There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

windowscentral.com

spaghettiwestern , to technology in A PR disaster: Microsoft has lost trust with its users, and Windows Recall is the straw that broke the camel's back

It’s also important to remember that Microsoft has no monetary incentive to force people to use Windows Recall.

With that in mind, there would be no reason for Microsoft to automatically enable Windows Recall in an update down the line. If it does happen, the user will be able to instantly tell thanks to that that visual indicator and turn it off again.

This article is nothing but propaganda. There is huge monetary incentive to force people to use Windows Recall and collect their data, and Microsoft routinely uses Windows Update to enable data collection. They began that practice years ago on Windows 7. It’s a ridiculously simple matter for MS to disable the visual indicator and force This Week’s Plan on their users to monetize their data.

Windows Central pretends to be critical of plans to enable a feature that can be made into malware by Microsoft in a couple of minutes, but then back peddles and says it can’t be done (utter BS) and if it could be, it wouldn’t be that bad.

barsquid ,

Even if the database remains local only forever, which I don’t believe for a second, the computer will eventually make hyperspecific requests for ads based on the spying.

Luccus ,

Only data that is not stored cannot fall victim to attackers. It does not matter whether it is a ‘nigerian prince’, Microsoft or some agency. Even if you completly trust whatever entity with your data right now, they may become problematic in the future.

This is why a low profile is a crucial component of OPsec.

Recall is objectively stupid, even if Microsoft only had their users best interest in mind. And they don’t.

TwilightVulpine , to gaming in Xbox's new policy — say goodbye to unofficial accessories from November thanks to error '0x82d60002'

Enshittification advances. Consoles already are the prime example of devices that act as if they are still owned by the company rather than the customer, but they somehow find even more ways to make it worse...

FlyingSquid , to news in Google pulls the plug on uBlock Origin, leaving over 30 million Chrome users susceptible to intrusive ads
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

I have said this in other threads about this issue in response to all the “use Firefox” comments.

Thousands upon thousands of school children are currently using Chromebooks they get from their schools. Now they will be forced to look at ads.

bitwaba ,

Gotta get 'em hooked while they’re young…

TotalFat ,

Joe Camel

CafecitoHippo ,

Now they will be forced to look at ads.

I’m pretty sure they would’ve been seeing ads anyways. I doubt that school IT administrators had uBlock Origins as an extension that was being installed and I really doubt they didn’t have the chromebooks locked down so students could install whatever extensions they wanted.

madcaesar ,

Good, smart IT would have installed ublock and locked that shit down. Saves bandwidth and protects the kids.

But you’re probably right, most IT departments are useless.

CafecitoHippo ,

Yeah, I’m not saying it’s not a good practice, but I just don’t see them doing it.

kogasa ,
@kogasa@programming.dev avatar

Don’t think it saves bandwidth unless it’s a DNS level block, which IT should also do but separately from uBO

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

I was able to install it on my daughter’s Chromebook.

captainlezbian ,

Tbh I wouldn’t be surprised if that wasn’t a goal of the chromebook project

atocci ,

I was done with school before giving out computers to students was the norm, but my brother’s school district seems to be issuing Surface Laptops instead of Chromebooks. With Firefox preinstalled.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

It must be a wealthier school district because Chromebooks are far cheaper, even in bulk, than Surface notebooks.

discountcomputerdepot.com/shop?product_listings=C…

atocci ,

Wow those things can really get down in price. I think the district is issuing the original Surface Laptop Go, which went for about $500 when they were new and bought individually. No idea what kind of discount they could get for buying in bulk though, educational institution pricing is hidden behind having to “contact sales”.

ReveredOxygen ,
@ReveredOxygen@sh.itjust.works avatar

They’re forced to look at ads anyway, as the IT dept blocks installing extensions

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

The IT department at my daughter’s school allowed me to install the uBlock Origin extension last year. Granted, some extensions (and websites for that matter, no PornHub) were blocked, but not that one.

JusticeForPorygon ,
@JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.world avatar

I’m willing to bet you’re the exception and not the rule. I can confirm from my own experience that we couldn’t even alter the system settings of the individual device.

atocci ,

Altering system settings wasn’t possible when I was in school, but browser settings weren’t so locked down. Extensions were freely available to install on the school computers.

JusticeForPorygon ,
@JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.world avatar

That wasn’t the case for us, we couldn’t download anything that didn’t come pre-installed. If the teachers wanted to use a website that was blocked by the cartoonishly restrictive web filter they had to wait upwards of a week because all of the IT was done by one guy who was also a teacher.

atocci ,

Our IT team was pretty cool I think.

