10 ms·

Windows 10 is really recent though. That said, since I like controversy: I'm happier to see Microsoft buy Github than I would be to see Google or Facebook buy

Windows 10 is really recent though. That said, since I like controversy: I'm happier to see Microsoft buy Github than I would be to see Google or Facebook buy it. And also! A big shoutout to Linus for helping to make source control distributed and open, which means swapping between git providers (for the code at least) is simple, easy and impossible to block. The amount of good Linus has done for the world is incredible.

mpartel 8y ago
Another recent example: lockdown of ARM-based Windows machines, preventing the installation of other operating systems.
- badsectoracula 8y ago
  I really dislike how you get downvoted (your message is faded out) here. Do people really applaud removal of control of their own devices?
  - Wurdan 8y ago
    I think it's because Microsoft's reason for doing this is plausible and not as anti-competitive as that comment makes it seem - locking down the boot process has serious security benefits.
    - mpartel 8y ago
      I admit I may be ignorant, but could you spell out the security benefits of going from "locked down but user-openable" to "not user-openable"? (edit: specifically benefits that couldn't be effectively addressed by making it a little difficult and scary to open that lockdown?)
      - nailer 8y ago
        If it's openable it's not locked down. If I can't trust the kernel then every level above it is tainted (this is assuming you can trust the CPU and firmware, but at least ARM is better than Intel here).
        mpartel 8y ago
        OK, let me be more accurate: "user-openable" in the sense that the user is free to choose to trust any OS vendor they want. What's the unmitigatable harm?
        nailer 8y ago
        A user that isn't the owner of the device - say a repair tech, but possibly a remote third party - installs an OS they trust, which scrapes all the device owners personal info and sends it to their server. The device owner may not ever become aware of this.
        mpartel 8y ago
        For the remote third party case, the option to unlock should be isolated from the OS so that it needs physical access (boot to bios/recovery mode). AIUI that's how it's typically implemented in Androids and in Secure Boot. The point about attackers with physical access is fair, though significantly mitigated on Androids (and Chromebooks I think) by a warning (of varying severity) that the OS has been modified. On my Nexus 5, it's a subtle "unlocked" icon, on my Moto G it's an unmissable red triangle on white background with "warranty void" and other scary words. It's still vulnerable to the user getting a prebooted device and only seeing the warning on next boot, so not perfect, but also not the only imaginable defense. One could e.g. move initial authentication to the locked down "bios" phase so either (a) the warning is visible there and/or (b) the OS isn't replaceable in the first place without authentication. And we should bear in mind that a malicious repair tech can probably convince a fair portion of the population to give away their password :/
        nailer 8y ago
- guardian5x 8y ago
  You mean like Android or iOS?
  - mpartel 8y ago
    Like iOS yes, and some, but not all, Android manufacturers/phones. "Others do it too" is not a very good justification in my mind.
    - guardian5x 8y ago
      "Others do it too" is not a good justification of course. But his comment also fails to to explain how Microsoft is somehow more evil than the industry standard.
      - mpartel 8y ago
        Bootloader lockdown was practically unheard of for the PC/laptop form factor before Microsoft started doing it for ARM laptops. And and it's not even really standard for phones. Plenty of Android phones have unlockable bootloaders (see LineageOS). I don't think whether one is more evil than Apple/iOS in this regard is a good benchmark.
  - hobofan 8y ago
    You mean unlike most other desktop/laptop OEMs/manufacturers? (which would be the more apt point of reference)
- raesene9 8y ago
  Lockdown of consumer grade devices isn't really a new experience (e.g. iOS devices). There's a trade-off to be had between security/reliability and flexibility. If MS were selling those devices as general purpose computers and then refusing to allow other OS installation, I think that would be dishonest, however as far as I'm aware they're not making such claims.
  - mpartel 8y ago
    I don't see the tradeoff honestly. Sure, make it a little difficult, show a big red scary warning, perhaps even require the use of a screwdriver to discourage "casual" users from being misled into compromising their machine's security. But ultimately true ownership, recyclability/reusability (Linux on aging hardware..), and hardware-independent OS competition are norms with significant benefits that we shouldn't give up lightly.
    - raesene9 8y ago
      Those may be norms for IT professionals, but the needs of IT professionals are very different from those of standard users. Realistically most people (numerically) don't want a computer, they want a thing that lets them communicate, create and consume content. Lockdown isn't a problem for them, and walled gardens like iOS are generally the best way for them to stay secure. If you provide a method to escape the sandbox, it is likely that attackers will work out how to exploit that. For example try going to facebook.com and open the developers tools. They've had to put a warning in there to stop people from "self-XSS" ...
