[HN Gopher] Edge sends images you view online to Microsoft
___________________________________________________________________
Edge sends images you view online to Microsoft
Author : 8organicbits
Score : 694 points
Date : 2023-06-12 15:40 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.neowin.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.neowin.net)
| AmenBreak wrote:
| [flagged]
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| 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.
| Havoc wrote:
| Brave is literally an ad funded company that made a pinky
| promise to only do good ad stuff.
|
| Boggles my mind that people view them as the solution to
| privacy
| deafpolygon wrote:
| Marketing.
| LordShredda wrote:
| Brave is chromium based, which immediately means it's not going
| to help with anything
| propogandist wrote:
| [dead]
| hot_gril wrote:
| 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.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Issues about telemetry and privacy are separate from issues
| with web client hegemony.
| freediver wrote:
| > Brave --- the easy way to fix this and lots of other privacy
| related issues affecting the most popular web browsers.
|
| Unfortunately any browser with telemetry turned on by default
| is not fixing privacy related issues, but is making them worse.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Brave is not serious about privacy. Firefox.
| kernal wrote:
| Firefox has telemetry and "run studies" turned on by default.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Nothing's perfect. Firefox is the least-bad of the
| available options, and it's pretty good.
| kernal wrote:
| So now we've gone from respecting the user privacy to
| "least bad". You're either for user privacy or you're
| not.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| I mean, I guess use lynx if you're that worried about it.
| Or use Firefox and spend 2 minutes customizing
| about:config.
|
| My point was just that Firefox is a lot better than
| Brave. I'll stand by that.
| kernal wrote:
| 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.
| Rapzid wrote:
| Brave --- Experience the websocket bugs of Safari but in a
| Chromium based browser!
| ShowalkKama wrote:
| librewolf is like brave but: - it's firefox - its defaults are
| saner - it has no crypto bullshit
| cesarb wrote:
| 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.
| johnfernow wrote:
| 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.
|
| 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36295837
| 10g1k wrote:
| https://brave.com/
| peoplearepeople wrote:
| How does this pass legal review?
| nomel wrote:
| What do you see as "illegal", with the very fair assumption
| that MS is competent, with legal matters?
| Merad wrote:
| 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.
| james_pm wrote:
| Edge would be my everyday browser if they would just stop with
| all this crap they keep adding that both causes bloat and also
| diminishes user privacy.
| WirelessGigabit wrote:
| 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.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| 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"
| masswerk wrote:
| Aren't there copyright concerns involved?
|
| 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.)
| EMCymatics wrote:
| Fuck Edge
| autoexec wrote:
| 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.
| aunetx wrote:
| And this option disabled by default of course
| dagaci wrote:
| 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.....
| xnx wrote:
| The super resolution "feature" is a pretense for the data
| collection. This is not accidental.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| I hope Microsoft is okay with looking at a lot of porn
| ranting-moth wrote:
| They're fine with it. Just be prepared to explain it to the FBI
| of your ever mistakenly pull into an investigation. They'll
| definitely get it from MS.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| Fbi? Not in my country. Oh, wait....
| 7373737373 wrote:
| So how can we remove this and other Microsoft spyware from our
| systems?
| mkup wrote:
| 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.
| propogandist wrote:
| [dead]
| malikNF wrote:
| Linux
| inversetelecine wrote:
| 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.
| otikik wrote:
| Avoid the whole OS entirely.
| perihelions wrote:
| _" Debian GNU/Linux Installation Guide_"
|
| https://www.debian.org/releases/bookworm/amd64/index.en.html
|
| _" Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M.
| Stallman"_
|
| https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/fsfs/rms-essays.pdf
| kevincox wrote:
| Use a different OS.
|
| 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.
| folugna37 wrote:
| [flagged]
| internet2000 wrote:
| 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.
| tgv wrote:
| You can start by switching to Firefox
| (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browsers/). It's a
| perfectly fine browser, good extensions.
| VancouverMan wrote:
| If a browser user is concerned about privacy, I don't see how
| Firefox is really all that much better of an option.
|
| Read the Firefox Privacy Notice, for example:
| https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/
|
| 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.
| mentalpiracy wrote:
| If I gotta pick a leaky bucket, I am going to pick one with
| a smaller hole.
| vntx wrote:
| 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 do miss Paint.NET though.
