Even Firefox will in general not protect you I believe.
I showed my mom how she can use 'web.whatsapp.com' to use Whatsapp more easily (in order to share screenshots or links with others).
After logging in, a notification about Whatsapp having been installed from the app store popped up after a few seconds. And indeed, the Desktop app had been installed, without any user interaction whatsoever.
I am not even sure how this was initiated, but I believe DoH being disabled by default probably has to do with it.
Edit: Like a lot of comments have suggested, I most likely remember this wrong. I tried to reproduce this (after "forgetting about" whatsapp.com in Firefox and uninstalling the app) and was unable to. I did encounter three separate "install the app" buttons, all of which however yielded an additional installation prompt from the app store.
I don't think it's a PWA if she was using Firefox, because Firefox removed the little PWA functionality their desktop browser offered a while ago (this is one of the reasons I still have Chromium installed).
I imagine during the process, WhatsApp opened an ms-store: link that launched the Microsoft Store, and not knowing better, they clicked "install" when prompted.
The desktop app has some features that the web browser version lacks, like video calling support, so I would argue the desktop app is probably what you would want to use as a WhatsApp user, but it's rather annoying that web apps are pushing so hard for people to install desktop applications when their web apps could have the same features if they bothered implementing them in a non-Electron environment.
I just checked it, it opens a small Microsoft Store window with button "Get". In other languages they also used shady terminology to replace word "Install".
I don't think DNS has anything to do with this whatsoever :)
Even if it returned a different IP it would have to be verified by TLS. And it wouldn't affect what the browser is capable of doing. That even being possible would be a huge vulnerability. DoH is more of a privacy feature than security.
It's a weird thing and hard to understand without more details but like the other reply I think it may be a PWA.
My (uninformed and probably misguided) idea was that there was a host DNS service (responsible e.g. for resolving local domain names) which would cause Windows itself to trigger some rule when 'web.whatsapp.com' is encountered.
But yeah, the PWA thing seems more plausible, even though I was not aware of any install prompt or similar.
I would need to read up on PWA, and there seems to be a LOT unfortunately.
> And indeed, the Desktop app had been installed, without any user interaction whatsoever.
Highly unlikely it just happened out of the blue without any user interaction at all. Stuff like this would be all over the news. Tech tabloids would love farming clickbaits with FUD like this.
You definitely clicked on something that accepts/triggers the installation and you don't remember doing it.
That's probably because you can't "log in to whatsapp" from that address - you can only download and install the app and the site is very explicit about that.
>That's probably because you can't "log in to whatsapp" from that address - you can only download and install the app and the site is very explicit about that.
No, that's not true. You can log in and use WhatsApp from that address. Only voice calls require downloading an app (at least on Mac).
OK, tested for that and couldn't reproduce OS installing WA on its own, though the web interface kept showing links to download the app in multiple places.
At what point does this go beyond dark patterns into illegal?
Sure, they could argue that the users consented into uploading their passwords to Microsoft, but a phishing site could put in terms and conditions that says by entering your password into this fake bank site, it will be uploaded to ShadyFooCorp and that won't stop them getting prosecuted.
I'm sure many of these tactics are already illegal. But at this point that's just a marketing expense for them. I'm certain that whatever their fine will be, ist's nothing compared to how many user they managed to convert to Edge with this strategy.
ShadyFooCorp has not many, many contracts with the government. And the governments computers do not run on their OS.
The only vaguely serious argumentation I can think of, is that they have the comfort and benefit of their users in mind and that they do not missuse the collected passwords in an obvious way.
Collecting the passwords is already an egregious overstep, which renders any usage a DAMNING misuse. Microsoft does not have the comfort or benefit of their users in mind, or they wouldn't do this. What a senseless notion. This is further aggression from a company attempting to take choice away from people using their software. It's not even vaguely serious argumentation, it's outright disingenuous and ridiculous.
As someone who sticks with Debian Linux, the only times I use Windows is in the workplace. I leave the internals of Windows to the infrastructure team. How they setup their users, updates, etc.. is not of my concern. I only use work laptop for work.
Sometimes, however, I come across trying a modern Windows. To install and setup myself. For example, the mother-in-law buying a new laptop. I just cringe at all the new rubbish I have to do. Last time I had to create an account. The crap on the taskbar (news, weather) to Microsoft Edge.. and all inbetween.
I am a proud user of Debian. It might not be perfect and I might not be able to play the latest games... but it provides everything I need.. which is the bare minimum!
(Yes I know Steam has come a long way in recent years... but point stands)
I just wish more people would move away from Windows. Yes, gamers may have to sacrifice their games if not supported... but companies go where the money is, including game devs.
Sadly, as computers get better and better.. and more convenient, the more freedoms you lose. People dont care.
It looks like MS response to completely missing the boat of the early web 1.0 and 2.0 development is to go all in trying to be less trustworthy then Meta, Google, tiktok, apple and amazon combined by ignoring all pretense to respecting any privacy standards.
Individually the changes might look like things other SaaS vendors might do but combined it's clear that MS is the least restrained of the big players in the cloud/SaaS market.
This is unfortunately not new, I reported the same behavior here on HN 2 months ago, and how I uninstalled Edge via the new EU DMA update to keep it from sending my browser history (of any browser) to Microsoft, potentially, probably.
Microsoft Edge is a unique type of prankware. Whoever's in charge of its development should at least be assigned, there is no excuse for how wildly user-hostile that thing is.
Microsoft Edge is so disappointing because it was and can be a great browser.
I recently had to use a low-spec computer (Celeron 6305, 4GB Ram, Windows 11), and Firefox just did not run well on it. I switched over to Edge and it loaded webpages much faster, and used much less RAM and CPU while doing it.
