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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)

#191

Post by lbriner »

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 don't think that the exact problem is double counting IP addresses or multiple CDN shards that are basically the same but there are several concerning things:

1) Why would relatively specific services need to contact so many different endpoints? The skype service is using about 40 different endpoints by the look of it. 2) Why can't the providers of these services use much more consistent naming? I am less concerned about pipe.skype.com and avatar.skype.com being called from skype because it makes sense. On the other hand, calling b-ring.msedge.net is weird. What is that site? Could be MS, could be anything. 3) It is not clear whether these services were expected to be enabled or not. For example, I don't like the idea that Windows is wasting internet bandwidth on Cortana or XBox live since I use neither of them.

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

#192

Post by heresie-dabord »

neilalexander wrote: post #102
peter_retief wrote: post #89

Why do people still use Microsoft is a great mystery to me.

That's obvious. It's much less expensive to buy a Windows PC than a Mac. Linux on the desktop is still quite terrible in a number of ways (particularly if you are ever unfortunate enough to deal with drivers and kernel modules for your slightly uncommon hardware). Chromebooks still don't rate that highly and haven't really entered the public consciousness as a result. Not to mention that many people are using Windows…

> Linux on the desktop is still quite terrible [...] for your slightly uncommon hardware

You have revealed your point of view. However, for the great majority of Linux users, Linux on the desktop has been a reality for well over a decade.

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

#194

Post by jpalomaki »

feintruled wrote: post #115

I recently helped a friend de-cruft their slow as molasses laptop, and as ever was struck how Windows is always freaking DOING shit. It's sitting there seemingly idle, but the start bar takes 5 seconds to open. You open task manager and it's grinding away at network, grinding away at CPU, grinding away at disc, all via opaquely named processes. The bloody thing is relentless.

Based on my experience, I blame the 3rd party stuff. All kinds of software and devices just love to add background processes to the system.

I guess this is the price you pay for system where everything is possible.

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

#195

Post by schmuelio »

GiorgioG wrote: post #104
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…

I tried running Pop OS for the last 3 weeks on my desktop machine. It's got 90% of the polish I expect from a UI/IX - which I can live with. I sadly switched back to Windows yesterday because I couldn't solve the following problem: I use Remote Desktop to get into my work machine - I have a 4K monitor and I couldn't get the scaling to work the way I expected with Remmina or freerdp clients. I had hidpi scaling enable…

I've found remote desktop a pain as well.

On the occasion where I _have_ to use it I don't set it to fullscreen, just have it as a floating app at whatever resolution I care for. Then I just deal with the lower real-estate for however much time I need to be using it.

Nearly all of my remote work is SSH or SSHfs-based now, which (if you're used to terminal stuff) is so much nicer than any equivalent I've found on Windows.

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

#196

Post by jaywalk »

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #124
kuschku wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s entirely DRM. On Windows you only get HDR/4K if you use the native silverlight/UWP (!) app with their DRM. Part of that is that all your monitors have to pass validation, not just the one on which netflix is playing.

Hah, I thought Silverlight was dead years ago, but I don't keep up with Windows tech at all.

Silverlight is long dead, the poster was mistaken: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/2090

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

#197

Post by TacticalCoder »

scroot wrote: post #178
Terretta wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Agree with what? That's not the original point. The original point was that Linux font rendering "doesn't come close to Windows or Mac".

You're all shifting the goalpost.

Nobody is saying that fonts on a retina display on OS X do not look better than fonts on a non-retina display on Linux.

What we're disputing is that fonts rendering on Linux is so bad that it's "uncomfortable".

Now we may have a discussion as to whether everybody should be using retina display or not but that'd be another topic.

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

#198

Post by shawnz »

dijit wrote: post #67
agent008t wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

That seems pretty terrible to me, even discounting the fact that it's monospace (I use monospace for editing too). Especially notice how the letters have inconsistent thicknesses, sometimes thicker on the left vs the right or vice versa, sometimes even different thicknesses depending on where they appear in the sentence (e.g. look at the 'n')

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

#199

Post by lbriner »

josteink wrote: post #185

Modern OSes (and not just Windows) are getting overly bloated and complicated. Talking to all those hosts and IPs is just a symptome of that nobody seems to care about such things anymore. My main work-laptop, my server and work workstation are running Ubuntu (because of support, yadda yadda), but I've recently tried Arch linux on my personal laptop. I'm not yet an Arch fanatic, and find the installation procedure pa…

Isn't the issue that these are a paid product and the supplier has to keep adding "value" (or pretending they are) to keep selling new software?

Some things get better over time like better graphics cards and 64 bit but MS wouldn't keep making money if they said, "yeah just keep Windows 98, it basically does everything you need". Instead they add fluff, search that no-one wants, messaging that not everyone uses etc.

Maybe they should do Windows Lite which would only include the desktop and windows update and nothing else. Sell it for $10 inc updates for the first year. You then pay a subscription if you care about more updates and nothing if you don't.

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

#200

Post by deno »

mongol wrote: post #131
sinsterizme wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Is not subpixel rendering of fonts impossible to illustrate unless you sit down in front of the same monitor (or at least similar hardware)

Yes, doesn't have to be the same monitor but it needs to have the same subpixel orientation and you need to have the same resolution or 2x resolution and scale 50% so it pixel aligns.

If you look at those screenshots on a 4K display they're incredibly blurry because all you're looking at is your browser doing image scaling optimized for photographs.

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