This happened to me. I was wondering why my internet speeds were slow when I discovered that Microsoft was in the process of uploading my users directory, they had already uploaded almost two gigs when I realized. They also changed the path to these directories to something like C:\Users\name\OneDrive\Desktop\. Another poster in this thread claimed it's easy to reverse -- I disagree, it's a pain in the ass to track down the setting, and I shouldn't have to do this. When I did, it gave me an error for one of the directories and refuses to revert (documents?).
I don't like leaving negative or hyperbolic comments on HN, but this was enraging and unacceptable to me. It's hard to convey without coming off as unhinged. I only ever boot into Windows nowadays when I need to compile and test a Windows build of software. I understand Microsoft has built up good will through efforts like VS Code, but it's all undone because of things like this. I avoid MS products, they cannot be trusted.
> It's hard to convey without coming off as unhinged
Man. I have felt this way a whole lot lately.
I think some people see Linux users and genuinely can't fathom how or why they'd want to go through all of the trouble choosing to use Linux and doing real work on it. A lot of us look back just as puzzled, because when I switched to a Linux desktop for the first time in around 2004, it was definitely a choice, but it hasn't felt like a "choice" for a very long time.
Installing a mainstream distro on modern hardware (AMD graphics at least; I haven't tested Intel, Nvidia) is way easier and more relaxed than doing the same for Windows 11.
Then installing apps, even with WingetUI it's far easier on Linux than trying to find and install apps on Windows... God help me, I hope Microsoft have learnt how to actually do window management this time to make all their crap worthwhile.
There was an incident a week or two ago, where one chess player demanded brand new computers to be unboxed before the chess match[1] begins. Every day of the match, to unbox new computers, because he didn't want the software to be tinkered with by no one.
So they unbox the computers every day, and they have to wait an hour or more, a team of 10 people, for windows update to finish and start the match. Windows update could not be cancelled by the user anyway.
I thought, if he doesn't trust software from other people, maybe he could carry with him an OS in a flash drive the size of a gum. Also, linux was not traditionally great for games, but a chess game can be supported even on a live boot.
Yeah I ran Linux as my daily driver 2004-2017 and I regret it.
Since then I run Windows 10 + WSL and life is good.
Win10 support ends next year and I am at a complete loss at what to do.
Linux desktop never worked, never will, the incentives are not there. It's only free if you don't value your time. As I wrote before , your choices are Ubuntu where an OS upgrade shatters your entire system so throughly it takes days to get back to a working system or you can go with Arch where Bluetooth/multifunction device/etc might break every so often. But at least most of the system remains standing. And if you need to connect to some funny enterprise wifi or VPN, the IT department of the client will have Mac and Windows support but Linux? X Windows doesn't get new features, Wayland is not ready, and the package manager landscape is just getting worse https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/112/616/9...
Windows 11 is hot garbage. No other way to put it.
Maybe write to the FTC? This is a privacy violation. It’s also arguably anticompetitive— they’re auto-enrolling you in an MS product you didn’t want to use, and this comes at the expense of either just local use or of any competing system.
IMO this is also something that the US should shut down hard for a very different reason: every time anyone complains about a vendor, usually Chinese, misusing American data, the US is implicitly making a comparison to American vendors, which are supposedly better. But here’s MS being every bit as bad, if not worse.
Foreign countries can, and should, stop using MS over this. Things like NDAA look pretty dumb in light of this behavior. The US’s technological dominance is somewhat at risk due to this crap.
I'm sure anyone using Windows implicitly agreed to this "feature" via EULA but it sounds to me like data theft and something state attorneys general might want to start looking into. It stinks whichever way you approach it.
I don't like leaving negative or hyperbolic comments on HN, but this was enraging and unacceptable to me. It's hard to convey without coming off as unhinged
You're not unhinged, there's been a fundamental change in internet culture and the early 2000s free internet people are considered loony now. Ive been laughed out of Discord groups(it's what the under 30s use these days instead of chats and forums, and is itself problematic) for talking about these things.
I think it’s better to see it as not a shift in culture but understand that the internet represents all culture now. There are still under 30s that believe in real freedom but everyone is on the internet now, rather than a set of people that were more biased towards freedom (as that was partly what the internet represented).
I'm with you. They just don't know any better. Discord is a prime example of how complete garbage software can become dominant because modern day users set the bar really low.
