End of Life: Time to X goodbye to Windows 1012

00:00:07.75
Gus Hosein
Welcome to The Technology Pill, a podcast that looks at how technology is reshaping our lives every day and exploring the different ways that governments and companies use tech to increase their power. My name is Gus Hosein and I'm the Executive Director at Privacy International.

00:00:21.45
Caitlin
And I'm Caitlin, and I'm PI's Campaigns Coordinator. Hi.

Gus
Today we're gonna be speaking about a small software company based in the Northwest corner of the United States of America called Microsoft. They're so small that they have put the micro in their name.

00:00:38.10
Gus
And so if you are a user of desktop and laptop computers, odds are you're using one of two different firms operating systems, whether it is Apple Mac OS or Microsoft Windows.

00:00:54.39
Gus
Then the next question is, which version of Windows are you using? And a few years ago, Microsoft came out with Windows 11, a shiny new version of Windows that has all this great new functionality, such as a really annoying functionality called Copilot AI, which is their AI version of things just to try to get you stuck into their world.

00:01:16.47
Gus
The unfortunate problem for Microsoft, is again, this very small struggling company, is that they have... A huge tail of users of over 400 million devices across the world that use their older operating system, being Windows 10.

00:01:33.37
Gus
And you may have seen the news recently that Windows 10 is essentially dying. Caitlin, you call it Schrodinger's cat of death.

Caitlin
Yes, it's the Schrodinger's cat of operating systems.

00:01:46.34
Caitlin
Microsoft have taken it out the back and shot it, but no one's taken its pulse just yet. Microsoft will no longer be giving Windows 10 security updates, which means any vulnerabilities found Windows 10 from now on, Microsoft will not be fixing, they claim.

00:02:01.58
Caitlin
However, there are still 400 million odd devices running Windows 10. In that Schrodinger's box, that cat we will unpack with Chris and Tom, who are both amazing staff members here at PI, Chris, who's our technology lead, and Tom, who leads our work on corporate exploitation.

*meow*

00:02:31.44
Tom
Hi everyone, I'm Tom West. I'm the Programme Director at Privacy International for our work on corporate exploitation.

Christopher
And I'm Christopher Weatherhead. I'm Technical Lead here at Privacy International.

Caitlin
Always an open question which job title you're going to go for.

Gus
Yeah, I know.

Caitlin
Always a moment of like anticipation. What's it going to be this time?

00:02:48.20
Gus
And the only people who care are the people at PI listening.

Christopher
Yeah, I mean, i don't know what my job title is.

Gus
I know.

Caitlin
All purpose fixer, which is actually why you're here today, because we're here to talk about Windows 10. So would you mind kind of just a brief summary of like, why are we here?

Christopher
So this week, on Tuesday the 14th of October, the Windows 10 operating system made by Microsoft reached what Microsoft referred to as end of life, i.e. they were no longer going to release feature or security updates for it for their general availability audience, i.e. their normal users, home users, business users which don't have any of the other additions that Microsoft make.

00:03:35.82
Christopher
So if you continue to use Windows 10 after this date, you are putting yourself at ever greater risk of there being some vulnerability discovered in Windows 10 that Microsoft won't fix because they're no longer releasing security updates.

00:03:54.04
Christopher
And that puts your privacy and your data security risk.

Caitlin
So what is Windows 10?

Christopher
I can't you remember exactly which generation of Windows product this is, although it's numbered number 10. It might actually be number 12 or 14, I think, because there was some earlier versions.

Gus
Windows 3, Windows 3.1.

Christopher
Exactly. And then Windows 95.

Gus
95, Windows NT Windows 2000

Christopher
Windows 98

Tom
What happened to Windows 9?

Caitlin
Windows Vista

Gus
Vista, Nice job.

00:04:26.17
Christopher
XP

Gus
I forgot about XP.

Christopher
Windows Mistake Edition, Windows ME.

Gus
That's right. And they had a mobile one at some point, too.

Christopher
Yeah, there were some mobile ones as well. So whether it's actually the...

Gus
There was CE.

Christopher
Yeah. So whether this is actually the 10th version of Windows is an open question.

00:04:44.76
Christopher
Anyway, it's the mainstream consumer and business operating system for end users, i.e. terminals for people to use, as opposed to their server operating system or some of the other slightly more off-brand versions like their mobile version. And it was released in 2015, gone through multiple major iterations since then, which Microsoft has referred to as feature updates.

00:05:13.90
Christopher
They started off having nice names like the Autumn Update and the other, you know, this kind of update and they've just resorted to being coded updates.

00:05:25.23
Christopher
So I think the last version of feature updates was from 2022 and was in the twenty two h two update which is twenty twenty two half two second half of twenty twenty two

Gus
Their marketing team was like, you know really on this game, weren't they? Yeah.

00:05:46.36
Tom
But Chris, you're you're talking about Windows 10 in the past tense as if it doesn't exist anymore, right? But it's still with us, right? And it's still really popular. It's still very widely used.

Christopher
Yeah, so I think it might be microsoft one of Microsoft's most popular products.

00:06:02.39
Christopher
Still about 400 million terminals are still using computers, still using Windows 10. um I think at the time of recording, the usage between Windows 10 and Windows 11 is somewhere around 50:50-ish.

Gus
Oh, wow. Yeah.

00:06:20.54
Tom
I think I saw a graph where they just crossed over, but it would have been recent if they have done.

Christopher
Yes, they're very closely matched. So Microsoft have ended the life of Windows 10.

Caitlin
Microsoft have taken it out back and shot it repeatedly.

Christopher
Yeah, taken it to a farm upstate, which is actually a little bit of a misnomer because there is quite lot to be said, which is why we're doing a podcast on it, about what's actually going on here.

Gus
Okay, so what does pi have skin in the game on this one? What do we want out of this?

00:06:57.38
Christopher
So, I run the project at PI around securing our digital lives and an aspect of that is around software support and life cycles and advocating for longer software support and life cycles both for the security and privacy reasons as well as the ethical environmental reasons of keeping devices running for longer.

00:07:21.73
Christopher
But there's a an older piece of work we did around privacy and luxury where if you can afford to pay more often your privacy is better protected than if you're poorer, less economically mobile, whatever the right term is.

00:07:39.60
Christopher
And the Windows 10 extended service update system is just another instantiation of this. If you're in the EU you can get access to it for free.

00:07:54.28
Christopher
If you are in the United Kingdom you can pay 30 dollars you can get it for free you're prepared give data to Microsoft. or you can get it for free if you're prepared to give your data to microsoft If you're in Kenya, you can pay $30 or give your information to Microsoft. And if you're in Bangladesh, you can give Microsoft $30 or you can pay with your data.

