Black belt in Mikado, Photo model, for the photos where they put under ‘BEFORE’
- 76 Posts
- 263 Comments
If you like, with Windhawk you can have, without any problems, the look and feel of Windows 98 in Windows 11. The biggest problem in Windows is the amount of bloatware, spyware, services which nobody needs and other crap filling the memory, which it has by default. Luckily there are tons of FOSS apps out there which permits to show the middlefinger to M$ and turn it in a fast, small and reasonable private OS (my Windows has less than 800 MB in RAM (RAM 16GB -15,3 GB free) and is blazing fast.). All apps and tools I use are FOSS.
Yes, this is why using Windhawk is mandatory in W11 (apart of Portmaster)
It’s absolute nonsense the MS argumentation about it, when a simple script of Windhawk with few lines solve this “problem” same as with the crappy W11 Startmenu.
Windhawk is something like an Userscript Manager, with tons of different scripts to change at the Milimetre instant any aspect of the UI, no restart needed, on off the change with a click. All script visible and editable.
That is the point, I use Windows but the Copilot was one of the first thing, among a lot of other crap, which I deleted from the system. I prefer to lick my Ellbow before tolerating an inbuild AI in the system or in the browser. I’m using sometimes since almost 3 years an AI search (Andisearch), because I know that it ist one of the most private and anonym search engine out there and offers 99% trustworth results from reliable sources, no logs, no tracking, searches not even appears in the browser history, but it is an exeption. It don’t invent nothing, if it don’t find a result of the question, it say it and offers an normal websearch (DDG). But this, It can give an direct answer, but in internet it is always needed to check before use, with and without AI.
AI itself isn’t the real problem, the problem are AIs from greedy corporations. The AIs are nothing new, they existed since the first electronic checkergames and before. Also not a so great problem that for the user the results are often biased and containing halucinations, it’s the same as normal researches in the web, where it is always needed to contrast the results. The problem exist when the user don’t do it, trusting what the webpage, the influencer or ChatGPT said. AI is an tool which can offer huge benefits in researches, offering relevant results and atvantages in science, medicine, physics and chemie. The existence of new materials and also vaccines in last years didn’t exist without AI. For the user an search engine with AI can have advantages and be a helpfull tool, but only if in the results appears trustworth sources, which normal ChatBots don’t show, relaying only on the own scrapped knowledge base, often biased by big corporations and political interests. The other problem is the AI hype, to add AI even in a toaster, worstto add AI in the OS and/or in the browser, which is always a privacy and also an security risk, when the AI have access to activity and even the locally filesystem, the issues like the menciones of the Google AI is the result of this. No, AI isn’t the real problem, it can be a powerfull and usefull tool, but it isn’t a tool to substitute the own intelligence and creativity, nor an innocent toy to use it in everything.
There are two Windows services which are big Data hogs, slowing down the system and which you can desactivate, the hibernation service, which create temporary duplicates of every open app in a temporary file, so it open this apps after Reboot, it’s not really needed, you can put apps you use regulary simply in the Start avoiding to fill your PC with tons of temp files. Apart the Index service, which stored any change in the file system, to accelerate the search, but this in a modern PC, more if you use an SSD, don’t make much diifference, but save a lot of RAM and CPU.
For customize the UI and the Start menu, which in Win 11 is by default an absolute crap with an chunky Fisher Price design, where you can’t customize not even the Task Bar, you can use WindHawk (FOSS), it’s something like an userscript manager, which permits to change any aspect of the GUI with an click.
If you have to use Windows, there are two mandatory apps with which you can turn Windows in an fast, private and submissive OS without nags and trackings, Hellzerg Optimizer and Portmaster. My tweked W11 use less than 1 GB in RAM and the GUI has nothing to do with the (horrible) original one.
Not only Chromiums in this alliance, also Geckos there.
https://www.goeuropean.org/, there you can find all kind of stuff. but there is anyway an page with all european alternatives in https://european-alternatives.eu/categories.
Summary
Microsoft has admitted it cannot protect EU citizen data from U.S. government access, even when stored in European data centers. In sworn testimony before a French Senate inquiry in June 2025, Microsoft France’s legal director Anton Carniaux stated “No, I cannot guarantee” that French citizen data would never be transmitted to U.S. authorities without explicit French authorization[1].