| BasedAnon wrote:
| Have you tried running Paint.NET under WINE?
| vntx wrote:
| I did actually, but it gave a massive amount of errors so
| -\\_(tsu)_/- it seems like I don't miss it that much.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| 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.
| hexo wrote:
| Simple, stop supporting website on this thing. Like many sites do
| with firefox for a long time already.
|
| We've been there with IE. With safari. Now its time do to it to
| edge.
| jmartrican wrote:
| 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.
| hot_gril wrote:
| 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.
| eulers_secret wrote:
| 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.
| graypegg wrote:
| > A media driver your computer needs is missing
|
| Oh how I remember the days of installing proprietary media
| codecs on Ubunt-... oh wait we're talking about Windows? In
| 2023?
| hot_gril wrote:
| > 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.
| javajosh wrote:
| _> 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.
| beodbdodbsk wrote:
| the only difference for osx is that apple leaves that data
| collection to when you try to download security updates for
| your apps.
|
| Microsoft at least let us get security updates without accounts
| aftet we dodge all that during install. apple doesn't. login or
| get out.
| hot_gril wrote:
| You don't need an account to update your OS, and you don't
| need to download apps from the Mac App Store (I never do).
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| > Forced me to make a Microsoft online account
|
| They actually don't quite force this. They just make it very
| difficult to find the option to use a local account instead.
|
| (Unless they've changed things for the worse since last time I
| installed windows. Very possible!)
| tredre3 wrote:
| 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.
| Strom wrote:
| > _On W11 you have to resort to more esoteric tricks, you
| can 't actually complete setup normally without network and
| a ms account._
|
| Maybe with the latest images, but I have an original W11
| RTM image that installs just fine without network and a MS
| account.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Probably you have the "Pro" version, which allows this.
|
| The Home version does not.
| star-glider wrote:
| 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.
| hot_gril wrote:
| > 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.
| mentalpiracy wrote:
| 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.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| > 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.
| hot_gril wrote:
| 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.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| Isnt this a dark pattern.
|
| I think you are apologizing for them if you say it wasnt
| forced. It sure feels forced.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| 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.
| speeder wrote:
| 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.
| bborud wrote:
| 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.
| deelowe wrote:
| 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.
| genewitch wrote:
| 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.
| intelVISA wrote:
| 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.
| hot_gril wrote:
| 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.
| belter wrote:
| In the unfortunate scenarios, where you need to use a Windows
| Install and or a VM never start without running through
| something like this:
|
| https://github.com/Sycnex/Windows10Debloater
|
| WARNING: Use at your own risk, no guarantees. Personally never
| broke anything for me.
| angry_moose wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://www.getblackbird.net/
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| > and never felt Linux was a worthwhile alternative on desktop
|
| ZorinOS (https://zorin.com/os) can hopefully change your
| perspective.
| hot_gril wrote:
| 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.
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| 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.
| yonatan8070 wrote:
| Pro tip: never give Windows internet access during setup.
|
| Windows 11 will not let you continue without an online account
| unless you use a tool like Ventoy which automatically bypasses
| it
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| Not fully true. There is a way to open command prompt and
| skip the account login and the entire setup
|
| https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/install-
| windows-11-witho...
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| How kind of Microsoft to allow us to skip such a critical
| step using command prompt.
| [deleted]
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| Edge keeps adding buttons and sidebars that I didn't ask for and
| don't want to take the time to keep or hide.
|
| Safari is a peaceful tenant.
| chasing wrote:
| _I don 't want my browser manipulating the content of websites I
| visit without me asking it to. At all._
| BasedAnon wrote:
| When are people going to grow a backbone and switch to Linux?
| It's kind of hard to feel sorry for tech-literate Windows users
| V__ wrote:
| 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.
| replaceusb wrote:
| 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.
| dustyharddrive wrote:
| > No binaries
|
| There are so many binary packaging formats available, almost
| to a fault.
| deafpolygon wrote:
| > When are people going to grow a backbone and switch to Linux?
|
| When Linux becomes an actual viable platform for getting work
| done.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| When my job starts supporting that?
| isoprophlex wrote:
| 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.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| I'm a lawyer, not a dev. It's a different world.
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| 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.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| 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.
