TWeaK

Microsoft are unlike Facebook and Google in that they make you pay for the software they use to steal your data.

My experience is limited, but not no experience. In any case, it’s not like Windows 10 will be immediately unusable when support ends.

What are your plans when end of life /support comes to Windows ten?

Switch to Linux and run virtual machines when I need to use Windows.

Right now I don’t quite have the drive to do it, but an end to support for Windows 10 would push me over the edge. I just can’t stand Windows 11, not even because of all the bullshit but just the way it mandates the UI structure - last time I tried it my dealbreaker was that you can’t just have it always display all taskbar icons, you have to manually force each one to show. If a new icon comes up, it will be hidden.

I’m sure I’ll be there with you soon enough.

/me Laughs in Windows 10.

Almost not surprising. Inventors and R&D businesses patent things all the time, then it takes a while to claim them. There was a guy in Australia who apparently invented WiFi (he calls it “wiffey”) and he successfully asserted his patent against WiFi manufacturers worldwide such that they paid him a couple pennies in royalties for every chip manufactured.

The saving grace is that patents only last for 20 years. After that, anyone can use the design, like Gillette’s double edged safety razor (which is why their modern razors are so silly and change every few years).

Erm, WhatsApp would suggest otherwise.

WhatsApp was the vector for zero click access to a target’s phone from Israel’s weapons grade hacking Pegasus toolkit. They would send a video call, typically in the middle of the night, and with no input from the used they’d get full access. My personal belief is that they used functionality WhatsApp itself uses to access user data.

There was also an encrypted phone called ANOM, which had this trick calculator app with a hidden encrypted messager. “Made for criminals, by criminals”. Except, when the guy started his business he got investment from the FBI and Australian Federal Police to pay for the servers and some of the phones themselves. Basically every time it sent an encrypted message it sent a separate encrypted message to the ANOM servers. It’s entirely possible (perhaps even likely) that WhatsApp would do this also.

As for Google, they’re truly insidious. Lots of banks now require you to connect to Google captcha servers - they don’t give you the pictures, it’s just the back end, basically the tracking parts. Then there’s the controversy about them collecting location data when users have said no. They absolutely do collect data they shouldn’t.

That’s the crux of it here. Microsoft wanted to get into the data game they saw Facebook and Google reaping. However, Microsoft still charge you for the software they use to harvest your data.

Microsoft is pivoting its company culture to make security a top priority

Didn’t they already do that a decade or two ago??

Nah, the reason MS products are such a mess is that they gave up on desinging software for the user and instead focused on what they could get out of it (stealing user data).

FYI Win+D sucks ass, because when you open something on your desktop it resets. Instead, if you use Win+M you will minimise all windows, then Win+Shift+M will restore them, regardless of any other windows you’ve opened.

Why are you hitting Win+R and using it to crop screenshots when you could just use Win+Shift+S and take the screenshot properly to begin with? Snipping Tool also allows you to do basic doodles, and it even has the ability to move straight to Paint if you want to do anything slightly more advanced.

95% of the time, I just need cut, rotate and resize.

Rotating in (classic) Paint is actually a huge challenge lol

Yeah but if they did that they wouldn’t be able to snoop and steal content from their users.

It utterly disgusts me that Microsoft charges you for the software they use to harvest your data. At least Facebook and Google can maintain the facade that it’s an exchange of data for access to the service (it never was).

its raster graphics editor included in every version of Windows since 1985

Incredibly misleading. The new version of Paint in Windows 11 is a completely different piece of software, and older versions of Windows (10 and below) will not have this function.

The day I can no longer use Windows 10 will be the day I move to Linux. I’ve already started using virtual machines for certain things so maybe performance will go up there.

Don’t recommend Brave either lol.

I remember it also let you spoof your user agent, and had a built in email client. It was just generally feature rich.

The company responded, but the shareholders voted on each of the proposals. While certain shareholders made the proposals, the shareholders overall voted against it.

The board recommended voting against it, but the shareholders collectively did that.

More accurately, Amazon shareholders voted against the proposals.

Nooooooo. I can’t remember my ICQ, maybe I still have it somewhere, but this is still sad.

At least IRC is still going.

Edit:

In its heyday, ICQ boasted over 100 million users on its platform, which was a remarkable achievement at the time. In 2010, ICQ was purchased by Mail.ru (now VK), who has since owned the products as it declined in use.

Today, ICQ announced that they are shutting down on June 26th, recommending that users switch to VK Messenger and Workspace.

So apparently Russian business killed it.