Someone shared a document containing that title, and now your phone is begging you to look at it.

Glances over at my lovely POTS telephone.

Nope, my phone is squarely telling it to fuck off.

I don't believe for one second that this "leak" was any way unintentional. Microsoft has used pre-releases as free advertising for quite a long time.

Of course, now that it has been out for a while, they are sending out some takedown notices. They have to, or the beta-kids that downloaded it would not feel naughty and special.

If it were too easy to get it, they might accidentally realize that beta testing is actually WORK.

And yet no one is creeped out by all these gadgets recording and tracking everything you do? Right, you all love it. It is for your protection.

I don't want to live on this planet any more.

Quite frankly, ANY Windows box should be treated as if it were running Windows 98. (zero security, and software that loves to suck untrusted crap from everywhere).

Updates are part of the security equation, but they should NEVER be relied upon blindly. Too often, updates can actually introduce security issues or wreck system stability. Modern software is so insanely complicated and bloated, it should ALWAYS be assumed to have bugs and vulnerabilities.

If the bad guy can't get (directly or indirectly) to your Windows 98 box in the fist place, then they can't do anything with it. Windows "security" should only be considered a nicety that can assist a bit should the bad guy happen to get to it.

A CEO's job is to appoint the right people to do the work,

In my opinion, the absolute number 1 step in security is having the "right people" and giving them the resources they need to do their job and to do it right.

All of the technical implementation details should then sort of trickle down from there. This often means having people onsite in-house that knows the systems inside and out.

Unfortunately, is is still too often the trend that CEOs or other higher-ups don't see IT as "profitable" so they give it minimal funding and outsource everything to some Elbonian hovel dwellers.

"I'm never apart from my phone," Mr. Sheu said... "It feels to me like a pretty undebatable way to track where I am...."

Spoken as if everyone should happily agree with owning a smart phone and allowing tracking. Obviously the point of this story is to convince people they should.

It seems quite debatable to me. How would one normally adequately prove their location without a smart phone? Exactly why should cell-phone collected data be considered so much more authoritative? Just because smart phones have what plants crave?

Well then, at least I'm not a trolling asshole like you. If you have such a big fucking brain, you could have used it to be HELPFUL. I was actually hoping that by making my original post that someone might chime in with some CONSTRUCTIVE suggestions to try.

Oh, well, back to ignoring trashdot.

You totally missed the point. They have NOT made another form of 2FA available to me, at least not with the login issue. I would be fine with added security as long as it does not force me to buy/subscribe to something that I don't otherwise need. It is unfortunate that you are not mentally capable of comprehending existence without a smart phone. (so you are probably also not mentally capable of comprehending existence without a god, which BTW does not exist)

So, does this mean I will have to buy a stupid smart phone just to log in to my Gmail account on my powerful desktop computer?

I've already run in to these assholes wanting to "text" me for a login. I have been trying to log in to my old site specific youtube (now google) account - I only log in every year or two and this time it insisted that it "text" me to prove I was the owner, even though it already validated my password and e-mail address.(Just for shits I gave it my "landline" number, and it didn't do anything). I don't know if it is worth trying to call their support phone number.

There is nothing magical about "texting". It is not even secure. It just locks people in to toy smart phones.

Yea, yawn, so this is one of those instances where a 32-bit version would have worked well enough, so it was probably less headache to support one single binary version.

Faster? I don't doubt if you measured it down to the microsecond you might find a speed increase, but in this kind of application it is not likely something that would be perceptible to end users. That is the beauty of marketing, you can take some irrelevant statement that has even a hair of truth and pump the hell out of it. It's got what plants crave.

Of course, putting your data on one of Microsoft's random servers, oh, I mean teh cloud, is not something most people should be doing, and the way they shove applications like this in everyone's face is sickening.

I really don't get the obsession with getting flash totally uninstalled.

It seems like the more appropriate thing to do is to "update" browsers to disable its use as a plug-in. Isn't that how most problematic plug-ins/extensions are handled? Ok, in this case the remnant Flash software probably would not serve any other purpose, but what is the specific problem?

I find this disturbing as many people do require "old" applications for one reason or another. Will it become standard practice now that all other "old" things are forcibly uninstalled?

And the next step will be outright requiring cell phones because everyone loves their cell phone so darn much.

Crap. I was presently surprised to find out they still had a 32-bit version that ran on 32-bit Windows 10. Will have to check to see if it will still work or not.

But chrome has broken so much lately, Palemoon/Newmoon/Serpent/Firefox are still much better choices.

That still does not make it right.

When the real world comes knocking at your door with a cold hard fact, modding it as troll does not make that fact go away.

ALL of these idiots need to get their heads of the sand and realize that there is no such thing as god, or whatever magic being(s) they worship.