Linux us kernel, while Windows in an Operated System, so you compare apples to oranges. Instead you could get a distro(e.g. ubuntu or Mint, e.t.c.) and compare it with Windows for a correct scenario.
Correct, the change discovered yesterday does not suggest that Beta will be getting timebombs. Some debugging was used to get it up and running with the date manually set to that for demo purposes. As for why it showed up in Beta first? Probably just something backported from ni_current branches that will make it into Ge soon.
You can disable it if you want in either case. I have trying to search past downloaded files that I have revisited in the past and I do not recall where they are stored or how they were named. In your case, you can disable it, in my case I will disable. It is about a win-win scenario in the end
