It is unclear in what ways this is different/better than O&O ShutUp10 (https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10), aside from that tool having a much worse name.
I've always used WinAeroTweaker. I like it more than all these other ones because for each tweak it does it also gives you a way to manually enable or disable the tweak in the registry or in the group policy editor. Windows 10 2004 seems to have disabled the ability to disable web search on anything other than windows 10 enterprise though sadly. Apparently it was always supposed to be that way: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/client-management/g...
I think I've disabled search on Pro edition here. It just required a registry edit[0] (shutup isn't updated for 2004 yet AFAIK). On my machine it prevents internet searches from appearing.
The only concern is I don't know if it hides it while still being run in the background, or if it completely blocks the search from happening in the first place.
Kind of sad that end users even need to think about this sort of thing. It should be painfully obvious on how to disable such an invasive feature.
This tool takes all the various privacy settings Windows 10 permits the user to change and offers a convenient place to toggle them all at the same place.
It also offers an application uninstaller and downloads/applies firewall rules to the built-in Windows firewall. Shutup10 does not offer those features.
It _doesn't_ allow the user to completely disable telemetry on Windows 10 Home or Pro, which is the primary reason to use Shutup10 in the first place. For privacy purposes you want Shutup10 not this program.
Shutup10 also does not allow completely disable telemetry. Moreover, it has more than half of useless settings that have nothing to do with privacy. Shutup10
- In fact, just another registry editor.
Btw only one WPD feature "blocker" can completely cut off IP telemetry addresses. This is much more effective than any settings.
If you do not understand the topic, you should not give advice.
p.s Shutup10 is a Microsoft partner, closed source and you can't decompile it. Think about it :3
So according to HN if you aren't paying for it you're the product. That has me worried. If this was just a repo on github I'd have a little more faith that this isn't just a trojan in disguise (not saying it is but it's scary to give an app enough access to know and set this stuff)
When I type upd, Windows Update comes first, then I type a, it gets replaced with Dell Update, then I type t, and Windows Update comes back. They are trying to keep us vigilant, I guess...
I have the exact same “problem” on my work PC. I want to find MS SQL Management Studio. Searching for “SQL” brings up nothing, but “manage” will match the app.
Then try typinng in "Internet Explorer" .. it stays on Microsoft Edge with a "Recommended" label underneath. I know it's recommended, but I need IE for a specific site... So make a shortcut and put it on the desktop. Slowly the start menu is loosing it's role as it's getting obnoxious.
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced]
"DisabledHotkeys"="S" ; Write out EI to disable the shortcut Win+E and Win+I.
You can still replace the start menu with a more traditional one with OpenShell if you prefer. It has quite a functional simple search but I think it just searches the PATH and start menu entries, not your whole system like the start menu tries to. But I prefer that.
You mean the "Don’t search the web or display web results in Search" group policy? It doesn't work for me. Neither does setting the AllowSearchToUseLocation, BingSearchEnabled, and CortanaConsent registry entries in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search to 0 (from https://www.thewindowsclub.com/disable-bing-web-search-resul...)
Hmm, weird. I just set up a new machine at home with Windows 10 Pro and it worked just fine. No more web search. Perhaps since you're at work there's something else negating it?
Ah, right, yeah. Admittedly I never think about Home, as I've just come to accept the quality of life upgrade that comes with Pro (this being one of them), regardless of the machine.
Also some other privacy tools have silently broken/disabled domain administrator's access to computers. The tools are not necessarily tested in domain networks at all and for example in work environments that may cause time consuming issues to solve.
I tend to share this sentiment, or at the very least come from a reputable company such as O&O.
I personally tend to modify the Windows install image these days to not include offensive components, as well as disable offending features in group policy.
Look into unattended installs, the WIM format. I use NTLite, which is not free, but worth the money. There are other, free, tools which you can also use.
Some do but it's hardly universal. AFAIK that comes with its own security problems like each app having to bundle and update its own dependencies. Games aren't great either. I think Steam for example makes its application folder writeable by all users by default.
