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Do you use the default Mail client on your PC, the one that comes with Windows 10, to read your email? How would you feel if Microsoft decided to throw in a few ads right at the top of your inbox?
These aren't rhetorical questions — as Windows news site Aggiornamenti Lumia noticed today, Microsoft is already testing that exact idea in a number of countries around the world. According to Microsoft's FAQ, what we're seeing is a pilot program, an experiment, a test that'll theoretically help the company decide if it should actually roll out the feature for real.
Update, 11:52 AM PT: Microsoft comms head Frank Shaw tells us the company has decided to turn these ads off. He also says the experiment was never intended to be tested broadly, which doesn't quite jibe with the existence of a FAQ about a pilot program taking place in several countries around the world, but either way the ads should be gone.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 17 2018, @03:31PM
I'm sorry but this is just no the case and hasn't been for a long time. Intel is the biggest GPU vendor and also the one with longest history of open-source driver development for Linux. They support vaapi for video decoding for a long time and it's been proven to be stable as well. Mpv has no problems using it for everything and so do most other media players on Linux. Not to mention Google uses it itself on Chromebooks. Chrome on Intel x86 Chromebooks is perfectly fine doing accelerated video decoding and accelerated rendering using the same open-source Intel drivers as desktop iGPUs. There is no technical reason for Google not to enable it by default in Chrome on Desktop - they just refuse to do so giving lame excuses about compatibility.
The acceleration flags for Chrome that are exposed in the GUI are only for rendering acceleration and not video decoding acceleration. Unless you are using some heavy graphical websites it doesn't matter that much while video decoding on the CPU is a big problem, especially for laptops.