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So Microsoft is one of the most valuable companies in the entire world. They have a stranglehold on corporate America, power a huge the cloud infrastructure, hold one of the largest sources of telemetry/user data, and are the defacto standard of PC environments worldwide.
Why in the fuck do they need to pivot to ads? I’m genuinely curious. Even if they lost 50% of their entire business they would still be one of the most profitable companies in the world.
Because when you have shareholders, there’s no such thing as “we’re profitable enough”. Shareholders always demand more. Ads means more profit, at least in the short term. Next quarter profits are all that matter to public companies.
It’s obscene, but it’s the way it is.
It’s not just that they demand more, they demand more/faster growth all the time. It doesn’t matter that the economy has slowed down to borderline recession, it doesn’t matter that they pretty much captured all the market they can, they still need to make more and more money every quarter otherwise they’re considered a failure even if they are one of the biggest companies in the world.
but it’s the way it is.
It doesn’t have to be, of course. Taking a look at the long, sordid history of how the privilege of incorporation has been perverted in this way, it becomes clear what needs to be done to fix it.
I read the article you referenced, but it’s not clear to me. What needs to be done to fix it?
Basically, abolish corporate personhood by overturning the sequence of court decisions cited in the article that got us to this point. Or, as the last sentence in the article hyperlinks to, pass these Constitutional Amendments.
Unless I’m missing something, what “needs to be done to fix it” and what is in the realm of possibility seem to be two very different things.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I didn’t say it was easy, just clear.
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Because they were “leaving money on the table” instead of getting it for their shareholders.
the shareholders don’t get that. the top managers, CEOs etc. get it. some of them may be shareholders as well, but that’s not how they fill their pockets.
@SuperSynthia @dvdnet62 because once untamed capitalism sees a money spigot they can’t help but wonder how wide it will open.
I think it’s the same reason games offer a cash shop for things you can get in-game. Sure they’re making billions but why not billions plus ad revenue? I don’t agree with the practice but the answer always comes back to money.
@SuperSynthia @dvdnet62 Because for capitalism, profit is not the end, only a means to the end. The end is to accumulate sufficient capital to absorb all competitors and achieve total control of markets.
Yea but like, their competitors, when it comes to operating systems are Apple, which isn’t anywhere near small enough to be obtainable by anyone and Linux and Linux-Derivatives, which are also unobtainable due to their open source nature.
@accideath The point isn’t whether Microsoft will reach that end. The point is that like all capitalist enterprises it will forever strive to do so.
Not all of them. Only the big and successful ones
@accideath All of them. That is the definition of a capitalist enterprise.
Not every larger company is automatically evil, just because they exist within a capitalist market. A lot of them are, sure. At least to some extent. But there still are privately owned enterprises that do have a conscience.
Also, calling them “capitalist” enterprises seems redundant.
@accideath I’m calling them capitalist enterprises to emphasize that they are capitalist enterprises. They accumulate capital. That is what they are and defines what they do.
A capitalist enterprise does not decide it has enough and can retire and take up gardening. It is not a person. It does not have a conscience.
Would be nice if pivoting to ads caused them to lose 50% of their business.
Sadly it won’t.
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@SuperSynthia @dvdnet62 Because capitalism demands infinite growth.
@SuperSynthia @dvdnet62 I’ll explain in two very simple words.
MOAR MONIES
@SuperSynthia @joby InFiNiTe GrOwTh
I’d believe Google has a larger data collection as it’s includes both google hardware and software products.
Google can also connnect the dots between an extreme amount of user data and services.Isn’t it obvious? Start Menu is being used by every windows user but is not generating any revenue Serving ads will enable them to better support the platform and provide more advanced features. Ad supported version is better than making it a subscription like some third party apps have done. Start8 I think, basic copy of Microsoft’s Start Menu but paid.
Cool
I’m learning more and more about Linux while using Linux Mint
It’s pretty cool NGL
HOW MANY TIMES DO WE HAVE TO TEACH YOU THIS LESSON OLD MAN
Every time.
