The Edge team is working overtime to add in more and more "features" and it is just becoming more and more irritating.
The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge
81–90 of 389 posts
Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge
#82As a Windows user since version 3.1, ever since Windows 11 I've been thinking of migrating to KDE+Ubuntu.
It's sad that Microsoft clearly has talented developers, but their product people seem to be like an Apple that is openly hostile.
Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m not going to pay MS even more just to get a version that has a “please disable this one specific bit of crap” toggle. This has got to be the worst upsell ever. It’s like you book a hotel room and the TV is on Fox News and you can’t turn the TV off. You ask around but everybody says that they can turn it off just fine, must be you. Turns out that they’re all in the executive suite and they also have Fox News on th…
It was either in 1984 or Fahrenheit 451 where each house was equipped with a radio that couldn’t be turned off but only made quieter. My Google-fu is failing me.
On the first page of _Nineteen Eighty-Four_ there's this:
"Winston turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat, though the words were still distinguishable. The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely."
(Though the more nightmarish thing about 1984's "telescreens" is that they were two-way, giving the government the ability to see and hear what you were doing as well as exposing you to their propaganda.)
I had the vague feeling there was something similar in _Fahrenheit 451_ too, but I took a look and I'm pretty sure there isn't.
Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge
#84It is your fault for using the successor of Internet Explorer
Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you think there is some coordinated smear campaign against Microsoft that is holding them to a higher standard than its competitors, and if so, why do you believe this instead of the simpler explanation that people are fed up with a user-hostile OS/browser especially when it is the only upgrade path from a prior, non-user-hostile one (Windows 7)?
What's the point of introducing a strawman like that? A coordinated smear campaign, really? Nobody said before you. You're painting me as a conspiracy theorist and alienating me from the debate. Why should I bother replying?
No offense intended.
Your response insinuated that even if Edge did the same as Apple, people would still complain, which suggests that Microsoft is the target of some hate that Apple wouldn't be subject to, so I wanted to understand your reasoning.
Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you can track pretty well with just the device ID alone, but you combine it with other identities like location information, IP address, cookies, login information and so on. Is that why Windows 11 recently made it impossible to bypass creating an MS account?
Yeah but they're speaking about switching to a chromebook or a mac. How is your device ID going to help with that?
They could summarise the User-Agent s visiting LinkedIn or a couple of other websites they run.
Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you can track pretty well with just the device ID alone, but you combine it with other identities like location information, IP address, cookies, login information and so on. Is that why Windows 11 recently made it impossible to bypass creating an MS account?
Yeah but they're speaking about switching to a chromebook or a mac. How is your device ID going to help with that?
You estimate how many people use computers and how many people use computers you make. When you subtract the two, you get how many people use computers that your competitors make.
Not every “internal metric” is something you can measure directly.
Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
What if they're not? What if it really is economically better for Microsoft to "double dip" and try to monetize Windows beyond its purchase price?
I think you raise a very important point. What if it's economically better for you to let men have sex with your wife for money? If you _don't_ do this, you're just sitting on untapped value.
Not a fan of the analogy, I like to think that would be her own decision, not her partner's.
Anyway, companies are capitalist entities, so all that ultimately matters for them is to make more money. The majority of decisions happen along the axis of short term revenue vs long term revenue (e.g. not ruining your brand, not getting fined etc).
In an environment of insecurity and fear, I've seen companies focus more on the short term, since it's less speculative. But it sure doesn't look very good from the outside.
Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge
#89Did you know that out-of-the-box, Edge will transmit the content of your text boxes on web pages to the Microsoft Editor service for the purpose of grammatical suggestions? I have no idea how this concept got past legal but hey, it’s on by default now. Holy shit. :( At what point are some of the major government legal departments actually going to step up and sort this shit out? It is so , so, so, so, so far past ove…
Chrome does the same thing for textboxes if you use enhanced spell checking. >Enhanced spell check Uses the same spell checker that’s used in Google search. Text you type in the browser is sent to Google.
The difference is that Google has come under enough historical privacy flak that they now aggressively privacy red-team new functionality like this and do things like make it opt-in.
Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve seen those screenshots too, I spent hours googling for this. But that setting is not available on my Windows. Maybe a pro vs home thing? I’m on the latest version. I don’t believe that this is by accident, I think MS decided that I’m in some customer segment that’s not allowed to not know that Jimmy Fallon might be depressed. And even then, I can’t get the widgets feature, a pretty decent idea, without the news.…
I have Win11 Pro and it really is just those three clicks.
I have the non-Pro edition (Home?) and I have the setting. I think this is a US-vs-Europe thing?