This is just bananas to me that a browser would perform "super resolution" at all, much less by default.
Couldn't this wreak havoc on doing things like viewing medical images, inserting false detail that isn't there?
As well as on text in images, e.g. inventing a cleanly readable but hallucinated license plate number on a car, or financial figure, where the original is blurry?
Not only does this seem like a terribly dangerous idea, but I'm shocked that a legal review at Microsoft would ever have approved this in the first place.
It’s crazy. I used Edge when it first switched to Chromium because it was a nice, clean Chrome alternative with working sync. Today it’s obvious Microsoft can’t be trusted.
This “feature” is insane and it makes me concerned about what Windows might be doing in the background.
I just had the Edge Desktop Search Bar show up on my desktop. It just appeared from nowhere. Didn't even know when it was "installed".
MS is getting really pushy. They probably see the GPT stuff as their ticket to beating Google in search so they are pushing it as hard as they can to get as many users as they can.
I just click "turn off". I don't trust LLMs - all their knowledge is learned from the unreliable internet then you add hallucinations on top of that.
My parents used the search to find documents on the local system. Now it defaults to searching the interent. Event more insane is now the 'close' button location has a button that opens your search in the Edge browser, where my parents still try searching for local documents. Getting lost ... so many levels deep.
I got a laptop in from a user the other day, that shocked the hell out of me, that floating search bar thing. MS is downright creepy the way they slip things in.
With remote work it always fascinates me to see how many people leave the weather (& news) bar displayed next to the tray on the taskbar, this is something that came with a Windows 10 update. People really don't change defaults...
I was wondering if I could make a fake one, just add an appropriate icon and change its label to say something like 6000°C Nuclear Holocaust
They make it very difficult to uninstall that crap. I set up a new windows 11 machine the other day. And then did the obligatory removal of the weather/news, cortana, and 15 other pieces of crap I don’t need or want. While I was doing that it was downloading updates and once the updates were installed, the weather/news thing was back.
The stories on there are so bad. Like, borderline conspiracy thinking / conservative media gossip rag stuff. I can’t believe Microsoft puts their company name behind the content that shows up. (Though I’m in Australia. Maybe the people in charge of that content have no idea how bad it is here).
Defaults are incredibly powerful. For us on here, we expect to have control and to be able to manipulate these things. For most people a computer is just an appliance like a washing machine. Accept it as it comes!
While I appreciate the ability to configure software, I also believe that software that requires too much configuration is poorly suited for my needs and will replace it with something better suited to my needs. There is an incredible number of options out there. We do not have to put up with the nonsense that overbearing businesses subject us to.
> There is an incredible number of options out there. We do not have to put up with the nonsense that overbearing businesses subject us to.
How true that is depends on the type of software. Web browsers, for instance, don't have an incredible number of meaningfully different options. I can no longer find one that sufficiently meets my needs at all.
Just have to right click the task bar and change the news settings to 'reduce updates' & turn off open on hover.
Turning on 'reduce updates' just has the taskbar display the weather and not change to some random stock ticker of a company you don't care about or whatever other item of interest they feel like showing.
I saw that pop up on one of my parent's computers. The hardware is old enough that it didn't want to install Windows 11, but Microsoft still managed to push that shit. Within an hour I wiped the drive of Windows.
Similar happened to my parents years ago. Windows 7, working perfectly. My mum kept seeing a popup asking "do you want to upgrade to Windows 10?" and every time (for months) clicked close.
Then, they changed the button layout and put a "install" button where the close button was, and she installed it without realising. Some bits of hardware weren't supported in Windows 10 and I had to go around and mess around with drivers, which I failed at.
So, she's been on Fedora since. Considering all she did on Windows was light browsing in Firefox and many hours of Pysol, she barely even noticed the switch.
Grammatically, the location of the apostrophe makes parent singular. However, it seems weird if I think of it that way, likely because pronunciation as a whole is the same regardless of parent being singular or plural. Computers is plural regardless. This really doesn't effect me ib any way, but somehow seeing someone else want to know makes me want to know.
The only real alternative option with most hardware is linux. And when the use case is browsing the internet and you are there to help them unstuck a broken update, things should be fine.
Just happened to me this week, same thing. Out of nowhere. It also auto-signed me into Edge, when I never did it before in my life. It really is getting ridiculous now.
You weren't around when they were threatening linux with patents and forcing OEMs to not deliver PCs without a Microsoft operating system preinstalled then?
I use Microsoft products for business (though I'm trying to phase them out). I don't care that much about their competitive practices (from a business perspective) and there's even the upside of a pretty uniform productivity software/ file format ecosystem that makes communication easier.
Committing corporate espionage, which is what their software does now, on the other hand, makes me not want to use them at all. I have agreements with customers about protecting their data, how can I use software that steals everything I put into it and sends it to MS? This is a much bigger deal. (Although I agree you could argue their earlier anticompetitive practices gave them the monopoly that allows them to run their current criminal spying empire unchecked)
> See that’s on-brand with the cutthroat ruthless billG company
Tangential, but this made me reflect on how "good"/"nice" Ballmer, and Ballmer-era MS, was in a very relative sense. This is slightly startling considering how my mental image of either Ballmer or MS is not great. But now looking back it does feel like relentless anti-competitiveness lessened a bit during that era, and lot of good stuff happened then. Windows 7 probably will go down in history as the pinnacle of traditional desktop Windows, MS giving up on IE gave room for Firefox and (unfortunately also) Chrome, lot of previously proprietary stuff got documented and published (SMB and Office formats comes to mind), and there were some nice product developments.
In contrast Gates era Microsoft was very much characterized by strong-arm tactics and throwing their weight around. And now Nadella era feels very aggressive again, pushing the company forwards no matter what; in some ways maybe less vindictive and direct than Gates, but still definitely not nice.
Ballmer was as bad as Gates (and seemed completely unhinged at times to boot), Nadella only looks good next to Ballmer but has done plenty of stuff that should have never ever happened.
All of them were present at MS when they pulled their 'millions of lines of code' bullshit in an attempt to kill Linux and harm FOSS.
As a long-time Linux user, the Nadella era looks far better. Back in the earlier eras, MS was my clear and present enemy: they did a lot of stuff to me, personally, to make my life hard because I didn't want to use their software, and tried to force me to be their customer with various tactics.
These days, that's all gone. I don't feel any pressure to use Windows, and I don't see MS doing various legal shenanigans to try to destroy Linux. I'm able to do what I want and not worry about MS much at all. It's very different from the earlier eras that way.
Instead, the difference these days seems to be that MS is the enemy of its own customers (or should I say "users"?). If you use Windows, MS will make your life hard with all this built-in malware and advertising. But if you're like me and you simply don't use Windows, you never see this stuff, except when people complain about it on forums like this, or if you have the misfortune of having to deal with a relative's PC.
Personally, I like this new era much better. I'm able to easily opt out of MS's shenanigans by simply installing Linux. When other people gripe and complain about that stuff, it falls on deaf ears here. ("but but but... I need to play $game on my PC!!!") I feel the same way as when sports fans complain about how much they're getting raped by the media companies so they can follow their favorite team.
I see the Nadella era rather as the triumph of PM culture, adapted/stolen from the seemingly more competitive Google and Facebook. It's all about demonstrating increased "engagement" and the ubiquitous A/B testing because new product deltas get you promoted. It's never about maintaining 'old' stuff or providing real value - only gimmicks to catch the eye of your half-wit leadership.
If you're referring to Program Management and not Project Management...
Microsoft actually created the "PM" role and popularized it.
"The PM role is unique to Microsoft and was actually created in response to developing software that is more usable and at the same time pushes the state of the art of technology. So when we talk about PM at Microsoft, we're talking from a perspective of creating and evolving the role over the lifetime of the PC industry."
"Program managers got started at Microsoft while developing Excel for the Macintosh. [...] a new role was created in Program Management with the explicit goal of partnering with development and working through the entire product cycle as the advocate for end-users and customers."
Lot of people like to troll Ballmer for his "Developers! Developers! Developers!" act, but then again you can't really get any better than being developer centric and by consequence enthusiast, power users, and professional centric.
By contrast, Gates was "Embrace! Extend! Extinguish!" and Nadella is "Data! Data! Data!"
Also, Microsoft nowadays is very much in the business of mass surveillance. This "feature" prepares the ground for a future with client-side scanning and upload filters running all your "local" data and "private" communications through [PhotoDNA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhotoDNA) and other spyware.
I wouldn't actually mind going back to DOS, like FreeDOS. Or even Windows 2000, with some updates for SSE, AVX, and other instructions. Operating systems have been getting in the way of the software that runs on top of them for over twenty years now and it's annoyingly become the norm.
Not only PC's. They tried to eliminate as many Android OEM's as possible by threating and launching patent litigation against them unless they paid up. The amount they demanded from each device was so ridiculous that you would have thought it was a payment to license the Android OS itself. Thugs will always be thugs.
>The disclosure by MOFCOM on April 8, 2014 is a direct result of Microsoft’s acquisition of Nokia’s mobile handset unit as that deal required approval by the Anti-Monopoly Bureau of MOFCOM. The disclosed lists were part of the antitrust review.
>Of the two lists of Microsoft patents disclosed by MOFCOM2, one was a list of 310 patents which included 73 "standard-essential” patents (SEPs) for smartphones; 127 patents which are “implemented in Android”; and 110 “nonstandard-essential” patents and applications (non-SEPs). This list is referred to as Annex “B” by Microsoft.3 The second list is identical to the non-SEP set minus one issued patent, U.S. Patent No.7,111,039. This list is referred to as Annex “A”.
At the time Microsoft was strong-arming every Android OEM into paying royalty payments or else. Samsung paid more than a billion dollars to Microsoft in royalty payments for those questionable patents. I'd call that a chokehold.
