First RCS now this, today has been wild
This is cool and all, but why do we always stop at Microsoft? I think it would be more impactful in 2023 if we can uninstall Safari from iOS devices and Chrome from Android?
Why yes Microsoft, I am totally a European in Europe right now…
VPN to Sweden, update Windows to the EEA version, profit?
I’m not holding my breath, but we can hope.
Välkommen!
Bless you.
It 's wild to think that some people might VPN to the EU for basic rights.
You wouldn’t pirate basic human rights, would you?
Freedom!
People do that China 🤷♂️
Coming to a Western country soon near you!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Microsoft has published a new blog post which details how Windows 11 will be made compliant with the Digital Markets Act (DMA) in the European Economic Area (EEA.)
To be compliant, Microsoft has made several changes to the OS, which now allows users to choose between providers and uninstall most in-box apps.
The company describes these changes as specific to Windows 11 PCs in the EEA, so it’s unclear if users outside this area will be able to utilize these functions.
These changes will rollout in preview on Windows 11 in the Insider Beta Channel in the coming weeks, and will become generally available early next year.
The EEA is an economic and political union that spans 27 countries in the European and surrounding area.
In the case of Microsoft, this means not forcing users to use Edge or Bing, and ensuring the OS is interoperable with other services where necessary.
The original article contains 488 words, the summary contains 151 words. Saved 69%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
ABOUT FUCKING TIME. Take edge and shove it so far up your data tracking sphincter of a face hole.
Can we please get these laws on a global level.
Nope. But hey look, the Democrats are coming to take your guns!
Well they’ll probably reinstall it with every update anyway.
… then disable the update …
Not really possible anymore, Microsoft has been forcing updates since Windows 10.
They would get massive fines if they tried that.
I appreciate your sense of relief, but don’t share it. This isn’t the first time Microsoft has been ordered to stop pushing its stuff (remember Internet Explorer?) and I’m sure it won’t be the last.
If I have to keep a chromium browser around, in addition to Firefox, I’d rather edge than mainline Chrome.
I’m not sure I would. Edge is trash, it keeps shoving the AI bullshit, all the MSN news stuff, ads for cheaper shopping, all in your face when you first start up. While you can turn it off, it gets annoying doing that every time you reinstall or spin up a new VM. Chrome, for all its faults, is a lot less annoying freshly installed.
That’s a false dichotomy. There’s no shortage of Chromium browsers that are significantly better than both.
Suggestions? Preferably for both Windows and Mac
All Mac browsers are just Safari anyway
You might be thinking of iOS browsers? Mac browsers use a variety of engines
Arc is weird but pretty good once you get used to it.
DuckDuckGo is good if you want a minimal browser and don’t really care about extensions
Brave is OK if you want a slightly more private version of Chrome
Honestly though, just use Firefox.
Not sure which ones are compatible with Mac. Brave is my choice but there’s also Vivaldi and several flavors of Opera.
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Which one comes with a VPN you can’t not install?
Brave seems like a superb option.
Opera seems like a reasonable option, I guess, but I’m not sure if it has the market share to actually be seen and controversial if there was something to be controversial about.
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I’m not disagreeing, but what entity would enforce those global laws?
La Haye International Court of Justice, of course.
And what happens when the country in question is one that doesn’t care that much about the ICC, and responds “make me”?
To wit: The United States has famously refused to subordinate itself to the ICC
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I vote for angry mob with convenient access to an active volcano.
Who needs a volcano when woodchippers can park right in your driveway.
Remember to load them feet first kids!
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*jots down ‘load kids feet first into chipper’
Wait, is Microsoft violating child labor laws, too!?
Well, your heart’s in the right place.
And apparently the kids feet are in the right place too!
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Same way laws are enforced now? Each country passing it and the companies needing to comply to continue operations.
Why are they force to comply right now if the laws don’t work?
You’re missing the point.
The ICC only has power in countries that let them have power. If a given country doesn’t feel like doing that, the ICC has precisely zero recourse or ability to enforce.
What should citizens in countries like that (which may or may not be dictatorships, single-party states, theocracies, or some other restrictive, un-democratic, and/or xenophobic form of government) do?
Space force?
