There’s an alternate timeline in which I actually give Bing and Edge a chance because Microsoft’s not flinging their feces at their users constantly the way they are now
It’s wild because Bing is generally quite good now, but I switched away from it recently because it kept trying to advertise edge…
Meanwhile edge tries to advertise “pay later” schemes and really gets in your face about bing…
So to be honest, I did use Bing for a good while, mostly for the rewards, and it wasn’t bad, but at some point I was using a Canadian IP with a VPN, and Microsoft stubbornly switched everything to Canadian currency and would no longer let me redeem my rewards with US dollars or within the US lol. Honestly, it’s one thing that nudged me to start thinking more about using a search engine that’s not as problematic as Google or Bing.
Yeah I’ve had similar experiences with Microsoft switching my currency out of nowhere and it was weird…
Recently been using Brave Search but in general I feel like there just aren’t any good search engines anymore?
It was a really good time when the new chromium edge just came out and was a lean, quick and bs-free browser with a few power user features.
Until about maybe six months ago, Edge was great (please ignore the massive amount of data it sends to MS) as a browser. The user experience was top notch.
Some product owner with shit for brains was hired and started cramming Bing and AI nonsense into every corner.
MS needs to ease up, fast.
Not to mention pay later credit card cr@#.
The sad thing is that Edge is actually decent, and Bing is also not terrible… E.g. as an user there is absolutely no reason to use Chrome instead, but Microsoft managed to make it seem so annoying with shit like this.
Edge was decent in beta and upon release. I find now though they have slowly been adding in their own features and now it’s a browser packed with Microsoft’s products.
Edge is actually decent
And also it tracks you, same as Chrome.
Normies barely know what that means, and don’t care.
E.g. as an user there is absolutely no reason to use Chrome instead
What do you mean instead? Edge is a Chromium rebrand
Installing Chrome… since Edge is already there. If anything they would have to install Firefox to make a difference.
Chrome is not the same thing as Chromium. It’s not a “rebrand”, it’s a fork.
It’s built on chromium.
I find bing to be slightly less shit than google these days.
I’ve actually found Bing to be way better than Google for a while now. It’s not even close, idk what Google did to their search engine but it’s pretty frustrating. It’s all ads and irrelevant links.
I’ve switched entirely to Startpage and SearXNG instances, and I’m having a much better time
I did that once. I’m Firefox and DuckDuckGo now. Love it. The difference in being served the internet and surfing the internet. Ha. Haven’t heard that term in a long time.
Really love being free of Windows and this bullshit.
My system76 laptop is in the mail and I’m excited.
I run popOS and it’s awesome, it just works.
Yup, the only Microsoft product I use at home is GitHub, my home computer is Linux, and my work computer is macOS, so I just don’t see this BS.
Gitlab is pretty great!
Yeah it is, and that’s where I put my personal projects. But I like contributing to other FOSS projects, and most of those are in GitHub.
Codeberg too. Though I’m still using VSCode because for some reason no one in MS management has remembered that they need to make it awful yet.
@InternetUser2012 @const_void Haven’t had Windows installed since like 2005. Did I miss something?
Yeah, it’s been a breeze since I moved into Apple ecosystem. Nothing really being shoved down your throat feels nice.
So you change from the payed system that advertises but at least still have the option to use other things to the free os/over priced device that doesn’t need to advertise since the only option is to use their shit? Really an improvement…
Outlook the other day insisted it was better opening links in Edge instead of my default browser… Yeah, I shut THAT down…
Tbf, they did recently (I think) implement a feature where Edge would open with the email in a sidebar when opening links from outlook. So at least there’s some point to it… if that’s a feature anyone actually wants…
I encountered this at work today. I just assumed I couldn’t turn it off. Will def be looking for that setting tomorrow.
Outlook devs also doesn’t know how the internet works. After all they use word as there email renderimg engine
I don’t think I have ever seen that, but that could be because I only use Outlook on my work computer, which runs macOS. It looks like Edge works on macOS, but they don’t seem to be pushing it.
Stop trying to make Bing happen. IT’S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!
I like that it exists. I don’t use it, nor do I plan to, but I like Google having more competition.
I personally use DuckDuckGo, another Google competitor.
Which also relies on Bing on the backend.