Each app already had to bundle and update its own dependencies. The WinSxS folder was created solely for programs who tried to install global dependencies -- it serves as a per-program "global" folder so each program can have its own "global" without getting in the way of others.
Cool, and? Then you're apparently not the target audience.
It's an unobfuscated .NET application that a bunch of folks seem to have built in their spare time. Did you use any of the widely available tools to decompile it and find anything egregious in there or is this just a lazy dismissal?
This really misses the point. There's a practical point, and a point of principle.
If you're making the point that disassembly is at least possible, you've already lost. Sure, maybe they haven't gone as far as they possibly could have in preventing us from inspecting the code's workings. Perhaps the licence is gracious enough not to try to prohibit such study. That's still not good enough.
These days it's pretty much the norm to release such freeware as Free and Open Source software. If this weren't true, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Why then haven't they done so? Why do they choose to deny the rights to study and improve the software?
Releasing the source is also a pretty good way of offering assurance of the absence of malware.
It's reasonable to be wary with admin privileges. Proprietary freeware comes across as saying You're not allowed to look, just trust me. I'll pass.
Sure, I completely agree with the point of principle, just found it odd to simply dismiss a project on it.
The norm for HN maybe just hasn't reached the authors yet given their home countries and the fact they seem to identify via Steam profiles, i.e. are likely more involved in a social circle of Windows based gamers instead of FOSS folks. We don't know anything about those authors, it's pretty unlikely that this came from a point of explicitly choosing to deny somebody any rights, for all I know this was made by a bunch of 15 year olds that simply didn't know any better. While I realize the fundamental difference between this tool and random webapps, products without disclosed source or incentives are cheered on by HN all the time, which is why I found "not open source. won't install, won't suggest." a rather lazy contribution.
If one of the authors had submitted this we could have had a conversation and suggest they open source it, like you've just done, which is absolutely fine. Passing on closed source freeware is fine as well but attribution of bad intentions or "closed source == bad" style comments are just plain unnecessary imho.
> I completely agree with the point of principle, just found it odd to simply dismiss a project on it.
I dismissed the project the moment I learnt it's closed-source, for the reasons I've given. A point of principle is a fine reason to dismiss something, even in the absence of a practical concern. Here we have both.
There are plenty of things I can shrug off about a software project, such as internal design decisions I disagree with, or using tools and languages that I dislike, or even using a Free and Open Source software licence that I dislike. Choosing to make it closed-source is bigger than that.
To be clear, I'm not a FOSS purist (I'm writing this from Firefox on Windows 10), but for a tool like this in particular, it should either be FOSS, or direct from Microsoft.
> The norm for HN maybe just hasn't reached the authors yet given their home countries and the fact they seem to identify via Steam profiles, i.e. are likely more involved in a social circle of Windows based gamers instead of FOSS folks.
This doesn't change my assessment at all. If the developers are beginners/hobbyists and are, bluntly, of such low calibre that they aren't aware of the advantages of Free and Open Source software, I don't see how that's reassuring.
> for all I know this was made by a bunch of 15 year olds that simply didn't know any better
Then I'm glad I was quick to dismiss the idea of giving their code admin rights on my machine!
> I found "not open source. won't install, won't suggest." a rather lazy contribution
You're right that detay's reply didn't explain their dismissal, yes.
> attribution of bad intentions
I mean, they are denying us the rights to study and improve the software. That's what closed-source software means. Was the decision to go closed-source the result of bad intentions? Perhaps not, as you say they might not be deliberately setting out to deny rights that people value, but my strong reservations remain justified.
> "closed source == bad" style comments are just plain unnecessary
In the context of software of this kind, closed source is bad. I think I've justified this position.
> It's reasonable to be wary with admin privileges. Proprietary freeware comes across as saying You're not allowed to look, just trust me. I'll pass.
I agree with this completely, and I extend it to the operating system itself. I'm at the point (at home) where I no longer need a proprietary, closed source OS for work or for play. Linux and OpenBSD do essentially everything I need in my home office, and at work I've shifted most of my day-to-day over to my Linux workstation. The systems I maintain do of course still run Windows 10 out of necessity for our accounting software, but if we ever switch that over to a hosted solution we will only need one workstation with Windows, and it's not a critical role. The company president has already greenlit working in whatever OS I am most comfortable with, as long as it doesn't hinder my duties, so he's at least open to moving everything over one day.
