The app automatically installs Bing Visual Search and includes code to decrypt cookies saved in other browsers, Rivera said, and it also brings a “free” geolocation web API to the system.
The developer discovered “many” nasty tricks Microsoft integrated in Bing Wallpapers, which include trying to change the browser’s settings and set Edge as the default system browser. If the default browser isn’t Edge, the app will open the default browser after some time asking to enable the previously installed Microsoft Bing Search for Chrome extension.
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.
If there was more competition they (probably) wouldn’t be doing this stuff as people would leave.
I’m up to buy a new computer and I’ve never wanted a Macbook but with all the negative changes Microsoft is making I feel it is the time to make the switch.
Microsoft seems to think that we are the product and harvesting data is the default business model moving forward.
Apple is no better, they just have a better PR team.
Apple is historically better in terms of privacy than Microsoft. From resistance to government data requests to just their posture on data collection, it is an improvement. They rely less than Microsoft on advertisement and service based revenue and more on hardware sales which do not require the same level of invasive collection.
I don’t mean to sing their praises too loudly, but between the two I think Apple is a clear favorite. And couple that with a better, BSD-based, OS and I think you’ve got a winner. Unless of course you include alternate, clearly superior alternatives, like GNU/Linux.
But hardware alone? MacBooks can’t be beat.
Microsoft
sofficial “Bing Wallpaper app”does some nasty, malware-like thingsto WindowsWhy 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.
I do enjoy all the NASA photos and National Geographic backgrounds served up to me on a rotating basis without needing to take up local storage space to do so. But I ain’t running Windows either.
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)?
As a “boomer” myself, I do know the secret of the ‘right click: Save as’. Who do you think thought up the idea-- that’s right, a Boomer. And we taught Gen X about it. Not my fault they didn’t pass on the ancient and now arcane knowledge to future generations. But I suppose you need to know how to use a mouse before you can right click anything. Having attempted to teach 3D CAD to high school students, my first job was to show them how to use a mouse and why fingers and CAD don’t mix. And do it before we could actually move on to the subject matter they were supposed to be learning.
Still I do use an app for rotate my backgrounds and quotes. The app Variety works well with KDE Plasma with a large selection of repositories to choose from with beautiful backgrounds without taking up extra space on my drives. But what do I know, I’m just a boomer.
Oh lord, as someone teaching a bunch of technologically illiterate college students something that requires a lot less computer skills, teaching CAD to today’s high schoolers sounds rough. I am a millennial that started on DOS, and joke to them that back in my day, to play video games I had to climb uphill both ways in the snow, and, use a terminal lol. And funny that you mention your KDE setup, I use plasma and one of my first thoughts was “I bet there’s a KDE widget/applet for that” haha
I suspect it might be easier to teach high school students. You get them younger and they don’t know no better. Fewer things to unlearn. But the skill gaps can be eye opening for sure. I’m old as dirt. I got my feeble tech start in front of a printer terminal-- we didn’t have such things as monitors. I don’t think I saw my first DOS prompt until I was maybe 19 or 20. But we stilled played Oregon Trail and some Space Invader game. And we loved it!
And the first rule of KDE is “There is ALWAYS a widget!”
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.
A wallpaper app is already targeting the most vulnerable. Nobody who knows how to remove the spyware that’s already in Windows is installing a wallpaper app.
While scummy indeed, if you need a desktop application to get yourself new wallpapers, my sympathy only goes so far.
Also not at all surprised the top comment speaks of Linux.
Linux, hating Musk, and Star Trek: the Lemmy trifecta.
You only have sympathy for people who are already technically competent to some standard you’ve chosen? It’s those who don’t have technical competence that this shit works on. I’d bet that’s the reason a wallpaper app was chosen for these shenanigans, because it filters out the people who will be wise to it.
Like it or not, building a secure internet means making systems that are safe for regular internet users, and if you’re getting snooty about the kinds of programs a person installs, I’d wager that’s not you. Even if it’s just the least competent 5 or 10% of the internet falling prey to this, it’s the predators that make the environment more dangerous for everyone. Put the blame where it belongs.
