Edit: Guys I didn’t write the headline; the subtitle that I added, I’ve now fixed tho
Edit: Also, the information about there being no escape is out of date – here’s a quick guide to how to fix the problem in the modern day
Don’t want to sound like I’m proselytizing, but unless you run Linux, your computer really isn’t yours (closed firmware aside).
Microsoft is just as bad at treating your hardware as theirs that they so graciously allow you to use (in between forced updates, criticizing your browser choices, and trying to trick you into storing everything you do in one drive)
Forced updates are a good thing for most people, though. The general population doesn’t know or care about infosec, so they’ll put off updates for months or years.
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I’d be fine with what you describe in the second paragraph, but that’s not what’s meant by “forced.” That’s opt-out. Forced is what’s really objectionable, especially when it’s abused, as discussed in the article and elsewhere in these comments.
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No.
A notification, in the tray and elsewhere across the OS, with a short description like “Updates are crucial to the security of you and your device, they also provide the freshest experience.” would get the point across. What would be even better is if there was a one-click NQA button to initiate the update, perhaps even included on the notification.
Those notifications have existed for years. People don’t give a shit.
All you have to do is restart your computer every so often and nothing will be forced.
The problem is Microsoft have abused it. Now they claim an update is for security, but instead it just reverts settings to promote their other products.
In Windows’ case, this is the truth. But certified corporation momentos are not a required side-effect of this approach to updates.
Yes, but trust is required of users are not going to boot out. If it’s not opt out, that’s a risk in intself.
Updates forced at inconvenient (or inapropriate) times aren’t a good thing though.
Don’t interrupt my work right bloody now.
You can update later when I’m done doing what I’m in the middle of.
The forced updates are usually after the system has bugged the shit out of you to update for a week or two.
Plus, you can easily disable it.
Let’s have the authorities force us to eat salad and exercise while we’re at it, it’s better for us
Oh Christ, that’s not the same thing and you know it.
Meh. You’re not just talking about just making it automatic or easy or recommended, but actually forcing everyone to have to go along with it and taking away the option to not do it.
You 100% should have to keep your systems up to date. It’s a danger to yourself and everyone else when you don’t.
Even at the risk of Microsoft adding more spyware to my machine, reinstalling apps I deliberately uninstalled, reverting privacy settings I set, strongarming me into using their browser, etc? All of which has been reported.
My hardware, my choice.
If you want to phrase it as a “personal responsibility” thing, then you should frankly be criminally liable if your system is used for a DDOS attack.
Sounds like Microsoft is the problem here. Their antics finally got me to switch to Linux with Copilot.
Just curious, are you unvaccinated too?
Hard agree to disagree.
Which part exactly are you disagreeing with? Do you think that we should force people to never be allowed to run an OS that enforces a strict update regimen? Because I think you probably actually think that the user should be allowed to choose how they update; whether that be mandatory and automatic, or manual and optional. The reality is, the vast majority of people will opt for the former, and I think we both agree that they should be allowed that choice.
The real issue is transparency: what is being installed and executed, why, and is any data being collected. As long as all that can be audited at will, I don’t see any issue with the existence of an OS that insists on being updated for the people who want that.
I don’t see any issue with the existence of an OS that insists on being updated for the people who want that.
Emphases mine, obviously. No OS (nor its vendor) should insist how I use it or force anything on me, the owner / administrator. If it wants to make an opt-in option to make certain things automatic for the lazy / technically-challenged, sure, whatever, but don’t make it mandatory or convoluted to opt out (if opt-in is a dealbreaker)
I don’t want my OS to treat me like an idiot, a child, a product to be data mined, a mark to sell stuff to, etc. Just handle I/O, render what I tell it, do what I tell it, and don’t take liberties or suggest things to me.
Yeah, I don’t think you’re disagreeing with my point. I get it, you aren’t the person who wants to be treated like an idiot when it comes to your computer, but the vast majority of computer users do.
There are many things in your life that you rely on on a daily basis that you never think about the internals of. Maybe your electrical system, your washer and dryer, your car, the roof over your head, the mail system, or the kitchen at a restaurant. All of these things are black boxes that get you what you want without you having to ever think about how it works. Because you don’t want manual control over every single thing in your life you interact with, no one has time for that, you couldn’t function in modern society.
Your computer is an exception that you have arbitrarily chosen to have intimate control over, but most other people don’t. In their perfect world, they don’t even know they’re using a computer, it’s just a magical box that gets them what they want.
Respectfully, I am disagreeing with your point.
To be quite blunt about it, I’m tired of everything constantly being dumbed down to accommodate the lowest common denominator, intellectually non-curious “everyman”. Every once in a while, people should be expected to reach up, just a little. Otherwise, it’s a race to the bottom.
Just because I’m expecting people to reach up doesn’t mean no one will be there to help.
Ok, so it sounds like you are in fact arguing that people shouldn’t be allowed to run a system that forces updates. And yeah, I think we will have to agree to disagree. I believe people should be free to run whatever they want on their own devices, regardless of my personal beliefs.
Remember, we’re not talking about a system that spies on you without telling you, or recommends things to you without you wanting it to, we’re specifically talking about a system that says “either let me update myself, or I will stop functioning”. And I think that’s perfectly reasonable system for a person to want and have.
Most people have absolutely no need to understand how the systems they use operate under the hood.
If anyone does care to “reach up”, it’s not hard to find the steps to disable it on Google. But 99.9% of people aren’t going to do that.
That’s their problem though. If they wanna get hacked, go for it.