I’m a Linux guy and I don’t really care about Windows, but I’m glad to see this happening and every day I thank Europe for being the main entity fighting for regulation of big tech monopolies, because America is really failing.
EU is very much a mixed bag. On the one hand, they do this, on the other hand, they tried to ban P2P encryption and microtargetted religious and elderly in resisting countries, feeding them the classic “it’s for the children’s safety” lies.
they tried to ban P2P encryption
They recently enshrined it as an unalienable human right as a world first.
Though we have to remind ourselves that it’s mainly the EU Commission who does this.
The Supreme Court spoke out against it from the very beginning, the Parliament voted against it, it’s really only the Commission who doesn’t want to understand that EU law applies to them, too.
Quite a few positions in there that need to be held by new people who understand the damn law.
I wonder if Windows in Non-EU areas does not have this kind of choice.
Well, does not matter, I use Linux, too.
America empowers these bozos
I’m one illness or accident from being financially ruined, what do you really expect me to do about it?
Start a revolution.
California is doing okay, all things considered
How do you know someone uses Linux?
Don’t worry they’ll tell you
I use Linux (one that’s based on Arch btw) Make one guess at:
- my diet
- what I think is the best text editor
Seriously, how am I supposed to keep quiet when I find a clearly superior choice? Especially when most people feel a psychological barrier to trying it, that turns out to be not nearly as big as the adcantages.
at least meat-reduced diet
vim
Exactly! I use neovim as a full IDE (got started quickly using the nvchad template). And I think you know which “at least meat-reduced” diet is most associated with evangelizing ;)
what I think is the best text editor
ed?
diet: coffee
editor: vim
:wq
Points for the editor, but weirdly enough, not a lot of coffee (<1 per day) and I didn’t drink coffee at all before a few weeks ago.
As a Linux user (and ex arch user btw), I’m deeply offended.
Hey hey hey, don’t just go around generalizing. Not all Linux users are like that (but I am, and I use arch BTW).
Like I’m sure we’re bound to find at least ONE Linux user who doesn’t tell.
That would be mee
Opsi
Its nuts that during the Obama admin, all anyone cared about was the threat of zero privacy. Now everyone in the US has surrendered to it, because our politicians have sold our digital privacy rights to the tech companies.
If we had actual IT giants in Europe, this would look very different.
I’ve seen how the car industry in Germany only got a slap on the wrist because of Dieselgate and even got the chance to send out advertisement payed by the government.
I feel like the only reason stuff like this gets pushed so hard is because we try to slow down the current IT giants until we get our shit together.
I’m glad that we do it, but i wouldn’t say we are better than anyone else.
Thanks for the honest take, a lot of people get caught up in the idea that if an organization does something that aligns with them, they are good or doing it for the same reasons.
There is a lot of protectionism at the heart of the EU. They are quite happy to heavily regulate Big Tech when it’s not based in their own market. Unfortunately they don’t have quite the same passion for nurturing the European tech industry as much as stifling the foreign ones.
They are it purely fighting these fights for the greater good, or they wouldn’t also be pushing things like the recent browser certificate debacle.
Yeah because dieselgate was a travesty and all companies have a moral obligation to find ways around the idiocy of the US EPA as they actively make our cars more harmful to the environment by writing poorly thought out rules that encourage larger vehicles as well as completely failing to understand how to calculate diesel emissions for vehicles in a sensible manner.
Nah, it still would be much harder.
Because the EU exists out of many different countries with each their own government.
To lobby something through you have to bribe the majority of them, instead of just one.
I mean we have SAP but they are probably not affected by this law.
SAP
All my homies hate SAP
America is a huge corporation.
America is getting paid to do it.
Maybe the FCC is still resisting for now.Did you mean FTC?
Not sure anymore. Maybe both I guess
That’s what I was talking about: https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/15/23962881/fcc-anti-digital-discrimination-pass
This apparently only applies to Europe, say least for now.
Wait for it. Slow roll outs
So apparently having consumer-friendly laws does in fact lead to better products. Cool.
Perhaps the USA and other countries should follow the EU’s good example on this.
Based EU.
This is Microsoft… What’s the catch?
I think it only applies to Europe
Most likely, they have “N” versions for some time for EU regulated countries
https://www.itprotoday.com/windows-10/what-are-windows-10-n-and-kn-editions
Ya, then just install the N version. It’s not some weird region locked thing. If you tell Microsoft you don’t have a product key, you’ll get a list of windows versions you can install, and you just select the N version.
