They had since win2K to enact laws regarding this "info sharing".
What is in the services of W2K - W7 , is what they "hard baked" into the code of W10. At least you could opt out before W10.
18 years of running a whole society on the same tech (W2K - W10) , you could legislate on win 10 based on what you know of W2K ... basically.
The whole 18 years shows no "innovation" , just incremental grabs at the privacy of the user base.
OS
Intel is just as guilty.
Hardware is suspect , too.
Intel MEI , is the management software for (server farms). (below) - Why ?? is it needed on consumer desktop boards ?? "unknown" is the memory (and bios) component , and
I found out , the "simple PCI com controller" is a virtual serial port that "piggyback's" on the LAN.
With the onboard LAN , I could not only gain access to the OS , but fart around with the bios itself. What a security hole - 2010 to present , most intel chipsets have this gaping "hole".
To circumvent , you can just install the MEI and not the virtual PCI communications component by manually installing through device manager.
NO MEI seems to degrade performance of the memory controller.
Disable the onboard lan and the use of a 3rd party pci-e one works too. I could not get the remote admin to work with a realtek PCI-E. I have the same Intel board (DP55WP) as a full size gaming ATX MB , no simple communications controller on this one. They figured the gaming "geek" would be pi$$ed about a hardware based remote forced on them. I have seen many Intel chipset based boards like this , what a wide gaping security hole. Worse than Specter/meltdown , for sure.
No wonder they call microsoft/intel - "wintel" , no security/privacy concerns between the two exist. OS
Hardware is suspect , too.
Intel MEI , is the management software for (server farms). (below) - Why ?? is it needed on consumer desktop boards ?? "unknown" is the memory (and bios) component , and
I found out , the "simple PCI com controller" is a virtual serial port that "piggyback's" on the LAN.
With the onboard LAN , I could not only gain access to the OS , but fart around with the bios itself. What a security hole - 2010 to present , most intel chipsets have this gaping "hole".
To circumvent , you can just install the MEI and not the virtual PCI communications component by manually installing through device manager.
NO MEI seems to degrade performance of the memory controller.
Disable the onboard lan and the use of a 3rd party pci-e one works too. I could not get the remote admin to work with a realtek PCI-E. I have the same Intel board (DP55WP) as a full size gaming ATX MB , no simple communications controller on this one. They figured the gaming "geek" would be pi$$ed about a hardware based remote forced on them. I have seen many Intel chipset based boards like this , what a wide gaping security hole. Worse than Specter/meltdown , for sure.
No wonder they call microsoft/intel - "wintel" , no security/privacy concerns between the two exist. OS
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Having a brick and mortar computer store and repair shop for twenty five years I have seen many changes. IMO W10 is by far the best OS I have seen by a wide margin. I don't have any interest in privacy concerns but what I do have interest in is reliability and ease of use. The OS flat out works and is not virus prone. I have a pretty big customer base and from my observation customers are very happy with Windows 10. On a side note, I love the information sharing that goes on. I'm not an advocate for it but I like ads that are tailored for me and reflect things I search for or buy. I'm not saying I like ads or watch commercials (hate them) but if I am exposed, at least some of them are in my wheelhouse.
Vince
Vince
For a PC store , W10 is a wet dream. M$ does the repairs on the app end , just
sell and replace hardware.
"better" is subjective , as is "value" (like walmart).
Ads have NO place in the OS. Acceptance of such is the way we got this far.
Next step is reduction of ads for the W10 subscription service. Incremented ,
like ever increasing fees (or video card prices).
sell and replace hardware.
"better" is subjective , as is "value" (like walmart).
Ads have NO place in the OS. Acceptance of such is the way we got this far.
Next step is reduction of ads for the W10 subscription service. Incremented ,
like ever increasing fees (or video card prices).
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Its far worse than you think. Enter "windows 10 privacy invasion is worse than you think" into a search engine and you'll get zero exact results. Microsoft pays Google to shift the results of a search about Windows 10's privacy invasion to put the stories at the very top from corporations that can be bribed which say:
"Why you shouldn't worry about Windows 10 Privacy" laptopmag.com
"Windows 10 privacy problems, here's how bad they are" slate.com
"Windows 10 privacy guide: How to take control" zdnet.com
"Windows 10 violates your privacy by default" techrepublic.com
All of the top results are from companies...
