I share your concerns about Windows 10, but the vast majority of people are having their telemetry used to advertise to them, which is sinister enough in of itself but by no means new If they have FB, it's the same shit. Not that I condone it, but it's true.
What really worries me is using telemetry to remotely disable "unauthorised hardware". What. The. Fuck. Does this even mean? Any company who doesn't pay M$ a fee doesn't get authorised? I don't have a clue what this T&C means for the personal computing sector and that is truly sinister.
I have upgraded to it on my gaming machine but not my work/college laptop because I don't want them watching what I'm studying/doing. It's weird, I don't give a shit if they watch what I play, but I have an OEM of Win 7 so if shit hits the fan I can revert. Not everyone has that luxury.
I've been moaning about it for a while but unfortunately my concerns and ruminations on the subject stray, by their very nature, into that sort of general anti-capitalist stuff you probably roll your eyes and sigh at.
But the top and bottom of it is that the game's all about walled garden software markets now. Personalised hardware (for mainstream OSes at least) will be a thing of the past within the next couple of decades.
Basically geeks like us can say goodbye to the PCs we love to tinker with and spend hours tailoring to our needs, it's all tablets and touchscreen from here, with all the end user restrictiveness that comes with. Apple and Google have proved that there's no money to be made in making a computer techies can fuck around with, it's far better to get all the plebs hooked on your shiny picture box.
It's been slipping this way ever since stuff like iTunes sunk its claws into the mainstream, forcing automatic updates and restrictive DRM policies that identify unique accounts and computers etc. People have become accustomed to the idea that their laptop/phone/tablet is some borderline magic contraption and that we are to obey at all cost when it says we must upgrade/update. The days when we were the owners and masters of the machine and the software on it, and the idea was to have it do as WE say, are long gone.
>>24515 >What really worries me is using telemetry to remotely disable "unauthorised hardware". What. The. Fuck. Does this even mean?
Assuming you're talking about section 7b of the Microsoft Services agreement, it means you can't get uppity if an XBox update causes an unsupported third party peripheral to stop working, or some other such shite. It does not mean anything relevant to Windows. It is clickbait garbage. Windows isn't even listed under the covered services:
>>24515 I upgraded without really thinking about it on my gaming machine. I'm looking into GNU/Linux options and seeing how good the drivers are. This shit's scary. My laptop is 8.1 but I can't switch to linux on it.
>>24518 > if you're not paying for a service, you're not the customer, you're the product. Fuck that.
You can be a product even if you pay for it nicely lad.
True enough, although I try my best to avoid companies that do this. Pretty hard to accomplish as businesses engaged in this practice tend not to publish the fact they are, in fact, dirty rotten cunts.
Supposedly the data is rather unwieldy in its raw form. Most people searching the dump are focusing on email addresses. The email addresses on their own certainly don't stand up as evidence. When you cross reference them with the CC payment details (which include names and addresses) along with user descriptions, that's when the denials become less tenable. I haven't, and don't intend to, download the dump so may be talking out of my arse.
>>24556 As a frequent /101/er about people using my outlook.com address to order themselves Dominos, sign up to Sky or get themselves on kinky dating sites, I am genuinely surprised to have never been contacted by Ashley Madison.
You're in luck, they're still accepting new users if you fancy getting on their mailing list. Although according to John 'Crazier than a coconut' McAfee, you probably shouldn't.
>>24556 I'm not entirely sure what the deal is with the payment details, because the company's techs are adamant that, in line with PCI standards, they don't keep them. They're supposed to keep the transaction reference and auth code they're given, but nothing that's actually printed on the card. Of course, they could be just saying that to avoid admitting that they were storing data they shouldn't have been.
Storing card data is perfectly permissible under PCI-DSS as long as you meet their security standards. You aren't allowed to store the CVV or any magstripe data, but everything on the front of the card is fair game. Some companies use a third-party provider to handle card data to avoid PCI-DSS compliance, but compliant organisations are fully entitled to store data where there is a compelling justification to do so (e.g. rebilling).
As an ex-executive of an approved PCI DSS scanner vendor I can confirm that's all, awfully, true. The awful 're-billing' loophole is how companies like Amazon and Paypal can store your CV2, forever, without incurring fines. I'm not party to either company's insurance premiums but having seen those of smaller "re-billing" companies I can make an educated guess that neither's is affected by their storing such info (due to said loophole).
I like ALM's response to being hacked:
>The criminal, or criminals, involved in this act have appointed themselves as the moral judge, juror, and executioner, seeing fit to impose a personal notion of virtue on all of society. We will not sit idly by and allow these thieves to force their personal ideology on citizens around the world. They said, whilst sitting idly by and allowing these thieves to force their "personal ideology" on the cheating shitbags of the world.
>>24576 Of course the signup page remains online. You don't expect them to spend years building a sizable business and then throw in the towel over a little data breach, do you? There's money to be made. It won't happen again, they'll tell themselves. This is a company which enables and indeed encourages people of the "what they don't know won't hurt them" mindset. And yet they're still able to claim the moral high ground over these hackers.
To be fair their Facebook page is littered with official statements on the incident.
Based weev.
He's not outright admitting to this one, but I'm pretty sure it's him. He's been my favourite hacker influence for many years and he's really made me smile this week. I was about to post about the second thing but I know this isn't the audience for it.
This is a brilliant shitstorm. So many politicians around the world are going to get fucked for this. Makes me think that ARE BOYS at YMCA are going to be a little pissed off with so much blackmail they had in store being exposed. All those people they've slimily held under their grasp, now publicly exposed anyway, and all their influence removed.
I'll be over there smoking a phatty in celebration as I peruse the news about this.
>>24590 If you must know, he stopped The Daily Stormer getting blackholed the same wy TPB and KAT etc have been. I don't know how the fuck he did it but he did. I was very surprised to see the site come back.
>>24598 Lately, when I'm feeling really down, I make myself a cup of tea, and it just reassures me that everything will be okay, It alleviates my stresses. Music used to do that for me, and it still does. I suppose it is nice that tea does it for me now too, but I fear that I'm replacing things people expect from close family and friends with music and a reassuring cuppa.
>>24599 >Lately, when I'm feeling really down, I make myself a cup of tea, and it just reassures me that everything will be okay, It alleviates my stresses.