This has been a struggle for me as I've gotten older - and I'm not even that old (36) but I've noticed such a big culture shift with the younger generations.
I've been accused of holding "far right" views, or at best an overly paranoid nut, for some of my opinions on software and internet freedom, for promoting E2E encryption, and lamenting the loss of public forums to private, hidden from search, discord/Facebook groups, etc.
To be honest, it's difficult to sit by and watch the enshittification of everything tech while seeing the younger crowd be totally OK with it, and in a lot of cases even defend it.
> I understand Microsoft has built up good will through efforts like VS Code, but it's all undone because of things like this.
Someone in Microsoft should look into who is making these decisions, why these decisions are are being made, and why they are being received so negatively. Then they need to address them.
Even though I'm not much of a fan of Microsoft products, I get the impression that they have some excellent developers making excellent products that end up being undermined by business decisions. These are decisions that will probably end up undermining the business itself. We don't live in the 1990's anymore. Microsoft has plenty of competitors who are nibbling away at their edges.
Oh, I mean, the "why" is pretty simple. They're going to enable onedrive upload by default, wait until the sync finishes, then change the EULA to allow them to scrape everyone's onedrive for machine learning data that they can then sell.
I had this happen about a year ago. OneDrive changed the default path for the Documents folder to the one you mentioned above, but I only noticed it when I wasn't able to find some files in the Documents folder. It turned out that some files were being saved to the default path C:\Users\username\Documents. So I tried to move the Documents folder from the directory made by OneDrive back to the default one, but it gave me an error. Then I tried to fix it in the registry, but there were quite a lot of different entries for the default path, and I wasn't able to figure out which one I should change or remove. In the end, I had to reinstall Windows. Now each time I install Windows on any PC, the first thing I do is remove OneDrive.
Unfortunately, this problem somehow happened again on my current Windows installation. Maybe I forgot to remove OneDrive this time, or it was automatically reinstalled during some update.
This problem CONSTANTLY haunts me and my customers.
(1) Uninstall OneDrive
(2) Reboot
(3) Apply policy to block OneDrive reinstallation (linked below)
(4) Attempt to change your folders with Explorer: right-click the library folder, then go to properties, Location, and choose Restore Default. If this fails, use Move.
(5) Manually move any remaining files from c:\users\username\OneDrive
(6) Open registry, manually edit the keys shown in the link
(7) Delete leftover OneDrive folder
(8) Reboot for completion!
Now you understand why Stallman was right. If you don't want to get shafted, the only way is to control 100% of the software running on your machine. One either does that with totally free/libre software, or they don't.
No one can or should trust non-free software. Period.
I'm imagining this happening to someone on a highly metered connection and blowing through gigs of their limited monthly upload budget before realizing their OS has just gone rogue on them. Treating everyone like they have an unlimited bandwidth budget and greedily using it without permission is just awful behavior.
Proton is an improvement for sure and worth being hopeful about but it takes effort to get/keep games working. I've probably spent 10 hours trying to make Cyberpunk 2077 work with varying levels of success. I finally caved and just started booting into Windows 11 to play -- the only time I ever use it.
It's not possible to reverse. Once you send information to an online service, you should assume it'll become public domain in only a matter of years. Digital information is permanent. Hacks happen. Crypto will be broken. Culture will change. Governments will most likely even pass laws requiring it. That's why tech wants this so bad they're willing to do what I thought only cyber criminals would do ten years ago.
I just discovered the OneDrive path last night. Bought a gaming laptop a couple of months ago. Only use it for gaming. No Office use or anything like that. Uninstalled OneDrive within the first hour of using it. Didn't notice paths for Documents et al were altered until last night when I was trying to fix a minor problem. Despite never agreeing to OneDrive and uninstalling it very shortly after the machine was turned on, all my paths to the preset folders are now \name\OneDrive\.
Found ways to change it. Have no idea if I should. It's currently working and afaik OneDrive isn't slurping any data from it. There's no data to slurp other than savegames anyways.
But it still left a bad taste. I think my laptop is well supported by the major distros. I already know my favorite games work on Linux thanks to my Steam Deck. Having a strong urge to just abandon Windows for good.
<< It's hard to convey without coming off as unhinged.
