For many years malicious PDF files had the shameful honor of being the number one way people’s PCs got infected, and it’s because of bullshit like this.

“Surprise, here’s some Java code to execute on your personal computer without asking!” isn’t being done by anyone who is actually your ally.

We’re just discussing how shitty a shitty person has been toward you, at this point. There’s no good pro-social reason to deliver you an app while calling it a document.

Do we think it’s a virus? Probably not, but maybe. So we think there’s a tracker? Certainly. The average organization shitty enough to build or use this technology layer has over 500 separate relationships with companies that track you.

Someone tried to put a tracker in this PDF.

Whether people like me made it too hard for them is up for analysis.

I guarantee you that someone tried.

They’re not good enough at hiding this stuff yet, to feel confident lying about it, so it likely is disclosed in the fine print somewhere, if you’re feeling patient enough to read all of it.

deleted by creator

It’s so great.

And the scene is even better on a rewatch.

Yeah. They do still sell Frisbees, though, at least.

Does “Breaking News” on Dropout.tv count…

Why would Microsoft fire an employee for holding a vigil, it’s not like they …

…called “No Azure for Apartheid”

Oh. Thanks for drawing attention to this, Microsoft! I appreciate that they’re so willing to invoke the Streisand Effect.

I hope those employees land somewhere where they build something that costs Microsoft a lot of profit.

This sounds like an important step toward fully working the right think algorithm.

For example, Republicans tend to have Christian evangelicals and business interests.

Yeah.

But at least the Christian evangelicals’ shareholders keep them so accountable to their core values that the desires of the mostly unorganized pastors leading the business owners have no meaningful say in the outcomes. (This is Sarcasm)

C.S. Lewis wrote that every death in our lives is an ending not just to their life, but an end to the unique part of our own life that only happened when we interacted with them.

It’s natural to fear and mourn that ending.

Very nice. Thanks for the update!

This is great stuff.

My comment from the peanut gallery today is just that there’s no law that CI/CD can’t be kept under control and run in ten seconds.

Given the choice between a slow out of control CI/CD mess, or a shell script, I too will take the shell script every time.

But I am living my best life today, and have a simple shell script in my CI/CD pipeline.

Oh cool! I haven’t tried in some time. Thanks for adding your experience. That’s great news. (I’ll add a correction above, as well.)

Great write up. Thank you!

Sure! Feel free to ask for clarification. I’ve been in your shoes. I’ve had debloat software help a ton (and I don’t recall it causing issues.) I’ve also reinstalled Windows fresh (from a recovery disk) to buy time. And of course I’ve switched older computers to Linux, too.

Edit: I just saw:

including my Windows 11

No. Windows ships already well compressed. There’s no way it’ll compress further by 50%. Correction: Someone who has actually tried it says it can!

Also, as I mention below, backing up and restoring a full copy of Windows can set off anti-piracy tools that keep you from restoring your own copy of Windows. It can be done, either by waiting on the phone with Microsoft, or (presumably) by having an accomplished software pirate friend.

But look for the Windows tool “create a recovery disk”. You’ll need another separate drive than your 63GB one, but it probably doesn’t need to be as big as a full Windows install.

Otherwise, yes.

Yes, if your drive has 133GB occupied, and you’re running Windows, it is likely that Windows, itself, is over half of that.

I’ve not, personally, seen Windows, itself, occupy less than 70GB, in recent years. (Usually much more.)

So what’s left, your files that you care about, is likely 133-70=63GB or less. (Probably much less. Windows is usually huge - usually around 120GB.)

Note that you can’t just blindly backup the whole drive. You’ll have to go find the files you care about and just back those up.

Backing up entire copies of the Windows operating system has gone very poorly for me, when I tried, anyway. Windows, itself, does not like to be relocated, because it tends to decide it has been stolen. I ended up on the phone with Microsoft waiting for permission, last time I moved a Windows install. So if I had a big enough drive to backup the whole Windows drive, I wouldn’t bother.

There may be a utility for Windows that backs up just your files. Mac has had one for awhile. Something like the free tier of Crash plan would probably do a nice job guiding you to where the files you care about are.

Beware, file compression doesn’t go far, today. The days when we stored our files in ludicrously inefficient formats are over.

I’ve only seen 10%-20% differences with compressed files, in 2024.

So, in your shoes, I would backup my files to the 63GB USB drive with something like CrashPlan. I wouldn’t bother with compression since I don’t think it will help much and I don’t think you’ll need it.

I would also accept that this is probably a one way trip. If the debloater works, fantastic.

If it corrupts your Windows install, you’ll need to reinstall. You can use a recovery disk or download Windows 11 install media from Microsoft, which will take less space than a full install, but still takes space.

Personally, I wouldn’t hassle with reinstalling Windows in 2024. Especially on a small hard drive. That’s more work for a much worse outcome. I would switch to Debian. I’m fact, the first time I switched, was so being new life into an older computer.

Debian does most of the same things, takes dramatically less space, doesn’t grow in size over time, is completely free, and is now much easier to install than a Windows reinstall. (Neither is pure sunshine and joy, but I would rather search for correct UEFI settings for 15 minutes than wait on hold with Microsoft for an hour.)

However you do it, resurrecting an old computer that Windows has mucked up is totally worth the effort. It’s easy to forget how faster a Windows computer was when it was new.

This is another mentoring sprint, for my team. So lots of cleaning up “welcome” documents and practicing my elevator pitches for what the team does.

On the personal side, making Raspberry Pi projects with the kids. PhonieBox is pretty neat.

OWASP has some free resources that are meant to be widely accessible:

https://owasp.org/www-project-top-10-for-large-language-model-applications/

Labyrinth is a world where wishes come true, especially sexually charged but confused ones.

So I think your logic is spot on.

This is just speculation, but I’ve picked up on a pattern of speculating that something is technically possible, assuming there’s no way they’d actually be doing that, and later finding out that it was actually underestimating what they were doing.

As the saying goes, just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean you’re wrong.

The answer that will put this question to bed is open source hardware. Thankfully we’re close to having viable options, finally.

I say supposedly because I think 95% of users don’t have a threat model that justifies the extra security really.

Does street cred with my Cybersecurity peers count as a threat model?

I’m definitely one of the users of GrapheneOS that you’re talking about. My threat model is “this is fucking cool!”

Also, the grass is always greener on the other side. I want a Fair phone.