[HN Gopher] Windows Defender blocks qBittorrent
___________________________________________________________________
Windows Defender blocks qBittorrent
Author : ethbr0
Score : 303 points
Date : 2021-07-26 12:09 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| gentleman11 wrote:
| It's targeting certain copyrighted works too, even legitimate
| ones
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/oof29b/windows_de...
| Subsentient wrote:
| Well you'd really have to be crazy to try and torrent stuff on a
| Windows machine nowadays anyways. That's just getting on your
| knees and begging for malware. Maybe this will help some of the
| more savvy users realize that Windows should be relegated to a
| virtual machine for when you need a specific Windows app that
| doesn't run under Wine, and never given access to real hardware.
| I only use my Win10 VM for compiling stuff with MSVC that refuses
| to build with MinGW.
| K5EiS wrote:
| Do you use a VM to download everything? Malware exists outside
| of torrents.
| smcl wrote:
| You mean the act of torrenting on its own would cause you to
| fall victim to malware, or that the process of finding a
| torrent via certain sites would do so?
| Subsentient wrote:
| Both. Plenty of malware-infested executables in torrents.
| mtone wrote:
| Instead, just don't run executables from untrusted sources.
|
| Torrents, email, mobile apps (like that fake banking iOS
| app that looks like the legit one) or otherwise. The
| transport method doesn't matter much.
| prepend wrote:
| Not sure what you mean as I've used reputable tracker sites
| without any malware for many years.
|
| As for downloading random torrents off I trusted sites, that
| seems about as smart as random exes.
| l30n4da5 wrote:
| >> Maybe this will help some of the more savvy users realize
| that Windows should be relegated to a virtual machine for when
| you need a specific Windows app that doesn't run under Wine,
| and never given access to real hardware.
|
| hurr durr windows bad linux good im so smart.
|
| you're practically _soaked_ with condescending smarm. Caureful,
| or it'll rub off on innocent bystanders.
| Subsentient wrote:
| Windows is the dominant operating system, and as such has a
| giant target on its back. It's true, I despise Windows, but
| the risk of torrenting on Linux vs the risk of torrenting on
| Windows is quite a huge difference.
|
| And look, Microsoft has been user-hostile for years now, the
| fact is, this kind of behavior from them doesn't surprise me
| anymore, and I'm tired of watching people take those punches
| lying down.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Windows is definitely more user-hostile than it has been in
| the past, and seems to be becoming more so[0], but honestly
| I'll still take Windows over a Linux Desktop any day
| because it works in a way that is much more in line with
| how I want my computer to work.
|
| Your attitude seems to very much be "you're an idiot for
| still using Windows and Linux is great", which is
| condescending as hell.
|
| [0] I am by no means defending this behavior. In fact, I
| hate it and kinda want to beat certain people at Microsoft
| with a rubber hose over it.
| Subsentient wrote:
| Ahh, well no. I don't think Windows users are idiots. I
| think they're normal, non-technical people who don't want
| to drop to a terminal to pair their bluetooth earbuds
| because the BlueZ GUI was written in an afternoon by some
| rando and never worked right.
|
| But I do admit that for _programmers_ , I don't
| understand why they'd want to still use Windows. I mean
| obviously there's reasons, but they're totally beyond me.
| Seems like masochism.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| And using Linux Desktop seems like masochism to me. Why
| would I want to use an OS where I can't install
| applications to a different disk without recompiling them
| or otherwise jumping through a bunch of namespacing and
| filesystem overlay hoops?
|
| There are reasons people make the choices they do and to
| assume that just because those reasons are beyond you
| that they are not reasonable is silly.
| l30n4da5 wrote:
| > non-technical people who don't want to drop to a
| terminal
|
| PowerShell exists. and it is LEAPS AND BOUNDS better than
| bash for pretty much anything related to scripting. so
| much so that half the time when I needed to write a
| script on linux, I opted to write it in ruby because bash
| is just that bad to write anything meaningful with.
|
| To assume that people on windows don't use a terminal is
| STILL coming across as condescending as hell.
|
| > But I do admit that for programmers, I don't understand
| why they'd want to still use Windows.
|
| there is an entire development ecosystem built around
| windows that has been around for decades. Only recently
| (relatively speaking) has it started to branch out and be
| OS-agnostic.
|
| Are you actually saying you didn't know .NET Framework
| existed, or are you just being willfully ignorant?
|
| I used Linux for years as my daily driver OS. Eventually
| got fed up with it. Driver support for a lot of USB
| devices is atrocious, and support for HiDpi monitors was
| still in its infancy when i switched. these are problems
| that Windows has fixed _right now_ and I don't get paid
| to fuck with my desktop settings so I can make my monitor
| display things correctly.
|
| I switched to windows, and if I need anything from linux,
| there is always the WSL, which is pretty much the best of
| both worlds for me.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| > " _and look, Microsoft has been user-hostile for years
| now_ "
|
| You know how sometimes people can have things completely
| backwards, and it's impossible to understand how? This is
| one of those times.
|
| Windows: the best thing for accessibility, screen readers,
| keyboard navigation. The best user-side (rather than admin
| side) automation of programs using things like Autohotkey
| and COM automation. Windows defender is a response to
| protect users both from malware and from the predatory
| behaviour of the likes of McAfee. Enormous amounts invested
| in hardware compatibility, software backwards
| compatibility. Generally very good tooling for
| introspection, performance monitoring, debugging,
| development on .NET, event tracing, public symbol servers.
| Famous for GUI wizards making complex tasks possible with
| less skill. Most typical programs have a next->next->finish
| install including technical programs like WireShark,
| Python, etc. "user hostile".
|
| Linux world: a culture where the user should "RTFM", where
| lack of technical skill is mocked, where a GUI wizard is
| scorned as inferior and people who use them shunned, where
| not wanting to self-host a LAMP stack is considered "lazy
| and incompetent", where technology being difficult is seen
| as par for the course and people who deal with that are
| lauded for it, where simple things are complex and common
| things in Windows land are dismissed with "nobody does
| that" cluelessness accepted without question.
|
| It's like seeing a billion people walk into shops, exchange
| money for food, and leave in 5 minutes and hearing someone
| living on a homestead who works 5am-10pm pickling cabbage
| and making the vinegar to do so describing shops as "user
| hostile" because you can't choose the pressure the grapes
| were crushed with - the tyrants!
|
| Windows is _nice_.
|
| It's incredible to think that you can go to Add/Remove
| Programs and switch on a type-1 hypervisor with a checkbox
| click and a reboot (or with a command line if you want) and
| that's the kind of engineering which runs through Windows,
| and people dismiss it because of Candy Crush in the start
| menu (and Microsoft ruin it with candy crush in the start
| menu).
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I don't particularly like the way you said it, but the
| sentiment is most definitely shared. It seems like this
| attitude is incredibly common in the Linux Desktop community
| and it is definitely not working in their favor.
| l30n4da5 wrote:
| ive seen this attitude from linux fanbois too many times at
| this point to be polite about it.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Unfortunately I know all too well what you're saying.
| finalis wrote:
| You sound like the kind of person who would report this page as
| suspicious: https://torrent.ubuntu.com/tracker_index
| thrower123 wrote:
| That's just complete nonsense.
|
| There's nothing inherently dangerous about torrenting on
| Windows, assuming you're not a moron who indiscriminately
| downloads warez. It's still relatively common for large files
| to be distributed as torrents, like game mods or Linux images.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| _That 's just getting on your knees and begging for malware._
|
| We're not in 2007 anymore.
| Subsentient wrote:
| You'll keep thinking that until you pirate a copy of Adobe
| Shitware 2077(tm) and it works fine for a day until the
| embedded cryptolocker activates and holds everything on your
| system hostage for 3 bitcoin.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| If you ran Linux executables you torrented you'd have the
| exact same problem.
| Subsentient wrote:
| Yeah, but less likely frankly, because it's less likely
| the malware author would take the time to make a
| ransomware for Linux, though I know it's happened before.
| 1% of the market vs 80% of the market, which would you
| target? And of course, utilities being free on Linux
| negates the need almost entirely in any case.
| joshuaissac wrote:
| > utilities being free on Linux negates the need almost
| entirely in any case
|
| Some of these utilities are installed by running: curl
| hxxp://urlshortener.ly/Bde29al | sh
|
| > Yeah, but less likely frankly, because it's less likely
| the malware author would take the time to make a
| ransomware for Linux
|
| Linux is the dominant server OS. Enterprises are far more
| capable of paying ransoms than individuals.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Right, so the problem isn't really because "Windows is a
| bad OS, m'kay", it's because Windows is popular... why
| might that be, I wonder? Maybe people like using it
| more...
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Yeah this type of argument always contradicts itself.
| "Use Linux because it doesn't have viruses". Why doesn't
| it have viruses? "It's not popular enough". So by
| suggesting Linux, thus making it more popular, you're
| increasing the risk of viruses?
| xc468 wrote:
| Any pirate worth their salt knows how to avoid malware -
| reputable and/or private trackers. If needed, throw the
| executable into VirusTotal, otherwise if you're worried about
| bespoke FUD malware, you've already lost regardless of OS.
| Datagenerator wrote:
| The walls of the garden are rising. And retrofitted and applied
| to your digital archives. Power corrupts.
| kilodeca wrote:
| Dude, just use Linux.
| kilodeca wrote:
| Looks like HN prefers to suffer. Yesterday I watched a video
| that talks about this kind of human behavior. You are welcome
| to "hell". (This might be inappropriate to say. To the atheists
| out there.)
| mikub wrote:
| They also blocked Kevin Beaumonts GitHub repos in Smartscreen
| because of some vulnerability writeup about HiveNightmare.
| https://twitter.com/GossiTheDog/status/1419569833298038784
| neonihil wrote:
| One more reason why I only use windows what it was built for: to
| run games. ^.^
|
| No flames. But I mean this is really really rude, even from MS.
|
| Forced upgrades were very hard to kill, but eventually some dns
| and firewall tweaks in the router did the trick.
|
| But this? Removing stuff they don't like? Without user consent?
| Wow. This is a new level.
| semitones wrote:
| I too, am now using Windows primarily to play games or
| record+edit music, because virtually everything else is easier
| and faster on Linux for me now.
| tyingq wrote:
| Defender also doesn't like NirSoft's ProduKey. Which is
| irritating, as all it's doing is retrieving product keys. If you
| want to reinstall Windows, it's a pretty normal thing to want to
| do.
| arsome wrote:
| Many NirSoft utilities get detected. Not sure if it's still
| true, but back in the day it was surprisingly common to find
| them embedded in password stealing malware, it'd basically run
| a few different password dumpers, make a zip and send it off to
| an FTP site. Minimal software development knowledge necessary
| as the whole operation could be done from a batch script.
|
| Particularly bad malware too since anyone who reverse
| engineered it could get the FTP site password and
| download/delete all their stolen passwords.
| ogurechny wrote:
| Then wmic.exe should also be listed as PUA, as you can get
| the product key with it. Not even mentioning Powershell and
| CMD -- average user never runs them, while bad people do that
| all the time. Their appearance in the process list is a sure
| sign that the system WUZ HAKKED.
| Jzush wrote:
| Hmm, I wonder if this is why I've been unable to use qbittorrent
| in the last month or so.
|
| I connect via a socks5 proxy, and everything appears to be
| connecting but I get nothing but "checking" continually and no
| activity.
| bob1029 wrote:
| I like how defender has been a daily thing on HN for the last
| week.
|
| If you want to turn this shit completely off (or actually
| _remove_ it), you just need to find a way to elevate a prompt as
| TrustedInstaller. This is the magic spell required to carry out
| extremely dangerous actions, such as 'net stop windefend', or
| otherwise adjusting permissions so the local administrator is
| allowed to do administrative things again.
