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

471–480 of 514 posts

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

#471

Post by chipsrafferty »

bee_rider wrote: post #78
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…

Programmers use markdown or LaTeX anyway; there’s approximately nobody excited about working on an office suite. It is a completely unrewarding task.

I use Google docs

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

#473

Post by chipsrafferty »

zrobotics wrote: post #107
harshreality wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they don't remember the two-click procedure for toggling ublock on a website that they want to be using , they weren't paying attention when they were told or showed that, and all they need is a remedial work training session to hammer it in.

I mean, easier said than done. We pay accountants because they are good at their specialized field. They have knowledge and experience I don't, and there's certainly things that are obvious and simple to them that I don't know 9r remember. It's really easy to just say it's the LUsers fault and make pebkac jokes, and I definitely enjoy BOFH style humor, but honestly not everyone will remember the 30 seconds of trainin…

As someone who uses adblock, it is likely that they will encounter this problem every day. A massive amount of sites don't work or don't work fully with adblock. They can be trained to "whenever a site doesn't seem to work, try to turn of adblock for the site as a first measure". They won't forget it because they will do it every day.

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

#474

Post by hollerith »

fsflover wrote: post #468
hollerith wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but when an individual hacker needs a secure computer and is deciding which computer to buy, it does him no good to tell him that if the whole industry had evolved in a more convenient way over the last 4 decades, he would have been able to avoid secure boot: in the actual world, the only user-facing computers on the market with decent security use secure boot to help deliver that decent security where "user-fac…

Coreboot with Heads exists and works fine for me with Qubes OS. So it's not a hypothetical.

Coreboot with Heads and Qubes prevents malware that has inserted itself into the firmware of your ethernet driver, keyboard or block-storage device from modifying your software?

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

#475

Post by kragen »

netdevphoenix wrote: post #463
kragen wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

> 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 Are you counting the emissions produced to make it and all the packaging that comes with it, the vehicles used to transport it, lightning used in the warehouse where it sits and the appliances used to keep the warehouse clean too? Phones, just like anything else, are not made in a…

Apple says they are counting the emissions produced to make it and all the packaging that comes with it, the vehicles used to transport it, lighting used in the warehouse where it sits, and also the consumption of the device during its lifetime. You wouldn't want to count the carbon emissions of making the appliances used to keep the warehouse clean too because with that procedure the carbon emissions of anything would be infinite.

It ought to be obvious, but I'll say it anyway: the carbon emissions of shipping things like a smartphone are quite small, and the carbon emissions of things like warehouse lighting and warehouse cleaning are utterly insignificant.

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

#476

Post by kragen »

rixed wrote: post #378
kragen wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

e-waste is very much linked with over-production, of which any particular product taken in isolation, be it iphone or tomatoes, is of course insignificant, the issue being the economy at large not iphones or Apple. I don't know what's your point exactly? I was close to believe that this near perfect mix of naive quotation from Apple PR BS, computation of tons of minerals required to build a phone to the 5th decimal,…

I am an engineer, and engineering is what is going to keep the planet habitable, not self-sacrifice. Engineering is based on calculating the costs and benefits of tradeoffs.

I do respect self-sacrifice on principled grounds. If you were starving in a besieged city, and killing and eating a baby were your best chance for survival (https://youtu.be/KOkBEqtGUI8?t=2886), I'd endorse you not doing it. Even if, in some utilitarian calculus, you were more important than the baby, I'd endorse your hypothetical non-baby-eating moral choice. I'd like to think that I'd be one of the people abstaining from lifesaving cannibalism myself, though I've often seen people fail to uphold their principles when it comes down to it. I respect drawing a line in the sand beyond which you refuse to coldly weigh costs and benefits like an engineer.

But that's not what you're doing. If not buying a smartphone were "all about principles" to you, you wouldn't have a smartphone in the first place. You've crossed the line in the sand; you're already eating babies. All that remains to you is balancing the number of babies you kill and eat against your nourishment.

And, in that situation, refusing to balance costs and benefits isn't a matter of principle. It's merely irresponsibility, and will result in you eating unnecessary quantities of babies.

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

#477

Post by 3form »

fujigawa wrote: post #228
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…

> 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 Windows RT ARM machines from that era. Okay, but, that was like 15 years ago, on some shitty first-run computers that no one bought. A failed first attempt. I've never met a single person that owned, or has ever used, a Windows RT de…

I wouldn't mind that if in fact the parent poster didn't try to make it look like an argument that Microsoft is kind and playing nice. They did a bad thing there, there was an outrage, they fixed it, the end. If possible, they will do another bad thing again, should it benefit them.

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

#478

Post by array_key_first »

WorldMaker wrote: post #413
array_key_first wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason they are required is that, so far, every platform that has widespread TPM use is completely locked down. Microsoft would very much love for you to essentially rent your computer from them like you do with Apple and Google. There are security boons, sure, but these are a side effects. They are not what TPM is for.

Microsoft isn't Apple or Google, so assuming their intent here is a bit of an "all your friends are jumping off the bridge so you must want to jump off the bridge" fallacy. Stated primary intent by Microsoft for TPM is Passkeys (because Microsoft has key incentives to kill Passwords and reduce Phishing) and Netflix-class DRM (because people want to still be able to watch Netflix on their PCs). Sure, Microsoft has als…

All companies are the same, I can safely predict their actions. Intent doesn't matter, money matters.

Microsoft has tried, and failed, before but there is a culture shift here. All platforms are becoming locked down and consumers are being accustomed to being treated like cattle. Some even prefer it, beg for it.

One day, the time will come, and Microsoft will have all the tools. Because you gave them the tools.

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

#479

Post by array_key_first »

3eb7988a1663 wrote: post #435
array_key_first wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Changing the registry is far too much of a hurdle.

Guess that depends on how much it angers you. Within minutes of seeing that, I jumped to the web to find a workaround, because that was way too annoying to accept.

That solution doesn't work in window's last remaining relevant market: enterprise. I run regedit on a work computer, and work is the only place I am forced to put up with Windows.

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

#480

Post by rightbyte »

WorldMaker wrote: post #389
breakingcups wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a reason Microsoft is aggressively deprecating "older" CPU's that work perfectly fine. Heck, I have one laptop with Windows 11 that worked great, but won't update from 22h2 to 24h2 because CPU support was dropped between versions, leaving me with only the glib suggestion from the Windows Update UI to "Buy a new device". Ironically, installing Windows 10 and activating ESU would lead to longer hardware life. O…

TPM wasn't the only reason older CPUs were dropped. The biggest reasons where the line in the sand Microsoft chose would not be supported in Windows 11 was Spectre/Meltdown [0] mitigation. Windows 10 added a bunch of intentional slowdowns to mitigate that disaster and people incorrectly blamed Windows 10 for being slow and not the CPUs and their CVEs. Windows 11 seems to have wanted a clean slate without needing to h…

My understanding is that Spectre etc. only is a problem if the user choses to run hostile code on their computer.
Post reply on HN