And the ones which come from independent sources, on forums, from people like you and me at the very bottom which say:
"The Aggressive invasion of Windows 10" from answers.microsoft.com
Which is about how Windows 10 installs stuff without a choice from the end user. Not about privacy invasion.
"Windows 10 Privacy Nightmare - What microsoft knows about you" youtube.com
And the ONLY website on that entire page is the very last result comes from a forum, quora.com asking the question like a confused consumer "Is Microsoft Windows 10 Basically a Spying operating system?"
Remember what the question was that I had asked the search engine?
Remember here is the exact search inquiry that I used:
"windows 10 privacy invasion is worse than you think"
I didn't ask for any of the search results above, yet I received search results which are trying to change my mind on the subject matter. and NOT search results which support my clear standing on the subject matter. I am telling a search engine that I already know that windows 10's privacy invasion is terrible, and I'm asking the search engine to search the web about topics and/or forum posts which support my biased side. Yet I'm getting zero results which support my side of the argument.
And yet, I remember finding a search result which was exactly spelled out as:
"Windows 10 privacy invasion is worse than you think" So why isn't it result #1 in the search results? Because corporations are blinding us to the facts.
Fact of the matter is, the forum thread that has that very title is deep buried in pages and pages of search results. Why is this a problem? pretty obvious.
I remember a long time ago, in the years of dogpile and metacrawler I could enter in the exact or similar forum thread title into a search engine and get it up on the first page, as most likely the first result. But not anymore.
So don't base your judgements merely upon the first page of search results regarding this matter, they are compromised by corporations. Do extensive digging on this subject matter and you will realize that Windows 10 is not just using usage data but is in fact a keystroke logger that records data and sends it in bursts to microsoft servers periodically.
And you may think that the last statement that I just made is bunk. Well yes it is, there is no keylogger in the released version of Windows 10, but there was. technically. You see the Windows 10 Preview release had a full blown keylogger installed on it and that is what this website post was going on about, that is what the massive hoopla regarding Windows 10 privacy invasion was all about back in 2015:
A Traffic Analysis of Windows 10 - root@localghost:~#
Don't like a Czech source?:
From 2014: Windows 10 Technical Preview Captures Your Files, Keystrokes And Voice
Just to cement things even further we don't need to rely on that previous article as solid evidence. we've got this article from arstechnica:
Even when told not to, Windows 10 just can’t stop talking to Microsoft | Ars Technica
Which says that:
I remember way back in the early 2000s that I wouldn't stand for a computer which has a serial number installed in its CPU, and Intel got huge backlash for that embedded serial number. Well guess what, ALL CPUs today have unique serial numbers embedded, all phones, all devices with a CPU today have them. You can look up on any android device in the about page or in CPU-Z for android and obtain a serial number for the cpu.
So why is there no outrage? Because corporations have been bribing us with new features which require said serial numbers and we fall for it every single time because we WANT THOSE FEATURES SO MUCH!
The mere fact that there was a full blown keylogger installed in the Windows 10 Preview release should put you standing upright and stiff for decades to come, BECAUSE IT MEANS THAT MICROSOFT'S DEVELOPMENT GROUP IS THINKING IN THAT MANNER, IT SHOULD TELL YOU THAT THEIR THOUGHT PROCESS IS "LETS INSTALL A KEYLOGGER, BECAUSE THE NSA TOLD US TO". Let alone that you have no option of ever turning any of it off without hacks. Or that even with hacks you still cannot disable Cortana or the keylogger, because it is so heavily embedded into the system that it cannot be removed without completely breaking Windows updates. Nevermind the fact that the domain name is called nsatc.net
And when you think of it in terms like that, it becomes a HUGE opsec failure on part of Microsoft, they snuck in a keylogger into the preview release AND pulled it before the product was shipped. Which also tells you another thing. The keylogger could still be there, it could just be disabled and if you become a person of interest they flick one bit and it becomes enabled again. You have no way of knowing if that is true or not.
Okay. lets say that you don't actually care about any of this. That you don't believe any of it, there is no keylogger. Well... Windows 10 is still sending to Microsoft a long list of the files that you are running and searching for on your hard drive. Even that metadata can be used to infer some truly amazing things about you. The keyword being here is infer.
Most if not all people don't understand the true power of metadata. Most people aren't data scientists, and it is a massive con on the people, a sly way of spying on people.