Where were you when it's 'free' OS' was 'phoning home' or during it's behemoth days in the 90s-2000s when it forced the most pro-business Government (US) to essentially break it up when it was using it's monoploitic practices too far for even them?
I have to use Teams and just logically assume all of what was said or talked about exists on some server somewhere for the employer, LEO or intelengence agencies to retrieve; if Snowden has taught us anything is that M$ is the darling child of the Intelligence agencies in the US for a reason.
Using M$ outside of a (forced) work environment is literately like asking to be tracked, monitored of your own accord. Nothing they do should be presumed to be secure until proven a length to be otherwise. It's very likely why it's so bloated and runs terribly, they are optimizing no for UX but for it's real business model: spying.
Sadly, and with only a slight tinge of despondence: I've given up on preaching about FOSS to the masses, but with stuff like this it's like asking why people sign up for death cults, it alwasy ends in: Humans just being Humans.
Please don’t give up praying about FOSS to the masses. It was a post like this that convinced me to try Linux Arch. I will never look back.
I didn’t boot into my Windows drive for more than a month now. I just keep a bare installation for online games that don’t run on Linux. For now.
It’s unfortunate, but there’s not really a FOSS alternative for a general purpose personal-use OS that comes close to Windows.
It completely owns that market. There’s macOS and iOS I guess, but they’re not generally available to install on third party equipment.
Linux, sadly, is just not at all a consumer OS and never became one. The security model alone is an unfixable disaster (and many have tried over the years).
You are aware that users are not privileged by default in Linux? While historically in Windows...at least until UAC and Windows 2008...
Not sure what the example proves. The simple fact you can compile your kernel, have a strong model with Linux SE, it's just another ballpark.
Besides the fundamental aspect that Microsoft are telemetry kleptomaniacs, one OS assumes the user machine does not belong to the user, and Microsoft knows better.
Linux assumes it's your machine and nobody else.
You can have your own hardened and lighter Linux kernel, with less surface exposure, while with Windows you start with whatever version version of Cortana Microsoft would like to push that week on it's users...Plus all the other unnecessary components that create an almost infinite opportunity of attack vectors.
Naturally for Linux, the open source code, makes for a more transparent process, even if I don't subscribe to the idea that more eyes on the code, correlates directly to higher safety.
The fact that deb extension is associated with an application (I don’t know what Eddie is) does not make deb executable. It’s like Winzip opening a zip archive on double click in Windows: yes, the file is opened, but no untrusted code has been run (assuming, Winzip is installed already and is considered trusted).
Linux is more secure because it has a much smaller attach surface. Even from the kernel interaction perspective, the number of syscalls in Linux is much smaller than in Windows, they are in a way more primitive and easier to audit. But the biggest distinguisher is lack of DCE (or MS) RPC - in Windows it’s ubiquitous, available both locally and sometimes over the network with various ways to access it (named pipes over SMB, DCE over TCP/IP, even over NetBEUI, over HTTP in some cases) which makes it hard to secure (Windows firewall is very complex as a result). Finally, Windows Carrie’s enormous amount of legacy and Microsoft is not interested in fixing it (they would rather push you to “cloud”).
Combination of code complexity and large attack surface makes Windows less secure that competition (although Pottering seems to be working on fixing it).
Self extracting archives don't require scripts or other functionality to work. They have a decompressor built-in. This is why they're _self_-extracting and not just archives.
None of the above can be enforced at a distribution level, and where these features are opt-in they’re significantly underdeveloped relative to Windows/macOS/ChromeOS as no-one is using them in significant numbers.
I’m not even sure you could find any amount of FOSS advocates to even get on board with notarization let alone get it implemented.
You could maybe enforce protected folders at the distribution level but I don’t know if anyone could really trust a feature like that if it wasn’t implemented in the kernel directly.
I've been railing about all the spying Microsoft Teams is doing across corporate networks for the last year or so, to nothing but shrugs, 'I'm sure Microsoft isn't using our business data' or similar responses. People never learn.
We use Teams at work. We also use almost everything else Microsoft sells, which is probably the only reason we use Teams.
I suspect that the kind of company that uses Teams is just not very interested in critically evaluating Microsoft or competitors (relative to companies that are evaluating specific Microsoft products as one-offs). They're already bought into an ecosystem whose main strength as a collection of mediocre (or worse) software is that it is integrated with all the other mediocre software in the collection. If they don't 'trust Microsoft', where does that leave them? So they 'trust Microsoft', and that's the end of that.
Never mind teams, imagine what kind of data Office gives them. Every email, every word doc, and every excel document created by nearly every company on the globe is theirs to pick through! It must provide insane levels of insight into what most companies (even those that compete with MS) are doing.
Teams takes all that data, plus all the conversations about it, including audio, IMs, web browsing, etc and creates reports tying it all together. Teams is the 'one ring to rule them all' that allows it to all be coordinated in context. It takes all of data that Microsoft can gather from other apps and weaponizes it into a competitive advantage against its own customers.
For example, if Bob at ABC Company is working on an MS Word doc, yes, Microsoft can steal that data. But it's worse when Teams is on a corporate network, because maybe Bob has a Teams meeting, pulls up the Word doc, discusses it with coworkers Sarah and Bill, and now Teams tracks the doc, the conversation, who was in the conversation and what the conversation was about. It tracks the email conversation that follows. All of this is proprietary information. Teams has handed Microsoft the internal working projects, context, thoughts and strategy of ABC Company.
21 years ago: "It is difficult enough already to engage Gabriel in a discussion of security or Digital Rights Management, and spelling Microsoft M-dollar sign is probably the best way I can think of to get your mail deleted. He might even have a rule that does it now, I haven't asked. When Ross Anderson penned his now famous Palladium FAQ, which reads somewhere between a toaster manual and grim speculative fiction, you will note that he never deploys the dollar sign, because he would like to be taken seriously."
People can come up with whatever reasons to ignore others that they want. That doesn't make those reasons reasonable, it just makes those people ignorant.
I can switch OS, Office is almost obsolete with google + free stuff, their browser/software is terrible and never used, Github(yikes, well, git works..), LinkedIn(and nothing of value was lost).
So we really are at the whim of M$ when it comes to Github and Minecraft. Scary. But hey, I used to be obsessed with Nintendo games, and now people have Zelda clones so I don't need to pay games that are graded on the Nintendo Curve.
I use LibreOffice. I'm the only person I know who does, but it works great. People are incensed when I send them ods files. "You expect me to install a program on my computer to view this file?" "No, you can use any spreadsheet program." "I don't want to do that. Why don't you just use Google sheets?"
Exactly. Nintendo spent many years developing a sequel to Breath of the Wild, when they certainly could've gone for a cheap cash grab, and instead released an extremely high quality followup to a beloved game.
Not only that, but they delayed release for a year to fix bugs and polish TotK [1]. They deliberately missed the holiday '22 window for this! No one else seems to care about their games as much as Nintendo in terms of product quality.
The use of "just" here is classic underestimation of complexity or investment required. Technologists everywhere face this negative language from customers and other laypeople, and I expect many readers understand from first hand experience how insulting it feels. Please don't "share" that negativity with other creative arts.
ToTK makes BotW look like like an early developer build. While the base of the map is the same, they expanded it WAY beyond anything reasonable for an expansion pack. They have an below ground map that is the same size as the rest of hyrule and it is basically done just as a bonus to the rest of the title.
The depths is just inverted version of the same overworld height map, copy-pasted enemies and reused items from BOTW. It's simply yet another collectahon with bunch of puzzle shrines with physics sandbox. Not zelda game in my book. At least it did not copy paste the same boss with different skin 3 times this time however.
Minetest is surprisingly good it's a minecraft clone but also a sort of game engine like roblox but FOSS. It even has lots of mods, gamemodes, texturepacks, and servers to try out
It would be wise of them not to go against those that know how to build alternatives. Never under estimate the stubbornness of a programmer wronged.
Look at Richard Stallman, disliked proprietary software so much he spent his life fighting it even building large parts of an OS! Messing with Github would be like creating 100,000 Stallmans - and I don't think anyone wants that. ;)
GitHub as a tool is easily replaceable. GitHub as a platform where you can easily interact with countless projects is not. MS would have to really fuck up to negate the network effects.
It's a lot like the 2D titles, with elements added from the 3D ones, like the targeting system, stamina meter, and controls for raising the shield (not a thing in many 2D Zeldas). Plus, of course, it also introduces its own elements and gameplay elements from other series.
More seriously, Tunic also draws upon newer Zelda titles as well as games outside the series. In addition, many 2D Zelda games have come out since the time of the SNES, not even counting re-releases like the recent remake of Link's Awakening.
Tunic doesn't just evoke Zelda aesthetically as a substitute for developing its own aesthetic! It's a loving homage to a series that absolutely materially inspired the core gameplay, too.
The cynic in me wants to argue that all post-SNES 2D Zelda games are in fact remakes of LttP :) I mean that as a good thing.
I haven't had a chance to really play Tunic yet, but I just get the feeling that calling it a Zelda clone is unfairly reductive to both. If Tunic and Okami are both Zelda clones, but not clones of each other, something needs reevaulation.
https://veloren.net - not exactly a clone but it's pretty awesome (and free software)
"Veloren is a multiplayer voxel RPG written in Rust. It is inspired by games such as Cube World, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Dwarf Fortress and Minecraft."
"Veloren is fully open-source, licensed under GPL 3. It uses original graphics, musics and other assets created by its community. Being contributor-driven, its development community and user community is one and the same: developers, players, artists and musicians come together to develop the game. "
But the lack of PvP or other strong competitive elements makes it still fun to play free as long as you're in it for the game & story and not for the collecting and minimaxing.
> Zelda clones so I don’t need to play games that are graded on the Nintendo Curve.
hospitalJail is saying there are similar games out there, and that they don't need to play games from Nintendo that are unfairly rated well just because they're from Nintendo, despite a former obsession with Nintendo.
