371–380 of 572 posts
On LinkedIn someone in my network pointed out that, apart from the security and privacy disaster, the name Recall was a bad choice because of negative events like product recall.
"Total Recall", aka "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale"
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> Can't we just have a peaceful life without wasting time on constantly following and analyzing every single move from these companies? Not if you're using Microsoft products, no. People continue to get irritated when "we" do this, but here I go: you should be running Linux exclusively on your personal computers. You should also stop buying "smart" shit.
I've been running linux (ubuntu) for last 2 years, for the 3rd time in my life. All I can say is: Linux does just about everything more efficiently than Windows, but Windows does just about everything better than Linux. What makes Linux so great is also what keeps it perpetually at ~5% adoption. I'm probably going to go back to Windows again soon. I'm just not interested in needing to learn a bespoke computer languag…
I'm not like so many who seem to have to rationalize their choice of Linux or other free software by pretending it's actually technically better than the proprietary for-profit stuff. It's not about that.
Linux could get 10% of the battery life of Windows, have zero games, no Netflix/whatever support, and be slow as hell--I'd still choose it over proprietary options out of principle.
I want to own my computer. I don't want my computer to spy on me. Microsoft is literally adversarial to its users (Apple and Google are, too, but Apple at least has slightly different incentives that might make them less bad). Why would I invite that negativity into my life? Life is hard enough without trying to fight against a trillion dollar company for my privacy when I don't have to. It's that simple for me: I'm not inviting a Trojan horse in. But, people act like I'm some tinfoil hat nutjob. I think everyone else is crazy for sacrificing their privacy for "but Windows has a game I like".
Apologies for the preaching, but I don't know how to explain my point of view without it sounding like that!
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Yes, Onedrive started out as a pretty useful tool but has turned into a deceptive trojan that tries to force whatever growth metric MSFT managers are currently chasing through a combination of dark patterns (like hiding true file paths from view) and also simply refusing to operate in obviously useful ways which many users want and expect (like not having a built-in way to back up only specific sub-folders on differe…
There used to be no option to uninstall it - now there is. You will still get it reinstalled during a major OS update, but at least it can easily be removed. Before it was a chore to clean up. I would speculate there is even some way to prevent it from reinstalling during those major updates. That seems like the kind of capability they would build in because a huge Windows customer complained (i.e. realistically, the…
Maybe a bit off-topic, but I sure wish they'd do this for OneDrive! I installed Windows for personal use for the first time recently (although I use it exclusively at work) and it drove me ABSOLUTELY BONKERS that my home drive was mapping to C:\Users\atribecalledqst\OneDrive. What I hated the most was that the File Explorer just calls the folders in there e.g. "Documents" and "Pictures" without showing the full path.…
For Windows 11: https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/install-windows-11-witho...
Maybe a bit off-topic, but I sure wish they'd do this for OneDrive! I installed Windows for personal use for the first time recently (although I use it exclusively at work) and it drove me ABSOLUTELY BONKERS that my home drive was mapping to C:\Users\atribecalledqst\OneDrive. What I hated the most was that the File Explorer just calls the folders in there e.g. "Documents" and "Pictures" without showing the full path.…
Dear OS writers: Internet access is not always guaranteed or reliable. Please do not assume that the cloud is a viable solution for every user. I ran into this on my phone awhile back. I knew I would be out of service for some time but had some PDFs I needed to reference. So I downloaded them to "files". Que surprise when I later go to look up a value and there's a little cloud with a down arrow button next to the PD…
I've gotten burned by that "isn't really downloaded" thing a few times before too, to the point where I don't trust apps to download anymore. I just adb push files from my laptop to my phone before I go. Can't always do that though, but I try to.
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Your auth cookie expires. The username/password you type in next time it expires is far more valuable. And it might not even be necessary to obtain cookies or credentials if I can just see whatever you could see when you’re logged into various sites.
This is all moot anyway because Microsoft has already said they are now going to encrypt everything behind Windows Hello making it as secure as my password manager.
https://doublepulsar.com/recall-stealing-everything-youve-ev...
What makes my blood boil is that they are just going to keep pulling shit like this which they KNOW everyone (with zero exceptions) intensely HATES, and it's up to everyone to push back ferociously (very high threshold) every damn time. It's up there with "not now" instead of "get rekt and never ask me again" choices in terms of user-antagonism. I'm aware that other OSes exist, but I happen to hate Windows least on t…
I'm glad that it's shining a light on the reality of Windows 11 as a subscription and data collecting vehicle. If you still hate Windows least, that's almost certainly because it's what you know best. I work with Windows, Linux, and OSX on a daily basis and Windows is easily the most user-hostile of the three. Edit: All you know -> What you know best
It's true that I'm most familiar with Windows; given free choice, why would someone use an OS they dislike more? I personally think Mac OS is more user-hostile (it's a whole lifestyle and worldview they really want to sell you!) but it's comparable.
What I actually want isn't Linux or Mac OS, but a Windows-like OS that isn't so goddamn user hostile and doing stupid shit like always-listening Cortana or this Recall feature or whatever they feel trumps what the user actually wants. If there were a "Windows but actually a user-first product and not a data collection vehicle" I bet it would utterly crush in the marketplace (inasmuch as there is a viable market for OSes).
The first big mis-step of the Nadella era. Will be interesting to hear what he has to say when he's inevitably asked to comment in his next public appearance.
That's all.
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I recently tried to fully rid myself of OneDrive and it took me over 48 hours to accomplish. The only working method I found involved fully enabling OneDrive, signing in, and waiting for a full sync. Only then was I able to tell it to stop syncing and finally remap Documents, Downloads, Pictures, etc. The fact that I needed to log in, wait 24 hours for my account to unlock due to inactivity (!!!), and enable sync in…
That is truly insidious, but FWIW, you don't need to abandon Windows entirely because of this. There are ways of creating a custom Windows installation disk that removes OneDrive, along with other bloatware, spyware, and pretty much anything else you don't like. Look into tools such as Tiny11 Builder, MSMG Toolkit, NTLite, etc. This is a decent guide[1] for setting all of this up. The process is quite tedious and tak…
Maybe a bit off-topic, but I sure wish they'd do this for OneDrive! I installed Windows for personal use for the first time recently (although I use it exclusively at work) and it drove me ABSOLUTELY BONKERS that my home drive was mapping to C:\Users\atribecalledqst\OneDrive. What I hated the most was that the File Explorer just calls the folders in there e.g. "Documents" and "Pictures" without showing the full path.…