The changes to Windows for DMA-compliance include:
- You can now uninstall Edge and Bing web search using the built-in settings. Earlier, the option was greyed out.
- Third-party web search application developers can now utilize the Windows search box in the taskbar using the instructions provided by Microsoft and choose any web browser to show results from the web.
- Microsoft will no longer sign-in users to Edge, Bing, and Microsoft Start services during the initial Windows setup experience.
- Data collected about the functioning of non-Microsoft apps, primarily bug detection and its effects on the OS, from Windows PCs will not be used for competitive purposes.
- Microsoft, from now on, will need explicit user consent before combining data from the OS and other sources. It will also deliver new consent screens where required.
These changes are only applicable to users in the EEA. For those outside the region, Windows will continue to function as it is!
I was surprised I was able to uninstall Media Player on Windows 11. I played a video file on my laptop and accidentally selected “always open with”. Lo and behold Windows Media Player doesn’t play HEVC encoded files (not sure if it was 264 or 265). I thought I would have to tinker with the default program settings but tried “add or remove programs” on a lark and it worked. I then opened the file with VLC as one normally does and life is back in balance.
Props to EU keeping these assholes in check
Today is a good day.
… if you’re European
I suddenly feel more European!
Me for the rest of the week:
You could always uninstall with the Revo Uninstaller
Check out Chris titisi’s script. Can do quite a bit and uninstall edge.
It can be ran as a single command without any manual download.
Is you regional settings set to a European country?
(by the way, life pro tip, setting your region to a European country solves a ton of issues people have with Windows, most complaints I see I never had a problem with even though I live in Canada, my settings are set to UK)
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Timezone stuff might act a little weird, same with fuzzy location
No issues with that for me as it’s separate settings 🤷
No, it just uses that to know which signs and types of spelling to use.
Useful fact: Both Ireland and Malta have English as official languages so you’re guaranteed availability of those locales (unlike say en-DE, which exists, (at least according to ICU), while en-FR doesn’t).
Fun fact: Both don’t have it as sole official language, though, and each EU member only gets to nominate one of their official languages as an official language of the EU, which means that with Brexit English ceased to be an official EU language. The commission manoeuvred around that though and still kept it as working language. With the Brits out of the picture though they’re not writing passive-aggressive memos regarding language use any more and the Irish certainly will not stoop down to that level, Euro-English can finally evolve freely and within ten years we’ll start telling Anglophones that it’s incorrect to say “there were five people at the party” (you attended), it’s “we were five people at the party”. Deal with it.
I’ve read about Euro-English and discussed it back on reddit quite some time ago, and I have to say I’m very skeptical whether such a thing exists or ever could exist. Fundamentally it’s a mis-learned standard English, and the mis-learning is to a large degree determined by the speaker’s native language - which varies extremely across Europe. Slavic speakers will have issues with articles, Germans much less so, etc. Consequently there’s hardly any definite characteristic of Euro-English (the examples in the article are too vaguely described, and I’m sure many European ESLs would find them grammatically unacceptable too). Perhaps one could speak of a variety of English used by EU politicians and institutions, but those people are hardly a linguistic model for the vast majority of other speakers.
Define standard English?
Both the USA and UK don’t agree on what it is.You’d think it’s the language spoken in England
The sort of English you’ll see in literature, newspapers, any remotely formal communication, in grammars (which learning materials are based on as well). The stuff learners will aim to learn.
Differences between US and UK English, and the dialectal variety within each of them, are not all that relevant here. Where I live, students are taught British English, but no professor ever chastised us for using American pronunciation or vocabulary. Both are within the range of what natives will find acceptable.
the examples in the article are too vaguely described, and I’m sure many European ESLs would find them grammatically unacceptable too
I wouldn’t ever drop the s for he/she/it but the rest is perfectly cromulent. Remember these aren’t high school mistakes they’re stuff that C2 speakers use, practically native-level “mistakes”, just as you’ll see American generals writing reports using “less” instead of “fewer”, or “good” instead of “well”, or “who” instead of “whom” (shudder). “was” instead of “were”. That’s language evolution, plain and simple, things change as they always have and the language does different things in different places.
but the rest is perfectly cromulent
“Competences”, “planification”, “to hop over” (=to refrain from)? Sorry, that stuff is downright grotesque.
Remember these aren’t high school mistakes they’re stuff that C2 speakers use
I can’t remember that because the WP article didn’t claim that. In fact, if you make these mistakes, you’re not C2, by definition.
just as you’ll see American generals writing reports using “less” instead of “fewer”, or “good” instead of “well”, or “who” instead of “whom” (shudder). “was” instead of “were”.