>I’m unsure of anyone producing games of a quality and polish level that rivals Nintendo, but that’s subjective too.
like sub 20 FPS, empty worlds, 5 enemies with different skins(okay, factually there were 11 enemies, meanwhile MM had over 70 enemies), same story as the last 30 years, annoying combat mechanics, grindy crafting(food) mechanics.
But IGN said it was the greatest game of all time 10/10 and never mentioned a single issue. That is what happens when we grade on the Nintendo curve.
But I think all these different divisions just act radically different within microsoft. What is absolutely certain is that the Windows team cannot be trusted, as they have shown repeatedly.
GitHub has not broken my trust in them yet. I'm sure one day it'll happen; statistically it's more likely than not. But what's the point in pre-empting it, exactly?
More like 40 years now! I have said ti for a very long time, Microsoft didn't innovate in technology, it innovated in sleazy business practices disguised as technology.
It is difficult to find some of the more awful practices nowadays but I was always amazed at just how far they would go, and a little impressed by the thinking, to undermine all opposition.
Microsoft is like an Alpaca, if they start getting friendly towards you, it means they are about to attack!
Above the privacy concerns that MS captures your data that they can have their hands on quick and loose and the way they please their terrible record of ruining long living basic functions is a second reson not to go for laptops with Windows, not trusting it for reliabile functionality and handling any private data of mine. Having a completely isolated separate computer for company data on Windows that belongs to the company - they seem to feel easy about handing over all confidential data to them to store and manage, so I do not need to worry there.
Lol, explain this to the average European/global business.
They pay for "the service" to upload their trade secrets and literally everything to Microsft / the USA. OneDrive, SharePoint, Outlook, Teams, etc etc.
And then boast about their high level of "security". The naivity is unbelievable.
Install Office, use an App that tracks bandwidth use, uploads and downloads, PER app, and be amazed with how many MB/s of data Office sends to Microsoft.
Yeah, I switched to the web version of outlook when I noticed (via little snitch) that the desktop app was sending 100's of MB upstream. No idea why it'd need to send much of anything in that direction.
I think I was mainly upset that it was using a bunch of upstream bandwidth (if I remember right, it kept going while idle), possibly also didn't like the disk space that it was using for caching. Nothing important. Arguably a web application is more secure, since it can't read my disk, but that wasn't my concern.
At this point, I prefer the UI of the web app (I tried switching back), and since it is a PWA, it behaves like a normal application.
Firefox is my favorite browser. Not because I like it more than other browsers. But I think it is very important that there is not just a single browser engine on the market. Chromium has too much market share. And although it is open source google dictated what features get in. We shouldn’t trust one company with that much power.
I've been using FF more lately because it has a functioning ad block. Mobile web has become borderline unusable with the amount of ads that get shoved in your face. It's not enough to take up 90% of the screen, it has to pop up autoplay videos with audio over that last 10%.
Preach. Using my iPhone, I clicked on an HN link to Tom’s Hardware earlier today. Readable text occupied less than 1/4 of the screen. Everything else was taken by various banners, modals, etc. I tried to scroll down a little. It jumped back to the top of the page every time I tried, then started reloading itself. So, in sum, I read one(ish?) paragraph of a post before giving up.
I don't have problems scrolling in Firefox mobile that I've noticed, and I don't run flagship phones (I'm running a few years old Galaxy A51). I do run uBlock on Firefox Mobile though, which I'm sure helps immensely, so maybe that's the main difference.
I have a late model samsung and browsing a news site like NYTimes works better with Vivaldi than with FF. FF seems to stutter if I scroll quickly, as if getting "snagged". Maybe Vivaldi is preloading resource vs. FF trying to load stuff realtime while scrolling? I'm taking a wild guess.
I was also an edge user until a few month ago. I have Lenovo X1 Yoga that has had severe overheating problems since I bought it a year ago. Lenovo has been very helpful but unable to resolve the issue. They have changed the mainboard twice.
Then I switch to brave instead of edge and now I don't have overheating issue anymore. When I start edge it won't take many minutes before the laptop gets burning hot.
I guess the bloat has exceeded what the highest spec'd, top of the line, Lenovo laptop can handle.
Rather naive to ignore Embrace/Extend/Extinguish, the dark patterns used to push Win10, the online account hassles, the practically buying-up of OpenAI...
Wow, I can't believe they shipped the product knowing this could happen and thought that putting 2 warnings in the software guidebook (who reads that?) would suffice. Maybe they only added that in to avoid getting sued.
Also, reading the timeline was great.
> March 2015 The German Federal Office for Safety in Information Technology bans JBIG2 from being used for archival purposes.
Wonder if any other governments took notice as well.
Or before the images accompanying a comparison article between a Samsung Scene Optimizer moonshot and $4,800 Sony astrophotography rig become completely incomprehensible:
Don't want to bring too many Reddit memes over, but if the browser enhances the images on both sides of the comparison, and corporate wants you to identify the differences... what can you say but "they're the same picture"?
Just to be clear, Samsung was caught using basic pattern matching to detect the camera being pointed at the moon, triggering wholescale substitution with the image from the $4.5k camera. A redditor blurred an image of the moon, took a photo of the blurry image on their screen, and got the high-res image.
> This is just bananas to me that a browser would perform "super resolution" at all, much less by default.
But it's really not the issue here.
They invented "super resolution" just as they could have used "ultra denoiser" or "elite acne spot remover" or whatever other bullshit term they think they could use to get away with to "explain" why they're sniffing pictures.
The goal is to send the images to Microsoft and nothing else.
All of these other "enhancements" would be just as unreasonable to apply to web images by default even if done entirely locally. Both the exfiltration and the non-standard rendering are issues here.
> Sending medical images to Microsoft seems like a major HIPAA violation.
Without sounding to condescending: Bro... this entire Industry still relies on using fax or snailmail for records. Using slow, leaky, non-private/seure channels for sensitive information is not as much of a concern to this field than one thinks if you've been in the belly of the beast.
Ask anyone who has spent anytime doing IT work at a hospital, or better yet a disgruntled nurse who works the counter after a 12 hour shift.
You ever try requesting an MRI in the US?
After needing several during COVID and being turned a way and having lots of time on my hands I've actually learned a hack to get it the same week (or in my case the same day recently) now that we're out of the pandemic because I knew who to press for a physical paper trail and get it submitted (via fax) and have it approved by all parties: it cost me a day off of work, and tons of leg work on the phone but it was done and I literately didn't care so long as it was done and prove my method was sound. I got it done after business hours, too!
I'm starting to think that the issue with it being so archaic is not because a better solution doesn't exist, but because it's made this way in order for them to justify the long delays in procedures and increase membership duration on their policies and they use things like HIPPA and other acts to justify the lengthy process and obscene amounts of money needed to be able to modify the way things are done, which is why software people just move on and the same mediocrity continues to the detriment of us all.
Try talking to healthcare workers too. They think there is some magic about faxes.
>They are so fast(no they arent, something can be ahead of them)
>They are safe compared to email(literally anyone can walk by the fax and take it)
>They are faster than a phone call, because doctors don't pick up the phone. (What...)
You can mention the US government has ultra high security communication that uses the internet, you can mention the value of finance information, you can talk about the secrets your billion dollar company sends over email/web. But noooo, patient information is too sensitive and urgent to be sent over email/web....
I know 3 people off the top of my head that have gotten in trouble for looking up people's health information because it was physically stored on premises.
All 3 still work in the medical field to this day, one of them is a doctor...
I imagine this is a huge issue in the medical field.
Fax is still a magical thing in healthcare specifically because of how easy it is to use under HIPAA.
HIPAA has all of these crazy rules for anything digital, but the second you switch to good ol’ telephony the rules all become “there’s no rule because hacking a telephony system would be a federal crime.” I’m not joking. Telephony is considered a “mere conduit” while the internet is not.
It really is stupid. HIPAA has all of these controls, but phones are just fair game.
It would be great if the US also considered internet to be a mere conduit and went after those messing with it. The we wouldn't need to break backwards compat for entirely static public content and waster energy in forcing everything under TLS.
What specifically did you do to get an MRI quickly? Your personal doctor didn't want to give you one? Or the hospital/MRI place didn't want to give you one?
Waaaaait! In the US also the FAX is still a thing?! Seriously?!
I have heard terrible stories from Germany and Japan, but did not know that also the US…
I work for an insurance company that for a long time didn't trust digital signatures. So we accepted docs from our agents via fax. They were there four decades ago, and they're still there (of course they're fax servers). They'll probably be there when I retire.
The US has a zillion healthcare providers. Some are so huge and well resourced that they literally have $100 million+ digital record systems. Some are so tiny that it's one doctor operating out of an old house with pen and paper. A fax machine is the least common denominator.
> In the US also the FAX is still a thing?! Seriously?!
Yep. My current employer, as well as the two prior to this one, all have and use fax machines despite being tech companies. Not because they want to, but because so many other companies out there still require it.
It's sending URL's, and it's not clear if it is also sending cookies or other auth info. I would think / hope that any images covered by HIPAA would not be leakable by URL alone.
I don't know HIPAA specifics off-hand, but I would not be the least bit surprised if ephemeral pre-signed urls get generated for sharing HIPAA protected assets based on cookies/auth. If the URL is live for a time window and doesn't insta-expire on refresh, then it's conceivable that data gets leaked here.
HIPAA requires "reasonable" measures. Hilariously, you can't chuck a drive full of plain text PII into a dumpster in the back of your building...
...unless there's a fence around it.
A lot of the nonsense around shredding hard drives is just the drive industry convincing people that they need to destroy perfectly good devices.
Unless you're facing state-level actors a simple zero-out or pipe from /dev/random will suffice. Or with a lot of modern drives where the data on the platter is encrypted by default, just send the "secure erase" command, causing the drive to roll over the controller's private key.
