I keep losing sensitive work because of the windows penchant to reboot at times when im not at the PC, causing my tabs and docs to be lost.
Edit: yes im aware we need security patches but id lile those on demand, not randonly
I followed various instructions to disable automatic updates, and I'm someone who generally keeps things up to date, but after the third time of Windows updates ruining things, I gave up and switched to a MacBook. With Windows it seems like updating is its primary task and running applications is secondary to. There's probably someone at Microsoft who shows weekly graphs of Windows updates, and their bonus depends on the graph continuing up and to the right, so they ram through whatever update features are necessary without thinking of the customer experience.
The fact that you watch videos, open programs and earn a living and lay out files on the PC is merely collateral, they see it's a necessary accident to keep you on the line and plug into your essence to try to drain it.
Let's repurpose PC to mean either Piece of Crap or Post-Computers depending on how we react to the new establishment.
I use this for a work computer that I shut down daily and it restores everything I had open: browser windows & tabs, email, Visual Studio solutions, PyCharm workspaces, Windows Explorer windows, Slack, etc. And update restarts use this mechanism specifically.
Now here is to hope That the next "fix" from windows does not push an update that consistent blue screens my PC [1] which is why i prefer to reject all patches.
[1]https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/window...
Check out this:
Genuinely curious if this will result in a successful block, a failed block....or a BSOD ? I'll report back.
Crossing fingers - Thanks you!
> Just do X yourself
This isn't helpful in the slightest.
A.k.a. "if you don't want to get a toothache and have your life interrupted with a 'random' need to visit the dentist, then take a few minutes of your choosing each day to brush your teeth."
Microsoft taking control of a computer you bought and paid for remotely to force it to do what they want is in no way comparable to a health issue and I really don't understand what could possibly lead you to believe it is.
If you think the scope of the loss of control doesn't line up: replace "brushing your teeth" with "watching your blood pressure"; "a toothache" with "a stroke"; "the dentist" with "an ICU doctor"; and "taking control of your mouth" with "taking control of your whole body" (since you're likely under general anesthesia — they've literally taken control of your body away from you to fix the problem.)
But, by looking at my analogy as analogizing two fields, I think you missed the point. I was trying to give a general analogy about preventative maintenance tasks you are expected to enact as part of the ownership of a tool; where that tool will eventually 'randomly' break down without said maintenance, effectively forcibly interrupting you to have reactive maintenance done by some external professional at much greater time cost. Your teeth are just one such tool.
A different but equivalent analogy would be to changing the oil in your car. If you don't do it, eventually at some 'random' time you'll need to spend a long time at a repair shop because your engine cylinders got grit in them and wore holes large enough to lose stroke pressure.
Also, if you mean to suggest that these cases are different because the computer is "choosing" to force the update on you, rather than "requiring" the update in some technical "being broken" sense — it's not like that's uncommon. Many tools and machines — industrial ones, specifically — come with resource and maintenance sensors built into them which will prevent you from operating the machine in a condition where it would begin to require maintenance, to prevent you from accidentally imposing an above-tolerance workload on a system that you presumably want to last a long time. Self-greasing CNC routers will stop running when they run out of grease, rather than trying to operate dry. Etc.
If you question why your system "requires maintenance" in the first place — well, this is what I addressed in a sibling comment. If you believe in vaccines, and in herd immunity; and if you understand that, for active threats (computer worms et al), computer networks have virality coefficients just like human populations do; then you should be able to see that the "maintenance" being required here, is for the sake of increasing the herd-immunity of the network by removing your node within it as a potential infection vector, rather than for the sake of your own computer's individual health per se. (Although it is also for the sake of your own computer, insofar as, besides just joining you to a botnet, a worm could also carry a crypto-locker payload or something equally nefarious.)
And if you question why Microsoft should be able to force your computer to "get vaccinated", when the government can't force you to do so — well, consider something the government can do: it can prevent you from driving a car that doesn't pass an EPA inspection. Because driving is a privilege, rather than a right. Well, operating your computer isn't a right either. It can come with conditions.
(If you, finally, notice that the distinction should actually be "operating your computer on the Internet", similar to "driving your car on the road" — such that operating your computer offline, or driving your car on a private track, shouldn't be something anyone other than you has a say in — well, I'm not going to argue with you there. Computers could certainly have the option to delay a forced restart to install a patch, but to "force you offline" until such time as the [already-downloaded] patch is installed. I think OSes only don't offer that because it'd be terribly confusing for the average grandmother. But it could certainly be something hidden in the most arcane of config flags.)
Those other OSes have a much smaller market share and do not care about security of their platform.
Linux kernels don’t run something like 90% of the servers out there?
Note though, snapd updates packages for you by default and was not an option to disable this as well.
2nd note - once you are talking about servers - I believe Windows Server has much fine grained control over this.
I generally had once or twice my Windows 11 Pro Insider Beta machine to reboot forcibly - usually I see notification on pending reboots and even been asked when to do it/delay. Cannot complain here.
2023, the year of Linux on the desktop ?
Install updates once a month and Windows does not have to do it "randomly".
If this is still available in 11, that's your best solution.
https://www.henrypp.org/product/simplewall
Also it is probably best opensource firewall for Windows out there. Portmaster from Stafin has similar approach but not good for managing firewall rules.
What would you prefer: coming back to find your computer has joined a botnet while you were gone; or coming back to find your computer was restarted while you were gone, to avoid joining a botnet?
Yes, because you presumably do your computing mostly behind some kind of NAT most of the time, and without any un-patched devices hanging out on the same LAN segment, and so there's no path for worms to have ever reached you by.
That's not necessary true for the average computer user, though, who connects to shared wired or wireless networks at an office/coworking space/internet cafe/university campus/etc. Those that do this may end up with either/both of 1. a public-routable (usually IPv6) address for bots and worms to talk to, and 2. a link on a multicast-routable subnet with other already-infected devices.
Also, a few years after you stopped using Windows, cryptocurrency was invented, which "changed the game" for cybercriminals in a lot of ways. Fun, meaningless, low-penetration cyberthreats don't exist any more; as "hacking groups" are now motivated by "real money" to get root on every PC they can so they can deploy crypto-miner background services, encrypt files and hold them for (cryptocurrency) ransom, exfiltrate the user's own crypto-wallet private keys, etc.