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I've deactivated all reporting and services that call back home (at least which I was aware of). In addition I've installed glasswire to check the network activ

I've deactivated all reporting and services that call back home (at least which I was aware of). In addition I've installed glasswire to check the network activities. So far I can assure you: Compared to my Android phone Windows 10 is absolutely mute. There're no noticeable differences compared to Windows 7. You seem to be more driven by your hatred towards Microsoft than by real privacy concerns.

x5n1 11y ago
Hatred for Microsoft? I have none. I do hate the fact that we have an absolutely free operating system that works just fine but thanks to Bill Gates 90s shenanigans and aggressive and illegal market and business tactics we're stuck with a proprietary system that is totally unnecessary and as it continues that system becomes more and more invasive. And that system is a black box that you can't trust. Google started engineering features that were supposedly opt-in but they were so convenient that most people opted in anyway. Google forced people to divulge their data, for instance location, for navigation. It did not actually need the level of data it collects to provide navigation, it was just a way to steal their location privacy to increase its marketing reach and to improve the service not necessarily for the user but for its own business needs. How long before Microsoft starts employing the same tactics. You know you have a choice but it's a totally false choice!
- cletus 11y ago
  Nothing about Linux on the desktop "works fine". It's horrible. UI seems to be one area that benefits--almost demands--a central planning authority. I'm reminded of Supported Features [1]. There is some great open source software out there. But I'm struggling to think of great open source software with a good UI. Not that I'm saying Windows is good mind you. My personal preference would be OSX, which you can view as Windows with a better underlying OS or Unix with a decent UI. Either way it's a win. [1]: https://xkcd.com/619/ https://xkcd.com/619/
  - zxcvcxz 11y ago
    Linux on the Desktop works stunningly for me. Seeing as you're an OS X fan I'm going to link you to this HN thread so we can go ahead and stop pretending that trash OS "just works": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10010395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10010395 As far as OSS interfaces go, I wouldn't be surprised if you're using an open source browser right now, seeing as the closed source alternatives don't compare. Windows has nothing to show for the billions of dollars put into it. Every installation of windows I've ever had was a piece of crap that got bugged out after a months use. It would be snappy at first and then it would start taking five minutes to boot, then when it did boot the whole OS would choke as soon as I opened the start menu. Then you have to give it a "cool down period" before you open any programs or it'll choke again. Linux doesn't have this problem. It's a myth that Windows "just works" or that os x "just works". You have just as many buggy drivers and weird issues on those operating systems as you do Linux. For me, Linux with GNOME is just the easiest to use, most stable, prettiest, OS out there. I didn't have to use the command line or configure any text files. It just worked. To install windows 10 I actually needed to use command line instructions from https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3081048 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3081048
    - wlesieutre 11y ago
      > As far as OSS interfaces go, I wouldn't be surprised if you're using an open source browser right now, seeing as the closed source alternatives don't compare. Since he's a Mac user, that's not necessarily a good bet. Safari wins out handily in battery life, and Firefox's UI text rendering (tabs/URL/bookmarks) is comparatively atrocious. Chrome benefits from its cross-platform bookmark sync, but the snappier interface, extra hour of battery, and the fact that it comes preinstalled all make Safari a pretty popular choice on OS X. EDIT: Though I suppose Safari is a sorta-open-source project in the same way that Chrome is. Mostly it's the same as WebKit, but not entirely. Does Apple get much in the way of community contributions, or is it a "we have to publish the source, but we're not going to take your input" arrangement like Android?
    - Mithaldu 11y ago
      In terms of UI speed, stability and conscientious use of memory without leaks, Opera 12 on Windows is still unbeaten.
- jeeva 11y ago
  > supposedly opt-in but they were so convenient that most people opted in anyway How is making a feature (that is opt-in) good enough to get people to opt-in a bad thing here?
  - morganvachon 11y ago
    Bait and switch. Release a great service with sane privacy settings and policies, make any privacy-sensitive settings opt-in at first, get people using it and depending on it. Switch it to opt-out but no one notices or cares because they're already on the hook and it's a media darling. Then change the privacy settings and policies to something nefarious while leaving it opt-out. Even if the media brings up the new privacy issues, only the folks who are already privacy-conscious will notice or care, and they probably weren't using the service anyway. See Spotify for a very recent example of this process.
- adestefan 11y ago
  > Hatred for Microsoft? I have none. When you post "M$" in a reply I automatically mark you as rabidly anti-Microsoft and usually stop reading. I'm not a fan of Microsoft, but childish acts such as those have no place in a rational discussion.
  - JimmaDaRustla 11y ago
