4 ms·

Hope the PM in charge with the scammy copy designed to trick people into turning this on is happy with the boost in free users falling for it. My dad turned it

Hope the PM in charge with the scammy copy designed to trick people into turning this on is happy with the boost in free users falling for it. My dad turned it on not knowing what it meant and it completely messed up his workflows and now I have to figure out how to safely disable it and move his files back. I will remember Microsoft causing this problem for him every time I think of or get asked if someone should use a Microsoft product or service.

nomilk 1y ago
This work is 10x more effort than it sounds too due to how severely mistakes are penalised (i.e. unrecoverable files), necessitating extreme caution. When uploading 10k photos from macOS to Google Cloud using the Google Cloud macOS app, it said syncing had completed about 2 hours earlier than my back-of-the-envelope calculations predicted. "Great", I thought, but was still a bit suspicious, so just in case, before deleting the local copy, I closed the Google Drive app and reopened it, and it immediately started syncing - there were 2k photos/videos to go (!!). That's how insanely easily it could be to lose precious memories due to a tiniest bug in cloud software. Surgical precision and extreme thoroughness are the only ways to approach these seemingly simple operations of moving files from one computer to another.
- erikpukinskis 1y ago
  I wish more software companies had a core value of “every user created bit is sacred.” Storage is cheap enough that this attitude is possible. But I guess keeping all of your designers aware of it across thousands of teams is too hard.
  - crote 1y ago
    > every user created bit is sacred They only care about the bits they can sell to advertisers. Actual user data is only a burden to them, and occasional data loss is not a big deal.
  - BiteCode_dev 1y ago
    As usual, user are not making them paying the price for being badly treated. Software companies do this because they can get away with it, that's it. Even on HN many people can't be arse to use Firefox, how could we expect anyone to avoid giants like Microsoft?
    - queenkjuul 1y ago
      Sadly Firefox has been utter garbage for me the last few months, routinely hangs for me on 3 different machines across two different OSes. Running out of options these days
      - queenkjuul 1y ago
        [flagged]
        WarOnPrivacy 1y ago
        I work across 5+ desktops (phy and vm) over the course of the day, 3 running multiple Ffx instances + forks. I support and maintain several dozen more Ffx installs for clients. Mostly because Firefox is the most capable (ex:containers) and trustworthy of my browser options. Of the few problems I have, some are due to my unconventional setups - like the one I'm typing on now. It's a remote app, running on a vm w/ a copy of a profile storing logins. I presently don't have any Ffx issues pending. Ironing them out took less time and energy than posting a rant about it.
        queenkjuul 1y ago
        I'm not doing anything weird and nothing in my setups changed, it all started after a recent Firefox update. I've been trying unsuccessfully to resolve the issue for weeks. Just because other people aren't having problems doesn't mean I'm lying about my experience or that my comments need downvotes. I love Firefox and only mention anything out of anxiety that enshittification is coming for it, too.
- crazygringo 1y ago
  Honestly, the Google Drive for Desktop app was extremely reliable when Google was managing the files. Then when macOS provided native support for cloud filesystems, it migrated to that. And it's been a complete mess. Uploads often don't get triggered until you restart the system, exactly what you're describing. I'm pretty sure they're Apple macOS bugs, not Google ones. Because those kinds of bugs are constant across everything iCloud and Mac, but I don't generally see them on Google-only stuff.