|
| I hesitate to share the actual mechanisms for elevating TI at
| this point. God forbid Microsoft plugs all those little holes and
| I have literally no choice but to move everything to Linux. I
| don't mind hacking around the consumer safeguards to get rid of
| cortana/defender/telemetry/etc because everything else about
| win10 is amazing. Ideally, I wouldn't have to jump through these
| hoops and could just pay for a properly-licensed copy of Windows
| that I actually own.
| novok wrote:
| I don't think those controls will ever go away, because Windows
| is mostly just gamers and corporate IT installations, and IT
| people will need full control over that kind of stuff until the
| end of time, due to law.
| bob1029 wrote:
| > IT people will need full control over that kind of stuff
| until the end of time, due to law.
|
| This is the other edge of the sword when dealing with
| leviathans like Microsoft. They cannot directly target &
| oppress independently-minded assholes like myself without
| also compromising their target markets.
|
| If some arbitrary megacorps need a way around this, it would
| be economically infeasible for Microsoft to develop special
| custom code piles for every one of them in addition to the
| builds that the general public use, _and also_ ensure the
| corporate builds don 't magically leak out somehow at that
| scale.
| moss2 wrote:
| Switching my home computer to Linux has had its problems since
| I'm an avid gamer, but the more news I read about Windows the
| less I regret that decision.
| sneak wrote:
| I have a computer that runs Windows, exclusively for playing
| video games, and I have another computer for doing work, that
| will never run Windows outside of a VM.
| bitwize wrote:
| Whatever runtime Steam bundles with its games will soon grow
| almost as many irritating warts. Valve is apparently getting
| anticheat to work, which under Windows involves basically
| voluntarily installing a kernel-level rootkit so the game
| publisher can fully monitor your PC.
|
| Ultimately the ideal setup will probably involve keeping a
| Windows machine around for gaming and using Linux for serious
| work. Or running Windows in a VM with PCI passthrough for the
| video card.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| I love Linux, but it's still like a glass house. One simple
| terminal command out of curiosity will basically force you to
| reinstall the OS.
|
| If you're response to that is "well you should know what you're
| doing before you run as sudo," all I can say is no. There is no
| reason why changing a DE, or installing certain software should
| make it nigh impossible to revert to previous changes short of
| being an expert or full reinstall. Plus minor quirks with every
| single one. It gets tedious fast to the point that I just want
| to develop. I don't want to mess around with why I can't use
| this piece of software because of some configuration issue
| related to Linux. I just want it to work.
|
| When I'm on Linux, more often then not I'd rather just not have
| complicated software as I'm used to on Windows or Mac. Linux is
| where you go when you borderline have to expect something isn't
| going to work or you'll need to do a reinstall at some point.
| I've never felt that way about Windows or Mac unless my root
| drive felt bloated and it was entirely optional.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Shouldn't change major parts of the os unless you fully
| understand what you're doing. Has been true on every os since
| the beginning.
|
| I recommend Ubuntu Mate as something that works well for dev
| work with a minimum of tweaking needed.
|
| Also, I always keep my data files on another partition so OS
| installs are not a worrisome operation.
| bogwog wrote:
| > One simple terminal command out of curiosity will basically
| force you to reinstall the OS.
|
| You mean like `sudo rm -rf /`? Would an equivalent command
| run by an admin on Windows not cause the same types of
| issues?
|
| Sure, there might be some files that can't be deleted while
| the system is running (like kernel32.dll or whatever it's
| called), but you'll certainly break a lot of things which you
| can only reasonably fix by reinstalling Windows.
|
| > It gets tedious fast to the point that I just want to
| develop
|
| What type of development do you do? Front end web
| development? C#/.NET/WPF? Something else?
|
| Because life as a developer on unix is much much nicer than
| it is on Windows for most types of work. If you're not one of
| those people who is stuck with Visual Studio, you should
| invest time into learning to work on Linux, Mac, FreeBSD,
| etc. It'll be better for your job prospects (and sanity) in
| the long run.
| somethingreen wrote:
| My last Linux kill was mixing up command that adds group to
| a user with one replacing whole user groups list.
| danieldk wrote:
| > I love Linux, but it's still like a glass house. One simple
| terminal command out of curiosity will basically force you to
| reinstall the OS.
|
| Counterpoints:
|
| * Fedora Silverblue provides an immutable base OS with atomic
| updates/rollbacks. Makes it hard to mess up your system to
| the point where it doesn't work.
|
| * NixOS and Guix provide delarative system configuration with
| atomic updates/rollbacks.
|
| * Even on a 'traditional' distribution, you can use something
| like btrfs or ZFS snapshots and rollback your changes if you
| have a tendency to destroy systems ;).
|
| That said, Linux is not for everyone and it is completely
| fine to use macOS or Windows (as I write, I am using macOS on
| a MacBook).
| sslayer wrote:
| I ditched in the middle of Windows 7, with absolutely no
| regrets. Valve has made tremendous inroads in gaming with
| Proton, along with developers releasing for Linux, there really
| isn't a good excuse to stay with Microsoft.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Sure their is: Windows is a better fit for the things I do
| with a computer.
|
| Edit: I know right? How _dare_ I express a preference for
| Windows. Downvote me to hell because I don 't like using your
| favored OS.
| l30n4da5 wrote:
| for the most part, HN is pretty squarely in the 'windows
| bad linux good' camp. It is dumb af since according to a
| lot of the users on here, linux is gods gift to humanity.
|
| doesn't matter that pretty much all software is a dumpster
| fire, and linux is just another, less hot dumpster fire
| compared to windows.
| sneak wrote:
| This is a false equivalence.
| l30n4da5 wrote:
| how, exactly?
| adrian_b wrote:
| The difference between Linux and Windows is that in Linux
| I have never encountered any problem that I could not
| solve, in the worst case, when all else failed, by
| reading many source files of the offending programs,
| while on Windows I have encountered many cases of
| unsolvable problems, for which not only I was unable to
| find a solution (even if I have a lot of professional
| experience with all Windows versions since 3.0 till
| present) but also nobody else from IT support.
|
| Just to give a recent example, 3 different IT support
| people, from 3 different countries, have worked one day
| each, trying to discover why MS Teams does not work on a
| certain new Dell laptop, while it works fine if you move
| the Ethernet cable to the old laptop. After many efforts,
| nobody has any clue.
|
| Such things cannot happen on Linux.
| hanselot wrote:
| At least in Linux the dumpster fire's contents isn't
| hidden behind a corporate framework of people trying to
| hide the flames.
|
| At least the Linux fire doesn't attempt to take over
| other trashcans and force you to update your trash
| without consent.
|
| At least the Linux fire doesn't preinstall its fire in my
| trashcan artifically driving up the price of trashcans in
| the market.
|
| At least in the Linux fire, if you apply yourself and
| learn enough about your trash, you can choose how much
| trash and fire is in your trashcan.
|
| At least in the Linux fire, the fire tells you that its
| dangerous, instead of hiding everything behind stripped
| down excuses of flames from yester-year.
|
| At least in the Linux fire I can plan to barbecue
| something over a section of fire and know that it will
| consistently burn the same way, instead of spreading
| everywhere and the trashcan exploding.
|
| The irony of course being, that the people who argue for
| any other fire, have to first answer, why does Windows
| now feature Linux embedded inside itself?
| bogwog wrote:
| > doesn't matter that pretty much all software is a
| dumpster fire, and linux is just another, less hot
| dumpster fire compared to windows.
|
| Yeah, but the difference is that Linux is MY dumpster
| fire, not Microsoft's!
| l30n4da5 wrote:
| fair point. counter-argument: i'll start modifying my
| C:\Windows directory and make it my own dumpster fire.
| talentedcoin wrote:
| Don't let the haters drag you down. Myself I think Windows
| is fine (I work in finance). I use Fedora at home as my
| daily driver but lots of things on Windows are just as easy
| (or as tricky) to get running as they are anywhere else.
| mmsimanga wrote:
| I am guessing down votes are not for expressing your
| opinion but rather for not providing context. Why is
| Windows better option for you?
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Why would it matter? So they could try and change my
| mind?[0] That I prefer the way Windows works is
| sufficient reason to continue to use it instead of Linux
| Desktop. Why is not really relevant.
|
| [0] I've played that game a thousand times and it is
| always an exercise in frustration. No thanks.
| kempbellt wrote:
| "Windows good, you can't change my mind!" doesn't add
| anything of value to the conversation, especially for
| people who aren't dead-set either way.
|
| If you swear by windows, you probably have good reasons.
| People who like windows would love to hear them.
| Otherwise, why partake in a conversation that frustrates
| you at all if you don't want to argue in support of your
| opinion?
|
| +1 for the windows camp: Personally, I haven't found a
| better alternative for running Adobe programs on good
| hardware without taking out a loan on my house (mac pros
| are a no-go). So Windows works best here.
|
| Another +1 for the windows camp: Gaming (but SteamOS is
| starting to compete here).
|
| Other than that, I have found that some variant of linux
| or macOS outperforms windows in every way for _my_ needs
| (insert obligatory, YMMV), and I am happy to list those
| out if anyone is interested or needs help deciding which
| OS suits their needs best.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > "Windows good, you can't change my mind!" doesn't add
| anything of value to the conversation
|
| I was making a specific counterpoint to the argument
| "there really isn't a good excuse to stay with
| Microsoft". My point needed no elaboration to be valid.
|
| > Otherwise, why partake in a conversation that
| frustrates you at all if you don't want to argue in
| support of your opinion?
|
| Because in my experience said "conversations" always
| devolve into the same useless arguments, which are
| entirely irrelevant to the point that _people have good
| reasons they use Windows_ because anyone else 's opinion
| of their reasons is irrelevant.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| I swear Linux is a religion and its believers must
| CONVERT the heretics.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> Why would it matter? So they could try and change my
| mind?_
|
| Because you want upvotes, so you gotta give people things
| to agree with. If I just say "Linux Sucks" I'm not giving
| people much to agree with, except naked tribalism.
|
| But there are other things I can say that will allow
| members of my tribe to feel they're not voting tribally -
| and even some Linux enthusiasts to think I've got a
| point:
|
| * "Linux doesn't support Photoshop / MS Excel / Altium /
| SolidWorks"
|
| * "Microsoft's fanatical devotion to binary backwards-
| compatibility means I don't have to worry old software
| will break because I've got the wrong version of python
| installed, or my version of libreadline is too new."
|
| * "I've got an nvidia graphics card, and nvidia drivers
| on Linux are a right mess"
|
| * "Linux is all-too-often a second-class citizen, both
| hardware and software makers giving it less testing and
| support than they do Windows and Mac"
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > * "Linux doesn't support Photoshop / MS Excel / Altium
| / SolidWorks"
|
| "You don't need those things anyway, Krita / LibreOffice
| Calc / etc are good enough. Alternatively, don't they run
| in Wine?"
|
| > * "Microsoft's fanatical devotion to binary backwards-
| compatibility means I don't have to worry old software
| will break because I've got the wrong version of python
| installed, or my version of libreadline is too new."
|
| "People shouldn't use old software because it is
| insecure. Fortunately there are armies of third party
| package maintainers dedicated to keeping software up to
| date for you and updating is easy and painless."
|
| > * "I've got an nvidia graphics card, and nvidia drivers
| on Linux are a right mess"
|
| "Don't use Nvidia then."
|
| > * "Linux is all-too-often a second-class citizen, both
| hardware and software makers giving it less testing and
| support than they do Windows and Mac"
|
| "That's why we have to push more for its adoption!"