    Instantly what I thought too. HN "M$" haters don't like your logic because it doesn't feed their hate.
  - user_0001 11y ago
    Perhaps not "rabidly anti-microsoft", but it does come across as childish and reduce the effectiveness of the point you are trying to make.
  - jdright 11y ago
    When you post "childish" in a reply I automatically mark you as rabidly ad-hominen and usually stop reading.
  - billiam 11y ago
    And it's so 90s, dude. Move on. There's a lot more evil in the world now, even if they say they don't do any.
  - jfb 11y ago
    Also, MICROS~1 is much funnier.
  - x5n1 11y ago
    Okay stop reading. Your response smells of fanboyism, blind faith, and ad-hominem attacks which are rather childish in themselves. I got my point across and it seems the vast readership is behind me.
    - throwawaykf05 11y ago
      The vast readership... on a site where open source is the primary religion and the readership includes a significant population of Slashdot escapees. Look up "confirmation bias" and "preaching to the choir".
- sidmkp96 11y ago
  > that works just fine Are you kidding me? If you're a full-stack developer, then try opening Android Studio & PyCharm IDE at the same time, and after approx. 1 hour, things just get horrible. Everything is stuck. I don't know exactly what is happening, but somewhere the Swap handling horrible wrong. No such issues on Mac OS/Windows :/
  - outworlder 11y ago
    This is not the general public experience. Sure, I've had similar issues before. Usually, I could trace the culprit to a specific motherboard chipset, or graphics card, not swap. Unless one of these apps is leaking memory. On the other hand, I've had my fair share of windows weirdness. My work machine will from time to time not shutdown and I'll come the next day to a bluescreen. What does that say about windows? Nothing at all, it's likely a driver issue too.
- pmelendez 11y ago
  > we're stuck with a proprietary system that is totally unnecessary I think you are being a bit biased on this one. There are a lot of applications that the "free" alternative is just not good enough in comparison with the propetary one. Just to name a few: Gimp and Photoshop Inkscape and Illustrator Maya/3DStudio and Blender I would even add Office and LibreOffice but the later is actually good enough for a good chunk of people.
  - outworlder 11y ago
    You are missing the point. "Proprietary system" here means Windows. All these applications could run under Linux just fine if the vendors cared.
    - scholia 11y ago
      Any good examples of closed source applications being financially successful on Linux? How do the opportunities on Linux compare with investing in applications for other platforms? It's not so much about "caring" as about the ability to pay programmers to create profitable software.
      - JupiterMoon 11y ago
        Loads. Mainly very expensive high end niche scientific packages (scientists tend to use Linux at a higher percentage than ordinary people so the market percentages are more favourable).
        JupiterMoon 11y ago
        I'm thinking stuff that is available on Linux as well as Windows/OSx. Examples include Matlab, the Avizo image analysis suite, a certain simulation package that was described as AllSIM in a controversial discussion relating to CERN last week on HN and Maya (not scientific but it does illustrate the sort of high end very expensive niche stuff that tends to have Linux versions).
      - 11y ago
r3bl 11y ago
I have a license for like every single Microsoft's product (Windows 8.1, Office 365, Dreamspark account, 1 TB of data on OneDrive, some Skype premium minutes) and yet, I completely agree with him. I love Microsoft's products and I'm using them when I need to use them, but Windows stopped being my primary operating system ever since that whole Snowden scandal. People just automatically assume that I hate Microsoft because I'm using Linux as the only operating system on my primary laptop. That's not even remotely the case.
- UnoriginalGuy 11y ago
  > but Windows stopped being my primary operating system ever since that whole Snowden scandal. Snowden released nothing specifically about Windows. No backdoors, no specific cooperation, only the NSA's bespoke malware (but they also have malware for everything under the sun, Linux, uEFI, RAID firmware, cell modems, etc). Sure, the NSA were spying on Microsoft by hooking the fiber lines between Microsoft's data centers in order to gain backdoor access to Hotmail (now Outlook.com). But they did the same thing to Google and several other organisations.
  - pdkl95 11y ago
    Microsoft was an early adopter of PRISM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Prism_slide_5.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Prism_slide_5.jpg > same thing to Google So what? The claim was about not using Microsoft's products.
    - pmelendez 11y ago
      OP's point is that the whole Snowden thing was about datacenters, which happened to all biggest players so not using Windows is not going to mitigate that fact.
      - yellowapple 11y ago
        Even if that were true (as another commenter pointed out, Snowden's leaks are about far more than just datacenter snooping), that still puts Windows users at a lot of risk; when basically your whole computer is being continuously synchronized with Microsoft's servers, your whole computer is now vulnerable to such datacenter attacks.
thescrewdriver 11y ago
> Compared to my Android phone Windows 10 is absolutely mute. I think this says more about Android than it does about Windows 10. Windows 10 has crazy defaults, but so does android and many android apps want access to my info for no good reason (e.g. news apps wanting access to list my accounts, my phone number, my contacts, precise location etc.). Comparing privacy defaults of Windows to Android is not comparing it to a particularly high bar.