The problem was I also had to go into the setting and turn at least 10 different things off. Shopping assistants, copilot, sidebars, etc. The average user is not going to know or feel comfortable turning all of these "features" off, leaving them a browser constantly showing them adware and sending tons of data off to Microsoft.
TLDR: On low-end computers Edge runs great, but Microsoft has also injected it with a bunch of crap.
I would be tempted to switch to edge for the sake of "super duper secure mode" [1] but they have violated my trust in so many ways that I can't bring myself to do it.
You can disable JIT in Chrome (which also enables CET [1], just like in Edge) by executing it with
--js-flags="--jitless"
You can also disable JIT in Firefox by setting javascript.options.baselinejit, javascript.options.ion and javascript.options.native_regexp to false in about:config, although you won't get CET.
The weird part is they didn't even wait until it built up a marketshare before they thoroughly enshittified it. It's actually worse than Chrome now with unrequested coupon and loan schemes.
Yeah I actually switched to Edge pretty early on as a way of trying to disentangle some of my online identity away from Google because I wasn't (and still am not) happy with how much power they had over it.
Not that I trust Microsoft any more than Google, but I figured they were less inclined to violate my privacy in the name of advertisers and other third parties since that wasn't their main business.
Only lasted on Edge about 6 months before I abandoned it as it quickly ended up just as intrusive as Chrome, if not more so, while also being a far worse user experience.
1) Do I have to actively use Edge - or does this happen automatically in the background - even if I never open an Edge window?
2) Does any of the data gathered that way find it's way into Windows telemetry (anonymized or not)?
Since I'm neither "allowed" to uninstall Edge, nor "allowed" to fully disable telemetry...
Someone in here writes that there is a possibility that Edge sends its browser history (imported or not) to Microsoft servers...
I imagine: "As a MS Edge user, I would like to have Chromium tabs readily available when I open MS Edge, so that I can continue working in MS Edge seamlessly ...."
> Some engineers must have worked on this type of integration.
Knowing how to program is not correlated to someone’s ethics or capacity for empathy. A desire to shit on users for profit is not exclusive to ad executives.
I am old enough to experience that I have done something I whole-heartedly believed to be the right thing only to be re-interpreted to be malicious.
I do not believe that some people mean mal intend, and so my original question was in which framework this would no be mal intend.
(My heart are with the anti nuclear protestors who's work is being reinterpreted to have ruined the earth these years, despite them doing what they believe was right)
I agree in the abstract, but not with the specifics. You can be tricked or misinterpreted a couple of times and deserve the benefit of the doubt, but you no longer have an excuse when your company has this long of a pattern of being user-hostile.
Microsoft has been criticised (and even sued) for these practices for years. At a certain point you have to accept they are doing it on purpose. Anyone inside the company who decides on or implements these features and is genuinely surprised by the backlash is either unbelievably naive or unbearably incompetent. It’s been going on for too long for plausible deniability.
Thus it’s no longer abstract but specific to Microsoft, which is my point. In general we shouldn’t assume malice right of the bat. But the situation changes when we’re talking specifically about an entity with a history of being malicious (however we define that for each case).
The Register has been told by an anonymous source that it could be an unintentional bug:
> A person familiar with the kerfuffle who has visibility into the Windows giant, though who did not want to be identified, told us it appears that "if a user chose continuous import in the Edge first run experience on some other device, this state may be syncing incorrectly across their devices. This is not the intended feature experience." We're assured that Microsoft is addressing it for the next Edge Stable release.
>What kind of narrative is being build around the feature to justify its implementation?
I dunno, what kind of narrative are Googlers or Meta employees using to justify building an ad tracking and surveillance dragnet for the whole world, including one that emotionally manipulates youngsters into depression and slef loathe?
Probably making enough money to be able to afford not to think about ethics. Everyone has their price, especially those with no wealth to their name.
So you believe that people working at mentioned companies get into work everyday with the conviction that their work is making the world a worse place, but disregard it because of $$?
Same thing with people working at McDonalds producing burgers that make people fat, unhealthy and give them heart attacks. It's the economy we live in. You're lucky if your job doesn't actively destroy society, nature, health or whatever else there is. Basically every job has side-effects. You build housing for the poor? Well, nature isn't going to be happy with you pouring concrete everywhere.
Funny to equivalate poor MacDonalds workers who don't have many other options to highly paid Googlers and Meta employees who could work anywhere else, and also equivalate damage being done from building housing for the poor to damage being done from building user tracking and manipulation software.
Building housing for the poor does damage to the environment but it also provides a public good, the poor now have housing.
My main question is about narrative. Many people identify themselves and are driven by narratives. In McDonalds you can say that you feed busy people on the go. Provide the framework for a stressed stressed family who needs an out for an evening etc.
I am not trying to qualify each of these individual narratives. People do that themselves.
My initial questions was just on the enumeration of narratives that would leave the implementor on the morally right side.
Are you saying Meta and Google employees are unaware from where the crazy good money for their paychecks comes from?
Maybe not with conviction, but they can't tell the world with a straight face they don't know what their masters are doing with their tech.
The excuse "I'm just moving buffers around as I'm told" doesn't hold up, same how "I'm just a low level foot soldier following orders " didn't hold up at Nuremberg.
It's a $-denominated narrative. Dollars in, ethics out.
Just like with every second high-tech company that pays their devs from the ad, tracking, invasive profiling, personal data aggregation and all other blatantly anti-person techs that fuels much of their business. Don't have to go far for examples.
The feature being developed was a way to make adopting Edge easier and with that mindset of that being what the users want developing robust ways for edge not to run it's import feature at every boot simply never gets to be an priority.
The mentality at MS is for everything to be about promoting their SaaS divisions to the point where there is no longer an independent business unit selling windows, and bundling them with an nearly impossible opt out is an proven strategy for selling value add services that people might either not need or prefer to get from 3rd parties if asked to explicitly opt in to the vendors version of that service.
