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Windows 10 Informs Chrome and Firefox Users That Edge is 'Safer' (venturebeat.com)
An anonymous reader shares a VentureBeat report:Microsoft has turned on a new set of Windows Tips that inform Chrome and Firefox users on Windows 10 that Edge is a "safer" browser. We reached out to Microsoft to find out how long this latest recommendation has been active. "This wave of Windows Tips for Windows 10 users began in early November," a Microsoft spokesperson told VentureBeat. If this sounds familiar, that's because Microsoft turned on similar Windows 10 tips back in July, warning Chrome/Firefox users about battery drain and then recommending Edge instead.
Remember when just bundling Internet Explorer with the OS was enough reason to provoke an anti-trust response?
Not actually sure, but could this be considered as an abuse of position (monopolistic activity)?
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It seems that those peddling your average mainstream OS these days are hellbent on pushing their views of the world on what is largely an unsuspecting and technically ignorant user base. Use Android? We'll spy on you wherever you go and push a bunch of ads for something you already bought yesterday. Use Windows? We'll create self-doubt in your choice of software to push you into our domain where we can collect information on you, and push ads on your start screen unless you jump through dozens of technical hoops. Use MacOS? We'll collect anything you do in Spotlight so we can "make our product better" for you.
/. crowd and people of similar technical capability can filter out this BS, but the average user will continually fall victim to this nonsense with no idea of the real consequences, both individually and for the overall browser market.
Just like Farcebook and any other SaaS platform, the OS guys are trying real hard to squeeze a few extra dollars out of us users at the expense of users by making the user the product rather than the OS. That this happened with Edge in this case is merely another symptom of this greater problem. The
Yeah bullshit. Those devices are being owned not by flaws but by default passwords. Try again.
I used to do that, but I prefer browsing in VMs, just so if something escapes one browser, it can't do much, and a snapshot rollback instantly fixes all damage.
Browser-wise, I would give Chrome the nod (although it doesn't have NoScript-like functionality) because of how it runs Flash and other items in separate VMs, limiting the context a compromised add-on can damage. Add uBlock Origin and Tampermonkey, and this does an adequate job at dealing with malvertising.
In my experience, blocking ads does a lot more for security than almost any AV utility. AV utilities are stymied by 0-days. Ad blockers don't care how old the exploit is... if it can't load through an ad server, it doesn't run.
In the brave new world according to Microsoft: they're not "your users."
Not anymore.
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ISIS is taking a shellacking. Americans just don't realize it because we're not spending a trillion dollars and 4400 lives doing it. Mosul will probably fall before Trump takes office, and if Obama and Kerry can work out the problems with Turkey there's a good chance ISIS will be getting kicked out of its capital Raqqah as the new president takes office. This will destroy even the semblance of a claim to an ISIS caliphate since that requires holding territory.
And as for Al Qaeda... Al who?
Oh, and the destabilizing influences of energy dependency? US oil and gas production has soared under Obama's policies (much to the displeasure of his base) so that the US will be a net energy exporter this year for the first time since 1957. If Trump continues Obama's policies we'll be able to replace most of Russia's gas supply to our trading partners in Europe.
So yeah, I'll take "Obummer" on security over someone who was briefed a month in advance about 9/11 and dismissed it as CYA.
As for Orlando, a mass shootings of one sort of another are a regular event in the US. The last year we went without a mass shooting was 1995. Sometimes like this time it'll be Muslim nutjobs pledging allegiance to the flavor-of-the-month; but just as often it'll racists, misogynists, anti-gummint conspiracy theorists, or just plain apolitical nutjobs. Like always.
But here's the thing: we've decided essentially that mass shootings are rare enough we can live with them. Back in the 70s it used to be revolvers or hunting rifles with internal magazines. Now it's semi-automatics with big removable magazines, so the body count is higher. But statistically it's still rare enough that Amerians (rightly) treat these things as a negligible risk.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
A major difference being that of those three only Firefox lets users see what's going on, alter the code, and share their improvements with others (even commercially). It's a lot harder to get away with spying and other kinds of subterfuge in software users are free to run, inspect, share, and modify. Subterfuge is trivially easy to do in proprietary software, thus proprietary software is never trustworthy and never safe to use. Furthermore, both Google and Microsoft work with government agencies (such as the NSA) to help their spying efforts. You're better off with even worse quality code that is free software than more featureful, less buggy, faster, or in any other way "better" proprietary software. Software can be improved to become technically better but only the copyright holder can free their proprietary software.
Digital Citizen
I grudgingly suffer through login screen, "working on updates" and various nag popups like trying Office 365 to run Steam games not available elsewhere. But who would want that just to do web browsing and basic productivity tasks? My "desktop" is $265 Intel Compute Stick running Ubuntu connected to $500 45 inch 4K TV. I can walk away for two weeks and come back to find things exactly as I left them, without any nag screens. My laptop is a Chromebook Flip that again does not aggregate me and that runs a decent selection of Android games and Ubuntu for when I need it.
Microsoft also used to sell drama-free operating systems that ran a large selection of apps. Windows 2000 was about the pinnacle, though XP is Ok if you forget about activation issues. Windows 7 is decent from UI point of view, but quicky chews up globs of disk space in mysterious directories like WinSXS. Everything afterwards is just obnoxious.