The impudence of Microsoft has reached new (criminal?) heights

[Benta]

This morning I turned on my PC to be greeted with a jubilant installation banner touting the "new Edge Browser from Microsoft". Only option presented: install the turd.
The following banners also only had the option to continue installing. Clicking the cross in the upper right corner to stop this only made the install move one step further.

What kind of behaviour is this? I've never used Edge and have no wish to do so, I have much better browsers installed.

It's intolerable to experience this type of Microsoft heavy-handedness. But OK, I only have one M$ machine for historical reasons, all others run Linux/Ubuntu.
The M$ machine will now be reconfigured as well. Bye-bye M$.

[coppice]

Only option presented: install the turd.

Ahhhh, who can complain about such an honest tag on a button. 

[Bud]

Yes yes , i vividly remember how i turn on my Ubuntu linux PC one morning and the shit goddamn thing installed a new version with the Unity interface without even asking. So much for your beloved linux.

[Benta]

Yes yes , i vividly remember how i turn on my Ubuntu linux PC one morning and the shit goddamn thing installed a new version with the Unity interface without even asking. So much for your beloved linux.

Which means you had it set to autoupdate. Too bad... But that isn't even an option with M$. Just eat what they send you.

[hexreader]

Only option presented: install the turd.

Ahhhh, who can complain about such an honest tag on a button. 

Made my day, Made me laugh.

[TerraHertz]

This morning I turned on my PC to be greeted with a jubilant installation banner touting the "new Edge Browser from Microsoft". Only option presented: install the turd.

Well you did choose an open-arse policy when you installed Windows 10. Funny how Gates/Microsoft have the same strategy in such different arenas. What with Gates/Fauci found to have been funding the Wuhan phase of COVID development. Forced code updates, so much profit potential.

Glad to hear you're deleting it.
Probably should try to get that completed before WWIII starts (tomorrow?) You wouldn't want to have a Win10 system on your conscience at the end, would you?
Ref: China moving 100s of MBTs to area of border conflict with (nuclear armed) India.

[james_s]

Well you did choose an open-arse policy when you installed Windows 10. Funny how Gates/Microsoft have the same strategy in such different arenas. What with Gates/Fauci found to have been funding the Wuhan phase of COVID development.

WTF are you talking about?     Also you realize Gates has been retired from Microsoft for years?

Edge makes a pretty good downloader for Pale Moon or Chrome.

[m98]

Have you checked out the new chromium-based Edge browser though? It's quite good, performs better and consumes less memory than Google Chrome.

[Mr. Scram]

Have you checked out the new chromium-based Edge browser though? It's quite good, performs better and consumes less memory than Google Chrome.

Unfortunately both come with lots of "telemetry", which is a cute name for sending your every move to the mothership.

[m98]

Unfortunately both come with lots of "telemetry", which is a cute name for sending your every move to the mothership.

Just like Google Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari...
You can also disable most of the telemetry. I don't care what the browser does out-of-the-box. As long as I can configure it, it won't influence my choice.

[wraper]

What kind of behaviour is this? I've never used Edge and have no wish to do so, I have much better browsers installed.

Consider it an automatic update. There was Edge browser on your computer to begin with, it just got updated.

[NiHaoMike]

Unfortunately both come with lots of "telemetry", which is a cute name for sending your every move to the mothership.

There's one thing to do with such unwanted "telemetry": feed it fake data to show them how much you don't like it. And don't give it any real data so they would have nothing to gain.

[Siwastaja]

Yes yes , i vividly remember how i turn on my Ubuntu linux PC one morning and the shit goddamn thing installed a new version with the Unity interface without even asking. So much for your beloved linux.

It's not a huge newsflash that Ubuntu is the Microsoft of the Linux world, though.

[SpecialK]

What kind of behaviour is this? I've never used Edge and have no wish to do so, I have much better browsers installed.

Never used it, but are certain other browsers are superior?  But yeah, if you have a preference it really does suck when your system always chooses another default browser.

[bingo600]

Yes yes , i vividly remember how i turn on my Ubuntu linux PC one morning and the shit goddamn thing installed a new version with the Unity interface without even asking. So much for your beloved linux.

Heh .. I switched to Linux Mint after 10.4 , as they threathened w. Unity.
Never looked back

[rdl]

All browsers and the companies behind them are not the same.

Google is in a league of their own when it comes to telemetry and tracking user activities. Microsoft is doing the best they can to catch up. Avoid those two and the real problem becomes where you are connecting to, not what you use to connect with.

Unfortunately both come with lots of "telemetry", which is a cute name for sending your every move to the mothership.

Just like Google Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari...
You can also disable most of the telemetry. I don't care what the browser does out-of-the-box. As long as I can configure it, it won't influence my choice.

[SiliconWizard]

Speaking of that...
"Microsoft Swiftkey" virtual keyboard got installed on my phone (Android-based) without me having ever actively installed or allowed it. I don't use it. I noticed it was there when it appeared in a recent update, and after the update, my phone battery started to deplete much faster than usual. I looked at the battery details, and this Swiftkey shit showed up as the number one source of power draw. Keep in mind I don't even use it, it's not selected as any of my input methods. I tried uninstalling it, but the phone says it's part of the system and can't be uninstalled. What kind of bullshit is that. I managed to "disable" it from the Applications list, and it stopped eating my battery, but it's still installed.

I suggest anyone having a smartphone to check this out, Android or not, as it's also apparently available for iOS, and got updated recently.

Beyond the power draw issues, if you ever use this virtual keyboard, I suggest to be wary, as knowing MS's practices, I wouldn't be surprised if this app didn't "phone home" on a regular basis, possibly sending your inputs to some MS server one way or another. 

[wraper]

Speaking of that...
"Microsoft Swiftkey" virtual keyboard got installed on my phone (Android-based) without me having ever actively installed or allowed it... I tried uninstalling it, but the phone says it's part of the system and can't be uninstalled.

That's impossible unless phone manufacturer included it in firmware update.

[themadhippy]

I switched to Linux Mint after 10.4 , as they threathened w. Unity.

I learned how to get rid of it and keep the classic old look.There other clever move was removing shortcuts from the desktop,erm no its my desktop i'll put wot i like on it.

[SiliconWizard]

Speaking of that...
"Microsoft Swiftkey" virtual keyboard got installed on my phone (Android-based) without me having ever actively installed or allowed it... I tried uninstalling it, but the phone says it's part of the system and can't be uninstalled.

That's impossible unless phone manufacturer included it in firmware update.

Well, as that is obviously possible since it happened, yes it probably came as a "preinstalled" app - for what reason, only the phone manufacturer knows.
I just didn't notice it was installed until it got recently updated (because yeah, any preinstalled third-party app still updates separately from firmware updates) and started to eat battery.

This post confirms it's impossible to uninstall if preinstalled: https://support.swiftkey.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/115003098809-uninstal-swiftkey
(my phone is not a Sony but I guess it's a general statement. I wonder how many phones actually come preinstalled with this, but I suggest anyone to check this out.)

And then why a preinstalled, but non-essential app can't be uninstalled is fricking annoying. It may not be an MS issue per se (but as for MS, I still warn people about this app.)
The fact it was drawing a lot of power with also abnormal data consumption, although I have no proof of what it does, doesn't look good.

[joeqsmith]

   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. 

[SilverSolder]

[...]

And then why a preinstalled, but non-essential app can't be uninstalled is fricking annoying. It may not be an MS issue per se (but as for MS, I still warn people about this app.)
The fact it was drawing a lot of power with also abnormal data consumption, although I have no proof of what it does, doesn't look good.

I have noticed the same thing with Android -  a whole class of applications that cannot be uninstalled?   

Sadly, this seems to just be part of the "conspiracy" to force telemetry and tracking down everyone's throats - can you think of any other plausible reason? 

[NiHaoMike]

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.   

Time to compile a list of suspected "telemetry" so that we'll know where to inject fake data?

[SilverSolder]

  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!

[SilverSolder]

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.   

Time to compile a list of suspected "telemetry" so that we'll know where to inject fake data?

The ultimate solution is probably to disconnect any "serious" computer from the Internet,  and have a separate machine just for browsing the Internet....   either that, or a separate firewall product that can completely block all communications with the surveillance capitalist mother ships.

[Monkeh]

[...]

And then why a preinstalled, but non-essential app can't be uninstalled is fricking annoying. It may not be an MS issue per se (but as for MS, I still warn people about this app.)
The fact it was drawing a lot of power with also abnormal data consumption, although I have no proof of what it does, doesn't look good.

I have noticed the same thing with Android -  a whole class of applications that cannot be uninstalled?   

Sadly, this seems to just be part of the "conspiracy" to force telemetry and tracking down everyone's throats - can you think of any other plausible reason?

Uh, yes, the system partition is quite intentionally read-only.

[Mr. Scram]

Just like Google Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari...
You can also disable most of the telemetry. I don't care what the browser does out-of-the-box. As long as I can configure it, it won't influence my choice.

I was talking about Chrome and Chrome based Edge. Firefox isn't nearly as bad. I don't think all of it is configurable either and many actually take steps to obfuscate their behaviour or circumvent your wishes. It very obvious many parties won't take no for an answer.

[Mr. Scram]

There's one thing to do with such unwanted "telemetry": feed it fake data to show them how much you don't like it. And don't give it any real data so they would have nothing to gain.

Go ahead. Show us how you do it.

[Mr. Scram]

All browsers and the companies behind them are not the same.

Google is in a league of their own when it comes to telemetry and tracking user activities. Microsoft is doing the best they can to catch up. Avoid those two and the real problem becomes where you are connecting to, not what you use to connect with.

Even if you're able to keep full control of your own system, a lot of the world is now run on Azure, AWS or Google's platform. Many services, companies and governments use these so not shipping your data to them really is an uphill battle.

[NiHaoMike]

The ultimate solution is probably to disconnect any "serious" computer from the Internet,  and have a separate machine just for browsing the Internet....   either that, or a separate firewall product that can completely block all communications with the surveillance capitalist mother ships.

Throwing in noise is one way to discourage such data collection in the first place, especially if it's hard to distinguish from real data.

Another thing that helps a lot is using adblocking. In fact, many users don't like how targeted advertising seems to be "stalking" them and start using adblockers for that reason. (Although if you're using noise injection, checking ads is a good way to see how effective it is - if they're no longer relevant, it's probably working.)

Go ahead. Show us how you do it.

It's just a matter of generating noise and presenting it to the telemetry. If you don't do anything that gives telemetry real data, then what it's collecting would be all fake.

[SilverSolder]

[...]

And then why a preinstalled, but non-essential app can't be uninstalled is fricking annoying. It may not be an MS issue per se (but as for MS, I still warn people about this app.)
The fact it was drawing a lot of power with also abnormal data consumption, although I have no proof of what it does, doesn't look good.

I have noticed the same thing with Android -  a whole class of applications that cannot be uninstalled?   

Sadly, this seems to just be part of the "conspiracy" to force telemetry and tracking down everyone's throats - can you think of any other plausible reason?

Uh, yes, the system partition is quite intentionally read-only.

...Why place an application in system space?

[Monkeh]

[...]

And then why a preinstalled, but non-essential app can't be uninstalled is fricking annoying. It may not be an MS issue per se (but as for MS, I still warn people about this app.)
The fact it was drawing a lot of power with also abnormal data consumption, although I have no proof of what it does, doesn't look good.

I have noticed the same thing with Android -  a whole class of applications that cannot be uninstalled?   

Sadly, this seems to just be part of the "conspiracy" to force telemetry and tracking down everyone's throats - can you think of any other plausible reason?

Uh, yes, the system partition is quite intentionally read-only.

...Why place an application in system space?

.. because it's shipped with the system image?

[SilverSolder]

[...]

And then why a preinstalled, but non-essential app can't be uninstalled is fricking annoying. It may not be an MS issue per se (but as for MS, I still warn people about this app.)
The fact it was drawing a lot of power with also abnormal data consumption, although I have no proof of what it does, doesn't look good.

I have noticed the same thing with Android -  a whole class of applications that cannot be uninstalled?   

Sadly, this seems to just be part of the "conspiracy" to force telemetry and tracking down everyone's throats - can you think of any other plausible reason?

Uh, yes, the system partition is quite intentionally read-only.

...Why place an application in system space?

.. because it's shipped with the system image?

So it is beyond the wit of man to eject it into user space during / after a system installation?

Putting user level applications into system space is just bad...  wouldn't pass muster in most other situations, can't believe Google et al don't already know this.

[Monkeh]

So it is beyond the wit of man to eject it into user space during / after a system installation?

Which part of it being part of the read-only system image confuses?

Putting user level applications into system space is just bad...  wouldn't pass muster in most other situations, can't believe Google et al don't already know this.

Your app store is a user level app. Your keyboard is a user level app. Your launcher is a user level app. The entire interactive element of the device is a user level app.

[VK3DRB]

Ubuntu GUI looks and behaves a lot like Windows to the user. No innovation there. The MS Office alternatives look and behave very much like MS Office. Ho hum, nothing new under the sun  .

[james_s]

Operating system GUIs and office productivity software are problems that were solved decades ago. What sort of innovation are you expecting? The Windows UI severely regressed with 8 and further with 10. The only thing keeping me on Windows at this point is that the Win7 UI is still more polished than any of the Linux window managers I've tried. Office hasn't added anything compelling since the late 90s, I went with Libre Office last time I set up a PC because I couldn't be bothered to go dig out my MS Office installation disc.

[NiHaoMike]

The only thing keeping me on Windows at this point is that the Win7 UI is still more polished than any of the Linux window managers I've tried.

Strangely, "polished" apparently does not include having the small but very useful feature called the always on top button, something Linux has had for well over 20 years. Nview can add it if the PC has a Nvidia GPU.

[Mr. Scram]

Throwing in noise is one way to discourage such data collection in the first place, especially if it's hard to distinguish from real data.

Another thing that helps a lot is using adblocking. In fact, many users don't like how targeted advertising seems to be "stalking" them and start using adblockers for that reason. (Although if you're using noise injection, checking ads is a good way to see how effective it is - if they're no longer relevant, it's probably working.)

It's just a matter of generating noise and presenting it to the telemetry. If you don't do anything that gives telemetry real data, then what it's collecting would be all fake.

Again, show us how you do it.

[SilverSolder]

So it is beyond the wit of man to eject it into user space during / after a system installation?

Which part of it being part of the read-only system image confuses?

It is perfectly clear that some applications are being distributed as part of the system image - thank you for emphasizing.

The actual question is,  why can't the non-essential applications be uninstalled?  Does it really matter how they were distributed?

[Kleinstein]

It helps the programming of apps if the systems look all similar. So there is some sense in having some functions on all systems, even if most users don't use them of don't want them. If is one of the weak points of linux that there are so many variations. Already now MS has quite some problems checking there updates, that they don't break too many systems.

Chances are the phone companies get money for having some software pre-installed one the phones.

With the phones there is the additional difficulty that some of the system tasks should not be open to the user. So they have a good reason not to allow root access to the owners / users.

I also got the unwanted Brower update with only accept button. At least under Win 8.2 the install shield did block the update (at least stopped any further dialog).

[NiHaoMike]

Again, show us how you do it.

Easy, no setup required way to protest Google:
http://makeinternetnoise.com/index.html

Customizable add ons that work great for a separate browser:
https://noiszy.com/
https://adnauseam.io/

All of these are open source so the community can improve it.

I no longer use Google for real searches (switched to DuckDuckGo), therefore all the searches they get from me are fake.

I have Noiszy and Adnauseam running together in a separate browser whose only purpose is to generate noise. On my "real" browser, I use uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger to minimize the amount of real data that trackers get.

[Mr. Scram]

Easy, no setup required way to protest Google:
http://makeinternetnoise.com/index.html

Customizable add ons that work great for a separate browser:
https://noiszy.com/
https://adnauseam.io/

All of these are open source so the community can improve it.

I no longer use Google for real searches (switched to DuckDuckGo), therefore all the searches they get from me are fake.

I have Noiszy and Adnauseam running together in a separate browser whose only purpose is to generate noise. On my "real" browser, I use uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger to minimize the amount of real data that trackers get.