YouTube
And this privacy theft con works because YOU don't know the value of a simple mouse click in the right place. The metadata that you send out to Microsoft is VERY valuable and they know that. You don't know that. That is their power over you.
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By the way. Anyone who has compromised a gateway between your ISP and microsoft servers can siphon all of that metadata that you so rightly call microsoft's and specifically target your system with a 0 day exploit, because they know exactly what programs and their versions you are running.
Russian/Chinese hackers can do that in their sleep.
In fact a simple DNS compromise of any of the massive numbers of domains which Microsoft uses to send telemetry data do will do the same thing as well.
But you wouldn't know that the block range of ip addresses for the nsatc.net domain name was previously owned by hackers, and you wouldn't know that because you don't use SNORT ip range blocking, which became a serious issue for enterprises back in 2015.
Russian/Chinese hackers can do that in their sleep.
In fact a simple DNS compromise of any of the massive numbers of domains which Microsoft uses to send telemetry data do will do the same thing as well.
But you wouldn't know that the block range of ip addresses for the nsatc.net domain name was previously owned by hackers, and you wouldn't know that because you don't use SNORT ip range blocking, which became a serious issue for enterprises back in 2015.
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Since we have things like TPM (trusted platform modules) , 
my question is where did the "trusted platform" go ???
Like , using hardware encryption when your secret will be out of the bag as soon as you un-encrypt it.
For those who say " I have nothing to hide" , what about -
1- your financial data
2 - any IP you have worked hard to develop.
3 - any other personal info that could be used as leverage or (a weapon) ... to bring you down - hard!
So , what do we do ? Go darkweb and download Putin's hacked Win7 (works great - btw). Some would feel some misguided honour , and not screw the corporation/monopoly back that just screwed them ... Linux for them ??
Everything is moving in a very wrong direction , most don't seem to care. When it matures , they most likely will deserve it. OS
my question is where did the "trusted platform" go ??? Like , using hardware encryption when your secret will be out of the bag as soon as you un-encrypt it.
For those who say " I have nothing to hide" , what about -
1- your financial data
2 - any IP you have worked hard to develop.
3 - any other personal info that could be used as leverage or (a weapon) ... to bring you down - hard!
So , what do we do ? Go darkweb and download Putin's hacked Win7 (works great - btw). Some would feel some misguided honour , and not screw the corporation/monopoly back that just screwed them ... Linux for them ??
Everything is moving in a very wrong direction , most don't seem to care. When it matures , they most likely will deserve it. OS
Yep! There have been many better alternatives over the years, some are still with us and some are long gone, but M$ have the market share and that alone is enough to keep the status quo unless something really radical happens.
I held out till 1996, at which point I accepted the situation and bought a windows machine. Even apple had to sell out to a degree, and switch from the superior power series processors to Intel x86. Why do you think that was... simply the fact that the volumes, (mainly driven by M$ sales) of x86 processors (and all related supporting chips) make them a cheaper option would be my guess.
Tony.
Are you still taking about Microsoft/google/other OpSystems or regular hackers ?Since we have things like TPM (trusted platform modules) ,
Like , using hardware encryption when your secret will be out of the bag as soon as you un-encrypt it.
For those who say " I have nothing to hide" , what about -
1- your financial data
2 - any IP you have worked hard to develop.
3 - any other personal info that could be used as leverage or (a weapon) ... to bring you down - hard!
OS
What's the difference ? In my opinion , they have become the same.
Personally , I would rather be compromised by "regular hackers". They just
want the $$$ .
OS
Funny thing , to test how "hardened" I could be - I went darkweb and taunted these groups to hack me.
Amazing exploits , OMG ! I even had one max out my fans and overclock the CPU
through the UEFI bios. I guess just opening my cd-rom tray was not enough.
Luckily , my Intel MB's have a bios setting to disable (UEFI) reporting to the
OS.
So , it seems any HW feature that provides a frivolous convenience also becomes a gaping security hole.
This seems to appy to software , as well. To be lazy and have the OS/apps remember your finance/passwords or logging on though facebook/google offers mindless convenience in return for setting you up for a cascading domino effect of security breaches.
OS
I bought (knowing the risks) A new gigabyte motherboard and Ryzen 2200G processor about a week after they came out for use in my Ubuntu MythTV box. Everything I had been able to ascertain was that the main issue was with lack of support in the amdgpu drivers for the vega 8.
