Mount a Windows 11 ISO. Open an administrative command window. Navigate to the new drive letter. Enter this command:
.\setup.exe /product server /auto upgrade /EULA accept /migratedrivers all /ShowOOBE none /Compat IgnoreWarning /Telemetry Disable
I've used this to upgrade 10 to 11 on non approved hardware, going back to at least 2nd gen Intel CPUs. I've used it to upgrade existing Pro, EDU and IOT that didn't want to upgrade.
My understanding is that TPM is secure, and Win 11 still supports TPM. Am I mistaken and/or misunderstanding your statement that Microsoft is enforcing a hardware requirement with a known back door?
Here's a significantly more credible (stacksmashing) video that demonstrates how ineffective some TPM implementations are. If the TPM was integrated into the CPU die, this attack would likely not be possible. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTl4vEednkQ
Despite the TPM being a pretty good and useful idea as a secure enclave for storing secrets, I'm concerned that giving companies the ability to perform attestation of your system's "integrity" will make the PC platform less open. We may be headed towards the same hellscape that we are currently experiencing with mobile devices.
Average folks aren't typically trying to run Linux or anything, so most people wouldn't even notice if secure boot became mandatory over night and you could only run Microsoft-signed kernels w/ remote attestation. Nobody noticed/intervened when the same thing happened to Android, and now you can't root your device or run custom firmware without crippling it and preventing the use of software that people expect to be able to use (i.e. banking apps, streaming services, gov apps, etc.).
Regardless, this is more of a social issue than a technical issue. Regulatory changes (lol) or mass revolt (also somewhat lol) would be effective in putting an end to this. The most realistic way would be average people boycotting companies that do this, but I highly doubt anyone normal will do that, so this may just be the hell we are doomed for unless smaller manufacturers step up to the plate to continue making open devices.
Sure let’s just centralize hardware attestation to Microsoft’s cloud tied to a Microsoft account with keys you can’t change what could possibly go wrong?
This is all publicly documented by Microsoft you just need to translate their doublespeak.
Google is doing does the exact same thing and people were sounding the alarms when they did it but Microsoft gets a pass?
Use ChaGPT to outsource your critical thinking for you because I’m not gonna do it.
I've looked into this fella before because he didn't pass the smell test. He's running a grift selling schlocky cell phones and cloud services. His videos are excessively clickbait-y and show minimal understanding of the actual tech, it's more or less concentrated disinformation and half-understood talking points. GrapheneOS devs also had something to say about him: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/20165-response-to-dishonest...
I've had to learn about TPMs to figure out if they're the right technology with which to integrate a product I've worked on. I don't agree that they're a "neo-clipper-chip" in any real way based on my exposure to them.
While I'm not a cryptographer... I never really understood the appeal of these things outside of one very well-defined threat model: namely, they're excellent if you're specifically trying to prevent someone from physically taking your hard drive, and only your hard drive, and walking out of a data centre, office, or home with it.
It also provides measured boot, and I won't downplay it, it's useful in many situations to have boot-time integrity attestation.
The technology's interesting, but as best as I can tell, it's limited through the problem of establishing a useful root-of-trust/root-of-crypt. In general:
- If you have resident code on a machine with a TPM, you can access TPM secrets with very few protections. This is typically the case for FDE keys assuming you've set your machine up for unattended boot-time disk decryption.
- You can protect the sealed data exported from a TPM, typically using a password (plus the PCR banks of a specific TPM), though the way that password is transmitted to the TPM is susceptible to bus sniffing for TPM variants which live outside the CPU. There's also the issue of securing that password, now, though. If you're in enterprise, maybe you have an HSM available to help you with that, in which case the root-of-crypt scheme you have is much more reasonable.
- The TPM does provide some niceties like a hardware RNG. I can't speak to the quality of the randomness, but as I understand it, it must pass NIST's benchmarks to be compliant with the ISO TPM spec.
What I really don't get is why this is useful for the average consumer. It doesn't meaningfully provide FDE in particular in a world where the TPM and storage may be soldered onto the same board (and thus impractical to steal as a standalone unit rather than with the TPM alongside it).
I certainly don't understand what meaningful protections it can provide to game anti-cheats (which I bring up since apparently Battlefield 6 requires a TPM regardless of the underlying Windows version). That's just silly.
Ultimately, I might be misunderstanding something about the TPM at a fundamental level. I'm not a layperson when it comes to computer security, but I'm certainly not a specialist when it comes to designing or working with TPMs, so maybe there's some glaring a-ha thing I've missed, but my takeaway is that it's a fine piece of hardware that does its job well, but its job seems too niche to be useful in many cases; its API isn't very clear (suffering, if anything, from over-documentation and over-specification), and it's less a silver bullet and more a footgun.
> I never really understood the appeal of these things outside of one very well-defined threat model: namely, they're excellent if you're specifically trying to prevent someone from physically taking your hard drive, and only your hard drive, and walking out of a data centre, office, or home with it.
So basically the same thing you'd get by having an internal USB port on the system board where you could plug a thumb drive to keep the FDE key on it?
> It also provides measured boot, and I won't downplay it, it's useful in many situations to have boot-time integrity attestation.
That's the nefarious part. You get adversarial corporations trying to insist that you run their malware in order to use their service, and it's giving them a means to attempt to verify it.
Which doesn't actually work against sophisticated attackers, so the security value against real attacks is none, but it works against normies which in turn subjects the normies to the malware instead of letting someone give them an alternative to it that doesn't screw them.
If I knew absolutely nothing about TPM other than the circumstances in which it was made (who, what, why, when) I would have predicted from that alone that it wouldn't benefit consumers, wouldn't be secure, and that it was motivated by business, not technology.
This is incorrect. Not all CPUs supported by Windows 10 supported the VBS feature.
Microsoft is making the VBS mandatory for OEMs, hence the CPU needs support, hence the ~7 year old minimum requirement for CPUs in what Microsoft supports for Windows.
Yes, you can disable it during setup as a workaround, but it's exactly that. And why you'd want to make your system less secure, well I'll leave that to the exercise of the reader when they'll turn around two weeks from now and complain about Windows security.
Most of the requirements for that feature are UEFI features or a TPM, and have nothing to do with the CPU
The actual CPU requirements are VMX, SLAT, IOMMU and being 64 bit, which have all been available on the Intel side at least, since at least 2008, with some coming available even before that.
The CPU requirement was just an attempt to force people to buy new hardware they didn't need. Nothing more.
A perfect example of this is the Ryzen 5 1600. Its not officially supported but meets every single one of the requirements and had no trouble enabling the feature in the run up to the release of Win11 (before it was blocked for no reason). I know this because I did it.
Also they marked all but one 7th Intel Core CPU as unsupported, and the one they did add just so happens to be the one they were shipping in one of their Surface products. No way you can tell me this list was based fact and not the whims of some random PM when they do stuff like that.
> and why you'd want to make your system less secure,
I'd offer that the likely goal here is the most usable system possible, working with what one has. If folks are here, there's usually a lot of necessity factors in play.
They might sell more Windows 11 if it ran on more hardware. How does this make them money?
It's worth asking, but I think there's an answer: they want the OS to be transformed into an interface to their cloud where recurring revenue is easier. To do that, they need to make it more like a mobile OS and more locked down. TPM helps this.
Dropping windows 10 support is a pretty big lever to apply pressure to get people to upgrade to 11. Oh turns out you also “need” to buy new hardware to run it.
Dropping windows 10 support is a really reasonable decision. The focus is on 11, it's been out for almost 5 years. I'm guessing they are close to releasing 12 at this point, maybe in a year or two. Supporting three entire fully fledged oses is quite alot of work. I also understand supporting newer hardware, they dropped 32bit on 11 and moved the instruction set up a bit. You gotta do a cutoff somewhere and I'm happy that they are at least allowing us to use the improved performance our modern CPUs have. I'm not happy with alot of stuff, but I get this at least.
I'd argue it's probably time to drop 32-bit x86 support, but the rest of this stuff is arbitrary and doesn't have any tangible benefit except conveniently providing hardware manufacturers with an excuse to unload new hardware onto people when there's nothing wrong with what they have. (not to mention, pardon the conspiracy theory, they're probably trying to use the TPM to turn the PC into a smartphone-like platform)
It's surprising that when we had Win7 they did that brief "XP Mode" experiment with some virtualized-penalty box.
Why didn't that go further? Presumably virtually any x86-64 box currently in circulation would be fast enough to run a VM running a full copy of 32-bit XP/Win7/Win10, or even a full carousel (or download store) of DOS and early-windows releases. It could be the most compatible Windows ever, solving the weird "64-bit systems can't run some 16-bit apps" gotcha and perhaps allowing some way to bridge in support for devices that can only be driven by old 32-bit XP drivers.
> They might sell more Windows 11 if it ran on more hardware. How does this make them money?
Given the free Win 7/8->10->11 upgrade path, almost every end user who'd want a Windows license probably already has one. This leaves enterprise licensing and computer manufacturers (laptops, mini-PCs, desktops), who wouldn't care about this because they'll have newer hardware anyway.
No they will make the same money either way because they are selling the OS, not the hardware. They are requiring only newer hardware to limit their surface of exploitation and reduce their compatibility list.
They also sell a license with the new hardware. The bulk majority of the public never buy hardware without an OS. So yes, they are making more money with each new hardware sale. Plus the increase of forced advertising means they make more per user, effectively double dipping.
Why do you feel the need to defend a convicted monopolist for engaging in user hostile behavior?
It wasn't confusing enough that Intel named their CPU core 'Core' or that they put 'Duo' after it if there wre two 'Core' cores packaged together, but they also put a '2' after it if it was the second generation, then they dropped the generation number from the name in the third generation, making that the first generation of their new numbering scheme of which you're discussing the second generation.
Only if you work in a hospital. And who would be crazy enough to build hospital IT on Windo.. oh, wait.
I haven't tried Win11 on personal hardware so far, but since Win8, boot times are not much of an issue in my experience.
Making the whole OS the vehicle for a rent-seeking vendor lock-in scheme built to make you pay more and more to keep up the same set of functionality is more of a problem I think.
Just a note for others that that the language of the ISO needs to match what you used to install Windows 10.
For example, I installed Windows 10 with the "International English" ISO and if I try this with the Windows 11 "US English" ISO, then it doesn't let me do an upgrade where it keeps installed programs and drivers.
Or just use Rufus[1] to create a bootable USB installer from the ISO.
Another trick that should still work, though I haven't tested it with newer Windows 11 builds: to create Windows 11 install media that will install and boot via BIOS — useful on machines where Windows doesn't work correctly under UEFI, e.g., older MacBooks that only work properly with Windows when booted via CSM — create writeable, BIOS-bootable Windows 10 x64 install media, then replace the install.wim file with one from an appropriate Windows 11 ISO.
I have an old gaming pc (i5 3570k) that I thought needed replacing since Windows 10 stopped security updates. Downloading the ISO from the Microsoft website and running this command worked a charm. Zero issues upgrading to Windows 11 and everything works exactly the same as before. Thank you!
Will this work on a version which is part of LTSC or IoT or whatever factory debloated version microsoft makes? As in, will the upgraded version preserve the IoT or LTSC designation and “debloatedness”?
> Will this work on a version which is part of LTSC or IoT
I've used the command with a Win11 LTSC/IoT 24H2 ISO. I upgraded Win10 LTSC/IoT 21H2 to Win11 24H2 LTSC/IoT. I've done this on two old notebooks, a Dell Core2Duo and a Thinkpad T430.
> Can I modify the command to go from regular windows 10 to debloated windows 11?
I setup a virtual Win10 edu to try and convert to Win11 LTSC/IoT. The only option setup gave me was to wipe out my apps and keep my personal files. That's what it did.
So the command doesn't offer much improvement over a wipe and a reload. Sorry I don't have better news.
I don't know yet. I've got a Win10 EDU I'm going to try to upgrade to Win11 IOT but I haven't pulled the trigger yet. It's in place doing some NAS duty atm.
The command doesn't ask any questions so there's no opportunity to tweak it. I'm getting a recovery plan in place before I pull the trigger on mine.
edit: I might also go another way. There are some other setup methods that might be a better fit for cross-upgrading Windows types. I'm actively investigating but it may be a month before I'm in a position to try them out.
Mostly to see what works. In this case tho I've found some remote management on workgroup PCs works better when it's Win11->Win11 (instead of Win10->Win11).
ex: With Win10->Win11 I get a fair number of crashes when remotely viewing the event log mmc.
I setup a virtual Win10 edu guest in hyper-v. I mounted a Win11 LTSC/IoT iso as a drive using hyper-v tools. When I ran the command I got the same error you did.
Next. I copied the Win11 LTSC/IoT iso to a folder in the Win10 edu guest. I mounted the ISO and ran the command and didn't get the error.
It's installing now but the setup only gave an option for saving my files, not the apps. It's not great but it makes sense.
Using updated Win 10 and current 25H2 iso downloaded direct from Microsoft.
The only thing that is perhaps a little unique is that this is a Win10 Home installation that was previously upgraded to Win10 Pro.
EDIT: Well, there is one more little detail. I used RUFUS to produce a bootable USB drive. Apparently, the install is checking for this somehow.
I reformatted and used WinRAR to extract the ISO to the USB drive and it is currently in the process of installing (30% complete). I'll post the final results.
>Windows cannot parse the provided command line options
I got the same behavior on one that had W10 22H2.
But got a more descriptive error message [/product not a recognized switch].
To fix this, had to replace the setup.exe file that is now provided with the 25H2 ISO. The current setup.exe now appears to be badly lobotomized by a decision-maker who has got to be equally brainless (less-brainful?) compared to how it was before.
Using setup.exe from the 23H2 ISO seems to be a workaround for this next annoying decline in Windows 11 suitability for industrial and sensitive enterprise applications. If I said it was like the "canary in the coal mine" some would say I was exaggerating because it is too late for that and there have been earlier warning signs for years. Not much like the tweety bird who thought he saw a puddy cat, more like the chicken on the dinner table now, or a goose who is more than fully "cooked".
Going further, it's also good to prevent the "surprise" data loss, when you are using a local "account" and not on line at all, which threat only comes from Microsoft itself with their auto-bitlocker encrypting your whole drive more aggressively on new installs like never before, the result can be worse than many types of malware/ransomware. To prevent that you need to interrupt the first boot after the upgrade files are copied, and boot instead to the Recovery Console or alternatively a separate Windows install so you can do an offline Regedit creation of a new DWORD in the target Windows\System32\Config\SYSTEM hive being upgraded; adding \HKLM\system\ControlSetXXX\Control\BitLocker\PreventDeviceEncryption, then setting value=1. This needs to be done carefully and some renaming in Regedit can be involved.
Unfortunately, even if this Registry setting preventing encryption has been previously set=1 before this type upgrade, that PreventDeviceEncryption DWORD is completely removed by this setup process. Which is why I go a little further and check manually, replacing it if necessary.
Then on the second reboot, the DWORD needs replacement again, so repeat the above process :\
Allowing you to re-live the experience as only malware-type persistence can ;)
After that when you reboot back to the target volume being upgraded (rather than the alternate utility bootmedia), the W11 setup process will proceed without encrypting. Otherwise it can be very likely to encrypt everything it has access to and it's not intended to be recoverable without a Microsoft account. Even with a Microsoft account I don't trust this, seems like the opposite of "trustworthy computing" to me :\
Anyway with that in mind the command line does perform as expected and took this PC from W10 pro 22H2 to W11 pro 25H2, preserving my installed programs and files as far as I can tell. And this is on an MBR-booting PC where Windows 10 was installed to an MBR partition, using legacy CSM with UEFI disabled. No GPT, no EFI folder, none of that.
In W10, was only using the first 64GB of a HDD as NTFS, with the remainder unallocated. My Recovery folder (containing winre.wim) was intentionally the one on the same volume as Windows 10. This direct W11 upgrade created a new 750mb type 27 ("hidden" recovery) partition immediately following the 64GB. With the new 750mb containing its new Recovery folder.
If there would not have been enough unallocated space on the drive, I believe the upgrade process would have replaced the W10 winre.wim in my C:\Recovery folder with the W11 version? Not sure at this point, but C:\Recovery\WindowsRE still contains the previous W10 winre.wim, and the new recovery partition contains the W11 winre.wim.
Edit: found a recent article documenting bitlocker problems that might be related, look at the comments:
I mean... documenting the details of the investigation to support the first decision and relying on the documented details the second time would easily explain that.
Google censors the world, together with Microsoft.
Well - it is time that the rest of the world censors these two corporation. I don't want them to restrict information.
People will find workarounds by the way. This is now a Streisand effect - as people see that Google and Microsoft try to hide information from them, they will now look at this much more closely than before, with more attention.
(Having said that, my bypass strategy is to not use Windows 11 altogether. I don't depend on it, having used Linux since 21 years now, but my machine to the left is actually using Win10, for various reasons, such as that I can fix problems of elderly relatives still using Windows. But I won't use Win11 ever with its recall-spy software. I also don't care that it can be disabled - any corporation that tries to sniff-invade on me, is evil and must be banned.)
Edit: Ok so the video was restored. That was good, but still, we need an alternative here. Google holds WAY too much power via youtube.
> This is now a Streisand effect - as people see that Google and Microsoft try to hide information from them
This comment section is wild.
The videos are up. Microsoft and Google weren't meeting in secret backrooms to censor this one channel. The most likely explanation is that a competing channel was trying to move their own videos up in the rankings by mass-reporting other videos on the topic.
It's a growing problem on social media platforms: Cutthroat channels or influencers will use alt accounts or even paid services to report their competition. They know that with enough reports in a short period of time they can get the content removed for a while, which creates a window for their own content to get more views.
The clue is the "risk of physical harm". People who abuse the report function know that the report options involving physical harm, violence, or suicide are the quickest way to get content taken down.
A tale as old as time. A long time ago I worked in DDoS prevention and the bulk of our first customers were competing gambling sites and online eyeglass retailers.
Why? Because they were all paying people to DDoS each other. Kinda silly, but good for business.
I never thought I’d live to see the day a link to Action got posted on HN but alas, it has arrived! Show those Dollar General losers across the pond how it’s really done
Action is awesome. Shopping there you quickly realize that almost everyone (except Action) is selling junk from China that they bought for pennies at huge markups.
lol. Available languages include 4 kinds of Dutch/German, 3 kinds of French, 2 kinds of Netherlands, 2 kinds of Swiss, 1 kind of Spanish, and no English. Really defined their market, I suppose.
Seems to cover most of EU languages. So that seems to be the market. Though switzerland is not part of the EU. But the no english option is weird as hell, as english is more and more lingua franca in europe.
(swiss is not its own language btw. but italian, german and french)
Zenni Optical is the antidote. Even my too-blind-for-Zeiss-VisionPro-inserts prescription in the highest refractive index lenses is under $100 for a full pair.
The landscape is a little different now than then.
At the time(and really, even now) people would get their eyeglasses from their local provider. Who cares, insurance probably covers some or all of it. Even getting contacts or glasses as a prescription was like pulling teeth, since they wanted to keep it in house.
So the new market of get your prescription, then buy online was born. And it was like the wild west, not full of eye care professionals but...mostly less than above board places all fighting for your click.
Think about it...if you finally decide to Google eyeglass frames or such, you were entering a whole new realm. And why fight over SEO, when you can just take your competition offline, as most people will click a link, watch it load for 5s, then click back and try the next.
I have no idea if the industry is still shady or not, but 20 years ago, it was full of nothing but bad actors.
I don't know if it matters at all to the conversation or not, but none of the actors(gambling or eyeglasses) were based in the US, despite their domain names and courting US customers. The DDoS company was based in the US.
> Who cares, insurance probably covers some or all of it
Exactly, this is why vision "insurance" is basically a scam, supported only by US tax laws that enable employers to offer vision "insurance" tax-free, while people buying their own eyeglasses have to pay with after-tax dollars.
Except where insanely inflated, glasses cost at most tens of dollars. Certainly not the kind of thing one needs insurance to cover.
Just a reminder that "insurance covers" doesn't mean society doesn't pay for it: all the people pay for it. The insurance company paying causes prices raises for everyone else, same country and abroad. So the whole world ends up paying more for that "insurance coverage": more for the product, more for the insurance, more in taxes that fund public free healthcare...
> Microsoft and Google weren't meeting in secret backrooms to censor this one channel
That's not the argument IMO. They don't have to be intentionally malicious in each action. A drunk driver doesn't want to kill a little girl in the road. Their prior choices shape the outcome of their later options. A drunk driver decides to get behind the wheel after drinking. A large company makes a decision to make more profit knowing there are repercussions and calculating the risk.
That's Section 1201. The takedown bit is Section 512. They're two different things.
It's also not clear how an informational YouTube video would be either a circumvention tool or an act of circumvention if nothing in the video itself is infringing.
>Two weeks ago, Rich had posted a video on installing Windows 11 25H2 with a local account. YouTube removed it, saying that it was "encouraging dangerous or illegal activities that risk serious physical harm or death."
The DMCA is from 1998. I don’t think Larry and Sergei were taking a break from inventing google so they could lobby congress from their Stanford dorm room.
> They know that with enough reports in a short period of time they can get the content removed for a while
This can be accomplished with bogus dmca notices too. Since google gets such a high volume of notices the default action is just to shoot first and ask questions later. Alarmingly, there are 0 consequences (financial or legal) for sending bogus dmca notices
They shouldn’t, because the original claimant has 10-14 days (depending on exact timing) to sue. If they don’t, they reinstate. Which considering many other folks it can take 6 months…
So Google is between a rock and a hard place here.
If they don't react quickly and decisively to reports of "possible physical harm", even if the reports seem unfounded, they'll eventually get the NY Times to say that somebody who committed suicide "previously watched a video which has been reported to Youtube multiple times, but no action was taken by Google."
You can act quickly and decisively and also correctly. Take the average number of reports per day times the average length of a reported segment times two, divide effective work hours per day by that number and hire that many people to process reports. Congrats, your average time to resolution is 24 hours.
If that's too expensive, your platform is broken. You need to be able to process user reports. If you can't, rethink what you're doing.
Not saying you’re wrong in this particular instance, but there are all sorts of areas where we accept that harm will occur at scale (e.g. that 40,000 people per year die in motor-vehicle incidents just in the US). How do we determine what is reasonable to expect?
We require auto manufacturers to include certain safety features in their vehicles, to decrease deaths to a socially acceptable level.
The central ill of centralized web platforms is that the US never mandated customer/content SLAs in regulation, even as their size necessitated that as a social good. (I.e. when they became 'too big for alternatives to be alternatives')
It wouldn't be complicated:
- If you're a platform (host user content) over X revenue...
- You are required to achieve a minimum SLA for responsiveness
- You are also required to hit minimum correctness / false positive targets
- You are also required to implement and facilitate a third-party arbitration mechanism, by which a certified arbitrator (customer's choice) can process a dispute (also with SLAs for responsiveness)
Google, Meta, Apple, Steam, Amazon, etc. could all be better, more effective platforms if they spent more time and money on resolution.
As-is, they invest what current law requires, and we get the current situation.
It’s even worse when you think about what happens when it’s NOT English + NOT mainstream content.
I really wish someone could tell me that either
1) Yes we can make a system that enables functional and effective customer support (because this is what this case is about) no matter the language
2) No we can’t because it’s fundamentally about manpower which can match the context with actual harm.
Whatever I suspect, having any definitive answer to this decides how these problems need to eventually be solved. Which in turn tells us what we should ask and hope for.
> a system that enables functional and effective customer support
I'm not saying that it's humans, but it's humans.
Augmented by technology, but the only currently viable arbitrator of human-generated edge cases is another human.
If a platform can't afford to hire moderation resources to do the job effectively (read: skilled resources in enough quantity to make effective decisions), then it's not a viable business.
> If a platform can't afford to hire moderation resources to do the job effectively (read: skilled resources in enough quantity to make effective decisions), then it's not a viable business.
But, it is viable. Many profitable businesses exist that don't pay for this.
One may instead mean that they want such businesses to be made non viable, in which case we should critically consider which business models that we might currently like other consequences of may be made non viable. For example, will users suddenly need to pay per post? If so, is that worth the trade-off?
Businesses that are profiting off un-paid-for externalities aren't socially sustainable businesses. They're just economic scams that happen to be legal.
Imho, we should do what we can to make sure they're required to pay for those externalities.
Then, they either figure out a way to do that profitably (great! innovation!) or they go under.
But we shouldn't allow them to continue to profit by causing external ills.
> Then, they either figure out a way to do that profitably (great! innovation!) or they go under.
They do figure out how. That's the problem. This stuff is all trade offs.
If you say they have to remove the videos or they're in trouble then they remove the videos even if they shouldn't.
You can come up with some other rule but you can't eliminate the trade off so the choice you're making is how you want to pay. Do you want more illegitimate takedowns or less censorship of whatever you were trying to censor?
If you tried to mandate total perfection then they wouldn't be able to do it and neither would anybody else, and then you don't have video hosting. Which nobody is going to accept.
Given YouTube's profits, I think it's fair to say there's a substantial viable middle ground of much more vigorous (and labor intensive) appeals than what's currently done.
And that requirement can be created by more robust, outcome-defined regulation.