Neither of those inject fake telemetry, they just create additional traffic. It would also be naive to think traffic of a rather different nature isn't easily distinguished. Anyone who makes that mistake is severely underestimating the sophistication of modern data harvesting. Other than the browser blatantly reporting the traffic comes from a plugin, that is.

[NiHaoMike]

Neither of those inject fake telemetry, they just create additional traffic. It would also be naive to think traffic of a rather different nature isn't easily distinguished. Anyone who makes that mistake is severely underestimating the sophistication of modern data harvesting. Other than the browser blatantly reporting the traffic comes from a plugin, that is.

What if the fake traffic outnumbers real traffic by a wide margin, say 100 to 1 or even more?

[Siwastaja]

Neither of those inject fake telemetry, they just create additional traffic. It would also be naive to think traffic of a rather different nature isn't easily distinguished. Anyone who makes that mistake is severely underestimating the sophistication of modern data harvesting. Other than the browser blatantly reporting the traffic comes from a plugin, that is.

What if the fake traffic outnumbers real traffic by a wide margin, say 100 to 1 or even more?

It won't - web browsing is slow enough as it is, both for communication bandwidth and browser CPU/memory resources, you don't afford generating realistic-looking fake internet use at 100x rate unless you have a 10GB/s fiber optic connection and a massively powerful 32-core machine with 64GB of RAM. Even then, I doubt realistic 100:1 would be possible.

If you only load lightweight pages, then it's different from "normal" usage patterns and is likely easy to filter. So the only way of generating realistic traffic incurs similar hardware requirements as the real traffic.

Note that normal internet usage is far from noise; it's a very specific "signal", depending on who's using it. And detecting a signal on top of noise is easy-peasy. The key would be not to generate truly random noise, but noise that seems similar to that signal.

[dave j]

Ubuntu GUI looks and behaves a lot like Windows to the user. No innovation there. The MS Office alternatives look and behave very much like MS Office. Ho hum, nothing new under the sun  .

That's an eternal, unwinnable, problem for open source GUIs. Innovate and people complain it's too different to Windows. Make it work like Windows and people complain you just copy stuff.

[NiHaoMike]

It won't - web browsing is slow enough as it is, both for communication bandwidth and browser CPU/memory resources, you don't afford generating realistic-looking fake internet use at 100x rate unless you have a 10GB/s fiber optic connection and a massively powerful 32-core machine with 64GB of RAM. Even then, I doubt realistic 100:1 would be possible.

It takes very little bandwidth and client resources to do a Web search. And how often do you use the search anyways? Generating 100x as many searches per day as you normally do is not hard at all.

Now if you want to generate 100x fake video streaming sessions, that would indeed be harder. Even then, as long as you're not looking for full HD on every stream, it's quite possible to do 100 streams in less than a gigabit. Skip the rendering and you'll save a lot on compute power. But there's a much better way to make fake Youtube views that are indistinguishable from your real ones - use youtube-dl to download videos to a temp directory, keep the ones you're really interested in, and discard the rest.

Note that normal internet usage is far from noise; it's a very specific "signal", depending on who's using it. And detecting a signal on top of noise is easy-peasy. The key would be not to generate truly random noise, but noise that seems similar to that signal.

So then make the "noise" a bit less random. Or indeed, base it on real traffic. For example, if I make a lot of fake searches similar to a real search about topic A, it would appear that I'm a lot more interested in topic A than topic B.

[Mr. Scram]

What if the fake traffic outnumbers real traffic by a wide margin, say 100 to 1 or even more?

If I'm completely honest, asking these questions is admitting you don't understand the subject matter well enough. People in general seem surprisingly naive what data collection and the subsequent processing entails. This is a wonderful quality, but also means companies can collect with impunity. This is an industry built on deducing marketable conclusions from huge amounts of raw and noisy data. It's far beyond some guy or basic algorithm looking at your browsing and going "you looked at a backpack, you must want a backpack". That happens too, but is a incredibly crude and clunky approach compared to the profiles built of people and their behaviour.

What's done is preferably collecting large amounts of data and matching patterns to other know patterns. Facebook can say with an uncomfortable degree of accuracy whether you're about to engage in or end a relationship. They don't do this by looking at the content of your messages, but at the metadata like how much messages you send when and similar patterns. Note that Facebook also collects large amounts of data about non members. This is also why large scale data collection is a dangerous game as you can make accurate predictions about things people aren't even aware of themselves. This includes illnesses, pregnancies and all kinds of medical data but also political matters. Remember Cambridge Analytica? It's industrialized manipulation. Other than on the micro level people are ridiculously predictable.

To create meaningful noise means creating an adversarial model. "The other side" not only has a massive headstart but is also ridiculously well funded as it's literally an industry worth many billions of dollars, so there's not really a chance of even putting up a fight. Note that I'm simplifying a couple of things here as it's a massive, sprawling and quickly evolving industry.

[NiHaoMike]

So in the end, the first thing to do to fight back is to use adblocking to cut down on the source of revenue?

The noise generation, even if not effective at obscuring the real data, still makes good protest that increases their costs. If the end goal is to discourage data collection, I wonder if generating a ridiculous number of ad "views" (using AdNauseam) in the hopes that the views will be marked as invalid (and won't give them any revenue) would actually be a good idea. Or just use a regular adblocker and take away the revenue.

If you're not actually using the service you're feeding fake data to, the question of whether the noise is effective at obscuring real data is irrelevant when there is no real data to find. Would there be a chance that when presented with 100% noise (especially if not completely random), the algorithms would find a false pattern?

[SilverSolder]

What if the fake traffic outnumbers real traffic by a wide margin, say 100 to 1 or even more?

If I'm completely honest, asking these questions is admitting you don't understand the subject matter well enough. People in general seem surprisingly naive what data collection and the subsequent processing entails. This is a wonderful quality, but also means companies can collect with impunity. This is an industry built on deducing marketable conclusions from huge amounts of raw and noisy data. It's far beyond some guy or basic algorithm looking at your browsing and going "you looked at a backpack, you must want a backpack". That happens too, but is a incredibly crude and clunky approach compared to the profiles built of people and their behaviour.

What's done is preferably collecting large amounts of data and matching patterns to other know patterns. Facebook can say with an uncomfortable degree of accuracy whether you're about to engage in or end a relationship. They don't do this by looking at the content of your messages, but at the metadata like how much messages you send when and similar patterns. Note that Facebook also collects large amounts of data about non members. This is also why large scale data collection is a dangerous game as you can make accurate predictions about things people aren't even aware of themselves. This includes illnesses, pregnancies and all kinds of medical data but also political matters. Remember Cambridge Analytica? It's industrialized manipulation. Other than on the micro level people are ridiculously predictable.

To create meaningful noise means creating an adversarial model. "The other side" not only has a massive headstart but is also ridiculously well funded as it's literally an industry worth many billions of dollars, so there's not really a chance of even putting up a fight. Note that I'm simplifying a couple of things here as it's a massive, sprawling and quickly evolving industry.

So...   What can we do, if we intensely dislike the way the Internet has ended up?   ... At least ad blocking means we don't have to look at the intrusion, even if it is still there...

[Mr. Scram]

So...   What can we do, if we intensely dislike the way the Internet has ended up?   ... At least ad blocking means we don't have to look at the intrusion, even if it is still there...

You roll up your sleeves and do what you can. Proper ad blocking doesn't just hide the ads and is an important first step. Reduce your fingerprint. In the case of telemetry you'll want an independent firewall or PiHole type deal. It's definitely an uphill battle, but I consider not doing anything at least as unattractive.

[SilverSolder]

So...   What can we do, if we intensely dislike the way the Internet has ended up?   ... At least ad blocking means we don't have to look at the intrusion, even if it is still there...

You roll up your sleeves and do what you can. Proper ad blocking doesn't just hide the ads and is an important first step. Reduce your fingerprint. In the case of telemetry you'll want an independent firewall or PiHole type deal. It's definitely an uphill battle, but I consider not doing anything at least as unattractive.

This is based on the assumption that "the enemy" is happy to snare 95% of the users (like your non technical friends and family), and are unlikely to do all the work required to track people who know what they are doing?

[NiHaoMike]

You roll up your sleeves and do what you can. Proper ad blocking doesn't just hide the ads and is an important first step. Reduce your fingerprint. In the case of telemetry you'll want an independent firewall or PiHole type deal. It's definitely an uphill battle, but I consider not doing anything at least as unattractive.

This is based on the assumption that "the enemy" is happy to snare 95% of the users (like your non technical friends and family), and are unlikely to do all the work required to track people who know what they are doing?

That's why I advocate for noise injection and efforts to the make the noise harder to distinguish from real data, because that has the potential to help those who don't know any better.

[SilverSolder]

You roll up your sleeves and do what you can. Proper ad blocking doesn't just hide the ads and is an important first step. Reduce your fingerprint. In the case of telemetry you'll want an independent firewall or PiHole type deal. It's definitely an uphill battle, but I consider not doing anything at least as unattractive.

This is based on the assumption that "the enemy" is happy to snare 95% of the users (like your non technical friends and family), and are unlikely to do all the work required to track people who know what they are doing?

That's why I advocate for noise injection and efforts to the make the noise harder to distinguish from real data, because that has the potential to help those who don't know any better.

What if most people don't care?

[rdl]

My opinion is that to really fix the problem will require legal solutions implemented by government. There have been some noises in that area but so far it's way not enough.

The first thing that an individual can do is to not use a Google or Microsoft browser. Next, install uBlock Origin and NoScript and learn how to use them. It will require a bit of effort at first and there will be a lot of annoyances due to many sites not working.

I like to have two different functioning browsers installed. One tightly locked down for day to day use and one loose enough that online shopping still works. In theory, two different profiles should work, but I find separate browsers easier. I use Pale Moon and Firefox.

[SilverSolder]

My opinion is that to really fix the problem will require legal solutions implemented by government. There have been some noises in that area but so far it's way not enough.
[...]

This.

Governments / legislatures are sooooo far behind the curve these days...

[james_s]

So...   What can we do, if we intensely dislike the way the Internet has ended up?   ... At least ad blocking means we don't have to look at the intrusion, even if it is still there...

I keep my network locked down pretty tight, I have ad blocking on both my PCs and slightly less draconian ad blocking on my router that takes care of other devices. A bunch of dnsmasq rules too which block various things.

I try not to give away any more information than I have to but I don't worry too much about it either. Given I'm not a very typical consumer I think my habits are essentially worthless to marketers. I very rarely buy anything new other than food and when I do want something I figure out exactly what I want first and then actively search for the best place to buy it. I don't even remember the last time I saw an ad for something and decided I wanted it. Actually between my aggressive ad blocking and the fact that I haven't watched live TV in years I'm not sure I remember the last time I saw an ad.

[james_s]

This.

Governments / legislatures are sooooo far behind the curve these days...

We still have legislators who have never used the internet, at least we did not long ago, and many of them who have used it do not understand it. The people writing the laws are always hopelessly behind these days.

[NiHaoMike]

What if most people don't care?

They're part of the problem, just like how those who fall for phishing scams keep those scams going.

[chriva]

There's a tiny, tiny button to circumvent it if you dig around. Trust me.

[nuclearcat]

Yes yes , i vividly remember how i turn on my Ubuntu linux PC one morning and the shit goddamn thing installed a new version with the Unity interface without even asking. So much for your beloved linux.

As far as i remember Ubuntu doesn't do that, or at least not doing anymore, if they ever did such thing - max once. Linux users wont tolerate that.
If you are running LTS version - compatibility is everything for them. They will keep pushing only fixes and security updates, but no "totally new" versions of software, unless there is no real way to keep compatibility (like for example with php, they just deprecate old branch and project is too big to support by Ubuntu team means).
Thats why it is perfect for EE.
>Development machine? You just pack LTS version of some Linux to VM with kicad and other relevant tools, and you can expect consistency for several years. You can stay up2date secure AND still compatible with your software. While with windows you have choice - keep updates and have a chance everything breaks at major updates, or disable them and your Windows is becoming one giant security hole.
Did i forgot point that you can reinstall everything offline, without any "connect me to internet to download missing installer files and also i will download something else and screw with this new shiny updates"?
Oh and how many times i just turn on my Windows PC(some customers want Windows-only stuff) and at most needed time i have this "Please don't turn off your computer", it takes ages, and sometimes things get really wrong and at worst time.
>Product? Same here, you can even build your own update mirror based on LTS repos and push only updates for software that is critical for you, and choose, if you want to upgrade openssh to really latest version as it is not critical for your embedded stuff and you just tested it before.
Windows? Ticking bomb. Except that hilarious ATMs, billboards, "airport tableau" bluescreening, showing license errors or windows updates, everybody remember how FTDI massively bricked tons of chip clones and the only one guilty and responsible (and most likely paying) will be EE who built product and missed problem with supply chain. Or, if you built, for example, some product that is based on another components and one tiny, like some barcode reader have this counterfeit FTDI chip. And you have no control on their supply chain.
They literally delivered logical bomb that did significant damage and did not bear any responsibility. In my opinion, this is a real career suicide and the crime of using such a system that might sabotage whole product.

[SilverSolder]

[...]
  everybody remember how FTDI massively bricked tons of chip clones and the only one guilty and responsible (and most likely paying) will be EE who built product and missed problem with supply chain.
[...]

Wonder how many decided to avoid using FTDI altogether as a result of this?  -  the company went from "Good reputation for solid product"  to "Typhoid Mary" in about a week...

[james_s]

Wonder how many decided to avoid using FTDI altogether as a result of this?  -  the company went from "Good reputation for solid product"  to "Typhoid Mary" in about a week...

I've actively avoided using FTDI products since then and I was not even personally hit by the scheme. I'd rather just cut it off at the pass and never have to deal with such an issue, there are competing products with their own drivers that work just fine, no need to use fake FTDI clones.

[Mr. Scram]

That's why I advocate for noise injection and efforts to the make the noise harder to distinguish from real data, because that has the potential to help those who don't know any better.

It doesn't work that way. Look into how these things work or at least read by previous reply to you. Being naive about this doesn't get us anywhere and vague and overly broad handwavy "plans" won't either.

[NiHaoMike]

It doesn't work that way. Look into how these things work or at least read by previous reply to you. Being naive about this doesn't get us anywhere and vague and overly broad handwavy "plans" won't either.

So you give 100% noise (not necessarily all random) to an algorithm that (according to you) tries to pick out any pattern it can out of the noise. What happens if there isn't any real data to make any real patterns? Regardless of whether it locks onto a false pattern or gives up and concludes there's nothing of value, they just spent a lot of computing power to get nothing useful.

[Bassman59]

It doesn't work that way. Look into how these things work or at least read by previous reply to you. Being naive about this doesn't get us anywhere and vague and overly broad handwavy "plans" won't either.

So you give 100% noise (not necessarily all random) to an algorithm that (according to you) tries to pick out any pattern it can out of the noise. What happens if there isn't any real data to make any real patterns? Regardless of whether it locks onto a false pattern or gives up and concludes there's nothing of value, they just spent a lot of computing power to get nothing useful.

For starters, you haven't shown us any examples of how one would generate this noise.

If there is no real data, then, sure, the monitor "spent a lot of computing power ..." but then again, so did you. The difference is that they have power to spare and you don't.

I should also point out that your internet connection is metered. Look at your bill. You do have a data-transfer cap, even if it's high (like mine, which is a terabyte per month). Do you really want to eat up your data allotment sending noise?

[nuclearcat]

I've actively avoided using FTDI products since then and I was not even personally hit by the scheme. I'd rather just cut it off at the pass and never have to deal with such an issue, there are competing products with their own drivers that work just fine, no need to use fake FTDI clones.

Sometimes there is a reasons to keep using FTDI, for example reusing existing opensource software or libraries, to not reinvent the wheel.
And now i am ok to use clones, after such harmful "stunt" done by company and wont feel any guilt about that, as long as they are suitable for project and there is no way FTDI can do such sabotage in specific product again.
And whole topic is more about that Microsoft might deliver another bricker code for your devices, different vendor, if they wish to do so, and you can do nothing about it. All this attempts to cut updates by ips and dns names are funny as well, as you can't know, because you cant know how much stuff hidden in their code, and how they can keep data channels over "steganographed means" on.