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| 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.
| BasedAnon wrote:
| Unless you're struggling for money, would you seriously
| consider a job that expects you to be watched constantly by
| strangers?
| ss48 wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/24/podcasts/the-
| daily/workpl...
| dahwolf wrote:
| 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.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Here is how you disable that:
|
| 1. Go to your favorite search engine
|
| 2. Download a different browser
|
| 3. Never use Edge again
| acomjean wrote:
| 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.
|
| there is it, was not remembering wrong:
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/2/22813733/microsoft-window...
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| The pinnacle of psychopathy.
| noodles_nomore wrote:
| I can't believe Microsoft would do this, *huff* *puff*. What an
| outrage!
| noAnswer wrote:
| 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.
| moomoo11 wrote:
| windows is made for the average consumer. Makes sense MSFT would
| do everything they can to extract as much info about users.
| swader999 wrote:
| And we trust the guy to advise/pontificate/steer the health care
| and also the WHO.
| Camisa wrote:
| 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.
| vips7L wrote:
| This has never happened to me with Windows as a daily driver
| since 2014.
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| This has happened to me several times.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| Changing your M$ settings was basically my last straw.
|
| I fixed my Windows install to be perfect, took me hours.
|
| A few weeks later, it was reverted.
| spirit557 wrote:
| 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.
| jacooper wrote:
| I mean is it worse than chrome?
| doodlesdev wrote:
| Yes.
| crazygringo wrote:
| 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.
| Finnucane wrote:
| 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.
| lynx23 wrote:
| 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?!
| donmcronald wrote:
| 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.
| belter wrote:
| 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.
| dunham wrote:
| 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.
| trelane wrote:
| > switched to the web version of outlook
|
| I don't understand what you believe this gained you.
| dizhn wrote:
| It would decrease their bandwidth use, especially
| uploads. Much more efficient.
| dunham wrote:
| 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.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >Today it's obvious Microsoft can't be trusted.
|
| I trust Microsoft far more than I trust Google.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I trust them both to exactly the same degree.
| worrycue wrote:
| 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.
| joseph_b wrote:
| 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.
| AJ007 wrote:
| 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.
| burnte wrote:
| 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.
| netsharc wrote:
| 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 6000degC Nuclear Holocaust
| LoganDark wrote:
| > I was wondering if I could make a fake one, just add an
| appropriate icon and change its label to say something
| like 6000degC Nuclear Holocaust
|
| Dude, if you ever make this, post it to HN. I'd install
| that on my computer in a heartbeat.
| [deleted]
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| Rather naive to ignore Embrace/Extend/Extinguish, the dark
| patterns used to push Win10, the online account hassles, the
| practically buying-up of OpenAI...
| IgorPartola wrote:
| Reminder that MS owns GitHub, LinkedIn, and Mojang.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| >Mojang
|
| The real danger. (almost unironically though)
|
| 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.
| edgyquant wrote:
| There are no "Zelda clones" of compatible quality and
| intrigue.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| 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.
|
| [1] https://www.gamingbible.com/news/tears-of-kingdom-
| delayed-fo...
| marisnom wrote:
| 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
| highwaylights wrote:
| > Zelda clones so I don't don't need to pay games that
| are graded on the Nintendo Curve.
|
| Huh?
| fragmede wrote:
| Corrected:
|
| > 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.
| 4BynHmBFUxBD wrote:
| >Office is almost obsolete with google + free stuff
|
| Google is also a privacy nightmare tho...
| mikae1 wrote:
| Could you name some Zelda clones?
| pie420 wrote:
| Genshin Impact is basically a better version of BotW
| Shared404 wrote:
| And is also Gacha is it not?
|
| I'll take an up front cost any day over content
| gating/gambling/fomo.
| pxc wrote:
| The best ones it feels like an insult to call clones, but
| Tunic is a very good one that comes to mind.
| dmonitor wrote:
| Tunic is nothing like Zelda, except that both characters
| wear green and swing a sword. It's really good in its own
| way, though.
| pxc wrote:
| 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.
| blix wrote:
| There is a little more to the series at this point than
| the 30 years old Link to the Past.
| pxc wrote:
| That game is still great. Show some respect!
|
| 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.
| blix wrote:
| 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.
| jwitthuhn wrote:
| Not terribly recent, but Darksiders from 2010 is pretty
| good. Haven't seen anything else really comparable.