|
| Like I said, I've played this game _a lot_. This is
| exactly how it goes _every damned time_. No matter what
| you say, someone will come out of the woodwork to argue
| that your opinion is wrong, you chose the wrong hardware,
| or even, bizarrely, that _normal_ people don 't need
| that, like that has anything at all to do with why you
| need it.
| fsflover wrote:
| > to argue that your opinion is wrong
|
| But this is not arguing that the opinion is wrong. It
| just shows that it's not a universal true for everyone
| and that Linux _could_ work for other people reading
| this.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| But the whole point of what I'm saying is that _I
| personally_ use Windows for _my own personal_ reasons.
| Why is it my job to provide a platform for some Linux
| Desktop evangelist to promote their favorite OS by
| arguing against my reasoning?
| fsflover wrote:
| HN is not the place for dry posts like "I love
| Windows/Linux". Nobody cares that _you_ run Windows for
| "your personal" reasons. People are actually interested
| in the reasons.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| This all started because someone posted "[...] there
| really isn't a good excuse to stay with Microsoft.", a
| point I sought to refute. That's it.
|
| I would say it is at least as good as this post:
|
| "You actually can directly listen to many scientists on
| social media."
|
| Literally everything that followed was people being upset
| I didn't give them reasoning to attack. Well you know
| what? I'm sick of their bullshit arguments designed to
| promote their favorite OS by telling me all my personal
| decisions are bad just because I don't like the same
| things they do.
| fsflover wrote:
| "I love Windows" does not refute anything. It's just
| tribalism.
|
| "there really isn't a good excuse to stay with Microsoft"
| implies that Microsoft is bad, and on HN it's more or
| less accepted (mostly due to the user tracking and non-
| flexibility). Of course, there are still reasons to stay
| with Microsoft, so that argument is far from perfect too.
|
| > I would say it is at least as good as this post: "You
| actually can directly listen to many scientists on social
| media."
|
| My post suggests how to find the opinions of actual
| scientists. It's an actionable suggestion with reasoning
| unlike yours.
|
| > by telling me all my personal decisions are bad
|
| Nobody tells you that your personal decisions are bad.
| People are just discussing the reasons to choose one
| system of the other. Bystanders read that and decide for
| themselves. "I love Windows" arguments do not help anyone
| to decide.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > "I love Windows" does not refute anything. It's just
| tribalism.
|
| Let me sum up:
|
| >> There's no good reason to use Windows
|
| > If Windows fits how you use a computer better, then
| that is a good reason.
|
| That's it, that's all I'm saying. I didn't even say
| Windows was _good_. I certainly didn 't say I _love_
| Windows, because I really don 't and you will find many
| posts by me to back that up.
|
| > Bystanders read that and decide for themselves.
|
| _THIS_ thinking precisely illustrates why I didn 't
| elaborate on why I use Windows. With evangelists it isn't
| about discussion, or understanding, it's about performing
| a fucking sales pitch and I'm goddamned sick of it.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> This is exactly how it goes every damned time._
|
| Well, if you're going to post arguing against your own
| point every time... :)
| sbuk wrote:
| "Single button mouse"...
|
| You did _exactly_ this.
|
| Edit: changed to the relevant statement
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| People really latched on to that "single button mouse"
| thing, completely ignoring the other 2 reasons I listed
| that I don't like MacOS. Not to mention that I wasn't
| telling people they should use Windows or criticising
| their reasoning for using MacOS.
| sbuk wrote:
| To be fair to you, there is not a lot that can be done
| about the other two things that you don't like.
| _Everyone_ knows that gaming on the Mac is limited, as is
| hardware choice. The _reason_ that most people latch on
| the mouse comment is because it hasn 't been true since
| the last century in all reality.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Which I'll accept is a problem of my last real attempt to
| use a Mac being well over a decade ago. I guess I just
| don't get why people keep harping on it, like correcting
| me on MacOS's 2-button mouse support is going to convert
| me or something.
| robador wrote:
| Is Windows the better fit or is it the software that runs
| on it that doesn't have linux support?
| hulitu wrote:
| No and no. Windows is "the better fit" because: 1) AD. 2)
| corruption (it's a very long story, see Munich for one).
| 3) anticompetitive behavior. 4) Excel.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Is there a difference really? Microsoft spent years and
| literally billions to get developers on their OS (see
| Balmer's "developers developers developers" speech in the
| nineties). Of course some people consider this evil.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| It's the OS. The application distribution model is, in my
| opinion, significantly better than Linux and it's package
| management/repo scheme. I don't have to recompile old
| software to keep using it 2 years later (or 10 for that
| matter), I can place applications on different disks than
| the OS resides on, I can keep multiple versions of the
| same application, etc.
| finalis wrote:
| I used to think that too before I made the switch to macOS.
| Yes it was a learning curve initially, but it wasn't
| unmanageable, and you start to uncover Windows annoyances
| that you never knew existed because you were used to them
| and conditioned into thinking they were normal for so long.
| You'd be surprised how flexible your needs are when you
| aren't pigeonholing yourself.
| gruez wrote:
| >and you start to uncover Windows annoyances that you
| never knew existed because you were used to them and
| conditioned into thinking they were normal for so long
|
| ..which promptly get replaced with mac annoyances. Random
| ones off the top of my head:
|
| * closing a window (using the red x icon) doesn't close
| the app
|
| * overwriting a folder deletes existing contents, rather
| than merging them
|
| * weird scroll acceleration that makes clicky scroll
| wheels unusable
| harrygeez wrote:
| I never understood the rational behind the second one...
| Sure I get that's how directories probably work
| underneath the hood but in a GUI I guess I expected a bit
| more "magic"
| hulitu wrote:
| > * closing a window (using the red x icon) doesn't close
| the app
|
| There are applications with more than one window.
|
| > * weird scroll acceleration that makes clicky scroll
| wheels unusable This is called "progress" or UI/UX or
| whatever name they have today for brain damage . Some
| years ago the Apple GUI was looking good. Then the
| replaced the window buttons with coloured circles. Guess
| which one is which ?
| gruez wrote:
| >There are applications with more than one window.
|
| And windows handles it just fine. Clicking X on one
| window doesn't close the entire app.
| bitwize wrote:
| > * closing a window (using the red x icon) doesn't close
| the app
|
| Command-Q is your friend.
| willis936 wrote:
| >* overwriting a folder deletes existing contents, rather
| than merging them
|
| Wait. If there truly is not a setting for this then it
| makes finder unusable as a file explorer and arguably the
| entire OS. Recursive merge is one of the most fundamental
| things a personal computer does.
| paulmd wrote:
| that's the pretty standard behavior on unix. Unless the
| window manager goes out of its way to override it, mv'ing
| a folder to a place where one already exists will replace
| the old folder with the new one.
|
| You can go out of your way to do it manually with rsync
| and similar tools, of course, but by default you're
| moving directory pointers around, not merging trees.
| willis936 wrote:
| How many Unix graphical OS distributions are there even,
| let alone how many are installed?
|
| Nautilus, the default file manager of GNOME (and by
| extension Debian and its children such as Ubuntu) handles
| recursive merge. This isn't an issue on Linux.
|
| It's obviously bad design to have something as high level
| as a file manager be a glorified 2D wrapper of 2 command
| line tools.
| CyberShadow wrote:
| The window manager manages windows. It has nothing to do
| with the filesystem or how it's presented to the user.
| Arnavion wrote:
| They meant "window file manager", ie graphical file
| manager.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| There is in fact a workaround, hold down option while
| copying the folder. Note that there needs to be at least
| one subitem in common.
| adar wrote:
| I hate being the kind of internet guy who's like "X
| sucks" about something a lot of people have worked on,
| but I really, really, really dislike Finder. It fails as
| a file explorer on several fundamental levels. For
| example network shares in Finder feel so tenuous and like
| they could break any instant. Sometimes after you sleep
| your Mac and wake it up, you have to reboot to be able to
| reconnect to a network share.
| john-aj wrote:
| Well, at least Finder used to be good... before OS X.
| jensensbutton wrote:
| I have to use macos for work. I don't think it's very
| good. Mostly just different (and less untuitive for me -
| ymmv). I started by being annoyed about the UI, then the
| cli differences (it's not linux) then I got annoyed by
| the terrible finder, then I got annoyed by frequent
| beachballs, then... it goes on.
|
| Some people just don't like it.
| novok wrote:
| Your frequent beachballs might be caused by your work
| installing an antivirus on the mac, such as carbon black
| or crowdstrike. Or a bad external hard drive causing i/o
| freezes.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > Some people just don't like it.
|
| Indeed. That goes for any software and it'd be really
| nice if we could grow beyond our childish tribalism and
| accept that "I don't like the way your favorite software
| works" is not a personal attack.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Honestly, I feel like Apple should just throw away Unix
| compliance at this point. The average Mac is less POSIX-
| derived than most unlicensed Linux distros (or BSD
| derivatives, for that matter), and it only serves to
| further ostracize people like me, who just want to
| develop and not wait on my computer. Most Mac owners I
| know wouldn't care at this point, since they're either
| completely used to this kind of treatment or quit
| programming altogether.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I have used other operating systems, including Linux and
| MacOS. While I am fond of MacOS Application Bundles, I do
| not like many other things, like single-button mice,
| limited choice in hardware, and relative lack of gaming.
| djxfade wrote:
| Apple's mice haven't been single button since ages ago.
| Right click works out of the box, and all of their own
| mice also supports right clicking in various ways
| salamandersauce wrote:
| Yet they still build the Magic mouse as though it was a
| single button mouse so it doesn't actually have 2
| separate switches, just 1 in the middle. This annoyingly
| means that clicks don't always click if you're too far
| from the center.
|
| Apple has never actually built a mouse with 2 distinct
| switches for left and right click. It's like they are too
| proud or something and "right" click needs to be faked
| for some reason.
| vetinari wrote:
| You know you can connect any USB mice you want, right?
|
| Right now, I'm using a Steelseries one with a Mac. All
| six buttons and the scroll-wheel work fine.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > You know you can connect any USB mice you want, right?
|
| Yes, I'm aware of that. When I last seriously used MacOS
| X it was still the PPC era, and while technically you
| could use a 2 button mouse it wasn't really designed for
| it. Anyway, compared to other complaints that's a minor
| gripe of mine.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > while technically you could use a 2 button mouse it
| wasn't really designed for it
|
| Nope. Plug in a two button USB mouse and it just worked.
| azalemeth wrote:
| > and while technically you could use a 2 button mouse it
| wasn't really designed for it.
|
| I don't quite think this is true. I'm pretty certain that
| MacOS 9 had a right click menu if you plugged in a two
| button mouse; I've used MacOS since version 6 and I
| recall distinctly right click being a novelty in OS 8.
|
| Apple's philosophy always was that context menus could
| _aid_ other workflows in the program, but couldn 't
| _replace_ them -- the functionality had to be accessible
| in some other way. Which, I thought, certainly makes
| sense if 90% of your users have a one button mouse. Could
| this be what you 're thinking of?
| smoldesu wrote:
| Side-note: I really, really, _really_ wish MacOS had
| mouse acceleration control in the settings menu. It 's
| the first frustrating roadblock I hit whenever I set up a
| Mac, and it makes me just want to flash it with something
| else.
| pebble wrote:
| Can you watch youtube videos with hardware acceleration yet?
| zamadatix wrote:
| Facetious question but for a genuine response: Firefox yes,
| your distro's Chromium package yes, but Chrome proper is
| still refusing to enable it though (they allowed you to
| toggle it for a bit after 88 the retracted that in 91).
