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Comment by afpx | Hacker News Reader

No source code? No thanks but no thanks.

There also seems to be a lot of ‘privacy’ tools popping up on github lately. It’s a good time to be wary of any if you don’t trust the author 100%.

It’s like when HIV emerged in the 80s - the disco days of free love are over. Be wary of who you’re sleeping with, and always wear a condom.

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> There also seems to be a lot of ‘privacy’ tools popping up on github lately.

FWIW, O&O ShutUp10 dates back to 2015, with the launch of Windows 10. This isn't v10, it's "Shut Up, [Windows] 10!".

O&O Defrag has been a trusted tool since 1998.

That said, I largely agree with "No source code? No thanks." as I don't want to worry about a private equity group buying O&O Software and doing with it what they will.

There are plenty of better open source alternatives like FlyOOBE:

https://github.com/builtbybel/FlyOOBE/

O&O has been around for decades, they're among the OGs of third party functionality providers for Windows.

I understand. Different people have different thresholds for trust. Unfortunately, I have lived in DC for a long time. Long enough to know the basics of how espionage works. And, appealing to authority is very effective. Humans love authorities. Write a few papers. Give a few conference talks. Get a few magazines to report on your expertise. That's pretty much all it takes to get entry. Otto and Olaf are probably great guys. I'm just extra cautious.

I remember that time very well, and not in a good way. We were all running dubious janky obfuscated software without giving it a second thought. These days trust is not enough, you need at least some way to verify (but also a lot more). Plenty of trusted software has been sold, hijacked, or otherwise has turned on its users over the decades.

To be frank we're still running dubious and janky software, but at least it tends to be a bit more transparent.

a myriad STDs existed before HIV.

Few were as potentially deadly, at least at the time (in earlier times there might have been less we could do to treat them), and in the 80s the main source of fear of HIV was that it was not understood (people feared catching it in ways that are not possible, and so forth) were those that had been around much longer had well known risk factors.

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