| theduder99 wrote:
| fenix rising is better than botw
| scrollaway wrote:
| LinkedIn could never be trusted anyway :)
|
| 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?
| JohnFen wrote:
| Yep, LinkedIn was always bad. But I don't trust GitHub or
| Mojang to any greater degree. They're all Microsoft, and
| will burn you sooner or later.
|
| > GitHub has not broken my trust in them yet.
|
| I abandoned GitHub as soon as MS bought it, but I think
| my choice was a good one. If I hadn't, then I would have
| felt betrayed by the copilot stuff.
| arcanemachiner wrote:
| > But what's the point in pre-empting it, exactly?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog
| [deleted]
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Vivaldi is my browser of choice due to sync, and because
| Firefox as much as I love it does not perform well when
| scrolling on mobile.
|
| Of course, Firefox has sync as well.
| johnnykree wrote:
| 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.
| basq wrote:
| 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%.
| dmvdoug wrote:
| 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_am_uncreative wrote:
| Firefox has sync, but it's opt-in, not opt out. You have to
| login.
| kbenson wrote:
| 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.
| dhimes wrote:
| I have no problems with FF mobile on iPhone.
| sangriafria wrote:
| Any browser on iOS is forced to use the Safari rendering
| engine. Firefox on Android is very different to iOS
| pmontra wrote:
| Yeah but I don't have any problem with Firefox on
| Android. I'm typing this on a Samsung A40.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| 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.
|
| It was annoying enough for me to make the switch.
| Melting_Harps wrote:
| > Today it's obvious Microsoft can't be trusted.
|
| Today?
|
| 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.
| silverbax88 wrote:
| 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.
| autoexec wrote:
| 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.
| silverbax88 wrote:
| 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.
| pxc wrote:
| 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.
| johnnykree wrote:
| 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.
| intelVISA wrote:
| It's a noble cause, congrats on freedom.
|
| If you feel adventurous you can eventually transcend dual
| boot to a VFIO setup that helps to keep your bare metal
| protected from Windows entirely.
| highwaylights wrote:
| 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).
| belter wrote:
| > The security model alone is an unfixable disaster (and
| many have tried over the years)
|
| Surely you are talking about Windows... :-)
| vorticalbox wrote:
| Linux isn't any better. Take any Debian based os download
| a .deb and double click it.
|
| It's executable by default, opens up in something like
| Eddie and just asks for a password.
|
| Nothing about Linux is really more secure than windows
| other than the fact it is a small target.
| belter wrote:
| 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.
| SR2Z wrote:
| Knowing the root password for a machine is meant to grant
| you full control over that machine...
|
| You literally just described an _.exe or_.msi.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| > is that M$
|
| https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2002/07/22/m
|
| 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._ "
| fknorangesite wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Today? We've had almost forty years of being taught that
| Microsoft can't be trusted about what they're doing in the
| background.
| zelifcam wrote:
| > Today it's obvious Microsoft can't be trusted.
|
| Umm. Should someone tell them?
| zeruch wrote:
| "Microsoft can't be trusted."
|
| Never could be.
| mihaaly wrote:
| 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.
| bboygravity wrote:
| 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.
| dizhn wrote:
| But but they have a privacy policy. (Same people lose it
| when you even mention a similar service from Russia or
| China)
| tester756 wrote:
| Is this naivety if they *trust* MS?
| nottorp wrote:
| > Today it's obvious Microsoft can't be trusted.
|
| 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?
| version_five wrote:
| 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)
| kernal wrote:
| 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.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Well, I remember they had the FAT patent, which each
| Android device needed. Was it more than that?
| kernal wrote:
| >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".
|
| https://www.m-cam.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2018/03/patently_ob...
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > With this disclosure, China may be attempting to
| counteract Microsoft's chokehold on the smartphone market
|
| This is a very strange statement!
|
| But thanks - appreciate the link. Not sure how the "media
| player in the taskbar" got in there, but that's patents
| for you.
| kernal wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-29505439
| Nemo_bis wrote:
| 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.
| r00fus wrote:
| See that's on-brand with the cutthroat ruthless billG
| company. So not ideal, but not surprising either.
|
| This is anti-customer and needlessly fraught with legal
| implications.
|
| Of course it seems aligned with their hallucinations-
| enabled OpenAI investment.
|
| How much of this is just attempts to feed GPT4?
| zokier wrote:
| > 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.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| 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!"
|
| I miss Ballmer.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I don't. All three of them were/are terrible. They just
| each have their own personality about it.
| pinewurst wrote:
| 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.
| jacquesm wrote:
| 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.
| autoexec wrote:
| 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.
| gtwomd wrote:
| Only a matter of time until Ryan Gosling shows up in someone's
| X Ray[0]
|
| [0] https://petapixel.com/2020/08/17/gigapixel-ai-
| accidentally-a...
