The main idea behind it is to improve the creation of tab groups for the user. The process is automated when the feature is used, which means that you do not have to create tab groups manually anymore and put tabs into them.
Edge sends information about all open websites to a Microsoft server when the option is selected. The AI processes the request then on the server and returns its suggestions after a moment.
While the automatic tab group creation features of Edge and Chrome look useful, privacy conscious users may want to skip those and create tab groups manually instead.
Having your entire list of open websites submitted to a company server without really knowing what is done with it and how it is stored outweighs the convenience of the feature.
I honestly just assumed this would more or less be happening all along, even pre-AI. Google and Microsoft are established Peeping Toms. If you care at all about privacy they should be avoided. (I type from my Android phone…)
because the other options are living like a caveman, or buying into a walled garden that will fuck you over every step of the way.
i don’t blame you. try to use as many privacy-respecting apps as possible though, once degoogled android becomes mainstream you can easily switch.
one could argue it already is, but many workplaces mandate the use of microsoft or google products. the monopoly/duopoly is real right now.
This is indeed the way. In my personal life I’m like 50-75% there: I run Linux on my primary computer, use Firefox and LibreWolf, self-host as much as possible, etc. But you’re right about the duopoly (triopoly, if that’s a word? If you consider MS, Google, and Apple as being the main gatekeepers to the average person’s technical experiences). As much as open-source and privacy-respecting alternatives have gotten vastly more accessible over the last decade or so, it still almost always requires effort and at least some technical knowledge on the part of the user. Sometimes at the end of the day I just want to chill out, so I pick my battles and approach this as a long-term, gradual process.
To your last point I’ll even admit that I’m part of the problem. In addition to some other roles I run IT for the small business I’ve worked for over the last decade+. About a year and a half ago the owners decided to retire and my family pooled our money to buy the business (a bunch of us had worked there a long time). Newly promoted to treasurer, I had the keys to the castle and could have used this as an opportunity to push for a paradigm switch in our IT to Linux. I didn’t though, because with all the other moving parts and major financial risks we were taking, it would have just been one more source of friction in an already -stressful time.
So, instead, I doubled down on the MS tax and moved us to MS365. The thing is, though, outside of two Windows-only apps (only one of which is mission-critical) 90% of what my users do is all browser-based and they probably wouldn’t even notice a difference in their OS. But, a) I didn’t want to waste the political capital when I had other priorities I wanted to push for with the new owners, and b) again - sticking with the status quo is just easier in the short term. The thought of teaching a new OS to a dozen non-technical admins and salespeople was just too much at a time when I was scrambling to make sure we could pay our bills. As the old adage goes, “no one gets fired for buying IBM.”
What makes this even more ridiculous is that, in part due to my lack of super-in-depth Windows admin knowledge, I ended up setting up a co-management agreement with an IT provider so I had a fallback option when my other duties kept me from responding to IT issues myself. The really crazy part, looking back, is that I regularly run into way more weird bugs on my Windows 11 work laptop than I do on my goddamn Arch desktop. Perhaps if I’d have just pushed for this back then, I’d have saved the company thousands of dollars in subscription fees - money which could have instead been spent on my main priority of raising wages. But, alas, the tech establishment is really good at marketing themselves as a turnkey solution (which really isn’t true).
Anyway, thank you all for coming to my Ted Talk.
Yeah… I went Apple to get away from Google, but now I’m looking at de-googled android options
Pretty shit all around. Almost like millions of wealthy and powerful people don’t want anybody to have private and secure phones.
the Fairphone 4 is supposed to work well without google, open camera even has access to the wide angle camera.
LineageOS, /e/OS, and ubuntu mobile seem to be popular options.
but of course everything google won’t work. that means almost all playstore apps as well. what a lame dystopia this is.
You can still get play store apps, if you must, on a de-googled phone using Aurora Store. You can bypass the safetynet attestation as well with some methods (used by things like banking apps). I’ve been using a google-free phone for a month now and after switching I reinstalled the apps I used the most (mostly through F-Droid), and then I created a separate profile solely for installing apps from Google Play (still through Aurora Store). It works well for me, I haven’t had a single issue. Maybe because I really only get 3-4 apps from Google Play, the rest is F-Droid.
that’s awesome to hear, my library of play store apps is still quite large and includes a number of games, which likely rely on google services.
once it becomes possible without missing out on much, i’ll switch for sure. i will do the same with linux btw.
for now, i’ll have to wait for the EU to pass more privacy laws.
