That’s because we hide in the shadows…
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I have repeatedly acknowledged the possibility that Microsoft would do something that would result in those files being deleted because the system is not upgradable to Windows 11.
I could quote those acknowledgments for you, but if you can’t be bothered to pay attention to what you read – or to be honest about what you’ve read – I don’t see why I have to do your own legwork.
What I have mocked and forcefully denied is the conspiracy mentality. That, and the mumbo-jumbo coming from someone pretending to be an expert.
Again, how many times do I have to explain this? I’m not hostile or close-minded about the possibility that Microsoft could have done something like this. I’m hostile and close-minded about people spreading bullshіt like it was something solid.
There’s a difference between “Agnes is a witch, I’ve talked to my neighbors and they all agree” and “Agnes did some spooky shіt and we’re investigating it”.
What happened here is the former, not the latter.
“Microsoft’s AI wiped my rear drive and contaminated my front drive because my system is not upgradable, I’ve spoken to a bunch of gamers and they all agree, I’ve never seen such malice from a company” is bullshіt.
Yes, it’s possible that someone will prove that there was some truth to this bullshіt. And it’s that “someone” who will deserve all the support and the praise, not the people who were confidently spreading bullshіt around and presenting it as some truth, without any effort to actually do anything to look for the truth.
Do you realize how often the baseless accusations of wrongdoing without any evidence have been used to do great harm?
There’s a reason our society has a presumption of innocence baked into our justice system. (How well that justice system actually works is a whole 'nother can of worms.)
That’s true, but:
Your bias is showing here. You’re deliberately misrepresenting my arguments as if I had an unreasonable standard for acceptable evidence. “Looking straight into a camera and holding up his ID” would be incontrovertible evidence, but that’s not the only evidence.
“Look, these people here asked for evidence, they must want something unreasonable” is nothing more than a dirty rhetorical trick.
That good investigator you keep mentioning? Just saying “this dude fits the profile and we should keep him on the suspect list” is not what makes him a good investigator. Going after actual evidence is what makes him a good investigator.
And all this metaphorical discussion about a murder suspect is not even touching the fact that we’re not talking about a case where someone said “this dude beat my wife to death”, but rather about a case where someone said “this dude grew wings, flew to my house, and summoned a demon to beat my wife to death”.
In this story, I’m the guy who said “People can’t grow wings and fly, there’s no such things as demons, and if you want to know what happened to your wife, you should get someone competent to investigate instead of running around spreading crazy stories.”
I’ll leave it up to you to draw conclusions about your role in that story.
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Because:
- This has absolutely no place on the Conan Exiles forum
- It is just as ridiculous as it sounds, not because of lack of evidence, but because there is nothing to gain from it, quite the opposite… it’s highly counter productive and corporations don’t tend to put effort and money and AI power into things that make no sense and actively hurts them…
- Not only there isn’t any evidence… there aren’t even enough “reports” from UFO hunters to be even worth consideration for gathering evidence…
Tell me 
What does one have to do to benefit from this magical game deletion from their harddrives?
Does it cover every game or only gamepass ones? Do I need a gamepass subscription to benefit from this magical disk cleanup?
Oh no… wait… that can’t be… cuz you know who I would go complaining to if my gamepass games suddenly get deleted?.. uhmm… 
… yea… microsoft…
So hey… maybe they’re doing it only to other platforms and other corporations like Valve and their legal department absolutely do not mind this nice little service…
@Glurin … serious question time… is this really the hill you want to die on? Because I was genuinely surprised to see you be the one rise to the defense of this statement… I mean it’s okay and totally up to you, but don’t be surprised if from now on I put you right up there with the local priest when talking about IT and beliefs 
And while I do get your point, let me reassure you, nobody here who replied imo. is naive enough to believe that corporations are all sunshine and butterflies and all they want is to float around like little angels and do nothing but good for humanity 
(ex. Google’s quietly stealing the “free” internet even more than it already has been, right under peoples noses. And they even managed to trick a lot of us IT people as we were the ones spending years recommending their chrome 
So yes, perfect example of how they can still trick us if they really want to)
But going around and deleting your games would be the stupidest thing a OS manufacturer (who also has a game platform) could possibly do… and that’s not something subjective… Would you use a banking service where your money randomly keeps disappearing? 
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This is a good post for Creative Corner. It has been a while since I read something this entertaining.
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Funnily enough, I’ve spent all those years actively not recommending Chrome, but even I couldn’t guess how bad Google could get. Now, I don’t agree with everything the EU legislators are doing in order to restrict the flow of information etc., but at least they’re trying to force information-processing megacorporations to play a bit nicer.
