4 ms·

> Clicking this lead me to a page about a wild garlic festival in Germany. And you learned a little something that you didn't know before. It cost you nothing.

> Clicking this lead me to a page about a wild garlic festival in Germany. And you learned a little something that you didn't know before. It cost you nothing. You got a little drawing of garlic in your search bar. That cost you nothing too. I personally enjoy the little search bar illustrations and the rotating login screen background with the "did you know" style button. It's nice. Not everything has to be all serious all the time.

rkagerer 4y ago
It cost an incredibly valuable reource: his attention.
- fphhotchips 4y ago
  No, he donated that. He could have chosen to simply ignore the icon, as thousands of others do daily.
  - nailer 4y ago
    Would you ignore random garlic in your OS?
    - fphhotchips 4y ago
      Yes. I didn't ignore today's because this conversation had it front-of-mind and I'm curious, but it seems like for a long time it was some kind of beach scene and I have no idea what that was about. Once you know "this is just a little curiosity button", it's easy enough to ignore if you're not into that. (Today's is in reference to van Gogh's 170th birthday, which is a nice little "oh!" moment, but not one I clicked through to see more)
      - slowmovintarget 4y ago
        This is Microsoft trying to drive usage for Edge by adding a Google widget into Windows. None of those clickable features in the Taskbar open your default browser, they all open Edge.
  - rkagerer 4y ago
    It wasn't donated, it was stolen. Even one stupid garlic ad is one too many.
eur0pa 4y ago
Narrow-minded viewpoint. To show the enjoyable garlic festival fact, a crucial component of the operating system's user interface must either actively poll for content or receive pushes automatically. Why would I want such a significant security risk? If I desire insignificant facts, I can browse /r/InterestingAsFuck during my leisure time.
- fphhotchips 4y ago
  Ah yes, the incredibly narrow minded viewpoint of checks notes being open to new things. > To show the enjoyable garlic festival fact, a crucial component of the operating system's user interface must either actively poll for content or receive pushes automatically. Why would I want such a significant security risk? If this is a "significant security risk" in your threat model for your gaming machine, I hope you're not multiplayer gaming, or using Steam.
  - nicbou 4y ago
    This is not the right community to adopt such a tone.
    - fphhotchips 4y ago
      Fair enough, mea culpa. I can't edit out the swipe, so I'll make the argument more substantive instead. The long version is that - while it is true that loading a small image is a strictly speaking unnecessary risk - it is such a small risk as to be negligible to most security postures. In particular, OP mentioned that they use Windows only for gaming, so we have to take into account that: 1. They probably use Steam, or another launcher. All such launchers download a bunch of stuff on startup - in particular, Steam loads like 8 pages of ads for new games on startup. As Steam sometimes/often requires admin privileges, this is at least as much of a risk as the garlic image. 2. They probably play multiplayer games, which semi-frequently have RCE exploits. I think it's also fair to say that they're also generally subjected to less-rigorous analysis than the Microsoft Windows kernel. There's no reasonable security posture in the world that sees those two things as acceptable risks on one hand, but sees a small image in the taskbar as unacceptable on the other. So, to argue that a small icon in the search bar represents "significant security risk" and that the people running Windows have "lost their minds" is hyperbolic at best. At worst, you're kind of just looking for things to not like. (Minor edit: I just noticed that it was two different users that said those things, but I think the point still stands) Sure, it's not a necessary part of the operating system, but it's just a nice little thing that occasionally brightens my day, and costs me nothing when it doesn't. I don't think that's narrow-minded, is it?

rkagerer 4y ago

It cost an incredibly valuable reource: his attention.

fphhotchips 4y ago
No, he donated that. He could have chosen to simply ignore the icon, as thousands of others do daily.
- nailer 4y ago
  Would you ignore random garlic in your OS?
  - fphhotchips 4y ago
    Yes. I didn't ignore today's because this conversation had it front-of-mind and I'm curious, but it seems like for a long time it was some kind of beach scene and I have no idea what that was about. Once you know "this is just a little curiosity button", it's easy enough to ignore if you're not into that. (Today's is in reference to van Gogh's 170th birthday, which is a nice little "oh!" moment, but not one I clicked through to see more)
    - slowmovintarget 4y ago
      This is Microsoft trying to drive usage for Edge by adding a Google widget into Windows. None of those clickable features in the Taskbar open your default browser, they all open Edge.
- rkagerer 4y ago
  It wasn't donated, it was stolen. Even one stupid garlic ad is one too many.

eur0pa 4y ago

Narrow-minded viewpoint. To show the enjoyable garlic festival fact, a crucial component of the operating system's user interface must either actively poll for content or receive pushes automatically. Why would I want such a significant security risk? If I desire insignificant facts, I can browse /r/InterestingAsFuck during my leisure time.

fphhotchips 4y ago
Ah yes, the incredibly narrow minded viewpoint of checks notes being open to new things. > To show the enjoyable garlic festival fact, a crucial component of the operating system's user interface must either actively poll for content or receive pushes automatically. Why would I want such a significant security risk? If this is a "significant security risk" in your threat model for your gaming machine, I hope you're not multiplayer gaming, or using Steam.
- nicbou 4y ago
  This is not the right community to adopt such a tone.
  - fphhotchips 4y ago
    Fair enough, mea culpa. I can't edit out the swipe, so I'll make the argument more substantive instead. The long version is that - while it is true that loading a small image is a strictly speaking unnecessary risk - it is such a small risk as to be negligible to most security postures. In particular, OP mentioned that they use Windows only for gaming, so we have to take into account that: 1. They probably use Steam, or another launcher. All such launchers download a bunch of stuff on startup - in particular, Steam loads like 8 pages of ads for new games on startup. As Steam sometimes/often requires admin privileges, this is at least as much of a risk as the garlic image. 2. They probably play multiplayer games, which semi-frequently have RCE exploits. I think it's also fair to say that they're also generally subjected to less-rigorous analysis than the Microsoft Windows kernel. There's no reasonable security posture in the world that sees those two things as acceptable risks on one hand, but sees a small image in the taskbar as unacceptable on the other. So, to argue that a small icon in the search bar represents "significant security risk" and that the people running Windows have "lost their minds" is hyperbolic at best. At worst, you're kind of just looking for things to not like. (Minor edit: I just noticed that it was two different users that said those things, but I think the point still stands) Sure, it's not a necessary part of the operating system, but it's just a nice little thing that occasionally brightens my day, and costs me nothing when it doesn't. I don't think that's narrow-minded, is it?