It's just three clicks to disable widgets, "Right click taskbar, select taskbar settings, click on slider to turn widgets off".
And even then, I can’t get the widgets feature, a pretty decent idea, without the news. I want to turn off the news, not the feature.
It’s like you book a hotel room and the TV is on Fox News and you can’t turn the TV off. You ask around but everybody says that they can turn it off just fine, must be you. Turns out that they’re all in the executive suite and they also have Fox News on the TV, turned on by default when they enter the room, but for them the hotel didn’t hide the remote.
If you have a TV in a public place people are always trying to put Fox News on. It is not because of those businesses.
My Google-fu is failing me.
"Winston turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat, though the words were still distinguishable. The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely."
(Though the more nightmarish thing about 1984's "telescreens" is that they were two-way, giving the government the ability to see and hear what you were doing as well as exposing you to their propaganda.)
I had the vague feeling there was something similar in _Fahrenheit 451_ too, but I took a look and I'm pretty sure there isn't.
Huxley's extrapolations were much more on-target than Orwell's. He realized people would line up to buy things that Orwell assumed would have to be imposed at gunpoint.
As the clock struck 10 in the morning, Winston Smith approached the telescreen in his small apartment, where his voice assistant, known as "Big Alexa," awaited his commands.
"Order household items," Winston spoke into the device, his voice barely above a whisper.
"Confirmed," the cold, metallic voice of the voice assistant replied. "What items would you like to order, Winston?"
Winston hesitated, feeling a twinge of paranoia as he considered the possibility that his every word and bowel habits were being monitored and recorded by the omnipresent Party. But he knew that he had no choice but to comply with the rules of this totalitarian society.
"Two rolls of toilet paper," he said, his voice trembling slightly.
"Two rolls of toilet paper," the voice assistant repeated back in its emotionless tone. "Anything else?"
"Yes," Winston said, his eyes darting nervously around the room. "One bottle of dish soap, one box of laundry detergent, and a package of paper towels."
"Confirmed," the voice assistant said. "Your order will be processed and delivered within the next 24 hours."
Winston breathed a small sigh of relief, knowing that he had successfully navigated yet another aspect of his tightly controlled life. But as he turned away from the telescreen and resumed his mundane existence, he couldn't help but wonder if there was any escape from the all-seeing eyes of the Party.
Companies need to make money (if you don't accept this premise, fair rough but we probably have no further meaningful discussion).
I'm OK if they offer me options. Here's a free / cheap option that's ad supported, here's a premium option that has no ads.
This is a good choice! It's a good choice for all! It's when we don't have that choice that things suck! And if we want free things with no ads, that option exists too! :-)
The honest thing to do here is for Microsoft to leave the option visible but show a big ugly error window when lesser users try to change the setting. That way, people won't waste their time trying to fix something they're not allowed to fix.
Source: This happened to me, a now Linux user.
If there were a free ad-supported Windows and a paid ad-free (and news-free!) Windows I’d be a happy paying customer.
Recently someone’s laptop broke while visiting the Mexican beach I was living so they bought a laptop from the local shop. The Windows install was in Spanish and the language options offered no other language to choose from. All of the tutorials online showed menu options that weren’t there. I tried helping them change it to English.
Apparently, for some reason, Microsoft really does offer single language Windows—I found after some digging.
(Edit 29 minutes after, because I can't seem to post anymore:)
It still runs its webview in the background and can be toggled with the keyboard shortcut, Win+W, even if the button is hidden.
In order to fully disable it you need a Group Policy or a registry hack.
I'm currently using a laptop that was mid-to-low spec when I got it a couple years ago. It was chugging, especially during video calls. Uninstalling the Widgets feature was enough to make it useable again.
I need to figure out a way to remap it but not having admin on my corporate machine I have little hope.
macOS was just too good.
I tried setting my "Home" to Google, but that doesn't seem to do it.
Also it's open source: https://github.com/jimschubert/newtab-redirect
The only way AFAIK to change the new tab is an extension
Disclaimer, I created https://aboutblank.page because in some browsers, about:blank was a default white page, and ignored the OS dark mode setting. My site respects the prefers-color-scheme setting, or you can set it to whatever color you want via a query string (see https://github.com/sphars/about-blank/#usage)
It's pretty icky, and being stuck on this Windows work laptop is shortening the time I'll spend in this gig.
> Our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
It’s disappointing to see them working against their own mission like this…
It’s a shame because I actually liked Edge, and it was the fastest browser in my experience.
I am willing to sacrifice Bing.