Sure, but it has other unique features that make it different and nicer to use than Bing.
Sweaty desperation by Microsoft
Bing AI is great
I use Bing on the regular for the points but Firefox for everything else.
What are you using instead?
Anyone else notice the search (in windows 10 at least) suddenly being fucking useless? Used to be able to just type “disk man” and it defaulted to the disk management control panel, now it’s defaulting to a Bing search (in edge of course even though Firefox is default browser) for the phrase… Tried it on like 4 computers and only one was even offering the control panel as an option and it wasn’t the first one. Same thing with “default apps”…
Really glad I made the jump to Linux when I did, everytime I have to do something out of the usual user use case in windows at work I find myself more and more frustrated and jaded with windows.
Confirming this on (my sister’s installation of) Windows 11. Not even
restore pointwould give me a result (switching toen-USat least found Reset my PC but still creating a restore point is nowhere to be found unless you know where to go from previous versions of Windows).Install Linux, problem solved
I actually installed Mint before going through the Windows OOBE. However, the laptop is so new that the touchpad, touchscreen and fingerprint sensor don’t work in kernels <6.5, and the Wi-Fi card in kernels below 6.0. Most distros ship with kernel 5.x and none have LTS versions with 6.5 (which only became stable this week). I am not nearly skilled enough to go with a non-mainstream or unstable distro. My sister will need Windows so I configured GRUB to boot that by default with 0.2 s hidden timeout and now I can’t boot to Linux at all. I’ll be reinstalling it anyway in a few months.
That being said, Windows is also terrible. You can’t configure the fingers to only scroll and the active stylus to only draw in a note-taking program, the touchpad’s horizontal scrolling is reversed while the vertical is not, the handwriting recognition has not improved since my grandpa’s 2004 Windows Mobile PDA, there is a shitton of telemetry, and uninstalling Edge caused the fingerprint reader to stop working somehow. Without asking, it encrypted my storage with BitLocker (which I cannot configure because it’s not the Pro edition) and I had to enter two 48-digit codes to unlock the D: and E: partitions on each boot (thankfully I removed that). I would welcome encryption if it unlocked on Windows login and didn’t completely lock non-Microsoft account users on the same device from the storage partition. NumLock stays lit in Sleep mode or when the display is closed. Also the manufacturer CaReS aBoUt pRiVaCy and therefore included a camera cover but has a fucking persistent app that “monitors the system” and shows extended warranty popup ads, but is required to limit the battery charging voltage.
And the internal PSU makes a maddening coil whine all the time but the company just said “manufacturing is difficult and we screwed up, just use headphones lol”. It could be fixed by some soft glue, foam or rubber around the inductors but I think I would lose the warranty over this.
Sounds like the biggest (only) issue is drivers, then? Most distros (mint too) have repositories for newer kernels,nyou can turn those. Should be fairly easy to setup
I have been warned against using Mainline due to instability. I will wait until a stable release, it’s my sister’s laptop anyway and I have another.
Mmm, as long as the kernels themselves are stable you should be fine. Worst case your computer won’t boot up and you simply boot back into the previous kernel
simply boot back into the previous kernel
That’s asking too much from somebody who cannot fix a screwed-up GRUB config from a Live USB (it took me several tries to successfully
update-grubfrom the Mint installation, and the one time I succeeded, the config is wrong and I cannot boot into it: GRUB menu never shows up no matter what I press, and I set Windows as default for my noob sister). As I said, I’m not the primary user and I will now be mostly debloating and customizing Windows for her, after which she takes it to college. So working Linux is not on the agenda until Christmas at least, and I’ll put up with WSL (or my own laptop) until then.
I’ve had issues in the past where the local full text search index was broken and no apps or settings ever came up, so it only offered Bing searches for shit like “control panel”.
There’s a way to clear it and force it to rebuild, but I’m not so sure this is the same problem that you’re describing since you’re seeing it on multiple computers at the same time.
It’s not sudden, it’s been garbage for a while.
Are they begging for another antitrust?
That would require a functional or semi-functional government which we currently do not have.
I’ll say it a million times if I have to
Install Linux, take back your computer, get rid of the microshit problem
The game I want to play isn’t available on Linux.
There are soooooo many games.
