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Comment by Jonnax | Hacker News Reader

The reason why general computing sites don't recommend it is because users won't be happy when they can't sign into their bank or use other websites they wish to use.

The average user doesn't know anything about how sites are constructed. Telling them to use uMatrix is non sensical.

Though that's not to say there's good advice on these kinds of sites.

I've seen a "Windows 10 tips" list from a very popular site telling users that "they don't like being patronised about their own computer" and recommends turning off UAC (Essentially running their account as root)

Or even saying that updating your OS is frustrating so here's how to disable it.

Absolutely dangerous advice but that's the level of general computer sites.

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Yep

Regarding Update/UAC Please blame microsoft.

I don't want forced updates when I am working. And many time I have encountered issues like computer not booting. After updates they prompts "Please install our cool new software called edge".

I want security update not the marketing update. So I make a compromise and disable update all together. Why not give linux style update where I can review each and every package.

Because you most likely didn't buy the product called Windows 10. Rather, you're using the service and you are in fact the product.

W10 education and enterprise licenses allows you to manage the updates yourself.

The reason is that the product is Windows 10 as a whole.

Linux Distros are just bundles of software that make up the operating system.

So if your compromise is that you don't want new Windows 10 updates because they also bundle in new features rather than using an OS like linux, then it'd be your fault if you get hacked via an exploit that was patched in an update.

Microsoft aren't going to care.

Microsoft aren't going to care.

Then the obvious solution is to make them care. We penalise corporations for financial negligence and failing to take proper precautions and report correctly. We increasingly penalise them for violations of privacy and data protection rules, where similarly they are expected and required to provide adequate infrastructure to comply with the regulatory obligations. If failing to implement reasonable security practices and provide appropriate security updates to users with no strings attached started costing the hardware manufacturers and software developers and resellers the same kinds of penalty per violation as some of the financial or privacy regulations, we'd soon see those security updates universally available without forcing all the unwanted user-hostile changes at the same time.

There isn't law that mandates they split security updates from feature updates.

What if they rewrote a component to have new features and it also fixed a security issue?

What's the difference between a security patch and a bug fix?

At the end of the day if someone gets so angry that Microsoft added Paint 3D in an update that they disabled updates.

What's the obligation here? They chose not to update their computer.

There isn't law that mandates they split security updates from feature updates.

I'm suggesting that perhaps there should be.

In what other area of consumer protection law does a manufacturer or reseller get to provide a seriously defective product and then refuse to deal with the problem unless the buyer also accepts other changes that might make the product significantly different and possibly in their view significantly worse than the one they chose to buy?

The principle is important here. Your example about Paint 3D is cute, but in reality, there are plenty of other examples where user-hostile software changes have been pushed out after purchase, including those that disabled previously available functionality, reduced privacy, introduced advertising, or dramatically changed the look and feel of the product. People shouldn't be forced to accept these kinds of unwanted retrospective changes to the product they originally chose to buy just to maintain an adequate level of security.

you know, windows LTSC exists

Not in any real way for most people. It's only available to enterprise accounts, and from what I saw when I worked in IT, Microsoft strongly discourages it's use for normal user desktops.

The unpleasant answer is that if you give people linux style updates, every Windows 10 install becomes part of a botnet like the bad old days. No operating system I know of other than Linux actually gives you the option to do updates piecemeal and security is one of the main reasons why.

For the record I hate this, but history has shown that if you don't try your absolute hardest to get security updates installed onto users' machines, they're going to constantly get owned by malicious third parties. Chrome and Firefox aggressively auto-update for the same reason (if you try to manually install old Chrome for testing it'll obliterate itself on next launch!) The vast majority of users simply do not pay attention to security and will not make the right decisions if you offer them choices about updates and security, because they don't have enough knowledge or context to make the right choices.

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