Windows 11 still sucks.

[Mæstro]

I'm no expert in these matters, but every single time I've read about someone getting nabbed by the Feds (FBI, Secret Service, DEA, etc) or by someone like Interpol is not because they were using an OS with backdoors, but because they had incredibly bad opsec…

Your tales of gross incompetence made me laugh out loud. Well done.
Personally, I think the late developer of TempleOS has proposed the best name for Interpol and friends.

Edited by myself to remove a digression about politically charged examples of such incompetence I have encountered in the wild.

[andyprough]

Your tales of gross incompetence made me laugh out loud. Well done.
Personally, I think the late developer of TempleOS has proposed the best name for Interpol and friends.

And it's not as if the feds or Interpol are terribly wise or sophisticated themselves. If you were reading the Snowden revelations at the time they were originally published, you would have noted that a lot of his spy comrades were spending their office hours hacking into people's webcams in order to sneak a peak at them running around naked in the supposed privacy of their own home or hotel room. I think what the Pink Panther movies from my youth tried to show is mostly true - the ranks of the spies and the criminals are both filled with plenty of examples of incompetent fools.

[Mæstro]

I think what the Pink Panther movies from my youth tried to show is mostly true - the ranks of the spies and the criminals are both filled with plenty of examples of incompetent fools.

If it is a game of cat and mouse, presumably, it is Tom & Jerry.

---

Copilot’s glaring problems become all the more apparent as vulnerabilities have already been discovered. The failure to discount possible complications which I described is common. The chance that something could go horribly wrong simply does not occur to most people, whether users or developers.

Edited to avoid political offence, and again when I realised i missed a phrase or two added in grey which I intended from the beginning..

[Gemmaugr]

I think what the Pink Panther movies from my youth tried to show is mostly true - the ranks of the spies and the criminals are both filled with plenty of examples of incompetent fools.

If it is a game of cat and mouse, presumably, it is Tom & Jerry.

---

Copilot’s glaring problems become all the more apparent as vulnerabilities have already been discovered. The failure to discount possible complications which I described in far-right mainstream IT users simply does not occur to most people, whether users or developers.

Please desist in painting a biased single politically motivated picture of "fAr-riGHt", since it could well apply to the CTRL-Left too, especially when it comes to Discord and CSAM, for example.

[Moonchild]

Everyone please stop associating any technical features or people's understanding of them with political streams. This thread isn't about any sort of extremism (no matter which side of the spectrum) and I will not accept it drifting into that realm. Fine to have those opinions but keep them to yourself, thanks.

[frostknight]

Everyone please stop associating any technical features or people's understanding of them with political streams. This thread isn't about any sort of extremism (no matter which side of the spectrum) and I will not accept it drifting into that realm. Fine to have those opinions but keep them to yourself, thanks.

I don't think that was my purpose when I wrote about backdoors... but regardless point taken.

[Mæstro]

My intended theme was gross incompetence, so let us return to that. Ereyesterday, a pair of regressions for Windows 11 released. The first comes from the Microsoft Store’s DRM and appears directly related to mandating Microsoft accounts over local one, and even manage to afflict Notepad. The other surrounds OneDrive, because of course it does. Sleep mode was also apparently broken earlier this month. The article itself can only provide home remedies for victims. I only remember one regression in five years of Debian 10. Timeshift rescued me from that, and within a day or two, a patch released. Windows 11’s sorry state strikes me as worse than the neglect one would expect simply because Microsoft no longer derives much revenue from home users. The problems began before LLM entered the mainstream in 2022. What could it be?

[UCyborg]

• The first gripe I have continues to get worse and this is the very one that inspired me to make this post is Microsoft's incessant desire to eliminate the control panel, and especially how they go about doing so. I totally get why they want Settings to be the default place people go to change settings on their system. I mean it makes sense and it's a lot more friendly to touch interfaces... I've heard all the arguments and they're all valid, but here's the problem: control panel has been around for decades - that's literally what we know and luckily Microsoft does give us a way to access the control panel but they're slowly taking it away piece by piece with every update.
  They're systematically taking away pages with each update and, what's worse, you don't know about it until you need it or even worse go out to help someone on Windows 11 and then realise that you can't find the page that you need in order to configure the thing that you're trying to configure. Cue mad scramble with a ton of frustration and actually looking like a fool bumbling around going in circles to try and get to where you need to go.
  This kind of on-going change should remain limited to pre-releases of software. Like Alpha or at most Beta stage. Not a production release...
  Want to get rid of Control Panel? Then make sure Settings is complete and make us swap over to "the new way of doing things" when it's done (and leaving control panel along in the meantime) but not this half-baked constantly changing ambiguity where a click will send you this time.

To think the settings app was started in 2012 if not earlier and still not finished in 2026.

[Mæstro]

To think the settings app was started in 2012 if not earlier and still not finished in 2026.

When you phrase it like that, I think Yandere Simulator is the best analogue to Windows 11’s development.

[Gemmaugr]

https://reclaimthenet.org/fbi-accessed- ... overy-keys

FBI Accessed Encrypted PCs Using Microsoft Recovery Keys
The case exposes how convenience in cloud security quietly redefines who truly owns digital privacy.

Federal investigators obtained access to encrypted computers for the first time through Microsoft’s own recovery keys, a move that has intensified long-standing concerns about how much control the company retains over user data.

The development emerged from United States v. Tenorio, a fraud case in Guam tied to alleged misuse of pandemic unemployment funds. Investigators believed three laptops contained evidence of the scheme. When they discovered the machines were protected with BitLocker, the encryption system built into Windows, they turned to Microsoft.