I had a technology class when I was there that only had 6 students in this little computer lab in the back of the cafeteria. There were way more computers than than students though, so the few of us that were there started unplugging monitors from the unused computers next to us and giving our computers multiple monitors. We couldn’t rearrange the monitors since they were physically attached to the tables, and they couldn’t be reordered in Windows since system settings were locked, so we just had to remember that to get to the left monitor we’d actually have to move the mouse to the right for example.

Not even a week later, someone from IT showed up to check on things. We thought that would be it for our multi-monitor setups and they’d make us put them back, but not a beat was missed between them noticing what we had done, realizing that the monitors were in the wrong order, and offering to fix it for us in the settings.

JusticeForPorygon ,
@JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah our IT guy was cool and always tried to be helpful, it’s just that he was given the job of a whole team on top of being a full time teacher, while also constantly facing criticism from the school board for being unable to keep up. You could tell he was only there for the students, because his bosses treated him like shit.

Except he was also a big time trump supporter and ended up losing his job after (from what I heard) bringing a gun on a school trip.

So nobody’s perfect I guess.

Lets_Eat_Grandma ,

I would personally push adblockers in a professional environment. They eliminate a lot of unwanted threat vectors.

There is a very rare occasion where it breaks things just one ticket later and a little education and it’s good.

JusticeForPorygon ,
@JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.world avatar

Definitely! It’s just unfortunate that many times the people in charge of doing that don’t know that.

Trainguyrom ,

Around the time the FBI quietly updated their security recommendations to include recommending adblocking a couple of large local colleges in the very conservative area I live started pushing uBlock Origin to all of their computers. And if I were higher on the foodchain at my place of work I’d be pushing to enact a similar policy update

A_Random_Idiot ,

given the typical IT inertia, that will be a problem when they update chrome in 5 years.

Showroom7561 ,

Thousands upon thousands of school children are currently using Chromebooks they get from their schools. Now they will be forced to look at ads.

I don’t want to be “that guy”, but the ads school-aged kids are viewing come from the apps they are using, not their web browsing on Chrome.

And they are even more heavily impacted when their favourite content creator hucks sponsored products, which can’t be blocked with an adblocker.

I feel like I’ve dodged a bullet by not being exposed to 99.9% of the ads out there, but that’s only because I don’t use toxic social media apps or YouTube in its designed form.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Except no they don’t because they have to do things like research for their essays, which requires using the web in general.

Showroom7561 ,

Maybe it depends on the school system, but my kid’s Chromebook was locked down, so they couldn’t really explore the full internet. Many sites are either white or blacklisted, so they were researching from a website designed to be used by students - not many ads, but yeah, going off script would get them into ad territory.

Still, they aren’t seeing the majority of ads from the few minutes they need to look up a research topic.

mindlight , to news in Google pulls the plug on uBlock Origin, leaving over 30 million Chrome users susceptible to intrusive ads

If you want to avoid ads it might be a good idea to not use products from a company which primary goal is to make money on ads…

But hey, what do I know…

silverbax , to technology in Microsoft accidentally leaks internal tool that can enable hidden Windows 11 features

Nice try, Microsoft, trying to get people to use Windows 11. Just focus on fixing Windows 12 and cut your losses.

ConstipatedWatson , to technology in Google pulls the plug on uBlock Origin, leaving over 30 million Chrome users susceptible to intrusive ads

We should all probably start donating to Firefox. Isn’t Google their main source of income?

There might come a time when they prefer to gut Firefox, forcing Mozilla to either reject uBlock Origin or die (or they could simply pull the plug on funding knowing they’ll earn more when people go back to Chrome-based browsers)

fernlike3923 ,
@fernlike3923@sh.itjust.works avatar

Mozilla still does pretty good without any donations, and your donations will most definitely not be spent on Firefox.

noodlejetski ,

Mozilla still does pretty good without any donations

because Google pays them so that they keep offering Google as the default search engine. now that Google has been declared a monopoly, they might not be allowed to do that anymore, which means Mozilla loses its funding.

fernlike3923 ,
@fernlike3923@sh.itjust.works avatar

Mozilla’s funding did mostly consist of the Google partnership (86%), but as you can see, it’s not their only source of income. And you really don’t need half a fucking billion just to develop a web browser, which is open source, which also gets community contributions. This is made pretty obvious by their current revenue (>$1,000,000,000) and their CEO’s whopping $5.6 million salary.

