Snippet: The Day Windows Died ☇

Thomas Bandt:

First, there was news about a mass shooting that had occurred only recently. In the middle of the search menu. The menu which was supposed to be one of the first touch points with that computer for the kid. Not okay. But after some time, I figured out how to switch that off. […]

Some people recommended tools to me which can be used to switch most of those things off. But honestly: How do you trust a system (or its manufacturer) if you can’t even know if those settings, which you deliberately chose, persist? What if I remove app x for a reason, and it suddenly pops up again after the next Windows update? Or the news section in the search menu? No way. I can no longer see a good use case for it, at least not in my home.

I’ve followed the growth and development of Windows, partially due to my day job, but also just to be aware of what the rest of the desktop operating system landscape looks like. Although Bandt is talking about Windows 11, a lot of these things started to creep in with Windows 10, a vast departure from the stay-out-of-your-way nature of old versions like Windows XP.

I found Bandt’s post from this one by Matt Birchler and I think that his commentary is equally worthwhile on the subject. He cites an example of something a lot of people seem to accidentally click on Windows 10 and 11—the weather icon that isn’t just weather:

The weather info you clicked on occupies 4% of the pixels (I actually counted), and the rest is devoted to garbage from the MSN home page. And don’t worry, it does infinitely scroll, so you can browse this bullshit to your heart’s content.

And no, there is no way to turn this news feed off. The best you can do is “manage interests” which kicks you out to msn.com to have you tell it what topics you prefer. If you can believe it, my preferences say I only care about sports!