Is it possible that Microsoft is using the remaining power of my machine to power paid Microsoft Azure machines?
How would we go about that, and how does that fit in modern day capitalism (you don’t even own your own machine)?
I think your question is misunderstood. Are you asking: “Is Microsoft using my PC or laptop to rent some power through Microsoft Azure?”
Your question is super vague.
You want to know " does microsoft optimise the load on its serveur when you rent CPU time ? " the answer at 99% is yes.
Or you’re going into conspiracy land and ask " Is Microsoft stealing CPU time from me" the answer is not for azure but for all the bullshit tracking they do.
Of that concern you switch to a libre os
Well, Microsoft certainly doesn’t care if I want to own my data or my physical things.
You own your hardware. What is you run on it is up to you.
Not saying it’s not costly to install another OS . but it’s possible and there are people and collective ready to help you online and offline.
Cool, but I can’t help but to think: Unwanted tracking used to be spyware. Unwanted ads used to be adware. Unwanted processor usage is now cryptojacking. What if it is just something that “used to be” as well?
Unwanted processor usage
Most of the web is full of tracker. Those tracker you download them on your browser. That browser use your processor to run the shitty tracking code.
This is a stupid example but bear with me: when I load Facebook I use 100% of my cpu. Reddit ~50%. Lemmy ~50%. I have 4 thread on my old i5 . Scrolling FB use 1 whole tread (25% load). Scrolling Reddit 1/2 thread. Lemmy 1/3 thread (but lemmy is not infinite scrolling).
I consider that the three site provide the same information, text/image/video. If a website use twice the resources to do the same job it is as you said “unwanted processor usage”.
It’s the kind of price people are OK to pay. At some point removing the FB apps from an android phone would increase the battery life by 25%. When I heard people complaining about their phone battery life that something i would bring up, none deleted the app. If you make the math it’s absolutely insane millions of peoples (180M users) had to charge their phone more often because of that shitty code.
Just use GNU/Linux
Yes, but Microsoft owns over 70% of the market. Wouldn’t you expect those people to have some rights?
What do you mean when you say “rights”?
Rights over their ownership of hardware and more rights over ownership of data. So that spyware, adware and processor using is what they used to be: malware.
We can’t have people normalizing jacking into our computers just because it is connected to the Internet.
Soon, much more things will be connected to the Internet, which means much more control over our hardware - or companies basically treating us as a hostile country they want to suck on, by intrigue, spying and military action.
I don’t want to be treated like a criminal because I want to own my hardware, people can’t just force this giving status onto me, especially when it’s not fucking mutual: companies won’t move a centimeter into giving us ground and is basically sucking us ever more.
If they are going through with this “be giving” mentality, at least companies should adhere to it and have their resources sucked freely - I certainly have much less to give than a rich company who doesn’t care about me.
Soon, much more things will be connected to the Internet, which means much more control over our hardware - or companies basically treating us as a hostile country they want to suck on, by intrigue, spying and military action.
More than your dishwasher and microwave?
Also, who is treating you like a criminal?
Cars and city objects will be connected to the Internet.
Treated like a criminal, for example, as in I can’t be trusted with deDRMd stuff because I’m presumed to have bad intentions with owning my hardware/data.
Which market? If you are saying cloud (which I assumed) that is not accurate.
AWS 32%
AZURE 20%
GCP 9%
Yeah I don’t think I understood your question correctly initially. You are asking about whether or not MS could use your hardware to power azure as sort of a way for them to steal resources exploiting their market dominance?
The answer is yes. Would they? Even if it is legal (maybe it already is, IANAL) for them to do it I doubt they’d do it . My two cents is that the reality is the resulting product would be too unreliable to sell to customers, especiaply Enterprise customers. I guess they could sell preemptive VMs but even then there are so many things they can’t control: network, hardware, availability, basically the only use a system without more guarantees is for raw computation like Bitcoin mining or folding@home like applications. Sure they could do that and sell it but they’ve chosen not to for some reason. The technology has existed she nice the late 90s. Likely doesn’t make monetary sense.
This idea hasn’t come to my mind until now, but if it’s true, nobody should hesitate any longer & should abandon MS products for good