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Or before the images accompanying a comparison article
| between a Samsung Scene Optimizer moonshot and $4,800 Sony
| astrophotography rig become completely incomprehensible:
|
| https://www.inverse.com/input/reviews/is-samsung-
| galaxy-s21-...
|
| https://www.samsungmobilepress.com/feature-stories/how-
| samsu...
|
| 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"?
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/13/23637401/samsung-fake-
| moo...
| f1shy wrote:
| >> inventing a cleanly readable but hallucinated license plate
| number on a car, or financial figure,
|
| This has already happened with copiers, which because of a bug
| in a compression algorithm, would randomly change figures when
| copying
| mouse_ wrote:
| Yes, and there is legal precedent.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/11/rittenhouse-tria...
| dmvdoug wrote:
| It's hilarious that the prosecutor's name there was Binger.
|
| MICROSOFT!
| [deleted]
| lynx23 wrote:
| 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."
| Shared404 wrote:
| > 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.
| lesuorac wrote:
| > 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.
|
| http://www.curtisreevestrial.com/files/1187.pdf
|
| https://www.jonathanhak.com/2018/02/17/image-clarification-n...
| AnonCoward42 wrote:
| 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.
| leokennis wrote:
| Reminds me of the issue where Xerox machines would replace some
| 9's on your scanned documents with 0's due to over enthusiastic
| compression.
|
| https://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-workcentres...
| adhvaryu wrote:
| 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.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| It's absolutely astounding that they weren't sued into the
| ground for that. Contracts, medications, engineering
| drawings, chemical formulae...
| xingped wrote:
| Holy cow, the implications of that story were terrifying! I
| can't believe it took 8yrs for someone to notice!
| jacquesm wrote:
| > Couldn't this wreak havoc on doing things like viewing
| medical images
|
| Regardless it would seem to me to be a HIPAA violation.
| Drunk_Engineer wrote:
| Sending medical images to Microsoft seems like a major HIPAA
| violation.
| Melting_Harps wrote:
| > 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.
| voldacar wrote:
| 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?
| f1shy wrote:
| 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...
| JohnFen wrote:
| > 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.
| kube-system wrote:
| 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.
| intelVISA wrote:
| That fax is probably much more secure than the $100m
| system too...
| hospitalJail wrote:
| 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....
| bombcar wrote:
| To be fair to them, how many fax breaches have you heard
| about compared to email/website breaches?
| hospitalJail wrote:
| 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.
| bombcar wrote:
| Oh, definitely. Anyone in the medical field who says
| they've never gossiped about people's health issues is
| either a saint or bending the truth a bit.
|
| But that's vastly different (though perhaps more
| invasive) than massive breaches like these:
| https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/cybersecurity-
| hacking-he...
| hospitalJail wrote:
| On the bright side, at least you know if you are
| affected!
|
| When an employee snoops, you will never know.
| msla wrote:
| Don't worry: If this all breaks, the fines levied on
| Microsoft won't be anywhere near their profits.
| brookst wrote:
| 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.
| partiallypro wrote:
| 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.
| Drunk_Engineer wrote:
| 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.
| sebosp wrote:
| 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 via 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...
| Rapzid wrote:
| 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.
| circuit10 wrote:
| Discord is the same
| flangola7 wrote:
| Hopefully no identifying info in the URL!
| bilalq wrote:
| 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.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| 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.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >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.
| pfffr wrote:
| So anyone in the medical industry using microsift edge is
| violating HIPAA?
