These market forces really are great, they really made Microsoft to stop abusing dominant positions to get advantage in other segments, stop showing ads, etc. hooray for deregulation and innovation
These market forces really are great, they really made Microsoft to stop abusing dominant positions to get advantage in other segments, stop showing ads, etc. hooray for deregulation and innovation
Accept! Then the next day send a right to be forgotten request.
If they do it like Paul Graham with Hackernews, then they just remove the link between the person and the data.
Using a different identifier isn't sufficient to satisfy a right to be forgotten request. The user's identity could still be inferred from comments, for instance.
So does that mean that if we request Dang will nuke our accounts (honest question, because it's something I've been thinking about. Maybe or maybe not write a Tell HN)
He does not, that's the point. I think YC is not on the legal side regarding this topic.
Which law(s) do you think they are not on the legal side of?
The most common law people cite for deletion rights is GDPR but I'm not sure GDPR applies. GDPR's territorial scope is defined in Article 3.
For controllers or processors not "in the Union", which I think is the case for YC, GDPR applies if the processing activities are related to:
"(a) the offering of goods or services, irrespective of whether a payment of the data subject is required, to such data subjects in the Union; or
(b) the monitoring of their behaviour as far as their behaviour takes place within the Union."
People in the Union can make HN accounts and post, but that doesn't mean that YC is offering goods or services to data subjects in the Union. Recital 23 of GDPR elaborates on offering goods or services (edited to split into two paragraphs to make it easier to read):
In order to determine whether such a controller or processor is offering goods or services to data subjects who are in the Union, it should be ascertained whether it is apparent that the controller or processor envisages offering services to data subjects in one or more Member States in the Union.
Whereas the mere accessibility of the controller’s, processor’s or an intermediary’s website in the Union, of an email address or of other contact details, or the use of a language generally used in the third country where the controller is established, is insufficient to ascertain such intention, factors such as the use of a language or a currency generally used in one or more Member States with the possibility of ordering goods and services in that other language, or the mentioning of customers or users who are in the Union, may make it apparent that the controller envisages offering goods or services to data subjects in the Union.
I think YC could make a decent case that they do not envisage offering such services to people in the Union.
> Whereas the mere accessibility of the controller’s, processor’s or an intermediary’s website in the Union, of an email address or of other contact details, or the use of a language generally used in the third country where the controller is established, is insufficient to ascertain such intention, factors such as the use of a language or a currency generally used in one or more Member States with the possibility of ordering goods and services in that other language, or the mentioning of customers or users who are in the Union, may make it apparent that the controller envisages offering goods or services to data subjects in the Union.
I think YC could make a decent case that they do not envisage offering such services to people in the Union.
I very much doubt it. YC has an explicit list of European-based companies in their portfolio; they have posted job ads on HN for positions that were based exclusively in EU countries, and continue to do so as far as I can tell. PG is on the record talking about using HN from the UK (no longer part of the EU, but it was at the time).
Maybe it is time to write that manifesto. I love the community but the environment has changed underneath us and faster that I, even someone in ML, expected.
He will not, I have asked. Instead, he does what throwboatyface has mentioned. It's bad form.
As an aside- If you ask nicely they'll edit/remove the PII from the comments.
This is such a different case I don't even know where to begin. Dang does an incredible job moderating the site.
You can do an excellent job moderating this site while also choosing to not do something.
This has nothing to do with Dang. It's not the moderators who decide this - it's company policy, most likely defined by pg.
What do you mean by that?
If you ask hackernews to delete your comment(s), they refuse to do so. Instead, they just set the username of the comment to deleted.
From what I have seen, the servers for hackernews are a bit delicate. At least when OpenAI does something stupid...if our usernames are a primary key ID a single update to remove the username is far less costly than actually dropping all the comments.
Or they just want to have an archive for some background monetization scheme, anything is possible!