Don’t donate to a shitty for-profit that masks itself with their non-profit company. Instead donate to something like Ladybird, whom are currently in early development but have no plans on adding features that actively spy on you (FakeSpot, Pocket), and they don’t need $500 fucking million to develop a web browser.

And if you’re going to talk about Mozilla’s social work, just don’t. I’ve already seen it.

areyouevenreal ,

You have zero idea how much engineering it takes to create a standards compliant engine and then maintain it. “And you don’t need half a fucking billion just to develop a web browser”. Technically this is true if you are willing to use someone else’s web engine. Firefox aren’t doing that, and it requires huge investment to maintain their own engine. There is a reason only large companies these days (Apple, Google, Mozilla) have their own engines. The actual browser part is tiny compared to the engine. We are talking about something the size of the Linux kernel or bigger, that gets far less contributions from outside sources. It actually makes perfect sense they are looking at starting other projects when you think that all other companies that do this kind of work need those other projects to remain profitable. Web engine development from my understanding does not pay. You get almost the same amount of money using somebody else’s engine as you do developing your own, yet one costs way more.

The fact Mozilla manages to maintain a better web engine than Apple’s WebKit only from Google’s advertising money is actually incredible. Did I mention Apple didn’t even start that engine themselves? It’s based on KHTML. Chrome is in turn a WebKit derivative. Firefox on the other hand actually comes from Netscape, and was first developed under the name Mozilla based on Netscape’s code. So Mozilla has put in more work than Google in modernising their engine.

fernlike3923 ,
@fernlike3923@sh.itjust.works avatar

Thank you. Yes, they are also developing their own web engine, which is a very complicated piece of software because of the current sad state of the web. But it doesn’t excuse any of the things I mentioned, and web engine development still doesn’t suckle up that much money as we can see from their current revenue and other efforts to make an independent web engine such as Ladybird.

I do not mind Mozilla starting other projects, but if you’re talking about FakeSpot or Pocket which are getting integrated into the “more private alternative to browsers like Internet Explorer, and now Chrome” by the “non-profit” whom “prioritize people and their privacy over profits”, I think you need to take a look at those privacy policies I linked in my previous comment.

I agree with you on your last paragraph, but there are some things I’m bothered with. Mozilla is (or was) a company that focused on one thing, their web browser. Apple and Google are (and were) different, in that they have a vast range of products to maintain. And Gecko is most definitely inferior to Blink in terms of speed, although I’m not familiar with any of their “modernity”.

areyouevenreal ,

other efforts to make an independent web engine such as Ladybird.

Notice the word efforts here. No one has actually succeeded yet despite multiple attempts, some even by Mozilla themselves like Servo. Ladybird is not a fully functioning browser yet. Are they anywhere even close yet? Even if they are close it also has to be fast. Google and Mozilla have spent quite a bit of time, money, and effort making their JavaScript engines as fast as possible.

I will have a look at some of the links you have given, but honestly I think most criticism thrown at Mozilla isn’t anything close to what the alternatives are guilty of, and is mostly done by conspiracy nuts. The kind of people were Mastodon and Lemmy is their only social media, and refuse to own a modern smartphone that isn’t running custom firmware.

fernlike3923 ,
@fernlike3923@sh.itjust.works avatar

Ladybird is fairly new. Just like how Mozilla didn’t get Gecko to this point in 1 year, Ladybird will take years of development to become a reliable browser and browser engine.

I pretty much agree with you. The alternatives are far worse. Seeing Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge being literal spyware, other Chromium-based browsers cutting out support for content-blocking extensions Firefox is vastly superior to them in terms of privacy. Although that still doesn’t mean Firefox is good, at least if we’re past talking about web browser engines etc., using another Firefox-based browser which is less bloated (Firefox Sync off by default, no Pocket, no recommendations in Addons tab), more privacy-friendly (all telemetry off by default, uBlock Origin installed by default, some hardening options from about:config enabled by default) seems to be the best choice currently, since other options like GNOME’s Epiphany and KDE’s Falkon sucks, if we’re being honest.

And I do kind of fit your description, if we exclude being a conspiracy-theorist.

areyouevenreal ,

I actually use Firefox sync. In fact I think all of that is quite unnecessary given what the policies you brought up actually state as was discussed in another comment. Everyone should be using AdBlock at this point, and I am planning to setup network wide AdBlock and malware block at my home in the future.

And I do kind of fit your description, if we exclude being a conspiracy-theorist.

