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Windows needs to stop showing tabloid news

(www.tomshardware.com)
1725 points taubek | 4 comments | 27 Mar 23 05:20 UTC | HN request time: 0.624s | source
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PrimeMcFly ◴[27 Mar 23 06:33 UTC] No.35323525[source]▶
I don't want anything, any type of news being pushed by my OS. It simply isn't it's job. Maybe, as an option or optional add-on, but not the way MS does it.

I use 10 now, as locked down and 'fixed' as I was able to make it (custom ISO via NTLite with a bunch of crap removed and some fixes steamrolled in), but really I look forward to ditching it altogether - which is a shame. For all the MS hate in the OSS community, I always thought Windows did a lot of stuff well (when it was good at least).

The telemetry, changing things for the sake of changing things and forced crap constantly being added is enough. I'm so in love with awesomewm at this point, and the fact that I can customize and program every part of my UI, allowing me to have something absolutely perfect and tailor made.

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1. PaulHoule ◴[27 Mar 23 17:08 UTC] No.35329259[source]▶
Telemetry in Windows has some value for users. Specifically, Windows has a system for systematically shimming the standard library (which is the documented API for OS services) to fix problems with applications.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/ask-the-performance-t...

Telemetry returns information about applications crashes to the "mothership" and MS is pretty quick to update the application compatibility database to fix problems.

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2. n8cpdx ◴[27 Mar 23 17:29 UTC] No.35329591[source]▶
Modern telemetry is completely unnecessary for that.

In the Vista era, the OS was able to detect programs that crashed and give the user the choice to report it. It could even, with consent, check to see if there was already a known solution, which might involve an updated version or might involve changing compatibility settings.

None of that needs the MS personal info vortex and none of that requires trampling on consent.

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/cfs-filesystemfile...

https://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/1pca.pn...

http://s3.jasonlitka.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/bluescre...

3. whoopdedo ◴[27 Mar 23 18:14 UTC] No.35330176[source]▶
I'd love for that to be the case if it actually translated to fixing problems. For instance, in all of Windows 10 I would frequently get an error if I used the media device system tray to eject a USB drive, as I had been taught ever since Windows 98. However, if I instead ejected by right-clicking the drive in Explorer it would work. Obviously Explorer was preventing the drive from unmounting and the systray eject should be changed to notify other apps and give them a chance to close their handles. It got to where I would intentionally do the "wrong" thing hoping that the telemetry would make its way to Microsoft and they could notice the problem.

So I was thrilled when I saw a headline saying that removing media would be fixed in Windows 11. The article informed me that Microsoft's solution was (pause for effect) to remove the system tray icon.

Apply palm directly to face.

I'll admit that modern Windows is more stable than in the past. But how much of that is simply the benefit of memory safety in C#? Also stricter oversight of third-party drivers.

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4. PaulHoule ◴[27 Mar 23 20:33 UTC] No.35332108[source]▶
That problem is fundamental to how Linux and Windows deal with a bad situation.

Back when the love letter crisis was ungoing I had a Linux machine fill the disk with log messages and deleting /var/log/messages didn't free the space because there still was a process that had the file open.

In a similar situation in Windows you can't delete the file. Either way it is a problem like looking at Cthulhu and something bad is going to happen either way you resolve the situation.