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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)

#171

Post by pmoriarty »

sickcodebruh wrote: post #100
kekebo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can come down to one program that doesn't have a good alternative on another OS, my version of that are the DAWs / music production tools I know and love. Wine solves a lot of this (but not all) for Windows programs, the macOS equivalent Darling[0] seems to still has some way to go until GUI programs are reliably supported. [0] https://github.com/darlinghq/darling

If you’re open to switching to Reaper, it’s my understanding that their Linux version is coming along well. I’ve read good things about it plus LinVST. Of course, I’m also unwilling to test this myself and I’ll probably run MacOS until the day I stop making music.

I use Renoise and Ardour as my DAWs on Linux.

Bitwig (which has an Ableton-like interface, and was made by Ableton developers) is also available for Linux.

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

#172

Post by rhplus »

I’m surprised by the number of requests to port 80, especially for requests to PKI certificate related domains. I assume there’s an element of chicken-and-egg somewhere that means they can’t use TLS in certain cases. Can anyone offer insight into why this is OK and not subject to MITM attacks on the certificate validation/supply chain?

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

#173

Post by NoGravitas »

agent008t wrote: post #55
norman784 wrote: post #27

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.

My experience with font rendering on Linux is that it's much better than on Windows, on comparable displays. I have fought with my Windows station at work to get acceptable font rendering for anything but the optimized-for-ClearType system fonts, but font rendering on Linux is great, and if you have different preferences, there are adequate levers to adjust it (via, e.g., GNOME Tweak Tool).

(In particular, I get color banding and inconsistent weights in Windows, especially with thin fonts.)

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

#174

Post by grishka »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #77
grishka wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For now. Modern chips will make it harder and harder, until one day we will have almost no control over the machine we are running. For our own good, of course. Plus nobody will care appart from us. And not all of us. Not the us that are working on this techs at least.

As long as signature enforcement in BIOS can be disabled, everything is possible. And it will always be possible to disable it because otherwise someone would sue the hell out of Microsoft, OEM, or both, for not being able to run Linux or other competing OS on a PC they bought.

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

#175

Post by rob_c »

indymike wrote: post #41
rob_c wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I personally prefer Linux, but what’s holding me are the streaming services Yes but then these turn off, drop the content you were watching with little/no warning and are unreliable. Buy physical media while you can at least then you have a licence to watch it when you please until the media degrades. (Or better in the territories which allow for backing up across media formats)

I've never had a problem watching streaming stuff on Linux.

True, it's a problem that money solves. But frankly I'd rather keep the money as I'm content rewatching my favourite shows off disk.

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

#176

Post by Ensorceled »

mananaysiempre wrote: post #17

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…

> 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.

Do you have a reason to doubt either the sincerity or technical ability of the Author? Did you find a fault in their methods?

I totally believe it, both from a load balancing perspective and from a stack perspective.

There was a version of Mac OS were different applications used different resolvers so, for instance, changing /etc/hosts would redirect SOME services/browsers to the IP in /etc/hosts and other services/browsers would still use DNS. I've had similar issues manually setting the DNS server address where some services ignored the setting if they could resolve against Apple's favoured DNS. This might still be true but I'm now longer doing security work and I'm not using these tricks anymore.

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

#177

Post by NoGravitas »

sinsterizme wrote: post #81
dijit wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux can have crappy font rendering. I can also have gorgeous font rendering. I would mess around with some live distros to see what you prefer. This is how my comment looks to me (on linux): https://i.imgur.com/wvruFyX.png

Hmm not sure if it’s the quality of the image or the font, but that might prove his point, that looks quite bad.

It's both. The image compression makes it not perfect, and it's also a monospaced font, which makes it impossible to say anything about the kerning.

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

#178

Post by scroot »

Terretta wrote: post #148
TacticalCoder wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really as bad as you make it out to be? I've got everything at home: old non-retina MacBook Airs running OS X, a M1/retina MacBook Air running OS X, Windows (well, wife's computer) and then Linux laptops and desktops. Fonts on my main Linux "workstation" may not be as perfect as on the M1 Mac I use from the couch but it's because my 38" monitor ain't retina and it's a far cry from making "browsing uncomfortable…

> Is it really as bad as you make it out to be? Yes. > my 38" monitor ain't retina … perfectly happy Put another way, either you are not visually discerning or your bar is lower. // Since “FHD” laptops, and monitors

I have to agree here. Font rendering in Linux is across the board noticeably worse than macOS. I still can't quite understand why.

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

#179

Post by dgellow »

cyberpunk wrote: post #150
dgellow wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I already use a pi-hole for our local network, everything msn, windows, microsoft related is already blocked for all our devices, so it's really not a big task. It's also not a big task to maintain the list of domain to block, every few months I find a new one to add. I also don't mind some level of telemetry. And I personally like Windows as an operating system, NT is a very cool and well documented technology, and…

You're assuming they're not just going to start using their own DNS or DoH for these requests. Orwell got things slightly wrong in 1984; he never realized that we would be paying for the privilege of being spied on.

My personal assumption is that Microsoft isn't a malicious actor, so yes I don't expect them to try to dodge domain blocking. I also don't see their telemetry as spying, everything I've seen so far tells me that they only use gathered data in aggregate as a replacement for QA, and without PII (unless you decide to report crashes, send feedbacks, or take part in their insider program) and they seem to respect user settings regarding personalized ads.

But I don't like that you have so much advertising in the default Windows and Edge experience and understand the general frustration regarding telemetry, not everybody can control their network the way I do just to have a reasonable experience...

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