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > 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.
| RajT88 wrote:
| That's nothing. This is on by default:
|
| "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."
| freediver wrote:
| If you are not paying for your browser with your wallet,
| somebody else is paying for you. It has all sorts of
| implications.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| This is why I don't use Firefox/Chrome/Edge or Linux.
|
| I don't want to be the product.
| TheNewsIsHere wrote:
| Where in Linux is the user generally the product?
| hexo wrote:
| ubuntu
| pessimizer wrote:
| ouch
| hospitalJail wrote:
| Users become lifelong converts and demand organizations
| convert until they have to give Linus money to fix
| problems.
|
| (25% /s)
| michaelmrose wrote:
| 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.
|
| Your algorithm is fairly broken.
| autoexec wrote:
| 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.
| PhilipRoman wrote:
| 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.
| pessimizer wrote:
| You don't recognize that the comment that you are
| replying to is a sarcastic extension of the argument?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Huh?
|
| "You don't recognize that [the thing you just said]?"?
| PhilipRoman wrote:
| Sorry for confusion, I meant my comment as a reply to my
| siblings.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Which one is the browser that i can pay for and keep my
| privacy, then? Safari?
| MortimerDukePhD wrote:
| Netscape Navigator Gold
| dmvdoug wrote:
| _pats good old Telnet client_
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I'm told that browser is Brave
| kossTKR wrote:
| I don't get how brave even among non techie friends have
| gotten such a "progressive" reputation.
|
| It's a freaking shitcoin browser, but that probably means
| enormous PR budgets.
|
| Sad that a mozilla has apparently sunk itself in the
| meantime.
|
| It's really a sad dystopian future we live in compared to
| the cypherpunk optimism of the 90's.
| gaze wrote:
| Unfortunately brave is forever cemented in my mind as
| being linked to the brave shitcoin.
| StingyJelly wrote:
| The opt-in brave shitcoin?
| JPws_Prntr_Fngr wrote:
| 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.
| causi wrote:
| Is the Brave shitcoin really worse than all the stupid-
| ass stunts and services Mozilla has pulled over the
| years?
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Integration of pocket never sent your data to pocket or
| made you use it. It's scandals are entirely boring.
| gaze wrote:
| I'm not saying better or worse, I'm just saying that it's
| an embarassment.
| baal80spam wrote:
| Brave is indeed a fantastic browser, and their recent
| introduction of vertical tabs is the cherry on top.
| freediver wrote:
| How can you pay for Brave?
| benatkin wrote:
| Opera GX
| _-____-_ wrote:
| Firefox with uBlock Origin and various about:config flags
| disabling telemetry, autocomplete, etc.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| 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_.
| aceazzameen wrote:
| I mean, anything you install on your hardware can do
| something nefarious. Edge is built into Windows, so who
| knows how deep its permissions can go.
|
| Luckily uBlock Origin is open source and viewable on
| github, and isn't driven by greed. So I trust it more
| than Microsoft or any big tech company.
| nottorp wrote:
| Well some people are putting a lot of faith in Chrome,
| which is owned by Google. I don't know which choice is
| more risky...
| arepublicadoceu wrote:
| Yeap, everything can do nefarious things.
|
| 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)
| freediver wrote:
| 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.
| lwn wrote:
| Orion Browser is free. Payments are possible by donating
| or subscribing to either Orion+ or Kagi Search.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| > Safari
|
| Yes.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| No source code= black box you can't trust.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Well, the rendering engine is open source.
|
| https://webkit.org
| hospitalJail wrote:
| 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.
| PeterisP wrote:
| All the bad things of Edge we're discussing here are not
| in the rendering engine, so who cares about that?
| autoexec wrote:
| 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.
| janoc wrote:
| I didn't know that Windows is now free.
| einr wrote:
| 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.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Edge is cross platform.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| It's free if you're willing to break the EULA. I haven't
| paid for it. Just used some Win 7 CD key I found online and
| it activated.
| hot_gril wrote:
| Not even break EULA, just download from Microsoft and
| install without activating.
| technothrasher wrote:
| That _is_ breaking the EULA:
|
| "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."
| hot_gril wrote:
| Ah, you're right. Wow, that EULA is very different from
| the reality of how people use it, and MSFT makes no
| attempt to enforce it.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| LispSporks22 wrote:
| I think Microsoft is trying to wear us down with stupid shit.
| imglorp wrote:
| Windows is not the product anymore: it's now 1) an ad delivery
| vehicle. 2) user surveillance collector, 3) cloud service loss
| leader
| nwoli wrote:
| Data harvester for their daughter company openai to
| eventually build machines that replace their customers
| rtsil wrote:
| 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.