Regarding opposing Microsoft and Google. Guys, did you forgot Mozilla aint saint too? Their stunt with DNS over HTTPS routed by default to cloudflare, and as i heard enabled by default for US customers - doesnt smell good at all. One thing is good - if browser if opensource, you can always build your own fork of Firefox or Chromium. "Edge" is not even near to that.

[NiHaoMike]

For starters, you haven't shown us any examples of how one would generate this noise.

If there is no real data, then, sure, the monitor "spent a lot of computing power ..." but then again, so did you. The difference is that they have power to spare and you don't.

I should also point out that your internet connection is metered. Look at your bill. You do have a data-transfer cap, even if it's high (like mine, which is a terabyte per month). Do you really want to eat up your data allotment sending noise?

Believe it or not, uncapped connections (at least for fixed connections) are the norm in some areas. (If you *do* have a cap, ad blocking is a must!)

Here's one example of a noise generator:
http://makeinternetnoise.com/index.html
It's just a script that periodically submits a random string as a search query. Doesn't use much bandwidth or compute power on the client side. I'm sure that if you reimplemented it as native code (or even an interpreted language that's more efficient than Javascript), it would be even more efficient and allow many more parallel instances to run on even a Raspberry Pi.

I am aware that bandwidth is (relatively) cheap for them, hence wasting that is not the most effective way of protest. But do they really have as much to spare as you think? Some video hosts are lowering the default resolution to reduce bandwidth usage thanks to COVID-19 dramatically increasing demand.

They don't get compute power, memory, or storage space very much cheaper than we do (in fact, enterprise hardware tends to be more expensive per metric than consumer hardware), plus the good protests are very asymmetrical in that the resource use on the client side is much lower than on the server side.

[SilverSolder]

[...]
Here's one example of a noise generator:
http://makeinternetnoise.com/index.html

[...]

Love it!   Have it running in a virtual machine now... 

[james_s]

For starters, you haven't shown us any examples of how one would generate this noise.

If there is no real data, then, sure, the monitor "spent a lot of computing power ..." but then again, so did you. The difference is that they have power to spare and you don't.

I should also point out that your internet connection is metered. Look at your bill. You do have a data-transfer cap, even if it's high (like mine, which is a terabyte per month). Do you really want to eat up your data allotment sending noise?

Believe it or not, uncapped connections (at least for fixed connections) are the norm in some areas. (If you *do* have a cap, ad blocking is a must!)

I've never had a cap on my internet connection. Until recently I had a 30/30Mb connection and at one point I had the downstream almost completely saturated for several weeks and was not billed anything extra or throttled. Now I have a gigabit connection and have not come close to saturating it for any length of time and again I cannot find any mention of any sort of cap.

[themadhippy]

I've never had a cap on my internet connection.

last one i had was about 18 years ago

[Bassman59]

I've never had a cap on my internet connection.

last one i had was about 18 years ago

On the page detailing Internet service from Cox Cable (the incumbent here, and I have no real choice), there's an entry for "Data plan." That it's placed so prominently here is new -- only in the last couple of months. Previously, the cap was buried in the service details. It is not on the bill.

So, check your service details. If you don't have a cap, consider yourself lucky. And expect it to change.

[themadhippy]

my provider state

unlimited  is truly unlimited,we do not limit your data or use any traffic management

and a quick check shows

You’ve consumed 1,229GB of your unlimited broadband data since 01/01/2020

not bad for 20 quid a month

[edy]

I have found the Edge browser to be fairly good. For example at the office we need clients to fill in PDF forms. When Google Chrome loads a PDF it doesn't allow you to save the form filled in. It only lets you download and it saves the blank. Edge let's you load the PDF, fill it, save the contents and reload the PDF again and display the saved data in the fields/checkboxes no problem. Much better than installing a bloated Adobe Reader.

At home I use Ubuntu Studio, which uses the Xfce desktop. Very smooth and slick. I've experimented with Unity but couldn't stand it. At some point I updated from Xenial Xerus to Artful Aardvark and I think they pushed the Gnome desktop on us. I liked it at first, added some cool extensions (see video below) but then soon had a total meltdown of my desktop environment (very glitchy). So I did a complete reinstall to the latest Ubuntu Studio with Xfce and never looked back.

As far as leaving little to no footprints, use Tails on a bootable USB with persistence. I made myself a key and boot up with it on any machine. It will retain your files and work, everything configured through Tor and uses DuckDuckGo search engine. Good for watching and seeing news and shows restricted to other countries. When you are done, shutdown, remove key and the host computer you used has no idea. Apparently Snowden used this distro on various library and public machines.

[SilverSolder]

Will the new Edge browser start on Windows 7?

[mc172]

I had this happen on my W10 machines about a week ago but what I really didn't expect is for this to happen on one of my W7 machines just a few minutes ago. It effectively took over my computer and was running 3 as separate instances in task manager so that even if you try to use the end task button, the other two are left running. You can't escape it until you go through with it as it wants you to. Absolute bellends, pretty annoyed by this.

The update schedule on this particular machine are set to manual and the update it prompted me to install earlier today (about 4PM GMT) looked like a normal security update, apart from being a little bit larger than usual (80 MB) but looked fine. Unfortunately not.

[SilverSolder]

A Win7 machine here received Edge as an update a couple of days ago, as well.

Not bad for an unsupported OS that's not supposed to get any updates...

[SiliconWizard]

A Win7 machine here received Edge as an update a couple of days ago, as well.

Not bad for an unsupported OS that's not supposed to get any updates...

Indeed, it appeared as an update.
Note that 7 also gets Windows Defender updates on a (very) regular basis, but apparently it's just "signatures" and not the core software itself.

I guess they consider both as not directly part of the OS, but as additional MS apps, that you still get updates for. Edge is a weird case though - what app is it supposed to update? Internet Explorer? Which would be contradictory though, as MS explicited stated that IE support on 7 would end on the same date that the OS support itself would.

Also note that 7 is NOT exactly unsupported. Support is just no longer free. https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/4527878/faq-about-extended-security-updates-for-windows-7
At the moment, ESU has a planned update cycle up to Jan. 2023.

[rdl]

Last week Defender claimed it needed an definitions update. It downloaded it but couldn't install it. Googling the error did not really help. I didn't really look into it any farther. Maybe definitions are no longer compatible with the Windows 7 Defender?

[Mr. Scram]

Indeed, it appeared as an update.
Note that 7 also gets Windows Defender updates on a (very) regular basis, but apparently it's just "signatures" and not the core software itself.

I guess they consider both as not directly part of the OS, but as additional MS apps, that you still get updates for. Edge is a weird case though - what app is it supposed to update? Internet Explorer? Which would be contradictory though, as MS explicited stated that IE support on 7 would end on the same date that the OS support itself would.

Also note that 7 is NOT exactly unsupported. Support is just no longer free. https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/4527878/faq-about-extended-security-updates-for-windows-7
At the moment, ESU has a planned update cycle up to Jan. 2023.

Windows 7 is essentially unsupported as regular Joes won't get any further updates. Extended support isn't for regular end users.

[Mr. Scram]

For starters, you haven't shown us any examples of how one would generate this noise.

If there is no real data, then, sure, the monitor "spent a lot of computing power ..." but then again, so did you. The difference is that they have power to spare and you don't.

I should also point out that your internet connection is metered. Look at your bill. You do have a data-transfer cap, even if it's high (like mine, which is a terabyte per month). Do you really want to eat up your data allotment sending noise?

Being ridiculously naive about how these things work isn't going to help anyone. Generating noise successfully depends both on overwhelming the other party and creating relevant and appropriate "adversarial" noise. Neither are realistically going to happen. These are incredibly well funded parties literally making their money by distilling vast amounts of highly noisy data into something usable profitable. Some idealistic handwavy plans aren't going to impress anyone.

[AlexJackson]

And here I am slowly migrating my main programs, and work environment to Debian Mate to leave the Microsoft Ecosystem. (Plasma looks nice and polished so I'm struggling a bit though). I'm still on Windows 7 Pro with updates disabled so luckily I avoided the recommended 'security' updates (*cough* "Edge" *cough*). The only thing holding me to Windows is gaming. Debian Mate "Live USB" w/ persistence is more than adequate for my daily needs such as browsing, programming, and relaxing.

Windows 7, Palemoon browser (portable version, noscript, ublock) along with a pihole with aggressive filters and a firewall with aggressive settings and lots of garbage in my hosts file. It stops a lot of garbage but it also breaks a lot of sites.

In one particular circle of users I'm around, Windows 10 was a huuuuuuuge unmitigated disaster with people running machines 24x7 who operate local weather stations. The incessant rebooting, system wide configuration changes, and a host of issues made Win10 useless for that environment. Its gotten better though. Luckily on my WX server still runs 7 and I haven't had any issues with it.

I miss Windows 2000 Pro. An operating system to get work done with no social media installed.

[NiHaoMike]

Being ridiculously naive about how these things work isn't going to help anyone. Generating noise successfully depends both on overwhelming the other party and creating relevant and appropriate "adversarial" noise. Neither are realistically going to happen. These are incredibly well funded parties literally making their money by distilling vast amounts of highly noisy data into something usable profitable. Some idealistic handwavy plans aren't going to impress anyone.

Then what about just cost them computing resources with automated protest? Count how many times you actually use the search along with how much (little) bandwidth it uses and it will turn out doing 100x as many searches per day as a normal user does is not hard at all. And it takes far less computing power to generate random data (especially if defeating tracking is not the goal) than it does to actually do the search.

[Mr. Scram]

Then what about just cost them computing resources with automated protest? Count how many times you actually use the search along with how much (little) bandwidth it uses and it will turn out doing 100x as many searches per day as a normal user does is not hard at all. And it takes far less computing power to generate random data (especially if defeating tracking is not the goal) than it does to actually do the search.

Incorrect. You're still working under the naive assumption you can essentially DDOS these groups with blunt noise, which is problematic for several reasons. We can go back and forth endlessly but it's no use without at least some understanding of what you're up against.

[NiHaoMike]

Incorrect. You're still working under the naive assumption you can essentially DDOS these groups with blunt noise, which is problematic for several reasons. We can go back and forth endlessly but it's no use without at least some understanding of what you're up against.

Not a complete DDoS attack, just increasing their costs so the data collection ends up less profitable. Even ignoring the tracking side of things, they end up using resources to return a bunch of results that ultimately just get discarded. Don't forget that it takes resources to look at the search terms and decide what to actually use for analysis.

[Mr. Scram]

Not a complete DDoS attack, just increasing their costs so the data collection ends up less profitable. Even ignoring the tracking side of things, they end up using resources to return a bunch of results that ultimately just get discarded. Don't forget that it takes resources to look at the search terms and decide what to actually use for analysis.

You keep making the same handwavy arguments. Stop talking and start informing yourself a bit.

[NiHaoMike]

Please explain why you don't think it will work. I see it as going a step beyond not using the service (using alternatives instead) and actively protesting them.

[Mr. Scram]

Please explain why you don't think it will work. I see it as going a step beyond not using the service (using alternatives instead) and actively protesting them.

I already did. Again, stop talking and start reading.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/the-impudence-of-microsoft-has-reached-new-(criminal)-heights/msg3101860/#msg3101860

[NiHaoMike]

It doesn't have to affect the data analysis for it to work. Just making the searches uses their resources while using little on your end.

[Mr. Scram]

It doesn't have to affect the data analysis for it to work. Just making the searches uses their resources while using little on your end.

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. 

[NiHaoMike]

Do you have any suggestions that go beyond merely not using those services?

[SilverSolder]

Do you have any suggestions that go beyond merely not using those services?

Even that doesn't help, because all the services that you DO use are feeding the beast in the background.

Every time you do a "Captcha", guess who got "captured"?

[NiHaoMike]

Even that doesn't help, because all the services that you DO use are feeding the beast in the background.

Every time you do a "Captcha", guess who got "captured"?

That's why actively protesting is better than just using the services as little as possible.

There's a captcha breaker to fight the much criticized Google reCAPTCHA.
https://github.com/dessant/buster

[TMM]

Tbh Windows 10 is an improvement over Windows 7. Things generally just work. Almost all annoyances can be turned off if you delve deep enough, and in a world where Facebook, Google etc know your every move (if you use their mobile apps) I wouldn't be worried about a small trickle of activity profiling being sent to MS. Complaining about M$ will probably put your on their watchlist instead of flying under the radar blending in with the normies viewing selfies on instagram haha!

Re: browsers - I stopped using Chrome when they added the feature to auto-login the browser itself to your Google account as soon as you log in to any Google service via the browser. At least with Firefox you have the option of using the browser somewhat anonymously.

While I hate updates which force new features (or remove them), I think forcing Edge onto people still running outdated browsers is probably a positive thing. Better that grandma uses a modern, reasonably secure browser when following a dodgy email link, instead of IE6.

[themadhippy]

Wonder how much of a back hander the EU got  to stop looking to closely  at  micro$t forcing internet browsers on people

[Mr. Scram]

That's why actively protesting is better than just using the services as little as possible.

There's a captcha breaker to fight the much criticized Google reCAPTCHA.
https://github.com/dessant/buster

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. Not using a smartphone may be a good idea and I suspect that some Linux based distributions are the best option for desktop computing. Whatever the case, without some legislative intervention it seems you can only hope to reduce your footprint a tiny bit. It's not a fight one can reasonably hope to win on your own.

[Monkeh]

Wonder how much of a back hander the EU got  to stop looking to closely  at  micro$t forcing internet browsers on people

It's no longer an issue of concern:

[Mr. Scram]

Tbh Windows 10 is an improvement over Windows 7. Things generally just work. Almost all annoyances can be turned off if you delve deep enough, and in a world where Facebook, Google etc know your every move (if you use their mobile apps) I wouldn't be worried about a small trickle of activity profiling being sent to MS. Complaining about M$ will probably put your on their watchlist instead of flying under the radar blending in with the normies viewing selfies on instagram haha!

Re: browsers - I stopped using Chrome when they added the feature to auto-login the browser itself to your Google account as soon as you log in to any Google service via the browser. At least with Firefox you have the option of using the browser somewhat anonymously.

While I hate updates which force new features (or remove them), I think forcing Edge onto people still running outdated browsers is probably a positive thing. Better that grandma uses a modern, reasonably secure browser when following a dodgy email link, instead of IE6.

Why do you think Microsoft's data gathering is just "a tiny trickle"? Nadella is transforming Microsoft into a services company and for those more data is better. Data is where the money is and Microsoft stockholders have shown they understand this by replacing Ballmer with Nadella. Microsoft got into the data game and is anything but pussyfooting around. Edge Chrome is actually a decent browser, though unfortunately yet predictably it's stuffed with telemetry features.

[NiHaoMike]

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?

Not using a smartphone may be a good idea

Or use a smartphone based on a completely open OS, for example LineageOS.

[Mr. Scram]

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?

Not using a smartphone may be a good idea

Or use a smartphone based on a completely open OS, for example LineageOS.

I'm cutting the "why not generate noise" discussion off as we're endlessly circling back to your same mistakes. Reread the previous posts, as they cover your question. LineageOS could be a decent start but still needs to be "degoogled" as it uses some Google components. Using a smartphone means being extremely vigilant and probably overlooking something sooner rather than later. Most prominent apps are completely unusable without Google. We have to remember that Android has been designed to be a sensor for Google. That has been the primary function from the moment Google acquired it and the reason Google did so.

[NiHaoMike]

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.

[SiliconWizard]

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.

[Bassman59]

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.

[NiHaoMike]

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.)

[Mr. Scram]

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.

[NiHaoMike]

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.

[gnavigator1007]

Try Brave:

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

[Mr. Scram]

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.

[Mr. Scram]

  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?

[NiHaoMike]

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...

[Mr. Scram]

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. 

[NiHaoMike]

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.

[Mr. Scram]

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.

[SilverSolder]

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.

[SilverSolder]

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

You mean they don't???   

[NiHaoMike]

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.

[Mr. Scram]

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.

[Mr. Scram]

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.

[Mr. Scram]

You mean they don't???   

They may not love you, but at least they'll love your donations.

[joeqsmith]

  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!

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. 

[NiHaoMike]

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.

[SilverSolder]

  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!

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.

[Mr. Scram]

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.

[joeqsmith]

  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!

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.

[NiHaoMike]

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...

[Mr. Scram]

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.

[joeqsmith]

  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?

