SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Windows 10 App Starts Showing Ads, Microsoft Says You Can't Remove Them
Microsoft displaying banners in the official Mail app for Windows 10 is something that we’ve seen in the past, but this time the company has apparently returned with a more aggressive approach.
If the original ad only showed up for insiders as part of what Microsoft described as just a test, the new version is displayed in all instances of the Mail app.
These include not only insiders, but also non-insider devices such as production machines. I’m also seeing the ad on my device running the stable version of Windows 10 version 1909.
The banner shows up in the left sidebar and recommends users to “Get the free Outlook app on your phone.” The weird thing is that the ad is displayed even if the Outlook mobile app is installed on a device where the same email account is configured, as I also use Outlook for Android and Microsoft Launcher on my mobile phone.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 16 2019, @12:39AM (19 children)
I'm sticking with Windows 7.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Gaaark on Monday December 16 2019, @01:19AM (11 children)
I'm sticking with Linux!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 16 2019, @02:42AM (10 children)
I'm going to be moving to Ubuntu as my web facing daily driver OS and have Windows 7 in a virtual machine. I can't trust Microsoft at all and never will. Seeing this whole Windows 10 fiasco (forced on people at times) was enough to burn the bridge of trust permanently. A Windows VM can be reset instantly if I should need it. I am going to have to look into WINE too. My parents and family are going to lose their minds next month when they start getting pop-ups from Microsoft. They're going to have a hard time adjusting to Ubuntu too I think. They might move to Mac since they have iPads and like the simplicity of Mac stuff. No one wants to go to Windows 10 and see ads in their OS and be tracked constantly, incessantly. This is a major turning point in computing for me and many others. I'm not happy about it, lets put it that way...
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday December 16 2019, @04:08AM (3 children)
Last I checked WINE was useful in specific cases, but not generally useful. Of course, the programs I was trying to play were MSWind2000 and previous games, and those might be a special case.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 16 2019, @11:44AM (1 child)
Those old games DEFINITELY won't run on Windows 10 or even 7 (DirectX 6 etc while in theory still there are utterly broken).
So whatever else, WINE will work BETTER for those than Windows, even though it quite often won't reach up to "actually usable".
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday December 16 2019, @04:43PM
Bull. I'm currently running Civilization II (1996), Alpha Centauri (1999), and Space Empires IV (2000) in my Windows 7 VirtualBox. For each of them, you just need to move one DLL/add a line or two to the init file.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday December 16 2019, @05:50PM
I highly recommend using PlayOnLinux. It makes dealing with WINE much easier and you're likely to spend more time playing games. As opposed to spending more time trying to make a game work on Linux.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 16 2019, @06:26AM
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1031901/how-to-disable-telemetry-for-all-users [askubuntu.com]
Well, I suppose, at least you can disable Ubuntu's telemetry...though you should be asking yourself the question 'why is it even there in the first place?'.
Something allegorically apocryphal about slowly boiling members of the genus Rana comes to mind as a cynical answer...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gaaark on Monday December 16 2019, @11:37AM (3 children)
I got off the MS tit almost 2 decades ago and have never looked back: now I only occasionally have to interact with it at work and usually regret every second of it.
I can't believe anyone would CHOOSE to use it beyond gaming.
Windows is a gaming system and that is it: for anything else, it's a steaming pile of shit!.....now it looks like it's JUST a steaming pile of shit.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday December 16 2019, @02:25PM (2 children)
It really is, but look at all the job creation. (that was sarcasm)
One thing I don't understand is: how and why so many significant and mission-critical applications- CAD, CAE, banking/financial, medical, real-time(ish) control, etc., are based in Windows. I don't think that would be the case if true technical-types made the decisions.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gaaark on Monday December 16 2019, @11:02PM (1 child)
In a perfect world, MS and Windows would be a non-starter.
In a perfect world, people would have brains and not use it.
Too bad there are so many stupid people in this world....
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RS3 on Tuesday December 17 2019, @04:43AM
> Too bad there are so many stupid people in this world....
"You say that like it's a bad thing."
But seriously, I don't mind the stupid people, I mind that they get promoted to positions of power.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 17 2019, @02:07AM
Early Windows 10 worked fine then a forced Win 10 update caused my PC to BSOD, I then switched to Ubuntu...
(Score: 3, Informative) by jasassin on Monday December 16 2019, @03:31AM (6 children)
Just an FYI Microsoft back ported all the telemetry into Windows 7.
I just did a clean install of Fedora 31 (was using Fedora 30). It now uses Wayland exclusively by default and the installed Firefox is all Wayland. I have found it fast as hell scrolling and responding on pages heavy on javascript and images. In my opinion it is way faster than Chrome.
About the only thing you need to do after installing Fedora 31 is install the rpm fusion repositories (free and non-free) and install compat-ffmpeg28 to get your porn sites working in Firefox (youtube works out of the box). Gnome is very responsive and simple to use (press the window key and type in the first few letters of the application you want to run and press enter). Fedora has a five to ten page simple tutorial on using Gnome you can go through after installing. I don't know why people hate Gnome so much. I don't miss the taskbar at all (alt-tab click on what you want or just alt-tab tab tab tab to flip through the running apps).
I have no problems with systemd, it just works. I don't interact with it at all. I've looked at running custom services on it and it seems pretty straightforward.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 16 2019, @06:26AM (5 children)
Only if you mindlessly choke down every patch Microsoft gives you through its back door (which they euphemistically refer to as "automatic updates").
They're supposed to be for security, of course, and the mindless mantra of security experts is to install all patches even if they set your house on fire, because obviously all patches are good (hah). But at this point, one has to wonder who they have to be secure from, hackers or Microsoft itself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 16 2019, @12:46PM (4 children)
If you don't understand how computer security works, don't post. Those security patches from Microsoft are significant and necessary unless you browse the web behind a separate firewall (from a router or similar) with something like Firefox and NoScript and don't download anything. An awful lot of people who disabled Windows Update are unknowingly part of botnets. Those same Microsoft patches also bring all sorts of garbage you don't want, but you really only have two choices: vulnerable to hundreds of security exploits on one side or up to date with security and Microsoft's own malware on the other.
I wouldn't suggest running an out of date install of Linux or FreeBSD either.
(Score: 2, Informative) by zion-fueled on Monday December 16 2019, @01:34PM (2 children)
Stop with the FUD. The telemetry patches are either separate patches or feature updates. Plus missing a patch doesn't instantly put you in a botnet nor protect you from tomorrow's 0-day. If you really understood how security works you would know it's more than some vendor patches.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday December 16 2019, @02:31PM
I agree. As far as we know, there are many patches that are telemetry-only. And as far as we know, the security patches don't include telemetry.
There are fairly well publicized lists of those patches, and even simple .bat files for auto-removing them and other troublesome patches.
Sometimes Windows Update tries to re-install those patches, but it's pretty easy to spot them, uncheck them, and mark them "hidden".
It's also fairly easy to run a packet sniffer and you'll know if something unwanted is happening in the OS. I've caught a virus or two in action that way.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday December 16 2019, @02:35PM
> Plus missing a patch doesn't instantly put you in a botnet...
Actually, by definition and for all we know about what they're actually doing, some MS patches put you in the MS botnet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 17 2019, @06:52AM
If you believe this:
Then you shouldn't post either, because if you don't this:
Then you're pretty much a sitting duck, and no amount of patches will save you whether or not they come through Microsoft's back door.