TFA has an update at the bottom that suggests it might be a case of the "continuous import" setting being synced between multiple computers after being set on only one. Not sure I believe it though.
I recently decided to open up Edge and see how it was, given that it is the only browser on Windows which features hardware isolation [0]. Though it seems like this feature is deprecated now.
The sheer amount of garbage I had to turn off made me give up and close it half way through. Which is a shame, because there seems to be good tech underneath all the garbage.
We're not even near the end of this process. Every thing that occurs on (ostensibly) your PC must be uploaded and processed by Bing AI so you can be "productive" while utterly dependent on the cloud and viewing as many MSN ads as possible. I had high hopes for Edge once but it's become clear that it's just a value-extraction funnel.
It's very clear why windows usage is dwindling year after year. Windows 7 was the last good windows version. 8 was trash and 10 introduced ads and other extreme anti-features. The search in windows has never been worse. I'm thinking MS just doesn't care about it anymore given they have azure.
I wonder what percentage of users these days deliberately make use of local files, as opposed to The Cloud. Maybe local search is considered a niche feature now (I have no idea if this is true or not, and I really hope that it isn't).
If you sign in to a onedrive/MS account on windows it'll set all the default file explorer directories to your mounted cloud drive.
Newer versions of Office defaults to the cloud directory when you are trying to save a file. It's an absolute hassle to do something as simple as save a file to my hard drive.
I had to set up my wife's laptop with a MS account a while back, since she got an office license she wanted to use. She's a big Sims 3 and 4 player. Sims stores it's save files by default in the "my documents" directory. Sims game save files are huge. The moment I signed in to a MS account on the laptop, the damn thing converted the whole user folder to a cloud folder, and subsequently started uploading dozens of gigabytes of Sims save files, without my consent or asking me beforehand.
Not excusing the overall behavior, but just FYI there's a checkbox somewhere on the onedrive first login process that changes this. At least on the Win10 version of it.
And during windows 7 the older people all said XP was the last good release. The actual truth is that there has never been a good windows release and even during the XP days, and before, people who used it routinely complained about Microsoft being a corrupt money grabbing corporation.
I disagree. Windows 7 (which is really just Vista SP1) isn't universally an improvement over XP. The update system (which lives on today still) is crappier than the XP one, even when it required IE to run it! 7 will gradually eat a whole hard drive once WinSxS cancer starts to grow, 10 papers over this mess by doing a behind the scenes upgrade install every year like snake sloughing off its skin. The search doesn't work (everyone blames this on 10, which made it worse but 7 sucked too) and the UI is less customizable than previous windows. Continuing a trend in Windows, UI actions take more clicks and are further buried in each Windows version and 7 was no different.
Everyone loves 7 mostly because the mess of the 64-bit transition and the changed driver model had mostly been ironed out by the time 7 was released. It also actually had some new worthwhile technical features, mostly refined from Vista, that at least made a 2 steps forward 1 step back release. A feat Microsoft hasn't performed since.
Better in some ways, worse in others. It's less insistent on bothering you with things, but the App Store is a worse blowup than Microsoft Store, macOS's native window management is trash, the OS can't have separate natural scroll settings for the mouse and the trackpad, etc.
I generally feel like Windows is a better OS with more active annoyances, while macOS is aggressively mid as the kids would say, but doesn't actively bother you as much.
Yes, much better. In the last 8 years I haven’t had an update reset my settings yet. On major OS upgrades it will ask me to opt into telemetry but it defaults to my last selection which is “off”.
Apple is far from perfect but I haven’t seen any dark patterns make it into MacOS yet.
This is Window's security model in action. Nothing stops Microsoft from developing a feature to compile browser history, bookmarks, previously opened tabs, etc all into one place for the user's convenience. On mobile platforms app's don't have permission to do such a thing.
> On mobile platforms app's don't have permission to do such a thing.
Very doubtful. If you turn on GPS for one app, all ads in all apps at all begin to be better targeted immediately. Especially noticeable if there were a big travel since the previous GPS usage.
Even if Microsoft had a proper sandbox system they would have exempted themselves from it "for security scanning and product improvement". It isn't the apps that are the problem, it is Microsoft.
I just today installed windows in a virtual machine because I have an interview in the next few days, and ms teams is the schroedinger video call, dear satan are these people bad, from the inability to use it without a ms account because it doesn’t give the button to skip, but how much upselling of onedrive, office, edge, migration of data etc, just let me use the os and stfu
It works 1 time every 2, but there is a chance that microphone for example doesn't work, and I was tired of taking my chances, or having to install chrome on linux, so I just now have a VM that when I need teams, I can boot and then shut down and forget about it
Press Shift + F10 to launch the command prompt then type in 'OOBE\BYPASSNRO' and press Enter. The system will reboot and you can proceed without a MS account.
I did this a couple of times lately on a bare metal install as well as in a VM.
I've found myself setting up a new Windows install - sometimes VM, sometimes bare metal - every 4-8 weeks for the past 6 months and it's sooooo painful. My computer is a vehicle for getting work done - just let me use the damn thing.
How many people are actually going to switch, though?
I’ve primarily used Linux for 25 years. Used to try to get people to switch. Microsoft would do something user hostile and people would complain, and then just go back to using Windows. A percentage switched to Apple, but they’re just bad in different ways. (Google, too, if you’re thinking about Chromebooks.)
I’d love to believe “surely this” will be the thing, but I’m not optimistic. (Would love to be proven wrong!!)
I've seen this sort of consumer inertia with lots of things. People just generally don't care about the topics as deeply as you or I.
My personal bugbear here is Pokemon, for example. I've got acquaintances that outright say "I'll buy the next game no matter what" when each generation has a myriad of issues and lazy development.