Because this old man hasn’t learnt the lesson…
We love a good call to arms, what more can be said
Although not the same, this has been going on for about two years now. Jensen Harris, a former MS engineer, criticized the ads as well as the design of the new Start Menu, over here: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1564399431545667585.html
Weren’t they doing this as far back as windows 8?
It just highlights the downward spiral to user hostility becoming the standard. Pretty sad.
I have a feeling that this year is going to be the year of the Linux desktop.
If there is a recommendation that satisfies:
- A nice looking UI with good fonts, and a clean interface.
- The ability to run random Windows applications with minimal fuss.
All without needing to use the terminal, then that will likely win the battle.
Honestly Wine and Bottles are both pretty great at running windows programs these days, I wouldn’t worry to much about that so long as you check and make sure the critical software you need works.
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Pretty much anything beats Windows in that regard
Fonts have looked like shit on Linux for years, if not decades. The poor UI and lack of polish has been a big problem in design communities for a long time, and to many it’s one of the reasons why Linux is less favourable to Mac and Windows.
This is the biggest hangup for me. Even if there is a GUI, most instructions will send you into the terminal nonetheless.
For all the deserved shit that Windows gets, it “just works” without ever needing to touch config or a terminal. Until a Linux distro and window management system can get this part right, it’s silly to call it a desktop replacement for the average person because it’s not trying to be.
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You think the average joe does browse this environment?
My guy, we are on lemmy. This ain’t reddit.My point exactly. I’ve watched people break down over the start menu changing, or being unable to do anything after switching to a Mac. If you think the average person will go through this shit you’re mistaken…but I’d expect nothing less from Lemmy. It’s a bit like Slashdot from 20 years ago…
I had to explain to users where to find the windows key or how to start a search in the start menu.
Many can’t comprehend typing if there is not a textbox…
I don’t see anything wrong with fonts or the UI in Linux rn. I had tried Linux multiple times back in the 2000s and early 2010s and you are right, it used to look bad compared to windows and macs.
But if I am being very honest here, Linux looks better than both windows and mac currently. Either GNOME or KDE Plasma easily look much better, just pick the one you prefer. There is also Cinnamon.
It is not hard at all to find the one you like. As I was installing Debian 12 there was a list with checkboxes to select the GUIs I wanted installed and I just installed all of them, then whenever you startup, on the login interface where you have to insert your password, there is a dropdown list to select the interface you want to use, and you can change back and forth between all of them as much as you want, this is so much better than windows by itself (if you want to have options to change the look of windows that is a lot more work, Linux on the other hand has a bunch of well tested, trustworthy and cohesive interfaces ready to go, you just select them on a list.
For me I like GNOME better, thousand times prettier than windows 10 that I was using before. Most people seem to prefer KDE Plasma tho. Just have a look at them, ain’t no way you will come out thinking they lack anything compared to windows.
Just get over it and learn
I also have to use terminal in Windows, and up until recently it was an awful useless terminal too
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Prove it.
Elementary, Zorin?
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My daily drivers are MacOS and Fedora (with Windows on my Surface Book), but I’m a software engineer, not the average person.
I would love for Linux on the desktop to be viable for the average person, but there isn’t really a built-in option that can beat Windows at what it’s good at, and that’s backwards compatibility, and a clean interface that users know. The attitude of “well, Linux is just better” hasn’t worked for decades, and it never will until there is a distro that prioritises that (hard) switch.
It’s been the decade of Linux on the desktop for me
I don’t think so
So maybe next year will be the year of the Linux desktop
I don’t know if Microsoft’s choices to drive windows into the ground are going to have an immediate impact on Linux adoption (though you certainly see some governments trialing Linux right now because of it) but in the medium term they basically demand that Linux increase in users by a massive amount.
I know business not gaming is where Microsoft sees the value of Windows (and there is wayyyyyy more money in selling software for business) but I think a strategic defeat is happening right now with the steam deck taking off and more broadly the association in computer nerd’s minds that windows is the operating system to stick with is essentially all but evaporated from the series of bogglingly condescending decisions Microsoft has made about the future development of windows.
