<story><title>I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10</title><url>https://jonathan.porta.codes/2015/07/30/windows-10-seems-to-have-some-scary-privacy-defaults/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>freehunter</author><text>&amp;gt;Who wanted that for desktop computers or laptops?&lt;p&gt;I did. Linux and OSX are still available for whoever wants them. You can stick with Windows 7 if you want, that&amp;#x27;s just fine. I like Cortana. I like my software knowing what I like and what I&amp;#x27;m interested in. It makes my life easier, which is what computers were invented for.&lt;p&gt;I can see why some people might not, and to be fair I use Linux on my work laptop because the work I do demands it. I would never put my client data on a Windows machine.&lt;p&gt;But like I can see your side of the argument, you have to be able to see that some other people want personalization and learning and all that. Pandora and Apple Music are both heavily tailored that way. Google Now on your phone knows everything you do. Netflix can find videos for you to watch based on what you&amp;#x27;ve watched before. Amazon will recommend purchases to you based on what you like. Hell, half the people on this site &lt;i&gt;build&lt;/i&gt; these systems. You know how many machine learning articles there are on the front page every week?&lt;p&gt;So who wanted that? I did. And so did several million other people. For the people who &lt;i&gt;don&amp;#x27;t&lt;/i&gt; want it, I mean it&amp;#x27;s not even really opt-out. They ask you up front do you want the default or do you want to pick your own privacy settings. If you still don&amp;#x27;t trust it, Windows 7, OSX, and Linux are right there, just a click away.</text></item><item><author>Animats</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;Windows is now essentially a personalized, cloud-based operating system with the primary interface as a personal assistant.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Who wanted that for desktop computers or laptops? This is not going to fly with business customers.  Microsoft has already bombed twice in the business space, with Windows Vista and Windows 8.  This looks like another bomb.&lt;p&gt;Windows 7 is still pretty good, and it will probably be the main Microsoft desktop OS for years to come, despite what Microsoft wants.</text></item><item><author>ewzimm</author><text>Windows is now essentially a personalized, cloud-based operating system with the primary interface as a personal assistant, so I expected to see all these things as defaults. The advanced features just couldn&amp;#x27;t work without it. I&amp;#x27;m glad there&amp;#x27;s at least an opt-out, but I do think that Windows needs an OS-wide incognito mode, just a simple switch to record or not record data.&lt;p&gt;I generally use that on my browser for when I hand my laptop to someone else and don&amp;#x27;t want their activity polluting my history, but now there&amp;#x27;s the risk of the entire OS learning someone else&amp;#x27;s habits when they just need to use the computer and don&amp;#x27;t want to log in. Sometimes, guest accounts are too restrictive.&lt;p&gt;I do like having the option of a personalized experience, and Microsoft is generally one of the most restrictive companies when it comes to sharing data. With their push toward more personal cloud services, I hope they will take special care to maintain that record, although everyone knows that certain groups like government have ways of getting whatever they want if it&amp;#x27;s available.&lt;p&gt;Hopefully, some of the fine-grained permissions of Windows Phone will soon carry over to the unified platform for those who want it, but either way, I would still do any especially sensitive work on Debian or a similar system.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>johnchristopher</author><text>&amp;gt; But like I can see your side of the argument, you have to be able to see that some other people want personalization and learning and all that. Pandora and Apple Music are both heavily tailored that way. Google Now on your phone knows everything you do. Netflix can find videos for you to watch based on what you&amp;#x27;ve watched before. Amazon will recommend purchases to you based on what you like. Hell, half the people on this site build these systems. You know how many machine learning articles there are on the front page every week?&lt;p&gt;But that&amp;#x27;s the thing, right ? People want their computers to be more intelligent, reactive, adapted to their needs. They don&amp;#x27;t want Google, MS or Apple to know everything about them. How did the first came to automatically imply the second ?&lt;p&gt;Apple, Google, MS and others could deliver the same products (software that learn user behaviour and adapt accordingly) without sacrificing privacy, invading personal space and storing private documents on the cloud in order to parse it to deliver relevant ads.