Like MS, once they started to force updates, my perception is that they made me less productive.  For me, I want my software like like any other tool to be reliable and repeatable. 

In the case of MS, they blue screened my PC a few times and the endless full installs became a real pain.  I have PC connected to our TV and had left it open for all updates.  I may only have 30 minutes to watch something and many times, this was spent doing updates. When I go to turn off the PC, the last thing I want to do is wait a half hour while it updates to make sure they didn't fuck it up.     

FF with their constant patches at one point changed the way the data was presented on my tablet which I run with a touch screen.  That one change to the menus was pretty much the point where I rolled back to an early version that did not require the updates.   This worked fine until recently.   I now have the new version (locked) but  I would have switched to Vivaldi out of frustration, had it worked out of the box. 

[NiHaoMike]

How much computing resources does it actually take to do a search that's not cached? My understanding is that it's a few orders of magnitude more than what it takes to make the simple query in the first place.

The English dictionary has about 470k words. Obviously, most of those are obscure terms that the majority has never heard of. For simplicity, let's pick 65536 of them to use for making search phrases, a nice binary number that lends itself nicely to efficient implementation. If we allocate 16 bytes per word (for CPU efficient access), that's 1MB of memory needed - it can even fit in the cache of many CPUs.

String just 4 of those words together and the number of possible combinations will be about 1.84 x 10^19 - completely impossible to fully cache. If that's not an impressive enough number for you, consider increasing that to 5 words or more. We can therefore conclude that the vast majority of searches will make actual database lookups and won't be fully cached.

The actual operation of stringing the words together with spaces in between takes so little time on a modern CPU that it's not worth thinking about. Turning that into a HTTP request is also trivial. Then you actually make the requests, something that can take advantage of parallelism.

All in all, it doesn't take much resources to make a lot of requests, I'd be interested to know how it can be possible to make the search itself use a lot less resources than I would expect it to.

[cdev]

Chroimium is even worse.

All of the better known browsers are essentially spyware now.

[joeqsmith]

Chroimium is even worse.

All of the better known browsers are essentially spyware now.

At least for the USA as I understand it, the provider is allowed to track and sell the data.  The fear of being tracked is less of a concern as I just assume they are.   I know MS would track everything they could.   It not my goal to address this so much as trying to keep the PC as a stable tool for engineering use.  The latest game simulator and background themes have no value to me.  If the PC is doing what I need it to,  I see no reason to upgrade.  If you are going to force it on me, I will most likely find a work around. 

Rather than trying to use old star trek clips as a fear motivation,  why not present some meaningful metrics?   I did a quick search:

https://www.thedrum.com/news/2019/04/25/brave-will-pay-web-browsers-watch-ads-with-novel-digital-revenue-model
https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/67594/braves-browser-has-been-autocompleting-websites-with-referral-codes
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3292619/the-brave-browser-basics-what-it-does-how-it-differs-from-rivals.html

[Mr. Scram]

How much computing resources does it actually take to do a search that's not cached? My understanding is that it's a few orders of magnitude more than what it takes to make the simple query in the first place.

The English dictionary has about 470k words. Obviously, most of those are obscure terms that the majority has never heard of. For simplicity, let's pick 65536 of them to use for making search phrases, a nice binary number that lends itself nicely to efficient implementation. If we allocate 16 bytes per word (for CPU efficient access), that's 1MB of memory needed - it can even fit in the cache of many CPUs.

String just 4 of those words together and the number of possible combinations will be about 1.84 x 10^19 - completely impossible to fully cache. If that's not an impressive enough number for you, consider increasing that to 5 words or more. We can therefore conclude that the vast majority of searches will make actual database lookups and won't be fully cached.

The actual operation of stringing the words together with spaces in between takes so little time on a modern CPU that it's not worth thinking about. Turning that into a HTTP request is also trivial. Then you actually make the requests, something that can take advantage of parallelism.

All in all, it doesn't take much resources to make a lot of requests, I'd be interested to know how it can be possible to make the search itself use a lot less resources than I would expect it to.

You're still trying to come up with a "solution" for a problem you don't remotely understand. What kind of capabilities do you think you are up against? Do some research and try ballparking it and then tell us how feasible gumming something like that up is by a blunt stress attack. This horse must be pulped by now but is obviously requires some more beating. 

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

[NiHaoMike]

The only part left to make it fail is if doing the search actually takes much less resources than I expect. I'm interested to know exactly how that could be the case, since complete caching is already ruled out. Are they using ASICs or something that really are that efficient at searching?

[joeqsmith]

Pretty much sums up what I was seeing.
https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/33633/vivaldi-gets-stuck-on-some-pages-very-slow-like-frozen/82?lang=en-GB&page=5

Looks like its a problem with Chrome.   I have never tried using it. 
https://www.fileinspect.com/blog/fix-slow-connection-caused-by-the-establishing-secure-connection/

Looks like it's been a problem for a very long time.   Firefox stays for now. 

[SilverSolder]

  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?

Like MS, once they started to force updates, my perception is that they made me less productive.  For me, I want my software like like any other tool to be reliable and repeatable. 

In the case of MS, they blue screened my PC a few times and the endless full installs became a real pain.  I have PC connected to our TV and had left it open for all updates.  I may only have 30 minutes to watch something and many times, this was spent doing updates. When I go to turn off the PC, the last thing I want to do is wait a half hour while it updates to make sure they didn't fuck it up.     

FF with their constant patches at one point changed the way the data was presented on my tablet which I run with a touch screen.  That one change to the menus was pretty much the point where I rolled back to an early version that did not require the updates.   This worked fine until recently.   I now have the new version (locked) but  I would have switched to Vivaldi out of frustration, had it worked out of the box.

I had a cheapo little Win 8 tablet that literally got bricked by a Windows 8 update -  it never recovered!   I spent a couple of hours trying to bring it back, but it ended up being recycled.

[SilverSolder]

Pretty much sums up what I was seeing.
https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/33633/vivaldi-gets-stuck-on-some-pages-very-slow-like-frozen/82?lang=en-GB&page=5

Looks like its a problem with Chrome.   I have never tried using it. 
https://www.fileinspect.com/blog/fix-slow-connection-caused-by-the-establishing-secure-connection/

Looks like it's been a problem for a very long time.   Firefox stays for now.

I just tried the "problem sites" linked in the first one - didn't see an issue using 3.1.1929.34 (Stable channel) (64-bit).

[joeqsmith]

Pretty much sums up what I was seeing.
https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/33633/vivaldi-gets-stuck-on-some-pages-very-slow-like-frozen/82?lang=en-GB&page=5

Looks like its a problem with Chrome.   I have never tried using it. 
https://www.fileinspect.com/blog/fix-slow-connection-caused-by-the-establishing-secure-connection/

Looks like it's been a problem for a very long time.   Firefox stays for now.

I just tried the "problem sites" linked in the first one - didn't see an issue using 3.1.1929.34 (Stable channel) (64-bit).

The last update I tried was:
Vivaldi   3.1.1929.34 (Stable channel) (64-bit)
Revision   a3849a97b5fbcc3f22dc813c14e999c7bf13b4f5

I'm not surprised it works for you as if it were very common problem no one would use it.   But again, that doesn't help sorting out the problem.   I thought about opening the network to all traffic but my better judgement steps in.   

Another option may be to run WS and see if they hit any IPs that I have locked.  I would expect if they had specific requirements that it would have been documented. 

It's possible that it's something in the OS but it's odd that only Vivaldi seemed to have a problem.   

*********************

I reinstalled it, and set my homepage to Amazon (known problem site).  The problem persists.     There was an update from the last time I had tried it, so I went ahead and installed it.

Vivaldi   3.1.1929.45 (Stable channel) (64-bit)
Revision   1eb3263017ed42270818939fbff241845938a81f

The problem still persists.  "Establishing secure connection..." "This site can't be reached"  "Too long to respond" 

[SilverSolder]

Pretty much sums up what I was seeing.
https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/33633/vivaldi-gets-stuck-on-some-pages-very-slow-like-frozen/82?lang=en-GB&page=5

Looks like its a problem with Chrome.   I have never tried using it. 
https://www.fileinspect.com/blog/fix-slow-connection-caused-by-the-establishing-secure-connection/

Looks like it's been a problem for a very long time.   Firefox stays for now.

I just tried the "problem sites" linked in the first one - didn't see an issue using 3.1.1929.34 (Stable channel) (64-bit).

The last update I tried was:
Vivaldi   3.1.1929.34 (Stable channel) (64-bit)
Revision   a3849a97b5fbcc3f22dc813c14e999c7bf13b4f5

I'm not surprised it works for you as if it were very common problem no one would use it.   But again, that doesn't help sorting out the problem.   I thought about opening the network to all traffic but my better judgement steps in.   

Another option may be to run WS and see if they hit any IPs that I have locked.  I would expect if they had specific requirements that it would have been documented. 

It's possible that it's something in the OS but it's odd that only Vivaldi seemed to have a problem.   

*********************

I reinstalled it, and set my homepage to Amazon (known problem site).  The problem persists.     There was an update from the last time I had tried it, so I went ahead and installed it.

Vivaldi   3.1.1929.45 (Stable channel) (64-bit)
Revision   1eb3263017ed42270818939fbff241845938a81f

The problem still persists.  "Establishing secure connection..." "This site can't be reached"  "Too long to respond"

I've got the network clamped down reasonably tight, also using DNS over HTTPS to avoid the local cable company throwing ads into random browser sessions...  (b@stards...)

[joeqsmith]

I've got the network clamped down reasonably tight, also using DNS over HTTPS to avoid the local cable company throwing ads into random browser sessions...  (b@stards...)

Against my better judgement, I bypassed the router.   Started Vivaldi and instantly came up with Amazon.  I then tried several other known problem pages.   They all worked.   

Next I switched back to the router and the problem returns as expected.   I shut down every app I could, fired up wireshark and then started Vivaldi.  I let it run till the point it timed out, captured the data and closed the connection.     

It's a bit hard to tell as the OS spams the router with Microsoft traffic but it does appear they are attempting to use some of the addresses I have locked.  We know they have some hard coded IPs but again, the ones they mention are not on my list.   Vivaldi would need to make what they require very clear and why before I would open it up.  Another option would be to open a block of addresses at a time until I locate it but I have them all blocked for a reason.

Microsoft, creating the most complex virus yet with Windows 10 had caused me to rethink how to lock things down which comes with a price.   Vivaldi for what ever reason is caught up in it.  Too bad really.   If MS starts investing in FF, I will need to find something else.

[SilverSolder]

Yeah, I've had it with surveillance capitalism, but I don't see any escape from it other than dropping off the grid completely.

I sometimes go out without my phone, it almost feels naughty! 

[joeqsmith]

So, after running that little experiment with Vivaldi where I opened connection for 10, I powered up the PC today and get this nice new message.  In this case, the PC was purchased with the OS installed and there should have been no reason for them to fuck with it.  Of course, the router blocks it from from activating.  So now there is a constant reminder in the lower right corner that there is a problem.   

Another point of interest is that if I now select update (mind you it is running through the router) it reports it is up to date.   I suspect we have a new block of IPs added in their upgrade.     Best virus ever!!

[joeqsmith]

Opening the connection once again to allow it to activate and it looks like it's going to be a long wait.....

It will be interesting to see what new hooks they have added.  It seems like with every upgrade they add a few new addresses to attempt to circumvent the router.   

[SilverSolder]

So, after running that little experiment with Vivaldi where I opened connection for 10, I powered up the PC today and get this nice new message.  In this case, the PC was purchased with the OS installed and there should have been no reason for them to fuck with it.  Of course, the router blocks it from from activating.  So now there is a constant reminder in the lower right corner that there is a problem.   

Another point of interest is that if I now select update (mind you it is running through the router) it reports it is up to date.   I suspect we have a new block of IPs added in their upgrade.     Best virus ever!!

I have an application that I use on an old Android tablet in my car, to look at the CAN bus and display various gauges with information like hybrid battery state of charge, temperature, 4x4 clutch activation percentage, that kind of stuff.

Every 6 months or so, I get a popup "Application not owned!"  -  meaning, it wants me to carry the tablet into the house, connect to the Internet, so it can talk with the mother ship.   Then it is happy for another 6 months or so.

To say that I find this behavior offensive is an understatement...

[ejeffrey]

[...]

And then why a preinstalled, but non-essential app can't be uninstalled is fricking annoying. It may not be an MS issue per se (but as for MS, I still warn people about this app.)
The fact it was drawing a lot of power with also abnormal data consumption, although I have no proof of what it does, doesn't look good.

I have noticed the same thing with Android -  a whole class of applications that cannot be uninstalled?   

Sadly, this seems to just be part of the "conspiracy" to force telemetry and tracking down everyone's throats - can you think of any other plausible reason?

You can't uninstall manufacturer installed applications because they are part of the base OS image which is read-only.   But you can disable them which keeps them from updating or launching.  This will stop them from taking up additional storage beyond the base image and also avoid using CPU, memory, or collecting data.  Last time I checked you have to do this from the setting menu under Apps.   Unless this has been fixed if you go to the play store app and select the "uninstall" option for a built-in app it uninstalls the version that has auto-updated but leaves the original factory app behind (which will then eventually auto-update).  I have no idea if you technically have to use uninstall to revert them to the factory version followed by disabling if you want to avoid having it take extra storage as I don't care that much about storage as long as I can disable the app.

Also note that there are applications that are not part of the system image but are instead automatically installed by the welcome/signup app on first boot.  Those should be able to be uninstalled completely.

[joeqsmith]

That's pretty bad.   I wouldn't be surprised to see MS force something like that on the few users they have left.    It's looking like 1903 is the full install as it's been pounding the network non-stop once it made it to that one.  There appears to be no indicators as to how long it will take.   
 
Last time they had pulled this shit, I had no idea what they were doing.   Will the PC will ever boot again and if it does, will all of my tools still work.  Will it be as stable as it has been.   Will I get a new candy crush game?   Maybe some new fancy menus that I have to navigate.     It's just so fucking productive. 

[joeqsmith]

1903 appears to be over a year old.       Well, I did say I have them locked out.   

Reading through MS notes on 1903, I didn't find one feature that looked like it would be of benefit to me.   So glad they shove it down my throat.   

Of course, their quality updater failed about an hour an a half into the process.    It oozes quality..   

[Monkeh]

You have, after all, gone out of your way to make it difficult for them..

[joeqsmith]

You have, after all, gone out of your way to make it difficult for them..

It's wide open for them.  Just like the wild west.   If they can't make it work under these conditions, they best be looking for new talent.

After about a half hour of resetting, it's back, just in time for the next round of updates.   2.5 hours so far of doing nothing but watching this stupid PC load patches I don't give a shit about. 


**
While poor Microsoft is normally locked out, they are not the victim.   Those of us having to deal with their shit are.     


2 hours, 40 minutes. 
Pull the trigger on 1909?  Anyone here running it.  If so why?

[SilverSolder]

[...]

And then why a preinstalled, but non-essential app can't be uninstalled is fricking annoying. It may not be an MS issue per se (but as for MS, I still warn people about this app.)
The fact it was drawing a lot of power with also abnormal data consumption, although I have no proof of what it does, doesn't look good.

I have noticed the same thing with Android -  a whole class of applications that cannot be uninstalled?   

Sadly, this seems to just be part of the "conspiracy" to force telemetry and tracking down everyone's throats - can you think of any other plausible reason?

You can't uninstall manufacturer installed applications because they are part of the base OS image which is read-only.   But you can disable them which keeps them from updating or launching.  This will stop them from taking up additional storage beyond the base image and also avoid using CPU, memory, or collecting data.  Last time I checked you have to do this from the setting menu under Apps.   Unless this has been fixed if you go to the play store app and select the "uninstall" option for a built-in app it uninstalls the version that has auto-updated but leaves the original factory app behind (which will then eventually auto-update).  I have no idea if you technically have to use uninstall to revert them to the factory version followed by disabling if you want to avoid having it take extra storage as I don't care that much about storage as long as I can disable the app.

Also note that there are applications that are not part of the system image but are instead automatically installed by the welcome/signup app on first boot.  Those should be able to be uninstalled completely.

Yep, whatever MS is guilty of on the telemetry/snooping front, I am pretty sure Google/Android is worse.

