Seems that blocking my robot vac’s Internet access when it’s not in use is not so paranoid after all.

Not the first time. I thought a Windows 10 update wiped grub, but Microsoft actually deleted my entire Linux partition. Others have experienced the same thing.

Windows is required for a couple of apps I need with no alternatives, but the only way it runs on any of my computers is in a VM.

I have mine behind a Pihole too. It blocked all the ads at first but Roku seems to actively varying the ad servers and they’ve started showing up again. I haven’t had a chance to see if I can block them again.

Could be a bad board. I have a Pi 3B+ that intermittently crashes and shows insufficient voltage no matter what power supply is used.

Roku is chocked full of ads too, and regularly sets the default for the “Select” button to open those ad sites or apps. Roku used to be great. It has now been completely enshittified.

I have a convertible laptop with a MicroSD slot. A 4TB card would be great for backups.

Makes not the least bit of difference: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jul/20/the-microsoftcrowdstrike-outage-shows-the-danger-of-monopolization

Literally hundreds of millions of people around the world have seen the Microsoft BSODs that resulted from this fuck up. Millions of people have had their lives disrupted. The vast majority of those will blame Microsoft. Executive boards and IT groups may know better but it won’t matter all that much - they will be aggressively looking to reduce their exposure to Microsoft’s near monopoly anyway.

I worked in sales for a Fortune 500 tech equipment and software manufacturer. When a customer had a serious outage with a single piece of our equipment it would cause them to stop and reevaluate their purchasing plans and dependence on my company.

IMO every government and business out there is going to be looking at this at every level and IT departments will be tasked to significantly reduce their reliance on Microsoft products. It will take years to actually happen, but I think Microsoft sales are going to take a serious, long term, and well-deserved hit.

This would be of limited use for many people. Carriers lock people in by selling lots of phones that are missing frequency bands and cannot be used on their competitor’s networks. For instance, many of TMO’s phones cannot be used on AT&T and Verizon’s networks. My Oneplus 9Pro is a great phone, but if I wanted to switch to Spectrum (on Verizon’s network) or AT&T I would be forced to buy a new phone.

Some phones like the Iphone and Pixels are compatible with every U.S. network, but plenty of others are not.

Teamviewer has a history of lying about serious security breaches. The company’s networks have been breached before and they literally spent years denying it and blaming it on their customers: https://www.securityweek.com/teamviewer-confirms-it-was-hacked-2016/

HP has known the hinges are defective since they introduced them. There are so many people having problems a class action suit was filed about it.

Must depend on the model. I’ve been running Mint on that (repaired) X360 for years without significant problems outside crappy Realtek wireless module issues.

HP laptops are garbage. This is the hinge of my HP X360 laptop after 6 months of occasional use: https://i.imgur.com/LhZWBIt.jpg

Correct me if I’m wrong, but this doesn’t look like this has anything to do with Syncthing vulnerabilities. Instead it looks like a hack that uses a preconfigured Syncthing installation to transfer sensitive data. Disturbing nonetheless.

It’s also important to remember that Microsoft has no monetary incentive to force people to use Windows Recall.

With that in mind, there would be no reason for Microsoft to automatically enable Windows Recall in an update down the line. If it does happen, the user will be able to instantly tell thanks to that that visual indicator and turn it off again.

This article is nothing but propaganda. There is huge monetary incentive to force people to use Windows Recall and collect their data, and Microsoft routinely uses Windows Update to enable data collection. They began that practice years ago on Windows 7. It’s a ridiculously simple matter for MS to disable the visual indicator and force This Week’s Plan on their users to monetize their data.

Windows Central pretends to be critical of plans to enable a feature that can be made into malware by Microsoft in a couple of minutes, but then back peddles and says it can’t be done (utter BS) and if it could be, it wouldn’t be that bad.

Another tip: On Android phones, Tasker can be used to automatically activate Wireguard tunnels to your own or a commercial VPN host. Taskernet.com has one project that activates WG when off specific wifi networks, and another that I wrote that allows you to activate a tunnel on demand only when you open specific apps. Great if you want to access a home server occasionally (without detectable open router ports) or want an extra layer of security when running a financial app.

There are a number of ways to access your Linux drives from Windows (I did it regularly when I ran Windows) and if your drive hasn’t been wiped your data is probably all accessible. Here’s a link that should help: https://www.howtogeek.com/112888/3-ways-to-access-your-linux-partitions-from-windows/

We have all become unwilling, unpaid employees of every company in their pursuit of higher profits. It’s a feature, not a bug.

Corporations have discovered that there is no real downside (for them) when they don’t function. Customer satisfaction no longer has much of an impact on their profits because the few companies left in each sector are doing the exact same thing.

IMO this is yet another side effect of unchecked corporate power. It’s the same reason prices have risen so rapidly and corporate profits have reached 70 year highs. We are dealing with near monopolies and the billionaire class who created them. Until our government addresses the problem it’s not going to get any better.

In other words it’s not going to get better in our lifetimes.

Windows went a step further on my machine. I thought it had just screwed up my bootloader, but when I went to restore it my Linux partition was completely gone. Windows Update had deleted the partition.

Malware is right.

These are the same people who want to know why Obama wasn’t in the Oval Office on 9/11.