- soccerdave 11y ago
  This is a main reason that I have avoided Android so far. The iOS permissions model is a far better model. At least with the next release of Android (Marshmallow) they are fixing some of this and hopefully you will be able to use apps without giving them access to so much info.
  - edwhitesell 11y ago
    If your phone is rooted, you can try installing XPrivacy to manage permissions for Apps. I used it for a while when I had to have Skype on my phone. It worked great to lock Skype out of GPS, Contacts, etc. There was a noticable performance hit, but my phone is 3+ years old. It likely would not be as much on a newer phone.
  - ionised 11y ago
    CyanogenMod is a barebones Android ROM that comes with permissions management.
    - joesmo 11y ago
      As far as I can tell, I still only have the option of accepting or denying apps' permission on CyanogenMod. Also, I can hide my contacts and location from apps, if I'm really persistent about clicking the deny box a million times. But I still can't approve only the app permissions I want and not approve the ones I don't (which coincidentally are not essential to app functioning).
forgotmypassw 11y ago
The questionable part is that they're there in the first place and enabled by default. I'd be fine with that if the telemetry and what not was opt-in as opposed to a lot of toggle switches spread across multiple settings.
- Amezarak 11y ago
  All the toggle switches are under the Privacy screen in the Settings window.
  - forgotmypassw 11y ago
    Not really, there's a bunch of other options that are not in the privacy section and need to be explicitly toggled off in the scheduled tasks manager (I forgot what was the name of it).
    - HelloNurse 11y ago
      Until an official, signed, mandatory update from Microsoft installs something worse.
mbrutsch 11y ago
Are you using 10 on a daily basis? My primary work machine is begging me to update, but I keep seeing reports of slowdowns and lockups.
- soylentcola 11y ago
  Not addressing any potential privacy/security concerns but as far as daily operations, I've had it on my primary desktop workstation, my higher-end laptop, my girlfriend's budget laptop, and my work Surface Pro 1. Haven't noticed any slowdowns or lockups. If anything it's on par or a little faster than 8.1. I had a minor issue on my laptop at launch because it kept trying to install the wrong touchpad driver but I used the little "hide updates" app they provide and that sorted it until the underlying issue with Windows Update was addressed and it stopped trying to pull the wrong driver after a few days.
- JimmaDaRustla 11y ago
  I use 10 at home, works perfect. Some people have issues with GPU driver support (old Nvidia card in my bro's case), and 100% cpu issue, also sounded like driver/software related. I wouldn't update on a work machine however - no need to put your time at risk.
  - mbrutsch 11y ago
    Self-employed, so my "work" machine is mine. Might as well bite the bullet and get the upgrade done.
- vetinari 11y ago
  [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Gwx] "DisableGwx"=dword:00000001 It won't beg anymore ;)
skrowl 11y ago
You you provide us with a powershell script or app that you used to disable all the call home stuff? It would be nice to have it all in one place. FWIW, https://fix10.isleaked.com/ https://fix10.isleaked.com/ is what I've been going off of so far
- odabaxok 11y ago
  I think he just meant the stuff which can be deactivated from the standard privacy settings. At least, this is the same what I did (standard privacy settings and monitoring my network with Glasswire) and I have the same experience.
- LordJZ 11y ago
  Here's what I've been using, in addition to all the manual stuff and things like Destroy Windows 10 Spying[1]: https://gist.github.com/LordJZ/70d463335b2b7ab06e4f https://gist.github.com/LordJZ/70d463335b2b7ab06e4f (still contains some stuff from DW10S because I started collecting snippets before it was released) Feel free to contribute. [1] https://github.com/Nummer/Destroy-Windows-10-Spying https://github.com/Nummer/Destroy-Windows-10-Spying
enraged_camel 11y ago
>>I've deactivated all reporting and services that call back home (at least which I was aware of). In addition I've installed glasswire to check the network activities. That's great. And what have you done about Microsoft not telling you what is inside each Windows Update?
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
TallGuyShort 11y ago
It's well known that Android has also abandoned many of the principles of user freedom behind the rest of the Linux ecosystem and similar communities.
- radmuzom 11y ago
  Well, Android is open source and not free software. It appears that's what people want nowadays. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.en.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.e...
moe 11y ago
In addition I've installed glasswire to check the network activities. How do you know glasswire sees all network activity? What about data that piggybacks on legitimate network activity (e.g. the requests to update.microsoft.com)? http://www.technobuffalo.com/2013/08/22/nsa-windows-8-exploit/ http://www.technobuffalo.com/2013/08/22/nsa-windows-8-exploi... http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-c... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY
smtddr 11y ago
>>I've deactivated all reporting and services that call back home (at least which I was aware of). In addition I've installed glasswire to check the network activities. I'm going to recommend to you, or anyone, wanting to verify Windows 10 network behavior to do it without depending on software running on the OS itself. Try verifying it again using network analyzing software on linux or macosx, running downstream of your network setup. e.g., a router that's running linux you can ssh into and run "ngrep"(kinda like a commandline version of wiresahrk) and verify from there.