[Monkeh]

While poor Microsoft is normally locked out, they are not the victim.   Those of us having to deal with their shit are.

I don't disagree, but either run their OS the way it's intended or don't bitch when you break it.

Pull the trigger on 1909?  Anyone here running it.  If so why?

Because fighting it is more effort than it's worth. Mind you, it still only updates when I choose to allow it.

As little as I like their crap, third party vendors are responsible for almost all the breakage I've encountered.

[joeqsmith]

If you are offended by my bitching about the shit MS has turned out in these later versions, the easiest thing is to block me and your problems are over.       

About 3.5 hours which included sniffing for an hour.  A total waste of time.  There doesn't appear to be any new IP blocks added.     I've also ran through most of my software and it appears functional.   It's back behind the router and assuming I don't run into any problems with all their patches over the next few weeks, it should be fine for another year. 

Another happy customer MS, not     Too bad really but I guess when your software company is failing you need to find other ways to keep it afloat. 

[Monkeh]

It's one thing to complain legitimately about problems, another to create them and blame someone else. You chose to not allow the system to perform updates the way it was designed to, any problems which arise are your responsibility.

Again, I do not like 10 either. At all. I also don't allow it to update (using mechanisms provided for this purpose). I just don't whine about it if that breaks stuff. If the tool doesn't suit your needs, you should get one which does. And, frankly, the data collection and some UI.. choices, aside, the underlying OS is a massive improvement.

[joeqsmith]

It's one thing to complain legitimately about problems, another to create them and blame someone else. You chose to not allow the system to perform updates the way it was designed to, any problems which arise are your responsibility.

Again, I do not like 10 either. At all. I also don't allow it to update (using mechanisms provided for this purpose). I just don't whine about it if that breaks stuff. If the tool doesn't suit your needs, you should get one which does. And, frankly, the data collection and some UI.. choices, aside, the underlying OS is a massive improvement.

What problem have I created?   Maybe you are incapable of reading the past posts where I explained the problems with constant patching.  It sounds like you are fine with it but that does not mean that everyone is.   As long as MS continues to make shit I will most likely continue to bitch about it as long as I am using it.   Like I said there's an easy fix for you.     

Surely you can't be this ignorant.  What other choice is there at this time?   I am stuck with shit tools and the only solution I have found to counter MSs heavy handed tactics is to lock it.    Its nothing new.  I've had them blocked for 4 or so years now.    The only reason it came up is because I let my guard down long enough for the virus to mutate.   

[Monkeh]

What problem have I created?   Maybe you are incapable of reading the past posts where I explained the problems with constant patching.

What problem? You haven't allowed the system to keep up with patches correctly, for a start..

It sounds like you are fine with it

Maybe you are incapable of reading the past posts where I indicated I too disallow automatic updates and take control of the process? More succcessfully, apparently.

Surely you can't be this ignorant.  What other choice is there at this time?

Stick to 7? Consider alternative platforms? Yes, I am ignorant - of your software choices and workflow. I can't read your mind and I'm not going to dig into your entire posting history to determine if suggesting you think about your choices is viable or not.

You could just as easily ignore me if you don't like being criticised. Bitch constructively. And if all you've got in response is more childish insults, let's just drop it here before one of us gets banned (again).

[Ed.Kloonk]

It's one thing to complain legitimately about problems, another to create them and blame someone else. You chose to not allow the system to perform updates the way it was designed to, any problems which arise are your responsibility.

Again, I do not like 10 either. At all. I also don't allow it to update (using mechanisms provided for this purpose). I just don't whine about it if that breaks stuff. If the tool doesn't suit your needs, you should get one which does. And, frankly, the data collection and some UI.. choices, aside, the underlying OS is a massive improvement.

It's the insidious, covert payload contained within updates that is what users are not aware of. What makes it annoying is the dominate message that the essential update provides urgent security updates and whilst that might be true and prudent in terms of their kernel code sloppiness, slipping in junk that spews your data is a dick move.

[rsjsouza]

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...

That is my biggest problem with your argument. Sure, let's all open and close TCP connections as fast and as numerous as the system can support and increase the traffic as much as we can to "show them what they deserve", while clogging the pipes for everybody else. Nope, that doesn't work without costing us in the long run in the shape of data caps, speed limits and price increases.

I dislike data mining as much as anyone else that has no skin in the game, but since the absolute majority of people sees no issue paying the availability of resources and services from the internet with their personal data, no amount of group effort will cause a dent in the bottom line - even if a million or ten million join this effort. Defeatist? I prefer to see it as realist.

While poor Microsoft is normally locked out, they are not the victim.   Those of us having to deal with their shit are.

I don't disagree, but either run their OS the way it's intended or don't bitch when you break it.

Windows 10 broke for me many times without me doing anything out of their ecosystem but simply applying updates. MS puts out reasonable software but still insists in surprising you with mandatory updates that can't be disabled for the common man. Sure, a Windows defender update is quite innocuous, but a complete Service Pack overhaul is hardly a walk in the park, especially considering the vast amount of different hardware it supports.

There is a reason as to why my work computer still runs 1809 - IT is very conservative as they have to pick up the pieces of a bad update affecting thousands of stations.

[joeqsmith]

What problem have I created?   Maybe you are incapable of reading the past posts where I explained the problems with constant patching.

What problem? You haven't allowed the system to keep up with patches correctly, for a start..

It sounds like you are fine with it

Maybe you are incapable of reading the past posts where I indicated I too disallow automatic updates and take control of the process? More succcessfully, apparently.

Surely you can't be this ignorant.  What other choice is there at this time?

Stick to 7? Consider alternative platforms? Yes, I am ignorant - of your software choices and workflow. I can't read your mind and I'm not going to dig into your entire posting history to determine if suggesting you think about your choices is viable or not.

You could just as easily ignore me if you don't like being criticised. Bitch constructively. And if all you've got in response is more childish insults, let's just drop it here before one of us gets banned (again).

7    First, it wasn't offered at the time I bought the PC.  Obviously it was stupid to bring it up without knowing my requirements but at least you didn't suggest LINUX. 

I am not considering you trolling, have no reason to block you and don't mind the criticism.  I do find it odd you would bring up banning.   Sorry if I make you feel so uncomfortable but you were the one who decided to engage in this non-productive banter.   

You could have said to yourself, this person is blocking all traffic to MS using a router.  I bet I could help them by suggesting a better approach.   You could then provide a case as to why you feel what you are doing is better.   That would be a grownup way of handing it.    Instead you refer to my responses as childish but so far all you have done is bitch about my bitching.   I guess you could ask the admins to help you out.   Depends on your goal.   

You haven't allowed the system to keep up with patches correctly, for a start..

So what?  I don't give a shit about their patches.  The PC has been very stable without them.   The only time I have had problems is when they start forcing them.   I thought that was clear.     

It would have remained locked and all would have been fine had I not opened up the router to run a test on Vivaldi.    This was all it took for MS to make a change.   No matter how I block it, I don't see how opening it up one way or another is going to prevent this.  If you actually have some useful information,  post it. 

[joeqsmith]

While poor Microsoft is normally locked out, they are not the victim.   Those of us having to deal with their shit are.

I don't disagree, but either run their OS the way it's intended or don't bitch when you break it.

Windows 10 broke for me many times without me doing anything out of their ecosystem but simply applying updates. MS puts out reasonable software but still insists in surprising you with mandatory updates that can't be disabled for the common man. Sure, a Windows defender update is quite innocuous, but a complete Service Pack overhaul is hardly a walk in the park, especially considering the vast amount of different hardware it supports.

There is a reason as to why my work computer still runs 1809 - IT is very conservative as they have to pick up the pieces of a bad update affecting thousands of stations.

I opted out of 1909 and it will take some time to evaluate 1903.  The fact the older has been so stable and I wasn't having any compatibility problems, I can't blame you for staying with it.   

It seems that Monkeh has a better way to lock it down.  Personally, I am very interested in hearing what they are doing.   When I first looked at 10 and saw them sending back data on a simple number pad key press with their calculator running, I figured there wasn't any option that would lock it.   Being totally independent, the router has worked very well.   I had written some software to create the scripts for the router but still I have to run a sniffer and manually lookup each address.   Someone had posted once how there was a database for the routers that people would update.  This may have saved me some time but I have not looked into it.   

[SilverSolder]

I use Windows 10 at work, where there is a whole IT department making it secure and non-leaky...  It isn't too bad at all.

On my lab PC,  I run Windows 7, patched up to about service pack 2 equivalent, but no further patching has been done nor will there be done.  It is 100% rock solid stable.  And...  it is not connected to the Internet, at all.  Brute force, but it works! 

[Monkeh]

Suppressing all instinct to pick apart the giant ego show..

I use the Enterprise edition. Updates disabled, sorted. Sure, there's still some telemetry and I don't know precisely what it is, but I also don't use that machine for real work, so it's not a concern to me. Certainly not worth spending hours trying to block, especially as my use of the system makes that unviable.

And frankly, forced updates are a net benefit even if I don't like them. The arrogance of the typical ignorant user 'this works fine, don't touch it' creates a large portion of the hostile security environment that makes up the internet. That they choose to include 'feature updates' to lower their maintenance burden is a minor annoyance. That they include so much telemetry and keep resetting things to their preferred defaults is horrible behaviour, which is why I do not choose to employ their software for important tasks. Yes, yes, to get it all over with, I use 'LINUX', clearly I am an idiot who achieves nothing because you don't know how to use my tools.

[SilverSolder]

Suppressing all instinct to pick apart the giant ego show..

One of the primary rules for staying sane on the Internet:   Don't show up to every argument you're invited to.

[joeqsmith]

Suppressing all instinct to pick apart the giant ego show..

Feel free.

The arrogance of the typical ignorant user 'this works fine, don't touch it' creates a large portion of the hostile security environment that makes up the internet.

Odd, it's not magic and I just assumed it was the assholes of the world that create it. 


I had noticed as soon as the updates were done, the softheads at MS could not even sort out how to use the old settings at the screen background had changed to black.   I had wasted a little time setting things back up but when powered the machine for the first time the following day, it asked me if I would like to set the PC up.  Oddly, the fucktards don't have an option to turn this popup off, only remind me later or do it now. 

Looking at what had been added to the scheduler.   Of course they put the Xbox BS back in again. 

Sniffing the traffic for 10 minutes with no user applications running, it does appear to generate a little over two times as many attempts to contact MS compared with prior to these patches.   

On power up, it seems to take longer to sort out that it has an internet connection.   The Ethernet cable to this PC is always alive.   

Besides these few things I haven't noticed any problems.  Of course, I haven't noticed any enhancements as well.  In the end, it was a loss of a day. 

I understand that the 1909 update was not as bad as the 1903 as far as downtime. 

I use Windows 10 at work, where there is a whole IT department making it secure and non-leaky...  It isn't too bad at all.

On my lab PC,  I run Windows 7, patched up to about service pack 2 equivalent, but no further patching has been done nor will there be done.  It is 100% rock solid stable.  And...  it is not connected to the Internet, at all.  Brute force, but it works! 

I have 7 on my laptop and doubt I will change it.  It's also been very stable.  I haven't ran into too many problems with 10.   For the most part, it's been stable.  I still have to run XP in a virtualbox to gain access to some of my test equipment but slowly I have been porting over my software to support 10. 

[james_s]

They "upgraded" everyone from 7 to 10 at my previous job and I lived with it for a bit over a year. I've never experienced such a user-hostile operating system as 10 was, it just felt like it was constantly fighting me every step of the way and trying to break my will. It was a real turd at the time too, it has become much more polished since then but it STILL is not as nice looking as 7 and it is still plagued with constant feature updates. My experience with it was so bad that I switched my main work PC to Linux and only ran Windows on my laptop, Linux had improved noticeably since I had last tried it but what really gave it the lead was the fact that Windows had regressed.

They could have avoided a very large part of the controversy by separating security updates from feature updates and UI changes, and by backing off a little on the extremely heavy handed update policy. Users HATE being pushed around, treated like children and told it's for their own good, no matter how valid that is. That and they really should have spent another year polishing the heck out of it before foisting it upon the world. Win10 shipped too soon, it was very half baked and the much touted Edge browser was not even worthy of being called a beta when it shipped. You only get one shot at a first impression and they screwed up royally there.

[SilverSolder]

Microsoft partially lost the plot with Windows 8.  The idea behind Windows 8 was to make a unified experience across PCs, tablets, and phones.  It could well have worked too, but they had made the serious mistake of forcing the "Modern" UI on standard PCs instead of making it an optional feature.  Long time users rebelled and avoided version 8 like the plague.  Microsoft lost several years fighting an uphill battle to get the world to accept the new UI ideas.  Windows 10 was the capitulation.

So here we are, with Windows 10 actually looking and working not that different from Windows 7,  certainly not so bad that I can't find my way around in it. 

But then there is the telemetry and the forced updates to contend with. 

Eventually, I will have to update everything to use Windows 10, but I am not in a great hurry.  It isn't like the old days, where each new version of Windows was an obvious and huge improvement over the previous one...

[rsjsouza]

The arrogance of the typical ignorant user 'this works fine, don't touch it' creates a large portion of the hostile security environment that makes up the internet.

The corollary would be "this works fine, let's keep changing it until... It doesn't?" 

Don't bucket everyone that wants to be left alone with their fully working system as arrogant. Pushing innocuous and undesirable GUI updates and being careless to downtime and loss of productivity is the element of arrogance here. Of course this only applies to us peasants, since you are using the Enterprise version with full control over updates and can lecture us all. Thank you for your wisdom oh mighty guru, but I'll pass. 

Besides these few things I haven't noticed any problems.  Of course, I haven't noticed any enhancements as well.  In the end, it was a loss of a day. 
I understand that the 1909 update was not as bad as the 1903 as far as downtime.

That is the issue; security/kernel updates usually don't bring anything visible but are important. The GUI/application/settings are the key contributors to frustration.

They could have avoided a very large part of the controversy by separating security updates from feature updates and UI changes, and by backing off a little on the extremely heavy handed update policy. Users HATE being pushed around, treated like children and told it's for their own good, no matter how valid that is. That and they really should have spent another year polishing the heck out of it before foisting it upon the world. Win10 shipped too soon, it was very half baked and the much touted Edge browser was not even worthy of being called a beta when it shipped. You only get one shot at a first impression and they screwed up royally there.

Precisely. That would be a nice compromise if Microsoft was seriously concerned about security. However, this approach does not secure a revenue stream.

[Monkeh]

Don't bucket everyone that wants to be left alone with their fully working system as arrogant. Pushing innocuous and undesirable GUI updates and being careless to downtime and loss of productivity is the element of arrogance here.

That's it, only one party is ever wrong.. and it's never you.

Of course this only applies to us peasants, since you are using the Enterprise version with full control over updates and can lecture us all. Thank you for your wisdom oh mighty guru, but I'll pass. 

Who said I have full control? I can choose when it decides to give me everything. That's all I get. But it's reliable.

Feel free to use the Enterprise edition yourself. Maybe even LTSC, which is still on 1809. Or at least switch to semi-annual and plan ahead. The other option is to wilfully ignore security updates, potentially leaving yourself vulnerable to loss or being exploited to harm others.

I really wish they hadn't put it together this way, but they did. Live with it responsibly or jump ship..

[Ed.Kloonk]

Microsoft partially lost the plot with Windows 8.  The idea behind Windows 8 was to make a unified experience across PCs, tablets, and phones.  It could well have worked too, but they had made the serious mistake of forcing the "Modern" UI on standard PCs instead of making it an optional feature.  Long time users rebelled and avoided version 8 like the plague.  Microsoft lost several years fighting an uphill battle to get the world to accept the new UI ideas.  Windows 10 was the capitulation.

So here we are, with Windows 10 actually looking and working not that different from Windows 7,  certainly not so bad that I can't find my way around in it. 

But then there is the telemetry and the forced updates to contend with. 

Eventually, I will have to update everything to use Windows 10, but I am not in a great hurry.  It isn't like the old days, where each new version of Windows was an obvious and huge improvement over the previous one...

More people need to realize that Windows is just a glorified program launcher.

Every other OS out there encourages the user to pimp their ride. MS always stifles it.

Looking at the number of people that complain that W10 interferes with their productivity and concentration. Provide mechanism, not policy.

