Note: the MacOS part is false
Reminds me of the most traumatising conversation I’ve had in a good while, which included the following (abridged) exchange:
Me: You do know that, if payment for your yearly M365 fees fails for some reason, or you simply don’t want or don’t care about it anymore and let your subscription expire, you will get read-only access to your OWN data, which is stored in YOUR computer, and unable to create new files in Office ?
Him: So what? If you have a newspaper subscription and you stop paying, you won’t get the newspaper anymore, that’s just how subscriptions work.
…
I am not talking about a 10 year old. This is a 50+ year old dude who does entrepreneur’s consulting for a living.
Claim: you don’t need a Microsoft account to run windows. Here’s how.
Step 1: set up a Microsoft account.
Finally, some sense.
So in other words, just switch to Linux already
The only thing you need a Microsoft account for is to play Minecraft. And use other Microsoft products and services that Microsoft keeps pushing their terrible account system on.
You can actually download and play minecraft without a Microsoft account in multiple ways.
You can. It is in fact possible to play Minecraft without any code from Microsoft, as there are alternative implementations for both the frontend and the server. You can’t play on regular servers that way, though.
Dave is amazing, and his content on YouTube is very entertaining. This is a pragmatic answer for those who want or need Windows in some capacity, and then want to go on a use local accounts. Have some decency and recognize good advice when you see it.
It’s useful information for those who need it, but the way it is presented sounds delusional and contradictory.
He says you don’t need a Microsoft account, but goes on to explain actually you do need a Microsoft account.
It just sounds like pure cope.
For some people even needing a burner account is absolutely off the table and in no way a solution, and the fact of the matter is that an account is now required.
It only really works if you maintain access to a burner account, which might be difficult in the long term.
> Content creator who got massive recognition for Windows and used to work for Microsoft
> looks inside
> WindowsI swear the people in this comm behave like Christian missionaries
Just make a burner first-born for the initial sacrifice pledge & then make other local children as you please.
With Windows 10 eol coming up, I installed Bazzite on my buddies computer. All he uses it for is games, browser and editing the occasional document. The transition has been really seemless so far, and he is not technologically adept in the slightest.
Linux is really mature nowadays. I spent like five hours getting my NIC to work back in 2006 on my laptop. Now, it all seems to work pretty seamlessly. For people who just want to use a basic GUI and press “install” buttons, I think it’s perfectly fine.
It’s even simpler than I stalling windows.
For those who do want to continue to use Windows 10 after EOL, 0patch is providing post-EOL security updates.
Idk about you guys but I got sick of using an os that obviously doesn’t want me to use it.
Linux install: maybe 10 or 15 minutes tops from booting USB to desktop access, login is local, network connection is optional.
I installed Linux on a friend’s old laptop in an attempt to wring a few more years out of it, and they told me that they were surprised at how easy to use it was. I think most people just struggle with feeling intimidated. There is a bit of a learning curve, but the main obstacle is getting over that initial inertia
Just set up a windows *spits rig for a family member because old. My god the insanity of it all. From untoggling shit to stop ms *spits from spying and toggling other shit to stop ms *spits from spying, and dealing with uefi settings to get it to a level of security without allowing ms *spits to lock it down cost me a full day.
Then I had to deal with the ridiculousness that is their permission system to let them browse their own files from a different hard drive.
I love that it also sets up the first user as a full admin and I had to create another account and lock down all the stupid crap that would allow them to destroy everything.
Just the initial booting was longer than it would have taken me to install and fully set up the mint distro I had ready to install on my USB stick (for the use case they’d be using)
I was going to set up a server so they could access stuff and watch free stuff on their TV with the old PC, but that will have to wait for another visit.
Even I was astounded at the length of time it took. I was expecting stupidity but ms *spits has taken it way too far.
(I did install without any account at all though, and did manage to get full GUI desktop environment Ubuntu running in wsl though, so that was fun - for me)
David Plumber is a former Windows engineer, and has a YouTube channel where he shares stories about his time at Microsoft.
Of course he has positive Windows opinions, and of course he yaps about it like he’s an expert: because he is
His “expert” opinion is quite dated
He wrote task manager. I trust him.
The only Microsoft’s app that I used everyday, multiple times a day in the past. Just to avoid the computer from completely crashing.
I watch his videos from time to time, he stays quite up to date when it comes to the underpinnings of modern software engineering. Mind you, just because he retired doesn’t mean he stopped tinkering and building. By all accounts he is still poking around in a number of projects and contributes his fair share of expertise. I’m not a fan of him not outright calling out Microsoft for their bullshit, but I do respect the sheer amount of expertise he brings to the table. Calling him out of date, particularly with the level of understanding needed to make something like a task manager, doesn’t seem fair.
Really? It seems pretty up to date since he’s talking about something that happened in the last year or so.
deleted by creator
He also loves pretending he developed every single Windows dialogue box, tool, application, default software and interface element, when the truth is more like:
He says quite the opposite. He’s pretty open about what he was involved with and how long it’s been since he’s worked for MS. I’ve watched quite a few of his videos. He’s not what you claim.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Plummer
David William Plummer (born August 9, 1968) is a Canadian-American programmer and entrepreneur. He created the Task Manager for Windows, the Space Cadet Pinball ports to Windows NT, Zip file support for Windows, HyperCache[2] for the Amiga and many other software products.
2025: The guy that wrote Windows’ Task Manager at Microsoft is creating burner accounts to get the OS installed.
I’ve been doing that whenever I had to do a Windows installation in recent years. But I don’t plan to ever install Windows again.
