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Comment by sunaookami | Hacker News Reader

Not directed at you but I find it funny that people (rightfully!) complain about Microsoft spyware and then run some dubious scripts from who-knows-where. With the added side effects that these scripts always disable/remove waaaay too much and break the install which then lead to users cursing Microsoft for things that the user has broken without knowing.

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I find it funny that on website called hacker news, it's still assumed that anyone who customizes their system must also be an idiot that knows nothing about being safe online.

You'd think a bunch of javascript programmers I mean hackers would know better.

I like to live dangerously and with my riced up little Linux setup. It makes me feel cool and edgy.

Those that describe themselves as "pro users" or "hackers" are mostly the users that don't actually know better. It's kinda cringy reading blatant false information from tech people and then people not in tech believe this "misinformation" and it spreads like wildfire and can never be contained.

There is misinformation out there, for sure, but I fail to see your point. People will happily recommend installing Linux over Windows but then suggest you shouldn't dare to touch the registry! That makes no sense.

Windows 10 basically unusable on my GPD Pocket 1 without about as many tweaks as I can make to it. However, once properly tweaked it's actually pretty usable for pretty heavy coding tasks. It has a good amount of RAM but a pretty slow drive.

I don't bother tweaking my Windows 11 machine so heavily except to turn off everything that makes sense to turn off. These are all settings that Microsoft provides themselves but are only available via group policy or registry keys. Thankfully there are tools that not only make it easy to change but also explain the consequences and provide recommendations.

If I were to describe myself as "Pro user" or "hacker" would you assume I don't actually know better? That seems pretty uncharitable.

I think it's a pretty damning condemnation of Microsoft's current product strategy, at least in relation to the user segment that visits hacker news.

People are willing to run highly privileged untrusted and unverified code in the personal computers, just for a chance to remove the stuff you're actively spending money and time developing.

Microsoft's software is now indistinguishable from malware. If I had to run Windows, I would have zero trust in it, which matches my level of trust in "Fast Eddie's Random Script". At least Fast Eddie says in the README file that his script is not attacking my computer. Microsoft readily admits to its status as an attacker, and calls the attacks "features."

Microsoft learned from the years of its own users accepting 3rd party malware on their machines pre Win-7, and pretty much all phone users (Android definitely, probably iOS as well but I'm less familiar) accepting unremovable bloatware, so they added it back with Win8+.

Honestly Windows 10 is/was pretty good once you removed the MS malware but they're definitely antagonistic as a whole.

This really hit home for me when trying to dual boot. Repeatedly I had to select the drive in the boot menu and rerun the script to get me back to my nice grub chosing screen. I gave up, it felt violating.

Ultimately it's Microsoft not giving those users what they want. They have to accommodate the OS to fit their needs and sometimes it breaks.

It should be technically easy for Microsoft to decouple Recall from Explorer. I already saw this in the 90s with their web browser, coupled to the OS for purely commercial reasons.

I wouldn't say always. The last time I ran such a script, it didnt break anything. Granted, I did as the repo readme expressly and boldy stated, more than once, that 'anyone using this should read through the list of commands' (it was also nicely commented for lay people) and disable any sections related to services they use. Regardless, the defaults seemed quite sane and I even had to enable/uncomment a few for other services/products I didn't need.

key difference being - copilot and recall were added to my operating system without my consent - microsoft did not ask before they added these things, via windows update.

those dubious scripts from who-knows-where are run by me, with intent and with my consent, having passed whatever my own personal review process might be for that particular script.

If I try something and it turns out bad, that's on me, and I'm okay with that. If something is done to me without my knowledge or consent and it turns out bad, then that's a different story.

>If I try something and it turns out bad, that's on me, and I'm okay with that

That's ok, I'm critizing those that run these scripts without checking (and understanding!) them and then blame Microsoft when things go south (think of the "stick in own bicycle" meme). This is not a defense of Microsoft, they are also to blame that users feel the need to run these scripts because dubious stuff like Recall gets added and/or automatically activated without asking.

What would get disabled that "breaks the install"

I don't have a list but over the years I've seen a lot of people that had problems after running these. This was also prevalent for earlier Windows versions and especially by "gamers" who thought they could squeeze more FPS out of their machines. Failing Windows updates come to mind, especially major Win10 & Win11 updates.

is it that funny?

I'd trust some rando on github more than modern Microsoft

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