Would you use Edge as your default browser on Windows 11 if Microsoft nags you with a 3D banner? Microsoft thinks you would. In a new experiment, which appears to be rolling out to Edge stable on Windows 11, Microsoft has turned on a banner that uses 3D graphics to promote the browser.

First spotted by Windows Latest, Microsoft has been testing the new 3D banner for a while now, but it’s now rolling out to more people. If Edge is not your default browser and you open it directly or through files like PDFs, a new banner will remind you to change your default browser settings.

The banner explains that using Edge as your default browser can help protect you from phishing and malware attacks. It asks you to confirm this change by clicking “Set default,” and then you need to confirm again in the Windows settings app.

The pop-up screen will appear after you install the new Windows updates. If you skip the banner, you’ll get another reminder to use Edge when you open the browser.

  • deweydecibel@lemmy.worldEnglish
    56·
    3 months ago

    In our tests, Windows Latest spotted that Microsoft plans to use ChatGPT to generate website suggestions, which will appear below the search bar.

    So needlessly wasting resources to provide something that already exists but you can market as AI?

    • androogee (they/she)@midwest.socialEnglish
      171·
      3 months ago

      How many ai “improvements” do you think are based on ideas generated by ai at this point?

      The answer is definitely not zero. Which is pretty fuckin weird, the more I think about it.

      • Richard@lemmy.worldEnglish
        41·
        3 months ago

        Unfortunately, there are plenty enough humans to come up with stupid shit like this.

        • oo1@lemmings.worldEnglish
          2·
          3 months ago

          yeah but ai means the same stupid ape can excrete 25 times the stupid shit in the same time period. That’s progress.

    • affiliate@lemmy.worldEnglish
      92·
      3 months ago

      if they use an LLM to make the suggestions then it’s possible it ends up suggesting websites that don’t even exist. or it could accidentally suggest a malware website, or make a typo, etc.

      this could be dangerous if they aren’t very careful

      • Mirodir@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        8·
        3 months ago

        Remember the people who created malicious libraries that ChatGPT made up and suggested, in the hopes someone would blindly install them? You can do this a lot easier here. Check what websites this tends to hallucinate when typing “google” “youtube” “facebook” etc. and if any of them don’t exist yet, register that address and host a phishing version of the corresponding site there.

  • cestvrai@lemm.eeEnglish
    541·
    3 months ago

    The only thing that could get me to switch back to windows would be an animatronic Clippy with LLM hallucinations dialed up to 11.

    • DannyMac@lemm.eeEnglish
      10·
      3 months ago

      “Hey, I see that it looks like you’re having fun and fun and relaxing in a few days so I don’t have a chance to get the remainder of the time in the past”

    • undefined@links.hackliberty.orgEnglish
      1·
      3 months ago

      There’s an old JavaScript library that brings Clippy to your web application. Hacking it to do this sounds like a fun weekend project.

  • kolorafa@lemmy.worldEnglish
    482·
    3 months ago

    Only [ Confirm ] and [ Set later ] in the dialog? No way to never set/change/cancel? Rapist mentality?

    • pyre@lemmy.worldEnglish
      13·
      3 months ago

      corporations are people when it comes to “free speech” (read: political bribes) but they aren’t when it comes to accountability. this is what happens when you don’t treat corporations like people and fucking jail them for shit like this.

      • SuperSpruce@lemmy.zipEnglish
        2·
        3 months ago

        So you’re saying I can get away with anything as long as I somehow legally declare myself a corporation?

        • pyre@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          3 months ago

          well i can’t give a definitive answer there; I’m just a bird lawyer

    • PowerCore7@lemm.eeEnglish
      12·
      3 months ago

      How about using M$ Edge on Linux? /s

      Seriously though, one of my friends uses Edge on Windows, Linux, and Android. I still couldn’t wrap my head around his decision.

      • undefined@links.hackliberty.orgEnglish
        1·
        3 months ago

        I used Edge on macOS for a spell when it first came out, but mostly for outdated websites that wouldn’t pass Safari’s security restrictions (mainly loading an iframe of a PDF without the Content-Type). Chrome on macOS at the time was a memory hog and went against my anti-Google stance.