| pebble wrote:
| Not being facetious at all. I'm replying to "there really
| isn't a good excuse to stay with Microsoft." and last I
| checked browser video acceleration on linux with nvidia
| was still broken, no matter whose fault that is.
|
| I'd love to use linux but It's hard to say everyone
| should use linux when in 2021 not everyone even has
| proper video acceleration.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Valve has made it so Linux is finally back to the point
| "Linux has games it can run that I can play" but it's still a
| far cry from reaching "Games that I play I can run on Linux".
|
| For some it's not a problem but for those that play games
| from developers which use kernel level anti-cheat Proton
| isn't a be-all-end-all that Linux is now ready to migrate to.
| ghastmaster wrote:
| I was so happy with Linux, I switched my 80+ yo grandmother's
| computer as well. My father now runs it on his laptop. For
| the average user who does not game, windows is not
| recommended by me. Linux has stopped me in my tracks a few
| times, but I fiddle with things. My grandmother and father
| haven't had any issues in the years they have had it
| installed.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| I switched to Linux with the release of XP. Later versions of
| XP (SP2 and 3) were better with their service packs offering
| new features that really should have been in vanilla XP. But
| the original release of XP was slower than Windows 2000,
| uglier than Windows 2000 and required twice as much system
| resources as Windows 2000 while offering literally nothing in
| return aside a little more compatibility for gaming. But
| since all of the Windows games I played already supported
| Windows 2000 (bar the DOS games but I kept Win95 about for
| DOS games) there was no benefit in upgrading to XP. So I
| switched to Linux instead.
|
| So it's been nearly 20 years running Linux and honestly I've
| never once missed Windows. I've never got people who said "I
| can't run x" because everything I've needed to work has
| worked or there has been some open source alternative that
| has worked equally well. And if I really needed a corporate
| platform there was always OSX. Unfortunately macOS these days
| is becoming a similar cesspool as Windows. Before long the
| only good operating systems left will ironically be the free
| ones.
| naosouumapessoa wrote:
| > there really isn't a good excuse to stay with Microsoft
|
| Except, if you run nvidia optimus laptop and have mixed
| display DPI.
|
| Every few months I try to run Arch on my recent laptop and
| it's always a nightmare.
|
| I was hyped that 470 driver would fix wayland in nvidia (the
| only half decent way to fix mixed DPIs on Linux). Lo and
| behold, It's still a buggy mess that made me crawl back to
| windows.
|
| Maybe on 570 I will be able to use Linux on this laptop,
| likely never.
| adrian_b wrote:
| In recent years I have used only laptops with non-Optimus
| NVIDIA, and on these I had no problems in Linux with
| multiple monitors with different resolutions, even if I do
| not use Wayland.
|
| The NVIDIA settings program allows you to configure the
| monitors at any resolutions and in any geometric
| arrangement.
|
| Some 6-7 years ago, I had a laptop with Optimus NVIDIA and
| I lost a couple of days until making it work. After that I
| had no problems, but the external monitor had the same
| resolution with the laptop display, so I have never tried
| mixed DPI with Optimus.
|
| In any case, after that I have avoided Optimus and there
| are enough alternatives.
| Zambyte wrote:
| > mixed display DPI.
|
| I believe Wayland may be better than X with this, but my
| displays have the same DPI so I haven't tested myself. My
| displays do have different refresh rates and Wayland
| handles that better in my experience.
|
| NVIDIA has been slow on the Wayland front though, but I
| think they may have made decent progress with recent driver
| releases.
| ahefner wrote:
| So don't do that, then.
| zamadatix wrote:
| "There's no reason to go to McDonald's instead of
| Applebee's"
|
| "Except if you want to use the drive through"
|
| "So don't do that then"
|
| Avoiding it personally doesn't alleviate that there is
| still a reason.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| I've had the opposite experience - Proton has been getting
| better and better - even more so if you like to play around
| with the Glorious Eggroll fork.
|
| Then again, I mostly play single player games that don't have
| anti-cheat. Once Valve gets anticheat working though, which
| they are actively working on, it's basically game over.
| sp332 wrote:
| How do you avoid malware on Linux?
| ajoseps wrote:
| recently switched off of Windows to using PopOS. Really
| impressed how everything kinda just worked out the box. I'm
| very excited to see if Valve's proton will push more people to
| Linux and in general, improve the desktop experience.
| physicles wrote:
| PopOS on a Thinkpad is the best Linux experience I've ever
| had, by far. The far-field microphone even works.
| kempbellt wrote:
| I set up a LAN box for my parents on a computer that my dad
| received for free. It came with Windows 10 on it, but wasn't
| very powerful - company's old hardware.
|
| After several...frustrating... _hours_ of trying to talk them
| through things over the phone to get RDP working, just so I
| could install Docker to run some containers that didn 't even
| work properly with networking, and having to call/text any time
| the machine thought it was smarter than me and rebooted because
| of an update, I finally drove out there, wiped it, and threw
| linux on it (Ubuntu 20, which serves the purposes I need).
|
| The entire installation process took about 15 minutes because I
| was explaining it to my dad as I installed it. _Zero_ headache
| since it was plugged in next to the router and powered on weeks
| ago, and the performance on the running containers makes it
| feel like a brand new computer compared to trying to run them
| in Windows.
|
| I run a Windows desktop locally for gaming. I've heard good
| things about SteamOS and have been toying with switching, but
| I'm put off by the idea of trying to re-flash Windows if it
| doesn't work. Personally, I'll be happy when I no longer need
| Windows even for gaming.
| zamadatix wrote:
| I don't care how much of a Windows fanatic I was I'd never
| even try to use the GUI of the client version to configure
| the a box as a Docker server remotely. I don't know what to
| expect from that other than frustration. I'd definitely use
| Linux myself but if someone asked me to use Windows I'd still
| just enable the OpenSSH service instead of RDP and use the
| Server version if possible and if not at least set up the
| auto update schedule to the early morning like I would on the
| Linux box.
| stinos wrote:
| _After several...frustrating...hours of trying to talk them
| through things over the phone to get RDP working_
|
| Having had similar problems (not just windows, RDP/VNC/you
| name it) to me this now sounds like 'wrong tool for the job';
| just use e.g. Anydesk : no install, just an exe, have the
| remote side run it and tell you the ID and you're good (at
| least it didn't fail me once yet). From then on configure
| RDP/VNC yourself, and the router's port forwarding, etc.
| Popegaf wrote:
| Have you checked https://www.protondb.com/ to see which games
| run well on Linux with Steam?
|
| Lutris ( https://lutris.net/ ) also provides scripts for
| games that aren't on steam or bought on other stores.
|
| You can also install Pop!OS which is another Linux distro for
| gaming (or so I've heard).
| kempbellt wrote:
| Funny you mention it. This thread actually sparked some
| digging and I'm currently looking into flashing Pop!OS
| right now.
|
| For anyone interested:
|
| From what I've gathered, Pop!OS has a bit more support than
| the officially released SteamOS Beta version, which is
| actually someone outdated right now. But from what I've
| read about the Steam Deck, Steam has a new version of their
| OS that the deck runs on. So maybe (hopefully) it will be
| released along with the deck - couldn't find any info on
| that though.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| > maybe (hopefully) it will be released along with the
| deck - couldn't find any info on that though.
|
| Valve has stated that their SteamOS 3 will be a freely-
| available open platform, and that they encourage other
| device manufacturers to ship it on their hardware. I
| assume that this means isos will be available.
| malka wrote:
| Gaming is my only use case with windows, and I am filled with
| deep hatred each time I have to boot this OS.
| bogwog wrote:
| Which games do you play that don't work on Linux? Because I
| switched to it a long time ago and haven't looked back.
| Proton and Wine are excellent nowadays, and 99% of what I
| want to play works, with the rest usually just a short
| `protontricks ...` command away from working.
|
| The only stuff that is completely broken is Easy Anticheat
| and BattleEye, but those will supposedly be working when
| the new Steam Deck starts shipping.
| malka wrote:
| The last one that me reinstall windows was disco elysium
| bogwog wrote:
| I played through that entire game through Wine on Linux
| last year. Idk if the Steam version works out of the box,
| but IIRC I didn't have to do anything special to get the
| GOG version to work.
| doctorsher wrote:
| I agree completely. I have Windows at home for gaming, and
| Windows at work (because those are the laptops we get).
| It's rough. The only thing that makes this bearable is
| Windows Subsystem for Linux.
|
| Side note: if you end up dual booting your gaming PC,
| please learn from my mistakes and disable Fast Startup
| before you do. Otherwise you're going to have a bad time.
| aceazzameen wrote:
| There's a group policy to prevent this in Win 10 Pro. Although, I
| haven't tested it with this issue.
|
| Open Group Policy Editor, then:
|
| Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows
| Components > Microsoft Defender Antivirus > Turn off routine
| remediation
|
| Enable "Turn off remediation"
|
| Policy description: "This policy setting allows
| you to configure whether Microsoft Defender Antivirus
| automatically takes action on all detected threats. The action to
| be taken on a particular threat is determined by the combination
| of the policy-defined action, user-defined action, and the
| signature-defined action. If you enable this policy
| setting, Microsoft Defender Antivirus does not automatically take
| action on the detected threats, but prompts users to choose from
| the actions available for each threat. If you
| disable or do not configure this policy setting, Microsoft
| Defender Antivirus automatically takes action on all detected
| threats after a nonconfigurable delay of approximately five
| seconds."
| e3bc54b2 wrote:
| When I mentioned in another thread this happening to other open
| source projects (winmerge, kdiff3) [0], I was told I was making
| stuff up and/or this is in 'best interest' of users and that this
| only happens because these are 'uncommon applications'.
|
| Its going to be amusing to read replies to this thread.
|
| Pardon the snark, but this is BS and its really sad to see this
| shitshow being defended.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27355191
|
| edit: typo
| Someone1234 wrote:
| > Its going to be amusing to read replies to this thread.
|
| I feel like respondents did a good job in the previous thread
| explaining what is going on and why. Your summation of that
| interaction, tone then, and tone today seemingly suggests
| you've got a predetermined conclusion in mind and consider any
| other interpretation/explanation as inherently adversarial.
|
| Or to phase this more simply: This isn't constructive. You
| should assume good faith in the people who respond to you, test
| your assumptions, rather than simply dismissing any insight as
| a blanket "defense."
| bob1029 wrote:
| > I was told I was making stuff up and/or this is in 'best
| interest' of users
|
| This is the sensation I get too. "Why don't you just use
| regedit/gpedit/etc." (this approach is hilariously
| insufficient)
|
| Some days I feel like giving up on tech because of how the
| corporate PR machines have ruined large swathes of the
| community. It is getting harder and harder to find actual
| answers to questions like "how do I _remove_ the windows
| defender binaries from my PC? "
|
| If the TI approach stops working, I am moving to linux and I am
| taking our product's platform along for the ride too.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| They need to bring Ballmer back to throw some chairs around for
| the sake of the developers.
| auxym wrote:
| the Nim compiler is also getting flagged by Defender:
| https://github.com/nim-lang/Nim/issues/17820
| gruez wrote:
| >I was told I was making stuff up and/or this is in 'best
| interest'
|
| I read the comment thread. It's unclear which comment said that
| you were "making stuff up". There's also zero matches for "best
| interest" (your direct quote).
|
| >that this only happens because these are 'uncommon
| applications'.
|
| Relatively speaking, winmerge and kdiff3 are quite uncommon,
| compared to the normal stuff that people have installed on
| their computers.
|
| >Pardon the snark, but this is BS and its really sad to see
| this shitshow being defended.