I subscribe the Finnish NCSC’s newsletter for a daily dose of up-to-date news on cybersecurity and cybercrime, as well as the EU Data Protection Office’s newsletter. And I’m also paranoid. So if something big is going on, I’ll probably hear about it sooner or later. Microsoft wiping the auxiliary hard drives of non–upgradeable machines hasn’t apparently hit the radar of any of those operators yet. And lucky me, MS hasn’t managed to find my home computer yet, even though it contains several older hard drives, and my CPU is just below the Win11-compatibility threshold.
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I just attended a webinar where Microsoft’s Chief Security Advisor Sarah Armstrong-Smith presented Microsoft’s Digital Defense Report for 2023, and had the opportunity to ask her about this “theory” - and actually got a pretty lengthy response. I’ll post a link to the recording as soon as it becomes public.
Of course, people who have already decided that Microsoft cannot be trusted will probably not believe what she has to say, but in case anyone else is interested, this is probably about as high up in the corporation as we can expect to comment.
lol you mean to tell me she didn’t just burst out in laughter?
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Making her laugh was a bonus, her laughter is lovely. (You get to hear that too on the recording.) But MS is taking security stuff seriously, as well as their reputation regarding security.
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You do realize what you’re doing though, right? Asking the person allegedly involved in a conspiracy if they’re involved in a conspiracy? 
“Hey, are you hiding tracking chips in breakfast cereals?”
“What? No, of course not. That’s just a silly conspiracy theory.”
“There, you see? They say they aren’t doing it so there’s nothing to worry about. Now shut up and eat your oddly metallic tasting Tracking-Os.”
Oh, sorry. I didn’t realize we were supposed to simply believe the first version of the story and not hear the accused party’s side of the story.
Now, if you ever get accused of a crime (because that’s what we’re talking about here - accusations of criminal activity), please do everyone a favor and STFU. Just because you’re being accused doesn’t give you the right to defend yourself.
Or we can stop pretending we live in North Korea, and get back to playing by the rules of Western justice.
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Well there’s your problem. You have instealled Age of Conan, and entirelly different Funcom game, into your Conan Exiles game (which is also a Funcom game). You are getting double the Conan but, likely, 8x the bugs!!!
Really? Are you sure about that? So, where are the Lizard People then? Fun fact, did you know that the person who started the whole lizard people / reptoid conspiracy theory based it upon one of Robert E. Howard’s stories? It was one of his King Kull stories! This isn’t even a conspiracy, it’s quite literally true. So yes, the whole “lizard people are ruling the world” conspiracy was started by a nut job who read one of the stories written by the author who also wrote CONAN, and you are going to say that these “theories” tend to be true? 
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You would be wise to note that I said no such thing. 
Yes, I did know that.
Funny thing. With the exception of the really wild stuff like aforementioned goblins or reptilians and whatnot, it’s usually less a question of if a conspiracy is true and more a question of how successful they were.
I mean, just ask yourself why a group of power hungry megalomaniacs with nigh unlimited resources wouldn’t look into something like mind control rays or tracking chips or genetic manipulation or various chemicals for the purpose of population control or compliance or what have you. Suddenly the idea of scoffing at such notions is even more ridiculous than the notion itself.
Frankly, at the end of the day, the term “conspiracy theorist” is far more often than not a label applied to those who are simply better informed than the one applying it. The purpose of doing so is of course to discredit and silence those people by lumping them all in with the true loonies. That’s why you shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss and label people yourself just because a statement they made seems ridiculous or implausible.
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Frankly, at the end of the day, the term is generally applied to people who LITERALLY REFUSE TO ACCEPT REALITY AND ACTUAL SCIENTIFIC FACTS and instead cling to baseless suppositions which they will defend regardless of any and all lack of evidence to support their case. In fact, any evidence is PROOF they were right, but at the same time any lack of evidence is PROOF that “the man” is suppressing the “truth”.
There is absolutely no reasoning with these people because they have no reasoning. Nothing will, or even can, change their opinion because they cannot accept anything else. It is all a part of the sunk coast fallacy. They are in so deep they simply CANNOT accept anything else because they have already paid too high a price and admitting they were wrong is simply no longer an option for them. So they continue to scream at the top of their lungs about that which has already been proven to be wrong, time and time again, in many different ways, but it doesn’t matter. They will not ever waver from their fanatical beliefs in their conspiracies.
