> Not sure why you think that's relevant though,

I think it's relevant to the discussion of why Windows 10 update quality seems to be worse than the average Linux desktop updates.

Microsoft seems to have no incentive in providing a great experience to home users, as opposed to Apple (who still seems to be doing a better job, even if they have also let quality slide a bit recently).

> the GP was postulating that Microsoft was mismanaged, but clearly throwing Windows to the dogs and betting the house on the cloud was an excellent managerial decision and continues to support my point.

From the perspective of a shareholder, Microsoft may not appear to be mismanaged, but from the perspective of a "Home PC" user (the customer segment that allowed them to succeed in the 80s and 90s) they definitely don't seem to be adequately managing the quality of the product they provide.

Unless of course the user is the product ...

The original post inferred that, because Linux is not able to play Netflix etc. At 4K, AnonymousCoward cannot use Linux for anything, even though he wants to.

Widevine provides a CDM allowing playback of video streams with encryption as mandated by the copyright owners and they already provide a version for Linux, that as far as I know is technically capable of 4K playback.

Widevine indicates that 4K requires "Verified Media Path" to be implemented. VMP basically can't be implemented in a Free operating system as it requires the OS to provide a fully secure path from the point of decryption to the point of display. If an OS allows the user to replace their display server, display drivers, or install arbitrary kernel drivers, this cannot be guaranteed. If it can be guaranteed, it's not a Free operating system.

Some of the reasons Linux is successful are the same reasons the content owners don't want it to be able to play back 4K content.

AnonymousCoward has a very cheap option to watch 4K Netflix while using Linux: buy a Fire TV Stick 4K (there may be other options, but as far as I know, that's the cheapest one). But, for some reason, people such as Cipheron don't seem to understand that the differences are ideological and not technical, and the best alternative available is to separate the want to watch Netflix in 4K from the need for a secure and stable desktop operating system by using/buying a cheap separate device for watching Netflix.

> Can't even watch Netflix/Hulu/Crunchyroll at 1080p on Linux, let alone 4k.

My $35 Fire TV Stick 4K proves otherwise ...

Oh, you meant that 4k-playback via open-source software isn't permitted by the content monopolies? That's not a technical limitation ...

> As for right now, Microsoft is the only US tech company that has a market cap of more than $1tn.

Wrong, Amazon's market cap is currently $1.2T, and first exceeded $1T around the beginning of Feb 2020.

https://ycharts.com/companies/...

As far as I know, Microsoft's recent growth is based more on their businesses that aren't directly tied to Windows on the desktop, namely hosting mailboxes and offering online file storage (sometimes sold as "Office 365") and hosting Linux VMs (Azure). This is borne out in their recent financial statements, where the only rapidly-growing business is (according to Microsoft themselves) "intelligent cloud".

Which runs as an unprivileged user, with privilege escalation mitigations in place (e.g. separate namespace, or SELinux protections etc.) which aren't practical for ssh when used for remote administration.

Sure, but your firewall doesn't have any open ports facing the internet, so now we're talking mainly about kernel vulnerabilities. Better to have firewall appliances on separate devices running a different kernel/OS in addition to host-based firewalls on your web servers, so that you have some protection while one has a vulnerability.

And that's defense-in-depth is important.

Note: I didn't say to not implement key-only auth (possibly restricting how authorized keys are deployed), it is useful, but not always sufficient.

In secure networks I have designed, this was not the case.

That's a possibility, but not necessarily a certainty.

I would typically have a monitoring agent installed on all servers, which would alarm on any unplanned ports listening, to mitigate this (among many other controls, such as host-based firewall rules, auditing etc.).

"Continuing to blame Google when an ISP allows that ISPs traffic destined towards Google to be hijacked to Russia does not sound like a good idea to me.
Why blame Google for something out of their control? Only an ISP can control their own network, and when the ISP allows any random actor on the Internet to redirect it, this is clearly and completely the fault of the ISP."

But, can we blame Google for being on the "unsafe ISP" list (since they are)?

Until there's a zero-day in OpenSSH, and your hosts are compromised without any authentication being required.

Sure, so you chose convenience over security.

Maybe that's a reasonable choice in your environment. In many, it isn't.