> Given YouTube's profits, I think it's fair to say there's a substantial viable middle ground of much more vigorous (and labor intensive) appeals than what's currently done.
People keep looking at the absolute amount of profit across a massive service and assuming that it means they could afford to do something expensive. But the cost of the expensive thing is proportional to the size of the service, and then they can't, because dividing the profits by the number of hours of video turns into an amount of money that doesn't buy you that.
> And that requirement can be created by more robust, outcome-defined regulation.
What are you proposing exactly?
Outcome-based metrics are the things that often fail the hardest. It's reasonable to have a given level of human review when you have functioning CAPTCHAs on the reporting function to rate limit spam reports, but if you then require that by law and LLMs come around that can both solve CAPTCHAs and auto-generate spam reports to target competitors etc., now your cost of doing human review has gone up by many fold but you're still expected to meet the same outcomes. Then they either have to tune whatever metric you're not forcing them to meet up to draconian hellscape levels to meet the one you're demanding or you're now demanding they do something that nobody knows how to do whatsoever, both of which are unreasonable.
And all of this is because the government doesn't know how to solve the problem either. If you want to prohibit things with a "risk of physical harm" then you have to hire law enforcement to go drink from the fire hose and try to find those things so the perpetrators can be prosecuted. But that's really expensive to do properly so the government wants to fob it off on someone else and then feign indignation when they can't solve it either.
Please explain what kind of magic your solution uses to ensure that reports always come in at a perfectly even pace without any peaks or valleys. Because without that, your proposed approach will not work.
They have a history of removing videos that describe things they don't like under the guise of "harm", eg Linus Tech Tips video on De-Googling your life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apdZ7xmytiQ
Google incentivizes takedown vote abuse.
1. 3 Strikes rules for channels
2. Automatic takedown systems based on votes
3. Incentivizing competing channels with ads
4. No verification/limits/punishment of bogus takedown voters and vote bots
5. Lack of democritized, universal takedowns of equivalent content
Does Microsoft unfairly benefit from Google's takedown tirefire? I do not know.
But if I were designing a voting system for takedowns it would be:
1. 1 non-DMCA takedown vote per user per year
2. No takedown votes for accounts less than 1 year old
3. Takedown all equivalent content when a video is voted down.
4. Verification of DMCA ownership before taking down DMCA-protected content.
The problem I see with that attitude is that it's excusing companies with immense profits from having even the tiniest modicum of actual human review for things.
YouTube claim these were not automated actions. This explicitly rules out "algorithm/LLM makes a stupid mistake" but also seems to rule out "hits a threshold of community reports and gets automatically taken down pending manual review".
Also, it doesn't even need to be collusion between Microsoft and Google, but to pretend like that's never a thing is to be ignorant of history.
Stop defending these big companies for these things. Even if your version of the story is true, the fact they allow their platform to be abused this way is incredibly damaging to content creators trying to spread awareness of issues.
But also, do you seriously think there is a massive amount of competition at the scale of a 330k subscriber channel for people to bother pulling off this kind of attack for two videos on bypassing Windows 11 account and hardware requirements?
Regardless of what happened here, Google is to blame at least for the tools they have made.
As for Microsoft, I don't think there's anything disagreeable with saying that they've tried hard to get people to switch to hardware with their TPM implementation and lying about the reasons. Likewise for forcing Microsoft accounts on people. I am not certain they were involved in this case, but they created the need for this kind of video to exist, so they are also implicated here.
> But also, do you seriously think there is a massive amount of competition at the scale of a 330k subscriber channel for people to bother pulling off this kind of attack for two videos on bypassing Windows 11 account and hardware requirements
Enough to cause this behavior. I don’t know if theres a mathematical or organization law or something, but it seems like theres always a way to abuse review mechanisms for large communities / sites.
Never enough manpower to do review for each case. Or reviews take a long time.
> Never enough manpower to do review for each case.
Manpower at a given salary cost.
All content platforms could throw more money at this problem, hire more / more skilled reviewers, and create better outcomes. Or spend less and get worse.
It's a choice under their control, not an inevitability.
Content hosts are damned if they do and damned if they don't. If they take their time and are cautious with reports, people end up swamped with garbage that people complain about. If they try to be quick to clean up the garbage, some clean stuff get caught and people complain.
The only frequent obvious problem I see is Youtube not telling people why their videos get hidden or taken down or down ranked. Long time creators get left in the dark from random big changes to the platform that could be solved with an email.
In the olden days this would simply be solved by... having customer support befitting the size of the company. Of course nowadays that's "inneficient".
We have companies with billions of customers but smaller customer service than a mid-sized retailer from the 90s. Something is not right.
IME it's especially bad with Admob. They've purposefully kept their email contact option broken for years and the only "help" you can access is from their forum, which is the absolute worst and never provides any meaningful resolutions. It's awful.
Google, Facebook etc does have support for some customers. If you have a $10m a year advertising account with them I’m sure you’ll have an account manager.
People posting on these sites as content creators aren’t customers.
What became of the old ruse of simply not listening to contents that one find objectionable? Now it needs to be nuked from orbit yesterday to make sure nobody's pure eyes glance at it.
The world got more connected and we all had to suffer the consequences of other people consuming propaganda, so we decided it should be banned, except for the ones who consume it, who decided the same process should be used to ban reality and only allow propaganda.
They are absolutely aware of these sorts of abuses. I'll bet my spleen that it shows up as a line item in the roadmapping docs of their content integrity/T&S teams.
The root problem is twofold: the inability to reliably automate distinguishing "good actor" and "bad actor", and a lack of will to throw serious resources at solving the problem via manual, high precision moderation.
In certain niches, the marginal value of kneecapping the competition exceeds the viable budget for counteracting gaming. It may be a quirk of this reality’s hyperparameters that a UGC media monopoly inevitably suffers from this. Or maybe at a certain point it hits their bottom line and better enforcement is contrived.
IMO, major hosting providers ought to implement a function to neuter mass-reporting. Some threshold past which each additional report lowers the priority in the stack.
YouTube frequently claims this and are frequently caught lying. (Oh, you really watched this one hour video and reached your decision in an email sent 96 seconds after the appeal was submitted? Yeah okay...)
They'll silently fix the edge case in the OP and never admit it was any kind of algorithmic (OR human) failure.
I'm aware that there's a chance that Google is lying, I'm just pointing out that their comment doesn't make any sense if they believe that Google deserves the benefit of the doubt.
The video was restored because of the noise the takedown created. Small creators have no voice and for every big channel that can ignite a PR backlash there are potentially thousands that would disappear without trace or chances to be restored. YouTube has been unreliable for years, but AI just makes it even more so; how could one base their business on such an unprofessional and unstable partner that appears managed by kids with too much power in their hands? An alternative is badly needed asap.
> Rich appealed both immediately. The first appeal was denied in 45 minutes. The second in just five.
> The platform claimed its "initial actions" (could be either the first takedown or appeal denial, or both) were not the result of automation.
If they claim that a non automated review occurred but then still took down/denied appeal, what caused them to change course?
What is your source that the restoration of the video was not because of the noise?
Pattern recognition, an innate skill in most humans. When most bogus takedowns are not reversed, but the more people you see talking about them, the more likely they are to get reversed, you can easily see the pattern.
Yep. While my mom was working she needed too many Windows-only applications. But once she retired, I set her up with a Linux desktop and it's been smooth sailing.
I installed zorin on an old machine that was given to me because it wouldn’t run win 11. I like it a lot. Debian based, clean smooth UI. Just tell them Microsoft improved the user experience with windows 11.
X X Windows L.E. => (e)X X Windows (Wayland) L.E. (Linux Edition)
Even the one major 'windows' app that my mom needs to use is going Web only... so I figure if I install Debian Stable + Widevine that'll cover 99.9% of the use case and I gain an OS that just works correctly.
i think a good ubuntu is a bit better than just debian for this. probably linux mint or kubuntu. for just debian, then mint debian edition or mx linux would be best, imo
generally, it's more user-friendly and has more third-party stuff like codecs and drivers. i think it's also got more of a community to help with issues, whether googling or using the irc client that normally comes with a distro.
I feel your passion, but I feel this is a little hyperbolic? I feel your passion is directed more at UEFI secure-boot than at Linux. I am no lover of the UEFI secure-boot world, using shims as a first-stage boot loader component whose job is to bridge the firmware’s trusted key infrastructure (typically Microsoft’s signing key) to a Linux (or other non-Windows) bootloader/kernel chain.
> Linux is under control of the same companies
Linux is indeed open source, so are you trying to say that "Linux is EFFECTIVELY under control of the same companies VIA UEFI WITH SECURE BOOT ENABLED"? Or is there a big-Tech cabal controlling Linux in another manner? I get that most big-Tech companies are major contributors to open source projects.
> all major distributions (Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu) ship with a shim signed by Microsoft
Having a shim signed by Microsoft makes no difference if these distributions are being installed on hardware without UEFI firmware implemented on the motherboard’s SPI flash e.g. motherboards from Purism (Librem Laptops), System76 (Thelio, Galago Pro, etc.), Framework Laptop (2021 →), Star Labs, Raspberry Pi / Single-Board Computers and uncountable DIY PC builds with motherboards (ASUS, ASRock, Gigabyte, etc.) that expose Secure Boot options. It is usually only when consumer hardware is being used from major OEMs (Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc.) that ship with only Microsoft’s key in the firmware trust database.
> and systemd
You are suggesting that “systemd” is also part of the lock-in or control (in your mind) of those distributions. But strictly in the context of shim and Secure Boot, systemd is not the same issue: systemd is an init-system/process manager in userland, not part of the firmware/boot loader signature infrastructure. Major distros use systemd, so from a “vendor/lock-in” narrative they may lump bootloader trust and systemd governance together. But strictly speaking your assertion is more of a opinion/ideological piece than a formal technical dependency.
> *BSD is the only escape
Not true. Not all Linux distributions use it — Tails, Qubes OS, PureOS, Alpine, Void, Gentoo, etc., deliberately avoid it. Most minimalistic, privacy, or DIY distributions refuse the Microsoft-signed shim route because their users are expected to control their firmware settings or use owner-controlled keys.
You're technically correct, but you're slicing the argument so thin it disappears
The YouTube drama you glossed over is the point: we've reached a stage where explaining how to bypass Microsoft's arbitrary hardware requirements gets censored for "physical harm"
On systemd: calling it a Red Hat/Microsoft, driven monoculture that mediates everything from device mounts to DNS is accurate, the same consolidation that gave us Microsoft signed boot chains also delivered one init system to rule them all, dismissing this as "merely ideological" is exactly how normalization works, by the time it's a technical dependency, it's alreadt too late, look at the "cloud" ecosystem..
You listed exceptions, but let's be honest, they are only just distros.. Tails and Qubes are security, hardened research tools, not daily drivers for "elderly relatives". Alpine, Gentoo and Void require deep knowledge, technical skills and an ongoing maintenance that defeats the "set it and forget it" goal
And yes, you can buy a Purism or System76 laptop, but that's the exception that proves the rule: you must pay a premium and choose their hardware to escape the shim problem, that's not freedom; it's choosing your corporate master from a smaller menu, all subject to the same master/ideology
*BSD remains the only ecosystem offering a complete, usable desktop without either a Microsoft signature or a sprawling, vendor, controlled init system, if that sounds hyperbolic, it's because the Overton window has already shifted so far toward corporate control that stating the obvious appears radical
Today Linux supports most HW but Tomorrow, if the Chip Security Act passes, chips will be legally required to contain tracking and kill-switch mechanisms, while the Act doesn't directly mandate Linux to restrict hardware support, it creates the legal infrastructure for exactly that: either mainstream distributions cooperate with the surveillance architecture or risk being barred from running on modern hardware
The 'choice' becomes BigTech-approved Linux that supports backdoored silicon, or niche distros that can't run on any new machine
I could continue with many more examples, but I feel like none of the people over hear understand the point
Windows 10 is also the stop I'm getting off at. Windows 11 does not serve me and it does not suit my needs. Windows 10 was not too great either, debloated was somewhat manageable to run on one of my machines. It's inertia of all these years, my first windows installation was Win 95. But Windows 11 is a horror show I don't want take part in and warn anyone that could be tricked into using to stay away.
I realize crypto has become dominated by the investment community, but money is not just a store of value. As a medium of exchange, fiat currencies use money to implement monetary policy and control. Electronic exchange of fiat currency is a permission based activity, and significant transactions are simply disallowed and users often debanked. You don't have to wait for a monetary system to collapse before crypto has meaningful value. That value can come from simply not being subject to corrupt monetary policies and control.
And if they do care they will find workarounds as you said.
Nothing will change, the frog has been sitting in boiling water for more than a generation now and the newbloods never experienced the computational freedom you hold dear; they will happily use whatever corporate surveillance technology is being forced upon them. They will even defend it to the bone if you try to take it away
Microsoft is just a video game company to me, I can live without its products and be happier. With Google though, things are bit different, they have Google Maps and YouTube, which I use nearly on daily basis. I can probably replace Google Maps with something else, even though that will probable be a downgrade in terms of user experience, however replacing YouTube is impossible, so many unique content in it.
(a big) But YouTube has grown to be such a monopoly, that they now dictate what we are going to be able to watch on the web.
This is sadly so hard to change, so many creators are now literally working "for" YouTube, and there are so many quality videos there.
Replacing YouTube with a drop-in substitution is obviously impossible, but it's not that hard to replace with a different hobby. I've never used YouTube to any significant degree, and manage pretty well without it.
I think it's only a matter of time before youtube starts injecting ads directly into the video stream, and only allow streaming it at the actual playback speed.
They might even put the ads in different places for different users to throw off things like Sponsorblock.
You should try just paying the $8. Its honestly a great value for all the entertainment you get.
It is literally better in every way and helps support the content creators whose work you enjoy. As a bonus it includes YouTube music.
I guess taking those creators work without paying using adblock is one way to live, but that doesnt give you the moral high ground you think it does and your entitled attitude is kind of nasty. Do you really feel like YouTube and all of those creators owe you free shit? Just don't use it if you hate commercials that much and can't afford 8 lousy bucks.
No I don't work there. I'm just a fan who thinks the excuses people make to steal are gross.
At least you're bargaining instead of demanding, I respect that.
I would have to jump through all kinds of hoops to do that, like creating an account, staying logged in, and on top of that I would still need to have my adblocker to fix their website trying to shove "trending" videos down my throat. The real recommendations based off viewing history work great with a disposable anonymous cookie.
Simply put, paying doesn't provide enough value over doing it the free way. This is YouTube's problem, not mine. I don't pirate games, simply because buying them from steam or gog is a much nicer user experience than pirating the games. But dealing with google and getting so little in return, still needing to use extensions to fix their crap website anyway? Nah, I don't care about their business model.
What is so much of value in YouTube that you cannot live without? The platform has turned into clickbait conspiracy board, exactly because creators are trying to adapt to the algorithm. Apart from fun gaming channels, there are very few channels where you can actually learn something. It’s mostly noise.
I’m having much more trouble imagining life without Google Maps that without YouTube.
Google Maps is garbage as well, full of inaccurate shit or meme stuff people added but the process of getting it fixed has been made worse and worse over the years.
The report system has been gimped massively,can't even type in reasons any more just have to select from some limited options and hope for the best. Took me over half a year of reporting a permanent street closure near me for them to actually change it and all the whole they were happy to direct people and cars down it . Other times they just outright reject reports without any reason.
Directions have got more sucky over the years.
More and more advertising has creeped into the maps as well, seeing the logos for stores and restaurants over other places and when zoomed out because they paid to be boosted.
I only use Google for street view and, on google earth, for historical aerial imagery these days, not for navigation. For that I use apps that use OSM like Organic Maps or now CoMaps.
Google Maps has a practical value. I know why I use it - I want to get to somewhere, I open the app, type my destination and I'm given a route. Most of the times it has worked very well, in numerous different countries that I visited.
I find it hard to extract the same practical value from YouTube. There have been cases where I would see how people repair stuff and to some degree it has been useful but it is hard to find that "useful" type of video you look for among all the noise. Product review videos are always kind of fishy, because reviewers are mostly sponsored. So I can't quite get to extract anything of great value from YouTube.
Btw, thank you for the Organic Maps tip. Looks really really cool!
I've had a pretty good experience with OpenStreetMap to replace Google Maps. For YouTube it depends on your needs. If it's just entertainment there's Nebula, Odysee, Nicovideo, Twitch, Dailymotion, et cetera. For more educational content the alternatives can be a bit hit-or-miss.
That said, YouTube has been auto-dubbing videos using an algorithm that overdubs English spoken by people with an accent, which I consider discriminatory (if not outright racist), so I'm trying the various alternatives now. In a few months I think I'll have more of an opinion about them.
At this point I'm pretty sure my next phone will be GrapheneOS, on whichever hardware they support at the time I want to buy a new phone. As a bonus it'll probably be really annoying to use because of the security, which will make me use it less.
I'll just have to remember to never visit Spain, lest I get arrested for drug trafficking because of my phone.
Maybe not totally related but I remember a comment from few years which lets say, was "dismissed" at the time by votes where user said that Google doesn't innovate when it comes to web standards but pushes own agenda by planted people at W3C. To ensure their browser will work for them and not for the user.
Microsoft on the other hand seems to be reheating the old Palladium/Trusted Computing concept enhanced now by Copilot. This idea was already criticized over 20 years ago as a dangerous attempt of turning desktop machines to uncontrollable appliances which would run only approved software and serve, access approved safe content rigged with DRM. And frankly, with all this play with chat control, age verification it's hard to not see some similarities. Maybe that's where this is all going.
most games run in Ubuntu with steam now, Google workspace replaced excel for the great majority of tasks online and I ubuntu improved a lot drivers support.
I'm happy to work in Linux and see the great improvements they did thru decades
> (Having said that, my bypass strategy is to not use Windows 11 altogether. I don't depend on it, having used Linux since 21 years now,
I'm not quite that cool, but I have been using it full time since about 2009, so I'm not too far behind :)
The only time that I have to use Windows is because I have to play tech support for my parents, because despite considerable effort on my end, I have been completely unsuccessful at convincing them to move to Linux or Mac. It's a little annoying, because when I bring up the subject they act like I should just "live and let live", but that's a really stupid argument when they're saying this while I am fixing their computer. Somehow this is lost on them.
I have complained about this a bunch of times on here, but I'll say it again: If you work on Windows Update, then you should consider any career other than software engineer. Windows Update has made the world a worse place because it disincentivizes updating your computer, leading to an increase in open. Update software isn't allowed to suck.
Obviously it depends on your relationship, but it's not really nice of them to insist on your tech support like this AND refuse to make it easier for you AND be ungrateful (?) for it. You could set a date after which you won't help anymore unless they switch to Linux or Mac.
To be fair, they are always extremely thankful when I help them out with stuff.
It didn’t bother me that much until a few months ago when an auto update to Windows 11 bricked my mom’s computer, and since Windows won’t support filesystem that didn’t coexist with dinosaurs and because System Restore doesn’t work, and because the automatic repair tools never work, I ended up having to walk them through flashing a drive with a fresh copy of Windows 11 to get it working.
Oh, also, the diagnostic tools don’t appear to work, and they don’t really have “live USB” support for anything anymore, so I actually had to first walk my dad through flashing Ubuntu to a drive so I could tmate in, mount the NTFS drive and rsync all the files to my server. The only way to save Windows and NTFS is to use Linux, apparently:
If they were running Linux, I would have them set up with automatic system snapshots with ZFS and since ZFS is actually a competently built filesystem the snapshots would actually work.
I am ragging on filesystems but it’s not even inherent to filesystems. I run NixOS on my laptop and every time I do a rebuild it takes a snapshot, so if I break something I can just reboot and choose an older generation, and this works even on ext4. I think this is how Windows System Restore is supposed to work but it has the slight disadvantage of not actually working, or it is so limited so as to be useless (e.g. you apparently cannot restore a Windows 10 restore point from a Windows 11 install, a big problem if the auto update to Windows 11 was the actual problem).
I have debated giving the ultimatum, and I haven’t ruled it out, but in order for it to work I need to be willing to stick to my guns if they call my bluff, and I don’t know that I am there yet. I have been trying to plant the seed though it has not been successful.
I'm a bit of an LLM skeptic but chatgpt could probably explain this kind of thing pretty well and a) it's interactive so you can ask if you don't understand a step b) there will be no filler to pad the content for ads (well not at the moment anyway)
Suppose we hadn't done so; what alternative method of disseminating information might we have used, that would have had within a few orders of magnitude of the same reach?
The implication here is that YouTube enabled the reach it got; whereas in reality the reach was induced because of the faith we put in it. Had we not done so, then whatever alternative method of communication we did put our faith in - like blog posts, or self-hosting videos - would have had the same reach.
Framing it in terms of trust is already problematic.
We don't trust the NYTimes or Washington Post, they are a source of information that needs to be taken with shovels of salt and require additional research to get to anything trustworthy. And we always understood that was their role.
We don't trust supermarkets or retailers to give us important pricing information, we do the research to get anything actionable.
Because in order for freedom of speech you also need freedom for people to say dumb and abhorrent things. There are some clear bad things like hate speech, and Grey things like Covid conspiracies, maybe they should be banned, but removal of w11 bypasses sends a clear message that google is the lapdog for other big businesses.
and it is why total freedom of speech on a platform does not mean we can trust it. maybe even the opposite because people who tell a lie are more motivated (money or whatever)
I am not justifying w11 video removal I'm just saying thinking youtube trustworthy because it's open to everybody is a mistake
We can't and we shouldn't, these people only care about making more money, even if it means teenagers contracting diseases in the process. They are then using the money to shape the public opinion about them. The societal norms should change in a way that makes these people miserable the more they are successful IMHO.
I'm not even sure I know who Billie Eilish really is but she was all over Reddit for telling billionaires to donate their money.
More or less, the charitable and responsible approach to being ultra-rich, and which has disappeared in this century.
I see the people in charge of these big corporations as lizards, given every decision they take seems to be anti-Humanity. We should cherish non-profits, small businesses, having a good and boring life, doing normal things. Instead we idolise being successful, rich, or famous. What a stupid system…
You can't, and this was readily apparent in 2020 with Covid. Even doctors presenting factual information got censored and de-platformed by YouTube.
The only real competing video platform that promises no censorship is Rumble ( https://rumble.com ), but it has a very right-wing slant due to conservatives flocking to it during all the Covid-era social media censorship.
Yeah the moment they started I knew it was doomed to fail. Get it wrong once and your credibility is ruined. They should have never tried to censor content outside of what is legally required and therefore defined.
Society is doomed because we stopped silencing disinformation peddlers. We know what happens when Nazis are allowed to spread propaganda freely - because that happened one time in Germany, and we saw the results. We don't know what happens when antivaxxers are allowed to spread propaganda freely, but it's not hard to guess, and measles cases are on the rise. You can argue it's not YouTube's problem to solve, but nobody else is solving it, so it's hard for me to blame them for trying.
There's also this annoying pattern where 98% of the complaints about censorship are from people who are mad that the objectively stupid and dangerous stuff they were trying to profit from got censored, so it becomes a "boy who cried wolf" situation where any complaint about internet censorship is ignored on the assumption it's one of those. (What if there really is a Nigerian prince who needs my help, and I don't read his email?)
This time, though... Society is not being destroyed by people pirating Windows 11. That is entirely different from censoring things that destroy society, and they don't have a good excuse.
>Society is doomed because we stopped silencing disinformation peddlers. We know what happens when Nazis are allowed to spread propaganda freely - because that happened one time in Germany, and we saw the results.
That one time in Germany, actually an 80 year long ongoing event in central Europe. Hitler didn't wake up one day with a novel idea about the Jews and the place of the German people, these were foundational ideas in the culture at least as far back as Wagner.
If anything, this pro-censorship argument is self defeating, because the "disinformation" peddlers that were silenced in the second reich were generally those of the liberal, anglo, and francophilic variety, those who would seek to decenter the goal of a collective German destiny.
Censorship is only ever a good if you find yourself a part of the group that would be doing the censoring.
> The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible place to live even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong.
I looked at the front page alone and it's full of right wing hot takes and neo-nazis. If a platform wants to accept white-supremacists that's one thing. When it's right on their front page though it's being actively promoted.
It's because the only valid argument nazis have for why they should be allowed to broadcast what they have to say is that (in most jurisdictions) it's not literally illegal to.
The point is to prevent viral videos from getting widely viewed during their peak. To cut it off. It doesn't matter if the block is removed some days or weeks later and then there's a trickle of traffic. This is the status quo for corporations that wish to suppress content on Alphabet's platforms. Another well known recent example is Forbes attacks on Gamer's Nexus investigative documentary on the GPU black market that competed with their video.
Isn't the damage done though? Like if they were down at the time when people were told that win10 reached end of support and it's time to get on 11 does it matter that they are up now?
Anyway I doubt youtube did this intentionally, but it does show how vulnerable their system is to false reports.
If Windows keeps going in this direction, I will try again.
But in the past 20 years I tried using Linux on the desktop a couple of times.