>A lot of the nonsense around shredding hard drives is just the drive industry convincing people that they need to destroy perfectly good devices.
Unless you're willing to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that each and every such hard drive does not in any shape or form contain sensitive information and pay hefty fines and jail time when you inevitably fail, the only nonsense here is you. It has been proven time and time again that data once written can be and will be recovered.
Any storage media that contains or contained sensitive information must be physically destroyed. That is the only surefire, foolproof way that we currently know of to securely and permanently delete sensitive information.
> Unless you're willing to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that each and every such hard drive does not in any shape or form contain sensitive information
I'm not sure which part of "HIPAA says you can take an UNENCRYPTED hard drive and toss it in a dumpster provided it has a fence around it" you didn't understand.
> Any storage media that contains or contained sensitive information must be physically destroyed.
...and as previously mentioned: not for PII healthcare data.
The bit about "you can only be SURE if you destroy it" is pure hard drive manufacturer nonsense.
Find me a single case where someone has recovered data from a non-solid state (hybrid or otherwise) drive or tape that has undergone a SMART secure erase or NIST / DoD compliant wipe.
In decades, I have never heard of such an incident.
Simple, I read a paper that vaccines cause autism... Now prove to me that you are not an elephant.
Now lets get purely logical. There is a non-zero chance of risk, and the best risk avoidance strategy is to not take the risk in the first place, so shred the drive.
So lets make a software, that would secure erase the drive and try to recover the data, and prove that you are not actually an elephant. But why?
Make a lot of money instead? Make a hard drive with a secure erase feature, and yes I know, but like put a spin on it, maybe a button, or better yet, you secure erase the drive backed by an industry grade non-recoverability warranty for a cheap $10/yr./drive subscription access to our secure erase service. We come to you next day, give a certificate and everything, you can put it in your HIPAA folder and show it to your risk committee.
Your market? Health care, gov, and problems that solely exist in between the keyboard and the screen.
Trivia: At the old AT&T (not at&t, the (mostly) mobile/cell company), it was standard to degausse the drive then drill through the middle of the radius and park a bolt there.
Bonus points if You had a spot welder to secure a nut to the bolt.
But given that our hardware is largely cheap and disposable, it's almost always cheaper to throw another device or 1000 on top of the shredder pile than it is to pay a tech to make sure every one of them has been zeroed.
If you put an image in a Google doc it will be accessible by the URL regardless of if you are logged in or not. Perhaps not in every case, but in the basic case I have tested this has been true.
Sharing the URL is equivalent to sharing the image in these cases.
And what prevents a distributed denial of service attack or fuzzing using Microsoft's infrastructure? If you were to trick many users into visiting a site with 1000 variants of:
Yeah, since it's sending the URLs, Microsoft couldn't get to the actual images in question because they'd in a private network, behind a login, etc. If the images are hosting on a public domain or IP, that is not on Microsoft.
Under HIPAA, any scrap of "individually identifiable health information" that can be used to connect online data with a patient cannot be sent to a third party without consent.
Just curious, how are images protected by login:password? The only way I know is htacess, which isn't really an easily scalable/usable feature... Many years ago, maybe 10 when I used Facebook I recall you could share a picture location with anybody regardless of login (i.e. Right click, copy image location, send over whatever), so the URL wouldn't be guessable or possible to predict, and the protection would be that you would get access to such url only when logged. I think in this context, the private network idea would only work if you are on vpn and you share urls that are only accesible vía vpn, is this a common setup for medical images? Is this expected? I wouldn't mind having a key or an image descrambler/decrypting/token but can't say the same about my grandma, my mother, my brother, my nephews...
Images are like any other web asset and can be protected either by the web server (htpasswd) or the application's logic.
I think you've been brainwashed by modern storage services (S3) where the URL is essentially always public and out of your control. It's trivial to password protect an image when it's on your server. I would assume any medical provider would protect their images by checking the session and not serve them via AWS.
Generally, no-one hosts public content on the S3. It is simply really expensive when it comes to outbound traffic. The content is usually cached and served by CDN, where you have full control over authentication and cross-origin rules.
You're right, although I would not assume anything when it comes to privacy, there are so many examples where companies did not follow best practice.
We need to move away from this model where others are in control of our private data to one where it's owned and controlled by us, giving access to service providers as needed.
Maybe. Maybe not. I used to work in health insurance. HIPAA protected information is "Personally identifying information" (name, email, etc) plus a medical diagnosis, treatment, or cost of treatment.
It might be PII. It might be sensitive. But if it's not both of those, it's not HIPAA protected.
If you think about medical textbooks where there are pictures of patients and their maladies, but they are not identified this makes sense why both are required. Otherwise educating new doctors would be impossible.
> e.g. inventing a cleanly readable but hallucinated license plate number on a car, or financial figure, where the original is blurry?
You can use enhanced images in trials.
In general, Courts rely on expert witnesses so if you can get one that says X method is applicable and used in that field then it's a go. It then becomes the other side's job to find an expert witness to say X actually has these flaws and is untrustable. i.e. the Court is not bothered by confidence intervals; if your profession makes decisions by flipping coins its admissible in court. The Court only cares if somebody is willing to certify it as true.
> [1]: Super-resolution imaging (SR) is a class of techniques that enhance (increase) the resolution of an imaging system.
It looks pretty clear to me that a Super Resolution Algorithm enhances images (aka Image Enhancement).
Although I think you missed the point of my post. As long as you can get an expert witness to certify the accurate you can use a technique in court.
Somebody else [2] linked the Rittenhouse case as an example as to this being disallowed but that's not what the Rittenhouse case shows. The Prosecution wanted to use pinch-to-zoom; the defense challenged that zooming wouldn't be an accurate representative; the Judge asked the Prosecution if/how they knew that zooming would be an accurate representation; the Prosecution admitted they had no idea how pinch-to-zoom works; the Judge (very reasonable) didn't allow an unknown method to be used in court. The lack of an expert witness to explain how Zooming wouldn't've changed the image was the problem.
You linked to an actual imaging technique called super-resolution imaging which is for imaging. It's a technique applied to the capture of an image, and cannot be applied to an already captured image.
Machine learning super resolution adds detail to image that does not exist, in the same way that image inpainting (or even outpainting) do.
"It's important to note that the computed super-resolution image is not real. The added details—known as "hallucinations" in image processing jargon—are a best guess and nothing more."
If you go and research the literature on deep learning super resolution techniques, they also carefully use the term "hallucinate" as well.
Indeed, this sounds like a bad idea not just for the user but for the image host as well. If I post a picture, I post it the way I want it to be seen. I don't want the browser to arbitrarily reinterpret it.
Well, that reminds me of autocorrection in web input fields, turned on automatically. Especially great if there is no proper language detection. You type a message into a text field, and Edge corrects every second word because you are typing in your native langauge, how dare you?! This is totally something I'd enable by default, because, you know, what is there except US and UK? Nah, nothing noteworthy... Ah, the joy. Internationalisation, no surprise its written i18n, it reflects the care and fucks given... Or Apple... I t took them 3 major iOS releases to have umlauts pronounced properly with their speech synth. Umlauts?! Who the fuck needs those?!
OCR in images is becoming the norm. It was a big relief on social media for blind and visually impaired people. Asking for manually created image descriptions and/or transcribed text was too much to ask from the social web. So ML found one of its first public use cases. Composite image description and OCR. And yes, the quality is bad. But nobody really cared about this, esp. not those offering the feature. Holy heartlessness basically says "it is for free, so be happy that we gave it away. If it fails, that is not our fault."
> Asking for manually created image descriptions and/or transcribed text was too much to ask from the social web.
Mastodon at least has had a better culture about this in my experience. Possibly worth investigating, and it may have degraded over the last mass migrations.
I should take a look at Mastodon one day. However, all of this talk of having to maintain your own instance and my very bad experience when looking at Google Plus (the most inaccessible social network ever put out by a large corporation) kind of myke me weary I am wasting my time. Besides, I mostly use FB as an event calendar. As long as someone doesn't mirror all the events announced in my area, I will likely not use it on a regular basis.
I'm guessing they didn't put much thought into the "enhancement" aspect at all. They just needed some justification to collect lists of every image you view.
I think using some form of super resolution by default is not necessarily a bad idea given other upscaling techniques were deployed before and this is not so different. There are definitely scenarios where you want to avoid this, but these are few and far between.
Sending these images to Microsoft by default however is scummy.
Same people who saw no legal problem with letting Tay/Zo into the wild. Or the Bing chatbot. All product launches that would have sunk any smaller company. They’re so big they believe they can just eat any legal challenge. Probably right too.
Also, it seems like there may be some copyright implications as well? The more I think about this it really seems like Microsoft is opening itself to lots of liability issues with this policy.
I rememeber these was a video where a lawyer defended his defendant by line like: "when you zoom in the video, the algorithm makes up things so you can't use it as an evidence, your honor."
And he was mocked by the whole internet. Really showing how much an average person knows, isn't it.
I installed Windows 10 (not even 11!) recently on a random laptop and was appalled by the amount of BS in the initial setup process. Forced me to make a Microsoft online account seemingly with remote access to my PC, tried to sign me up for several different free trials, then tried multiple times to push me to Edge instead of Chrome. The UI has new crap like the Bing search on the taskbar and in the center of the desktop. It finally left me along after a while, but I know there will be updates and Edge will try to reassert itself. Win10 wasn't this bad a few years ago.
I'm not normally careful about privacy and never felt Linux was a worthwhile alternative on desktop, but this was so plain annoying that I'd probably pick Linux on my primary PC nowadays if I didn't already have a Mac.
I literally reinstalled win10 yesterday and you’re right on. I couldn’t even install due to “a media driver your computer needs is missing” with no further info and no workaround. This was after mbr2gpt.exe failed and gave no information on why and every online resource was SEO crap without any info on fixing it.