| 1024core wrote:
| 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.
| paxys wrote:
| Yup, pretty common theme on this and other online communities.
|
| If Apple does something - this is obviously the correct thing
| to do, and everyone should copy them.
|
| If Microsoft does the same thing - meh, no one cares.
|
| If Google or Meta does the same thing - pitchforks, outrage, a
| thousand daily top-voted blog posts detailing how terrible
| these companies are.
|
| Goes to show how much of the current outrage culture is driven
| by marketing and perception rather than reality.
| wewtyflakes wrote:
| 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.
| brookst wrote:
| Exactly this. And with very little outrage that Google and
| others already do that same scanning, in the cloud, with no
| transparency.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| >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.
| [deleted]
| lolinder wrote:
| 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:
|
| _Microsoft Edge removes ability to delete Sync Data from
| Cloud_ - Jun 2023 (186 points, 118 comments) -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36267087
|
| _The Day Windows Died_ - Apr 2023 (1146 points, 894
| comments) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35415758
|
| _The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge_ - Mar 2023 (506
| points, 377 comments) -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35207830
|
| _Not-so-great features coming soon to Windows 11_ - Dec 2022
| (543 points, 654 comments) -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33943777
| opportune wrote:
| 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.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| >this is obviously the correct thing to do, and everyone
| should copy them.
|
| This is either the result of decades of marketing or
| astroturfing.
| AHOHA wrote:
| 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.
| nologic01 wrote:
| this is such superficial analysis.
|
| 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.
| gordian-not wrote:
| If it makes you feel any better I still remember a time when it
| was exactly the other way around
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| _MSFT is the biggest software company out there._
|
| And Google is the biggest privacy invader out there.
| jimsimmons wrote:
| Except that posts like this should change your beliefs
| towards who the biggest privacy invader really is
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| MSFT's main product is software and services.
|
| 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.
| jimsimmons wrote:
| Windows is free. MSFT is literally siphoning data from
| your personal devices.
|
| You're speaking on an agenda without accounting for
| reality
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| 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.
| jimsimmons wrote:
| Question is who is more predatory not who makes more
| money
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| 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?
| jimsimmons wrote:
| You're again confusing being large with being more
| predatory.
|
| There are more mosquitoes than tigers
| partiallypro wrote:
| 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).
| malfist wrote:
| I don't see anyone here defending microsoft for this.
| lolinder wrote:
| 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.
|
| I'm not sure what more you expect?
| mirkules wrote:
| 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.
| electroly wrote:
| 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.)
|
| Are we talking about the same website?
| Solvency wrote:
| 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.
| jimsimmons wrote:
| Market cap. They've the most money and enjoy highest PE ratio
| pessimizer wrote:
| 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.
| alden5 wrote:
| 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.
| Aardwolf wrote:
| 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.
| arp242 wrote:
| 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.
| phoenixreader wrote:
| This feature is not public, right? Not on my Edge installation.
| It's only on canary.
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| heavy handed forced moat tactic
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| A future where Microsoft is enforced is a worrying future,
| specially since emergent powers are becoming serious
| competition..
| f1shy wrote:
| I find interesting, that video processing (where it could make
| sense to use "cloud computing" is made locally, but pictures
| remotely...
| [deleted]
| gordian-not wrote:
| The feature makes sense but more in an Apple context and without
| uploading stuff
|
| 1. You have a good enough onboard AI chip you can use to run this
| locally
|
| 2. You only do it for low resolution photos
|
| 3. You have a screen with a lot of pixels
|
| This can be nice when Apple releases their latest ultra super
| retina screen and most web pages suck
| JohnFen wrote:
| That's par for the course. This sort of thing is one of the
| several big reasons why I will never use Microsoft products for
| anything.
| heisenbit wrote:
| 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).
| reaperducer wrote:
| Wow. Viewing TFA in Edge must send a hundred images to Microsoft,
| since that page is 90% ads.
|
| At one point, there are so many ads stacked up that there's no
| article text left!
| wintorez wrote:
| Microsoft: "Let's find the lowest possible point, and then see if
| we can go any lower."
| foxandmouse wrote:
| 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.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Jetbrains make great IDEs, Codeium isn't half bad as a copilot
| replacement, and there are other git hosts that are fine too...
| empyrrhicist wrote:
| At least there's stuff like VSCodium.
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