I didn't know that Windows is now free.

It's free if you're willing to break the EULA. I haven't paid for it. Just used some Win 7 CD key I found online and it activated.

Not even break EULA, just download from Microsoft and install without activating.

That is breaking the EULA:

"You are authorized to use this software only if you are properly licensed and the software has been properly activated with a genuine product key or by other authorized method."

Ah, you're right. Wow, that EULA is very different from the reality of how people use it, and MSFT makes no attempt to enforce it.

Ehm, I guess you have never heard about BSA raids, right?

Edge is cross platform.

That's a technicality - who in their right mind is going to choose edge on other platform if they are not already used to it from Windows.

Enough users to justify the salary of the teams making it happen.

In practice it has been free for home users for many years. I assume the only reason they still keep up the facade that Windows costs money is so they can sell it to OEMs and volume licenses to businesses, which still makes them big bucks.

It only seems free for home use because the activation key for the home version is embedded in NVRAM of the machine by the OEM. You pay the OEM when you buy the machine, and they pay Microsoft.

You pay the OEM once, for a Windows 7 key, and then you run on that -- because it keeps working, with Microsoft's implicit authorization -- for the next 15+ years. They 100% would not let you do that if they cared to charge for Windows like they did in the pre-Windows 8 days when Windows was the product and not the user's data.

Which one is the browser that i can pay for and keep my privacy, then? Safari?

Firefox with uBlock Origin and various about:config flags disabling telemetry, autocomplete, etc.

You're putting a lot of faith in uBlock Origin though. You have to grant it full permissions when you install it. Not at all saying that uBlock Origin is doing anything nefarious, but it certainly could.

I mean, anything you install on your hardware can do something nefarious. Edge is built into Windows, so who knows how deep its permissions can go.

Luckily uBlock Origin is open source and viewable on github, and isn't driven by greed. So I trust it more than Microsoft or any big tech company.

Well some people are putting a lot of faith in Chrome, which is owned by Google. I don't know which choice is more risky...

Yeap, everything can do nefarious things.

But, somehow I trust a random dev that refuses to accept donations, even though my cheap ass would definitely donate to him, more than Microsoft, apple and (insert BigTech here)

I have more faith in gorhill behaving ethically than either of Mozilla, Google, Microsof or Apple, yes.

Orion browser by Kagi is a browser you can pay for. Another one I know of is SigmaOS. Both are Mac only, not sure about the state of things on other platforms.

Orion Browser is free. Payments are possible by donating or subscribing to either Orion+ or Kagi Search.

I'm told that browser is Brave

Unfortunately brave is forever cemented in my mind as being linked to the brave shitcoin.

Is the Brave shitcoin really worse than all the stupid-ass stunts and services Mozilla has pulled over the years?

I'm not saying better or worse, I'm just saying that it's an embarassment.

Integration of pocket never sent your data to pocket or made you use it. It's scandals are entirely boring.

"But that other guy is just as bad" is never a good argument.

The opt-in brave shitcoin?

An opt-in shitcoin ... that attempts to approach the advertising market in a new way, which I find genuinely interesting. And I'm an anti-advertising zealot.

Any shitcoin whatsoever.

How can you pay for Brave?

I don't get how brave even among non techie friends have gotten such a "progressive" reputation.

It's a freaking shitcoin browser, but that probably means enormous PR budgets.

Sad that a mozilla has apparently sunk itself in the meantime.

It's really a sad dystopian future we live in compared to the cypherpunk optimism of the 90's.

Brave is indeed a fantastic browser, and their recent introduction of vertical tabs is the cherry on top.

Netscape Navigator Gold

Opera GX

But Opera has been sold to Chinese companies, so those who are concerned about surveillance may not be comfortable with it. Opera's founder later created Vivaldi, which I have used ever since

> Safari

Yes.

No source code= black box you can't trust.

Well, the rendering engine is open source.

https://webkit.org

That is a disingenuous response. I have a program that uses open source libraries, but the program is closed.

Such a weird thing to post in reply.

It has a 'nuh uh' feeling, but doesn't actually refute the parent. However it seeds doubt in the parent argument without ever touching the parent argument.

All the bad things of Edge we're discussing here are not in the rendering engine, so who cares about that?

This is why I don't use Firefox/Chrome/Edge or Linux.

I don't want to be the product.

Geez can hacker news users no longer detect sarcasm? This comment is clearly pointing out the absurdity (or more specifically, incompleteness) of the grandparent argument, not bashing on Linux.

You don't recognize that the comment that you are replying to is a sarcastic extension of the argument?

Huh?

"You don't recognize that [the thing you just said]?"?

Sorry for confusion, I meant my comment as a reply to my siblings.

Where in Linux is the user generally the product?

ubuntu

ouch

Users become lifelong converts and demand organizations convert until they have to give Linus money to fix problems.

(25% /s)

Firefox has had minor missteps in the past but Linux and Firefox are not unsecure options despite being free and Microsoft isn't a safe option despite charging money.

Your algorithm is fairly broken.

Even with Linux you have to be careful. Some distros have pulled shit like sending local searches to remote servers so that they can push amazon ads at you (https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/ubuntu-spyware-what-to-do). We have to watch everyone like a hawk these days.

Some distros is one of the major distros once in 30 years 10 years ago.

I doesn't matter how much you pay for something, they'll still collect all the data on you that they can because you can never pay more than they'd make taking your money and also collecting your data.

Which browser are you paying for with your wallet

This is a bad take, because many products are not free, and you still get shafted with surveillance, ads and more. Windows is one example, but there's also cable TV subscriptions, smart TVs, many modern games on phones and PC.

hey I've got a question about Kagi:

so, a bunch of third party apps made for Reddit are getting killed this month because Reddit decides to jack up the prices. What's going to happen to Kagi if/when it becomes somewhat of a competitor to Google/Bing and they want it dead?