Help the ppl out, Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39179929

I showed my mom how she can use 'web.whatsapp.com' to use Whatsapp more easily (in order to share screenshots or links with others).

After logging in, a notification about Whatsapp having been installed from the app store popped up after a few seconds. And indeed, the Desktop app had been installed, without any user interaction whatsoever.

I am not even sure how this was initiated, but I believe DoH being disabled by default probably has to do with it.

Edit: Like a lot of comments have suggested, I most likely remember this wrong. I tried to reproduce this (after "forgetting about" whatsapp.com in Firefox and uninstalling the app) and was unable to. I did encounter three separate "install the app" buttons, all of which however yielded an additional installation prompt from the app store.

Apologies.

FWIW, according to https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web... Firefox does not support PWAs without an extension, so that wasn't it either.

I imagine during the process, WhatsApp opened an ms-store: link that launched the Microsoft Store, and not knowing better, they clicked "install" when prompted.

The desktop app has some features that the web browser version lacks, like video calling support, so I would argue the desktop app is probably what you would want to use as a WhatsApp user, but it's rather annoying that web apps are pushing so hard for people to install desktop applications when their web apps could have the same features if they bothered implementing them in a non-Electron environment.

I just checked it, it opens a small Microsoft Store window with button "Get". In other languages they also used shady terminology to replace word "Install".

It’s unfortunate Firefox removed PWA features.

Even if it returned a different IP it would have to be verified by TLS. And it wouldn't affect what the browser is capable of doing. That even being possible would be a huge vulnerability. DoH is more of a privacy feature than security.

It's a weird thing and hard to understand without more details but like the other reply I think it may be a PWA.

But yeah, the PWA thing seems more plausible, even though I was not aware of any install prompt or similar.

I would need to read up on PWA, and there seems to be a LOT unfortunately.

Highly unlikely it just happened out of the blue without any user interaction at all. Stuff like this would be all over the news. Tech tabloids would love farming clickbaits with FUD like this.

You definitely clicked on something that accepts/triggers the installation and you don't remember doing it.

No, that's not true. You can log in and use WhatsApp from that address. Only voice calls require downloading an app (at least on Mac).

At least on platforms where they can't trick you into installing the app.

Sure, they could argue that the users consented into uploading their passwords to Microsoft, but a phishing site could put in terms and conditions that says by entering your password into this fake bank site, it will be uploaded to ShadyFooCorp and that won't stop them getting prosecuted.

The only vaguely serious argumentation I can think of, is that they have the comfort and benefit of their users in mind and that they do not missuse the collected passwords in an obvious way.

Sometimes, however, I come across trying a modern Windows. To install and setup myself. For example, the mother-in-law buying a new laptop. I just cringe at all the new rubbish I have to do. Last time I had to create an account. The crap on the taskbar (news, weather) to Microsoft Edge.. and all inbetween.

I am a proud user of Debian. It might not be perfect and I might not be able to play the latest games... but it provides everything I need.. which is the bare minimum!

(Yes I know Steam has come a long way in recent years... but point stands)

I just wish more people would move away from Windows. Yes, gamers may have to sacrifice their games if not supported... but companies go where the money is, including game devs.

Sadly, as computers get better and better.. and more convenient, the more freedoms you lose. People dont care.

Individually the changes might look like things other SaaS vendors might do but combined it's clear that MS is the least restrained of the big players in the cloud/SaaS market.

I recently had to use a low-spec computer (Celeron 6305, 4GB Ram, Windows 11), and Firefox just did not run well on it. I switched over to Edge and it loaded webpages much faster, and used much less RAM and CPU while doing it.

The problem was I also had to go into the setting and turn at least 10 different things off. Shopping assistants, copilot, sidebars, etc. The average user is not going to know or feel comfortable turning all of these "features" off, leaving them a browser constantly showing them adware and sending tons of data off to Microsoft.

TLDR: On low-end computers Edge runs great, but Microsoft has also injected it with a bunch of crap.

1: https://microsoftedge.github.io/edgevr/posts/Super-Duper-Sec...

  --js-flags="--jitless"

[1] https://github.com/chromium/chromium/blob/12c232c43ce7324d30...