00:08:23.29
Christopher
In one of those countries 25 quid, 26 quid is not a lot of money. and another one of those countries it's quite a lot of money. So your interest in paying with your data changes. So you're now paying for service with data, which is something the PI has for a long time advocated against.

00:08:42.38
Tom
It makes me think of the ongoing conversation, debates, outrage around the use of pay or okay or consent or pay banners. For those based in the EU or UK, you probably have come up against these. They're like a cookie banner, but instead of asking you to reject or accept or more likely go into a never-ending loop of annoying clicking, they ask you to subscribe or accept cookies, which is a practice which, again, is doing this. It's looking for people to either cough up their money or to have their privacy respected in line with their rights.

00:09:15.09
Caitlin
I just quickly looked it up and according to a website called remote people, the average salary in Bangladesh is approximately 26,000 Bangladesh taka, which translates to about 213 USD. and So $30 out of someone on the average salary in Bangladesh is just over 10% of their monthly income.

00:09:37.71
Caitlin
And this is the thing, right? PI cares about principles. PI has to care about Microsoft because of the sheer number, the volume of people on it, right? We care about the privacy of those 400 million kind of, well, it's computers installs, but let's ah pretend it's one person per computer.

00:09:54.84
Caitlin
We care about the privacy of those 400 million people. and the potential vulnerability of their computers because we care about privacy. But it's not that we care about Microsoft specifically, we care about kind of the principles involved, we care about the privacy involved, we care about the cybersecurity involved.

00:10:12.36
Caitlin
And PI for number of years, you know as part of securing our digital lives, has been talking about longer software support. And you know I think one of the things that's kind of interesting on this is PI has been asking for ah minimum of 10 years of software support. And that's what Microsoft has technically given us.

00:10:31.86
Caitlin
Like, why are we giving them sh** for it?

Tom
I think there's a difference between operating systems and other forms of software as well, right? Because the operating system is so crucial to what the device is doing.

00:10:43.34
Tom
But yeah, I mean, it is a fair point saying, look, it has been around for a long time. Why is it not long enough? I go back to this point about saying, look at the usage still and the amount of people that are you know potentially at risk because of that.

00:10:55.50
Tom
When we think about other sort of more esoteric devices and yeah everything now has some part of software in it, and this question of Will its lifetime be dependent on its kind of physical capabilities to function? Will your dishwasher break down first because it no longer can i don't know take the water in and spit out the right places?

00:11:13.65
Tom
Or will it start to break down first because there's a problem in the software which either they can't fix or they don't want to fix? And I don't know, this kind of becomes a bit a problem when to devices or items which are otherwise serviceable can no longer be used because of limitations in how that software is being used.

00:11:37.00
Tom
Now, obviously, the question with laptops is quite interesting because as we set out in the blog we wrote, there are options available for people who have devices which work fine but don't meet the spec for Windows 11. You can install other operating systems.

00:11:53.09
Tom
That might be an interesting learning curve for some people. It might be too much of a learning curve for some other people. But there are other devices in which you can't do that.

Gus
Okay, so let me let me put a different gloss because, Tom, I want to disagree, but that's a really good example with the dishwasher.

00:12:09.74
Gus
I don't like any of the companies that build operating systems. you know I don't like them as companies. But it does sound like, going back to Caitlin's point, it does sound like we're expecting more of these companies.

00:12:23.11
Gus
We're expecting a noblesse oblige, which is they made their money ages ago. They invested as much as they could in order to create code, and now we're telling them they owe us more than anybody else owes us, that they owe people 10 years of service when we wouldn't expect that from ah small software company starting up, which then begs the question, maybe operating system companies are different.

00:12:48.12
Gus
you know we're not. We're not looking for a new OS company to innovate all a sudden and come out with a new OS to replace the the current dinosaurs. We're instead saying these dinosaurs are just part of the infrastructure because they run hospitals.

00:13:01.62
Gus
And so they have a different set of obligations to society.

Christopher
I think there's a also a mapping that we have to be a little bit careful about. Going back to Caitlin's question as well around why does 10 years not seem like enough when this is 10 years.

00:13:17.69
Christopher
But this 10 years requires a few things. Firstly you have to be a first adopter to get that full 10 year cycle. You have to have bought Windows 10 on day one of its public release.

00:13:30.27
Christopher
And all the pitfalls of doing that where lots of your apps won't work, lots of your drivers might not install, whatever the issues are with that on day one, you know, you've got to just lump that because you want to have the longest service life of your device.

00:13:48.06
Christopher
There's nothing saying you didn't buy your device halfway through that period or even yesterday. You can still buy Windows 10 operated system devices off Amazon.

00:14:00.15
Christopher
Other retailers are available.

Caitlin
Equally sh** retailers are available.

Christopher
Yeah, so you could still buy you can now buy an out-of-date device, a device that's running an operating system that's going to receive no more updates.

00:14:14.16
Christopher
You didn't get 10 years of software, so you got no software support at all. Microsoft would argue it's on you to make sure you get something that is supported, but Not everyone is like keeping up with what Microsoft's product portfolio is.

00:14:28.99
Christopher
I know they would love us to, but people aren't. And then also finally, which version are we talking about? Because those feature updates that Microsoft releases are quite large changes.

00:14:43.86
Christopher
Sometimes organizations, again going back to places like hospitals or schools, might not actually deploy a feature update because it breaks something, changes something, so they might not even be running 22h2, they might be running an older version 22h1, whatever.

00:15:03.13
Christopher
So is it three years of software support from the last feature update or is it 10 years of support for all of the lifetime of Windows 10? And then corporations are getting, you know, they they're obviously paying over the odds for their operating system but they're getting lot longer support cycles and why are consumers treated differently?

Caitlin
Well, so there are a couple of really good points that Chris has made. One is packaging and expiry dates is something we've been asking for for a long time since, in fact, the low cost tech work that we did, you know, half a decade ago, because we were finding you could pick up Google phones, Android phones, long past their software support dates with, you know, all this branding that said they were protected, which simply wasn't true.

00:15:42.76
Caitlin
So there is a job of work to be done around being clear and transparent to consumers when software support doesn't exist. But my point around 10 years was not that you know what we're asking for is adequate and Microsoft has done us a huge favor by meeting our demands.

00:15:59.22
Caitlin
My point was what the minimum that we are asking for is 10 years. like The minimum that we're asking for is because you know that's much better than what people currently get. um' By no means do I think that is necessarily adequate.

