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It was listed on several of the lists Brian presented.

-- rc primak

Capture boxes differ in what they actually capture. The ones which are not legal in the US are ones which don’t capture the HDCP part of the signal (if present in the input). (I have such a box.) As long as you aren’t trying to display HDMI captures with the HDCP stripped out or missing, you won’t run into display issues with the captured output. And as long as the HDCP part of the input was captured, in most cases of non-copyrighted content, the output signal will probably display on high resolution monitors or HDTVs. (Next-gen TV signals (ATSC-3)  are a whole new level of encryption, and have not been approved yet for capture and replay.)

-- rc primak

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Will Fastie

Microsoft Defender and the free components of Malwarebytes Antimalware/Browser Guard are free and well-respected, especially in combination. Many users do not agree that Malwarebytes produces excessive numbers of false-positives. MBAM does flag potentially unwanted programs, many of which are not malware, just annoyances many of us would just as soon not have on our computers and devices. Many of these PUPs adversely impact system performance or provide avenues for spying on or tracking users.

The “free antivirus” sites Brian highlights are so-called “crack” sites, where people are tricked into believing they can get paid products for free, with license keys downloaded from hacker networks. Complaining about these sites is like going to the Dark Web and complaining when your bank accounts get drained. This is not at all what is meant by the term “free antivirus programs”.

But I do agree that if you want extra levels of protection, you will have to pay for the added security.

And definitely stay away from free VPN services.

-- rc primak

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opti1, teuhasn2, jburk07, WSbobby-p, cesmart4122

I find that change much less disturbing than what Will Fastie sees on his phone. The Context Menu items are easily ignored during everyday tasks. But the overwriting of Contacts with Copilot and similar foistware is really pushing my tolerance of Microsoft products and services.

I just found something in the BIOS of a motherboard which has ASUS under the hood, but was sold as Powerspec by the Micro Center. This BIOS automatically installs Q Installer or Armoury Crate, and tries to register the motherboard with a mothership server at ASUS. Unfortunately, the server has at some point been taken offline or moved to a new location. But the Registration Installer keeps running at Windows Startup, like a zombie. It interferes with Windows boot and impacts system performance, until it is manually dismissed.

So how did I just now find out about this baked-in foistware? I ran the Windows 11 24H2 installation. Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, decided to enable this sleeping BIOS “feature”. No notification before, during or after this change. TO MY BIOS!! Fortunately, this change is reversible. But I had to go through three or four forums and a You Tube video to find out what had happened. Even the ASUS RoG Forums had little or no information on what was happening, and why it was triggered now, three years after I bought and set up the PC.

BTW, I did install Armoury Crate as driver updating software, voluntarily. I would be using it to this day if the BIOS tie-in had not been revealed. So, if I want an up to date BIOS for this motherboard, I will have this major annoyance to deal with.

Kind of puts the current Microsoft shenanigans into some perspective, if you ask me.

But Microsoft never asked me.

 

-- rc primak

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rbailin

Those long-standing differences are not as striking as the Arm vs. x86/x64 or Copilot vs. standard Windows experience differences. There is a real watershed happening at Microsoft these days (and with many other tech companies). Microsoft is going all-in with AI Everywhere. This to me is the ultimate Windows Annoyance. I have already switched to Linux for daily activities. The latest changes will only force me deeper into the Linux camp.

-- rc primak

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ibe98765, abbodi86, gwt10, Alex5723, Sky, Cybertooth, Will Fastie

Upon reviewing my notes, it appears this issue with HDCP is in the monitor inputs for HDMI signals, not in the PCs themselves. HP says HDCP is present in nearly all monitors sold in the US which have 1040p and above resolutions.

Any incoming HDMI signals which lack HDCP won’t be displayed on most high resolution monitors. I have encountered this issue with nearly all PC outputs, and all outputs from HDMI splitters except for one splitter.

If you record directly to a USB device, you won’t encounter HDCP issues. (USB doesn’t necessarily have HDCP.)  Other display inputs, like Displayport, VGA and DVI don’t necessarily have HDCP, so this is not an issue. But if you try to display captured video directly to a monitor’s HDMI inputs, there’s a fair chance it won’t display.