They give windows away for free? If you don’t have a key wouldn’t they tell you to buy it?
Windows put a watermark on your desktop and locks you out of personalization if you don’t pay.
Watermark can be disabled with a simple registry editor change. Or the entirety of windows can just be activated with a single command prompt command.
Even if you’re not into pirating, you can use windows without a key without issues. They honestly don’t care.
Their main income is from businesses. They don’t care what an individual user does.
That said, most motherboards already have a license key for Windows attached. Or you can just use a Windows 7 or 8 key you have laying around. I believe they wanted to stop being able to do this, but it still isn’t implemented.
I’m a bit surprised, this time it took them so long I thought they stopped about even pretending.
Hey, 'Muricans, how come we need to pressure every company into compliance for you?
Do you really think any average citizen has any say in this whatsoever?
Great America, land of the free
Land of the fee and home of the slave
Free to be shot at and advertised to
Obviously since it’s happening for us Europeans
Yes. You’re a democracy, right? Right?
On paper yes. In reality…
Isn’t that the point of your guns? Why are all these less free states more free?
Nah, those are just so we can shoot nonwhite people and say we thought they had a gun
well, on paper also no, democracy don’t exist with only two parties, and that is writed in paper
An electoral democracy, we choose those that make the laws. Due to the 2 party system we don’t have many options for when they fail to do what they claim they will.
No, we’re a republic.
A true democracy would empower each of us to do as you say, but that’s not what’s here.
Our republic is quite corrupt due to greed and power, as well… Not as corrupt as many countries out there, mind you, but it’s alot worse than it should be.
We’re starting to resemble a corporatocracy in many ways these days as a result of all this.
‘Republic’ is about whether or not you have kings. Democracy is as opposed to autocracy, with a few other *cracys between those poles.
America is a democratic republic; the United Kingdom is a democratic monarchy. The US has a broken democratic system that does a really bad job of electing the most preferred candidate. It’s almost cheeky to call America democratic.
Hey, 'Peans, how come you think a country larger than your pseudo continent is a homogenous hivemind?
E: what Ive learned from this comment is that apparently, all europeans share 1 single trait, which is just utterly horrid reading comprehension
Erm… Larger by land mass? Yes. Larger by GDP? No. Larger by number of inhabitants? No. Larger by amount of vastly different cultures that somehow get stuff like this done whole very decidedly not being a hive mind? Also no.
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I bet this person is one of those “actually, I’m 1/8th Irish” people…
American moment
It is certainly more diverse lol
ThEre ArE no iMmIgRaNtS in EuRopE
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The majority of the immigrant population in 'Murica are from Europe.
40 years counts as quite a long time in american history i suppose
I mean, in terms of humans that’s 2 generations, and since diversity and populations concern humans, that’s a big head start. But you can keep applying off topic cliches if they help you feel better.
Firstly, no one said that.
Let me quote:
Lmfao you think europe is more culturally diverse than a country with thousands of cultures from around the world? Thats hilarious.
So yeah. That.
The rest of your comment is blatantly ignorant AND horridly racist, so I think I’ll just do is both a favor and ignore it.
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Where in your quote does it say europe has no immigrants?
As an American, you’re being silly. You’ve heard of the Silk Road? The Mediterranean? The Old World has been rubbing shoulders with each other since 4000+ years ago. We just got here in comparison.
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The US is smaller than Europe in size of population and in area.
Nah. Those corps will still do it at home or sell it as PR at home.
For $100,000 the US Congress will tell you!
See: Regulatory Capture
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Which war? Help me out here. Vietnam? Iraq? Korea? I’m lost here … Oh wait…
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So your answer is "I could tell you, but I won’t " and a personal attack? Talk about “not flattering on you”.
So: which war the EU is involved in are you “funding”?
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Sorry, our country is currently on fire 😕
Regulation works.
I might upgrade now from 10. Imagine giving what consumers want.
Imagine being forced to give what consumers want due to European legislation.
Welcome to the American tech industry.
This is the first time I saw a post get over 1000 upvotes in 15 hours.
damn, Europe is wild!
Bless the EU
