More user hostility. Less user choice.
I remember a few years ago on here everyone crowing about the new Microsoft and how it wasn't like the old one. It's notably worse a this point.
I remember a few years ago on here everyone crowing about the new Microsoft and how it wasn't like the old one. It's notably worse a this point.
I'm in a different space now and I am blessed that my editor is vim, my language is either Go or Julia and my VCS is Fossil.
Funny. Great choice! Almost makes one believe the company behind it is not the biggest driver of AdTech in the world, whose business model is built entirely on selling user data, and that company also has propensity to kill much beloved and heavily used projects no matter how ridiculous the move is.
So true. Majority of my time on the computer is dominated by these, and I'm not comfortable they're all owned by Microsoft.
I don't see how they could ruin a programming language, but a code editor and centralized code repository.. Especially the latter, I'm surprised how long it's been since the acquisition and so far it's been mostly unaffected by the inevitable enshittification.
The only thing that will incentivize Microsoft from ruining these admittedly great products is the existence of viable alternatives. Same with Windows, minus the great part.
The other sides of Microsoft are mostly the same as they always were.
Microsofts OS division have bet everything on the strategy that "enthusiasts" aren't going to run Windows anyway. It's a segment they never cared about, and nothing indicates they ever will. I don't agree with the strategy (because it's these enthusiasts who recommend things to everyone around them and of course fix their parents machines every Christmas since the 90s), but I'm going to guess that more clever people than me have run the numbers and reached the conclusion that it's better to alienate our 10% of the Windows user base while catering only to enterprises and the non-tech-savvy users who are actually likely to buy the subscription recommended on the start menu. We weren't going to do that anyway now were we?
Microsoft is one facade regardless of who is underneath it and they are aligned in user hostility at the moment. Even devdiv is a mess.
MacOS is a service tied to selling an expensive piece of hardware. They don't need to make money by selling MacOS, they make money selling the Mac.
Microsoft makes money selling Enterprise Windows licenses, Office subscriptions, OneDrive subscriptions, AppStore cuts etc. But they let Acer put an OEM copy of Win11 Home edition with very little markup because it's likely that these customers will a) ensure thir employers keep running windows because everyone knows it and b) they are likely to buy a OneDrive/Office365/whatever subscription.
> Even devdiv is a mess.
How so?
From 95 - Windows 7, I could talk grandma through her problems without even being near a computer. Now the start menu can't even search properly.
That said, I still fear what may come. The decrees from on high concocted by the unscrupulous bugmen that are breathing absolute contempt for their users. Who can ponder their designs while maintaining his conscience?
That was the thing that kicked me over the fence. Open source doesn’t matter if the stewards do not have your best interests at heart.
As you can see, it is system data and basic crash reporting, something that helps with the health of .NET ecosystem and has no monetary value.
Also, monetary value is not the only reason you might want to keep information private.
[0] https://github.com/dotnet/sdk/issues/6145#issuecomment-22010...
I like my privacy more than the next guy, but you are not arguing in good faith (which is all too common, because people like to use much inferior technologies and make .NET a scapegoat, instead of learning better and ceasing idiotic self-sabotage)
Edit: Heh, in HN jail. In response to the comment - you should apply this logic to the languages steered by Google, Oracle and Apple. .NET is completely unrelated to Recall and whatever happens to it, it could have been as well a separate company.
See, for example, the Recall debacle. https://doublepulsar.com/recall-stealing-everything-youve-ev...
People here still do this, despite all evidence to the contrary!
I have concluded that a large percentage of hn users simply work at Microsoft or one of its subsidiaries (eg GitHub).
Thankfully the EU has forced them to curb some of these practices, even if the process is still intentioanlly obtuse. For example, you can't upgrade to an EU version of Windows if you didn't start with one - you have to reinstall Windows from scratch, without preserving any other user settings, and choose an EU country as your locale at this step. Only then do you get to uninstall Edge and no longer need to manually opt-out of all their tracking crap. I'm sure they've still kept a lot of illegal tracking around for now too, though I'm hopeful that in time they'll be forced to remove even that.
I mean, they could make a ton of money by charging users for Windows without tracking/online accounts/bloatware.
And letting people run some sort of no-frills windows where you login as a local account and run your old spreadsheet for 10 years is completely at odds with any kind of strategy that will make money from home users.
I don't like it - but I'm also not disagreeing with the beancounters at ms if this is the conclusion they reached. I have a feeling it's the right call.
I would be willing to pay for an OS that has no Candy Crush, LinkedIn and whatever installed and that would allow to use local accounts. I also don't want forced reboots because of updates.
Yet, I still would use OneDrive, M365, ...
It's currently possible to to run your Office 2010 on Win 10/11, there's nothing holding you back.
Me too. But I do agree with the beancounters at MS that putting such an OS on the market might reduce sales of store apps or O365 subscriptions or make it less convenient for people to use OneDrive backup etc - in a way that costs them more than they would make from selling this great version of Windows to very few enthusiasts.
Btw I think there are lots of differences between getting a good LTSC install now, vs if you have an OEM Home version of Win 11. A lot of my complaints only apply to the "bad" SKU's of Windows and not generally. The problem is of course that you can't buy this "good windows 11". It's reserved for volume license customers.
users already have the power to defer updates for up to 35 days. What do people do with it? defer it as long as humanly possible and then whine when the timer runs out and they have to run the install.
again: the cure for forced updates has always been simple: run your updates occasionally. the people like GP who are forced into it? those are the people who should not be allowed to defer updates indefinitely, because they obviously can't handle the ability to defer updates which they are already allowed.
selling those users a version of windows intended for enterprise environments with a formalized lifecycle, managed by dedicated users, which is allowed to break the normal rules around updates etc, is like giving a no-limit amex to someone who has repeatedly overdrafted their secured credit card. They literally already have self-identified as not being able to handle even a little bit of a responsibility, they are the last users in the world you want to be able to defer indefinitely
Occasionally, a little user-hostility can be a good thing, in the big picture. Like, laws are fundamentally "citizen-hostile", but we still have to have them, because without fences a significant amount of people will choose not to be good neighbors.