It always ends the same way - out of the blue it refuses to boot. Of course there's usually a solution, but I just really don't like that my PC can just suddenly decide that I'll be troubleshooting for the rest of the day, usually in front of some very minimal "maintenance" CLI. And that's if I got the time - I may have to use my laptop for the rest of the week, now dreading the weekend instead of welcoming it.
Right now I'd have to do a bunch of research first. Would I still be able to play all the games I play with my friends once a week? I have 3 monitors, one of them has a different DPI than the others, did they fix that by now? I got a stream deck, will that be essentially useless? Is my webcam / mic supported? Do I need to learn about various audio architectures before I can ever use a mic again? Which ones of the dozens of apps I use every day can be made to run under Linux?
It'll probably take a 40-hour work week to get to like 90% of where I was on Windows, and then I'd consider myself lucky that I got that much to work at all. And then I'd start waiting for the first "troubleshooting day".
With all that negativity I have to also say that I adore Linux on the server. When all you need in terms of hardware is basically a CPU and any number of storage devices and all you get in terms of UI is SSH, Linux is far superior to anything else.
If you want to avoid boot issues, stay away from Arch-based platforms. Their goofy pacman installer has borked my boot numerous times. I prefer Debian-based or specifically for recent-enough-packages-and-stable desktop, Debian Testing.
Yes I do that. Half the time it just deletes the grub generated image for some reason. So the solution is to often mount the drive and grub update. Ridiculous that it even happens though.
Distros like Mint, Ubuntu, Bluefin, etc all annoy me to the same extent as Windows.
Distros like Arch, NixOS (my current laptop driver) or even Debian require a bunch of tinkering to get some things to behave properly.
Also, I get tired of all the tech "reboots", eg the 3 or 4 different ways of setting up network or DNS, pipewire vs pulseaudio vs whatever, Wayland vs X11, etc.
It was the same problems on the Fedora and Ubuntu since ever (I have Linux-based work laptop). Also on Fedora i had to upgrade very slowly, so they could release bugfixes - stable new releases were always crippling my ** Dell somehow.
Easier to work on than Windows but my Linux pisses me off every day.
Problems with docks, forgetting all monitor setups except for the last dock (I use three, two at the office, one at home), Zoom ALWAYS having problems with screensharing, Network Manager issues since forever (can't VPN like a human being, have to use vpnc like an animal), etc, etc.
Ah yes. The Linux user is always holding it wrong.
In my case it stems from having to deal with multiple distros (and multiple generations of distros, eg 3 LTS Ubuntus) professionally.
In other cases, distros give a choice on which tools to use, usually because the new one is better (but also happens to come with its own new bugs).
Unrelated, I love that any "why aren't you using Linux?" question is actually almost always just a thinly veiled "let me tell you why you're wrong" plant.
That's actually the opposite of what I said. All those issues seem to come from the fact that the user didn't choose a distribution where it's "one-click install".
If you came to me and said "I tried Arch Linux and my installation broke after every update", I think it's fair to say that it's something you should've expected before you installed the distribution. It's unfair to make the comparison for stability between Windows and Linux if your only example is Arch Linux.
So yes, I maintain that the distribution choice is important and that if you constantly run into issues, it's probably a problem with your distribution (or your use thereof).
"You chose the wrong distro" is very much in the "you're holding it wrong" vein, in my book.
If there's one thing I'll admit to "doing it wrong" it's that I've been on a distro-hopping binge the past few years because I've (fortunately) not actually needed my laptop as a daily driver, so I've experienced a bunch of them and, so far, none of them have given me a compelling reason to stay.
Many have been interesting (particularly NixOS and Bluefin), some have been easy until you decide you want to get away from defaults (Mint comes to mind). All of them have had some quirks/issues.
I haven't tried a SUSE in probably 25 years so maybe that'll be my next hop.
Mind you, I've had Linux devices for 30 years and I was also a FreeBSD-as-my-main-desktop user for about a decade, so it's not like I'm not into this kind of tech.
I see. Sorry if I came off as trying to invalidate your experience. That's not what I meant.
I've tried about 4 or 5 distros before settling on openSUSE Tumbleweed (now on my 4th or so year). Linux Mint, Fedora, Kubuntu, Solus, Manjaro...
Ironically, I find Tumbleweed (a rolling distro) more reliable than all the others I've tried. I can't say it's stable per se, but if something breaks you can rollback very easily. Doesn't break often, though.
I've been using openSUSE Tumbleweed for years and while it is decently stable, it is far from perfect.
For example i think the first issue any new user will face is with many codecs not being available in the official repository distros, making various sites (and video plays) unusable. The solution to that one is simple, add packman, which is a community repository that contains all codecs - but IIRC packman is not mentioned anywhere during the install, it is something you need to search for (it is in the wiki). However, packman very often conflicts with the official repos when it comes to updates, making all GUI-based ones (that do not seem to handle cross-repo conflicts like zypper) pretty much unusable as they always give up in the presence of a conflict. And unfortunately some comments i've seen (mainly on Reddit) from people working on the distro seem to indicate at least a minor hostility towards using packman, so i do not see this being solved any time soon.
For an experienced Linux user this is a trivial issue, something that i doubt most (long time) openSUSE Tumbleweed users would even think about, but for someone new to Linux it can be a larger issue they wont find in distros like Debian (though they may find other issues :-P).
There have been other issues i had with openSUSE Tumbleweed, like -e.g- at some point after an update every 3D game had some significant input lag regardless of vsync state. I never solved that one, i just rolled back updates (snapper is great for that, but again an advanced Linux user feature) until at some point -months later- the problem stopped happening. Though now i have another issue where the X server randomly starts not updating the screen for random numbers of milliseconds - essentially it feels as if the entire thing is stuttering - but weirdly enough there are no CPU or GPU usage spikes and it doesn't seem to be relevant to CPU/GPU usage at all. If anything, it does not happen at all if there is some OpenGL or Vulkan program running in a window (so it doesn't affect games at all, just regular desktop use) and sometimes i just end up running vkcube in another virtual desktop (it doesn't matter if the output is visible or not) to avoid it. My guess is that there is some sort of scheduling bug in the modesetting driver as i never had that issue with the amdgpu driver (my guess is the modesetting driver doesn't get as much testing as the amdgpu driver on AMD GPUs), but the amdgpu driver causes the X server to hang after i suspend and resume my desktop since i got a RX 7900 XTX (it did not happen with my RX 5700 XT, which was rock solid), so it is choice between the lesser evil.
> I so badly want to jump ship entirely, but there's several things holding me back. I do music production as a hobby and Ableton Live doesn't play nice with Linux. In fact it seems anything that is resource intensive without native linux support has some issues. I'm also an MS stack developer, so things like Visual Studio Pro aren't available (although I've been using Cursor IDE more and more these days). Lastly I have some games acquired through "the high seas" in which a work-around doesn't exist for compatibility.
The responses I got were to switch to different software. No, no, and no. I paid a lot of money for Ableton Suite and poured many many hours into learning how to use it; it's the DAW I prefer to use, I don't want to switch.
Having said this, I did try to dual boot recently with Linux Mint, and once again ran into headaches getting my Logitech mouse buttons to work.
Ableton seems to run under Proton (a compatability layer intended for games) with reasonable-but-slightly-higher-latency of 16-20ms per user reports.
This should generally work for games of various origins as well.
Extra mouse buttons should generally map correctly. For me, my Logitech MX Master 3 works under Arch. You may need to add udev rules if your mouse generally works but additional buttons don't seem bindable.
Try an Arch linux based distro, Omarchy or Manjaro. Most of these tweaky things will generally work better since you will be on the latest versions of software.
If Linux was so good shit would run faster not slower.
Objectively if you want to run desktop performance intensive software, Linux is not the primary place unless it’s AI/HPC or crypto related. Linux is a bad choice for gaming and people like you who try to pretend like it’s not are wrong and they should feel bad for spreading lies on the internet.
Because the ads are the devil I know and can be defeated. Linux for desktop has been the bottom contender YoY because it is still not reliable enough for daily use, especially on laptops.
My requirement is not to have a random Linux evening. Whenever I try Linux, it eventually involves one or two of these Linux evenings to get something working or something fixed. I'm just done with those. Windows on laptop will sleep and wake consistently without bluescreen. Once the ads are removed, its great. I much prefer battling ad injection to battling critical functional issues. Ads can be ignored until I do something about them; Kernel panicking and locked up screen cannot be ignored.
Granted, I don't use the sleep feature because I'm on a desktop and seeding Linux ISOs.
But whenever I run into an issue after an update, I just rollback and wait for a few more days because it usually gets fixed. More often than not, it's not even an issue that deserves to rollback, let alone spend a whole evening troubleshooting.
Next time you try a Linux distribution, may I suggest openSUSE Tumbleweed with KDE Plasma?
Because it doesn’t work reliably on the surface pro 4. Yes, I have tried surface-linux, and no it doesn’t work well enough. When shutting down, the machine actually doesn’t shut down and my battery was dead the next morning. The boot process sometimes hangs. The OS doesn’t properly differentiate between finger and stylus. It doesn’t seem to do palm recognition. Etc…
I know this is a special case: hardware with specific Microsoft firmware. But I imagine that other people have other specific cases.
My time involved in making Linux work right mainly, there's always minor issues that take a lot of effort to solve. Like my audio interface has CH 1&2 working fine, but CH 3&4 are at half volume no matter what I do, and after waking from sleep it stops working entirely. And this is an interface with no special drivers needed.
Also Lightroom and Fusion 360 don't run on Linux, fusion kind of works through wine but barely, and lightroom does not work at all.
Half the time I woke it from sleep the lockscreen would be broken and unresponsive too, requiring a reboot.
Overall its just too much time to figure out these problems, windows just works with very little involvement on my part.
Dual booting is the worst possible combination, given that any windows update will kill the linux bootloader (major update to be fair, but it will happen and then you have to recovery iso to fix the bootloader every time). Plus having to disable all boot optimizations on the windows side because of tainted filesystem that linux can't figure out without risk of data destruction. I'd rather just use a VM - but the same games that don't run on linux also dont want you playing in a VM.
This is no longer true, and has been for close to a decade now. If you sandbox the Windows bootloader in a directory it will not be able to mess up your custom boot loading config, especially booting to the kernel from UEFI.
I've been dual booting windows/arch for almost 1 years now. Except the rare case that windows fucks my grub and I have to mkconfig again it'd been smooth sailing.
I have them on the separate nvmes and I disable Linux nvme before I boot into windows.
Last time I accidentally inserted encrypted pendrive I use in Linux when my windows was booted, it immediately offered razing the partition to the ground, creating a new one and quick formatting it. Very helpfully "OK" was preselected. If I was a bit more tired I'd be a bit sad.
Windows is intentionally hostile to anything non-windows. Enjoy your dual booting while it lasts :)
Yep. I've been a paying Google Workspace user for almost 20 years now (in the various iterations of the product name).
Some stuff goes in GitHub, none of which I actually truly care about though.
I'm sure you'll groan. :)
But hey, if it's good enough for Cloudflare and Datadog (two past employers), it's good enough for me.
I also may be weird because I don't own any media and I'm perfectly happy with the streaming model. I enjoy not having the mental load of thinking about self-hosting and backing up terabytes of stuff.
Yeah it makes it very easy to be OS-independant. I have backups of my whole home directory so if anything goes awry I can just reinstall software as I go and restore my config files from the most recent backup.
I have a Nextcloud instance for family to store files, though.
Yeah, but presumably that's not acceptable to the person who talks about "(not) caring about the privacy of data you put in windows" in the ancestor comment, which is why I mentioned rebooting.
I don't game much, but as a parent, we have both a ps5 and a xbox. Frankly, console graphics are good enough for me. I don't see much point in having a gaming PC.
Actually, I would trade visuals for better games. Most games nowadays are better enjoyed as movies than games.
We really need some antitrust enforcement right about now.
When second and fourth largest companies by market cap find it in their financial best interest to collaborate with each other, we have a problem.
In healthy markets, two companies that harvest and sell data as a major source of revenue would want to pull an Auric Goldfinger and disrupt one another's data collection practices to decrease the supply and increase the price of ad-relevant data.
If anyone at YouTube Trust & Safety is reading this article, I've got a real problem for you to solve.
There are channels that exist solely to pump out AI slop seemingly designed to trick gullible seniors into identifying themselves in the comments. I suspect the scammers will go after these people later in pig-butchering or related scams.
For example, the “Senior Secrets” channel pumps out videos such as “Over 60? Add THIS Powder To Your Coffee To Walk like You’re 40 Again! | Senior Health Tips.” (I won’t link to the video, but you can easily find it with a search.) The video makes bold health claims justified by citing what appear to be scholarly research studies, such as:
> University of California, San Francisco (2023). "Mobility Enhancement Through Nutritional Supplementation in Older Adults." Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences, Volume 78, pp. 445-453.
However, none of the cited studies and papers are real.
The deeply concerning thing is that the video’s narrator invites the seniors who are duped by these claims to identify themselves and reveal their age and locations in the comments. From the transcript at 1m44s:
> "Before we begin, tell us in the comments now your age and where you're watching us from. We're reading and replying to every single comment, so drop your comments below."
I’ve already reported this content to YT, but I’ve seen no apparent follow-up.
Disclaimer: I used to work at Google, but not in anything YouTube related. If you’re in YT and want to reach out, my contact info is in my HN profile.
Age and city isn't all that identifying, I don't see anything useful there that isn't already in census etc. They are just doing it because YouTube promotes highly commented videos, hence the old saying "like, comment and subscribe"
It's not the age and location that are concerning. It's that the seniors who are especially susceptible to being misled will identify themselves as such. Further, if you look at the comments from these seniors, their YT usernames often reveal their real names.
This isn't merely AI slop. This is AI slop that appears to have been designed to specifically target a vulnerable audience for the purpose of later running financial scams against them. It ought to be in a different category altogether.
Google used to proudly say "Don't be evil"... But they just forgot to add "let us take that part".
When tech giants start deciding what technical knowledge is too "dangerous" for users to access, we've crossed into a different kind of territory. Installing an OS on your own hardware is now physical harm? That's some creative interpretation of their policies. The irony is that this kind of censorship just validates why people want to bypass these systems in the first place, nobody wants corporations deciding what they can and can't do with their own machines.
If a company chooses to automate something that should not be a defense. They should still be held equally accountable for their actions no matter if they employ a human or an algorithm to do their censorship for them. If they know their software/automation is shit and keeps screwing up, they're still making the choice to continue using it.
> Then came the twist. YouTube eventually restored both videos. The platform claimed its "initial actions" (could be either the first takedown or appeal denial, or both) were not the result of automation.
The videos are back. It's also possible that a group of people "brigade" reported his posts for some reason. YouTubers attract haters, too.
Everytime I read such news, I'm glad that I ditched Windows for Linux. Since Proton makes almost all games run, I don't have any reason to use Microsoft's rotten software anymore.
Governments (we the people in general) have the right and duty to regulate corporations, non-human entities which exist at our regulatory pleasure. The US and the EU could easily rip Google/MS/Apple to pieces if they wanted to. Hit some other media conglomerates while they're at it. Vote or something.
Windows 11 attempts to remove local only account is the last straw. I have mostly moved away from Windows already but if they fully implement this will never recommend to anyone period. I manage 2600 computers where I work and am down to less than 150 running windows … could see this reaching 0 in just a year or two.
Funny, because all the LLMs are more than happy to spit out the steps. Alphabet, if you want to get ahead, you need to be sure you're consistent. It's literally 4 clicks to get the same info from your sister product.
This happened to me when Amazon KDP's fraud prevention AI hallucinated that my Kindle version was plagiarizing my paperback (yes, it's the same book). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40992654
Unfortunately, I'm not sure a human ever really looked at my case, or was strongly disincentivized to go against the AI. I got nothing but bland, contentless denials of my appeals that got vaguer each time. And I was never able to go viral, so I'm banned from KDP for life for complete nonsense.
I forsee a lobby to the government for further restriction on our freedom of speech by google and others as these companies can't compete with open source and decentralized alternatives that are beginning to offer really well made alternatives.
Observations indicate we're approaching a point of inflection. We've had about three decades of Big Tech running a serfdom, unless power starts shifting back to users we'll be locked-in serfs for good.
I reckon most of us don't actually realize how much trouble we're in already.
It's like they want people to bypass Windows 11 altogether. I've finally bit the bullet and gone to Linux recently. Certainly dying by 512 cuts and counting, not for the faint of heart, but I'm surprised at how much of my daily usage I've been able to replicate. I'd say 80% of life works, unlike previous attempts.
As if people would not talk to each other or post such instructions elsewhere....
What a clumsy attempt to censor that.
As if we now would love Microsoft for their shit and crap they produce since centuries.
I only got a gaming machine running it here, all my private data will stay on another linux machine
I switched from Windows 10 to Nobara KDE plasma ~1 month ago. It's a Fedora based distro, so most of the Fedora documentation applies. I came from server Linux but Windows desktop (20 years or so) and I'm amazed how similar it is and reacts. It comes with Libre Office, Steam etc. pre-installed and while the Libre software is certainly different and needs getting used to - for me, coming originally from Wordperfect and Quattro Pro it was no challenge. There are some minor bugs which I attribute mostly to the Nvidia 580 graphics driver, like distorted fonts in certain mouse positions, but these are really minimal and I won't deep dive (yet) into that. Support online via discord which isn't optimal, but at least there is support.
It would help to know what it is you are not loving with Mint+Cinnamon... My picks for a beginner-friendly batteries-included Linux dist for KDE:
- You can install KDE on Mint without switching distro or reinstalling[0]
- Debian (caveat: packages can be out of date if you need the latest-greatest of something)
- Fedora (caveat: two major OS upgrades per year can feel like a chore)
- EndeavourOS (caveat: Requires a bit more expertise and grease to properly maintain)
- Aurora (caveat: Still young project and I'd still consider it a bit experimental and adventerous)
- kubuntu (caveat: snaps. Accept them or learn how to disable)
KDE Linux is a thing and something to keep an eye on but it's still in alpha/beta and probably not ready for your use just yet.
[0]: Caveat: it's possible that some DE service might not be disabled properly from your old setup and conflict with KDEs variety if you keep the cinnamon packages around
The better question would be what is the best distro for you. Personally I like Debian. But I don't know enough about you and how you use your computer to say for sure what is best for you.
I used Kubuntu for years, but ultimately moved away from the Ubuntu based distros due to Canonical cruft. I haven't really missed anything going with vanilla Debian.
I've found Gentoo Linux to be a good developer- and sysadmin-oriented distro. It requires a lot more work up-front than most any other distro but -IME- once you have it running, it just keeps running and upgrading just fine. If you wish, you can even subject yourself to systemd, as that's a supported init system.
As a bonus, if you don't want to build everything from source, there are prebuilt packages available. Instructions for how to use them are in the "Installing the base system" section of the Gentoo Handbook. I've not used the Gentoo-provided prebuilt packages, but I do use my own prebuilts. I've found the process of using them to be well-documented and fairly straightforward.
OpenSUSE has traditionally done a bunch of work on making sure other software works well with KDE (for example patching Firefox to use the KDE file chooser). Much of that work is no longer needed with new tech like the XDG desktop portal stuff, but Tumbleweed is still a fairly solid system (up to date, stable, GUI system administration tools, automatically installs packages with AVX3 if your CPU supports it,...).
Don't worry too much about distributions, they'll mostly just affect package formats and default settings, but imo Debian is the best choice for stable desktop computing, with the best overall support and community.
Unfortunately for right now, KDE has recently released major version 6, which is also about as stable as Windows (meaning, very not). This is reminiscent of the KDE 4 transition and much worse than the KDE 5 one.
For example, half the time I try to log in or unlock the screen, it just ignores my password. Fortunately, I have discovered that pressing Escape triggers a crash, and I have to deliberately trigger a segfault by pressing Escape, in hopes that next time the password will be accepted.
Plasma 6 is nearly two years old, and is totally fine in my experience. The transition was more like 5.x to 5.y. The biggest change is Wayland by default (X11 is currently still available, so might be worth a try).
It sounds like your problem may be with SDDM (the login screen program) rather than Plasma itself. You could try an alternative: https://alternativeto.net/software/sddm/
Changing the KDE theme into something other than the default Breeze breaks the whole Plasma: black screen with a cursor instead of the SDDM login screen. Hit this while setting up an Arch system for my wife, spent hours rebooting with recovery USB image and tweaking configuration until it all worked again.
Point of order: SDDM is entirely unrelated to the KDE project.
I've been using the Breeze Dark theme for approximately forever and I've never run into the problem you're describing. However, I've very rarely used SDDM... I find its default rainbow-colored background intolerable and use LightDM instead.
Do you happen to remember configuration that you ended up having to change, and is that computer running Nvidia graphics hardware with the closed-source drivers?
I went to System Settings > Themes > Login Screen (SDDM) in KDE settings and changed from the default Breeze to Maldives, and that broke SDDM login screen to black text mode with a cursor. Later searching for fixes I found that only Breeze was compatible with Qt 6.x, and any other choices there would break SDDM the same way (I did not try it though).
First, I had to figure out how to manually mount LUKS-encrypted laptop drive while booting from a USB stick, that took a while.
Trying to recover, I re-installed kde, sddm and sdd-kcm and qt5-declarative packages. Still broken. I made sure /etc/sddm.conf was the default configuration, still broken. Then finally I stumbled upon /etc/sddm.conf.d/kde_settings.conf, which was still overriding defaults to Maldives. Deleting it finally fixed the SDDM login.
My wife was thoroughly not impressed with Linux out-of-box experience!
No Nvidia graphics, this was a Lenovo Yoga laptop with AMD graphics.
SDDM is garbage and I've switched to using lemurs now (for whatever reason graphical display managers are terrible. GDM doesn't allow changing the mouse cursor theme, SDDM doesn't show battery percentage, LightDM doesn't do fonts properly,... the KDE people are apparently working on a new DM, but the info I got was vague as anything and may as well have been referring to the KDE LightDM greeter).
I wouldn't say that SDDM is garbage. Apparently, it sets the environment variables & etc. needed to enable automatic HiDPI scaling that a shockingly large number of Wayland proponents insist Xorg doesn't support. [0][1]
[1] Manual scaling (even non-integer scaling) works fine as long as you have a settings editor that will speak the XSETTINGS protocol, and a daemon running that can be queried. GNOME has both by default. KDE has the settings editor, and you might need to install xsettingsd or similar. The quirk I've found is that while GTK programs accept the display scaling changes immediately, QT programs must be restarted to adopt the changes.
> automatic HiDPI scaling that a shockingly large number of Wayland proponents insist Xorg doesn't support.
Assuming they know what they're talking about and not just parroting whatever they read others mention, usually when someone says that "Wayland does $THING that X11/Xorg doesn't do", this is really a shortcut for "X11/Xorg could technically do $THING, if enough developers and projects cared about it, but that would be a massive undertaking and it is easier to convince developers do $THING if we can control most of the stack to only do $THING in one particular way we want by working from a clean slate".
Since you mentioned environment variables, not sure what SDDM exactly is doing, but in the case of HiDPI scaling under Xorg the only method for HiDPI i'm aware of that uses environment variables is Qt's `QT_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTORS` which is a semicolon-separated list of per-screen scaling factors that Qt applications can use to automatically scale themselves depending on the screen the window/application is in. Considering SDDM is written in Qt, i'll guess that this is what it set.
But the thing is, this is far from enough if you want "robust" support under X11/Xorg. The reason is that a typical X application under a typical X desktop has multiple components: an X server (which i'm going to assume it is Xorg for now - other X servers are basically Xorg forks and sync with its features), a window manager, an optional desktop compositor and a widget toolkit on the application's side (not strictly needed as an app can use its own adhoc code for that but let's assume it uses one since this doesn't really matter in this case).
The behavior you need for robust HiDPI support is for the application to use the proper scaling for each of its toplevel windows depending on the connected output the window is in (note: this may or may not actually be relevant to DPI - someone may have bad eyesight and want their 27" 1440p monitor to be 150% scaled) and have that be done automatically - ideally, transparently from the user's perspective - as they move windows between outputs and/or add/remove outputs (e.g. connecting/disconnecting or turning on/off a graphics tablet with an embedded monitor would add/remove an output).
Now, technically, Xorg does provide the necessary core functionality to implement the above, however the issues begin when you start considering who is going to implement it and what part of the stack is responsible for which aspect of supporting window scaling.
Ideally, what you'd want is for applications should be able to scale each of their toplevel windows arbitrarily based on notifications from the underlying system as the user interacts with the application windows (note: this is not necessarily limited to just the user moving windows between outputs - a user could, for example, select an option from their window manager to scale a window at 200% or 300% - this could be useful when doing video streaming or recording videos for example).
So, in an ideal world, the following should happen under X11/Xorg:
1. Widget toolkits can scale their widgets arbitrarily (ideally not just at fractional level but also sub-100% level too - useful when using secondary screens with a low resolution).
2. Window managers can receive RandR events for output DPI changes and use that information to maintain a scaling factor for each output (the user could also specify custom per-output scaling too).
3. As the user interacts with the windows, the window manager sends notifications to the windows/applications whenever a window needs its scale changed. The widget toolkits use these notifications to scale their windows' contents.
Ignoring a few details, the above is basically what Wayland does since it started from a clean slate where they could dictate everything from scratch.