They lost, this period will gone down as a historic unforced error of a tech company undermining the foundation of their profits to make a bit more profits in the near term. They could have kept linux gaming mostly a pipe dream indefinitely if they just made sure windows wasn’t ever tooooo shitty of an experience for gaming, but now the dam is broken and though it might not be a flood all it once, the people leaving windows are never coming back and the movement of users away from windows will erode the levee behind the dam, compromising Microsoft’s basic ability to hold on to users, for gaming or business.
It starts with a trickle, but before we know it in a blink of an eye that trickle is going to cut a channel and slips its fingers back under the dam and destabilize the entire thing, and then it will be a massive rush of users leaving that Microsoft can’t control at all because they ignored the issue until the process was way past a point of no return.
Last year was the year of the Linux desktop, but only for me personally.
KDE Plasma 6, and their distro KDE Neon, are both really good.
There are many very friendly Linux communities on Lemmy who can help you get set up.
Windows 11 looks like a crappy knockoff of KDE with all the good bits removed and replaced with spyware and adware.
It looks much better actually, with the fancy blur and transparency effects. Not to say it works better than Linux, and I’m sure it must be possible to customise KDE to look better.
Yeah, if there is one thing that windows 11 does well is looks. I think its fancy.
Yeah there are plenty of kwin effect you can install that would make it as pretty as windows 11 if that’s important to you. Just like there are plenty of themes you can install if you want a macOS experience instead
I had the same issue holding me back from giving up Windows, until I discovered the Python keyboard module.
How to bind key presses to it varies, but here’s a recipe for Ubuntu, as an example:
Overall, it’s not quite as elegant, as AutoHotKey, but it’s ultimately a more powerful, since there’s so much else I can also do from the same Python script.
Edit: Most notably, I don’t recall AutoHotKey having any nice way to tell which apps are open, and Python can quickly call out to
ps. It’s been on my to-do list to leverage this to let me map keybindings according to what is open (i.e. a favorite game, or a move player.)KDE can do that without third party software I believe.
Fedora+KDE ftw. I switched my un upgradeable windows PC to fedora and I couldn’t be happier.
@tsonfeir But Linux does not have AutoHotkey. This is the biggest deal-breaker for me by far. AutoKey seems be the closest thing, but it’s such a massive pain to even try to use by comparison.
Depending on your usage, perhaps this re-implementation of AHK for Linux might be of use to you.
Interesting, thanks. I think ultimately, seeing this port’s adherence to AHK v1 syntax, I’d just have to bite the bullet and learn Python or something, though…
Never mind, I’ve since stumbled across
xdotool!
I doesn’t have auto hotkey because for the most part, you can control Linux from the command-line without someone having to invent a new scripting language from scratch to control it.
I heavily recommend you familiarize yourself with bash and the system commands you’ll need to send key presses, move windows, spawn and kill programs, etc.
Hmm, thanks. Can it simulate mouse-clicks?
Apparently,
xdotoolcan! I guess the next thing would be generating GUIs. I think the final issue is that this would cause quite the fragmentation given how I use the same scripts on my Windows-only work laptop… but I’ll think about this more…An alternative is python, it can do GUIs easily, and it does have mouse-control facilités as well and it is cross plaform. That being said generally on Linux you don’t even need to automate mouse click, as almost all of it can be controllers with straight up commands.
Fuck me, there is no worse way automating things
Do you have any as-convenient alternative? It’s way easier to use than Python or anything else, and it’s sped up some of my work procedures by, like, 7x. I use it for dozens of text expansion strings, autocorrect, address typers, mouse-clickers, etc.
Never mind, I’ve since stumbled across
xdotool! I suppose this may be doable after all…
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And my houshold 😁
Ther is for sure a 2.5k line powershell script from someone totally trustworthy which fixes this issue though
The French National Police also use Linux machines with its modified Ubuntu distro Gendbuntu.
Plus, Russia uses Astra, based on vanilla Debian.
Not like Russia can legally nor want to be dependant on MS/american software.
Which distro are the Germans switching to?
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If they could inject the ad’s into your veins, they would.
Good thing I use Ubuntu for >90% of my computing now.
Yeah Canonical has never put ads in Ubuntu.