I used to use Evolution until MAPI was removed, then Thunderbird+Exquilla for a bit, but now Thunderbird+IMAP is the sensible way to go. I make all my email rules server-side using OWA, and Thunderbird has had most of the OAUTH2 growing pains sorted out for a while now.
We use Teams, which handles all the calendar stuff I used to need my mail client to do for me. The only risk seems to be Microsoft silently changing something and Thunderbird being left to figure out what to fix. I no longer need to access proprietary Public Folders, as that functionality has been swallowed up by Sharepoint Online.
I've used Linux at work for the past decade, in spite of it being a Microsoft shop -- some days I would wrestle with HyperV or whatever ricketysticks thing Microsoft bolted on top of HyperV, some other rare days I'd get to play in the terminal all day.
I could tolerate using Windows if I was forced to. But I absolutely love using Linux. Who even needs Outlook specifically these days?
As someone considering switching to Linux for work, why not use OWA always? It's a full PWA, so you can access your data offline, and it's flowing through Exchange anyway.
I prefer all my email in emacs because it is a familiar extensible environment subject only to my changes and decisions.
"I have power here" versus "you have no power here".
Someday I should really look into emacs since it can be literally anything my workstation needs it to be lol vi VS emacs seems like comparing Notepad++ to BSD. They may have similar functions built in but can do very different jobs.
"A nice operating system with a mediocre text editor built in."
OWA is fine for quick emails, usually, but I like old fashioned stuff like being able to view my message headers. Also, I use Firefox instead of Chrome so I don't get the PWA benefits.
It's gonna suck when Microsoft finally kills connectivity or login support for the Teams for Linux Electron app lol
I know that was just one example, but I think you can view message headers in OWA by clicking the ellipsis on a message, then "View" > "View message details".
Also, my mom preferred Safari but kept Chrome around for installing and opening PWAs. I understand if there's a philosophical reason this won't work for you though :)
One reason is good extension support, for example for fast keyboard navigation and mail moving in TB...
https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/nosta...
One reason is because OWA is really slow on not-great hardware...
I could tolerate using Windows if I was forced to.
I couldn't. I reinstalled windows on a laptop I was giving away a few months ago and it literally took me 25 minutes to figure out how to install Chrome. Windows refused to download it in Edge, stating it was a security concern, and it was endless googling to find out how to disable this setting, and none of the instructions seemed to work. Several restarts later and toggling a million things, it finally worked, but i'm not even sure specifically what it was.
If I can't install the absolute bare minimum software without issues like this, I cannot tolerate it.
Since windows 7 there has only been one usable version of windows: Enterprise/LTSC. After finally being forced to upgrade to windows 10 because I was starting to have too many issues with outdated drivers, it’s serviceable with a few scripts that disable the telemetry and other annoyances in group policy.
Windows makes you click "Keep" AND "Download Anyway" then when you try to run your downloaded executable it says no, but there's a "hidden" menu that lets you say run anyway. It's super annoying lol
Thunderbird add-on `owl-for-exchange` is another way to go for a little price (10€/y).
Exquilla is another paid add-on that does a similar job, and I believe the price is pretty comparable - in case Owl ever has issues :)
FWIW, Evolution works quite well with O365 when using the EWS provider these days. You might want to give that another look if you aren't wedded to Thunderbird.
Evolution was always rock solid for me, but these days so is Thunderbird. I'll have to give it a go sometime, thanks for the suggestion :)
I had a time on a 13-00 phoneline today which said your call is important to us, you are "undefined number" caller on this queue and it made me very happy. I suspect 766 is "suspiciously accurate" and some of them are JV with Microsoft.
Unbelievable. You, [SUBJECT NAME HERE], must be the pride of [SUBJECT HOMETOWN HERE].
Imagine being the voice over artist having to say:
"undefined number"
"not a number"
"floating point overflow"
"the back-end ESS-QEW-ELL server has returned an error"
"missing semicolon or comma on line [1,2,3,4,..... 1231,1232,1233...]"I wonder if anyone has done a mysql injection exploit via text to speak over an automated phone line.
