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Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

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Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#691

Post by JoshMnem »

Hawxy wrote: post #398
JoshMnem wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They watch what companies like Google get away with to see how far they can push things. > Activity history helps keep track of the things you do on your device, such as the apps and services you use, the files you open, and the websites you browse. Your activity history is stored locally on your device when using different apps and features such as Microsoft Edge, some Microsoft Store apps, and Office apps. > If you…

How is anything you quoted a problem? Activity history being synced to your Microsoft account is an entirely opt-in feature. It's designed to assist in the scenario of "I moved from my desktop to my laptop and want to open that file I was working on a few days ago....now what did I name it and where did I put it?"

That feature could easily be opt-in, without any dark patterns. If people want it, they could check a box.

Data shouldn't leave my devices unless I opt-in on a very specific case-by-case basis.

Giving personal data (like browsing history, identifying information, etc.) should not be a requirement for using technology, which has become a fundamental aspect of participating in society.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#692

Post by pndy »

userbinator wrote: post #120
xeeeeeeeeeeenu wrote: post #41

I don't understand why so many people on HN praise Satya Nadella. I guess good PR is worth much more than actions. Before Nadella, Windows wasn't nearly as user-hostile as it is now. There was no mandatory telemetry, there were no forced updates, end users weren't treated as betatesters and QA wasn't non-existent. And now they are taking away the ability to use Windows without Microsoft Account. Of course there are a…

there were no forced updates I have attempted to disable those "for real", and the lengths that MS has gone to in an attempt to stop people from doing it is extremely disturbing; there's half a dozen different services and scheduled tasks with various names which are involved, and if you don't disable all of it quickly, it all comes back . This Hydra-like persistence is something that hitherto was only seen in malwar…

The most recent occurrence of this hydra is usocoreworker which most likely replaced previous Windows Update services components; sometimes it's even impossible to kill it even by temporarily elevating rights of task manager or console (for taskkill use) by 3rd-party tools. It can spawn in the background even if you postponed updates - guess that's the MS insurance that OS will receive updates despite of user settings choice and update feature will be immune to bypassing (but luckily, that is possible - at least for this moment, if you of course try hard enough).

Gods, I miss the good times of XP, Vista and 7 where it was possible to control updates and avoid potentially dangerous patches.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#693

Post by Can_Not »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #443
freeflight wrote: post #432

Used to be that you shouldn't install Windows online to prevent getting exploited by malware before you had a chance to patch. Now it looks like one has to install offline to prevent getting adware and all kinds of other things, what amazing progress. As somebody still stuck on Win7 I'm dreading the change, sadly Linux is not really an option because I like my PC gaming. Any good resources on what to look out for whe…

Linux PC gaming has gotten much better (except for VR).

A lot of titles are missing, but has gotten better, and for me personally it's gotten to a point where if it doesn't run on linux, I don't really need to play it.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#694

Post by peterangular »

klingonopera wrote: post #664
peterangular wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does but good luck getting licensing. They explicitly try to make getting the LTSB/C difficult because they know everyone would buy it if they offered a "clean" version of Windows. But - if you can swing it - LTSB/C is the only thing that I would prefer for any sort of automation etc.

Checking around, here in Germany averages for Enterprise LTSB vs standard Enterprise is €275 vs €70. Standard Enterprise comes with forced updates and mandatory restarts, yes?

I do believe so but I don't touch that bull. It spies on you I know that. Last enterprise copy I had I sniffed the network traffic post setup and it was a slap in the face. I also think it comes with the Windows Store too.