Yeah I thought you could be. Nothing wrong with using a de-googled phone. Lemmy while a great idea is full of extremists. The kinds of people who go to that level of effort to cut out Google and social media tend to be uber paranoid. It’s a shame that people are divided into three groups regarding piracy: unknowing sheep, people who know but don’t care, and conspiracy nuts. The kind of person who hears something vaguely sketchy from someone and immediately jumps to the conclusion they need to boycott that company. Very rarely do you get reasonable, informed people who actually care with regards to online privacy without thinking every single organisation is out to get them (even non-profit like Mozilla or Wikipedia). It’s why things like the legislation the EU comes up with is necessary, to protect those who won’t or can’t protect themselves.

areyouevenreal ,

Oh also the devs behind Ladybrid are apparently against anyone who isn’t male using their technology. People tried to change masculine pronouns in the documentation to neutral pronouns just to be more grammatically accurate, and it started a whole chain of GitHub arguments arguing the change is “political”. Apparently it’s political not to imply that every computer user is a man.

fernlike3923 ,
@fernlike3923@sh.itjust.works avatar

There are many software from bigots and shitheads that still get used, being seperated from their creator (e.g. Hyprland, I guess you can put here some social media platforms like Xitter if we’re not only talking about open-source software). Although I prefer not using or supporting such software, I’ve not been able to find what you’re talking about. I’ve tried searching “ladybird pronoun controversy (forgive my search engine skills)” and other similar sentences but nothing really related pops up, so it would be great if you told me your source. Thank you!

areyouevenreal ,

The whole Vaxxry controversy is largely bullshit from both sides. The original complaint was something said in his Discord server, and that he didn’t police it enough. Not something bigoted he himself said. Vaxxry was right to defend himself given their CoC doesn’t apply to his Discord server, and talking about how they are trying to improve the moderation there.

Vaxxry from the little I know of him doesn’t seem that bigoted. He certainly isn’t progressive by any means. He does espouse tolerance for other political viewpoints, which is more than can be said for a lot of projects.

It’s on there GitHub. I would have linked earlier but search engines don’t seem to pick it up.

github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/pull/6814

github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/pull/8046

fernlike3923 ,
@fernlike3923@sh.itjust.works avatar

Thank you very much! I guess it makes sense a little bit that the lead developer of an older-style operating system is a conservative, but I was still not expecting it. It’s pretty sad that this seems to be the only new web browser engine that has actual support.

areyouevenreal ,

Yeah it’s really annoying. We need more browser engines and alternatives to the current web standards. The current way these things is not fit for purpose, and is making it easy for google to establish a monopoly on the web. I think wasm helps with this somewhat, but it isn’t popular enough yet nor is it a complete solution.

areyouevenreal ,

I’ve read the one for fakespot. Given what it’s designed to do then having your purchase history makes perfect sense. How else are they meant to make recommendations? If you really have a problem just don’t use that service. The only real criticism here is the name doesn’t imply they also make product recommendations. Nevertheless they explain that on the website.

I have skimmed the pocket one, and as far as I can tell they aren’t doing anything dodgy. Keeping information only to provide the service, and some anonymised analytics to see how it’s actually being used. The later is needed to direct development effort.

In summary: Not everyone is out to get you. Some information is needed to provide services.

Edit: sorry for there different comments, wanted to come back and do more research before I finished making a statement.

fernlike3923 ,
@fernlike3923@sh.itjust.works avatar

Yeah, no problem at all. This is a lot better than people downvoting and not actually talking about what they disagree on. Felt like r/apple.

Reading it again, Pocket’s privacy policy is actually not that bad. Thankfully it was not one of those 100 page ones that are made to confuse the shit out of consumers, but I have a slight problem with it.

Personalized Advertising: Some Pocket web pages have ads. With your consent, Pocket’s ad partners will place advertising cookies on your device to personalize the ads you see here and on other websites.

How does this consent exactly work? Is it just a simple check you have to tick in your account settings, or is it one of those cookie banners that require you to untick 800 advertising partners to “not give consent”? I’m not exactly a Pocket user so I’m a bit ignorant about it.

Though there doesn’t seem to be another privacy concern with Pocket. It seems I had misconceptions about their practices.

The one other problem I have with Pocket though is, it’s not a feature that should be in a browser, it should be an extension. They have already made a lot of extensions for features that not all of the userbase might need, even FakeSpot is currently an extension (approximately 40,000 users). I guess this is a whole another argument though.

I will write my thoughts about FakeSpot in another reply.

fernlike3923 ,
@fernlike3923@sh.itjust.works avatar

Okay, what does a sweepstake or a contest have to do with a browser extension, made to spot fake reviews. Trade shows? What?

