Grrrā¦
here is how to trim the intrusion down.
From the link Rich posted:
Microsoft uses telemetry to collect data from users with a goal to improve user experience with future updates. The telemetry system has so far been accepted as a legitimate way of enhancing the Windows experience.
In my opinion, this isnāt a case of MS spying on anyone. If it was, you would have learned about it years ago from a much harsher outcry in the media.
Lots of people will disagree with me, and I donāt want to turn this into a debate. I just donāt think itās logical or healthy to assume that companies are always out to screw over the consumers who buy and use their products. The reality is that companies just make bad decisions, even when they have good intentions. We all do.
I donāt mean to say that people should simply accept data collection by companies; instead, people should be more aware of the things we agree to when we use products. Then we can make informed choices and not live in fear of the technology we willingly bring into our homes.
I have one goal with OpenHAB: reduce cost of living. This āfrugal home automationā philosphy has lead me to use Orangepi 3 LTS as hardware and Armbian, a Debian derivative as operating system. Cheap and so far very reliable.
@rpwong I agree 100 % I am not a winders fan boy by any means, but the reality is the link I posted as well as the other links embedded in that one clearly defines exactly what MSFT is doing and how you can manage it.
The read the contract before you sign on the dotted line (click ok button) has always applied on anything privacy related and as always nothing is free on the internet!
Every year a disclaimer is sent out from legit companies that are mining your data if they plan on changing the privacy policy you may not read it and just click through or delete the e-mail but truth is it was presented to you.
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The problem, as I see it, is that this is not sufficient. A publicly traded company has one and only one directive: maximize shareholder profits. Wherever customer priorities align with that directive you get happy, safe customers. The moment that data that has been collected with permission under a privacy policy is more lucrative in some other domain than the fines/class action lawsuits that would result in from its misuse, that privacy statement and that use permission are worthless. How many times has this pattern already occurred? The only real impediment here is that it is difficult for companies to predict with sufficient accuracy what some of those penalties would be.
Iām not as militant as some about sequestering my digital life from companies, because I agree, nothing is free. But I do believe that you should fully expect anything that does get collected is always potentially going to be misused eventually*, so it is always important to understand what is collected. Even moreso, it is critical to set consistent, robust boundaries between what you feel is acceptable for a company to collect and what is not.
* - And thatās not even counting the odds of that information escaping into the wild due to company incompetence or 3rd party malicious activity.
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There was a harsh outcry in the media (at least the computer press) years ago when they added it.
This is one of the tamer articles I remember from back then.
One of the big problems is that MS wasnāt really up front and forth coming when they added this. Some security engineers noticed āhey, that new Win 10 machine sure is talking to MS servers a lot, I wonder what thatās about.ā and MSās initial response was
before needing to come clean and eventually revamp their UI to make the telemetry stuff more apparent. āIt was all in the end user agreement!ā after all.
But, putting on my security engineering hat for a moment there are some things to consider.
- These companies keep your data forever
- If the company changes hands (e.g. bought by vulture, oops I mean venture capitalists) any agreement you signed might change
- Data in aggregation over time pose some risks, sometimes in unexpected ways, for example Strava Data Heat Maps Expose Military Base Locations Around the World | WIRED
Data collection isnāt always quite so cut and dry and data anonymization is largely a myth Big Data May Not Know Your Name. But It Knows Everything Else | WIRED. Even if you trust the company you are dealing with now doesnāt mean they are the ones who will always control that data and in a surprising number of cases, the company that you are dealing with isnāt even the company whoās collecting the data and instead they are contracted with some third party to mine the data for value.
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I actually LIKED the fact that Google knew when I started my car, it was Wednesday AM, and that on Wednesday I went to a particular coffee shop and would give me traffic info.
Then it got a little scary.
As mentioned - I clicked AGREE. And you either click AGREE, orā¦ dontā use it.
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Your ā*ā is more my concern.
I tried to write something to this effect, but Iām glad I deleted it since youāve said it much better.
1000%.
WHAT? Youāre kidding?
Debian 11 SERVER is great. You have to load what you want to use. It doesnāt even come with sudo. You have to apt install sudo.
It just works.
This is a great thread.
Iāve already learned some new stuff and Linux is great in all itās flavors. If you have one thing that you want a computer to do, there is probably a distro just for that one thing.
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Iād rather have a base o/s snd install what I need than have tons o stuff Iāll never use.
Having written a fair bit of ansible, I can say that ansible, puppet and the likes canāt hold a candle to proper declarative systems. Ansible is far better than doing it manually of course, but the constant state mutation is a royal pain. With the declarative systems, they are either in the state you want them to be or they are not. Thereās no āhalf of the playbook ran before some corner case made ansible error outā.
But they sure are different from traditional systems.
Unfortunately, noā¦
But MS is āinvestigatingā.
@jp1955: For what it is worth, my 5 Centsā¦
I have been using windows since 1985 (I think), until 4-ish years ago, when I had enough and moved to Linux Mintā¦ and never looked back.
I worked with Novell (UNIX), PDP11, and Linux along these years with a few minor breaks, hence the move to Linux was even easier.
If I cannot get around needing some Windows app, I run Windows 7 in a VM (virtualbox) with these apps installed.
Never looked back.
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I just swapped out Octopi on my RPi3 for DietPi, which now has openHAB available in its optimized software list.
Iām not planning to use openHAB on that machine, but thought itās worth noting since DietPi works on a wide variety of machines (including x86). Iāve already got CUPS, OctoPrint, and Pi-Hole working, and Iām going to add an SSD so that I can try out UrBackup server.
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This has actually been a very interesting thread.
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Novel was so goodā¦pity Microsoft took over with itās lame filesystemā¦Oh well. 
Yes Linux is better by far.