00:16:12.33
Caitlin
In particular, as Chris is saying, other companies would have rebranded some of those feature releases as new operating systems. And it seems unreasonable to keep calling it Windows 10, so that you can claim 10 years of software support when maybe that's just not what you're getting.

00:16:27.06
Caitlin
I also think it's really optimistic of you, Tom, to think that the kind of operating system data that go in goes into an operating system that isn't secure and needs to be maybe supported for longer.

00:16:38.95
Caitlin
I think the more devices get introduced into our homes that have you know increasingly invasive kind of data collection technologies in them, you know the longer we're going to desperately need them to have adequate security and software support beyond even keeping your dishwasher running.

00:16:54.86
Caitlin
So I was being a bit of a sh** like I was being a bit annoying. But my point was not that all Microsoft has done is a solid. My point is that the rest of the industry has been screwing people over massively.

00:17:09.44
Caitlin
And PI has been arguing at the European Union around the Cyber Resilience Act, which is PCVU legislation, which I think we got five years of software support in, right?

Christopher
Yes, the CRA, as enacted right now, has five years of software support.

caitlin
It's a minimum.

Christopher
It's a minimum and unless other criteria are met however the actual period of implementation is over three years and between now and then there's going to be a review as to whether the current written legislative

00:17:43.37
Christopher
power is actually appropriate so in another year's time they might decide that the five years was overly ambitious and it might be watered down so although it's in there right now we do have to take it with a pinch of salt.

Tom
Yes, I mean, i didn't mean to be saying it's okay if your dishwasher is you know not supported for a long time at all. My point was more, this matters in all sorts of different bits.

00:18:06.80
Tom
But the I think the bit that I want to go back to is, Gus used the word infrastructure. and And I think that's where OSs are a large part of that digital infrastructure. And that's why you know you don't just go, okay, 10 years, fair game, that's enough. Because these are so essential and crucial issues.

00:18:25.62
Tom
to not quite everyone, but a lot of people and all of the things we do and everything that's built on top of it and everything that we do in our day-to-day lives to work from, which is why that you have to say, you know, ah there is, I think, additional responsibility and demands that can come with providing services which people are dependent on.

**Music Break**

00:18:56.20
Christopher
I think to keep it accurate to start with, Microsoft when they release version updates, they used to call them service packs, they now call them feature updates, they would at the point of release say how long they planned to support that version.

00:19:11.58
Christopher
So when 22h2 was released they said it would have three years of software support, which meant that its end date was in October 2025.

Gus
When they issued twenty two h two were they clear that this was going to be the last one?

00:19:27.37
Christopher
interesting question, I think they said that this was the last major feature update because by that point windows 11 had already been released.

Gus
So that was my next question when was windows 11 introduced?

Christopher
You are asking the question i do not know the answer to let me google that.

Tom
What i do know it's been out for less time than windows 10 had been when previous versions of windows to that had

Gus
interesting

Christopher
end of life windows 11 was 5th of october 2021

Caitlin
So four years ago.

Gus
OK. So Windows 11 has been out for four years. Windows 10, the last feature update was in 2022.

00:20:06.63
Gus
And they made a statement about how long they would keep the security updates for that. How long was that?

Chrisopher
So 2022 H2, the last feature update for Windows 10, was released on October 18th, 2022, which meant it got three years of software support. So support ended on October the 14th, 2025.

Gus
Well, they weren't being generous at all. Like they counted leap hours and seconds and...

00:20:34.48
Chrisopher
yeah

Tom
And I think for me, what really matters about it is that they have reached this end of life moment for Windows 10 when there's still like significant number of people still using it.

00:20:46.08
Tom
Whereas previously, when support has been ended, they've been much more minority products operating systems, whereas we've seen like 400 million or 45% people are still using it. I guess because it still works for them and still meets all their needs, like the amount of advancements that we need in what our tech can do has got less over recent years, as basically now it's fairly easy to have a device which can do all manner of things which most people don't use on a day-to-day basis.

00:21:18.38
Tom
So now we're in a situation where Windows 10 works fine for everyone, it's very popular, But we've now hit a point where that is now in direct conflict with those devices remaining secure and things that people really can be confident and safe in using.

00:21:36.33
Caitlin
So when Windows say they've ended security support, what does that actually mean? What does that look like for them?

Chrisopher
So for systems that are in their support window, Microsoft release a mix of different kinds of security updates. They usually release once a month a security roll-up, which is all of the various security-related fixes for their operating systems. These could be for various of the subsystems and services that the operating system has, for vulnerabilities that are known about, or vulnerabilities that have been disclosed to Microsoft and have yet to be used or reported on.

00:22:20.48
Chrisopher
Sometimes they do have to release emergency patches, which are often whenever there's an imminent risk, but most of the security updates come through these monthly roll-ups on the what's often referred to as Patch Tuesday, although I'm not sure whether they're still on Patch Tuesdays, I think.

00:22:42.75
Chrisopher
There's a little bit more ah rolling release model these days, but historically there used to be a patch Tuesday where everyone should jump in and get all their patches installed on that Tuesday when they're first released.

Caitlin
Is that why they ended software support on a Tuesday?

00:22:58.26
Chrisopher
Quite possibly actually. Actually, well, it's the last roll up. It came out on Tuesday, was the last security patch for Windows 10.

Caitlin
In the last security patch from now on is, from their perspective, transfer to Windows 11.

Chrisopher
Yeah.

00:23:12.15
Caitlin
So if I, obviously, as a super cool and super ethical and wonderful hacker, find a huge security floor in Windows 10, and I do the responsible thing and disclose it ethically to Microsoft, their response from now on will be, thanks, but like, why are you telling us?

00:23:29.31
Chrisopher
Yes, but also no. So Windows XP, which is going back a few years, was in a similar situation in April 2014, I believe. Windows XP stopped being supported by Microsoft, but a few years later there was a critical vulnerability discovered in how it used its network sharing subsystem called SMB.

00:23:55.56
Chrisopher
This was notoriously exploited in the WannaCry malware. And Microsoft released a out of band software update for all users of Windows XP to mitigate patch even though the software is out of support.

00:24:14.74
Chrisopher
So there may be a scenario where Microsoft will release further patches but it's not part of their plan as it were.

Caitlin
WannaCry was 2017 and XP fell out of software support 2014.

00:24:28.28
Christopher
Yes.

Caitlin
And as Tom already said, there's like 45% of people still using Windows 10. ta That very long tail on Windows XP that lots of kind of significant infrastructure things got caught out in the WannaCry malware, we're still using Windows XP. Is that the kind of tail we expect to see on Windows 10?

