[causi]

Just because they’re singing sweet songs now doesn’t mean they’re fundamentally different.

Frankly I think it's only because Google, Facebook, et al. invented new kinds of evil too fast for Microsoft to keep up that they seemed warm and fuzzy at all. They're still the company that force-upgraded users to Windows 10, and they're still the company that's requiring you to have a Microsoft account for future versions of Windows 11.

[simion314]

And they are the company that bought Skype, forced me to create Microsoft accounts and then mess things up, now they boutght Minecraft and I just receive an ultimatum to switch my Mojang account to a Microsoft account. F U MS, can't you let me login with existing shit,.

On a different topic, I am using some MS APIs at work (TTS stuff) and my impression of this MS products is bad, it feels like different teams that hate each other were forced to work on this shit and some other team is forced to cover it up with documentation. I don't recommend MS stuff if you have alternatives.

[moron4hire]

What are you talking about? Microsoft's Text-To-Speech APIs are the best on the market. Google's are definitely a distant second: not as many languages, not as many voices, and the output is nowhere near as good. After those two, there isn't really anything left worth mentioning.

[simion314]

I am talking about they have one documentation but if you look deeper there are 2 products, thay say here are 2 options long and short API , but look closer and see one uses names like "Name", "Voice" the other "name", "voice" , the list of voices of this 2 options are not the same , and you randomly get weird errors with shit message that will solve themselves in the next few days. If my memory is correct you authenticate in2 different ways.

So I would prefer MS do this;

1 this is our 2 completly different and incompatible APIs , they might look similar but are not the same, outpiut can differ even if you send same params to each one

2 give me good error messages, like if is your fault a request fails make it clear , if is my input the problem make it clear it is me and what is wrong

[moron4hire]

I mean, there's the old Windows-only SAPI from the Windows XP days that they haven't been developing for several years now, and the current Azure Cognitive Services, which is just a REST API with a pretty standard auth scheme. There's an official .NET package for wrapping that REST API, but it's certainly not necessary to use it if you know how to handle REST APIs. Is that what you're talking about?

[simion314]

Yes, the Azure API, there are 2 different things under the hood, the short and login APIs, that are different names, different auth headers, different voices supported, voices with same name that have different styles supported. Bad errors messages that popup and get fixed in a few days but only on one of the APIs. The issue is that I am trying to combine the short and long APIs in one product and I am hitting this big inconsistencies, I see lcearly there are 2 teams and do things different , if you use only one section you have a completly different experience.

Edit. I do the REST calls directly, not via an SDK and use the documentation from MS for the REST API so no SDK documentation or SDK code that hides the issues.

[causi]

Microsoft's Text-To-Speech APIs are the best on the market.

Wow, I had no idea they were that good. Is there a way to get at them from a consumer level? For example, there are plenty of e-reader apps that use Google's TTS to read epub books as audiobooks. Anything similar for Microsoft or is it all on the developer side?

[zidad]

You can just try it out here from the browser if you like:

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-service...

[causi]

That's a good demo, but it isn't much use for making audio content from ebooks.

[hobo_mark]

Transcribing an entire ebook this way is going to be _expensive_.

[AshamedCaptain]

They have basically been licensing L&H then Nuance until they bought it outright.

[stickfigure]

I don't understand this complaint. You want separate logins for every service? You can't even argue that there are privacy issues - these are now all part of the same company.

Separate logins incur a cost to both the service operator (who has to run multiple secure identity systems, build multiple 2FA systems, manage multiple customer service teams, etc) and the client (who has to remember multiple passwords). Consolidation of identity services is natural. One secure login is better than dozens of insecure ones.

Before you yell "password manager" admit that the average person doesn't even know what a password manager is. "Every user changes their workflow" is not a practical solution.

[tomrod]

> You want separate logins for every service?

In short: yes.

In long: I want separate logins for different domains. In no universe should Minecraft share a login service with Azure cloud engineering. And I shouldn't have to log in to use offline applications locally. And teams should support different logins for many accounts, like Slack figured out ages ago. By forcing changes to the login pattern for negligible to negative consumer benefit, it's clear Microsoft continues to be broken.

Microsoft and login services are terrible, and uniting them under one login to rule them all doesn't help.

[stickfigure]

You can create as many Microsoft logins as you like. If you want to separate Minecraft and Azure, go ahead. But there's no reason this requires separate authentication technology or infrastructure.

[simion314]

>But there's no reason this requires separate authentication technology or infrastructure.

Only if you are Microsoft replacing working login system with a new one costs zero.

But as a user you have no reason to change and many reasons not to do it, especially if you experienced already issues from the Skype account migration issue and you seen the news where giants ban your account for shitty reasons , so now I might lose my MS account access if my son somehow gets banned in Minecraft.

But you will say is more beautiful from an engineering POV to have one account to rule them all, my response is that is not as easy, I might already have 2 Skype accounts, 2 Minececraft accounts and 1 MS account that I use(MS might have created some other ones behind my back), it is ugly not beautifull.

What would have been beautiful maybe would have been from those smart devs to keep the old email and password login work and move their login server to Azure ,Windows and .Net if they are allergic to whatever Mojang uses, that is beautifull when dev changes help the users or don't screw with themn, changes that help devs are just for dev ego.