- danlindley 11y ago
  Could you recommend a resource that would provide some good information on this? I keep hearing about ways to modify routers to operate this way, but have yet to come across something that clearly describes how this is done.
  - asdfaoeu 11y ago
    The cheap and easy way to do this is to buy a hub and plug it into your router the computer you want to analyse and another computer.
    - lewiseason 11y ago
      Or buy/make something like this: http://hakshop.myshopify.com/products/throwing-star-lan-tap http://hakshop.myshopify.com/products/throwing-star-lan-tap and a couple of USB-Ethernet adaptors
    - mikeash 11y ago
      If you happen to have a computer with both WiFi and ethernet (many/most laptops these days), set it up as a bridge, connect the Windows machine to one of those interfaces and use the other one to connect to the internet.
    - BuildTheRobots 11y ago
      Even easier (buying hubs is hard) and possibly cheaper (switches with mirror ports aren't the cheapest) is to just stick two network cards into your linux box, set up a layer-2 bridge and sniff everything going between. CentOS/RedHat derivitives: https://www.banym.de/linux/centos/setup-bridge-device-on-centos https://www.banym.de/linux/centos/setup-bridge-device-on-cen... Debian/Ubuntu: https://wiki.debian.org/BridgeNetworkConnections https://wiki.debian.org/BridgeNetworkConnections
ionised 11y ago
Same. Disabled every form of data collection possible from the Settings and also edited Group Policy and the registry to disable further collection. I've also edited the hosts file and added entries for dozens of domains associated with MS telemtry and reporting. At this point Comodo Firewall was still reporting some suspicious outbound connection requests which I've analysed and blocked most of. System still works fine and is getting updates okay but I'm sure there is plenty I've missed or that people do not know about yet. I'm honestly considering rolling back to a clean install of Windows 7 SP1. I'm really not liking Win 10 the more I learn about it.
- jqm 11y ago
  Interesting. I read sometime back that MS was going to disable changing the hosts file. I guess that was just rumor?
  - ionised 11y ago
    I'm not sure how they could. It's just a text file. There is however the issue that adding entries to the hosts file may not change anything, as the domains for this telemetry collection might be hardcoded elsewhere and would likely override/ignore the hosts file.
XzetaU8 11y ago
@KaterKarlo123 And you seem to be driven by pure passion toward your beloved corporation that you felt the need to create an account here, 1 hour ago, just to inform us how mute Win 10 is compared to an android phone.
- deathhand 11y ago
  Good catch.
nsajko 11y ago
Glasswire runs on the OS, it doesn't protect you from it.
andrepd 11y ago
Deactivating the services that call home doesn't stop Windows 10 from calling home. You can only completely disable "telemetry" if you have Windows 10 Enterprise Edition and even then I'm not entirely sure it does completely shut down. And anyway, even getting to this meant manually ticking out dozens of boxes in several settings windows and installing a packet sniffer to check your own computer for unwanted connections. Nevermind that running a packet sniffer on your outgoing connections usually means you suspect you have a virus (which is what Win10 is?), it requires technical expertise that 95% of Win10 users won't have. No I don't think GP was driven by hatred of Microsoft, as much as a genuine dislike of an operating system which hands over control of your own computer to someone else. I always thought Stallman was being hyperbolic when he said "with free software the users control the computer, with proprietary the computer controls the users", but I don't anymore.
- xlm1717 11y ago
  The good thing is that those 95% are often willing to pay for services like virus removal and the like, so maybe Microsoft has created a new industry for surveillance removal!
- Artemis2 11y ago
  > running a packet sniffer on your outgoing connections usually means you suspect you have a virus Windows 10 isn't the first software product to phone home, and that's what packet sniffers are used for the most.
mtgx 11y ago
So you think customizing the OS fully to turn off the privacy intrusion and using a network monitoring tool is an "acceptable" solution for the mass market (99.99% of the users)?
Koahku 11y ago
>I've deactivated all reporting and services that call back home And you'll have to keep doing it after every Windows update. Is Windows 10 really that good to be worth the trouble?
mrits 11y ago
You are going to need to have something running outside of the OS to monitor your network activity.
cm2187 11y ago
I must say that privacy is a matter of trust. We rely on code that we haven't inspected. Even open source software doesn't get that much scrutiny as the various major recent vulnerabilities have shown. So getting worried because Microsoft is turning against their users by exploiting their data is a legitimate concern. I have disabled all these settings too but I must say that Microsoft damaged the trust I had in them. I always used windows and I am a big fan of the .net framework and of visual studio. But I am now considering learning Linux. I have zero interest in an OS that leaks my personal data.
hadeharian 11y ago
Microsoft is not driven by stupid people. I would expect that system update packets to home base would possess information that would be useful to MS researchers, among other things. Even if it's not there, MS should be experts in steganography. They don't have to leave you clues what they use.