I eventually used Ventoy, it works on Linux and solved my problems immediately. It also forces the win installer to think it’s offline to avoid the dark pattern of online-“only” accounts.
Then it was loaded with adverts and other horseshit. Seriously degraded experience.
All of this because when I was trying to play a game pass game the play button just did nothing. No logs, no info, nothing. The online help was pretty good, but removing/resetting/reinstalling all game related software did nothing. Real pain when there’s no feedback.
> every online resource was SEO crap without any info on fixing it
Man, searching anything related to Microsoft software is an instant trip down scam lane. It's not their fault even. Part of me is glad the majority aren't using Macs and bringing that over here.
It's a little bit their fault. They host forums but appear not to tend to them. There's endless trash there from external "experts" that rarely engage with the specific problem and have no particular advice beyond sfc /scannow.
Good troubleshooting advice can be found but good gravy is it hard to dig up.
On W10 you only get the option to create a local account if your network is disconnected, and only after multiple screens of insistence. A normal person being asked to connect to wifi during setup will do so and never have the option to not create a MS account. So it may not be impossible to create an offline account, but for all intents and purposes they do force your hand.
On W11 you have to resort to more esoteric tricks, you can't actually complete setup normally without network and a ms account.
Correct: with the latest images, W11 will not under any circumstances allow you to avoid creating an MS account. It will insist you go online and halt the installer until you do.
Rufus (https://rufus.ie/en/) offers an option to revert fix this, but you still have to ensure that you keep wifi disconnected and ethernet unplugged during install.
Actually yes it will - at least as of last weekend. During OOBE setup, after connecting to Ethernet or Wi-Fi, you must select “join a work or school domain.”
I got tripped up by this too because I was insistent on not connecting it to the internet during setup, but the local account only switch had moved since I last checked up on it.
It will still ask you three or four times ARE YOU SURE you don’t want to sign in to a Microsoft account. But at least you can still avoid it for the moment.
> Correct: with the latest images, W11 will not under any circumstances allow you to avoid creating an MS account. It will insist you go online and halt the installer until you do.
Huh. Aside from the ethics, this creates a chicken-and-egg problem for anyone who needs a PC to set up their home internet.
> On W10 you only get the option to create a local account if your network is disconnected, and only after multiple screens of insistence.
This isn't correct. Even with network connected, it's 2 "no thanks" clicks to continue with a local account. If you don't have network connected, you go straight to local account as the only option.
At least this is the case with the last 3 versions of W10, and a normal single-user product key, or if you skip the product key. I guess if you use an enterprise or volume key it might be different.
Oh it’s a dark pattern for sure, and it’s really shitty. I’m not apologizing at all, just putting a comment out there to let people know that it’s actually possible to do what you’re trying to do.
I remember it being hard before but still having the button hidden somewhere. This time I looked for it and didn't see it. Maybe if I didn't connect it to wifi at all, it would've let me do it. I originally connected cause I figured there'd be OTA updates and wasn't about to restart the whole process.
Also, the entire reason I was even doing 10 instead of 7 is this laptop came with 10.
I had to help my grandma get her new laptop up and running for the first time, with Windows 11, and it got to the account screen and there were no hidden/vague options to skip or go local. I assume this is because they detected an internet connection.
She literally had to get an MS account which apparently didn't work because she already had one from the last laptop. MS wanted to send her a recovery code to her email... Which she couldn't access because no computer.
Oh and the amount of opt-in screens after that? 10+ screens. No joke.
It's insane.
There's no way she would be able to use her new laptop if she didn't get 2 hours of help.
> I'd probably pick Linux on my primary PC nowadays if I didn't already have a Mac.
Just do it! I bought a Framework laptop and, because I forgot to buy an OS with it, decided "what the hell" and installed Ubuntu. I figured I could always install something else if it didn't work out. And it's actually been pretty good! In some ways better, in some ways worse than macOS (my main OS) and Windows (my gaming pc OS). It is actually quite nice to run the same OS as my server(s) on my laptop - it means I can use the same knowledge in two places.
When I was finally forced to ditch Win7 due to lack of drivers, I installed (alongside Linux, that I've been using for years), a modified Win10 with all the telemetry crap and other stuff removed.
My parents have unmodified Win10 and that thing just annoys me to no end, ads, resetting settings after update, etc... Including some behaviour that caused revenue loss in my parents company.
The irony here is that the line used to be "Linux is only free if your time has no value", but with all the junk you need to remove from Windows to make it usable, we could say "Windows is only $140 if your time has no value".
(MacOS is no saint either, I vivdly remember the frustration of having to run random system commands taken off the internet to try in vain to get "smart sleep" to work. If I'm going to have to futz with my system regardless, I'll just use Linux.)
I have an old 2010 Mac Mini that I wanted to sell on, figured I would install it back to the base OS (was a Linux box for a very long time) and then see what I could get on Ebay.
The horrors or trying to get that thing reset without an Apple account! I gave up after a few hours and it is just sitting as back up in case I blow away an install and need a machine to get a disc image from.
I bought a cheap laptop to run some industrial automation software and i was shocked at how bad Windows still is. I used to dislike Windows for being slow, stupid and buggy. Instead of addressing quality they just make the OS more creepy.
You can use a local account, but it’s really hidden away (you have to use command prompt at setup time). I had to do this because my WiFi requires a browser to setup and my Ethernet had missing drivers.
I use Win 10 in the work place, it is - fine - once you spend the hour or two to lock it down. Ignoring the privacy issues.
But the joy of having a fresh install of something like Linux Mint (or Kubuntu)and having nothing to lock down is so refreshing. It is like stepping back into the simplicity of Window XP but knowing it is up to date with current technology requirements.
Is pass-through good enough on modern hardware where I can just run a windows VM for gaming and then shutdown windows when I'm done? This would be the ideal scenario for me. I applaud Valve's efforts with proton, but I think Microsoft will start pushing back. I bet starfield will be very difficult to run well in Linux, for example.
yes, with vfio. I've had a windows 10 in a VM on my "main desktop" for nearly 3 years now. Gentoo gets two screens and an "ok" GPU, windows gets the beefier GPU and its own screen. I use qemu, there may be other ways to do it. The linux machine can't "see" the other GPU or screen(s).
if you want to do this, there are a couple of gotchas. One i'd recommend bearing in mind is not using identical cards. Either two vendors or two different types of cards (like a 1060 and a 1070). This makes it easier to stub the windows card and also write/edit the scripts (which are probably searchable on goog with "vfio-bind").
The second is one that i lost the information about, but if it affects you, it should be possible to dig up the info. Some games get micro-stuttering or stuttering when running with vfio under qemu; the fix can be an application that applies settings on windows or editing the windows registry.
All that aside, it works fine. The audio latency is minimal, but if you have a machine with more than 24 PCIe lanes, you can just dedicate an entire USB PCI card to windows, passing that through and plugging all the windows related hardware through that.
I think Linus (LTT) mentioned doing something like this, virtualizing even multiple windows machines on a single machine with the threadripper (32-64 lanes) and Epyc (64, 96, or 128 lanes) - having a dedicated USB and GPU for each virtualized desktop. Nice.
Fwiw the stuttering fix you describe is likely moving from IRQ to MSI, it's common to edit the passed-through PCI device in regedit to use MSI (message signalled interrupts) instead.
Yes, that's what it was. And i just remember the arch wiki had something about it back when i set it up, but it was[0] incomplete - it fixed most of the issues i had with my setup, but not the MSI (i think) stuff. The site that did have the correct information and possibly even a windows download link was light grey text on a black background, and otherwise a very minimal site. I had it bookmarked on firefox on an old PC, and for some reason firefox loves deleting history/bookmarks that are older than some age. I've never bothered to track it down and it bites me every couple of years when i try to find/remember information just like this.
Technology, it's so advanced.
[0] it may be more complete now. I probably wouldn't do this again myself; but at the time i had been "selling" this service (qemu/xen virtualization of PCI cards) for linux on linux for over a decade, so it was something i already knew enough about to stumble through - windows on linux.
Oh by all means I would just boot into Windows or have a separate PC for video games if I cared about them. Not worth messing with emulation unless you find it fun.
Not emulation, virtualization. That would be easier than emulation or dual booting, if it worked well. Surely virtualization must be getting pretty good given it's ubiquitous use in the cloud. In fact, I was hoping that one day we'd see games distributed in a fully containerized manner so that the OS becomes irrelevant. That's probably just a pipe dream though...
I tried Blackbird (similar idea) a couple times on my Surface and it hosed the install twice. I'd still make it to desktop but it was a barely usable mess, and the "restore" functionality didn't fix it.
I've been pretty leery of them ever since - definitely don't try it on a critical machine, and you're really at the mercy of Microsoft changing something every update. Definitely "use at your own risk" territory.
I've tried em all. It's not that I need a more user-friendly DE like Zorin's, it's more that the Linux kernel lacks broad support. One small but kinda important example is how simply watching Netflix requires workarounds and won't run above 1080p. Zoom and Discord also have caveats. And hardware peripherals are always questionable with Linux, whereas they'll get 0 stars if they don't 100% work with Windows (even if it's Windows's fault).
Also, random other users are probably better off with Ubuntu than Zorin purely because that's what more people use and you can actually Google how to do stuff in it. Even a lot of Zorin questions will link to Ubuntu tutorials.
Ubuntu resources are practically (in practice) useless. They change directions too much. Fixes that worked in ubuntu 18 won't work in 22, because they changed too much. Best case the old fixes do nothing. Worst case, you have a non-functioning system unless you have a long-suffering friend that is willing to help you.
Ubuntu has the windows-itis, change for change's sake. I can't even say i like Ubuntu Server, but i'm regularly forced to interact with it because universities output stuff that "works on ubuntu, just copy and paste these lines!", where ubuntu doesn't update certain packages so you end up with old versions of stuff that works reliably until the next "tick" of an even year, when everything will break again. Windows-itis also implies that there's money in "knowing" ubuntu, because you have to keep up with their new ideas in order to be effective.