Would you really believe any of that?
He has been making Youtube videos for years, if he was a fraud, which you imply, someone would have found evidence of it
He was actually convicted of fraud. Remember “Your computer has a virus. Install my (shady) app to fix it” banners in 2000s? That was also him.
I hadn’t heard anything about this - quite interesting in context of the discussion, and also in that it only has a grain of truth.
His company was sued for violations of the Consumer Protection Act (for making shitty misleading ‘you may have a virus! Click here for free scan’ popups and shady apps like ‘RegistryCleaner’, as you allude), which they settled for $150k plus $40k in court fees.
He was never charged with fraud nor convicted - that is something much more serious.
Ah so the guy is a POS, so why should I listen to him.
You shouldn’t, and i don’t wish to either. I just don’t understand why there was a need to take his already shady and shitty behaviour and embellish it to say he was convicted of fraud, when the truth would have been adequate.
Took years for pirate software to be outed as a fraud, he also ran a YouTube channel for years pretending to have been a game dev at blizzard.
Except Pirate isn’t fraud as in stolen valor, in the case of him it was just the house of cards of over embellishments finally caught up with him.
David was in Microsoft early and for a long time. Thinking he’s lying about that part is a bit rich.
Wait, believe what?
I promise real humans made Windows. Like, a lot of them. It’s not that weird.
But beyond that, trust me, that is this guy’s entire personality. I believe he uses his Microsoft access card with his picture as an image in thumbnails often. Which I’m now realizing I’ve judged him for when it’s probably in response to getting this type of reaction a bunch.
Well that’s the thing though, he claims he did a bunch of stuff at Microsoft and all of it is conveniently very fun to say in a YouTube video for views but literally none of it is verifiable. It would be fine if he was trustworthy but he’s also going around claiming “as an intern, I shipped a lot of major features” which that’s just straight up false, interns don’t do that.
At the very least, I would take all claims made on his wikipedia article that are not immediately followed by a citation with a massive grain of salt.
The fact he then went on to sell registry cleaners and support contracts is telling.
This is astoundingly weird.
I mean, he didn’t show up from the ether to make this tweet, he’s a semi-well known youtuber, his anecdotes about his time at Microsoft have been reported in specialist press often and to my knowledge nobody at Microsoft ever went “hey, we don’t know who that is”. No matter how many grains of salt you take on uncited Wikipedia content, there are enough citations there to verify his identity, from local newspaper coverage of his career to links to public talks mentioning his background. He has frequently namedropped coworkers at the time, who to my knowledge haven’t contested his accounts. The Wikipedia page in question isn’t even a hagiography, bringing up his failed companies and legal issues surrounding them.
I don’t mind skepticism, but this is paranoia. Is it possible the guy is a bullshitter whose wide reaching lies have somehow not triggered a rebuke from the people he has specifically named? I guess weirder things have happened. Would you be questioning his background if he was saying something you don’t perceive as disagreeing with you? Absolutely not.
I have no more reason to question this guy having worked at Microsoft (and on the Task Manager specifically, which is a really weirdly mid-tier thing to brag about for twenty years if you didn’t do it) than to think Niccolo Venerandi didn’t contribute to KDE Plasma because he has a Youtube channel. It’s just a strange way to react to this.
It’s easy to lie about this stuff and not get called out by the company or employees. See: PirateSoftware
Yes, famously never-called-out PirateSoftware
You are not immune to propaganda
Wait,.did PirateSoftware not actually work at Blizzard?
Brother, he got away with it for years without being called out. Are you stupid? Did you really think I meant that he was never called out for it? Sometimes the shit you nerds say is downright incredible.
He has made this video with Dave Cutler. I strongly doubt there would be any reason for Cutler to give an MS PirateSoftware any free endorsement.
Why wouldn’t you?
What do you believe the existence of a dormant Microsoft account does on your device?
Instead I look at the sky and I feel nothing
Tonight the sky is empty
But that is nothing newYou know I hate to be alone.
I want to be wrong.
You’re gonna need to be more specific
Since everyone is dogging on Dave for his MacOS comment - I doubt he even realized MacOS has a “skip” option for the Apple ID.
Weird hill to die on, guys.
That’s not what the expression “Hill to die on” means…
That’s what she said.
Ok.
Weird thing to obsess over.
Obsess? I don’t think that word means what you think it means…
Can’t tell if he’s joking considering all of his videos as a former MSFT engineer.
Then again, he is a former MSFT engineer lol.
It’s not an awful take to say something like “Hey, you can get around this requirement by creating a burner account, then creating local accounts”. His wording is a bit off but he’s an odd guy, who also used to scam people, so this isn’t that bad in the grand scheme. He’s also heavily biased to windows.
On the topic of the account, I moved to Linux and I threw an LTSC build of Windows 10 on another nvme drive so I could play a couple games that use anti cheat. I figure by the time that’s no longer supported developers will just accept Linux in their games or i won’t care anymore.
How did he scam people? <citation needed>
https://lemmy.ca/comment/19382367
I’m guessing this is what they’re referring to?
One bummer about ‘burner accounts’ in 2025 is it seems to be increasingly difficult to have a true anonymous burner account that doesn’t involve someone getting your PII. A few short years ago you could just get a disposable email address from a bunch of places and use it to sign up, but now everything seems to be super locked down to where you either need an existing email address or a phone number to create an email account, both of which tend to have ways of being tied back to you.
I don’t know if there’s even any email services left that will just give you an account no questions asked, but I’ll bet if there are they’ll already be rejected as invalid by the big players.
