I hear about people in my extended circle moving to linux every week now. Windows users of 10-25 years++ have had enough.
Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11
691–700 of 804 posts
Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11
#692For me the worst is Microsoft Start news. I've already turned it off multiple times and it always come back. To add insult to injury, it always displays terrible gossip, sports or far right news. If any developer that works in MS news service is reading this message, please know that I hate you.
do you really expect us to believe ms is pushing 'far right news'? perhaps youre just so far left that anything slightly in the center feels 'far right'? when bing / edge recommends me stories it's never ever 'far right'. it's almost always something pro-left or that makes the (R) look negative.
You really have no clue how this works. Microsoft is just the intermediary. They take money from whoever pays to shove you ads, sometimes malicious ads that could infect your machine (if you're not heavily protecting yourself from that). And it's not only Microsoft that's the culprit, they all do it. Google does it, Meta does it, Microsoft does it.
Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11
#693I believe they are abusing their customers but I think it's in poor taste to compare this to domestic violence.
I strongly disagree, and not because of the "Microsoft is associated with bad things and that's a form of violence" points other people mentioned. The end result of treating domestic and sexual abuse like Serious Important Subjects that people should only talk about in a Serious Respectful Tone isn't that people become more mindful of abuse dynamics, it's that they avoid bringing up the subject at all. In practice, y…
Strongly agree with you (and disagree with GP).
I'll also note that the same demand for Serious Respectful Tone never seems to be invoked for metaphors that refer to other kinds of serious crime (including violent crime, such as murder). You can say "great job, you killed it out there", or "oof, my sportsball team got destroyed", etc. etc., and nobody seriously proposes that this somehow devalues life (human or otherwise).
Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11
#694Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most people want a computer that works with their software. No, "learn the FOSS version" is not a solution. Especially because nearly everyone has some niche thing they like, some 5% that isn't covered by the FOSS solutions, that only a niche Windows program can actually do correctly. And that doesn't even get into gaming.
Well acktshually , gaming is a really good example. Valve did a lot of good with Proton to the point that a lot of games work and work well. Perhaps ironically, Wine may be the best stable API on Linux. I'd like to see a concerted and well-funded effort to make Wine run certain Windows applications well. We might not be able to replace the Adobe Suite short-term by a FOSS alternative for most of its users, but we mig…
Yes. please. All that Ai Coding Power that's presumably around.. it should get easier, no?
Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11
#695Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Our economic system fundamentally chooses to reward such behavior". This is true, but what people seem to fail to grasp is that rewarding such behavior == buying the product. If people simply didn't buy it, they wouldn't do it. It's really that simple. It may be hard to not buy, of course. The alternatives may be worse, there may be downsides to not buying, etc. But nothing else will really be effective.
Sure, but there's a power disparity here. I think the clearest example is smart TVs where there have been examples of consumers buying a TV, and then having ads retroactively added to the product a year later. There's not much a consumer could to avoid that. It's our regulatory environment allowing that.
And this is even worse than with computers where you can, with some training, remove Windows and install a less user-hostile operating system. With a TV, while sometimes possible, most people are not sufficiently proficient in tge dark arts required to get rid of the native OS or to subvert it to your will against the wishes of its corporate master.
Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11
#696I believe they are abusing their customers but I think it's in poor taste to compare this to domestic violence.
I agree and appreciate you calling this out. It’s easy to not understand the impact or meaning of referring to violence in a flip way when one has never had to have experienced it.
>the impact or meaning of referring to violence in a flip[pant] way
I don't think you actually mean "violence" in general, unless you think that word means something radically and fundamentally different from what I think it means (and my understanding is based on what dictionaries say; but I will happily acknowledge that I have encountered very, very many people whose apparent understanding of the term is utterly incomprehensible to me). I say this because I never, ever see people object to the use of idioms such as https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/you+killed+it . The objection is only ever raised with respect to very specific kinds of violence.
Or will you also object when I kill a process, or when POSIX-standard systems (I'm pretty sure this is part of the standard but I'm not that kind of nerd) continue to use `kill` as the command name? How about when a new startup releases a "killer app"?
Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11
#697Earlier quoted context omitted.
People want a full-size keyboard. Adding a couple of millimetres underneath that keyboard allows you to put a whole computer in there. We have laptops because it makes sense. Look at Apple's Macbook Neo. The tiny logic board on that computer is the least of Apple's worries. The most expensive components are the display and case. Why not charge 100 bucks more and not have to worry about this thing being a phone access…
Yeah, that's basically my point. The only way it would make sense to use your phone is if the keyboard and monitor can fold up so small that they can attach to the phone and still fit in your pocket. Otherwise, just using a laptop is going to be better every time.
What you're asking, a laptop that can fold so small, requires materials science breakthroughs that we cannot bet on. A cheap slab of pure aluminium will be king by the time we're both dead. Mark my words.
Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11
#698Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't need a TV. If there are only smart TVs then simply don't purchase one. Most consumers are unwilling to take an option that they perceive as inconveniencing them more than getting screwed by the company inconveniences them.
Telling people to just go without a TV is a little more than a “perceived” inconvenience. The reality is that companies know they can get away with crap because they all get away with crap. And because they all do it, consumers are powerless. This is why regulation isn’t a bad the thing that many HNers seem to recoil at. The real problem with regulation is when it’s defined by lobbyists rather than consumer groups. B…
> Telling people to just go without a TV is a little more than a “perceived” inconvenience.
The TV I have has never had an antenna cable plugged, or an internet connection. It’s, from day one, been a large HDMI monitor to an Apple TV, a Nintendo Switch and a C64 Maxi with some other devices plugged in from time to time.
It IS possible to ignore the TV’s software most of the time (mine, luckily, isn’t intrusive at all) and use it as a conduit for a much cheaper and easily replaced (or hacked) device.
I remember how surprised the engineers at [manufacturer redacted] were when I told them they had everything needed to turn their TVs into thin clients and meeting room monitors right into the Linux firmware just a compile away. I’d totally love a 35” X terminal in 2008 with Ethernet and a couple USB ports.
Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11
#699Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Telling people to just go without a TV is a little more than a “perceived” inconvenience. From personal experience, it really really is barely even an inconvenience. Especially in a world where YouTube exists and is accessible for free from a desktop computer. There's barely been anything good on TV for decades, and the older stuff probably only seemed good because of the difficulty of publishing any competition.
It really depends on the individual. I barely watch any TV and have been like this for the 30+ years that I’ve been old enough to own a display. For a while, I did go fully in with media centres. Even running XBMC on an original Xbox. But I honestly just don’t really care for video content all that much regardless of how it’s delivered. But I also know a hell of a lot of people who still massively prefer watching con…
> And I have no more right to tell them how to consume video content as they do to tell me how I should consume the stuff I want to read.
I sometimes suggest they’d do themselves a favor if they stopped watching Fox News and reality TV, that life is much better without that.
Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11
#700Earlier quoted context omitted.
If somebody "needs" a TV then they might "need" some hobbies. A disturbing proportion of my family spend more than half of their free time watching television (typically while doom scrolling tiktok). They don't "need" TVs - they need to find interests.
What people don’t need is someone dictating to them how they should relax after work. Besides, it’s not like TVs are the only industry where consumer choice is an illusion. You see the same problem in a lot of sports (I used to fence and there was a great deal of pressure to buy equipment from one specific manufacturer which charged literally 4x the price for their gear). And it’s not just hobbies either. I need a ca…
> What people don’t need is someone dictating to them how they should relax after work.
Nobody dictates that. What we do is to suggest there might be more rewarding things to do with their time off than watching TV between the dopamine hits from TikTok