[rdl]

I'm probably going to build a new PC later this year. It will have to run Windows 10 because the only reason for it is games. Because of that, unlike every new PC I've built in the past, I'm not looking forward to this one. That's pretty sad.

[SilverSolder]

I'm probably going to build a new PC later this year. It will have to run Windows 10 because the only reason for it is games. Because of that, unlike every new PC I've built in the past, I'm not looking forward to this one. That's pretty sad.

I'm in your arms and you are kissing me
but there seems to be something missing in your kissing
the love we knew is just a memory
it's turned into a comedy
The thrill is gone!
The thrill is gone!
I can see it in your eyes,
I can hear it in your sighs,
Feel your touch and realize
The thrill is gone.
The nights are cold,
For love is old.
Love was grand when love was new,
Birds were singing, skies were blue.
Now it don't appeal to you,
The thrill is gone.
This is the end, so why pretend
And let it linger on.
The thrill is gone.

[themadhippy]

I'm probably going to build a new PC later this year. It will have to run Windows 10 because the only reason for it is games

was in a similar dilemma a few years back,and bought a games console, upgrading to a newer console last year still cost less than a decent graphics card

[rdl]

The last console I bought was a SNES. The problem I have with modern consoles is that you're locked into their system. You constantly have to be online with them. I've started using GOG instead of Steam for the same reason. No DRM, download a game once, disconnect and play as much as you want.

[rsjsouza]

Don't bucket everyone that wants to be left alone with their fully working system as arrogant. Pushing innocuous and undesirable GUI updates and being careless to downtime and loss of productivity is the element of arrogance here.

That's it, only one party is ever wrong.. and it's never you.

I disagree with your generalization, not the need to keep the system free of backdoors through critical security patches - they are important and the vast majority of times they are not disruptive. The inability to control how and when the less important patches (GUI, etc) will be applied is the problem, together with the ever increasing telemetry and set/reset of user options.

Who said I have full control? I can choose when it decides to give me everything. That's all I get. But it's reliable.

So, by your own account you apply patches only when you want, not when MS does. 

Feel free to use the Enterprise edition yourself.

I don't think this license legally covers private citizens, but I may be wrong.

I really wish they hadn't put it together this way, but they did.

I totally agree with you. Unfortunately, as I mentioned before, I tried to play along a few years ago and got shafted more than once. Other alternatives are more encouraging by the day.

Unfortunately Microsoft forgot that, if you piss people off too much, they end up looking at alternatives and it becomes hard to bring them back. 

[themadhippy]

you're locked into their system

true enough,and my choice was made solely by the games i wanted to play

You constantly have to be online with them.

nope,my xbox gets  briefly connected when i buy a new game and thats all,yea it nags you occasionally but that can be ignored

[rdl]

That's not so bad then. Steam has to be running constantly when you want to play a game. Damn butthole sniffers.

[Monkeh]

That's not so bad then. Steam has to be running constantly when you want to play a game. Damn butthole sniffers.

This is a great concern why? You still on dialup, or? It does offer you the option of going into offline mode, anyway..

DRM is a thing publishers still want, especially on high profile software, and Steam and most forms of DRM on it are far less intrusive and dangerous than the stuff used for a lot of commercial and professional software.

[rdl]

Even when Steam is "offline" it still has to be running and collecting data. It will continue attempting to connect and if the internet is actually available it will transmit data anyway.

[Monkeh]

Even when Steam is "offline" it still has to be running and collecting data. It will continue attempting to connect and if the internet is actually available it will transmit data anyway.

And what is it they're collecting which is so offensive to you? They're games. Consoles will do exactly the same thing if you're using their online services to download games. Games did it before Steam came along and independently long after.

[themadhippy]

One  annoying trait of the microsoft xbox being on line is it takes considerable longer for a game to install,also if it sniffs an update either to the console or game it buggers off and gets its update leaving you to dig out the ludo

[rdl]

And what is it they're collecting which is so offensive to you?

I don't know and that's the problem.

[joeqsmith]

Other alternatives are more encouraging by the day.

There was a point in the mid 90s I though LINUX may become a viable alternative.   NI, Altera and a few other large companies were starting to support it.    Normally they were very specific about what was required and their software would be crippled.    I assume there wasn't a demand as even today you still don't see any major support for it.   The last few times I had planned to look at LINUX, the software I was interested in had been ported to Windows. 

[rsjsouza]

Other alternatives are more encouraging by the day.

There was a point in the mid 90s I though LINUX may become a viable alternative.   NI, Altera and a few other large companies were starting to support it.    Normally they were very specific about what was required and their software would be crippled.    I assume there wasn't a demand as even today you still don't see any major support for it.  The last few times I had planned to look at LINUX, the software I was interested in had been ported to Windows.

Our software runs on Linux natively for about ten years now and I can tell it is a fraction of the Windows user base, only losing to macOS (which is only really popular in the US). However, the status of Linux nowadays is much more mature than in the 1990s (also a user since then) but still requires a great deal of monkey wrenching with the command line - something that for me is second nature but not for the mainstream public.

As for Windows, I still use Vegas and a few other Windows-only software (mostly older versions that I don't intend to pay to upgrade) that could potentially be confined to a VM, as it is easier to manage. The issue is really the jump itself and the fact that even Linux changes quite significantly and at a faster pace than Windows - a LTS Ubuntu, for example, is supported for five years. Still runs? Sure, but it becomes a similar conundrum.

At any rate, I wasn't intending to hijack this with penguin talk. Carry on.

[joeqsmith]

I posted back when Microsoft duped my wife using their deceptive popup tactics into changing the OS on her laptop.  This was prior to my locking down all MS traffic.  Since then she has moved to a MAC.   It's rare to see her use the Windows PC.   

Once you start locking at the router, you discover some odd things.  For example, duckduckgo.com is touted as the non-tracking, protective search engine.   Ping it and look up who owns the IP.   

[SilverSolder]

I posted back when Microsoft duped my wife using their deceptive popup tactics into changing the OS on her laptop.  This was prior to my locking down all MS traffic.  Since then she has moved to a MAC.   It's rare to see her use the Windows PC.   

Once you start locking at the router, you discover some odd things.  For example, duckduckgo.com is touted as the non-tracking, protective search engine.   Ping it and look up who owns the IP.   

I guess my filters won't allow pinging duckduckgo.com, I get 100% packet loss...    -  but a WhoIs query didn't return anything untoward.  What are you seeing?

[joeqsmith]

I posted back when Microsoft duped my wife using their deceptive popup tactics into changing the OS on her laptop.  This was prior to my locking down all MS traffic.  Since then she has moved to a MAC.   It's rare to see her use the Windows PC.   

Once you start locking at the router, you discover some odd things.  For example, duckduckgo.com is touted as the non-tracking, protective search engine.   Ping it and look up who owns the IP.   

I guess my filters won't allow pinging duckduckgo.com, I get 100% packet loss...    -  but a WhoIs query didn't return anything untoward.  What are you seeing?

See attached.  Also a quick search:

Microsoft and DuckDuckGo have partnered to provide a search solution that delivers relevant advertisements to you while protecting your privacy. If you click on a Microsoft-provided ad, you will be redirected to the advertiser’s landing page through Microsoft Advertising’s platform. At that point, Microsoft Advertising will use your full IP address and user-agent string so that it can properly process the ad click and charge the advertiser.

[SilverSolder]

LOL that's funny.

I know a guy who used to work in marketing for a tobacco company.  Over a few beers, he was explaining how all the different brands they sold were essentially the same product, how the "feeling" or "lifestyle" that was being marketed was the main difference.

The example that really stuck in my mind:   For people that hate advertising...  they had a brand that they never advertised or promoted in any way, it was just put on the shelves along with all the regular brands of cigarettes.  The "ad haters" would happily buy this product to avoid feeling manipulated...

At that point I gave up, and just ordered another beer! 

[rsjsouza]

I found the following:


user@host:~$ traceroute www.duckduckgo.com
traceroute to www.duckduckgo.com (40.89.244.232), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
 1  router (192.168.0.1)  6.144 ms  6.326 ms  6.308 ms
 2  gateway.home (192.168.254.254)  6.491 ms  6.473 ms  6.455 ms
 3  47.184.128.1 (47.184.128.1)  16.556 ms  18.582 ms  18.566 ms
 4  172.102.50.212 (172.102.50.212)  13.711 ms  13.694 ms 172.102.52.90 (172.102.52.90)  11.301 ms
 5  ae8---0.scr02.dlls.tx.frontiernet.net (74.40.3.25)  13.646 ms ae7---0.scr01.dlls.tx.frontiernet.net (74.40.3.17)  8.865 ms  13.610 ms
 6  ae1---0.cbr01.dlls.tx.frontiernet.net (74.40.1.82)  13.598 ms  12.437 ms  11.399 ms
 7  static-74-43-96-185.fnd.frontiernet.net (74.43.96.185)  11.310 ms  8.929 ms  11.232 ms
 8  ae26-0.icr04.dsm05.ntwk.msn.net (104.44.233.68)  27.854 ms  27.832 ms  27.743 ms
 9  * * *
10  * * *
11  * * *
12  * * *
13  * * *
14  * * *
15  * * *
16  * * *
17  * * *
18  * * *
19  * * *
20  * * *
21  * * *
22  * * *
23  * * *
24  * * *
25  * * *
26  * * *
27  * * *
28  * * *
29  * * *
30  * * *
user@host:~$


The msn.net says it all.

[rsjsouza]

Good story, SilverSolder.

One detail, though: nobody truly hates advertising - after all, the internet as we know it is sponsored by it, with all its free goodies and information. 

[SilverSolder]

Good story, SilverSolder.

One detail, though: nobody truly hates advertising - after all, the internet as we know it is sponsored by it, with all its free goodies and information. 

Agree -  I don't actually hate advertising either.   I do hate being tracked and stalked, though.  It irritates some deep instinct, like you are being hunted or something.

[rsjsouza]

I posted back when Microsoft duped my wife using their deceptive popup tactics into changing the OS on her laptop.  This was prior to my locking down all MS traffic.  Since then she has moved to a MAC.   It's rare to see her use the Windows PC.   

I moved my wife's computer to Windows 8.1 Pro - it is quite easier to keep up and I can turn off much more stuff. Also, it still works fine on her eight year old Toshiba ultrabook Z935 (a fine machine). However, I foresee her having to re-adapt to a Linux machine (she was a developer in a past life) or to a mac of sorts - not sure how that will go down.

[bd139]

As a software dude sitting on a Mac right now, a Mac is a top notch Unix workstation with a pretty GUI that works. That's best way to sell it to anyone

If you can't trust the person or they are perpetual buggerators sell then an iPad if you value your sanity.

Edit: incidentally I canned my windows workstation entirely about a month ago now. I am so fucking done with it now.

[SilverSolder]

As a software dude sitting on a Mac right now, a Mac is a top notch Unix workstation with a pretty GUI that works. That's best way to sell it to anyone

If you can't trust the person or they are perpetual buggerators sell then an iPad if you value your sanity.

Edit: incidentally I canned my windows workstation entirely about a month ago now. I am so fucking done with it now.

I've got WAAAY too much Windows software to do that.  I do bottle Windows up inside nice virtual machines, where it becomes almost controllable!

[bd139]

Less difficult for me as 99% of what I do is on some remote Linux box somewhere. It was all gain for me. I lost GTA V really and that was it. 

Oh LTspice on macOS sucks balls though I will add. Then again it sucks on windows, just less 

[Mr. Scram]

As a software dude sitting on a Mac right now, a Mac is a top notch Unix workstation with a pretty GUI that works. That's best way to sell it to anyone

If you can't trust the person or they are perpetual buggerators sell then an iPad if you value your sanity.

Edit: incidentally I canned my windows workstation entirely about a month ago now. I am so fucking done with it now.

MacOS is poop too. Just a different poop flavour.

[bd139]

True but it doesn’t come with a gigantic tapeworm in it.

[martinot]

This morning I turned on my PC to be greeted with a jubilant installation banner touting the "new Edge Browser from Microsoft". Only option presented: install the turd.
The following banners also only had the option to continue installing. Clicking the cross in the upper right corner to stop this only made the install move one step further.

What kind of behaviour is this? I've never used Edge and have no wish to do so, I have much better browsers installed.

As Edge is part of Windows, and they have a new version of Edge (they changed the rendering engine from their own too Googles Chromium), I guess they saw it as part of your update of the system.

Even if you have not used som parts of your system, it is usually updated regardless. I installed a firmware update to a Keysight scope that I am testing, and it also updated things in the scope that I (yet) had not used.

So I do not find it that very strange. That said I agree they should perhaps informed better about it.

Personally I use Edge (the new Chromium based version) on not only my Windows machine, but also om my two Macs, and my iOS devices (one iPhone and two iPads), and I am very happy with it so far. I think they made an excellent browser, replacing my previous most used one (Chrome) as the default one.

[bd139]

I tested the new browser but the Microsoft account sync periodically broke and deleted by bookmarks bar contents. And that’s the sort of stuff I don’t want to have to deal with.

[Mr. Scram]

True but it doesn’t come with a gigantic tapeworm in it.

It has a fist instead.

[Mr. Scram]

As Edge is part of Windows, and they have a new version of Edge (they changed the rendering engine from their own too Googles Chromium), I guess they saw it as part of your update of the system.

Even if you have not used som parts of your system, it is usually updated regardless. I installed a firmware update to a Keysight scope that I am testing, and it also updated things in the scope that I (yet) had not used.

So I do not find it that very strange. That said I agree they should perhaps informed better about it.

Personally I use Edge (the new Chromium based version) on not only my Windows machine, but also om my two Macs, and my iOS devices (one iPhone and two iPads), and I am very happy with it so far. I think they made an excellent browser, replacing my previous most used one (Chrome) as the default one.

The Edge Chromium installation is rather obnoxious. No regular update should generate obnoxious shortcuts and a full screen nag screen which is hard to skip. Unfortunately it doesn't end there as it also comes with loads of "telemetry" or tracking. I really don't care they didn't ruin the Chromium experience too much, either is enough to get the boot. It could have been decent but they Microsofted it.

[bd139]

True but it doesn’t come with a gigantic tapeworm in it.

It has a fist instead.

I might enjoy that 

[Mr. Scram]

I might enjoy that 

No kink shaming here. You can count on the TEA thread to lend a hand to a friend in need. 

[bd139]

Hahaha 

[tom66]

Some Windows 10 update has now permanently broken sleep on my machine as it wakes up at 23:50 every day.  Waste of power and wakes me up as the Windows chime comes on every time the system resumes.

[Mr. Scram]

Some Windows 10 update has now permanently broken sleep on my machine as it wakes up at 23:50 every day.  Waste of power and wakes me up as the Windows chime comes on every time the system resumes.

It's a setting. Earlier versions of Windows did this too.

[joeqsmith]

Ran into this with my XP laptop.  Get to the race track, the battery would be dead.   The virus scanner I had installed was able to wake the PC is run it down.   Shit software. 

It appears with the last round of updates to the browser and OS, there are some new IPs that the PC wants to send data to which are also marketing firms.   Amazon for example.   So, for example, not being on Amazons site at all, they seem to be collecting some data as well.   There are others.  A really odd one is LinkedIn.  I have never had an account with them and have no interest in the services they provide.  I wonder what information they could possible find useful.

[SilverSolder]

Ran into this with my XP laptop.  Get to the race track, the battery would be dead.   The virus scanner I had installed was able to wake the PC is run it down.   Shit software. 

It appears with the last round of updates to the browser and OS, there are some new IPs that the PC wants to send data to which are also marketing firms.   Amazon for example.   So, for example, not being on Amazons site at all, they seem to be collecting some data as well.   There are others.  A really odd one is LinkedIn.  I have never had an account with them and have no interest in the services they provide.  I wonder what information they could possible find useful.

LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft -  maybe they see an opportunity for a "better Facebook" down the road?

[joeqsmith]

Really, I didn't know that.   My ignorance of social media is based on my lack of giving a rats ass about it.   

[SilverSolder]

Really, I didn't know that.   My ignorance of social media is based on my lack of giving a rats ass about it.   

They bought it, not that long ago.  -  Ignoring social media is a good way of remaining sane!   

