Author Topic: The impudence of Microsoft has reached new (criminal?) heights  (Read 30398 times)

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Online SiliconWizard

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Re: The impudence of Microsoft has reached new (criminal?) heights
« Reply #100 on: July 04, 2020, 07:25:01 pm »
LineageOS could be a decent start but still needs to be "degoogled" as it uses some Google components.
Which is as simple as not installing the "gapps" package.

Yes, actually AFAIK any Android distribution not provided by Google must install Google components separately for license reasons, so when dealing with open-source Android-based OSs, not installing them is always possible.

As stated here: https://wiki.lineageos.org/gapps.html
they can't even come preinstalled.
 

Offline Bassman59

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Re: The impudence of Microsoft has reached new (criminal?) heights
« Reply #101 on: July 04, 2020, 09:45:19 pm »
You're not actively protesting anything, only fooling yourself and possibly making yourself more visible by also creating additional relevant traffic. If you want to try doing something: block ads, scripts and advertising domains. Block telemetry whenever possible. Use privacy respecting browsers and anonymous tabs and counter fingerprinting. Accept that using some products and services is no longer viable.
What's the downside of using a low power device, completely separate from your main PC, to create fake traffic that uses up resources on the services you protest?

Running your “low-power device .. to create fake traffic” costs you a lot more than it costs them.

You pay more than they do for electricity. Your internet service costs A LOT more than theirs.
 

Online NiHaoMike

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Re: The impudence of Microsoft has reached new (criminal?) heights
« Reply #102 on: July 04, 2020, 10:20:12 pm »
Running your “low-power device .. to create fake traffic” costs you a lot more than it costs them.

You pay more than they do for electricity. Your internet service costs A LOT more than theirs.
I'd be interested to know how it would be possible to return a page of search results with not much more processing required as generating pseudorandom strings and submitting them. Keep in mind the queries are just picking a few dictionary words and stringing them together - making them look realistic is no longer the goal. It doesn't take that many words to increase the number of possible combinations to the point where caching is no longer feasible. And because you're just submitting strings and downloading text, you can run a lot of parallel instances on a little bandwidth.

There's a figure out there that running about 4 searches per minute would use the equivalent of keeping a 60W bulb on in the data center. Not sure if it's accurate, but even if the real value is an order of magnitude lower, it's not hard to do 4 search queries per minute with a low power processor that uses less than 6W. (In reality, a Raspberry Pi can do a lot more than that even without optimization, and then optimization can really shift things in your favor.)
Cryptocurrency has taught me to love math and at the same time be baffled by it.

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Offline Mr. Scram

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Re: The impudence of Microsoft has reached new (criminal?) heights
« Reply #103 on: July 04, 2020, 11:24:52 pm »
Running your “low-power device .. to create fake traffic” costs you a lot more than it costs them.

You pay more than they do for electricity. Your internet service costs A LOT more than theirs.
It's probably best to stop feeding this non discussion. NiHoaMike keeps ignoring any input or rebuttals, only to circle back to his original mistakes and naive views. I'm done playing chess with the pigeon.
 
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Online NiHaoMike

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Re: The impudence of Microsoft has reached new (criminal?) heights
« Reply #104 on: July 04, 2020, 11:38:08 pm »
Doesn't change the fact that generating a simple string of random words is fundamentally a much simpler operation than finding what entries in a very big database most closely match what is being described by those words. This doesn't even involve the data analysis.
Cryptocurrency has taught me to love math and at the same time be baffled by it.

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Offline gnavigator1007

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Re: The impudence of Microsoft has reached new (criminal?) heights
« Reply #105 on: July 05, 2020, 01:47:36 am »

Try Brave:


Didn't Brave get caught hijacking links a little bit ago?
 

Offline Mr. Scram

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Re: The impudence of Microsoft has reached new (criminal?) heights
« Reply #106 on: July 05, 2020, 02:28:09 pm »
Doesn't change the fact that generating a simple string of random words is fundamentally a much simpler operation than finding what entries in a very big database most closely match what is being described by those words. This doesn't even involve the data analysis.
Please read back. Endlessly repeating your ignorance only serves to embarrass.
 

