No, not just Microsoft services or features (or subscription based software), ads for games and apps on their store get jammed in the start menu as well.
And as other commenters have pointed out, lots of budget phones and hardware jam ads all over the place.
I wouldn't be surprised if there was some light brigading going on from rivals. There's also some really lazy frontend devs out there that get indignant about testing on Firefox.
Chrome is the new IE and Google is the new Microsoft. They make up their own standards on a whim, which thanks to market dominance everyone is forced to follow. They collect user data without permission. They waste computer resources. They push people towards other Google products in an anti competitive way.
Mozilla has made some dumb mistakes here and there but it pales in comparison to the very serious threat that Chrome, and Chromium in general has to the free web and to users.
It's worth noting that the complaints below have nothing to do with the article, which shows a pretty promising tech, and are just bagging out FF because just as you said, that's what happens on HN.
This is from Troy Hunt of Have I Been Pwned fame and I'm almost positive that even in the last year he still gets legal threats from companies that he contacts about embarrassing security risks.
It's always going to be something lightweight and probably tiling for me. Right now I'm using Sway because I'm doing the Wayland thing and I'm a sucker for /r/unixporn type desktops.
That being said eventually you end up with both the Gnome and KDE libraries anyway - plus a handful of Electron apps are unavoidable today.
It's actually an awful idea. The whole benefit of working for a large company is that you DON'T need to sacrifice outside of your 9-5. This is that outdated grind mentality that managers sell to convince people this is needed to get ahead before they hand out promotions to their mates anyway.
Secondly, and I don't mean to disrespect you in any way, but if you're self-taught, and your prior experience is one man jobs working on small sites then I wouldn't expect the quality of your code to be great. I would be wondering how much time it would take to ensure whatever you build is really readable, documented, fully tested, maintainable, in line with the company's current tech stack, performant and scalable.
The benefits of working at a large company is that they have products that run on massive code bases that are, for the most part, REALLY STABLE. They move slowly, but they also move surely. New code won't be scrappy and volatile. Old code can stagnate, but it's because it hasn't broken in years. All of these things are learning opportunities you can take with you even if you strike out to start/work at a startup.
THIS. Please ask your coworkers for help. If the company isn't a toxic shithole your colleagues will be happy to help out. Modern screen sharing, code pairing and mobbing tools have made doing this in a remote working environment incredibly easy, almost more so than in meatspace.
As for the massive codebase, try to specialise in an area and own it. Take lots of tickets around that module / namespace / whatever and you'll end up in a niche with lots of ideas about how to modernise, optimise or otherwise improve that code base, as well as teach you a lot about the companies coding standards and practices when you're ready to move horizontally into other parts of the code base. You will become trusted as an expert in that area and valued by your colleagues.
Large code bases are a reality in programming. All of your smaller app and websites are built on top of the massive code bases of your favourite JS frameworks, web servers and web browsers, which are built in operating systems that also have massive code bases. All of those code bases, by the way, started out small as well, and grew to meet bigger and more demanding requirements.
You are kneecapping your potential if you decide to stop at the software development equivalent of barre chords.
And yet modern advances point to tech bros trying to limit the USERS power of that internet.
It's already impossible for a lot of people to host their own web server from their home, to own the media they purchase without it potentially being erased by the vendor at a whim, to opt out of social media without a massive social (and professional) hit and computer power is being wasted on shitty electron apps and built-in OS adware.
Oh, on the subject of computer power being wasted, on a global scale it's being wasted on crypto, another attempt by a bunch of elitist executives to invent something that allows them to invent a new financial system in which they're still on top, but allows them to more easily commit tax evasion and money laundering.
All of our tech advances have largely been from massive companies trying to add scarcity to a system we invented that absolutely doesn't need it. Can't copy a MP3, can't copy an EXE, and now, you can't copy a JPG.
Yes, we do in fact have to participate in these dumbarse discussions. The choice to simply walk away from these things, particularly AS a tech worker, is bullshit artistry.
I'd be more optimistic about AR and VR if it hadn't been almost immediately monopolised by Facebook and Google. Now instead of actual creativity we get VR Walmart, using 3D UX decisions that game developers realised don't work in a 3D space back in 1997.
I've been jumping back into desktop Linux in a big way just because of this. It may be a big step backwards in usability, but there's the satisfaction of knowing that what you've got does exactly what you want, and nothing more.
No guarantees about the personal beliefs of the person/people running the forums, who seems to be the major blocker of this patch / discussing the patch.
And as other commenters have pointed out, lots of budget phones and hardware jam ads all over the place.
Premium hardware too (hello Smart TVs)