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I can’t believe a paid OS needs a tool like this. Here’s a GUI tool called OFGB (Oh Frick Go Back) to remove all the ads in Windows 11. It’s understandable if a free OS or app needs ad support, but this is just crazy github.com/xM4ddy/OFGB
[Screenshot Of a GUI Tool To Removes Ads From Various Places Around Windows 11]
Conditioning everyone to see their computers as media consumption kiosks instead of the powerful, productive machines they are. That’s where MS OSes are headed. They tried too early with Windows 8 Metro, but they haven’t lost sight of that concept.
“My TV shows ads so it’s only natural my computer does too.” - I bet a lot of people already think like this.
Pretty soon it’ll want to use your idle cpu net and disk for undisclosed purposes as part of the EULA.
The Telemetry collection service does a good job of that already, especially on laptops where it wakes them from sleep, and eats through the battery while idle in a backpack. I’ve been stung by this many times since Windows 8 - I now unplug then hibernate my last remaining Windows laptop, work-issued.
Also moved as much personal gear as possible over to various Linux distros a while ago, except my PC where some games cannot detect my sim peripherals & freetrack emulation under WINE
I want to make a script for Linux that adds ads everywhere. It would be tricky with Wayland but not impossible. It could start by installing browser extensions.
If they were fake ads like in GTA and Cyberpunk, it could be fun, provided you could turn them on and off anytime.
I’ll use the Google Ad platform
From there I’ll encrypt all your files and make you watch an ad per file to access your data
Na just throw ads into system logs. Or do what Ubuntu does and throw an advert every time you run apt upgrade.
Makes me wonder how long till video game load screens are sold as ad space.
NBA 2K has had ads in it for a while, though I can’t remember if they’re specifically in the loading screen or not.
I think EA also did this with the ad boards around the pitch in FIFA one year IIRC
I mean there does have to be something there and while I prefer charities, fake companies or promoting your own products, if they’re not targeted and realistic so you see eg. Ethiad ads while playing as City I don’t think that’s too bad… But on loading screens, menu screens or as popups gtfo, even if it’s your own product
Makes me wonder how many seconds till they realise the users won’t be able to tell if the game is still loading or it’s just monetised delay. Bonus points if a user finds out, lobbies to get it banned and then they just include bullshit extra processing to justify it.
The future looks so bright.
If its a pc game people will just find a way to turn that off and tell everyone else how to do it.
You can turn off stuff that the programmers allow you to through a settings menu (that they wrote), configuration files (that they make their program to read) or fiddling 3rd party stuff that it’s using (like your driver settings, external libraries, etc.).
Similarly to how GTA V’s (could be GTA Online) extreme loading time was caused by a very inefficient way of loading data. Users couldn’t change the algorithm themselves; they could investigate what was going on, but the developers were the only ones being able to actually change it to a recommended version.
Obviously the story is a bit different with an open source code which you can compile for yourself.
https://finalfantasyxv.fandom.com/wiki/Cup_Noodles
They also had a bunch of Coleman camping gear as a major feature of the game.
As ad placement went, I thought it was kinda charming and cute. More like a goofy Superbowl ad than an obnoxious “BUY ME NOW!!!” splash screen or pop-up insert. But I’m glad the latest FF7 Remakes didn’t continue this trend.
they used to call this malware
If its pre-installed, its typically called “Bloatware”.
And I remember having bloatware on my machine going back to the 90s. The first really high quality gaming computer I got was a Sony Vaio and it had tons of bullshit excess software I had to mop out of it before I was ready to really use it.
How the heck did those tools developers figure out how to remove those various ads in windows? Did they do it the hard way, fired up a debugger to reverse engineer how those ads were displayed? That takes some dedication. We in the Linux land have it easy because the source code is available to mess with.
It’s not difficult. Corporations won’t put up with this shit and MS knows it, so there are (almost) always documented registry entries or GPO policies you can set to disable this crap.
But you shouldn’t fucking have to. Which is why I’m now on Tumbleweed instead of Windows for my daily driver.
Couldn’t M$ make corporations deal with it anyways? It’s really not like they could just switch to Linux or Mac with their very specific BS piece of software of which every company has their own that runs on Windows only.
They could try but anything over a medium size business likely has a specific contract with Microsoft and they probably have language preventing this kind of thing. I know my company does. And there would be a ton of pushback from any security org that knows what they are doing, since ads are a common vector for security incidents.
Microsoft is already getting their money from the corpos, it’s the ‘freeloading’ public they are trying to squeeze revenue from.
This is the third reference to the tumbleweed distro I’ve read today. Sounds like I have a new VM to set up!