|
| Are you against people defending microsoft on principle, or are
| simply unsatisfied with the explanations given? The explanation
| given (ie. unknown software -> don't know whether it's safe ->
| warn users it's unknown) seems pretty reasonable to me, as it
| fails closed rather than fail open. For a technical user that
| might not be an acceptable trade-off, but I also don't see it
| as an unacceptable default for non-technical users.
| e3bc54b2 wrote:
| I admit and apologize for salty tone above. It is not very
| constructive, and I agree, and would like to elaborate.
|
| This isn't the first time such thing has happened and it
| won't be last. Windows has becoming more and more painful as
| Operating System as in operating the machine and has been
| trying to operate the user instead.
|
| The incidents I mentioned about Winmerge and Kdiff3 did
| happen with me and I stand by that. Above comment does not
| quote anyone but convey my understanding of the replies in
| general, which I now understand to be less than perfect.
|
| But,
|
| > unknown software -> don't know whether it's safe -> warn
| users it's unknown
|
| You must be able to realise that it is not exactly presented
| in such manner as to be "unknown". Unknown would simply mean
| windows doesn't know about it and its upto user's discretion.
| Microsoft, by virtue of all the telemetry, happen to know
| that this application is uncommon. Why not say that? Why not
| let the user decide whether they want to run an uncommon app?
| What is happening here instead, however, is it gets presented
| as "dangerous" and blocked by default. This, along with
| Microsoft's position ends up being (in my humble opinion) an
| abuse of powerful position. And that, again, in my own humble
| opinion is unacceptable in being defended.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| TBH, Windows shouldn't even be in the business of having
| any opinion on uncommon software.
|
| If they want to collect data sets for virus protection, go
| ahead.
|
| If they want to hash installed files from common software
| to detect divergences for virus protection, go ahead.
|
| But having any kind of notification that an install is
| uncommon? We call it a general purpose computer because we
| want to use it for general purposes: which is to say,
| uncommon purposes.
|
| This feels like ape'ing Apple without thinking it through.
| gruez wrote:
| > But having any kind of notification that an install is
| uncommon? We call it a general purpose computer because
| we want to use it for general purposes: which is to say,
| uncommon purposes.
|
| How much % of the windows install base do you think is
| running random programs that they downloaded off github,
| and how many are just running the top 1000 programs (eg.
| chrome/office/winrar)?
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Do we want to live in a world where someone running
| something different than everyone else on their computer
| is treated with suspicion?
|
| This seems like a very slippery slope towards the
| iPhonization of the PC.
| gruez wrote:
| > Do we want to live in a world where someone running
| something different than everyone else on their computer
| is treated with suspicion?
|
| It depends on what you mean by "suspicion". Should users
| be wary and not blindly run uncommon binaries they got
| off the internet, on a unsandboxed system? I don't see
| why not. I'll even say that most _developers_ are not
| exercising enough caution when downloading random
| packages off npm.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Isn't this already what Windows does? It's warned about
| unsigned binaries on first run for a while now, no?
|
| And I can see some argument for that, even if in practice
| it feels more like teaching users to blindly ignore
| warnings.
|
| But holding uncommon or un-Microsoft-sourced (that is,
| signed) to a higher standard feels wrong.
| gruez wrote:
| > Isn't this already what Windows does? It's warned about
| unsigned binaries on first run for a while now, no?
|
| Sort of? There's three I know of
|
| 1. the generic warning for files you downloaded off the
| internet
|
| 2. the UAC warning when you try to run any program as
| admin
|
| 3. the smartscreen warning for uncommon files.
|
| The first two has the "run/open" equally as visible as
| the "don't run/cancel" button. The last one is the one
| where the "run" button is hidden.
|
| >And I can see some argument for that, even if in
| practice it feels more like teaching users to blindly
| ignore warnings.
|
| That's exactly the problem. The first two warnings show
| up for everything, so users are trained to click through.
|
| >But holding uncommon or un-Microsoft-sourced (that is,
| signed) to a higher standard feels wrong.
|
| The problem is that without a digital signature, you
| can't tell whether a binary from a legitimate developer
| and a malware developer. Hence the need to rely on file
| hashes and needing to warn users for uncommon binaries.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Another interaction before 3. is the Edge / SmartScreen
| integration where it won't download files thought to be
| unsafe "This is unsafe to download and was blocked by
| SmartScreen Filter" and you need to explicitly download
| them, e.g. screenshot in this blog:
|
| https://www.windowscentral.com/how-download-blocked-
| files-sm...
| UnFleshedOne wrote:
| Have you tried running anything on new Apple architecture
| -- even running your own apps built locally works half of
| the time, and that's _with_ the full moon out and correct
| number of goats dully sacrificed...
| gruez wrote:
| >You must be able to realise that it is not exactly
| presented in such manner as to be "unknown". Unknown would
| simply mean windows doesn't know about it and its upto
| user's discretion. Microsoft, by virtue of all the
| telemetry, happen to know that this application is
| uncommon. Why not say that? Why not let the user decide
| whether they want to run an uncommon app?
|
| But seems pretty close to what they're doing? I don't feel
| like downloading random shady programs to get the UI to
| show up, so I'll base my analysis off the screenshots from
| this page:
| http://www.rawinfopages.com/tips/2014/10/unblock-programs-
| bl...
|
| 1. the prompt says the app is "unrecognized"
|
| 2. the prompt says running the app "might put your PC at
| risk". I'm presuming that's what you meant by "dangerous",
| but that's not exactly the same thing.
|
| 3. The default option is indeed "don't run", and you do
| have to click on the non-obvious "more info" link for the
| "run" to show up, but this seems like a reasonable trade-
| off. Otherwise users might instinctive click "run" and
| ignore the warning.
|
| >This, along with Microsoft's position ends up being (in my
| humble opinion) an abuse of powerful position. And that,
| again, in my own humble opinion is unacceptable in being
| defended.
|
| In other words, "I'm so confident that I'm correct and
| microsoft is so powerful that I think it's unacceptable for
| people to present arguments to the contrary?
| josephcsible wrote:
| > Relatively speaking, winmerge and kdiff3 are quite
| uncommon, compared to the normal stuff that people have
| installed on their computers.
|
| I think you missed the point here. The fact that programs are
| uncommon isn't a legitimate excuse for Microsoft to falsely
| flag them as malware and then not fix it.
| gruez wrote:
| I'm must be missing some context here. Did OP and/or the
| project flag this problem to microsoft?
| djanogo wrote:
| They would get lot more of community to agree with them had they
| thrown in a statement that they are doing it as part of "stopping
| distribution of misleading content". /s
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/05/windows_10_microsoft_...
|
| Windows Defender routinely blocks the installation of Ardour,
| too.
| Jenk wrote:
| PUA is "potentially unwanted app" right? The "potentially"
| implies this is somewhat conditional, or optional.
|
| Is there no way to tell defender to leave it alone? Without
| disabling defender entirely I mean.
| theon144 wrote:
| There absolutely is, per the last comment in the thread:
| https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent/issues/14489#issu...
|
| However, that also means disabling protection against
| cryptominers and a host of other nasty stuff, so it's not
| really a great solution IMHO.
| hcta wrote:
| kind of hilariously ironic. What do you call an app that makes
| itself impossible to remove, and deletes users' files without
| their consent? I guess when you spend too long fighting malware,
| you end up becoming the malware, or something.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Just another way in which the cure (anti-malware software) is
| worse than the disease (the malware). Slows down every file
| access and program launch, high false positive rate, is itself a
| vector for exploitation... why did we ever think this was a good
| idea?
| timbit42 wrote:
| It seemed like a good idea because back then the OS wasn't
| multi-tasking.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > It seemed like a good idea because back then the OS wasn't
| multi-tasking.
|
| Of course virus scanners have been around in some form
| forever, but I believe always-on virus scanners didn't really
| take off until the multi-tasking age (and indeed _couldn
| 't_--"always on" doesn't mean much without some sort of
| multi-tasking). For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An
| tivirus_software#2000%E2%80%... tells me that ClamAV wasn't
| released until 2001.
|
| Optional, "on-call" virus scanners are highly unobtrusive
| (though, like manual backup, only as reliable as their
| operators), and I can't imagine this sort of outcry against
| them.
| kragen wrote:
| I imagine that what happened was that, if the same muggles came
| back to you every week to uninstall the same malware from their
| computers, you'd get pretty tired of it after a few months and
| install some kind of malware blocker. It's not a solution to
| the problem, but it's a painkiller.
| allo37 wrote:
| I'm convinced most of this anti-malware software is largely
| security theatre, but it helps IT departments sleep better at
| night I guess.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| I'm so glad I vaporized my Windows partition a few weeks ago -
| for completely unrelated reasons but the more time goes on the
| more I'm sure I made the right choice to swear them off forever.
|
| Linux is the only real option if you care about using your
| computer the way _you_ want instead of how some global
| corporation decides you should.
|
| If you're in the market for a new computer, shop with someone
| that also cares - System 76 seems like a good start. Dell XPS or
| Thinkpad with Linux preinstalled would also be a solid choice.
| kozak wrote:
| I recently unpacked an old archive from the time I was making
| some shareware few decades ago. Windows Defender instantly ate
| all keygen.exe files from it. Those keygens were my own keygens
| for my own software (I wrote them myself and used them to
| generate keys for my customers back in the day).
| adriancr wrote:
| check if there's any trojan appended to them... or if you've
| used UPX to package them then they will automatically get
| flagged.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| What's the deal with UPX compressed executables being
| "dangerous"? Is there self modifying code or something?
| adriancr wrote:
| it used to be a very common way to append trojans to
| existing executables. First pack them then add small
| payload (ones i've seen were usually ~20kb in size)
|
| Then antiviruses took an easy way out and marked all as
| viruses for some reason...
| badkitty99 wrote:
| It's so disgusting how they police your local files and delete
| without any prompt, what a joke
| BizarroLand wrote:
| In the Windows defender settings, I believe under history
| actions or something similar (I don't have a PC running
| defender at hand) you can release and whitelist files it has
| placed in quarantine.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| Gives a new meaning to "software is eating the world"
| sdoering wrote:
| Wow. Any idea why?
| habibur wrote:
| That's fall out from the 90s. People hunted for keygen.exe
| for their sharewares. And some rouge sites will collect many
| keygens, attach backdoor program with those and then
| distribute from their site or over bit-torrent.
|
| Anti-virus then would scan those files. Looks like modern
| ones simply delete any such named file without scanning.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Non-braindead antivirus software would look for the
| backdoor programs rather than the keygens themselves.
| Though as time goes on, I become less and less convinced
| that there's such a thing as non-braindead antivirus
| software.
| e3bc54b2 wrote:
| Its not even braindead, just plain lazy.
|
| Although I have to agree with your second sentence.
| 0x0nyandesu wrote:
| And this is why the first thing I do with winblows is
| disable defender.
|
| So much for that.
| hulitu wrote:
| It serms that antiviruses today have only antifeatures.
| The last time i saw an antivirus detect malware was more
| than 10 years ago. Now the only protection against
| viruses is common sense, a good backup and another OS to
| recover what's left after the disaster strikes.
| UnFleshedOne wrote:
| The problem is that you also need backup bank accounts
| and probably a backup identity after disaster strikes...
| hulitu wrote:
| This depends on your online presence. Even if malware
| touches my computer it has no access to bank accounts and
| the amount of personal info is low. I still have to find
| a better email provider than yahoo or gmail for receipts.
| 0x0nyandesu wrote:
| Honestly I've been over it for years. I do real work on
| Linux and MacOS. Windows is for a handful of games I
| can't play on Linux.
|
| Everytime I try to use windows for work I end up with
| issues caused by windows update that blows out chunks of
| my work day.