00:24:47.62
Christopher
I imagine it will be very similar that tail off. So for a Windows 10 to Windows 11 doesn't necessarily have the same advantages as moving from say Windows XP to Windows 7 as was available in 2014.

00:25:01.63
Christopher
There was quite a big shift in how the software and its capabilities were compared to Windows XP in many ways.

00:25:13.20
Christopher
Whereas the shift between Windows 10 and 11 is less obvious.

Tom
You've got to factor in as well the advantage for my mum or other everyday users of just not pressing the update button because they don't get around to it. It's in the way. It's a hassle. The thing works for them as they want it to.

00:25:29.90
Tom
With this like large number of people using a device which is you know targeted at the mass market, um I suspect there will be lots of people who could upgrade to Windows 11 but won't do for quite some time just because they don't do it.

00:25:43.04
Gus
So say you bought a computer in 2017 and it was running Windows 10 just fine. If you want to run Windows 11, do you have to buy a new computer? like is the Is the bump in its specs so great that not only is it Tom's scenario of Tom's mom not wanting to do an update because she can't be bothered to install a patch that to update, she's required to restart her computer, because most people haven't restarted the computer for a long time, or is it, I can't afford a new computer, so I'm going to keep my old computer in my old OS?

00:26:14.81
Tom
There is extra technical requirements for Windows 11 compared to Windows 10, which again, I don't think was the case when Windows 10 came about. I think it's called the TPM. Chris certainly will know more detail around that exact additional requirement for Windows 11. But yeah, to answer the question, Gus, there will be devices out there which cannot be upgraded to Windows 11.

00:26:33.68
Tom
no matter how good you are at pressing yes which you should do when the update button comes up.

Christopher
I think there's two factors to this one is that microsoft have changed the system requirements and i mean initially on windows 11's release they were actually quite steep you needed to have a computer that was released probably after 2017 to even consider being able to install because in its vanilla form Windows 11 has processor restrictions. Older processors aren't supported and yes as Tom alluded to trusted platform module or a TPM is requirement according to Microsoft of deploying Windows 11.

Tom
At one point, didn't they suggest that there was a workaround for that as well and then withdrew it? We we linked to it in the piece we wrote around.

00:27:23.45
Tom
There was this sort of idea that there might be a way around this. And then Windows went, no, hang on, that's obviously a bad idea. We can't do that. Which just goes to the way in which I think Microsoft have been... Well, they've changed their mind and changed their messaging quite a few times around the options available to people with Windows 10 devices.

Christopher
There has been a lot of chopping and changing in their language and what they've offered to different different parts of the world, which we'll probably come on to at some point.

00:27:51.03
Christopher
But the official line for Microsoft is you need to have a processor that's you know of a certain age or you know certain modernness and you need to have a TPM and a certain other capacities are required for this system to run Windows 11.

00:28:09.86
Christopher
In actuality though, most of these are faux requirements. There are, as you elldued to Tom, workarounds for a number of them because Windows 11 is based on Windows 10, which is based on Windows 8, which is based on Windows 7, and there's a number of different things that you can pull or use from various versions of Windows to make them work with other versions.

00:28:37.89
Christopher
The infrastructure hasn't changed so much that some stuff can't be manipulated or hacked to get Windows 11 running on unsupported hardware.

00:28:50.01
Christopher
The downside of this, or at least Microsoft would contest, that they could change this you know ability to run unsupported hardware at any time and you know you could be left out in the cold with a Windows 11 system that won't even boot, for example.

00:29:07.73
Gus
It blows my mind there's 400 million devices out there, 45% of the user base of the two operating systems that are essentially going to become insecure, well, have for the last three days have in essence become insecure.

00:29:26.65
Christopher
Because if the hacker, Caitlin, identifies a vulnerability that's less than something that can be used in WannaCry, people are left vulnerable. Their systems are left vulnerable.

Tom
Unless, and this on the messaging point as well, this is the thing that there are these other sort of options available for continuing security support under Windows 10.

00:29:48.48
Tom
So initially when Microsoft had announced this, they talked about extended support updates or ESU. I think it was initially just for business customers. sixty $60 for the first year, then $120, then $240.

00:30:02.85
TOM
And people complained. And then they said, okay, you can have it for individuals for $30. And then people complained. And they said, okay, schools can have it for $1 because you know schools have got loads of devices too, and they're schools.

00:30:15.82
Tom
And then what was the next one? i think they then said, okay, you can have it for free, but only if you link your usage to a Microsoft account and back up all your data with us.

00:30:27.25
Tom
And that caused some problems in the EU because now people in EEA countries, which is the EU plus a few others, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, maybe, they now will get access for free for a year.

00:30:43.99
Tom
So there's so many different variables and it depends as to what actually you'll be able to have for your device and what's available to you. And it hasn't been constant over the last year, 18 months at all.

00:30:57.33
Gus
And what's the actual cost? I guess there's no easy answer because there's so many different types of users, but is Windows 11 expensive?

Tom
It's free if you have Windows 10 to upgrade if you meet the compatibility requirements from Windows 10 to 11.

00:31:10.40
Tom
I think there was some messaging somewhere which kind of did that. It's free for now kind of thing, right? You know, it's sort of suggesting, yeah, it's no charge.

Caitlin
*wink*

Tom
Yeah, exactly. It's no charge today.

00:31:21.28
Tom
And obviously Microsoft may have incentives why they want to try and push people onto Windows 11 for other reasons too. But yeah, I don't think they've seen concrete evidence right now that they're going to start charging on this day.

00:31:32.62
Tom
But you might have buy a new device.

Christopher
I think just to clear up as well, like we're talking a lot here about Windows 10 and we're specifically really talking about the as Microsoft will refer to it, the general availability channel or GAC, which is the version of Windows that you get with a laptop when you buy it from Dell or the version of Windows if you go into the store and buy a copy.

00:31:59.37
Christopher
and is often the version that's installed by small and medium-sized businesses. and There are various other versions of Windows that are still going to remain supported.

00:32:12.20
Christopher
The notable ones I think would probably be the LTSC or the long-term servicing channel that Microsoft used for particularly large enterprises their support continues. I think there's support still to 2032 wow because they get 10 years of software support on the last version of a ltsc release so if the last version was in 2022 then they get 10 years till 2031. As Tom alluded to, there's the extended support updates, which has been flip-flopped around.

00:32:48.38
Christopher
And now consumers on the general availability version can get one year of support, but businesses can get up to three years of support. And it's a ratcheting.