However X11/Xorg already has a lot of software already written for it and there are a few snags in the way:
1. Pretty much no toolkit supported arbitrary scaling, so they had to be extended for it. Since Wayland needed that, toolkits that need to support it added the functionality anyway (e.g. Qt and Gtk) though not without issues along the way (AFAIK Gtk didn't support fractional scaling for a long time). Though not all toolkits have support for this.
2. Window managers must be extended to monitor outputs via RandR and send appropriate notifications whenever windows move across outputs to those windows. This would also need some new notification protocol (most likely a new version of EWMH). However...
3. ...toolkits must also be extended to support these notifications - supporting scaling isn't enough if they do not know when to scale. This introduces a problem because...
4. ...window managers will have to deal with toolkits not supporting the notifications. One way would be to just ignore them, but another way is to do the scaling themselves. However, there is another issue here.
5. When using (and having enabled) a desktop compositor scaling can be easy (especially when dealing with edge cases like a window lying across the edge between two monitors :-P), but without one, the window manager needs to scale the window itself (there was a Xorg branch by Keith Packard that introduced server-side window scaling but AFAIK it was never merged) without affecting the rest of the desktop - and of course do the appropriate coordinate transformations for various events (e.g. mouse motion). Moreover since a desktop compositor can be a separate program than a window manager (many -if not most- X11 window managers are not desktop compositors), they both need to somehow coordinate with each other.
6. Since this requires all window managers (and desktop compositors) to be updated, the inevitable result is that there will be a lot of them that will not be updated for quite some time, so applications (or realistically, widget toolkits) will need to also handle HiDPI scaling themselves by doing the RandR queries and automatically sizing their own windows based on output. This is a subpar option because the application does not know the window manager's own state and you can end up with the two "fighting" with each other. Also the window manager cannot do desktop-wide configurations (it is actually blind to them).
7. Obviously whatever protocols in place (as i wrote above, probably a new EWMH version) are used, they'll also need to let the components (window manager, widget toolkit) provide information for when any of the above are in place so the proper action is taken (e.g. a toolkit should not try to do the output tracking itself if the window manager supports it and a window manager should not try to do scaling itself if the widget toolkit supports it - but both need to inform the other about this).
As you can hopefully imagine, the above require the developers of all window managers, all desktop compositors, all widget toolkits and applications not only to coordinate with each other but also handle various cases in case the user used something in the stack that did not support things.
With Wayland since everything was done from scratch, there were less people that needed to be convinced to cooperate - and in practice since Wayland originated from RedHat and the GNOME ecosystem, convincing the appropriate GNOME and Gtk developers to cooperate was probably a coffee break away :-P. Meanwhile Qt would already need to add (or already had, not sure when it was added) support for scaling/HiDPI anyway for Windows and macOS, so the infrastructure was there.
The current situation is that Qt, currently, supports the #6 i mentioned above since it can be implemented without needing support from window managers, desktop compositors or specifying new protocols (something that seems to be much harder than it should be - e.g. AFAIK Cinnamon implemented a very trivial X attribute for displaying a percentage for windows in a taskbar/icon overlay -think of download percentage- but despite the developers' attempt to have others adopt it, i do not think it saw much adoption). But this is really the "fallback solution" when everything else is just not there, it is not the ideal one.
That said, from a technical perspective there is nothing theoretically stopping Xorg desktop environments having top-notch robust HiDPI support. What blocks everything is convincing the developers of the various components of the desktop stack to cooperate, implement and support it.
> ...the above require the developers of all window managers, all desktop compositors, all widget toolkits and applications not only to coordinate with each other but also handle various cases...
/me wonders if OP has been paying attention to how "consensus building" actually ends up working in the Wayland world
> With Wayland since everything was done from scratch, there were less people that needed to be convinced to cooperate - and in practice since Wayland originated from RedHat and the GNOME ecosystem, convincing the appropriate GNOME and Gtk developers to cooperate was probably a coffee break away...
/me realizes that the answer is "No. Not really."
To be less droll:
1) Through xrandr, even windowmaker provides the data required for an application to know the properties of the monitor that > 50% of each of its windows are on. Given how much nicer xrandr was than xinerama, WMs that cared about multihead moved over to it fairly quickly.
2) I'm certain that not every WM provides the information required for screen-DPI- and screen-scaling-aware programs to scale as desired. But, the "Wayland is a lightweight protocol that makes few policy decisions" motto turns out to mean that for most decisions that users care about, each Wayland WM (or whatever the Wayland terminology for the Wayland equivalent is) needs to re-make and reimplement those decisions. Feature fragmentation has been bad. So, no, if you're not going to hold Wayland to the "Every WM must implement all the features" standard, then you're not going to demand that of Xorg WMs.
3) You happened to mention the two things that's needed for Xorg to support both HiDPI and non-integer scaling... GUI drawing library support and a common protocol for setting and retrieving user-driven adjustments to the "natural" rendering scale given the display DPI. XRandR [0] has either always, or has effectively always provided the information required for GUI toolkits to scale their widgets according to a screen's DPI. And the XSETTINGS protocol [1] is used to store the user-commanded scaling adjustment. Glancing at the release date for those two things, they either substantially predate or came out very, very shortly after Wayland's initial release.
Weird. It's almost as if we were waiting on the GUI toolkits to use what Xorg had been providing them for ages.
Anyway. Check footnote 1 in the comment you replied to for the on-the-ground details on GUI toolkit render scaling on Xorg from an end-user's perspective.
[0] adopted no later than 2007
[1] first proposed in 2001 and adopted no later than 2009 (though, if I cared to spend more than a few minutes on the search, I expect I'd find that it was adopted much earlier)
What i described was about Wayland, GNOME and Gtk specifically, not the entire "Wayland world". Wayland has been a mess that could have been completely avoided if people just tried to fix any issues with Xorg instead of falsely claiming that Xorg cannot be fixed and we'd had proper support for HiDPI, HDR, mixed refresh rate configurations with compositing and all sorts of other nice things at least a decade ago instead of creating a pointless schism in the already tiny Linux desktop ecosystem but ultimately you cannot control what other people spend their time on.
1) Window Maker does not provide anything to any application, if applications need such information they have to use the extension APIs themselves. IF there was an agreed upon protocol for window managers notifying applications to scale themselves, then Window Maker could implement it. But such a protocol does not exist.
2) Window managers do not provide any information there at all since there is no such support. And yes, all Wayland compositors do need to implement that stuff, but because it started from a clean slate and Wayland compositors had to be written from scratch anyway, it was easier to convince developers to do that because they self-selected to go through the effort of making a Wayland compositor in the first place. As i wrote in my original post, the issue here isn't if something would be written or not, but convincing the people who work on the projects. It is mainly a social issue, not a technical one.
3) Yes, without any other support in place, GUI toolkits and other applications can use the information exposed RandR to implement scaling themselves but, as i already wrote, this is a fallback solution because the rest of what i describe is not there. This is far from having robust support, ignores things like custom scaling options, handling moving windows between desktops and support for applications that do not do scaling themselves (which is many of them), among other things.
All of the above are things i already addressed in my original message BTW and again, the issue is not technical but social/political. It is about convincing people to cooperate, not if something is technically possible (and let's be honest, it isn't like Xorg's code is written in stone, if something is currently impossible, the code could be extended to make it possible).
Gotta be something specific to your machine - for me version 6 is way more stable than 5 was. That line would crash doing sillies things like resizing task bar or applying settings. Now I feel as good with CachyOS and Plasma 6.5.2 as I was with W2K or W7
As someone who's been bouncing back and forth between Arch and Tumbleweed for a while now I had a very different experience. The transition from KDE 4 to KDE Plasma 5 was terrible, plasmashell would crash all the time, tons of stuff would break between updates, and I had to switch to running awesome for a while (which is fine, awesome is pretty great). The transition from Plasma 5 to Plasma 6 was basically 'these 2 KWin scripts don't work any more' and everything else was fine.
The only issue I have on my Plasma 6 laptop is also lock-screen related: About 20% of the time keyboard input is ignored/blocked after coming back from sleep. Closing and reopening the lid usually sorts it. Haven't seen what you describe.
I did have some earlier snags which all went away after switching from Wayland session to X11 session.
It absolutely is a thing, at least, I'm a happy dual-booter for 10+ years now. Microsoft doesn't, at all, make that hell. They don't give a fuck, which is a different thing - that means that in some cases, they bork the other system on your computer. Other than those few cases, it's all dandy.
It might help that I'm using Windows LTSC, and that I have installed Linux and Windows to separate SSDs (with the Linux SSD not being present when the Linux was installed). But it might be just unnecessary as well.
Installation is not complicated at all, but I'd install Windows first, because it can be a finicky PoS, Linux is much better at respecting the user's wishes. Installation can be done to the same drive. With the Windows already installed, you can resize the last, largest partition, and install Linux to the newly created free space.
The UEFI then can boot either Windows directly, by selecting that in the UEFI boot menu, or boot Grub, which can then boot Windows or Linux.
With most Linux install media, you can also manage the drives, like create partitions, repair boot, delete or create EFI boot entries, etc.
UEFI secure boot is not getting in the way? Namely is secure boot can be still enabled even though the system is dual booting?
I know that some windows game anti-cheat will now deny some games to run if secure boot is not enabled.
And last but not least: I build my own distro, can I use my own crypto keys with UEFI secure boot hardware? That not blocking windoz secure booting (I guess crypto keys for windoz are generated and installed in the UEFI hardware upon... installation). I never actually have a look at that in the details.
Secure Boot doesn't get in the way, I think. I had it disabled for some reason, but I enabled it to test it for you, and my Debian Linux boots just fine.
I have no idea about the crypto key situation unfortunately.
You have to test with win11 (in dual boot with your fav distro) and some software requiring UEFI secure boot (maybe its status is displayed somewhere in win11 settings).
Perhaps someone at Microsoft threatened physical harm to a Google engineer if they didn't remove the videos... and they caved into their demands rather than reporting the threat, or perhaps did both.
You see, Windows 11 has new, improved, patented prevent-the-computer-from-physically-beating-up-the-user technology. But this technology requires an online account; you can't trust a local-only account to prevent the computer from beating you up, because it's on the computer in question (duh). So we prevent you from learning how to bypass the requirement for a remote account for your own physical safety.
So why shouldn't I use the windows 11 on the other partition that I use for games that don't run on Linux or run with degraded performance?
(Yeah, it's Nvidia, no, I didn't do my homework and bought Nvidia for a Linux PC).
While it may make sense for others, I don't find system that can lock up for 11 hours for updates suitable for anything other than occasional gaming. But why shouldn't I use it for it?
I already think twice before getting any game that doesn't run on Linux and gave EA WRC Rally a downvote after they rug pulled Linux users. (A game that run on Linux on the beginning got borked with anticheat. A racing game, so you don't cheat your friends by having 1s less on that race you all compete on).
There is no worse usage of windows than the occasional one given the huge amount of updates it starts to download whenever you start it up after a long period unused.
I guess it might be useful if you only keep it offline but in that case you aren't playing games online and thus you would be fine gaming on Linux given the only downside is lack of anticheat support.
My Windows "fun" was when it decided that the "unknown" space immediately after its little boot partition was free for it to expand into. (Imagine not being able to recognize an ext2 filesystem...) After repairing that disaster, I ensured it would never happen again by putting Windows onto its own harddrive. That's worked for a great many years.
Though, now that I've quite a bit of personal experience with how good Steam/Proton is for video games, I think I'll reclaim the surprisingly large amount of space that Windows is taking up.
If it has to be Windows, just remove all the shit of Win11 yourself, set it to unattended installation with a local account, remove the hardware requirements barrier while you are at it, remove the games, controller add-ons, virus scanner and whatever else you would like to (the windows store?) and create your own LTSC.
This isn’t a solution to the problem and missing the point of the whole argument. But if it has to be Windows, I would recommend to try it.
But there is a harm. Just had to repair a pc of my family, because you are able to install windows 11 on a MBR Partition without EFI Boot. Has to convert it and fix some stuff, but it still starts only every second boot (srsly)
You can watch the latest Hollywood movies for free on YouTube and they don't care about any copyright, but if it's for showing a genocide to the world or bypassing Windows tutorials, YouTube lost it's spirit.
This is meek and seems almost resigned. I don't understand how discourse and responses around these kinds of strange, bewildering, or stupid corporate decisions is always so nice. This corporate bullshit thrives in respectful environments where nobody needs to be afraid of being told how it is and publicly humiliated for their obviously disingenuous or stupid behavior.
When you're dealing with full-on idiots like that "support specialist" (AI?), all bets are off anyways. Might as well tell that clown that what he just said is the dumbest shit you've heard all week.
Take off the gloves and burn some bridges if you have to, the world will be better place for it.
Can anyone provide any attempt at rationalizing their decision? Could your computer overheat and explode if you do this? Could hackers take over your computer and play a flashing light pattern that will give you an epileptic seizure?
Stop assuming good faith. This is the same company that acquired Skype and de-P2P'd it at the pressing of the U.S. government to make interception feasible.
Microsoft just wants you reliant on them. They can't tap value if you aren't integrated. Simple as.
>I just don't understand how inhumane hostile behavior is just so rampant and like allowed to exist in our society.
It's because that's the default. Do you see any other facet of human organization which doesn't have constant hostile behavior? If it's large enough, or going on for enough time, there is abuse happening in it.
>Like are people just careless and distracted 24/7?
People just want to live their lives, on which a removed Win 11 bypass video has zero effect.
Because the only mechanism to hold these mega corporations / billionaires accountable is government, and they're already powerful enough to have waged massive information wars convincing people to fight each other instead of them.
Because people like my mom don't know there is an alternative and people like my dad thinks OSS has ties to communism (really, I wish I was joking) and MacOS is for hipsters. Doesn't matter that I work for a FAANG company and we use and contribute to OSS or that my work laptop is a Mac.
Why should I care that much what Microsoft is doing? I sold my Windows 11 computer long ago and haven't looked back. In fact, more user-hostile they get the better that is for the Linux ecosystem which is better for me!
I think it will be better with a little bit higher marketshare, but once the masses come in they demand stuff like kernel-level anticheat, DRM and to never accidentally run things in a terminal and then it will become way worse. Linux is as user-friendly as it is, because it is used by professionals and power users and the masses use something else.
Linux can exist because there is a huge industry producing inexpensive open hardware. If that industry transitions to producing only locked down hardware, it will hurt Linux and all open source software. Be careful what you wish for.
Mount a Windows 11 ISO. Open an administrative command window. Navigate to the new drive letter. Enter this command:
I've used this to upgrade 10 to 11 on non approved hardware, going back to at least 2nd gen Intel CPUs. I've used it to upgrade existing Pro, EDU and IOT that didn't want to upgrade.The install window will say server but it isn't.
Crazy how windows 11 objectively works fine on pretty much all hardware you'd expect but Microsoft is insisting it doesn't and we need to upgrade
They want everyone to have neo-clipper-chip "TPM"s.
My understanding is that TPM is secure, and Win 11 still supports TPM. Am I mistaken and/or misunderstanding your statement that Microsoft is enforcing a hardware requirement with a known back door?
TPM can be secure. But secure for whom against what? Microsoft and “against you” are not implausible answers to that question…
TPM is not secure. At all. At least when when you’re using Windows.
https://youtu.be/t1eX_vvAlUc
Do you also have a source thats not a youtuber? Would be far more interesting to read on apparently it being a spy chip rather than just a HSM.
Here's a significantly more credible (stacksmashing) video that demonstrates how ineffective some TPM implementations are. If the TPM was integrated into the CPU die, this attack would likely not be possible. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTl4vEednkQ
Despite the TPM being a pretty good and useful idea as a secure enclave for storing secrets, I'm concerned that giving companies the ability to perform attestation of your system's "integrity" will make the PC platform less open. We may be headed towards the same hellscape that we are currently experiencing with mobile devices.
Average folks aren't typically trying to run Linux or anything, so most people wouldn't even notice if secure boot became mandatory over night and you could only run Microsoft-signed kernels w/ remote attestation. Nobody noticed/intervened when the same thing happened to Android, and now you can't root your device or run custom firmware without crippling it and preventing the use of software that people expect to be able to use (i.e. banking apps, streaming services, gov apps, etc.).
Regardless, this is more of a social issue than a technical issue. Regulatory changes (lol) or mass revolt (also somewhat lol) would be effective in putting an end to this. The most realistic way would be average people boycotting companies that do this, but I highly doubt anyone normal will do that, so this may just be the hell we are doomed for unless smaller manufacturers step up to the plate to continue making open devices.
isn't the TPM integrated into the cpu die on many modern systems? i.e. AMD's PSP.
It’s not like these things aren’t publically documented by Microsoft.
You just need to be able to translate their doublespeak.
A tall order, and that's if you can even find it.
Apparently not.
Sure let’s just centralize hardware attestation to Microsoft’s cloud tied to a Microsoft account with keys you can’t change what could possibly go wrong?
This is all publicly documented by Microsoft you just need to translate their doublespeak.
Google is doing does the exact same thing and people were sounding the alarms when they did it but Microsoft gets a pass?
Use ChaGPT to outsource your critical thinking for you because I’m not gonna do it.
I've looked into this fella before because he didn't pass the smell test. He's running a grift selling schlocky cell phones and cloud services. His videos are excessively clickbait-y and show minimal understanding of the actual tech, it's more or less concentrated disinformation and half-understood talking points. GrapheneOS devs also had something to say about him: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/20165-response-to-dishonest...
That video contains many specific statements. This comment addresses none of them.
Secure against what threat model?
I've had to learn about TPMs to figure out if they're the right technology with which to integrate a product I've worked on. I don't agree that they're a "neo-clipper-chip" in any real way based on my exposure to them.
While I'm not a cryptographer... I never really understood the appeal of these things outside of one very well-defined threat model: namely, they're excellent if you're specifically trying to prevent someone from physically taking your hard drive, and only your hard drive, and walking out of a data centre, office, or home with it.
It also provides measured boot, and I won't downplay it, it's useful in many situations to have boot-time integrity attestation.
The technology's interesting, but as best as I can tell, it's limited through the problem of establishing a useful root-of-trust/root-of-crypt. In general:
- If you have resident code on a machine with a TPM, you can access TPM secrets with very few protections. This is typically the case for FDE keys assuming you've set your machine up for unattended boot-time disk decryption.
- You can protect the sealed data exported from a TPM, typically using a password (plus the PCR banks of a specific TPM), though the way that password is transmitted to the TPM is susceptible to bus sniffing for TPM variants which live outside the CPU. There's also the issue of securing that password, now, though. If you're in enterprise, maybe you have an HSM available to help you with that, in which case the root-of-crypt scheme you have is much more reasonable.
- The TPM does provide some niceties like a hardware RNG. I can't speak to the quality of the randomness, but as I understand it, it must pass NIST's benchmarks to be compliant with the ISO TPM spec.
What I really don't get is why this is useful for the average consumer. It doesn't meaningfully provide FDE in particular in a world where the TPM and storage may be soldered onto the same board (and thus impractical to steal as a standalone unit rather than with the TPM alongside it).
I certainly don't understand what meaningful protections it can provide to game anti-cheats (which I bring up since apparently Battlefield 6 requires a TPM regardless of the underlying Windows version). That's just silly.
Ultimately, I might be misunderstanding something about the TPM at a fundamental level. I'm not a layperson when it comes to computer security, but I'm certainly not a specialist when it comes to designing or working with TPMs, so maybe there's some glaring a-ha thing I've missed, but my takeaway is that it's a fine piece of hardware that does its job well, but its job seems too niche to be useful in many cases; its API isn't very clear (suffering, if anything, from over-documentation and over-specification), and it's less a silver bullet and more a footgun.
> I never really understood the appeal of these things outside of one very well-defined threat model: namely, they're excellent if you're specifically trying to prevent someone from physically taking your hard drive, and only your hard drive, and walking out of a data centre, office, or home with it.
So basically the same thing you'd get by having an internal USB port on the system board where you could plug a thumb drive to keep the FDE key on it?
> It also provides measured boot, and I won't downplay it, it's useful in many situations to have boot-time integrity attestation.
That's the nefarious part. You get adversarial corporations trying to insist that you run their malware in order to use their service, and it's giving them a means to attempt to verify it.
Which doesn't actually work against sophisticated attackers, so the security value against real attacks is none, but it works against normies which in turn subjects the normies to the malware instead of letting someone give them an alternative to it that doesn't screw them.
If I knew absolutely nothing about TPM other than the circumstances in which it was made (who, what, why, when) I would have predicted from that alone that it wouldn't benefit consumers, wouldn't be secure, and that it was motivated by business, not technology.
The unsupported CPUs lack the support for Virtualization Based Security, which is a major security feature in Windows 11.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/de...
VBS is also in Windows 10 and has no problem working on CPUs that aren't "supported" in Windows 11
This is incorrect. Not all CPUs supported by Windows 10 supported the VBS feature.
Microsoft is making the VBS mandatory for OEMs, hence the CPU needs support, hence the ~7 year old minimum requirement for CPUs in what Microsoft supports for Windows.
Yes, you can disable it during setup as a workaround, but it's exactly that. And why you'd want to make your system less secure, well I'll leave that to the exercise of the reader when they'll turn around two weeks from now and complain about Windows security.
Most of the requirements for that feature are UEFI features or a TPM, and have nothing to do with the CPU
The actual CPU requirements are VMX, SLAT, IOMMU and being 64 bit, which have all been available on the Intel side at least, since at least 2008, with some coming available even before that.
The CPU requirement was just an attempt to force people to buy new hardware they didn't need. Nothing more.
A perfect example of this is the Ryzen 5 1600. Its not officially supported but meets every single one of the requirements and had no trouble enabling the feature in the run up to the release of Win11 (before it was blocked for no reason). I know this because I did it.
Also they marked all but one 7th Intel Core CPU as unsupported, and the one they did add just so happens to be the one they were shipping in one of their Surface products. No way you can tell me this list was based fact and not the whims of some random PM when they do stuff like that.
> and why you'd want to make your system less secure,
I'd offer that the likely goal here is the most usable system possible, working with what one has. If folks are here, there's usually a lot of necessity factors in play.
I have literally spent all evening trying to get this to work so I can play arc raiders. Turns out I needed to update my BIOS. So fun.
It is not a mandatory feature.
Yes, it is mandatory for OEMs.
They are lying to make money. It's a common tactic.
They might sell more Windows 11 if it ran on more hardware. How does this make them money?
It's worth asking, but I think there's an answer: they want the OS to be transformed into an interface to their cloud where recurring revenue is easier. To do that, they need to make it more like a mobile OS and more locked down. TPM helps this.
Dropping windows 10 support is a pretty big lever to apply pressure to get people to upgrade to 11. Oh turns out you also “need” to buy new hardware to run it.
Dropping windows 10 support is a really reasonable decision. The focus is on 11, it's been out for almost 5 years. I'm guessing they are close to releasing 12 at this point, maybe in a year or two. Supporting three entire fully fledged oses is quite alot of work. I also understand supporting newer hardware, they dropped 32bit on 11 and moved the instruction set up a bit. You gotta do a cutoff somewhere and I'm happy that they are at least allowing us to use the improved performance our modern CPUs have. I'm not happy with alot of stuff, but I get this at least.
I'd argue it's probably time to drop 32-bit x86 support, but the rest of this stuff is arbitrary and doesn't have any tangible benefit except conveniently providing hardware manufacturers with an excuse to unload new hardware onto people when there's nothing wrong with what they have. (not to mention, pardon the conspiracy theory, they're probably trying to use the TPM to turn the PC into a smartphone-like platform)
It's surprising that when we had Win7 they did that brief "XP Mode" experiment with some virtualized-penalty box.
Why didn't that go further? Presumably virtually any x86-64 box currently in circulation would be fast enough to run a VM running a full copy of 32-bit XP/Win7/Win10, or even a full carousel (or download store) of DOS and early-windows releases. It could be the most compatible Windows ever, solving the weird "64-bit systems can't run some 16-bit apps" gotcha and perhaps allowing some way to bridge in support for devices that can only be driven by old 32-bit XP drivers.
> They might sell more Windows 11 if it ran on more hardware. How does this make them money?
Given the free Win 7/8->10->11 upgrade path, almost every end user who'd want a Windows license probably already has one. This leaves enterprise licensing and computer manufacturers (laptops, mini-PCs, desktops), who wouldn't care about this because they'll have newer hardware anyway.
No they will make the same money either way because they are selling the OS, not the hardware. They are requiring only newer hardware to limit their surface of exploitation and reduce their compatibility list.
They also sell a license with the new hardware. The bulk majority of the public never buy hardware without an OS. So yes, they are making more money with each new hardware sale. Plus the increase of forced advertising means they make more per user, effectively double dipping.
Why do you feel the need to defend a convicted monopolist for engaging in user hostile behavior?
Microsoft and their OWM partners sell hardware and have done so for a very long time.
[dead]
> Would that be the 4040 or the 8008?
Heh, yeah. In the moment I couldn't come up with the brief, unique descriptor and reached for the modern shorthand.
It wasn't confusing enough that Intel named their CPU core 'Core' or that they put 'Duo' after it if there wre two 'Core' cores packaged together, but they also put a '2' after it if it was the second generation, then they dropped the generation number from the name in the third generation, making that the first generation of their new numbering scheme of which you're discussing the second generation.
