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Comment by ofek | Hacker News Reader

I can confirm that Kaggle runs on Azure because I block all Microsoft IPs (to avoid the ninja Windows 10 upgrade) and must disable the blocker in order to go on the site.

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As skrebbel said, don't they charge for the upgrade now? That said, Never10[1] was (still is?) a great tool to prevent the Windows 10 auto-upgrade. Also, according to the Never10 page, Microsoft now has an optional update to get rid of the GWX stuff.[2]

[1] https://www.grc.com/never10.htm

[2] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3184143

> to avoid the ninja Windows 10 upgrade

What ninja upgrade? You always had to opt-in. Yes, they were really pushing the offer annoyingly hard, but I had no problems whatsoever to keep one of my machines on Windows 7.

Anyway, you can stop doing so now, the time for a free upgrade is over.

This is incorrect. There was an opt-out phase where the Windows 10 install started automatically in the middle of work. I've experienced this myself, there's a moment where Windows 7 just shuts down and starts installing Windows 10 and I had to wait 30 minutes until I could press "I disagree" to the EULA and then it would start rolling back the Windows 10 it just installed.

Entirely off topic, but I thought they now charge for the Windows 10 upgrade and don't force it anymore?

They do charge now but you can get it free if you say you will use an accessibility feature.

Why not upgrade to Windows 10? It's my favorite Windows OS yet, and has me even rethinking whether I want our house to be all OS X...

This thread from a while back covers some of people's objections to Windows 10, outside the usual privacy concerns:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13555100

So you don't get windows updates?

At this point presumably a system not running Windows 10 is not getting updates anymore. Unless it's an enterprise install, in which case the ninja update is irrelevant.

I get updates on Win 7

This is a great idea. Adding it to my DNS blackhole as we speak.

It's really not a great idea. Either you don't run Windows, and it's not an issue, or you just blocked Windows Update and other important services Microsoft provide that work in tandem to keep your systems safe.

Blocking Windows Update sounds like a feature to me, not an issue.

> Either you don't run Windows, and it's not an issue,

Not a solution for those of us who run Windows boxes for various reasons...

And to clarify, I plan on occasionally letting updates through (I'm already on Windows 10) but this is a great way to prevent data collection / backdoor activation, which I hadn't considered. Seems like the simplest way to add a lot of privacy to Windows.

There are a shed load you can block without interefering with updates.

Yet that's not what the parent and its parent were talking about/implying. It clearly said "blocking all Microsoft IPs".

And considering the Windows 10 upgrade was being pushed through Windows Update I'm not sure how you'd want to prevent that specific update by blocking an IP and not interfere with Windows Update as a whole.

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