My recommendation? Be polite, but firmly call them out. "You complain, but you'll never do anything about it.". Don't ask them to switch, just point out that they won't.
The point of it is to get them to self-reflect on that assertion, and maybe from that point they might do something about it. Just being offered a solution won't do anything (see user elsewhere in this post who says they unfortunately have to use Windows for gaming but refuse to use Proton)
> see user elsewhere in this post who says they unfortunately have to use Windows for gaming but refuse to use Proton)
To be fair, as good as Proton is, the API isn't fully compatible with Windows' (yet!) -- I can fully understand why someone would want to avoid the hassles of dealing with this.
It doesn't matter as long as you can hardly get a PC without Windows.
It is a text book example of a monopoly which no longer has to care for its users.
I really don't understand Microsoft. They work on VScode, Visual Studio, WSL and other product for developers and then they try as hard as they can to push them of the Windows platform with Candy Crush, spyware and a browser nobody asked for.
Microsoft wanting their own browser is understandable, but why not just make a good and secure browser? Same with Windows, why not provide a secure and private platform that people would actually want to use? Presumably they don't care, they also have enough money, so I guess they don't really have to.
> do employees not have the obligation to refuse certain demands in order to protect the shareholders?
That might actually be the problem. Public companies may have an obligation to protect shareholder investment/returns, forcing a focus on near future profit. So you stuff in ads and tracking, because that will yield a "positive" result with the next quarter or two.
Microsoft has a growing ads business, and it's the ads division in charge of Windows and Edge nowadays, as far as I understand. The dev tools are for internal use and B2B, so the motivation is different.
The problem with civil litigation against some of these dark patterns is it can be challenging to show quantifiable harm to a magnitude that makes it worth pursuing. Fortunately judges are becoming more keyed-in to the intrinsic value of privacy.
Ironic given one of yesterdays front page stories on hn was how to respond to a c&d letter from a large tech company where they claim violation of ToS for some tool you built to automate processes on a “free” website.
At the point where laws are enacted the protect the user and their respective data, as well as punishment for breaking said laws is more than just a monetary fine. We can have the protective laws all day, but fines are basically just a license to break them, especially when we are talking about something as lucrative as user data.
When the regulatory bodies start to have more power than the corporations they regulate, we will see change. So, you know, probably never.
The market is fine? Do you have any sources to back that up? I'd argue that my family with its rampant technological illiteracy are part of "the market" and they would all throw a hissy fit if their environment and work flow suddenly changed after a reboot.
> and stored passwords […] it'll also sync that data to the cloud too
Yet another reason to keep my auth details in a separate store and not let any browser get its grubby mits on them beyond when they are actually needed.
VSCode and GitHub are honestly great at what they do, granted there are valid criticisms. These are essential daily tools for a sizable population of users, including myself. I think Microsoft has earned a lot of good will by cultivating these, as well as TypeScript and other open-source developer-oriented projects.
Maybe not enough good will though, to recover their reputation from historic and on-going user-hostile moves. I'm really praying that Microsoft doesn't ruin these projects like they've been doing with Windows and Edge.
Microsoft owns Github, VSCode, Typescript, and NPM. That's like... my entire web development stack. Maybe it's fine now, but having one company own all of that makes me a little nervous.
It's not just the browser, it's the OS as well, at least on Windows 11. Literally everything is optimised to force you to try and use Bing and Edge. If I hit start, I get bing, if I run updates it tries to sell me Bing and Edge. If I use edge it throws me at the microsoft portal all the time and I have to futz around with it to disable CoPilot integration and add extensions to give me a blank new tab page etc. Then I get an update. Oh and next thing I know it's trying to sell me vouchers. And then the other day it ripped off all my Chrome credentials which I keep separate. I don't even know how it did it. The final straw was on my pixel 7a when I opened the outlook app and found there's a fucking garbage feeds and subscriptions tab in it now which just pipes crap to you.
I got fed up with it at the start of December last year and rinsed my credit card in the Apple Store. I walked out with an MBP and an iPhone and neither have not yet kicked me in the nuts once. I'm slowly porting my data over at the moment and then I'm chucking this crap on ebay and never touching it again.
Well done Microsoft. You burned a 30 year long developer relationship.
Given MS being horribly anti-user these days, monetizing each user to be farmed like cattle and Apple's massive anti-consumer malicious compliance to any legal rulings, more people should be considering Linux.
It's fast.
It respects the user.
Games work beautifully with proton.
Most software has an equivalent on Linux if they don't offer their own binaries.
More and more I don't understand the desire or need to generate revenue for companies that treat you like dumb cattle.
I second a vote for Linux or Neverware. OMG I used Windows 11 yesterday to debug something. Efficiency mode sucks so bad. Chrome was unusable with it and there's no apparent way to disable it. I'm environmentally conscious but I'd club a baby penguin to disable Efficiency mode.
I would like to use linux but every system I have ever installed it on, it eventually breaks. Then I have to spend several hours searching through forums trying to find the correct command line prompts to fix it.
This is even using the supposedly "reliable" distros like Ubuntu and Mint.
At this point when a linux user says they never have an issue I just can't believe them. I don't do anything complex, but linux always eventually fails in some way. I have above average knowledge of computers, and still linux cannot work reliably for me. It will never go mainstream until it can work without breaking, and never touching the terminal for 10+ years like MacOS can.
As an example, look at the "Switched to linux challenge" Linus Tech Tips did a couple years ago, he tried to install steam and it broke his entire OS. I have never installed anything on Windows or MacOS that has broken my OS. If you want regular users to use linux, things like that should not be possible.
I think this is key. I'm comfortable in the terminal so it really doesn't bother me and I doubt many days go by where I'm not using it. Linux works for me, but its not for everyone and I still have an old macbook for some photo editing applications.