x5n1 11y ago

Hatred for Microsoft? I have none. I do hate the fact that we have an absolutely free operating system that works just fine but thanks to Bill Gates 90s shenanigans and aggressive and illegal market and business tactics we're stuck with a proprietary system that is totally unnecessary and as it continues that system becomes more and more invasive. And that system is a black box that you can't trust. Google started engineering features that were supposedly opt-in but they were so convenient that most people opted in anyway. Google forced people to divulge their data, for instance location, for navigation. It did not actually need the level of data it collects to provide navigation, it was just a way to steal their location privacy to increase its marketing reach and to improve the service not necessarily for the user but for its own business needs. How long before Microsoft starts employing the same tactics. You know you have a choice but it's a totally false choice!

cletus 11y ago
Nothing about Linux on the desktop "works fine". It's horrible. UI seems to be one area that benefits--almost demands--a central planning authority. I'm reminded of Supported Features [1]. There is some great open source software out there. But I'm struggling to think of great open source software with a good UI. Not that I'm saying Windows is good mind you. My personal preference would be OSX, which you can view as Windows with a better underlying OS or Unix with a decent UI. Either way it's a win. [1]: https://xkcd.com/619/ https://xkcd.com/619/
- zxcvcxz 11y ago
  Linux on the Desktop works stunningly for me. Seeing as you're an OS X fan I'm going to link you to this HN thread so we can go ahead and stop pretending that trash OS "just works": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10010395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10010395 As far as OSS interfaces go, I wouldn't be surprised if you're using an open source browser right now, seeing as the closed source alternatives don't compare. Windows has nothing to show for the billions of dollars put into it. Every installation of windows I've ever had was a piece of crap that got bugged out after a months use. It would be snappy at first and then it would start taking five minutes to boot, then when it did boot the whole OS would choke as soon as I opened the start menu. Then you have to give it a "cool down period" before you open any programs or it'll choke again. Linux doesn't have this problem. It's a myth that Windows "just works" or that os x "just works". You have just as many buggy drivers and weird issues on those operating systems as you do Linux. For me, Linux with GNOME is just the easiest to use, most stable, prettiest, OS out there. I didn't have to use the command line or configure any text files. It just worked. To install windows 10 I actually needed to use command line instructions from https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3081048 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3081048
  - wlesieutre 11y ago
    > As far as OSS interfaces go, I wouldn't be surprised if you're using an open source browser right now, seeing as the closed source alternatives don't compare. Since he's a Mac user, that's not necessarily a good bet. Safari wins out handily in battery life, and Firefox's UI text rendering (tabs/URL/bookmarks) is comparatively atrocious. Chrome benefits from its cross-platform bookmark sync, but the snappier interface, extra hour of battery, and the fact that it comes preinstalled all make Safari a pretty popular choice on OS X. EDIT: Though I suppose Safari is a sorta-open-source project in the same way that Chrome is. Mostly it's the same as WebKit, but not entirely. Does Apple get much in the way of community contributions, or is it a "we have to publish the source, but we're not going to take your input" arrangement like Android?
  - Mithaldu 11y ago
    In terms of UI speed, stability and conscientious use of memory without leaks, Opera 12 on Windows is still unbeaten.
jeeva 11y ago
> supposedly opt-in but they were so convenient that most people opted in anyway How is making a feature (that is opt-in) good enough to get people to opt-in a bad thing here?
- morganvachon 11y ago
  Bait and switch. Release a great service with sane privacy settings and policies, make any privacy-sensitive settings opt-in at first, get people using it and depending on it. Switch it to opt-out but no one notices or cares because they're already on the hook and it's a media darling. Then change the privacy settings and policies to something nefarious while leaving it opt-out. Even if the media brings up the new privacy issues, only the folks who are already privacy-conscious will notice or care, and they probably weren't using the service anyway. See Spotify for a very recent example of this process.
adestefan 11y ago
> Hatred for Microsoft? I have none. When you post "M$" in a reply I automatically mark you as rabidly anti-Microsoft and usually stop reading. I'm not a fan of Microsoft, but childish acts such as those have no place in a rational discussion.
- JimmaDaRustla 11y ago
  Instantly what I thought too. HN "M$" haters don't like your logic because it doesn't feed their hate.
- user_0001 11y ago
  Perhaps not "rabidly anti-microsoft", but it does come across as childish and reduce the effectiveness of the point you are trying to make.
- jdright 11y ago
  When you post "childish" in a reply I automatically mark you as rabidly ad-hominen and usually stop reading.
- billiam 11y ago
  And it's so 90s, dude. Move on. There's a lot more evil in the world now, even if they say they don't do any.
- jfb 11y ago
  Also, MICROS~1 is much funnier.
- x5n1 11y ago
  Okay stop reading. Your response smells of fanboyism, blind faith, and ad-hominem attacks which are rather childish in themselves. I got my point across and it seems the vast readership is behind me.
  - throwawaykf05 11y ago
    The vast readership... on a site where open source is the primary religion and the readership includes a significant population of Slashdot escapees. Look up "confirmation bias" and "preaching to the choir".
sidmkp96 11y ago
> that works just fine Are you kidding me? If you're a full-stack developer, then try opening Android Studio & PyCharm IDE at the same time, and after approx. 1 hour, things just get horrible. Everything is stuck. I don't know exactly what is happening, but somewhere the Swap handling horrible wrong. No such issues on Mac OS/Windows :/
- outworlder 11y ago
  This is not the general public experience. Sure, I've had similar issues before. Usually, I could trace the culprit to a specific motherboard chipset, or graphics card, not swap. Unless one of these apps is leaking memory. On the other hand, I've had my fair share of windows weirdness. My work machine will from time to time not shutdown and I'll come the next day to a bluescreen. What does that say about windows? Nothing at all, it's likely a driver issue too.
pmelendez 11y ago
> we're stuck with a proprietary system that is totally unnecessary I think you are being a bit biased on this one. There are a lot of applications that the "free" alternative is just not good enough in comparison with the propetary one. Just to name a few: Gimp and Photoshop Inkscape and Illustrator Maya/3DStudio and Blender I would even add Office and LibreOffice but the later is actually good enough for a good chunk of people.
- outworlder 11y ago
  You are missing the point. "Proprietary system" here means Windows. All these applications could run under Linux just fine if the vendors cared.
  - scholia 11y ago
    Any good examples of closed source applications being financially successful on Linux? How do the opportunities on Linux compare with investing in applications for other platforms? It's not so much about "caring" as about the ability to pay programmers to create profitable software.
    - JupiterMoon 11y ago
      Loads. Mainly very expensive high end niche scientific packages (scientists tend to use Linux at a higher percentage than ordinary people so the market percentages are more favourable).
      - JupiterMoon 11y ago
        I'm thinking stuff that is available on Linux as well as Windows/OSx. Examples include Matlab, the Avizo image analysis suite, a certain simulation package that was described as AllSIM in a controversial discussion relating to CERN last week on HN and Maya (not scientific but it does illustrate the sort of high end very expensive niche stuff that tends to have Linux versions).
    - 11y ago

