Kroger acquires Home Chef for $200M - <AUTHOR> https://thespoon.tech/kroger-buys-home-chef-for-200m-as-meal-kits-continue-march-into-grocery-stores/ <comment><USER2> I'm always surprised there aren't more kits like what you would find in Blue Apron/Plated/Home Chef/etc in grocery stores.

I would buy A LOT more, and probably even overpay because of convenience if I could walk into my local Harris Teeter/Krogers/Food Lion and just pick up a 3 meal/2 person box with most of what I need.

<comment><USER3> Free business idea: A store _dedicated_ to exactly this.

Imagine instead of many different, individually packaged, products, you have one (or maybe a handful) of pre-packaged meals for one or two people. The retail space and checkout would be insanely efficient as you'd just grab and go.

You'd have the green angle too as there wouldn't be any excess packaging to keep the food fresh nor carbon emissions from all the individual deliveries. Just standard refrigerators and pictures of happy patrons walking home with their meal kits.

The recurring subscription model, i.e. the holy grail of high valuations, could be added as well. Either through the usual $X/period gets you Y meals or maybe just a discount ($Z/month to get Q% off).

Or taking it to the next level, imagine a meal kit vending machine. The owner would stock it each day (say around 3pm) and customers could grab their own meals with a quick swipe of their card. Same idea as the store but reducing the retail space from a mini store to a couple square feet.

<comment><USER4> I think you described Mark's and Spencer food stores.

<comment><USER5> Are their only sites in Hong Kong and Macau? This is the site linked from the only location I could find in Google Maps.

[http://global.marksandspencer.com/hk/store- locator/](http://global.marksandspencer.com/hk/store-locator/)

<comment><USER6> They're all over the UK at least.

<comment><USER5> Ok, thanks. I do not get over the pond much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This makes me happy.

I've tried a half dozen of the meal kit providers and Home Chef is hands down the highest quality in terms of ingredients and also providing recipes that are fancy enough that you don't say "I could have just made this myself" like everyone says about Blue Apron. I order irregularly but my experience with Home Chef has been incredible.

I'm probably one of the few on HN who's tried Kroger's existing meal kits that have been piloted in a few stores around Cincinnati. They definitely target a different audience than the online meal kits, but being able to pick one up at the grocery store on a whim vs committing to buy + cook 3 kits in 1 week has been a game changer for me. I hope that they bring the Home Chef kits in store. Plus it's got to save a ton not having to ship the kits and not requiring the ice packs.

</comment><comment><USER8> Home Chef is by far my favorite of the meal kits I've tried (and I've tried a lot) in terms of both variety and quality. Fingers crossed this is one of those "keep doing what you're doing but now with the funds for greater scale and distribution" acquisitions and not one of those "steady degradation of service while the new owner plunders you for parts" acquisitions.

</comment><comment><USER9> It was reported when it happened, but most New Yorkers are unaware that Kroger bought Murray's Cheese last year. They already have 400 or so standalone Murray's shops _inside_ Krogers around the country, selling the best cheese and 'specialty food' items (charcuterie, crackers, dips, etc.) you can get in the US. And every person behind the counter is trained by Murray's to know their stuff and be able to make expert recommendations.

Murray's bake-at-home mac and cheese, only available at Kroger, sounds quite nice.

<comment><USER10> I didn't know this, thank you for mentioning it. I shop at Kroger pretty often and have never considered buying cheese or charcuterie there since it seemed like it might be bad, guess I was quite a ways off the mark.

<comment><USER11> It varies by location, though. If you have a Kroger with a Murray's, the cheese selection will be much better than the average grocer. They're easy to recognize given all the Murray's branding they put up. Kroger with their standard cheese counter is pretty much what you'd expect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm really not surprised by this at all. I know that Kroger was exploring a service like this last year, based on conversations that I had with someone from their legal team; they've had this in the Cincinnati area stores that I've been in recently (when I've been in that area) -- including their "flagship" Oakley store -- for at least the last six to eight months.

<comment><USER13> Why are you talking with their legal team, and what would they say that would lead you to believe they were exploring this service? Honestly wondering, I'm not doubting you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Kroger seems to have some vision on technology implementation. I've been impressed with thier clicklist (online grocery pickup) here in Salt Lake City. Looking forward to having this available.

<comment><USER12> I'm going to have to disagree -- and this is based on first hand knowledge (albeit from a few years ago), and from second-hand knowledge from friends that I trust who are working in/around Kroger now.

Kroger is in a difficult position -- Grocery is a low-margin space: it is the true "race to the bottom," and now, with Amazon's acquisition of Whole Foods, and Target's acquisition of shipt (Kroger has looked at other delivery services, but, can't find one for the same price point), they're struggling to find the same portfolio matrix to keep them competitive to other startups.

They _want_ to use GCE, but, they're truly struggling to use it. They refuse to use AWS for competitive reasons. They don't want to pay for talent (they were offering an Enterprise Architect $25/hour on a contract in the Cincinnati area , they don't want to pay for commercial tooling). Admittedly, in order for them to make money, they have to run truly Lean IT...but, they also make really foolish decisions. They were considering building their own cloud until it was pointed out just the sheer amount of capex needed for that project....and then the VMWare Licensing costs. They spend a crazy amount of money on SurePOS, but, then don't pay for any of the Verifone branding/customization/contactless enablement for their terminals. Technologies like LaneHawk help their cashiers catch shrink, but, their cashiers comment that it's ineffective and do not work 95% of the time.

If it was my job to move Kroger's technology forward, I'd probably do the following:

* Look at ways to help the cashiers do their job better and more effectively. Finding ways to shave transaction time will add up, enabling more customers per hour to flow through the transaction lines.

* Microservices in the store level for things that need to have store level availability, but, push things to cloud services where it's feasible. Yes -- let's buy bigger pipes to the cloud, but, keep a smaller server at the store in case things fail. We can manage that farm in the cloud more efficiently at scale, and then deploy out to the stores nightly or weekly versus continuous delivery in the cloud.

* Vendor Selection: Use the right vendors for the right things. Look at how you're spending your money with your vendors, and do a double check to make sure you're not being foolish with your spending (ala, vendors like Pomeory -- 99.99% of the time, you can do it better in house)

<comment><USER15> I can tell you worked with them, too. I think you were only scratching the surface, though. Most of the stores I see run on some mainframe apps or something that people use terminals for on buggy handhelds. The checklanes got upgraded recently to what looks like a Fujitsu Linux running Java-based clients. Slow and limited in UI control compared to the concurrent DOS thing from IBM that only slowed down on updates. They had no interest in stuff like QNX when I proposed it for U-Scan to keep robots running despite software failures which they have a lot of. Employees complain the browsers in that company can take several minutes to ten minutes to load on whatever thin client and virtualization solutions they're using. They didn't know. The inventory and Clicklist computers often have different inventory in them or other preventable problems. The digital coupon system constantly screws up to the point that a recent sale required printed barcodes for cashiers at registers in case it screwed up again. They apparently have a social network that few workers use for knowledge sharing since they don't even have time to stock stuff.

The list goes on and on. I keep following the situation out of both concern and morbid curiosity. Easily one of the worst I've seen at managing both operations and IT. Their media and legal departments are among the better I've seen, though. I mean, nobody reports this stuff. Can't be an accident with the amount of attention on them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> >And you can see why everyone's diving in. As we've covered before: According to Nielsen research, "in the year ended 2017, in-store meal kits generated $154.6 million in sales, posting growth of more than 26% year-over-year. For context, total brick-and-mortar sales for center store edibles (grocery, dairy, frozen foods) dipped 0.1% last year to $374 billion."

So, "everyone's diving in" because meal kits are a rounding error to the other category?

<comment><USER17> No, they're diving in because they want the early growth and infrastructure without the need to build it themselves.

That "rounding error" can be seen in a different light, it's an area of the market that is making significant progress YoY.

This isn't a play for the next year, it's seeing the YoY growth of this vertical within their market and wanting to capitalize on that.

The world is and has been moving towards "easier" and services that provide immediate gratification. In-store meal kits are right in that category.

People don't want to buy homes, cars or big ticket items anymore, there's a culture of "leasing" because of the inconvenience that goes along with the maintenance/upkeep of those items. In a similar vein, lots of people view cooking "healthy" meals to be difficult (it's not) but are willing to spend a little more to get a simple meal to cook that is either healthy or gives the illusion of being so.

$200M is dirt cheap to acquire the talent, and all of the existing processes of the company.

Add in the scale of someone like Kroger, and the price per unit they can acquire is going to be vastly cheaper then someone like Blue Apron or the various other meal kit startups.

