Comment by MichaelGG | Hacker News Reader

Comment by MichaelGG | Hacker News Reader

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Microsoft has established support timelines. They will have to backport fixes and carryout whatever level of support they do regardless of how many people upgrade, because it will never be 100%. More users on Win10 just means a better pitch to app developers about using the latest Store-enabled APIs.

But you're right they want to show improving numbers and then mine users for ads. MS absolutely hates how they let online/mobile/advertising slip out of their grasp due to terrible management. So they're poorly trying to implement the Google model to compensate.

Thing is, they are sucking at it. Let people turn off telemetry, little to lose - unless they want to condition people all they are doing is fomenting anger towards MS. And if you're going to go all in, then have some taste. Fix the store. Stop spamming shit in the start menu. But take a look at XBox with its ad-covered dashboard and we can see MS just does not get it and is doomed to poorly trying to ape others and doing it with zero class.

But hey at least we are getting nicer dev stories from them! I love that enterprises enjoy paying crazy prices for Azure "solutions" as it subsidizes MS investing in dev tech.

I don't even mind the telemetry data as some of the in your face passive advertising and additional "features" and apps I could care less about. I finally went linux on my home desktop a few months ago, I was so sick of it. No, I don't want Edge as my main browser. No, wtf is this contacts thing you added in that I can't seem to remove. Can you please get rid of these cards for apps I don't have installed? No, I don't want to install MS-* now..

I mean, just give me a nice OS to work with.. hell, I like Windows 10 fine, if they'd stop shoving adware down the update channel.

> No, wtf is this contacts thing you added in that I can't seem to remove.

HKCU:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\People, key PeopleBand of type Dword, set to 0.

However, normal people should not resort to configuring their system via registry. This should be normal, disableable feature, if it has to be there at all.

Do not forget to re-check after earch update.

And yes, I do mind the telemetry data. So do I mind resetting the user preferences by updates and forced updates too.

"Normal people" are right-clicking the taskbar and clearing "Show People on the taskbar" checkbox.

Or even more straightforward: Settings -> Personalization -> Taskbar.

I mean, I don't like the telemetry... but the telemetry isn't in my face reminding me it's there all the time.

Hell, I go to support.dell.com to look at drivers for my laptop, and Cortana pops up, "Can I interest you in a coupon?"

I mean WTF.

Whoa wtf. Is that Edge only?

Yeah. :\ Another reason not to use it.

How many times do we have to go over this...

Telemetry != Tracking

Telemetry data has been gathered since Windows XP and it's gathered in the magical Windows 7. It's not new. It's used to identify problems with their software and how it interacts with users systems. It's also used to understand how users are using the software and what issues they encounter.

Microsoft even provides documentation of everything captured under basic tracking.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/basic...

> How many times do we have to go over this...

As many times as it takes for people like yourself stop switching the subject and feigning surprised frustration.

It has never been about "telemetry" or "tracking". It's always been about not "phoning home" under pretense du jour.

It is all about _privacy_ and _control_ over one's own computer, the very notions that's been steadily eroded to near oblivion through constant and unyielding pressure from Microsoft et al.

It reminds me of an old /b/ wheeze:

There was this memetic image called either "Cockmongler" or "Grinman". Which of those names was correct? Why, whichever one the mark didn't use, of course! If the pigeon said "Cockmongler", you had a whole rant ready to copy-paste about how it was always "Grinman" and oldfags know this and /b/ is now cancerous and yadda yadda yadda. Vice-versa in the converse, of course; the point is, the other person is always wrong.

You can apply the same thing to "ship" vs "boat" or "half-staff" vs "half-mast" or "that" vs "which" or any other pair; it's a wonderful way to utterly derail any attempt at discussion involving those terms, or, possibly, the concepts they're attached to.

Agreed. I don't have a problem with telemetry and updates being turned on as by default. What I have a problem with is Microsoft not even giving us the option to turn these features off.

>_control_

You are running several millions of lines of possibly closed source code written by others running on almost definitely closed design hardware. At some level you have to trust your platform.

Trust is not binary. I trust Microsoft not to, say, deliberately weaken Bitlocker. I trust them to generally keep me safe and not turn on my webcam and watch me at night.

It does not mean I trust them building up a profile on me. Someone in this thread said Cortana pops up coupon offers when visiting Dell.com? I do not trust this to not be abused.

It is also about the overton window and shifting people's acceptance of spying, even in innocent forms like crash metrics. I've defended telemetry and used to turn it on for most machines, because it was optional. Making it mandatory is the wrong policy.

It's on by default in 8.1, 8, 7, Vista, and XP. It's also on by default in Office since XP.

When was it optional?

I'm not saying you're wrong, but you're saying XP collected lists of installed apps? And had no way to disable? Citation? This is more than DrWatson/crash reporting.

Again, this isn't a new problem and it's actually better in Windows 10 than it's ever been as far as choice.

If the problem is choice, not that the telemetry gathering exists then everyone really needs to reframe their argument because everyone complains first about the collection and then second about the inability to turn it off.

How is it better than ever as far as choice? I can't turn it off!

Really? Sounds like Windows 10 cannot turn of this telemetry stuff. And sends my installed apps. But not allowing turning it off is not excusable. All it does is piss people off and encourage the public to accept phoning home as a fact of life and nothing to see.

As did every other version of Windows since XP.

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