I’m under no illusion Ubuntu is perfect. But I PAID for my Windows licenses. And if I paid, I don’t want to see ads. I don’t care about Win 8’s penetrative pricing model or the $25 coupon. I don’t care that I paid for my licenses 10+ years ago. Don’t sell me ads on a product I paid for. And Windows serves up ads all the god damned time now. If there’s anything good to be said about Windows 8, it’s that it didn’t take every opportunity to sell me an Office 365 subscription ever second breath I took. I don’t actually remember the last time I saw an ad in Ubuntu, and I’ve been using it to varying degrees since 2011. I think we can at least agree Canonical is better than Microsoft, yeah?
All that said, I’ve had thoughts of switching to plain old Debian, especially now that I’d consider myself much more experienced and comfortable in Linux. But if I were recommending a distro to a new user, I am one million percent telling them Ubuntu or Mint, depending on how they feel about the Windows UI.
This is amusing. They might as well replace the wallpaper with an ad.
They have on the lockscreen already, so not too far off
Done already, they are ahead of you guys Pic
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Sorry, but i couldn’t reupload the picture on my instance
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Thank you microsoft for doing bad changes to the windows operating system im sure linux users will enjoy this
The second Win 10 stops receiving security updates, it’s Linux for me.
I remember people saying the same thing with Windows 7
Some people probably did the switch
I considered it before I switched from 7 to 10, but since 10 still makes it possible to create an offline account and disable most of the spyware and other bloat, I opted to stay with Windows for another generation of OS. 11 is different though, it’s several steps too far into proprietary hell.
I think the same, Win10 is still “domesticable”, because of this it will be the last Win I’ll use, maybe in Octubre 2025 in dual boot with Linux, for local use. Win 11 is already beginning to take over the user’s PC as its own and Win 12 probably only admitting apps from the MS Store, naturally most proprietary paid apps or free with ads or hidden costs (Free*)
I switched from Win7 to Linux, but you are right, few stuck to their guns on that threat. My only Windows machine now is a work laptop that I have to use for some tasks. Admittedly, even Win 10 is looking good now compared to Win11. MS is doing a bang up job as being consumer antagonists.
You can start the switch early to get used to it 😉
I’ve been dipping my toes into it over the years, I’m just not ready to make it my daily driver quite yet
Best way to make the switch is by immersion. I’d also like to add it’s best to do it when you’re not being forced on a timeline, and you have time to deal with it. All my personal machines made the jump 7 years ago and I don’t regret it.
Killing myself one day🤦♂️
MESSAGE FOR EVERYONE : Just switch to Linux 😃
Why yourself? Let M$ kill itself.
You’re right 😂
it was already full of ads on win10
Yeah, lol people forgot what ads are. News feeds, Xbox and other office apps you haven’t bought yet, are also ads, just their own products.
I’ve used Linux on every PC except my gaming PC for years. This year I made the final leap because of decisions like this from Microsoft.
Very few games have failed to work, the ones that have are all from Epic and they fail because of their shitty anticheat software. The only other things I feel the lack of are paint.net and the Affinity apps.
How many PCs do you have, lol. And Gimp and Inkscape are pretty good art programs.
5 in use. Main Gaming PC, Laptop, Game server pc, media server PC, and another for testing things out. Whenever a family member upgrades I get the old one so most of these are pretty old.
I have gimp and other graphics tools, I also have a LOT of hours of use in the ones I mentioned so there are things I know how to do quickly in those programs but not in their counterparts.
EAC is now largely compatible with Linux, but devs have to enable support per game.
I recommend browsing protondb to see how (if) people have made games with anticheat work, you might need to change proton versions, add launch options etc.
It was Fortnite and Fall Guys, I’m not really missing them.
Fall guys works. I used to play it on my stem deck. Fortnite is notoriously busted though.
Pinta is a fork of an older version of paint.net: https://www.pinta-project.com/ I have no idea if it is any good. I just thought that this might solve your problem.
I have Pinta, it’s ok but lacks a lot of the plugins I used and hasn’t been too stable. The graphics editing thing is something that will,just take time for me to rework my workflows. Gimp is great, I’m just not used to it.
