If you must run Windows 10 • Hacker News Board

Re: If you must run Windows 10

#211

Post by jodrellblank » Thu, Aug 29, 2019, 10:53 PM UTC

throwaway-9320 wrote: post #148

user5994461 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must be kidding on Linux not spying on you. The ubuntu start menu is sending everything you type to the internet and filling the menus with ads.

[citation needed]

Circa 2012, and disabled-by-default since Ubuntu 16, but still a system wide toggle instead of a per-use option:

> Ubuntu, a widely used and influential GNU/Linux distribution, has installed surveillance code. When the user searches her own local files for a string using the Ubuntu desktop, Ubuntu sends that string to one of Canonical's servers. (Canonical is the company that develops Ubuntu.)

> [..] Ubuntu uses the information about searches to show the user ads to buy various things from Amazon.

https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/ubuntu-spyware-what-to-do

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/ubuntu-spyware.en.html

Re: If you must run Windows 10

#212

Post by jodrellblank » Thu, Aug 29, 2019, 11:58 PM UTC

habitue wrote: post #106

I feel like there's this continuum: Linux: Free, Doesn't spy on you MacOS: Costs money, Doesn't spy on you ChromeOS: Free, Spies on you Windows: Costs money, Spies on you

Ubuntu, to livepatch the kernel between reboots, you need to sign in (== some kind of user tracking for free patching). After three machines you need to pay:

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/canon...

They advertise this paid service in the MOTD:

https://linuxconfig.org/images/02-change-welcome-message-ubu...

That's not fundamentally any different to Microsoft advertising Office 365 in Windows, is it?

Re: If you must run Windows 10

#213

Post by lawnchair_larry » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 3:35 AM UTC

jodrellblank wrote: post #209

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess again!

OK. the .NET Core SDK includes telemetry, here's the official documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/tools/telemetry Section three, "How to opt out". I guess the same way again.

You’ve found a way to opt out of one particular thing that they collect. This is irrelevant to the broader issue. You can’t opt out of all of the hundreds of other things they collect across the other products. There is no way to opt out entirely for Windows.

Re: If you must run Windows 10

#214

Post by safeplanet-fesa » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 5:39 PM UTC

rasz wrote: post #103

owenwil wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'phones home' argument doesn't really add up—there's plenty of control over this at this point, and every OS is calling home, macOS included, to some degree. The advertisements thing happens out of the box, and is trivial to remove (if my memory is correct, Safari harasses you about being the default browser, too, if you try to change it). The updates to add features thing.... isn't an issue for me, but YMMV.

Is every OS running kernel traces and uploading them to the mothership behind your back? Have a look at C:\Windows\System32\SleepStudy C:\Windows\System32\LogFiles\WMI

You can also search for *.etl files to find what is traced. There are Autologger and GlobalLogger for live kernel tracing. Some of the tracing entries are present by default, but others are added by Intel's drivers! I could not control my anger when I discovered it. And it's not the .sys files, but the .inf files that add entries to Autologger. Now if I need to install Intel's drivers I first clean the .inf files. It ruins driver's signature of course, but at least I will not have any tracing sessions constantly written to disk.