The ONLY reason I run Windows machines is to do automation on them - I have zero tolerance for the OS.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#695

Post by Can_Not »

lone_haxx0r wrote: post #154

Meanwhile, the Linux world is wasting its biggest opportunity to take over the desktop space. IMO, Unintuitive interfaces (e.g. Gnome shell), forced package management (as opposed to decentralized distribution of apps) and lack of care for graphic design are the biggest things keeping the masses away from the Linux desktop, because in other areas (speed, robustness, privacy, control) it just blows Windows out of the…

> forced package management

What's forced here? I can use others on ubuntu. I can add alternative repos/PPAs to the default package manager. And what's even the issue? The default package is (as far as I know) entirely open source and/or GNU. "Package management" is not even a concept on windows at all.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#696

Post by Can_Not »

amiga-workbench wrote: post #55
egdod wrote: post #26

>Windows is a service Windows used to be a fucking operating system. That’s all I want it to be.

Its pretty much the McDonalds of operating systems these days, I do not know how people put up with it.

Say what you want about McDonald's food quality/genericness, but their UX destroys windows in terms of dark patterns.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#697

Post by lozf »

mgkimsal wrote: post #614
kchamplewski wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Domain joining means connecting the machine to a Windows domain allowing domain user accounts to be used, and allowing for the domain to administer the machine. It's actually quite a helpful option to have, but it's completely absurd for the only way to create a local account to be via the domain join option.

My knee jerk reaction would be that 'domain join' would be something reserved for connecting to enterprise domains - it might ask me for an active directory connection or something (which, if I'm offline, I wouldn't even think to try in the first place). "domain join" for a single user machine? I wouldn't even make the connection.

That's clearly what MS are hoping for.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#698

Post by squarefoot »

proc0 wrote: post #556
mastazi wrote: post #63

This is incredibly bad. In general I have a positive opinion about what MS is doing lately, but Windows is a glaring exception, it’s getting worse and worse at an alarming rate. In the last two months we had two consecutive updates that broke basic functionality for users who disabled web results in Windows Search (which is a very common setting among those who care about privacy) https://www.zdnet.com/article/window…

Games is literally the only reason keeping me installing Windows. Hoping this changes with some viable alternative.

You would be surprised at how good is Wine at running Windows games today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhwOgTaxJTI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pr_dVP_bV14

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7ATaLC4ixE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9oXKvymIFs

https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#699

Post by orloffm »

wayneftw wrote: post #208
lone_haxx0r wrote: post #154

Meanwhile, the Linux world is wasting its biggest opportunity to take over the desktop space. IMO, Unintuitive interfaces (e.g. Gnome shell), forced package management (as opposed to decentralized distribution of apps) and lack of care for graphic design are the biggest things keeping the masses away from the Linux desktop, because in other areas (speed, robustness, privacy, control) it just blows Windows out of the…

As a long time Windows user, I switched from Windows to XFCE (Manjaro) and it was pretty seamless. Most of the keyboard shortcuts are the same (or, easily configurable to be the same). I had to hunt down one xdotools script and bind a shortcut for moving windows from one display to another for it to work the same. There are many things that XFCE does even better or just as good. Window snapping works great. The start…

Wanted to thank for the post, it finally triggered me to ditch Windows on my laptop. But it seems that Xubuntu would be a better choice for dotnet core development: there is an official 3.0 SDK for Ubuntu while Arch is not officially supported, and no one has built the 3.0 SDK for it yet.

I also read some description of the state on Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/cx64r5/the_state...), and it seems that there are too many hoops to jump on Manjaro.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#700

Post by noobermin »

SquishyPanda23 wrote: post #553
mastazi wrote: post #63

This is incredibly bad. In general I have a positive opinion about what MS is doing lately, but Windows is a glaring exception, it’s getting worse and worse at an alarming rate. In the last two months we had two consecutive updates that broke basic functionality for users who disabled web results in Windows Search (which is a very common setting among those who care about privacy) https://www.zdnet.com/article/window…

> I pay for the service so I don’t want to be the product. I think this is worth thinking about for a bit. The trope is that if you're not paying then you're the product. But it doesn't follow that if you are paying you are not the product. That depends entirely on business decisions that customers have little visibility into. For any product you pay for, there may eventually be a decision to extract additional reven…

This sort of thing cannot be remedied apart from regulation.
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