Did you actually try this or is this based on one of those articles about the open beta of Windows 10 that had a lot more telemetry you couldn't disable?
As you can see in gpedit, Cortana and Web Search is disabled. Why does explorer.exe need to access akamai or search.msn?
Instead: Click Search, Hamburger Menu, Settings, Uncheck "Search Online and Include Web Results."
If you have OneDrive installed Explorer keeps a constant connection to Microsoft's servers to populate your OneDrive folders into the navigation pane.
Also, if you had actually researched before publishing, you'd known that Microsoft removed the disable option from the Hamburger menu during the Anniversary Update.
This is not a conspiracy theory but Microsoft blatantly crossing the line, I personally don't care since I'm not interested in joining the arms race against Telemetry, but not being able to easily disable an annoying persistent connection certainly leaves you a bad taste in your mouth.
It says right in the GPO policies which operating systems they apply to. For example in your screenshot you set "Do not allow web search" to quote the policy itself that only applies to:
> Microsoft Windows XP, or Windows Server 2003 with Windows Search version 3.01 or later
Doesn't do anything on Windows 10. So it isn't "blatantly nonsense." You are just playing with pro functionality you don't understand.
> Also, if you had actually researched before publishing, you'd known that Microsoft removed the disable option from the Hamburger menu during the Anniversary Update.
Nope. http://i.imgur.com/nzHBVex.png
As you can see I am on 10.0.14393 which is the Anniversary Retail Release and have the option.
I will say that I definitely do not want to manage options via clicky-click. Local policy editing (and domain group policies in the enterprise) have been a replicable, scalable way to manage settings in a Windows environment since at least XP/Server 2003 (the earliest Windows client + server environments I've admin'd IIRC).
Configuration outside of LP/GP doesn't scale particularly well beyond personal use, I'd say and as such I get what the other poster was driving at.
You said above:
> That's not true. Install and run wireshark then dial all you want, there will always be traffic every other minute or so to one of Redmond's servers from just idling.
I literally did exactly what you said. Shutdown all third party applications on a Windows 10 Pro machine, loaded Wireshark 2.2.3, filtered out all LAN traffic/broadcast traffic/etc and watched. Didn't see any traffic at all going to Microsoft nor anyone else, it is still running now and not a peep.
Now I have no doubt that if I waited long enough I would, since I have Windows Update enabled, use Microsoft for time synchronisation, and a handful of other things. But it definitely isn't "every other minute." I cannot reproduce that.
Is your system volume license or retail?
Maybe Microsoft tracks this and forces my in theory Retail copy to still act like some sort of guinea pig :/
I think the other side effect from all those regedit hacks was issues with Windows updates. In the end, my machine got stuck at installing October patches, rebooting then failing at 99% applying the patch, rebooting again, rolling back the patch, rebooting, trying to install the patch again. The non-stop CPU usage and reboots made me quit Windows for awhile.