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

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

#311

Post by AnthonyMouse »

bob1029 wrote: post #217
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…

I am starting to see the benefits to secure boot and TPM from a gaming perspective. I realize this can still be tampered with but it eliminates so many casual cheaters that the edge case is practically irrelevant. I don't see how my TPM module will prevent me from using the machine the way I want. The offer of a cryptographic assurance to a 3rd party is something I happily provide in order to gain access to a competi…

> I don't see how my TPM module will prevent me from using the machine the way I want.

I guess people don't know this particular dystopia is implemented.

First a platform gets third parties (games, banks, etc.) to impose their attestation system on customers. Congrats, you're locked in! This is the gun they point at you but the bullet comes after.

Now you can't leave the platform or you lose all your games, have to get a new bank, etc. The more stuff they can get to require that, the more stuck you are. This also prevents any new competitors from building a network effect. But competition -- the ability to switch to a competitor -- is the only thing stopping them from being the worst people in the world. Ads in the start menu. Censoring whatever they don't like. If you want to buy something -- anything -- they want a 30% cut. They'll hide it from you but take it anyway. All your local files get uploaded to their cloud and the terms let them use it for AI training, or whatever else they want. And soon you have to pay a monthly fee if you don't want them to be deleted. Why would not paying also delete them from your local machine? Because screw you, you don't have a choice anymore.

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

#312

Post by throwaway7679 »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #239
josephcsible wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TPM and Secure Boot would be good things if there were no way to prove to third parties that you're using them, or have them configured a certain way (i.e., remote attestation). It's the fact that that is possible that makes them reduce user choice and promote state and corporate surveillance.

> TPM and Secure Boot would be good things if there were no way to prove to third parties that you're using them, or have them configured a certain way (i.e., remote attestation). This is exactly what a TPM was made for, so your statement is a little bit paradoxical.

The ideal is the owner being able to use TPM/SecureBoot/etc to ensure that the device is in the configuration they want. That means resisting tampering, and making any successful tampering become obvious.

The problem is third parties using TPM/SecureBoot/etc as a weapon against the owner via remote attestation, by preventing them from configuring their own device, with the threat of being cut off from critical services.

Having the upside without the downside would be nice, but how could it work? Is a technical solution feasible, or would it need a law/regulation?

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

#313

Post by TiredOfLife »

lutusp wrote: post #105

This is an excellent article as well as a sign of the times. I wish the list of Linux choices had included Mint, which is essentially Ubuntu without Snaps. Snaps are a partly closed-source Ubuntu project that contradicts the open nature of Linux. Linux users can install the free software suite LibreOffice, which not only replaces Office but reads and writes the same file formats. Many similar choices exist, this is j…

> pushing the Recall eavesdropping-to-cloud feature with no user opt-out provisions

That's not what Recall is and not how it works.

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

#314

Post by 2d8a875f-39a2-4 »

Echoing a lot of users ITT, Windows has been good to me but the enshittification has reached what feels like the end point.

Windows value to me was "everything just worked". But that's no longer the case now, unless you are willing to walk down Microsoft's centralized rails. Need an MS Account and OneDrive... need expensive modern hardware... get ads and crapware... get telemetry and data exfiltration. The effort of working around all that is non trivial. EDIT: and if I was ok with all that stuff I'd already by captured by Apple.

If I have to fuck around with something in my home OS, that OS might as well be Linux. So now I am compiling wifi and printer drivers from github (FFS Linux!) instead of disabling telemetry and hacking an install with local accounts only.

The challenge, as always, is going to be taking the family with me.

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

#315

Post by fainpul »

grogenaut wrote: post #144
1over137 wrote: post #42

Where I work, I'd love to move our remaining Windows boxes to linux, but there's often software that only works on Windows. How well does Wine work these days? Can they run CAD software for example?

Just run it in a windows vm for just that use, there's great ways to make this almost seamless in linux. works better than win/etc.

CAD applications usually require graphics acceleration. I've tried to make Fusion 360 work on linux using VMware, VirtualBox and GNOME Boxes – performance was unacceptably bad.

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

#316

Post by [deleted] »

entropie wrote: post #302
OvbiousError wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gaming on linux has been awesome for years. With the advent of systems like bazzite, the transition is only getting easier.

As far as I know almost all (if not all) anti cheat software just does not work on linux therefore "gaming on linux has been awesome for years" is not true if you play games online or competitive.

[deleted]

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

#317

Post by Kbelicius »

jogu wrote: post #310
entropie wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know almost all (if not all) anti cheat software just does not work on linux therefore "gaming on linux has been awesome for years" is not true if you play games online or competitive.

