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Windows OS, Services and Apps: Network Connection Target Hosts (2021)

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Re: Windows OS, Services and Apps: Network Connection Target Hosts (2021)

#51
post #45

I read a lot of comments here wanting to block the connections, but wouldn’t be easier/better to switch to an OS that doesn’t spy you? The answers possibly is no, because they might use X or Y that requires them to use Windows, so a better question is, what holds you back to switch to Linux? (macOS also talks to a lot of servers and collect telemetry as Windows, maybe in a different scale, so isn’t an alternative if…

Sure, as soon as an operating system with a good Win32/DirectX/Windows HAL implementation appears, I will be the first one to switch. ReactOS perhaps?

I think it will be implemented by proton/wine first

Re: Windows OS, Services and Apps: Network Connection Target Hosts (2021)

#52

I read a lot of comments here wanting to block the connections, but wouldn’t be easier/better to switch to an OS that doesn’t spy you? The answers possibly is no, because they might use X or Y that requires them to use Windows, so a better question is, what holds you back to switch to Linux? (macOS also talks to a lot of servers and collect telemetry as Windows, maybe in a different scale, so isn’t an alternative if…

I haven’t noticed or didn’t care that the content was in SD on Linux. I was pretty happy it worked. Use a Roku for streaming HD to the tv for the few things I watch there.

There is a weird “wildvine” plugin thing that chrome and Firefox use for video drm for some services. I think that enables video.

Linux seems to be the only OS that is respectful of the user.

But desktop Linux has come really far. It my daily driver on my home machine and I’m switching to it at work (or cluster is Linux anyway). I’m hardly a sys admin type and it’s been working great for me the past few years. Even steam works on Linux now.

Re: Windows OS, Services and Apps: Network Connection Target Hosts (2021)

#53

I read a lot of comments here wanting to block the connections, but wouldn’t be easier/better to switch to an OS that doesn’t spy you? The answers possibly is no, because they might use X or Y that requires them to use Windows, so a better question is, what holds you back to switch to Linux? (macOS also talks to a lot of servers and collect telemetry as Windows, maybe in a different scale, so isn’t an alternative if…

Another option to consider is FreeBSD, which can be especially attractive for those of us who want to avoid systemd.

There are non-systemd linux distros like alpine and gentoo. With elogind and such, you can run gnome and such without systemd.

Re: Windows OS, Services and Apps: Network Connection Target Hosts (2021)

#54

There seems to be some degree of overcounting in the reported figures: the number of “hosts” is the number of unique hostnames in the table, but the number of “IPs” is a straightforward sum of IP address counts that the table segregates by service, and I refuse to believe that ( e.g. ) the IP address of login.live.com as resolved by OneDrive is always different from same as resolved by Skype. $ curl -fsSL 'https://he…

> DigiCert’s OCSP service A weakness of the OCSP protocol is that it gets sent the certificate hash as an input. This means that to a significant degree, an OCSP provider can track what software you are using, what sites you visit, etc... For the code signing certificates, they could also determine which year (or two) it came from. DigiCert could sell that to marketing companies, and spy agencies / state-sponsored ha…

There is actually now a dormant but a powerful system that's a win-win to privacy and CA's infra bills: OCSP stapling (and the associated must-staple directive). Instead of the client requesting OCSP validation directly, the web server does that on behalf of its visitors. This saves on CAs since that the web server can minimise the request to every minute (or even every half-hour if that's what the website operator desires) and is definitely a win for privacy (as users will no longer be required to send a request to the CAs). The only probable downside is that revocations aren't instant, but in theory you could arrange your CA to issue 5-minute validity OCSP responses allowing for faster revocation.

Now if this exists, why aren't people switching to this? Google. Chrome doesn't even actively validate revocation information anymore, and Android didn't even bothered to do many of the required validation since practically its inception (so much that Let's Encrypt exploited that fact to allow their CA to still issue valid certificates to older Android devices: https://letsencrypt.org/2020/12/21/extending-android-compati...). Since Google insists that revocation is broken (as demonstrated though it can be fixed now if we want to) no-one (at least at a corporate level) is seriously pushing OCSP must-staple.

P.S. you should at least read GRC's post about CRLSets (the only mechanism available in Chrome) that was posted in 2014 a few days after the Heartbleed discovery (https://www.grc.com/revocation/crlsets.htm). It's still (unfortunately) relevant today, amd says a lot about Google's security practices.

