Thread

Dutch governments builds alternative for Microsoft based on NixOS

1021 points · 583 comments · fjfaase

askonomm · 1790329035 · focus · HN ↗
Any move away from the abusive big tech that exists in USA is a good move in my book. Microsoft just recently made a new patent where they will monitor you via camera and microphone to block your program/game to show you ads, and per ads viewed, you then earn credit to be able to use your program/game. It is absolutely wild to me how a corporation can be so toxic and abusive to its users and still be in business.
1. Thanemate · 1790330307 · focus · HN ↗
  > It is absolutely wild to me how a corporation can be so toxic and abusive to its users and still be in business.
  It's easy: The choice was made from someone else, and you just accepted it as normal. Hardware vendors shipping PC's with Windows 11, corporations who went all in to Microsoft's tooling shove Microsoft Teams down your throat because "the company uses it", and the list goes on.
  1. jacquesm · 1790332453 · focus · HN ↗
    I refuse to use 'teams', it's a pile of garbage and spyware to boot.
    not-my-team · 1790333980 · focus · HN ↗
    I recently found out that several researchers, departments... buy a personal subscription for zoom (out of the own project money) even as our university as a MS Teams subscription. Despite if it is effectively "free" for them, they do not use it. So much on public money spend wisely and the quality of the MS Teams software...
    jwrallie · 1790338337 · focus · HN ↗
    Can confirm, my boss has his own paid Zoom while I’m using Teams to save research money. Another assistant professor I know pay for Slack as well.
    I think Teams improved and Zoom regressed in the last 3-4 years to the point the garbage level is not that different nowadays. Most of the annoyance is related to finding your way in a different interface.
    Avoiding Office 365 is so annoying due to everyone in academia using it that I’m using macOS instead of Linux at work just to interface with others better. I got used to it but I need Linux as soon as I’m home, I feel observed and vulnerable otherwise.
    DanielHB · 1790338991 · focus · HN ↗
    I thought everyone on academia used LaTex, or at least in STEM?
    Are people really making hundred-pages thesises in Word?
    I suppose it is not that bad if you don't have a lot of charts/pictures/formulas, but still...
    lmz · 1790343021 · focus · HN ↗
    Not everything is papers and theses. Not an academic but I can imagine Excel being quite useful.
    mcv · 1790344265 · focus · HN ↗
    > I can imagine Excel being quite useful.
    As long as they use it for actual calculations, and not to maintain tables full of data.
    lmz · 1790349996 · focus · HN ↗
    A while back they renamed some gene names so they wouldn't trigger Excel's autocorrect: <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21355674/human-genes-rename-microsoft-excel-misreading-dates" rel="nofollow">https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21355674/human-genes-renam...
    mcv · 1790368739 · focus · HN ↗
    Not so much autocorrect, but Excel is very eager to interpret things as a date, which may be useful when you're dealing with dates a lot, but it disqualifies it for anything related to serious data.
    People also used it to collect COVID data during the pandemic, and a lot of data was lost because someone accidentally opened it in an older version of Excel.
    It's one of my pet peeves. Excel should not ever be used to maintain data. It's a fancy calculator.

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