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Talking about dark patterns, here are a couple I've noticed. In Windows, I'm very careful about NOT signing in to anything Microsoft, unless I have to. I make
by rbut 5y ago
Talking about dark patterns, here are a couple I've noticed.
In Windows, I'm very careful about NOT signing in to anything Microsoft, unless I have to. I make sure I use a local administrator account instead of a Microsoft account.
Yesterday I had to open Microsoft Edge for something that would only work in Edge, and lo-and-behold, Microsoft had taken my Xbox Game Pass sign-in and applied to Edge, then informed me they are syncing all my browser history to their servers for my benefit..
It's even worse when you activate Office 365. There is a small checkbox at the end which if you don't uncheck, converts your local administrator into your Microsoft account.. Going back to a local administrator account is not an easy task.
- jart 5y agoThat whole thing with Edge has got to be the biggest information heist in the history of the software industry. Everyone on Windows basically woke up one morning and Microsoft was like, greetings, we've backed up your hard drive to our cloud. Always do your work in a terminal folks!
- _Algernon_ 5y agoLooks like switching to linux when win 7 support ended was the right move. All my games may randomly freeze for no discernible reason, but at least I don't have to deal with that BS.
- McAtNite 5y agoI’m desperately wishing for Valve to have success with the Deck so that Linux gets better attention from game devs. The last Windows machine in my environment is exclusively for PC games, and I honestly can’t wait to install Linux over it.
- fartcannon 5y agoJust start now. Think of unsupported games as you think of games for Nintendo and Sony machines. Your financial support of gaming on Linux will encourage developers to support it. Waiting just keeps the status quo.
- RussianCow 5y agoI did this a few years ago with the same mindset, thinking I’d still regularly boot into Windows, but I haven’t done so in probably over a year. I was surprised at how little I missed the games that don’t run (well or at all) on Linux—probably because there are so many good options these days. At this point I’m thinking of deleting my Windows partition altogether.
- fartcannon 5y agoYeah, if you ever REALLY need one you can just run it in an emulator. In 20 years, I've never REALLY needed it.
- foerbert 5y agoReally? I made the same move (or at least finished it 100%) at the same time, and that's not a problem I've ever seen. Some (surprisingly few, actually) don't perform well under Wine/Proton, or at all, but random freezing I've never seen. And certainly not all of my games.
- Skunkleton 5y agoSeems like luck of the draw. I’ve had the same random freezing issues
- skoskie 5y agoBut it’s linux, so one obscure setting in a config file or slightly different hardware can make all the difference. I say this as a linux user since WinXP. The whole OS market is pretty rough right now.
- ziml77 5y ago> The whole OS market is pretty rough right now. This is my feeling over the past few years. No OS is in a great spot. But I have hopes for Linux being better supported with Valve using it on the Steam Deck. (Not the highest hopes, but more hope than I used to have)
- GekkePrutser 5y agoI don't agree. KDE in particular feels more well rounded than ever before. I use it on FreeBSD but I use Linux on servers and I'm also very happy with that. Windows 10 is stable for me too though I was hit with the eTPM stutter bug (I use my Windows box exclusively for gaming, in particular VR which I didn't feel like figuring out in proton). But the windows dark patterns are surely there and I hate them. But as it's only my gaming machine I can deal with it. And Mac... Well I moved away from it because Apple is locking down too much and I've come to hate opinionated software. Still they seem to be doing nice things with M1..
- 5y ago
- creakingstairs 5y agoI can’t wait for Proton to get better so I can ditch Windows for good. I know it’s already really good and it will run for most of the game I play, but I do like to dabble in competitive online or AAA once in a while :(
- deadbunny 5y agoProton is great, anticheat work fine with it. It's up to the producers of AAA games to enable it now.
- etataetaet 5y agoI've probably played ~15-20 games on wine now and literally all have worked with, at most, minimal tweaking (Changing the proton version). I mostly play single player or indie multiplayer so I haven't had to deal with the anti cheat. Only game that hasn't worked with Proton is Oneshot and its kina understandable considering the games context... It did have a linux version that mostly works out of the box though!
- Mindwipe 5y agoProton and VR are currently not happy bedfellows.
- mobilio 5y agoI do this switch 13 years ago just before 7 was released to macOS. So mine last Windows was XP.
- seanp2k2 5y agoI've had the freezes happen when my nvidia drivers weren't properly installed and when the kernel wasn't using the nvidia DKMS modules. glxgears should run super fast at a consistent framerate. Check out https://gist.github.com/wangg12/c69b56272eaeed1aba9515d19f550a12#install-nvidia-graphics-driver-via-apt-get https://gist.github.com/wangg12/c69b56272eaeed1aba9515d19f55...