Also, those people aren’t using Linux partly because Linux is an elitist community that shits on anyone who’s not comfortable in the command line. If you want Linux to be a viable threat to the Windows monopoly, you need to accept that these people will need to be accommodated, unless you’re happy selfishly keeping it to cloistered group of nerds who are toxic towards every newcomer, and you think that’s the way it should be. I’ve certainly met Linux people who think that way.
I only hate Musk and love Star Trek. Does that mean I’m not a true Lemmy?
So long as you have extremely strong political opinions and shout them loudly than it’s okay.
Those are rookie numbers. You gotta pump those numbers up.
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.
You’re just describing free market capitalism.
I’m really not.
Free market capitalism differs from our current economic system in regulations and taxes, which manipulate normal supply and demand. For example, we subsidize EVs, which makes EVs more attractive than they normally would be, which encourages EV companies to keep prices higher than they normally would. We also subsidize roads, which makes cars more attractive than other modes of transportation. We also levy tariffs, which prioritize locally produced goods and goods from friendly trade partners, and may be unequally levied based on product type to protect certain types of domestic industries.
Free market capitalism does not prevent all regulations. You can still ban price fixing and other forms of collusion w/o violating those underlying principles of non-interference. Companies are not “free to do what they want,” they are restricted from colluding w/ government to get special favors or handouts. A system with a properly separated government and market means the government only steps in if there’s a crime, and the list of possible crimes should be limited and not target specific industries. Companies can still acquire others and whatnot to form conglomerates, but doing so is only profitable if they’re breaking some other type of law so it may trigger an investigation.
Once you allow the government to directly regulate the market, you open the floodgates to cronysism. Regulations disproportionately hurt small companies because large companies can overcome it and use those regulations as a weapon against potential competitors.
Nobody challenges cable companies because cable companies can tie up competitors in court over permitting and whatnot to exhaust whatever investment capital they have on legal fees, so the only real competition possible is government (muni fiber) because they control the permitting or new tech (Starlink, point-to-point wireless) because they can sidestep the permitting. If permitting was substantially easier, we’d see more competition in the ISP space (and probably reuse of existing lines since it’s better to make a deal than run separate lines or lose 100% profit).
The only way, IMO, for regulations to be a net good WRT competition is if government is sensible and untouchable by corporations. I don’t believe that’s feasible, so the next best is to limit the ability of governments to make laws that impact the market so corporations don’t have anything to gain through lobbying.
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.
I really disagree, but we haven’t seen anything approaching a truly free market for 100 years or so, so it’s really hard to say.
That said, one of the core functions of government is to break up monopolies to keep the market free.
I think by virtue of the government breaking up monopolies, it cannot be a free market. I do believe the government should make sure that corporations shouldn’t be monopolies however.
Maybe if we’re talking in absolutes, but most of the problems I see in our current market are due to cronyism. People generally hate Comcast (or local cable company of choice) and CenturyLink (or local DSL company of choice), yet it’s incredibly hard to start an ISP due to local regulations and protectionism. Many people don’t like Windows, yet they’re “required” for many computing tasks due to agreements with others in the industry.
Price fixing and other types of collusion go against the principle of a free market, and if that goes on unchecked, I think it’s appropriate for a government entity to step in. However, if a company is merely the preferred provider of a good or service and they’re not colluding or otherwise preventing competition, there’s no reason for a government entity to step in. So someone like Comcast should probably be broken up, but someone like Valve should not. Not all “monopolies” should be broken up, only the ones violating the law.
The issues with google and windows that you are pointing out are the result of corporate welfare and capitalism without regulation. It’s incredibly expensive to start an isp yes. So it should be a nationalized service. MS got to where it was because they buy up competition, and there wasn’t anyone who stepping in earlier to stop it.
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.
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.
That is until they kicked everyone out for being “nazis”
If you want an anti-woke game engine, what are you doing on an operating system whose mascot is a transgender foxgirl?
As a general rule, I support the removal of nazis.
Nobody is against the removal of nazis.
Have you asked a nazi about that?
They do Nazi the problem with that.
I dunno, your comments seem to have a certain tilt.
Point to a comment where I show support for nazis. Strawman arguments is all you have to defend your points. Once again you fail to formulate an objective argument.
That is until they kicked everyone out for being “nazis”
Point to a comment where I show support for nazis.
You are the one who keep bringing up Nazi’s. You can’t bring it up, have people agree it’s good to remove Nazi’s, and then say “whoa I support the people kicked out, I don’t support nazi’s” after you yourself said they were kicked out for being nazis.
