I have a network-wide pi hole and I noticed that it requested activity.windows.com, a url blocked by my pi hole, even while my pc is suspended. I pinged 10.0.0.217 and it is currently unreachable. So, somehow, windows pc’s turn on networking, phones home, and turns off even while suspended.

Creepy behavior

33 points

Oh god another one of these posts…

When pihole blocks a dns request, devices often keep trying to connect until the connection is successful. So yea, no shit it’s ginna keep trying to query that domain repeatedly, including when you’re sleeping.

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4 points

You had me in the first half

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2 points

What do you mean?

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5 points

including when you’re sleeping

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12 points

The thing is, the device was in suspend for a couple days now.

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3 points

Then just shut it down lol. It’s gonna ping windows microsoft domains unless it’s actually off.

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23 points

Modern sleep modes are internet connected, with the intent to allow systems to perform updates while sleeping.

I don’t like it but that’s how it’s designed to work.

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11 points
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aka S0 sleep/Modern Standby.
It has some legitimate benefits like returning from sleep immediately. Kinda want it on linux but without all the telemetry crap (but it’s really, really hard to pull of at an OS level)

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1 point
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10 points
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So, let me grasp your comment, are you saying that this is not creepy at all?

EDIT: To clarify, I find both things creepy, the telemetry and the insistence to ping home no matter what.

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14 points

The fact that windows has so much telemetry is creepy yes. The fact that it will keep trying to ping the domain when blocked is not creepy and is basic tech functionality.

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10 points

are you saying that this is not creepy at all?

Definitely creepy that it phones home in the first place.

But it’s not necessarily creepy that it keeps trying; it could just be sloppy programming. Hanlon’s Razor comes to mind. Microsoft Teams behaved in a similar way apparently. If you blocked it phoning home at the network level it would buffer gigabytes of data on disk until the disk was full.

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-3 points
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Removed by mod
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199 points

Honestly if you’re still trying to find workaround for Microsofts crap at this point - just switch to Linux.

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25 points

Oh, my daily driver is a linux, i just have a spare surface book 3 i use occasionally for gaming (the thing is surprisingly powerful)

Idk how well linux would support detaching and touchscreen with pen. But I’ll definitely switch the os to linux sometime in the future when i get a new gaming rig.

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8 points

I have a convertible laptop with pen and it works fine.

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8 points

I am using linux-surface on my surface book 2, works perfectly. BUT the webcam doesn’t work :-)

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2 points

You know. I disable that crap stuff from bios on my zenbook s.

Someimes broken webcam is a good thing. At least to some…

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6 points

In trying it doing that on someone hybrid, not surface but a Lenovo, PopOS! seems to works mostly out-of-box.

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3 points

Worth noting that you can install KDE Plasma over Pop OS.

I love Pop OS, but hate its Desktop Environment.

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204 points

At this point for me, trying to get games working on Linux has become easier than trying to get telemetry to stop working on Windows.

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41 points

And since Ive never bought the problematic games before it’s so much easier for me.

I’d encourage anyone to ditch the crappy anticheat broken crap and just go back to playing good high quality games.

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4 points

🙄 there are plenty of great games with anti cheat.

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26 points
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Deleted by creator
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2 points

Sorry for the rant but why the hell people still entertain themselves with proprietary Windows games in 2023?!? So much so that they are willing to put up with such utter rubbish of an OS? Man, just play better games, even FOSS ones, on Linux! The proprietary rubbish pay-to-win games should be shunned!

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6 points

You can’t play VR on linux without significant pain and most VR games are from small devs who don’t do unethical stuff like pay-to-win.

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3 points

Minetest and veloren masterrace

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13 points

I game on Linux every day.

I wish multiplayer worked across the board but it’s whatever. I don’t have time for it any way haha.

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2 points

What multiplayer doesn’t work? Do you mean because of EAC not working or something?

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1 point

If you have a wireless Xbox controller it becomes far harder. Xone is what I want to use but then I have xow, xbdrvr and a bunch of other things to deal with. Or if I want to actually use my Nvidia video card to it’s fullest ability, well good luck.

Linux is awesome but has a bit to go for me. Although it’s been that was since it stopped being my daily driver in 2014.

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-3 points
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6 points

He pinged the local IP to check if the network card was up on his suspended machine…

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10 points

Ain’t 10.0.0.217 an private IP?

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1 point

did you expect it to be a public ip?

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4 points

yes, it’s for LANs

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11 points

Yes that is the local ip of the pc phoning home

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3 points

Yah. That make sense now. I thought that’s what the domain resolved to.

Never used PiHole but Blocky.

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5 points

Probably the IP of the device, not the IP resolved through DNS

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15 points

Windows… With this only word you already have all the abswers

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