I did take a look at this privacy policy before to check if the extension was worth installing, but holy fuck I didn’t see that.

And they collect a lot of things, supposedly “automatically”. I have never developed a browser extension, but does the browser force this information on the extension? Do they just look at their data collection and find the geolocation of their users, how they accessed the extension download page, browser specifics etc.?

They also sell your “automatically collected” geolocation data, “internet or other electronic network activity”, “inferences drawn from other personal information to create a profile about a consumer”, and “commercial information”. I’ve quoted the three data selling points I really don’t understand, since their “descriptions” aren’t very descriptive. But if we are to fully trust the lawful descriptions they provided, I hope the extension stays at 40,000 users really.

https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/7ae6ed2a-b24c-4d34-866c-ef8c990df43e.png

FakeSpot’s privacy policy

areyouevenreal ,

A lot of this is the same kind of things amazon do to make purchase suggestions. It is fairly invasive but also effective. There are even some customers who appreciate this kind of thing. I will say though that the name is misleading. It dosen’t just spot fakes, it seems to be designed as a shopping assitant or search engine who’s stand out feature is pointing out fakes. I think there is a place in the market for such a thing, but they need to be careful of how they market that and what data is actually needed to be collected. Ideally they should put in a system where you can opt in to personalised recommendations and collect data for only those people who require that feature. It also needs to be spelled out clearly what this involves in terms of data collected and who sees the data. Regardless I don’t think it should be enabled by default in Firefox. Including it in the browser isn’t so bad provided they don’t get up to microsoft-like shenanigans pushing people to use it.

sunbeam60 ,

This is what drives me mad about Mozilla. Let me donate to Firefox! I don’t want to donate to another hairbrained idea to “diversify your revenue streams” - I want to donate to Firefox.

As I’ve said many times before, Firefox would be better off as an opencollective-driven, smaller (50-ish) team, with code on Codeberg, than driven by a 600 strong org who needs to compete with SF salaries and fancy offices. They have become Google by another name and it ain’t healthy.

fernlike3923 ,
@fernlike3923@sh.itjust.works avatar

I really couldn’t agree more.

mhm ,

LibreWolf exists, and is already on Codeberg. If and when push comes to shove, they may stop depending on Firefox altogether.

sunbeam60 , (edited )

I like LibreWolf! But while they may be the natural successor to a folded Firefox, they would need to beef up dramatically to actually be the stewards of the codebase. Right now they do a good job at removing stuff, but setting a direction for a browser that zings with users requires a fully fledged product org.

Firefox is caught between those two worlds.

mhm ,

Fair take. I agree 👍

areyouevenreal ,

I actually think it’s a good thing they are seeking other income sources. After all Google is both their competitor and main income source while being under investigation by the government. Firefox barely manages to keep up with Chrome as-is. Nevermind if they had a team a fraction of its current size. It’s just not really practical for a project this size and scope to have a small plucky team. It needs a big organisation of some kind behind it. Ideally one like Google or Microsoft who can pull income from more profitable projects to pay for better browser engineering. It’s also needed so they can have a say in web standards. An organisation like that also has more ways to make money from their browser like with ChromeOS and Android. Firefox actually tried to make their own smartphone OS, to be honest I am annoyed they didn’t succeed. It would have given us a real alternative to Android while giving them needed income.

HKayn ,
@HKayn@dormi.zone avatar

Your money is honestly better spent donating to new efforts like Ladybird or Servo.

sunbeam60 ,

Is Servo independent of Mozilla now? It’s instructive how much they swayed when Mozilla cut them away, but seems they’ve found a new team to steward it.

Ladybird I hadn’t heard of so thank you for the suggestion. I’ll check them out.

mostlikelyaperson ,

Screw the mozilla foundation. My only hope at this point is that Ladybird or one of the other projects produces something viable one of these days.

piracysails ,

If they can pay 5-8 milion the CEO while laying off employees, they do not need donations.

Tilgare ,

You’re absolutely right, ~80% of Mozilla’s revenue is from Google’s paying to be the default search engine in Firefox - and the US is going after Google for it’s anticompetitive behaviors as we speak. Ad blocking aside, Mozilla is going to need help pretty soon anyways if Google gets their monopoly broken up.

werefreeatlast ,

Possibly when the US government decides to break Google up next week.

tabular , to technology in Xbox's new policy — say goodbye to unofficial accessories from November thanks to error '0x82d60002'
@tabular@lemmy.world avatar

Another attack on ownership. The user is the only one who can authorize an accessory being used with their hardware.