"Spell your name"
"F-R-E-D-double-quote-semicolon-D-R-O-P-space-T..."
Little Bobby Drop Tables is all grown up now! :-)
(for the youngsters out there!)
I'm certain that the majority of the time it's a TTS generating those lines. These days, probably something involving AI.
Or a Perl script sold as AI because you can charge more this way.
The device is now worth more than the combined incomes and organs of [SUBJECT HOMETOWN HERE]
I could never decipher these lines (they just sounded like "mumble mumble" to me), and now it makes sense. Have a cake as a "thank you"!
Cheers! If you don't mind me asking, could it be due to the "buzziness" they add to Glados voice? I have a friend who received an eardrum patch as a kid, but it never fell off, so some frequencies resonate insanely loudly for him.
The parts I didn't understand where those spoken with a different voice, like "subject name here", and it's mostly because I'm not a native english speaker.
Makes sense, those parts are definitely tough to hear with the echo they add to the audio too.
Maybe we get a merging of Half Life and Portal in a future game, that could be really fun :)
Many games, including Portal and Portal 2, have subtitles. I like having them on because I often find it difficult to understand spoken text in games (and movies).
If they use any Open Source code, it's very, very easy to start hitting those numbers.
After Windows 10, Microsoft's policy seems to be "I will give you free updates, but in return, you will be a Windows tester, watch ads, and provide your privacy."
The End Game is to make Windows “Cloud Only” [1]
Then they will have the users by their balls. Charge money for every click. Insert ads where they see fit. Dynamically adjust prices to squeeze the max amount of money.
Time for quarterly reports? “Sorry our Excel servers are under ‘heavy load’, Excel now costs 4x the usual hourly rate…”
[1] https://www.techradar.com/news/could-windows-12-become-micro...
That sounds too negative. How about that:
"The prize-winning Excel service is in high demand right now. We apologize for any delay this might cause. Do you want to become an 'Excel Prime Plus User' with preferential treatment? Just upgrade your subscription now and increase your productivity!"
“I’m sorry, in order to multiply you will have to purchase a subscription to our multiplication extension. Please click HERE to have your credit checked.”
The use of surge pricing encourages their definitely-not-employees to turn on their servers and relieve congestion, dontcha know.
Vendor lock-in is a tried and true classic MicroSoft tool
After paying for windows - that’s the part that really makes it sting.
As usual, Pirates of the LTSC have a better experience.
A friendly reminder that legally even if you buy Windows using a pirated copy is the same offense as pirating it without buying that other version in the first place.
Sooo don't waste money if you decide to pirate LTSC :)
Wine on linux is really nice these days BTW.
To be fair hardware sales have slowed down quite a lot because nowadays even a 10-year-old computer is fine for most people. Since it is pretty hard to sell OS software without new hardware this is their solution to this "problem".
Their primary competitor, Apple, chose the route of programmed obsolescence for the hardware bundled to their OS software and also extreme price hikes for a given hardware performance level.
So, I don't know, pick your poison, I guess. I think it's easy to shit on Microsoft, but still most people prefer their shenanigans to Apple ones from what I see, because at least it's a lot easier on the wallet at the end of the day.
As an historical Apple user, I somewhat prefer this behavior because at least I can work around it. You don't have to use Outlook and all of the Windows "ads" can be turned off, especially if you are willing to pay a bit for a "pro" version. On the other hand, good luck working around Apple extortionate pricing on soldered SSD and RAM. Privacy may be valuable, but that's only true if you are rich enough in the end...
Microsoft isn’t exactly struggling to turn a profit, though. They have reached the stage of market maturity (and capture) where their primary focus is on milking their “legacy” products like Windows and Office for cash.