I almost wonder if this is by design. I genuinely had people look at me funny when I described relatively minor issues that eventually made me jump from Windows ( in my case I think it was dropping detailed descriptions from updates in Windows 7 ). I kept explaining that even the issues are not the actual issue. The issue is that I am unable to administer my machine as I see fit. I am not anti-tech, I tell people, but the tech has to work for me...
I realized too late that apparently the only way to get rid of the OneDrive directory structure is to manage the settings from within OneDrive itself! I'd already uninstalled it and removed, by hand, most of its folders.
Now if I try to reinstall OneDrive, it doesn't open when I try to launch it! I think it just gets trashed by all the changes I've made.
I guess I have to live with the OneDrive\Pictures and OneDrive\Documents folder forever, because they keep coming back when I delete them.
(I am somewhat loathe to reinstall Windows because just getting it installed on this laptop was a huge PITA in the first place, and it was extremely annoying getting all the ads & crap uninstalled)
ee; this is another example of a phenomenon I see a LOT, which is that just complaining about something into the void is often a critical step to solving a problem.
> You're low on disk space. Storage Sense is freeing up space on your PC to help it run its best. Synced files that haven't been used recently will become cloud-only.
All of my family and friends get tricked by tactics like this. None of my family wants to use OneDrive or the cloud storage from Google / Apple for photos, etc., but their data always ends up synced to these nasty services.
How is it not considered predatory? Fine them a gazillion dollars and make the CEOs smash rocks with a children's hammer for the rest of their lives.
Edit: And how is that a "backup"? They're moving my files to their servers eventually. That's not a backup. That's theft.
Hahaha I love reading this because this is basically me. You try to do you. But Windows has other plans. When you get down to the bottom of it, although you don't even have time for that, it's always the same experience. You feel like someone shat upon your head intentionally. To the point I just became indifferent to all of this. I don't expect any good from it anyway and just click yes to all everytime. If it decide it should backup my computer without asking me - so be it. It is what it is.
Remember the thread from the other day in which someone asked how many video encoders Facebook should release before we forgive them for all the crap throughout the years?
I worked it out when the (actively) working on broke compilation after returning from my lunch break. If MS can't get OneDrive to work well with Visual Studio then what hope is there for true third-party products?
I got everything off windows and only use it for games. It’s easily the worst OS experience out there.
I wake up all the time and find my windows laptop stuck at the boot screen because I’m not using the on-brand power supply. My lid is shut, but windows ignores that, and it installs updates anyway.
And then it asks you every time to sign in/up for MS bullshit. And the decline button is becoming harder to find.
It's annoying but it's a smart move, once they get you to hit that low 5gb onedrive limit it's a easy path to get you on a office365 sub for the extra storage.
Have you tried installing Windows 11 without signing in to a Microsoft account? It's very difficult to do and the instructions online keep having to change as Microsoft makes it more and more difficult. What I'm finding now [0] involves using a hotkey to open command prompt at a certain part of the installation process and running a command to disable the internet before you proceed.
They go out of their way to make this difficult. I tried disconnecting my internet while installing, but they're apparently wise to that because the option which internet articles claim is there is no longer there. I think there's probably a console dropdown you can bring up when installing to get a local account, but I've decided against fighting the OS. It's so user hostile that it's not worth it to try to turn it into something I like.
I literally did an install of Win 11 this week - trying to stay offline didn't work, trying to enter false details didn't work, couldn't find any other tricks and so had to make yet another account.
Got it installed, added the family as users, tried to login to my young child's freshly minted account. Apart from taking forever, you then have to go through all the "let us copy all your data" and "we're going to advertise to you, so you may as well let us personalise the ads!" and so on ... and you have to do that for every member of the family ... it's an absolutely diabolical time suck.
And of course you can't, for goodness knows what reason, just point at the existing Win10 install to copy all the profiles and settings across.
Once I have my (now ex) girlfriend at home, and she wanted to check her email. So she used my computer to login on Outlook and just do her thing for work. Little did I know that logging to Outlook actually added some new account on my computer (for the same windows User), and it started to sync all the stuff from my ex's workplace.
Fast forward 1 month later, we broke up, and I was still seeing her stuff popping on my computer, as "recently opened" in the file explorer, or "recommended" in the start menu. Since we recently broke up it was really affecting my mood to be constantly reminded of her.