Not that I trust Microsoft any more than Google, but I figured they were less inclined to violate my privacy in the name of advertisers and other third parties since that wasn't their main business.

Only lasted on Edge about 6 months before I abandoned it as it quickly ended up just as intrusive as Chrome, if not more so, while also being a far worse user experience.

What kind of narrative is being build around the feature to justify its implementation?

Knowing how to program is not correlated to someone’s ethics or capacity for empathy. A desire to shit on users for profit is not exclusive to ad executives.

I do not believe that some people mean mal intend, and so my original question was in which framework this would no be mal intend.

(My heart are with the anti nuclear protestors who's work is being reinterpreted to have ruined the earth these years, despite them doing what they believe was right)

Microsoft has been criticised (and even sued) for these practices for years. At a certain point you have to accept they are doing it on purpose. Anyone inside the company who decides on or implements these features and is genuinely surprised by the backlash is either unbelievably naive or unbearably incompetent. It’s been going on for too long for plausible deniability.

But that also is proof for the abstract! By having this image, MS preselects on engineers with lower ethical standards.

Thus it’s no longer abstract but specific to Microsoft, which is my point. In general we shouldn’t assume malice right of the bat. But the situation changes when we’re talking specifically about an entity with a history of being malicious (however we define that for each case).

> A person familiar with the kerfuffle who has visibility into the Windows giant, though who did not want to be identified, told us it appears that "if a user chose continuous import in the Edge first run experience on some other device, this state may be syncing incorrectly across their devices. This is not the intended feature experience." We're assured that Microsoft is addressing it for the next Edge Stable release.

I dunno, what kind of narrative are Googlers or Meta employees using to justify building an ad tracking and surveillance dragnet for the whole world, including one that emotionally manipulates youngsters into depression and slef loathe?

Probably making enough money to be able to afford not to think about ethics. Everyone has their price, especially those with no wealth to their name.

Building housing for the poor does damage to the environment but it also provides a public good, the poor now have housing.

I am not trying to qualify each of these individual narratives. People do that themselves.

My initial questions was just on the enumeration of narratives that would leave the implementor on the morally right side.

Just like with every second high-tech company that pays their devs from the ad, tracking, invasive profiling, personal data aggregation and all other blatantly anti-person techs that fuels much of their business. Don't have to go far for examples.

The mentality at MS is for everything to be about promoting their SaaS divisions to the point where there is no longer an independent business unit selling windows, and bundling them with an nearly impossible opt out is an proven strategy for selling value add services that people might either not need or prefer to get from 3rd parties if asked to explicitly opt in to the vendors version of that service.

1) Do I have to actively use Edge - or does this happen automatically in the background - even if I never open an Edge window?

2) Does any of the data gathered that way find it's way into Windows telemetry (anonymized or not)?

Since I'm neither "allowed" to uninstall Edge, nor "allowed" to fully disable telemetry... Someone in here writes that there is a possibility that Edge sends its browser history (imported or not) to Microsoft servers...

(And I'm guessing it won't be hard to do that outside the EEA either.)

The sheer amount of garbage I had to turn off made me give up and close it half way through. Which is a shame, because there seems to be good tech underneath all the garbage.

[0]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/microsoft-edge-...

[email protected]

It also requires adding 7 microsoft sites to the 3rd party cookie exception list that are totally necessary and not for spying on users.

Microsoft has never fundamentally changed, they just got smarter and are playing a longer game now.

I did this a couple of times lately on a bare metal install as well as in a VM.

I’ve primarily used Linux for 25 years. Used to try to get people to switch. Microsoft would do something user hostile and people would complain, and then just go back to using Windows. A percentage switched to Apple, but they’re just bad in different ways. (Google, too, if you’re thinking about Chromebooks.)

I’d love to believe “surely this” will be the thing, but I’m not optimistic. (Would love to be proven wrong!!)

My personal bugbear here is Pokemon, for example. I've got acquaintances that outright say "I'll buy the next game no matter what" when each generation has a myriad of issues and lazy development.

My recommendation? Be polite, but firmly call them out. "You complain, but you'll never do anything about it.". Don't ask them to switch, just point out that they won't.

