh&t level develpment when not the last used (frequent) instance gets activated on click but perhaps the last/first opened, "inventing" slow preview that not always work (during an active Teams chat it does not) needing a second click to get to where you want, but also removing title from this tiny undistinguishable preview for same layout instances making the choice even harder. I frequently need to work with several instances of the same software and my productivity is worse now just because of this maddening incompetently formed central thing of the taskbar. It was good, worked, but then they worked hard to ruin it. Ruined it and made it mandatory! How stupid is this?! It causes loss for my company: I work slower than could been, also making me mad, distracting, which also takes time to get back the focus. Less work can be achieved in the same amount of time. Costs money for the user, considerable amount of money. Need to look for (available, interestingly, the demand is that high, they make good money on this) auxiliary software that brings back essential functions (just to ruin those software too with a Windows update as underlying mechnism and tricks the auxiliary software relies on changes).

Software is supposed to ease and help the work we have to do, not making it harder! They seems to be careless and arrogant (forcing their choice without self critique), which is very dangerous combination.

All other usual things like incompletely reorganizing functionality/settings into yet another different form and location again and gain just to distract the known workflow, the continuous damaging refactoring pile on the top of these. But this taskbar thing, the very essential first door into the system, its destruction into inadequate pile of sh&t is a serious crime. Unluckily I am (yet) forced to use this in work, at home I free myself from Windows. Some friends, who can do, demanded to stay on the earlier verion than 11 from their organization until they finaly complete the taskbar to the usability level already achieved more than 10 years ago.

Not to forget TCPA through the backdoor. Aka TPM 2.0 required. In the 2000s we demonstrated and fought against this. 20 years later people are so apathetic and M$ just decides that TPM 2.0 is a required hardware feature.

I only use Windows for playing games. Other irreplaceable software would be DAWs.

I don't see why I should have to buy a new computer, a "cheap" AMD-only system would cost 2.5k eur. An Intel/Nvidia system 5k, because of the ridiculous Nvidia GPU price and the high (600+ eur) motherboard price if you want ECC RAM.

What do I gain? A computer that is potentially controlled by external sources. Where someone else decides what I can and can't do with it.

Why hasn't there been an outrage when they said TPM 2.0 was required?

I will not "upgrade". I'm sure they'll find a way to force me. The games that I play don't require top notch hardware. Those "AAA" titles are honestly 100% completely uninteresting. 80 eur for NFS unbound where they removed the coop aspect of the story game vs the previous version? Are they on crack? A bunch of remakes and remasters? Pokémon, Mario aka console titles? I don't feel like they're even trying anymore. I'm probably too old and no longer part of the target audience.

MSN, I never read it anyway.

I will not install a consumer OS that requires a TPM chip.

IIRC there was quite a bit of outrage about the CPU requirements for Windows 11.

When you push the windows button it has some kinda delay and it’s so shitty like u can’t start typing for what u want to find until it first pings some website for some metadata.

That also happens for the settings button when you click the network / volume widget next to the clock. The button will animate, but nothing will happen for a while.

There's also my favorite: notifications appear with a bubble to the right of the clock. When you dismiss them, the bubble goes away and the clock moves to the right. Occasionally, it moves a bit too much, so you can only see half of it.

We'll eventually get the year of Linux on the Desktop, not because of Linux, but because macOS and Windows just got worse!

It will be more like a quarter year. As bad as Mac and Windows have become Linux is still Linux and isn't really any more ready for primetime time than it's ever been. A majority of non-dev types who try Linux go back to their old OS.

Linux is never really going to succeed on the desktop because it isn't really well suited for it. The BSD's have a better shot should anyone put the effort in to one.

I don't know, man. It seems to me that, at least on "standard" hardware, support is better on Linux.

I've got some late-2021 HP laptops, nothing particularly fancy, standard fare "enterprise" things. They both have weird issues on Windows. They both worked absolutely perfectly on Linux ever since I got them, brand new, almost a year ago.

One of them required me to do an absurd plug/unplug dance with my external monitor and HP dock to get 4k@60 working. Some Intel driver updates fixed this a month or so ago (so one year in). It still won't drive 4k@60 on another dock (cheap Chinese model, though). Linux doesn't care and just works. The cheap dock also works perfectly on the other laptop (AMD instead of Intel) with Windows.

One year in, the windows install (11 22h2) still doesn't recognize the touchpad nor track point. Worked OOB on Linux.

On the other laptop, only recently did Windows start to recognize my webcam. Sometimes. It worked since day one on Linux, IR and all.

The other day, I've tried a newer model, with an Intel 12th gen. The thing's fan would be constantly on while sitting on the Windows desktop doing nothing. Completely silent under Linux.

It's been my experience that if someone's use case can be solved with ChromeOS, then modern Linux with a web browser and something like Plasma would suit them well, too.

> isn't really any more ready for primetime time than it's ever been

It definitely got better since times when you needed CLI to install it (for example)

Isn’t that just MacOS?

I expect this is because those kinds of stories acquire engagement. These bots don’t get bogged down in the minutiae of “truth”, or “credibility”. It’s all metrics. The content is a vehicle for these metrics.

Real or not, Bigfoot gets clicks.

> Unfortunately, this new system is clearly not exercising good judgment about what articles or publications are credible

And that’s different from meatbag publishers how exactly?

That somehow "we" decided to not hold software (or its creators) liable for bad behavior while for humans there's at least a semblance of responsibility.

"Oh that malfunctioning server that caused an outage to hospital infrastructure? Yeah, Software is hard, isn't it?"

Somehow shitty software is acceptable as an explanation for things, and as soon they are explained, they are understandable, and somehow we decided that makes them okay.

Oh no I completely agree, I’m just suggesting that the human news/media curators aren’t much better than AI which pics up fake news.

Take the current ‘Putin fell down the stairs and pooped himself’ story, search around for any evidence that’s actually true and it’s you who will be having a shitty time.

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