r3bl 11y ago

I have a license for like every single Microsoft's product (Windows 8.1, Office 365, Dreamspark account, 1 TB of data on OneDrive, some Skype premium minutes) and yet, I completely agree with him. I love Microsoft's products and I'm using them when I need to use them, but Windows stopped being my primary operating system ever since that whole Snowden scandal. People just automatically assume that I hate Microsoft because I'm using Linux as the only operating system on my primary laptop. That's not even remotely the case.

UnoriginalGuy 11y ago
> but Windows stopped being my primary operating system ever since that whole Snowden scandal. Snowden released nothing specifically about Windows. No backdoors, no specific cooperation, only the NSA's bespoke malware (but they also have malware for everything under the sun, Linux, uEFI, RAID firmware, cell modems, etc). Sure, the NSA were spying on Microsoft by hooking the fiber lines between Microsoft's data centers in order to gain backdoor access to Hotmail (now Outlook.com). But they did the same thing to Google and several other organisations.
- pdkl95 11y ago
  Microsoft was an early adopter of PRISM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Prism_slide_5.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Prism_slide_5.jpg > same thing to Google So what? The claim was about not using Microsoft's products.
  - pmelendez 11y ago
    OP's point is that the whole Snowden thing was about datacenters, which happened to all biggest players so not using Windows is not going to mitigate that fact.
    - yellowapple 11y ago
      Even if that were true (as another commenter pointed out, Snowden's leaks are about far more than just datacenter snooping), that still puts Windows users at a lot of risk; when basically your whole computer is being continuously synchronized with Microsoft's servers, your whole computer is now vulnerable to such datacenter attacks.

thescrewdriver 11y ago

> Compared to my Android phone Windows 10 is absolutely mute. I think this says more about Android than it does about Windows 10. Windows 10 has crazy defaults, but so does android and many android apps want access to my info for no good reason (e.g. news apps wanting access to list my accounts, my phone number, my contacts, precise location etc.). Comparing privacy defaults of Windows to Android is not comparing it to a particularly high bar.

