Microsoft accidently leaks internal tool; can enable hidden Windows 11 features | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft accidently leaks internal tool; can enable hidden Windows 11 features

windowscentral.com

62 pointscrtasm24 comments

> Windows 11 Insiders are currently partaking in a "bug bash" which is when Microsoft issues a number of tasks for people to complete and submit feedback on. The bug bash quests can be found in the Windows Feedback Hub, and partaking in the bug bash often concludes with a badge in the Feedback Hub that acknowledges your participation.

Why pay for proper product QA when you can give your most hardcore Microsoft simps sparkly JPEGs for free?

Neat. But can it remove MS native spyware & adware?

No. You need something like mkfs.ext4 to do that.

Pity that afterwards one needs to emulate Windows to actually have proper games, despite the pleothara of games available for Android.

The spyware is load-bearing.

I've had snarky replies to my anti-M$ comments basically saying that without a hint of sarcasm.

I would gladly pay Microsoft for a non-spyware laden operating system. If they will not allow me to do so, then I will utilize every opportunity to dismantle and destroy their spyware in regards to any system I run.

Because people should be allowed to play and communicate without some nebulous 3rd party recording everything they say and do. I don't care what they plan to do with the data they are scraping. It's amoral that they try to collect it in the first place regardless of their justification.

> then I will utilize every opportunity to dismantle and destroy their spyware in regards to any system I run.

If you are really serious about it, you should stop supporting MS and abandon their broken OS, which fights against you on your own computer. I did and couldn't be happier.

For my personal computers, I primarily use linux. For work computers I advocate for linux based servers and have succeeded in a few cases but I can't get rid of windows for our end-users.

However, as a sysadmin I uninstall as much spyware as possible from our images and add any non-service interrupting blocks that I can to make it difficult for M$ to spy on my coworkers.

You don't have to emulate windows, you only need to provide the compatible interface. I'm not making a silly joke here. There's lots more that makes windows windows than the libraries that manage memory and transform data structures into pixels. And that additional part with many crappy and annoying parts is not necessary. There's no "windows" on my StreamDeck and it's running lots of modern games.

> emulate Windows

Wine Is Not Emulator.

This was a leak as much as the Win11 announcement itself was a leak. It's a product/feature announcement strategy for MS/bigtech at this point.

The linked feature list is really interesting. I'll try to enable "CtrlBackspaceRemovesWord" as soon as I can to make windows a bit less terrible.

No one finds any of these reverse engineering the OS?

Post says theres a couple unofficial tools that do similar things

If Microsoft used decent security practices they could just revoke a key and the leaked version would stop working on all updated systems. But it's Microsoft, so I would be surprised

Isn't that the point of Pluton?

Can't say I'm looking forward to that.

I haven't been. I own a Thinkpad X13s and switched it to Pluton mode (since it wasn't enabled by default) and every single time I get a new UEFI update delivered by Windows Update from Lenovo it blows out the keys in the processor and it fails BitLocker and dumps out all my Windows Hello biometrics at the same time.

Isn't that justification to get rid of pluton then? Why keep it if all it does is make your life more difficult?

Or is it that you have to have it for business purposes?

I hope I never have to buy a computer with "decent security practices". If it's on the disk and I tell it to run, it had better run.

Hopefully Edge can be turned off now. :)

Or taskbar grouping.

I hate this thing so much, and all the times Microsoft just ditches long standing features/options for seemingly no reason. They likely collect usage stats for them too and know many people use them...

For task grouping they had left a way in the registry to disable it but for some reason they also temoved it in an update... and now I think they have added an option in an Insider version and it "should" come in a release in Fall.

> They likely collect usage stats for them too and know many people use them...

This is exactly how this happens: some idi^W manager in the need to boost his KPI seeks for something to 'take control', 'improve', 'provide' and any other corporate bullshit lingo meant to 'change'. Of course searching for real troubles, especially if it only bothers <3% is tiresome and that's why it is easier to just invent the need to do some change.

> They likely collect usage stats for them too and know many people use them...

A/B doesn't help it. You need a working brain to interpret it results, which is inaccessible for KPI slaves.

It's upcoming. But you can use StartAllBack today.

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