You end up placing these in their stores on endcaps and other areas where it's only a bit more per person to buy a meal kit that's marketed as "healthy" and they're going to fly off the shelf.

This is one acquisition that makes a ton of sense to me, and Kroger likely sees In-Store meal kits as continuing to grow tremendously YoY.

<comment><USER6> >People don't want to buy homes, cars or big ticket items anymore

That's the perspective of a very specific demographic. And even in SV, there seems to be no shortage of people wanting to buy houses and any shortage of cars on the road.

That said, there is a trend towards convenience which is one reason you see so much food that's been pre-prepped to various degrees (for a premium) in supermarkets. Adding full meal kits seems a very logical extension to that trend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Kroger is also potentially gearing up for an Alibaba partnership as well that was reported earlier this year. I know rumors are still floating down to the store level on this (my father is a store manager)

</comment><comment><USER19> I did a study on Kroger, Costco, Walmart, Sams, Aldi, and Kroger was a scam.

Constant "10/10$" or "ALWAYS LOW PRICE $2.49" on items that are cheaper at Costco, Walmart, and Aldi.

As a note, Walmart won or was on par with Aldi. Aldi had a very limited selection despite having decent prices. Costco isnt worth shopping at for food item with few exceptions(canned food, which isnt very optimal in general).

Anyway, my point is, I dont really trust Kroger. They overcharge for items and claim its cheap. They even have an 'organic' section of the store, which makes me think is all marketing.

If anyone wants the link to the study, lmk, I avoid posting my link unless its relevant and wanted.

<comment><USER20> Are you saying that because Kroger isn't cheaper than discount grocery stores, it's a scam?

<comment><USER15> What they did was increase the "regular" price of retail goods above what competition would charge, apply a "discount" if you have a Kroger card, and then you get this "cheaper" price. They even put how much you would have "saved" on your receipt if you didn't have a card but that's vs inflated prices others don't charge. At one point, their "regular" price for milk was at convenience store levels with sale price just over Walmart. These fake discounts should be considered straight-up fraud. That's not to say they don't have plenty of real ones but you'd have to look carefully to know. There's yellow tags everywhere. So, about all of it is cheaper than Walmart or a similar competitor at that moment, right? Nope.

The other thing they did with Kroger card was price discrimination. The regulations apparently were about the _price_ of items rather than what people _paid for them_. These are technically two different things. The way that works is they learn that certain people will keep buying specific things. They use this data from their card profile to deny them coupons or other discounts while they give them to other people. They've got a lot of profiling tricks for adding or denying discounts. I'd say more consumers take a hit than benefit since there were previously coupons for all of them in the papers or what they mailed out. They're also mailing out fewer coupons with lower amounts, too, now that they've rolled out digital coupons tied to profile data from card.

So, many of the sales are fake. The line about what people would've saved versus Walmart is fake. Most of the coupons are for brand-name items that already overcharge you anyway. The good generics are cheaper much of the time. The gas discount and recall notices are about the best benefits of the Kroger card. The best coupons they gave me discount per order, department, etc letting me spend on whatever I wanted. Those could probably be delivered based on survey data without tracking.

Summary: the Kroger card is mostly a fraud designed to trick people into thinking they're getting discounts, give them coupons for more expensive stuff, give them less coupons that would make things cheaper, and otherwise make profit on surveillance of them. There's benefit but most selling points are layers of lies. This is why I prefer either no loyalty cards or them limited to stuff having nothing to do with pricing. Preferably by law to increase competitiveness and reduce risk to consumers.

<comment><USER19> This was insanely interesting to read. You should totally write about this.

<comment><USER15> Thanks! It was originally CASPIAN that I learned it from. I confirmed it with my own data. They're pretty fringe in what they publish, though. Might limit their impact on wide audience.

So, a project from a reputable organization re-running the price studies and explaining the scam might be worthwhile. Consumer Reports may have already done something on it. They could be good outlet for next version with new data.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Using HTTP codes as text-message shorthand - <AUTHOR> http://lizrevision.com/sms-shorthand-for-geeks-using-server-response-codes.html

<comment><USER2> I love this idea but almost all of my friends think the internet revolves around Facebook so trying to use any of this would never work on them.</comment>


Investopedia Acquired by Forbes - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2007/04/12/investopedia/ <comment><AUTHOR> Even more "traditional media" companies are discovering value in popular web destinations -- many with no obvious big-money making schemes, but has untapped potential. I found this one interesting because Investopedia is one of those sites that has always been around which I've found incredibly useful (I used it to teach myself about investing sometime in high school), but never thought it to be an acquisition target.</comment>


24 Days of PureScript - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/paf31/8e9177b20ee920480fbc <comment><USER2> This is from 2014. Here is the 2016 version: [https://github.com/paf31/24-days-of- purescript-2016](https://github.com/paf31/24-days-of-purescript-2016)</comment>


NZ Flag Referendum – Pseudorandom Numbers in Legislation - <AUTHOR> http://notstatschat.tumblr.com/post/129692767316/ <comment><USER2> I think what people outside New Zealand don't realise is that not many Kiwi's really give a damn about the new flag at all.

There's definitely a few people that voice their opinions about it, but the majority of them don't really care.

I think regardless of what flag gets chosen, people will still use the old flag and it will take literally years before flags get updated on websites, or it will get completely ignored and we'll end up reverting back to our current flag down the track.

Another thing to note, is that we don't have the same level of Patriotism that America has. You don't see NZ flags wherever you go, maybe outside some government buildings, but it is rare to see a flag in a residential area in someone's front yard.

<comment><USER3> Speaking as a NZer who's parents have a flag flying high outside their house (rural, with B&B), I disagree. My parents love countries where the flag is flown proudly - Canada being a great example where it's everywhere to be seen, Bhutan even more so. But my parents don't feel the same, mostly because they don't feel particularly patriotic about the current Kiwi flag. They partly fly it because they wish there was some sort of patriotism associated with it and they feel that flying it might help that, but partly just because it helps guests find their house when they're staying at the B&B.

Given the NZ flag's Union Jack and very close resemblance to the Australian flag I can understand why people don't feel too strongly about the current state of affairs. There's nothing evocative, nothing that feels distinctive to NZ. How many NZ flags do you see being waved at sporting events compared to silver ferns and the like? Almost none. Based on that alone I think it's high time we shrugged off the flag's colonial roots and changed it to something that's uniquely NZ. It might take a while for people to adjust to the change (after all, people generally don't like change), but in the long run people will support it just because it's truly ours.

<comment><USER4> I don't get the resemblance to the Australian flag because nz registered its flag years before australia did. So technically the Australian flag resemblabes our own.

Regardless as a kiwi I wish they would leave the damn flag alone. This is as bad as wanting to give the north and south island official names. Instead of just calling them the north and south island.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pseudorandom numbers to break a tied referendum? Talk about overthinking. Nevada does it better. They literally draw cards from a deck. This has happened as recently as 2002.

[http://napavalleyregister.com/news/candidates-draw-cards- to-...](http://napavalleyregister.com/news/candidates-draw-cards-to-settle-a- tie-vote-in-nevada/article_b7f98faa-65de-559f-bb38-149a46094981.html)

<comment><USER6> I was going to propose rocks, paper and scissors, best out of 15. But that can be gamed [1].

[1] - [https://www.google.de/search?q=winning+at+rocks,+papers+scis...](https://www.google.de/search?q=winning+at+rocks,+papers+scissors&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gws_rd=cr&ei=uvgEVt6aDMW4UajAjsgC)

<comment><USER7> The first result suggests announcing your move, and following through, gambling that most people think you are lying. In the last 10 years I've only ever played scissors, and I usually tell people ahead of time, and I still win about half the time.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Hacker/Startup Living Space in NYC? - <AUTHOR>

I'm hoping to find information about spaces geared towards this type of living. As a startup founder I'm trying find a place in the right location with the right community, but i'm also looking for a minimalist living situation that would allow me to keep most of my resources going towards my company. I'd live on a bunk in a room full of founders if it was available. Any ideas are much appreciated! <comment><USER2> What are you building?</comment>


Show HN: Ink for iOS - <AUTHOR> http://minimaltools.com/ink.html <comment><USER3> To be honest, I feel like in your minimalist efforts you have created an easy- to-draw-with app, but not necessarily one that's easy to use. The grabber should take you to something akin to an action sheet (no real minimalism inherent in that - design your own) and should have the save option inside there, instead of two different functions (one unintuitive without reading a description of the app, or you telling me on an internet forum).