The point of it is to get them to self-reflect on that assertion, and maybe from that point they might do something about it. Just being offered a solution won't do anything (see user elsewhere in this post who says they unfortunately have to use Windows for gaming but refuse to use Proton)

To be fair, as good as Proton is, the API isn't fully compatible with Windows' (yet!) -- I can fully understand why someone would want to avoid the hassles of dealing with this.

Microsoft wanting their own browser is understandable, but why not just make a good and secure browser? Same with Windows, why not provide a secure and private platform that people would actually want to use? Presumably they don't care, they also have enough money, so I guess they don't really have to.

I wonder though, for public companies, do employees not have the obligation to refuse certain demands in order to protect the shareholders?

That might actually be the problem. Public companies may have an obligation to protect shareholder investment/returns, forcing a focus on near future profit. So you stuff in ads and tracking, because that will yield a "positive" result with the next quarter or two.

Behave

Anyway I'm off to implement more push notifications for things the user hasn't asked for.

However their behaviour with Windows and Edge makes me wonder what telemetric-hell their phones would have been by this point.

When the regulatory bodies start to have more power than the corporations they regulate, we will see change. So, you know, probably never.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38430102

I wonder what 4% of MSFT worldwide annual revenue is!

Tbh it's the same thing Apple would say about Safari, except they haven't tried to hijack my firefox tabs yet.

Not just azure but Microsoft 365

They're no longer a software company, they're a services company. Windows is no longer a huge part of their revenue.

Newer versions of Office defaults to the cloud directory when you are trying to save a file. It's an absolute hassle to do something as simple as save a file to my hard drive.

I had to set up my wife's laptop with a MS account a while back, since she got an office license she wanted to use. She's a big Sims 3 and 4 player. Sims stores it's save files by default in the "my documents" directory. Sims game save files are huge. The moment I signed in to a MS account on the laptop, the damn thing converted the whole user folder to a cloud folder, and subsequently started uploading dozens of gigabytes of Sims save files, without my consent or asking me beforehand.

Everyone loves 7 mostly because the mess of the 64-bit transition and the changed driver model had mostly been ironed out by the time 7 was released. It also actually had some new worthwhile technical features, mostly refined from Vista, that at least made a 2 steps forward 1 step back release. A feat Microsoft hasn't performed since.

All the while, Voidtools have been doing it better, for free.

It's still better than windows 10 and 11, but that's not saying much.

Apple is far from perfect but I haven’t seen any dark patterns make it into MacOS yet.

It's a tool. Not a religion.

Very doubtful. If you turn on GPS for one app, all ads in all apps at all begin to be better targeted immediately. Especially noticeable if there were a big travel since the previous GPS usage.

Yet another reason to keep my auth details in a separate store and not let any browser get its grubby mits on them beyond when they are actually needed.

Though sometimes I wish to let enshitification run rampant as a sadistic exercise.

I'm pretty sure it's the government intervention which forces Microsoft to act this way.

Telemetry requested by the Feds. Online accounts requested by the Feds. Edge integration into the OS requested by the Feds.

Don’t listen to what these orgs have to say. Just watch what they do and see who it benefits.

Like Colombo used to say: Follow the money.

Linkedin, Github, Copilot(just no, but people swear by it), VS code...

How long before M$ takes github down the same road as sourceforge (for those who dont know: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/rise-fall-slashdot-media/ )

Maybe not enough good will though, to recover their reputation from historic and on-going user-hostile moves. I'm really praying that Microsoft doesn't ruin these projects like they've been doing with Windows and Edge.

Now if Edge also auto activates some sync service that sends your tabs to MS...

It's fast. It respects the user. Games work beautifully with proton. Most software has an equivalent on Linux if they don't offer their own binaries.

More and more I don't understand the desire or need to generate revenue for companies that treat you like dumb cattle.

This is even using the supposedly "reliable" distros like Ubuntu and Mint.

At this point when a linux user says they never have an issue I just can't believe them. I don't do anything complex, but linux always eventually fails in some way. I have above average knowledge of computers, and still linux cannot work reliably for me. It will never go mainstream until it can work without breaking, and never touching the terminal for 10+ years like MacOS can.