| efdee wrote:
| Many virusscanners do this, arguably because as an employer
| you would want to block your employees from running them.
| arthurcolle wrote:
| Lmao - WHAT? On his own computer, not with any (based on
| the post) added certs?
|
| Madness
| [deleted]
| gruez wrote:
| >Oh his own computer
|
| Company machine is implied.
| [deleted]
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I'd also be curious what happens if you rename them to {not-
| keygen}.exe
|
| I'd hope it wouldn't make a difference, but my experience
| with IT security thinking makes me bet the other way.
| httpsterio wrote:
| It sadly doesn't make a difference. I have about a dozen
| keygens on my machine and they get quarantined unless
| they're zipped behind a password or zipped into a 7z.
|
| Just downloading a zip with a keygens inside, it gets
| removed from the zip before even unarchiving it.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Also, AFAIK by spec, the manifest of a zip file is
| unencrypted, even if the zip "is".
|
| Most scanners are too brain dead to care, but I have come
| across a few that still quarantine if the manifest lists
| a file with a blacklisted extension.
|
| Easy solution? Compress to zip, then compress that zip to
| another zip, with a password.
|
| (Yes, I've spent far too long trying to get work done
| underneath insane corporate security policies)
| 13of40 wrote:
| Gmail will block you from sending a a password-protected
| ZIP with anything potentially bad in it, like an EXE,
| because they can see the individual file headers and
| central directory, like you say. Unfortunately, if you
| have a ZIP inside a passworded ZIP it also gets
| considered dangerous and blocked.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Here's a workaround: rename the .exe file to a .txt file,
| then put that in a password-protected zip file. Now
| braindead security scanners have no choice but to believe
| that it really is a text file.
| indigochill wrote:
| Yeah, I once circumvented gmail's antivirus detection by
| sending a (perfectly legitimate) installer executable as a
| txt file because gmail apparently just has/had a strict "no
| files with certain extensions" policy. And IIRC Zendesk
| applies the same rule to file attachments on support
| tickets.
|
| I had pitched for my team to build a tiny widget that would
| send attachments to virustotal, but it would have required
| a license for commercial use and we never had a security
| incident with files coming into our support center so it
| never became a priority.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| While this may sound like a dumb policy, the end result
| is exactly what you want, a system that makes it
| impossible to have you download executables without you
| being aware.
| atatatat wrote:
| > we never had a security incident with files coming into
| our support center
|
| ...that you are aware of.
| Hjfrf wrote:
| Can confirm that ServiceNow and Outlook have the same
| workaround.
| kozak wrote:
| I renamed it into {not-keygen}.{not-exe} instead. I didn't
| investigate the issue in details, but I think that
| Microsoft expects a more enterprisey file name for a
| legitimate keygen. I should have called it something along
| the lines of CredentialManager.exe instead :)
|
| But I wonder whether it did auto-submit these files to
| Microsoft together with my private keys. I'm glad that the
| private keys were in config files outside of the
| executables, and this probably saved them from being
| compromised.
| doubled112 wrote:
| If everybody started renaming keygens to
| CredentialManager.exe, would the learning algorithms the
| AV companies are using start to flag and delete those
| .exes too?
|
| No way, right? What could go wrong?
| Y_Y wrote:
| Did you have catchy chiptunes and graffiti ANSI art?
| kozak wrote:
| I anticipated this question :)
|
| No, it was just a plain Windows form, built from scratch
| using a then-popular Windows IDE. I think it was mostly
| triggered by the file name, maybe in combination with some
| crypto code inside.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > using a then-popular Windows IDE
|
| If you're referring to Delphi, this has been a common issue
| for a long time.
|
| Delphi seems to have been very popular with malware
| writers, and so AV companies keep flagging stuff from the
| standard libraries as malware.
|
| Got so bad at one time that some tried to get a deal with
| the major AV players to provide a suite of very basic
| Delphi applications they could use for false-positive
| testing.
| nitrogen wrote:
| NSIS installers used to get flagged as malware
| occasionally, too. Was very frustrating for distributing
| software.
| ampdepolymerase wrote:
| What about pre-.NET VB?
| kozak wrote:
| This is so sad.
| integricho wrote:
| Out of curiosity, which shareware programs were you developing
| back in the day?
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Yes that's why you have to unzip them on a Mac or Linux PC
| first. It does the same for Windows Loader by Daz and similar
| activation cracks for Windows 7/10.
| mikewhy wrote:
| Another option is using a folder you've added to defenders
| exclude list: https://support.microsoft.com/en-
| us/windows/add-an-exclusion...
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| ...or you just disable Windows Defender.
| tomatotomato37 wrote:
| You can also just whitelist it. It's how I maintain my LTSC
| variant
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Which you can't do permanently anymore.
| verall wrote:
| You can still delete its required files with NSudo so it
| can't run.
| smt88 wrote:
| You can permanently disable it with policies.
|
| https://www.windowscentral.com/how-permanently-disable-
| windo...
| thunderbong wrote:
| This happened to me as well. Even when those keygens were in
| zipped files, Defender would flag them as malware and remove
| them automatically.
|
| The only solution I found to this was to keep the keygens in a
| password protected zipped files.
| zabatuvajdka wrote:
| Interesting ideas here: how antivirus becomes a form of
| censorship. Maybe that's an extreme view but it feels like
| now that Microsoft supplies it's own defender app. And like
| all forms of martial law beginning as a way to protect
| citizens!
|
| I also noticed that with win10 when apps crash it sends the
| data to Microsoft--as though they can fix 3rd party apps for
| us. Yeesh. I think I'll skip out on Windows 11 TYVM.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| > " _Microsoft--as though they can fix 3rd party apps for
| us.._ "
|
| They can, and have done for decades. The classic famous one
| is retold by Joel Spolsky as " _[...] a bug in SimCity
| where he read memory that he had just freed. Yep. It worked
| fine on Windows 3.x, because the memory never went
| anywhere. Here's the amazing part: On beta versions of
| Windows 95, SimCity wasn't working in testing. Microsoft
| tracked down the bug and added specific code to Windows 95
| that looks for SimCity. If it finds SimCity running, it
| runs the memory allocator in a special mode that doesn't
| free memory right away. That's the kind of obsession with
| backward compatibility that made people willing to upgrade
| to Windows 95_ ". One from Raymond Chen is a program which
| hacked its way through the control panel printers menu and
| Microsoft had to detect that, put a dummy menu for it to
| use, then trigger what it was trying to achieve. Since then
| application compatibility has become its own subsystem in
| Windows which developers, enterprises and Microsoft can use
| to create compatibility shims to make programs keep working
| even if their makers have gone out of business.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2281932
|
| https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20060109-27/?p=3
| 2...
|
| https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-
| versions/windows/i...
|
| > " _Interesting ideas here: how antivirus becomes a form
| of censorship. Maybe that's an extreme view but it feels
| like now that Microsoft supplies it's own defender app_ "
|
| Why didn't it feel like that for all the other antivirus
| false positives from McAfee, Symantec, Norton, F-Secure,
| Panda, et al over the years?
|
| And how is Microsoft (not a government) or Defender
| (optional) anything to do with martial law?
| kozak wrote:
| People are downvoting the above comment for some reason,
| but what is this Windows Defender behavior if not a form of
| censorship?
| bin_bash wrote:
| That's sort of like arguing a hotdog is a sandwich. It
| isn't simply because if someone asked for a sandwich and
| you gave them a hotdog they'd say you gave them the wrong
| thing--even though technically a sandwich can simply be
| meat between some bread.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Judging. And it's impossible to build certain feature
| without judging.
|
| A lot of people here probably don't remember what email
| was like in the 90s/00s, before it got bad enough that
| Gmail's killer feature was (what we'd now call) cloud-
| enabled spam filtering.
|
| The distinction between judgement and censorship is the
| amount of user control. (1) Does the user know it
| happened? (2) Can the user override the decision?
| hulitu wrote:
| 1) no 2) no. So it seems a good idea to disable defender.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Not true. Defender alerts you when it quarantines a virus
| or whatever. And if you know what buttons to push, you
| can tell it to remove it from quarantine. You can also
| tell it to ignore folders if you so desire.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Not in this instance. Program was automatically
| uninstalled.
|
| I didn't have time to poke through it, but options appear
| limited to whitelisting the app _going forward_ , and
| then reinstalling yourself.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Given that Defender (apparently) directly deletes the
| files in question without asking, it seems you agree with
| the grandparent that it is, in fact, censorship.
| crazygringo wrote:
| That makes no sense.
|
| By that logic, what are firefighters doing but censoring
| homes? What are koalas but a form of eucalyptus
| censorship? What is locking your front door but a form of
| censoring burglars?
|
| No, just no. Censorship is _preventing the transmission
| of ideas_ , nothing more, nothing less.
|
| Deleting a file has nothing to do with transmission, and
| it's being done in response to a perceived threat, not
| its communicative meaning. (Like how you lock your house
| to protect from burglars.)
|
| It's important _not_ to abuse the term "censorship" --
| if it means everything then it ceases to mean anything at
| all.
| teawrecks wrote:
| You can't transmit what you don't have.
|
| Also, fwiw "transmission" is literally the name of
| torrenting software. Would your argument change if that
| was the package being removed instead of qbittorrent?
|
| Most people use windows, windows comes with defender on
| by default, _what 's stopping_ the govt/some company from
| getting msft to remove programs and files they don't
| like?
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _what 's stopping the govt/some company from getting
| msft to remove programs and files they don't like?_
|
| Literally the capitalistic profit motive?
|
| You know, companies generally try to avoid pissing off
| their customers and driving them to competitors for no
| good reason. If Microsoft started politically censoring
| users' content, that's probably the easiest thing they
| could do to send users away from Windows and Office over
| to Macs and Google Docs en masse.
| ATsch wrote:
| > By that logic, what are firefighters doing but
| censoring homes?
|
| Not inherently, but a disparity in which fires get
| prevented and put out and with which priority might
| constitute censorship, just as a disparity in which types
| of programs are identified as malware might. Many
| historical examples for the former instantly come to
| mind, from one library in alexandria to a sexual research
| institute in nazi germany. Not to imply that this is
| comparable to those in magnitude of course.
|
| (On second thought, that also applies to systems of
| explicit censorship, where all media has to be approved
| but media that exhalts the government line has a higher
| chance of being approved than media that does not
| comment. As well as our system of implicit censorship,
| where every film company has to make money, but a movie
| produced with approval and material support of the US
| military has a significantly higher chance of being
| financially viable.)
| ajnin wrote:
| Defender is deleting the app as a "potentially" unwanted
| application, a better analogy would be if firefighters
| went to every home and confiscated every "potential"
| source of ignition.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| ...I'm less sure of this.
|
| If Windows Defender was deleting any file named "Animal
| Farm.txt", that would be a form of censorship, right?
| It's preventing the transmission of a piece of political
| literature.
|
| Now, what if it was deleting "Animal Farm - The Video
| Game.exe"?
|
| Now, what if it was deleting the _keygen_ for "Animal
| Farm - The Video Game"? What if the activation server for
| that game had gone offline, and this keygen was now the
| only way to play it?
|
| My point being, software (and especially games) can
| absolutely be a way of expressing ideas, and if you block
| the software, that seems like censorship to me. I also
| think that some forms of censorship are fine and even
| necessary--I don't particularly like stumbling across
| porn unprepared--but it should be optional.
| Goronmon wrote:
| _If Windows Defender was deleting any file named "Animal
| Farm.txt", that would be a form of censorship, right?
| It's preventing the transmission of a piece of political
| literature._
|
| I guess, in some ways, you could consider it censorship.