Beyond that, I like the ease of drawing and the clean look of the app.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I cringe at seeing a share sheet shown by a double-tap on a grabber. For one, I strongly expect share sheets on iOS to be shown only by the normal "share" icon; for another, I don't expect double-tapping on a grabber to do anything. Inherent in a grabber is its "grabbiness": it's something tactile that you drag, not something you tap on. (Yes, Chrome uses a clickable grabber-looking-thing for displaying a menu; that's unfortunate IMO.)

Additionally, having "Clear" as an option in a share sheet feels really wrong too.

If something acts differently than another thing, generally it should look different, too. This thing isn't a grabber (at least not as far as I'm aware of from having seen the linked page) and the thing that it shows isn't a share sheet.

I do _definitely_ like the idea of a quick, minimal sketching app like this that ruthlessly eschews feature creep to do one job well. I think you're on the right track and am interested in getting this!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The app looks nice but it has usability issues.

I downloaded the app and used it for a bit but wasn't able to figure out how to do anything besides clear the page by swiping the grabber up and so I deleted it. I hadn't read the website nor the app description and there was nothing in the app itself to indicate that I should double-tap to bring up the action sheet. (Note that in iOS in general double-tapping is typically used to zoom.)

Here are two possible solutions.

(a) on first launch show a modal dialog that says something like "double-tap the grabber to access the menu"

or maybe a better fix:

(b) have the options "behind" the paper so when the user slides the grabber up the options become visible, then if the user continues to swipe all the way up the screen, the drawing is cleared.

I'd love to chat with you about the app. Post a link to your twitter/email/smoke signal/etc if you're interested.

<comment><USER6> The double-click menu is a bit non-intuitive, but I think the issue stems more from the perceptual "flakiness" in its detection.

Also, rather than showing a modal dialog once/doing it "under the paper", I'd track an incomplete save to camera action (incomplete swipe/swipe in progress) (btw, awesome abstraction with the full swipe!) and showing the 100->0->100% alpha transition hint "doubleclick the = area for sharing options".

Other than that little glitch this is an _awesome_ app with no extra bells and whistles. Totally keeping it for my napkin sketches!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot. I do consider pull to save the primary action. Double tap or shake gives you the menu, but I agree this can be simpler. It would pain me to put instructions in the app though...

<comment><USER6> ++ on the pull. What could help though is to display something transient-ish while you are "flipping the page" (to not present the direct modal choice, but to give a hint there's more). I am a relative noob in iOS coding, so not sure how easy it is.

The "real" problem that I perceived is the double-tap, and I have debugged my interaction a bit more.

What it looks like is that the triple-equal sign is a bit too small for my fat fingers. OTOH you do not want to waste the drawing space too much...

My thought would be: take a rectangle of 2x size the current triple-equal sign action area, then try to both use the drawing mechanism there, as well as to track the doubleclick-like events there - and if one happens, then undo the last drawing event (which was a part of the click, anyway).

I think this should make it easier for fatfingered people to deal with it :) And the translucent advertisement upon the swipe should take care of education, I think.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for offering solutions. It can be improved I agree. We had thought about some one off instructions like this and perhaps that's something we'll think about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I know being minimalistic in your design is good but your app icon doesn't really benefit from being minimal. It needs to tell the user what the app does. I suggest having "Ink" in your icon using the same sketch style in your first screenshot.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think about the icon in the context of something that could live on the homepage, rather than a device to sell the app or encourage downloads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been looking for an app like this, and it fits the bill. I'll admit that while I could sketch right away, it took me a second to learn how to clear the screen. I skimmed through the site, and didn't know to double tap the grabber, so I shook the phone, not expecting much. But I appreciate that that brought up the menu as well.

Good job!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like it. It does what it says. I can see myself using it for sketching out iPhone UI ideas because of it's size. And just quickly sketching something and sending it to friends. Thanks, keep up the good work!

</comment><comment><USER10> Nice. I used the original version of Adobe Ideas for exactly this kind of thing (back when it was free + in-app purchase if you wanted layers).

I like the approach of a 'new napkin' rather than an eraser.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm glad you find it useful. Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nice, really wish there was eraser, that's pretty much it.

<comment><USER12> It's called Ink, not graphite.

<comment><USER11> Was there a reason you left this comment, beyond some innate need to feel snarky?

<comment><USER12> One of their stated goals was to eliminate all things unnecessary. Maybe the Ink/no eraser thing is part fo their product. It's for quick and dirty sketches/notes, no second drafts or masterpieces.

<comment><USER11> Ok - I'm curious why you couldn't have said that instead of leaving your initial snarky comment. This comment leads to a productive discussion - <USER2> initial comment was just a bit demeaning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One of the few Show HNs that are actually pleasing to the eye. Nice little app!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I cannot download it, if you can, please make it for the iOS 5 also.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'd love to hear your thoughts.

<comment> slash-dot ok, without your website I wouldn't have figured out how to clear the canvas and while trying I only found out how to save the picture. I actually went back to the website to figure it out. Another thing i couldn't find is an eraser. If you screw up a tiny detail you have to start over. But I like the concept of quick ideas scribbled on anything you can get your hands on.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your thoughts. I always thought a little effort to learn the interface upfront is worth it to keep it simple for the long term.

<comment> slash-dot Yes sure, but it could be fixed if you added a few hints in the app.

<comment><AUTHOR> We'll consider. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> looks nice. why double tap instead of a single press?

<comment><AUTHOR> In use the single tap was too easy to fire when you inked near it, and got in the way of the pull a little.

Tip: Shake opens the action sheet too. You might find that nicer.

<comment><USER16> Shake is often used for undo, which may be a nice feature in keeping with the minimal feel -- you could even have an extra long shake prompt the user to see if they would like to clear all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> iOS 6 required?! Not so minimalist after all..

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, we require that for some things we're doing.

<comment><USER17> Fair enough.</comment></comment></comment>


Charts about Wealth Inequality in America - <AUTHOR> http://apps.urban.org/features/wealth-inequality-charts/ <comment><USER2> Wow. Much of this I knew but one thing that shocked me is that the 10th percentile of wealth in this country is a family with NEGATIVE $2000. If you were dropped into Nebraska from a meteor with nothing in your pocket you wouldn't even be in the bottom tenth.

A sad state of affairs for the "greatest country in the world".

<comment><USER3> Want to do a survey of how many people in that bottom tenth have an iPhone?

<comment><USER2> A $600 iPhone is probably one of the best investments you can make if you want to participate in modern society.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. And iPhones have been around for like a decade and over a billion of them have been produced, so there are plenty of cheap used versions available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The second chart is all you need to look at. It can't be healthy for a society if only the top few percent see any income gains and for the rest incomes stagnate.

<comment><USER6> I do t think these charts take into account benefits (I.e. Health insurance) which means that for many people income has not grown, but total compensation has grown, those workers just didn't get to choose where to spend it...

<comment><USER7> In that case, think of that chart as representing "buying power," rather than "income."

<comment><USER8> That doesn't make sense, though, because if your buying power remains stagnant, but you suddenly don't need to buy health insurance with that buying power (because it's handled in the form of pre-takehome compensation), then hasn't your net buying power increased?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Side note, in graph 5 the middle one is the "Non-Hispanic African American" category ...

... and have a look at the "data" underneath, a three line set of data with two values coming from Melissa (link to another "local" .xlsx) and a third one which is just a number.

Most probably correct calculations, but no real way to check.

</comment><comment><USER10> Probably the best bet here is to create mechanisms such that wealthy people who possess an abundance of caring and money can donate that money to the less fortunate, which would have the side effect of levelling the field, and the bonus of not impinging on anyone's liberties.

<comment><USER11> Pretty sure they already can, but it's not enough, and you end up with a society where the more selfish you are, the more money->power you have.

Tragedy of the commons is _not_ a new concept.

<comment><USER12> That's not a Tragedy of the Commons. Tragedy of the Commons is what happens when nobody clearly owns something that many people use, so none of them use it responsibly. That's not relevant at all to people hoarding their own wealth.

<comment><USER13> > That's not a Tragedy of the Commons.

GPs example is exactly game-theoretix tragedy of the commons / prisoners dilemma.

> Tragedy of the Commons is what happens when nobody clearly owns something > that many people use, so none of them use it responsibly.

It's specifically, originally, a term for overgrazing a pastureland resulting from the kind of arrangement you described; there are a number of generalizations from that example which have been given the name, including both the one you describe, and the even more general condition in which each player has a dominant strategy of defection even though all players cooperating has a better payoff than all defecting.

