Not a replicant

Ah yes, that’s a concern - but I have a job in Task Scheduler that re-writes my registry tweaks - mostly changing various tasks back to “disabled”. You can trigger it hourly, or on an event. As soon as a selected event - such as a telemetry switch-on - hits the event log, the “disable” script runs.

There’s other ways, like taking ownership of the executables and changing permissions to lock out the “SYSTEM” account.

And pihole blocks DNS resolution of the telemetry harvesters as well. Windows update won’t touch that. It’s not 100% effective, but I couldn’t be bothered to take it further.

Colossus (The Forbin Project)

Audio playback is such a low-demand process, surely a player (e.g.VLC) can spare a thread to line up playback of track 2, a few seconds before track 1 ends? It knows the exact length of the track, why can’t track 2 be initiated when the audio level in track 1 drops to zero (or minus infinity dB) in the last frame?

If you choose “expert install” it asks you if you want automated updates or not.

Aussie Dollar? 😜

I tried co-pilot. Once.

I asked it “why does Windows Defender peg my HDD* at 100%”

The reply was “I don’t know, but here are some google searches that might help”

Microsoft’s own co-pilot doesn’t seem to have access to microsoft products, so now I uninstall/deactivate it every opportunity I can.

*yes, a HDD. Not ideal for performance these days, but it’s the last laptop I have with a HDD, and I use it for experiments.

Don’t the military swear loyalty to the constitution, and then superior officers, including the C-in-C?

So unless the constitution was legally changed, drumpf can’t be C-in-C for a third term?

That’s an approach I’d never considered - is there wiggle-room in the state constitutions to split into smaller states?

It’s not difficult to block the mining and telemetry. Pihole, a few registry tweaks, a few scheduled tasks disabled and life goes on.

Folk see nothing wrong with spending hours tuning a Linux distro, but they object to doing the same with Windows?

FWIW I use vanilla Debian for everything other than what I’m required to use Windows for.

One doesn’t need to pay for MS Office. Not home users, anyway.