[HN Gopher] Microsoft tests Windows account menu error badge whe...
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Microsoft tests Windows account menu error badge when Microsoft
Account not used
Author : tech234a
Score : 105 points
Date : 2023-04-04 17:45 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| Phelinofist wrote:
| Totally unrelated, but why is the twitter logo the dog if
| dogecoin?
| samspenc wrote:
| Some news reports on this:
| https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-news-today-04-...
|
| https://www.engadget.com/twitter-is-covered-in-doge-for-no-d...
| TobTobXX wrote:
| > The Twitter press email, meanwhile, returned a poop emoji
| when Engadget sent a comment request.
|
| wild.
|
| Though audacious, it completely lacks style and wit and thus
| is just rude and abrasive.
| theodric wrote:
| That's automated, apparently
| torh wrote:
| I guess you have to ask Elon Musk...
| butt____hugger wrote:
| [flagged]
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| To commemorate Elon's attempt to dismiss the SEC lawsuit last
| week (or at least try to out-SEO the news about it). Dogecoin
| has also gone up a lot since the change.
| xg15 wrote:
| I can understand the outrage over dark patterns, but I think you
| could also view this change from a different perspective:
| Microsoft makes it clear that long/medium term they want to make
| Microsoft accounts mandatory to use Windows and view local
| accounts as a legacy exception which should be progressively
| eliminated. If you follow that assumption, it's perfectly logical
| to see a local account as an "error".
|
| So if the roadmap is that clear, I think the better question is
| why people go still along with it and keep using Windows.
|
| Or alternatively: Why are software companies allowed to just make
| those decisions, even it could potentially disrupt the work of
| millions of users.
| rurp wrote:
| > I think the better question is why people go still along with
| it and keep using Windows.
|
| The reason investors and CEOs love monopolies and oligopolies
| so much is that they don't have to care about users, they can
| abuse them as much as they want.
|
| Windows machines are the only affordable option for millions of
| people so they have to keep using it, no matter how much they
| hate Microsoft. Governments should be less tolerant of
| important companies that abuse their power.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"I think the better question is why people go still along with
| it and keep using Windows."
|
| I've been using Windows for almost 30 years now, and while I've
| given different distros of Linux and MacOS an honest try, I am
| never as comfortable or as fluent with them as I am with
| Windows. I know there is an extensive amount of customization
| that can be done with Linux to get it _really close_ but it
| just isn 't the same.
|
| I'm also at the level where I am comfortable enough with gpedit
| and regedit that as long as there is a way to turn _most_ of
| the annoying and onerous "features" off, I can keep on
| truckin'. For instance, disabling Cortana in the start menu.
| [deleted]
| citrin_ru wrote:
| > I think the better question is why people go still along with
| it and keep using Windows
|
| A lot of non-open source desktop software available only for
| Windows and MacOS. While I dislike MacOS less than Windows 10
| or especially 11, MacBook is more expensive than Windows
| notebook or mini-PC.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > why people go still along with it and keep using Windows
|
| Because it's often the _only_ option in the corporate world.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| And this is probably the fate of Windows in the long run: a
| desktop operating system for corporations.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| Windows will be the reason for Linux overtaking the gaming
| and home desktop market.
|
| They'll pull a 180 right around Windows 13 when linux OS is
| released that works by default with 95% of games and 95% of
| hardware takes 20% of the desktop market.
| dark-star wrote:
| the funny thing is: In corporate editions of Windows, you can
| easily disable all that crap via GPOs.
|
| It's only the home-users that get hit by this....
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >why people go still along with it and keep using Windows.
|
| Because Windows runs Win32.
| sys32768 wrote:
| I support a Windows site and am wishing I could retire before the
| Windows 10 end of support in Q4 2025. My only hope is that
| Windows 11 becomes 12 by then and resembles something like
| Windows 9 might have been.
|
| I understand goat farming done right can provide a living, but I
| also understand there's not a restart button on goats.
| badrabbit wrote:
| You know, I with most of you on being against this. I will always
| use offline accounts myself but for regular folks there is a
| security advantage to having an MS monitored and access
| controlled account, especially for people that reuse passwords.
| But then again an online account is easy to phish and then
| pathways open up to control the windows device.
| chinathrow wrote:
| If this shit persists, I'm going to convert the three last
| systems I support to Linux - enough is enough.
