Oh yeah, starting your post with

I set up a web-facing server for this niche group so I can provide unpaid tech support at 4am

is definitely on every normal user’s mind at all times.

The missing undertone here, which is present in about every issue involving Windows 11 ever since it was released, is the corporate enshittification, the unerring fatigue of normal users of avoidance to

go the fuck away from this cursed idiocy,

and last but not least people like you going ‘hmm yes but akshually’ in sort-of-defense-but-not-really of the deliberately malicious and billion-dollar company.

We have been conditioned to view people that criticize the corporatism in this Western society with the same lens as we used to conspiracy theorists. You need to call this out as propaganda wherever you see it. The people who cannot describe the price of a supermarket banana or bread are not your friends.

Look at it this way: A normal dude with bad hair and questionable social intelligence isn’t getting up in the morning and deciding to fuck with a million or more users by making their computers unbootable. There is only good intentions. Sometimes the Lennart Poetterings fuck up - but we will send three long-haired dudes with funny glasses to your place to fix your tank for free, as you did.

Whereas with Shitmicro Operating System, they have continually demonstrated that they’re here to sell you ads and make everything so much shittier like you would not have believed twenty years ago.

The negotiation needs to happen first - a compliant host port cannot just send 12V. Heck, even 5V at 5A depending on available power, the limit for PD, cannot just happen. A compliant USB-PD power supply is not supposed to deliver any power until an actual negotiation, or specific pull-down resistors on the device CC1/2 are detected.

Of course not all USB-C ports are compliant. USB-A is essentially a hardwired 5V at (your-guess-is-as-good-as-mine-the-spec-is-nonsense)A, and some transit systems like buses I have found and tested to just hardwire USB-C to provide 5V with no negotiation either. Maybe those had host-side resistors advertising any particular amperage (you can draw up to 3A at 5V ONLY depending on CC1/2 pull-up resistors with no further negotiation), but I wouldn’t count on it.

Also, you can’t really directly short VBUS to D+/-, since there are CC/SBU pins inbetween. On the host side, CC is either pulled up to VBUS (with a huge resistor) or tied to some IC, that might be able to detect bad conditions (though I have no experience here). On the device side, CC is either pulled-down with another big resistor, or tied to another IC. There are opportunities to detect errors and go into protection states, but that might not be the case depending on the ICs they’re using. SBU is supposed to be left floating or unconnected at the start.

Nobody disputed that their current software works.

Choosing software is mostly choosing a tool get a job done.

The issue in this case is that the vast majority of companies will choose a tool made by a company that will now be bending their will to a fascist dictator whose cronies cannot be trusted to do rudimentary operational security.

There was always the nebulous stranglehold that the US might have on the IT security of any company that chooses Microsoft, because you cannot build Windows and the vast majority of their software from source, or audit them.

From the IT security perspective of Europe it’s exactly like all zero-days and backdoors known and implemented by the US intelligence agencies were just handed over to North Korea.

Microsoft saw a world

That’s not what happened. They got a dominant position because IBM could not even on their IBM PCs, and were at the right place at the right time, even if DOS was actually just garbage. With the power/money from this deal, they strongmanned their position as dominant PC operating system long after that era using legal and illegal anti-competitive means.

Microsoft still has wide unethical reach with secret and not-so-secret contracts and agreements not to allow other operating systems to gain a foothold in OEMs. And that’s before you get through the sheer inertia from users that completely refuse to try something different on the grounds that they don’t want to.

Besides this, the complete apathy in Europe moving off Microsoft software is quite concerning. Companies in the US are already collaborating with fascists in an unreflected way in true capitalist fashion - as happened 90 years ago. The reaction to this in terms of OS selection by companies is to hide their head in the sand and pour concrete for good measure. This will not work indefinitely, and I feel like nobody is going to suffer consequences for being a completely willful useful idiot for what is in summation a batshit fascist regime.

Yes, I am putting Microsoft and fascism on the same pedestal, the end stage in Microsoft bashing. The sad part with this meme is that in 2025 it’s not unwarranted.

Nobody has ever been fired for ordering SAP Microsoft, right?