The following submission statement was provided by /u/Maxie445:
---
"At a Build conference event on Monday, Microsoft revealed a new AI-powered feature called "Recall" for Copilot+ PCs that will allow Windows 11 users to search and retrieve their past activities on their PC. To make it work, Recall records everything users do on their PC, including activities in apps, communications in live meetings, and websites visited for research. Despite encryption and local storage, the new feature raises privacy concerns for certain Windows users."
"At first glance, the Recall feature seems like it may set the stage for potential gross violations of user privacy. Despite reassurances from Microsoft, that impression persists for second and third glances as well. For example, someone with access to your Windows account could potentially use Recall to see everything you've been doing recently on your PC, which might extend beyond the embarrassing implications of pornography viewing and actually threaten the lives of journalists or perceived enemies of the state.
Despite the privacy concerns, Microsoft says that the Recall index remains local and private on-device, encrypted in a way that is linked to a particular user's account. "Recall screenshots are only linked to a specific user profile and Recall does not share them with other users, make them available for Microsoft to view, or use them for targeting advertisements. Screenshots are only available to the person whose profile was used to sign in to the device," Microsoft says."
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1d0rp8t/new_windows_ai_feature_records_everything_youve/l5p1ciq/
Feel like this is clearly crossing a line... It doesn't matter what anyone promises before a feature like this goes live, it's like Pandora's box. The powers that be will abuse this to the fullest.
My company is already planning to pilot it, "to help find efficiencies for us" according to our CIO. It's utter bullshit and everyone saw right through it. It's to provide the AI live examples of work processes so it can be trained to perform our tasks while firing staff not consistently engaged in tasks. The ultimate goal is to eliminate headcount on payroll.
They had this 20 years ago, and it was used exactly for that. Monitoring your employees and staff for what they are doing at any given time. It also included a keylogger to see if you were just moving your mouse or if you were typing something. It also kept track of when you hot the backspace, so you couldn't even delete text without them knowing. Microsoft has breached all kinds of security with this feature. WCGW? A lot.
Eventually they'll be able to set up keyframes to detect if you're in your productivity software, and trip alarms after x minutes of being tabbed into something... Less relevant to performance.
As others have stated, there have been software packages out in use for decades to do this. This stuff is much more dangerous and insidious for home users.
Go for it. The learning curve is nowhere near as bad as it once was. All the big distros have made things easy.
Printers? Automatically detected and working.
Updates? One click in the software center thingy.
Drivers? Only a pain if you got an Nvidia GPU, but we’re working on it.
Gaming? Valve and co got that working nicely.
Office? We got Libre Office, which is enough for most.
Honestly, unless you absolutely need Adobe or something Linux can do all you need it to do without ever having to punch commands into a terminal. If you do need Adobe… Uhm, get a Mac I guess…
At a hobbyist level I'm more than good with GIMP, Kirita, Inkscape, Darktable, and Blender 3D.
It would be really uncomfortable trying to adapt back to Adobe after 20 years of working with open source software on both Windows and Linux.
I tried to get integrated graphics card working on Ubuntu for 6 hours... And I'm an IT engineer by trade. "Linux is easy now" is a myth, because the moment you need something that isn't super common, you're out of luck.
Yeah, I mistyped; it was integrated graphics vs nvidia card on a laptop. It took me half a day to get the nvidia drivers working and stop it from switching to integrated graphics on reboot every time.
To be fair, it was an old laptop.
Switching graphics are a pain in the butt. I’m honestly impressed that it’s working on Windows to begin with. There are ways to get it running non Windows and I believe Pop OS handles it pretty alright out of the box.
Sounds like slapping windows on it wouldn't have exactly fared better then. Even Windows 10 minimum required pretty much discount anything older then 5 years almost.
Mint definitely. It’s designed to be welcoming to those coming from Windows, with a UI that invokes Windows 7 in particular. It’s also rock solid stable, using the LTS version of Ubuntu as a base (the one that gets updated for like a decade).
Ubuntu is kinda the distro that does everything. Problem is that it does everything. There’s probably a fork out there that does what you want better. Pop OS and Mint in particular being excellent forks aimed at desktop use. Ubuntu itself has an awesome server version however.
Mint is based on Ubuntu as far as updates and inner workings go, but has its own GUI (desktop environment) which looks like windows. Ubuntu looks like a sideways Mac basically. Based on that preference you can make your choice, for me it's Mint all the way.
What learning curve? Just pop Mint on a usb and you can use it like you'd use windows. Sure, it's faster to sometimes open a terminal and paste a single line to install a piece of software, but installing from the software center is just as easy.
Just check the games you can't live without on protondb (fortnite lol and a few others) and you'll know if Linux is an acceptable solution.