  - vladvasiliu 1y ago
    > when macOS provided native support for cloud filesystems When was that? I haven't regularly used a Mac in a good four years. At the time I had the Google Drive app with a business subscription, and I don't think there was any other option. It was terrible, to the point I completely gave up on it. Just like the other poster says, it would say, "I'm all synced up", but only half my files would be synced. I'd need to restart it to get syncing again. When I would try to get a large amount of files from the cloud to local storage, it would randomly crap out. Basically, it would stall very often, and this was on wired gigabit ethernet, not some spotty mobile connection from a phone via wifi in a crowded cafe.
    - crazygringo 1y ago
      May 2022: https://support.google.com/a/answer/13067413 https://support.google.com/a/answer/13067413 Apple calls it File Provider. I've been using the Google Drive for Desktop file streaming version since it launched in 2017 (file streaming, not exactly sync), I think it was originally called Google DriveFS, and never had any problems until they switched to Apple's File Provider. There's a different Drive app that only did sync, I think that's what you're talking about. It's much older. Then they got merged into the current one.
      - vladvasiliu 1y ago
        Yeah, it's the file streaming one I used to use. My use case was storing my photography collection on it. Combined with lightroom, it was terrible. For random documents, it worked well enough. But, for that use case, I never had any issue with iCloud nor OneDrive. I never use iCloud for massive quantities, but OneDrive would also crap out when syncing many large files (I used it as a backup for my camera while travelling earlier this year). Attempting to work with Lightroom out of that would also have it randomly stop syncing (I had checked "keep files on this device" or similar so LR always had local copies).
smileson2 1y ago
Face the facts your dad isn't as important as KPIs tied to one drive and 365 subscription numbers, don't blame the PM for making Microsoft money lol It's not even something you have to "fix" just pay and enjoy
- bonoboTP 1y ago
  It seems that after the 90s/00s MS hate, there was a period where MS was seen as the good guys, and "this isn't the same MS" etc. Seems to be turning around again.
  - happymellon 1y ago
    I never got the "this isn't the same Microsoft" talk. Usually used to shut down anyone's complaints about bad or deceptive behaviour. Not the same Microsoft, so this time must be a mistake! Except they were still claiming to love Linux whilst paying off government officials to hurt adoption amongst other deceptive behaviour.
  - hulitu 1y ago
    > there was a period where MS was seen as the good guys Some people are really naive.
    - userbinator 1y ago
      There was a period when they were as hostile to Linux and non-Windows as a competitor would naturally be, but they were not hostile to users. Try Windows 98/2K in a VM and see how peaceful the Windows experience used to be.
      - wkat4242 1y ago
        They're not so hostile to Linux anymore because their business no longer depends do much on selling OSes but services. However they still want you to use windows because it makes it easier to sell their services. Windows has become a marketing vehicle which is why it now demands we create a Microsoft account and constantly pushes things like OneDrive as the article alludes to. I don't think they were ever any more benign. It was always a pretty hardcore business. First software then services (and now they're hell-bent on becoming the biggest AI player, not very successfully so because they're really only a reseller of watered-down OpenAI services)
ndiddy 1y ago