The only clear option is to use the internal code name, but that's technically not valid once it's released so "Products formerly Sandy Bridge" is the best Intel can come up with. (https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/codenam...)
Physical harm realized because boot took eternity.
Only if you work in a hospital. And who would be crazy enough to build hospital IT on Windo.. oh, wait.
I haven't tried Win11 on personal hardware so far, but since Win8, boot times are not much of an issue in my experience.
Making the whole OS the vehicle for a rent-seeking vendor lock-in scheme built to make you pay more and more to keep up the same set of functionality is more of a problem I think.
Thanks, this is great.
Just a note for others that that the language of the ISO needs to match what you used to install Windows 10.
For example, I installed Windows 10 with the "International English" ISO and if I try this with the Windows 11 "US English" ISO, then it doesn't let me do an upgrade where it keeps installed programs and drivers.
Or just use Rufus[1] to create a bootable USB installer from the ISO.
Another trick that should still work, though I haven't tested it with newer Windows 11 builds: to create Windows 11 install media that will install and boot via BIOS — useful on machines where Windows doesn't work correctly under UEFI, e.g., older MacBooks that only work properly with Windows when booted via CSM — create writeable, BIOS-bootable Windows 10 x64 install media, then replace the install.wim file with one from an appropriate Windows 11 ISO.
[1] https://rufus.ie/en/
I have an old gaming pc (i5 3570k) that I thought needed replacing since Windows 10 stopped security updates. Downloading the ISO from the Microsoft website and running this command worked a charm. Zero issues upgrading to Windows 11 and everything works exactly the same as before. Thank you!
Will this work on a version which is part of LTSC or IoT or whatever factory debloated version microsoft makes? As in, will the upgraded version preserve the IoT or LTSC designation and “debloatedness”?
> Will this work on a version which is part of LTSC or IoT
I've used the command with a Win11 LTSC/IoT 24H2 ISO. I upgraded Win10 LTSC/IoT 21H2 to Win11 24H2 LTSC/IoT. I've done this on two old notebooks, a Dell Core2Duo and a Thinkpad T430.
Can I modify the command to go from regular windows 10 to debloated windows 11? Do I just need debloated ISO for that to work automatically?
> Can I modify the command to go from regular windows 10 to debloated windows 11?
I setup a virtual Win10 edu to try and convert to Win11 LTSC/IoT. The only option setup gave me was to wipe out my apps and keep my personal files. That's what it did.
So the command doesn't offer much improvement over a wipe and a reload. Sorry I don't have better news.
I don't know yet. I've got a Win10 EDU I'm going to try to upgrade to Win11 IOT but I haven't pulled the trigger yet. It's in place doing some NAS duty atm.
The command doesn't ask any questions so there's no opportunity to tweak it. I'm getting a recovery plan in place before I pull the trigger on mine.
edit: I might also go another way. There are some other setup methods that might be a better fit for cross-upgrading Windows types. I'm actively investigating but it may be a month before I'm in a position to try them out.
What's the benefit of upgrading from W10 IoT to W11 IoT?
Any specific features?
W10 IoT gets support until 2032 I believe.
Mostly to see what works. In this case tho I've found some remote management on workgroup PCs works better when it's Win11->Win11 (instead of Win10->Win11).
ex: With Win10->Win11 I get a fair number of crashes when remotely viewing the event log mmc.
Does this work with 25H2? I haven't tried it yet.
Yes. I've done Win10 to Win11 with a 25H2 ISO. I've also used it to push 24H2 to 25H2 when WU wasn't offering the upgrade.
Thanks. Good to know it still works. I've got a few unsupported machines I need (ugh, not want) to do.
Oooo, might try this with my 2011 PC.
Schneegans.de autounattend XML files generator
Windows cannot parse the provided command line options
I managed to recreated your error.
I setup a virtual Win10 edu guest in hyper-v. I mounted a Win11 LTSC/IoT iso as a drive using hyper-v tools. When I ran the command I got the same error you did.
Next. I copied the Win11 LTSC/IoT iso to a folder in the Win10 edu guest. I mounted the ISO and ran the command and didn't get the error.
It's installing now but the setup only gave an option for saving my files, not the apps. It's not great but it makes sense.
It's possible something got lost in HN's formatting.
The line should look like this: https://i.postimg.cc/VLHfF4H3/commandline.png
If it's correct, I'd like to know some specifics, if you don't mind. Current OS and ISO you're working with.
I've never had this fail and if there's an instance where it will, I'd like to know about it.
This is correct.
Using updated Win 10 and current 25H2 iso downloaded direct from Microsoft.
The only thing that is perhaps a little unique is that this is a Win10 Home installation that was previously upgraded to Win10 Pro.
EDIT: Well, there is one more little detail. I used RUFUS to produce a bootable USB drive. Apparently, the install is checking for this somehow.
I reformatted and used WinRAR to extract the ISO to the USB drive and it is currently in the process of installing (30% complete). I'll post the final results.
I did a follow up reply to your op. I ran into your issues when the ISO was mounted as a drive outside of Windows. https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=WarOnPrivacy#4586361...
Mounting an ISO from within Windows seems to expose an upgrade-centric version of the installer.
Yes, the problem seems to be using a *bootable* USB drive.
Just don't do it. Instead, simply format the drive and extract the ISO to it using WinRAR.
Then the install works as prescribed.
>Windows cannot parse the provided command line options
I got the same behavior on one that had W10 22H2.
But got a more descriptive error message [/product not a recognized switch].
To fix this, had to replace the setup.exe file that is now provided with the 25H2 ISO. The current setup.exe now appears to be badly lobotomized by a decision-maker who has got to be equally brainless (less-brainful?) compared to how it was before.
Using setup.exe from the 23H2 ISO seems to be a workaround for this next annoying decline in Windows 11 suitability for industrial and sensitive enterprise applications. If I said it was like the "canary in the coal mine" some would say I was exaggerating because it is too late for that and there have been earlier warning signs for years. Not much like the tweety bird who thought he saw a puddy cat, more like the chicken on the dinner table now, or a goose who is more than fully "cooked".
Going further, it's also good to prevent the "surprise" data loss, when you are using a local "account" and not on line at all, which threat only comes from Microsoft itself with their auto-bitlocker encrypting your whole drive more aggressively on new installs like never before, the result can be worse than many types of malware/ransomware. To prevent that you need to interrupt the first boot after the upgrade files are copied, and boot instead to the Recovery Console or alternatively a separate Windows install so you can do an offline Regedit creation of a new DWORD in the target Windows\System32\Config\SYSTEM hive being upgraded; adding \HKLM\system\ControlSetXXX\Control\BitLocker\PreventDeviceEncryption, then setting value=1. This needs to be done carefully and some renaming in Regedit can be involved.
Unfortunately, even if this Registry setting preventing encryption has been previously set=1 before this type upgrade, that PreventDeviceEncryption DWORD is completely removed by this setup process. Which is why I go a little further and check manually, replacing it if necessary.
Then on the second reboot, the DWORD needs replacement again, so repeat the above process :\
Allowing you to re-live the experience as only malware-type persistence can ;)
After that when you reboot back to the target volume being upgraded (rather than the alternate utility bootmedia), the W11 setup process will proceed without encrypting. Otherwise it can be very likely to encrypt everything it has access to and it's not intended to be recoverable without a Microsoft account. Even with a Microsoft account I don't trust this, seems like the opposite of "trustworthy computing" to me :\
Anyway with that in mind the command line does perform as expected and took this PC from W10 pro 22H2 to W11 pro 25H2, preserving my installed programs and files as far as I can tell. And this is on an MBR-booting PC where Windows 10 was installed to an MBR partition, using legacy CSM with UEFI disabled. No GPT, no EFI folder, none of that.
In W10, was only using the first 64GB of a HDD as NTFS, with the remainder unallocated. My Recovery folder (containing winre.wim) was intentionally the one on the same volume as Windows 10. This direct W11 upgrade created a new 750mb type 27 ("hidden" recovery) partition immediately following the 64GB. With the new 750mb containing its new Recovery folder.
If there would not have been enough unallocated space on the drive, I believe the upgrade process would have replaced the W10 winre.wim in my C:\Recovery folder with the W11 version? Not sure at this point, but C:\Recovery\WindowsRE still contains the previous W10 winre.wim, and the new recovery partition contains the W11 winre.wim.
Edit: found a recent article documenting bitlocker problems that might be related, look at the comments:
https://www.guru3d.com/story/windows-11-25h2-update-causes-u...
> Rich appealed both immediately. The first appeal was denied in 45 minutes. The second in just five.
> The platform claimed its "initial actions" (could be either the first takedown or appeal denial, or both) were not the result of automation.
Didn't know YouTube can improve their review time from 45 minutes to 5 minutes without automation. I bet it's pure magic.
I'm sure someone is figuring out a new version of the DMCA that prohibits circumventing data collection "in the name of preserving copyright".
If the DRM can't spy on you, you could be a pirate!
I am reading that to mean that they are automatically denying the appeals because it was a human who chose to take the action so it can’t be appealed.
I mean... documenting the details of the investigation to support the first decision and relying on the documented details the second time would easily explain that.
I would love but probably be horrified to see the documented support for "serious physical harm or death".
Google censors the world, together with Microsoft.
Well - it is time that the rest of the world censors these two corporation. I don't want them to restrict information.
People will find workarounds by the way. This is now a Streisand effect - as people see that Google and Microsoft try to hide information from them, they will now look at this much more closely than before, with more attention.
(Having said that, my bypass strategy is to not use Windows 11 altogether. I don't depend on it, having used Linux since 21 years now, but my machine to the left is actually using Win10, for various reasons, such as that I can fix problems of elderly relatives still using Windows. But I won't use Win11 ever with its recall-spy software. I also don't care that it can be disabled - any corporation that tries to sniff-invade on me, is evil and must be banned.)
Edit: Ok so the video was restored. That was good, but still, we need an alternative here. Google holds WAY too much power via youtube.
> This is now a Streisand effect - as people see that Google and Microsoft try to hide information from them
This comment section is wild.
The videos are up. Microsoft and Google weren't meeting in secret backrooms to censor this one channel. The most likely explanation is that a competing channel was trying to move their own videos up in the rankings by mass-reporting other videos on the topic.
It's a growing problem on social media platforms: Cutthroat channels or influencers will use alt accounts or even paid services to report their competition. They know that with enough reports in a short period of time they can get the content removed for a while, which creates a window for their own content to get more views.
The clue is the "risk of physical harm". People who abuse the report function know that the report options involving physical harm, violence, or suicide are the quickest way to get content taken down.
A tale as old as time. A long time ago I worked in DDoS prevention and the bulk of our first customers were competing gambling sites and online eyeglass retailers.
Why? Because they were all paying people to DDoS each other. Kinda silly, but good for business.
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As I have limited dealings with eyeglass retailers, why ?
Selling a 2$ piece of metal wire and a 15$ lens of polycarbonate for obscene markups.
It’s also a monopoly, luxottica owns practically all brands and dictates the prices.
> 2$ and 15$
That estimate is way to high. More like 90 eurocents (~$1) for the whole thing, assembled. That's retail price:
https://www.action.com/de-de/search/?q=lesebrillen
I never thought I’d live to see the day a link to Action got posted on HN but alas, it has arrived! Show those Dollar General losers across the pond how it’s really done
Action is awesome. Shopping there you quickly realize that almost everyone (except Action) is selling junk from China that they bought for pennies at huge markups.
lol. Available languages include 4 kinds of Dutch/German, 3 kinds of French, 2 kinds of Netherlands, 2 kinds of Swiss, 1 kind of Spanish, and no English. Really defined their market, I suppose.
Seems to cover most of EU languages. So that seems to be the market. Though switzerland is not part of the EU. But the no english option is weird as hell, as english is more and more lingua franca in europe.
(swiss is not its own language btw. but italian, german and french)
Zenni Optical is the antidote. Even my too-blind-for-Zeiss-VisionPro-inserts prescription in the highest refractive index lenses is under $100 for a full pair.
The landscape is a little different now than then.
At the time(and really, even now) people would get their eyeglasses from their local provider. Who cares, insurance probably covers some or all of it. Even getting contacts or glasses as a prescription was like pulling teeth, since they wanted to keep it in house.
So the new market of get your prescription, then buy online was born. And it was like the wild west, not full of eye care professionals but...mostly less than above board places all fighting for your click.
Think about it...if you finally decide to Google eyeglass frames or such, you were entering a whole new realm. And why fight over SEO, when you can just take your competition offline, as most people will click a link, watch it load for 5s, then click back and try the next.
I have no idea if the industry is still shady or not, but 20 years ago, it was full of nothing but bad actors.
I don't know if it matters at all to the conversation or not, but none of the actors(gambling or eyeglasses) were based in the US, despite their domain names and courting US customers. The DDoS company was based in the US.
> Who cares, insurance probably covers some or all of it
Exactly, this is why vision "insurance" is basically a scam, supported only by US tax laws that enable employers to offer vision "insurance" tax-free, while people buying their own eyeglasses have to pay with after-tax dollars.
Except where insanely inflated, glasses cost at most tens of dollars. Certainly not the kind of thing one needs insurance to cover.
Just a reminder that "insurance covers" doesn't mean society doesn't pay for it: all the people pay for it. The insurance company paying causes prices raises for everyone else, same country and abroad. So the whole world ends up paying more for that "insurance coverage": more for the product, more for the insurance, more in taxes that fund public free healthcare...
> Microsoft and Google weren't meeting in secret backrooms to censor this one channel
That's not the argument IMO. They don't have to be intentionally malicious in each action. A drunk driver doesn't want to kill a little girl in the road. Their prior choices shape the outcome of their later options. A drunk driver decides to get behind the wheel after drinking. A large company makes a decision to make more profit knowing there are repercussions and calculating the risk.
The DMCA laws prescribe the process. Google (or any other party) isn’t allowed to decide for themselves what is or is not a valid DMCA complaint.
Complain to Congress, they’re the ones who set this up to work this way.
This isn't a copyright issue. DMCA doesn't apply.
DMCA covers circumvention of protection measures.
That's Section 1201. The takedown bit is Section 512. They're two different things.
It's also not clear how an informational YouTube video would be either a circumvention tool or an act of circumvention if nothing in the video itself is infringing.
False DMCA claims are commonly used to take down videos like this.
And were not in this case.
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Read the article.
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> They don’t even attribute their quotes, and there is no screenshots I can see of these supposed notices either.
You'd see them, if you read the article. Look for the big image with the caption saying "Source:".
I should warn you that you'll have to make it through seven (7) sentences of text before you get there.
As a side note, not a single word of your comment just now is true. Did you think no one would notice?
> You'd see them, if you read the article. Look for the big image with the caption saying "Source:".
Please don't don't sneer at fellow community members on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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It's the fourth sentence in the piece.
>Two weeks ago, Rich had posted a video on installing Windows 11 25H2 with a local account. YouTube removed it, saying that it was "encouraging dangerous or illegal activities that risk serious physical harm or death."
Stop embarrassing yourself.
Have you?
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> they’re the ones who set this up to work this way.
Who lobbied for it to work that way? I'm assuming google aren't entirely innocent here.
The DMCA is from 1998. I don’t think Larry and Sergei were taking a break from inventing google so they could lobby congress from their Stanford dorm room.
From what I remember Google fought against DMCA abuse by media companies and lost.
Google had only been founded a month before, I don't think they had vast lobbying powers yet!
> They know that with enough reports in a short period of time they can get the content removed for a while
This can be accomplished with bogus dmca notices too. Since google gets such a high volume of notices the default action is just to shoot first and ask questions later. Alarmingly, there are 0 consequences (financial or legal) for sending bogus dmca notices
Action against DMCA abusers has happened in a few instances, but it's still largely an unsolved problem without sufficient deterrence from abuse.
https://techhq.com/news/dmca-takedown-notices-case-in-califo...
it is a weapon the music industry wanted, but now has this unintended consequence.
I think it's high time google stopped acting as judge jury and executioner in the court of copyright enforcement.
The law says they have to.
The law also says a counter claim can be immediately filed. Google don’t follow that part.
Google has nothing to do with filing a counter claim except accepting it if filed. The content owner is the only one who is allowed to file it.
Google do not immediately reinstate on counter claims.
They shouldn’t, because the original claimant has 10-14 days (depending on exact timing) to sue. If they don’t, they reinstate. Which considering many other folks it can take 6 months…
[https://copyrightalliance.org/education/copyright-law-explai...]
Not saying Google is good or anything, but this is well trod ground at this point.
So Google is between a rock and a hard place here.
If they don't react quickly and decisively to reports of "possible physical harm", even if the reports seem unfounded, they'll eventually get the NY Times to say that somebody who committed suicide "previously watched a video which has been reported to Youtube multiple times, but no action was taken by Google."
You can act quickly and decisively and also correctly. Take the average number of reports per day times the average length of a reported segment times two, divide effective work hours per day by that number and hire that many people to process reports. Congrats, your average time to resolution is 24 hours.
If that's too expensive, your platform is broken. You need to be able to process user reports. If you can't, rethink what you're doing.
Not saying you’re wrong in this particular instance, but there are all sorts of areas where we accept that harm will occur at scale (e.g. that 40,000 people per year die in motor-vehicle incidents just in the US). How do we determine what is reasonable to expect?
We require auto manufacturers to include certain safety features in their vehicles, to decrease deaths to a socially acceptable level.
The central ill of centralized web platforms is that the US never mandated customer/content SLAs in regulation, even as their size necessitated that as a social good. (I.e. when they became 'too big for alternatives to be alternatives')
It wouldn't be complicated:
Google, Meta, Apple, Steam, Amazon, etc. could all be better, more effective platforms if they spent more time and money on resolution.As-is, they invest what current law requires, and we get the current situation.
It’s even worse when you think about what happens when it’s NOT English + NOT mainstream content.
I really wish someone could tell me that either
1) Yes we can make a system that enables functional and effective customer support (because this is what this case is about) no matter the language
2) No we can’t because it’s fundamentally about manpower which can match the context with actual harm.
Whatever I suspect, having any definitive answer to this decides how these problems need to eventually be solved. Which in turn tells us what we should ask and hope for.
> a system that enables functional and effective customer support
I'm not saying that it's humans, but it's humans.
Augmented by technology, but the only currently viable arbitrator of human-generated edge cases is another human.
If a platform can't afford to hire moderation resources to do the job effectively (read: skilled resources in enough quantity to make effective decisions), then it's not a viable business.
> If a platform can't afford to hire moderation resources to do the job effectively (read: skilled resources in enough quantity to make effective decisions), then it's not a viable business.
But, it is viable. Many profitable businesses exist that don't pay for this.
One may instead mean that they want such businesses to be made non viable, in which case we should critically consider which business models that we might currently like other consequences of may be made non viable. For example, will users suddenly need to pay per post? If so, is that worth the trade-off?
Businesses that are profiting off un-paid-for externalities aren't socially sustainable businesses. They're just economic scams that happen to be legal.
Imho, we should do what we can to make sure they're required to pay for those externalities.
Then, they either figure out a way to do that profitably (great! innovation!) or they go under.
But we shouldn't allow them to continue to profit by causing external ills.
> Then, they either figure out a way to do that profitably (great! innovation!) or they go under.
They do figure out how. That's the problem. This stuff is all trade offs.
If you say they have to remove the videos or they're in trouble then they remove the videos even if they shouldn't.
You can come up with some other rule but you can't eliminate the trade off so the choice you're making is how you want to pay. Do you want more illegitimate takedowns or less censorship of whatever you were trying to censor?
If you tried to mandate total perfection then they wouldn't be able to do it and neither would anybody else, and then you don't have video hosting. Which nobody is going to accept.
Given YouTube's profits, I think it's fair to say there's a substantial viable middle ground of much more vigorous (and labor intensive) appeals than what's currently done.
And that requirement can be created by more robust, outcome-defined regulation.
> Given YouTube's profits, I think it's fair to say there's a substantial viable middle ground of much more vigorous (and labor intensive) appeals than what's currently done.
People keep looking at the absolute amount of profit across a massive service and assuming that it means they could afford to do something expensive. But the cost of the expensive thing is proportional to the size of the service, and then they can't, because dividing the profits by the number of hours of video turns into an amount of money that doesn't buy you that.
> And that requirement can be created by more robust, outcome-defined regulation.
What are you proposing exactly?
Outcome-based metrics are the things that often fail the hardest. It's reasonable to have a given level of human review when you have functioning CAPTCHAs on the reporting function to rate limit spam reports, but if you then require that by law and LLMs come around that can both solve CAPTCHAs and auto-generate spam reports to target competitors etc., now your cost of doing human review has gone up by many fold but you're still expected to meet the same outcomes. Then they either have to tune whatever metric you're not forcing them to meet up to draconian hellscape levels to meet the one you're demanding or you're now demanding they do something that nobody knows how to do whatsoever, both of which are unreasonable.
And all of this is because the government doesn't know how to solve the problem either. If you want to prohibit things with a "risk of physical harm" then you have to hire law enforcement to go drink from the fire hose and try to find those things so the perpetrators can be prosecuted. But that's really expensive to do properly so the government wants to fob it off on someone else and then feign indignation when they can't solve it either.
Please explain what kind of magic your solution uses to ensure that reports always come in at a perfectly even pace without any peaks or valleys. Because without that, your proposed approach will not work.
Perhaps the current process becomes the backlog management system. This isn’t an insurmountable problem, were the incentives in place.
They have a history of removing videos that describe things they don't like under the guise of "harm", eg Linus Tech Tips video on De-Googling your life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apdZ7xmytiQ
Google incentivizes takedown vote abuse. 1. 3 Strikes rules for channels 2. Automatic takedown systems based on votes 3. Incentivizing competing channels with ads 4. No verification/limits/punishment of bogus takedown voters and vote bots 5. Lack of democritized, universal takedowns of equivalent content
Does Microsoft unfairly benefit from Google's takedown tirefire? I do not know.
But if I were designing a voting system for takedowns it would be: 1. 1 non-DMCA takedown vote per user per year 2. No takedown votes for accounts less than 1 year old 3. Takedown all equivalent content when a video is voted down. 4. Verification of DMCA ownership before taking down DMCA-protected content.
The problem I see with that attitude is that it's excusing companies with immense profits from having even the tiniest modicum of actual human review for things.
As long as the bad behavior is profitable, platforms aren't going to fix it: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/06/meta-reportedly-projected-10...
YouTube claim these were not automated actions. This explicitly rules out "algorithm/LLM makes a stupid mistake" but also seems to rule out "hits a threshold of community reports and gets automatically taken down pending manual review".
Also, it doesn't even need to be collusion between Microsoft and Google, but to pretend like that's never a thing is to be ignorant of history.
Stop defending these big companies for these things. Even if your version of the story is true, the fact they allow their platform to be abused this way is incredibly damaging to content creators trying to spread awareness of issues.
But also, do you seriously think there is a massive amount of competition at the scale of a 330k subscriber channel for people to bother pulling off this kind of attack for two videos on bypassing Windows 11 account and hardware requirements?
Regardless of what happened here, Google is to blame at least for the tools they have made.
As for Microsoft, I don't think there's anything disagreeable with saying that they've tried hard to get people to switch to hardware with their TPM implementation and lying about the reasons. Likewise for forcing Microsoft accounts on people. I am not certain they were involved in this case, but they created the need for this kind of video to exist, so they are also implicated here.
> But also, do you seriously think there is a massive amount of competition at the scale of a 330k subscriber channel for people to bother pulling off this kind of attack for two videos on bypassing Windows 11 account and hardware requirements
Enough to cause this behavior. I don’t know if theres a mathematical or organization law or something, but it seems like theres always a way to abuse review mechanisms for large communities / sites.
Never enough manpower to do review for each case. Or reviews take a long time.
> Never enough manpower to do review for each case.
Manpower at a given salary cost.
All content platforms could throw more money at this problem, hire more / more skilled reviewers, and create better outcomes. Or spend less and get worse.
It's a choice under their control, not an inevitability.
Either that or microsoft and/or google will send someone to my house to Raymond Reddington my ass if I install W11 with only a local account.
Stop making so much sense
The problem here is that companies seems to not be the wiser to such tactics and creators are left holding the bag by such aggression.
Content hosts are damned if they do and damned if they don't. If they take their time and are cautious with reports, people end up swamped with garbage that people complain about. If they try to be quick to clean up the garbage, some clean stuff get caught and people complain.
The only frequent obvious problem I see is Youtube not telling people why their videos get hidden or taken down or down ranked. Long time creators get left in the dark from random big changes to the platform that could be solved with an email.
In the olden days this would simply be solved by... having customer support befitting the size of the company. Of course nowadays that's "inneficient".
We have companies with billions of customers but smaller customer service than a mid-sized retailer from the 90s. Something is not right.
This is the problem.
IME it's especially bad with Admob. They've purposefully kept their email contact option broken for years and the only "help" you can access is from their forum, which is the absolute worst and never provides any meaningful resolutions. It's awful.
Companies listen to small claims lawsuits.
Google, Facebook etc does have support for some customers. If you have a $10m a year advertising account with them I’m sure you’ll have an account manager.