- ipaddr 5y agoA update is needed as most are on 20.04
- nwallin 5y ago> All my games may randomly freeze for no discernible reason, All? My experience is that 90% work fine, 9% have weirdness, (for instance, voices in Skyrim are out of sync with mouth movements) and 1% of them have game breaking bugs.
- dimgl 5y agoYeah, I have the experience as OP. Every single game I play on Linux has random hitches for seconds at a time.
- freedomben 5y agoCan you keep an htop running by chance? It would be very helpful to see if CPU is maxxing out when the hitches happen, or if the swap file is growing, etc. Any time it happens to me, it's usually low resources because of something. Most often some chrome tab (or 3) that are going crazy. I also discovered that one of the apps that I thought was using hardware acceleration actually wasn't. The CPU usage made it pretty clear that the CPU was doing a ton of work.
- fsflover 5y agoSounds like a typical problem with an Nvidia GPU.
- dagw 5y agoI've found that AMD APUs are by far the worst supported GPUs on Linux. Nvidia gives me far less problems.
- Zardoz84 5y agoI made Kubuntu my main OS a long time ago, and I play a lot of (thanks to Valve, Steam, Wine and Proton...) games, and I never experienced a game freezing. My experience it's so good, that I only touch Windows to play Fornite. The only annoying bug/problem that I have actually, it's that Dolphin could have a erratic behavior if I had mounted a SMB folder via an VPN and I end the VPN before un-mounting the SMB folder.
- rkagerer 5y agoStayed on Win7 in hopes MS would get their sh*t figured out by now. Looks increasingly like my next PC will need to be Linux and some VM's.
- simion314 5y ago>All my games may randomly freeze for no discernible reason, Could be a GPU thermal issue, happens to me with old games that have no FPS limit, then the GPU does so much work that it hangs for some reason(Nvidia GT970), I am not sure if is my GPU broken/dusty, the driver bugged or Xorg, Windows users only see a game crash not a full system crash.
- Silhouette 5y agoYesterday I had to open Microsoft Edge for something that would only work in Edge, and lo-and-behold, Microsoft had taken my Xbox Game Pass sign-in and applied to Edge, then informed me they are syncing all my browser history to their servers for my benefit.. I'm not sure how that sort of behaviour isn't a clear violation of all kinds of privacy laws in 2022.
- userbinator 5y agoI'm sure it was specified somewhere in the EULA that you were forced to agree to long ago while installing the OS. It's been a while since I've looked at it too, but I believe there's a clause in there that also permits them to change it at any time without telling you.
- Silhouette 5y agoOne of the few really good things about some modern privacy laws is that this kind of defence carries almost zero weight. You don't get to do scummy things and then claim that the user "consented" because of some small print on page 50 of some document no-one ever reads before clicking the button they have to click in order to use the software they just paid for.
- Nextgrid 5y agoBut the problem is that in practice I still don’t see those laws being enforced in any meaningful manner. Case in point, Microsoft is doing this - they’re not stupid, they’ve reviewed the legal implications that and rightfully decided that they’ll benefit more than the penalty from enforcement if it ever happens. Same with Google, Facebook, etc.
- Silhouette 5y agoThey're starting to be enforced but obviously the regulators particularly in Europe are underfunded and there are a lot of bad actors to chase. I imagine Facebook and Google both rate higher than Microsoft for now. That doesn't mean there won't be significant penalties later, particularly as governments come to realise how lucrative penalising these big tech firms can be under the rules they've created for themselves.
- mikevin 5y ago> It's even worse when you activate Office 365. There is a small checkbox at the end which if you don't uncheck, converts your local administrator into your Microsoft account.. Going back to a local administrator account is not an easy task. I'm not even sure it's possible, I've tried multiple approaches but gave up after almost having to do a clean install. Now I have to deal with an accountname that contains multiple characters that make WSL interactions with the windows paths a game of Russian roulette with shell quoting bullets.
- 29athrowaway 5y ago
- nyjah 5y agoI saw this comment and began to wonder if it was necessary to make a throwaway to make your comment. But then I clicked the name and realized this account is used more than some random throwaway. Almost had me asking hn if we were abusing throwaway accounts.
- leshenka 5y agoUnlike Meta/Alphabet, Microsoft actually has something that’s not shameful
- rapind 5y agoOff the top of my head, Project Zero? I never forgave M$ for IE6 though, so I’m biased. A new generation is being lulled into thing they’re the good guys.
