This is the rule for any account or mobile game, too - if it asks your age before asking for consent to farm, put any age below 13. It'll either not farm you because it's illegal or it'll kick you out. If the latter, good riddance really

If that actually becomes a thing people do, that could prompt MS to start to require either submitting to a face scan or showing some government ID just to install Windows, though, if the way Google's handling KYC on YT if your account gets flagged as underage, and soon Android app dev, as well as KYC going out across other sites, is any indication.

I'm pretty sure having to KYC just to install an OS is the last thing people want right now.

Back in my day, we had to make ourselves looks older online to get things, not younger! hehe

My go to is to pop open the console and run "ipconfig /release" right before you create an account. Win 11 will have you set up a local account if you don't have a network connection.

What if they just ask your age as step 1 of the setup?

collecting data, and training AI of course.

just making it easier to act like they don't even exist. I'll never, EVER get an account for MY computer.

I've been using Linux exclusively for more than ten years. You've made the right choice. As if you needed anyone to tell you 😆

I could see them requiring government-issued ID. The age verification laws coming into effect in various states and countries make this a logical step for Microsoft. They might even start their own age verification service where you give them your ID and they vouch for your age with the sites you visit in Edge. Of course it would have the totally accidental side effect that everything you do on your computer could be monitored and legally tied to your identity.

its on our work computers, i believe windows 11 with all the BLOAT too.

Technically it possible with using windows server edition ,clean no bloatware ,minimum processes Legally cost a lot not available for usual users only in crack way

It's not our mentality, it's their strategy.

Wars breed new strategies.

Sometimes it's free trade as a carrot and embargo as a stick, like with, well, one can try to nail it to Napoleonic wars, but as old as life. Sometimes it's mass production and standardization and ergonomics and scientific industrial design, one can try to nail these to WWII, but also as old as life. And sometimes it's controlled escalation as a way to reach your goals without triggering nuclear response, which one can nail to the Cold War.

American strategy of the Cold War is being used against world markets, ladies and gentlemen. Together with the previous two strategies mentioned.

The Soviet one was the opposite, to try to make even the smallest transgression cause firmly the same response, so that controlled escalation wouldn't work, but unfortunately one is founded in human psychology (plus game theory) and the other in rational knowledge (just game theory), the latter always loses. It was called scientific-technical revolution and meant literally its name - instead of gradual escalation, which favors the stronger side, you should create technical means to punch a fatal wound, nothing gradual.

So - the subscriptions themselves matter very little, they are just slowly transitioning everything big to dependence upon remote components available over the Internet.

It's funny, actually, so much gradual work, and in the end it'll be just wasted time - even making computers is not magic. State of the art processes could as well be that for most of humanity, but for many purposes Pentium MMX is a good enough computer, and such are not magic.

And especially making computer software of the kind that's being "metropolized" like this is not magic. Most of it is complex simply because of legacy, backwards compatibility and as a barrier for competitors making alternative implementations.

I had no clue skate didn't work for Linux until I went to play it :'( it was installed and everything. Bummer.

Those kinds of computers still exist, it's called Linux.

to ubiquitous shit-shoveling malware appliances controlled by some of the worst elements of society.

Hmmm, I wonder which background economical system we all live in that could explain why every single technology ends up controlled by the top 1% to make our lives more miserable and their profits higher...

The future was here, once upon a time.

and still expensive

Tbh I'm hoping the AI crash permanently kills most of the larger tech corps.