People posting on these sites as content creators aren’t customers.
What became of the old ruse of simply not listening to contents that one find objectionable? Now it needs to be nuked from orbit yesterday to make sure nobody's pure eyes glance at it.
The world got more connected and we all had to suffer the consequences of other people consuming propaganda, so we decided it should be banned, except for the ones who consume it, who decided the same process should be used to ban reality and only allow propaganda.
They are absolutely aware of these sorts of abuses. I'll bet my spleen that it shows up as a line item in the roadmapping docs of their content integrity/T&S teams.
The root problem is twofold: the inability to reliably automate distinguishing "good actor" and "bad actor", and a lack of will to throw serious resources at solving the problem via manual, high precision moderation.
The law doesn’t allow companies to do anything other than what they are doing.
In certain niches, the marginal value of kneecapping the competition exceeds the viable budget for counteracting gaming. It may be a quirk of this reality’s hyperparameters that a UGC media monopoly inevitably suffers from this. Or maybe at a certain point it hits their bottom line and better enforcement is contrived.
IMO, major hosting providers ought to implement a function to neuter mass-reporting. Some threshold past which each additional report lowers the priority in the stack.
Your theory is baseless given that YouTube claimed that decisions weren't automated:
> The platform claimed its "initial actions" (could be either the first takedown or appeal denial, or both) were not the result of automation.
YouTube frequently claims this and are frequently caught lying. (Oh, you really watched this one hour video and reached your decision in an email sent 96 seconds after the appeal was submitted? Yeah okay...)
They'll silently fix the edge case in the OP and never admit it was any kind of algorithmic (OR human) failure.
I'm aware that there's a chance that Google is lying, I'm just pointing out that their comment doesn't make any sense if they believe that Google deserves the benefit of the doubt.
Thank you for the sane reply
People are so quick to assume conspiracy because it is mentally convenient
The video was restored because of the noise the takedown created. Small creators have no voice and for every big channel that can ignite a PR backlash there are potentially thousands that would disappear without trace or chances to be restored. YouTube has been unreliable for years, but AI just makes it even more so; how could one base their business on such an unprofessional and unstable partner that appears managed by kids with too much power in their hands? An alternative is badly needed asap.
> The video was restored because of the noise the takedown created.
Source:
> Rich appealed both immediately. The first appeal was denied in 45 minutes. The second in just five. > The platform claimed its "initial actions" (could be either the first takedown or appeal denial, or both) were not the result of automation.
If they claim that a non automated review occurred but then still took down/denied appeal, what caused them to change course?
What is your source that the restoration of the video was not because of the noise?
Pattern recognition, an innate skill in most humans. When most bogus takedowns are not reversed, but the more people you see talking about them, the more likely they are to get reversed, you can easily see the pattern.
Elderly relatives are the best candidate for switching to linux.
They need to do what? Browser, zoom, email client. They are never going to install anything.
All of these have great options on linux, and they work just as well.
Just put them on Debian stable and be done with it.
Yep. While my mom was working she needed too many Windows-only applications. But once she retired, I set her up with a Linux desktop and it's been smooth sailing.
I installed Debian (with Mate desktop) for 3 different elderly ladies.
All 3 give it a solid thumbs up. "It never crashes", "It's so easy", "It's fast", "None of that Windows bs".
I installed zorin on an old machine that was given to me because it wouldn’t run win 11. I like it a lot. Debian based, clean smooth UI. Just tell them Microsoft improved the user experience with windows 11.
X X Windows L.E. => (e)X X Windows (Wayland) L.E. (Linux Edition)
Even the one major 'windows' app that my mom needs to use is going Web only... so I figure if I install Debian Stable + Widevine that'll cover 99.9% of the use case and I gain an OS that just works correctly.
I installed them Mint and they said it's better than Windows due to all the built-in free apps (like public TV)
i think a good ubuntu is a bit better than just debian for this. probably linux mint or kubuntu. for just debian, then mint debian edition or mx linux would be best, imo
> imo
Any particular reasons?
i just fret about grandma using plain debian. my first thought is i want to give her puppy linux. it's probably fine if she lives in firefox though.
What do you believe Ubuntu has that Debian doesn't and will make their lives easier?
generally, it's more user-friendly and has more third-party stuff like codecs and drivers. i think it's also got more of a community to help with issues, whether googling or using the irc client that normally comes with a distro.
Chromebook.
A locked in Google platform while Google is helping Microsoft implement mass data collection...
Most of them can be turned into a vanilla linux laptop fairly easily, and even support custom coreboot firmware: https://docs.mrchromebox.tech/
That being said, it's also pretty easy to get a full linux shell and even install gui apps via flatpak or whatever.
So that all your chat history with the relative goes straight to train Google ads? No, thanks.
Chromebook is absolute garbage
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Linux is under control of the same companies
Besides, all major distributions (Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu) ship with a shim signed by Microsoft, and systemd..
*BSD is the only escape, but for how long?
I feel your passion, but I feel this is a little hyperbolic? I feel your passion is directed more at UEFI secure-boot than at Linux. I am no lover of the UEFI secure-boot world, using shims as a first-stage boot loader component whose job is to bridge the firmware’s trusted key infrastructure (typically Microsoft’s signing key) to a Linux (or other non-Windows) bootloader/kernel chain.
> Linux is under control of the same companies
Linux is indeed open source, so are you trying to say that "Linux is EFFECTIVELY under control of the same companies VIA UEFI WITH SECURE BOOT ENABLED"? Or is there a big-Tech cabal controlling Linux in another manner? I get that most big-Tech companies are major contributors to open source projects.
> all major distributions (Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu) ship with a shim signed by Microsoft
Having a shim signed by Microsoft makes no difference if these distributions are being installed on hardware without UEFI firmware implemented on the motherboard’s SPI flash e.g. motherboards from Purism (Librem Laptops), System76 (Thelio, Galago Pro, etc.), Framework Laptop (2021 →), Star Labs, Raspberry Pi / Single-Board Computers and uncountable DIY PC builds with motherboards (ASUS, ASRock, Gigabyte, etc.) that expose Secure Boot options. It is usually only when consumer hardware is being used from major OEMs (Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc.) that ship with only Microsoft’s key in the firmware trust database.
> and systemd
You are suggesting that “systemd” is also part of the lock-in or control (in your mind) of those distributions. But strictly in the context of shim and Secure Boot, systemd is not the same issue: systemd is an init-system/process manager in userland, not part of the firmware/boot loader signature infrastructure. Major distros use systemd, so from a “vendor/lock-in” narrative they may lump bootloader trust and systemd governance together. But strictly speaking your assertion is more of a opinion/ideological piece than a formal technical dependency.
> *BSD is the only escape
Not true. Not all Linux distributions use it — Tails, Qubes OS, PureOS, Alpine, Void, Gentoo, etc., deliberately avoid it. Most minimalistic, privacy, or DIY distributions refuse the Microsoft-signed shim route because their users are expected to control their firmware settings or use owner-controlled keys.
You're technically correct, but you're slicing the argument so thin it disappears
The YouTube drama you glossed over is the point: we've reached a stage where explaining how to bypass Microsoft's arbitrary hardware requirements gets censored for "physical harm"
On systemd: calling it a Red Hat/Microsoft, driven monoculture that mediates everything from device mounts to DNS is accurate, the same consolidation that gave us Microsoft signed boot chains also delivered one init system to rule them all, dismissing this as "merely ideological" is exactly how normalization works, by the time it's a technical dependency, it's alreadt too late, look at the "cloud" ecosystem..
You listed exceptions, but let's be honest, they are only just distros.. Tails and Qubes are security, hardened research tools, not daily drivers for "elderly relatives". Alpine, Gentoo and Void require deep knowledge, technical skills and an ongoing maintenance that defeats the "set it and forget it" goal
And yes, you can buy a Purism or System76 laptop, but that's the exception that proves the rule: you must pay a premium and choose their hardware to escape the shim problem, that's not freedom; it's choosing your corporate master from a smaller menu, all subject to the same master/ideology
*BSD remains the only ecosystem offering a complete, usable desktop without either a Microsoft signature or a sprawling, vendor, controlled init system, if that sounds hyperbolic, it's because the Overton window has already shifted so far toward corporate control that stating the obvious appears radical
Today Linux supports most HW but Tomorrow, if the Chip Security Act passes, chips will be legally required to contain tracking and kill-switch mechanisms, while the Act doesn't directly mandate Linux to restrict hardware support, it creates the legal infrastructure for exactly that: either mainstream distributions cooperate with the surveillance architecture or risk being barred from running on modern hardware
The 'choice' becomes BigTech-approved Linux that supports backdoored silicon, or niche distros that can't run on any new machine
I could continue with many more examples, but I feel like none of the people over hear understand the point
https://www.centerforcybersecuritypolicy.org/insights-and-re...
Windows 10 is also the stop I'm getting off at. Windows 11 does not serve me and it does not suit my needs. Windows 10 was not too great either, debloated was somewhat manageable to run on one of my machines. It's inertia of all these years, my first windows installation was Win 95. But Windows 11 is a horror show I don't want take part in and warn anyone that could be tricked into using to stay away.
kde is fun!
so is xfce but i'm too old for tweaking so much
I love xfce. It is so stable and practical.
Also Visa/Mastercard are big silencers…
What do you mean?
Payments providers engage in censorship and moral policing, e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/29/mastercard-vis...
The first instance that I remember was when they stopped Wikileaks from taking donations back then.
Nowadays they censor by putting pressure (by denying payment capabilities) on sites that offer content that they dont agree with.
I realize crypto has become dominated by the investment community, but money is not just a store of value. As a medium of exchange, fiat currencies use money to implement monetary policy and control. Electronic exchange of fiat currency is a permission based activity, and significant transactions are simply disallowed and users often debanked. You don't have to wait for a monetary system to collapse before crypto has meaningful value. That value can come from simply not being subject to corrupt monetary policies and control.
Possibly referring to them pressuring companies from selling adult contact they dont like by threatening to cut off payment capability.
> Google censors the world
It’s literally their mission: to organize the worlds information.
We just didn’t understand it at the time.
The reality is most people don’t care about this.
And if they do care they will find workarounds as you said.
Nothing will change, the frog has been sitting in boiling water for more than a generation now and the newbloods never experienced the computational freedom you hold dear; they will happily use whatever corporate surveillance technology is being forced upon them. They will even defend it to the bone if you try to take it away
It wouldn't be the first time that something gets posted on HN and then miraculously is resolved.
As the article notes, it was already resolved, and that happened five days ago.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45744503
Microsoft is just a video game company to me, I can live without its products and be happier. With Google though, things are bit different, they have Google Maps and YouTube, which I use nearly on daily basis. I can probably replace Google Maps with something else, even though that will probable be a downgrade in terms of user experience, however replacing YouTube is impossible, so many unique content in it.
(a big) But YouTube has grown to be such a monopoly, that they now dictate what we are going to be able to watch on the web.
This is sadly so hard to change, so many creators are now literally working "for" YouTube, and there are so many quality videos there.
Replacing YouTube with a drop-in substitution is obviously impossible, but it's not that hard to replace with a different hobby. I've never used YouTube to any significant degree, and manage pretty well without it.
Same. It is quite difficult for me to understand the current YouTube addiction... I can go literally years without even opening it.
You can replace the frontent yt-dlp invidious mpv etc
I think it's only a matter of time before youtube starts injecting ads directly into the video stream, and only allow streaming it at the actual playback speed.
They might even put the ads in different places for different users to throw off things like Sponsorblock.
Its wild to me that you watch enough YouTube to care, but won't pay for it. Its a service, either pay or put up with the ads.
Every single video platform that has ever existed has added ads after some number of users are paying.
Also you can block the ads so you have the third option.
And if YouTube do that then I will unsubscribe. Just like I did with Amazon.
Until that point I’ll continue to pay. Content creators tell me they get more income from premium subscribers too so win-win.
The problem for me is that "enough to care" is like a video every couple months. $8/video is poor value.
Fair enough. Thats why there is an ad supported version.
I consider my time to be valuable, and really hate ads though so removing even a few minutes of ads are worth the $8 to me.
[flagged]
You should try just paying the $8. Its honestly a great value for all the entertainment you get.
It is literally better in every way and helps support the content creators whose work you enjoy. As a bonus it includes YouTube music.
I guess taking those creators work without paying using adblock is one way to live, but that doesnt give you the moral high ground you think it does and your entitled attitude is kind of nasty. Do you really feel like YouTube and all of those creators owe you free shit? Just don't use it if you hate commercials that much and can't afford 8 lousy bucks.
No I don't work there. I'm just a fan who thinks the excuses people make to steal are gross.
At least you're bargaining instead of demanding, I respect that.
I would have to jump through all kinds of hoops to do that, like creating an account, staying logged in, and on top of that I would still need to have my adblocker to fix their website trying to shove "trending" videos down my throat. The real recommendations based off viewing history work great with a disposable anonymous cookie.
Simply put, paying doesn't provide enough value over doing it the free way. This is YouTube's problem, not mine. I don't pirate games, simply because buying them from steam or gog is a much nicer user experience than pirating the games. But dealing with google and getting so little in return, still needing to use extensions to fix their crap website anyway? Nah, I don't care about their business model.
What is so much of value in YouTube that you cannot live without? The platform has turned into clickbait conspiracy board, exactly because creators are trying to adapt to the algorithm. Apart from fun gaming channels, there are very few channels where you can actually learn something. It’s mostly noise.
I’m having much more trouble imagining life without Google Maps that without YouTube.
Google Maps is garbage as well, full of inaccurate shit or meme stuff people added but the process of getting it fixed has been made worse and worse over the years.
The report system has been gimped massively,can't even type in reasons any more just have to select from some limited options and hope for the best. Took me over half a year of reporting a permanent street closure near me for them to actually change it and all the whole they were happy to direct people and cars down it . Other times they just outright reject reports without any reason.
Directions have got more sucky over the years.
More and more advertising has creeped into the maps as well, seeing the logos for stores and restaurants over other places and when zoomed out because they paid to be boosted.
I only use Google for street view and, on google earth, for historical aerial imagery these days, not for navigation. For that I use apps that use OSM like Organic Maps or now CoMaps.
Google Maps has a practical value. I know why I use it - I want to get to somewhere, I open the app, type my destination and I'm given a route. Most of the times it has worked very well, in numerous different countries that I visited.
I find it hard to extract the same practical value from YouTube. There have been cases where I would see how people repair stuff and to some degree it has been useful but it is hard to find that "useful" type of video you look for among all the noise. Product review videos are always kind of fishy, because reviewers are mostly sponsored. So I can't quite get to extract anything of great value from YouTube.
Btw, thank you for the Organic Maps tip. Looks really really cool!
I've had a pretty good experience with OpenStreetMap to replace Google Maps. For YouTube it depends on your needs. If it's just entertainment there's Nebula, Odysee, Nicovideo, Twitch, Dailymotion, et cetera. For more educational content the alternatives can be a bit hit-or-miss.
That said, YouTube has been auto-dubbing videos using an algorithm that overdubs English spoken by people with an accent, which I consider discriminatory (if not outright racist), so I'm trying the various alternatives now. In a few months I think I'll have more of an opinion about them.
and what phone do you use? There's no way out from that perspective (apple included), privacy and interoperability should not be mutually exclusive.
At this point I'm pretty sure my next phone will be GrapheneOS, on whichever hardware they support at the time I want to buy a new phone. As a bonus it'll probably be really annoying to use because of the security, which will make me use it less.
I'll just have to remember to never visit Spain, lest I get arrested for drug trafficking because of my phone.
Maybe not totally related but I remember a comment from few years which lets say, was "dismissed" at the time by votes where user said that Google doesn't innovate when it comes to web standards but pushes own agenda by planted people at W3C. To ensure their browser will work for them and not for the user.
Microsoft on the other hand seems to be reheating the old Palladium/Trusted Computing concept enhanced now by Copilot. This idea was already criticized over 20 years ago as a dangerous attempt of turning desktop machines to uncontrollable appliances which would run only approved software and serve, access approved safe content rigged with DRM. And frankly, with all this play with chat control, age verification it's hard to not see some similarities. Maybe that's where this is all going.
most games run in Ubuntu with steam now, Google workspace replaced excel for the great majority of tasks online and I ubuntu improved a lot drivers support.
I'm happy to work in Linux and see the great improvements they did thru decades
> (Having said that, my bypass strategy is to not use Windows 11 altogether. I don't depend on it, having used Linux since 21 years now,
I'm not quite that cool, but I have been using it full time since about 2009, so I'm not too far behind :)
The only time that I have to use Windows is because I have to play tech support for my parents, because despite considerable effort on my end, I have been completely unsuccessful at convincing them to move to Linux or Mac. It's a little annoying, because when I bring up the subject they act like I should just "live and let live", but that's a really stupid argument when they're saying this while I am fixing their computer. Somehow this is lost on them.
I have complained about this a bunch of times on here, but I'll say it again: If you work on Windows Update, then you should consider any career other than software engineer. Windows Update has made the world a worse place because it disincentivizes updating your computer, leading to an increase in open. Update software isn't allowed to suck.
Obviously it depends on your relationship, but it's not really nice of them to insist on your tech support like this AND refuse to make it easier for you AND be ungrateful (?) for it. You could set a date after which you won't help anymore unless they switch to Linux or Mac.
To be fair, they are always extremely thankful when I help them out with stuff.
It didn’t bother me that much until a few months ago when an auto update to Windows 11 bricked my mom’s computer, and since Windows won’t support filesystem that didn’t coexist with dinosaurs and because System Restore doesn’t work, and because the automatic repair tools never work, I ended up having to walk them through flashing a drive with a fresh copy of Windows 11 to get it working.
Oh, also, the diagnostic tools don’t appear to work, and they don’t really have “live USB” support for anything anymore, so I actually had to first walk my dad through flashing Ubuntu to a drive so I could tmate in, mount the NTFS drive and rsync all the files to my server. The only way to save Windows and NTFS is to use Linux, apparently:
If they were running Linux, I would have them set up with automatic system snapshots with ZFS and since ZFS is actually a competently built filesystem the snapshots would actually work.
I am ragging on filesystems but it’s not even inherent to filesystems. I run NixOS on my laptop and every time I do a rebuild it takes a snapshot, so if I break something I can just reboot and choose an older generation, and this works even on ext4. I think this is how Windows System Restore is supposed to work but it has the slight disadvantage of not actually working, or it is so limited so as to be useless (e.g. you apparently cannot restore a Windows 10 restore point from a Windows 11 install, a big problem if the auto update to Windows 11 was the actual problem).
I have debated giving the ultimatum, and I haven’t ruled it out, but in order for it to work I need to be willing to stick to my guns if they call my bluff, and I don’t know that I am there yet. I have been trying to plant the seed though it has not been successful.
What if they censor you for a good reason. Is it ok then?
I'm a bit of an LLM skeptic but chatgpt could probably explain this kind of thing pretty well and a) it's interactive so you can ask if you don't understand a step b) there will be no filler to pad the content for ads (well not at the moment anyway)
Unfortunately, this brings an obvious question:
If they sensor something like this, how could we trust platforms with the actually important subjects?
We can’t anymore. Simple as that.
I agree with this except for the "anymore" part. We never could trust them. It just wasn't as obvious before as it is now.
We will anyway because the “put a camera directly on those in power” approach ala CSPAN is boring.
Most Americans literally can’t imagine news as anything other than entertainment.
we put way too much faith in them. It's easy to fake authoritative when your substance is virtual.
Suppose we hadn't done so; what alternative method of disseminating information might we have used, that would have had within a few orders of magnitude of the same reach?
The implication here is that YouTube enabled the reach it got; whereas in reality the reach was induced because of the faith we put in it. Had we not done so, then whatever alternative method of communication we did put our faith in - like blog posts, or self-hosting videos - would have had the same reach.
lol, the evening news was always a laugh if you knew anything about the subject matter.
> trust platforms
Framing it in terms of trust is already problematic.
We don't trust the NYTimes or Washington Post, they are a source of information that needs to be taken with shovels of salt and require additional research to get to anything trustworthy. And we always understood that was their role.
We don't trust supermarkets or retailers to give us important pricing information, we do the research to get anything actionable.
Why is trust involved for YouTube ?
Because unlike NYT or Washington post, anybody can upload a video in seconds, which implies a reasonable level of freedom of speech.
How is freedom of speech lead to trust? it's more the opposite, when it's free for all anyone can lie and have their lie amplified.
Because in order for freedom of speech you also need freedom for people to say dumb and abhorrent things. There are some clear bad things like hate speech, and Grey things like Covid conspiracies, maybe they should be banned, but removal of w11 bypasses sends a clear message that google is the lapdog for other big businesses.
exactly.
and it is why total freedom of speech on a platform does not mean we can trust it. maybe even the opposite because people who tell a lie are more motivated (money or whatever)
I am not justifying w11 video removal I'm just saying thinking youtube trustworthy because it's open to everybody is a mistake
Lies and other harmful speech are against freedom of speech.
That's an interesting way of looking at things. Now we just need to have some sort of arbiter who decides what is harmful and what is true eh?
Why not just a quick duel?
I'll go arm the icbm
We can't. From COVID to wars, YouTube is like public access TV from the 80s with scam preachers. We have to take it with a bucket of salt.
We can't and we shouldn't, these people only care about making more money, even if it means teenagers contracting diseases in the process. They are then using the money to shape the public opinion about them. The societal norms should change in a way that makes these people miserable the more they are successful IMHO.
I'm not even sure I know who Billie Eilish really is but she was all over Reddit for telling billionaires to donate their money.
More or less, the charitable and responsible approach to being ultra-rich, and which has disappeared in this century.
I see the people in charge of these big corporations as lizards, given every decision they take seems to be anti-Humanity. We should cherish non-profits, small businesses, having a good and boring life, doing normal things. Instead we idolise being successful, rich, or famous. What a stupid system…
They removed hundreds of videos documenting Israel's human rights violations.
The answer is no, we can't.
*censor
This implies we could ever trust them.
Did we ever trust them?
You can’t.
like they did during COVID
You can't, and this was readily apparent in 2020 with Covid. Even doctors presenting factual information got censored and de-platformed by YouTube.
The only real competing video platform that promises no censorship is Rumble ( https://rumble.com ), but it has a very right-wing slant due to conservatives flocking to it during all the Covid-era social media censorship.
Yeah the moment they started I knew it was doomed to fail. Get it wrong once and your credibility is ruined. They should have never tried to censor content outside of what is legally required and therefore defined.
I kind of agree but laws vary from countries to countries. It's quite an hassle to know what is legal in one country and not in another.
Take freedom of speech for instance, half the thing you can say in usa would be deemed as hate speech in Europe.
Society is doomed because we stopped silencing disinformation peddlers. We know what happens when Nazis are allowed to spread propaganda freely - because that happened one time in Germany, and we saw the results. We don't know what happens when antivaxxers are allowed to spread propaganda freely, but it's not hard to guess, and measles cases are on the rise. You can argue it's not YouTube's problem to solve, but nobody else is solving it, so it's hard for me to blame them for trying.
There's also this annoying pattern where 98% of the complaints about censorship are from people who are mad that the objectively stupid and dangerous stuff they were trying to profit from got censored, so it becomes a "boy who cried wolf" situation where any complaint about internet censorship is ignored on the assumption it's one of those. (What if there really is a Nigerian prince who needs my help, and I don't read his email?)
This time, though... Society is not being destroyed by people pirating Windows 11. That is entirely different from censoring things that destroy society, and they don't have a good excuse.
>Society is doomed because we stopped silencing disinformation peddlers. We know what happens when Nazis are allowed to spread propaganda freely - because that happened one time in Germany, and we saw the results.
That one time in Germany, actually an 80 year long ongoing event in central Europe. Hitler didn't wake up one day with a novel idea about the Jews and the place of the German people, these were foundational ideas in the culture at least as far back as Wagner.
If anything, this pro-censorship argument is self defeating, because the "disinformation" peddlers that were silenced in the second reich were generally those of the liberal, anglo, and francophilic variety, those who would seek to decenter the goal of a collective German destiny.
Censorship is only ever a good if you find yourself a part of the group that would be doing the censoring.
> promises no censorship... has a very right-wing slant
https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservativ...
> The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible place to live even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong.
If you want to avoid censorship, self-host Peertube and have peave of mind.
That's just self censorship, since no one will see your videos there
You can do both.
I looked at the front page alone and it's full of right wing hot takes and neo-nazis. If a platform wants to accept white-supremacists that's one thing. When it's right on their front page though it's being actively promoted.
Rumble isn't going to save the internet.
Right, it is explicitly a neo-Nazi platform
>Right, it is explicitly a neo-Nazi platform
We call those "free speech" platforms nowadays, because apparently the only free speech is Nazi speech.
It's because the only valid argument nazis have for why they should be allowed to broadcast what they have to say is that (in most jurisdictions) it's not literally illegal to.
odysee is similar but maybe with more of an anarchist/conspiracy theory slant than rumble
Although the reason was absurd, videos were eventually restored.
The point is to prevent viral videos from getting widely viewed during their peak. To cut it off. It doesn't matter if the block is removed some days or weeks later and then there's a trickle of traffic. This is the status quo for corporations that wish to suppress content on Alphabet's platforms. Another well known recent example is Forbes attacks on Gamer's Nexus investigative documentary on the GPU black market that competed with their video.
