I did comment on the _kernel_. I did not comment on Weyland (which IMO is a really bad idea and I will avoid it as long as possible). I certainly did not comment on the fuckups behind systemd, that clearly show there are prominent people that do not get KISS or IT security in the Linux space as well.

As to MS, yes they do not care or are fundamentally incompetent regarding security. They push defective patches. They have ridiculous vulnerabilities. They had their cloud hacked several times now, always due to abjectly stupid mistakes. There is a reason that they claimed "security is our highest priority" several times now, always after they screwed up massively. MS cares about security exactly as far as they think they need to in order to stay in business and not one bit more.

Thank you.

I was going to make a joke about the Surface Laptop being a different form factor than a Macbook because of some small detail, but about the only thing different is the logo on the lid.

...what I paid for it a decade ago.

It still does the things I wanted it for then, but I can't say I've really used any of the new features added over the last decade, which if anything pushed "just stream my media" to the background.

Microsoft still makes money on Windows. This isn't Microsoft Linux Home, it's a server version of Fedora with some Microsoft stuff intended to be run on Azure.

They did.

Short of simply outlawing the collection of this kind of data (which is problematic in the US), that genie is out of the bottle and is never going back in. You don't even need license plates, just access to enough cameras. It isn't exactly hard these days to track e.g. a blue 2008 Honda Civic through a well-covered area, and coverage is filling in by the day. Things like supermarket loyalty cards, credit card transactions, property tax records, etc, can answer the "who's doing the driving" part.

Ever growing automation is going to make for nice searchable databases. Which surely will never, ever, ever, be used inappropriately by those with access to them.

The violence in the Middle East dates back to the early Bronze Age. The Shah was violent and assassinated political rivals. In the 1940s, half of the Middle East sided with the Nazis.

The violence did not start in the 1970s, it didn't even start with Islam. It predates all of that.

Blaming individual X or modern event Y is to ignore the violence and open warfare leading up to those.

Only an idiot fixates purely on Iran. One genocidal Syrian despot has been replaced with another genocidal Syrian despot. IS is back on the rise. Egypt is a military dictatorship. Libya went from military dictatorship to perpetual civil war. The Arab Spring was ultimately crushed not because of a hatred of freedom but because the entire region is riddled with corruption.

Iran is a minor side show.

In which alternate reality?

Iran is not "a", but "the" supporter and financier behind Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis and a bunch of other militias and trouble sources in the region. So no, they were absolutely not playing nice, even if you ignore all the atrocities inside Iran.

Yes, but Trump's will go in 3 years by itself. The IRGC regime will not.

I would think that China has that access. I know of several large corporations and one smaller state that have this access.

What a dumb statement. If you are trying to defend the indefensible (Microsoft), try at least to sound a bit plausible.

So? The Linux kernel folks patched within hours or days. And these vulnerabilities are unlikely to crop up again. You are comparing apples and oranges. Also note that building a big, bloated KISS violation of a "kernel", as Microsoft does, certainly counts as "not caring about security". The only way to get good security in software, and even more so in kernels, is by simplicity. Microsoft certainly knows that. But raking in the dollars is far more important to them.

So ask yourself: Why are you defending Microsoft with invalid arguments?

There are also other master's degrees besides the clearly negative-value MBA. For example, you can get a STEM one.

This is also the users that tolerate this crap and ask for more, at least some of them. Yes, MS has no honor, integrity, decency or skill, but they are getting away with it because they do not get called out.