00:33:00.08
Christopher
cost so the first year is cheaper than the second year and which is more expensive and the third year more expensive still as Microsoft tries and encourages companies to move away. And of those 400 million users a lot of them will be companies, and as a subset of that, a lot of those users will be things like hospitals who have line of business applications that aren't tested in Windows 11 environments or are connected to hardware that only has drivers available for Windows 10.

00:33:38.82
Caitlin
It's also worth noting with hospitals, it's extremely difficult to reboot machines because sometimes you just can't turn something off unless the same thing is available on another computer.

00:33:50.27
Caitlin
and often hospitals have older infrastructure because again, replacing stuff such that you can turn something off can be extremely difficult. So like if you want to update every single computer in a hospital, it's very difficult to do it all at the same time. It's very difficult to do it like at all, particularly as their infrastructure tends to be older.

00:34:13.39
Caitlin
And yeah, like even if you didn't face those driver problems, sometimes you need all the machines to be able to talk to each other and some of them being off isn't really an option.

Christopher
Yep, like some machines are pre-set up to only work in some environment. For example, an MRI machine might only work with software that only works with Windows 10. And I think hospitals might feel like they're in a little bit of a bind here because if they'd succumbed to WannaCry in 2017 and been pushed into updating after the event, a lot of UK, for example, the NHS services,

00:34:52.54
Christopher
were specifically victims of the WannaCry malware. They would have upgraded to Windows 10, you know, 2018 time after they'd recovered their systems and now they're in ah another position to have to upgrade yet again So its it's quite burdensome. And the other side of particularly healthcare contexts is that there are often other regulatory requirements on their systems beyond just the availability of patches and security updates and, you know, driver compatibility.

00:35:30.67
Christopher
You know, there's because they're often used in critical care scenarios, they have to go through a load of other kinds of auditing and requirement checking before they're allowed to be used in public.

Caitlin
When it comes as well to reasons not to switch over to Windows 11, Microsoft have not been covering ring themselves in glory necessarily with some of the features available in Windows 11, in particular Recall being the system that was going to screenshot every single thing you did on your computer.

00:35:59.79
Caitlin
was initially one of the more like visible new features that was going to be available in Windows 11. like There was a lot of advertising and talking about Recall.

00:36:10.27
Caitlin
And everyone went that's insane. That's a completely unreasonable thing to do. What are you doing? and it Given that Chris was talking about hospitals, worth noting, would be mad in a hospital taking screenshots of absolutely everything someone is doing on a computer, including sensitive health information, would be a choice.

00:36:28.11
Caitlin
and then Recall became something you could turn on and off, and then it got removed, and then it came back. but like If I was thinking about, do I want to update to Windows 11? I would also be thinking about, do I want some of these weird new AI features that Microsoft has been advertising And to be honest, a lot of the time the answer would be, mmm no I don't.

00:36:49.12
Gus
And so let me try to be generous for a second and give an opportunity for generosity. Why do we have OS updates? And this is, I'm not trying to sound like an idiot who doesn't understand innovation.

00:37:03.89
Gus
My understanding of operating systems goes back to the 1980s. I've used almost all the operating systems have existed since the 1980s. And I don't know why we keep on innovating so much at the OS level, but I imagine OS design has evolved more than I think it has, which is, does my floppy drive connect to the motherboard? And does can the data from the disk could be understood by the computer?

00:37:31.07
Gus
It's a little bit more advanced now, sure. But did we need Windows 11? Or is it just an AI add-on in the way that Apple tried to sell the last iOS in the same way?

00:37:44.42
Gus
Is there something genuinely interesting about... Windows 11 that is in the interests of the world to move on from Windows 10.

Tom
I mean, i I don't know from from the technical side of on the floppy disk and things like that, but I think the fact you still have such wide usage of Windows 10 suggests that it's still meeting lots of people's needs, right? And there may be lots of reasons why people don't want to use Windows 11 and the sort of mainstreaming of AI features into it, which we're seeing, I guess, not just on this, but on lots of different tech services that are being provided now.

00:38:16.40
Tom
Absolutely, might be one of them. I think that AI question is relevant to what I was mentioning earlier around this sort of, ah instead of paying for upgrades, being able to sort of say, oh, don't worry, I'll i'll upload all my data onto Microsoft services. Well, there might be all sorts of reasons why they want that as well, right?

00:38:30.80
Tom
And I think for me, what that also brings up is this kind of bigger question of like the ways in which users can be locked in to these products, these services that being provided by companies.

00:38:41.08
Tom
And then it's very difficult for them to say, well, actually, maybe I want to do it a different way. Maybe that doesn't quite work for me. So while, of course, there's all sorts of ways why people may like Windows 10, may not like Windows 11, blah, blah, blah, and and so on and so forth.

00:38:54.69
Tom
In some ways, it's important to think about it from the point of view of the user and saying, look, is this a device, ah product which you are now owning and can now do what works for you with and as you wish with?

00:39:05.75
Tom
Or is this in some ways a service you're leasing off a company and you have to work with it the way that they want to use it?

Christopher
So i think there's a lot of good reasons not to want to upgrade to Windows 11.

00:39:19.27
Christopher
Key ones will be for users having to use Microsoft accounts log into their desktop machine or laptop machine rather than being able to use a local user account.

00:39:31.60
Christopher
There were workarounds for this, but Microsoft is trying to close that loophole. In the latest builds, it now requires you to have a Microsoft account um There's the all-encompassing spectre of Copilot integration and sharing information in a way that is currently still unclear exactly how data that is shared with Copilot is used and trained and where it goes.

Gus
So Copilot being the Microsoft implementation of AI for users.

Christopher
Yes, Copilot is Microsoft's equivalent of ChatGPT. It's a large language model, but it can do image generation and all sorts of other things as well.

00:40:18.89
Christopher
And then as Caitlin alluded to there is Recall. Although, that won't necessarily be true of a lot of devices because I believe it requires co-pilot plus capable machine.

00:40:32.67
Christopher
yeah it's a it's a trajectory that a lot of users are uncomfortable with and you can understand why they would be uncomfortable with that.

Gus
i think I'm actually particularly pissed that you have to have a Microsoft account under Windows 11. That's outrageous.

Christopher
I agree. Yeah.

00:40:48.12
Tom
Well, I think this is why in the EEA, they ended up having to give it out free because Well, I mean, the final statement from Microsoft didn't tie it so directly, but certainly consumer groups had complained to Microsoft saying, oh, you you can't do that. You can't bundle the availability of your security of your service to also having this account.

00:41:09.33
Tom
Article 6.6, I think, of the DMA was what they pointed to what the Digital Markets Act, that is, I think is what they pointed towards for that. Now, Not everything quite got stitched together, but you can see how it can be. And yeah, it will it's again this point of saying, if I want to use one Microsoft product or service in one place, does that mean I have to use it for everything across every single yeah product feature I want to be using?