Isn't the damage done though? Like if they were down at the time when people were told that win10 reached end of support and it's time to get on 11 does it matter that they are up now?
Anyway I doubt youtube did this intentionally, but it does show how vulnerable their system is to false reports.
But did someone on Microsoft's pay, a Google employee with elevated access, flag it?
DMCA has always been buried in false reports. Every system gets gamed, and this is a particularly easy one to do so with.
TBH the title is clickbait given the outcome.
Are you arguing that
And we see how many people here on HN don't read the article.
Those of you who don't use Linux as a daily driver: why?
What do you need in Windows that is not possible in Linux? Its slowness to justify your 40-hour work week?
If Windows keeps going in this direction, I will try again.
But in the past 20 years I tried using Linux on the desktop a couple of times.
It always ends the same way - out of the blue it refuses to boot. Of course there's usually a solution, but I just really don't like that my PC can just suddenly decide that I'll be troubleshooting for the rest of the day, usually in front of some very minimal "maintenance" CLI. And that's if I got the time - I may have to use my laptop for the rest of the week, now dreading the weekend instead of welcoming it.
Right now I'd have to do a bunch of research first. Would I still be able to play all the games I play with my friends once a week? I have 3 monitors, one of them has a different DPI than the others, did they fix that by now? I got a stream deck, will that be essentially useless? Is my webcam / mic supported? Do I need to learn about various audio architectures before I can ever use a mic again? Which ones of the dozens of apps I use every day can be made to run under Linux?
It'll probably take a 40-hour work week to get to like 90% of where I was on Windows, and then I'd consider myself lucky that I got that much to work at all. And then I'd start waiting for the first "troubleshooting day".
With all that negativity I have to also say that I adore Linux on the server. When all you need in terms of hardware is basically a CPU and any number of storage devices and all you get in terms of UI is SSH, Linux is far superior to anything else.
If you want to avoid boot issues, stay away from Arch-based platforms. Their goofy pacman installer has borked my boot numerous times. I prefer Debian-based or specifically for recent-enough-packages-and-stable desktop, Debian Testing.
Wouldn't all boot issues caused by pacman shenanigans be solved by setting up snapper or equivalent? Luckily haven't experienced one so far
Yes I do that. Half the time it just deletes the grub generated image for some reason. So the solution is to often mount the drive and grub update. Ridiculous that it even happens though.
Distros like Mint, Ubuntu, Bluefin, etc all annoy me to the same extent as Windows.
Distros like Arch, NixOS (my current laptop driver) or even Debian require a bunch of tinkering to get some things to behave properly.
Also, I get tired of all the tech "reboots", eg the 3 or 4 different ways of setting up network or DNS, pipewire vs pulseaudio vs whatever, Wayland vs X11, etc.
> require a bunch of tinkering to get some things to behave properly
> the 3 or 4 different ways of setting up network or DNS, pipewire vs pulseaudio vs whatever, Wayland vs X11, etc
Sounds like a problem with your distribution. I've been on openSUSE Tumbleweed for years and I've never had to tinker with any of those.
It was the same problems on the Fedora and Ubuntu since ever (I have Linux-based work laptop). Also on Fedora i had to upgrade very slowly, so they could release bugfixes - stable new releases were always crippling my ** Dell somehow.
Easier to work on than Windows but my Linux pisses me off every day.
Problems with docks, forgetting all monitor setups except for the last dock (I use three, two at the office, one at home), Zoom ALWAYS having problems with screensharing, Network Manager issues since forever (can't VPN like a human being, have to use vpnc like an animal), etc, etc.
Ah yes. The Linux user is always holding it wrong.
In my case it stems from having to deal with multiple distros (and multiple generations of distros, eg 3 LTS Ubuntus) professionally.
In other cases, distros give a choice on which tools to use, usually because the new one is better (but also happens to come with its own new bugs).
Unrelated, I love that any "why aren't you using Linux?" question is actually almost always just a thinly veiled "let me tell you why you're wrong" plant.
> The Linux user is always holding it wrong
That's actually the opposite of what I said. All those issues seem to come from the fact that the user didn't choose a distribution where it's "one-click install".
If you came to me and said "I tried Arch Linux and my installation broke after every update", I think it's fair to say that it's something you should've expected before you installed the distribution. It's unfair to make the comparison for stability between Windows and Linux if your only example is Arch Linux.
So yes, I maintain that the distribution choice is important and that if you constantly run into issues, it's probably a problem with your distribution (or your use thereof).
"You chose the wrong distro" is very much in the "you're holding it wrong" vein, in my book.
If there's one thing I'll admit to "doing it wrong" it's that I've been on a distro-hopping binge the past few years because I've (fortunately) not actually needed my laptop as a daily driver, so I've experienced a bunch of them and, so far, none of them have given me a compelling reason to stay.
Many have been interesting (particularly NixOS and Bluefin), some have been easy until you decide you want to get away from defaults (Mint comes to mind). All of them have had some quirks/issues.
I haven't tried a SUSE in probably 25 years so maybe that'll be my next hop.
Mind you, I've had Linux devices for 30 years and I was also a FreeBSD-as-my-main-desktop user for about a decade, so it's not like I'm not into this kind of tech.
I see. Sorry if I came off as trying to invalidate your experience. That's not what I meant.
I've tried about 4 or 5 distros before settling on openSUSE Tumbleweed (now on my 4th or so year). Linux Mint, Fedora, Kubuntu, Solus, Manjaro...
Ironically, I find Tumbleweed (a rolling distro) more reliable than all the others I've tried. I can't say it's stable per se, but if something breaks you can rollback very easily. Doesn't break often, though.
I've been using openSUSE Tumbleweed for years and while it is decently stable, it is far from perfect.
For example i think the first issue any new user will face is with many codecs not being available in the official repository distros, making various sites (and video plays) unusable. The solution to that one is simple, add packman, which is a community repository that contains all codecs - but IIRC packman is not mentioned anywhere during the install, it is something you need to search for (it is in the wiki). However, packman very often conflicts with the official repos when it comes to updates, making all GUI-based ones (that do not seem to handle cross-repo conflicts like zypper) pretty much unusable as they always give up in the presence of a conflict. And unfortunately some comments i've seen (mainly on Reddit) from people working on the distro seem to indicate at least a minor hostility towards using packman, so i do not see this being solved any time soon.
For an experienced Linux user this is a trivial issue, something that i doubt most (long time) openSUSE Tumbleweed users would even think about, but for someone new to Linux it can be a larger issue they wont find in distros like Debian (though they may find other issues :-P).
There have been other issues i had with openSUSE Tumbleweed, like -e.g- at some point after an update every 3D game had some significant input lag regardless of vsync state. I never solved that one, i just rolled back updates (snapper is great for that, but again an advanced Linux user feature) until at some point -months later- the problem stopped happening. Though now i have another issue where the X server randomly starts not updating the screen for random numbers of milliseconds - essentially it feels as if the entire thing is stuttering - but weirdly enough there are no CPU or GPU usage spikes and it doesn't seem to be relevant to CPU/GPU usage at all. If anything, it does not happen at all if there is some OpenGL or Vulkan program running in a window (so it doesn't affect games at all, just regular desktop use) and sometimes i just end up running vkcube in another virtual desktop (it doesn't matter if the output is visible or not) to avoid it. My guess is that there is some sort of scheduling bug in the modesetting driver as i never had that issue with the amdgpu driver (my guess is the modesetting driver doesn't get as much testing as the amdgpu driver on AMD GPUs), but the amdgpu driver causes the X server to hang after i suspend and resume my desktop since i got a RX 7900 XTX (it did not happen with my RX 5700 XT, which was rock solid), so it is choice between the lesser evil.
Software that's unavailable on Linux? That I use literally all day, every day?
I get that's a car-aazy answer, but here I am.
This is what I posted last time:
> I so badly want to jump ship entirely, but there's several things holding me back. I do music production as a hobby and Ableton Live doesn't play nice with Linux. In fact it seems anything that is resource intensive without native linux support has some issues. I'm also an MS stack developer, so things like Visual Studio Pro aren't available (although I've been using Cursor IDE more and more these days). Lastly I have some games acquired through "the high seas" in which a work-around doesn't exist for compatibility.
The responses I got were to switch to different software. No, no, and no. I paid a lot of money for Ableton Suite and poured many many hours into learning how to use it; it's the DAW I prefer to use, I don't want to switch.
Having said this, I did try to dual boot recently with Linux Mint, and once again ran into headaches getting my Logitech mouse buttons to work.
Ableton seems to run under Proton (a compatability layer intended for games) with reasonable-but-slightly-higher-latency of 16-20ms per user reports.
This should generally work for games of various origins as well.
Extra mouse buttons should generally map correctly. For me, my Logitech MX Master 3 works under Arch. You may need to add udev rules if your mouse generally works but additional buttons don't seem bindable.
Try an Arch linux based distro, Omarchy or Manjaro. Most of these tweaky things will generally work better since you will be on the latest versions of software.
If Linux was so good shit would run faster not slower.
Objectively if you want to run desktop performance intensive software, Linux is not the primary place unless it’s AI/HPC or crypto related. Linux is a bad choice for gaming and people like you who try to pretend like it’s not are wrong and they should feel bad for spreading lies on the internet.
I switched my gaming pc to Linux both for reliability and because of about 7-9% improvement in raw frame rates.
This depends on the game too obviously.
Though having a computer that actually.. just works can't be overstated.
The numbers seem to be in favor of Linux though: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44381144
Because the ads are the devil I know and can be defeated. Linux for desktop has been the bottom contender YoY because it is still not reliable enough for daily use, especially on laptops.
> it is still not reliable enough for daily use
I don't know what your requirements are because I can say the exact same for Windows.
> especially on laptops
I agree with this but only if you have Nvidia drivers.
My requirement is not to have a random Linux evening. Whenever I try Linux, it eventually involves one or two of these Linux evenings to get something working or something fixed. I'm just done with those. Windows on laptop will sleep and wake consistently without bluescreen. Once the ads are removed, its great. I much prefer battling ad injection to battling critical functional issues. Ads can be ignored until I do something about them; Kernel panicking and locked up screen cannot be ignored.
Granted, I don't use the sleep feature because I'm on a desktop and seeding Linux ISOs.
But whenever I run into an issue after an update, I just rollback and wait for a few more days because it usually gets fixed. More often than not, it's not even an issue that deserves to rollback, let alone spend a whole evening troubleshooting.
Next time you try a Linux distribution, may I suggest openSUSE Tumbleweed with KDE Plasma?
I exclusively use Linux on servers now. I'm not really trying anything for desktop anymore.
Because it doesn’t work reliably on the surface pro 4. Yes, I have tried surface-linux, and no it doesn’t work well enough. When shutting down, the machine actually doesn’t shut down and my battery was dead the next morning. The boot process sometimes hangs. The OS doesn’t properly differentiate between finger and stylus. It doesn’t seem to do palm recognition. Etc…
I know this is a special case: hardware with specific Microsoft firmware. But I imagine that other people have other specific cases.
My time involved in making Linux work right mainly, there's always minor issues that take a lot of effort to solve. Like my audio interface has CH 1&2 working fine, but CH 3&4 are at half volume no matter what I do, and after waking from sleep it stops working entirely. And this is an interface with no special drivers needed.
Also Lightroom and Fusion 360 don't run on Linux, fusion kind of works through wine but barely, and lightroom does not work at all.
Half the time I woke it from sleep the lockscreen would be broken and unresponsive too, requiring a reboot.
Overall its just too much time to figure out these problems, windows just works with very little involvement on my part.
the games I play don't support Linux
The Daws of my choice do not run on Linux.
Isn't dual-booting convenient for you? I've never done it myself.
Dual booting is the worst possible combination, given that any windows update will kill the linux bootloader (major update to be fair, but it will happen and then you have to recovery iso to fix the bootloader every time). Plus having to disable all boot optimizations on the windows side because of tainted filesystem that linux can't figure out without risk of data destruction. I'd rather just use a VM - but the same games that don't run on linux also dont want you playing in a VM.
This is no longer true, and has been for close to a decade now. If you sandbox the Windows bootloader in a directory it will not be able to mess up your custom boot loading config, especially booting to the kernel from UEFI.
Dual booting with windows running on the same box? Sooner or later windows WILL destroy the other system.
That or you'll get into an argument with UEFI/Windows/Bitlocker.
I've been dual booting windows/arch for almost 1 years now. Except the rare case that windows fucks my grub and I have to mkconfig again it'd been smooth sailing.
Good luck. And I'm not sarcastic.
I have them on the separate nvmes and I disable Linux nvme before I boot into windows.
Last time I accidentally inserted encrypted pendrive I use in Linux when my windows was booted, it immediately offered razing the partition to the ground, creating a new one and quick formatting it. Very helpfully "OK" was preselected. If I was a bit more tired I'd be a bit sad.
Windows is intentionally hostile to anything non-windows. Enjoy your dual booting while it lasts :)
I like Linux, it's my laptop daily driver, but there's nothing I would do on Linux on my gaming PC that I can't do on Windows.
Linux just has no upside over Windows in a dual boot context.
> Linux just has no upside over Windows in a dual boot context
If you do dual-boot and don't care about the privacy of the data you put into Windows, I guess so.
If I dual-boot, I have to maintain both OSes no matter what.
I also personally keep no data on my devices, but if I did, having data that I need to reboot to get to would be friction I don't want.
> I also personally keep no data on my devices
Now I get your point. But still I would prefer to access my "personal" accounts from a device I trust.
Do you use a cloud service for your files?
Yep. I've been a paying Google Workspace user for almost 20 years now (in the various iterations of the product name).
Some stuff goes in GitHub, none of which I actually truly care about though.
I'm sure you'll groan. :)
But hey, if it's good enough for Cloudflare and Datadog (two past employers), it's good enough for me.
I also may be weird because I don't own any media and I'm perfectly happy with the streaming model. I enjoy not having the mental load of thinking about self-hosting and backing up terabytes of stuff.
I feel "lightweight" and I like it.
Yeah it makes it very easy to be OS-independant. I have backups of my whole home directory so if anything goes awry I can just reinstall software as I go and restore my config files from the most recent backup.
I have a Nextcloud instance for family to store files, though.
If you dual booted but wanted access to your data from either OS, you could easily set up a data drive/ partition that both OSes can access.
Yeah, but presumably that's not acceptable to the person who talks about "(not) caring about the privacy of data you put in windows" in the ancestor comment, which is why I mentioned rebooting.
Bit beside the point but Windows 11 is the first version since Windows 3.1 that I haven't used.
Nuked my Windows 10 install and put Pop OS on it + a MacBook separately.
I've dual booted since the 90's and have run Microsoft OS's somewhere since the 80's.
I had Windows 11 (kept it around for gaming), I binned it a few weeks ago.
Don't game enough to justify it any more (haven't even tried gaming on linux yet).
Juice was no longer worth the squeeze.
Gaming on Linux is quite good these days, as long as you don't need any kernel-level anticheat for multiplayer.
Proton is an impressive piece of software.
Bazzite baybeeeee
I don't game much, but as a parent, we have both a ps5 and a xbox. Frankly, console graphics are good enough for me. I don't see much point in having a gaming PC.
Actually, I would trade visuals for better games. Most games nowadays are better enjoyed as movies than games.
We really need some antitrust enforcement right about now.
When second and fourth largest companies by market cap find it in their financial best interest to collaborate with each other, we have a problem.
In healthy markets, two companies that harvest and sell data as a major source of revenue would want to pull an Auric Goldfinger and disrupt one another's data collection practices to decrease the supply and increase the price of ad-relevant data.
If anyone at YouTube Trust & Safety is reading this article, I've got a real problem for you to solve.
There are channels that exist solely to pump out AI slop seemingly designed to trick gullible seniors into identifying themselves in the comments. I suspect the scammers will go after these people later in pig-butchering or related scams.
For example, the “Senior Secrets” channel pumps out videos such as “Over 60? Add THIS Powder To Your Coffee To Walk like You’re 40 Again! | Senior Health Tips.” (I won’t link to the video, but you can easily find it with a search.) The video makes bold health claims justified by citing what appear to be scholarly research studies, such as:
> University of California, San Francisco (2023). "Mobility Enhancement Through Nutritional Supplementation in Older Adults." Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences, Volume 78, pp. 445-453.
However, none of the cited studies and papers are real.
The deeply concerning thing is that the video’s narrator invites the seniors who are duped by these claims to identify themselves and reveal their age and locations in the comments. From the transcript at 1m44s:
> "Before we begin, tell us in the comments now your age and where you're watching us from. We're reading and replying to every single comment, so drop your comments below."
I’ve already reported this content to YT, but I’ve seen no apparent follow-up.
Disclaimer: I used to work at Google, but not in anything YouTube related. If you’re in YT and want to reach out, my contact info is in my HN profile.
Age and city isn't all that identifying, I don't see anything useful there that isn't already in census etc. They are just doing it because YouTube promotes highly commented videos, hence the old saying "like, comment and subscribe"
It's not the age and location that are concerning. It's that the seniors who are especially susceptible to being misled will identify themselves as such. Further, if you look at the comments from these seniors, their YT usernames often reveal their real names.
I’m curious to hear whether any YouTubians[O] take you up on that.
0 - idk. Can’t call employees “YouTubers”
They don't care. There's a ridiculous amount of AI slop on YouTube.
This isn't merely AI slop. This is AI slop that appears to have been designed to specifically target a vulnerable audience for the purpose of later running financial scams against them. It ought to be in a different category altogether.
Google used to proudly say "Don't be evil"... But they just forgot to add "let us take that part".
When tech giants start deciding what technical knowledge is too "dangerous" for users to access, we've crossed into a different kind of territory. Installing an OS on your own hardware is now physical harm? That's some creative interpretation of their policies. The irony is that this kind of censorship just validates why people want to bypass these systems in the first place, nobody wants corporations deciding what they can and can't do with their own machines.
I no longer run a Microsoft OS on any of the computers I own.
This type of behavior is the reason.
Linux is good enough for most everything I do, for the rest is MacOS.
[dupe] More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45744503
YouTube is taking down videos on performing nonstandard Windows 11 installs https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45744503 - 9 days ago, 497 comments
Maybe they mixed it up with mental harm from using Windows 11 and that's why they removed Windows 11 content.
There are a lot of videos on YouTube about things that have a “risk of physical harm” and this is what they choose to pick on??
I would think this selective action could / should open them up to litigation for all the other harmful things on their site
It’s all automated, of course there are false positives
If a company chooses to automate something that should not be a defense. They should still be held equally accountable for their actions no matter if they employ a human or an algorithm to do their censorship for them. If they know their software/automation is shit and keeps screwing up, they're still making the choice to continue using it.
> Then came the twist. YouTube eventually restored both videos. The platform claimed its "initial actions" (could be either the first takedown or appeal denial, or both) were not the result of automation.
The videos are back. It's also possible that a group of people "brigade" reported his posts for some reason. YouTubers attract haters, too.
This is a blessing in disguise.
Now more people will be motivated to migrate AWAY from Windows since they will have no bypass.
"Now more people…."
Yes, some will but unfortunately in actual per capita/percentage terms it'll be pathetically small.
Do you really think the marketers, economists and social scientists at Microsoft haven't got that figure off to a tee aready?
It's a certainty they have and they've figured it just amounts to noise in the grand schema of things.
.
It's often a mistake to think that companies are these perfect union of ultra rational agents, just because they have a lot of employees and money.
See: Windows 8, Windows Phone.
Everytime I read such news, I'm glad that I ditched Windows for Linux. Since Proton makes almost all games run, I don't have any reason to use Microsoft's rotten software anymore.
Governments (we the people in general) have the right and duty to regulate corporations, non-human entities which exist at our regulatory pleasure. The US and the EU could easily rip Google/MS/Apple to pieces if they wanted to. Hit some other media conglomerates while they're at it. Vote or something.
Windows 11 attempts to remove local only account is the last straw. I have mostly moved away from Windows already but if they fully implement this will never recommend to anyone period. I manage 2600 computers where I work and am down to less than 150 running windows … could see this reaching 0 in just a year or two.
Funny, because all the LLMs are more than happy to spit out the steps. Alphabet, if you want to get ahead, you need to be sure you're consistent. It's literally 4 clicks to get the same info from your sister product.
This happened to me when Amazon KDP's fraud prevention AI hallucinated that my Kindle version was plagiarizing my paperback (yes, it's the same book). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40992654
Unfortunately, I'm not sure a human ever really looked at my case, or was strongly disincentivized to go against the AI. I got nothing but bland, contentless denials of my appeals that got vaguer each time. And I was never able to go viral, so I'm banned from KDP for life for complete nonsense.
The whole Windows 11 saga can be titled, "Dr. Bashlove, or, how I stopped worrying and learned to love the *NIX".
Hard to believe this is the same company that made Windows 7. Coulda just ported WSL and security fixes back to that and stopped there. But nooooo.
I forsee a lobby to the government for further restriction on our freedom of speech by google and others as these companies can't compete with open source and decentralized alternatives that are beginning to offer really well made alternatives.
That will only happen if we let it.
Observations indicate we're approaching a point of inflection. We've had about three decades of Big Tech running a serfdom, unless power starts shifting back to users we'll be locked-in serfs for good.
I reckon most of us don't actually realize how much trouble we're in already.
> That will only happen if we let it.
What actions could we take that actually matter here?
Stop using Windows 11.
Meanwhile AI products occasionally talk kids into killing themselves and that's okay.
I think this is the same story as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45744503 ?
It's like they want people to bypass Windows 11 altogether. I've finally bit the bullet and gone to Linux recently. Certainly dying by 512 cuts and counting, not for the faint of heart, but I'm surprised at how much of my daily usage I've been able to replicate. I'd say 80% of life works, unlike previous attempts.
In my experience 120% of my daily usage from windows works on Linux.
Where are the friction points for you?
> YouTube eventually restored both videos
Okay, nothing to see here then. Just some sensationalism around a content moderation mistake.
Thanks Google and Microsoft, I am going to write a blogpost on how to bypass Microsoft's shits and archive the page as well.
As if people would not talk to each other or post such instructions elsewhere.... What a clumsy attempt to censor that. As if we now would love Microsoft for their shit and crap they produce since centuries. I only got a gaming machine running it here, all my private data will stay on another linux machine
https://archive.ph/K0tKm
The videos were restored, though...
Once the masses discover that KDE is just as user friendly as Windows these days, ...
... and that it is relatively easy to run (most) Windows apps they love through Bottles (https://usebottles.com/), and/or WinApps (https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps)...
... oof
I've been doing my first journey w Linux as a daily driver and I'm not loving Mint+Cinnamon, what's the best distro for KDE?
I switched from Windows 10 to Nobara KDE plasma ~1 month ago. It's a Fedora based distro, so most of the Fedora documentation applies. I came from server Linux but Windows desktop (20 years or so) and I'm amazed how similar it is and reacts. It comes with Libre Office, Steam etc. pre-installed and while the Libre software is certainly different and needs getting used to - for me, coming originally from Wordperfect and Quattro Pro it was no challenge. There are some minor bugs which I attribute mostly to the Nvidia 580 graphics driver, like distorted fonts in certain mouse positions, but these are really minimal and I won't deep dive (yet) into that. Support online via discord which isn't optimal, but at least there is support.
It would help to know what it is you are not loving with Mint+Cinnamon... My picks for a beginner-friendly batteries-included Linux dist for KDE:
- You can install KDE on Mint without switching distro or reinstalling[0]
- Debian (caveat: packages can be out of date if you need the latest-greatest of something)
- Fedora (caveat: two major OS upgrades per year can feel like a chore)
- EndeavourOS (caveat: Requires a bit more expertise and grease to properly maintain)
- Aurora (caveat: Still young project and I'd still consider it a bit experimental and adventerous)
- kubuntu (caveat: snaps. Accept them or learn how to disable)
KDE Linux is a thing and something to keep an eye on but it's still in alpha/beta and probably not ready for your use just yet.
[0]: Caveat: it's possible that some DE service might not be disabled properly from your old setup and conflict with KDEs variety if you keep the cinnamon packages around
The better question would be what is the best distro for you. Personally I like Debian. But I don't know enough about you and how you use your computer to say for sure what is best for you.
Devops-heavy development, but been a Windows desktop user up until now, with linux just running on servers.
I'll probably go with Kubuntu just because I want something as vanilla as possible with the largest support-base.
I used Kubuntu for years, but ultimately moved away from the Ubuntu based distros due to Canonical cruft. I haven't really missed anything going with vanilla Debian.
I've found Gentoo Linux to be a good developer- and sysadmin-oriented distro. It requires a lot more work up-front than most any other distro but -IME- once you have it running, it just keeps running and upgrading just fine. If you wish, you can even subject yourself to systemd, as that's a supported init system.
As a bonus, if you don't want to build everything from source, there are prebuilt packages available. Instructions for how to use them are in the "Installing the base system" section of the Gentoo Handbook. I've not used the Gentoo-provided prebuilt packages, but I do use my own prebuilts. I've found the process of using them to be well-documented and fairly straightforward.