Offline Mr. Scram

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Re: The impudence of Microsoft has reached new (criminal?) heights
« Reply #107 on: July 05, 2020, 02:29:31 pm »
:-DD  Years ago I wrote how I was using Wireshark and saw were even pressing a number key on the MS calculator causes the OS to send the data up to MS.   

I'm still using a WRT router to block all MS traffic.   To install the BLE software for Dave's 121GW,  I had to pull it from the store.  I let my guard down just long enough for them to push a new update which had additional IPs that had to be accounted for.   I have not changed anything after that.   10 still tries to send data non-stop but at least the PC is usable.

I had been using an old version of Firefox but recently was forced to "upgrade".   I pitched FF and tried Opera for a day,  until I learned it was sold off to China.  Then I tried Vivaldi and ran into problems with it that I wasn't smart enough to sort out.  So now it's back to FF and setting the admin rights to block its updates.    Too bad really as I like Vivaldi.
What's wrong with the modern versions of Firefox?
 

Online NiHaoMike

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Re: The impudence of Microsoft has reached new (criminal?) heights
« Reply #108 on: July 05, 2020, 03:20:54 pm »
Please read back. Endlessly repeating your ignorance only serves to embarrass.
You still have not explained how it's possible to do a search on a similar compute power level as a very simple random phrase generator. Try programming such a random phrase generator on even something as limited as the original Arduino and you'll see the phrases appear so fast it's just a blur. You keep saying that it would be trivial to distinguish from real data but that's not the goal. If it causes them to spend resources generating pages of search results, that achieves the desired effect.

But now I have thought of a way to protest that uses little or no resources on the client side once set up: make a bunch of throwaway Gmail accounts, then sign those up to as many spam lists as you can find. I suppose to enhance the effect, you could have a script occasionally log in and reply to a few spam messages, which will give the spammers the illusion that there is someone looking at the address and to send more spam that way. Now Google and the spammers waste each other's resources...
Cryptocurrency has taught me to love math and at the same time be baffled by it.

Cryptocurrency lesson 0: Altcoins and Bitcoin are not the same thing.
 

Offline Mr. Scram

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Re: The impudence of Microsoft has reached new (criminal?) heights
« Reply #109 on: July 05, 2020, 04:17:22 pm »
You still have not explained how it's possible to do a search on a similar compute power level as a very simple random phrase generator. Try programming such a random phrase generator on even something as limited as the original Arduino and you'll see the phrases appear so fast it's just a blur. You keep saying that it would be trivial to distinguish from real data but that's not the goal. If it causes them to spend resources generating pages of search results, that achieves the desired effect.

But now I have thought of a way to protest that uses little or no resources on the client side once set up: make a bunch of throwaway Gmail accounts, then sign those up to as many spam lists as you can find. I suppose to enhance the effect, you could have a script occasionally log in and reply to a few spam messages, which will give the spammers the illusion that there is someone looking at the address and to send more spam that way. Now Google and the spammers waste each other's resources...
Please stop embarrassing yourself. You're still proposing to gum up the operation of the people with a massive and streamlined infrastructure to deal with huge amounts of data by making a few extra requests. The only reason you think this may make any kind of difference is because you have no idea what you're talking about, refuse to listen to any input or rebutts and won't look into matters even at a cursory level. This "discussion" is like explaining a 5 year old why world hunger can't be solved by mailing groceries to Africa, not even I if we all do it. I hardly claim to be an expert myself but you really need a grasp of the basics to participate in a meaningful discussion.

