An app called Dark Sky came out, powered by Forecast.io. Several months ago they rebranded the service to DarkSky.net which continues to power the Dark Sky app, along with other 3rd party apps like Forecast Bar.
In my experience, macOS has similar tricks. I got notifications for "Discover Safari!" even though Chrome was my default browser. Similarly, I got repeated prompts to upgrade to Sierra, which is just as much an "ad" as what you describe.
This is a service I've written to send push NWS severe weather alerts for iOS apps (for now). It also allows you to set a time of day to get a daily forecast powered by Dark Sky over push. I'll be launching it soon, but wanted to see what you all think or recommend!
Living in Mountain View and driving with Google's self driving cars every day, I have to say I think they are quite a bit further than you give them credit and those conditions appear to be less limited than you are letting on here.
They do well in rain but snow remains a problem, not due to icy roads (at SXSW Chris Urmson said they do well on slick roads) but that the "better than GPS" LIDAR-based location tracking stops working when snow is on the ground.
The car simply cannot figure out where it is when there's a significant layer of snow on the ground because the reference maps stop looking like what the car is seeing.
I was expecting to see a far higher figure. 2Gbps for $300 is certainly high, but not a joke in and of itself. What was the main intention of this law? If it was to spur higher bandwidth connections, it did so. If it was to lower costs, it seems obvious there should have been a cost factor to the law.
What is the harm done? Of course you don't "own" your operating system. You also paid nothing for it. I also struggle to grasp the double standard of why Google, Facebook, et al are able to endlessly track and personalize ads, but when Microsoft follows a similar model, there is outrage.
The argument that Win10 is free won't hold for much longer, it's only 'free' if you upgrade from Win7 or 8. It's already being sold retail in stores for a similar price to the old versions. And from later this year, people will have to pay for upgrades too.
On the flipside, you don't "own" your software anyway, you own a license to use it (EULA).
The double-standard probably has something to do with the ability to block most of Google's ads and tracking, or use another search platform if you really want. This is the OS on top of which you'll be using all of your other software (web platforms included), and it's impossible to control what is going on in the background.
While I agree with the difference, it should still be possible to block these types of ads with some kind of firewall. Unless the OS is blocking the blocking at a lower level (which I'd be VERY surprised by), something like Privoxy and using that as the system proxy for http[s] should be able to knock these out if they're loaded dynamically. I haven't tested this, so it would require some inspection and network monitoring to figure out what's serving these. Some hosts file entries may even be enough.
I think that's different because you are subverted the OS's attempts to advertise to you. Most people are not willing to go to this level. Changing search engines is not subverting Google, it's just not using their product.
I expect to own my operating system in the same way that a tenant owns the interior of building. The landlord cannot walk into the home uninvited. The landlord cannot install cameras or listening devices in the home. As Justice Roberts said in Riley v. California (which also applies to computers, surely), "Modern cell phones are not just another technological convenience. With all they contain and all they may reveal, they hold for many Americans 'the privacies of life.'"
>I expect to own my operating system in the same way that a tenant owns the interior of building. The landlord cannot walk into the home uninvited. The landlord cannot install cameras or listening devices in the home.
Yeah, and I want a unicorn that farts rainbows.
If you continue to use Windows, you're going to get all kinds of uninvited stuff you don't want. The question is, what are you going to do about it? Sit around a whine?
Personally, I love this stuff, and I hope MS makes it so people can't disable it, and even requires that all Windows PCs must be connected to the internet at all times to phone home, or else they stop working.
> I'll assume from the downvotes that some people want to pretend that pattern-of-life data isn't valuable
I'm pretty sure it's from people who either payed for Windows and just got a free upgrade, or who directly bought Windows 10. Computers with "free" Windows obviously also have the price of Windows factored in. The closest you get to free Windows is with Dreamspark (their MINT student program), and even that costs money for the university.
Like many in posts in this thread, the "free" I was replying is the Win10 upgrade. Unlike previous upgrades that cost money, many people instead had to pay for that upgrade in data.
Obviously Windows is sold in other forms, and new pre-built computers still have a Windows Tax.