I struggled for like 3 months to find the option to deactivate it. I even considered formating my computer. It really felt like a private space violation, like my computer wasn't even my own, and all that just with a naive email login followed buy a ton of implicit behaviors.
Once I've added my second gmail to the email app on the Android phone and it added it, not only to the email app, but to the whole system. I just wanted to be notified about receiving new mail to that address, but Google decided it needed to sync and backup everything on the phone also to that second email. I consider these kind of things hostile, dark patterns.
Luckily there wasn't any weird content, just work stuff and memes with colleagues. I couldn't even open the files because it was locked under her login/password, literally just see the thumbnails and titles of the file. It's such a weird feature.
Imagine opening your file explorer and seeing the attached files of your ex's emails, updated live, it's a nightmare I swear.
Tech companies in general seem to struggle with consent. Even when they bother to ask, they often refuse to take "no" for an answer, only offering "maybe later."
> Tech companies in general seem to struggle with consent.
This is why Louis Rossman started describing these behaviors as a “rapist mentality” of tech companies. It’s a violation of consent, an exploitation of their anti-competitive size (yes just their size is inherently a problem that distorts the market).
These tech companies have gotten very comfortable pimping out their users to advertisers. They already believe they own your ass; if they perceive some benefit to it, why would they not just rape users directly?
And whatcha gonna do about it? Run to one of the 2 or 3 other pimps who treat their bitches with equal contempt?
While he was no saint, this was something Steve Jobs emphasized - Let the people know about it and make the decision themselves. Many would probably be happy to do it but don't just force it.
I find it just weird that 1. They think that this should be a default option that people would want. 2. They assume everyone just has unlimited data to use.
My parents laptop is on a very limited mobile connection in which they do all their photography stuff on. This move would just chew through a years worth of their internet data in one swift move. Just an outright idiotic move.
Sadly I think the enthusiasm with which the market embraced this behaviour in mobile, console and IoT makes it legally difficult for Microsoft to be punished.
How can you penalise Microsoft for pushing OneDrive by default but not penalise Apple for iCloud? Should multiple backup providers be suggested at startup for economic fairness? Or should backups be disabled by default (potentially annoying consumers of mobile devices)?
Not saying it’s impossible for a skilled regulator to build a PC specific theory of harm but it’s hard. Potentially might need entirely new legislation.
IMO While Apple are pushing iCloud harder than they really should be allowed to, but it's nowhere near as bad as what Microsoft are doing. With Apple there's a simple opt-out in the setup wizard, and if you opt-out you stay opted-out (and are only prompted to opt-in once a year with the major OS update).
"It looks like you're considering investigating Microsoft! I've loaded 500 free crystals into Candy Forgecraft Extreme and launched it for you! Just play one level..."
I have no idea why the EU isn't going after Microsoft with a heavy club for all the crap they're pulling lately.
The last time, they built a new physical (lol) office and convinced an entire state to abandon their custom Linux setup and switch back to Office 365. Looking at you Bavaria...
> I have no idea why the EU isn't going after Microsoft with a heavy club for all the crap they're pulling lately.
Did someone get a O365 license reduction or a nice dinner out. MS rep used to take me out to dinner in the 90s to get us to use NT+Visual Basic. Free dinner with asshats - worth it. We used Solaris in the end and Sun only gave us hats.
I think the 90's Antitrust battle was long and painful for everyone, and the hope was that the lessons from the fallout of it from it would carry forward in OS design.
But the staff has turned over and nobody remembers it anymore, so here we go again. (see also: The rise of Fascism worldwide as WW2 veterans die off)
That said, a Web Browser was/is a disproportionately significant application for the OS, where preferential defaults and bundling raise anti-trust concerns. Not so with a cloud backup option. TBH, Apple has been/remains equally annoying with iCloud integration/upsells on both OSX and iOS. And nobody cares.
Microsoft bundle edge still and it can't be removed, even in windows 11 LTSC. Constant nagging if you don't accept O365/OneDrive unless you eviscerate the machine thoroughly or use a cracked LTSC build.
As for Apple, no. Literally I get asked once about stuff and then never again.
I've been wondering this too. The stuff Microsoft has been pulling for the last decade is just ripe for them to go after, yet all you hear is crickets.