Re: Windows OS, Services and Apps: Network Connection Target Hosts (2021)

#55

I read a lot of comments here wanting to block the connections, but wouldn’t be easier/better to switch to an OS that doesn’t spy you? The answers possibly is no, because they might use X or Y that requires them to use Windows, so a better question is, what holds you back to switch to Linux? (macOS also talks to a lot of servers and collect telemetry as Windows, maybe in a different scale, so isn’t an alternative if…

Linux still has horrible font rendering, which makes web browsing uncomfortable. It doesn't come close to Windows or Mac. Fonts often appear soapy, kerning is off etc.

Re: Windows OS, Services and Apps: Network Connection Target Hosts (2021)

#56

I read a lot of comments here wanting to block the connections, but wouldn’t be easier/better to switch to an OS that doesn’t spy you? The answers possibly is no, because they might use X or Y that requires them to use Windows, so a better question is, what holds you back to switch to Linux? (macOS also talks to a lot of servers and collect telemetry as Windows, maybe in a different scale, so isn’t an alternative if…

I recently considered installing Linux on my desktop workstation. Then I decided I wanted to buy a wireless card for the machine - and any device I saw available locally had dubious issue/debugging threads online, people unable to get it to work, BT functionality missing, etc. I've used Linux desktop in the past and it looks like things haven't changed much. I don't like the idea of having to compile kernel modules j…

Keep in mind that you'll only find results from people who have issues. Few people will go online just to say their hardware works with Linux.

To give a concrete recommendation for a wifi adapter, look at Intel-based hardware. Intel stuff generally works out of the box because they contribute drivers to the Linux kernel directly. The ASUS PCe-AXE58BT is based on Intel's AX200 so should work out of the box on any modern Linux distro.

You basically never have to compile kernel modules anymore. Even if compilation is necessary, DKMS-based packages mean that the recompilation is done when you install your package updates, so you don't need to think about it.

Re: Windows OS, Services and Apps: Network Connection Target Hosts (2021)

#57

I read a lot of comments here wanting to block the connections, but wouldn’t be easier/better to switch to an OS that doesn’t spy you? The answers possibly is no, because they might use X or Y that requires them to use Windows, so a better question is, what holds you back to switch to Linux? (macOS also talks to a lot of servers and collect telemetry as Windows, maybe in a different scale, so isn’t an alternative if…

I recently considered installing Linux on my desktop workstation. Then I decided I wanted to buy a wireless card for the machine - and any device I saw available locally had dubious issue/debugging threads online, people unable to get it to work, BT functionality missing, etc. I've used Linux desktop in the past and it looks like things haven't changed much. I don't like the idea of having to compile kernel modules j…

Won't deny, BT depending on the vendor, is just a hell to make it work. And you are not gonna get the same functionality (like ADP2 + mic).

In the end is the compromises you are willing to make. For development Linux is way better IMO, even gaming now really good with DXVK (Steam Proton)

Re: Windows OS, Services and Apps: Network Connection Target Hosts (2021)

#58

Sending telemetry data at all without real consent (ie not some ultimatum) is scary. Windows is not a daily driver OS.

Software isn't immutable. The code that makes these requests has to physically exist somewhere. Which means you can find it and overwrite it with nop's.

Re: Windows OS, Services and Apps: Network Connection Target Hosts (2021)

#60

I read a lot of comments here wanting to block the connections, but wouldn’t be easier/better to switch to an OS that doesn’t spy you? The answers possibly is no, because they might use X or Y that requires them to use Windows, so a better question is, what holds you back to switch to Linux? (macOS also talks to a lot of servers and collect telemetry as Windows, maybe in a different scale, so isn’t an alternative if…

I recently considered installing Linux on my desktop workstation. Then I decided I wanted to buy a wireless card for the machine - and any device I saw available locally had dubious issue/debugging threads online, people unable to get it to work, BT functionality missing, etc. I've used Linux desktop in the past and it looks like things haven't changed much. I don't like the idea of having to compile kernel modules j…

I would at the very least make an effort to validate those claims before repeating them. Linux has improved greatly in the last few years, and I haven't had a WiFi issue for a long time.
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