[Red Squirrel]

Windows 10 is basically malware, I don't get why so many people put up with it. Just hearing all the crap they pull off pisses me off enough to never want to touch that junk. 

And MS needs to give up with their failed IE experiment.  Renaming it to something else is not going to change the fact that it's a crappy browser.  They need to just give it up and ship with Firefox or something.

[tom66]

Edge is a good browser, based on Chromium.  But, people are right to be skeptical of Microsoft's intentions with Edge.  They want it to be dominant so they can dictate standards like Google does, and I'd sooner trust Google's standards intention (generally favouring open standards although certainly not privacy-centric) than Microsoft's.

[Mr. Scram]

Windows 10 is basically malware, I don't get why so many people put up with it. Just hearing all the crap they pull off pisses me off enough to never want to touch that junk. 

And MS needs to give up with their failed IE experiment.  Renaming it to something else is not going to change the fact that it's a crappy browser.  They need to just give it up and ship with Firefox or something.

Except that it's an entirely different browser, not just a rename.

[Mr. Scram]

Edge is a good browser, based on Chromium.  But, people are right to be skeptical of Microsoft's intentions with Edge.  They want it to be dominant so they can dictate standards like Google does, and I'd sooner trust Google's standards intention (generally favouring open standards although certainly not privacy-centric) than Microsoft's.

It's beyond skepticism. They introduced the browser by installing it unasked in an exceptionally intrusive manner. It's full of telemetry. Microsoft's intentions are loud and clear. This browser will be adopted whether we want to or not.

[SilverSolder]

Edge is a good browser, based on Chromium.  But, people are right to be skeptical of Microsoft's intentions with Edge.  They want it to be dominant so they can dictate standards like Google does, and I'd sooner trust Google's standards intention (generally favouring open standards although certainly not privacy-centric) than Microsoft's.

It's beyond skepticism. They introduced thr browser by installing it unasked in an exceptionally intrusive manner. It's full of telemetry. Microsoft's intentions are loud and clear. This browser will be adopted whether we want to or not.

Nobody is forcing us to use it...  right?

[Mr. Scram]

Nobody is forcing us to use it...  right?

They're strong arm tactics. I don't think whether actually having a choice makes a difference for most of the Windows users. Considering Microsoft's history with fines for not presenting people with a decent enough choice it seems they haven't learnt their lesson.

[vk4ffab]

It doesn't have to affect the data analysis for it to work. Just making the searches uses their resources while using little on your end.

In all seriousness, the only way to win, is to turn off your computer. Consume less online, gives them less data. I seriously only use about 20 websites. The big data harvesters are social media, facebook, tiktoc, instagram, twiter. The less we feed them the better.

[Mr. Scram]

In all seriousness, the only way to win, is to turn off your computer. Consume less online, gives them less data. I seriously only use about 20 websites. The big data harvesters are social media, facebook, tiktoc, instagram, twiter. The less we feed them the better.

Please don't start that "discussion" again. 

[SilverSolder]

Nobody is forcing us to use it...  right?

They're strong arm tactics. I don't think whether actually having a choice makes a difference for most of the Windows users. Considering Microsoft's history with fines for not presenting people with a decent enough choice it seems they haven't learnt their lesson.

It seems to me that Google, Facebook, and the like are quietly cooperating to do much more intrusive surveillance than Microsoft ever did (or are doing).

The trick here is:  they cooperate.  Whatever you do on eBay is reported back to Google, which then prompts stalking on Facebook later.  (Not only by using cookies...) 

So we are beyond being able to blame one particular corporation for the lamentable state of affairs -  most of them are "in" on it now, and together they have enormous influence with government.  The sense that Trump and Brexit voters often convey that they feel a lack of democratic influence from ordinary people is not completely unfounded...

[SilverSolder]

It doesn't have to affect the data analysis for it to work. Just making the searches uses their resources while using little on your end.

In all seriousness, the only way to win, is to turn off your computer. Consume less online, gives them less data. I seriously only use about 20 websites. The big data harvesters are social media, facebook, tiktoc, instagram, twiter. The less we feed them the better.

That is the reality,  if you are bothered psychologically by being stalked.   Many people aren't.  They are the ones that would be eaten by the predators in ancient times! 

[NiHaoMike]

Please don't start that "discussion" again. 

The sure way to end it is to prove (or disprove) that creating a lot of random searches "costs them less than it costs you". Given the computer science of generating pseudorandom numbers is far simpler than that of searching databases, it would be quite a feat even if they have a 10X advantage in lower energy cost. If it is the case, it would be interesting to know how they do it.

[SilverSolder]

Please don't start that "discussion" again. 

The sure way to end it is to prove (or disprove) that creating a lot of random searches "costs them less than it costs you". Given the computer science of generating pseudorandom numbers is far simpler than that of searching databases, it would be quite a feat even if they have a 10X advantage in lower energy cost. If it is the case, it would be interesting to know how they do it.

I think the noise idea could work -  but only if enough of the "prey" were doing it that it amounted to a kind of denial-of-service attack on the "predators"! 

Perhaps some kind of open source noise generating screen saver or other app that could devote a couple of percent of your CPU resources to generating noise.  It would have to be very cleverly generated noise, and it would have to change and evolve to remain ahead of the "predators"... it would need to be designed to create plausible looking, but false patterns across millions of users...   

[NiHaoMike]

I think the noise idea could work -  but only if enough of the "prey" were doing it that it amounted to a kind of denial-of-service attack on the "predators"! 

Perhaps some kind of open source noise generating screen saver or other app that could devote a couple of percent of your CPU resources to generating noise.  It would have to be very cleverly generated noise, and it would have to change and evolve to remain ahead of the "predators"... it would need to be designed to create plausible looking, but false patterns across millions of users...   

Just draining their resources doesn't need very much sophistication at all and would be very easy to implement. The big question is exactly how much energy does it take on their side to do a search?

[SilverSolder]

I think the noise idea could work -  but only if enough of the "prey" were doing it that it amounted to a kind of denial-of-service attack on the "predators"! 

Perhaps some kind of open source noise generating screen saver or other app that could devote a couple of percent of your CPU resources to generating noise.  It would have to be very cleverly generated noise, and it would have to change and evolve to remain ahead of the "predators"... it would need to be designed to create plausible looking, but false patterns across millions of users...   

Just draining their resources doesn't need very much sophistication at all and would be very easy to implement. The big question is exactly how much energy does it take on their side to do a search?

Just draining their resources wouldn't matter to them - they can just keep adding servers until you get arrested for conducting DDOS attacks!  -   whereas if the noise was "smart",  it would be far more damaging to the predators, and much less of it would be needed.

"Smart noise".  You saw it here first! 

P.S.:  It is easy to create a little "smart noise"...   whenever you search for something,  also search for two or three other things that you don't actually care about.  This leaves the predators with a couple of false trails that they then have to figure out.  Chances are they will waste their sponsor's ads...   in other words, you will be wasting their resources.

[bd139]

Considering Azure borked a while back because they ran out of servers, it probably wouldn’t take much 

[SiliconWizard]

Please don't start that "discussion" again. 

The sure way to end it is to prove (or disprove) that creating a lot of random searches "costs them less than it costs you". Given the computer science of generating pseudorandom numbers is far simpler than that of searching databases, it would be quite a feat even if they have a 10X advantage in lower energy cost. If it is the case, it would be interesting to know how they do it.

I think the noise idea could work -  but only if enough of the "prey" were doing it that it amounted to a kind of denial-of-service attack on the "predators"! 

Perhaps some kind of open source noise generating screen saver or other app that could devote a couple of percent of your CPU resources to generating noise.  It would have to be very cleverly generated noise, and it would have to change and evolve to remain ahead of the "predators"... it would need to be designed to create plausible looking, but false patterns across millions of users...

Well yeah. Obviously by adding noise, you're going to decrease the "SNR". It would have a consequence only if the SNR has gone low enough that gathering data is not profitable anymore - and I guess there is a very LARGE margin there, so while the idea could work, in practice it's not very likely to have any sizeable effect. A large fraction of all connected users would have to do it. Also, all the more that I think there is also a large margin regarding how all users of "big data" analysis can actually detect that the data they gather is actually bogus. I'm pretty sure it would take a while before they even realize it. Another related thought - if enough people were actually flooding networks with "noise" and it had a noticeable effect on the effectiveness of data analysis, there are so many interests at stake here that doing it would probably become illegal in most countries. Sweet. Of course you could always try to outsmart it, and just release bogus, but credible information, instead of mere noise. But in that case, we would be back in the case I described just above: the systems wouldn't be able to really tell the data is bogus, and all actors of that would actually NOT care. They are just interested in selling data, and as long as this data looks credible, they don't care whether it's actually real or bogus. (Until of course it has a quantifiable effect, but IMHO it would take a long time before it does, or at least before we can analyze for sure it does.)

All that said, even if not practical as a means of stopping data gathering as a whole, it can be a way of isolating oneself from it. So, basically an individual solution, but not a global one.

[NiHaoMike]

Just draining their resources wouldn't matter to them - they can just keep adding servers until you get arrested for conducting DDOS attacks!

Pretty easy to hide your IP address using free proxies and VPNs, or step up to Tor for even more protection. You can also use a VPN/proxy after Tor (that is, you connect to the VPN/proxy using Tor) to get the security of Tor without creating backlash against Tor IPs.

[Mr. Scram]

Just draining their resources doesn't need very much sophistication at all and would be very easy to implement. The big question is exactly how much energy does it take on their side to do a search?

You still refuse to do some homework. What portion of one server do you think you can gum up with your "plan", vague as it is. How many queries can you bombard them with before your connection is denied? How much servers do Google and Microsoft have? It's know both achieves remarkable efficiency by employing all kinds of tightly integrated technologies and they obviously buy industrial power at even lower prices than usual so I'd like to hear how that factors in.

You're still proposing to essentially DDOS the top dogs of bandwidth and capacity. Even if you deploy some anonymising scheme you're still talking about what essentially is creating a botnet to attack Google or Microsoft. It should also be noted that this is considered a felony and they love making examples of naive idiots. Without some ballpark estimates showing you're more than ant and to the freight train it's all just a naive fantasy about defeating the system. Illuminate us how you're going to build a sizeable botnet and evade the law.

[NiHaoMike]

Use free proxies and VPNs to get around IP blocking.

Make the primary purpose something else (e.g. quickly parse the results to make "art") and even add an anti-DoS mechanism that measures the response time and slow down if it increases significantly. The latter would make it less effective, so the sensitivity would have to be adjusted to not slow it down too much but still be plausible to say it's an anti-DoS mechanism.

Maybe we should go back to the throwaway accounts and spam idea. That would be more effective at draining the resources of spammers (who presumably have a lot more resources than ordinary home users, plus unlike Google do not provide anything useful to end users), which would also be a good thing. And it would use minimal resources on the client side.

[Mr. Scram]

Use free proxies and VPNs to get around IP blocking.

Make the primary purpose something else (e.g. quickly parse the results to make "art") and even add an anti-DoS mechanism that measures the response time and slow down if it increases significantly. The latter would make it less effective, so the sensitivity would have to be adjusted to not slow it down too much but still be plausible to say it's an anti-DoS mechanism.

Maybe we should go back to the throwaway accounts and spam idea. That would be more effective at draining the resources of spammers (who presumably have a lot more resources than ordinary home users, plus unlike Google do not provide anything useful to end users), which would also be a good thing. And it would use minimal resources on the client side.

You know you have a brilliant idea, if only you knew what it was!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

[NiHaoMike]

I think it's safe to say the real implementation of my idea would be done by someone with a lot more experience in network programming optimization than I do. Actually, it's not even my idea, just my thoughts on optimizing someone else's proof of concept.

[vk4ffab]

Use free proxies and VPNs to get around IP blocking.

Make the primary purpose something else (e.g. quickly parse the results to make "art") and even add an anti-DoS mechanism that measures the response time and slow down if it increases significantly. The latter would make it less effective, so the sensitivity would have to be adjusted to not slow it down too much but still be plausible to say it's an anti-DoS mechanism.

Maybe we should go back to the throwaway accounts and spam idea. That would be more effective at draining the resources of spammers (who presumably have a lot more resources than ordinary home users, plus unlike Google do not provide anything useful to end users), which would also be a good thing. And it would use minimal resources on the client side.

You are still missing the point. Lets say that a ddos of google could work, and it wont, but lets say it will, what then? Does this stop every other website on the net harvesting data? No. I have a webserver, I own the physical box and maintain it, on it is 1 wordpress site, its colocated in a secure facility. I have never installed any analytics and I have no advertising and yet, wordpress or some plugin i am using is harvesting data all the time and I cannot stop it. And i just do not have time skill to write my own blog software from the ground up, so i live with minimal data harvesting.

But these are not even the most pervasive of issues. What about everytime you order from JLCpcb or Ali Express, your information is passed onto the Chinese Government, or at least can be as that is the law. And this goes on and one. Or what about your cell phone? Its tracking your crap all the time, its apps are reporting back to the mothership all the time, its gps can locate you to within 20m. A smart phone is nothing more than a surveillance device in your pocket. How about your smart watch? Yeah you are being watched all the time. The question is how much of that being watched actually matters? And just remember, your TV is watching you too.

The best any of us can do is to block as much as is possible and after that, avoid the internet, cell phones and other smart devices if you are actually worried. Consume less is the only way to not be a bitch to corporate interests. Personally, i do not care all that much about data tracking, my life is boring, i am not a criminal, i obey the law, i pay my taxes. They know i walk from my bedroom to my office in the morning and go to work, they know i shop on ebay, jlc, lcsc and mouser, visit the same bunch of websites every day and am not big on social media. And i am ok with that.

[Mr. Scram]

I think it's safe to say the real implementation of my idea would be done by someone with a lot more experience in network programming optimization than I do. Actually, it's not even my idea, just my thoughts on optimizing someone else's proof of concept.

Uh-huh. You're the Idea Guy. You're not investing anything nor doing the work, you're just the guy with the incredible yet surprisingly unspecific idea. The important part is that you just know, and we should know, it's going to change everything.

https://www.riskology.co/idea-guy/

[NiHaoMike]

Or what about your cell phone? Its tracking your crap all the time, its apps are reporting back to the mothership all the time, its gps can locate you to within 20m. A smart phone is nothing more than a surveillance device in your pocket. How about your smart watch? Yeah you are being watched all the time. The question is how much of that being watched actually matters? And just remember, your TV is watching you too.

Both my smartphone and smartwatch run aftermarket firmware without Google. My TV isn't even connected to the network since there's no point doing that, I just have it connected to a Linux PC. I download videos using youtube-dl and play them using mpv, so Google doesn't know when I watch the videos unless I go to comment right afterwards. I always use Adblock so I don't see how they would profit from my data. I have considered switching to a stealth adblocker so they would waste ad views, but in the near term I think that will just feed such data collection efforts, so I'm sticking with uBlock Origin for now.

Uh-huh. You're the Idea Guy. You're not investing anything nor doing the work, you're just the guy with the incredible yet surprisingly unspecific idea. The important part is that you just know, and we should know, it's going to change everything.

The Javascript proof of concept, made by someone else:
http://makeinternetnoise.com/index.html
I just gave some input on how it could be optimized, but obviously someone who really knows what they're doing will do a better job at optimizing it.

[vk4ffab]

Or what about your cell phone? Its tracking your crap all the time, its apps are reporting back to the mothership all the time, its gps can locate you to within 20m. A smart phone is nothing more than a surveillance device in your pocket. How about your smart watch? Yeah you are being watched all the time. The question is how much of that being watched actually matters? And just remember, your TV is watching you too.

Both my smartphone and smartwatch run aftermarket firmware without Google. My TV isn't even connected to the network since there's no point doing that, I just have it connected to a Linux PC. I download videos using youtube-dl and play them using mpv, so Google doesn't know when I watch the videos unless I go to comment right afterwards. I always use Adblock so I don't see how they would profit from my data. I have considered switching to a stealth adblocker so they would waste ad views, but in the near term I think that will just feed such data collection efforts, so I'm sticking with uBlock Origin for now.

