The Official fuck Windows 11/Microsoft Thread
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I’ll need to build a new PC because of this. This PC was built years ago and still plays any game I load into it. I asked Gpt for recommendations and it gave me a RTX 5090 as a reasonable choice…$2500k. How much is high end $10k!?!
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@Lithu said in The Official fuck Windows 11/Microsoft Thread:
I’ll need to build a new PC because of this. This PC was built years ago and still plays any game I load into it. I asked Gpt for recommendations and it gave me a RTX 5090 as a reasonable choice…$2500k. How much is high end $10k!?!
I agree with @Gpt . Helicopter explosions are a hard thing for low-end graphic cards to render.
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Not just NSA…
Billions of Calls Exposed Via Unencrypted Satellites
The Discovery: Researchers used $800 consumer satellite equipment to intercept sensitive unencrypted data from geosynchronous satellites, including military communications, personal calls, and corporate data across 40% of Earth’s surface.
Why It Matters: The vulnerability threatens privacy of millions, compromises critical infrastructure, and exposes military operations. Major companies like T-Mobile have responded with encryption, while others remain at risk.
Researchers find a startlingly cheap way to steal your secrets from space
Using commercially available equipment, researchers scanned 39 satellites and observed sensitive, encrypted communications from telecoms, businesses and the U.S. military.
GTFO
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Reminds me of that time during a US war game in Europe, the bad guy side tracked troop movements by using Tinder. People are so accustomed to using devices that opsec goes out the window.
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So, commies use Tinder?
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@Tazz said in The Official fuck Windows 11/Microsoft Thread:
Not just NSA…
Billions of Calls Exposed Via Unencrypted Satellites
The Discovery: Researchers used $800 consumer satellite equipment to intercept sensitive unencrypted data from geosynchronous satellites, including military communications, personal calls, and corporate data across 40% of Earth’s surface.
Why It Matters: The vulnerability threatens privacy of millions, compromises critical infrastructure, and exposes military operations. Major companies like T-Mobile have responded with encryption, while others remain at risk.
Researchers find a startlingly cheap way to steal your secrets from space
Using commercially available equipment, researchers scanned 39 satellites and observed sensitive, encrypted communications from telecoms, businesses and the U.S. military.
Satellites don’t encrypt, devices using them encrypt. If you stuck encryption on a satellite, then you would be stuck with that for the lifespan of the constellation. If you do it on the ground then you can update it over the years that the constellation is active.
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@Gators1 said in The Official fuck Windows 11/Microsoft Thread:
@Tazz said in The Official fuck Windows 11/Microsoft Thread:
Not just NSA…
Billions of Calls Exposed Via Unencrypted Satellites
The Discovery: Researchers used $800 consumer satellite equipment to intercept sensitive unencrypted data from geosynchronous satellites, including military communications, personal calls, and corporate data across 40% of Earth’s surface.
Why It Matters: The vulnerability threatens privacy of millions, compromises critical infrastructure, and exposes military operations. Major companies like T-Mobile have responded with encryption, while others remain at risk.
Researchers find a startlingly cheap way to steal your secrets from space
Using commercially available equipment, researchers scanned 39 satellites and observed sensitive, encrypted communications from telecoms, businesses and the U.S. military.
Satellites don’t encrypt, devices using them encrypt. If you stuck encryption on a satellite, then you would be stuck with that for the lifespan of the constellation. If you do it on the ground then you can update it over the years that the constellation is active.
Makes sense to encrypt/decrypt on the ground where a combination of software and hardware techniques may be employed, but it also should be possible to upload software for an extra level of encryption in orbit.
"laissez les bons temps rouler!"
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It was my understanding that the satellite is just a repeater that can handle many connections.
GTFO
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Mine too.
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@Jam said in The Official fuck Windows 11/Microsoft Thread:
@Gators1 said in The Official fuck Windows 11/Microsoft Thread:
@Tazz said in The Official fuck Windows 11/Microsoft Thread:
Not just NSA…
Billions of Calls Exposed Via Unencrypted Satellites
The Discovery: Researchers used $800 consumer satellite equipment to intercept sensitive unencrypted data from geosynchronous satellites, including military communications, personal calls, and corporate data across 40% of Earth’s surface.
Why It Matters: The vulnerability threatens privacy of millions, compromises critical infrastructure, and exposes military operations. Major companies like T-Mobile have responded with encryption, while others remain at risk.