Using the built in graphics and Ubuntu 16.04 it was definitely not a happening thing. To get it to work I put my nvidia GT710 card in (I was using it in the system before the motherboard replacement) and disabled IOMMU in the bios.
That ran stably.
I later upgraded to Ubuntu 18.04 without issue. When people started to mention success with using the APU for graphics, I got a mainline 4.18 kernel and obiaf mesa and tried my luck at using the onboard graphics. Booting was a bit hit and miss but once it was up and running it was stable.
Some more patches came out so I decided to install, so I could hopefully implement suspend and wakeup, but this introduced GPU lockups. Still having those. It only freezes X the rest of the system keeps working, but requires a hard reset to get the X back, can't even shut down the box.
If it isn't fixed soon I'll put the Nvidia card back in (transferred it to my Windows 7 desktop).
So yes there are issues with certain hardware, but this has always been the case with linux when new hardware comes out. A lot of the time there are die hard techies reverse engineering the hardware to work out how to write a driver for it, as the manufacturers very often do not provide any support for linux. That's the way it goes unfortunately. If you want a trouble free experience with Linux you look up successful builds that other people have done and replicate that.
I recently found the solution to the IOMMU problem (can't remember the webpage) but for my gigabyte motherboard.
set these two in the bios
bios advanced settings / advanced cpu core settings /
SVM on
iommu ENABLED
grub kernel line add amd_iommu=on iommu=pt
That completely fixed the IOMMU refusing to boot issue
sure it would be nice if it could work that out for itself but at least there is a workaround... Tony.
Just on the above IOMMU stuff I tried it first editing the boot line on startup. Do Not edit grub before you have tested it or you may be in for a bigger world of pain!!
My most recent PC adventure was yesterday. Trying to activate windows 10 on the PC I had just put together. Actually just trying to put in the product key during initial install was the first battle.
It just kept telling me that the product key didn't work. I tried disabling UEFI secure boot, I tried using downloaded version of windows, tried pretty much everything. I ended up installing without the product key and trying to activate from windows. That wouldn't even let me type in the entire activation key. I was getting pretty furious. I contacted the vendor and they told me to contact Microsoft.
I contacted microsoft and after a very painful hour or so on the phone, they told me my product key was invalid and to go back to the vendor. I was getting pretty upset by this point!
So I rang the vendor and they said fill in a warranty claim and come in, which I then did. I got to the store and told the guy the situation and everything I'd done. He had a look at the product key. I said it seems not to like the U it says invalid character entered when I type it in.
The guy says that's because it's not a U it's a J. I said what? He then showed me the card and it was a J. I let out an expletive and then laughed. See the attached before and after photo of the relevant part of the product key!!
What are the chances that I could scratch the protective film off in such a way that only just that bit would remain to change the J into a U???? I blew about four or more hours stuffing around because of that!
Third pic is a pic of the assembled machine.
Asus A320M-K MB
AMD Ryzen 3 2200G processor
16GB Gskill 2400Mhz RAM (probably overkill 8GB though these days seems to be the minimum)
500GB samsung 970 Evo M2 SSD
Thermaltake 450W power supply.
Fractal design core 1100 case.
Windows 10 Home.
I built it for my Brother In Law, who was struggling with a very under-powered machine and getting very frustrated.
Not a cheap build but I'd call it a budget high performance desktop. He came over tonight and I think is pretty happy with it
The SSD is amazingly quick. Benchmarked at 3500MB/s read and I think 2400MB/s write. I can't remember the iops.
The only thing I'm not happy about is that the fan controler on the MB does not control the speed of three pin fans, which both of the case fans are. Luckily they are reasonably quiet, and it shouldn't be noticeable in it's final environment.
Tony.
My most recent PC adventure was yesterday. Trying to activate windows 10 on the PC I had just put together. Actually just trying to put in the product key during initial install was the first battle.
It just kept telling me that the product key didn't work. I tried disabling UEFI secure boot, I tried using downloaded version of windows, tried pretty much everything. I ended up installing without the product key and trying to activate from windows. That wouldn't even let me type in the entire activation key. I was getting pretty furious. I contacted the vendor and they told me to contact Microsoft.