Doing shady stuff to juice KPIs seems like standard operating procedure at Microsoft. My favorite example of this is a few years after Windows Phone came out (when it was already clear it was going to be a failure), Microsoft announced they would be paying developers $100 per app (up to 20 apps) for ANYTHING submitted to the Windows Phone store. Clearly some executive was being graded on "number of apps in the store". As expected, this resulted in Windows Phone having a wide and varied selection of apps as long as all you needed was Chuck Norris jokes, fart apps, soundboards, whack-a-mole, Simon, etc.
aldebran 1y ago
HN seems to think PMs have a lot more power at Microsoft or large corps than they actually do. I assure you, a bunch of this stuff just comes top down because some VP's million dollar bonus rides on it.
- OptionOfT 1y ago
  The mandate to implement these kind of pop-ups doesn't come from above. The mandate to identify ways to increase profit comes from above, and it is the PMs (through marketing/research/developers) that come up with ways to satisfy these requirements. And failure to meet these requirements means a bad review and a chance of being laid off.
  - aldebran 1y ago
    Bro I worked in the windows team. I’m telling you how it was. Trust the HN crowd to know.
mihaaly 1y ago
I wish they gave more attention to the many bugs. One is the many many years old renaming trouble, renaming a file in Windows Explorer inside the OneDrive sometimes select all while I am alread typing extension to the end of the file name, clearing everything with the following keystroke, either resulting in something stupid saved on Enter if I do not realise what is happening (and being mad not remembering what the original name was), or just have to cancel and restart the renaming. Very frequent and annoying. But a ... lets call it funny, so a funny trouble I recently discovered is that file name completely fine with Wndows is incompatible with OneDrive, OneDriva mandates me to "change the filename! change it!" (with different words but the same tone). What the f! Microsoft is not compatible with itself? : D What a clusterfuck. It is fairly new, I believe there are spaces in fron of the file name that is generated with some software I am trying, I don't care that much, nonessential, but very comedic. I have too much difficulty with using Windows to care with all the trouble and spend any time on those, I work around those, I increasingly give no f. (my work mandates Windows, ah!) I also seen some sort of message box when a certain software tried to automatically open a newly created file in OneDrive, something like this: "The file http://sharepoint.blablabl/bla/bla/newly_created_file.ext http://sharepoint.blablabl/bla/bla/newly_created_file.ext" cannot be found. Whaaaat?! I work with a desktiop only software, it does not even care about internet connection. Saving the file to an ordinary folder works great, opens automatically. Sounds like at some point querying the full path of the file produces an internet address? Again, I give no sht to this crp that much to go ino and investigate and diagnose this hundredths of bug, just to have fruitless conversation a very understanding and very useless support guy or a forum audience suggesting how should I wrap my life around the stupidity of Windows.
- hulitu 1y ago
  > I wish they gave more attention to the many bugs. We all wish that. But if you look at their responses, when people report bugs, tough times. They. Don't. Give. A. Shit.
JohnTHaller 1y ago
A family friend upgraded to Windows 11 and had it helpfully turned on personal files being OneDrive enabled. It ate up her free space and suddenly she couldn't receive or reply to email anymore. She was nearly 80 and had no idea why until she had randomly asked me to help her with something on her computer. This is an instance of Microsoft being evil.
mardifoufs 1y ago
Yeah, the tech sector's understanding of the notion of consent is so unique and twisted. It makes sense now that the industry has the reputation that it has w.r.t misconduct/harrassment and how it's generally seen as being filled with creeps. Just keep asking until the user slips up or gets tired of the endless prompts/manual work required.