| But without evidence that its being done specifically to
| target certain types of speech, as opposed to a side
| effect from some other goal, I'm not sure it's a
| particularly useful label.
|
| What is anti-virus software in general but "censorship"
| of people's abilities to distribute viruses to whoever
| they want? What is an adblocker but software that
| "censors" someone's ability to advertise in the most
| effective way possible?
| crazygringo wrote:
| No, it depends on the _intent_.
|
| If the intent is to prevent the transmission of ideas,
| then yes it's censorship.
|
| If the intent is to protect from harm -- totally
| unconnected to ideas -- then no it's not censorship.
|
| The reason Defender deletes keygens is that they're
| statistically associated with malware and viruses, as any
| Google search will terrifyingly immediately reveal. It
| _clearly_ is falling under the "protect from harm"
| category as it's designed to do.
|
| But so to answer your question clearly: deleting "Animal
| Farm.txt" because of the ideas inside is censorship
| (prevents it being transmitted). The video game would
| similarly be censorship if based on its content. But if
| it's deleting _all_ keygens, regardless of content of
| their associated video games, then _clearly not_
| censorship.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| Isn't the stated intent of most censorship to protect
| from harm?
| crazygringo wrote:
| I think the distinction is pretty clear.
|
| But if it needs to be clearer: in censorship the harm is
| _in the ideas themselves_ , the perspectives they spread.
|
| In prohibitions that are non-censorship, it _doesn 't
| have anything to do with ideas._ You aren't locking your
| door to prevent the _idea_ of burglars entering your
| house.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| I think you are holding far too strict a definition of
| the word related to "transmission". If I am prevented
| from reading data I want to read, because some entity has
| decided they don't want me to read it, how is that not
| censorship?
|
| Also, where are you even getting that defintion anyway?
| Looking up nearly every form of the word 'censor' I can
| think of, nothing speaks specifically to the
| _transmission_ of ideas. Rather, every definition I can
| find that makes sense focuses on _deletion_.
|
| You could even argue that anti-virus is a form of
| voluntary censhorship.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _If I am prevented from reading data I want to read...
| how is that not censorship?_
|
| Of course it's censorship, they're preventing it from
| being transmitted to you. That's what I said.
|
| > _Also, where are you even getting that defintion
| anyway?_
|
| Literally the first sentence of the Wikipedia article
| [1]:
|
| "Censorship is the suppression of speech, public
| communication, or other information."
|
| Speech and communication are _transmission_. There 's no
| such thing as speech or communication with only a single
| party involved, as generally understood.
|
| And no -- anti-virus is not voluntary censorship because
| it's not censorship at all. It's protection from harm,
| not a shield from comunicative ideas. If anti-virus were
| "voluntary censorship" then locking your home from
| burglars would be too. And that twists the word beyond
| any recognizable or useful meaning.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Oxford Languages defines censorship as "the suppression
| or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc.
| that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or
| a threat to security."
|
| Mirriam-Webster defines a censor as "a person who
| supervises conduct and morals," adding a subdefinition as
| "an official who examines materials (such as publications
| or films) for objectionable matter." The relevant
| definition for "censorship" simply points at the word
| "censor," so it was not useful for my argument.
|
| In any case, I think wiki is not 100% right according to
| the actual language authorities. MS deliberately
| categorizes otherwise-harmless piracy-related software as
| deletion-worthy, and that isn't censorship? When they
| clearly have a conflict of interest in that some of that
| software represents a direct threat to their revenue
| stream? C'mon dude.
| srg0 wrote:
| Come on, whitelist the folder where you keep your
| keygens, and windows defender won't interfere.
|
| "Censorship, the changing or the suppression or
| prohibition of speech or writing that is deemed
| subversive of the common good" (Britannica). Voluntarily
| enabling a program to filter incoming data for personal
| convenience and safety is the opposite of the censorship.
| Like following self-imposed rules and restrictions is not
| a lesser freedom.
|
| For less tech savvy users wiping keygens might be a safer
| default approach. I am pretty sure that keygens are an
| attack vector.
| UnFleshedOne wrote:
| Re crash data: MS actually provides crash data to 3rd party
| providers who set things up correctly. So if you have a
| desktop app you don't need to roll your own crash
| collecting system if Winqual [0] is enough. Apps that roll
| their own (like chrome and 100s of other crashpad based
| apps) usually disable MS error reporting for their
| executables.
|
| Also MS does ship shims for popular 3rd party apps that
| don't fix themselves, for better or worse...
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winqual
| zabatuvajdka wrote:
| The problem is that if you're using a 3rd party app that
| IS NOT registered, it still sends the crash info to
| Microsoft.
|
| They should create some better apps to manage/configure
| that stuff. All I see as a user is when any app crashes
| it gets sent to Microsoft.
| UnFleshedOne wrote:
| Yeah, because MS sometimes fixes or shims those too, if
| they are too popular (or fixes bugs in their own API if
| those led to the crashes).
|
| Of all the questionable telemetry this one is actually
| useful...
| smt88 wrote:
| This is incredibly hyperbolic. If you don't like Defender's
| default behavior (which is sane for the 99.999% of users
| who are not devs), turn it off or use a different OS.
| mkw2000 wrote:
| Is it? I've personally seen it label keygen type files
| (with no malware whatsoever) as dangerous more times than
| I can count. It's false and misleading and I don't see
| why they couldn't pull the same shit with anything else.
| smt88 wrote:
| Windows is a consumer/business product. For the vast,
| vast majority of its customers, keygen files are going to
| be malware.
|
| It would only be censorship if you didn't have a choice
| to avoid Defender, and you obviously do, or if Microsoft
| had some sort of political interest in suppressing files
| named keygen.exe.
| mkw2000 wrote:
| 'For the vast, vast majority of its customers, keygen
| files are going to be malware.'
|
| That's just not true though. They have the ability to
| detect malware. What they are doing is blindly labeling
| anything reslembling a keygen as malware , for no valid
| reason. This also doesn't just apply to Defender.
| smt88 wrote:
| > _What they are doing is blindly labeling anything
| reslembling a keygen as malware_
|
| First of all, that's not true. You can test it: create an
| empty file and name it keygen.exe. It won't get deleted.
|
| The code inside the file has some similarly to one of the
| hundreds of thousands of malware used to train Defender,
| and there's a false positive.
|
| None of that matters, though, because you can _just not
| use it_ if it causes problems for you.
| [deleted]
| mkw2000 wrote:
| Found the Windows Defender dev
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| I really hate windows defender. It's as aggressive as
| Apple and a constant struggle to shut up.
|
| But on the bright side install any other AV (including
| free malwarebytes) and it will switch off.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| lowering the quality of the discussion admittedly, but in
| the most generous possible tone of voice, I ask, why does
| "thunderbong" have password protected zip files of game-
| cracking exe files ? because of smoking weed and piratin
| games thats why !
|
| and, should the wealthiest corporations on earth be in
| charge of making sure that thunderbong does not get to make
| game cheats at home ?? of course NOT
|
| on the other hand, as a software developer in the 90s, I
| went to Hong Kong, and saw first hand stalls of 100%
| pirated movies, games, OS and apps.. lots of it, with
| professional COPIED artwork and packaging .. as a content
| creator this was really disturbing.. people told me that
| there are no software development jobs (then) only hardware
| companies, for this exact reason
|
| Summarize- commerce takes place in a market, and theft is a
| real, constant problem, both at the commercial level (Hong
| Kong) and personal level (Thunderbong). Yet, society must
| have some stable relief valves for overzealous, rich
| Sheriff types, and overreaching rich merchant types, to
| prevent rifling through the rights, privacy and headspace
| of Thunderbong, and the legitimate customer THEY might
| become, while dealing with commercial pirates who are just
| basically stealing.
|
| I am a Westerner, and I have to say, I am more concerned
| that Thunderbong have a safe life, than I am about the
| profits of Merchant and turf of Sheriff.
| chabad360 wrote:
| You should probably research how the crash reporting works,
| but the gist of it is (iirc) companies can register their
| software with Microsoft and get these crash reports sent to
| them.
| zabatuvajdka wrote:
| The problem is that if you're using a 3rd party app that
| IS NOT registered, it still sends the crash info to
| Microsoft.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| With the convenient excuse that Windows Defender is a
| separate app that is not part of Windows, of course.
| laurent123456 wrote:
| Wouldn't signing the application help? I understand many open
| source projects don't sign their app, because it's not free to do
| so, but on the other hand it's a bit of a waste. They spend years
| developing something great, and the first thing users see when
| they install the app is a big yellow warning as if it was malware
| (and in this case it's literally detected as such).
| MikeUt wrote:
| It's the official Microsoft stance that torrent software is
| considered PUA (potentially unwanted application) on Enterprise.
| Perhaps they're expanding that to consumer versions? They define
| PUA very vaguely, with rather disturbing language. Phrases like
| "safeguard productivity" and "help deliver delightful Windows
| experiences" are not what I would expect in security software
| documentation:
|
| _Our PUA protection aims to safeguard user productivity and
| ensure enjoyable Windows experiences. This protection helps
| deliver more productive, performant, and delightful Windows
| experiences.
|
| Microsoft uses specific categories and the category definitions
| to classify software as a PUA.
|
| Torrent software (Enterprise only)_
|
| https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/threat-pro...
| ogurechny wrote:
| I suppose that in enterprise environment Defender acts as a
| simple agent reporting to a control center that can be set with
| a lot more granular rules on whether something is wanted on a
| specific workplace.
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| It does seem that torrent software is very likely unwanted by
| the customer on enterprise, where the customer is the business.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| PUA definitions are probably different enough to warrant
| segregation. Games on an enterprise system are probably
| equally PUA
| deepstack wrote:
| Hmm, many Linux distro are distributed via Torrent. As well
| as many video platform also use webtorrent. It is a just
| protocol like http. And when one is downloading a really
| large file, torrent can arguably be much better than direct
| download.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| Sure, I use BitTorrent for Linux isos at work in a highly
| controlled environment, but for every one of me there would
| be hundreds pirating software at work, and tens
| accidentally killing their businesses bandwidth/quota by
| seeding too much.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Enterprise also expects certain kind of user awareness,
| or if not then certain amount of admin-set restrictions
| on the machine. Not these kind of big daddy policing
| decisions.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| Is defender a 'big daddy policing decision'?
|
| You're welcome to disable it via group policy if you
| like.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Defender working this way by default is a 'big daddy
| policing decision'. The default should be to not do this,
| and people that want it should have to enable it via
| Group Policy.