- ahmedalsudani 5y agoYou don't think any of those are "not shameful"? - Google search - Google maps - YouTube - FB Messenger/WhatsApp - Instagram - Oculus - FB Marketplace
- 29athrowaway 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Geenirvana 5y agoI do not mind logging into a Microsoft account however the most bizarre situation happened to me very recently. I will occasionally log into my personal Microsoft account when accessing a Microsoft website when I am on Lunch to work on some personal projects. At work last week, I was upgraded to Office 365 and as a result I started downloading the latest versions and trying it out in various ways. One of these was upgrading my old OneNote into the latest version (2013 -> 365) Saturday morning, I booted up my own different PC at home and notice in the "Recommended" section on the Windows 11 start menu "Work 365". This is the name of the OneNote I created at work when I upgraded the document. I do not even have Office on my own PC. Hovering over it would show that it was located in my Works One Drive folder. I must have been logged into my personal account on OneNote and it somehow meta-data? links it between the work and personal accounts. I am now in process of removing all traces of my personal account from Windows on my work laptop as the very last thing I want to happen is to see personal files appearing in the Recommended section of my works laptop!
- dustinmoris 5y agoWow that is CREEPY AF and very very scary. This is an instant reason to never use Windows because I'd be so scared that I'd leak personal/private data to other people's computers. The really fucking scary thing is that even we both as power users who understand computers, the internet and how things work are even extremely vulnerable to those hostile dark patterns in Windows that less tech savvy family members would be absolute prey to those Microsoft hyenas. There is NO WAY that anyone in my family will ever use a Windows or Microsoft device. It will be iPhones and Macs for them for the rest of their lives.
- Geenirvana 5y agoI obviously did not find it amusing. I had my young son with me at the time so I didn't investigate it further. What would have I seen if I clicked the More > button in the Start Menu - would there have been more leakage? Have I logged into my work account on my personal PC at some point? Why did it only show the OneNote file but not any others? What happened if I actually clicked it and tried to open it? Did I simply make a mistake when using multiple accounts in one OS? There are numerous questions I am asking myself that I don't have an answer for yet. As far as I can see, I have removed all traces of my personal account off my work laptop now but I am hoping (not sure this is the correct wording in this context) that I can see still the file in my Recommended Section when I get home. I really would like to know exactly how it can happen.
- unhammer 5y ago> In Windows, I'm very careful about NOT signing in to anything Microsoft and then you try to look at a picture of your kids but it's a HEIC file from an iPhone so Windows says you have to go to the Store and download Microsoft HEVC decoder which for some reason wasn't bundled with Windows but hey it's just a dollar oh that's nearly free we just need your credit card details and e-mail and make a user account and would you like a free newsletter with that LOOK OVER THERE whileweswitchdefaultbrowsers and check out what else is on sale today
- alexklark 5y agoBut who needs HEVC, when you have 3D objects.
- CraigJPerry 5y agoUsed to be able to get around this charge by using this link https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/p/hevc-video-extensions-from-device-manufacturer/9n4wgh0z6vhq?wa=wsignin1.0&activetab=pivot:overviewtab https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/p/hevc-video-extensions-from... Not sure it’s possible anymore though or what an alternative might be now.
- tored 5y agoThe future of operating systems will be of microtransactions and loot boxes. - Oh, you want to format your hard drive? Purchase in store :-) - Checkout our file utilities bundle, 50% off today! - Congratulations on formatting your hard drive, here is a free loot box! - Share your hard drive formatting experience with our award winning app instaclip! - Subscribe to our feed and give us a thumbs up!
- jjoonathan 5y ago- the part that does the actual work is still the same format dialog designed by David Plummer one morning all those years ago
- stonemetal12 5y agoMaybe I am being silly about it but Minecraft just migrated from mojang accounts to MS accounts. I am worried they are going to pull these sort of hijinks with that.
- zerkten 5y agoIt gets more complicated than that. Imagine having to sign into the machine with a work (AAD) account. Potentially, your machine can be taken over and bound to AAD policies operated by IT at the same time it's connected to a personal account. Very messy.
- dm319 5y agoWow, I feel like that goes beyond a dark pattern and strays into unconsensual abuse (excuse the truism). I feel like a dark pattern persuades and tricks you into doing something, but won't outright do something without your consent. Reminds me of when Linked In did that thing where it sent unsolicited emails after getting access to your address book.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]