You’re your own unreliable narrator and it is both hilarious and embarrassing.
Wow. Looked at you comment history and you are not well liked. Later gator.
Yes, I get downvoted a lot on Lemmy, yet nobody seems to be able to say why I’m wrong on these issues. Users of Lemmy resort to downvoting when they can’t defend their arguments. It is a fact that humans are more eager to show their disapproval than approval for something, like in restaurant reviews, where the only people who bother to leave a review are those with bad experiences.
Also, I’d be wary of basing your opinion explicitly off what other people think. You need to formulate your own thoughts if you want to retain some sort of identity.
Users of Lemmy resort to downvoting when they can’t defend their arguments.
You got absolutely obliterated because you posted two links to ‘articles,’ one of which is just some guys blog, and then refused to defend anything the articles said.
Also you don’t ‘defend’ a counter argument. You started the argument, offered a blog as ‘proof’ of an issue, when pressed on what the blog said you backed down and refused to defend it, and you just accuse everyone around of you of not having independent thought.
It is a fact that humans are more eager to show their disapproval than approval for something, like in restaurant reviews, where the only people who bother to leave a review are those with bad experiences.
YOU LITERALLY DID THIS. A guy said ‘The Godot Engine is getting better every day.’ in a post about Microsoft screwing up an app and you, yes, you started complaining about the team behind the engine! You’re like the living embodiment of irony, hahahahahaha
You realize it’s open source and you don’t need their blessing to use it right?
You’re not entitled to force people to deal with you being a raging jackass.
You realize it’s open source and you don’t need their blessing to use it right?
Yes, everyone knows that. What they did is banned developer accounts, thus preventing you from contributing to it.
You’re not entitled to force people to deal with you being a raging jackass.
There it is. The community of inclusion once again unable to express their thoughts without insulting people. Almost comical, but I guess there’s nothing funny about hypocrisy.
They banned “developer” accounts who were being incredibly disruptive throwing a tantrum about the social media account celebrating games with a wide variety of perspectives. I don’t think there’s any actual evidence for them banning a single person who ever did anything useful, but it doesn’t actually matter. They aren’t obligated to let you be in their community.
Don’t behave like a raging jackass and you won’t be called one. I’m not obligated to ignore bad behavior either. It’s perfectly OK to call bad people behaving badly bad people.
They banned “developer” accounts who were being incredibly disruptive throwing a tantrum about the social media account celebrating games with a wide variety of perspectives. I don’t think there’s any actual evidence for them banning a single person who ever did anything useful
Sure, if by not doing anything useful you mean donating money to the project, and saying that the project should focus on the project [1].
They aren’t obligated to let you be in their community
Beautiful statement.
Don’t behave like a raging jackass and you won’t be called one. I’m not obligated to ignore bad behavior either. It’s perfectly OK to call bad people behaving badly bad people.
The fact is the mass banning was not justified, and people were not being “raging jackass”, no matter how many times you call them that. There’s a reason Godot apologized for the incident, yet you fail to see that.
Donating money doesn’t give you free rein to be an asshole, and shockingly, their donations went way up when they removed the trash.
They elected to decide that some of the people being jackasses didn’t technically violate their community guidelines and apologized, but that doesn’t mean that there was a single person who was banned who didn’t deserve it. Yes, jumping on a bandwagon of unforgivable horseshit without technically saying a banned thing still makes you a bad person, and yes, everyone they banned should have stayed banned.
The community of inclusion once again unable to express their thoughts without insulting people.
Funny how calling someone a jackass is “insulting” to you, but you treat bigotry like fair game.
Funny how calling someone a jackass is “insulting” to you, but you treat bigotry like fair game.
“Jackass” is indeed an insult, no need to put it between quotations. And here you accuse me of treating bigotry like fair game without proof. The truth is here Godot messed up and you aren’t willing to see that because it would expose you as a hypocrite. Remember Godot apologized for the incident, yet here you are defending it.
Glad you see it as well. It’s so fundamental to how they engage online, the hypocrisy becomes them.
Bold coming from someone who recently took a strong stance on support of sexual assault against women.
Lol what? No don’t bother, something is wrong here, and I’m not engaging with you ever again.