[stickfigure]

I don't really care, but I can only imagine that your opinion of what is "beautiful" doesn't carry much weight with the folks that have to build and maintain this shit.

[zimpenfish]

> You want separate logins for every service?

I want a separate login for Minecraft than for MS services, yes.

> the client (who has to remember multiple passwords)

I'd guess that the majority of Mojang accounts don't have a corresponding MS account already.

> "Every user changes their workflow" is not a practical solution.

But that's precisely what MS are enforcing - you have to migrate your Mojang account to an MS account.

[causi]

I'm talking about using your PC, not logging into Microsoft's online services. Using the same account for Microsoft's possessions like Xbox and Minecraft and Skype makes sense. That's fine. But you know something? Microsoft doesn't own my god damned computer.

[simion314]

This is a lame excuse, say what after the forced account migration is my pourchase invalid? Will Microsoft just drop the db table with my purchase and logins? Will they refuse to migrate people after?

No, they have to keep all that data and confirm even 2 years from now that I paid for this game and migrate my logins ,

Tell me know what is more expensive

1 Keep the Mojang logins for Java edition. do nothing

2 Write ton of code to force migrate Java edition players into the XBox ,Microsoft accounts.

It is not lke I can play from Linux PC with an XBox person multiplayer so there is Zero benefit for me, just some mangers and develoeprs at MS getting busy. They fucked up my skype account move so this is why I don't like when they are trying to move me to their shit account, Now what? when they block my MS account I lose Skype and Minecraft too?

[causi]

They fucked up my skype account move

Ah yes, the old "you had a Microsoft account you didn't know about so when we merged the two any contacts you didn't have on both accounts were permanently erased" trick. Happened to me.

[stjohnswarts]

Yeah, people like to block off parts of their life. It's not really that hard to manage accounts with password managers and saved sessions. Microsoft doesn't need to have everything at their greedy little fingertips to data mine.

[rob74]

Well in my book the order is still something like Google < M$ < Facebook < Amazon when it comes to "evilness". Not sure where I would rank Apple on that scale (and I also don't use Apple products a lot), so I left them out.

About Windows 11: I switched my home desktop PC to Linux when I upgraded it early last year. I still have Windows 8 lying around mostly unused on a partition, but since it's a 32 bit version I would have to do a complete reinstall, and most of the software I'm using (including most games, thanks to Steam) runs just fine on Linux, so I haven't worked up the motivation to do it yet. And stories like this don't really increase my urge to install Windows...

[Shared404]

> Well in my book the order is still something like Google < M$ < Facebook < Amazon when it comes to "evilness".

I find this an interesting order to think about. Amazon has directly lead to fatalities and ( I would describe as ) an abusive work environment, but Facebook I would say has done more harm on a larger "societal shift" scale.

I suppose just looking at direct consequences of actions, I agree with your assessment - Amazon knowingly builds itself of labor abuse, and Facebook can at least lie to themselves.

[fartcannon]

Apple and Microsoft are equals.

[justsomehnguy]

> requiring you to have a Microsoft account for future versions of Windows 11.

How quickly people forgot about mandatory iTunes activation...

> They're still the company that force-upgraded users to Windows 10

This is response for all those cries what MS should take the security of the OS seriously. No wonder what after a decade of disabled Windows Update on the endpoints (to conserve resources, to not to receive WPA update so a pirated copy would continue to work, so it wouldn't waste the precious Internet traffic and bunch of other ridiculous reasons) they took the forced approach.

[causi]

But that forced approach only worked on the people who had auto-update enabled. For people like me who had WU disabled it didn't affect me at all.

[justsomehnguy]

> For people like me who had WU disabled

...

Yes. This is the reason it is so hard to disable WU now. YOU are one of those reasons.

> forced approach only worked on the people who had auto-update enabled

Also I want to hear what kind of magic should they used to do that on people with WU disabled.

[vetinari]

There's a reason WHY people disabled WU. Microsoft might consider that, before going with heavy-handed approach.

[causi]

I would've been one of those people, if I'd ever had a security breach. At this point I've been saved so much time and hassle not putting up with Microsoft's nonsense I could spend a month dealing with a stolen identity and I'd still come out on top. Of course I'm not one of the numpties that runs untrusted JS in my browser or installs rando programs.

[justsomehnguy]

> Of course I'm not one of the numpties that runs untrusted JS in my browser or installs rando programs.

You, as the other people in this thread, are forgetting/don't think what 90% of the Windows userbase struggle to distinguish between a click and a double click.

Personally I'm not fond on how and where MS directs Windows for the last 8 years, but it's becames totally understandable when you take the sheer number (and ignorance/stupidity) of the userbase.

[robertlagrant]

Also the fact that WU breaks things. Might be worth considering that.

[teh64]

> mandatory iTunes activation

Did macOS ever have mandatory activation? Because I have used it for a long time and have never needed that. You need some way to get a new OS version, which was buying a new macOS version on a disk (back in the day), then on the app store, and then it was a free upgrade from the app store. But you never needed an account to run the actual OS.

[justsomehnguy]

iOS, not OSX