I'd recommend Fedora KDE, it's vanilla and well used enough to be able to easily find answers.
https://www.fedoraproject.org/kde/
Ubuntu based distros are fine too, but there are a few weird things to get to grips with like Snaps.
There's really not much difference between most distros these days so I'm sure if you like one you'd like the other.
OpenSUSE has traditionally done a bunch of work on making sure other software works well with KDE (for example patching Firefox to use the KDE file chooser). Much of that work is no longer needed with new tech like the XDG desktop portal stuff, but Tumbleweed is still a fairly solid system (up to date, stable, GUI system administration tools, automatically installs packages with AVX3 if your CPU supports it,...).
Don't worry too much about distributions, they'll mostly just affect package formats and default settings, but imo Debian is the best choice for stable desktop computing, with the best overall support and community.
kubuntu, kde neon, or mx linux kde version (which is debian)
Unfortunately for right now, KDE has recently released major version 6, which is also about as stable as Windows (meaning, very not). This is reminiscent of the KDE 4 transition and much worse than the KDE 5 one.
For example, half the time I try to log in or unlock the screen, it just ignores my password. Fortunately, I have discovered that pressing Escape triggers a crash, and I have to deliberately trigger a segfault by pressing Escape, in hopes that next time the password will be accepted.
Plasma 6 is nearly two years old, and is totally fine in my experience. The transition was more like 5.x to 5.y. The biggest change is Wayland by default (X11 is currently still available, so might be worth a try).
It sounds like your problem may be with SDDM (the login screen program) rather than Plasma itself. You could try an alternative: https://alternativeto.net/software/sddm/
Changing the KDE theme into something other than the default Breeze breaks the whole Plasma: black screen with a cursor instead of the SDDM login screen. Hit this while setting up an Arch system for my wife, spent hours rebooting with recovery USB image and tweaking configuration until it all worked again.
Wouldn't call it stable.
Point of order: SDDM is entirely unrelated to the KDE project.
I've been using the Breeze Dark theme for approximately forever and I've never run into the problem you're describing. However, I've very rarely used SDDM... I find its default rainbow-colored background intolerable and use LightDM instead.
Do you happen to remember configuration that you ended up having to change, and is that computer running Nvidia graphics hardware with the closed-source drivers?
I went to System Settings > Themes > Login Screen (SDDM) in KDE settings and changed from the default Breeze to Maldives, and that broke SDDM login screen to black text mode with a cursor. Later searching for fixes I found that only Breeze was compatible with Qt 6.x, and any other choices there would break SDDM the same way (I did not try it though).
First, I had to figure out how to manually mount LUKS-encrypted laptop drive while booting from a USB stick, that took a while.
Trying to recover, I re-installed kde, sddm and sdd-kcm and qt5-declarative packages. Still broken. I made sure /etc/sddm.conf was the default configuration, still broken. Then finally I stumbled upon /etc/sddm.conf.d/kde_settings.conf, which was still overriding defaults to Maldives. Deleting it finally fixed the SDDM login.
My wife was thoroughly not impressed with Linux out-of-box experience!
No Nvidia graphics, this was a Lenovo Yoga laptop with AMD graphics.
SDDM is garbage and I've switched to using lemurs now (for whatever reason graphical display managers are terrible. GDM doesn't allow changing the mouse cursor theme, SDDM doesn't show battery percentage, LightDM doesn't do fonts properly,... the KDE people are apparently working on a new DM, but the info I got was vague as anything and may as well have been referring to the KDE LightDM greeter).
I wouldn't say that SDDM is garbage. Apparently, it sets the environment variables & etc. needed to enable automatic HiDPI scaling that a shockingly large number of Wayland proponents insist Xorg doesn't support. [0][1]
[0] <https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/SDDM#Enable_HiDPI>
[1] Manual scaling (even non-integer scaling) works fine as long as you have a settings editor that will speak the XSETTINGS protocol, and a daemon running that can be queried. GNOME has both by default. KDE has the settings editor, and you might need to install xsettingsd or similar. The quirk I've found is that while GTK programs accept the display scaling changes immediately, QT programs must be restarted to adopt the changes.
> automatic HiDPI scaling that a shockingly large number of Wayland proponents insist Xorg doesn't support.
Assuming they know what they're talking about and not just parroting whatever they read others mention, usually when someone says that "Wayland does $THING that X11/Xorg doesn't do", this is really a shortcut for "X11/Xorg could technically do $THING, if enough developers and projects cared about it, but that would be a massive undertaking and it is easier to convince developers do $THING if we can control most of the stack to only do $THING in one particular way we want by working from a clean slate".
Since you mentioned environment variables, not sure what SDDM exactly is doing, but in the case of HiDPI scaling under Xorg the only method for HiDPI i'm aware of that uses environment variables is Qt's `QT_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTORS` which is a semicolon-separated list of per-screen scaling factors that Qt applications can use to automatically scale themselves depending on the screen the window/application is in. Considering SDDM is written in Qt, i'll guess that this is what it set.
But the thing is, this is far from enough if you want "robust" support under X11/Xorg. The reason is that a typical X application under a typical X desktop has multiple components: an X server (which i'm going to assume it is Xorg for now - other X servers are basically Xorg forks and sync with its features), a window manager, an optional desktop compositor and a widget toolkit on the application's side (not strictly needed as an app can use its own adhoc code for that but let's assume it uses one since this doesn't really matter in this case).
The behavior you need for robust HiDPI support is for the application to use the proper scaling for each of its toplevel windows depending on the connected output the window is in (note: this may or may not actually be relevant to DPI - someone may have bad eyesight and want their 27" 1440p monitor to be 150% scaled) and have that be done automatically - ideally, transparently from the user's perspective - as they move windows between outputs and/or add/remove outputs (e.g. connecting/disconnecting or turning on/off a graphics tablet with an embedded monitor would add/remove an output).
Now, technically, Xorg does provide the necessary core functionality to implement the above, however the issues begin when you start considering who is going to implement it and what part of the stack is responsible for which aspect of supporting window scaling.
Ideally, what you'd want is for applications should be able to scale each of their toplevel windows arbitrarily based on notifications from the underlying system as the user interacts with the application windows (note: this is not necessarily limited to just the user moving windows between outputs - a user could, for example, select an option from their window manager to scale a window at 200% or 300% - this could be useful when doing video streaming or recording videos for example).
So, in an ideal world, the following should happen under X11/Xorg:
1. Widget toolkits can scale their widgets arbitrarily (ideally not just at fractional level but also sub-100% level too - useful when using secondary screens with a low resolution).
2. Window managers can receive RandR events for output DPI changes and use that information to maintain a scaling factor for each output (the user could also specify custom per-output scaling too).
3. As the user interacts with the windows, the window manager sends notifications to the windows/applications whenever a window needs its scale changed. The widget toolkits use these notifications to scale their windows' contents.
Ignoring a few details, the above is basically what Wayland does since it started from a clean slate where they could dictate everything from scratch.
However X11/Xorg already has a lot of software already written for it and there are a few snags in the way:
1. Pretty much no toolkit supported arbitrary scaling, so they had to be extended for it. Since Wayland needed that, toolkits that need to support it added the functionality anyway (e.g. Qt and Gtk) though not without issues along the way (AFAIK Gtk didn't support fractional scaling for a long time). Though not all toolkits have support for this.
2. Window managers must be extended to monitor outputs via RandR and send appropriate notifications whenever windows move across outputs to those windows. This would also need some new notification protocol (most likely a new version of EWMH). However...
3. ...toolkits must also be extended to support these notifications - supporting scaling isn't enough if they do not know when to scale. This introduces a problem because...
4. ...window managers will have to deal with toolkits not supporting the notifications. One way would be to just ignore them, but another way is to do the scaling themselves. However, there is another issue here.
5. When using (and having enabled) a desktop compositor scaling can be easy (especially when dealing with edge cases like a window lying across the edge between two monitors :-P), but without one, the window manager needs to scale the window itself (there was a Xorg branch by Keith Packard that introduced server-side window scaling but AFAIK it was never merged) without affecting the rest of the desktop - and of course do the appropriate coordinate transformations for various events (e.g. mouse motion). Moreover since a desktop compositor can be a separate program than a window manager (many -if not most- X11 window managers are not desktop compositors), they both need to somehow coordinate with each other.
6. Since this requires all window managers (and desktop compositors) to be updated, the inevitable result is that there will be a lot of them that will not be updated for quite some time, so applications (or realistically, widget toolkits) will need to also handle HiDPI scaling themselves by doing the RandR queries and automatically sizing their own windows based on output. This is a subpar option because the application does not know the window manager's own state and you can end up with the two "fighting" with each other. Also the window manager cannot do desktop-wide configurations (it is actually blind to them).
7. Obviously whatever protocols in place (as i wrote above, probably a new EWMH version) are used, they'll also need to let the components (window manager, widget toolkit) provide information for when any of the above are in place so the proper action is taken (e.g. a toolkit should not try to do the output tracking itself if the window manager supports it and a window manager should not try to do scaling itself if the widget toolkit supports it - but both need to inform the other about this).
As you can hopefully imagine, the above require the developers of all window managers, all desktop compositors, all widget toolkits and applications not only to coordinate with each other but also handle various cases in case the user used something in the stack that did not support things.
With Wayland since everything was done from scratch, there were less people that needed to be convinced to cooperate - and in practice since Wayland originated from RedHat and the GNOME ecosystem, convincing the appropriate GNOME and Gtk developers to cooperate was probably a coffee break away :-P. Meanwhile Qt would already need to add (or already had, not sure when it was added) support for scaling/HiDPI anyway for Windows and macOS, so the infrastructure was there.
The current situation is that Qt, currently, supports the #6 i mentioned above since it can be implemented without needing support from window managers, desktop compositors or specifying new protocols (something that seems to be much harder than it should be - e.g. AFAIK Cinnamon implemented a very trivial X attribute for displaying a percentage for windows in a taskbar/icon overlay -think of download percentage- but despite the developers' attempt to have others adopt it, i do not think it saw much adoption). But this is really the "fallback solution" when everything else is just not there, it is not the ideal one.
That said, from a technical perspective there is nothing theoretically stopping Xorg desktop environments having top-notch robust HiDPI support. What blocks everything is convincing the developers of the various components of the desktop stack to cooperate, implement and support it.
> ...the above require the developers of all window managers, all desktop compositors, all widget toolkits and applications not only to coordinate with each other but also handle various cases...
/me wonders if OP has been paying attention to how "consensus building" actually ends up working in the Wayland world
> With Wayland since everything was done from scratch, there were less people that needed to be convinced to cooperate - and in practice since Wayland originated from RedHat and the GNOME ecosystem, convincing the appropriate GNOME and Gtk developers to cooperate was probably a coffee break away...
/me realizes that the answer is "No. Not really."
To be less droll:
1) Through xrandr, even windowmaker provides the data required for an application to know the properties of the monitor that > 50% of each of its windows are on. Given how much nicer xrandr was than xinerama, WMs that cared about multihead moved over to it fairly quickly.
2) I'm certain that not every WM provides the information required for screen-DPI- and screen-scaling-aware programs to scale as desired. But, the "Wayland is a lightweight protocol that makes few policy decisions" motto turns out to mean that for most decisions that users care about, each Wayland WM (or whatever the Wayland terminology for the Wayland equivalent is) needs to re-make and reimplement those decisions. Feature fragmentation has been bad. So, no, if you're not going to hold Wayland to the "Every WM must implement all the features" standard, then you're not going to demand that of Xorg WMs.
3) You happened to mention the two things that's needed for Xorg to support both HiDPI and non-integer scaling... GUI drawing library support and a common protocol for setting and retrieving user-driven adjustments to the "natural" rendering scale given the display DPI. XRandR [0] has either always, or has effectively always provided the information required for GUI toolkits to scale their widgets according to a screen's DPI. And the XSETTINGS protocol [1] is used to store the user-commanded scaling adjustment. Glancing at the release date for those two things, they either substantially predate or came out very, very shortly after Wayland's initial release.
Weird. It's almost as if we were waiting on the GUI toolkits to use what Xorg had been providing them for ages.
Anyway. Check footnote 1 in the comment you replied to for the on-the-ground details on GUI toolkit render scaling on Xorg from an end-user's perspective.
[0] adopted no later than 2007
[1] first proposed in 2001 and adopted no later than 2009 (though, if I cared to spend more than a few minutes on the search, I expect I'd find that it was adopted much earlier)
Also, I have no idea why the hell your comment is folded up. I don't see any indication that it's dead or flagged, so I don't know what's going on.
> wonders if OP has ..."No. Not really."
What i described was about Wayland, GNOME and Gtk specifically, not the entire "Wayland world". Wayland has been a mess that could have been completely avoided if people just tried to fix any issues with Xorg instead of falsely claiming that Xorg cannot be fixed and we'd had proper support for HiDPI, HDR, mixed refresh rate configurations with compositing and all sorts of other nice things at least a decade ago instead of creating a pointless schism in the already tiny Linux desktop ecosystem but ultimately you cannot control what other people spend their time on.
1) Window Maker does not provide anything to any application, if applications need such information they have to use the extension APIs themselves. IF there was an agreed upon protocol for window managers notifying applications to scale themselves, then Window Maker could implement it. But such a protocol does not exist.
2) Window managers do not provide any information there at all since there is no such support. And yes, all Wayland compositors do need to implement that stuff, but because it started from a clean slate and Wayland compositors had to be written from scratch anyway, it was easier to convince developers to do that because they self-selected to go through the effort of making a Wayland compositor in the first place. As i wrote in my original post, the issue here isn't if something would be written or not, but convincing the people who work on the projects. It is mainly a social issue, not a technical one.
3) Yes, without any other support in place, GUI toolkits and other applications can use the information exposed RandR to implement scaling themselves but, as i already wrote, this is a fallback solution because the rest of what i describe is not there. This is far from having robust support, ignores things like custom scaling options, handling moving windows between desktops and support for applications that do not do scaling themselves (which is many of them), among other things.
All of the above are things i already addressed in my original message BTW and again, the issue is not technical but social/political. It is about convincing people to cooperate, not if something is technically possible (and let's be honest, it isn't like Xorg's code is written in stone, if something is currently impossible, the code could be extended to make it possible).
Gotta be something specific to your machine - for me version 6 is way more stable than 5 was. That line would crash doing sillies things like resizing task bar or applying settings. Now I feel as good with CachyOS and Plasma 6.5.2 as I was with W2K or W7
As someone who's been bouncing back and forth between Arch and Tumbleweed for a while now I had a very different experience. The transition from KDE 4 to KDE Plasma 5 was terrible, plasmashell would crash all the time, tons of stuff would break between updates, and I had to switch to running awesome for a while (which is fine, awesome is pretty great). The transition from Plasma 5 to Plasma 6 was basically 'these 2 KWin scripts don't work any more' and everything else was fine.
The only issue I have on my Plasma 6 laptop is also lock-screen related: About 20% of the time keyboard input is ignored/blocked after coming back from sleep. Closing and reopening the lid usually sorts it. Haven't seen what you describe.
I did have some earlier snags which all went away after switching from Wayland session to X11 session.
And how you would install a dual boot with some mainstream elf/linux distro?
Is dual boot still a thing with all the effort from microsoft to make that hell or impossible?
It absolutely is a thing, at least, I'm a happy dual-booter for 10+ years now. Microsoft doesn't, at all, make that hell. They don't give a fuck, which is a different thing - that means that in some cases, they bork the other system on your computer. Other than those few cases, it's all dandy.
It might help that I'm using Windows LTSC, and that I have installed Linux and Windows to separate SSDs (with the Linux SSD not being present when the Linux was installed). But it might be just unnecessary as well.
Installation is not complicated at all, but I'd install Windows first, because it can be a finicky PoS, Linux is much better at respecting the user's wishes. Installation can be done to the same drive. With the Windows already installed, you can resize the last, largest partition, and install Linux to the newly created free space.
The UEFI then can boot either Windows directly, by selecting that in the UEFI boot menu, or boot Grub, which can then boot Windows or Linux.
With most Linux install media, you can also manage the drives, like create partitions, repair boot, delete or create EFI boot entries, etc.
UEFI secure boot is not getting in the way? Namely is secure boot can be still enabled even though the system is dual booting?
I know that some windows game anti-cheat will now deny some games to run if secure boot is not enabled.
And last but not least: I build my own distro, can I use my own crypto keys with UEFI secure boot hardware? That not blocking windoz secure booting (I guess crypto keys for windoz are generated and installed in the UEFI hardware upon... installation). I never actually have a look at that in the details.
Secure Boot doesn't get in the way, I think. I had it disabled for some reason, but I enabled it to test it for you, and my Debian Linux boots just fine.
I have no idea about the crypto key situation unfortunately.
Distros will ignore UEFI secure boot.
You have to test with win11 (in dual boot with your fav distro) and some software requiring UEFI secure boot (maybe its status is displayed somewhere in win11 settings).
Just tried with my win10, msinfo32 says that secure boot is enabled.
win10 is not revelant anymore.
What about win11? And for instance the game anti-cheats (more anti-open-source than anything else though...) which require TPM/secure boot?
Not my personal test, but looks like it's perfectly possible:
https://burakberk.dev/complete-guide-enabling-secure-boot-wi...
I see. Unfortunately I don't have Win11 to test with.
> Claims 'Risk of Physical Harm'
Elaborate please YouTube.
Risk of physical harm? Should I perceive that as a… threat?
Satya Nadella will kick in your door
Watch out for chairs...
Perhaps someone at Microsoft threatened physical harm to a Google engineer if they didn't remove the videos... and they caved into their demands rather than reporting the threat, or perhaps did both.
The sci-fi movies warn us about evil robots. Turns out the evil entity was Microsoft and other big tech companies all along
Indeed; those who are worried about the possibility of paperclip optimizers should take a look at the profit optimizers that exist today.
You see, Windows 11 has new, improved, patented prevent-the-computer-from-physically-beating-up-the-user technology. But this technology requires an online account; you can't trust a local-only account to prevent the computer from beating you up, because it's on the computer in question (duh). So we prevent you from learning how to bypass the requirement for a remote account for your own physical safety.
/s, in case that wasn't blatantly obvious...
Perceive that as being hit in szczepionke /s
The video in question does present a risk of death... to Windows.
(Nah, that wording is but a generic legalese sounding way of casting a huge net to get all sorts of fish.)
Huh I must have just got in on time as I set up a local account about 12 hours ago following a tutorial.
Risk of Physical Harm of losing profit.
It wasn't wrong, there is no bigger harm one can do to self than using Windows!
Anyone still using Windows for anything but gaming is an idiot.
Or, they are opting for convenience. Why bother with the OS, when it does the job, and there is a myriad other aspects of a person's life?
And you know it because you're forced to use windows somewhere?
"Risk of Physical Harm" is the kind of reason Tony Soprano would say
> Risk of Physical Harm
Yet ChatGPT is not responsible for having led to suicides.
They cant remove all the Ubuntu installation tutorials surely?
This is what the crowd shouting misinformation and "protect X" asks for all the time.
You want nanny states and nanny corps and authoritianism through and through (remember covid policies?), you'll get this more and more.
You either start rolling back all that BS in the name of freedom (no, not freedumbs) or you can't really complain.
What's next? Utilman.exe tutorials removal?
So why shouldn't I use the windows 11 on the other partition that I use for games that don't run on Linux or run with degraded performance?
(Yeah, it's Nvidia, no, I didn't do my homework and bought Nvidia for a Linux PC).
While it may make sense for others, I don't find system that can lock up for 11 hours for updates suitable for anything other than occasional gaming. But why shouldn't I use it for it? I already think twice before getting any game that doesn't run on Linux and gave EA WRC Rally a downvote after they rug pulled Linux users. (A game that run on Linux on the beginning got borked with anticheat. A racing game, so you don't cheat your friends by having 1s less on that race you all compete on).
There is no worse usage of windows than the occasional one given the huge amount of updates it starts to download whenever you start it up after a long period unused.
I guess it might be useful if you only keep it offline but in that case you aren't playing games online and thus you would be fine gaming on Linux given the only downside is lack of anticheat support.
A Windows update will eventually overwrite your bootloader and you won't be able to boot into Linux without some fuckery.
My Windows "fun" was when it decided that the "unknown" space immediately after its little boot partition was free for it to expand into. (Imagine not being able to recognize an ext2 filesystem...) After repairing that disaster, I ensured it would never happen again by putting Windows onto its own harddrive. That's worked for a great many years.
Though, now that I've quite a bit of personal experience with how good Steam/Proton is for video games, I think I'll reclaim the surprisingly large amount of space that Windows is taking up.
I cannot recommend NTLite enough.
If it has to be Windows, just remove all the shit of Win11 yourself, set it to unattended installation with a local account, remove the hardware requirements barrier while you are at it, remove the games, controller add-ons, virus scanner and whatever else you would like to (the windows store?) and create your own LTSC.
This isn’t a solution to the problem and missing the point of the whole argument. But if it has to be Windows, I would recommend to try it.
1] ntlite.com
Massgrave...that is all...
Even easier, Schneegans
Feels like AI going wild with censorship regardless of what they say lol
I wonder if this is because Windows 11 has been used in critical systems to a certain extent?
I don't get it.
If you hate Windows just use Linux, BSD or whatever.
I'm sick of all the "Windows 11 sucks" folks that yet keep using Windows.
Just boot your laptop from a Linux ISO and you've got the best way to bypass Windows 11.
Boycott Microsoft and everything it touches.
But there is a harm. Just had to repair a pc of my family, because you are able to install windows 11 on a MBR Partition without EFI Boot. Has to convert it and fix some stuff, but it still starts only every second boot (srsly)
Oh this is going to get the Streisand effect.
OBAY
Bullshit, horseshit, cows hot.
The whole win 11 thing is embarrassing.
They are this far in, pushing features nobody asked for and is there any wonder the numbers blow chunks?
None.
CachyOS.
And now 'physical' becomes as hyperbolized as 'violence.'
A small step. Some of us have seen it weaponized in my lifetime, some think it's ridiculous until it's not.
No, "physical harm".
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I would say that every political channel should be demonetized.
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"to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"
You can watch the latest Hollywood movies for free on YouTube and they don't care about any copyright, but if it's for showing a genocide to the world or bypassing Windows tutorials, YouTube lost it's spirit.
This is meek and seems almost resigned. I don't understand how discourse and responses around these kinds of strange, bewildering, or stupid corporate decisions is always so nice. This corporate bullshit thrives in respectful environments where nobody needs to be afraid of being told how it is and publicly humiliated for their obviously disingenuous or stupid behavior.
When you're dealing with full-on idiots like that "support specialist" (AI?), all bets are off anyways. Might as well tell that clown that what he just said is the dumbest shit you've heard all week.
Take off the gloves and burn some bridges if you have to, the world will be better place for it.
Can anyone provide any attempt at rationalizing their decision? Could your computer overheat and explode if you do this? Could hackers take over your computer and play a flashing light pattern that will give you an epileptic seizure?
Stop assuming good faith. This is the same company that acquired Skype and de-P2P'd it at the pressing of the U.S. government to make interception feasible.
Microsoft just wants you reliant on them. They can't tap value if you aren't integrated. Simple as.
Why is this allowed to occur?
Why is Microsoft allowed to operate in such a user hostile way?
Why aren't people like up in arms massively tanking their stock value, boycotting, reputation harming in every legal way possible en masse?
Like are people just careless and distracted 24/7?
Like surely this should just not be a thing?
I just don't understand how inhumane hostile behavior is just so rampant and like allowed to exist in our society.
>I just don't understand how inhumane hostile behavior is just so rampant and like allowed to exist in our society.
It's because that's the default. Do you see any other facet of human organization which doesn't have constant hostile behavior? If it's large enough, or going on for enough time, there is abuse happening in it.
>Like are people just careless and distracted 24/7?
People just want to live their lives, on which a removed Win 11 bypass video has zero effect.
Because the only mechanism to hold these mega corporations / billionaires accountable is government, and they're already powerful enough to have waged massive information wars convincing people to fight each other instead of them.
That's actually not the only way we can hold them to account.
Eventually, enough is enough.
1789.
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Because people like my mom don't know there is an alternative and people like my dad thinks OSS has ties to communism (really, I wish I was joking) and MacOS is for hipsters. Doesn't matter that I work for a FAANG company and we use and contribute to OSS or that my work laptop is a Mac.
Wait... OSS doesn't have ties to communism?
Then what have I been using and supporting it for?
Why should I care that much what Microsoft is doing? I sold my Windows 11 computer long ago and haven't looked back. In fact, more user-hostile they get the better that is for the Linux ecosystem which is better for me!
I think it will be better with a little bit higher marketshare, but once the masses come in they demand stuff like kernel-level anticheat, DRM and to never accidentally run things in a terminal and then it will become way worse. Linux is as user-friendly as it is, because it is used by professionals and power users and the masses use something else.
That's why we have different distributions. Let one of the distributions cater to those who don't want control of their own computer.
Yes, and this is how a healthy OS market should look like, but a lot of distros use the same kernel.
Linux can exist because there is a huge industry producing inexpensive open hardware. If that industry transitions to producing only locked down hardware, it will hurt Linux and all open source software. Be careful what you wish for.