I crashed many Win 10 versions trying to turn off bunch of telemetrics and cortana and store and other calling home services by tweaking registry and never quite succeed. Until I find Henry++ Simplewall. Brilliant tool - instead of tweaking regs etc you just shut down access to internet to bunch of services. And boy there is hundred of them trying non stop. So while your windows 10 works fine, cortana, store, telemetry and windows updates believe you have no internet at all.
Yepp. I installed on multiple Windows and donated many times; I suggest you do the same (I am not related to this project in any way).
The only "issue" I ever had was with Dropbox updates. Dropbox main instance would download its new update, name it somewhat randomly and then use that program to trigger update from the internet. This would trigger simplewall to ask for permission, but by the time you click "yes" the update would already fail. Minutes alter Dropbox downloads same install with new file name and the whole whack-a-mole game starts all over. In this case you need to whitelist Dropbox IPs: in user rules create new rule: tcpip v6, any direction with remote rule: 162.125.35.0:443-162.125.36.255:443 - this will allow any new Dropbox update to download new version and safely call home to finish install.
You're mostly right but I play a lot of games and Proton is good enough for me at least. I think it's a combination of not caring about games that don't run as well because they don't run as well or not caring for them in the first place.
That program is just a dashboard for quickly configuring group policies and the Windows firewall. It's programmed for .NET, if you don't trust it decompile it, get the list of policies and their values and set them manually. ILSpy does a great job at decompiling it. For the firewall part you can install AdGuard Home[1], set it as your DNS and add the host lists[2] if you want it to auto update or use WindowsSpyBlocker[3] and keep it updated manually.
Just to be clear, is this a closed source application that I am supposed to install to modify my OS and the only contact information for the people who made it are Steam accounts? And the primary motivation for installing this software is that I don't trust the multinational corporation that could lose hundreds of billions of dollars if they inappropriately abuse my privacy? But of course I trust Barnacle, Vegetorius, and Janeyris.
While I get your point, I think when using Windows, the majority of ibstalled software will be closed source. And most, if not all of them have been granted the same level of priviledge a some point during installation.
That is fair. I would be lying if I said I never installed potentially dodgy software from the internet. My primary problem here is the motivation behind the software.
The reason this software exists is fundamentally about a lack of trust. We don't trust Microsoft with the level of data that Windows 10 collects. That is a perfectly reasonable position to have. However if that is your opinion, it seems frankly bizarre to trust these nameless developers who have zero accountability for this software. Microsoft is at least accountable to the law, the stock market, and their customers. There is hundreds of billions on the line if they screw you over. If Barnacle screws you over, the only thing on the line is their copy of Ultra Street Fighter IV.
It's possible to set up your repo to have issues disabled, which will get rid of the majority of FOSS's costs.
When it comes to privacy/security tools, it makes sense to make it open source, since they usually are given an insane amount of privileges to modify your machine.
And their logo is too similar to Stardock's - I thought this was an actual Stardock product to begin with (because this is exactly the kind of program Stardock would make). I downloaded it, but I won't install it - there's something fishy about this whole thing.
There's no reason for this program to not be open-source - especially if it all it does is tweak the registry and apply GPO settings.
I wish people would stop thinking of open-source like it's some sort of panacea. The Ken Thompson Hack should be enough proof that what really matters is what gets run, not what the source code says.
For decades, the Windows community thrived with mods and such, all without source code.
If you have an unobfuscated .NET binary you pretty much have the source, and it will be honestly what it says it does.
This sort of paranoic fearmongering is exactly the sort of propaganda that pushes society towards that authoritarian corporate dystopia in which trust is forced by those in power, and which you have no control over. We are slowly losing our freedom to choose even whom to trust, thanks to this idea that these "multinational corporations" are somehow deities.
