Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Retiring Windows 10 and Microsoft's move towards a surveillance state

scottrlarson.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 514 posts

Re: Retiring Windows 10 and Microsoft's move towards a surveillance state

#161

Post by kjellsbells »

somenameforme wrote: post #148
heavyset_go wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to do this, set them up with something they can get commercial support for. IMO, if a user's needs can be met with a Chromebook, Linux + a browser + email + Zoom/or whatever would suit them well. I think you're going to have a hard sell if they rely on Office or other Windows-only software, and although well meaning, it might be doing them a disservice if they can't run the software they're accustomed…

What are the arguments for Office at the small business or individual level, as opposed to Libre Office? For most users, they'll be able to reacclimate in a matter of hours to near 100% competence. And they now are in an ecosystem that won't constantly try to squeeze you for rent. I think this is even more true in the era of LLMs, because on the rare difference somebody might get hung up on - there's no longer real n…

Sadly in small business Microsoft have a lock because no SMB wants to be the awkward outlier whose IT makes them hard to do business with.

For example, to be that supplier that whose documents never quite look quite right or who always struggles with the docusign /PDF /email /spreadsheet /whatever whatever.

For an SMB, fitting in with the de facto IT herd that is represented by your customers and partners is essential for survival. Sure, some SMBs do decide to buck the trend and move over, but it's hard and not for the faint hearted.

Time will tell if this problem solves itself as 365 becomes a pure web app and Windows becomes an RDP-like Cloud PC.

The irony of Bill Gates vision of a Personal computer where you run what you like and not what the mainframe gives your terminal becoming Windows where you consume what you are told to is not lost on me.

Re: Retiring Windows 10 and Microsoft's move towards a surveillance state

#162

Post by abdullahkhalids »

d3Xt3r wrote: post #99
heavyset_go wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, if you aren't dealing with power users, normal people won't be able to break their Linux install. The standard permissions model stops them from doing anything stupid, and they don't know enough to be dangerous.

Thing is, regular Linux distros are most prone to breakage when it comes to updates - especially Ubuntu and Ubuntu-based distros[1]. My elderly mum is non-technical and has been a Linux user for the past decade, and she had Xubuntu, Mint and Zorin - all of which ran fine until update broke it (and this is just a bog standard DELL Optiplex desktop with an Intel iGPU). So I switched her to Aurora a couple of years ago…

I would be very surprised if Debian stable ever broke anything. I am on Debian testing and none of the "standard software" - browser, office suite, image editing, zoom - has broken in many years.

Re: Retiring Windows 10 and Microsoft's move towards a surveillance state

#163

Post by jimbob45 »

ChrisArchitect wrote: post #108

Nobody thinks this is a weird reaction to an OS update that's been out for years at this point and barely makes a difference over the previous version? There's no 'Recall'. Co-pilot isn't all over in your face so removing it isn't really a priority. Edge isn't forced on you, it's just part of the bundled software just like a bunch of other items as in every Windows for decades. Not saying it doesn't get hairy if you'…

Every other OS from MS is garbage. XP good, Vista bad, 7 good, 8 so bad no one remembers it, 10 goodish, 11 horrific.

The hate is hardly unprecedented and indeed well-deserved. MS has shown in the past that they’ll respond to poor OS reception with attempts to win back customers and that’s what I’m hoping for in this case.

Re: Retiring Windows 10 and Microsoft's move towards a surveillance state

#165

Post by sciencejerk »

ants_everywhere wrote: post #10
ivraatiems wrote: post #3

I think describing TPM and Secure Boot as "artificial limitations" is unfair. Many Linux distros have no problem working with both of these and they serve a valuable purpose. The problem is not that they exist or that Windows 11 supports them. It's that Microsoft pretends they are required , when they are not.

I don't use Windows and actually find it kind of insane when I use someone else's computer to see what Windows is like... But it's kind of MSFT's choice whether TPM and secure boot are requirements for their software. If their software makes security assumptions that the OS has access to trusted hardware then it's a requirement. One could argue that they should create secure and less secure versions of Windows, but I…

I'm no MS fanboy, but don't you think Content Platforms like Netflix or Steam might be applying DRM pressure to Microsoft? And perhaps IP owners also apply pressure to the Content Providers to lock down their platforms, which may include hardware that has access to protected IP

Re: Retiring Windows 10 and Microsoft's move towards a surveillance state

#166

Post by matheusmoreira »

repiret wrote: post #41

I agree with all of the articles points except for the first one: TPM and Secure Boot do not reduce user choice or promote state or corporate surveillance. If you want to be able to prevent root kits you need secure boot, and if you want to store secrets that don't need a user password to unlock and can't be stolen by taking apart the computer, you need a TPM; or you need substantially similar alternatives. I would s…

> TPM and Secure Boot do not reduce user choice or promote state or corporate surveillance

Now with remote attestation they do.