Except that this is language change from within the native community, in their native language, aimed from native speakers at other natives who will understand or (if they don’t understand them or use a different variety) correct them. Some of that stuff (who-whom, was-were) is well-established in already existing usage and dialects, it’s not an innovation at all.
That’s language evolution, plain and simple, things change as they always have and the language does different things in different places.
I’ll repeat myself: no, this isn’t ordinary language change, as this “Euro English” is simply a local characteristic of this or that speaker who failed to learn English as it is used by native speakers. ‘Euro English’ is not a real unit, as it has no defining characteristics. Imagine a European using some calque from his native language while talking to a European who has a different native language and who can’t understand the calque - this is not what happens in a normal speech community, these people will fail to understand each other, and their English is not a stable or reliably identifiable linguistic variety. You can see that especially in the table with “Euro English vocabulary”, where words are clearly marked by their origin, and they won’t be understood or will be found absurd by many other Europeans.
That is most definitely not a fun fact. It’s bad enough having the Yanks telling us how to speak our own language!
Interesting that setting your location to the UK gets you EU protections. Do the EU protections apply in the UK? They Brexited didn’t they?
IIUC when they separated they basically ended up with a snapshot of EU regulations. So most of GDPR applies. But IDK if the DMA will apply as it was created after they split.
On iOS in the UK you’re not able to sideload on the new update so probably not
Yeah you better set it to Ireland or Malta to get full EU conformity.
Genuinely curious: Does that actually work? Don’t you have to have your credit card registered to an Irish bank to make payments in that PC’s Windows Store?
I never, ever, linked any payment means to Windows or Microsoft, and yes it absolutely works. I’ve got my VPN set to Europe as well most of the time though (Sweden actually), and for the language settings I’m indeed using Ireland, and can confirm in that configuration it works.
Linux solves the rest.
Wrong conversation
You’re right. I either fumbled it or found a bug in my client.
This ought to happen everywhere. Either I’m the admin on my machine or I’m not. If it’s not, I’m not sure how much longer I’ll tolerate a Windows machine.
You can be the admin of your machine, but I bet you know what that would mean :)
PSA: Once this rolls out into the actual downloadable Windows builds, everyone should be able to do this by reinstalling Windows.
European Economic Area PCs
As noted above, some functionality is only available in the EEA. Windows uses the region chosen by the customer during device setup to identify if the PC is in the EEA. Once chosen in device setup, the region used for DMA compliance can only be changed by resetting the PC.
I’d worry about how that might effect other things. Windows isn’t the only thing that changes its behavior based on region. What other software would be looking at that specific region setting?
Hmm, if it doesn’t honor that setting being changed after the initial install it could be possible to set it during install to get the benefits, then change it post install to make other apps behave normally.
That’s the real gift given by Microsoft:
Once chosen in device setup, the region used for DMA compliance can only be changed by resetting the PC.
Just change your region back to where ever you are after setup. Nothing on your PC outside of the OS will be reading the region set during Windows Install, they’ll be asking for the currently set region.
Maybe I’m misreading what you quoted but it seems to suggest you can’t do what you’re suggesting.
Once that region is set, it’s locked in unless you do a reset of the PC…which would presumably go through the windows set up again and ask for region.
Ummmmmmmmmmmmmm…
Can we get THIS fucking comment on the front page please? Outstanding work, friend! Sincere thanks!
You haven’t been the sole admin on a Windows machine in a long time, friend.
If you care about stuff like being the sole admin of your machine, IDK why you’re using Windows.
Is this option only available in the EU for EU citizens?
Correct.
That’s unfortunate to hear for anyone living in North America
Change your Windows settings and you’re all set
I’ve got a NA IP so that wouldn’t fix it unfortunately. Same with the clock.
I’m in Canada with English UK in my settings and I don’t have most issues people have with Windows 🤷
Ya know, it feels more unfortunate every day
What a coincidence we all just moved to the EU
I wouldn’t be very welcome there but I can dream.
I think the one who replied meant you install your PC as if it’s in an EU country. Language settings are independent of “location”. For example, I’m Dutch, but use UK English as a language. Time, keyboard, currency and other values etc. are following dutch standards though.
You can use your real location as a secondary timezone forvexample.
Might I ask why
According to user name I’d say because he’s Russian? I can’t speak for everyone, but people I know have nothing against ordinary Russians. It’s those in charge (i.e. Putin and his boys) that took the Russian nation hostage that everyone hates.
You’re in a minority then, because the Russophobia is real and in full gear.
It’s due to the war (obviously). War does that to society. Look how much Americans and Germans hated each other but 70 years later there is not one bit of hate between the cultures.
