Given the amounts involved likely as a single McDonalds meal voucher per recipient.

Unfortunately 90% of useful apps aren't on F-Droid.

That's just your opinion. 90% of the apps in Google play are junk that don't respect user rights or privacy.

I'm perfectly content using only the apps available in F-Droid, and have been for years.

my android phone has one play store app (Timely). The rest is software from F-Droid. my phone is my business lifeline.

The ironic part is that people have just become accustomed to (or ignorant of) the way data is gathered from your average Android phone. Everyone is upset about Win10, but little attention is given to Android and the associated ecosystem of apps.

Not quite. I do expect more respect for my privacy from my computer OS than I expect from my smart phone OS. My personal computer holds way more sensitive and important information than my smartphone.

That won't be true for everyone. Why should we just accept less privacy?

The guide shows how to disable sending updates from your computer to other computers on your LAN or on the Internet. It doesn't suggest disabling updates anywhere...

I don't understand why you would want to disable LAN distribution of Windows 10 updates to your other Windows 10 machines. It seems like a great way of avoiding multiple downloads of the same thing, and I'd love something similar for Linux (aptorrent or something; manual rsync of /var/cache/apt/archives isn't quite the same, neither is apt-mirror).

Disabling uploads to other external machines does make sense to me, though.

Probably not much point in disabling that. Disabling downloads from other machines on the web makes more sense if you have a data cap or are charged per MB, which is common in some countries. It's not really a privacy-related change as far as I can see.

It's one of two pieces of information he is claiming to have have learned. It's relevant as it narrows down the list of suspects somewhat.

I doubt there are enough people who care. Google has already proved that seemingly benevolent spying is a highly profitable business model. Most people aren't bothered, or even know, that they are being "Scroogled". Microsoft is just following suite. Sadly it seems to be a sign of things to come.

The potential big difference here is that it affects people's work computers, where they do things for organizations that have a strong interest in keeping information from leaking out. Such companies probably were never happy with corporate data passing through Android smartphones, and might have forbidden it. Now they know they can't trust Windows workstations either.

Win10 enterprise has the no telemetry option for a reason.

Because every small business uses Win10 enterprise?

Most enterprises that care probably is. And it is possible for small businesses to get, just costs a bit more (including Software Assurance renewal) and it also gets you access to things like LTSB.

Maybe some small businesses don't care, but the people whose data they are handling might not agree with that stance.

And don't some of the same companies store all their company documents, email etc. on Google Apps? Or on Dropbox?

Many do, but many don't. For those that don't, suddenly having the dominant desktop OS turn on them is going to be a big deal.

> And don't some of the same companies store all their company documents, email etc. on Google Apps? Or on Dropbox?

Storing company confidential information on services not controlled by the company is explicitly forbidden at many large corporations. They run their own email servers (not Google Apps), and often ban & block things like Dropbox outright.

> Compared to my Android phone Windows 10 is absolutely mute.

I think this says more about Android than it does about Windows 10. Windows 10 has crazy defaults, but so does android and many android apps want access to my info for no good reason (e.g. news apps wanting access to list my accounts, my phone number, my contacts, precise location etc.). Comparing privacy defaults of Windows to Android is not comparing it to a particularly high bar.

This is a main reason that I have avoided Android so far. The iOS permissions model is a far better model. At least with the next release of Android (Marshmallow) they are fixing some of this and hopefully you will be able to use apps without giving them access to so much info.

If your phone is rooted, you can try installing XPrivacy to manage permissions for Apps. I used it for a while when I had to have Skype on my phone. It worked great to lock Skype out of GPS, Contacts, etc.

There was a noticable performance hit, but my phone is 3+ years old. It likely would not be as much on a newer phone.

Try Xposed App Ops. It shows when, if ever, was the last time an application made use of each particular permission, and lets you revoke them.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/xposed/modules/xposed-appops...

CyanogenMod is a barebones Android ROM that comes with permissions management.

As far as I can tell, I still only have the option of accepting or denying apps' permission on CyanogenMod. Also, I can hide my contacts and location from apps, if I'm really persistent about clicking the deny box a million times. But I still can't approve only the app permissions I want and not approve the ones I don't (which coincidentally are not essential to app functioning).

> But I still can't approve only the app permissions I want and not approve the ones I don't (which coincidentally are not essential to app functioning).

Hmm? I can do exactly this in the Privacy Guard settings.

You can choose which permissions you want an app to have and which you don't. You can also set to Ask every time as well as just blanket blocking/.allowing permanently.

Oh wow. You're right. The option does exist. It's just hidden behind a stupid, non-sensical UI. Apparently if I long tap the app name, I get a lot of options. This is great. I don't understand why they hide it behind such a stupid, non-obvious UI. Do I need to long tap every single other UI element to get some functionality that should be obvious? Until they make a proper UI for it, it might as well not exist.

Yeah it's not the most intuitive.

As far as I'm aware you just long-press the app name in order to get to the more granular permissions controls.

There's nothing else I'm aware of that needs these long presses to get more options, save the stuff that Android has anyway.

I'm unsure why I cannot replt to ionised to ask which version he/she's running. I remmberPrivacy Guard briefly had those features, or was it when 'Roid inadvertently included the privacy feature they pulled d right after the EFF praised them for it? Either way, I'm sure my new flip phone will spy on me, I'll minimize what I give them... a removable battery doesn't interfere with elegan design on a clam, apparently.

> I'm unsure why I cannot reply to ionised to

HN rate limits replies when comments are nested. You either wait for the reply link to show up, or you clicky the time stamp.

It would be fantastic if Jetbrains was building an IDE for Rust somewhere in their basement. One can only hope...

They are currently tackling C++(Clion), which would lead me to believe it is within the realm of possibility if they were so inclined.

Except that Jetbrains probably makes most of its revenue from enterprise, and Rust has yet to see big enough adoption there (although there is some AFAIK). I'm not sure it's worth the investment yet.

On the other hand this is a chicken and egg problem. A powerful IDE like the ones Jetbrains builds would increase Rust adoption a lot, and eventually Jetbrains would completely dominate that market.

I doubt they'll be inclined in less than 2-3 years.

Still, someone can create a plugin (afaik, there was one but abandoned)

Why does the article title lead with the nationality of the company?

It helps build a negative sentiment against those nations. That's one of the techniques in a propaganda.

In this case it's the opposite: enforcing a negative reputation of a company based on deservedly poor reputation of its host country.

> Because there is a difference between "can voluntarily use" and "is rammed down your throat".

I got gmail rammed down my throat pretty hard when I needed to install an app from the play store on my Android phone... Google search was also front and center on the home screen.

That's like complaining, that when you want to get apps from Windows Marketplace, you need a Live account.

Which is fine. Except that I do not want apps from Windows Marketplace, so I don't need account. I don't want websearch from start menu, I don't want Cortana. So why does it still sends the data out, when I disabled everything that was disableable?

It's like forcing you into Gmail account, even if you didn't want to install anything from the Play Store.

See the difference?