| ok_dad wrote:
| My wife couldn't get along with Linux, but I'm trying to get
| her to at least get an Apple computer next time. At least Apple
| is a half-decade behind the other companies that are shoving
| ad-filled crapware into their OSes (MS, Google) and hopefully
| by the time iOS/OSX are merged and start getting ads and stuff
| in them and disallowing you from installing unapproved
| binaries, I can have trained her to use a Linux-like software
| and then move her onto Linux and never have to deal with that
| shit again. My son will use nothing but Linux on his computers
| once he's older.
| hbn wrote:
| It should make a buzzing noise every 5 minutes and pop up an
| alert window over the center of the screen, some people might not
| see that.
| zokier wrote:
| Huh, I didn't know you even could run Win11 without MS account.
| simse wrote:
| I'm annoyed that Windows named my user account hello.. because my
| email is hello@simse.io.
| hbn wrote:
| For a while now they've made the default user account name by
| truncating the first 5 letters of your email (so if your email
| starts with 'robert' your username will be 'rober'), and to
| stop this you need to do a weird workaround where you dodge
| some UI tricks that get you to login with your Microsoft
| account so you can create a local user account with a name of
| your choice.
|
| I believe when I setup my recent machine I had to be
| disconnected from the internet to be able to complete setup
| without a Microsoft account.
| donmcronald wrote:
| I hate it. I _always_ set up my Windows PCs with an offline admin
| account and normal user accounts for day-to-day work. Some of
| those I log in with my Microsoft account(s). Some I don't. It
| depends on what _my needs_ are.
|
| Encouraging everyone to use one administrator, do everything
| account just because it makes it easier for Microsoft to push
| their services seems pretty pathetic to me. Toss in the per-
| profile licensing and activation for Office, etc. and it's
| obvious Microsoft doesn't care about security if it gets in the
| way of sales.
| imran-iq wrote:
| > It depends on what my needs are.
|
| Unfortunately Microsoft/windows does not care what your needs
| are, it only cares about data collection and ads.
|
| I recently had to install windows in a vm because I could not
| get adobe reader working through wine. The install process was
| awful:
|
| * Dark pattern to try and force me to login with a MS account
| during setup
|
| * Majority of setup steps pertain to data collection and/or ads
|
| After setting it up, I had to open up edge to download and
| install adobe reader, once again
|
| * Nags me to login to an account
|
| * Most if not all setup steps are about ads and data collection
|
| All for the sake of filling out some pdfs. I am truly grateful
| that Valve is pushing proton as it makes me (almost never) have
| to leave linux.
| chankstein38 wrote:
| Oh yeah, go try to install Chrome through edge on that new
| setup. Windows alerts like 3-4 times during the process that
| Edge IS Chromium and stuff trying to keep you using their
| browser. I am not about to start using a browser that has
| special backdoors to annoy me when I try to do things that it
| doesn't approve of...
| Dalewyn wrote:
| To be fair to Microsoft, Edge _is_ Chromium.
|
| The only difference between Edge and Chrome is choosing who
| you want your data to go to and your ads to come from:
| Microsoft or Google.
| ketralnis wrote:
| "To be fair" these facts are 100% irrelevant to whether
| my computer should do wtf I tell it to do.
|
| You tell your car to drive to a cafe and it tells you
| that caffiene is bad for you and you should go to
| McDonald's instead. I give zero shits about whether it's
| true or not, it's nobody's goddamn business where I want
| to drive.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Whether it's Edge or Chrome it's going to sell you their
| respective vendor.
|
| Meanwhile, both Edge and Chrome are Chromium.
| HnUser12 wrote:
| I was also trying to install windows 11 on a VM to do some
| one off work. It was next to impossible to create a local
| account with internet connection on. I had to restart my
| installation process with Internet disconnected. And even
| after I installed, I realized how many times it asks me to
| login. Even desktop features like widgets need login.
| imran-iq wrote:
| > I had to restart my installation process with Internet
| disconnected.
|
| No way! Thankfully I went for windows 10 which did not need
| me to unplug the internet (just a hidden option down to the
| side), but that's just awful.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| It's even worse after you manage to install it: in
| Windows 11 the remove the option to ungroup application
| windows on the taskbar. So if you want find that specific
| windows, you need to first hover with your mouse over the
| single app tab, wait until it shows the windows, and pick
| up the right one. People are getting mad about this.
| crimsontech wrote:
| Not to mention the massive taskbar taking up a huge chunk
| of your monitor without a way to resize it. Why is it so
| big?
| codedokode wrote:
| > It was next to impossible to create a local account with
| internet connection on.
|
| And without Internet connection you cannot even reach the
| step to create an account.
| fencepost wrote:
| If you're using Windows Pro there should be an option for
| "Domain Join." If you select that it'll have you create a
| local account that's admin (so maybe don't make it your day
| to day account) because domain join is not actually done
| during the OOBE.