      - mpartel 8y ago
        That's why I'm entirely OK with making it scary and a little difficult. And it's not just IT professionals, but also their friends and family, especially those that can't afford to or don't want to get a new device that often. I think this is a pretty significant set of people.
        raesene9 8y ago
cube2222 8y ago
Well yes, Windows 10, finally a practically usable Windows in my opinion. Finally working, with a lot of polish and Dev tools available. (Like wsl)
- setquk 8y ago
  I don't buy the usability argument of WSL. The thing isn't anywhere near a useful Linux environment other than for some noddy stuff that cygwin can already handle. Try running a background process, a service, use a serial port or drag some half decent performance out of it and you'll see. It is ultimately backed with NTFS and NT's buffer cache. Running a VM is still several orders of magnitude more productive. And you can't fix NTFS and NT now. It's impossible.
  - cube2222 8y ago
    That's… completely false. At least for me. You should really stop and think before accusing people to have noob workloads. Even cronjobs work… The performance is sometimes better than on native linux, as a few of the syscalls are better implemented on windows. The file performance is abysmal, but that only hurts if you're using npm (and there you're in a world of pain already anyways). The only thing lacking, is that some debuggers don't work, which is a pity, but then I just start a docker container and mount it on my filesystem. I am using services on it too actually, everything works as expected. I can actually create windows bat files to redirect to linux binaries, which lets me do for example OCaml development, with the linux toolchain, on a system that actually works reliably. (my experience is, that as of windows 10, desktop linux environments crash way more often than windows ones)
    - setquk 8y ago
      Grep 150,000 source files on Linux and on WSL and come back to me. That's a pretty standard console load. It kills git operations, package managers, compilers, the lot. ALL the tools I use it for. Well USED it for. Real data: linux -> 1.3 seconds, all from buffer cache on a cranky old 10 year old HP desktop with 8 gig of RAM and bottom end SSD. wsl -> over a minute on a 12 core i7 with high end m2 SSD, every time. This is because of NTFS's awful performance on small files. The whole of Unix is file based and uses huge numbers of small files, as does source code generally so this is an end game scenario for the platform. It simply sucks! This goes back to when we had SVN which would take 6-7 minutes to check a repo out onto NTFS versus 20-30 seconds onto ext4 on the same rust disks. SVN was treated like cancer by the organisation for what is fundamentally a platform limitation.
raesene9 8y ago
I think MS made mis-steps on the Windows 10 privacy setup for sure, although they've largely fixed it in later releases with improved visibility of Privacy options and better docs on how to disable most of the telemetry stuff. Personally I like Windows 10 as a general purpose client OS, WSL is great and stability for me across a number of devices has been very good.
- ekianjo 8y ago
  Yeah but they reset your privacy settings with every update. Thats what we call dark patterns.
- badsectoracula 8y ago
  > and better docs on how to disable most of the telemetry stuff. How about disabling all of the "phone home" stuff, telemetry or whatever else? There is still only two options "Basic" and "Full" options without any "None" option and really most of the relevant options are scattered all over the place, making it a chore to disable them (and you need to redo that stuff every big update). This is either extremely dumb (which i doubt) or done with malicious intent so that people will miss stuff and/or get tired of them. Unless they provide the means to completely stop all communication with their servers with a single switch, there is no reason to give them any benefit of the doubt.
dfcowell 8y ago
Realistically, out of all of the BigCorps who could have bought it (and who have deep enough pockets to sustain its bleeding,) Microsoft is one of the best of a bad bunch. I'm not quite as cynical as the author of the OP when it comes to Microsoft's recent apparent change of direction, but who knows, that may just be naivety speaking.
- cecja 8y ago
  the best out of a bad bunch... what does this even mean. They are killing a neutral force in the market space there is nothing good coming from it.
  - SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
    Better integration with Microsoft's existing ecosystem would be a good outcome (for developers working in that ecosystem) as well as more investment in general. As others have stated, VSTS is excellent so they definitely know what they are doing in this space. "Nothing good coming from it" seems a bit of a stretch when we don't even know the terms of the deal yet - or indeed whether it's actually happening at all!
  - dfcowell 8y ago
    It seems like the alternative was GitHub running out of cash, so the main good coming from it is that GitHub will continue to exist.

