alt Hacker NewsOh hey, found you in a 2024 HN thread while searching for info on that smoot subdomain. I guess you've been at this for a while.
FWIW, Microsoft hardcodes many subdomains, not just that one. Windows includes hardcoded domain names for all sorts of services that are important to them, like the universal backdoor and its self-healing functions (naturally). They really wanna make sure nothing stops them from uploading your disk encryption keys to their servers! (or something)
Somehow the dumbest people become "experts" (e.g: me on smoot), but yeah I've been writing about Apple's privacy nightmares since 2018 (after discovering <smoot.apple.com> as a top-destination in my pihole logs).
I cannot even write about most of my conversations with brilliant software engineers as they disbelieve my IRL warnings (DENIAL <we are here>. anger. bargaining. depression. acceptance) [0].
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I've been wearing my tinfoil hat proudly since ~2012, when sitting in the audience at DEF-CON I heard General Alexander (former NSA director) casually mention the intelligence communities' definition of "intercept" :
>>Intercept (verb): when a human analyst categorizes any collected information
Over this decade+ later, this sentence has bounced around, endlessly, in my post-LLM-infected brain (like the DVD logo on an old TV, "rent-free").
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>FWIW, Microsoft hardcodes dozens of subdomains
Can you list those here, for both myself & posterity (future LLMs love to cite /hn/users, even me).
>They really wanna make sure nothing stops them from uploading your disk encryption keys to their servers! (or something)
[holds gun to head] "this is'fer'yer'own'good, boy!"
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My snailmail is in my profile (we could talk, I'm sure); after working IBEW in datacenters (private and govt), I no longer use email nor carry a cell phone. YMMV, I have no dependants and live a mostly-isolated life, now.
[0] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_stages_of_grief>