While that is generally true, as others have already reported there is progress being made.
Since a few days ago, I tried installing/running Elden Ring again, which did not work when it came out due to EAC. Works flawlessly out of the box now.
Nonsense. It worked on the day of release for me, on Linux. I don't know what went wrong on your side, but I played it on release day.
There were two issues, namely:
1. It crashed on start-up roughly half of the time. Not great, but survivable.
2. Swapping to a different workspace (Sway, Wayland) for an extended period of time made the game think your framerate is low, and it forced you to play offline with "FPS unsuitable for online play".
That's all. Other than that, the game experience was buttery smooth.
Soulsbornes are a great reason to keep a playstation around if you ask me. They may be porting their games to Windows these days, but their "DNA" is in console gaming and it shows.
Of course, if you play them for the experience. If you have to have 144 fps in 8k, you need to give a kidney to a video card manufacturer indeed.
Last week my wife got prompted by Ubuntu's automatic software update to install a security update that required signing up to some paid Ubuntu subscription.
I'm not sure this is really what it meant (I didn't see the prompt myself), but it was what Ubuntu made her believe.
After updating without this "option", all her VirtualBox VMs stopped working (I don't mean to imply that these two issues are linked).
Ubuntu has a Pro subscription for businesses, which is free for up to five (I think) installs for consumers.
Ubuntu Pro allows for things like patching the kernel while the kernel is running. If you're using VirtualBox, which uses kernel drivers on the host for acceleration, and you do a normal update, you need to reboot to make those drivers work again. You shouldn't need to, but something in Oracle's DKMS driver building process removes the existing drivers for some reason.
If the kernel is replaced while running, the new kernel modules should be loadable immediately and there will only be a brief moment during which VirtualBox wouldn't work.
Ubuntu Pro also provides updates to software packages that weren't maintained before the introduction to Ubuntu Pro (the Universe packages) so it's probably not a bad idea to enable it.
If you don't log in, you'll get the same experience Ubuntu always had before Pro was introduced, which includes the possibility of VirtualBox being broken until you reboot. This isn't Canonical sabotaging your wife's computer, it's just how some updates go down on Ubuntu.
Completely agree on MS. Would not agree on Linux being friendly on the desktop.
I find Apple to be the best for me on the desktop and also family. I use linux on servers, work ...
> Given MS being horribly anti-user these days, monetizing each user to be farmed like cattle and Apple's massive anti-consumer malicious compliance to any legal rulings, more people should be considering Linux.
Apple is the farthest thing from "anti-consumer".
Let's find one company that takes security in any way shape or form as seriously. Name one company that consistently picks up the phone. What device are we going to give to my dad, or my less than stellar relatives... (do you want to be their linux support line?).
>> More and more I don't understand the desire or need to generate revenue for companies that treat you like dumb cattle.
The apple tax: what your family gives to apple because they aren't going to pay you for support.
Honestly I'd love to do this but I'm getting too old to argue with Linux on the desktop. The apps I want don't exist on the platform (Adobe mostly) and the high DPI and fractional scaling is a mess. On top of that the desktop user interface, whichever desktop you use is quite frankly terrible.
I'm just using a Mac as a terminal for an EC2 instance where I do all the software dev now.
Fractional scaling on KDE + Wayland is working pretty well for me. I came from Windows, then macOS, I have been very happy with KDE.
Adobe is an issue, there are many analogs though. In place of Photoshop you could use Photopea, Krita, GIMP. That said I understand that people generally love their Adobe apps.
KDE is reasonable but the problem is that not all toolkits are made equal. If you have to fire up something that uses Gtk, which is somewhat inevitable, it really pokes you in the eyes.
I tend to use Adobe stuff because it is literally a decade ahead of the closest open source software and is not expensive on a monthly basis for what you get. I could not get close to what I do with open source software. I have tried. I mean just the AI denoise in Adobe Lightroom can't be touched by anything. I wish it could. And I wish I could contribute to something open source to do that but I'm not good enough at it :)
On this particular issue Firefox-on-windows is unlikely to be a solution. If they can and are doing it to Chrome on Windows they can to Firefox too. It might be more work as Edge doesn't share a codebase with Firefox like it does with Chrome, but unless FF is somehow encrypting everything in a way that blocks MS⁰ it won't be particularly difficult.
--
[0] Likely impossible. Even making it difficult enough to slow MS if they had the intention is likely completely impractical.
It's the other way around. Trying to search for problems with Stable is more difficult because potential fixes require things your OS doesn't have yet.
I haven't much had this problem with Debian Stable.
For awhile, there would be a thing with people using, say, JS libraries, and they'd want to Stack Overflow copy&paste something. But the more reckless of those people just ended up bypassing Debian with NPM or some other language-specific package manager. And less-reckless people can decide when they can just use Debian or have to pull select bits of software some other way.
Because I use computers to do things, and Windows is the right tool for the job in the vast majority of cases.
No, please don't suggest Linux or FOSS alternatives. They are all dead on arrival. I need Office, not LibreOffice. I need Photoshop, not GIMP. I need Illustrator, not Inkscape. I want Windows, not Proton.
Thanks to the magic of exploitative business models, you'll soon be able to run all of those via your Linux web browser for just $99.99 a month, and not long after that'll be the only option remaining.
I don't care if the code is closed or open, because I use computers to do things. Computers are tools to let me achieve things, thusly I care about the results and not about the process (eg: closed vs. open).
I don't care to computer either, because that's not what I consider computers to be at my point in life. I use tools, not tool tools.
Computers are tools to run software. Software is what makes (or breaks) the computer a useful tool. A computer without software is just as useful as a lump of pig iron: handy as a paper weight but no more.
Closed software which locks your data in its grasp may be OK for some purposes but in the long run it nearly always ends up causing problems - try opening an older Word file in current Word [1] for an example of such.