Would it surprise you to learn that those examples were or are actual government/military programs? I think most people have at least heard the word MKUltra. Most people also brush it off as just another crazy fictional conspiracy theory. Yeah, it was real. And it wasn’t just one project. It was over a hundred. And yes it was wildly illegal and unethical, but they did it anyway, which is why it was secret and much of it still remains secret and will remain secret forever. Nonetheless, it’s existence is now a matter of public record.
Considering “mind control rays” are a work of science fiction, then yes, it most certainly would be surprising. To literally anyone, because they don’t exist. As for implanting micro chips into people, and genetic manipulation, do you even know when the whole “MKUltra” thing happened? You do know the limits of technology at that point in time, as well as the limits of understanding of genetics at that point in time right? Using chemicals, yes, they were using psychedelics to experiment on people. The government has used all kinds of disturbing things to experiment on people such as infecting people with STD’s and giving them placebos just to see what would happen. That does not mean jack squat compared to the utter nonsense that is being spewed here nor elsewhere in these insane conspiracy theories.
And that’s the whole problem. You hear a buzzword, you hear about some bad thing associated with it, then you hear a bunch of nonsense tacked onto it and it keeps growing and growing and growing. Yeah, human experimentation with psychedelics is horrible! Why they chose to pump harmful chemicals into them, who the hell knows because they will never come clean and admit exactly what their true purpose was. But that had literal nothing to do with micro-chipping people, or genetic manipulation (both of which there is literally zero evidence to support). And so when you make those claims and then claim there were happening at a time when they weren’t even really possible on any viable scale, well… 
But as I said, nothing will ever change the mind of those who will never admit the truth.
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1950’s or 60’s ish as I recall.
Hence the reason they call it “experiments”.
So the fact that we are literally micro-chipping people and manipulating DNA as we speak means absolutely nothing to you? 
There are people out there right now making tik tok videos proudly showing off how they can pay for things by waving their hand containing a microchip ID over a scanner. It really doesn’t take that much brainpower to imagine someone might want to extend that beyond paying for potato chips.
There are some truly amazing scientific advances involving putting technology in people’s bodies. Almost as amazing as it is dangerous for people to deny that someone might try to abuse it or the belief that it can’t be abused.
I’m really not asking for much here. I don’t expect nor want you to just believe everything you hear. I’m just asking that you open your mind a little bit to the possibility that not everything you believe to be true is actually true.
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Show the scientific evidence to support this claim. Not some psudo-science fantasy mumbo-jumbo. Actual verifiable peer-reviewed fact based evidence to support your claims. Show where people are being genetically manipulated to be “controlled”. Since you seem to think that this is so widely prevalent prove it. Put your words to the test. Show it or admit that you have nothing.
There are tik tok videos. THAT IS YOUR PROOF! Seriously??? As if some Tic Tok video couldn’t possible be faked (news flash, massive amounts of them are). But sure, some nut job on tic tok made a video so naturally that proves it!!!
No it certainly does not. 
Yeah, that’s the whole point. Unless you can verify it and actually prove it, then it’s not a fact. Unless you can show it to be true, it’s not. So, what you have is a conspiracy theory, a bag of tricks with just enough tidbits of believably sprinkled in to hook people in and get them to swallow the bs they coat it in. But without verifiable facts to back it up, it’s just hearsay. So maybe you can open your mind up to be a bit more critical in your thinking and look into finding the actual facts behind things before you just “believe”, because belief without evidence is is about as close minded as one can get.
Ok, you do know what vaccines are, right? Or what viral research labs do? How about all that “lab grown meat product” stuff that’s been popping up lately. Or the abundant yields in our food crops every year. The letters “GMO” literally mean “Genetically Modified Organism”. Their DNA has been modified. That’s how they work. 
Countries have been attempting to manipulate the genetic code in one way or another for a very long time. Long before we even knew what DNA was. Wars have been fought over it, including one very big and rather infamous one less than 100 years ago. The soviets at one point even tried to crossbreed gorillas with humans to make super soldiers. A man with the strength of a gorilla and the intelligence of a human. That was the goal. (Nevermind the 50% chance that even if it succeeded they could get a man with the strength of a human and the intelligence of a gorilla.)
And really, you’d have to have been asleep for at least the last ten years if you won’t even accept the idea of putting a scan-able chip in a person that contains an ID number that could be connected to a database like say, a bank account. We’ve been doing it to animals for far longer than that.
As stated above. Show it or you don’t know it. Until then there is nothing further to discuss.
This is my first rule of conversation when someone has a conspiracy theory. What is the net gain of the “evil” intity? The lower the gain, the less likely the theory has substance. Money and power are the driving force of all sneaky actions.
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