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| I guess Microsoft didn't learn anything from Internet Explorer.
| When the thought leaders dump your product, no one else will want
| it either.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| It's a lot easier to switch browsers than it is to switch
| operating systems.
| donmcronald wrote:
| I'd say Edge is a better comparison for that.
|
| I used Edge (logged in) + Bing for 3+ years and recently
| switched back to Firefox. When it was new, Edge was great. It
| was a Google free Chromium browser that integrated with my MS
| account and got out of my way.
|
| Now Edge is a bloated piece of trash because Microsoft can't
| stop jamming crap into it.
| moogly wrote:
| Firefox also bugs you about signing in to Firefox Sync or
| Pocket or trying to upsell you their VPN.
| ok_dad wrote:
| I don't ever see any nagging by Firefox, except for the
| first time I installed it and a few tabs popped up to tell
| me about certain features or when a big new feature is
| released and they pop a tab up for that feature. I think
| those are pretty reasonable.
| moogly wrote:
| They do it on updates too. Not every time, but every few
| ones.
| vidanay wrote:
| I jumped from Chrome to Edge ~3 years ago, and ever since it
| has been a steady downward trend with each release. I
| switched back to FF a couple weeks ago when the giant Bing
| Button appeared and can't be easily removed.
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| From the screenshot, it doesn't even look like there's a way to
| get rid of the "error message"... short of doing what Microsoft
| wants.
|
| Anyone who works at Microsoft brave enough to comment...?
| donmcronald wrote:
| > Anyone who works at Microsoft brave enough to comment...?
|
| What would they even say? "Yeah, we think our users are stupid
| and we don't respect them, so we use dark patterns to dupe the
| suckers into giving us PII and $$."? It's intentional deceit by
| Microsoft IMO.
|
| It's the same thing with OneDrive. If you don't set up OneDrive
| you get nagged by the "security" center that your files are at
| risk because they're not "backed up". However, OneDrive isn't a
| backup. It's sync and, if you factor in files-on-demand, can
| end up being the only copy of users' files. I wouldn't consider
| the only copy of my files a "backup", but most users don't
| understand, so Microsoft is happy to stretch the truth (aka
| lie) to get people using OneDrive so they can convert them into
| subscribers.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Cloud storage is a de-facto backup for 95% of computer users.
| Most of them have a versioning system or time-travel system
| to see old versions for a few weeks or a year. I used
| OneDrive for a while and they also have a nice system for
| detecting encryption malware, and will notify you if it
| detects that a ton of regular files were deleted and then a
| bunch of new encrypted files were added. It's not the worst
| service in the world, and it does act as an effective backup
| for most cases for most users, especially considering that it
| takes no time at all to setup. A super reliable backup system
| is a hard thing to keep up with for most people, and you
| can't usually just set it and forget it like you can with
| cloud storage.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Anyone at Microsoft with integrity left a long time ago. All
| that are left are those willing to implement stuff like this
| because it pays the bills and don't really care enough about
| users to even bother with malicious compliance.
|
| It's why Windows 10 will be my last Windows.
| guessmyname wrote:
| > _Anyone who works at Microsoft brave enough to comment...?_
|
| Approximately 200,000 people work at Microsoft, and I can
| assure you that the vast majority do not hold the authority to
| make decisions like this. In reality, I suspect that many of
| them view this kind of user interface/user experience as
| unfriendly and express their concerns to higher-ups, but
| without any influence, they may never see any improvements.
|
| Given this fact, I would recommend rephrasing your request to
| call for a Microsoft executive to clarify this decision.
| However, you probably already know the answer to that question:
| engagement, which leads to promotions, which leads to more
| money.
| theknocker wrote:
| [dead]
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| Yes. It would be nice to see one being honest behind the
| protection of a pseudonym.... even nicer if they slip some
| hints for how to toggle these nastygrams off.
| msthrw153352 wrote:
| The problem is most of us have enough clues on our primary
| accounts that it wouldn't look great badmouthing our
| employer to the degree I'm about to.
|
| I regularly feel disgust at some of the decisions I see the
| OS and other consumer product teams roll out. It makes the
| company look bad, and I believe hurts our long term best
| interest by cheapening our product and brand, let alone the
| ethical perspective of dark pattern or depriving users
| control over their own devices.
|
| I know of no way to turn these off short of using an older
| version of Windows. I think some of the enterprise releases
| may have ways to create local accounts, but they may still
| hit this, I'm not familiar with that side of the world. If
| there is third party software to mitigate this I encourage
| it. If this drives you to linux I encourage and am
| encouraged by it. If you pirate out of protest I encourage
| it. Consolidation and other related factors in the OS
| marketplace have rendered consumers with very little real
| leverage, and this is not a state of affairs I am happy
| with.
|
| To guess's point, I can also say that I know of no
| coworkers happy with this or who have any power to impact
| this state of affairs. I am not in the OS org, but I would
| be surprised if it were any different there. To put it
| crudely, incentives are a bitch.
