Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

thomask.sdf.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 389 posts

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#361

Post by CatWChainsaw »

permo-w wrote: post #269
MikeSchurman wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The news widget is terrible, and the sole reason I haven't switched to windows 11. I spent about 30m turning off news source after news source before giving up. Apparently there is an infinite supply of them. It's actually a problem for me at work because they keep drawing my eye and distracting me from getting work done. It's crazy. What are they thinking?

they were thinking that it would draw your eye

Which is hilarious, because they always market windows 10 and 11 through the lens of "optimizing your workflow".

Except, obviously, when they want the news app to attract your attention and get a few advertising cents.

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#362

Post by justinclift »

deafpolygon wrote: post #359
justinclift wrote: post #21

Did 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…

Well, here is what Microsoft says on the privacy for this service: > By default, Microsoft Edge provides spelling and grammar checking using Microsoft Editor. When using Microsoft Editor, Microsoft Edge sends your typed text and a service token to a Microsoft cloud service over a secure HTTPS connection. The service token doesn't contain any user-identifiable information. A Microsoft cloud service then processes the…

> A Microsoft cloud service then processes the text to detect spelling and grammar errors in your text. All your typed text that's sent to Microsoft is deleted immediately after processing occurs. No data is stored for any period of time.

Interestingly, if they also share the text with third parties, then every one of those statements could still be completely true.

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#363

Post by CatWChainsaw »

skrebbel wrote: post #22
mikub wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have Win11 Pro and it really is just those three clicks.

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…

Last year, I bought a win10 pro to avoid microsoft login BS. It was a $1000 upsell.

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#364

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

2fast4you wrote: post #282
KronisLV wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are right about one thing: I refuse to purchase a Windows computer, and have been refusing for a decade. I still use Windows on my personal machine due to gaming still not being comparably good on Linux across all of the titles I want to play - sometimes native releases aren't available, other times even Proton has issues running stuff on Steam. Apart from that, there is actually very little holding me back, si…

GPU passthrough has been a game changer for me. I stream all my games from a computer in a closet running Proxmox. Windows is still there in the background, but I almost never have to interact with it

What kind of penalties you face with this setup? I suspect performance and maybe issues with peripherals?

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#365

Post by justinclift »

Dalewyn wrote: post #354
jnsaff2 wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is changing goal posts. In windows you need to spend time to work past ads, annoyances, shit not working as well. If you don’t you get bombarded with ads in which case you either run the risk of spending money buying garbage advertised or constantly need to expend energy to not be distracted.

If my sole interest was to just get shit done on Windows, I can just go and do it. Immediately. No setup time required. Yes, I could spend time tuning Windows to my liking (and I do as a power user), but it's optional. On Linux, I have to tinker with it before I can get shit done with it. It's not optional. $100~200 USD spent on a Windows license, or $0 by either not activating or using an old 7/8/8.1/10 license, is…

> If my sole interest was to just get shit done on Windows, I can just go and do it.

That works, unless Windows decides it needs to do a Windows Update before it'll finish booting. Sometimes, which can last several hours. :(

Saying that because one of my close friends was beside himself after staying up all night to get some paper written, ready for submission... only to be screwed over by Windows Update then pulling this shit on him.

Moved him to Linux after that :), though his new job then provided him with a Windows laptop (very locked down) that he's forced to use. And which the MS applications on it keep crashing on a lot (several times a day). :(

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#366

Post by foobarbecue »

Lendal wrote: post #344
foobarbecue wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"dark" as in the tech term "dark pattern." User-hostile defaults are generally considered a dark pattern.

Oh, I thought "Dark Pattern" meant trickery, deception, and using the browser in a fraudulent way to make users do something they didn't want to do. The features described in the article are certainly unpopular and annoying to certain types of people including myself, but they're not fraudulent. They're not deceptive. They clearly say what they do, and become disabled when you disable them, using the provided control…

That's how I see this. When customers buy Windows, they don't realize they are signing up for an ad-supported platform that vaccums up their data. It's trickery that you think you're buying an operating system, but it's actually your attention and data that are the product.

Maybe we need a "contains adware" or "violates your privacy" label, FDA-style...

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#367

Post by jnsaff2 »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #348
jnsaff2 wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same goes for Windows tho. You need to work to get rid of the windows install in the PC.

That makes no logical sense unless you're trolling or never used a computer in your life

Where have you lived for the past 20 years? Almost all PC laptops and desktops (from Dell, HP, IBM, Lenovo and others) have had Windows installed as the default option for that time. Sometimes you can uncheck it and save a little money, sometimes is won't save anything and most of the time you don't have the option to remove it.

The innovation has been to install vendor garbage in addition to Microsoft garbage. So it takes even more effort to get a clean system.

Only in the last few years has some distro of Linux started being an option.

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#368

Post by ChoGGi »

skrebbel wrote: post #3

I’m a longtime Windows fan, and initially I was quite enamored by Edge as well. Base UX is excellent, lots of settings and they’re easy to find. Vertical tab bar, profiles, and it all Just Works. I flat out love its “turn this website into a desktop app” feature. But by now they've shoved their core consumer products so chock full of crap that even I am starting to look for a way out. I got my son a new laptop recent…

You can hide it in task bar settings, or uninstall it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/x739nt/is_there_...

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#369

Post by flir »

pseudalopex wrote: post #186
sphars wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This worked for me when I used edge > 1 year ago, it may still work: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/new-tab-redirect/i... and set my new tabs to https://aboutblank.page Also it's open source: https://github.com/jimschubert/newtab-redirect The only way AFAIK to change the new tab is an extension

You can't set it to about:blank?

You can set "Home" to anything you want, but apparently Home isn't what happens when you open a new tab any more, it's what happens when you click the Home button.

It's pretty icky, and being stuck on this Windows work laptop is shortening the time I'll spend in this gig.

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#370

Post by whoisthemachine »

mrweasel wrote: post #12

While I'm sure that the shareholder love this, from the outside it looks like that last desperate acts from a company try to avoid bankruptcy.

My instinct is that this is maybe similar - could it be the last desperate acts of a department or departments within Microsoft to justify their value?
Post reply on HN