As an example, look at the "Switched to linux challenge" Linus Tech Tips did a couple years ago, he tried to install steam and it broke his entire OS. I have never installed anything on Windows or MacOS that has broken my OS. If you want regular users to use linux, things like that should not be possible.

I think this is key. I'm comfortable in the terminal so it really doesn't bother me and I doubt many days go by where I'm not using it. Linux works for me, but its not for everyone and I still have an old macbook for some photo editing applications.

You mean the distros with a marketing budget?

Confusing those two is a common misconception.

Most of the popular FPS games require anti-cheat software that does not work in Linux :(

Nonsense. It worked on the day of release for me, on Linux. I don't know what went wrong on your side, but I played it on release day.

There were two issues, namely:

1. It crashed on start-up roughly half of the time. Not great, but survivable.

2. Swapping to a different workspace (Sway, Wayland) for an extended period of time made the game think your framerate is low, and it forced you to play offline with "FPS unsuitable for online play".

That's all. Other than that, the game experience was buttery smooth.

Of course, if you play them for the experience. If you have to have 144 fps in 8k, you need to give a kidney to a video card manufacturer indeed.

But you don't have to play 'popular FPS games'.

There are thousands of good single player games that offer memorable experiences and tens of thousands that offer so and so experiences.

If you want to socialize, go for a beer with friends :)

Used Ubuntu from 2006 to 2011. It used to take some effort, compared to OSX.

But if we’re talking Linux vs Windows, I completely agree.

* ElementaryOS(https://elementary.io/) * PopOS(https://pop.system76.com/) * Linux Mint(https://linuxmint.com/) * As always, Ubuntu(https://ubuntu.com/)

All solid, functional, and not treating you like cattle.

I'm not sure this is really what it meant (I didn't see the prompt myself), but it was what Ubuntu made her believe.

After updating without this "option", all her VirtualBox VMs stopped working (I don't mean to imply that these two issues are linked).

Ubuntu Pro allows for things like patching the kernel while the kernel is running. If you're using VirtualBox, which uses kernel drivers on the host for acceleration, and you do a normal update, you need to reboot to make those drivers work again. You shouldn't need to, but something in Oracle's DKMS driver building process removes the existing drivers for some reason.

If the kernel is replaced while running, the new kernel modules should be loadable immediately and there will only be a brief moment during which VirtualBox wouldn't work.

Ubuntu Pro also provides updates to software packages that weren't maintained before the introduction to Ubuntu Pro (the Universe packages) so it's probably not a bad idea to enable it.

If you don't log in, you'll get the same experience Ubuntu always had before Pro was introduced, which includes the possibility of VirtualBox being broken until you reboot. This isn't Canonical sabotaging your wife's computer, it's just how some updates go down on Ubuntu.

I didn't think that Canonical was sabotaging her computer. What I do think is that Canonical is using security updates as an upselling opportunity.

In my opinion this is a bad idea, especially if the language used is vague enough to mislead people.

I'm just using a Mac as a terminal for an EC2 instance where I do all the software dev now.

Adobe is an issue, there are many analogs though. In place of Photoshop you could use Photopea, Krita, GIMP. That said I understand that people generally love their Adobe apps.

I tend to use Adobe stuff because it is literally a decade ahead of the closest open source software and is not expensive on a monthly basis for what you get. I could not get close to what I do with open source software. I have tried. I mean just the AI denoise in Adobe Lightroom can't be touched by anything. I wish it could. And I wish I could contribute to something open source to do that but I'm not good enough at it :)

For QT5/6 software into GTK desktops, there's QT5CT.

My XFCE4 desktop running QComicbook (QT5 comic viewer) both have the exact same theme, Zukitre. Ditto with the icons.

Apple is the farthest thing from "anti-consumer".

Let's find one company that takes security in any way shape or form as seriously. Name one company that consistently picks up the phone. What device are we going to give to my dad, or my less than stellar relatives... (do you want to be their linux support line?).

>> More and more I don't understand the desire or need to generate revenue for companies that treat you like dumb cattle.

The apple tax: what your family gives to apple because they aren't going to pay you for support.