I contacted microsoft and after a very painful hour or so on the phone, they told me my product key was invalid and to go back to the vendor. I was getting pretty upset by this point!
So I rang the vendor and they said fill in a warranty claim and come in, which I then did. I got to the store and told the guy the situation and everything I'd done. He had a look at the product key. I said it seems not to like the U it says invalid character entered when I type it in.
The guy says that's because it's not a U it's a J. I said what? He then showed me the card and it was a J. I let out an expletive and then laughed. See the attached before and after photo of the relevant part of the product key!!
What are the chances that I could scratch the protective film off in such a way that only just that bit would remain to change the J into a U???? I blew about four or more hours stuffing around because of that!
Third pic is a pic of the assembled machine.
Asus A320M-K MB
AMD Ryzen 3 2200G processor
16GB Gskill 2400Mhz RAM (probably overkill 8GB though these days seems to be the minimum)
500GB samsung 970 Evo M2 SSD
Thermaltake 450W power supply.
Fractal design core 1100 case.
Windows 10 Home.
I built it for my Brother In Law, who was struggling with a very under-powered machine and getting very frustrated.
Not a cheap build but I'd call it a budget high performance desktop. He came over tonight and I think is pretty happy with it
The SSD is amazingly quick. Benchmarked at 3500MB/s read and I think 2400MB/s write. I can't remember the iops.
The only thing I'm not happy about is that the fan controler on the MB does not control the speed of three pin fans, which both of the case fans are. Luckily they are reasonably quiet, and it shouldn't be noticeable in it's final environment.
Tony.
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I just bit the bullet and ordered 2 new harddrives.
They are WD Ultrastar 10TB, I hope to whatever deity there is for computer hardware that they are made in the HGST manufacturing facility.
Last time I got WD drives (or Seagate for that matter) they died in the worst way imagineable. My Samsung drives have been holding up really well, but I dare not tempt my luck any further, they need to be replaced. The Samsung drives I'll either mirror or use for installed programs since a potential failure would not really be a big problem.
Cannot throw away stuff that works really well.
They are WD Ultrastar 10TB, I hope to whatever deity there is for computer hardware that they are made in the HGST manufacturing facility.
Last time I got WD drives (or Seagate for that matter) they died in the worst way imagineable. My Samsung drives have been holding up really well, but I dare not tempt my luck any further, they need to be replaced. The Samsung drives I'll either mirror or use for installed programs since a potential failure would not really be a big problem.
Cannot throw away stuff that works really well.
Smartly configured system, Tony! I have always built my computer in that fashion until recently when I for the first time got persuaded to get a cheaper laptop computer. It is a pentium (6W dissipation) quad core 1.6GHz/2.4 GHz processor. What fascinates me is how convenient these machines are, with all the features I could ever wish for, but when it gets to browse the internet, forget it.
I am greatly concerned about the costs, so a lower powered machine I am always interested in. There is a new 2 core/4 threads i3 8109u mobile processor, 3.0GHz/3.6GHz, tdp 28W, just what would have solved my problem, if only it were possible to plug it in instead.
edit: Forgot to ask, can you share the total purchase price of the ryzen machine? I am curious to compare it to the offerings in Croatia.
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Hi Lojzek, hardware cost attached. I was going to buy the windows licence from an online source but got suspicious when I saw some of their other products and ended up buying an OEM licence from the same shop as the hardware, I think that was an additional $149.
I brought home my new work laptop today. It is a beast!! 32GB RAM, 8 core intel core i7 vpro 512GB M2 SSD I think it must be a 17" screen too. It's a HP zbook but I don't know the model.
Supposed to be a replacement for my workstation, but I don't want to give that up....
edit: the thing that I find makes the most difference with a laptop is making sure it has an ssd. memory too I wouldn't get less than 8GB... It's amazing how much faster cpus are these days and despite that, so much more efficient!
Tony.
I brought home my new work laptop today. It is a beast!! 32GB RAM, 8 core intel core i7 vpro 512GB M2 SSD I think it must be a 17" screen too. It's a HP zbook but I don't know the model.
Supposed to be a replacement for my workstation, but I don't want to give that up....
edit: the thing that I find makes the most difference with a laptop is making sure it has an ssd. memory too I wouldn't get less than 8GB... It's amazing how much faster cpus are these days and despite that, so much more efficient!
Tony.
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