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Microsoft’s new Windows prompts try to stop people downloading Chrome

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Re: Microsoft’s new Windows prompts try to stop people downloading Chrome

#341

Post by Spivak »

robbrown451 wrote: post #165

"Microsoft Edge runs on the same technology as Chrome, with the added trust of Microsoft." Hmmm, can I trust you to not put your own ads onto competitors websites? That is beyond f'd up. Will they never learn?

I mean they pretty much learned that they can get away with this and their only repercussions will be an HN post, a Reddit post, a few tech blogspam articles, and an EFF doomsday email blast cringier than the ads.

I mean this entire thread is a bunch of very angry people screaming to the void and self-congratulatory people stoking their own superiority complex for having the most common opinion in the HN echo chamber.

The days of “tech people” being ambassadors and having any influence over the direction of B2C software is over.

Re: Microsoft’s new Windows prompts try to stop people downloading Chrome

#342

Post by prepend »

kgeist wrote: post #289
prepend wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> i just don't see the point, from a consumer perspective, in all the major players fighting over who's version of Chromium is the most preferred I imagine the telemetry is extremely important. Knowing every activity done by every user is valuable to Google, or Microsoft, or whoever gets the chrome feed. Of course this is why I like brave, FireFox, safari and others as there is no similar telemetry.

Microsoft controls the OS, they already can track activity of any userland program, can't they?

I suppose they can, but that would be a new low to inspect the memory of their competitors processes to monitor traffic. With most chrome traffic SSL, I don’t think they could tell much from the network traffic.

If Microsoft started doing this, it would be a lot of negative attention. Whereas Chrome users haven’t cared about logging stuff for years now.

Re: Microsoft’s new Windows prompts try to stop people downloading Chrome

#343

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

passivate wrote: post #332
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The special sauce is probably WSUS, which allows them to control the update process for everyone and determine which updates they get and which they don't. Additionally, the WSUS channel for updates is behind Microsoft's normal updates, which allows for them to prevent problematic updates from reaching WSUS servers in the first place. Of course, home users get none of this. I personally believe it is arrogance to say…

Your arguing against something I didn't say. You can disagree with me, but you can't put words in my mouth. I didn't say or imply "shouldn't be allowed" or anything similar.

Since my comment was along the lines of "people should get a choice", if you did not intend to argue against that then one wonders what the point of your post was.

I mean, look at your language: "MS taking over is really not a big deal". How am I supposed to have interpreted that?

Re: Microsoft’s new Windows prompts try to stop people downloading Chrome

#344

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

tobias3 wrote: post #143
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't so straight forward if you aren't in the know on special tooling like O&O ShutUp 10 to accomplish it for you. Even then it'll get reset after updating and you'll have to fix it again. There is no "don't ever update unless I tell you to" checkbox, there is only the option to pause them for a limited time. Windows is actively user hostile when it comes to updates.

Use Windows Pro and Group Policy Editor. There isn't a checkbox there but a radio box that allows you to configure update behaviour in detail. Never had an issue with it during all upgrades. And if Windows Home users should be able to disable automatic updates is debatable.

I don't think it is debatable. Users should have control over their own computers.

Re: Microsoft’s new Windows prompts try to stop people downloading Chrome

#345

Post by 1_player »

tester756 wrote: post #336
1_player wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google's has been bashed so consistently on privacy issues on mainstream media that non-techies often associate them with creepy data collection What? Every non-tech person I see is happily running Google Chrome and has never even considered Firefox. Hell, I think most still think Google is one of the "good guys". Non-tech people still trust Google much more than Microsoft. Microsoft is bad, but they haven't made y…

>Non-tech people still trust Google much more than Microsoft. Microsoft is bad, but they haven't made your data their core business just yet. That's pretty interesting claim, what makes you think so?

There is nothing interesting or crazy about my statement. Microsoft sells software and services and has done so for the past 35 years. They started getting interested in people data recently but it is not their CORE business. How is this controversial?

