Does anyone find it unpleasant how these new OSs are increasingly embedding online content everywhere, presumably opening many network connections and using bandwidth while increasing attack area unnecessarily? The start screen tiles in Win8, which continue into Win10&#x27;s start menu, are the most obvious example here.<p>It isn&#x27;t that I hate the Internet or anything like that; I&#x27;ve certainly spent long hours online visiting various sites. Nonetheless, the idea of some parts of the OS that --- by default and with no explicit action of the user --- at some undisclosed time, reaching out somewhere to some server that I have no idea of, and retrieving content to be rendered on my machine, just doesn&#x27;t feel right to me. If some of that &quot;promiscuity&quot; resulted in malware being installed, it would be extremely difficult to determine the cause; according to the list in <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10053622" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10053622</a> , Windows 10 by default contacts a rather large list of domains, many of which are third-party and not even Microsoft-controlled.<p>As I write this post I have a total of <i>one</i> network connection from my machine, an IM client; and at all times I am aware of what connections it&#x27;s making, and which processes are doing it, so there is nothing unaccounted for. That&#x27;s the way I like it --- my machine does not &quot;talk to strangers&quot; without me being unaware.