<comment><USER12> The fact that Tragedy of the Commons is a subset of game theory defection problems does not change the fact that its defining requirement is the existence of a "Commons."

The Commons need not be an overgrazed pastureland; it can be any open access resource. The best modern example would be Earth's atmosphere and how its being filled with pollution. GGP has not specified a Commons and the existence of one is not implied in his comment.

<comment><USER13> > The fact that Tragedy of the Commons is a subset of game theory defection > problems does not change the fact that its defining requirement is the > existence of a "Commons."

The fact that the term has long been widely accepted as a label for the general class of problems, OTOH, does.

(Arguably, the structure of the payoff matrix in the class of problems implies an economically real if intangible "commons" in any problem in the class, which is probably _why_ the label is used that way.)

<comment><USER12> Ok, what is the Commons he is talking about?

<comment><USER10> Presumably the 'Commons' here is control over the government. However, the example is a trivialization of reality and that matters, in the same way that assuming all economic actors are rational matters (they aren't). It's fun when we can use simple laws of nature to make predictions accurately. Unfortunately, it doesn't work in the field of economics\politics almost ever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Where are the Asians on these graphs?

<comment><USER12> Shush, you're going to ruin the scam for everyone else. ;)</comment></comment>


Microsoft duplicates data from Firefox without asking - <AUTHOR> https://old.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/hct0mj/are_we_going_to_get_treated_to_spam_popups/ <comment><USER3> Historically I've minimized the use of Windows 10 on my home network, because of Microsoft's history regarding privacy and spyware.

Lately, however, I've considered letting Windows 10 run in a fairly locked down VM, so my family can use some apps and games that don't function well in Wine/Proton. I reckoned that the combination of VM isolation, and limiting Windows 10's internet access to a handful of whitelisted domains, is a reasonable compromise. I.e., I had a technical solution to a technical problem.

But this news story reminds me of another reason to keep Microsoft out of my network: they piss me off. Regardless of whether or not I'm currently ahead of them in the arms race. I don't want to reward Microsoft with even one more installation, and I don't want to be perpetually pissed off about something on my network. I crave Schadenfreude for everyone who conspired on this.

(Yes, I realize this sounds like the backstory for the least-compelling super- villain character ever.)

<comment><USER4> I'm so curious. Why do you care so much about Microsoft telemetry?

What data do you think they will exfiltrate that's so important that you go through the effort of setting of VMs and whitelisting?

Do you ban your family from using social media as well due to data collection?

<comment><USER5> I think you are coming to this point from the wrong angle: if the OP thinks (like I do) that telemetry itself is an invasion of privacy, which data is sent is irrelevant.

Asking "what data do you think they will exfiltrate?" assumes that the only reason to oppose telemetry is "they might see something I want to keep hidden". But, as it's often said when it comes to other people attempting to cross your personal boundaries, "'No' is a complete answer".

<comment><USER6> > as it's often said when it comes to other people attempting to cross your > personal boundaries, "'No' is a complete answer".

I love that, so important!

Have people seen the Tea consent video? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQbei5JGiT8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQbei5JGiT8)

<comment><USER7> Hmm. That's a cute way to talk through the ideas. But if someone asked for _actual_ tea, then decided they just didn't want it, it would be okay to be a little pushy. Not hugely pushy, but notably more than with 'tea'.

<comment><USER6> > be a little pushy

Eh? Why would that be ok? I think it's worth asking them why they don't want it anymore. If they continue to say no, do you really think it is ok to start pouring it down their throat?

Consent can be revoked at any point in time.

For what it's worth I think most cultures today are crap at consent. I think many of us are victim to a pre-#MeToo culture where sexual harrasment was somewhat more socially 'acceptable' or 'accepted' [1][2]. I think of the memes of women who seem uncomfortable when Biden touches them. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk talks about his desire for a 'trauma-conscious' society.

To me there is no denying that often we have been hurt, and that there is not enough support for many people out there. I believe we don't get the support that we would need to heal from these things. Walking around hurt and unhealed is unfortunately the norm.

> That's a cute way to talk through the ideas

Rape and sexual assualt are very common, so I think this video is more than 'cute'; it's essential. I hope we start showing this to kids at a younger age, to help them grow boundaries early on. This also concerns consent for non- sexual contact such as hugs, or just any other type of physical contact with another person.

[1] women: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWoP8VpbpYI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWoP8VpbpYI) [2] men: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc6QxD2_yQw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc6QxD2_yQw)

<comment><USER7> Pouring tea down someone's throat is more than "a little pushy".

I mean that "come on, you got me to make this tea, at _least_ have a sip" is perfectly fine to say about actual tea. In the analogy, doing that is _not good_.

(Assume this is a situation where they don't have a specific reason, so asking why they don't want it is completely nonproductive.)

<comment><USER6> Yeah fair point, I see what you mean

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For all the people who keep fawning of how Microsoft is now such a wonderful friend of open source, how this is not the Microsoft of 10 years ago, blah blah blah, THIS is why the old timers don't trust them. THIS kind of behavior is what we expect from Microsoft, and is exactly why we have long memories and distrust of them, including all their new seemingly open initiatives.

<comment><USER9> So who would you trust more? Red Hat? Apple? Mozilla? Independent developers? DuckDuckGo? Your government? Yourself?

All of them will betray your trust, either through maliciousness or incompetence. All major Linux distributions ship Firefox as the preferred default browser, which would be considered spyware if it were held to the same standards that Microsoft is held to. And even if they didn't, odds are you'll screw something up and get hacked (nobody, not even DJB, is perfect).

If you really want privacy, don't use a computer.

<comment><USER10> Why is Firefox spyware?

<comment><USER9> [https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/firefox.html](https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/firefox.html)

<comment><USER11> Sorry, but I couldn't help but laugh the whole time reading this. The vast majority of these things are bullshit.

\- portal detection is a plain GET request - no actual data is sent \- Google Analytics is used on Mozilla Web pages, not Firefox itself \- default search engines are meaningless, as you can pick which one to use and not even suggestions are requested without opt-in \- FHR I believe is still opt-in and also contains no PII \- Pocket does absolutely nothing unless you manually register and log in \- Auto updates are only on Mac and Windows, but if you're using either of those, you really can't complain here

That site is a good resource, but it is extremely exaggerating the situation - and that's not ok. Once you label Firefox as "spyware level HIGH", what do you call something like Windows 10? Firefox has a few opt-out points of telemetry that share no PII and aren't correlatable by design, whereas Windows 10 has no opt-out and automatically sends everything from local search queries to full binaries back to the mothership.

Saying everything is bad isn't helping anyone. We need to work on getting people off the things that actually violate their privacy (Windows, most Google products, FB, Web trackers...) and only then start working on improving the lesser offenders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Companies seem to follow a standard rulebook for these things. Do something flagrantly invasive and outrageous, wait for the inevitable backlash and then back down on a few of the minor points which is also great opportunity for PR to say how much they care about your privacy, and when the dust settles, they've gained a little more ground against user control of their device.

<comment><USER13> It's the exact same rulebook of politicians. It's so obvious I don't know how they get away with it, but they have done for a very, very long time!

<comment><USER14> Politicians cloak it in the idea of "compromise". Ask for more than what you want and then negotiate to some middle ground.

Playing that game isn't a good faith negotiation.

<comment><USER15> "Ask for more than what you want and then negotiate to some middle ground."

Very common practice in politics which serves both sides (assuming the most common 2 main parties context) as both of them can tell voters they accomplished part of their goal after hard fighting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> >It unsets your default browser, so next time you click a URL from a shortcut, you'll have to re-choose your default browser.

Isn't this exactly the kind of thing that would bring their hallmark antitrust case back to life?

<comment><USER17> No, because technically it doesn't unset your default browser.

It's default behavior in Windows 10 to ask the user to confirm the default handler for certain URI schemes after a new application capable of handling them is installed. The same would happen after installing any other browser.

I can't verify now, but IIRC if you dismiss the dialog the default handler doesn't change, basically it gives you an opportunity to change your default without delving into Settings. Android does something similar.

<comment><USER17> Another thing: Windows 10 at some point removed the API for changing default URI and file handlers, so they would need to use private APIs for something like that (to be fair, APIs for automatically pinning icons to the Taskbar never existed in the first place, but all Chromium-based browsers do it anyway)

<comment><USER18> Setting file handlers are still allowed IIRC but yes, the default browser API doesn't work anymore and pops up a "select a default browser" widget.

IIRC no browser currently force-selects a default browser via private API, except for new Edge _if you had old Edge as default_ (since old Edge is uninstalled at the same time).

