Hacker News Reader

Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

And teams. And all that software that you used to be able to use that you have to make exceptions for so that in the end you end up forgetting to re-enable some critical part of the windows scareware implementation.

Seriously: try installing Firefox on Windows 10 (I had to do this recently, I have now one computer in the house on Win 10 due to a hard requirement for some software/hardware combo), and you'll see Microsoft learned next to nothing from the browser wars lawsuit. They're simply asking to have this done to them again, they now actively discourage Firefox to be installed by claiming it can 'damage your computer' and is insecure. Incredible this stuff.

Oh, and Google will return a link for Chrome as the first item when you search for Adblock for Firefox. You can't make this stuff up.

Has there ever been a large company in IT that didn't turn absolutely evil as soon as the opportunity presented itself?

View on HN

> You never sent me a response on the question of what things an app would do that would make it run with MS-DOS and not run with DR-DOS. Is there [a] feature they have that might get in our way?

Bill Gates

> What the [user] is supposed to do is feel uncomfortable, and when he has bugs, suspect that the problem is DR-DOS and then go out to buy MS-DOS.

MS SVP Brad silverberg

> If you're going to kill someone there isn't much reason to get all worked up about it and angry. Any discussions beforehand are a waste of time. We need to smile at Novell while we pull the trigger.

MS VP Jim alchin

What has changed? Nothing, of course. Settling and paying fines for blatant abuses of dominant market positions has been Microsoft’s MO for decades.

The behaviors described here are intrinsic to capitalism, and are not peculiar to any individual company. The executives quoted here are simply describing the waters they swim in. But they are only one fish in the sea that is liberal governance. The system is the problem, not Microsoft.

This system will cause any publicly traded company to behave like a sociopath and limit career paths for non-sociopaths who are unwilling to break (or bend) the law to further their agendas.

I run Windows 10 (Home) since years and the OS has so far, never tried to warn me about Firefox. It does however reset default browser back to Edge after biannual major OS upgrades. Also searching 'adblock for Firefox' on Google returns several results from Mozilla addons for me. Chrome is not linked anywhere on the first page of results.

What is personally more annoying is Edge keeps randomly popping up a banner asking if I'm sure it shouldn't be the default browser. When a user declines once, the OS shouldn't nag repeatedly.

"When a user declines once, the OS shouldn't nag repeatedly. "

Haha, ... when you apply that standard to the modern world - you sometimed wish the stoneage back.

Seriously, there is something deeply wrong with society, when all this shit just gets accepted by everyone.

"Telemetry" such a innocent word. If they would write we record allmost everything you do on your computer and send that data to wherever we want to .. I doubt much would actually change, as MS office software is still mandatory in many places, but maybe there would be more awareness of it.

>Oh, and Google will return a link for Chrome as the first item when you search for Adblock for Firefox. You can't make this stuff up.

Maybe your profile affects results, here:

"Adblock for Firefox"

returns

"https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/"

"adblock"

returns 1st url = https://adblockplus.org

2nd url is = chrome.google.com

I just setup 2 laptops this week on Win10 Pro, inatlled Firefox and Chrome, and nowhere did it mention anything about Firefox being bad?

Maybe a Win10 Home, or some other version? Or was that in a search result (or ad) not actually Windows?

Give it time; it's a trickle campaign. Just this morning I updated my Win 10 Pro desktop, and on reboot I got a full screen wizard prompting me to "use recommended browser settings" which is doublespeak for changing my default browser to Edge.

Edit: On re-reading, I believe OP was specifically referring to false positives with SmartScreen that crop up regularly, like at https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/n7gige/ms_edge_blo...

The SmartScreen stuff is a plague that applies to all software developers in varying degrees. Chrome does this with their safe browsing stuff too, I hate it - essentially everyone gets told your exe is "malicious" until enough people have downloaded it without it being flagged as malware.

The idea that it applies to trusted vendors like Mozilla shipping code-signed executables is bonkers to me.

Nice way to promote further centralization into services like app stores that don't suffer from this!

You can disable SmartScreen with O&O ShutUp10 [1] on the home version.

[1] - https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

> Give it time; it's a trickle campaign. Just this morning I updated my Win 10 Pro desktop, and on reboot I got a full screen wizard prompting me to "use recommended browser settings" which is doublespeak for changing my default browser to Edge.

Yeah, I actually think this is a case of "don't explain by malice that which could be adequately explained by stupidity" or something.

I'm only a casual Windows user (only use for it games) and never bother to install another browser, Edge works well enough to download Steam and occasionally look up something on the internet.

Earlier this week when it installed the new update I also got the same "use recommended browser settings" dialog box. I think I had disabled 3rd party cookies or something as well as the random junk on the new page, so not willing to click around for half an hour I denied using anything and all went well. I'm pretty sure this isn't the first time I see the "use recommended settings" on this PC, since seeing it gave me an "again?!" reaction.

This is a Win10 Pro that's always been kept up to date.

" Has there ever been a large company in IT that didn't turn absolutely evil as soon as the opportunity presented itself?"

I like nuances, though. "absolute evil" is a bit strong.

There were companies who were engaged with enslaving people and working them to death. (some still are)

I am no fan of googles development, but absolute evil leaves no room to describe other companies who are actually worse.

> some still are

well that's an understatement[0].

I alos think it's less productive to interpret the phrase absolute evil as a comment on an entity's moral alignments (because it's a corporation, it's not chaotic evil or neutral good, it just is) but as a comment on the foundation and effects of the economic and political systems defining of the corporations (capitalism under neoliberalism). Absolute evil seems like a fairly decent personification of those metrics to me: every extra push to manufacture another product pushes us closer to a climate catastrophe (even 'green' products like Teslas, especially green products like Teslas[1]). Even if you deny climate change, you can't deny that workers are being taken advantage of near habitually. If we're going to personify the destruction of the earth and the worker, absolute evil does not seem too far off.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides for one 1: https://www.wired.com/2016/03/teslas-electric-cars-might-not...

There is still a big difference, between exploiting people - and owning people - and literal doing what you want with them. Flock them. Burn them. Rape them - as you please. This is slavery as it used to be (and partly still is!!). And that term gets watered down when applied to something else.

Exploiting people because they are desperate is a big problem. Maybe call it modern day slavery. But it really is not the same as what slavery means for people who are literaly and 100% owned by others.

With growth hacking it seems that all the it companies that get big now were evil when they were small, too

> Has there ever been a large company that didn't turn absolutely evil as soon as the opportunity presented itself?

No?

> Microsoft learned next to nothing from the browser wars lawsuit.

That's been true since the very beginning.

I very nearly filed papers to oppose class council in one of the state lawsuits on the basis that the proposed settlement was calculated to create a new antitrust injury to the class.

But I didn't because I was young and pro se and there was no way for me to afford or find representation. If I had to do it again I would've filed pro se requesting that they reject the settlement on that basis and appoint a guardian ad litem to roll the dice anyway.

> Has there ever been a large company in IT that didn't turn absolutely evil as soon as the opportunity presented itself?

If turning evil increases shareholder value, it’s their fiduciary duty to do so.

> If turning evil increases shareholder value, it’s their fiduciary duty to do so.

Meh. Maybe not: https://medium.com/bull-market/there-is-no-effective-fiducia...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com