00:41:32.39
Tom
course, there's lots of ways in which those do get stitched together. And yeah, that's why I think we've ended up in a situation where if you're in the EEA, you do get one more year.

00:41:43.20
Gus
It links back to my to my question about why do we have operating system updates? And I'm going to ask this to the computer scientists amongst us. Like, has computing changed dramatically enough that we need to think about operating systems differently? So arguably it's the addition of AI. Sure, that's the most recent version.

00:42:00.16
Gus
But even the addition of a user account that's linked to the operating system provider. That's a different type of operating system than the operating systems of previous eras.

00:42:12.22
Gus
An operating system was software that ran locally, that told your computer how to run other things on your computer. Has that changed? And is Windows 11 just a version of that change.

Christopher
I think there's bits on multiple angles for this.

00:42:28.17
Christopher
So there is some hardware differences that have materialized over time that cause Windows 11 to be more capable than Windows 10 for handling certain kinds of hardware.

00:42:44.64
Christopher
The graphical side is relatively stagnated. I believe Windows 10 has DirectX 12 and Windows 11 is still using DirectX 12. There's not been a new graphical subsystem library.

00:42:57.19
Christopher
But one of the things that has changed is that processing cores in devices, particularly laptops, now are split between energy efficiency and performance which is not something that was available when Windows 10 was released and has to be backported in if you want to make it work in Windows 10.

00:43:19.91
Christopher
So where certain cores in your device operate at higher speed but use more power and other cores operate lower speed and use less power so the battery life is extended.

00:43:31.07
Christopher
There are probably other numerous changes within hardware, generally, usually performance improvements, faster SSDs, more capable RAM, although they're usually quite agnostic to the operating system only when drivers need to be changed or new protocols get released does precipitate an operating system update.

00:43:55.81
Christopher
And then it's really interesting on the connectivity side because a lot of what a desktop, like a home user experience is now, is what a corporate experience has been for the last 20 years where you logged into a domain where there was a policy assigned to you and you could access everything through a single sign-on interface. So you know you logged into your corporate domain and you got instant access to outlook because it knew you who you were and then you got instant access to the contact system and because it knew you know that you you were in the accountancy department and you'd want to talk to all the other accountants for example

00:44:40.65
Christopher
and we've now got to the point where this information is now part of the home experience. You log in, you get signed into your browser which keeps all your passwords and your shortcuts and your bookmarks.

00:44:52.97
Christopher
You know, you're signed into Copilot and it knows, knows quote unquote, about you. it You know, it can address you with but as your username, whatever. so that's a change and it's a slightly different experience i recently had this experience with my brother-in-law where as a privacy person i'm like you gus i like the local account everything stays on my machine and i was trying to convince my brother-in-law who's also was on windows 10 to upgrade to windows 11 i said oh if you can get access to it you can use the enterprise version

00:45:28.15
Christopher
And a lot of this stuff, the copilots and the store integration and the advertising are all bolt-ons for the enterprise because enterprises don't really want this.

00:45:38.92
Gus
Exactly.

Christopher
But he was like, oh, no, I can't use this because I can't sign in with my Microsoft account because the enterprise version expects you to sign in to an enterprise network.

Gus
That's so annoying.

00:45:50.68
Christopher
And I was just surprised that someone was so enamored by Microsoft's account service. But it's just interesting how different people use different devices.

Gus
And probably a Hotmail account. I bet you he has a Hotmail account.

00:46:14.16
Gus
What can we say for people who are listening, who didn't know this before, who are using Windows 10? like Can we make resources available to them so they can understand what their options are and what the implications of those options are?

00:46:30.25
Speaker
Like Chris, before you alluded that there are alternative operating systems, but we don't want to tell somebody to install an alternative operating system. But if they wanted to go and learn, can we point them in these directions?

00:46:42.48
Christopher
So we wrote a blog post or a long read about this, but there is some suggestions there around what you could do next. As you say, there are other operating systems, various forms of Linux being the most likely to be an option.

00:47:02.14
Christopher
that will run on older hardware and maintain ah security footing, security updates. There are also other alternatives from other companies.

00:47:14.16
Christopher
A certain search giant has an operating system based on their browser. I don't think PI would recommend that one, but...

Caitlin
Well, PI would technically recommend nothing, but would maybe strongly recommend against that one...

Tom
Do your updates. We'd recommend do your updates, right?

00:47:31.24
Christopher
So I mean, it is an operating system is very secure. But if you're and if you're okay with that search company, Google, you know, using all your data to increase its search dominance, then that's fine. But obviously, we as privacy advocates think it's pretty crap behaviour...

Caitlin
sketchy.

Christopher
Yeah, sketchy for them to use your data to try and increase their search dominance.

00:47:57.06
Gus
Yeah, but sorry, Chris, like it I'm i' the first to agree that Chrome OS is relatively secure. it just It pisses me off because it's exactly the same problem we're dealing with, which is what we want for everybody right now is that they have devices that they own and love and use, and they are kept secure for as long as possible.

00:48:17.52
Gus
And what Microsoft is saying from what I understand from this discussion, which drives me nuts because I didn't know any of this at a time, that essentially the path of least resistance is the update to a new OS and you have to create a user account with Microsoft, which is the exact same destination you would get to with Chrome OS, which is why I've hated Chrome OS.

00:48:38.18
Gus
And just this industry shift towards you will only be secure for as long as we'll will let you be secure. But by the way, as we increase the number of steps you have to go through, in order to be secure, we're going to get more and more data and own more and more of your journey through life.

00:48:54.07
Gus
That's just pissing me off. So I'm not going to be happy with the recommendation of Chrome OS. Sorry, that was a rant just because you brought the Chrome OS red flag to this bowl.

Tom
Or charge you more and more money or find other ways to lock you in to other features and services. Exactly. Or make it so that actually you you can't use whatever feature without it also going off to the AI servers and so on and so forth.

00:49:16.84
Tom
So the like your question of... Like what should people do? I mean, people should like find out if their device is still running Windows 10, if it can update and what their options are and think about all those different options.

00:49:29.45
Tom
We've set out a load of like suboptimal options for different reasons. But in some ways, I think but maybe, if if I can be optimistic again, it's a chance for people to actually kind of really think about, well what is the tech that they need?