nomilk 1y ago

This work is 10x more effort than it sounds too due to how severely mistakes are penalised (i.e. unrecoverable files), necessitating extreme caution. When uploading 10k photos from macOS to Google Cloud using the Google Cloud macOS app, it said syncing had completed about 2 hours earlier than my back-of-the-envelope calculations predicted. "Great", I thought, but was still a bit suspicious, so just in case, before deleting the local copy, I closed the Google Drive app and reopened it, and it immediately started syncing - there were 2k photos/videos to go (!!). That's how insanely easily it could be to lose precious memories due to a tiniest bug in cloud software. Surgical precision and extreme thoroughness are the only ways to approach these seemingly simple operations of moving files from one computer to another.

erikpukinskis 1y ago
I wish more software companies had a core value of “every user created bit is sacred.” Storage is cheap enough that this attitude is possible. But I guess keeping all of your designers aware of it across thousands of teams is too hard.
- crote 1y ago
  > every user created bit is sacred They only care about the bits they can sell to advertisers. Actual user data is only a burden to them, and occasional data loss is not a big deal.
- BiteCode_dev 1y ago
  As usual, user are not making them paying the price for being badly treated. Software companies do this because they can get away with it, that's it. Even on HN many people can't be arse to use Firefox, how could we expect anyone to avoid giants like Microsoft?
  - queenkjuul 1y ago
    Sadly Firefox has been utter garbage for me the last few months, routinely hangs for me on 3 different machines across two different OSes. Running out of options these days
    - queenkjuul 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - WarOnPrivacy 1y ago
        I work across 5+ desktops (phy and vm) over the course of the day, 3 running multiple Ffx instances + forks. I support and maintain several dozen more Ffx installs for clients. Mostly because Firefox is the most capable (ex:containers) and trustworthy of my browser options. Of the few problems I have, some are due to my unconventional setups - like the one I'm typing on now. It's a remote app, running on a vm w/ a copy of a profile storing logins. I presently don't have any Ffx issues pending. Ironing them out took less time and energy than posting a rant about it.
        queenkjuul 1y ago
        I'm not doing anything weird and nothing in my setups changed, it all started after a recent Firefox update. I've been trying unsuccessfully to resolve the issue for weeks. Just because other people aren't having problems doesn't mean I'm lying about my experience or that my comments need downvotes. I love Firefox and only mention anything out of anxiety that enshittification is coming for it, too.
crazygringo 1y ago
Honestly, the Google Drive for Desktop app was extremely reliable when Google was managing the files. Then when macOS provided native support for cloud filesystems, it migrated to that. And it's been a complete mess. Uploads often don't get triggered until you restart the system, exactly what you're describing. I'm pretty sure they're Apple macOS bugs, not Google ones. Because those kinds of bugs are constant across everything iCloud and Mac, but I don't generally see them on Google-only stuff.
- vladvasiliu 1y ago
  > when macOS provided native support for cloud filesystems When was that? I haven't regularly used a Mac in a good four years. At the time I had the Google Drive app with a business subscription, and I don't think there was any other option. It was terrible, to the point I completely gave up on it. Just like the other poster says, it would say, "I'm all synced up", but only half my files would be synced. I'd need to restart it to get syncing again. When I would try to get a large amount of files from the cloud to local storage, it would randomly crap out. Basically, it would stall very often, and this was on wired gigabit ethernet, not some spotty mobile connection from a phone via wifi in a crowded cafe.
  - crazygringo 1y ago
    May 2022: https://support.google.com/a/answer/13067413 https://support.google.com/a/answer/13067413 Apple calls it File Provider. I've been using the Google Drive for Desktop file streaming version since it launched in 2017 (file streaming, not exactly sync), I think it was originally called Google DriveFS, and never had any problems until they switched to Apple's File Provider. There's a different Drive app that only did sync, I think that's what you're talking about. It's much older. Then they got merged into the current one.
    - vladvasiliu 1y ago
      Yeah, it's the file streaming one I used to use. My use case was storing my photography collection on it. Combined with lightroom, it was terrible. For random documents, it worked well enough. But, for that use case, I never had any issue with iCloud nor OneDrive. I never use iCloud for massive quantities, but OneDrive would also crap out when syncing many large files (I used it as a backup for my camera while travelling earlier this year). Attempting to work with Lightroom out of that would also have it randomly stop syncing (I had checked "keep files on this device" or similar so LR always had local copies).

smileson2 1y ago

Face the facts your dad isn't as important as KPIs tied to one drive and 365 subscription numbers, don't blame the PM for making Microsoft money lol It's not even something you have to "fix" just pay and enjoy

bonoboTP 1y ago
It seems that after the 90s/00s MS hate, there was a period where MS was seen as the good guys, and "this isn't the same MS" etc. Seems to be turning around again.
- happymellon 1y ago
  I never got the "this isn't the same Microsoft" talk. Usually used to shut down anyone's complaints about bad or deceptive behaviour. Not the same Microsoft, so this time must be a mistake! Except they were still claiming to love Linux whilst paying off government officials to hurt adoption amongst other deceptive behaviour.
- hulitu 1y ago
  > there was a period where MS was seen as the good guys Some people are really naive.
  - userbinator 1y ago
    There was a period when they were as hostile to Linux and non-Windows as a competitor would naturally be, but they were not hostile to users. Try Windows 98/2K in a VM and see how peaceful the Windows experience used to be.
    - wkat4242 1y ago
      They're not so hostile to Linux anymore because their business no longer depends do much on selling OSes but services. However they still want you to use windows because it makes it easier to sell their services. Windows has become a marketing vehicle which is why it now demands we create a Microsoft account and constantly pushes things like OneDrive as the article alludes to. I don't think they were ever any more benign. It was always a pretty hardcore business. First software then services (and now they're hell-bent on becoming the biggest AI player, not very successfully so because they're really only a reseller of watered-down OpenAI services)