&lt;p&gt;Machine learning should keep on trying to be machine learning and not solely data scraping for marketing tuning and exploitation.&lt;p&gt;What does it bring me that MS or Google knows my search terms of the day ? I want my quad-core CPU to know that when I browse HN it should automatically split the screen in half and open my media player to listen to radio music because that&amp;#x27;s what I do most morning. Why do I have to do that by hand ? Can&amp;#x27;t it know or guess my routine by now ?&lt;p&gt;Or is all the tech just a glorified lexical parser to fine tune ads to increase their efficiency ?</text></comment>
<story><title>I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10</title><url>https://jonathan.porta.codes/2015/07/30/windows-10-seems-to-have-some-scary-privacy-defaults/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>freehunter</author><text>&amp;gt;Who wanted that for desktop computers or laptops?&lt;p&gt;I did. Linux and OSX are still available for whoever wants them. You can stick with Windows 7 if you want, that&amp;#x27;s just fine. I like Cortana. I like my software knowing what I like and what I&amp;#x27;m interested in. It makes my life easier, which is what computers were invented for.&lt;p&gt;I can see why some people might not, and to be fair I use Linux on my work laptop because the work I do demands it. I would never put my client data on a Windows machine.&lt;p&gt;But like I can see your side of the argument, you have to be able to see that some other people want personalization and learning and all that. Pandora and Apple Music are both heavily tailored that way. Google Now on your phone knows everything you do. Netflix can find videos for you to watch based on what you&amp;#x27;ve watched before. Amazon will recommend purchases to you based on what you like. Hell, half the people on this site &lt;i&gt;build&lt;/i&gt; these systems. You know how many machine learning articles there are on the front page every week?&lt;p&gt;So who wanted that? I did. And so did several million other people. For the people who &lt;i&gt;don&amp;#x27;t&lt;/i&gt; want it, I mean it&amp;#x27;s not even really opt-out. They ask you up front do you want the default or do you want to pick your own privacy settings. If you still don&amp;#x27;t trust it, Windows 7, OSX, and Linux are right there, just a click away.</text></item><item><author>Animats</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;Windows is now essentially a personalized, cloud-based operating system with the primary interface as a personal assistant.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Who wanted that for desktop computers or laptops? This is not going to fly with business customers.  Microsoft has already bombed twice in the business space, with Windows Vista and Windows 8.  This looks like another bomb.&lt;p&gt;Windows 7 is still pretty good, and it will probably be the main Microsoft desktop OS for years to come, despite what Microsoft wants.</text></item><item><author>ewzimm</author><text>Windows is now essentially a personalized, cloud-based operating system with the primary interface as a personal assistant, so I expected to see all these things as defaults. The advanced features just couldn&amp;#x27;t work without it. I&amp;#x27;m glad there&amp;#x27;s at least an opt-out, but I do think that Windows needs an OS-wide incognito mode, just a simple switch to record or not record data.&lt;p&gt;I generally use that on my browser for when I hand my laptop to someone else and don&amp;#x27;t want their activity polluting my history, but now there&amp;#x27;s the risk of the entire OS learning someone else&amp;#x27;s habits when they just need to use the computer and don&amp;#x27;t want to log in. Sometimes, guest accounts are too restrictive.&lt;p&gt;I do like having the option of a personalized experience, and Microsoft is generally one of the most restrictive companies when it comes to sharing data. With their push toward more personal cloud services, I hope they will take special care to maintain that record, although everyone knows that certain groups like government have ways of getting whatever they want if it&amp;#x27;s available.&lt;p&gt;Hopefully, some of the fine-grained permissions of Windows Phone will soon carry over to the unified platform for those who want it, but either way, I would still do any especially sensitive work on Debian or a similar system.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>edoloughlin</author><text>&lt;i&gt;I like my software knowing what I like and what I&amp;#x27;m interested in.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;So do I, but I don&amp;#x27;t like my software vendors knowing it too.</text></comment>