And still the point is, this mostly changes nothing. Does anyone really care that youtube knows I watch eevblog and elecroboom and that guy with the Swiss accent? See this kind of data collection only becomes a problem when people are using youtube for "RESEARCH" and allowing its suggestion algorithm to feed your biases, or if you use youtube or facebook and twitter to get your news and information. The only way to defeat this sort of thing is to be educated, scientifically literate and understand what sources of should be trusted and then have the ability to fact check it all yourself. Even if you defeat the data collection, its still very easy to fall for very same trap of only using untrustworthy sources of information that are there to feed your biases. You cannot get away from data collection and feeding it noise really does nothing, but you can be smarter than it and not allow it to have much influence over the decisions you make, and ultimately that is how you defeat them.

[SilverSolder]

[...] if enough people were actually flooding networks with "noise" and it had a noticeable effect on the effectiveness of data analysis, there are so many interests at stake here that doing it would probably become illegal in most countries. Sweet. [...]

Yes, that is pretty much exactly what would happen -  compare with DMCA laws etc. that (almost) make it illegal to fix your own stuff, lest you deprive some corporate interest or other of the income that is rightfully theirs...   

Generating "smart noise" would be very hard to prevent and to make illegal.  Say you are interested in Gillette shaving foam...  your noisy search tool might create several decoy searches along with the real search terms,  resulting in searches for "Mars Bar", "Vacations in Peru", "The relative merits of Constitutional Monarchy vs. Republic", "Gillette Shaving Foam", and "Cloning sheep Dolly".    Not much traffic at all, certainly not enough to be considered denial of service or network abuse.  But there is no way for Google and other predators to know which of your searches is a decoy search and which is real.  So the effectiveness of their algorithms matching searchers and sellers takes a big hit, becoming much less effective. 

If enough people did this, it would hurt them badly, because now the wrong ads get put in front of the intended audience, and the value of the advertising "space" drops as a result. 

[Red Squirrel]

Please don't start that "discussion" again. 

The sure way to end it is to prove (or disprove) that creating a lot of random searches "costs them less than it costs you". Given the computer science of generating pseudorandom numbers is far simpler than that of searching databases, it would be quite a feat even if they have a 10X advantage in lower energy cost. If it is the case, it would be interesting to know how they do it.

I think the noise idea could work -  but only if enough of the "prey" were doing it that it amounted to a kind of denial-of-service attack on the "predators"! 

Perhaps some kind of open source noise generating screen saver or other app that could devote a couple of percent of your CPU resources to generating noise.  It would have to be very cleverly generated noise, and it would have to change and evolve to remain ahead of the "predators"... it would need to be designed to create plausible looking, but false patterns across millions of users...

I would love to see extensions like Privacy Badger and ublock implement a noise feature.  Basically it would simulate normal internet usage and doing random searches and going on random sites even when the browser is idle so it feeds junk data into all the spy algorithms.   Though I think to make it more realistic you almost need something that runs in a VM and actually controls the browser - like actually clicking and typing and moving the mouse.  All this spying is doing stuff like reading your history or reading your mouse position etc and probably even reading your hard drive so it's not so much that you have to send them junk data, but rather produce junk data/activity locally so they take the junk data from you.

What I hate though is the fact that browsers are designed in such a way that all this spying stuff is even possible.   The personal data these sites have access to and the fact that browsers provide it is part of the problem. 

[nuclearcat]

Quick update on subject for those, who use "hosts" file for telemetry block:
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/windows-10-hosts-file-blocking-telemetry-is-now-flagged-as-a-risk/

Starting at the end of July, Microsoft has begun detecting HOSTS files that block Windows 10 telemetry servers as a 'Severe' security risk.

[PKTKS]

Monsanto and Microsoft share a similar business strategy

- their products  are crippled by design
- their products aim to make consumers addicted to their license
- their products are seductive disguised and totally criminal

While one target to deploy addiction by hungry (no seeds)
The other target addiction by restricting control of individual privacy

Arbitrary Telemetry  and DRM snoopers which scan
the  whole system in permanent snooping state.

To say the least - criminal is a soft word for their business.


Paul

[PKTKS]

A secondary side note of these business is that
currently the retarded goonies behind ** systemd **
are pushing the very same business model.

Surfaced lightly by "secure" "compliance" and some
other misleading words,, systemd aims no further than
the very same control of system privacy and  process
snooping.

To an extent that is hard to put in simple words.

Soon the very same crap like "Anti Virus"..
paid safety and paid upgrades or paid clients
will surface this model

Behind that is very simple to see the very
same players behind the other crap business

They push the thing disguised as usual
with underlying tons of money

Monsanto Microsoft and systemd goonies should go to hell

Paul

[joeqsmith]

Quick update on subject for those, who use "hosts" file for telemetry block:
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/windows-10-hosts-file-blocking-telemetry-is-now-flagged-as-a-risk/

Starting at the end of July, Microsoft has begun detecting HOSTS files that block Windows 10 telemetry servers as a 'Severe' security risk.

Good find.  I wasn't aware people were trying to use this method to block them, or that they now detect it.   

[rdl]

What's even worse is, they keep you from saving the hosts file if you try to add something they don't like.

[peter-h]

Block telemetry servers in a router firewall? Even cheap routers can do this.

[BravoV]

Just don't understand the mentality of keep using Windows, but naively pretending one can tweak/hack or do what so ever to shutdown the telemetry, while still connected to the net (not air gapped), cmon, wake up or at least grow up. 

[duckduck]

Just don't understand the mentality of keep using Windows, but naively pretending one can tweak/hack or do what so ever to shutdown the telemetry, while still connected to the net (not air gapped), cmon, wake up or at least grow up. 

Agree. Windows is a privacy nightmare. If you choose to/must use Windows you can check out use the app from https://wpd.app/ to disable what you can.

[NiHaoMike]

What's even worse is, they keep you from saving the hosts file if you try to add something they don't like.

What happens if you boot into a Linux live distro to edit it, then set the file to read only?

Block telemetry servers in a router firewall? Even cheap routers can do this.

Or connect Windows to a network that only has proxy access. Then set up the proxy in only the apps you want connected. Could even be done using VMs.

[bd139]

Apparently the EU are going to give them an arse kicking on this shortly. Fingers crossed.

[Red Squirrel]

The more I read on Windows 10 the more I absolutely don't want it on my network.  I do have a Windows 7 machine for gaming but even that is on a separate vlan now.  Discord requires you to forward thousands of UDP ports for it to work, which is horrible design, and I did not like the idea of forwarding that many ports to a machine on my main network so I put it on a separate vlan, which is a good idea anyway.

Not even surprised that they are blocking attempts to edit the host file, best to block the telemetry stuff at the firewall.   If you use a proxy make sure it's password protected, as Windows might be smart enough to detect and use it.   I would also avoid using IE as if yo configure the proxy in it, even if it's password protected it will probably be able to then have Windows itself use it for telemetry.

Apparently the EU are going to give them an arse kicking on this shortly. Fingers crossed.

That should be interesting.

[Mr. Scram]

I honestly wouldn't have wanted to depend on the hosts file to block Microsoft telemetry before. Independent DNS blocking seems to be the best way though far from perfect and that can be circumvented if they decide so.

[Red Squirrel]

At this point I would even do IP based blocking too, it's a matter of time until MS just hard codes the IPs so there is no DNS lookup needed.   They own their IP space so no reason why they can't do that, not like they have to worry about IPs changing on them such as if you are using a leased server or something.   TBH I'm surprised they did not already do that.

If they REALLY wanted to be assholes they could even have the computer shut down or cripple the usability (maybe with constant errors) if it can't reach the telemetry servers.  I honestly won't be surprised if they eventually do this. I probably should not be giving them ideas.

[NiHaoMike]

I would also avoid using IE as if yo configure the proxy in it, even if it's password protected it will probably be able to then have Windows itself use it for telemetry.

Better, configure it to use a fake proxy that always returns null responses (as in a blank HTML page) and silently discards anything sent to it.

[Ed.Kloonk]

hey did not already do that.

If they REALLY wanted to be assholes they could even have the computer shut down or cripple the usability (maybe with constant errors) if it can't reach the telemetry servers.  I honestly won't be surprised if they eventually do this. I probably should not be giving them ideas.

You never used win98 did you?

 

[themadhippy]

If they REALLY wanted to be assholes they could even have the computer shut down or cripple the usability (maybe with constant errors) if it can't reach the telemetry servers.  I honestly won't be surprised if they eventually do this. I probably should not be giving them ideas

No need to give them ideas,there already partially there with the xbox , as that requires an internet connection during set up,no internet no go.

[Red Squirrel]

hey did not already do that.

If they REALLY wanted to be assholes they could even have the computer shut down or cripple the usability (maybe with constant errors) if it can't reach the telemetry servers.  I honestly won't be surprised if they eventually do this. I probably should not be giving them ideas.

You never used win98 did you?

 

That would just cripple and throw errors for no reason, despite internet being there or not.    "This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down".  Either that, or BSOD.

That's one thing I got to give MS at least their OSes are more stable than before now.   

[Ed.Kloonk]

hey did not already do that.

If they REALLY wanted to be assholes they could even have the computer shut down or cripple the usability (maybe with constant errors) if it can't reach the telemetry servers.  I honestly won't be surprised if they eventually do this. I probably should not be giving them ideas.

You never used win98 did you?

 

That would just cripple and throw errors for no reason, despite internet being there or not.    "This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down".  Either that, or BSOD.

That's one thing I got to give MS at least their OSes are more stable than before now.   

Apparently not from what's written above. An OS that actively denies your preferences in regards to net access cannot be deemed stable.

[NiHaoMike]

That's one thing I got to give MS at least their OSes are more stable than before now.   

Thank Linux for that - remember how Linux just started becoming practical for everyday desktop use?

[rdl]

The entire internet has become a privacy mess. The main problem is how companies like Microsoft, Google, etc. act as if having an connection gives them the right to do as they please with it. Probably 99% of the people that use computers have no idea how much is really going on without their knowledge.

[bd139]

That's one thing I got to give MS at least their OSes are more stable than before now.   

Thank Linux for that - remember how Linux just started becoming practical for everyday desktop use?

LOL no. It’s just as if even not more broken than windows.

[SilverSolder]

The entire internet has become a privacy mess. The main problem is how companies like Microsoft, Google, etc. act as if having an connection gives them the right to do as they please with it. Probably 99% of the people that use computers have no idea how much is really going on without their knowledge.

The trick, I guess, is - don't connect any "serious" computer to the Internet! 

Keep Internet connectivity on a separate machine that is used for communications, and anything valuable on the isolated one.

[rsjsouza]

The entire internet has become a privacy mess. The main problem is how companies like Microsoft, Google, etc. act as if having an connection gives them the right to do as they please with it.

Well, I dislike this as much as anyone else, but somenody has to pay for all this infrastructure and energy... The golden egg is targeted advertisement...

Probably 99% of the people that use computers have no idea how much is really going on without their knowledge.

True for that and for pretty much most aspects of life... We "in the know" suffer the most.

[rsjsouza]

That's one thing I got to give MS at least their OSes are more stable than before now.   

Thank Linux for that - remember how Linux just started becoming practical for everyday desktop use?

LOL no. It’s just as if even not more broken than windows.

I remember there were talks around Win 2000 or XP that Microsoft was surreptitiously using open source software to improve their own OSes. If that is true, then it would be one aspect where Linux would be thanked.

But yes, I agree Linux it is just a different type of mess.

[bd139]

They did. Half the network stack in windows 2000 was from BSD. They should have stolen the rest of it while they were there and run win32 on top of it.

[duckduck]

The entire internet has become a privacy mess. The main problem is how companies like Microsoft, Google, etc. act as if having an connection gives them the right to do as they please with it. Probably 99% of the people that use computers have no idea how much is really going on without their knowledge.

The trick, I guess, is - don't connect any "serious" computer to the Internet! 

Keep Internet connectivity on a separate machine that is used for communications, and anything valuable on the isolated one.

That is exactly what QubesOS ( https://www.qubes-os.org/ ) does, except that it's done all on one PC in virtual machines. If you're a privacy nerd this OS is the dog's bollocks.

[rdl]

The entire internet has become a privacy mess. The main problem is how companies like Microsoft, Google, etc. act as if having an connection gives them the right to do as they please with it.

Well, I dislike this as much as anyone else, but somenody has to pay for all this infrastructure and energy... The golden egg is targeted advertisement...

While I somewhat understand your point, I pay a lot of money to Comcast every month for my internet connection and places like Amazon are not exactly giving stuff away. Seems like that should be more than enough to cover their costs. My main problem is the lack of control and awareness that end users have of exactly what data is transferred over the two way internet connection. The big tech companies basically steal anything and everything they can as long as it's not specifically forbidden by law.

[duckduck]

I remember there were talks around Win 2000 or XP that Microsoft was surreptitiously using open source software to improve their own OSes. If that is true, then it would be one aspect where Linux would be thanked.

The IP stack in Windows 2000 is the most famous example. It wasn't surreptitious. It was openly admitted and they followed the Berkeley license.
 
The first versions of Windows (through 3.11 I believe) were written on computers running Xenix. Internally, Microsoft uses Git (originally written by Linus Torvalds) for version control since 2017 or so. Microsoft has it's own flavor of debian that it runs on the network switches in its data centers. MS-SQL 2019 was released for Linux. Recent versions of Win10 can run Linux code (essentially doing the reverse of WINE). In 2015, the CEO of MS put up the slide below in a press conference. Finally, over 50% of all hosts in Azure run Linux.

[bd139]

Also to point out, the Microsoft .Net framework was originally written on Unix machines and used Perl as the build toolchain. Oh and you could get IE4 on Solaris and HP/UX

[SilverSolder]

The entire internet has become a privacy mess. The main problem is how companies like Microsoft, Google, etc. act as if having an connection gives them the right to do as they please with it.

Well, I dislike this as much as anyone else, but somenody has to pay for all this infrastructure and energy... The golden egg is targeted advertisement...

While I somewhat understand your point, I pay a lot of money to Comcast every month for my internet connection and places like Amazon are not exactly giving stuff away. Seems like that should be more than enough to cover their costs. My main problem is the lack of control and awareness that end users have of exactly what data is transferred over the two way internet connection. The big tech companies basically steal anything and everything they can as long as it's not specifically forbidden by law.

The law is way behind the facts on the ground here, things are moving so fast.  The law is further behind in the US than the EU.  I don't know what the situation is in China.

[SilverSolder]

They did. Half the network stack in windows 2000 was from BSD. They should have stolen the rest of it while they were there and run win32 on top of it.

That might be the long term future of Windows...  - it worked for Apple...

[Mr. Scram]

For some reason I keep reading "the impedance of Microsoft". 

[mc172]

Generating "smart noise" would be very hard to prevent and to make illegal.  Say you are interested in Gillette shaving foam...  your noisy search tool might create several decoy searches along with the real search terms,  resulting in searches for "Mars Bar", "Vacations in Peru", "The relative merits of Constitutional Monarchy vs. Republic", "Gillette Shaving Foam", and "Cloning sheep Dolly".    Not much traffic at all, certainly not enough to be considered denial of service or network abuse.  But there is no way for Google and other predators to know which of your searches is a decoy search and which is real.  So the effectiveness of their algorithms matching searchers and sellers takes a big hit, becoming much less effective. 

If enough people did this, it would hurt them badly, because now the wrong ads get put in front of the intended audience, and the value of the advertising "space" drops as a result.

The real search will be the one where the results get clicked on. Couldn't be easier for them to figure out.

[bd139]

For some reason I keep reading "the impedance of Microsoft". 

[coppice]

For some reason I keep reading "the impedance of Microsoft". 

No, No. Its 120 pi ohms.

[bd139]

  sneaky

[SilverSolder]

For some reason I keep reading "the impedance of Microsoft". 

As long as your LCR meter isn't displaying the "impudence" of the DUT, you are probably going to be fine! 

[NiHaoMike]

Well, I dislike this as much as anyone else, but somenody has to pay for all this infrastructure and energy... The golden egg is targeted advertisement...

Easy solution: Adblock!

[bd139]

Easier solution: EU.

“If you don’t want a £4bn fine then turn it off”

I reckon that will happen this year.

[Red Squirrel]

Fine should be 4 bil for every day that it has not been done, then it goes up exponentially every week.  If it's a one time thing MS will just pay it and not change a thing.  It's basically like parking in the fire zone for them.  Big ticket but you can survive it.