I know, I'm not saying the bullshit they are trying to pull is good. But you have to look at the market as a whole, Apple makes even more profit while providing much less "services" to the world and their incentives are even more perverse (sell more hardware at higher price).
Microsoft always ends up looking like the bad guy, but considering how many people depend on them for easy cheap access to computing (including a lot of government/institutions) it could be much worse.
In fact, my point is that if it was Apple, we would be in big trouble we even less money in the bank while they would try to impose even more restrictions on their products to extract even more cash. At this point you realize that some shenanigans with ads are really not that big of a deal...
Office is even better. Look at the release cadence of the different MS365 tiers. Small businesses pay to be the canary for enterprise.
If you care about strongly about privacy... choose your email provider accordingly.
If Outlook is your company's email provider... the third parties are the concern of your IT department.
If you're not hit by one of those two conditions... why are you using Outlook? This feels like unwarranted outrage bait.
hotmail used to be a popular choice. it can be hard to completely switch email providers. Many websites still don't support updating email.
Just pay for one which sees you as a client, not eyeballs. Enable pop3 or redirect on old account. Change as many web sites as possible.
Bonus point if you get your own domain. Bitwarden and others allow creation of individual users on the fly on your domain, while a catchall on the email server collects this.
none of what you listed is 'free'. it requires time to create a new email, configuration, and learning how to use new tools.
Where is the option to make sure nobody I email uses outlook?
Check the X-Mailer header in their emails. It will say Outlook.
If Outlook is your company's email provider... the third parties are the concern of your IT department.
Still your concern given whatever information is shared about you and your job to the 766 third parties.
This. There's a choice regarding data identifying you that's made by someone who's not you.
I'm also thinking of 2FA things many corporations mandate, requiring the use of a phone number, application or both, without them handing you a work phone. Under no circumstances will I give my personal phone number to Google or Microsoft because I don't want them to link my work and personal stuff. Right now, I'm locked out of a corporate account at Google due to such refusal.
You must be new here - "unwarranted outrage bait" describes at least 50% of HN homepage.
Regardless of the reason, calling out such behaviour is always good, more so since many millions use outlook still.
the funny thing about outlook is not even mentioned here, it seems that they have absolutely no spam filter? I get more spam (and the stupid obvious one, like 2004 phishing methods) into my outlook inbox than into my gmail throwaway email intentionally created to receive spam and crap signups, it just baffles me
We use outlook for work. The only emails that go to my spam are new sales appointments from Salesforce. Just the most important, time-sensitive emails that I recieve. No matter how much I mess with the settings nor how many I flag as not spam, Microsoft is adamant that it's spam.
Salesforce meeting requests are spam. I get several dozen unsolicited first-contact meeting requests per week from sales weasels at companies I’ve never done business with. Most have salesforce or pardot references in the headers.
A CRM system has no business sending these out to leads who’ve never consented and are simply imported from Zoominfo or whatever. I’m glad MSFT finally started spam-binning them.
Not meeting requests. Not sent to the prospects.
Appointments. Sent to the salesmen.
Our office staff takes phone calls, emails, and website submissions from prospects -- they then have to let a salesman know that someone wants an inspection and estimate. The best and easiest way to do this is by creating an appointment for the salesman best suited for the job which will block off some of their schedule to connect with the prospect and set up an on-site meeting. This also sends an email to the salesman assigned to the new prospect [This is the part where MSFT spam filter tells me to GFY]. We don't send out emails to prospects until they give us their email directly.
If you would've actually read my comment, you would see that you didn't respond to anything I said but just made up your own idea of what I said then talked past me.
They definitely have anti spam. It's great at triggering on emails from a self hosted email server.
I've been maintaining one for a few years and have pretty good deliverability. 95% of the time when there's an issue it's Outlook/Hotmail marking me as spam. And no I don't do email marketing or newsletters.
Yeah, love all the innovation and competition in the mail clients nowadays. You sell your data to big companies or you get spam blocked by these companies, if you self host.
