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By goretsky · Posted
Hello, Yes, and yes. More specifically, there are lots of features in Windows that I do not use--I cannot recall the last time I needed to run EUDCEDIT.EXE or ODBCAD32.EXE on a computer I own, but I'm sure that for some people they are useful, and for a smaller set of people they might even be indispensable. I don't begrudge Microsoft for including them as part of the standard Windows installation nor the people who need such tools; sometimes it is convenient to have some little utility or feature readily available. One thing I do begrudge is Microsoft's over-reliance on its own telemetry, and perhaps surpisingly on the flip side, customers who disable it. Collecting telemetry is generally a good thing, if it is done for good reasons and does not include any customer PII. However, how you interpret that telemetry is even more important, as that can lead to all sorts of disastrous decisions. On the customer side of things, telemetry is your "vote:" it's how you tell companies what features you use in the program, and lets them prioritize things appropriately. One glaring example is Windows 8, which shipped with the full-screen Start Screen because Microsoft's telemetry told them the average Windows user pressed the Windows key to bring up the Start Menu less than once a day. I have often wondered how many "power users" of previous versions of Windows (XP, Vista, and 7) that relied on the Start Menu disabled the telemetry that would have told Microsoft a difference story about its usage. More recently, I came across a young lady who had a problem with a third-party sync program on her computer running Windows 7. An update for the utility removed Windows 7 compatibility, and broke her backup process. Now, support for Windows 7 ended over 5 years ago in 2020, but there are ISVs who still support their software on it, but decisions about stuff like that are made, in part, by knowing what percentage of your customer base is on what operating system version. When I asked about that, she mentioned she had specifically disabled the telemetry from the sync program to its developers, which was optional to begin with. What made things even worse was that this was an open source utility, and its authors had a very clear, well-designed and scoped policy on the telemetry they collected, the pains they went through to avoid collecting any PII, and even other ancillary risks involving information disclosure (like just using of the software) because of the network connection made for the checks. Yet, she took herself out of telling the project maintainers "Hey, I use your software and I'm running Windows 7" by disabling the telemetry checks, which could have let them know they needed to continue supporting it. In a sense, sending telemetry is just like voting: Individually, you may not think it matters much, but it is often the basis for very important decisions. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky -
By goretsky · Posted
Hello, My thoughts on this are mixed. Microsoft has hosted malicious code in the Microsoft Update Catalog where third party device drivers are stored; I wrote about one such incident about fifteen years ago, so if there are any other old malicious drivers floating around in the catalog, this will be a good step towards preventing any infestations from reoccurring. Another thing, which surprisingly is not mentioned in Microsoft's announcement, is that this helps protect against BYOVD (Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver) attacks, where malware either comes with or downloads an older device drivers with vulnerabilities in it that can be exploited to gain access to kernel memory. Removing all those old device drivers from the Windows Update Catalog, potentially with all sorts of undisclosed vulnerabilities in them, means an attacker can no longer leisurely count on being able to download them from Microsoft's servers--something that may go unnoticed or ignored by security analysts. This makes the adversary attack a little more noisy, since they have to either include the device driver with the rest of their initial payload or download it from a third-party site at some point prior to beginning their BYOVD attack. On the other hand, it means that people who are looking for a specific version of an older device driver for whatever legitimate reasons, like compatibility, performance or stability, may end up going to dodgy third-party sites in search of older drivers, which increases the risk of exposure to everything from nuisance advertisements and unwanted software to actual malicious code. As for me, I have keeping copies of all the device drivers, firmware updates, etc. I have downloaded over the years, some dating back to DOS and Windows 3.x era, not just for hardware I won, but popular things like unified chipset and video card drivers, just in case I ever needed it. It might seem silly to collect such a thing, but the hardware drivers, firmware updates, and documentation are just about 2 TB in size. From my perspective, it is an inexpensive form of insurance, especially given that disk space is always getting cheaper over time. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky -
By Mindovermaster · Posted
@Raze Bold it boy. (I admit, we all did it from time to time..) -
By Copernic · Posted
Fan Control V227 by Razvan Serea Fan Control is a powerful and versatile portable utility that allows you to monitor, control and customize the fans of your GPU and CPU to keep your machine cool and running smoothly. Fan Control supports a wide range of devices and hardware configurations, giving you complete control over your computer's cooling system. Fan Control backend is mainly based on LibreHardwareMonitor, an open source fork of the original OpenHardwareMonitor. This means that hardware compatiblity is entirely open for anyone to contribute, and doesn't rely on a single developer who may stop caring at some point. Combined with the plugin system, Fan Control is unlocked for many generations of hardware to come. Main features Guided setup process on first launch Save, edit and load multiple profiles Change the theme and color of the application. Multiple temperature sources ( CPU, GPU, motherboard, hard drives... ) Multiple fan curve functions, including a custom graph Mix fan curves or sensor togethers (max, min, average) Low resource usage Advanced tuning with steps, start %, stop %, response time and hysteresis FanControl V227 changelog: Allow decimal with hysteresis values Radeon Pro support through ADLX Fix a bug when cancelling the graph editing dialog Update LibreHardwareMonitorLib Download: FanControl V227 | Installer ~15.0 MB (Open Source) View: Fan Control Homepage | Screenshot Get alerted to all of our Software updates on Twitter at @NeowinSoftware -
By GravityDead · Posted
Lol tf you are talking about. People are PAYING by using this app exclusively, just indirectly. Do you have any idea how much facebook charges for api access to WhatsApp which has become more or less a monopoly in e-commerce.
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