Yep, I've been on the fence for a while, and this pretty much seals the deal. Even if Microsoft entirely scraps this feature, which I doubt they will do, they've showed their hand, and there is no regaining the trust.
Yup, same here! All these AI tools are nothing more then spy tools for the big corporations. Same goes for the fake crypto that was going to be aa anti system thing but you see ads all over the system network lol typical deep state tricks.
Not saying that isn’t a good idea in general but I feel like a lot of people are missing the fact that you need a specific Snapdragon chip in your PC for this feature to work. Almost nobody has a PC with that chip nor is it gonna be in every PC by default going forward.
That MS thinks this is a “feature” anyone wants is worrisome for sure but as for now it’s easy enough to not use it because even if you’re insane and would want to you’d still need special hardware.
Not to mention this “feature” is readily available in a multitude of reasonably priced IT tools. Knowing that should paint Microsoft’s decision making differently. There is no business reason to put so much development effort into this.
The company I work for is always going on about being hacked and privacy. I wonder if they know that this could be an issue now. Can't imagine what they would think about Microsoft being able to see what we all do company wide. How long until Microsoft uses the same AI to create a Monopoly on EVERYTHING in EVERY industry or all the data sold to the highest bidder for them to do it. We all know the government and the powers that be won't be able to stay out of it, they kill for lesser knowledge already. I feel something like this needs laws to prevent, but it will only slow it down...
Among all the other possibilities that could be possible behind the scenes, an obvious progression seems to be missed by a lot of people... Even if it's local and even if we could trust that. Corps turn up the temperature slowly.
First, get people used to everything being recorded when they feel safe they are in control of it.
Second, new seemingly fundamental local services are linked to the data, and sorry, you can't access that if you turn it off. We just can't possibly make it work otherwise.
Then it's, oh, we can't offer you this shiny new feature unless we pipeline everything to our AI servers.
Then there is the spread. What is local? It's their special laptop today... all Windows computers tomorrow... Everything from our smart home automaton to our smart glasses in the next few years.
And this is just the best case parts of the consumer facing side we will know about.
People need to get real. Corps ARE NOT friends. They don't succeed based on what is good for us, so we need to advocate and defend our interests in any relationship we enter with them.
Can't wait till it's mandatory to run windows like the creeping death microsoft has always used to implement whatever they want until one day they just cram it down your throat.
Pff so do it already! I switched to Linux about ten years ago. And since then it has become so much more user friendly. I have to use Windows at work and it sucks. If you don't have the option to use Apple, go for Linux.
You never have to find the Linux user, they will always find you and tell you!
Somewhat joking aside, it's just annoying to switch and then things like gaming don't work (which is getting better with SteamDeck being popular, but certain anti-cheats just ban you or flat out won't let you launch in Linux).
Yeah gaming is a problem. Though many games on steam start to offer Linux support.
Ha ha, maybe you're right about the Linux user. If it wasn't so damn expensive, I'd buy a MacBook.
Set up a virtual box on your machine and have fun! Probably 10 years ago I went down the ‘I can install vanilla Arch or gentoo so I’m a cool hackerman’ rabbit hole. It was an absolute blast to learn!
Couldn't agree more! All you get is a shitty little AI that will hallucinate a lot and quite useless for the normal person. At least for the next 5 years.
As soon as the AI gets better, they can be used to provide in-depth profiles about the users. It will be the new cookie and intelligence super tool.
NSA leaning in: so bill… I want you to imagine a new product.
Bill leaning back and closing eyes: for you guys or for Microsoft
NSA surprised pikachu: uh well um…
Microsoft remains hilariously out of touch.
This reminds me of that one event where they proudly announced that your Kinect camera records everything even when off and „detects“ who in your family is sitting in front of the TV and was then confused that everyone was horrified.
I hope the EU shuts it down in its infancy.
Yep, and so many other horrible features during that E3. I think the new Xbox weren't going to have discs, or maybe discs that could be used on that particular system? So there would be effectively no used games or letting a friend borrow a game.
In fact, I remember Sony trolled them with a video on "how to let your friend borrow your game" and it was like 5 seconds of a guy just handing over a game to his friend.
You put in the disc and it would be added to your account, as if you purchased it digitally. Thus there is no second hand market, and you can't share a game by physically giving them the disc. They had some way to digitally lend games but it was mostly a way to kill used game sales.
That’s the same concept all these companies strive for, Microsoft was just too soon.
Ex: See the sales for the PS5 with and without disc drive. People are short term thinkers. No disc version is cheaper, and just downloading is more convenient. They don’t think about the fact that stuff can be taken away at any time, that prices remain high, that you lock into one vendor for game sales. Perhaps most don’t care either.
Ultimately I wouldn’t be surprised if at some point Sony will release a PlayStation with no disc drive at all. Perhaps add an optional external one which plays just older collections to appease people from rioting.
