I got a laptop in from a user the other day, that shocked the hell out of me, that floating search bar thing. MS is downright creepy the way they slip things in.

With remote work it always fascinates me to see how many people leave the weather (& news) bar displayed next to the tray on the taskbar, this is something that came with a Windows 10 update. People really don't change defaults...

I was wondering if I could make a fake one, just add an appropriate icon and change its label to say something like 6000°C Nuclear Holocaust

> I was wondering if I could make a fake one, just add an appropriate icon and change its label to say something like 6000°C Nuclear Holocaust

Dude, if you ever make this, post it to HN. I'd install that on my computer in a heartbeat.

And this is why windows is plagued with malware.

not really.

They make it very difficult to uninstall that crap. I set up a new windows 11 machine the other day. And then did the obligatory removal of the weather/news, cortana, and 15 other pieces of crap I don’t need or want. While I was doing that it was downloading updates and once the updates were installed, the weather/news thing was back.

The stories on there are so bad. Like, borderline conspiracy thinking / conservative media gossip rag stuff. I can’t believe Microsoft puts their company name behind the content that shows up. (Though I’m in Australia. Maybe the people in charge of that content have no idea how bad it is here).

I'm in Australia too, and just assumed that stuff was the norm for the US.

It's the norm in certain subcultures in the US, but it would be incorrect to say it's the norm in the US as a whole.

> With remote work it always fascinates me to see how many people leave the weather (& news) bar displayed next to the tray on the taskbar

I leave it there and I've been a SWE for over 20 years.

I just like seeing what the temperture is at the moment. So I know how to dress if I was dare to go outside.

The news being part of it though, on HOVER, is a nightmare. They need to stop that ASAP.

Just have to right click the task bar and change the news settings to 'reduce updates' & turn off open on hover.

Turning on 'reduce updates' just has the taskbar display the weather and not change to some random stock ticker of a company you don't care about or whatever other item of interest they feel like showing.

Defaults are incredibly powerful. For us on here, we expect to have control and to be able to manipulate these things. For most people a computer is just an appliance like a washing machine. Accept it as it comes!

While I appreciate the ability to configure software, I also believe that software that requires too much configuration is poorly suited for my needs and will replace it with something better suited to my needs. There is an incredible number of options out there. We do not have to put up with the nonsense that overbearing businesses subject us to.

> There is an incredible number of options out there. We do not have to put up with the nonsense that overbearing businesses subject us to.

How true that is depends on the type of software. Web browsers, for instance, don't have an incredible number of meaningfully different options. I can no longer find one that sufficiently meets my needs at all.

Those widgets randomly come back after updates for me, along with ads in the start menu, even if you spent time removing them.

"People really don't change defaults..."

Because they are scared of breaking things.

Also, most people actually do change defaults: style and theme.

they don’t

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/01/default-s...

https://www.propublica.org/article/set-it-and-forget-it-how-...

Your links talk only about technical standards. But have you ever looked at a normal persons phone/desktop?

They are usually quite colorful and this is not the standard.

I saw that pop up on one of my parent's computers. The hardware is old enough that it didn't want to install Windows 11, but Microsoft still managed to push that shit. Within an hour I wiped the drive of Windows.

You have multiple parents or they have multiple computers?

What did you replace Windows with?

"What did you replace Windows with?"

Haiku probably ... s/

The only real alternative option with most hardware is linux. And when the use case is browsing the internet and you are there to help them unstuck a broken update, things should be fine.

Grammatically, the location of the apostrophe makes parent singular. However, it seems weird if I think of it that way, likely because pronunciation as a whole is the same regardless of parent being singular or plural. Computers is plural regardless. This really doesn't effect me ib any way, but somehow seeing someone else want to know makes me want to know.

Similar happened to my parents years ago. Windows 7, working perfectly. My mum kept seeing a popup asking "do you want to upgrade to Windows 10?" and every time (for months) clicked close.

Then, they changed the button layout and put a "install" button where the close button was, and she installed it without realising. Some bits of hardware weren't supported in Windows 10 and I had to go around and mess around with drivers, which I failed at.

So, she's been on Fedora since. Considering all she did on Windows was light browsing in Firefox and many hours of Pysol, she barely even noticed the switch.

My parents used the search to find documents on the local system. Now it defaults to searching the interent. Event more insane is now the 'close' button location has a button that opens your search in the Edge browser, where my parents still try searching for local documents. Getting lost ... so many levels deep.

Just happened to me this week, same thing. Out of nowhere. It also auto-signed me into Edge, when I never did it before in my life. It really is getting ridiculous now.

It takes a good hour to turn off their default ad-laden, adhd-inducing home page. And then they turn it back on a few weeks later.