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Comment by oz | Hacker News Reader

>but there should be an "I'm not a normie" switch somewhere...

Which will then summarily be used by malware authors and we're back we started.

I wish I could upvote this about 30 times. For every real Windows security expert slash power user in the wild, there's about 30 pimple-encrusted besotted teenagers out there who just want to run some warez on their parent's computer and will click whatever setting, run whatever software and make whatever Registry edits are necessary to get the game their parents won't buy them up and running.

The typical home user is not a sysadmin, doesn't want to be a sysadmin and will not put in the effort to be a sysadmin. Microsoft is building Windows to be safe for them. This is a net good for all of us. And underneith it all, Windows is still Windows, which puts it miles ahead of its real competitors (Android, iOS and I guess ChromeOS) in terms of allowing users to really own their device.

This is all great, but I am not a typical home user and there is no option for me on the Windows Edition Menu. I can buy Home or Pro, that's it. Pro used to be the "I know what I'm doing" version but this is no longer the case. Enterprise let's you do whatever you want but requires far more investment and effort to run just so that I can control my computer.

Edit to reply to cwyers below me as I cannot reply further:

Do you honestly think that running your own Active Directory system, calling Microsoft Enterprise Sales, arguing with them and probably failing to buy a single Enterprise license, and ultimately buying a pack of Enterprise licenses I do not need is required of me to be "on the same Internet as you"? All I want is close to the level of control I can get on previous versions of Windows which pale in comparison to any Linux distribution. Does this mean that anyone using a Linux distro that doesn't automatically update shouldn't be allowed on your internet? Surely if your computer is always up to date you have nothing to fear?

I am unsure how you are equating me to an anti-vaxxer simply because I want to control how and when my computer updates. I don't believe I ever said I do not ever want an update, I want to know what they are and control when they are applied as is standard on every other OS I know of.

I am also not making any ideological argument to privacy. In fact, I don't care too awful much about the telemetry in Windows 10. I don't really like it but I almost exclusive use my Windows machine for gaming so there isn't much I'm scared of MS finding out about there. I simply want to control how my computer works.

That's a spurious argument. What's important is that the OS forces updates _by default_.

Sure, some of the people that turn it off overestimate their own capabilities, and that will lead to infection. But that's a very small portion of the total population, the vast majority of which will leave everything set to default.

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