Tool users with any sophistication almost always need to make modifications or repairs to their tools. Buying tools that make that impossible seems foolhardy to me. That you don't see things this way is interesting to me. Some people are happy eating the slop that's served to them with no interest in even seasoning it themselves. Strange to me, but to each his own.
Linux and FOSS alternatives require me to spend more time fixing and managing them rather than using them. That is unacceptable to me; computers are tools, if I can't use the tools when I need or want them they have fundamentally failed their purpose.
I'm an adult with duties and responsibilities and limited time now, not a naive teenager with too much time, too little money, and a bad case of acne. I simply do not have the time, energy, nor will anymore.
Note: Also, I'm cursed. I've killed more Linux installs (barring Android) than I can bother to count at this point, for something as bluntly mundane as updating them. I cannot rely on Linux (again barring Android).
Do I really need to spell out the fact that computers are a means to an end? Not the end to a means?
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised given the HN audience, but come on. Ordinary people use computers because they need or want to do something, and a computer will help them do it.
Computers are not a means to an end any more. Computers are the end to a means since the ordinary user has no more choice not to use a computer at all. Ordinary people in 2020's use computers because a computer is the God, not because the man wants to run some program on it.
> Ordinary people in 2020's use computers because a computer is the
> God, not because the man wants to run some program on it.
Good point. Is something a tool still if the user has no choice but to
use it?
Certainly it is no longer "an extension of the mind-body and will" as
some philosophers define "tool".
Is it a crutch? And does that imply that we have become "disabled" or
are now "differently abled but dependent"?
I think the GP's appeal to simple dignity of labour and clear purpose
troubles me for other reasons though.
All tools shape their users, and none more-so than a computer. So much
indeed that I think it deserves a different status. It's a different
quality of tool than a hammer. Today, it very much uses you in equal
measure to you using it.
Calling computers (mere) tools seems a little dismissive.
And in that regard I think the GP shows a typical nonchalance around
what they _think_ is their (very mysterious and serious) "doings".
When a system already defines all the possibilities for what you can
make and do, and these days it even curates, censors, "corrects" and
extrapolates for you... what is left of that glorious will to action
(doing)?
Has it been magnified such that it's "AIA" = AI aligns with IA
(artificial intelligence is aligned with intelligence amplifications)
and the tool is a lever (bicycle) for the mind?
Or are we cranking the handle on a auto-cookie-cutter machine that
gives a choice of three shapes? That can feel a lot like "doing" stuff
too.
The closer one is to that kind of "doing on rails" the more vulnerable
to being replaced by a robot/algorithm.
OTOH, remembering how to see computers as engines of possibility
rather than certainty again (as Ada Lovelace did), seems to me more
where humans fit with computers. YMMV
Yeah sorry I didn't mean to be rude other than to josh you about
mysterious "doings".
You made it sound like they were somehow special, like, I dunno,
particle physics that could only run on a custom quantum computer.
Now you're specific, looks like those are all perfectly normal and
ordinary things, right?
I also had to use a very specialist CAD system. In those days the only
things it would run on were Sun Microsystems and HP Unix boxen.
Other than Microsoft's monopoly grip, and your need to interface with
other use ^H^H^Hvictims of that monopoly, is there any reason you
wouldn't try a friendlier, more socially conscious solution?
I mean, I would first point out Linux and FOSS aren't a "friendlier" solution.
Daring to ask about a problem will inevitably devolve into "You're committing heresy." and getting taken for a ride about changing my entire process and environment when that was never my inquiry nor even desirable.
As for socially conscious: Paying for good, practical software that serves my needs is a good thing. Both for myself and the developers, a win-win.
FOSS has a social contract problem. There are many open source developers who need/want money for their labor who get shut down and even coerced into free-as-in-beer for daring to ask for compensation, and many more project derelicts strewing the land abandoned due to lack of resources.
You remind me typical pro-Russian men who claim they are non-interesting in politics with no realizing their choice "not to be interested in politics" is a pro-war choice.
Some of us just want to get shit done and surprisingly there are products out there which you can exchange for money that allow you to get stuff done. I've found you can generally trade time or money to get stuff done and a lot of the time, money is much cheaper.
Recently I needed to de-duplicate 150,000 photographs from my dead father's NAS. I spent about 3-4 days trying to find an OSS solution that did the job and actually worked unsuccessfully. In the end I found some proprietary software (PhotoSweeper) that did the job in a couple of hours and cost $10
You claim to need a computer while rooting for what is essentially becoming a cloud terminal - odd. If you need a computer, get one. If you're happy with a cloud terminal then say so and continue using Windows.
You say that you use computers to do things, then mention not the things that you do but rather the tools that you prefer. That's fine, I also use the tools that I am familiar with. But you should know that other tools exist that do these same things.
Then the article is.. not newsworthy I guess. These things are meant to be: "I will still give them money and expect them to do better, no matter what they do".
Metaphorical you of course. Parent does not want to run it. I believe this is a moral error and a coordination failure, and that saying a computer that is out of your control is "more of a computer" while a computer that actually does what you say is a 'toy' is disingenuous.
It is an unfortunate fact that you pay for freedom with effort. IDK if it ever was not so.
- You can only run Windows safely on a machine disconnected from the internet and your internal network.
- If you have nothing of value, like if all you have is just some games, you could run Windows on bare metal, but make sure to shield your internal network from it.
- Running anti-virus on what is essentially a really nasty virus makes no sense, as are the various tweak tools that give you a false sense of security.
100% this. For me Windows has become an unfortunate necessity just due to gaming (Please don't try to tell me I can just game on Linux, I want my games to work every time and I don't want to deal with Proton).
Even going so far as installing Windows 10 LTSC on my steam deck and it has been amazing. Better performance, battery life, no annoying features, etc.