soccerdave 11y ago
This is a main reason that I have avoided Android so far. The iOS permissions model is a far better model. At least with the next release of Android (Marshmallow) they are fixing some of this and hopefully you will be able to use apps without giving them access to so much info.
- edwhitesell 11y ago
  If your phone is rooted, you can try installing XPrivacy to manage permissions for Apps. I used it for a while when I had to have Skype on my phone. It worked great to lock Skype out of GPS, Contacts, etc. There was a noticable performance hit, but my phone is 3+ years old. It likely would not be as much on a newer phone.
- ionised 11y ago
  CyanogenMod is a barebones Android ROM that comes with permissions management.
  - joesmo 11y ago
    As far as I can tell, I still only have the option of accepting or denying apps' permission on CyanogenMod. Also, I can hide my contacts and location from apps, if I'm really persistent about clicking the deny box a million times. But I still can't approve only the app permissions I want and not approve the ones I don't (which coincidentally are not essential to app functioning).

forgotmypassw 11y ago

The questionable part is that they're there in the first place and enabled by default. I'd be fine with that if the telemetry and what not was opt-in as opposed to a lot of toggle switches spread across multiple settings.

Amezarak 11y ago
All the toggle switches are under the Privacy screen in the Settings window.
- forgotmypassw 11y ago
  Not really, there's a bunch of other options that are not in the privacy section and need to be explicitly toggled off in the scheduled tasks manager (I forgot what was the name of it).
  - HelloNurse 11y ago
    Until an official, signed, mandatory update from Microsoft installs something worse.

mbrutsch 11y ago

Are you using 10 on a daily basis? My primary work machine is begging me to update, but I keep seeing reports of slowdowns and lockups.

soylentcola 11y ago
Not addressing any potential privacy/security concerns but as far as daily operations, I've had it on my primary desktop workstation, my higher-end laptop, my girlfriend's budget laptop, and my work Surface Pro 1. Haven't noticed any slowdowns or lockups. If anything it's on par or a little faster than 8.1. I had a minor issue on my laptop at launch because it kept trying to install the wrong touchpad driver but I used the little "hide updates" app they provide and that sorted it until the underlying issue with Windows Update was addressed and it stopped trying to pull the wrong driver after a few days.
JimmaDaRustla 11y ago
I use 10 at home, works perfect. Some people have issues with GPU driver support (old Nvidia card in my bro's case), and 100% cpu issue, also sounded like driver/software related. I wouldn't update on a work machine however - no need to put your time at risk.
- mbrutsch 11y ago
  Self-employed, so my "work" machine is mine. Might as well bite the bullet and get the upgrade done.
vetinari 11y ago
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Gwx] "DisableGwx"=dword:00000001 It won't beg anymore ;)

skrowl 11y ago

You you provide us with a powershell script or app that you used to disable all the call home stuff? It would be nice to have it all in one place. FWIW, https://fix10.isleaked.com/ https://fix10.isleaked.com/ is what I've been going off of so far

odabaxok 11y ago
I think he just meant the stuff which can be deactivated from the standard privacy settings. At least, this is the same what I did (standard privacy settings and monitoring my network with Glasswire) and I have the same experience.
LordJZ 11y ago
Here's what I've been using, in addition to all the manual stuff and things like Destroy Windows 10 Spying[1]: https://gist.github.com/LordJZ/70d463335b2b7ab06e4f https://gist.github.com/LordJZ/70d463335b2b7ab06e4f (still contains some stuff from DW10S because I started collecting snippets before it was released) Feel free to contribute. [1] https://github.com/Nummer/Destroy-Windows-10-Spying https://github.com/Nummer/Destroy-Windows-10-Spying

enraged_camel 11y ago

>>I've deactivated all reporting and services that call back home (at least which I was aware of). In addition I've installed glasswire to check the network activities. That's great. And what have you done about Microsoft not telling you what is inside each Windows Update?

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

TallGuyShort 11y ago

It's well known that Android has also abandoned many of the principles of user freedom behind the rest of the Linux ecosystem and similar communities.

radmuzom 11y ago
Well, Android is open source and not free software. It appears that's what people want nowadays. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.en.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.e...

moe 11y ago

In addition I've installed glasswire to check the network activities. How do you know glasswire sees all network activity? What about data that piggybacks on legitimate network activity (e.g. the requests to update.microsoft.com)? http://www.technobuffalo.com/2013/08/22/nsa-windows-8-exploit/ http://www.technobuffalo.com/2013/08/22/nsa-windows-8-exploi... http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-c... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY

smtddr 11y ago

>>I've deactivated all reporting and services that call back home (at least which I was aware of). In addition I've installed glasswire to check the network activities. I'm going to recommend to you, or anyone, wanting to verify Windows 10 network behavior to do it without depending on software running on the OS itself. Try verifying it again using network analyzing software on linux or macosx, running downstream of your network setup. e.g., a router that's running linux you can ssh into and run "ngrep"(kinda like a commandline version of wiresahrk) and verify from there.