Why is Win11 such a pain though? I don't get it. You had Win10 that worked just fine and they went on and fucked it up to what gain? Did they manage to sell more of other products in their lineup? And you do all that when Apple has its own silicon and produces superb laptops that could lure a lot of people in their ecosystem. I understand that Windows isn't the cash cow it used to be, they've moved to greener pastures like Azure, but still why mess up your main trademark product and piss off so many of your users? What's the end goal here?
The data they collect for the AI and the advertising opportunities enable more profits and more revenue to keep infinite growth happening. Even with Azure, even with Github and everything else. If you're not using all the profit opportunities, you are not delivering enough. The economic system doesn't reward or demand stable profits or sustainable growth, it demands compound growth.
This, exactly. Things will only continue to get more shitty as long as the expectation, and often requirement, for businesses with investors is to make infinite money, forever.
At least the version number increment is probably necessary because of the "breaking change" of requiring TPM, so they can move into a locked-down ecosystem like the iPhone, which I'm guessing is MS's goal within a few years.
But the terrible UI/UX? I guess they saw they had to entice users to move by changing the look and feel, but didn't give the programmers enough time, so it was mostly unfinished garbage when it was released, and maybe still is the case.
On that note, I have Win11 and Office version whatever at work. I really fucking hate new Outlook, it's a garbage web app, the whole "NEW" label on the icon makes me always think "Oh I've got some new emails. Oh no, it's just Microsoft being fuckwits". Also, the UI for modifying email signatures is a confusing maze of unfinished UI.
Microsoft painted themselves into a corner with Windows and backwards compatibility.
They do crap like UI mixing (old and new versions existing together) because backwards compatibility is what got them the marketshare they have in the enterprise (well that and anti-competitive practices). At some point, to improve their products, they are going to have to break compatibility and just push forward, and yet they can't because that would immediately alienate a significant portion of their enterprise customers that rely on that compatibility to run old software from vendors that no longer exist, that are critical to operating some niche equipment - hell, it's not uncommon for me to see air gapped windows XP machines still in production running some critical workload.
So they're stuck because they both simultaneously need to move forward but also can't break the old stuff without screwing over their customers.
Oddly enough, it's not an unusual pattern for Microsoft, other motivations aside like data collection. Generally, only every other version of Windows is good.
98 good, ME - bad, XP good, Vista bad, 7 good, 8 bad, 10 good. Par for the course, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a bunch of refinement, and some changes rolled back for Windows 12.
Microsoft makes it a pain, but you can still jump through some CLI hoops to use only a local user account to log in to Windows, rather than the cloud-conmected Microsoft account they try to funnel you into. Not logging into a Microsoft account prevents OneDrive from doing anything other than spamming you with notifications about how great it would be if you logged in and started using it. And you can still uninstall OneDrive after every major OS update that brings it back.
Or if ordering a new PC you can get one with Windows 11 Pro for a few $$ more, choose the option to domain join (during initial setup) to create a local account, and create user accounts with no Microsoft account.
Makes it easier to do minor little things like drive encryption as well.
There are a surprising number of laptops where getting Pro edition simply isn't an option. Lots of brands no longer offer detailed build-to-order customization and instead only sell online the same three or four configurations per mdel that retailers stock.
This. Way easier than any CLI workarounds, and pro is very available. Just don't buy your laptop from Best Buy and the likes. Stick to the better product lines. ThinkPad, XPS, Precision, Latitude, EliteBook, ProBook, Surface, etc. almost all come with pro as default or as an available option.
Just stay away from the more consumer oriented product lines
I was trying to install security updates into a ~8 years old laptop the other day. It's been updated to Windows 10 before. The updates were OTA, but after it completed there was no way to log into the local account without logging into a Microsoft account first (while it being connected to Wi-Fi). Here's the kicker, since this still being on the pre-login setup screen, there was no option to disable Wi-Fi either.
I consider myself fairly technically apt and I can google solutions with the best of them, but I gave up after windows 10, they are just data mining everything, being privacy hostile at every turn. I liked windows 10 as far as looks and usability, but eventually I just gave up and went to Mac and I’ve been a linux user as well (at home desktop)for 15+ years so it felt like home anyway. I requested a Mac laptop for work as well, and while I miss out on some resources at work (mostly limited IT support) because of it, it doesn’t hinder my work or get in the way.