If you allow ssh from the same sources you allow http and https, you're either running an internal-only web-based app for your sysadmins (e.g. monitoring web front-end), our you're "holding it wrong".

Kind of like mask-wearing. The government was running around telling us it didn't work, while desperately trying to make sure hospital workers had enough masks. Meanwhile, Asian countries where mask wearing is considered good public hygiene when ill or during an outbreak all adopted it en masse and mitigated their COVID-19 epidemics much faster. This has all deservedly cost the US government, our anti-science President, the CDC and other agencies vast amounts of credibility.

As another poster implied, the President is so bad at his job of reassuring the nation and communicating complex information in a convincing but straightforward and believable manner that he would be much better off shutting the fuck up and saying "I am going to let the experts address this". What some of these Trump supporters call "Trump derangement syndrome" is just rational, well educated people reacting to an imbecile in the office who couldn't reason or explain his way out of a paper bag. Trump has some good advisors around, and some of them are surely feeding him good information from time to time, so he isn't always wrong (though he frequently is), but he ALWAYS sounds like a moron when he opens up his mouth.

It seems likely to me that HCQ is somewhat effective against SARS-CoV-2. I had what I believe was COVID-19 in early March (no tests available, fuck you California and your horrible lack of preparedness, so until I can get an antibody test I won't know for sure) and I megadosed on zinc lozenges and used benedryl and Albuterol to manage reactive airway inflammation and shortness of breath. I came through it fine, but it was scary and unlike any virus I have had in the past. I would gladly have added HCQ into the mix, but my doctor seemed to think I was doing fine and it wasn't so widely discussed then. I am a scientist, but recognize that in many scientific fields we have to make timely educated decisions based on less than perfect evidence.

China has a massive, truly massive, local government apparatus as part of the CCP control mechanisms. The United States has nothing at all comparable. How could cities and towns deliver groceries to all of their citizens? Our military and reserves could help in a few locales with a massive-scale call-up, but could not do this nationwide. The US economy and government is organized completely differently.

What we should have done is put better restrictions and public/private cooperation mechanisms in place immediately to reduce panic-buying and hoarding, ensure sufficient supply to go around, regulate safe delivery service operation, etc.

People buy specific (expensive) hardware to run MacOS, yet aren't prepared to buy (at much more reasonable prices) hardware that is supported on Linux by the vendor (from Dell, HP, System76 etc. etc.) and expect everything to work perfectly out-the-box (without using the scary command-line to install the latest Nvidia drviers).

Windows doesn't "just work", you're just used to its failings.

I haven't used Windows myself for many years (Mac OS at work at present due to one required internal app not being available for Linux at the time I had to choose, Linux on all computers at home, including for kids and wife, and Android on a tablet), but family often have problems with Windows, such as "My printer stopped working", where Windows Update has been the culprit (installing a "Windows-optimised driver" which doesn't work at all). Yet, this doesn't happen on my linux machines (with the same printer model), where all hardware works out-the-box.

So, please, give at least one example that isn't due to "the hardware I have doesn't have a linux driver because the vendor couldn't be bothered, nor do they provide sufficient information to allow developers/contributors to write a driver" (the only common problem these days, but avoidable by choosing better hardware).

" That's precisely why AWS has had such a hard time charging by anything less than the hour - because their cloud infrastructure is older, and more antiquated than Microsoft's - "

EC2 launches new hardware quite regularly, and apparently uses the same hardware internally. So I don't understand what is "antiquated". Can you elaborate?

"Amazon have struggled to charge by the minute or second precisely because they're so reliant on VMs that take longer than that to spin up in the first place."

EC2 launched per-second billing almost 3 years ago:
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/a...

You don't seem to know what you're talking about, or you're a few years out-of-date.

Agreed (see my other posts), but why is this a reason to say:

This is what I was responding to here ...

"Amazon can't at the same time make a Google device and another device according to the agreement. "

I think it's more that 3rd-parties can't offer both AndroidTV- and FireTV -based devices.

E.g. if you are Hisense and offer AndroidTV on one model of TV, you can't offer FireTV on a different model of TV.

Ah well, guess I will just buy dumb TVs and a $35 Fire stick, oh wait, I have one of those already.