<comment><USER19> Yeah it seems like Microsoft is playing both sides. On the one hand they want New Edge to just be a new version of Edge if they already use Old Edge, and on the other they want New Edge to be treated as a new browser if you aren't using Old Edge.

<comment><USER20> That's no different to how Firefox or Chrome would do it if I had an old version of either installed.

I.e. If Firefox switched to Chromium I would expect the exact same behaviour "New Firefox" and "Old Firefox" is not a distinction.

<comment><USER7> You're missing the point, though.

You can make a consistent explanation for _either_ side, as you have just done.

If it's the same browser, then transferring the default status is correct.

If it's a new browser, then asking what should be default is correct.

Chredge is doing _both_ , depending on which one advantages them more.

<comment> im3w1l-alt Consider this from the perspective of the user's intention. This is the exact behavior I would want if I installed Edge.

Saying this as someone who mainly uses firefox and occasionally brave.

<comment><USER11> But users didn't install Edge. It installed itself. Yes, writing a special case for just this one situation sounds annoying, but they have a responsibility to their users. If the user didn't install something new, they shouldn't get the popup. That was the deal and MS broke it.

<comment><USER21> Getting updates from Windows Update with everything they include, was also part of the deal.

As you say, they have responsibility to their users;

If the URL handler was old Edge, and they didn't change it while removing old Edge, the user would have broken internet access and not understand why. That's no good.

If the URL handler was updated to quietly move to new Edge, they just swapped out a major piece of software for one which looks and behaves differently, with a different icon, without any introduction or warning or confirmation, which is an awful experience for users. Microsoft get accused of special- casing themselves and their browser, and it breaks the work Microsoft has done for years to stop programs changing file/protocol handlers without confirming it with the user. [see Raymond Chen writing about it here [https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20181016-00/?p=99...](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20181016-00/?p=99985) ]

If they decide a browser is not part of Windows and you have to install new Edge from the app store yourself, tens of millions of computers are now stuck on the last version of old Edge basically forever - because there's no Windows 11 on the way to replace it - and it becomes the new IE6 millstone for web developers. If they also remove old Edge at the same time, millions of people lost their browser and don't know why - and the only default one remaining is IE 11.

There is a new thing, the hypothetical user who had settled into Edge does need to know, however it got installed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Am I the only one who actually clicked through the link and is confused? It looks like a rant thread, with no specific information or links to blog posts, against Windows 10. I was expecting to get a link to a blog post, tweet, etc that showed specifically what MS is doing, with I don't know, some proof or facts? It doesn't seem like any of the HN commenters have clicked through; I know shocking...

All it is is some text that says:

Are we going to get treated to spam popups advertising Edge and having it duplicate our data from Firefox without asking every time Microsoft decides to update it from now on?

Love rebooting my computer to get treated to a forced tour of a browser I'm not going to use that I have to force close through the task manager to escape, and then finding out it's been copying over my data from Firefox without permission.

<comment><USER23> Same here. Surprised so many people have commented on this without questioning the veracity of the claim. Specifically, the claim that it is importing your firefox data without you giving it permission.

It's not that I have trouble believing this. It's definitely something they might do. But when did some random redditor become a reliable source?

Christ, people.

<comment> 0-_-0 For what it's worth, I just updated my Windows 10 install and all that changed was a new Edge icon appearing on the desktop, that's it. When I clicked it I had the option to load settings from Firefox which I declined. It didn't set itself as the default browser (maybe there was a prompt about it but I don't remember), but it did get pinned to the taskbar, which I now removed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> As if I needed more reasons to avoid Windows 10. The level of user hostility emergent from this OS is absurd.

The shame is I want to love it. The engineers made some great improvements under the hood. But the product decisions are a disaster. It's like an out of control dog with an owner that just doesn't care, who shits in the middle of your meticulously maintained PC and pisses your privacy all over the neighborhood.

<comment><USER25> _The engineers made some great improvements under the hood. But the product decisions are a disaster._

This would be a good reply anytime someone goes the generalist 'Microsoft does this and that and that and that and it's all bad' way. I've always found it somewhat strange how many people don't seem to realize there's x different divisions within Microsoft, and that's it's somewhat unfair to call all of it crap just because some lame in-your-face management-crap. Not that the latter is acceptable, but as you say: other divisions have been doing some neat things for the past decades..

<comment><USER26> Honestly, why should a customer care? If half of microsoft is sane and the other half retarded, the result will be retarded. The customer should be able to say microsoft as an entity is retarded. They have plenty of management to figure the details out themselves

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Interesting info from that thread. Apparently if you follow through the entire setup, it asks what you'd like to import, but if you go through the task manager and force close it, then it automatically imports everything without your consent.

</comment><comment><USER28> Unfortunately people's solution to this will be "edit this registry value" or "use this tool that disables it", just like with telemetry, instead of dropping this user-hostile data collection system off the face of the planet.

But it's OK - Microsoft <3 open-source :)

<comment><USER29> So much that they use their proprietary OS to collect information about users in order to exploit them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Quoting the top comment there, this is egregiously blunt:

"I was immediately annoyed at how invasive this. I'm a software developer so I'm sensitive to these sort of UI tricks. What MS has done this time:

Hit the user with a maximized Edge, with a modal roadblock window that only has one button that says "Get Started"

No option to get rid of the window, you cannot close Edge with the mouse and you cannot escape the modal window.

The only option if you don't want to "Get started" is to use task manager to kill it

Even when you do, it pins itself to your task bar

It puts an Edge icon on your desktop

It unsets your default browser, so next time you click a URL from a shortcut, you'll have to re-choose your default browser.

Apparently it ingests data from other browsers without your permission

Your parents and grand parents are probably using Edge now. They didn't mean to, they just couldn't seem to get it out of the way unless they agreed to "Get Started"."

<comment><USER31> I don't see anything egregious about the bluntness. It seems entirely appropriate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I just went through this with a Win10 box, and had no problems with declining migration from Firefox to Edge.

And when I open Edge, I see no personalization.

<comment><USER33> Same for me. I fired up Edge, it asked about migrating from Firefox, I declined and that was it...

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm not saying it's OK, but if you open Safari for the first time after using Chrome, it will import Bookmarks and History without asking for permission.

</comment><comment><USER35> Guess $700 million (1) is simply too cheap a price for directly marketing your product to 1 billion (2) users

1 [https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-fined-731m-by-eu- in-...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-fined-731m-by-eu-in-browser- choice-screw-up/)

2 [https://venturebeat.com/2020/03/16/windows-10-now-runs- on-1-...](https://venturebeat.com/2020/03/16/windows-10-now-runs-on-1-billion- devices/)

</comment><comment><USER36> As usual, there is a way to disable this if you can apply GPO or registry tweaks.

GPO: After installing[0] the Edge Group Policies (because of course they aren't included with the installer!), set the "Automatically import another browser's data and settings at first run" policy to "4: Disables automatic import, and the import section of the first-run experience is skipped". This works on any version of Windows 7 or later. Note that if you already enabled the "Hide first-run" policy, Edge will take it upon itself to import from the user's default browser anyway without asking, so you'll still have to set the other policy as well.

Registry: Go to Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Edge, create a new DWORD called "AutoImportAtFirstRun", and set it to 4. Auto import will not happen when Edge (Chromium) is launched for the first time, and you won't be asked about it during setup.[1] If you want to disable the first-run wizard entirely, create another DWORD called "HideFirstRunExperience", and set it to 1.

If you've already opened Edge (as described in the article), these policies being applied will not clear your browser of already imported data. You'll have to delete your Edge profile (edge://settings, -> profiles, delete) to get rid of it. If you haven't installed Edge, note that new Edge becomes mandatory in version 20H2, so you'll want to set the policy now before you get overtaken after a system update.

Guess this is another thing to add to the "new-install checklist"...

0: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/configure- micros...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/configure-microsoft- edge) 1: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/microsoft- edge-p...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/microsoft-edge- policies#autoimportatfirstrun)

</comment><comment><USER37> The title should be updated to "Microsoft Edge copies user data from Firefox without asking".

The current title is ambiguous: "Windows duplicates data from Firefox without asking". The fact that this is user data is an important distinction. Also, the word duplicates has a sense of having a purpose of redundancy, which is not the case here.

<comment><USER38> The correct title should actually be "Edge imports Firefox data if you say yes when it asks you". Because that is what is happening. The article on Reddit is just wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> This is another reason I avoid Win10 on my personal machine like the plague.

People just don't get it.