Why google would invent better email sender validation procedures and encryption, if the current system works pretty well for them.
Do yourself a favor and use eM Client instead. It works extremely well, including playing nicely with Exchange. It was the only Window client I found that could completely replace Outlook.
Shhhh, if too many people start using it, Microsoft will do something to put it out to pasture.
I doubt MS would care and eM likely pays some sort of licensing to MS I'd guess?
do iOS and other 3rd party exchange clients have to pay anything to MS?
Does it unfuck the obfuscated links that Outlook/Microsoft creates?
Bummer that they don't support Linux.
New Outlook is great /s
https://old.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/13lo7u6/list_of_n...
I use the new Outlook, and I didn't use the majority of features on the old Outlook.
Many of those features are basic UI ones, not really email specific. Anyway, Outlook's entire selling point is offering everything a mail client could. If all you care about is reading emails there was never really a good reason to use such a heavy desktop client. For many others that heavy desktop client was the entire point of having Outlook.
Wow.
It's hard for me to read the text on mobile.
Is this a cookie notice (required by EU e-privacy directive), or is this a sub processors notice (required by GDPR)?
Both would be insane. I don't see how they could possibly use that many vendors. Must also include all Microsoft subsidiaries?
It's GDPR.
You can pinch the screen and zoom in to make the image larger
I’m pretty sure it’s a forgery (though to what extent, I wot not), in part because of the mentioning of 766 third parties, but more because the entire thing seems significantly legally incoherent. It mixes elements of GDPR and ePD in technically nonsensical ways (e.g. “We […] process data to: store and/or access information on your device”).
Features removed [...] PST file support
No way! That kills of so many long term inboxes I know of. Over a decade of customer conversations in there in some cases. This will kick off a painful set of IT department phone calls and an even more painful migration if needed
On the other hand I can’t wait for PST files to disappear, along with their syncing, backup and migration problems. Would have been nice if they had one version of Outlook in between though that didn’t automatically create these deprecated files (looking at you, autoarchive).
Also good riddance: Word, the shitty html editor/viewer.
when you optimize packet size and then add 766 analytics libraries
Microsoft replaced the old Mail app in favor of the new Outlook Desktop app, and I can't even login despite reporting the issue for a year now. (At the time, I was even a Microsoft MVP getting briefed on the stuff way before launch.) That got me to finally stop using Outlook for good. Users beware.
With this much sharing, I'd reckon that a third life time award is coming. But I wonder whether the same sharing is going on for business users?
Low quality software with poor quality management sharing data with myriad other parties showing you ads and spamming you all the time. Yuck.
It's the sort of cookie notice (which also attempts to embed gdpr consents and notices) used by a lot of sites, I haven't checked who the vendor is but they began declaring the number of third parties a few days ago.
I think I ran into it five times so far, three of which had a party count similarly around 700, and two above 2000.
The counts maybe include the third parties to which the third parties relay data etc.
I haven't checked if they've done it for some upcoming legal requirement or out of their own good heart (the legal requirement would in all likelihood be an nth draft of the ever "upcoming" ePrivacy regulation).
Fairly eye-opening in any case.
The “new Outlook” is just a cover for MS to have complete, ongoing access to all email services a person uses. It’s a massive invasion of privacy. Their “email client” is a misnomer. The actual client becomes the MS “cloud,” and it retrieves and processes 100% of your mail, even storing your credentials. Outlook no longer makes any connection to your actual email provider. https://www.xda-developers.com/privacy-implications-new-micr...
The 3rd part of e-mail will simply fail in the Microsoft strategy of Embrace, Engulf, and Extinguish.
Bucking against the many IETF RFCs on SMTP is hard to do.
Jesus christ on a motorbike.
Makes me want to switch away - why do they do this?
I dislike it. No data file support is a big deal.
I think websites started competing who can round up most third parties. At least finally "Reject all" button is not hidden and is prominently displayed.