Which one? Because in today’s world nearly all games are supported unsupported games are exceedingly rare
Send a letter to the game developers, and if they don’t plan on supporting linux, don’t play it. Simple as that.
or, and hear me out:
Yeah proton still has a lot of limitations and workarounds to get many games working, so if you just want true plug-n-play you’re not going to be satisfied with that solution.
Yeah, but I’d still argue that it’s a lot better than nothing, and we have Valve to thank for making a lot of Windows games actually playable on Linux.
Of course it’s better than nothing, at its definitely working OK, but gaming on Linux is still not quite good enough in terms of user experience. Average users don’t want to, and honestly they shouldn’t, debug just to play their game…
This here is the reason Linux will never take off as a mainstream desktop OS.
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It’ll paobably take off, just not in our lifetimes.
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Apple is still tracking you, they just aren’t as donkey-brained as Microsoft.
Yeah, one of things that stood out was how much Apple tries to push signing into account too. And compared to Linux doesn’t seem like you can use their App store without logging in on MacOS compared to Linux App Store.
At least I know it’s only Apple tracking me and selling that data to a only handful, premium ad agencies. With Microsoft and Google, I don’t have a faintest idea if any 13 yo bengali kid with fakest company name can bulk purchase my browser history or not.
Richard Stallman, who art the in freedom of software, hallowed be thy name; the kingdom of GNU come; thy will be done; on every machine as it is free.
Give us this day our daily free softwares. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who touches macos. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from the scorched land of Microsoft.
For free softwares are the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever.
Windows is malware.
There was a thread on hackernews a few days ago (maybe even yesterday, time is a construct) where someone shared a screenshot of a pop up ad served to them by the OS itself.
Wtf. Why would anyone willingly use that crap?
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Ubuntu needs to change that. Hey Walmart, here’s a $1 thumbdrive you can sell for $5. 500% markup! It’s a can’t miss deal!
Seeing a very popular and powerful $5 OS next to $100 Windows cards at the store would be pretty compelling. I guess their advantage would still be that all you need is a code to install Windows on many machines while you need to boot into an external drive to install Ubuntu (and any other OS).
Cable used to be ad-free also
If the screenshot in the article is to be believed, it literally has a typo, missing a quote for Don’t, which is usually one of the most common ways to spot suspicious activity and malware, and now, as someone working for an MSP, I have to now tell those users who see this that confusingly, yes this was legitimate and it was a Microsoft ad. The font isn’t exactly standard either, the buttons look like Arial which also just looks suspicious.
Reminds me of that Facebook class action settlement that was legit, but it looked about as convincing as a ransomware screen
Bing sucks. Their customer support is absolutely terrible. They blocked one of my sites and I can never get a response, so I just don’t bother with it (and don’t advertise there)
Looks like Microsoft needs to be reminded about their anti trust case again. some things never change.
Edge* is fucking shitty, to boot. It keeps serving my grandma fucking scam ads, how in the ever-loving motherfuck is that a thing in an official Microsoft browser?
Are you expecting a browser to filter search results for you? The blame should go to the search engine, and you should be using an ad blocker to boot.
[sass-reduced because having written the wrong damn thing, it’s my fault]
Huh, I’ve never actually used Edge, so I assumed you were talking about Bing search results, since you said Bing served your grandmother ads.
Shit, I just noticed, that is what I said. And here I’m being all sassy. My bad - I did mean Edge of course.
(Edge really is fucking awful though, so you’re lucky, I guess)
You’re conflating search results with ads
Google and Bing do as well.
Sure but the person you replied to did not
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Can they also get google telling me to switch to chrome every time I open an email to become classed as malware
I don’t usually defend big corpos but compared to what Microsoft is doing, that small Chrome pop up is super minor
Darn, beat me to it today, can I post this tomorrow?
On a more relevant note:
We are aware of these reports and have paused this notification while we investigate and take appropriate action to address this unintended behavior
What is utter bullshit, Alex?
unintended behavior
Who do they expect to believe this shit?
Like “oops we accidentally injected ads into your browser”?
Is the explanation that this is unintended actually better than owning up to it? So some rogue employee can code this up, pass it through localization teams and then on to customers’ computers without any oversight? I’m somehow not calmed by that.
