I can't believe it.
— TCNO/TroubleChute (@TCNOco) March 11, 2023
My official Microsoft Store Windows 10 Pro key wouldn't activate. Support couldn't help me yesterday.
Today it was elevated. Official Microsoft support (not a scam) logged in with Quick Assist and ran a command to activate windows.
BRO IT'S A CRACK
NO CAP pic.twitter.com/0vcRGu9PDE
Imagine buying Windows in 2023
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Hey look, it's Microsoft Activation Scripts. Not even anything custom, just downloaded right off Github (also microsoft-owned) and executed.
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People don't know about MAS? I just activated 10 IOT LTSC with it a bit ago. Just had to spoof a HWID, which took a few seconds, and it's now permanently active. I've always had suspicions it was secretly an MS project that they use themselves occasionally considering they never removed it from github and it's just being maintained by a dude called "WindowsAddict" (a totally-not-microsoft-employee)
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I feel like it's too painless not to be implicitly microsoft-endorsed. If they wanted to they could easily make windows far harder to crack.
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I believe Bill Gates did admit at one point that the ease of access provided by piracy had a noticeable effect on Window's increased market share vs alternative operating systems, and that securing that market share was worth not cracking down on collecting on license fees.
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I remember that. An article around the same time said that more or less the entire continent of Africa was pirating windows and Microsoft cracking down on them would just make them switch to Linux and MS would permanently lose any chance they had to open up their software market there. If you think about it, they make all their sales back these days in laptop purchases anyway, where the cost is just bundled in and nobody cares.
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iirc it was reddit or somewhere else that i heard this but iirc it's the volume customers like companies and stuff that microsoft makes the money on
and honestly they are probably big into azure at this point so
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That’s how most of these companies make money like Adobe, that one decompiler, etc etc
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Yep as soon as your company reaches a certain size and they detect multiple pirated photoshops coming from a company office they'll come calling. Letting poor students and young designers use pirated PS is like free marketing / penetration for enterprise sales when they grow up or their company does.
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I remember downloading random shit off IRC all the time when I was bored in college. I got the software pixar was using to make movies in the late 90s and I was showing it to my roommate, I'm like "this software is worth millions of dollars" (it wasn't) and he's like "yeah ok, can you make something cool with it?" and I was like ".... well no. THAT'S NOT THE POINT."
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111-1111111
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They've had to allow people to run their own activation servers this whole time because they have customers like the fbi and cia who will absolutely not allow their servers to phone home every 90 days to MS to check their activation status. There's another project on Github, py-kms, that reverse engineered the publically available KMS server at least 5 years ago. Works on every version of Windows server. I think it would be very hard for MS to fix this and they just can't be bothered.
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Not all versions of windows can activate with KMS. And HWID is still forced to rely on microsoft controlled servers. I think some versions like Windows Home Server were never cracked.
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I love you. Had to reformat like a year ago and couldn't find a key or this before.
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You wouldn't steal a Windows
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