TenderfootGungi , to technology in Windows Phone gets revenge on YouTube from the grave by helping users bypass its ad-blocker-blocker

And Google updating this old code in 3, 2, 1

Nighed ,
@Nighed@sffa.community avatar

Probably just deleting it 😂

It’s a shame, the original windows.phone concept was great

neutron ,

It was great. Even if I didn’t like the idea of “yet another walled garden, funded by a company known for its track record against open source software (this was during Ballmer era)”, I really liked the design and how fluid the interface was. It could have become another player in the mobile market and lessen the practical duopoly. Firefox OS tried this too, but it also went under.

SnipingNinja ,

It was great until people were forced to buy a new phone instead of receiving updates

Nighed ,
@Nighed@sffa.community avatar

Oh, how they handled their phone devision was awful. The original “how would we build a new phone OS from scratch” bit was awesome though

hightrix , to gaming in Xbox's biggest crisis right now isn't games. It's hardware. (Opinion - Jez Corden)

Call me dumb if you want, but I still see a big issue in MSFT's naming convention for XBox. They need to stop trying to be clever and just do something sequential.

HalJor ,
@HalJor@beehaw.org avatar

They’re just following the naming convention established by Windows: 1, 2, 3, NT, 95, 98, 2000, Me, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10, 11

Amilo1591 ,

Only if… if Windows used same scheme as Xbox you’d get:

Microsoft Windows, Windows 95 , Windows XP, Windows One, Windows OS NT, Windows OS One.

sturmblast , to technology in Google pulls the plug on uBlock Origin, leaving over 30 million Chrome users susceptible to intrusive ads

Simple solution. Don’t use Chrome.

bluewing ,

Ive been testing out ungoogled chrome with uBlock, and it still seems to be working. But I think I’m going to add Waterfox along side of my Firefox to look at that one also.

But I’m also not sure you can install uBlock anymore from the Chrome repository either.

moon , to technology in A PR disaster: Microsoft has lost trust with its users, and Windows Recall is the straw that broke the camel's back

Gamers will literally install root kits on their PCs just because an update pop up tells them to. They really don’t care lol.

hikaru755 ,

Companies and their legal departments do care though, and that’s where the big money lies for Microsoft when it comes to Windows

Delonix , to technology in A PR disaster: Microsoft has lost trust with its users, and Windows Recall is the straw that broke the camel's back

Linux ftw!

CarbonatedPastaSauce ,

For those of you that are tired of Microsoft’s bullshit, a great place to start is Linux Mint or, if you want to be on the bleeding edge with a rolling distro that still gets some testing, openSUSE Tumbleweed (which is what I’m using).

Signed,

Linux daily driver convert of ~3 months now.

Jode ,

I went through quite a few distros to find one that would cooperate with my laptop and opensuse is the one that did it.

CarbonatedPastaSauce ,

Same reason I picked it. I did some distro hopping when I made the switch and Tumbleweed was the first one I tried that my motherboard audio worked with.

Jode ,

Did you try leap before tumbleweed because I still have a few issues I am running on bandaids right now.

CarbonatedPastaSauce ,

No, I tried Mint and Manjaro for a couple weeks each and a couple other distros I’ve forgotten cause I just booted them up, checked audio was broken, and replaced them. But I know Leap wasn’t one of them.

rottingleaf ,

I started with Mint, but for Windows users I’d advise openSUSE too.

There’s an issue, though, with them preparing for the next big release to become something like Fedora Silverblue or I don’t remember. But for now it’s a distribution with the corporate feeling in a good sense as strong as with Windows, almost none of that feeling in a bad sense, and it’s very polished.

ssj2marx ,

I’ve been driving Linux for about a year now, I ended up switching to Debian because I don’t want my programs updating with bleeding edge releases that can break things. The coolest part about Linux is that you can choose like that.

ruse8145 ,

I found endeavour (arch) to be a much simpler experience vs fedora or opensuse or void. Tpm chip worked right away, clear instructions for setting up secureboot with a hook that signs everything as it’s updated, etc. I could barely get void to boot, opensuse worked well but after a power outage the tpm stopped working and I was never able to get it back, fedora I had no success with tpm. I’m sure that’s all pretty variable depending on hardware.

If you aren’t looking for full functionality of your hardware most any distro should be fine, but…why sacrifice security?

cultsuperstar ,

Tell me about gaming on Linux. Most if my gaming is via Steam and I have a Steamdeck which I know runs on a flavor of Linux so it can be done. Is it fair to say that any game that runs on the Steam runs on Steam Linux?