danlindley 11y ago
Could you recommend a resource that would provide some good information on this? I keep hearing about ways to modify routers to operate this way, but have yet to come across something that clearly describes how this is done.
- asdfaoeu 11y ago
  The cheap and easy way to do this is to buy a hub and plug it into your router the computer you want to analyse and another computer.
  - lewiseason 11y ago
    Or buy/make something like this: http://hakshop.myshopify.com/products/throwing-star-lan-tap http://hakshop.myshopify.com/products/throwing-star-lan-tap and a couple of USB-Ethernet adaptors
  - mikeash 11y ago
    If you happen to have a computer with both WiFi and ethernet (many/most laptops these days), set it up as a bridge, connect the Windows machine to one of those interfaces and use the other one to connect to the internet.
  - BuildTheRobots 11y ago
    Even easier (buying hubs is hard) and possibly cheaper (switches with mirror ports aren't the cheapest) is to just stick two network cards into your linux box, set up a layer-2 bridge and sniff everything going between. CentOS/RedHat derivitives: https://www.banym.de/linux/centos/setup-bridge-device-on-centos https://www.banym.de/linux/centos/setup-bridge-device-on-cen... Debian/Ubuntu: https://wiki.debian.org/BridgeNetworkConnections https://wiki.debian.org/BridgeNetworkConnections

ionised 11y ago

Same. Disabled every form of data collection possible from the Settings and also edited Group Policy and the registry to disable further collection. I've also edited the hosts file and added entries for dozens of domains associated with MS telemtry and reporting. At this point Comodo Firewall was still reporting some suspicious outbound connection requests which I've analysed and blocked most of. System still works fine and is getting updates okay but I'm sure there is plenty I've missed or that people do not know about yet. I'm honestly considering rolling back to a clean install of Windows 7 SP1. I'm really not liking Win 10 the more I learn about it.

jqm 11y ago
Interesting. I read sometime back that MS was going to disable changing the hosts file. I guess that was just rumor?
- ionised 11y ago
  I'm not sure how they could. It's just a text file. There is however the issue that adding entries to the hosts file may not change anything, as the domains for this telemetry collection might be hardcoded elsewhere and would likely override/ignore the hosts file.

XzetaU8 11y ago

@KaterKarlo123 And you seem to be driven by pure passion toward your beloved corporation that you felt the need to create an account here, 1 hour ago, just to inform us how mute Win 10 is compared to an android phone.

deathhand 11y ago
Good catch.

nsajko 11y ago

Glasswire runs on the OS, it doesn't protect you from it.

andrepd 11y ago

Deactivating the services that call home doesn't stop Windows 10 from calling home. You can only completely disable "telemetry" if you have Windows 10 Enterprise Edition and even then I'm not entirely sure it does completely shut down. And anyway, even getting to this meant manually ticking out dozens of boxes in several settings windows and installing a packet sniffer to check your own computer for unwanted connections. Nevermind that running a packet sniffer on your outgoing connections usually means you suspect you have a virus (which is what Win10 is?), it requires technical expertise that 95% of Win10 users won't have. No I don't think GP was driven by hatred of Microsoft, as much as a genuine dislike of an operating system which hands over control of your own computer to someone else. I always thought Stallman was being hyperbolic when he said "with free software the users control the computer, with proprietary the computer controls the users", but I don't anymore.

xlm1717 11y ago
The good thing is that those 95% are often willing to pay for services like virus removal and the like, so maybe Microsoft has created a new industry for surveillance removal!
Artemis2 11y ago
> running a packet sniffer on your outgoing connections usually means you suspect you have a virus Windows 10 isn't the first software product to phone home, and that's what packet sniffers are used for the most.

mtgx 11y ago

So you think customizing the OS fully to turn off the privacy intrusion and using a network monitoring tool is an "acceptable" solution for the mass market (99.99% of the users)?

Koahku 11y ago

>I've deactivated all reporting and services that call back home And you'll have to keep doing it after every Windows update. Is Windows 10 really that good to be worth the trouble?

mrits 11y ago

You are going to need to have something running outside of the OS to monitor your network activity.

cm2187 11y ago

I must say that privacy is a matter of trust. We rely on code that we haven't inspected. Even open source software doesn't get that much scrutiny as the various major recent vulnerabilities have shown. So getting worried because Microsoft is turning against their users by exploiting their data is a legitimate concern. I have disabled all these settings too but I must say that Microsoft damaged the trust I had in them. I always used windows and I am a big fan of the .net framework and of visual studio. But I am now considering learning Linux. I have zero interest in an OS that leaks my personal data.

hadeharian 11y ago

Microsoft is not driven by stupid people. I would expect that system update packets to home base would possess information that would be useful to MS researchers, among other things. Even if it's not there, MS should be experts in steganography. They don't have to leave you clues what they use.