I got fed up with it at the start of December last year and rinsed my credit card in the Apple Store. I walked out with an MBP and an iPhone and neither have not yet kicked me in the nuts once. I'm slowly porting my data over at the moment and then I'm chucking this crap on ebay and never touching it again.

Well done Microsoft. You burned a 30 year long developer relationship.

--

[0] Likely impossible. Even making it difficult enough to slow MS if they had the intention is likely completely impractical.

That's the authoritarian alternative, to the perpetually backstabbing option.

Debian Stable is the actually wholesome marriage material.

https://www.debian.org/distrib/

OK, sure

>Stable

Masochism

(Even though the MTBF of Debian testing is at least 5 times larger than Windows.)

For awhile, there would be a thing with people using, say, JS libraries, and they'd want to Stack Overflow copy&paste something. But the more reckless of those people just ended up bypassing Debian with NPM or some other language-specific package manager. And less-reckless people can decide when they can just use Debian or have to pull select bits of software some other way.

— Bob Dylan

Neither do I. All it takes is Ublock Origin.

I don't care to computer either, because that's not what I consider computers to be at my point in life. I use tools, not tool tools.

I'm an adult with duties and responsibilities and limited time now, not a naive teenager with too much time, too little money, and a bad case of acne. I simply do not have the time, energy, nor will anymore.

Note: Also, I'm cursed. I've killed more Linux installs (barring Android) than I can bother to count at this point, for something as bluntly mundane as updating them. I cannot rely on Linux (again barring Android).

Computers are tools to run software. Software is what makes (or breaks) the computer a useful tool. A computer without software is just as useful as a lump of pig iron: handy as a paper weight but no more.

Closed software which locks your data in its grasp may be OK for some purposes but in the long run it nearly always ends up causing problems - try opening an older Word file in current Word [1] for an example of such.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38906331

Firstly I have raised two bugs against LibreOffice in the last decade where it can't open files it created and can't print a spreadsheet.

Secondly the specifications for proprietary software are not necessarily closed: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/office_file_form...

The only thing here is that crap software is crap software. And Word is crap software.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised given the HN audience, but come on. Ordinary people use computers because they need or want to do something, and a computer will help them do it.

Good point. Is something a tool still if the user has no choice but to use it?

Certainly it is no longer "an extension of the mind-body and will" as some philosophers define "tool".

Is it a crutch? And does that imply that we have become "disabled" or are now "differently abled but dependent"?

I think the GP's appeal to simple dignity of labour and clear purpose troubles me for other reasons though.

All tools shape their users, and none more-so than a computer. So much indeed that I think it deserves a different status. It's a different quality of tool than a hammer. Today, it very much uses you in equal measure to you using it.

Calling computers (mere) tools seems a little dismissive.

And in that regard I think the GP shows a typical nonchalance around what they _think_ is their (very mysterious and serious) "doings".

When a system already defines all the possibilities for what you can make and do, and these days it even curates, censors, "corrects" and extrapolates for you... what is left of that glorious will to action (doing)?

Has it been magnified such that it's "AIA" = AI aligns with IA (artificial intelligence is aligned with intelligence amplifications) and the tool is a lever (bicycle) for the mind?

Or are we cranking the handle on a auto-cookie-cutter machine that gives a choice of three shapes? That can feel a lot like "doing" stuff too.

The closer one is to that kind of "doing on rails" the more vulnerable to being replaced by a robot/algorithm.

OTOH, remembering how to see computers as engines of possibility rather than certainty again (as Ada Lovelace did), seems to me more where humans fit with computers. YMMV

Seeing as this needs demystifying for some bizarre reason...:

* Office work (including literally Microsoft Office documents, no substitutes acceptable).

* Occasional specialist work (CAD, Adobe Illustrator, etc.)

* Play; a man needs his vidja gaemz and some cold beer at the end of a long day.

You made it sound like they were somehow special, like, I dunno, particle physics that could only run on a custom quantum computer.

Now you're specific, looks like those are all perfectly normal and ordinary things, right?

I also had to use a very specialist CAD system. In those days the only things it would run on were Sun Microsystems and HP Unix boxen.

Other than Microsoft's monopoly grip, and your need to interface with other use ^H^H^Hvictims of that monopoly, is there any reason you wouldn't try a friendlier, more socially conscious solution?