00:49:42.99
Tom
How does it work for them? What do they need it for? What are they using it for? And how can it be something where they're like oh, actually, this is what I want. And to try and get a little bit of control over that back, and and that's hard for all the reasons we're talking about, but to try and think about how what's the actual product and service that I need and how can I kind of put that in place rather than just kind of being spoon-fed and being dependent I mean, we're we're moved into the whole ballgame.

00:50:17.27
Christopher
We've moved into the realms of Tesla, who can give you a software update to give you more range, we've moved into the realms of BMW, who log features on your $70,000 car behind a subscription service.

00:50:29.05
Christopher
we are and you know we were talking about dishwashers cars are the got to be one of the worst offenders here for having software that goes out of date when the car's longevity far outlasts the various satellite navigation systems and infotainment systems you know i've got a car that has an app for twitter on it that doesn't work because twitter is now x and

CAITLIN
And also why are you using Twitter from your car?

Christopher
I know, so many questions.

Gus
And this is why that like I never liked surveillance capitalism ah as a concept, because it doesn't capture all of this horrible stuff that you're all talking about, which is a disposable tech world that focuses on bringing you deeper and deeper into the ecosystems of very powerful players already.

00:51:23.45
Gus
And if you don't fully comply, including with the monthly payments or the buying of new services to unlock features of hardware you already own, then you're not the ideal citizen for the future.

00:51:36.97
Gus
And that's not the way this all started, and it's not the way it has to be. And now we're seeing operating systems essentially move to the cloud, like with OpenAI's latest innovations around how they will run apps for you.

00:51:50.79
Gus
so that those apps on their servers can order you that car, can book you that place at the restaurant. And so everything's becoming as a service. And these companies, I don't know if you've noticed, they become meaner and meaner and more tech bro right wing

Tom
yeah you're no longer go buying something you're leasing it off people and you're using it at the sort of you know um with the goodwill and then of course it brings in the possibility of rent seeking as well that possibility to say oh actually like chris was saying unlock this extra feature if you want to use it And you're kind of already a bit like, well, where do I look around?

00:52:28.28
Tom
So the analogy with cars, I mean, we could probably talk for a long time but about the analogy with cars, but you know there was a time when you had a car and you maybe could understand a bit about how it worked, but you could certainly go to like anywhere else, any old garage to get it fixed and work it up.

00:52:42.26
Tom
And we've moved away from that model. Well, yeah, you no longer have a product which is yours and you can work out how you're going to use it and what you're going to do with it. But rather it's like, oh, you're restrained and restricted

00:52:53.36
Tom
in what it can be used for.

Caitlin
I mean to continue the car analogy, farmers have been fighting John Deere for years, who have massively restricted how farmers can repair their tractors, which huge hulking piece of machinery that should last you know an extraordinarily long time.

Christopher
I mean, the price of a tractor is in the quarter of a million dollars range.

00:53:12.73
Caitlin
Yeah, but I mean, to come back to the things that people can do, you know, if you want to avoid all this stuff, then you ah do have extremely limited options and you are going to have to get tiny bit technical for a greater or lesser value of technical.

00:53:27.15
Caitlin
And that sounds scary. I think Linux is becoming increasingly less scary. Like I think there are so many projects around Linux, so many versions of Linux that can be overwhelming. And there are certainly versions of Linux that are very, very designed for people who want to play with it.

00:53:43.80
Caitlin
But there are also versions that are designed for people who want to use it, you know, and I don't want to turn people off that as an option, because it is a very good option.

Tom
Yeah, I agree. i think there's a bunch of non-scary options and it's also loads of support both online and actually at the moment in the real world as well. People are doing cafes and support groups and things like that, partly because of the Windows 10 end of life end of support.

00:54:07.54
Tom
But yeah, in some ways that's certainly an option and it's that's what someone needs to go and look at and think about, is that the right option for me and what I need and what I want? But yeah, and nothing necessarily is going to tick everyone's boxes.

00:54:20.11
Caitlin
Yeah, I think sometimes we think about things like, what what's the perfect option or you know what would be the perfect solution? and Partly because of the political and economic environment and market environment, which is partly a political environment anyway, the conditions that we're under, there are no perfect options.

00:54:36.36
Caitlin
But also because every person's individual needs are different, individual tech comfort levels are different. And so what works for you might be, I'm just going upgrade to Windows 11.

00:54:47.36
Caitlin
What works for someone else might be, I'm going to, you know, try and have a go at Linux. What works for someone else might be, you know, one of the suggestions in the long read, which we'll link in the description, is if you use it for something specific, it might make sense to...

00:55:02.17
Caitlin
you know, shield the system and just use it for that thing. So there are loads of options. We've outlined them kind of in a bit more detail in the long read. I say we, Tom and Chris, I had absolutely nothing to do with it. I've just read it and it's quite easy to read and easy to remember. So we'll add it to the link in the description.

00:55:18.34
Caitlin
And you can find all of our work on this topic because we've been doing it for a number of years on our website.

Gus
One the things that people can do is actually also to speak to their elected officials.

00:55:31.03
Gus
to say, why doesn't the law of my country protect me from this kind of insecurity? So for instance, that's how we were able through many years of work to get the EU to establish rules about how long a company that sells a device in the EU has to maintain the security updates of those devices.

00:55:58.32
Gus
And it shouldn't just be to the EU. Now, by us getting that into eu law, it does kind of set a standard for the world. But as we know, companies are very good at trying to sidestep regulation.

00:56:10.46
Gus
So we should expect every government across the planet on the back of this lesson of Windows 10 to demand that if you are going to sell products and hardware in a country,

00:56:24.81
Gus
in your country that they should provide security updates so the people and the infrastructure, including government-run infrastructure in your country, is kept secure for a longer period.

Caitlin
I think that's a really good point. And if people are interested in keeping up date on our work in this area, including any actions that ah we're going to be asking you to take soon, you should definitely sign up to one of our mailing lists at pvcy.org/podsignup.

00:56:50.51
Caitlin
Even if you're you're in the EU, don't feel safe. The EU are currently discussing the Cyber Resilience Act. And there's still ah few years until it's going to be practically implemented. So it would be worth emailing your MEP and saying, good job. This is a good piece of law.

00:57:07.37
Caitlin
It doesn't go far enough. But I'm pleased that the EU has managed to achieve this and try and help protect it for the long term to ensure that those five years of software support are the five years that you actually receive when the law is actually implemented.