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| Thank you for going to the trouble of making a throwaway
| for possibly just this comment. I'm aware that employees
| currently don't have a lot of power, and of course
| consumers being wrangled with dark patterns means they
| don't have a lot of power either. Getting confirmation
| that the unpopular decisions can be laid squarely at the
| feet of executives does allow one to hold out hope for a
| more equitable future for consumer electronics.
| sieabahlpark wrote:
| [dead]
| r00fus wrote:
| At this point, I struggle to understand who still uses Windows
| for anything productive.
|
| If it's only for games, MS is going to be very disappointed when
| all of gaming moves to Linux/Wine/Proton.
|
| Unless I don't understand what's going on, I feel MS is on thin
| ice here (everything looks fine until it's simply not anymore).
| chankstein38 wrote:
| Ah, another thing to learn to ignore because everyone seems to
| think my attention is owned by them. These companies don't seem
| to realize that continuing to add these petty things will just
| make us learn to ignore them more and more. It's like
| notifications. My discord is always on no notifications and the
| @heres and stuff make my icon badge always say 9+ or whatever. So
| now I never see things people want to share because they've
| overused the alerts.
|
| Facebook was the same. I turned off notifications completely
| because I couldn't disable specific ones I didn't need so they
| started emailing me so I blocked them as spam. Sorry FB, your
| loss. My life is better without your garbage product anyway.
| jbj wrote:
| If you are on an android phone what supports shelter[1], I can
| recommend installing "social" apps inside the shelter, and just
| sleep the apps when you don't use them.
|
| In regards to windows, it feels to me as morphing into a
| solution for large corporations if disregarding the tabloid
| news while leaving private users just waiting for a friendly OS
| to be presented for them.
|
| [1] https://github.com/PeterCxy/Shelter
| chankstein38 wrote:
| I hadn't heard of Shelter before but this looks really neat!
| nullfield wrote:
| Not quite as good, but you can turn off background app
| refresh on iOS to cripple their ability to do anything,
| though I believe push notifications come via Apple's server
| anyway.
| s3p wrote:
| This 100%. I turn off notifications every time an app abuses
| them. Spotify wants to tell me about a random album I should
| listen to? Notifications blocked. Twitter recommends an account
| to follow? Notifs off. The pattern has continued to the point
| where I now do not get any social media notifications and I
| only see the app's content when I actively open it up and
| check. They waste our time so we disable their functionality.
| chankstein38 wrote:
| Right? Or the pattern of opening Spotify to find/listen to
| something, something pops up, I close it immediately without
| reading it because it's In My Way and never find out about
| what they were trying to tell me.
| nerdjon wrote:
| The more and more I see, the decision to finally install Windows
| 10 LTSC is more and more justified for my gaming PC.
|
| I have to wonder though how much of this stuff are they going to
| try to shove into Windows 11 LTSC when that comes out or are they
| going to continue the pattern of a lot of the shady stuff
| magically being missing from LTSC?
| shp0ngle wrote:
| LTSC is a godsend. Too bad all the licenses are either pirated
| or when real, crazy expensive.
| nerdjon wrote:
| There is a GitHub project that you may find valuable.
|
| But yeah, and it make sense. I mean Microsoft doesn't want to
| make it easy to strip out all of the crap they add in (or
| really never have it in the first place).
|
| Not that I am defending Microsoft since this is their own
| doing, but I can understand why LTSC is not... easy isn't the
| right word. Can't think of the word I am looking for.
|
| Edit: The best part is I have not noticed any downsides. I
| did have to install the Windows Store for the Xbox app but
| that still leaves a TON of stuff that isn't there.
| snazz wrote:
| If you're affiliated with a university or high school (or know
| a student who will help you out), you can get free Windows
| Server licenses through their Azure student/educator deal. Also
| includes all the fancy versions of Visual Studio, SQL Server,
| and education versions of Windows 10 and 11 (which include
| Group Policy).
| Alifatisk wrote:
| This is why I use Windows only for games, nothing else. They have
| little to no respect to their users because they no we have
| almost no other options (except macOS).
|
| When the day I am able to play the majority of my steam games on
| a Linux device, that's the day I say goodbye to Windows.