Market forces are great. Everyone for whom it was important spent the extra money and went to macOS. Don’t remember seeing Candy Crush in my start menu on macOS for one decade, and I distinctly remember the quality of browsing (no obnoxious popups, no Askbar, not having to download software like 7zip or Notepad++ from dodgy websites) was my argument back then.
Maybe it’s not so important to you that you’d spend the extra money.
I'll criticize Apple when it's due, but I'm glad the OS isn't filled with absolute trash all over the place on a fresh install. I can't even bring myself to build a new PC for gaming, because whenever I turn on a Windows box I get disgusted by what it's become.
You guys seem to ignore that apple is an ads broker itself so no idea what are you on about https://www.wired.com/story/apple-is-an-ad-company-now/
Owned iPhone for more than two years now. Haven’t seen a single ad pushed onto me via home, settings or browser.
Owned iPhone for 13 years and I have never seen any ad, except on the web. And even that is partially blocked with some Safari extension.
They definitely put ads for Apple products like iCloud in Settings. They’re just much more restrained and tasteful than MS. And that’s good.
I just noticed “Apple Fitness+ Free for 3 months” in Settings. It’s definitely an ad but less annoying than candy crush.
I think they're probably talking about junkware like Candy Crush and Tiktok being pre-installed (or at least preexisting in the start menu)...
What do you mean? I have a Linux PC and all of my games work very well on it. I’m not an avid gamer though.
Well, Windows still has that trick where you can launch some other program as the shell instead of explorer.exe. Perhaps your newly built system should just launch to Steam as the primary OS shell directly ;)
In fact, I'm surprised I didn't do this earlier.
not visible, but there's a lot of invisible stuff going on in the background.
Fuck the poor
Ubuntu is free. (As in beer)
I can’t use Thunderbird with my university email, because the Owl plug-in developer cornered the market on an Outlook plug-in with a subscription model.
Subscription software is my hill to die on.
*won’t
You’re right, in the same way that I won’t use a rent-to-own furniture company because it’s a bad deal for me.
I sorta feel similar about BIG subscription software. Little subscription software (from small companies/developers) I see almost benign. If i needed this i would pay for it.
Same.
Open Office, Linux and various other Open tools are becoming a big .
EWS works with Evolution pretty well. Other than that, there is OWA.
Have you tried davmail?
I wasn't an Android user for 13 years because I couldn't afford an iPhone. I was an Android user for 13 years because I despised Apple's vision of mobile computing, specifically more paternalistic tendencies like "not allowed to side-load apps", "no filesystem access for you", "lol what are standards, let's use Lightning for everything".
Don't pretend that Apple and quality of computing go hand in hand. They only do if you buy into their mindset wholesale, warts and all.
And now just about every single android phone does the same thing. Even pixels are carrier locked. I have a 6A that I can’t root for 6 months.
I too have a 6A, and it's not carrier locked because I didn't get it from a carrier. Easy as that, really. Your carrier isn't Google's fault
The point being that even the “Google version” is subject to carrier enshitification, which casts a bad light on android as a whole compared to Apple, who has never compromised on their “take it or leave it” stance with regards to their vision and product in discussions with carriers.
But apple is just a different set of problems. They do things in their own interest just as much.
When you get a iphone, their privacy policy is right there at the beginning, thousands of pages long. "Privacy is a right!" But they still snoop on every little thing you do in their own way. And they have no buttons. Definitely do not have a "Reject All" button. sigh.
Lol. We're all at the same clown show. You just paid more for your seats.
The bloatware isn't even a blip on the radar for these companies. Everything is about gaining as much control as possible over everything. MS wants to make everything Office related web based so we have no control over our own documents and communication. Apple wants us to use iCloud for our photos and the app store for apps we need so we become dependent. Google dominates with Chromium because they don't want you to access the internet unless you're doing it the way they want.
Apple, Google, and Microsoft would be split into 20 companies each if regulations were working properly.