I am looking forward to Windows 11 LTSC to come out to get some improvements, but I have not had any issues with gaming on Windows 10 LTSC.
Proton is a dream nowadays. It seems to get 10x better every year. The problem is that there are some popular games that use a kernel-level anti-cheat that will never work in Proton. Honestly, I think the best option is just to not buy those games in order to disincentivize their bad behavior. Yes, I'm fine with never playing Fortnite if it means never having to deal with Windows again.
It isn't just kernel level anti-chat, while yes that is an easy thing to point the finger at and valid.
It is also just the chance of a game making some random change that has nothing to do with Anti cheat and that breaking the proton compatibility, this happened with Halo Infinite and others.
The ease of proton also goes out the window once you leave Steam and SteamOS. There are various things out there but if you own games on other platforms it does take more work which is a barrier for non technical people.
Don't get me wrong, Proton is a great piece of technology. But it is still a compatibility layer that will never be perfect. A layer that I don't have to even think about on Windows, everything just works.
Yeah I’ll pass on games that essentially want to install spyware only to be forced always online anyways. Never have to deal with that issue on indie games.
If you want avoid using activation scripts, build an enterprise ISO with UUPDump and then use vlmcsd to activate it. All I can say is that way has worked for about 5 years so far with no issues...
Basically you can get normal Windows already without paying from Microsoft itself. But on this site they also publish Windows LTSC ISOs which you can not get directly from Microsoft unless you are an Enterprise.
Plus, the scripts allow you to activate all of these Windows version and I think also Microsoft Office.
The script is abusing bugs that are long known but not fixed. And Microsoft does not seem to care, as the script is hosted on GitHub (which is owned by Microsoft) since a long time.
The repository also has ~60k stars, so it isn't "secret" that this exists.
LTSC was the best version, but now apps are starting to require specific release versions of windows. The current Windows 10 LTSC is based on Windows 10 21H2, and will not be updated beyond that. Ableton 12 for example requires Windows 10 22H2.
So until Windows 11 LTSC is released, I have been using Windows 11 Pro Education. It seems to be almost as good as LTSC (ships without most of the bloatware), but allows you to run a current version of Windows.
Windows 11 still feels much slower than Windows 10, even on a modern system clicking on the wifi icon takes 1-2 seconds for the window to open and then you can see elements of the window load. Opening file explorer is the same. This a fresh install on a Ryzen 6800H laptop with a fast NVME SSD. Then there are all the popups asking me to use OneDrive, Edge, Etc. Truly a terrible OS.
I'm curious if Ableton 12 actually requires 22H2 or just is only supported.
I was struggling with what to do with this recently on my wife's PC. I don't care for 11, she isn't interest in linux and 10 drops support in 2025 for regular editions. I went with enterprise LTSC iot because I figured that the support problems probably won't amount to much until after 2025 anyway. That version goes to 2032 of security updates but I suspect the install won't last that long regardless.
My computer was last upgraded 11 years ago (I had to do some trickery to be able to install Win 11) It obviously has specs dwarfed by yours. The wifi icon appears the instant I click. Freshly installed whenever Win 11 was available.
The problem is that it also doesn't the fix for what is broken, for instance the start menu was unusable for half of the life of win10 (was hanging every time you opened it).
Windows server is a similar alternative but has the same problem than LTSC.
I fairly strongly disagree, gaming on Linux has come a long way but you are still at a mercy of a compatibility tool like Proton.
So if a game updates breaks something or the dev just happens to add something that isn't compatible (which has happened enough to make it here) than you may not be able to play the game you want until it is fixed.
Also add in that if you are not on SteamOS and you want to play games outside of Steam it is more difficult for non technical people (or just people who are not as up to speed on that part of Linux).
It really isn't there for most people when you can run Windows (like the LTSC version that I do) and have no compatibility issues.
But not every game runs on Linux. And there are games I like to play with friends that aren't on Linux, so for better or worse I'm stuck with Windows for gaming.
And that's not to speak of VRR issues, essentially no HDR support, etc.
Agreed, there's no reason to go through crazy hoops to use an OS made by a vendor that repeatedly and openly works against the user at every step of the way.
I say this as someone that doesn’t care in the slightest about gaming OR Windows. I just fail to see what this “pretend that a vendor that you don’t like isn’t offering anything of value” attitude ever does for anyone. It certainly doesn’t add to the conversation in any meaningful way.
That’s quite some euphemism for describing a vendor that steals sensitive user data, bombards users with ads, and pulls all sorts of tricks to force users into submission. They’re even stealing IMAP credentials [1], and I’m just stunned that they can pull that off without fear of criminal prosecution. Windows is hostile, unreliable, and unfit for any purpose.
But people are supposed to turn a blind eye because of some diminishing advantage the OS has in gaming? At what point can one be allowed to say no?
For one, I missed the game bar, for its convenient background recording capability. So what I did is I re-enabled the Store, and then download the game bar with it.
Better support for scheduling on Intel’s heterogeneous cores (≥12th gen CPUs) and AMD’s aggressive dynamic frequency scaling (Ryzen 7040) isn’t coming to Windows 10 ever, from what I understand.
I had driver issues, the nvidia drivers refused to install on LTSC due to "system too old" error. True, at the time it was very new laptop, and it would probably work fine if I tried it now.
I did this for a while. I ran into something that was unfixable. It was quite a few years ago and my memory is hazy. But it was games related and I couldn't run something due to missinf DLLs and not being able to install a fix (or just paste in the required DLLs). I eventually gave up. I tried for days to find a work around. Shame, because it is a much better experience.
There are several ISO dumps available on the internet that you can download untouched LTSC images from. You can check the hashes from the official Microsoft support site if you need to be sure.