Who knows for how much longer this CLI escape hatch will exist though. Maybe at some point MS will implement mandatory online checks into their OS, similar to how some games DRM schemes work. Then you'll only be able to use "offline mode" if you connect to your account every XX days, or subscribe to a business plan for longer durations.
I'm working on a personal Win 11 Pro machine right now using a local account. I never made an online one. Also I wonder if I uninstalled OneDrive over a year ago, because I don't see OneDrive in File Explorer or Task Manager. I've had this laptop for over a year, so OneDrive has never returned in all the updates since.
I've definitely seen laptops from multiple OEMs with Pro edition pre-installed that still don't offer the local account route without first going through the CLI to bypass. I think the only other route remaining is to just not have any NIC that the installer can recognize.
> ...you can straight up block OneDrive and other cloud functions with Group Policy.
The world has certifiably lost its mind if this or any of the workarounds mentioned by the parent are acceptable to the baseline UX of a major paid OS.
Feeling vindicated in having gotten rid of my windows comps and gmail. I used to have a dedicated linux box but lately have been preferring the ease of macs. Maybe one day I'll get another linux desktop up, or just run it on the m2.
I don't think I have had a Windows machine in my home for over 15 years now. I also have an air gapped Haiku OS Machine for when I just want to get some work done.
I did also have a 2011 Macbook Pro until last year, it was used daily until the entire thing just packed it in one day in a spectacular fashion. Plugged a tablet in and the entire power system just failed. It was already on its death bed before that.
Readit News
I don't like leaving negative or hyperbolic comments on HN, but this was enraging and unacceptable to me. It's hard to convey without coming off as unhinged. I only ever boot into Windows nowadays when I need to compile and test a Windows build of software. I understand Microsoft has built up good will through efforts like VS Code, but it's all undone because of things like this. I avoid MS products, they cannot be trusted.
Man. I have felt this way a whole lot lately.
I think some people see Linux users and genuinely can't fathom how or why they'd want to go through all of the trouble choosing to use Linux and doing real work on it. A lot of us look back just as puzzled, because when I switched to a Linux desktop for the first time in around 2004, it was definitely a choice, but it hasn't felt like a "choice" for a very long time.
Then installing apps, even with WingetUI it's far easier on Linux than trying to find and install apps on Windows... God help me, I hope Microsoft have learnt how to actually do window management this time to make all their crap worthwhile.
So they unbox the computers every day, and they have to wait an hour or more, a team of 10 people, for windows update to finish and start the match. Windows update could not be cancelled by the user anyway.
I thought, if he doesn't trust software from other people, maybe he could carry with him an OS in a flash drive the size of a gum. Also, linux was not traditionally great for games, but a chess game can be supported even on a live boot.
[1] Kramnik vs Jospem chess match.
What trouble? Try to install Fedora and Win 11 and tell us which is faster and simpler.
Since then I run Windows 10 + WSL and life is good.
Win10 support ends next year and I am at a complete loss at what to do.
Linux desktop never worked, never will, the incentives are not there. It's only free if you don't value your time. As I wrote before , your choices are Ubuntu where an OS upgrade shatters your entire system so throughly it takes days to get back to a working system or you can go with Arch where Bluetooth/multifunction device/etc might break every so often. But at least most of the system remains standing. And if you need to connect to some funny enterprise wifi or VPN, the IT department of the client will have Mac and Windows support but Linux? X Windows doesn't get new features, Wayland is not ready, and the package manager landscape is just getting worse https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/112/616/9...
Windows 11 is hot garbage. No other way to put it.
Send help.
IMO this is also something that the US should shut down hard for a very different reason: every time anyone complains about a vendor, usually Chinese, misusing American data, the US is implicitly making a comparison to American vendors, which are supposedly better. But here’s MS being every bit as bad, if not worse.
Foreign countries can, and should, stop using MS over this. Things like NDAA look pretty dumb in light of this behavior. The US’s technological dominance is somewhat at risk due to this crap.
You're not unhinged, there's been a fundamental change in internet culture and the early 2000s free internet people are considered loony now. Ive been laughed out of Discord groups(it's what the under 30s use these days instead of chats and forums, and is itself problematic) for talking about these things.
I've been accused of holding "far right" views, or at best an overly paranoid nut, for some of my opinions on software and internet freedom, for promoting E2E encryption, and lamenting the loss of public forums to private, hidden from search, discord/Facebook groups, etc.