I just got a new prebuilt with Windows 11 Pro and I’ve been curious about Linux for the past few months. I know the variations have gotten better over the years but haven’t done too much research into it. I hear Mint and Arch quite a bit.

psycho_driver ,

Did you mean to say “any game that runs on the Steam Deck runs on Steam Linux?”

If so, the answer is yes. It’s honestly surprising these days to run across a steam title that doesn’t run in linux (though always look into the anti-cheat situation for online games).

kshade ,
@kshade@lemmy.world avatar

Is it fair to say that any game that runs on the Steam runs on Steam Linux?

No, it’s not that far along. A lot works, but if there’s invasive DRM or anticheat then it probably won’t. If you have specific games you want to play in mind check out www.protondb.com

I know the variations have gotten better over the years but haven’t done too much research into it.

If you’re curious you can just create a live USB stick to test drive it. Won’t work well for gaming though.

CaptPretentious ,
Tywele ,

There is more than one distro.

ReveredOxygen ,
@ReveredOxygen@sh.itjust.works avatar

If you’re still using Ubuntu, I’m not sure what you’re expecting

Rivalarrival , to technology in A PR disaster: Microsoft has lost trust with its users, and Windows Recall is the straw that broke the camel's back

Straw that broke the camel’s back? Every vertebra in that camel’s back has been smashed with a sledge hammer over the past 30 years.

Windows 95 was the last version I was excited about; Windows 98 SE was the last version of Windows I willingly purchased, and XP was the last one I willingly used. When they announced Win7, I downloaded Ubuntu 6.06, “Dapper Drake”. Since then, Windows has only existed on my computers as pirated, virtual machines.

CarbonatedPastaSauce ,

I think Windows 7 was good, and their last decent desktop OS before they started backporting Windows 10 garbage into it late in the lifecycle.

I’m in the same boat as you now. Earlier this year I’d had enough and there was no way I was going from my de-shittified Win10 Enterprise install to Win11. I’m on Tumbleweed for my main PC now.

lightnsfw ,

My job is in the early stages of planning for updating everything to windows 11. I just got my testing VM with it the other day which is my first experience with it and I had an almost physical reaction to how bad the gui looks when I first logged in. I haven’t even done anything with it and I already hate it.

On the other hand the Linux VM I set up at home to test my personal stuff out on has been going swimmingly.

bufalo1973 ,
@bufalo1973@lemmy.ml avatar

I hated Windows from the day I saw the 3.1 floppies had no write tab (that tiny piece that allowed you to write the disk). My first though was “we’ve payed for this and they forbid us to write on them? Fuck MS”. It was the last original Windows in any PC at home. And I used DRDOS, so even worse (Windows 3.11 had a “bug” that made it crash if it ran on DRDOS).

oo1 ,

Tape over the hole.

bufalo1973 ,
@bufalo1973@lemmy.ml avatar

I know (and then too) but that’s not the point. It’s “you are not selling this to me”.

Wolfwood1 ,

You lasted until Windows 7? I’m guessing you didn’t have to deal with Windows Vista’s bs then. I changed ship thanks to Vista.

I also suffered Windows Me, but I was too young and at that time I didn’t know there was an alternative.

I dual booted Vista/7 and Ubuntu/Mint for a while but after not using Windows in years ended removing it completely. Now I’m a happy Antergos Arch user ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Rivalarrival , (edited )

Wow, I actually forgot about Vista. I never actually had it installed on anything. XP was the last OS I had installed on hardware. Win 7 was the first I knew only from VM installations.

GamingChairModel ,

When they announced Win7, I downloaded Ubuntu 6.06, “Dapper Drake”.

Windows Vista was so bad that it gets forgotten even in a retrospective about how Windows versions sucked. But yeah, Win7 didn’t come out for another few years after that, to rescue the world from Vista.

rottingleaf ,

I have a unique memory of people saying that XP sucks ; after Vista nobody remembers that.

rottingleaf ,

and XP was the last one I willingly used.

Same.

When they announced Win7,

I, eh, still used it for some time, but then went to Linux.

Stovetop , to technology in Xbox's new policy — say goodbye to unofficial accessories from November thanks to error '0x82d60002'

Where was this outrage when Xbox blocked the ability to use third party headsets? This just seems like a continuation of their long-held policy and is likely only happening now that they have their accessibility controller on the market.

uriel238 , to technology in Google pulls the plug on uBlock Origin, leaving over 30 million Chrome users susceptible to intrusive ads
@uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I wonder if this leaves Chrome users susceptible to ads that load malware, which has been a problem for the last decade, and a driver of adblocking extension development. You can get spyware and worms from Forbes, for instance.

