Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#131

Post by solidninja » Thu, Jan 07, 2016, 6:24 PM UTC

Aleman360 wrote: post #71

LesZedCB wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And worse is that the only reason I have windows in the first place is to play games. I don't need to do anything else on it, but I have to have it in my life because big game companies will not make games for linux. Hell, I'm so excited for Oculus Rift, but at this point they have even dropped Mac support (understandably, they don't have the graphics power), so if I want to experience VR currently, I'm completely li…

Valve knows how many times you launch a game, how much time you spend in a game, who your friends are, your spending habits...

Which is fine by me - I consciously choose to boot into my gaming PC and start up Steam. My gaming friends are a small fraction of my friends. And spending habits are pretty easy as well - basically whenever there is a major Steam sale. And you are still able to play a lot of games offline.

My point with the above is that the risks are far less than with a general purpose operating system. How can I ever trust Windows as a platform for running the Tor Browser on? How could I trust any closed system?

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#132

Post by soylentcola » Thu, Jan 07, 2016, 6:30 PM UTC

michaelbuddy wrote: post #129

andrewchambers wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you don't need winrar, 7zip is far better.

can 7-zip reassemble those split rar files where you get r01, r02 and so on?

Yep. I just ran across one of those .rars the other day and was surprised that it wouldn't decompress properly. Then I realized I hadn't tried to unzip one of those on that particular computer in a long time and my version of 7zip was just really out of date. Updated to the current version and it worked fine.

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#133

Post by soylentcola » Thu, Jan 07, 2016, 6:34 PM UTC

thecatspaw wrote: post #32

holografix wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried changing the default search engine? It's SIGNIFICANTLY convoluted. It took me about ten minutes to figure it out and I am 100% confident my parent would be incapable of changing it. I've watched them try.

I had to install a plugin for chrome to redirect bing to chrome. Just in case I ever happen to click on the search bar in the bottom which searches the internet. Can you turn that off? So that it only searches your local pc?

I personally turn off the actual bar because I have a lot of pinned icons and I'm already used to hitting the Windows key to type a search query anyway.

But at least as far as regular old Win-key search, you can definitely change a setting to only include local results. I tend to do it simply because I'm in the habit of typing to search local files in the Windows/Start menu and doing web searches via the browser. Web results in my Start/Win searches would just clutter up results so I've been disabling them since Win8.

Not sure if this extends to the search bar in the taskbar but I'm reasonably sure they're the same thing with a different location/interface. I'll have to enable the search bar to check for sure though.

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#134

Post by soylentcola » Thu, Jan 07, 2016, 6:36 PM UTC

akerro wrote: post #8

jinst8gmi wrote: post #5

"44.5 billion minutes spent by users in the Microsoft Edge browser across Windows 10 devices" I wonder how much of that was spent downloading Firefox or Chrome? "30% more Bing search queries per Windows 10 device versus previous versions of the OS" I can't imagine that this is due to anything other than the OS and browser defaults?

Aren't Bing searches included when you search for local files?

Only if enabled. It's a tick box in the settings menu for "search" that I've disabled since it was introduced in Win8. I'm sure it's useful for some people since they typically open a browser to search more often than they search for local files (and Microsoft wants people to use their services). Still, for me, web results just get in the way of local searches and I'm used to typing in the Start/Win menu for local, not web so new installs get their options adjusted accordingly.

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#135

Post by solidninja » Thu, Jan 07, 2016, 6:39 PM UTC

chinathrow wrote: post #9

jlgaddis wrote: post #4

Wow, makes me glad that I don't use operating systems that track every little thing I do!

Which would be what OS?

Sigh I really wish it was easier to use a non-tracking OS.

Personally, I use Hardened Gentoo and actively avoid downloading binaries + a lot of other tweaks to the "standard" Linux setup to patch what I see as obvious holes. Perhaps I need to elaborate more on a blog post.

It is very inconvenient yet for me I accept it as a price worth paying. The great thing about Linux though is that there are many middle roads. On one hand, you could just use Ubuntu (hey, they even turned off the tracking stuff in 15.10) and the Tor Browser, and then you've pretty much eliminated most of the casual advertiser-level tracking (if you follow basic hygiene). On the other, you could go and build your own custom distribution with packages audited by you and always built from source, only after having verified personally all the developers' GPG keys...

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#136

Post by rms_returns » Thu, Jan 07, 2016, 6:48 PM UTC

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #126

AlexandrB wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By default in Ubuntu (and I know of no way to change this) the global menu bar in Unity is just an empty gray slate until you hover over it and "File", "Edit", "View", etc. appear. This means you have no idea where your mouse should be going until you've reached the top of the screen and have to move left/right until you get to the desired menu.

