WTF.
That was extremely difficult to read. I'm assuming it's LLMese (I've had less trouble with reading the writing of ESL'ers), but one of the strangest dialects of it I've ever seen. It has the flavour of article-spun SEO spam and those shady fake research papers with "tortured phrases". What causes this obfuscated writing style?
Claude without an editor having worked too long on its own project.
All of this is enhanced claude-era vocabulary minted at the pool-of-efficiency, built as a de-facto evolution of legacy-style language.
Humans and their comment postambles, amirite?
(Here's a literal quote from a claude session: "After the f-war, the evidence itself stops lying."
I don't understand why companies are not focusing more on making these highly intelligent models speak a decent language. Maybe they are, and they're failing. But the last few months have made it pretty difficult to engage with these highly intelligent assistants.)
The last time I tried ChatGPT, it had the tone of "bland, attempting-to-be-helpful-but-stupid corporate HR person", which is annoying but still much more human-sounding than this mess.
Or a random GDID on each read?
No GDID sounds like it sticks out a lot more.
It would make more sense just not use windows to begin with.
Same GDID would pollute the data for Microsoft if enough people did it. Which would also incentivise a fix or another way to differentiate.
Random GDID would likely be the most "security through obscurity" approach but still allow tracking per "session" or whatever time period it changed in.
No GDID could stick out more and if enough people did it also incentivise a fix.
Hard to say which is best but I also like another persons suggestion of random GDID assigned at boot. Or maybe no GDID by default with the option to spoof a random GDID manually
For example, it you are paranoid about Linux's /var/lib/dbus/machine-id file you can easily use dbus-uuidgen(1) to re-create it on shutdown.
C. 2012 I swore never to use Windows again, and I've managed it! It is possible - macOS is really good (you'll have to unlearn your muscle memory of the Ctrl key) and Linux gaming has come a long way.
If using Windows professionally, consider installing it in a VM on your mac or linux box, then asking your agent to set up scripts that remote to to it (eg. via ssh) and do the required tasks (builds, headless test-runs etc) - remotely.
Offtopic for the GDID thing; but couldn't be more on topic if you think the market shouldn't tolerate GDIDs and such things.
There is another option, which is to use Karabiner to revert to PC-like shortcuts. Learning the mac way is probably better if you plan to use mac exclusively, but I was triple-wielding macos+windows+linux for a period and I wanted my muscle memory to work across all of them.
It's actually really too bad MacOS doesn't have some of the windows key shortcuts like "windows key + arrow key". Would be super useful.
Two years now, and it consistently blocks 48% to 54% of all the trash, including _all_ Microsoft domains.
> Court reporting in 2026 established that Microsoft held a GDID-to-URL/time/IP association in one investigation.
1) what is the legal basis for storing it and if that's proper or not (e.g. legitimate interest requires balancing test)
2) if proper GDPR Article 13 notice was given and it covers that processing
3) if all Article 5 principals are being followed in regards to it (e.g. data minimization, retention period etc.)
4) if Microsoft had legal basis to transfer the data to police (they probably did, that's not high bar to clear)
Last week, when I logged into my Microsoft account, I had an extra machine with a funny name. Checking some logs, sure enough that was the hostname he gave that machine. Realized what had happened, refreshed the page, and it was gone.
The URL parameter for these devices in the Microsoft Account page is the GDID. So the Microsoft Account page showed me a GDID of a device I unlinked ~4 years ago. (And I'm slightly obsessive, I check on my Google/Microsoft account every other month.) Gooood job Microsoft.
It's missing quite a few things. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for claude
There's zero way to onion.route your internet connection information, unless you plan to go nowhere and do nothing.
Sure, it's worth to highlight privacy-potential-invasions, but the idea that you'll some how escape notice by changing the gdid is short sighted navel gazing.
You think they would have been thwarted without the gdid