The admission stems from the U.S. CLOUD Act, which compels American companies to hand over user data regardless of where it is stored[1:1]. While Microsoft claims to resist “unfounded” requests, they must ultimately comply with legally valid U.S. demands[2].
This revelation has significant implications for European data sovereignty, as U.S. firms control 69% of Europe’s cloud infrastructure[1:2]. The issue affects all major U.S. cloud providers - Microsoft, Google, and AWS must all comply with U.S. surveillance laws including FISA, the CLOUD Act, and Executive Order 12333[2:1].
European officials worry this creates dangerous dependencies, as sensitive government, healthcare and business data could be accessed without EU oversight[3]. Some experts advocate shifting to EU-based providers operating solely under European jurisdiction[2:2].
Well, it’s clear that the EU can’t avoid leaking data to the US, when they continue using US Cloud providers, irrelevant if they use MS, Google or any other. They can force MS to have OneDrive desactivated by default, let the choice to the user if he want to use it or any other EU provider, if he can’t o won’t to use Linux, but there is the same problem when he use US cloud providers, is there where tha data are property of the corresponding company and the gov “to protect the childrem and making America great again”
EU sovereignty in soft an services, better yesterday as tomorrow, FTUS
Nor for me, but I found alternative info
Tech billionaires are systematically dismantling American democratic institutions through unprecedented concentration of wealth and power, with Europe potentially facing similar threats[1][2].
Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and other tech leaders are implementing an explicitly anti-democratic vision outlined in “The Sovereign Individual,” a 1997 manifesto that predicted nation-states would collapse as wealthy elites gain independence from democratic control[3]. This ideology sees democracy as incompatible with freedom and envisions a “cognitive elite” rising to power through cryptocurrency and internet technologies[2:1].
The strategy has three key components:
Direct Political Control: Tech billionaires like Musk have gained extraordinary influence through campaign spending and direct government roles. Musk now controls critical government infrastructure through his “Department of Government Efficiency,” modifying federal payment systems without oversight[4].
Institutional Capture: Wealthy tech leaders are systematically weakening government agencies and civil service protections. Trump’s “Schedule F” order could replace tens of thousands of civil servants with political loyalists vetted by conservative groups[2:2].
Alternative Power Centers: Billionaires are establishing autonomous zones and acquiring land in places like New Zealand as “boltholes” for societal collapse. Thiel obtained New Zealand citizenship despite spending only 12 days in the country[3:1].
The model draws from competitive authoritarian regimes where “elections are often fiercely contested battles in which incumbents have to sweat it out” but the system is rigged through government machinery to attack opponents and co-opt critics[2:3].
Europe faces similar pressures as tech companies resist regulation and establish parallel power structures. According to tech policy experts, the U.S. must not undermine European efforts to “regain sovereignty over their information systems and resist domination by Big Tech”[5].
Generally hallucinations are frequent in pure chatbots, ChatGPT and similar, because they are based on an own knowledge base and LLM, so, if they don’t know an answer, they invent it, based on their data set. Different are AI with web access, they don’t have an own knowledge base, retrieving their answers in realtime from webcontents, because of this with a similar reliability as traditional search engines, with the advantage that they find relevant sites which are related with the context of the question, listing sources and summarizing the contents in a direct answer, instead of 390.000 pages of sites, which have nothing to do with the question in the traditional keyword search. IMHO for me, the only AI apps which result usefull for normal users, as search assistant, not an chatbot which tell me BS.
Also not a problem, there are also a lot of EU hosting services
I think that they will return to it, due to the growing need, also because of the growing use of LLM everywhere, which is a big energy problem and costs only for the cooling. The chinese saw it that the best manner is to use submarine servers, which no need energy for the cooling, saving a lot of money. The energy need of cooling large data centers are a lot of MW + of what the need is from the servers. The only other alternative are datacenters in polar regions, done already by nordic countries. The drawback of submarine servers is the accessibility, but with the saved money in energy it’s a minor problem. Independent of political opinions, western countries can learn a lot of chinese, we look to much on lobby interests of big corporations, which often break down the developement of new tecnologies.
No, after >30 years using PCs I’m very aware of this and what enter or leave the system.