| sdze wrote:
| I wouldn't mind signing up if Microsoft Account was End to End
| Encrypted.
| solarkraft wrote:
| I still would.
|
| I would _accept it_ if providers other than Microsoft could
| offer the service.
| jeppester wrote:
| It really is a testament to the power of the Windows monopoly
| that MS can continously make the product worse without losing a
| meaningful amount of customers.
|
| Windows is more than ripe for disruption, but unfortunate the
| monopoly is enforced by drivers, productivity software, habit,
| gaming etc.
|
| It's depressing to think about how much better our computers
| could have worked if there had been real competition in the
| market of PC OSs for the last 25 years.
| gred wrote:
| It's all the little things. I just set up my first Linux /
| Windows dual boot laptop to ease my way out of Windows, but my
| day 1 experience with Linux involved disabling IPv6 so that I
| could get onto WiFi + internet, disabling the HiDPI daemon so
| that my screen resolution changes would persist across
| restarts, and wearing headphones most of the day because the
| laptop's external speakers don't work out of the box. The
| Apple-like "everything-included" model might work well for
| desktop Linux, but the Windows-like "BYO everything" model is
| still quite rough... and I don't see that changing because it's
| mostly hardware / driver-related, and there's a constant churn
| of new devices, chips and accessories.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| It's a classic tragedy of the commons: individual managers at
| Microsoft can abuse the reputation of their org for personal
| gain.
|
| All of these moves I call "KPI features", as in: "I have to
| make this worse to meet my personal bonus criteria, sorry."
|
| There are so many dark patterns in Windows now because of this.
|
| Nobody at Microsoft cares about the products at all any more.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| The antitrust action against Microsoft in the 90s didn't go far
| enough and should have split off the OS from the rest of the
| business.
| mlrubenews wrote:
| [dead]
| newaccount74 wrote:
| Oh god just like Apple keeps showing these annoying "unread"
| indicators to tell you to sign into iCloud or get one of their
| subscriptions....
| fatnoah wrote:
| I was just thinking that as one popped up just now. "Some
| account services will not be available until you sign in again"
| all day every day. Whenever I try to close it, it (of course)
| brings me to settings.
|
| Guess what? If I haven't used those services over the past 6
| years, I don't think I need them.
| [deleted]
| phone_book wrote:
| Yes! Incredibly annoying. Just checked my iPad and I had 2
| notification markers or whatever they are called (the number on
| the Settings app icon) telling me about "special offers" since
| I recently purchased an iPhone and one to set up Apple Pay. On
| my Mac when I wasn't signed into iCloud I would get occasional
| popups telling me to sign in. Thanks Tim Apple
| solarkraft wrote:
| I'm not signed into iCloud on the main account on my mac. It
| brings some annoyances but in general it works remarkably
| fine.
|
| One day I desperately needed something from the App store, so
| I made another account to sign in there. Ever since then I've
| been getting a "sign into you account" badge on my Settings
| app prompting me to remove it from the dock.
| dbg31415 wrote:
| You get the same sort of "error" message in iOS when you don't
| turn Siri on.
|
| It's annoying that these companies are all starting to use
| "error" messages like this.
| mrtksn wrote:
| You don't get an error message, you get a badge. The difference
| is that the it acts as a reminder and doesn't pretend that
| there's something wrong.
| Timon3 wrote:
| It probably depends a lot on the individual user. I know many
| people don't have a problem with pending notification badges,
| some colleagues literally always have a bunch. But personally
| it's a big distraction, because for me a notification badge
| means _I have something left to do_. At worst it is
| dismissing the pending notification, but I always stay at 0
| notifications in any apps or services that are running.
|
| It's been distracting enough that I didn't use my previous
| company iPhone, and it's distracting enough that I'll fully
| switch off Windows.
| wbkang wrote:
| You get a badge for the "System Settings" app for both on
| macOS & iOS. It's very distracting because there is no way to
| dismiss it, I had to unpin them from the dock.
| rewgs wrote:
| Strange, I have Siri completely disabled on Ventura and
| don't get a notification.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| You _can_ dismiss it by going to settings, tapping the
| prompt to set up Siri, then saying you 'll "do it later"
| (again). Annoying AF.
|
| What's been bugging me is that a recent update (16.2?)
| means there's no way to dismiss the "Set Up Cellular"
| prompt in Settings anymore on an iPhone with no SIM.
|
| All of this is, frankly, paternalistic bullshit that treats
| the user like some kind of idiot or sometimes "mark".
| stragies wrote:
| Does this also happen with Active-Directory domain accounts?
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