You highly underestimate the skill of the community, and how it only takes one person to find out and spread the news if something is amiss. Source isn't needed, and doesn't tell the whole story anyway. (See: Ken Thompson Hack.)
the multinational corporation that could lose hundreds of billions of dollars if they inappropriately abuse my privacy
The corporation which has lawyers and knows exactly how to spin their spyware to carefully evade such laws?
Windows 10 would clearly be considered spyware 10 or even 5 years ago. Yet somehow Microsoft has convinced the general public that it isn't, and we are supposed to still trust them?
Edit: downloaded it to take a look. Appears to be written in easily-reversible .NET and not even obfuscated, so go ahead and analyse it yourself if you don't trust it. (If it was obfuscated, that would make my suspicion jump.)
Edit2: looks like people still think I'm wrong - go look at the binary yourself instead of blindly downvoting just because you don't want to do the thinking yourself. The more power you let them have, the more they will abuse it.
> So yes, Microsoft has publicly said if they detect a music track that may have been downloaded 'illegally', they will 'package it and all your info and send it to the feds'. It isn't spyware if you partner with the spies.
This was just part of the clickbait fearmongering that spread across various news and conspiracy sites before W10's release. From what I recall, it was to do the content clauses surrounding OneDrive/Office 365 (ie, you can't use OneDrive to host your illegally acquired content) that people somehow assumed would apply to their local documents. Microsoft made the privacy policy wording a lot clearer after that and have said numerous times that they really don't give a damn about your local files.
> Microsoft decided to go into the data business with Win10.
The advertising subsystem in W10 is actually pretty well isolated to the Windows Store and your Bing web searches, and it doesn't involve your personal information (just keyword/demographic based targeting). Your telemetry data isn't used for adverts. Microsoft Ads as a whole doesn't really make a ton of money for Microsoft so they don't invest a lot into it.
It's not fearmongering to question the low standard Windows developers and their users seem to consider routine. That Windows users have chosen to accept Windows becoming spyware is just another manifestation of that same problem, not a refutation of it!
It absolutely is fearmongering when you default to assuming maliciousness/bad faith just because the author is relatively unknown. There's nothing deep/unusual about what this program does, and I assure you that if it was created with malicious intent, it would not remain undiscovered for very long.
That Windows users have chosen to accept Windows becoming spyware
The developers of this, and others, are clearly fighting against it.
The developers of this program are asking windows users to install proprietary freeware from anonymous developers. This exemplifies Windows software culture, the very same culture that made Windows users compliant enough to tolerate Windows 10 in the first place. The developers of this software, in choosing to make it proprietary freeware, are reinforcing this culture.
Many Windows users may not know there's a better way, but I can hardly think that's an excuse for developers writing proprietary freeware for Windows. Surely they've heard of open source at some point, they just don't give a damn.
Telemetry is Spyware (see their screenshots) now? You might dislike telemetry but finding out if and how software fails is an entirely different thing from watching you to deliberately invade your privacy.
Yes, telemetry is spyware when it's enabled by default. If you don't think this is a privacy invasion, please consider that many people take the opposite view.
If it truly is nothing to worry about, then make the data easy to inspect, and the collection easy to turn off.
The data is close to impossible to inspect, and impossible to turn off without third-party tools or firewalls. So I suspect there's something to worry about.
Having a different opinion is not lying. If you are comfortable with having telemetry snooping around on your computer, feel free to allow it. You may feel that is not spying but others feel it is and that is a different opinion, not a lie.
It's not spyware, software has just gotten so bloated/bad and project management so clueless that we really need to broadcast everything you do and everything that goes wrong back to the mothership
No, they are not clueless, they've been stealing software since the late 90's with mmo's.
They wouldn't be celebrating your cluelessness, they are talking about a "revolution", aka a revolution in the publics cluelessness about software ownership.
Why does ANY piece of software need a remote computer in order to function?
How much will it take for users to stop using Windows? It seems like corporations can put whatever they want in products and people will just continue to consume them.
Maybe it's time to switch to Linux if you don't like to be tracked and have ads everywhere for a product that is not free.
For me, I'd like an OS that Just Works with what I do with it; Linux has never been it. Linux desktop has always been a compromise - it KINDA works.
