Click bait avoided, a prerelease build of Windows suggests some kind of general advertising in the start menu beyond promoting ads.
The article also calls this a “leak.” Is it really a leak if it’s in the insider Windows build that Microsoft makes freely available to anyone who wants it?
It’s datamining a hidden feature. I’d call that a leek.
No.
Sounds like we need to start developing ad-blockers based directly within the OS.
Those exist. Use dns based adblockers. You can pick from a variety of services already out there or run your own with pihole.
Yeah, though … those don’t always work and it is entirely possible to break them if they become overly “pesky” for the corporations.
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If I implement my service to use the same underlying IP address for the primary service/critical access that I use for advertising services (e.g., I put a load balancer and have Windows Advertising integrated with Windows Update via the same IP addresses), you can’t block the IP without breaking Windows Update.
That’s worse for other ingrained systems, e.g., a news app that actually has to send you content could do this instead of using separate IPs for the advertising service, and then if you want to use their service you have to accept the advertising packets.
If you’re relying on DNS for your blocking as well, it’s entirely possible to distribute the IP address information without ever involving DNS by syncing up the appropriate IPs out of band on some built in IP addresses hard coded in the binary (plenty of things do this sort of thing already for security purposes, they want to minimize the risk of a local DHCP server handing out some garbage DNS record and sending you a virus via their update mechanism).
I could go on.
Do yourself a favor and learn a bit more about how this shit works lest you look like an idiot.
Don’t be a dick; especially if you don’t know what you’re talking about. Thanks.
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DNS based ad blockers (I run one, it’s great, highly recommend) can’t block something if the address is both legit and also serves ads. For instance, if MS used the same domain name for updates and windows key validation as it does for ads, you’d quickly run into an issue. Especially if (please don’t read this MS), they required validation on every boot, then replied with a payload combination of a the ads and a “yea you’re legit and can boot”.
Also, MS could easily (and has) coded some processes to not lookup DNS addresses in things like LMHOSTS or HOSTS, they could just as easily bypass DNS itself. They certainly have plenty of public IPs they could have a process submit to the network stack.
I’m pretty sure you can turn these off with local group policy. And if you can, I’m sure someone will make a script to do it for you.
Personally, I set up AD for my own devices a long time ago, when I got pissed off about Windows 10 rebooting my PC while I’d stepped away to eat dinner and killing everything I had open. So I also use it to set group policy to turn off things like this. But this is far overkill for the average person.
Or literally just use the existing option in the settings menu that has been there since Windows 10 to turn this shit off.
All of this is clickbait.
Until it turns itself back on during an update. Or hey implement another version that has its own off switch buried somewhere, etc.
It’s bloat and hassle.
You shouldn’t have to do maintenance on a brand new Windows install. Set preferences and install apps? Sure. But expecting everyone to go through a checklist of shit to turn off? Nah. That’s user hostile and so tedious.
Checklists and debloating procedures like that can feel like something an expert would do. And can feel like what a good computer user should do, but that’s a limited mindset that is a niche among all Windows platform users.
Warning, car analogy:
Imagine if you bought a new car and had to scrape a bunch of advertisement decals off it. And you have to remove unneeded features like spoilers that are dragging you down. Oh, and randomly in the middle of the night the dealer tracks your car down and applies new decals that you will want to scrape off your windshield when you get a chance.
Other than the dealer sneaking up in the middle of the night to reapply decals, that is sadly exactly what buying a new car is like.
Or, well, at least from what I’ve seen and heard from others. Who has money these days for new cars?
Setting preferences is exactly what this is, though.
Having to tell your computer that “My preference is no bloat and marketing.” is a sad state of affairs though.
My whole point is these things shouldn’t need to be configured. Because the bloat and marketing shouldn’t be part of the OS like this.
I’ve worked with a Linux installation that had plenty of bloat and marketing by default too, I spent a fair bit of time combing through it turning off stuff I definitely didn’t want. Whether it “should” or “shouldn’t” doesn’t change that it is.
But updates can and do reset them.
Group Policy really helps - I don’t think I’ve had an update reset a policy… Yet.
Imagine depending on a company giving you the privilege of turning off ads in the operating system you paid $100USD for.
MS can get bent, I’m sick of advertising. Read the news, ads, watch any video without Adblock, ads, go out in public to enjoy a day out with my family, ads on every road and square foot of space. Now they want to put ads on the main menu of an operating system I only use to for relaxation and entertainment, but they were oh so kind to give me the option of turning them off for now. I’m not waiting for them to decide to remove the option, I’m going to remove myself from the equation.
I already gave these greedy bastards my money, I just want some peace and quiet while I relax, but that’s too much to ask for these days.
Yep. It’s my goal to be as unprofitable a citizen for our corporate overlords as possible.
I want them to lose money by doing business with me.
I want them to go bankrupt so that their future replacements can learn from their mistakes and not repeat them.