> installing their own root of trust and signing their boot image

Won't matter. They can tell we did this. They won't trust our keys. Only their own.

Re: Retiring Windows 10 and Microsoft's move towards a surveillance state

#167

Post by edg5000 »

repiret wrote: post #41

I agree with all of the articles points except for the first one: TPM and Secure Boot do not reduce user choice or promote state or corporate surveillance. If you want to be able to prevent root kits you need secure boot, and if you want to store secrets that don't need a user password to unlock and can't be stolen by taking apart the computer, you need a TPM; or you need substantially similar alternatives. I would s…

> if you want to store secrets that don't need a user password to unlock and can't be stolen by taking apart the computer, you need a TPM

I had a Win 7 system and just entered a password on boot, this decrypted the disk. It was supported without mods or TPM (maybe some registry tweaks though). On Ubuntu I do the same, no need for TPM. Am I missing something? My disk is encrypted. If they take it apart, they need my password to crack the encryption.

Re: Retiring Windows 10 and Microsoft's move towards a surveillance state

#168

Post by isodev »

repiret wrote: post #41

I agree with all of the articles points except for the first one: TPM and Secure Boot do not reduce user choice or promote state or corporate surveillance. If you want to be able to prevent root kits you need secure boot, and if you want to store secrets that don't need a user password to unlock and can't be stolen by taking apart the computer, you need a TPM; or you need substantially similar alternatives. I would s…

> Microsoft actually promoted user choice

Let’s not give Microsoft too much credit here…

Between 2011 and 2013, multiple Linux / free software organisations raised the issue with the EC. There was an actual antitrust investigation which at the time was seen as what motivated Microsoft to open the solution to third parties by 2013.

So in a way, thank you EU for making it so we have choices at all.

With that said, I think the technology still does more to promote vendor lock-in and as others have said, it’s one windows update away from a dystopian hellscape where all your bits have been pre-approved by someone else.

Re: Retiring Windows 10 and Microsoft's move towards a surveillance state

#169

Post by edg5000 »

trinsic2 wrote: post #2

I am a IT solutions provider for the public and small business. I think the changes to Windows 11 is gearing up to work with organizations to create a surveillance state. So I have to decided to promote Linux over Windows for computers I build for customers. If you have any suggestions on how I can make this promotion, better let me know.

The Snap store on Ubuntu is quite good. Has Spotify, VS code, Blender, Chromium. LibreOffice has a tabbed UI setting that mimics Office (easy to enable). Personally I love LibreOffice, something about it resonates with me. Everybody who liked office 2003 and could never get used to the newer weird ribbon UI in Office will love the default LibreOffice. Those who love the ribbon can enable the tabbed UI bar in LibreOffice. Only complaint is that performance is not as fluid as it could be.

I avoid snap myself because I use apt, but apt is a hard sell and arguably not ideal as well. E.g. I added Spotify repos which in theory could break other packages. In practice this doesn't happen (probably due to Ubuntu essentially freezing major versions for packages in their releases).

Re: Retiring Windows 10 and Microsoft's move towards a surveillance state

#170

Post by AlotOfReading »

somenameforme wrote: post #155
AlotOfReading wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't imagine trying to replace MS word with libreoffice for businesses. I respect the project and the complexity of the task, but it's just not there for even light professional use. As an example, I recently submitted a manuscript following standard format [0] with libreoffice. Nothing difficult, just basic professional functionality. The only way to do it involved editing global default page styles (because cust…

What exactly did you have to change? FWIW I'm not trying to interrogate you, I'm just trying to understand your perspective. From mine I just checked their checklist [1] and it's unclear to me what on that list you're suggesting required advanced features in Libre Office to achieve. [1] - https://www.shunn.net/format/2024/01/a_brief_manuscript_form...

Headers were the big one. The shunn format has no header on the first page, and numbered headers on subsequent pages.

Libreoffice only allows either headers on all pages of a specific style, or no headers. So, how to apply a different style to just the first page? It supports that with the title page concept. But that menu only allows you to select either the Default and First Page styles, not custom styles you've added, so you have to modify the global defaults.

Then there's the numbering. LO requires headers to be the same across all pages, up to left/right distinction. That means you can't manually number. If you want to use the shunn "name/title/number" format you have to write "name/title/" and then enable the checkbox, accepting the slightly uneven spacing.

This is probably half a dozen menus altogether, which I consider advanced. It also confused the page numbering and tried to label the title page as the last page.

Another issue is that shunn's requires multiple alignments within a single line. This isn't directly supported in a reasonable way, but the same workarounds are required in MS word and gdocs so it's not like LO is especially deficient.

Smart quotes also don't work on copy-pasted text, only by a primitive typo correction system when typing. That's more of a personal process issue, since I was copying out of the markdown I do my actual editing in.

Post reply on HN