        These days I’m no longer working in an industry 20+ years behind the times, but the application I developed does this work via containerized Selenoid anyway so users don’t have to bother with unmaintained shady web applications anymore.

    • wafflez@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      3 months ago

      I recently swapped and keep breaking my pc. Some people told me it’s a rite of passage. Do most people have this experience at the start or is it just Ubuntu or the newest version? When I get it booting back up again I’ll be trying to setup backups somehow

      • Cethin@lemmy.zipEnglish
        3·
        3 months ago

        What specifically is breaking and what are you doing with the system?

        Installing it and using it like normal shouldn’t break anything, but it is very easy to break things if you start tinkering. There are very few guardrails.

    • nate3d@lemmy.worldEnglish
      53·
      3 months ago

      Okay back that up: I just tried my third time in 5 years to run Linux as a daily driver for software dev work and gaming. I’m on an ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 2022 and I’ve never been able to fully get Linux working. Here’s my takeaways (and I really wanted Linux to work out fwiw):

      • No working mic until I added a modprobe and kernel taint to make the built-in mic and speaker work to “function” where the mic is unusable with background noise and the speaker volume control only changes the tweeters, not the subs - so no built-in audio AT ALL
      • Nvidia drivers - where to start… I’ve got an eGPU that I use as well and it’s a paperweight due to Linux+Nvidia support

      But sure proton is great! /s it’s only viable if the damn hardware works in the first place which Linux simply can’t do yet

      • psivchaz@reddthat.comEnglish
        9·
        3 months ago

        It’s the downside of open source: You’re at the mercy of companies that don’t care and developers who are primarily interested in the hardware they’re using rather than the hardware you’re using.

        The best experience is going to be hardware that’s built and certified for Linux. System76, Tuxedo, a bunch of other smaller names and the rare Dell or Lenovo. But that’s definitely not practical for everyone, or a good idea to convince people to buy new hardware for Linux.

        It’ll be a slow transition. The more enthusiasts hop on the bandwagon, the more manufacturers and hardware vendors will care about support. The more Microsoft keeps irritating their customers, the more companies will move away. The support will come, it’s been improving for a long time.

        All that said. I’d recommend CachyOS or PopOS if you get the urge to try again. I’ve tried a bunch of distributions and those seem to have the best focus on “just make consumer hardware work right out of the box.” That’s no guarantee of course, but it’s a start.

      • luciferofastora@lemmy.zipEnglish
        5·
        3 months ago

        I’ve got working Nvidia drivers without any tinkering. Gaming on my 3060 without issues. Never had microphone issues either. This isn’t supposed to be “You’re wrong”, more a “I wonder what I’m doing differently”.

        ASUS TUF GAMING B550 MoBo, AMD Ryzen 5600x, some Gigabyte version of the RTX 3060, running the Nvidia version of Nobara (Fedora-based gaming oriented distro).

        What distro did you try?

        • nate3d@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          3 months ago

          Tried Ubuntu, Drauger OS, Fedora, and Popos. It’s specifically the laptop hardware that’s giving trouble and as far as the drivers go it’s just really a mess because of X11 vs Wayland issues with Nvidia making it all the more difficult.

          Heres my current core issue: I need to run nvidia official drivers as the ones provided via open repos don’t support eGPUs/multi-gpu setups. The problem there is nvidia official drivers only support x11, so then I’m forced to used a sunsetting windowing system for my daily driver, which I just can’t bring myself to do.

          • luciferofastora@lemmy.zipEnglish
            1·
            3 months ago

            Ah, gotcha. Yeah, that’s one of those cases where you either add support yourself (provided you have the time, know-how - which most already don’t - and commitment) or wait until hopefully someone else does. Or - like me - you curse and go back to X11 until something gives you enouhh confidence to try Wayland again. I think I read somewhere on this platform that there will be (or was?) some Nvidia driver update that should help with Wayland support, but I haven’t looked into it.

