More like windows 10 were not spying edition. Probably the only one Microsoft doesn't have insight into what youre doing on it. China has access to their source code.
This is nothing new. Apple does (or rather, did) the same thing, by making versions of MacOS/iOS that funnel data directly to the CCP and utilize domestically owned and controlled servers. Unfortunately, catering to China seems to be the norm in this space.
Do they (Microsoft/Apple/whoever) really have much of a choice? The alternative would likely be that their products end up banned if they don’t satisfy the government. Not really a China-specific problem either — strikes me that the same would be true in many countries.
I mean, they do have an option. Companies like Google, Netflix and parts of Amazon are completely unavailable in China. Their option is to not be complicit in data collection for their oppressive government, but greed and disrespect for user privacy usually triumphs.
Funnily, Google has gotten way more flak for China on here than MS because of Project Dragonfly, a little secret project that was testing the waters of going back in with search (that got squelched by their employees as soon as they found about it) while Bing has been fully accessible in China to this day
Google doesn't like collecting data for the Chinese government, but at the same time they collect everything they can get their hands on for their own benefit.
And let's not forget that the US government has access to Google's data. They just promise not to use it against US citizens, which is both a lie and not very helpful to let's say Europeans.
> The Windows 10 China Government Edition is based on Windows 10 Enterprise Edition, which already includes many of the security, identity, deployment, and manageability features governments and enterprises need. The China Government Edition will use these manageability features to remove features that are not needed by Chinese government employees like OneDrive, to manage all telemetry and updates, and to enable the government to use its own encryption algorithms within its computer systems.
I think that at this point in time this is a contradiction in terms. I'm sure someone at CIA has wet pants knowing that the chinese government buys windows.
The ability to manage/disable features is meaningless. Surely the chinese government controls the source code and ensures that any install is off of their source?
And tell me china isn't the only country getting their own version. Russia, India, etc all have to be competent enough not to trust microsoft?
We declared kaspersky, an antivirus software company, as a national security risk. Surely the leaders of the world are smart enough to realize that if a mere little antivirus program is a national security risk, then an operating system is an even greater one. And yet, we never hear about other nations seriously ramping up investment in OS development. What is the EU doing? A larger economy and a larger population and nothing to show for it. Where is india and china? Surely with their large population then can spare a few engineers for OS development.
Not a bad idea. I’m sure China has its own domestic threat model and maybe this provides some better protection against data encryption malware and whatever other annoying tricks hackers are trying.
Does china have its own desktop OS though? I’d imagine that they have a pretty good domestically designed one.
Because there was a discussion about a stripped windows 10 iso yesterday with a link to the China Government Edition. It's the Hackernews cycle of lazy ass karma farming.
But I think it's a very interesting submission. At least I didn't know such a version of Windows 10 existed. I wonder if Microsoft would do such a project again in the current situation.
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[ 0.26 ms ] story [ 79.6 ms ] threadIt should be called the Windows 10 Spy Edition - removing/replacing crypto so it can be decrypted by the government...
Something like this should get a lot more attention and Satya Nadella should clarify why they support this?
And let's not forget that the US government has access to Google's data. They just promise not to use it against US citizens, which is both a lie and not very helpful to let's say Europeans.
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-it-pro-blog/l...
And tell me china isn't the only country getting their own version. Russia, India, etc all have to be competent enough not to trust microsoft?
We declared kaspersky, an antivirus software company, as a national security risk. Surely the leaders of the world are smart enough to realize that if a mere little antivirus program is a national security risk, then an operating system is an even greater one. And yet, we never hear about other nations seriously ramping up investment in OS development. What is the EU doing? A larger economy and a larger population and nothing to show for it. Where is india and china? Surely with their large population then can spare a few engineers for OS development.
Does china have its own desktop OS though? I’d imagine that they have a pretty good domestically designed one.
Red Flag? [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Flag_Linux
I'm not sure why this hit the HN front page?
But I think it's a very interesting submission. At least I didn't know such a version of Windows 10 existed. I wonder if Microsoft would do such a project again in the current situation.