I'm less than a year away from just switching to BSD, sooner if gentoo decides to do away with openRC.
> universities output stuff that "works on ubuntu, just copy and paste these lines!"
Well that's the value in it. There's never going to be a perfect system, just good enough. Until I conceded to that, I was using FreeBSD and enjoying the lack of systemd while I struggled to make random packages work. My servers do run Ubuntu Server now.
I don't use Netflix but on Brave, I haven't had any problems with Amazon Prime Video.
> Zoom and Discord also have caveats.
Such as? I use zoom just fine on Linux. Never noticed any caveats. I don't use Discord so not sure what's missing.
> And hardware peripherals are always questionable with Linux
Not a problem with most PCs. Unless you have a really special hardware, Linux will work just fine. Sometimes brand new hardware takes time to receive kernel updates but most hardware is absolutely fine.
> Also, random other users are probably better off with Ubuntu than Zorin purely because that's what more people use and you can actually Google how to do stuff in it
I disagree because Zorin comes with its own support desk. Not only do they provide official installation support (that Ubuntu doesn't), they also have more specific resources than something compared to Ubuntu. Besides, any problems that you run into, you can just search for the same problem for Ubuntu and the fix will work.
With Ubuntu, you have no installation support, no nvidia drivers, no helpful prompts for new Linux users (like WINE), no flathub, no familiar UI for people coming from other operating systems. Ubuntu is imho a worse choice for any new Linux user.
I've always recommended Zorin to family and friends and not a single one has complained about stuff breaking or not working for them. The store has the biggest apps library compared to any other distro, windows application installation support for users who really need it, familiar and one of the most polished UIs in any distro and proprietary drivers that most other distros don't ship with.
Zoom has issues with hardware acceleration and screen sharing on Linux, similarly with Discord. Netflix requires specific setup to work at all, and you get 720p at best unless you use Chrome with some custom extension to get 1080p at best. And back in the day (2018, not long ago) when you needed Adobe Flash to watch the World Cup on the only legitimate US site for it, Linux was a dead end.
> Not a problem with most PCs. Unless you have a really special hardware, Linux will work just fine. Sometimes brand new hardware takes time to receive kernel updates but most hardware is absolutely fine.
Somehow my hardware has always been "special" but worked fine with Windows. And people at work are constantly messaging about Bluetooth headsets flaking with Linux on their Thinkpads, which are supposed to have first-class support.
Of course my servers have always been fine with Linux, but a laptop with a trackpad, BT, wifi, sleep, and USB-connected accessories, that gets dicey.
> any problems that you run into, you can just search for the same problem for Ubuntu and the fix will work.
But those fixes will work for Ubuntu too. I'm no fan of it, in fact I agree with someone else here that it's the Windows of Linux OSes, but "how to do X in Ubuntu" always gives updated results.
> Zoom has issues with hardware acceleration and screen sharing on Linux, similarly with Discord.
I have no idea what the issues are. I've been using screen sharing for years and I haven't run into any issues. Same with my friends and family who switched to Zorin from Windows.
> Netflix requires specific setup to work at all, and you get 720p at best unless you use Chrome with some custom extension to get 1080p at best.
Ah, support issue I guess. Yes, Linux is sometimes not treated well by these companies but at least workarounds exist.
> but a laptop with a trackpad, BT, wifi, sleep, and USB-connected accessories, that gets dicey.
I have used Ryzen and Intel laptops and the only issue I've run into is Ubuntu installer not booting because of missing Nvidia drivers, whereas Zorin worked fine on day 1 (when Ryzen 5th gen was quite new).
Other than that, I haven't had any issues. My desktop's WiFi USB Adapter needs third party drivers so that's always an extra step whenever I'm installing new distros, but I haven't run into any issues that make the device unusable or work in a broken state.
The Bluetooth issues you just mentioned, I haven't seen any, and I am currently writing this on an HP Pavilion 15 Gaming laptop with Bluetooth connected to my speakers. I'm sure there are a few bluetooth chipsets that need kernel updates. For example, Victus has a mediatek BT+WiFi chip and it needs the latest 6.2 kernel, so it doesn't work on Zorin out of the box. However, upgrading kernels on Zorin is quite easy and there's a guide on the forums: http://maglit.me/upgrade-zorin-kernel
Besides, Linux in its current state is still a lot better than terrible software like Windows. No ads, no spyware, the system runs smooth no matter how old the installation is. All of these things are a luxury on the Windows side; it's terrible software.
Things usually work out of the box but not always. Might seem fine to you, but suppose you were choosing something else you don't understand fully. Maybe it's a used Mitsubishi with a CVT and you're told it's fine as long as you make sure the VIN is within a certain range, the recall work has been done, and the car computer has a certain software version. You can either get that or the Toyota that'll probably never have problems but is less efficient.
The thing is, like I said, Windows has gotten so annoying on its own that I don't want to deal with it ever again.
Headaches for me are dist-upgrades breaking, or fresh reinstalls needed every couple-few years.
Using Linux as primary/only OS (except for AAAA games) for 2 decades, and after dozens of distro-hops, I can finally recommend EndeavorOS for a clean, Arch-based system with rolling-release updates.
My Framework laptop has everything functioning, from media buttons to sleep to GUI-managed bluetooth audio to full-disk encryption with sleep and hibernation to multiple DE choices while I watch Wayland advance, but have GTK stuff around just-in-case.
It all just works.
"Allow Microsoft to save your browsing activity including history, usage, favorites, web content, and other browsing data to personalize Microsoft Edge and Microsoft services like ads, search, shopping and news."
Except they do ask you money for it. At this point, they should at least make it a free download. Being forced to have all that crap on something you paid for is just insulting.
Absolutely, it is the reason I am not too positive about the future of computing. Back in the early 2000's it was considered a major privacy issue when Windows XP used to identify what kind of machine you were using for a Security update. It took less than 20 years for that to turn into the dumpster fire we have today.
It is a case of our economic system is pitched in such a way as to drive these large companies to this path. In optimizing for shareholder profit, eventually they will go the path of least ethical solution provided they can get away with it. Those that do not do that will be left behind . An absolute shame really.
The games situation is pretty good nowadays, it is amazing just how well Proton can work. But if that one title you want is completely broken, I couldn't sell you Linux at all.
I have found it isn't usually the games that are the issue but the utilities. They are almost always alternatives but a lot of the time, you don't want the alternative - you want that specific program. Wine compatibility can be good but it can also be very strange. Notepad++ for instance, it works... but hits my systems CPU harder than GTA V. Go figure!
"You are authorized to use this software only if you are properly licensed and the software has been properly activated with a genuine product key or by other authorized method."
In practice it has been free for home users for many years. I assume the only reason they still keep up the facade that Windows costs money is so they can sell it to OEMs and volume licenses to businesses, which still makes them big bucks.
It only seems free for home use because the activation key for the home version is embedded in NVRAM of the machine by the OEM. You pay the OEM when you buy the machine, and they pay Microsoft.
You pay the OEM once, for a Windows 7 key, and then you run on that -- because it keeps working, with Microsoft's implicit authorization -- for the next 15+ years. They 100% would not let you do that if they cared to charge for Windows like they did in the pre-Windows 8 days when Windows was the product and not the user's data.
Geez can hacker news users no longer detect sarcasm? This comment is clearly pointing out the absurdity (or more specifically, incompleteness) of the grandparent argument, not bashing on Linux.
Firefox has had minor missteps in the past but Linux and Firefox are not unsecure options despite being free and Microsoft isn't a safe option despite charging money.
Even with Linux you have to be careful. Some distros have pulled shit like sending local searches to remote servers so that they can push amazon ads at you (https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/ubuntu-spyware-what-to-do). We have to watch everyone like a hawk these days.
I doesn't matter how much you pay for something, they'll still collect all the data on you that they can because you can never pay more than they'd make taking your money and also collecting your data.
This is a bad take, because many products are not free, and you still get shafted with surveillance, ads and more. Windows is one example, but there's also cable TV subscriptions, smart TVs, many modern games on phones and PC.
so, a bunch of third party apps made for Reddit are getting killed this month because Reddit decides to jack up the prices. What's going to happen to Kagi if/when it becomes somewhat of a competitor to Google/Bing and they want it dead?
You're putting a lot of faith in uBlock Origin though. You have to grant it full permissions when you install it. Not at all saying that uBlock Origin is doing anything nefarious, but it certainly could.
But, somehow I trust a random dev that refuses to accept donations, even though my cheap ass would definitely donate to him, more than Microsoft, apple and (insert BigTech here)
Orion browser by Kagi is a browser you can pay for. Another one I know of is SigmaOS. Both are Mac only, not sure about the state of things on other platforms.
An opt-in shitcoin ... that attempts to approach the advertising market in a new way, which I find genuinely interesting. And I'm an anti-advertising zealot.
That is a disingenuous response. I have a program that uses open source libraries, but the program is closed.
Such a weird thing to post in reply.
It has a 'nuh uh' feeling, but doesn't actually refute the parent. However it seeds doubt in the parent argument without ever touching the parent argument.
But Opera has been sold to Chinese companies, so those who are concerned about surveillance may not be comfortable with it. Opera's founder later created Vivaldi, which I have used ever since
I love the options they give you to "disable" this.
There's a toggle for "Enhance images for all sites" which if enabled gives them the URL of every image you view, but if you disable that, you're still allowing MS to "Enhance" images and collect data on some sites. MS could for example still collect data on every other image you see. Then MS gives you boxes where you can enter the sites you don't want them to enhance images on, which I'm sure they collect via telemetry anyway.
What's missing, and actually needed to prevent data collection, is a "Do NOT enhance images for ANY site" option which MS does not provide.