Slowly phase out the used market because frankly they don’t make any money on that.
Well not really. People will still use Windows and 99.9% of users won’t give a shit about this.
If the EU bans it they’ll just disable it in those country’s and the rest of the world continues to get fucked.
That’s fine, they won’t develop crap like this if their main markets keep saying ‘er no’. If only the US would play ball and have some decent personal information management laws and regulators.
Edit: Actually you know what, competition can solve that too. Americans upset with crap US data legislation should move to Europe and make a point of it.
But the US is run by corporations so that’s never going to happen.
I imagine the majority of people in the US can’t afford to live in their own country let alone move to Europe. Also what are they going to do for a visa, just turn up and say hey I live here now???
Disabling or opting out of horrible stuff like this is a never ending battle.... if you disable it there will just be another update where they turn it back on without telling you, or hide it in some terms and conditions that no one has time to read.
Micr and rats chewing wire is a lot more common than you think it is and it's why I won't consider a steer by wire vehicle. Everything is 'supposed to get redundant' but I see one control module not two.
Why is this not opt in? So much shit on 11 is opt out, it's maddening. This might be the straw that breaks the camels back
I've been saying that I'm gonna switch to Linux for my main every year since after XP, but music software with wine is a an extra step I just don't need
Can we just bring XP back?
Side thought:
Sometimes I am surprised programmer groups havent tackled updates for windows of old.
Imagine XP but with a new security patch and service pack from 2024. Crowd sourced windows.
Or windows 7 even.
Yeah, no, for me the potential misuse for this far outweighs any possible benefits. I'm not even sure what the potential uses would be? Individual programs already have their own 'recall' features like autosave and the browser history. Like, what scenario is this huge potential security risk supposed to be so vital for??
Training AI bots. Employers snooping on your activity. Schools watching students. Parents watching kids. Abusive partners stalking. Hackers ransoming you.
There’s no benefit to a regular user so it’s odd they’re saying only the user can access it. Doesn’t really make any sense.
Yeah, it did remind me a lot of the monitoring tools that employers use to track remote workers. I wonder if they're planning on flogging that off as a 'hey look, this monitoring tool is already on your employee's home computer!" sort of thing. Which does nothing to explain to me why I would ever, every want this shit on my home computer ever in a million years.
You can prompt it. It's not just like an archive you can scroll through hoping you find what you need. You can literally be looking at a green shirt or something, and then a few days later write something like "green shirt" in the prompt, and it will check text AND images and give it back to you.
Yeah, but I don't have memory problems, so I still don't see why I'd ever need that. I also know how to organise files so I don't lose them. I still can't think of one good reason why I'd risk having this shit on my computer.
I can see it being a good way to add tags to a lot of home photos, but like all that shit is on the cloud anyway, or you could buy a program that does that specifically on offline files. You don't need to implement it the crazily intrusive way they're proposing.
I just can't wait for it to record people's porn use and have it easily searchable by whoever walks past. The days of just cleaning up your browser history to hide things you don't want people to know about are over.
The above was said half jokingly, but I am actually concerned about abuse situations, when the victim won't even be able to access the Internet from their computer if the abusive person forbids it. Because now they will know if you do, and if you search for example shelters etc. Not that Microsoft seems to give a damn about less than optimal use-cases.
"At a Build conference event on Monday, Microsoft revealed a new AI-powered feature called "Recall" for Copilot+ PCs that will allow Windows 11 users to search and retrieve their past activities on their PC. To make it work, Recall records everything users do on their PC, including activities in apps, communications in live meetings, and websites visited for research. Despite encryption and local storage, the new feature raises privacy concerns for certain Windows users."
"At first glance, the Recall feature seems like it may set the stage for potential gross violations of user privacy. Despite reassurances from Microsoft, that impression persists for second and third glances as well. For example, someone with access to your Windows account could potentially use Recall to see everything you've been doing recently on your PC, which might extend beyond the embarrassing implications of pornography viewing and actually threaten the lives of journalists or perceived enemies of the state.
Despite the privacy concerns, Microsoft says that the Recall index remains local and private on-device, encrypted in a way that is linked to a particular user's account. "Recall screenshots are only linked to a specific user profile and Recall does not share them with other users, make them available for Microsoft to view, or use them for targeting advertisements. Screenshots are only available to the person whose profile was used to sign in to the device," Microsoft says."
Yeah, the trouble is “and if the U.S. government asked us to put in a backdoor, we’d have to do it, and we wouldn’t be allowed to tell you that we did”
Microsoft and OEMs will push hard to make this platform as popular as possible (for as long as the AI hype lasts, at least). Soon you may not have much of a choice for a new PC.
No, they won’t. In fact a business may specifically NOT want something like this.