It will take time but if the war in Ukraine ever ceases, a few decades from now people in Russia and the west will eventually make amends. That is of course if a non authoritarian government succeeds in Russia. Which doesn’t seem all that likely.
Wait why? I thought perogi was polish
They are
I’m inside, living where I was born. Still not welcome…
Now we just need a version that comes without bloatware and the windows 2000 theme
I’m assuming that just hopping on a VPN that exits in Europe is not enough to do this right? You probably have to do a fresh install and say that your location is in the EU?
Changing region probably would be enough and no reset / reinstall is necessary, but we will see.
Doubt your IP location matters because if I am from EU and I travel to USA, MS should guarantee same compliance to EU laws.
Yes
Good. Now make it be uninstalled by default.
Or even better: split MS up. And a bunch of other large companies also.
Yeah Microsoft way to big
Stupid Edge uses like 2-3 gb on my PC, then it says “you have insufficient data, free up space”
Meh, I purged windows from my systems last month. I will never be forced to (re)install Edge, use the garbage search, or link my pc to a gd Microsoft account again. I’ve had enough of Microsofts bullshit.
Luckily you don’t need Window$. You can install Edge on your Linux distro of choice! Will it then show warnings telling you Edge is the bestest browser when you use it to search for another browser? Who knows, why not try it and find out??? ^please someone use Edge on Linux, Micro$oft is now a friend of Linux^
Ironically people do actually use Edge on Linux. Beats me lol.
At least they actually got to choose which browser they wanted.
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I’d rather uninstall Chrome, TBH. If you need a Chromium browser, Edge is just better. And Bing is about as good as Google for most searches. Only a handful of things (like default maps) do I switch for. Which is honestly staggering because Bing used to be such shit in comparison. Google has really let itself go.
The point isn’t so much in which browser you’ll prefer to use at the end of the day (that’s on you as a consumer to decide), but being able to decide which browser to have installed on your PC in the first place.
I used to feel this way, but the aggressiveness at switch Edge pushes every new feature - re-enabling after disabling, constant nags, etc - has really turned me off of it. It’s become software I regularly have to argue with.
It doesn’t help that out of the box, Edge feels like a browser that my grandmother would have maintained (with so many glued on hotbars/sidebars/shopping popups).
Edge is bloated as fuck, just opening it for the first time prompts you with a 3 step dialog you can’t close about how Microsoft value your privacy and which setting you should choose.
Microsoft cares about my privacy?
Since when do they care about privacy?Ever read 1984 ? War is peace, etc. I didn’t mean to say Microsoft care about privacy, I meant they pretend.
About 20 years ago, Microsoft was found guilty and convicted, because they forced their browser on their users, driving out competitors by abusing their de facto monopoly on PC operating systems. These days, they are doing the exact same thing again, just on an even broader base. I don’t even understand how this verdict took so long.
The behaviour required of you when you have a monopoly is different when you don’t.
These days IE isn’t a monopoly. Chrome is. So Microsoft is allowed more leeway to nudge its users.
This isn’t a verdict. There’s been no court case. This is Microsoft complying with EU regulation, which is very recent. Microsoft has responded to it quite quickly.
It makes perfect sense once you understand that regulators have only cared about stock prices for the last 40 years. The EU coming down on giant corporations is a new development
Only because we don’t have any tech giants, we’ve slept on it so we get the money this way and try to slow down others until we figure shit out.
You can see that we don’t care about consumer that much in markets we’re strong.
It’s just lobbyism
Yes you do. SAP is gigantic. You just don’t hear about it because they’ve infected every business instead of being a consumer-oriented brand.
Lol this is asinine.
America let their tech companies get too big to the point that they are all behaving ridiculously anti-competitively, and you think the solution is that the EU should have let their companies get so big that they behave anti-competitively?
This is the EU steeping in to clean up America’s mess when it spills over to them.
Yes, if only the rest of the world would be so selfless.
Your simplification of the issues to steer this into your preferred narrative and conclusion is also asinine. The EU power broker’s hands weren’t getting their share of the bribes and are punishing orgs that didnt realize that the corruption they take part in is everywhere. Corruption in EU countries is old world corruption and is just part of the system bottom to top. Nobody has clean hands.
Your simplification of the issues to steer this into your preferred narrative and conclusion is also asinine.
It’s always projection.
You really have less than zero idea of what you’re talking about, this is actually hilarious.
Checkmate, amiright.
I impaled your heart with my mighty sword, peasant; And all that solemnly using but my words. Words… Forged in the gaping depths of my unending intellect, sharpened with rigorous studies, and honed through years of practice. You can only hope to reach the heights of my wit.
tip of my hat turn to the beautiful maiden on my side
M’lady, I’m sorry that you had to witness this murder. Shall we?
make passionate love to my queen
Lol, try again number 24.
