Hacker News Reader

Comment by kuschku | Hacker News Reader

Can’t we remove them from dnsapi.dll?

Decompile dnsapi.dll, remove all hardcoded hosts, replace and protect to a nonexistent group so that windows can’t even override it during an upgrade.

View on HN

Then watch all that hard work get undone the next time Microsoft forces an update and bundles a "fixed" dnsapi.dll with some other important security fix.

Are you going to verify that there isn't a new backdoor in every single update that works around your changes? Or are you going to bypass that impossible task by not installing any future security updates?

Workarounds that try to make a hostile OS "safe" is doomed always having to play catch-up, and Microsoft can probably add problems faster than you can find them.

The real question is how often does dnsapi.dll change, and when it does, can you reapply your patches? The crackers were quite successful in bypassing the activation scheme for previous versions and made autopatchers that would find and patch the right places, in a generic way that worked across many versions, so I'm reasonably certain that this could be done to preserve privacy too. And with more people on their side now than just pirates, there's all the more reason to do it. It's essentially taking the files that would be changed in an update and passing them through a filter that automatically maintains the pieces you want.

Or just switch to a less hostile operating system. As more things move to the web, this is becoming a very reasonable proposition.

I am using Linux since about mid-2012 exclusively, I switched after wasting a month trying to get git in command line working properly on Windows.

That's actually one thing I miss from Windows when I'm on Linux: Git for Windows is wonderful in my opinion. I don't know how to use Git on the command line (or rather, I'm not terribly comfortable with it). I don't use Git every day or even every week, so Git for Windows is a godsend to get me to actually commit things. Git on Linux is much, much more difficult for me.

There are Git GUIs for Linux as well. I don't use them, so I can't recommend anything personally, but I'm sure Google could turn up something useful :)

There is git-gui is nice. There are also plugins for editors and IDE's.

I love my touch screen. How's touch screen support on Linux?

I don't know. I suggest googling your particular laptop model, or better yet, launching a recent livecd and giving it a shot.

My touch screen works fine from my Vaio E Series to Linux Mint.

Drivers: Linux usually supports almost everything, there was even a build of Fedora for the Nexus 7.

UI: KDE especially has very good touch screen support, including a thing that automatically changes system UI when you connect a mouse, or keyboard, or so on, and switches between phone style, tablet style, desktop with touch, and desktop style on the fly. (Essentially Microsoft’s Continuum) Since 2012.

I used KDE Plasma Active on my Nexus 7 for some time, actually.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com