Technology

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

That was the context. The problem wa connecting to Wireshark, which more and more people are doing thanks to general awareness of VPNs.

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.

Huh? Where in my post did I defend MS? I was there when Balmer and crew decided to sue anyone with a pulse for using Linux. I was there when the Cathedral acquired the Bazaar (and I deleted my account for it), and I am still here using Linux and BSD for every single machine I own with the exception of one. I still hold a grudge against Mr. Bill "Jump on a roller to show how fit you are" Gates, and I refuse to purchase anything from their game catalog since 2011. Hopefully with this context, you would no longer misconstrue my point as "defending Microsoft".

Alas, normal users care about neither. The computer is just a tool that allows them to do work which allows them to put food on the table. If your assistance is just "boo hoo use Linux". That's not productive to them nor us. Joe Shmoe isn't gonna care that you should save your documents as ODT instead of DOCX. They need that document working with no hassle NOW.

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.

Case in video game modding: 1. GShade, where the developer deliberately made people's game segfault if compiled on their own after an update 2. MultiMC, where the developer personally threatened to sue for trademark violation after packaging the application for a Linux distro 3. Bukkit, where one dev decided to DMCA and take down all instances of the project.

Outside of video games: the entire university of Maryland, which attempt to inject backdoors into the Linux kernel that was not caught until they published a paper.

Also, for the "good dudes part": regardless of intentions, if the damage is done, the harm is done. If a suitcase falls from an airplane and kills me tomorrow, I wouldn't care whether it was intentional or not. I would be dead.

Going back to the original blog post: there is both a user problem and a technical problem here. The technical problem "could" be fixed by switching to Linux (assuming systemd or gnome doesn't get to it first), but the user problem can't. Calling out anyone who points out the user problem as "corpo drone" isn't going to make it go away.