For example Cyberpunk 2077 has no official mininum requeriments listed for PC yet, and I noticed in their official forums a couple people are asking if it will support Win7, a lot of people replied to these questions along the lines: "Of course not you loser, Win7 support from MS ended, noone is going to be retarded and support a game that uses Win7" and this just makes me sad.

I really hope Linux will "take off" before I am actually forced to ditch Win7.

<comment><USER40> If you can put as much weight on Linux as possible, that will help it happen.

We've made massive strides in the last 2 years, but we need everyone who is Win7 Main to at least run Linux for some games to get used to the differences and to get the numbers up. This will help bolster the efforts of all those who are switching from 'some usage -> dual booting', 'dual booting -> Linux main' and 'Linux main -> leading edge'.

If all take one step forwards then overall the scales start to tip!

<comment><USER39> At home currently I run my machine by default on Win7 and my wife machine by default on Ubuntu (I prefer Fedora but... it is her machine, not mine).

Often we play games with each other and whatnot.

But it is still obvious Linux is behind in some senses.

1\. Some interfaces are just awful, Ubuntu default one took me ages to figure how to type addresses on the file explorer thingy it has (seemly you have to type Control+G or something).

2\. If you use nVidia, you are screwed, nVidia drivers just suck.

3\. Often even native linux games do weird unexpected things, like refusing to close, and the kill interface on Linux is generally awfull, it is hard to track why the hell the game just doesn't close, my wife reboots her computer much more often than me because of something going wrong with a game and make the system go into a weird state of some kind.

4\. Installing wine and whatnot is a pain, for example when I tried to install Magic Arena I ended somehow, with many, many copies of wine on the system, and NONE worked. There are multiple game launchers and wine wrappers too, all of them trying to fix this issue, and none of them succeed completely.

<comment><USER41> >1\. Some interfaces are just awful, Ubuntu default one took me ages to figure how to type addresses on the file explorer thingy it has (seemly you have to type Control+G or something).

That's GNOME. Which regular Ubuntu ships by default. If you like Win 7, use Plasma (formerly known as KDE).

>2\. If you use nVidia, you are screwed, nVidia drivers just suck.

That's just Ubuntu again. On Arch or Manjaro you just install the "nvidia" package, reboot and you're done.

>3\. Often even native linux games do weird unexpected things, like refusing to close

You should have a task manager to list your processes and kill them. But it's true that the failure handling mode for some games that do weird shit isn't as nice as on Windows. I recommend htop, because when the graphical system hangs, you can switch to another tty (Ctrl+Alt+an F key like F2) and use htop.

>4\. Installing wine and whatnot is a pain

Don't. Use Lutris which handles installations of many games automatically for you, or if it doesn't have an install script (MtG: Arena does: [https://lutris.net/games/magic-the-gathering- arena/](https://lutris.net/games/magic-the-gathering-arena/)), helps you anyway in managing Wine for you.

<comment><USER40> In response to his specific points - this.

In response to his response as a response to _my_ response, I'd add that if he wants to see progress on these issues, Linux isn't ever going to burst into the room, take him by the hand and whisk him away. At some point he's going to need to take the leap and start using Linux in anger in order to escape W7 or W10.

His wife running Ubuntu is encouraging though. I'm much happier if someone has at least tried Linux rather than just assuming it's terrible.

But as I say, everyone needs to take a step forward of we want to move the front line.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> At this point, every ms customer should stop complaining. MS knows what you think about it, and ignores you. Look at your options rationally:

You can chose to live with it and bitch. Sorry, dont expect anyone to care, you preferred it over the alternatives.

You can mess with the registry/ group policy/ whatever. It will take you a few hours, and in a few weeks you'll have to do it again. You'll never be in the lead. If that's your choice, so be it, but be honest: you wanted this more than any alternative.

You can go to linux. Things will be better, but not perfect, and there will be an uncomfortable learning curve of a few weeks. Bonus points if you reclaim the money for the license. More bonus points if you give some money to the linux ecosystem.

You can go to OSX, and deal with the walled garden. Life will be good, as long as you can live with whatever apple thinks is best.

You can contact local politicians, consumer groups, etc...

You can sue microsoft. Really. Especially in the EU, if you thoroughly do your homework, you have a reasonable chance of winning. Somebody complained about seeing the license only after having paid for windows, sued and won. After that ms printed the url to the license on all their EU windows boxes.

You can contact ms support and complain. They will notice if their decisions make their support costs raise.

Each non ms option causes some short term discomfort, but each small drop eventually wears down a mountain. Make your choice and live with it.

<comment><USER42> > You can go to linux. Things will be better, but not perfect A lot of people > say Linux is not perfect or it is not as good as windows or mac. I have used > all three operating systems and all of them are not perfect, Linux may be > the best among them for a software engineer.

<comment><USER43> With Linux, at least it's easy to fix things myself. Doubly so for NixOS which is especially hackable. The UX is atrocious and you don't get the network effects of the mainstream though.

<comment><USER44> It's because you are programmer and worked with command line. I had seen many technical minded people completely mess up their linux installation.

<comment><USER43> That's why I like NixOS! If I ruin everything, I can just reboot & pick the last known working config since it's all immutable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Wow, it's almost as though Microsoft has been spending the last couple years trying to gain what they thought was enough good pr to allow them to just brazenly start openly pulling all their old bullshit again and expect it to be ok because, they gave people a powershell, the linux subsystem, 'open sourced' some of their software and bought github...who woulda ever guessed.

</comment><comment><USER46> I don't get it. What happened and when? I am running Win10 on all my computers in my house and none of these happened to me. On the other hand I don't run an online but local account and I've disabled Win10 all crap by using WPD.

</comment><comment><USER47> What a depressing time to be alive. The end of privacy, police brutality, dysfunctional dystopian governments, fascism on the rise, and tech companies brainwashing everyone so they can get away with dehumanizing everyone in the name of profits.

Also massive inequality, rising productivity, declining real wages, increased debt, global warming, and a complete lack of opportunity for most people.

<comment><USER48> Don't be so glum. We can travel across the world in a day. We have medical treatments for diseases that would have killed millions a year 75 years ago. We can communicate openly and freely with people all over the world. We can go to motherfucking space! The world is more at peace right now than any other time in recorded history. The power of religion to control people has slowly degraded away.

What a time to be alive!

<comment><USER49> >We can travel across the world in a day.

Damaging the fragile environment in so doing.

>We have medical treatments for diseases that would have killed millions a year 75 years ago.

Thus exacerbating global overpopulation and all the problems this causes

>We can communicate openly and freely with people all over the world.

Not for much longer. There's a push everywhere to centralize communications into silos owned by tech giants with zero accountability. How many times have I seen on HN that "email is deprecated" and the way of the future is to just buy into $proprietary_messenger that the user happens to work for?

>We can go to motherfucking space!

If you're a CEO, sure. The privileged overclass enjoys many perks as a consequence of its dominance.

>The world is more at peace right now than any other time in recorded history. The power of religion to control people has slowly degraded away.

Replaced by massive media and tech corporations controlling public discourse via social media, the new opiate of the masses, and fomenting identity politics to stave off the realization of class consciousness.

We live in a corporate dystopia.

<comment><USER50> Anybody with a $200 Chromebook can now write things that are read more than ever before. People have a voice that was unthinkable even 50 years ago.

CEOs can't go to space quite yet. However, it appears that space is about to get far more accessible. Not only that, cheap space launches are enabling things like Starlink, which may provide worldwide internet and get around national firewalls and make the world that much more transparent.

The average person has many incredibly cheap amenities available that were unthinkable not that long ago. What does a CEO have that is that much better? A bigger boat than other people? They get to fly in an airplane that has less people in it? A more expensive car? A slightly bigger TV? There are rapidly diminishing returns for being rich.

<comment><USER21> A (large company) CEO has the wealth to give them the freedom to not be an employee. The wealth to pay others to do anything they don't want to do. The top of the pyramid status and respect, and power that comes with it. Ordinary laws and things like parking fines become trivia they can dispense with. Other laws become things they can bend by buying a sufficient quantity of lawyers.

Time becomes less of a sticking point as they can buy a waiting limo and direct connecting flight, other people become less of a concern as they can rent any Penthouse suite with bodyguards in any location.

Influence over others becomes a matter of spending - donations, philanthropy, employment, high status connections.

The returns on being a (sufficiently) wealthy (American) person are much more than just the material stuff they can buy and own.

<comment><USER51> You missed the biggest one of all, he doesn't have to work at all anymore. Giving him all his time back, which is priceless.