Re: Microsoft’s new Windows prompts try to stop people downloading Chrome

#346

Post by nyuszika7h »

badsectoracula wrote: post #294
jeroenhd wrote: post #190

Back when Edgeium was new and just Chrome but with a lot of Google cruft removed, I actually used Edge instead of Chrome when I was on Windows. It was the same browser with some additional tweaks that I quite liked. Then Microsoft started this aggressive, disruptive push to bring it to iOS Safari's level as the only browser people should use. I don't know any good operating systems for normal people anymore. Windows…

> Linux has been making progress but still isn't a good alternative for the common user unless they have an expert to rely upon when something breaks down IME "common users" already rely on an expert when their Windows OS breaks down. Not long ago I had to walk my aunt through opening the command prompt in Windows 10 and entering the command to do a full reboot (as opposed to that hybrid shutdown+hibernation) because…

> Not long ago I had to walk my aunt through opening the command prompt in Windows 10 and entering the command to do a full reboot (as opposed to that hybrid shutdown+hibernation)

That's unnecessary, reboot will always skip Windows's "Fast Startup". It can be a bit unintuitive because back in the day people used to recommend a full shutdown+boot cycle instead of a reboot as it could fix more issues. But it makes some sense, because generally when you reboot it's either because of an update or issues that probably won't be resolved if the kernel is just hibernated rather than fully restarting.

Re: Microsoft’s new Windows prompts try to stop people downloading Chrome

#347

Post by nyuszika7h »

armchairhacker wrote: post #340
badsectoracula wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Linux has been making progress but still isn't a good alternative for the common user unless they have an expert to rely upon when something breaks down IME "common users" already rely on an expert when their Windows OS breaks down. Not long ago I had to walk my aunt through opening the command prompt in Windows 10 and entering the command to do a full reboot (as opposed to that hybrid shutdown+hibernation) because…

In my experience the real issue with Linux is that it’s hard to set up. Especially when you have/get an OS preinstalled with Windows, to just using Windows. And that most applications / drivers don’t support it nearly as well. There are many many distributions. When I started Linux, I first tried Ubuntu because that was recommended to me. Ubuntu is installed with Xfce which looks and basically is clunky and outdated.…

> Ubuntu is installed with Xfce

Ubuntu's default desktop environment is GNOME (or Unity in some earlier versions). You must be thinking of Xubuntu.

Re: Microsoft’s new Windows prompts try to stop people downloading Chrome

#348

Post by nyuszika7h »

smoldesu wrote: post #223
r00fus wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> macOS only runs on very expensive hardware and doesn't run most programs people need (because the business world is still Windows oriented) This is an outdated take - it's functionally untrue in most business settings. Gaming on the other hand, is very much still mostly Windows only.

I'd agree if they still had 32-bit support. Nowadays though, even most creatives are getting frustrated by the vicious upgrade cycle and outright refusal to continue support for fairly modern tooling. If by "business" you mean word processing and web browsing, then... yeah. Chromebooks are also a competitor if we're bringing the bar that low.

Honestly, Apple (and Microsoft) should have dropped 32-bit support sooner. The only reason it's such a big issue now is because lazy developers kept building apps that are 32-bit only because "it works fine on 64-bit systems". The same thing happened with the Python 2 -> 3 transition.

Re: Microsoft’s new Windows prompts try to stop people downloading Chrome

#349

Post by helmholtz »

ynx wrote: post #333
helmholtz wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 10 was a horrible release. With the passage of time, it has become just about usable (although not really in my opinion). When it came out, though, it had an immense amount of bloatware (candy crush), idiotic auto-updating, sample-your-DNA levels of spyware, Cortana rubbish, identical settings in two places, and a whole host of other unpleasantness. All for what, the dark theme? I fucking despised Windows 10.…

Re: Candy Crush - technically, those icons on the start menu were served up via XML tile specifications, and it wasn't installed until you clicked. Source: Over the years, an app I had my hand in was on one of the rotations.

Doesn't matter. It'd be one thing if I was talking about some cheap Chinese Android phone, but I'm not. It's Windows. It's supposed to be the pinnacle of Microsoft. If not, atleast something with a modicum of integrity. But seems Microsoft disagrees with that.

Re: Microsoft’s new Windows prompts try to stop people downloading Chrome

#350

Post by rnd0 »

rob74 wrote: post #46
tapoxi wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outside of requiring a newer PC I don't think Win11 is a trainwreck at all, I was auto-upgraded to it a few weeks ago and it's been fine. Auto HDR is neat for games and there's been a UI refresh, other than that it's basically Windows 10.

"requiring a newer PC" is a bit of an understatement - Windows 11 is the first version that will actively refuse to run unless the hardware meets its "compatibility" requirements, and from what I heard, it's quite picky...

There are pretty easy to use workarounds -such as rufus, though that may change.
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