But there should be a way to turn it off for us power users at least (without having to build a whole domain controller)
The problem is when those systems become part of a botnet.
Plus, you can just disable the update service if you want to leave your computer vulnerable to attacks.
It’s not that easy.
Except it is; you can add a batch script in your startup folder to disable it on startup. You could also just add the registry key that disables it.
If you’re actually a power user, disabling updates isn’t an issue.
Don’t want to sound like I’m proselytizing, but there are other free operating systems not based on Linux: FreeBSD, FreeDOS or ReactOS in example. I wish, I could add GNU/Hurd to the list, but from what I know, its unusable at the moment. Redox is also a new OS written in Rust, but it’s not ready yet (I think).
Now, are these real alternatives to a regular Linux based OS? In some cases they are (FreeBSD and their family), but most probably would just use Linux for their PC. They aren’t even suited for gaming I guess, the likes of Steam. I was just “Acktually”-ing around that you don’t “need” Linux for owning your computer. I mean, you mentioned closed firmware, so technically I was allowed to. :D
Yeah my position is really to recommend any FOSS OS in the large over proprietary ones. However, since my experience is primarily with Linux distributions, and I do think that Linux makes sense for a lot of use cases, I usually start by talking about “Linux” first.
But, from my experience, if a “solution” to a problem “forces” the user to make a choice, then they’ll stick with what “currently works” over having to make a choice. So when I talk to people about Linux IRL, I typically direct them to Linux Mint directly, even though other distros exist and it actually doesn’t fit my use cases. Once they’re comfortable in the Linux ecosystem, they can switch to a different distro or OS family if they feel the need to do so.
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Yeah, I know people running FreeBSD as their daily driver; totally left that one out haha.
The rest of them are either niche (e.g. FreeDOS for retrogaming) or not quite ready for daily driving (e.g. ReactOS – which I’ve been rooting for for a while now).
There’s also TempleOS lol
When we’re talking FOSS, feel free to “ackshually” all day. Worst case is I learn something new/cool.
I would absolutely run FreeBSD on my laptop if the WiFi wasn’t awful. It doesn’t matter which chipset, max is like 20 Mbps. Rouuugh.
On the server side of things, Docker/Podman is so convenient, and keeps me from blowing so much time on “maintenance.”
Hopefully, some day, I can daily a BSD. Until then- NixOS!
The Hurd hasn’t done anything properly in, what, 3 decades? I am actually surprised someone even remembers it.
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spoiler
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Thanks!
Don’t want to sound like I’m proselytising but do you have a few minutes to talk about our Lord and Saviour, Linus Torvalds?
I’ve said for years that the very last power we have as consumers is the ability to turn off our internet and still be able to use our devices. That is my minimum expectation of any company.
Fridge needs an internet connection, fuck you. TV won’t work unless it’s connected to the internet, fuck you.
But most especially (and this is why I moved to Linux originally), computer needs to always be connected to the internet even if all I’m doing is opening an office program that has nothing to do online? Go fuck yourself.
The ability to unplug my ethernet cable and still be able to use 99% of my computer with the exception of email and a web browser is the absolutely most basic human right left to us.
New versions of Android have made turning off mobile data more inconvenient. Now, you need to tap twice instead of just once in previous versions.
My fix to this is to click the “airplane mode” button
That’s Google’s version of android. Most OEMs still have the single tap internet toggle.
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Your Computer Isn’t Yours: Apple stores every program you run, and when and where you ran it
I’m not using Apple hardware or software, so I doubt it.
Same.
The good thing about buying something it’s with your own money you can buy whatever it’s better for you.
I have an iPhone propped up on the desk viewing my laptop screen just so Apple can record my programs and be happy. Don’t want them to miss out!
The version of macOS that was released today, 11.0, also known as Big Sur…
Good thing we’re on top of things here on the fediverse.
This is from 2020. You absolutely can use Little Snitch or a similar firewall to block this traffic.
https://eclecticlight.co/2021/02/23/how-to-run-apps-in-private/
This is from 2020. You absolutely can use Little Snitch or a similar firewall to block this traffic.
We agree how sinister and dystopian it is to need to work against your hardware/os vendor for something like this though, right?
Shutup 10 exists, but that doesn’t make it OK that Windows users have to continuously be on guard for MS to try snooping on them, either.
Can you though? LS now operates in user mode, which means it can no longer block traffic sent to Apple via a kernel thread.
It’s all a bit pointless though, as a LOT of hardware now calls home as well, and it doesn’t matter what OS to run on top of it unless you’re running something like TempleOS. Vanilla Linux is not going to protect you by itself. And if you’re using a repository system for software updates, that’s going to be reporting your software too — and many web browsers also report the URLs you go to (or even consider going to) and what extensions you have loaded.
But that article points at a solution for macOS users: it’s the certificates that are being checked. Any non-bog-standard software I run is not notarized or signed, and it functions just fine and has nothing to send back to Apple’s servers. First time I run it I need to right click and select Open to run the app, and this bypasses the entire signer system.
Added in an edit
Little Snitch
Little Snitch won’t work because they use the Apple-blessed content filter which apparently doesn’t allow blocking this.
Pointing it to localhost in the hosts file does work, as indicated in that article.
4 year old article
Last time I bought this up, everyone thought I was lying because they couldn’t believe the thought of their beloved status symbol not being perfect.
Its important to remind people that apple cares about your security and privacy as much as zuckerberg.
Why is this four year old story being reposted?
It was news to me
I haven’t noticed Akamai traffic recently; has Apple moved to another contractor, or do they import these hashes internally now?