Researchers find a startlingly cheap way to steal your secrets from space
Using commercially available equipment, researchers scanned 39 satellites and observed sensitive, encrypted communications from telecoms, businesses and the U.S. military.
Satellites don’t encrypt, devices using them encrypt. If you stuck encryption on a satellite, then you would be stuck with that for the lifespan of the constellation. If you do it on the ground then you can update it over the years that the constellation is active.
Makes sense to encrypt/decrypt on the ground where a combination of software and hardware techniques may be employed, but it also should be possible to upload software for an extra level of encryption in orbit.
You could, but why would you need to double encrypt something? And it’s still vulnerable from the ground to the satellite if you wait to encrypt it in the sky. The device is just a radio that others can pick up when nearby.
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@Gators1 said in The Official fuck Windows 11/Microsoft Thread:
@Jam said in The Official fuck Windows 11/Microsoft Thread:
@Gators1 said in The Official fuck Windows 11/Microsoft Thread:
@Tazz said in The Official fuck Windows 11/Microsoft Thread:
Not just NSA…
Billions of Calls Exposed Via Unencrypted Satellites
The Discovery: Researchers used $800 consumer satellite equipment to intercept sensitive unencrypted data from geosynchronous satellites, including military communications, personal calls, and corporate data across 40% of Earth’s surface.
Why It Matters: The vulnerability threatens privacy of millions, compromises critical infrastructure, and exposes military operations. Major companies like T-Mobile have responded with encryption, while others remain at risk.
Researchers find a startlingly cheap way to steal your secrets from space
Using commercially available equipment, researchers scanned 39 satellites and observed sensitive, encrypted communications from telecoms, businesses and the U.S. military.
Satellites don’t encrypt, devices using them encrypt. If you stuck encryption on a satellite, then you would be stuck with that for the lifespan of the constellation. If you do it on the ground then you can update it over the years that the constellation is active.
Makes sense to encrypt/decrypt on the ground where a combination of software and hardware techniques may be employed, but it also should be possible to upload software for an extra level of encryption in orbit.
You could, but why would you need to double encrypt something? And it’s still vulnerable from the ground to the satellite if you wait to encrypt it in the sky. The device is just a radio that others can pick up when nearby.
I think we agree.
I just meant to add that one can do both.
The encryption scheme local to the radio can be outside the radio and provide an additional layer.
But . . .
It’s probably unnecessary.
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@Tazz said in The Official fuck Windows 11/Microsoft Thread:
It was my understanding that the satellite is just a repeater that can handle many connections.
Your sister can handle many connections!
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@Tazz said in The Official fuck Windows 11/Microsoft Thread:
It was my understanding that the satellite is just a repeater that can handle many connections.
Basically yes. We have some encrypted traffic and some that’s not, but it’s up to the customer to enable that. The article was a bit weird talking about Tmobile texts that it said were unencrypted, but then later was talking about the metadata only. Usually the payload (message) would be encrypted if the customer wanted, but there is a wrapper of metadata that the satellite adds in plain text. They should be able to see like the device ID (IMEI or sim) and some other info, but at least on our network it’s obfuscated through algorithms.
Also they were looking at geostationary constellations, which in theory you could monitor from a certain location, but it’s a bit harder for LEO constellations because the satellite is moving and handing off traffic as satellites move in and out of the region. Something like Starlink would be nearly impossible because you don’t know which of the thousands of satellites is connected to the device you want to monitor at any point in time. At least dozens are over a user at any point in time.
I saw a story a while back about some old Navy communication satellites launched in the 70s or 80s that are basically repeaters and anybody can connect to them. It’s illegal to do that here, but in Brazil they don’t give a fuck about our laws so truckers or people in remote areas use them to call their friends and family. You can pick up the traffic on ham radios.
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This came as a shock to me:
As of October 2025, there are approximately 8,475 Starlink satellites in orbit, with plans for up to 42,000 in the future. These satellites are part of SpaceX’s effort to provide global internet coverage.
It stands to reason that there’d be a lot of them, but 8,500 headed to 42,000 was a surprise.
Radio amateurs:
https://hamradioprep.com/ham-radio-satellites/
I remember the firs OSCAR which simply orbited the earth sending out HI in Morse code.