What don't you understand about it being a billion dollar industry making a living out of extracting meaningful data out of massive amounts of noisy data? What numbers did you run that make you believe your little addition to the pile makes any kind of difference? At this point it feels like explaining my 5 year old nephew why his perpetual motion machine isn't going to work.  :palm:
 

Online NiHaoMike

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Re: The impudence of Microsoft has reached new (criminal?) heights
« Reply #110 on: July 05, 2020, 05:02:13 pm »
I did not suggest such fake data measures as a substitute for minimizing use of the services, but as something to do in addition. You also did not give any convincing reason why not to do that.

I'm starting to like the throwaway accounts and spam idea more and more. It is not limited by the resources available at home and wastes the spammer's bandwidth.
Cryptocurrency has taught me to love math and at the same time be baffled by it.

Cryptocurrency lesson 0: Altcoins and Bitcoin are not the same thing.
 

Offline Mr. Scram

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Re: The impudence of Microsoft has reached new (criminal?) heights
« Reply #111 on: July 05, 2020, 05:25:29 pm »
I did not suggest such fake data measures as a substitute for minimizing use of the services, but as something to do in addition. You also did not give any convincing reason why not to do that.

I'm starting to like the throwaway accounts and spam idea more and more. It is not limited by the resources available at home and wastes the spammer's bandwidth.
We did give you reasons many times, but you just don't seem capable of grasping them. I should know better than to argue with someone who thinks internet girls may like him back.
 

Offline SilverSolder

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Re: The impudence of Microsoft has reached new (criminal?) heights
« Reply #112 on: July 05, 2020, 05:26:17 pm »
I did not suggest such fake data measures as a substitute for minimizing use of the services, but as something to do in addition. You also did not give any convincing reason why not to do that.

I'm starting to like the throwaway accounts and spam idea more and more. It is not limited by the resources available at home and wastes the spammer's bandwidth.

I suspect that @Scram's view on this might be that it would take perhaps tens of millions of accounts to make an impact, and even then the algorithms would "learn" to ignore the noise after a while.
 

Offline SilverSolder

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Re: The impudence of Microsoft has reached new (criminal?) heights
« Reply #113 on: July 05, 2020, 05:27:29 pm »

[...]  I should know better than to argue with someone who thinks internet girls may like him back.

You mean they don't???    :o
 

Online NiHaoMike

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Re: The impudence of Microsoft has reached new (criminal?) heights
« Reply #114 on: July 05, 2020, 05:29:36 pm »
I suspect that @Scram's view on this might be that it would take perhaps tens of millions of accounts to make an impact, and even then the algorithms would "learn" to ignore the noise after a while.
But what if the goal is just wasting their resources to make it less profitable? It doesn't matter if the data analysis is impacted or not.
Cryptocurrency has taught me to love math and at the same time be baffled by it.

Cryptocurrency lesson 0: Altcoins and Bitcoin are not the same thing.
 

Offline Mr. Scram

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Re: The impudence of Microsoft has reached new (criminal?) heights
« Reply #115 on: July 05, 2020, 05:35:38 pm »
But what if the goal is just wasting their resources to make it less profitable? It doesn't matter if the data analysis is impacted or not.
Go run some back-of-the-envelope numbers and then explain to us why that's a silly idea.
 

Offline Mr. Scram

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Re: The impudence of Microsoft has reached new (criminal?) heights
« Reply #116 on: July 05, 2020, 05:46:55 pm »
I suspect that @Scram's view on this might be that it would take perhaps tens of millions of accounts to make an impact, and even then the algorithms would "learn" to ignore the noise after a while.
Obviously. You're trying to compete with a stupendously well funded and equipped adversary whose business model is sifting through endless amounts of noise. Thinking you have any chance of making any kind of meaningful impact is hilariously naive. It's the electronic equivalent of thoughts and prayers. You can't hope to do anything meaningful if you grossly misunderstand the situation.
 

Offline Mr. Scram

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Re: The impudence of Microsoft has reached new (criminal?) heights
« Reply #117 on: July 05, 2020, 05:49:43 pm »
You mean they don't???    :o
They may not love you, but at least they'll love your donations.
 