I understand the Android/Google Services part, but you wouldn’t be losing much if anything with a just-works Linux distro. I switched to Linux from Windows way before de-googling. Before switching it seems like it’ll be a very hard thing to do. Getting replacements for your Windows programs to run on Linux (you can run Windows programs on Linux with Wine by the way, I even got a Microsoft game running), get used to the whole operating system etc. But it hasn’t been bad for me. I really really recommend just downloading Linux Mint (just a recommendation for coming from Windows. You can get any other just works distro. I started with Debian), putting it on a USB and just testing it out in the live environment. Then if you have a spare hard disk or ssd, you can dualboot it with Windows. That’s how I got into it, I deleted Windows after a few months and used the now free hard disk as an encrypted volume. I haven’t missed Windows at all, and I still do not. I’m glad that I’m not using some closed-source, data collector corporation owned software for my operating system, I hope you have success in this area.!
Same.
Even for gaming, switching all my desktops to Linux was a breeze.
It’s mobile im struggling with
i do already dual boot mint cinnamon edition on my computer, whenever i’m curious i’ll try to run a certain application. and most of the time it’ll work just fine.
i have problems with gaming, mostly. there was a time where fusion360 didn’t work vecause it required edge for login, but i believe it’s been patched.
i use a Trustmaster T300, a stream deck (which is “compatible”), and play some online games with anticheat. i get that there’s a runtime for battleye and easy anti-cheat alteady, but it’s (to my knowledge) impossible to play fortnite.
if i ever bought a laptop, i would install linux no problem. but my use case is in the very early stages of even being possible. believe me, i WANT to use linux. i just don’t want to create too much work passing through usb devices to a VM or rebooting just to play beam.ng.
a number of games, which likely rely on google services.
For ads, mostly. The vew i tried, one didn’t let you select start because of a bug with a missing ad frame (imagine!). The 4 or 5 others ran fine. Might look different with the 90% of games who want to rip ypu off. Payment ingame might rely on Google Services too.
I switched from MIUI (xiaomi android) to LineageOS a month ago now and my experience has only been better. There’s no google, it’s way less bloated compared to MIUI or any stock android so I think it’s actually faster. Though I must say that while it increases your privacy, it decreases the security of your phone because of having an unlocked bootloader but that’s mostly a concern for a threat having physical access to your device, and that’s something I’ve accepted. If you have or get a pixel phone then you can install GrapheneOS which is also very much secure while being google-free and high-privacy. I can’t buy a pixel so I’m with LineageOS right now. I highly recommend it, compared to Apple.
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Android doesn’t really have telemetry or privacy issues unless you use stock android from google.
What’s that, like 90+% of Android users?
Probably more like 99.99% if we are being honest. However this is a privacy community so in just this community its likely much lower.
Shifts nervously
For real though, I’ve been meaning to switch to a de-Googled variant but just haven’t found the energy. Baby steps.
I type from my not-Android and not-Apple phone.
Outstanding! I always wanted my browser to group my tabs based on my porn tastes! Doggy in one group, missionary in another, and GILFs too! Now I’ll never get confused when hunting through my open tabs!!
I use Tree Style Tabs addon for that.
Edge is also pulling in tabs from other browsers unprompted. How convenient.
https://www.theverge.com/24054329/microsoft-edge-automatic-chrome-import-data-feature
of course it does
Why are we making such huge steps backwards. Didn’t we get federated learned to reduce data collection like a decade ago?
FLoC was never designed to make you more private, just for Google to monopolize data collection. Anything that contributed towards privacy was mostly undone, and mostly unintentional.
I meant more on the tools side of things like https://www.tensorflow.org/federated/tutorials/federated_learning_with_differential_privacy
With Gboard being user of federated learning to reduce data leakage.
Well, it’s Microsoft Edge…
Sounds like really useful technology. Can we get it without exhibitionism now?
There’s pretty much no reason this has to be done on the cloud. For one example, just download a tab tree sidebar for Firefox. Either the stuff you see in it will be managed by the browser itself, or by something as simple as an extension.
Even calling this feature AI seems rather disingenuous on the part of Microsoft. It looks more like a way to grab data about you and about non-consenting websites…
I wonder if that is even legal in europe.
Chris Titus Winutil for the win!
