Comment by jackstraw14
8 years ago
I guess I should have noted that I do all my C# dev work in Windows 7 and run Arch VMs for everything else. My Windows 10 setup won’t be much different, but I just don’t trust Windows 10 and won’t be running my VMs on it.
I haven’t followed up on whether this “feature” made it into an actual Windows 10 update, but I remember reading about keylogging to the cloud as a way to pre-load your start menu with things that might be relevant to what you’re doing. Maybe it’s just being a developer and knowing what this kind of casual abstraction can cause, but I’m not okay with the philosophy that gets it into a test release of Windows 10. Microsoft is doing cool stuff these days but they still haven’t won me over.
I'm not aware of any keylogging to the cloud "feature". That sounds like some crazy conspiracy theory dreamed up by the people who hate Windows 10 and or Microsoft.
Windows 10 has the same frequently used app feature as Windows 7, which you can didable. You can optionally allow Microsoft to gather data about onscreen keyboard usage to improve suggestions, like Google Gboard on Android. Cortana's searches are obviously cloud based, but can be disabled. And Windows 10 offers suggested apps and features in like 3 different places in the OS, which can also be disabled. Maybe someone dreamed up a fantastic spyware feature based on all of those things.
I hear what you're saying, but none of it makes me feel better about using Windows 10. It's not high-quality HN discussion, though here's a Reddit thread about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/31rxsv/disable_k...
You've told me three things that I can disable in Windows 10. Why is this stuff enabled by default in the first place? How do you know this is everything I need to disable to address these concerns? Or better, why isn't user consent requested before any serious "diagnostic tracking" like this? The answer, I think, is that it's too complicated for the average user. Once this "diagnostic tool" is effectively hidden from the user, and enabled on all devices, the tool either has to be monitored regularly (to make sure more features aren't auto-enabled like these were) or eliminated completely. I've spent too much of my life "monitoring" closed-source software to give much consideration to that option, at this point.
During installation/setup you have the option to disable a lot, unfortunately in an enterprise environment that isn't always something the user gets to see. Fortunately most of the crap is disabled or not present in the enterprise version of Windows 10.
It's on by default so that users will interact with it and try it out. This is pretty standard practice on every major OS or application you use today. New features are enabled by default and the user gets to figure out how to disable them if they don't like it.
Case in point, the latest update to Gmail on Android enables a feature of opening URLs in a Chrome Frame inside Gmail instead of using your browser. This is great for Google, not so much for the user. I got screwed over because of this feature because a nonce token I received was consumed by the Chrome Frame which promptly crashed.
Windows 10's suggestions and prompts are about on par with MacOS High Sierra's. If you're questioning that statement, try not setting up iCloud some time then come back to me.
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