Adblocking is not just a matter of a cleaner internet experience, but also of good internet hygiene

mihnt ,

Oh yeah, I have a feeling we’re about to see 2000s level bullshit on computers/phones again.

dan ,
@dan@upvote.au avatar

The majority of people already don’t use ad blockers though. The Chrome Web Store says that 34 million people use (used?) uBlock Origin, while it’s estimated that around 3.3 billion people use Chrome. If those numbers are correct, only around 1% of Chrome users use uBlock Origin.

uriel238 ,
@uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I feel sorry for that 3.26 billion people, most of whom have to deal with ads, spyware and malware.

smb ,

its not just ads and malware, and its not only about beeing sorry for them. ads are also manipulating how people think. not only the obvious things like “that product is good”, but also that products in general would help (with problems you didn’t have). and the format itself of ads (even without considering its contents) already has a changing effects on the minds of those who watch it. i am thinking of some parts of neil postmans thoughts about television back then and i guess there is plenty of possibilities to make a realistic conspiracy theory out of it why exactly the most poisonous parts of television are replicated to the internet with massive force even though everyone ignores ads in the net. i like theories

unfortunately, feeling sorry for them does not help society to stability. 😥

dan ,
@dan@upvote.au avatar

What’s the alternative to ads, though? Not everyone wants to (or can afford to) pay for every site they use.

smb ,

What’s the alternative to ads, though? Not everyone wants to (or can afford to) pay for every site they use.

its not about paying for the site a user uses, its about paying those who run the site (and less to pay for someone only “managing” the site by doing actually nothing)

maybe these could be alternatives:

  • patreon
  • flattr
  • micropayment in general
  • donations (somafm runs on donations)
  • link to shopping platforms (musicians on somafm mostly have links to the songs on amazon that you see while playing the song for free)
  • communities, like FSF, local groups
  • some small payed supporter part (like lwn.net) while the important stuff that makes the win-win of the site is free to use
  • maybe the list from this page can help too: kinsta.com/de/blog/patreon-alternativen/Kickstarter Indiegogo Podia Sellfy Buy Me a Coffee Memberful Hypage Ko-fi Substack Kajabi Gumroad WooCommerce Mighty Networks MemberPress Uscreen

maybe even a combination of multiple of those *whoa!!! mindblow!!! could be a good choice to allow usersvto choose how to contribute.

so really only choosing to offer exactly one option that also puts all users at a real risk of real attacks where they can get ripped off of all or lots of their real money and data for the sake if earning 0.003 ¢ per each putting them at high risk is not really what should be done, or do you personally profit from their users high risk and are thus completely okay with it? hope not.

if you have to earn money with your project or whatever, why not offer several options to choose from? why only one? and while we’re at it, offering an ad-free “membership” for 400 times the price of what they would earn by the same visitor with ads like they try here sometimes, does not make any platform look good, but the opposite.

there are many platforms that i would pay for monthly and i would spend much more money alltogether than now on that if their price would not be artificially pushed into astronomically heights per service…

there is one project where i do donate each month a little bit via recurring bank transfer since years. my transfer says the name of the project and “donation” thats pretty easy to setup for both sides, but too complicated for those who pay designers money so they can place the ad layers on top of the 400 other layers of spypixels and navigation controls… really ? lol*

if those you are talking about cannot afford to have a bank account for some reason, i guess they also cannot receive the revenue of ads on their webpages ;+)

saying there are no alternatives to ads is rather a candidate for the lamest excuse award ;-)

dan ,
@dan@upvote.au avatar

What’s the alternative to ads, though? Not everyone wants to (or can afford to) pay for every site they use.

Barbarian ,
@Barbarian@sh.itjust.works avatar

Ublock origin isn’t the only ad blocker out there. If you like Ublock origin, use Ublock origin lite. It’s fully V3 compliant.

tallpaul ,

Not so effective against the likes of YouTube allegedly.

s_s ,

Google says Manifest v3 is being done “for security reasons” but what they don’t say is that it’s not for your security.

It’s a Judge Dredd situation.

Google is vertically integrating the roles of content provider (ads) and content server so that web pages load exactly the way the page’s developer expects them to. This necessarily excludes things that selectively filter content, like blockers.

They’re essentially taking an open framefork for the web and replacing it with interactive pdfs, that show exactly what the web developer wants, and collects exactly the information the developer wants to know about you.

If you think you should have more control, use Firefox. Anyone using Chrome is complict at this point.

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