51–60 of 231 posts
I also have sporadic advertisements on my start bar (when I press the win key), sometimes it suggests an app, which looks just like any other app, the only difference is a "SUGGESTED" header which is easy to miss. I assume when you click on that, it opens the store app. It appears at the very top and AFAIK there's no way to disable it.
The ways Microsoft wants to trick users into using edge, using all sorts of dark-patterns, has rapidly increased with the launch of chromium edge. Opening Edge on startup, asking in Windows update-screens, putting Edge on the desktop and taskbar, asking to change to Edge when clicking on links, dissuading users when searching for browsers on bing, advertising Edge in the start-menu, it goes on... Chromium Edge is bri…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They got slammed for anti-trust with IE and then noticed Apple got away with even worse on iOS. Now they've doubled down.
Google really started this though. And they didn’t use anti competitive advertising practices to kill IE, they used them to kill Firefox.
This can also be used to display the internet advertisements, the "important" notices and other hints with which Windows wants to promote its not-so-good products.
LTSC is the answer (despite what MS "advocates" will tell you) no autoreboot, no MS store, no onedrive, no ads I've had a legitimate copy on my gaming pc for 18 months now without issue aliexpress has an excellent range of grey market keys...
On Pro, I have no auto-reboot, OneDrive is disabled, no ads, and the Store is useful at times and can easily be ignored when I'm not using it. I'm not sure how LTSC would be an improvement.
rather than downloading some third party app that attempts to break the functionality without (hopefully) breaking other features
(also hoping some new update doesn't re-enable what you thought you disabled)
And people wonder why I still don't trust Micro$oft, even if they say they're supporting open source.
I don’t think this is really related. Google supports open source & they do basically the same sort of stuff. Open source at this point is just common sense. It’s more profitable than a fully proprietary model in many cases.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Genuinely interested, why would Win7 be worse than Win10 if you had the same network setup, same browser (same extensions) and behaved the same as you do with Win10? I ask as even at home, my different devices all use the same browser/extensions, VPN and browsing habits. I use established FOSS where possible and the only problems I have had since Windows 98 are from data breaches (nothing I could have prevented with…
All sorts of security features in the browser only work on newer operating systems: Hardware-enforced Stack Protection: https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-chrome-this-new-feature... Significant improvements to ASLR starting in Windows 8: https://msrc-blog.microsoft.com/2013/12/11/software-defense-... And many more things. New Windows releases aren't just coats of paint.
Then when I point out this sort of shit to explain why I insist in keeping Win7, people say I am nuts and that Win10 is fine.
Windows 7 is a fine OS if you don't connect it to the Internet, but it's basically screaming "hack me" everywhere you go online. A few occasional mild annoyances from the marketing team is worth tolerating for a reasonably secure operating system. I'd argue people who feel otherwise need to reprioritize their risks.
List the last known remote exploit that will work for someone behind a NAT, and that doesn't involve visting a malicious site with all the default settings of IE or downloading and running an executable (at which point nothing will save you but the most authoritarian of walled gardens.)
Don't forget, the new stuff is not free of attack surfaces either.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They got slammed for anti-trust with IE and then noticed Apple got away with even worse on iOS. Now they've doubled down.
Google really started this though. And they didn’t use anti competitive advertising practices to kill IE, they used them to kill Firefox.
I guess you must be young enough to not remember when Google didn’t exist. The anti-trust trial against Microsoft being referred to above began several months before Google was founded. The FTC inquiries into whether MS was abusing a monopoly position with IE began before Sergey Brin even started at Stanford.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor...
You'd think they'd have realised by now how counterproductive these antics are. If you need to consistently plug and annoy users to force them to use your product, they'll be deterred against it even more.