            I don’t have much experience with laptop hardware. I did have one elderly laptop running Ubuntu, though it probably would have been served better with something more lightweight (I just didn’t know much about anything at the time). But that wasn’t doing anything intensive, just some Uni exercises. I think a simple neural network was the most challenging thing it ever had to handle.

    • Etterra@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      3 months ago

      Yeah if you have any idea how she it’s user friendly. Not the impressions I get.

  • sugartits@lemmy.worldEnglish
    341·
    3 months ago

    I remember when someone posted a joke Slashdot with a fake screenshot of Windows advising a user to switch away from Firefox and back to IE.

    Everyone lost their minds on what was an obvious joke. An unthinkable thing for Microsoft to do.

    Yet here we are…

    • dan@upvote.auEnglish
      20·
      3 months ago

      I moved from Windows 10 to Fedora/Debian recently. Dual-booting them until I figure out which one I want to use. I’ve used Debian on servers for 20+ years, but Fedora seems like a great distro too. I switched to Fedora at work too, and I’m enjoying it. At work, I can choose between a MacBook with MacOS, or a Lenovo ThinkStation or X1 Carbon / P1 with Windows or Fedora.

      The only Windows-specific app I really cared about was Visual Studio, but Jetbrains Rider is looking like a good replacement. I don’t really do any PC gaming any more.

      • barsquid@lemmy.worldEnglish
        13·
        3 months ago

        Both Fedora and Debian are excellent choices.

        I keep feeling compelled to suggest people try the atomic versions of Fedora. They do upgrades in a way that cannot get stuck halfway, and if the upgrade breaks something you can roll back. I think it’s neat.

        • dan@upvote.auEnglish
          4·
          3 months ago

          For desktop PC use, I think I’m liking Fedora more than Debian. The newer packages have been useful - Wayland seems less buggy for instance (thankfully I’ve got an AMD laptop, but unfortunately my desktop has an Nvidia GPU)

          I’ve thought about the Atomic version, but don’t really have much time to learn a lot of new stuff at the moment. How different is the workflow with the atomic versions vs the regular Fedora?

          • Amanda@aggregatet.orgEnglish
            3·
            3 months ago

            It depends. For development work it’s literally the same since you usually set up a container for each project that runs regular fedora. Otherwise you usually install software from flatpak.

            Installing system wide packages is possible but kind of annoying since they don’t activate until you reboot.

          • barsquid@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            3 months ago

            It’s not wildly different IMO, but yeah it is different enough that you might not be interested.

            Installing system packages means layering a commit on top of your base distro, so they urge most CLI stuff to be done in containers. GUI apps tend to be installed as Flatpaks, that part might be familiar.

            If you’re mostly working with Rider and can easily set it up to work with dev containers, the learning curve might not be too steep.

    • Swarfega@lemm.eeEnglish
      10·
      3 months ago

      They pushed me to Linux (Arch btw).

      They aren’t targeting people like me though. They are targeting people like my wife that doesn’t read what she clicks and just accepts it.

      Microsoft are being really very pushy to get people to use Edge.

  • xep@fedia.io
    271·
    3 months ago

    What is 3D about the banner? The mouse cursor graphic?

  • wispydust@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    211·
    3 months ago

    I get that Edge may not be the preferred browser of many, but calling this a “3D banner” seems a bit sensational at best. It’s just clipart of an arrow.

  • andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    14·
    3 months ago

    I have a dream of that time when small MS’s changes won’t get media coverage because even tech journos will not use the latest Windows release anymore.

  • rob200@lemmy.cafeEnglish
    176·
    3 months ago

    Microsoft could care less about your PCs resources when you’re idk, playing some 4k or even 8k video games. What a joke, but for real, if any of you use WIndows at home and don’t want to jump straight to Linux. You can (temporally jump over to Chromebooks, which will mostly work out of the box, and has support for Linux apps.

    Chromebook’s I would argue are perfect for getting users use to Linux apps without having to worry about losing any familiarity they might have with Something like WIndows or Mac.