Microsoft Edge is insane. The amount of privacy invasion it has by default, the constant nagging to re-enable and undo all your changes to the defaults, and maze of settings you have to disable is just crazy. Is there anything it doesn't phone home? Every image, everything you type, history, absolutely everything. I was interested in it initially but I 100% avoid this browser now. I feel like it takes 20-30 minutes to comb through all the different settings everywhere in the browser and even then we hear about bugs that leak it all anyways. Microsoft edge is a complete disgrace.
How?
Chrome send your browsing historyz search prompts, browsing activity all to google.
I meat at least Microsoft has additional features for that data?
It doesn’t send your search’s to Google if you don’t use Google search. It also won’t send your browsing history, although the web site itself will probably try.
It's such a dumb feature too, i don't think there's a single person who wants all the photos on the web "enhanced" it's adding features for the sake of adding features. What people actually want from edge is ads and tabloids not being plastered everywhere, but apparently that's asking too much.
I simply already dislike it because this means when creating a website you can't even rely anymore on the browser showing the image you as website designer intended.
What if I'm deliberately showing a comparison of compression artifacts, or a screenshot of bad vs good game textures, or comparing photos of different cameras? Now the browser will alter the intended good vs bad quality comparison.
I've played around with having images being intentionally low-res or full of artifacts, for artistic reasons. This is a bit like "hey Vincent, your paintings are really low-res, let me make them more realistic for you like Rembrandt did!"
The feature as such seems okay, and I can even see myself using this on occasion. But it really should be a button in the image or something, for usability and privacy concerns.
Just imagine if Google was doing something like this; I bet the HN servers would melt down from the outrage! MS often gets a pass in these areas because people think of it as the "underdog", when in reality, MSFT is the biggest software company out there.
I went through literally every reply in this HN thread and I didn't see anyone defending Microsoft. Two pages as of the time of this writing, I looked at every subthread. And the servers ARE melting down! (But not because of this.)
This post has >100 votes in 1 hour, with >30 comments all to the tune of "wow, this is awful." If there are people here defending MSFT, they're not prominent.
Maybe in other communities, but MSFT gets thrashed pretty thoroughly around here, especially when it comes to Edge and Windows. The response to this post is nothing like "meh", and what I'm seeing here is pretty typical of Edge or Windows posts these days.
Here are some of the recent posts I can find about Edge and Windows. There's no shortage of outrage and frustration:
This does not align with my experience with HN. The pitchforks were properly out and aggressively poking at Apple when Apple declared that images uploaded to the cloud would be actively scanned and reviewed for illegal content. It got to the point where Apple reversed its decision.
>It got to the point where Apple reversed its decision.
Nice?
HN users tend to use more Apple and Linux. If Microsoft gets more of a pass my guess is it's because no one expects anything from them. The opinion of many HN users about Windows and Edge is already very low.
Nobody knows what Google scans for, in which regions, at the behest of which governments. And it can change moment to moment, and nobody knows when it changes.
It’s not just marketing, News media hate Google and Facebook for controlling their top-of-funnel and generally outcompeting them in the eyeball market. They will never allow good coverage of them.
There’s also the general media trend of punching up / publishing surprising content so it gets clicks. Google especially had the reputation for being “good” for so long that any kind of expose or criticism rings as juicy and surprising. Microsoft had the reputation for being “bad” for so long that they are expected to be bad; it’s them being “good” that is surprising and gets clicks.
It’s probably because both MS and Apple actually sell products, hardware and software that used daily and the alternatives aren’t competing much, and then having these “occasional” privacy violations issues, FB/Google on the other hand, having their whole business model about selling your data. But I disagree that they (MS/Apple) get a pass, those are the reasons why some choose to use open source alternatives like linux etc.
People use to hate Microsoft because it was a monopoly. Apple was the underdog. Ultimately the MS hate was the perfect case of watch what you wish for.
Because both companies back then were actually selling stuff to users.
Then came the culture of "do not evil" and "move fast and break things". Users became product, the only clients are the advertisers. Technology was not sold, it was simply provided for "free".
This undercut the old MS monopoly which survived because of its corporate stranglehold. Apple flourished through devices and could afford to take the moral high ground on privacy.
But the political and regulatory normalization and extreme profitability of surveillance capitalism means that there is no technology company today that can afford not to be an adtech company.
This is a bizarre perspective. I don't know anyone who thinks of Microsoft as the underdog. I don't know anyone who would support Microsoft viewing their browsing, but condemn Google for the same thing. Your brand loyalty is fooling you into thinking that criticism of your favorite product is the same as promotion of your favorite product's competitors.
Is there a general assumption/consensus that Google doesn’t do stuff like this? My assumption is that any closed-source software can collect any data they want about their users.
“If they can, they will.” The past 20 years has been a steady march towards desensitizing users towards making users give up their privacy.
In 2023 what does biggest mean? Biggest in terms of programmer headcount? In terms of market share (which markets)? In terms of revenue? In terms of # of products? In terms of total users? Just curious what the qualifiers are.
Google's main product is YOU. Without your privacy, they would have nothing to sell to advertisers --- which accounts for about 80 percent of their revenue.
More than 80 percent of Google's revenue comes directly from selling your privacy to advertisers --- aka "personalized" ads.
More then 80 percent of MSFT's revenue comes directly from selling software and services.
Google earns about as much money from privacy invasion as MSFT does from software and data services. You can try to deny or ignore the reality of it --- but you have nothing to refute it other than personal bias.
How do you measure "predatory" if not by revenue/money made?
Google's privacy invasion spans the globe.
They have the world's most popular browser feeding them user's web activity. They have the most popular mobile OS feeding them users' physical location. They operate the world's most popular email service feeding them users mail habits and purchase receipts. They have trackers embedded on virtually all of the world's most popular web sites.
It is really possible for anyone to get more "predatory" than Google?
Windows isn't free, you are paying a licensing fee when you buy a PC, it's just baked into the price and you don't realize it. If you tried shipping out PCs without a license, you'd be promptly found out and sued (at least in Western countries).
We need to get off the GitHub and VsCode dependency before LLM tooling makes it too difficult. It's just a matter of time until those business units are integrated into Microsoft's system of perverse incentives.
Microsoft Edge has become a place where Microsoft can try out things at a much faster pace than Windows update.
But that means it's getting all of these features by default, leaking yorur data to Microsoft and with deceptive questions to make you use Bing as the default search engine. Every time I get the prompt I need to do a double take because they use their 'blue button' thing as a way to guide you to a certain choice.
Same thing with downloading a file.
Do you want to keep it?
Yes.
Are you sure?
And then you need to EXPAND something and click something that looks like a link, not a button to keep the file.
That's just bad. A link shouldn't cause an action to be executed.
the purpose is to make a record of what you are doing on the Internet.. detailed records. Its a feature for management, tax officials and to some extent ordinary law enforcement. Secondly, the records in aggregate show trends and activity, to sell ads, and might have other commercial value, or value to MSFT+partners with new product areas.
This kind of record keeping was mocked for thirty years in the West when it was done in other places, now its here on the "standard" PC. PC sales have slowed in the last dozen years. This is the kind of invasive, unbridled abuse you get now on a "personal computer"
Sounds like a feature a product manager thought, "Hey this is so cool! look what it did with this narrow set of test cases. We should ship it to everyone and claim impact!"
Second order effects are rarely considered, and bad actors ignored.
That's the thing. The feature is kinda cool, but it really should be done based on user input and not automatic ( or at least not default unless user explicitly opts-in ). For me it is mildly more annoying, because at work Edge is the browser and I cannot change anything in it ( mildly, because it is only an issue in principle for me; I don't browse anything non-work related on that PC ). Still, one would think my company does not want to have some stuff uploaded to a third party willy nilly.
Brave --- the easy way to fix this and lots of other privacy related issues affecting the most popular web browsers.
As this article shows, you can fiddle with Edge and other browsers to try and make them more privacy respecting --- but why bother trying to hit a constantly moving target?
Clearly, your privacy is not in their best interests and they will only continue to circumvent it.
User privacy is a fallacy. The standards we judge applications are thrown out the window relative to the services we use in everyday life. Do you think your ISP, TV service, Cellphone carrier, Credit Card company, etc. care about your privacy and don't sell your data? The answer is rhetorical. Yet these user privacy hypocrites somehow exempt these egregious violations because it's just the way it is.
I mean, heaven forbid Google stores my data in their impenetrable ultra secure data centers, but ISP's, TV providers, Cellphone carriers and Credit Card companies - go to town with my data and sell it to as many data brokers as you can.
Brave has much worse issues than this. The link hijacking incident alone was reason enough never to trust them again. I'm convinced the whole point is selling snake oil to semi-privacy-conscious people. I even heard an FM radio host advertising Brave, if that says anything.
Different people will have different reasons, but if you are curious, these are mine (I'm generalizing a bit):
* I don't want to use the terminal at all if possible. Not to configure my OS, not to do basic stuff which Win can do with a few clicks. I'm in awe how fast and efficient some people are with it, but if I need it at most once or twice a day, it's a nuisance.
* No binaries. I don't want to compile software ever.
* Packages and dependencies.
* Game compatibility. But apparently not for much longer.
* The problems I have with Win10 have been solved by running a debloater once after installing it.
All of those have been non issues and I have been daily driving linux for several years now.
The only few things I do from terminal is updates, because I do not want to load application icons from the update manager. My bandwidth is metered most of the time due to travel. Doing it from terminal is text based.
I cannot remember the last time I had to compile anything that wasn't related to something I was tinkering with out of curiosity. I wanted to compile those things.
Package and dependencies are issues on windows as well. The builtin application manager takes care of those? So I am not understanding that complaint.
Aside from a handful of multiplayer games that do run, you just cant play due to anticheat software not working. Every game in my steam library, and GOG has worked without issue through wine/proton. Native games also work great.