If they choose to be user hostile, I’ll match their energy and multiply it. Fuck em.
Think of the corporations!
Clicking a checkbox in a settings menu is so complicated, though!
Simpler to install Linux, a whole new operating system, and try to figure out how to either run your Windows apps there or find new equivalent applications to use.
Additionally, there has been an option in the settings menu since Windows 10 to disable Microsoft fucking with the start menu and settings “app” like this.
I would be shocked if it doesn’t also handle whatever this shit is.
I miss the xda of old, where shitty clickbait articles and ads didn’t rule the front page.
It’s really upsetting seeing the internet transform into this commercialized capitalistic thing that used to be fun.
Now I want to continue this by saying there are still communities and places that have kept true to the free and open internet and not all of it has been commercialized. And there are always fun and exciting projects happening, recently I’ve been looking at i2p, it’s similar to Tor but designed to be self contained and not for browsing the open web instead something called eepsites similar to onion sites.
ActivityPub gives me hope for the future of the Internet. I was able to completely replace Reddit with Lemmy after the exodus last year. I never used Twitter, but Mastodon seems like an alternative that’s gaining popularity.
The one that seems the hardest to replace is YouTube, since hosting and serving video is very expensive, and many creators have come to rely on monitization.
I’m not sure about I2P being an alternative to the clearnet. It helps prevent censorship, sure, but I don’t see how it provides anything that you can’t do on the clearnet already, other than anonymity. It’s also much harder to set up than Tor for non-tech savvy people. Anyone can already host any website they want on the clearnet.
ActivityPub really does feel like the future, or at least the one I hope for, it’s been very refreshing and exciting and it gives me much the same feeling as the internet did when I was new.
Video does require a lot of storage unfortunately, and of course it makes sense that creators want money for what they often do. The closest would be that each creator or group setup their own PeerTube, however that comes with cost and administrating, which is not something most would want to do.
I2P is definitely more complex. Unless I2P gets implemented on consumer routers I don’t see it becoming really popular, and most things on the internet do not need truly need anonymity even with VPN companies that like to advertise otherwise.
Yeah, used to be my go-to website for flashing custom ROMs.
Wonder if there’s an alternative nowadays, not counting Telegram or Discord channels.
xdaforums.com, looks like the original forum was split from the “news” website
I feel when the clickbait is this bad, sharing the article should come with a new title.
Cool. I switched to Linux and no longer care about Microsoft’s BS. This continues to just reinforce that I made the correct decision.
It’s honestly hard to find a reason not to switch anymore. I switched myself recently and once I get more comfortable with it, I am putting Linux on my kid’s computer as well.
My kids have never used a Windows computer. Android and Linux are all they know.
Welcome!
I’ve been a linux user for maaaaany years but always dual booted to windows for gaming. Got a new pc recently and this time I ditched the windows partition. Gaming on linux has come a long way the last few years and will only get better. Feels good man.
It’s great to see Linux getting better support for games. It still doesn’t support many titles, but it’s good to see progress.
I made the switch between Windows 8.1 and 10, but I appreciate the welcome anyway 😂
Based and open source pilled.
You do realize nobody but other Linux users care about this, right? In so tired of seeing people introduce Linux like none of us have ever heard about it.
We are aware of the other operating systems, thank you.
This is a comments section. And I commented. Sorry you don’t like it, but you’re welcome to scroll on by.
I hope whatever OS you use works well for you. Even if it’s Windows.
Damn did I chose a right time to move my gaming pc to Linux 😂
It’s always a good time to switch :)
Since Google is failing at Ads, my cousin Pedro is opening a brand new Taco and Ads shop! Need tacos and the knowledge of gods? Why not right? It’s better than my uncle’s engine, coffee, bananas and ads stand. Or my neighbor’s “Ads apples and diapers are us”.
It’s open season on delivering ads. I only learned about my fictional cousin from the bottom of an almond milk carton. He was missing, now he’s got ads for you.
“we respect your privacy, so please accept the cookies from our 1542 partners”
Someone mentioned while I was gaming yesterday and we were discussing Windows 11 and he said “just get an add blocker” and it blew my mind. Like why support a company that thinks “this” is the future? When there are alternatives.
Bro, you really should get an ad blocker.
As for windows ads, every single one I’ve seen referenced so far can be disabled in under a minute by toggling a setting.
clickbait?
Yes.
Not exactly? But spoiler: It’s even more ads! This time as search results.
Ha, this click bait article won’t snag me! I’ve been paying attention the past 4 years; there IS ALWAYS something worse on the horizon. Only a fool would suspect otherwise these days.
it’s like I once read: the best advertisement for Linux, or any other system, is Windows
Turtles?
I like turtles.
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Or just switch to Linux. It works flawlessly with everything except games that with anti-cheat that refuse to support it.