mpartel 8y ago

Another recent example: lockdown of ARM-based Windows machines, preventing the installation of other operating systems.

badsectoracula 8y ago
I really dislike how you get downvoted (your message is faded out) here. Do people really applaud removal of control of their own devices?
- Wurdan 8y ago
  I think it's because Microsoft's reason for doing this is plausible and not as anti-competitive as that comment makes it seem - locking down the boot process has serious security benefits.
  - mpartel 8y ago
    I admit I may be ignorant, but could you spell out the security benefits of going from "locked down but user-openable" to "not user-openable"? (edit: specifically benefits that couldn't be effectively addressed by making it a little difficult and scary to open that lockdown?)
    - nailer 8y ago
      If it's openable it's not locked down. If I can't trust the kernel then every level above it is tainted (this is assuming you can trust the CPU and firmware, but at least ARM is better than Intel here).
      - mpartel 8y ago
        OK, let me be more accurate: "user-openable" in the sense that the user is free to choose to trust any OS vendor they want. What's the unmitigatable harm?
        nailer 8y ago
        A user that isn't the owner of the device - say a repair tech, but possibly a remote third party - installs an OS they trust, which scrapes all the device owners personal info and sends it to their server. The device owner may not ever become aware of this.
        mpartel 8y ago
        For the remote third party case, the option to unlock should be isolated from the OS so that it needs physical access (boot to bios/recovery mode). AIUI that's how it's typically implemented in Androids and in Secure Boot. The point about attackers with physical access is fair, though significantly mitigated on Androids (and Chromebooks I think) by a warning (of varying severity) that the OS has been modified. On my Nexus 5, it's a subtle "unlocked" icon, on my Moto G it's an unmissable red triangle on white background with "warranty void" and other scary words. It's still vulnerable to the user getting a prebooted device and only seeing the warning on next boot, so not perfect, but also not the only imaginable defense. One could e.g. move initial authentication to the locked down "bios" phase so either (a) the warning is visible there and/or (b) the OS isn't replaceable in the first place without authentication. And we should bear in mind that a malicious repair tech can probably convince a fair portion of the population to give away their password :/
        nailer 8y ago
guardian5x 8y ago
You mean like Android or iOS?
- mpartel 8y ago
  Like iOS yes, and some, but not all, Android manufacturers/phones. "Others do it too" is not a very good justification in my mind.
  - guardian5x 8y ago
    "Others do it too" is not a good justification of course. But his comment also fails to to explain how Microsoft is somehow more evil than the industry standard.
    - mpartel 8y ago
      Bootloader lockdown was practically unheard of for the PC/laptop form factor before Microsoft started doing it for ARM laptops. And and it's not even really standard for phones. Plenty of Android phones have unlockable bootloaders (see LineageOS). I don't think whether one is more evil than Apple/iOS in this regard is a good benchmark.
- hobofan 8y ago
  You mean unlike most other desktop/laptop OEMs/manufacturers? (which would be the more apt point of reference)
raesene9 8y ago
Lockdown of consumer grade devices isn't really a new experience (e.g. iOS devices). There's a trade-off to be had between security/reliability and flexibility. If MS were selling those devices as general purpose computers and then refusing to allow other OS installation, I think that would be dishonest, however as far as I'm aware they're not making such claims.
- mpartel 8y ago
  I don't see the tradeoff honestly. Sure, make it a little difficult, show a big red scary warning, perhaps even require the use of a screwdriver to discourage "casual" users from being misled into compromising their machine's security. But ultimately true ownership, recyclability/reusability (Linux on aging hardware..), and hardware-independent OS competition are norms with significant benefits that we shouldn't give up lightly.
  - raesene9 8y ago
    Those may be norms for IT professionals, but the needs of IT professionals are very different from those of standard users. Realistically most people (numerically) don't want a computer, they want a thing that lets them communicate, create and consume content. Lockdown isn't a problem for them, and walled gardens like iOS are generally the best way for them to stay secure. If you provide a method to escape the sandbox, it is likely that attackers will work out how to exploit that. For example try going to facebook.com and open the developers tools. They've had to put a warning in there to stop people from "self-XSS" ...
    - mpartel 8y ago
      That's why I'm entirely OK with making it scary and a little difficult. And it's not just IT professionals, but also their friends and family, especially those that can't afford to or don't want to get a new device that often. I think this is a pretty significant set of people.
      - raesene9 8y ago

