Techie007

Continuing into the world of spying, Microsoft has a new offer of "30 days of unlimited Groove music access". The pertinent part is that when I click the link to view the offer, the Store app immediately opens over my web browser (Firefox 41.0a2 x64). The actual web page loads as expected in the background. I'm not sure what mechanism is being used to trigger the Store app, but I want to know how opening a webpage in Firefox can launch an app on my computer! Either they are spying on my web browser, waiting for me to open certain pages (and if they're spying, certainly they are collecting and transmitting this data!), or there is some legitimate trigger (like a MIME or protocol trigger) on the page.

You might want to download and install Process Hacker. It is a more powerful version of Process Explorer, and it has a Network tab that should show you exactly which service owns each open connection.

Can you provide some details on how you got it? Going to your link http://gs.statcounter.com/#desktop-os-ww-daily-20150701-20150805 I can find not a Windows 10 at all. besides the usual suspects: XP/Vista/7/8/8.1 I can find only OSX, Linux, "unknown" and "Other" jaclaz P.S.: EDIT, I need to set the date range within 29th July - 4th August to have Windows 10 "magically" appear in the legend and graph, here is the link: http://gs.statcounter.com/#desktop-os-ww-daily-20150729-20150805 the different scale somehow highlights a hiccup in 7 stats centered on the 2nd of August and a return to "normal levels" on the 3rd and 4th (it must mean something .... ). Yes, download the CSV data file, and graph it in a spreadsheet program. I used OpenOffice. This allows me to show more than eight operating systems, and to make the graph larger and specify the graph colors. The dip you see in Windows 7 is a reoccurring weekly dip on weekends (as you can see in the picture I posted). My interpretation of this is that more businesses are using Windows 7 and XP, while more home users are using Windows 8x and Vista.

Although Windows 10 bolted out the door very fast, overtaking Linux and Windows Vista in a mere 3 days, it looks like word is getting around about its mediocrity, causing it to lose steam: Click to enlarge (if you know how to make an attached picture appear larger, please let me know! This forum's picture capabilities are very limiting or hard to use.) As I expected, most of the upgrades are coming at the expense of Windows 8.1. Previously, Windows 10 was set to pass Windows 8.0 in a week, but it look like it will take longer than that now! This data is from StatCounter.

Strictly speaking of audio formats, the best lossy audio format currently is Opus. Unlike other lossy formats, Opus is a HiFi codec that gives a full 20-20kHz audio bandwidth at most bitrates, it supports dynamically changeable bitrates from 6 to 510 kb/s, it uses small frame sizes (20 ms by default) making it an excellent choice for low-latency audio, it supports surround sound up to 255 channels, and best of all, it is royalty free. HiFi mono speech sounds fine at 32 kb/s and is transparent at 48 kb/s. Opus is transparent with stereo audio/music at 128 kb/s (as in "can't tell that it was compressed without the original file and golden ears"). And unlike all other popular lossy audio formats (AAC, WMA, Vorbis, and MP3) Opus maintains this transparency even with very dynamic audio like classical music and nature sounds (types of audio I frequently listen to). Opus is normally stored in the Ogg container, which makes it streaming-friendly. It is a MTI (mandatory to implement) audio codec for web browsers, with support in Chrome, Firefox, and Opera as of this writing. As usual, it's been a standard for 3 years and Microsoft is still holding out. You can test your web browser's audio playback capability here. I am looking forward to the day Microsoft Edge and Apple Safari finally come to 2012 and support this awesome audio codec too (you can help encourage Microsoft by voting for it here). Opus can also be put into MKV, MP4, MTS/MT2S, and WebM, but those combinations are less supported. Windows Media Player can play Opus files after the installation of Shark007 Advanced Codecs (which also enables Windows to play many other formats, including DVDs). I personally use Opus exclusively for all my lossy audio codec needs, falling back on MP3 for web support and WMA for older MP3 players. The easiest way to create Opus audio files is with LameXP, an audio format conversion program. Programmers may like the command-line encoder version by Xiph called Opus-Tools which can convert FLAC or WAV files, and piped PCM streams. A year ago, a public listening test was performed at 96 kb/s. Opus won, followed closely by AAC. Vorbis had some good and bad moments, but MP3 could have passed for mid-anchor if they didn't bump its bitrate up to 128 kb/s, where it basically tied with Vorbis at 96 kb/s. For some reason, they did not test WMA. Probably because WMA has a limited number of bitrate options (hard to normalize bitrates between codecs) and two formats (WMA and WMA Pro). Personally I would rank the popular lossy codecs this way: Opus AAC WMA Vorbis MP3

Going from preview build to the next build, yes, they always came back. We will have to see on Windows Updates.

Good list so far. Here are some more items to add to it: Delete the following Scheduled Tasks: Microsoft -> Windows -> Application Experience -> Microsoft Compatibility Appraiser Microsoft -> Windows -> Application Experience -> ProgramDataUpdater Microsoft -> Windows -> Autochk -> Proxy Microsoft -> Windows -> Customer Experience Improvement Program -> Consolidator Microsoft -> Windows -> Customer Experience Improvement Program -> KernelCeipTask Microsoft -> Windows -> Customer Experience Improvement Program -> UsbCeip Microsoft -> Windows -> DiskDiagnostic -> Microsoft-Windows-DiskDiagnosticDataCollector Microsoft -> Windows -> PI -> Sqm-Tasks Microsoft -> Windows -> Power Efficiency Diagnostics -> AnalyzeSystem Microsoft -> Windows -> Windows Error Reporting -> QueueReporting And delete the following Registry keys: HKLM -> SYSTEM -> CurrentControlSet -> Control -> WMI -> AutoLogger -> AutoLogger-Diagtrack-Listener HKLM -> SYSTEM -> CurrentControlSet -> Control -> WMI -> AutoLogger -> SQMLogger There's a lot more lurking in the registry, but the above is all I am sure about at the moment.

If I saw a file with a name like that in that folder, I'd be all over it. Reeks like a virus! I wouldn't settle until it was gone for good. Hiding that file by subverting the file system (i.e. rootkit) would just make it stand out more to me. If it kept coming back, that would just tell me that there's more (probably a rogue driver/service or scheduled task) hidden somewhere. But then, I remove stuff like this from computers all the time, so go figure.

Apparently they want to make sure that people won't miss the scrollbar when reading the EULA, but they don't care about that issue with the rest of the OS. “Our EULA, updates, and cheap visuals are very important; your work, not so much,” is a message Windows 10 sends loud and clear. Not only that, but the default WiFi option will also "securely" (and secretly) share with all your contacts the WiFi passwords for every network your computer knows how to connect to. So, your private home WiFi network, your sensitive protected work network, your friends' home networks—you name it, your contacts will be able to silently connect to them—by default. For the first time, when build 10240 installed itself on my PC, I was presented with these options, and this was turned on. I had previously turned it off, so I can confirm that the default is ON. Not to mention that Microsoft will have that information and who knows what they may do with it in the future. (Techie007 envisions government agencies getting and hackers stealing that information from Microsoft and using it to hack into private networks people thought were protected by their router. Once on your network, a man-in-the-middle attack is extremely easy to accomplish. There are powerful WiFi antennas that would allow a hacker to attack pretty much any WiFi network from up to about a mile away.)

My computer is downloading TH1 Professional 10240 right now, and I fully expect it to reboot and install when it is finished downloading. Based on the latest Windows Insider Blog post, I believe we are getting RTM (or something very close to it) two weeks in advance.