So much simpler than clicking a checkbox in Windows’ settings.
Until they take away the checkbox.
Assuming that your hardware is fully supported by Linux.
Hahahahaha.
Right right.
I keep having to say this, as much as I like Linux for certain things, as a desktop it’s still no competition to Windows, even with this awful shit going on.
As some background - I had my first UNIX class in about 1990. I wrote my first Fortran program on a Sperry Rand Univac (punched cards) in about 1985. Cobol was immediately after Fortran (wish I’d stuck with Cobol).
I run a Mint laptop. Power management is a joke. Configured as best as possible, walked in the other day and it was dead - as in battery at zero, won’t even boot. Windows would never do this, unless you went out of your way to config power management to kill the battery (even then, to really kill it you have to boot to BIOS and let it sit, Windows will not let a battery get to zero).
There no way even possible via the GUI to config power management for things like low/critical battery conditions /actions.
There are many reasons why Linux doesn’t compete with Windows on the desktop - this is just one glaring one.
Now let’s look at Office. Open an Excel spreadsheet with tables in any app other than excel. Tables are something that’s just a given in excel, takes 10 seconds to setup, and you get automatic sorting and filtering, with near-zero effort. No, I’m not setting up a DB in an open-source competitor to Access. That’s just too much effort for simple sorting and filtering tasks, and isn’t realistically shareable with other people.
Now there’s that print monitor that’s on by default, and can only be shut up by using a command line. Wtf? In the 21st century?
Networking… Yea, samba works, but how do you clear creds you used one time to connect to a share, even though you didn’t say “save creds”? Oh, yea, command line again or go download an app to clear them for for you. Smh.
Someone else said it better than me:
Every time I’ve installed Linux as my main OS (many, many times since I was younger), it gets to an eventual point where every single thing I want to do requires googling around to figure out problems. While it’s gotten much better, I always ended up reinstalling Windows or using my work Mac. Like one day I turn it on and the monitor doesn’t look right. So I installed twenty things, run some arbitrary collection of commands, and it works… only it doesn’t save my preferences.
So then I need to dig into .bashrc or .bash_profile (is bashrc even running? Hey let me investigate that first for 45 minutes) and get the command to run automatically… but that doesn’t work, so now I can’t boot… so I have to research (on my phone now, since the machine deathscreens me once the OS tries to load) how to fix that… then I am writing config lines for my specific monitor so it can access the native resolution… wait, does the config delimit by spaces, or by tabs?? anyway, it’s been four hours, it’s 3:00am and I’m like Bryan Cranston in that clip from Malcolm in the Middle where he has a car engine up in the air all because he tried to change a lightbulb.
And then I get a new monitor, and it happens all damn over again. Oh shit, I got a new mouse too, and the drivers aren’t supported - great! I finally made it to Friday night and now that I have 12 minutes away from my insane 16 month old, I can’t wait to search for some drivers so I can get the cursor acceleration disabled. Or enabled. Or configured? What was I even trying to do again? What led me to this?
I just can’t do it anymore. People who understand it more than I will downvote and call me an idiot, but you can all kiss my ass because I refuse to do the computing equivalent of building a radio out of coconuts on a deserted island of ancient Linux forum posts because I want to have Spotify open on startup EVERY time and not just one time. I have tried to get into Linux as a main dev environment since 1997 and I’ve loved/liked/loathed it, in that order, every single time.
I respect the shit out of the many people who are far, far smarter than me who a) built this stuff, and 2) spend their free time making Windows/Mac stuff work on a Linux environment, but the part of me who liked to experiment with Linux has been shot and killed and left to rot in a ditch along the interstate.
Now I love Linux for my services: Proxmox, UnRAID, TrueNAS, containers for Syncthing, PiHole, Owncloud/NextCloud, CasaOS/Yuno, etc, etc. I even run a few Windows VM’s on Linux (Proxmox) because that’s better than running Linux VM’s of a Windows server.
Linux is brilliant for this stuff. Just not brilliant for a desktop, let alone in a business environment.
Linux doesn’t even use a common shell (which is a good thing in it’s own way), and that’s a massive barrier for users.
If it were 40 years ago, maybe Linux would’ve had a chance to beat MS, even then it would’ve required settling on a single GUI (which is arguably half of why Windows became a standard, the other half being a common API), a common build (so the same tools/utilities are always available), and a commitment to put usability for the inexperienced user first.
These are what MS did in the 1980’s to make Windows attractive to the 3 groups who contend with desktops: developers, business management, end users.
All this without considering the systems management requirements of even an SMB with perhaps a dozen users (let alone an enterprise with tens of thousands).
Seems like you’ve run some bad distros. Every problem you’ve described I’ve seen solutions for, and GUI solutions too, not just command line. Linux certainly was as you’ve described, but there are loads of user friendly distros that never require you to open a terminal window, ever, for anything.