Online joeqsmith

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Re: The impudence of Microsoft has reached new (criminal?) heights
« Reply #118 on: July 05, 2020, 06:05:22 pm »
:-DD  Years ago I wrote how I was using Wireshark and saw were even pressing a number key on the MS calculator causes the OS to send the data up to MS.   

I'm still using a WRT router to block all MS traffic.   To install the BLE software for Dave's 121GW,  I had to pull it from the store.  I let my guard down just long enough for them to push a new update which had additional IPs that had to be accounted for.   I have not changed anything after that.   10 still tries to send data non-stop but at least the PC is usable.

I had been using an old version of Firefox but recently was forced to "upgrade".   I pitched FF and tried Opera for a day,  until I learned it was sold off to China.  Then I tried Vivaldi and ran into problems with it that I wasn't smart enough to sort out.  So now it's back to FF and setting the admin rights to block its updates.    Too bad really as I like Vivaldi.

What happened with Vivaldi for you?  -  I've got it playing all four seasons here! :D

Sorry, I was derailed and forgot about this post.   I removed Vivaldi after their last "upgrade" and was still seeing the same problem.   There was a specific message about trying to locate the sites before timing out.   I suspect it's attempting to use an address that I have locked out.    FF, IE  and even the Chinese versions of Opera did not have the problem so I went back to FF.   If you like, I can reinstall Vivaldi and see if I can sort out the cause. 

Online NiHaoMike

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Re: The impudence of Microsoft has reached new (criminal?) heights
« Reply #119 on: July 05, 2020, 06:07:36 pm »
Go run some back-of-the-envelope numbers and then explain to us why that's a silly idea.
How many parallel instances of searches can you run on something like a Raspberry Pi if well optimized? Most likely it will be bandwidth limited rather than CPU limited, but even a mere 1Mbps of text searches is a lot. For each search, it takes a lot more processing to decide which results in the database to return as a page. Even if their electricity is 10x cheaper than yours (not likely unless your rates are very high to begin with), I'm struggling to see how you can do a search with just 10x as much processing as it takes to pick a few dictionary words, string them together, and submit them as searches. It doesn't take that many words to expand the number of possible combinations to well beyond what is feasible to cache.
Cryptocurrency has taught me to love math and at the same time be baffled by it.

Cryptocurrency lesson 0: Altcoins and Bitcoin are not the same thing.
 

Offline SilverSolder

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Re: The impudence of Microsoft has reached new (criminal?) heights
« Reply #120 on: July 05, 2020, 06:25:41 pm »
:-DD  Years ago I wrote how I was using Wireshark and saw were even pressing a number key on the MS calculator causes the OS to send the data up to MS.   

I'm still using a WRT router to block all MS traffic.   To install the BLE software for Dave's 121GW,  I had to pull it from the store.  I let my guard down just long enough for them to push a new update which had additional IPs that had to be accounted for.   I have not changed anything after that.   10 still tries to send data non-stop but at least the PC is usable.

I had been using an old version of Firefox but recently was forced to "upgrade".   I pitched FF and tried Opera for a day,  until I learned it was sold off to China.  Then I tried Vivaldi and ran into problems with it that I wasn't smart enough to sort out.  So now it's back to FF and setting the admin rights to block its updates.    Too bad really as I like Vivaldi.

What happened with Vivaldi for you?  -  I've got it playing all four seasons here! :D

Sorry, I was derailed and forgot about this post.   I removed Vivaldi after their last "upgrade" and was still seeing the same problem.   There was a specific message about trying to locate the sites before timing out.   I suspect it's attempting to use an address that I have locked out.    FF, IE  and even the Chinese versions of Opera did not have the problem so I went back to FF.   If you like, I can reinstall Vivaldi and see if I can sort out the cause.

All I can say is that Vivaldi, in the latest release, is working reliably for me on 3 different PCs here.
 

