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Even when told not to, Windows 10 doesn't stop talking to Microsoft

arstechnica.co.uk

231–240 of 267 posts

Re: Even when told not to, Windows 10 doesn't stop talking to Microsoft

#231
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look. Seriously. I don't want to be a brat, but what is the possible overlap between people caring to use Tor (for whatever reason) and people using Windows 10 as the host OS ? You're at the absolute cutting edge of spyware-in-the-home, defective by design, obscured infrastructure that was designed from the ground up to be user hostile in every conceivable dimension. And you're going to run Tor on that. There's a phr…

Look. Seriously. Like, totally. Not everyone interested in Tor is educated enough to reinstall an OS. Or they need Windows for something else they do. Or 50 other things. Or maybe we're concerned about VPN leakage, or any other thing than tor that we might use to obfuscate traffic.

The fact that you run Windows as the OS on your computer means you are not very interested in anonymity or security. Other things are more important. like playing Fallout 4.

Those people make Tor worse for everyone.

Re: Even when told not to, Windows 10 doesn't stop talking to Microsoft

#232
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I don't know what it's doing, how can I trust it? It's not enough to examine software: if you don't trust the company , then anything they say or promise is worthless. Automatic updates can change anything, including the TOS! This is the same company that sells a 1984-Telescreen (XBox) with an always-on camera and microphone. _NSA shouldn't be forgotten. Oracle likes to tout Java as GPL, but what does that matte…

What shouldn't we forget about _NSA?

I think he meant _NSAKEY [0].

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY

Re: Even when told not to, Windows 10 doesn't stop talking to Microsoft

#233
post #151
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone remember the MS "gmail man" ads mocking the way Google inspects your email Yes, and they were widely mocked. Privacy fears don't really sell, especially when deployed 10 years too late by a company that is the definition of "establishment".

This is the difference between the HN audience and the general audience. In general, the average user doesn't care about privacy or security at all. I develop a network virtualization product, and I spent a ton of time on security aspects of it. Sometimes I feel like that time might have been wasted, because it has thousands and thousands of users and so far not one single person has inquired about anything related t…

Security is like air, you don't even realize its there until its gone.

Re: Even when told not to, Windows 10 doesn't stop talking to Microsoft

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Up1 uses client-side crypto, so in this instance it is. No real point here though, but I use ShareX with it, and it's nice to be able to deliver screenshots and stuff like this privately.

> Up1 uses client-side crypto, so in this instance it is. What crypto? I didn't provide any key, so both the content AND the key came from the same place. Looks like completely useless crypto.

You did in fact provide a key. See that bit after the # in the URL? This is the beauty of Up1. It makes the crypto as transparent to the user as possible.

That part is not sent to the server by your browser. That's a seed, it's run through sha512 then split into parts, including a key, iv and filename to fetch from the server.

Now, as I said, in this instance, since I distributed the link on a public website, it's pretty pointless. But when I link my friends and colleagues on a private XMPP server or via textsecure, it's a pretty nice feature to have, as I can very easily share private screenshots.

Re: Even when told not to, Windows 10 doesn't stop talking to Microsoft

#235

I got a refurbished HP Stream 11 for $120 (Groupon) and spent 3 hours upgrading to Windows 10. I then installed Chrome and LibreOffice. It works fine, but, with all these privacy invasions, I see no reason to use it. My Acer C720 Chromebook (upgraded to a 128GB SSD) with Crouton and Ubuntu 14.04 is much more useful to me.

This is totally off topic, but, if you don't mind sharing, what SSD did you get? I have the same Chromebook running Arch, but it has been idling since I got something else. I really want to upgrade it and start using it again.

Re: Even when told not to, Windows 10 doesn't stop talking to Microsoft

#236
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android wasn't fork of OpenJDK

but Dalvik was.

No, Dalvik is not a fork of OpenJDK, but a clean room implementation. If it would have been a fork, then Google would be protected by the GPL license.

Re: Even when told not to, Windows 10 doesn't stop talking to Microsoft

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you told them nonsense. http://www.zdnet.com/article/does-windows-10-really-include-...

Labeling anything inconvenient to the narrative as a "conspiracy theory" is so 1990s. Also, your link does not appear to have been updated on Jul. 29 when the author says the final release should have been available. The Ars Technica article we are discussing is from today, Aug. 13, while the ZDNet article is from almost eight months ago (Jan. 27).

The article we are discussing says nothing about a keylogger.

Re: Even when told not to, Windows 10 doesn't stop talking to Microsoft

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume from your answer, that you do use it for professional purposes?

Yes but not on recommendation. In fact the majority of what I do these days is legislative compliance and bringing teams and applications back onshore that the companies have fucked up. Currently digging a financial company out of a royal mess of 20 years of bad technical leadership leading to sprawling infrastructure and cloud dependencies.

Oh wow. This is a tough task.

In your experience, what are the "worst" cloud dependencies? I'd imagine SalesForce and AWS would have very different impact?

Re: Even when told not to, Windows 10 doesn't stop talking to Microsoft

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but not on recommendation. In fact the majority of what I do these days is legislative compliance and bringing teams and applications back onshore that the companies have fucked up. Currently digging a financial company out of a royal mess of 20 years of bad technical leadership leading to sprawling infrastructure and cloud dependencies.

Oh wow. This is a tough task. In your experience, what are the "worst" cloud dependencies? I'd imagine SalesForce and AWS would have very different impact?

Money is good though so that's some consolation :)

Salesforce is the root of all evil. Once you're in the ecosystem, you're stuffed. You know it's bad when the entire business team start running round clucking when the EMEA salesforce instance goes down hard...

AWS is fine. Most of the platform's concepts have real world parallels for example.

Re: Even when told not to, Windows 10 doesn't stop talking to Microsoft

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand your opening para. Either way, I don't think defective software has anything to do with it. Microsoft keeps writing new versions for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with defects. Some are to add useful functionality, or ease of use, or to keep up with a changing world. Some are essentially changes in fashion. A quick google.... Windows 10 review: Why the new Start menu, Edge browser, n…

I don't understand your opening para. Either way, I don't think defective software has anything to do with it. That seems where we disagree. With other kinds of product I buy, at least in my country, there are consumer protection laws about the being of sufficient quality and fit for their intended purpose. If a product doesn't live up to those standards, I am entitled by law to have the situation put right or compen…

> My point is that providing a reasonable degree of support is not really optional for them and they are not really being generous in providing it.

Compared to who?

They're selling Home OSes for roughly $10 to $40 (sometimes free with Bing) and even a trivial support incident costs 2x to 3x revenue.

Further, most people have never actually bought anything from Microsoft. They "buy" it from the PC manufacturer, who is actually responsible for supporting their product.

> I'm not sure how much credibility I'd give reviews from that kind of source.

They're the sources most people use.

"Windows 10 laptop reboot loop" doesn't apply as it came after the launch; "Windows 10 WiFi Sense security" just shows a lot of ignorance, and "Windows 10 search" doesn't show anything very much. Paranoia, maybe? I looked that one up on Google, which probably now means "sending personal information to Alphabet without my consent".

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