But, they also become what they likely spent their life hating: a non-worker. Worse yet, they get the added distinction of becoming a leech on the human network, gaining further wealth through usury. The welfare recipient at least puts all the money they're handed back into the economy. The capitalists can never claim that, and mostly horde.

The OP is correct in that materially, the capitalist and the worker are largely equals. We all use the same phones, TVs and computers now. When I was a kid in the 80s a car phone was something only in movies, I never actually saw one.

<comment><USER21> I didn't miss it, it was the first thing I said.

> Giving him all his time back, which is priceless.

It's valued at "a livable wage", which isn't always but ought to be, "minimum wage". That's how much money you need to have every month to not need to work and still be considered living.

> " _The OP is correct in that materially, the capitalist and the worker are > largely equals. We all use the same phones, TVs and computers now._ "

Which is why I was trying to point out that's a sham measure, it's like saying "King Richard is your equal because you both speak English!". That might be true, but it's certainly not true that we are equals, it's a distraction from all the things which aren't equal. If nothing else, it shows that using a smartphone, TV or computer has lost its significance now we all have it, rather than we all gained signficance by having it.

<comment><USER51> I didn't intend to come off so oppositional. I agreed with what you were saying, just was trying to add more in agreement.

> _A (large company) CEO has the wealth to give them the freedom to not be an > employee._

Yes but I didn't read that as "giving him his time back", I read that as "could be a manager, start a new company" etc.

I thought your post was excellent, apologies for misunderstandings. Cheers!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Why are we so powerless? So annoying that we cannot sue them out of existence.. ;(

<comment><USER53> It would not surprise me that if by clicking on the EULA, you sign away the right to sue them.

<comment><USER15> AFAICT That kind of agreement should be void for being one sided; not sure if it has ever been tested in court however.

<comment><USER54> IIRC binding arbitration has been upheld by courts in the US.

<comment><USER55> The supposed reasoning being: it's in the contract that you willingly agreed to. You could've not paid for and installed Windows, but you did, then agreed to the EULA. So you're out of luck.

It's a perversion if what a contract is supposed to be: negotiable, but it's what it is right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Maybe this is a little off-topic, but has anyone else noticed that the Microsoft Teams browser interface works a lot better with Chrome than it does with Edge? Aside from the curious behavior where Teams meetings open in a browser, then either the native Teams app or another browser depending on which "Teams" ecosystem your meeting originated, if you open the Teams browser interface in Edge, you cannot share your desktop or present files. If you open in Chrome, you can do these things. Go figure...

</comment><comment><USER57> Is there an idiot-proof way to set up a Windows 10 VM with _good_ performance these days?

I play computer games. Because maybe 30% or so of the games I play work badly or terribly in Linux (anything from screen tear to crashing on startup) I have a licensed copy of Windows 10. I tried setting up a KVM / QEMU-based VM with GPU passthrough, but apparently Windows detected it because it locked up (somehow, I don't remember the details) after I entered the license key, and I ended up having to dual-boot.

<comment><USER58> Do you by any chance have an Nvidia gpu? Nvidia doesn't like people passing through their consumer grade gpus to VMs and blocks those. You can however enable a "hiding" mode so it works regardless.

Maybe have a look at the Archwiki about OVMF Passthrough That's how I got it to work.

<comment><USER57> Yes, it's cursed Nvidia. Thanks for the tip, I'll try that out! Edit: Yeah, not exactly idiot-proof. Without a simple list of commands it'll probably take a couple hours just to establish beyond a doubt that my hardware even fits the prerequisites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I found it particularly jarring the this pushy behaviour is present on Windows10 Pro as well, which is supposed to be a "for business" edition of Windows.

<comment><USER60> Pro is still primarily targeted towards individual users, albeit as a "productivity-focused" version. Businesses are mostly targeted by Enterprise, and they (along with educators) are the only customers for whom MS generally avoids mucking with established configs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> My Windows 10 even tried to sell me the new Edge as Chrome.

Somehow it displayed the Chrome logo when it started automatically and it had all my Firefox bookmarks.

Right after an update.

Was really scary.

</comment><comment><USER62> As someone who only runs a win10 instance for gaming, while using Linux for all other aspects of my computing, I am honestly now thinking about giving PC gaming up just so I can stop having to deal with M$ and their practices.

And before it is mentioned; I do realize I can play on Linux, but frankly I dont feel like sysadmining every time I want some escapism.

<comment><USER63> Steam handles all that now. You literally dont have to do anything special for an ever increasing number of new games. The method of installation is the same as on windows: Click install and wait.

<comment><USER62> It has admittedly been some time since I last gave it a go. In my memory I had wasted hours tweaking graphical drivers and game configs to get a game working, before finally giving up.

<comment><USER63> yes, neither of those things have been issues in ages.

<comment><USER62> So I just had some free time today to look into the state of Steam gaming on Linux. And my mind is blown! Between Proton and Vulcan it couldn't be easier and more stable.

I might just toss my Windows partition overboard in due time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Microsoft was, is and will always be a company doing shady shit to catch up with their competitors.

[https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/microsofts-bing- uses...](https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/microsofts-bing-uses-google- search.html)

</comment><comment><USER65> Reading that, it does seem like it is bad, but at least Microsoft has documented a registry setting to disable this feature. Still, that doesn't excuse most of the bad stuff they have done with this, and otherwise with Windows 10, even if they have made a few good improvements too.

</comment><comment><USER66> Is this not what chrom(ium?) has been doing since the very start (at least on windows)?

<comment><USER67> this happened to me last night. I never asked to install Edge, it was part of some automatic windows update.

Immediately after reboot, Edge goes fullscreen and pops up a unclosable modal window.

It also puts an icon on the desktop and pinned itself to the start menu.

Attempting to remove Edge via powershell results in errors and warnings about it being a required system component.

So...a bit more than chrome.

<comment><USER68> Can we start requiring legally tracing of the origin of these decisions? Someone has decided that. Why can't we have a name?

<comment><USER35> Origin was somewhere around this 1989 email:

"You never sent me a response on the question of what things an app [application] would do that would make it run with MSDOS and not run with DR- DOS," ... "Is there [sic] feature they have that might get in our way?"

and 1992 one:

"What the [user] is supposed to do is feel uncomfortable, and when he has bugs, suspect that the problem is DR-DOS and then go out to buy MS-DOS,"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> I dont remember it resetting default browser back to edge. I remember the update, edge popup, it putting edge shortcut to taskbar but firefox was still my default browser.

</comment><comment><USER70> Is there actually any data being sent or shared from your device remotely or is it just copying/taking local data from one application to another application?

</comment><comment><USER71> IIRC Chromium-based Edge imports not only bookmarks but also Cookies from Google Chrome that's surprising (and convenient) for me. Anyone know details?

</comment><comment><USER72> So Microsoft no longer has a strong foothold in the browser market and shit like this is no longer considered anti-competitive?

</comment><comment><USER73> The title is misleading.

The Edge popup asks you if you want to import data from other browsers and set the default browser (like what happens when any browser is installed). If you just press cancel a bunch of times nothing gets imported or defaults changed and only some icons get added. That dude just killed it in the task manager so it used the popup's default settings.

Complain about getting the chromified Edge popup as part of a regular update, not about it copying data.

<comment><USER7> If you do nothing, it copies your data. That is unacceptable, and the title is not misleading.

<comment><USER73> No, that guy didn't "do nothing". He killed it in task explorer instead of just pressing no.

<comment><USER7> You shouldn't have to do that. And it disables the normal close button.

What if you reboot without engaging with this weird unclosable window? What if you lose power? That's not agreement to the terms!

When you have a dialog to choose between yes and no, it is not acceptable to copy data without 'yes' being clicked. Justification about "they didn't 'just press no'" is not okay.

He did nothing in terms of giving the program any kind of input.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Your user files for one program are never "private" from any other program running on your computer. This is the security model of the desktop OS. It's not specific to Windows. It may be presumptuous - offensive, even - <USER2> Microsoft to do this from a UX standpoint, but there's nothing new here. There was no breach of protocol, Microsoft wasn't abusing its privileged position. Any program on your PC could do this at any time. We shouldn't act surprised.

</comment><comment><USER75> When Bing was released they did a similar thing with copying search results from the users browser to their servers.

<comment> dane-pgp The people downvoting you perhaps didn't know about this:

[https://www.wired.com/2011/02/bing-copies- google/](https://www.wired.com/2011/02/bing-copies-google/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> This sounds dodgy as hell. Surely incompatible with GDPR: processing personal information despite an explicit rejection by the user.