Oh, fair point - that sounds ridiculous! Is there any advantage to that as opposed to the OSX method (which is to just always show a global menu bar, that acts pretty much like any standard GUI menu, populated with items pertinent to the active application)?

> Oh, fair point - that sounds ridiculous!

Don't say that thing until you try something for yourself! In the latest versions of unity, the global menu is integrated with the title-bar of the window itself. It means, you move the mouse pointer to the title area (which the user naturally does to invoke a menu anyways) and the menu appears there. Moreover, once you get into the habit of doing this, it comes naturally, so the above point that it is non-intuitive to user is just ridiculous. And speaking of:

> Is there any advantage to that as opposed to the OSX method

The advantage is that unity makes a more sensible use of your screen-real estate. Firstly, by combining both title bar and menu bar into one, you have just one bar on the screen when the window is maximized (which is how about 95% of users use it about 99% of time).

Secondly, since menu bar is hidden by default, the only thing you focus on is the window or app content, and the title which also relates to the content. I personally find this kind of workflow much better to work.

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#137

Post by solidninja » Thu, Jan 07, 2016, 6:49 PM UTC

justncase80 wrote: post #124

Is it really a privacy concern if its anonymous usage statistics? The word for it is telemetry and every medium sized app or bigger has been doing it for a really long time. What's the big deal?

Well, on one hand it's not a big deal because it's all the EULA and you've presumably read it and agreed it to it before booting up.

On the other, it's a pretty big deal because I view my computers as extensions of my brain. And I view the ability to do things privately in my brain of paramount importance.

Now, I understand why software builders like to build in telemetry (it allows them to tweak their products to be more popular and sell data to advertisers) but I cannot accept such a thing for a general-purpose operating system.

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#138

Post by PuffinBlue » Thu, Jan 07, 2016, 6:55 PM UTC

Alupis wrote: post #107

PuffinBlue wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you cite a single widely used software that doesn't have a FOSS alternative which works on Linux. Yes. Photoshop and Lightroom. And before you all jump in and slather me with suggestions of Darktable, Shotwell, GIMP, ASP, RAWtherapee et al please know that NONE of these are a true substitute for Lightroom and Photoshop. Individually you can put together a decent work flow with Linux programmes but it's slow. Pa…

> Yes. Photoshop and Lightroom. Have you tried PlayOnLinux (a very, very good and very easy to use WINE wrapper).[1] It supports CS6 (including PhotoShop) and Creative Cloud installs on Linux.[2] [1] https://www.playonlinux.com/en/ [2] https://www.playonlinux.com/en/app-2316-Adobe_Photoshop_CS6....

Unfortunately I only have Intel graphics at the moment, so I can't use that. I will look into a cheap card if it does work though, I really would rather use Linux if I can.

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#139

Post by fwn » Thu, Jan 07, 2016, 7:17 PM UTC

thecatspaw wrote: post #32

holografix wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried changing the default search engine? It's SIGNIFICANTLY convoluted. It took me about ten minutes to figure it out and I am 100% confident my parent would be incapable of changing it. I've watched them try.

I had to install a plugin for chrome to redirect bing to chrome. Just in case I ever happen to click on the search bar in the bottom which searches the internet. Can you turn that off? So that it only searches your local pc?

I do think so: Search for "Cortana & Search settings" then turn off "Search online and include web results".

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#140

Post by WorldMaker » Thu, Jan 07, 2016, 8:01 PM UTC

AlexandrB wrote: post #97

mattmanser wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recording how long someone's had their browser open, how many hours of games they've played or how many photos they've viewed is not a log or a crash dump or in any way related to quality. It's just creepy and invasive.

> ...how many hours of games they've played or how many photos they've viewed... That part jumped out at me too. This probably means they're recording the name (or even hash?) of every executable you run and comparing to a list of known game .exe files. In addition they're recoding how long you have been using each executable (if not start/stop timestamps). I'm not a security expert but it seems like this kind of inf…

Hashing .exe names is way too much work. Since Vista Microsoft has provided an opt-in way for a game installer to optionally flag "Hey, I'm a game". This was used for the mostly useless "Games Explorer", but also little bits of other functionality.

Also, the Microsoft Store has an entire category called "Game" and can just use that.

Worst case though, by "game" it might just use the Window's Xbox app's determinant for shortcuts like Win+G which is essentially, from what I gather, "Does it use DirectX? y/n".