BitLocker is designed to shield all files on a drive by scrambling the data so it can’t be read without a recovery key.

Since Windows 10, the system has been enabled automatically on many new PCs.

When users sign in with a Microsoft account, those recovery keys are usually uploaded to Microsoft’s servers for convenience. That same design, however, quietly gives the company the technical ability to hand those keys over when faced with a lawful demand.

[andyprough]

https://reclaimthenet.org/fbi-accessed- ... overy-keys

FBI Accessed Encrypted PCs Using Microsoft Recovery Keys

That's not a backdoor, that's a front door. If you hand your encryption keys to Microsoft for convenient backing up, Microsoft won't turn down a valid warrant from the FBI. That's just common sense.

[Moonchild]

That's not a backdoor, that's a front door. If you hand your encryption keys to Microsoft for convenient backing up, Microsoft won't turn down a valid warrant from the FBI. That's just common sense.

The same is true for any other encryption where you share your keys. Looking at you, "Firefox Accounts".

If you're serious about system encryption, you don't want to use bitlocker, anyway. You'd be better off with something like VeraCrypt.

[Mæstro]

Microsoft is deliberately breaking older technologies, even if new devices continue to use them. Remember when Apple attracted controversy on the suspicion that iOS updates intended to degrade older devices’ performance?
On a happier note, it appears my giddy fantasy about XP security updates has actually come true for Windows 7. These are neither backports from 10/11 nor independently written, which would require the source, but I am impressed all the same.

[UCyborg]

Do security updates really make you sleep easier at night? I think of security updates craze as fearmongering and propaganda. BTW, code executes faster WITHOUT Spectre and Meltdown mitigations.

Though admittedly, few games I played a lot in my teenage years had / have scary remote code execution exploits. Strange things could start happening by just sitting in the lobby.

But how much of these in Windows specifically really matter in the grand scheme?

[Gemmaugr]

Do security updates really make you sleep easier at night? I think of security updates craze as fearmongering and propaganda. BTW, code executes faster WITHOUT Spectre and Meltdown mitigations.

Though admittedly, few games I played a lot in my teenage years had / have scary remote code execution exploits. Strange things could start happening by just sitting in the lobby.

But how much of these in Windows specifically really matter in the grand scheme?

I know I haven't had a virus since the turn of the millennium, and I venture quite far outside the normal mainstream sites. Dallying in this and that too boot as well.

I do often see chrome/ium defenders point out the many and rapid security updates as a bit of a scare to stay with the self-purported "most secure" browser.
It wouldn't surprise me if Microsoft utilized the same kind of tactic.

[Mæstro]

I remember infecting the family computer in 2009 with a virus after finding a free download, a level editor for a game I liked, on a fan site.
That was why we had gone without a computer at home for a year or more after that, letting me enjoy a nineties-like life a decade late.

[UCyborg]

I got bitten once by infected ClassicShell installer from official source, they were hacked. I didn't pay attention to lack of digital signature that was usually there.

Although the thingie failed to put the scary message on the screen at point when the OS was supposed to boot like it was intended. Just got single symbol displayed. Didn't take much to instantiate working boot sector.

I still get by without anti-virus software and the like for about 14 years. But yeah, it's easier to let guard down on supposedly trusted source.

[Mæstro]

I do not know whether or what antivirus we used back then, for I was a child. I recall one incident about 2011 when I perceived the need to install antivirus software onto our new computer, found one of those misleading applications which, in the words of a Norton advert from 2009, ‘makes a big show of running a “scan” of all your systems’ and presented it to my parents when it demanded payment to ‘register’. Happily, my father rejected it, and presumably found real antivirus. When I considered migrating to Linux in 2016, the wrong idea that it required antivirus combined with the inability to find free, legit antivirus software for it to turn me away; the closest I could find had been a free trial of Avira. I remember using Avast until early 2019, whereupon I switched to Malwarebytes and my present VPN until abandoning Windows and cancelling my subscription. Linux has saved me US$250 in subscription fees since.

[chrisriley+3000]

Windows 11 is so annoying sometimes, why did all the Security updates for Windows 10 have to be discontinued. This forced me and my mom to switch to Windows 11. We did it 3 months ago. She said when she takes screenshots, the pictures sometimes vanish. She can't copy and paste videos on Instagram or Twitter. And it runs more updates than Windows 10, but we have to; to keep our computer safe and running strong. Have you guys noticed anymore cons of 2019?

[frostknight]

Windows 11 is so annoying sometimes, why did all the Security updates for Windows 10 have to be discontinued. This forced me and my mom to switch to Windows 11. We did it 3 months ago. She said when she takes screenshots, the pictures sometimes vanish. She can't copy and paste videos on Instagram or Twitter. And it runs more updates than Windows 10, but we have to; to keep our computer safe and running strong. Have you guys noticed anymore cons of 2019?

I begin to wonder how much windows updates actually help security.

I have heard some on youtube say they never update and have never had problems. I don't know if this is the best philosophy or not, due to jumping windows in (late) 2013-2016 (early). I went back to windows a few times during 2014 and 2015

Not sure what the right philosophy is if you use windows.

Although if you do it that way, you could run webroot potentially and leave the protecting to them.

That was the last anti-malware I used on windows before I ditched windows.

Windows 8 + webroot anti-malware.

I hear it is the best one currently even now I have heard They do everything on the cloud. The only bad thing is, it cancels at the end of the subscription and your left without any protection at all till you renew but it has a very low footprint memory/cpu wise