cube2222 8y ago

Well yes, Windows 10, finally a practically usable Windows in my opinion. Finally working, with a lot of polish and Dev tools available. (Like wsl)

setquk 8y ago
I don't buy the usability argument of WSL. The thing isn't anywhere near a useful Linux environment other than for some noddy stuff that cygwin can already handle. Try running a background process, a service, use a serial port or drag some half decent performance out of it and you'll see. It is ultimately backed with NTFS and NT's buffer cache. Running a VM is still several orders of magnitude more productive. And you can't fix NTFS and NT now. It's impossible.
- cube2222 8y ago
  That's… completely false. At least for me. You should really stop and think before accusing people to have noob workloads. Even cronjobs work… The performance is sometimes better than on native linux, as a few of the syscalls are better implemented on windows. The file performance is abysmal, but that only hurts if you're using npm (and there you're in a world of pain already anyways). The only thing lacking, is that some debuggers don't work, which is a pity, but then I just start a docker container and mount it on my filesystem. I am using services on it too actually, everything works as expected. I can actually create windows bat files to redirect to linux binaries, which lets me do for example OCaml development, with the linux toolchain, on a system that actually works reliably. (my experience is, that as of windows 10, desktop linux environments crash way more often than windows ones)
  - setquk 8y ago
    Grep 150,000 source files on Linux and on WSL and come back to me. That's a pretty standard console load. It kills git operations, package managers, compilers, the lot. ALL the tools I use it for. Well USED it for. Real data: linux -> 1.3 seconds, all from buffer cache on a cranky old 10 year old HP desktop with 8 gig of RAM and bottom end SSD. wsl -> over a minute on a 12 core i7 with high end m2 SSD, every time. This is because of NTFS's awful performance on small files. The whole of Unix is file based and uses huge numbers of small files, as does source code generally so this is an end game scenario for the platform. It simply sucks! This goes back to when we had SVN which would take 6-7 minutes to check a repo out onto NTFS versus 20-30 seconds onto ext4 on the same rust disks. SVN was treated like cancer by the organisation for what is fundamentally a platform limitation.

raesene9 8y ago

I think MS made mis-steps on the Windows 10 privacy setup for sure, although they've largely fixed it in later releases with improved visibility of Privacy options and better docs on how to disable most of the telemetry stuff. Personally I like Windows 10 as a general purpose client OS, WSL is great and stability for me across a number of devices has been very good.

ekianjo 8y ago
Yeah but they reset your privacy settings with every update. Thats what we call dark patterns.
badsectoracula 8y ago
> and better docs on how to disable most of the telemetry stuff. How about disabling all of the "phone home" stuff, telemetry or whatever else? There is still only two options "Basic" and "Full" options without any "None" option and really most of the relevant options are scattered all over the place, making it a chore to disable them (and you need to redo that stuff every big update). This is either extremely dumb (which i doubt) or done with malicious intent so that people will miss stuff and/or get tired of them. Unless they provide the means to completely stop all communication with their servers with a single switch, there is no reason to give them any benefit of the doubt.

dfcowell 8y ago

Realistically, out of all of the BigCorps who could have bought it (and who have deep enough pockets to sustain its bleeding,) Microsoft is one of the best of a bad bunch. I'm not quite as cynical as the author of the OP when it comes to Microsoft's recent apparent change of direction, but who knows, that may just be naivety speaking.

cecja 8y ago
the best out of a bad bunch... what does this even mean. They are killing a neutral force in the market space there is nothing good coming from it.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  Better integration with Microsoft's existing ecosystem would be a good outcome (for developers working in that ecosystem) as well as more investment in general. As others have stated, VSTS is excellent so they definitely know what they are doing in this space. "Nothing good coming from it" seems a bit of a stretch when we don't even know the terms of the deal yet - or indeed whether it's actually happening at all!
- dfcowell 8y ago
  It seems like the alternative was GitHub running out of cash, so the main good coming from it is that GitHub will continue to exist.