</comment><comment><USER77> People are nuts, they are making another browser accessible if Firefox/Chrome stop working.

</comment><comment><USER78> Microsoft is that proverbial leopard.

It never changes its spots.

</comment><comment><USER79> Good old Microsoft in the brand new PR wrap.

</comment><comment><USER80> I mean, honestly... you're using Windows. This kind of behavior shouldn't even come as a surprise, but should be expected. The longer you stay on it, the longer you're tacitly supporting those kind of decisions.

If I went to a restaurant and they kept bringing me something I didn't order, I wouldn't go there anymore.

<comment><USER81> Don't know why you're being down voted. There is absolutely nothing that Windows 10 can do to its users' privacy or nonconsent that will surprise me.</comment></comment>


The Cosmopolitan Tongue: The Universality of English - <AUTHOR> http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/2009%20-%20Fall/full-McWhorter-Fall-2009.html

<comment><USER3> I've always thought that a world where English was every country's sole official language would be _better_ for preserving small minority languages. Typically, if you're a minority Kneebonian in Elbonia, you have a "triple burden":

1\. You want to learn English or some other regional "useful language" to get a good job in an international company

2\. You may want to learn/maintain your command of Kneebonese --- a "useless language" economically, but it gives you ethnic pride and access to Kneebonian community "social capital"

3\. Your government forces you to learn equally-useless Elbonese in the name of "national unity", e.g. by making it mandatory for high school exams. But learning it won't actually give you access to Elbonian "social capital", because of discrimination.

In practise, a significant proportion of Kneebonian parents relieve their kids of the "triple burden" by speaking Elbonese to them. Then 10-20 years later, you get a lot of Kneebonian kids who feel they have no other means to "prove" their ethnic identity, except demonstrating fierce "Kneebonian PrYDe4LyFe bro!" at every opportunity --- usually in the form of anti-Elbonian prejudice.

So losing the language doesn't necessarily kill the culture, but it does mean that it'll get twisted it increasingly ugly shapes by kids trying to overcompensate for the loss of a big part of their heritage.

</comment><comment><USER4> Preserving a language requires a very proactive approach. In Iceland (Icelandic is spoken by not much more than 350,000 people) there is a committee tasked with ensuring that new words are formed for new items, ideas or concepts.

In Iceland, rather than letting the English word 'computer' catch on, a linguist combined an old word for a witch (völva) with the word for number (tala) to come up with 'tölva' which is now the word for computer. Today, engineers often come up with clever new words for technical concepts.

With a proactive approach even declining languages can be revived (eg. Basque or Gaelic in Ireland).

Small tribes unfortunately lack the impetus or resources to proactively maintain their languages in this way.

<comment><USER5> The Vatican does this with latin too. It became a dead language nonetheless.

English always absorbed lots of words from many different languages. I suspect that this is a better recipe for language vitality than the "National bureau of new words" approach.

<comment><USER6> Latin lives on in Spanish, Portuguese, et al.

<comment><USER7> And in the same sense, your great-grandmother lives on in you. I'm not sure what you're getting at, especially because the Vatican has had an imperceptible effect on Spanish, Portuguese, et al.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This oddly relates to <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=909449> where we are concerned about increasing concentration in "centers" where in the other article the "center" is the cities, and here the "center" is dominant languages. And in both cases, there is the desire on the part of some to stop this increasing coalescing.

</comment><comment><USER9> > What makes the potential death of a language all the more emotionally > charged is the belief that if a language dies, a cultural worldview will die > with it. But this idea is fragile. Certainly language is a key aspect of > what distinguishes one group from another. However, a language itself does > not correspond to the particulars of a culture but to a faceless process > that creates new languages as the result of geographical separation.

Here I differ with the writer. Culture and language are completely intertwined. I personally think that as globalization happens, culture is disappearing. We are left with just a bad copy of American culture (as exported by Hollywood).

A good example of culture and language being intertwined is my first language. Culturally you are taught to have respect for people older than you, better educated or more senior. You are not supposed to use the word "you" towards those people but use another word (to signify respect). This cultural view is completely lacking in English and especially in the English world view.

> English is very user-friendly as the world's 6,000 languages go.

English may be not be as difficult as some languages - but it is definitely not the easiest. English is a bastard language which is built from many languages – therefore it is not that consistent.

<comment><USER7> Language reflects cultural views, not the other way around. (Note how master and mistress were gendered but equivalent terms, and how many similar divergences occur, as with sir and madam.) Using "sir" in English can serve some of the same respectful roles as an usted in Spanish, but there are many other things as well.

Sapir-Whorf is a long discussed issue [<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity>] and John McWhorter [<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McWhorter>] is well versed in the background.

<comment><USER9> Language is a product of culture. A lot of things can be expressed in English – but it is not normal to do so. For an Israeli Jew Hebrew isn't just "another language". It never is – language is part of your inherently part of your cultural and personal identity. Your culture shapes language – not the other way around.

You can't just anglicise and magically keep your culture and all other cultural influences out. I have seen this in my own group – with Anglicisation come American culture, norms and values. The dominant culture will always drive out other cultures.

You can perhaps argue that it is theoretically possible for a culture to remain during this process. But in practice it never happens. Another problem with culture is that due to democracy in a multi-cultural environment the dominant culture will always impose its values on a less dominant culture.

<comment><USER7> _Language is a product of culture. [...] Your culture shapes language - <USER2> the other way around._

I'm not sure why you would repeat what I said like this, except to buttress the dubious claim you sandwich in the middle.

For a lot of New York Jews, Hebrew isn't just "another language", but simply a decoder ring they use to read aloud in cultural rituals. They still have a cultural and personal Jewish identity.

 _You can't just anglicise and magically keep your culture and all other cultural influences out._

You keep mixing up the chain of causality, and you fail to acknowledge any of the presented arguments (i.e., you used my post to repeat what you wanted to say, rather than mention anything I said, and the bountiful evidence of English speaking African-American culture and English speaking Native American culture negates your ridiculous claims).

If all you'd like is a soapbox, please just go write a blog.

<comment><USER9> > For a lot of New York Jews, Hebrew isn't just "another language", but simply > a decoder ring they use to read aloud in cultural rituals. They still have a > cultural and personal Jewish identity.

Most have accepted a version of American culture and are completely ingrained with American mainstream life.

> speaking African-American culture and

African American culture emerged in the USA. Not much of their pre-slavery culture remains – they lost most (if not everything) of their pre-slavery culture.

> you fail to acknowledge any of the presented arguments

The argument you mentioned (that there are roughly almost equivalent words in English) does not hold water.

> If all you'd like is a soapbox, please just go write a blog.

You are turning nasty. I did not expect you to understand – but you could at least have respectfully disagreed.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure why I'm doing this, but I'll try once more...

'My argument' was not that there are roughly almost equivalent words in English. There are multiple things:

\- the case of linguistic relativity is largely resolved contrary to your view, but you don't appear interested in talking on the level of the informed intellectual debate

\- I cited a vertical example of culture shaping language, rather than some other direction. However, the death of English would not mean the death of misogyny.

\- Native Americans speak English, but retain a much different and largely unchanged culture, but you didn't see fit to address it. This point alone contradicts your claim of the "completely intertwined" nature of culture and language. Note also that America dwelling English speaking Asians retain a respect for elders and dutiful study habits, all while speaking not a jot of their culture's original language (in the crude sense you'd want us to believe it- no one's stuck on proto-Indo-European anymore). Various Amish communities preserve _entire eras_ while speaking more and more English.

Could you elaborate on how 'usted', '-san', or 'Mr.' are necessary to a specific culture, no substitutions?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> TED Talk: Jay Walker on the world's English mania (4 mins) [http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jay_walker_on_the_world_s_...](http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jay_walker_on_the_world_s_english_mania.html)

Summary:

2 billion people are currently trying to learn English.

In China you are required by the law to learn English beginning from the 3rd grade.

China will become the largest English speaking country in 2009</comment>


Uber Settles Cases with Concessions, but Drivers Stay Freelancers - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/technology/uber-settles-cases-with-concessions-but-drivers-stay-freelancers.html <comment><USER2> _Uber also agreed not to deactivate drivers who regularly decline to accept requests for rides from passengers, a practice that previously would contribute negatively to a driver's overall standing with the company. Instead, drivers may be temporarily logged out of the app and unable to accept new requests if they are "consistently not accepting trip requests."_

Does this mean drivers will be more able to decline rides from nearby areas they don't want to serve - like cabs? For instance, accepting rides from a business hotel zone, but decline from the poorer surrounding areas?</comment>