The problems I have with windows 10/11 even after running those is all the data it is constantly sending. Again I am on a metered network so MBs count. You cannot disable telemetry, you can only reduce how much is sent.
1 - Depending on your job and habits, you really don't have to. The only time I use it anymore is for Git stuff, and even that isn't required, I just am used to it.
2 - It's very rare I compile anything, and it's never manual. I'm OK with the AUR. I use Yay so it's all seemless anyways. If I weren't and had a no compile no matter what mindsey, I'd probably just use Debian or Ubuntu or Fedora where you really never need to compile anything. Or use Flatpaks.
3 - I don't game, but from reading, that's really made a ton of strides lately.
The same day all evangelists are going to be nice. So, never. As long as businesses continue to exploit human weaknesses legally, they'll continue to do so, because it either brings in profit, and/or helps them stay competitive. And the users are going to be human: vulnerable, and also having priorities other than the latest shenanigan of a mega-corp.
I don't know your circumstances of course, but I'm anal enough about this that I'd consider that a deal breaker.
An employer that forces me to use an OS that treats me like the audience to a television soap opera (meaning, a dumb shmuck who can be puppeted around) is not worth it, it'll kill my joy in working real quick. Tried it, it was horror. So right now, I'd say I'd rather drink my own piss than use a windows box as my daily workstation.
How are you verifying this in job interviews? Not using Windows is at the top of my list of wants in a new job, to me it'd be as good as a $10k raise. But I'm aware that asking about this during an interview sounds petty.
I get that, I felt petty too, but I'm much more productive, and much happier without windows. So you gotta frame it like that. "The cloud runs on linux, I'm most productive when developing natively on something close to where we deploy, can I not use windows?", or, "I have years of bash muscle memory and automate a
great deal of mundane tasks, is it okay if I use linux?"
Or otherwise make it a gentle enquiry, "I see you provide laptops, can I get a linux/Mac machine to work on?"
Framing is key ;)
Edit: personally I outright asked "can I choose my own OS, I can't deal with windows, it makes my head hurt" or something like that. If you have the confidence just tell em how it is.
That's how I've been framing it too, something like "I do my best work on Linux/Mac". A couple places that have seemed otherwise fine have acted weird though, Tesla especially.
If it's a work computer, I expect nothing less. Since remote work, there is a lot more invasive tracking software used by companies, often owned by third parties. If I want to browse anything personal, I would do it with a phone.
If I were the webmaster of a site which hosted non-public images, this news would be enough for me to either block Edge by its user agent (with an error page explaining the reasoning and alternatives), at least on the pages which contain the images, or omit the images (replacing them with an explanatory message) when the browser is Edge.
This is exactly what needs to happen to get Microsoft to stop doing things like this. How many sites not working properly does it take for someone to switch browsers? Maybe as little as 1, if the user really wants or needs to use that site.
That, and lawsuits (as others have mentioned, this easily could have resulted in violating HIPAA and other laws) could help stop behavior like this. But fines are the price of doing business for many companies, so outright blocking Edge may be even more effective.
I want competition in the browser space, but Microsoft simply has not offered that in over 15 years. IE obviously was worse than Chrome and Firefox in many ways, the original Edge still had worse W3C compliance and performance than Chrome and Firefox, and the new Edge is just a Chromium fork. They seem highly interested in getting your data, but not all that interested in actually creating an good product.
I'm not even sure why Microsoft is doing things like this at this time. If they wanted to increase the number of Edge users, this is not the way to do so. Are they content having less than 10% of users on desktop and just want to milk those users for all they can? As others have said [1], even if this was done locally (so that there'd be no privacy concern), this is is a terrible feature to have on by default due to the risk of inserting false details.
If you use windows it will routinely set edge back to the default browser. The web team of microsoft is absolutely disgusting in every possible way, and it has always been.
Wow, this is beyond anything allowed in law if I understand it right. Imagine you are looking at corporate IPR or private medical data (some MRI scans come with a browser based viewer to give a concrete real-life example).
When I'm publishing an image, I invest some time into presenting it just as I intend it to be seen, including the orchestration of sharpness. My intent that this is exactly what I want to arrive at the user and is to be seen is expressed and enforced by HTTPS encryption. And now MS circumvents this in order to apply whatever filtering they think may suit best, thus exchanging the content behind the scenes? Moreover, doesn't this involve breaking protective encryption? (Maybe not in a strict technical sense, but still.)
I use windows 10 ltsc on one of my personal laptops, and yesterday I had to use ms teams... you actually have to try hard to make software that bad, it's on the level of itunes on windows, and itunes isn't like that because of incompetence obviously but greed, so ms teams gives you those fake choices of "you can log in if you want" "you can use your login across your windows pc" and it doesn't have yes or no just close and continue/signin.
I obviously will never use edge because of how slimy their tactics to push have been, but it really surprises me how this disrespect of privacy still surprises people, they've been doing it for a long time: telemetry, linkedin reseting its user's privacy settings every other month, can't uninstall edge on windows 11 without scripts, r/windows shills deleting any negative comment, etc. wouldn't surprise me to find out they're training LLMs on private github repos or just copying them for their own apps.
It's more than likely anonymized, aggregated data that mostly just counts how many times a given picture was visited globally. If it's over X times, by at least Y unique devices and can be accessed publicly (I.e. Random Microsoft server can access it), then they probably upscale it via AI and redirect future navigations to their version of the picture.
Such simple heuristic also circumvents most (or all) the concerns about medical images.
IANAL but it seems like this potentially exposes MS to enormous liability. For example, doctors routinely use web based tools. When they look at images related to a patient's care and MS uploads them to the mothership, has MS violated HIPAA? What about someone browsing images of child sexual abuse? Is MS liable for storing that illegal content on their servers? When a user uploads illegal content to OneDrive it's easy to blame the user, but when MS is harvesting all the content the user views, I'm not sure they get off so easy.
Its funny you mention that. I was helping with a windows laptop. I swear using edge to download chromium and firefox, the browser didn't stop me, but put a bar at the top saying how I should give "Edge" a try for my browsing needs.
It was a little startling, realizing the browser is watching the url and that someone had to write code for that scenario.
I rarely use Edge, and going through its settings because of this, I realized it has now a VPN and it is enabled by default on http websites. That's unacceptable.
I just checked the enhance images thing and its switched off on multiple machines checked. I dont use Edge for much so this must be the default (Edge is annoying).
This may be a thing with Beta versions of Edge browser but not released versions. I think neowin.net is missleading people in to believing that its the default for the excitement.
Most likely everything is on by default in the beta versions because of beta testing scenarios.....
Microsoft doesn't even try to pretend anymore. Shamelessly piggy-backing Windows and Edge for a whole series of secondary goals with no care in the world about this being user-hostile or open market manipulation.
I guess you could say that they're back.
Funny thing is that in large corporations, Edge is often preferred as the default browser over Chrome, for Edge being a "cleaner" Chrome.
Forget sending the pictures I view to MS, what about the pictures my customers view?
I work as a photographer half the time, and opted out of using lightroom and other cloud services because I don't want my images to land in the various clouds and AI bullshit.
But I guess now I don't have any control over that anymore, do I?
After Edge showed me a "Get a better price at"-Ad while I was doing online banking, I disabled all those services except for the Image one. Because the German translation doesn't mention that the images will go to MS. Good to know I have to disable this option too.
MS turns evil when it comes to the browser. Maybe for other things too, but I definitely notice it when it comes to their browser. Like every time Edge upgrades, it asks questions using weird wordage to get you to click on setting it as the default browser.
Unless this is against the law it will keep happening.
"Unreasonable search and seizure" needs to become a legal duty on platforms, where the bar for "reasonable" (absent extremely informed consent) is very high.
You can try to disable each new instance but it will keep coming. These "features" will get harder to disable as time goes on.
Microsoft's goal is to make as much money as possible. Your data is worth money. They will attempt to make use of that. Will this harm Windows use long-term? Likely. But it definitely makes money in the short term.
It sounds to me like Firefox can collect and send out a lot of information beyond what is necessary for user-initiated browsing actions to be performed.
There are also numerous references to sharing information/data with "partners".
Maybe that data collection, transmission, and sharing can be disabled easier than in other browsers. A browser that truly respected user privacy, however, just wouldn't include such functionality to begin with.
I was getting sick of Window’s bloat and telemetry so I replaced Windows on every single one of my computers with PopOS! and have never looked back. The transition was rough ( I basically gave up gaming to learn programming) but I have no regrets, and this post just validates that decision. Micro$ cannot and should not ever be trusted.
I still use Windows 7 + Firefox + third-party personal firewall (to control network activity on per-process level). Despite FUD from Microsoft trolls, I have not had any malware in the last 10 years.
If the last two versions of their OS are crap, then it makes sense to consider previous versions IMO.
I deleted the Edge folders from C:\Program Files (x86)\ and moved on a while ago. Didn’t seem to break anything I care about. No longer worth chasing down the settings to disable the harmful behavior.
If you need Windows, like I do for multiplayer games' anticheat, Windows LTSC is an option. It has much less bloat (no Microsoft Store, Camera, Cortana, OneNote, GameBar, ...), but you still get the Windows platform.
But of course, you are either in or out, and unless you're completely out, you're in. As long as there's MS stuff on the PC and it's connected to the internet, some bullshit will surely seep in.
You can't (assuming you want to keep Windows), or if you can it makes the OS unusable. There are plenty of custom 'builds' on the net of Windows 10, 11, etc.
Microsoft will continue down this path until it becomes unprofitable.
Couldn't this wreak havoc on doing things like viewing medical images, inserting false detail that isn't there?
As well as on text in images, e.g. inventing a cleanly readable but hallucinated license plate number on a car, or financial figure, where the original is blurry?
Not only does this seem like a terribly dangerous idea, but I'm shocked that a legal review at Microsoft would ever have approved this in the first place.