I can understand that it sounds extreme, but I am sincere about it. These are not merely missteps. There is an extremely long trail (just search MS news) where it has become crystal clear that MS knows not any boundary in principle. MS acts like the computer and its data as its own, the user is just a hostage. (Even in a dual boot setup MS keeps setting Windows as default boot option). The amount of telemetry, browsing history and what not that MS pumps out of your devices is mind boggling.
The tech savy user has limited control about that. And they need to stay vigilant because each update can introduce new attacks on their privacy or security.
You should not trust such an actor. I did the math and moved over to Linux completely.
Every modern CPU can do this, but they don't, unless explicitly configured to do so. We know this because it would have been news already if they do. Network activity is suspicious. And Intel ME has been with us for 16 years now!
When Intel proposed the CPUID in the Pentium III, everyone panicked. I felt confident that, if there were nefarious things happening at that level, people would have figured it out. After many months of hand-wringing in the tech spaces of the time (/., et. al.), people started waking up to the fact that Intel had, in fact, already buried the CPUID in the Pentium II all along, and "we" had already been "had." Moral of the story: do not ever trust that "it would have been news already," for anything.
I don't trust the media fully either, but I think that if a proper remote execution vulnerability would have been found, and also exploited en masse, that would surely make the news. And if there wasn't, for 16 years, then I think we can assume that the thing is not more rickety than the rest of human constructed reality.
Also, please note that the discussion is not about possibility. It was explicitly stated that "Every modern CPU does this", and here, "this" refers to "calls home with full access to your everything". Now, that is patently false.
This has never been seen to work.
At the very least, it only has direct access to the built in ethernet adapter.
Communicating with say wifi would be quite difficult, it would need to steal the wifi credentials from any variety of currently running OS, future proof for whatever tricks says Linux does with wifi drivers.
So does this mean we should completely surrender and forget about any privacy and security? By the way, my Librem 15 has a disabled and neutralized Intel ME.
Imagine being CISO or any other high level manager doing information security, and your entire corporation runs Microsoft workstations.
Every week there's a new headache to keep you awake at night; did you pay those leeches enough for an enterprise license that doesn't silently exfiltrate all your employees' data? Will they roll out the latest greatest data vacuuming feature to your install base? Fun times!
I think Microsoft is one of those 'no one got fired for buying...' companies.
A Microsoft data breach is a Microsoft data breach. Your boss - the CEO, won't know what else you could have done, it's Microsoft, right?
Something goes wrong with your 'weird Linux-whatever-that-is-mumbo-jumbo', that you dragged the company into? Well then yeah it's your neck on the line. Sadly.
There's a good chance your company already enforces Edge as the only browser in the first place if your company is all-in on Windows. It's fully integrated into existing Group Policy management tools and is secure and compatible enough to be used for web browsing, unlike Internet Explorer 11.
Also, in general, Windows Professional is a lot more respectful towards users. Edge still nags you all the time, but it doesn't do most of the terrible shit that happens to the consumer version.
This behavior is in fact limited to "consumer" Windows 11 SKUs (so Home and Pro), and also disables when using Pro domain-joined. But bet on it migrating to the business SKUs eventually.
Bingo. Microsoft is careful to only screw consumers who don't know any better (they already surrendered their personal data and ownership of their digital purchases and devices to Google, Meta, Amazon, Apple, Sony, Samsung, etc. what's one more?) and to not fuck over their most loyal cash cow (businesses).
There is a large segment of crossover where small non-IT centric companies will run it on whatever was on sale at their local reseller and a couple of Cloud services for CRM and accounting and no IT staff/policy.
For those to sign up with a Microsoft partner and buy into the full packet could be an significant market, Though it could end up a net loss for MS if this segment start to go Chromebook in a major way the way a lot of school districts did.
>There is a large segment of crossover where small non-IT centric companies will run it on whatever was on sale at their local reseller and a couple of Cloud services for CRM and accounting and no IT staff/policy.
Sure, but even small businesses get Office 365 nowadays and that automatically unlocks your home/pro edition of Windows into a business one, the movement you sign in with your company Office 365 account.
If you go for Google Workspaces instead of Office 365 then that's another matter entirely.
I think your making the assumption that business user means someone sitting st a desk with a PC writing letters in word or doing calculations in excel and not someone with a shovel doing gardening or driving a van around.
For the average small business the only thing they cant do on their smartphone is file their taxes or interact with whatever bookkeeping/banking system their accountant ashed them to use. And the only applications they have is whatever came preinstalled on the acer laptop they bought from the local big box store.
For MS and their partners the goal is to actually sign them up with an business account through an MSP, which might not be the rational thing for any small service sector business to do as there is nothing in the o365 that will aid them in performing the services they sell to their customers.
Consumers can easily get the Pro edition instead of Home. There used to be even a update purchase link in some control.exe applet.
It is the Enterprise and LTSC editions, that consumers do not have access to. But for the purposes above, Pro is enough (and most popular in business).
There's Home, Pro, Enterprise (E3, E5); with variants for N (no media) and Education. That's it.
Enterprise doesn't have Appstore crap preinstalled, and has some features that you wouldn't want at home anyway (it is enteprise-oriented crap instead). Not every business runs Enterprise edition.
My experience working at companies using Linux machines to target Linux devices is that IT treat Linux as a headache or a toy OS. They like Windows. They like being able to give you an antivirus that cripples any compilation. They like being able to ignore fine-grained resource management - everyone needs to be a superuser to get anything done, anyway.
Buying McDonald's food does not make it legal for them to poison you. Buying Microsoft's OS does not make it legal for them to break antitrust law. Again.
But while you can just switch to another fast food chain of your choice, doing so with an operating system and losing years worth of experience + potentially paid software (games) is not something most people will choose to do on their own.
Help the ppl out, Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39179929