They are trying so hard to push everybody to linux. The only thing that has kept me using windows is game development tool chains, but even that isn't gonna be enough to keep me on windows much longer.
Technology
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
The Godot Engine is getting better every day.
If you're already using a third party engine it shouldn't be as big of a deal jumping to Linux. But if you're doing engine development, the tools on Windows are still superior. There's a big reason why Direct3D is still so popular despite being constrained to only Xbox and Windows. Tooling and documentation for Vulkan and OpenGL are light years behind and it's frustrating to see how vast the differences are as someone who primarily works with Vulkan/OpenGL and haa dabbled with Direct3D as a hobby.
This doesn’t sound “malware-like”. It sounds like just plain malware.
Microsoft produces malware, that's nothing new.
at least malware is free
"Free as in freedom?"
"Free as in free data for Microsoft to harvest."
Haven't we already categorized windows as malware and Microsoft as a malware company? We really shouldn't be surprised that they put out another piece of malware. It's their MO.
I’m not a windows fan boy, in fact I haven’t used one in years, and have no intentions to.
But this is a weird way of thinking about MS shenanigans.
- Hate it or like it, windows update is still an update to your system, to fix security vulnerabilities even. I wish they had implemented it in a user friendly way. But it is NOT a thing that disrupts you with ill intent as you mentioned here.
- That is a task manager running some process. But no indication on what the process is !
- Enabled by default is an horrible design decision no matter who does it. I agree on that. But this is NOT unauthorised access. You signed up for it when you decided to use windows.
Again I don’t like MS. Hate them for their bad decisions, but don’t hate them by misrepresenting them.
(My comment is only about this screenshot posted here)
An example of ill intent on Microsoft's part: https://mashable.com/article/windows-10-upgrade-snafu-analysis
If you haven't used windows in years then you might not know how bad it has gotten, but ... it's bad. Windows update is not just for security updates, it's also there to change users default browser to edge, their search engine to bing, trick them into using onedrive (too bad if the synced files get corrupted), old features get disabled for no good reason, it hijacks other browsers to show messages and change browser settings, ...
All those things are definitely not for security, but rather a way for Microsoft managers to meet KPI, for example: they want more users of a new application, so they remove the old way of doing things and boom, their quarterly report looks prettier. And to top it all off Microsoft doesn't test updates properly anymore in house, so it's the customers who are life testing that shit. And because those users have to keep updating windows for security, Microsoft has them over a barrel.
When I update my Linux machines, they won't override MY settings, something that Microsoft notoriously does all the time, changing settings intl their favor. Every time you try to cut the Microsoft bullshit down to a minimum, Microsoft will just try and restore it to it's "full glory" again.
Yeah, i do consider all Microsoft software to be malware
Why would you download bing wallpaper app anyways? First rule of computers: only install from trusted sources
Most average users consider Microsoft a trusted source, that's the root cause of a whole lot of crap.
"Megacorp learned nothing from Active Desktop being an utter fucking security disaster." Yeah, no shit. Everything old is new again.
Active Desktop was entirely ahead of its time. Let's not forget that it was only around a decade later that JIT-compiled JavaScript engines like V8 paved the way for web apps, including the iPhone which at launch only supported third-party apps as web apps.
Why do people need an app for wallpapers? Just find some nice photos on Flickr, DeviantArt, whatever, save them all to a folder, and configure the OS to change it once per week.
Reminds me of the "free smileys" and "free mouse cursors" apps from the 2000s. I thought we had evolved past that.
How do you save a picture? Where is Downloads? How do you apply a saved picture as a wallpaper?
These are confusing questions to boomers and Gen Z.
Why not have a simple app which "automatically" does all the hard work (just in exchange of a little of your data)?
I'm always surprised at how devious this windows spyware is. 99% of people would probably just accept to share all their data but that's not good enough; MS has to try and squeeze out every last drop.
Every time I see stuff like this it makes me slightly glad they got laughed out of the smart phone game. Can you imagine if a Microsoft mobile OS became a serious third between Android and iOS? I mean, those two aren't great by any stretch of the imagination (and are probably doing or planning similar shit), but Microsoft is just going gloves off at this point.
Time to break up Microsoft
Best time was a decade ago. Second best time is now. Same with Google, and Apple, auto companies and grocery companies. And...and...and. it's almost as the free market DOESN'T solve issues it creates them.
Oh, free markets can solve these problems, but we don't have a free market. These big companies don't win because they're the best, they win because they buy the marketshare bribe companies to only support their platforms.
ISPs are a fantastic example here. Starting a new ISP is prohibitively expensive, not because of the physical materials you need, but the permits (which the ISPs lobbied for) and lawsuits w/ existing ISPs. In a proper free market, we'd have a lot more selection than we do.
What you call "free market" I call "crony-capitalism." In a free market, monopolies only stay monopolies if they continue to be better than the alternatives. In a crony-capitalist market, monopolies continue if they can make enough barriers to prevent competition.
These big companies don't win because they're the best, they win because they buy the marketshare bribe companies to only support their platforms.
You're just describing free market capitalism.
The companies are free to do what they want without government telling them they can't do XYZ.
In a free market, monopolies only stay monopolies if they continue to be better than the alternatives.
I disagree, because like you say, they can just use their position to harm competitors.
In a crony-capitalist market, monopolies continue if they can make enough barriers to prevent competition.
A crony-capitalist market is just the natural end result of free market capitalism.
Only by regulating the market and not having companies be free to do whatever they want can you have healthy competition and companies that benefit people.
I disagree. Monopolies are the end state of free market capitalism, and yes the economic system we experience in north America isn't true capitalism either.
Microsoft ~~sofficial "Bing Wallpaper app"~~ does some nasty, malware-like things ~~to Windows~~