They are trying to find the breaking point in fleecing gamers, and I sincerely hope they find it in the most painful (for them) way imaginable.

In reality they probably won’t, because it seems the younger gamer generations enjoy being fleeced, but one can dream…

I mean, it’s Nintendo - if there was a way to somehow automatically charge your card every time you say, hear or think the words “Nintendo”, “Mario” and such, they’d do it without hesitation…

…because if I’m not interested in something, I might change my mind after I see it a bunch more times on the same fucking page - what a brilliant idea! Hell, put the ad in 50 different spots and make me click no less than 7 times to close each one - who knows, maybe that will encourage me to buy whatever shit you’re peddling!

Seems an alternative, easier method was found: https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/windows-11/an-even-better-microsoft-account-bypass-for-windows-11-has-already-been-discovered

Relevant part:

But fret not, as a new, perhaps better bypass has already been discovered that still uses the command prompt (which you can open with Shift + F10) and makes skipping the Microsoft Account sign-in step a total breeze.

Discovered by user @witherornot1337 on X, typing “start ms-cxh:localonly” into the command prompt during the Windows 11 setup experience will allow you to create a local account directly without needing to skip connecting to the internet first.

“Users who in the past would type ‘free online file converter’ into a search engine are vulnerable, as the algorithms used for results now often include paid results, which might be scams.”

Nooo, you mean turning search engines into monetization and ad delivery engines had downsides? Who would have thought!

Fucking greed at the root of another goddamned issue…

To people with self awareness, a sense of shame and at least a bit of integrity it sure would be!

That’s good and I’m genuinely glad they’re trying to clarify it, but it proves yet again that their top management is out of touch with reality and their users: somebody (most likely more than one person actually) had to sign off on these changes and the message they sent out - this whole thing could have been avoided if they understood their users better (and/or if they actually cared nore about what users think).

That’s the advanced cutting edge AI recommendation system for you. Oh, you just bought a fridge and a large TV? Here are fifty more fridges and large TVs that would be great for your fridge and large TV collection! And also a cheap Chinese knockoff impact drill, because they paid us to show it to people searching for fridges, TVs, jewelry, mineral water and potting soil!

“When it detects a user may be under 18, Google will notify them that it has changed some of their settings and will offer information about how users can verify their age with a selfie, credit card, or government ID.”

This will definitely not be used to get a massive amount of face and ID data from users who get misclassified as underage due to “glitches” and suddenly locked out from their Gmail accounts or Android phones. Nope, no sirree, that will never happen at all, Google wouldn’t do such an unethical and evil thing!

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I’d prefer to imagine a world in which a multi-billion dollar corporation isn’t tracking my every step to sell me more shit, and yet here we are…

I have no complaints about Lemmy, but posting on Mastodon is basically screaming into the void - I’ve been trying for more than a year, and I basically hardly ever get any reaction at all. In comparison, in the first week on Bluesky I found multiple people following me, commenting on my silly wine and cactuses posts, and in general just interacting.

Don’t get me wrong, I still prefer Mastodon technically and ethically, but it’s just so goddamned barren and dead I feel completely unmotivated to post there…

Zorin has a pro tier that costs money but it’s supposed to have the look and feel of classic Windows - maybe it’s that?

"A new eye-opening report (that we are not going to link, or even give you a title of, because trust us bro) has revealed something surprising about our social media platforms

This clickbait title will make you (or at least me) not want to click the link because it sounds like a shitty ad!💥🔥🍄

Amen to that. I’m not a busy CEO of four companies, I don’t need or want an assistant, digital or otherwise. I want to read through articles and watch videos, I can scroll/fast-forward through myself if I feel like it. And while we’re at it, I don’t really need or want personalized anything - just give me ALL the search results and I’ll sort through them myself. Luddite? Maybe, but I literally cannot think of a case where this would be useful or helpful to me…

To be honest, they probably are. My pet theory is that they’re trying to do what do many politicians are doing - drive away everyone but the strongest base electorate that will stay with them no matter what they do. And then, the grift starts. I’m reasonably sure sooner rather than later they’ll start charging a subscription fee to use Windows, and people and companies will bend over and pay it…

I solved this issue by following multiple tags that interest me. People tend to tag their posts on Mastodon it seems, so discovering posts about, say, wine and cacti is as easy as following #wine #cactus #cacti #redwine #oragewine and so on and so forth - it’s working pretty good for me without an algorithm recommending stuff to me, maybe it’s worth a try?

Oh cool! I’ll need to look into that, thanks! Wonder if there’s a way to convert an existing Windows into this somehow, installed software and all, because that would be perfect…

Right, but you have to boot into Windows first to even get the update in the first place…