Replies

…and let’s not forget that he tried to push through a yearly license fee for it. That he tried to put in a privacy-invading unique tracking Id for use by advertisers (which was rebuffed by a pushback similar to the BigBrotherInside counter against Intel’s similar aim). That he threatened computer makers like Gateway that they’d better include the inferior IE or they wouldn’t be allowed to use windows. That he unfairly squelched competition at every turn, so that software was worse because Gates was alive. That while Europe and some states moved against him, the feds largely didn’t because he bribed via campaign contributions. How he lied to congress that the US just didn’t have enough programmers, so he should be allowed to import more and more cheaper ones from other countries. On and on and on. All of which will be denied by his fanboys.

write your own OS. It is not Microsoft’s problem that there is “no other viable choice”.

Is there no way to block certain posters? I stopped reading on tenforums because of all the rude M$ fanboys there. Gates used every underhanded unfair business practice in the book, that’s how he got so rich – not because he is some sort of genius, which he isn’t. I don’t want to hear about how he is some sort of hero, and how the house he built is something admirable. That he got #meToo’ed out of, no less.

And btw, Gates didn’t “write his own OS” MSDOS, he very unethically ripped off an acquaintance for it. The start of many. Gates’ fans think that doing unethical business deals makes him some sort of genius.

Btw, Brendan Eich has had almost ZERO to do with day-to-day developing of Brave. You can see that from way back on Brave’s Github.

Brave is not a privacy browser. It is a money-making browser (substituting its own ad service for ads that the site wants to display). Brave merely uses privacy as a selling feature. I’d uninstalled Brave early this year; as of then, it still betrayed user privacy to google fonts. Brave does block the little spies, so in effect Brave solidifies google’s monopoly position when it only allows google.

But add in uBlock Origin to Brave or Firefox, and now you are finally cooking. That’s if you use it in advanced mode and block google and gstatic, etc. Also add Dencentraleyes or similar, and you are even better off because if a connection to google gets through, google can’t see what page you are on anyway… for now. There is a learning curve to this.

2 users thanked author for this post.

Steve, wavy

Unfortunately, Brave’s fake privacy has always betrayed its users’ privacy to the spyware called google fonts. You can use the Devtools’ Network tab to see that. Do any of your cites warn about google fonts being deliberately allowed through?

Except that ad blocking still allows spying. Look into installing uBlock Origin, and use in advanced mode.

Anything is better than google. Even M$soft is better than using google. So then DDG is much better than google. Else there is Startpage and Swisscows. Each has flaws.

The downside of DDG is that they have the very same mindset culturally and politically as does google.

Ideally use Opera with VPN and one of those 3 search engines for anything sensitive.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Cybertooth

“Firefox with… uBlock Origin”

As usual online, the best comment on privacy (so far) goes unnoticed. But JR, you can simplify by just saying: “use Firefox with uBlock Origin”. E.g., Ghostery is a corporation, not a privacy advocate. However, I’d also install the addon called Decentraleyes.

“Surely this array of tools intended to improve security will make Firefox at least equal to the other highly rated browsers?”
Actually when you use uBO in advanced mode and block everything google, you are far better than fake-privacy Brave, or any of the others without VPN/proxy.

“Google being confused about where I live…”
But for location? Your IP address tells google that. Unless you are at least semi-rural, google knows your very house. That was doubly ensured when the mapmobile/spymobile came round.
Why they seem confused? You’d have to post a case. Else you have a VPN/proxy.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Charlie

Thanks, Cybertooth, I might try that. It’s tempting, since my March update from hell gave me a bad case of Post Traumatic Win10 Disorder. 🙂

It’s noteworthy that WuMgr did not present the feature upgrade to me, so I will continue on with WuMgr to see what is presented, even if I download from the catalog.

I’ve bookmarked your “Keep Running Windows 7 Safely for Years to Come”. I might resurrect my old Win7 laptop. I like that concept.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Cybertooth

Yep, Tom, I updated today from the catalog. I will no longer update from the Win10 Update page, btw, since the time I was halfway through the March 5 GB upgrade when Win10 told me, “Oops, something went wrong with your download. Begin it again. Too bad for you.” That’s with my 1Mb connection, which took hours to get that 2.5 GB half. So since then I’ve been using Free Download Mgr to get from the catalog.  Plus I’ll then  have the msu saved in case the install goes badly and needs to be redone.

Thanks for posting the link, though. Since it is now installed, I cannot see if there is still a problem with it, since it won’t be presented to me.

Is a download using WuMgr resumeable?

Yep, Tom, KB5005565 was the only one available.

I do practice these days what you suggest about waiting. Except I’m doing updates for this particular month because in the coming weeks I’ll be tied up. I had a very bad update from hell in March, which was specific to my installation – so if heaven forbid that were to happen again, I want to get it out of the way this week.

I’d prefer to never do updates for Win10, if only that were possible. My update from hell was that bad, because I tried to thoroughly understand and fix it; but after weeks I had to do a repair install anyway. Yep, this summer I did buy a USB HDD and use that all the time now with Macrium.

I searched and see KB5005565 is available. But I can’t download or install it. I get errors:

1. Illegal characters in URL
2. 403 Forbidden

I also get the file size saying 103 GB, instead of file size as in the catalog of 6 GB.

Thanks @Tom-R for the guide. It’s very helpful.

When I click to “Get Links”, a very long list of URLs (only 2 are pasted here) is copied to clip, what is that list and why so many? I expected a single URL for the selected KB5005565 and my system.

2021-09 Cumulative Update for Windows 10 Version 20H2 for x64-based Systems (KB5005565)
http://tlu.dl.delivery.mp.microsoft.com/filestreamingservice/files/1f78cce7-d543-445f-939e-6f38cf778614?P1=1632068694&P2=404&P3=2&P4=bcTOvpL3rYQVlpQAX8FqlLbUjBJ%2bm33kgOuw6Z%2f1RzRa2fxPCgUKSOQ%2fUJeuOLZsTWLWoW0Vp7hsn77VIafGnQ%3d%3d
http://tlu.dl.delivery.mp.microsoft.com/filestreamingservice/files/8598c5e2-5b61-4e17-891b-54f163cc6fb1?P1=1632068798&P2=404&P3=2&P4=QdMvbvqpqrTgqTD7oVT%2b%2fJQvTyLSHo191q%2fPZPIXTxaN5QFbX%2fcL8AZbmCliEFqyBglr6vUojrJryJfIGQ%2fgbw%3d%3d

still going to take an hour or more

I’ve gotten used to a 100MB update taking at least two hours, with my HDD. Using  Resource Monitor, I can see endless writing to log files and filesystem control files. Endless. It’s a minority of the time that is spent on the actual updating.

I dread the 600MB upgrade that M$ keeps trying to push on me. The progress indicators the M$ provides are usually crap; and yes I have had times where everything just jams up and there is no way to distinguish if it is in an endless loop or not.

It seems WuMgr will do nothing if updates are paused. If I unpause updates, even with being set to metered, W10 will begin downloading some updates and upgrades.

Sometimes, when a download begins, it is impossible to pause again. So I turn off the wifi, and the download eventually times out. But sometimes, I then have to restart because W10 has become flaky from doing all this. Sometimes the restart is then giving problems or takes forever.

I imagine that WuMgr used to be very useful, until MS decided they are going to force downloads whether we want them or not.

The reason I first came to this site is because of the Patch Lady.

2 users thanked author for this post.

rc primak, Will Fastie