**Music Break**

00:57:28.95
Caitlin
I think they've been really caught off guard by how many people are still on Windows 10. I think they've been caught off guard by how dramatic a ah shift it's going to be. Part of why this is such a big deal is because most of the time, if you're buying ah desktop, or you're building your own pretty cool,

00:57:44.18
Caitlin
that you do that you know, you're buying a laptop whatever you've got two choices and one of them probably is microsoft and one of them probably is ios is apple and maybe you have a tablet a chromebook whatever and you you're engaging with chrome os but there's not that many of you and most of you are doing the first two and so you don't have a huge number of choices and I think that comes back to you know what Tom was saying about Digital Markets Act comes back to what PI has been working on when it comes to market capture and market dominance and comes back to 400 million people.

00:58:17.72
Caitlin
And that's not because you know this is the best operating system the world's ever seen. It's because you don't have a huge number of choices. That's a lot of freaking people.

Tom
It's a lot of people, and to go back to my mum, that point of why does she need to be going into this detailed research around this? She should be able to have something which which works for her, meets her needs.

00:58:38.87
Tom
And also, people sometimes, especially people who are not tech savvy, they don't like it when like their interface changes.

Caitlin
Oh, I hate it.

Tom
Yeah, exactly right.

Caitlin
You don't have to be tech savvy. I hate change.

Tom
And so you're like, where's everything gone? How do i do everything? And if you're already in a situation where you feel a little bit overwhelmed by all of these things, which actually, yes, all of us do, actually, then that moment of being like, everything is now different. Why can't it have just been how it was before? It's just another thing to like layer onto people.

00:59:09.28
Gus
So just to disagree with both of you as such a fundamental layer the only reason i update an operating system is so i can get the new interface that's that's shiny stuff

Christopher
Yeah i mean is going to hate me for bringing this one up but like if you're an apple user and you're using icloud for backup good luck trying to move your backups anywhere else you know you're now so locked in to paying it might only be at this stage 99 p a month to get you a 50 gig of data but like you're locked in and that's repeat revenue forever.

Caitlin
I mean have we accidentally done like an hour-long advert for Cory Doctrow's new book: Enshitification

01:00:02.15
Caitlin
We're definitely cutting that out, but it's still funny.

Gus
Yeah, and for what it's worth, we haven't been mean to Apple in any of this. And and I wonder why, because like they they do constantly say these devices are end of life. They do constantly say the new operating system will not extend to devices bought before this year.

01:00:22.22
Gus
What's the difference here, Chris?

Christopher
I think there's a couple of things that different. Firstly, there's an expectation difference and this is just because of the way that Apple sells hardware as opposed to Microsoft's Windows running on a load of OEMs hardware, different providers' hardware,

01:00:41.02
Christopher
in that your operating system is somewhat latched when you bought your hardware. So if you buy a MacBook today, it'll be running the latest version of Mac OS and you should expect to get like seven years of software support out of it.

01:01:01.25
Christopher
and I mean it's got a little bit shorter as they've tried to kick out all the Intel models out of their range and MacBook side but you're getting ah well-known quantity which is just you know it's like it's a security of mind I guess I mean it's not dissimilar from what Microsoft's trying to do it's just that you know what you're getting when you buy something which is better.

01:01:25.10
Christopher
And I think the other thing that Apple kind of a doing better, least on their MacBook range, it doesn't apply quite so much to stuff on iOS, is it's still a local device for the most part.

01:01:42.06
Christopher
You can sign into iCloud. It does ask you to sign into iCloud, but it doesn't force you to sign into iCloud. you know you can use most of the functionality of the device without having it check in repeatedly

Caitlin
That's very nice. But their software supports like seven years.

01:02:00.19
Caitlin
So ah you're buying an extraordinarily expensive piece of technology. I mean, like some of their stuff is obscenely expensive and they are expecting you to use it for seven years, which it doesn't seem like a lot of time if you divide the cost of the machine across those seven years, like at all.

01:02:20.50
Christopher
I don't know I think we're getting to a very deep discussion about ROI a lot of businesses are using MacBooks because the ROI is actually still quite good for them versus buying Dells or other kinds of devices.

01:02:36.69
Caitlin
If I buy an iPhone that's like, what, a grand? Like a thousand pounds, something like that. And then it's supposed to last seven years. That is how much money per year.

01:02:49.90
Caitlin
God, why can't I do that math in my head? That's appalling.

Tom
Dividing by seven is hard. It's £142.86p.

Christopher
But imagine you're buying Google Pixel 8, I don't know what they're up to, 9, whatever they're on now, and your software support is five years, and it's an £800 phone.

01:03:05.37
Christopher
Oh, no, for sure. i think I think my point is that we can be nice to Apple. There are things that they do well, but this is an industry-wide problem.

01:03:22.71
Caitlin
And software support is an industry-wide problem. It's a problem Microsoft has, but it is also a problem that Apple has. It is also a problem that Google has. And it's certainly a problem that others... phone and technology companies have ah pretty universally because long-term software support, security support is good for the consumer, but isn' it isn't necessarily good for the company. And it's expensive.

01:03:43.86
Caitlin
And it's expensive. And that's why we want to talk about things like the Cyber Resilience Act. We want to talk about things like regulation because expecting companies to give it to us to be nice is, I think, pretty optimistic.

01:03:58.76
Tom
This also goes the point Gus was saying around, nope why do we need this extra innovation in OSs? What are they giving us extra on top of it, which means that the older devices are no longer compatible with the new operating systems?

01:04:13.76
Tom
Because this is, in some ways, like the key as to why all this stuff around Windows 10 has become an issue, because there are devices out there which can't be upgraded to the latest versions.

Caitlin
Well, it's also like, I do think it's it's it's a fair point from the companies to also say, like long-term software support costs us money.

01:04:31.06
Caitlin
Continuing to find an update for bugs that create security issues in Windows 10 does cost Microsoft money. And it does cost other companies money. That is a completely reasonable point. And if we were going hardcore, like...

01:04:43.88
Caitlin
you know, no regulation, libertarian capitalism, then that would be the only point. But, you know, that's not where we are because there are market regulations and we are pushing for things like the Cyber Resilience Act, which should protect consumers more.

01:05:00.10
Caitlin
But it is a trade off where we say, look, the thing is just as a social good, as a long term kind of environmental good and to protect the privacy and security of your users, you are just going to have to spend the money.

01:05:25.57
Gus
So thank you for listening to all of us at PI. It was great to have a discussion with Chris and Tom. Remember, you can sign up to be the first to learn more about the work like this at pbcy.org slash pod signup.

01:05:39.67
Gus
And we'll include some links to relevant articles, including our own writing, in the description, wherever you're listening, or on our website at pvcy.org/techpill.

01:05:51.68
Gus
Don't forget to rate and subscribe to the podcast on whichever platform you use. Music is courtesy of Sepia. This podcast was produced by Max Burnell for Privacy International.