I see no fact here.

If you think about it computers have done as much to reveal and create new ends as they have to satisfy existing ones.

https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=applicatio...

Metaphorical you of course. Parent does not want to run it. I believe this is a moral error and a coordination failure, and that saying a computer that is out of your control is "more of a computer" while a computer that actually does what you say is a 'toy' is disingenuous.

It is an unfortunate fact that you pay for freedom with effort. IDK if it ever was not so.

- If you have nothing of value, like if all you have is just some games, you could run Windows on bare metal, but make sure to shield your internal network from it.

- Running anti-virus on what is essentially a really nasty virus makes no sense, as are the various tweak tools that give you a false sense of security.

Unfortunately they don't really sell you license legally as an individual. There are shady resellers online.

Even going so far as installing Windows 10 LTSC on my steam deck and it has been amazing. Better performance, battery life, no annoying features, etc.

I am looking forward to Windows 11 LTSC to come out to get some improvements, but I have not had any issues with gaming on Windows 10 LTSC.

It is also just the chance of a game making some random change that has nothing to do with Anti cheat and that breaking the proton compatibility, this happened with Halo Infinite and others.

The ease of proton also goes out the window once you leave Steam and SteamOS. There are various things out there but if you own games on other platforms it does take more work which is a barrier for non technical people.

Don't get me wrong, Proton is a great piece of technology. But it is still a compatibility layer that will never be perfect. A layer that I don't have to even think about on Windows, everything just works.

It is all tradeoffs.

https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts

https://massgrave.dev/

Plus, the scripts allow you to activate all of these Windows version and I think also Microsoft Office.

The script is abusing bugs that are long known but not fixed. And Microsoft does not seem to care, as the script is hosted on GitHub (which is owned by Microsoft) since a long time.

The repository also has ~60k stars, so it isn't "secret" that this exists.

So until Windows 11 LTSC is released, I have been using Windows 11 Pro Education. It seems to be almost as good as LTSC (ships without most of the bloatware), but allows you to run a current version of Windows.

Windows 11 still feels much slower than Windows 10, even on a modern system clicking on the wifi icon takes 1-2 seconds for the window to open and then you can see elements of the window load. Opening file explorer is the same. This a fresh install on a Ryzen 6800H laptop with a fast NVME SSD. Then there are all the popups asking me to use OneDrive, Edge, Etc. Truly a terrible OS.

I was struggling with what to do with this recently on my wife's PC. I don't care for 11, she isn't interest in linux and 10 drops support in 2025 for regular editions. I went with enterprise LTSC iot because I figured that the support problems probably won't amount to much until after 2025 anyway. That version goes to 2032 of security updates but I suspect the install won't last that long regardless.

Windows server is a similar alternative but has the same problem than LTSC.

Not even ironic, I see more issues on Windows nowadays than on Linux. That might say a lot about the games which I play, though.

So if a game updates breaks something or the dev just happens to add something that isn't compatible (which has happened enough to make it here) than you may not be able to play the game you want until it is fixed.

Also add in that if you are not on SteamOS and you want to play games outside of Steam it is more difficult for non technical people (or just people who are not as up to speed on that part of Linux).

It really isn't there for most people when you can run Windows (like the LTSC version that I do) and have no compatibility issues.

Older games have a decent probability of stuff like controllers not working.

Gaming on Linux has vastly improved yes, but its still much worse than on Windows.

And that's not to speak of VRR issues, essentially no HDR support, etc.

Because it’s better for gaming.

I say this as someone that doesn’t care in the slightest about gaming OR Windows. I just fail to see what this “pretend that a vendor that you don’t like isn’t offering anything of value” attitude ever does for anyone. It certainly doesn’t add to the conversation in any meaningful way.

That’s quite some euphemism for describing a vendor that steals sensitive user data, bombards users with ads, and pulls all sorts of tricks to force users into submission. They’re even stealing IMAP credentials [1], and I’m just stunned that they can pull that off without fear of criminal prosecution. Windows is hostile, unreliable, and unfit for any purpose.

But people are supposed to turn a blind eye because of some diminishing advantage the OS has in gaming? At what point can one be allowed to say no?

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38212453