Offline Mr. Scram

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Re: The impudence of Microsoft has reached new (criminal?) heights
« Reply #121 on: July 05, 2020, 07:06:56 pm »
How many parallel instances of searches can you run on something like a Raspberry Pi if well optimized? Most likely it will be bandwidth limited rather than CPU limited, but even a mere 1Mbps of text searches is a lot. For each search, it takes a lot more processing to decide which results in the database to return as a page. Even if their electricity is 10x cheaper than yours (not likely unless your rates are very high to begin with), I'm struggling to see how you can do a search with just 10x as much processing as it takes to pick a few dictionary words, string them together, and submit them as searches. It doesn't take that many words to expand the number of possible combinations to well beyond what is feasible to cache.
You're struggling because you don't grasp the situation. Forget about being "clever" for a bit and look into what you're up against. Then run some basic numbers and post your findings.

Go run some back-of-the-envelope numbers and then explain to us why that's a silly idea.
 

Online joeqsmith

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Re: The impudence of Microsoft has reached new (criminal?) heights
« Reply #122 on: July 05, 2020, 07:18:37 pm »
:-DD  Years ago I wrote how I was using Wireshark and saw were even pressing a number key on the MS calculator causes the OS to send the data up to MS.   

I'm still using a WRT router to block all MS traffic.   To install the BLE software for Dave's 121GW,  I had to pull it from the store.  I let my guard down just long enough for them to push a new update which had additional IPs that had to be accounted for.   I have not changed anything after that.   10 still tries to send data non-stop but at least the PC is usable.

I had been using an old version of Firefox but recently was forced to "upgrade".   I pitched FF and tried Opera for a day,  until I learned it was sold off to China.  Then I tried Vivaldi and ran into problems with it that I wasn't smart enough to sort out.  So now it's back to FF and setting the admin rights to block its updates.    Too bad really as I like Vivaldi.

What happened with Vivaldi for you?  -  I've got it playing all four seasons here! :D

Sorry, I was derailed and forgot about this post.   I removed Vivaldi after their last "upgrade" and was still seeing the same problem.   There was a specific message about trying to locate the sites before timing out.   I suspect it's attempting to use an address that I have locked out.    FF, IE  and even the Chinese versions of Opera did not have the problem so I went back to FF.   If you like, I can reinstall Vivaldi and see if I can sort out the cause.

All I can say is that Vivaldi, in the latest release, is working reliably for me on 3 different PCs here.

I'm sure it does, however hearing this doesn't help solve the problem I was seeing.   

It's odd as there were no plug-ins, just a clean install.  I disabled many of the security features and it had no effect.  What ever the problem was, it appears to have something to do with certain sites.   For example it had a problem with minicircuits. 

Their help talked about them having some hard coded IPs but the ones they mentioned are not being blocked.  Maybe they changed some of these.   One thing is certain, if they tried to use anything tied to MS, it would not work as I have every address I am aware of for them blocked.  Hard to say.

Online NiHaoMike

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Re: The impudence of Microsoft has reached new (criminal?) heights
« Reply #123 on: July 05, 2020, 07:24:49 pm »
You're struggling because you don't grasp the situation. Forget about being "clever" for a bit and look into what you're up against. Then run some basic numbers and post your findings.
I think you're trying to say one person isn't going to make much of a difference, that's why it needs to be a group effort...
Cryptocurrency has taught me to love math and at the same time be baffled by it.

Cryptocurrency lesson 0: Altcoins and Bitcoin are not the same thing.
 

Offline Mr. Scram

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Re: The impudence of Microsoft has reached new (criminal?) heights
« Reply #124 on: July 05, 2020, 07:40:00 pm »
I think you're trying to say one person isn't going to make much of a difference, that's why it needs to be a group effort...

I really don't think there's any doubt what I'm saying. You need an understanding of the numbers involved. You don't need to be spot on, a couple of orders of magnitude off won't matter. Look into them and post your conclusions. You've stated you'd like to engage in what's essentially a resource competition. You'll need some basic grasp of what you're going against.
 


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