… (another .) … (minus one .)
Fucking forum only allows three of the same characters in a row, followed by either one “.” or “…” but not just two fucking dots!
dit dit dit dit, dit dit
"laissez les bons temps rouler!"
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@Gators1 yeah,a few years ago i saw a guy in Galveston with a hand held antenna pointed out high over the Gulf and a heasdset. He way probably monitoring some drug trafficking conversation.
Do they still use the prick (PRC) 117? I’ve seen those as portable units as well as installed in planes.
GTFO
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@Jam said in The Official fuck Windows 11/Microsoft Thread:
This came as a shock to me:
As of October 2025, there are approximately 8,475 Starlink satellites in orbit, with plans for up to 42,000 in the future. These satellites are part of SpaceX’s effort to provide global internet coverage.
It stands to reason that there’d be a lot of them, but 8,500 headed to 42,000 was a surprise.
Radio amateurs:
https://hamradioprep.com/ham-radio-satellites/
I remember the firs OSCAR which simply orbited the earth sending out HI in Morse code.
… (another .) … (minus one .)
Fucking forum only allows three of the same characters in a row, followed by either one “.” or “…” but not just two fucking dots!
dit dit dit dit, dit dit
And Starlink has some competition from Amazon.
Amazon’s satellite communication initiative is Project Kuiper, a low Earth orbit (LEO) constellation of over 3,200 satellites designed to provide fast, low-latency internet service globally. The project uses advanced communications payloads, including optical inter-satellite links (OISLs) for high-speed data transfer between spacecraft, and has begun a series of launches to deploy its initial constellation. While the full service launch is pending the deployment of more satellites, Amazon is working to become a competitor to existing satellite internet providers like Starlink.
GTFO
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@Jam said in The Official fuck Windows 11/Microsoft Thread:
This came as a shock to me:
As of October 2025, there are approximately 8,475 Starlink satellites in orbit, with plans for up to 42,000 in the future. These satellites are part of SpaceX’s effort to provide global internet coverage.
It stands to reason that there’d be a lot of them, but 8,500 headed to 42,000 was a surprise.
Radio amateurs:
https://hamradioprep.com/ham-radio-satellites/
I remember the firs OSCAR which simply orbited the earth sending out HI in Morse code.
… (another .) … (minus one .)
Fucking forum only allows three of the same characters in a row, followed by either one “.” or “…” but not just two fucking dots!
dit dit dit dit, dit dit
Yeah, it’s all basically to increase the capacity available like with cellphones. Once they started doing broadband over cellphones, the existing towers got saturated and people were dropping connections. There was a mad dash to add more towers in places like NYC to support the traffic. The amount of spectrum you own limits the amount of bandwidth in a certain area, so to get more you build more towers closer together and turn down the power so you can serve more customers. Same deal in space, the more satellites you have, the more data you can push out of a particular area. Since SpaceX is covering large areas and doing broadband over satellite, they need a lot of them.
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There is a practical limit to the amount of traffic a single satellite may provide so It’s easy to see that thousands will be/are needed and this helps to the system less vulnerable to sudden destruction as well.
Decentralization FTW!
Here are specs on the AN/PRC 117(F):
ANPRC-117F datasheet(1/2 Pages) HARRIS
The Harris AN/PRC-117F(C) multiband, multimission, manpack radiois an advanced software-defined radio covering the entire 30 to 512MHz frequency spectrum, providing the warfighter with unsurpassedbattle-proven communications technology.The AN/PRC-117F(C) has embedded Communications Security(COMSEC)...
The Chinese are making knock-offs which are available on Ebay and in other places.
I would suppose encryption capabilities are not included.
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@Tazz said in The Official fuck Windows 11/Microsoft Thread:
@Gators1 yeah,a few years ago i saw a guy in Galveston with a hand held antenna pointed out high over the Gulf and a heasdset. He way probably monitoring some drug trafficking conversation.
Do they still use the prick (PRC) 117? I’ve seen those as portable units as well as installed in planes.
I don’t think the military uses it, it’s pretty big. I watched this video talking about Operation Redwing where a bunch of Seals got killed in Afghanistan. They were using the military satcom network, but fucked up the radio settings. In the end they remembered they had an Iridium handset and used that to call for help, which they should have done in the first place.
The REAL Operation Red Wings FAILURES You’ve Never Heard.