To be honest, it's difficult to sit by and watch the enshittification of everything tech while seeing the younger crowd be totally OK with it, and in a lot of cases even defend it.
Someone in Microsoft should look into who is making these decisions, why these decisions are are being made, and why they are being received so negatively. Then they need to address them.
Even though I'm not much of a fan of Microsoft products, I get the impression that they have some excellent developers making excellent products that end up being undermined by business decisions. These are decisions that will probably end up undermining the business itself. We don't live in the 1990's anymore. Microsoft has plenty of competitors who are nibbling away at their edges.
>>Welcome to hell.
Unfortunately, this problem somehow happened again on my current Windows installation. Maybe I forgot to remove OneDrive this time, or it was automatically reinstalled during some update.
[3] https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/onedrive/how-to-disab... [6] https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/how-do...
No one can or should trust non-free software. Period.
Deleted Comment
Found ways to change it. Have no idea if I should. It's currently working and afaik OneDrive isn't slurping any data from it. There's no data to slurp other than savegames anyways.
But it still left a bad taste. I think my laptop is well supported by the major distros. I already know my favorite games work on Linux thanks to my Steam Deck. Having a strong urge to just abandon Windows for good.
That's the Trojan Horse
https://ghuntley.com/fracture/
Step 1: "Why do I need to run Linux? I already have it in Windows"
Step 2: "Oh, and now this software runs better on WSL or requires WSL to work properly"
I almost wonder if this is by design. I genuinely had people look at me funny when I described relatively minor issues that eventually made me jump from Windows ( in my case I think it was dropping detailed descriptions from updates in Windows 7 ). I kept explaining that even the issues are not the actual issue. The issue is that I am unable to administer my machine as I see fit. I am not anti-tech, I tell people, but the tech has to work for me...
Now if I try to reinstall OneDrive, it doesn't open when I try to launch it! I think it just gets trashed by all the changes I've made.
I guess I have to live with the OneDrive\Pictures and OneDrive\Documents folder forever, because they keep coming back when I delete them.
(I am somewhat loathe to reinstall Windows because just getting it installed on this laptop was a huge PITA in the first place, and it was extremely annoying getting all the ads & crap uninstalled)
e; actually wait, I may have been able to finish the job with the registry hack given here https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/how-do...
Bless you Rodrigo. Bless you
ee; this is another example of a phenomenon I see a LOT, which is that just complaining about something into the void is often a critical step to solving a problem.
> You're low on disk space. Storage Sense is freeing up space on your PC to help it run its best. Synced files that haven't been used recently will become cloud-only.
All of my family and friends get tricked by tactics like this. None of my family wants to use OneDrive or the cloud storage from Google / Apple for photos, etc., but their data always ends up synced to these nasty services.
How is it not considered predatory? Fine them a gazillion dollars and make the CEOs smash rocks with a children's hammer for the rest of their lives.
Edit: And how is that a "backup"? They're moving my files to their servers eventually. That's not a backup. That's theft.
https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/
You did nothing, and now it's all gone!
Remember the thread from the other day in which someone asked how many video encoders Facebook should release before we forgive them for all the crap throughout the years?
I would recommend to only use Windows with a local account and without secure boot.
I wake up all the time and find my windows laptop stuck at the boot screen because I’m not using the on-brand power supply. My lid is shut, but windows ignores that, and it installs updates anyway.
And then it asks you every time to sign in/up for MS bullshit. And the decline button is becoming harder to find.
I don't think it can upload if you aren't logged in.
Have you tried installing Windows 11 without signing in to a Microsoft account? It's very difficult to do and the instructions online keep having to change as Microsoft makes it more and more difficult. What I'm finding now [0] involves using a hotkey to open command prompt at a certain part of the installation process and running a command to disable the internet before you proceed.
[0] https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/install-windows-11-witho...
Got it installed, added the family as users, tried to login to my young child's freshly minted account. Apart from taking forever, you then have to go through all the "let us copy all your data" and "we're going to advertise to you, so you may as well let us personalise the ads!" and so on ... and you have to do that for every member of the family ... it's an absolutely diabolical time suck.
And of course you can't, for goodness knows what reason, just point at the existing Win10 install to copy all the profiles and settings across.
It all sucks.
Fast forward 1 month later, we broke up, and I was still seeing her stuff popping on my computer, as "recently opened" in the file explorer, or "recommended" in the start menu. Since we recently broke up it was really affecting my mood to be constantly reminded of her.