Video capture cards sold in the US can’t capture video with HDCP encoding. (That’s a legal requirement in the US.) This includes the HDMI output signals from PCs running most modern OSes.

Sorry if this is a bit off-topic for this thread.

-- rc primak

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satrow, Will Fastie

Thanks also for including the information on how videos and stills were captured from the setup and preboot screen displays. Question: Do these capture devices work as well with DRM-protected (HDCP) HDMI signals? I’ve had difficulty finding streaming or capture boxes which are compatible with HDCP protected signals (like the ones put out by most PCs).

-- rc primak

AI as the term is now being used, is limited to LLMs. There are other AI applications, which do show the kind of promise you foresee. But LLMs are a dead-end street. They don’t have any actual intelligence, in the human sense. They just aren’t built that way. General AI is decades from posing any serious challenge to general human intelligence, if ever. Expert systems are limited to very specific use cases, where certain efficiencies of machine learning outperform human abilities. But these are edge cases so far.

-- rc primak

You need to review the extensive discussions (including here at AskWoody) about the legal issues surrounding Fair Use. There have been wars over content distribution by libraries through e-books, with publishers enforcing draconian limitations on “fair use”.

No, you do not have the legal right in the US or Europe, to wholesale copy entire libraries of books and publications, let alone whole art galleries and collections of images, videos and audio content, and retain all that content in  your own commercial database. You do not have the right to use all that content for commercial purposes without compensation to the copyright owners. This applies equally to content available on the World Wide Web, but owned by commercial interests.

-- rc primak

You can make anything illegal. But the truth is, kids will get their hands on any technology that’s available. Even toddlers know how to order from Amazon on their parents’ smart phones or using a home voice assistant hub, as has been pointed out in several recent news items.

By making social media illegal, you are increasing the desire of young people to use these platforms, not decreasing their access. What they do in secret is far more likely to cause harm and go undiscovered until it’s too late than what they can do out in the open, with responsible adults watching over their shoulders every minute. And then leading discussions and activities where kids can express their feelings and ask questions about what they have seen and heard on social media.

We have  (in most US States) required Drivers Education classes. Why don’t we have required Social Media classes, and for that matter, Personal Finance classes?

What it takes are parents and other responsible adults making time every day to guide their children in appropriate use of social media, giving hands-on experience, and guided training. The same way we train young people to drive. In Europe, for generations parents taught their kids responsible alcohol consumption by having the kids drink a little wine at meals and on special occasions.

-- rc primak

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wavy, rizzquery

If Deepseek’s code is truly open source, then it can be examined by anyone with the time and the technical skills to understand what it’s doing. And if there’s bias or filtering, the filters can be revised to comply with standards of free countries or open source communities. But at the end of the day, this LLM has upended the industry, making it obvious that there are fast, efficient and low-cost ways to build, train and deploy LLMs. This residue is not lost on open source developers.

I would caution anyone curious about Deepseek not to use their apps. But that means hosting your own version, which would still have bias and censorship baked in.

-- rc primak

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ibe98765, Slowpoke47

My concern is with posting in a publicly viewable forum your email address. This has a lot of security and privacy implications. The use of an email address for communication immediately removes the discussion from the public forum just as much as the use of a PM.

-- rc primak

The CISA Phishing-resistant MFA  link was fascinating and relevant reading. The table in that paper really puts various security measures into perspective.

-- rc primak

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windbg, Cybertooth

Build your own and business class networking have never been strong selling points for Mac. Apple prefers you just take the configurations they offer right out of the box. Networking, especially with Windows and Linux machines, is not easy, when it works at all.

-- rc primak

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Will Fastie, Cybertooth

Crossover is the commercial version of WINE for Linux, maybe also for Mac. Quicken is said to be reasonably compatible with this arrangement.

Faststone Capture is said to have worked in the past under WINE, but not so much recently.  Never said to have worked on Mac.

Synctoy does not appear to be planning to offer a Mac version.

-- rc primak