I’ll shake the piss hand over the shit hand any day.
Demand reparations for Netscape Navigator!
The fucking sad thing is, when they did it 20 years ago Internet Explorer became the gold standard. Now they are pushing super hard, annoying users, killing competition and they have a tiny market share. They aren’t getting anywhere, just being assholes because they don’t know how not to be.
Edge is just a Chromium build with more manageability for enterprise use.
Which is a problem, because Chromium is becoming a monopoly too. Safari and Firefox have a small marketshare and Google is abusing their power
“They” (collectively large lobbying corporations) own the US government.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture Read all about it
Because Apple saw that and said “hold my beer”.
It’s about time he did.🙏
This need to be applied to smartphones
Imagine phones coming with a clean Android with the ability to install Google Play Services like a normal app 😌.
And documention to port other operating systems or new Android versions.
The closest thing is Fairphone. Also, unfortunately, only available in Europe.
It’s actually sold in the USA /e/OS through Murena https://murena.com/america/shop/smartphones/brand-new/murena-fairphone-4/
Fairphone has made it pretty clear that they have no plans of selling future versions in the U.S. though. They allowed Murena to sell their older Fairphone 4, but the 5 and later versions seem likely to be EU only.
(The EU radio hardware makes EU versions incompatible with U.S. networks, in case anyone was thinking of trying to import one anyway)
Where has this been made clear? Also, I’m using the fp4, it’s perfectly up to date with current needs and probably will still be in 5 years.
While they haven’t made an official statement on their website, they have indicated in interviews that they don’t have any plans to have an official presence in the U.S. This is why a third party company (like Murena) would need to import the phones and handle customer service here.
They also have no plans for the 5 to be altered to function on U.S. networks, making it clear their latest model is not intended for use in the U.S. There is no indication Fairphone has plans to move into the U.S. market. They seem pretty content where they are currently.
Fairphone comes with standard Android? Unlocking the Fairphone to get a de-googled Android is easy for someone somewhat technically inclined.
My understanding was that the entire point of Fairphone was not to be under the thumb of a corporation and that would allow us to use our device how we want for as long as we want. If it is designed to be married to a corporation, that makes me distrust Fairphone as well.
In a way it does, but by default it comes with a fairly standard android. It’s more about the hardware modules and repairability than about the software.
Standard Android sounds fine to me. That’s to be expected. Bloatware would be unexpected.
No bloatware that I can recall!
My Fairphone had a far from clean android install.
Really? The Fairphone has bloatware on it? Can it at least be removed easily?
Why can’t we just have nice things like basic phones and printers without a bunch of fucking trickery?
Bloatware consisting of default apps and google play store. Not what I’d call bloatware.
Ahh. That all sounds fine to me.
Same, but after unlocking the bootloader, it had a very clean LineageOS install.
Now imagine your boomer aunt trying to sideload an app store on her new phone
This could be a common knowledge everyone has. Like inserting a SIM card and entering a PIN, this also had to be learned.
And not sideload. Install.
Maybe your family is smarter than mine, but none of my 60ish aged aunts or uncles have learned to install a sim. They have the store do it, or their kids, or struggle through the instructions the carrier sent then complain about it for 3 weeks and forget it by the next time it comes up.
Sideloading is a form of installing and it applies in this case. Its also a lot to ask of the sort of people who will turn on their new device and say things like “it’s says to enter my email address, what should I put?”
A modern consumer OS should come bundled with everything a typical user needs pre-installed. That includes an app store and a browser. The “knows enough to be dangerous” types should be free to remove it. That seems like a good compromise to me.
You just described GrapheneOS, by far the best mobile operating system IMO
Shame it, by sensible design, only works on Pixels.
Because Pixels are the only Android phones with reasonable hardware design (in regards to security)
Where is this coming from? Do you have any sources?
Pixels have many hardware security features that can’t be found on any other Android phone. Examples are the Titan M2 chip, which uses the Android StrongBox and Weaver API, Insider Attack Resistance and hardware attestation. It enables a strong implementation of Android Verified Boot. On many other Android devices, Verified boot is insecure or entirely broken. Pixels are also the only phones on the market with hardware memory tagging.
I highly recommend this section of the GrapheneOS FAQ and this video.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
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Just read my other comment https://lemmy.world/comment/8376049
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They are working on it (or it is part of the DMA) to enable users to uninstall preloaded apps.
Linux phone when?
Already exists but not in a good shape for “normie” use
normie Linux phone when?
On the year of linux