I struggled for like 3 months to find the option to deactivate it. I even considered formating my computer. It really felt like a private space violation, like my computer wasn't even my own, and all that just with a naive email login followed buy a ton of implicit behaviors.
Imagine opening your file explorer and seeing the attached files of your ex's emails, updated live, it's a nightmare I swear.
This is why Louis Rossman started describing these behaviors as a “rapist mentality” of tech companies. It’s a violation of consent, an exploitation of their anti-competitive size (yes just their size is inherently a problem that distorts the market).
And whatcha gonna do about it? Run to one of the 2 or 3 other pimps who treat their bitches with equal contempt?
While he was no saint, this was something Steve Jobs emphasized - Let the people know about it and make the decision themselves. Many would probably be happy to do it but don't just force it.
My parents laptop is on a very limited mobile connection in which they do all their photography stuff on. This move would just chew through a years worth of their internet data in one swift move. Just an outright idiotic move.
https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/
How can you penalise Microsoft for pushing OneDrive by default but not penalise Apple for iCloud? Should multiple backup providers be suggested at startup for economic fairness? Or should backups be disabled by default (potentially annoying consumers of mobile devices)?
Not saying it’s impossible for a skilled regulator to build a PC specific theory of harm but it’s hard. Potentially might need entirely new legislation.
I have no idea why the EU isn't going after Microsoft with a heavy club for all the crap they're pulling lately.
Did someone get a O365 license reduction or a nice dinner out. MS rep used to take me out to dinner in the 90s to get us to use NT+Visual Basic. Free dinner with asshats - worth it. We used Solaris in the end and Sun only gave us hats.
But the staff has turned over and nobody remembers it anymore, so here we go again. (see also: The rise of Fascism worldwide as WW2 veterans die off)
That said, a Web Browser was/is a disproportionately significant application for the OS, where preferential defaults and bundling raise anti-trust concerns. Not so with a cloud backup option. TBH, Apple has been/remains equally annoying with iCloud integration/upsells on both OSX and iOS. And nobody cares.
As for Apple, no. Literally I get asked once about stuff and then never again.
But the terrible UI/UX? I guess they saw they had to entice users to move by changing the look and feel, but didn't give the programmers enough time, so it was mostly unfinished garbage when it was released, and maybe still is the case.
On that note, I have Win11 and Office version whatever at work. I really fucking hate new Outlook, it's a garbage web app, the whole "NEW" label on the icon makes me always think "Oh I've got some new emails. Oh no, it's just Microsoft being fuckwits". Also, the UI for modifying email signatures is a confusing maze of unfinished UI.
They do crap like UI mixing (old and new versions existing together) because backwards compatibility is what got them the marketshare they have in the enterprise (well that and anti-competitive practices). At some point, to improve their products, they are going to have to break compatibility and just push forward, and yet they can't because that would immediately alienate a significant portion of their enterprise customers that rely on that compatibility to run old software from vendors that no longer exist, that are critical to operating some niche equipment - hell, it's not uncommon for me to see air gapped windows XP machines still in production running some critical workload.
So they're stuck because they both simultaneously need to move forward but also can't break the old stuff without screwing over their customers.
98 good, ME - bad, XP good, Vista bad, 7 good, 8 bad, 10 good. Par for the course, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a bunch of refinement, and some changes rolled back for Windows 12.
At least Gnome only gets screwed up once every decade or so.
The same applies; are just not accessible to non-technical people.
Makes it easier to do minor little things like drive encryption as well.
Just stay away from the more consumer oriented product lines
The world has certifiably lost its mind if this or any of the workarounds mentioned by the parent are acceptable to the baseline UX of a major paid OS.
CFAA (a)(2)(C)
In many cases, couldn't this be argued to exceed authorized access to a protected computer?
Clause 3. may seem to permit it, but the privacy statement it refers to at
https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement
states "When we ask you to provide personal data, you can decline."
In this case the way it is described, there was no request for the personal data, and no opportunity to decline.
I think you'd need a lawyer to look at it further.
I did also have a 2011 Macbook Pro until last year, it was used daily until the entire thing just packed it in one day in a spectacular fashion. Plugged a tablet in and the entire power system just failed. It was already on its death bed before that.