ndiddy 1y ago

Doing shady stuff to juice KPIs seems like standard operating procedure at Microsoft. My favorite example of this is a few years after Windows Phone came out (when it was already clear it was going to be a failure), Microsoft announced they would be paying developers $100 per app (up to 20 apps) for ANYTHING submitted to the Windows Phone store. Clearly some executive was being graded on "number of apps in the store". As expected, this resulted in Windows Phone having a wide and varied selection of apps as long as all you needed was Chuck Norris jokes, fart apps, soundboards, whack-a-mole, Simon, etc.

aldebran 1y ago

HN seems to think PMs have a lot more power at Microsoft or large corps than they actually do. I assure you, a bunch of this stuff just comes top down because some VP's million dollar bonus rides on it.

OptionOfT 1y ago
The mandate to implement these kind of pop-ups doesn't come from above. The mandate to identify ways to increase profit comes from above, and it is the PMs (through marketing/research/developers) that come up with ways to satisfy these requirements. And failure to meet these requirements means a bad review and a chance of being laid off.
- aldebran 1y ago
  Bro I worked in the windows team. I’m telling you how it was. Trust the HN crowd to know.

mihaaly 1y ago

I wish they gave more attention to the many bugs. One is the many many years old renaming trouble, renaming a file in Windows Explorer inside the OneDrive sometimes select all while I am alread typing extension to the end of the file name, clearing everything with the following keystroke, either resulting in something stupid saved on Enter if I do not realise what is happening (and being mad not remembering what the original name was), or just have to cancel and restart the renaming. Very frequent and annoying. But a ... lets call it funny, so a funny trouble I recently discovered is that file name completely fine with Wndows is incompatible with OneDrive, OneDriva mandates me to "change the filename! change it!" (with different words but the same tone). What the f! Microsoft is not compatible with itself? : D What a clusterfuck. It is fairly new, I believe there are spaces in fron of the file name that is generated with some software I am trying, I don't care that much, nonessential, but very comedic. I have too much difficulty with using Windows to care with all the trouble and spend any time on those, I work around those, I increasingly give no f. (my work mandates Windows, ah!) I also seen some sort of message box when a certain software tried to automatically open a newly created file in OneDrive, something like this: "The file http://sharepoint.blablabl/bla/bla/newly_created_file.ext http://sharepoint.blablabl/bla/bla/newly_created_file.ext" cannot be found. Whaaaat?! I work with a desktiop only software, it does not even care about internet connection. Saving the file to an ordinary folder works great, opens automatically. Sounds like at some point querying the full path of the file produces an internet address? Again, I give no sht to this crp that much to go ino and investigate and diagnose this hundredths of bug, just to have fruitless conversation a very understanding and very useless support guy or a forum audience suggesting how should I wrap my life around the stupidity of Windows.

hulitu 1y ago
> I wish they gave more attention to the many bugs. We all wish that. But if you look at their responses, when people report bugs, tough times. They. Don't. Give. A. Shit.

JohnTHaller 1y ago

A family friend upgraded to Windows 11 and had it helpfully turned on personal files being OneDrive enabled. It ate up her free space and suddenly she couldn't receive or reply to email anymore. She was nearly 80 and had no idea why until she had randomly asked me to help her with something on her computer. This is an instance of Microsoft being evil.

mardifoufs 1y ago

Yeah, the tech sector's understanding of the notion of consent is so unique and twisted. It makes sense now that the industry has the reputation that it has w.r.t misconduct/harrassment and how it's generally seen as being filled with creeps. Just keep asking until the user slips up or gets tired of the endless prompts/manual work required.