This is simply not true. Most anti-cheat software does work on linux, but many games choose not to allow linux. This has a good list of what works and what doesn't: https://areweanticheatyet.com

AFAIK on linux they are not kernel level and thus are easier to work around. It isn't just that devs are lazy or hate linux.

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

#318

Post by alias_neo »

4ggr0 wrote: post #294
OvbiousError wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gaming on linux has been awesome for years. With the advent of systems like bazzite, the transition is only getting easier.

+1, switched to Bazzite about three weeks ago. I did have to dualboot a Windows after a couple of days, unfortunately. Mostly related to Anti-Cheat and other shitty measures. Dark Souls II did not want to recognize my Controller, even though it works fine in every other game. Skate can't be played on Linux because of Anti-Cheat, but fuck EA anyways. Wolfenstein: The Old Blood, Dishonored 2 and Death to the Outsider a…

I've been gaming on Linux for about a decade, it has improved massively since Proton, and I'm at the point where I'm able to play Helldivers 2 with its anti-cheat with my buddies and get great performance (the game's performance/bug issues aside).

I tried Bazzite for a while on my desktop, it's fantastic for gaming, but I'm also a dev and a Linux user since I was a teen (almost all of the years of Linux) so I found it a little limiting for my other PC related stuff (I typically prefer to run Arch and Arch based distros on my machines).

For anyone with a computer dedicated to gaming I'd recommend Bazzite, I still run it on my ROG Ally since the moment I took it out of the box; I bought it _because_ Bazzite existed, never even considered booting Windows. It's a great distro tuned for gaming, and comes with some features like VRR and HDR that aren't as easily available on other distros (I've been able to get HDR on Arch/Gnome but not VRR).

It's hard for someone who relies on Windows software to be entirely rid of Windows, which is why I don't tell people they should switch to Linux, but it's not impossible if you really want to, unless you rely on a piece of software that just won't run under WINE or doesn't have an alternative.

For me, I grew up with Linux alongside Windows, went into a career that uses and targets Linux exclusively (backend SE) and for my computer based hobbies; gaming, coding, 3D printing/modelling they're served very well these days, and constantly improving.

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

#319

Post by benterix »

IlikeKitties wrote: post #87
heavyset_go wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would say that specifically with Secure Boot, Microsoft actually promoted user choice: A Windows Logo compliant PC needs to have Microsoft's root of trust installed by default. Microsoft could have stopped there, but they didn't. This was not the case with the initial rollout of Secure Boot, it was combined with locked BIOS to lock PCs so that they could only boot Windows 8 on some devices. This was the case on W…

> There is also a real potential for abusing TPMs or cryptographic co-processors to enforce remote attestation. People here REALLY need to start understanding this issue. Remote Attestation is the kind of tech that if abused will end free computing over night.

> over night.

No, I think they bend over backwards not to do it overnight because of the outcry but try to make all required changes and enforcements gradually over the years so in the end you will have no choice but there will not be any sudden change that would spark protests.

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

#320

Post by kragen »

rixed wrote: post #306
kragen wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your story is appalling, and I agree that this is a major problem. However, drowning in e-waste from smartphones is many orders of magnitude from being an issue, as trivial calculations easily show. Mentioning it makes your argument rhetorically much weaker. The iPhone 16 is 147.6mm × 71.6mm × 7.8mm (8.2 × 10⁻⁵ m³) and weighs 170g, according to https://www.dimensions.com/element/apple-iphone-16-18th-gen . The populat…

"Drowning in e-waste" was a metaphor for "slowly destroying the conditions for civilisation with the violent obsession for more fossil fuel and more minerals to extract".

That's a bad metaphor, because those problems don't have anything significant in common with the e-waste problem, but there is no particular danger of smartphones being a major contributor to them, either. According to https://www.apple.com/nz/environment/pdf/products/iphone/iPh... the emissions per iPhone 16 are 56 kg of CO₂ equivalent, 18% of which is the expected energy consumption during the life of the product. France emits 4.14 tonnes of CO₂ per person per year, so buying an extra iPhone per year would increase your total yearly CO₂ (equivalent) emissions by about 1%. Similarly, the quantity of minerals in a smartphone is insignificant (170 grams! largely recycled!) compared with the quantity of minerals in, for example, a sidewalk (many tonnes).

Some of those minerals, like the gold in the bond wires, are pretty heavily refined, requiring the excavation of some much larger amount of gangue and leaving most of it as tailings. But the total quantities of those minerals in the device are very small indeed. Instead, worry about things like electric vehicles and CO₂ emissions from making concrete.

What you are doing by attempting to reduce fossil fuel and other mineral usage by buying smartphones less frequently is analogous to attempting to pay the rent on a Paris apartment by looking for lost coins in the subway station, or attempting to take a running leap across the English Channel. You are doomed by your complete lack of understanding of the orders of magnitude involved.

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