You mean a few github accounts and a bunch of jerks on Discord, which you are bringing up on Lemmy?
If anything this is just another repudiation of Discord as a whole. I hate how its eating the internet like mad cow disease.
You mean a few github accounts and a bunch of jerks on Discord, which you are bringing up on Lemmy?
No, I mean titanium level backer of the project. What does being on Lemmy matter?
Yes blocking major backers is bad, I agree with that. The mod behind this kind of sounds unpleasant too.
What does being on Lemmy matter?
Discord is like the antithesis of Lemmy, a siloed off, inefficient, unscrapable, private, proprietary and dangerously monopolistic echo chamber. I’ve seen it swallow too many of my niches, and from my experience, it turns people into jerks.
Hence what I’m getting at is that this may not have happened without all that nonsense in the unoffiical discord.
So… one article that explains the situation as “Godot said something inclusive, bigots got angry, started harassment campaign,” and another full of dog whistles?
Bruh, you a fuckin clown.
I didn’t read the articles, and don’t care about how they frame the issue. This is for the guy who asked what I was talking about.
Bruh, you a fuckin clown.
Perfect.
I didn’t read the articles, and don’t care about how they frame the issue. This is for the guy who asked what I was talking about.
So you… posted articles you didn’t read in support of yourself, but you won’t defend them?
Lol, “excessive pandering to LGBT…”
Brave little CIS boi standing up to Big Gay, what a fucking hero.
He’s saying they should work on the engine instead of pandering. I feel like that’s a reasonable request, especially from a backer
instead of pandering
Seriously do you guys read what you’re writing after you write it? Is there no moment of introspection where you go “Huh, so they’re helping a minority group that is currently being attacked by powerful members of our society… by being inclusive. I wonder if that is a net good, and that helping people under attack is a sign of strength and not ‘pandering’?” or do you skip to “People I don’t like are openly accepted by others, and their acceptance is abhorrent to my backing of their” (checks notes) “video game engine. I must rage at this horrible injustice!”
The sheer volume of queer people who’ve made the games you play would cause you to froth at the mouth. Those same queer people can’t even be out anymore without being shot at a gay bar by some fanatic, or walk down the street and not get assaulted. The humanitarian actions of a company that accepts donations is not reliant on checking with each backer to ask if they’re okay helping people. Fuck them if they aren’t.
I think you should take a look in the mirror and think, really think, about if a company helping people is in any way abhorrent to you, and what that says about you. Because I know that you know someone impacted by the opposite of that help, and you know their lives improve every time someone who isn’t queer, or a visible minority, or a woman, steps out and says “No, fuck this, we’re helping these people.”
You can be that person.
Dual boot and encrypt your Linux drives so windows can’t access them, or run windows in an isolated VM. Only use Windows when you absolutely need to and use Linux for everything else.
That’s the best way to get yourself used to it. I did that with PC gaming. All my servers, my personal laptop, and my personal desktop all run Linux and just the personal desktop has windows dual boot. Now many games run on Linux, so I don’t even boot Windows. It’s been like a year or more since I last touched Windows outside of my work laptop.
And with KDE Plasma desktop, even my non-tech-savy partner had no problem switching. Fedora has a Plasma district that works really well for me.
If only flight sims and peripherals worked on Linux It’s been the one think keeping me back.
I left a long time ago while they would entertain my classmates of new features I had been using for 4 years. Everyone thought I was embarrassed when the MS rep told me they had to look at legal consequences before adding features that could be patented by others when I asked why they hadn’t added a menu of WiFi access points, yet I sat there wondering how our open source community built so much and took care of each other in collaboration. I understood they had to be careful to not get sued, but they also thrived in that world for competition rather than selling services.
This doesn’t sound “malware-like”. It sounds like just plain malware.
Or just plain Microsoft.
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
The good thing is you can disable most of their telemetry crap if you know what you are doing.
Should be opt in to begin with
A lot of it pops up and asks, but it’s inside a barrage of questions that requires users to actually pay attention at a point when they’re just trying to get into their computer
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.
Most average users consider Microsoft a trusted source, that’s the root cause of a whole lot of crap.
I remember when I installed SP3 for XP… On my AMD machine.
Lack of trust in Microsoft started on that fateful day.
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.”
“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.
BREAKING: Microsoft is still shitty
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