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| Yes but in practice people often use BitTorrent on their
| work computer to download music, movies and malware.
| duiker101 wrote:
| Hence the P for potentially.
| gruez wrote:
| That might be true, but let's be real here: torrents are
| overwhelmingly used to pirate software/videos/music. The
| categorization is " _potentially_ unwanted ", not "
| definitely unwanted", so I think the classification is
| justified. Also, despite "linux iso torrents" being a meme
| in many circles I have rarely actually used that to
| download isos. The default option of http is almost always
| fast enough and the increased hassle of booting up my
| torrent client isn't worth it.
| spijdar wrote:
| Interestingly, that document states that "PUAs are not
| considered malware."
|
| PUA detection and removal also seems to be a separate toggle
| from general malware protection, so running
| Set-MpPreference -PUAProtection Disabled
|
| From an admin powershell session should prevent this behavior.
| It sounds like a bug/unintentional if it's being flagged on
| non-enterprise SKUs of Windows, though.
| underscore_ku wrote:
| F Microsoft! use linux
| jaywalk wrote:
| I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that most of the people with
| these issues are using pirated Enterprise versions of Windows,
| not trying to install a BitTorrent client on their work
| computers. It's definitely not impacting Home or Pro versions.
| staticman2 wrote:
| qBitorrent is working fine on my windows home machine. I also as
| a test just updated to the newest version and it works fine. This
| seems like a isolated issue only happening on certain Windows
| machines.
| Semaphor wrote:
| I wonder if this is a weird bug? A/B Test? Locale-specific
| settings? The thread has several people without the issue and I
| just checked, Defender is not blocking my qBittorrent.
| rossmohax wrote:
| PUA == Potentially Unwanted Application. This is a class of
| application enterprises might not want to see on their computers.
| I bet there is a hidden registry key or something to allow PUA.
|
| If it was blocked on Home and Pro versions of Windows, then it is
| indeed odd.
| jaywalk wrote:
| It is indeed only Enterprise versions, and there is a simple
| PowerShell command to disable it: Set-
| MpPreference -PUAProtection Disabled
| iggldiggl wrote:
| Just for completeness, there's also an option for that in the
| regular settings panel.
| wmf wrote:
| Is the official binary unsigned by any chance?
| nmfisher wrote:
| For what it's worth, Defender has been going crazy with false
| positives since the last Windows update. It's regularly flagging
| Android split APKs that I build as trojans, with different
| signatures each time.
| [deleted]
| marcodiego wrote:
| I wonder if the MAFIAA can pressure software vendors to ban
| classes of software. I think agreements like: "We'll only make it
| legal to run our streaming service on your OS if you can prevent
| these specific set of software from running". I think this
| already happens with TV's but anyone knows if there is already
| pressure in this direction in the software world?
| ugjka wrote:
| If I can't stream i pirate and I do it on linux. No Loki in my
| region? Didn't stop me
| dtx1 wrote:
| I basically do the same thing. Why bother figuring out how to
| run Netflix with DRM on Linux and pay for the pleaser of a
| subpar libary when my little Raspberry Pi Seedbox, a 5$/Month
| VPN and Membership in a private Tracker gets me everything I
| want without the hassle or annoying DRM to deal with.
|
| But we are not the ones that will be hit by this. It's the
| normies and computer illiterates that will have to deal with
| the issue. And god save us from the politicians that will
| make OSes that can pirate content just plain illegal.
| criddell wrote:
| > Why bother figuring out how to run Netflix with DRM on
| Linux
|
| Because you want to pay for things. You want to support
| people making the things you enjoy. You want Netflix and
| other streaming companies to see that Linux users matter.
| dtx1 wrote:
| Yeah, no. I don't have to prove to a company that i am
| worthy to use their service without selling my soul and
| privacy to shaddowy entities. It's their job to sell a
| service that i would want to use to me.
| neonihil wrote:
| What if you pay for Netflix -- because you want to
| support creators, -- but you actually download stuff --
| because you also want to be able to watch it without
| hustle?
|
| Like Netflix 4K is not working on Linux. It's just not.
| And it wasn't working on Macs either until very recently,
| but it needs some special hardware.
| dtx1 wrote:
| > What if you pay for Netflix -- because you want to
| support creators, -- but you actually download stuff --
| because you also want to be able to watch it without
| hustle?
|
| I dont have to do that with music (spotify works on linux
| and my phone so its fine) or with games (steam works with
| linux and valve makes linux gaming better every single
| day).
|
| I don't mind paying a fair price for media and i like the
| convenience of a large, always available, curated,
| searchable, instantly available Media service. But the
| movie and TV Industry doesn't offer it. Netflix here in
| Germany has a pathetic libary and i dont want to
| subscribe to 5 services to watch the 5 or 6 TV shows i
| want to see. Thats neither fair nor convenient. I'd
| rather take that money to my local cinema and pay for the
| experience instead of just the content.
|
| Piracy is mostly a distribution problem and to a much
| lesser degree a pricing problem. As long as I can't buy
| into a service that is better than pirating content why
| should I pay for it.
| gruez wrote:
| >I wonder if the MAFIAA can pressure software vendors to ban
| classes of software.
|
| What if the vendor just says "no"? Who's going to win in the
| court of public opinion when this hits the press? Besides, they
| don't seem to care that much, considering that very few people
| actually watch videos on their computers anymore. In case they
| do, it's through a browser which sandbox (at least on firefox)
| the decryption modules to prevent them from scanning the
| operating system.
| marcodiego wrote:
| The "court of public opinion" didn't prevented walled gardens
| on the mobile world. People wouldn't stop watching BigStudio
| if they didn't offer their service for a TV vendor, people
| would just buy from the vendor who bowed to the imposed
| conditions.
|
| In Brazil, there's nothing legally preventing you from
| recording OTA TV but no big name TV vendor add a unencrypted
| record feature. You can find it on cheap digital decoders
| which have no support for streaming or apps. I don't think
| this is mere coincidence, I think streaming services and
| content producers already pressure TV vendors to not support
| "unwanted features"; in exchange, they gain the right to
| include some apps out-of-the-box.
| gruez wrote:
| >The "court of public opinion" didn't prevented walled
| gardens on the mobile world
|
| That's more like megacorp vs consumers, not megacorp vs
| megacorp. Trying to force vendors to remove piracy apps
| would be closer to the latter. As a concrete example,
| apple's app tracking transparency seem so be doing pretty
| well.
| marcodiego wrote:
| So how to you explain the complete lack of recording
| features on TV sets that support streaming services?
| gruez wrote:
| The _complete_ lack of recording features? I can 't
| comment about brazil because I don't like there, but in
| the US they're pretty popular, to the point that cable
| providers even advertise it as a feature, eg.
| https://www.xfinity.com/learn/digital-cable-tv/x1 (search
| for "DVR")
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Everyone would just add a "streaming" user account, and run all
| the prohibited software under another user.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| > "We'll only make it legal to run our streaming service on
| your OS if you can prevent these specific set of software from
| running"
|
| With windows I don't think this will be technically feasible.
| Sure I could see something like this happen on a mobile device
| or even MacOS but with Windows I feel like it's far too open
| ended for MS to do something like this without screwing their
| enterprise customers. And even if they did do something like
| this, most pirates will just pirate the enterprise version of
| Windows and run that.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| > With windows I don't think this will be technically
| feasible.
|
| It's not only feasible but it's basically reality.
|
| Anti-cheat systems for online games can literally ban you if
| they detect that you run a blacklisted program in the
| background or use a modified graphics driver. And you won't
| even know why you were banned, and lose access to all games
| you bought with that account.
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| Given that Linuxes are usually distributed via torrents, isn't it
| curious how suddenly a "bug" in Windows blocks so many torrent
| applications all of a sudden?
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Yes, Microsoft which has been hating on Linux for almost 20
| years since Ballmer days (despite moving .NET to Linux and
| releasing VS Code and building their own Linux distribution and
| becoming one of the biggest Linux server hosts in the world in
| Azure and building WSL and hosting Linux distributions for use
| on it) has just this week moved against the torrent protocol
| from 2001 which is famous for spreading Hollywood films.
|
| What's curious is that Linux is used by reasonable people for
| sensible reasons, but mostly represented online by total
| conspiracy theorists. At least make your conspiracy believable
| that the MPAA lent on Bill Gates who used his contacts inside
| Microsoft to get a rule added to Windows Defender?
| jtbayly wrote:
| Iirc it also is an unsigned app on the Mac, meaning that by
| default Macs can't run the app either.
| adamparsons wrote:
| Right click -> open
| JadeNB wrote:
| The parent did say "by default". One thing that bites those
| of us on company machines is that right-click > open requires
| admin privileges.
| jtbayly wrote:
| I know how to get around it, but many people don't. And it's
| similar enough in the warning that it gives that it seemed
| worth mentioning.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Can't run seems reasonable all things considered for most
| people. But it isn't actively removed on the Mac right?
| DrBazza wrote:
| And from just the other day: Windows Defender blocks decss.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27914752
|
| It's almost like there's something fishy going on.
| cle wrote:
| The complaints in GitHub started rolling in on March 4. I found a
| few torrent clients that were added by Microsoft as PUA on March
| 2 (this is probably an incomplete list):
|
| - QBitTorrent: https://www.microsoft.com/en-
| us/wdsi/threats/malware-encyclo...
|
| - Tribler: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/wdsi/threats/malware-
| encyclo...
|
| - Deluge: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/wdsi/threats/malware-
| encyclo...
|
| - FrostWire: https://www.microsoft.com/en-
| us/wdsi/threats/malware-encyclo...
|
| - BitComet: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/wdsi/threats/malware-
| encyclo...
|
| - Tixati: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/wdsi/threats/malware-
| encyclo...
|
| - BitTorrent: https://www.microsoft.com/en-
| us/wdsi/threats/malware-encyclo...
| jmrm wrote:
| This is why the first thing I do in my computers is disabling
| Defender via Registry or Group Policy.
|
| It not only enables itself after rebooting the computer, it also
| ignore your exclusions every month or so when it has an update
| and removes files you don't want to.
|
| Yeah, I know this is unsafe, but if you don't go to weird
| webpages, only install trusted software from trusted sites,
| doesn't use other people's pen drives, have weekly usable
| backups, and check every month the PC with other antivirus and
| antimalware there isn't so much dangers IMO.
| alyandon wrote:
| There are group policy settings to regain control over Windows
| Defender automatic quarantine/deletion:
|
| https://www.windows-security.org/6d29bb05ca76bf06eae9760e736...
|
| I use that and another setting to disable automatic sample
| submitting after catching Defender uploading sensitive files from
| my Firefox profile directory like places.sqlite.
| bserge wrote:
| I don't know how the new Defender quarantine works, but it's
| not just a folder on the system anymore. Often you just can't
| get your files back and Microsoft's answer is "well, they're
| dangerous".
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Win10 home doesn't have that.
|
| And I speak from experience that defender likes to magic away
| files to quarantine without any user interaction. Yes I didn't
| believe it either but it does. Indignation!
| alyandon wrote:
| While Windows 10 Home doesn't have a UI for manipulating the
| local group policy settings you might have luck just setting
| the registry key directly.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| This is how you end up with people degrading their system's
| security overall, which is what you really don't want.
| cpach wrote:
| Any qBittorrent users on Windows who can verify that the issue
| described actually still persists?
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Submitter here. Can confirm.
|
| Defender uninstalled it on a random Windows box of mine today
| (7/26/2021).
|
| Windows 10 Pro. Version 2004 Build 19041.1110.
|
| Windows Defender updated today (7/26/2021).
|
| Hence the curiousity and submission.
| cpach wrote:
| Ah. That's very frustrating.
|
| I'm not on Windows myself but I wonder if there is any
| workaround.
|
| E.g. does it help to add the qBittorrent application folder
| as an exclusion to Windows Security?
|
| https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/add-an-
| exclusion...
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I expect so. I didn't poke around it, past the initial
| message & a whitelisting / allow option.
|
| The breach of user trust, to me at least, seems to be
| Microsoft deciding a user installed application should not
| be installed, and leveraging Windows to uninstall it for
| the user.
|
| As noted somewhere else, there seems a big gulf between
| quarantining + alerting & uninstalling + deleting.
| Nortech001 wrote:
| When I read an article on this topic, the first thought was
| profound and difficult, and I wondered if others could
| understand. My site https://www.spectrulogin.email/spectrum-rr-
| email-settings/ has a discussion board for articles and photos
| similar to this topic. Could you please visit me when you have
| time to discuss this topic?
|
| https://www.spectrum-login.email/spectrum-rr-email-settings/
| antattack wrote:
| Nim binaries are also detected as virus.
|
| https://github.com/nim-lang/Nim/issues/17820
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