I mean, maybe, but does it matter? Time will tell, I'll just use whatever is more convenient. I use Termux everyday, but I'll happily switch if the native option is better.
I also considered this, but I was not able to solve the security problems. That remote server must (or not?) hold all my SSH keys, AWS creds, and other stuff, to even be useful. Secops guys would kill me for this. Until then, WSL is good enough.
I know "secops" guys tend to not really understand what's going on, but you can sell it as just a different computer. You could compromise and install whatever handbrake^w security product they like. Bonus points for that computer being separate from the one where you usually browse the interwebs and such.
However, in practice, at least for the kind of compiling I do, AWS EC2 VMs tend not to be faster than my cheap HP Elitebook. Maybe if you can leverage a hefty number of cores, the situation is different. For regular email pushing, the laptop is good enough.
Our secops guys broke most of our laptops so the engineering teams can't use them for development. They told them to use a Hyper-V VM. So they do. With a Hyper-V vswitch that talks directly to the ethernet adapter rather than the VPN connection. So effectively their policy leads to all those SSH keys, AWS credentials and other stuff to be stored on a virtual machine which is connected directly to the public internet and bypasses all DLP and security controls.
The more I work with secops people the more I fail to trust or respect them.
Having a Windows 11 corporate laptop with a domain/Entra login, I actually trust it more than a home Windows 11 with a Microsoft account. Because if I lock myself out, I have a contact (corporate support) that is actually interested in helping me recover everything. With a Microsoft account it's a mess. I had so many problems with Microsoft accounts that I lost count of how many I have, and most are broken in some way, because of different issues and different service integrations over time. The Skype account is now useless. I never recovered my paid Minecraft account after one event. With a machine with a local account, now I have to be very careful on what I click related to MS accounts, because trying to solve various issues with Teams, I managed to get the local account linked with that MS account. I spent hours trying to recover a different account after I randomly filled one nagging question about birth date - who wants to give the real birth date to Microsoft - and then I got locked out because I said was underage :). So yes, one of the big issues is the push to have a linked OS account where you have to rely on MS support to solve your issues, otherwise you basically get locked out of your machine and other things you paid for.
Also, domain policies offer more control over the corporate PCs (this is how some of the MS spying is shut off on corporate PCs; it's debatable if the corporate spying added by other domain policies is an improvement).
I have to agree, I've also suffered account problems. I was locked out from an email address I used for 20 years. It refuses to take my password which is still valid. I've changed phone number since 20 years ago so can't use that and the security questions were nonsense as I was a teenager. Originally my account never had phone number, they insisted I add it when they integrated my Skype account perhaps. So I didn't expect access to that phone number to be a strong ongoing requirement.
I recently, by playing around with the LAN's default PAC file and a dummy HTTP server, discovered that on a machine that says in System Settings that Proxy Auto-Discovery is turned off, the PAC file is still fetched and used by a too-large number of Microsoft/Google background auto-update services, from Windows Update to Office.
I had been lucky through having done my own experimentation, decades ago, with setting up a default PAC file on the LAN and having left it in just-send-everything-directly mode, keeping it as I upgraded things on the LAN, all of these years. Because otherwise I would have been vulnerable to a third-party in the search path for years, on a machine that clearly and unequivocally, including per direct inspection of the setting in the registry, has this switched off.
> Is such paranoia warranted? Millions of corporate laptops run Windows 11 just fine.
Yes. With Windows Recall data mining surveillance screenshots taken every 5-7 seconds, completely disregarding if this may compromise your security, safety or privacy, we move from "you're the product" to "you're a pet in a zoo, and we want to learn from your behavior."
> I know M$ is evil and spying on you, but not to such degree.*
I mean, they could be recording every second.
I'm pretty sure that's a bandwidth issue.
Not because they really feel like giving you 3-4 second pockets of security, safety and privacy.
I’m reminded of a checkbox titled “Don’t ask me next time” when logging into Microsoft Online that I am given the option to check every single time I log in.
My lack of trust in Microsoft (or Google) to keep my interest in mind is rooted in experience.
The problem is: once your organisation is so corrupt that they think of this shit, turning off bad ideas becomes a game of whack-a-mole.
I don't trust microsoft to not push an update that exposes all my stuff. Their updates the last few years have been an absolutely shitshow in so many regards.
I never understood (even in homelab circles) why people insist on running these toys 24/7. Just turn it off for the night, or use one of these timer sockets.
I just replied to someone else about this. I had exactly the same challenge with my first newborn. Simply sitting in a chair for hours is really mentally taxing and a huge waste of time. Good for you, that you've found something that doesn't get in a way of helping your child to fall asleep.
> Simply sitting in a chair for hours is really mentally taxing and a huge waste of time.
How do people that rawdog international flights do it? No phone, no books, no music, maybe just the flight screen with the little aeroplane over the map.
You could just let your thoughts wander. That's a form of meditation, letting the mind unravel on its own.
I remember going on family road trips growing up, and my only options for entertainment were reading or looking out the window. We did a road trip a few weeks ago, and my kids were beside themselves if they had to go without some form of interactive entertainment for more than a few minutes.
Of course, I'm sure I was often annoying as hell during long car rides when I was a kid. And the luxury of handing kids a magic-zone-out-device is a lifesaver. But I do wonder if I'm shortchanging my kids by not forcing them to be bored more often.
I tried at first, didn't work. I was frustrated after 15 mins of this. But don't worry - I had a plenty of thought wander time at nights, when I was trying to fall asleep, being awoken for the 7th time that night.
Baby sling and a standing desk! Get's a little uncomfy in the heat, but I could pretty much do a whole workday - with a couple of feeding breaks, and milk for the baby of course ;).
Depends on the age of his son. I spent 2-3 hours daily for 3 months just holding my newborn (because the sneaky one had well tuned bed detector and would just cry forever if not held) and reading AWS docs for the certification on my phone. Not feeling guilty at all.
Actually it's even more impactful when considering a whole country. To follow this example, renting in Warsaw can be easily 2-3x more expensive than in a random small city in Poland. You could slash the salary by 30-40% and still get people willing to work, as long as you keep it remote.
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