Professionally, I've used all three major operating system branches. Windows was a hack when it came to things like terminal support. Linux needed me to hack into config files pretty quickly just to make it work, and it's lacking the UI polish that the other operating systems have. Mac combines the best of both worlds.
Privately I've always used Windows, simply because all games work on there at the intended performance. It's not in the way.
Where are all the ads in Windows? I have Windows on most my computers and Ubuntu on one. The only place I see ads are in Ubuntu when connecting through ssh. Right now there are ads for MicroK8s and Canonical Livepatch.
I get Spotify, Candy crush and Office buttons in my start menu that I didn't install. It's not the same, but pretty close in terms of the OS doing things I didn't ask it to.
A bare installation option would be nice but bundling software with operating systems isn't new. As sad as it may sound Candy Crush is the new 3D Pinball, which you could argue was an "ad" for the full version of Full Tilt! Pinball.
Win10 ads depend on region, if you're in Europe you'll most likely won't see them, probably because they're illegal, or because Microsoft is testing the waters in other regions first.
In Germany I have only ever seen OneDrive popups in Win10, which can be considered either a "suggestion" or an "advertisement".
There were a few pre-installed apps but that's completely normal to be honest. If you go in a shop and buy a PC then it's usually full of that shit. If you remove it, it doesn't come back. They're not really ads but things the average user will want (I want office!!!)
> How much will it take for users to stop using Windows?
When the benefit of doing so is greater than the cost of switching.
That may be true already for some group of users like web developers. However most other user segments are critically underserved on other OSes and so the experience isn't even in the same league.
Quite frankly a lot more than this. The reason is that at the end of the day I need to be productive. While I viciously oppose this sort of stuff, I've turned off enough of it not to be bothersome and what is left is an extremely reliable, flexible and easy to drive operating system.
I am a very experienced Linux user both on desktop and server side of things. In fact 90% of what I do targets Linux but all the desktop solutions are quite frankly a mess. After 20 years of infighting and rewriting the universe, there is no cohesive desktop that even makes any sense at all and isn't bug ridden. I am forever fighting small things and edge cases to get anything working. Within a few days, it gets toasted and back to windows. I don't have enough hours left before I'm dead to actually argue with these things.
And as for MacOS, the hardware went down the toilet, you tend to have to fight the OS at every available opportunity, the pricing is quite frankly terrible and it's utterly inflexible. It's Apple's way or a punch in the balls. No thanks. At best I'm hanging on lightly to iOS as that's not too problematic when it's being inflexible (apart from HEIC which is a pain in the ass)
I also beg people to find a better place where I can throw together an 8-core workstation class machine with 32Gb of RAM, 4k 27" display, decent GPU, replaceable NVMe storage and high quality input devices for < £1300 that actually works reliably and the software doesn't get in the way.
I got tired of trying to make Linux on the desktop happen when XFCE told its users that not being able to resize windows by dragging their borders was "not as much of a usability issue as some suggest". When every Linux desktop complaint gets dismissed with a variant of "you're holding it wrong" a bit of mandatory anonymous telemetry by the alternative doesn't look that wrong.
Yes, you have to click on the border instead of outside. There are other window managers available that don't have that issue.
I often see this sentiment but I guess I don't get it. You are actually seeing a response from the developer about this, that's a good thing! They have repeatedly acknowledged the usability problem in the bug report I found [1], while explaining that the implementation would be difficult.
I might wonder why in Windows I am not able to resize windows with a hotkey+the mouse instead of fumbling for the border to click on. Personally I find that much more of a usability issue. But I would never get some response from a Windows developer about it. I might make a post asking about it on a Microsoft support forum and get some volunteer unqualified Certified Microsoft Helper explaining to me why my use case is invalid, but you would probably never get any real contact with a developer.
Wasn't it only Windows 10 that finally allowed you to scroll inactive windows under the mouse cursor, something that I'm sure worked fine on Xfree86 in the 90's? Using Windows can be pretty tiring too.
How's it a pain? I mean it's fiddly to set up but using it isn't much of a pain. And it's almost like having a little partitioned-off 'games console' inside your PC where you can keep all the ugly proprietary software and games. I think it's great.