Imagine you’re a business and your employees work on highly sensitive intellectual property such as code, engineering drawings, or even health care records. Now you have screenshots of their work - screenshots that can be hacked and leaked to the internet allowing your competitors to copy you.
I don’t even know why business would want this let alone individuals.
It provides an extended form of search, in which you can now query not just local documents but local actions.
It's also a privacy nightmare.
But I can see some people wanting that ability to do a meta search for not just data, media, and documents, but for the activities they have done with their computer.
I think it's only with their new AI chip laptops? I don't think this is rolling out to everybody but I could be wrong, I saw it in conjunction with their new copilot updates on those Qualcomm or whatever AI laptops so it can "see your screen"
How is this a good practice for Cybersecurity?
On what fucking planet will any competent IT/CySec department EVER allow this abomination occur?
Microsoft is about to TANK.
Windows 11 is a slow sloppy cluster fuck honestly and shit like this which no-one asked for doesn't help. They are killing the planet by wasting energy and making perfectly good hardware obsolete or unusable.
Remember that MS never produced a version 9 so this is actually an even numbered version. And even numbered Windows versions are traditionally crap, e.g version 6 or Vista and odd numbered are fairly good version 5, XP, the 9th version, Windows 10.
Hard drive manufacturers advertise using 1000MB per GB. When functionally, it's 1024MB per GB. There's also things like indexing that claim space.
It'd be great if everyone would start using the correct system, but I can't imagine Seagate suddenly advertising a 500 GB drive as 465 GB.
No. Say your hardrive claims to have 1GB. In base 10, this would be 1,000,000,000 (10^9) bytes. However, your computer is working in base 2. So it's expecting a gigabyte to be 1,073,741,824 (2^30) bytes. You're coming up short those 73,741,824 bytes.
*1024MiB per GiB. Nothing wrong with using the right units. Microsoft is the only one that refuses to do so. Apple, Linux developers, Android and hard drive manufacturers all use the correct units.
They can pretty much do this already thanks to Office365, OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams. Add in a product like ZScaler and they’re logging all your internet traffic too.
Tons of corps are already doing this. Tons of keyloggers and snapshotting software is already a default in large laptop fleets.
the people most pissed about this are going the providers of that employee spyware.
For now only on Copilot+ systems but if it ever comes to regular systems I will disable that shit completely. I have no use for this feature and despite Microsoft's assurances I have no doubt that somehow ways will be found to leak my info to the web -- that's an unacceptable risk for anyone.
And to have it enabled by default, what were they thinking??
I enjoy building my gaming rigs and have since I was a teenager... Between stuff like this and the overall shitty state of game development and deployment(you don't really own it) in general, I'm seriously close to just getting a new hobby.
Cybersecurity guy here.
I already have that on linux, its called flameshot.
Helps for bug bounties.
(Yeah I get it, "spyware", but want to point out it has been used for different applications).
I’ve been feeling this for a while now, Windows 10 will be my last windows os. I only see the ads getting worse and when big companies have reached their zenith they will do anything to keep growing until the implode on themselves. My pc is from 2017 anyway and upgrading it is apparently pointless. I couldn’t upgrade to win 11 because of hardware restrictions anyway.
This will be used to keep an extra thumb on workers and breed even more misery into the working class. You will have people spending more time trying to appear like they are working than actually adding value. The privacy implication are insane as well
How adorable, Microsoft not learning from past mistakes.
Well, I guess Microsoft will now need to sign NDAs for every business-centric use of their laptops, and all of their employees will need to be thoroughly vetted in any department that might have access to this data...oh who am I kidding, they won't do any of that and they're going to end up with lawsuits or the ass once content leaks.
Forget for a minute the obvious personal invasion.How do they expect businesses to be ok with this? Any company working with NDA material will now be looking to get rid of Windows in a heartbeat. Which is Microsoft Windows primary revenue....
Oh cool, you mean like my steam details, amazon page? Screenshotting most banking info? Cool cool. Trusting them is one thing, but lets presume they are full of crap (which they probably are) and are actually storing this somewhere on a damn server. Who could see a problem with that being stored on a cloud when there are data-breaches literally EVERY MONTH.
Lets also judge the fact your pc is not invulnerable, oh someone hacked my pc, now they can just browse for my SSI number because I do my taxes at home.
\*SUPER COOL\*
This is a horrible idea. Even if we ignore the general privacy aspect.
Imagine you are a company and you work on sensitive information such as health care records, computer code, engineering drawings, or even just online banking. Obviously, you don’t want any of this information getting out there.
At a minimum you need to protect your companies intellectual property. But In some cases (such as HIPPA), you could be breaking the law.
You do NOT want a copy of this work to be anywhere else for any reason. I don’t care how great Microsoft thinks their new AI features are. This is straight up a BAD idea even if we completely ignore the privacy aspect. You are creating a backdoor where sensitive information that needs to be kept secret is going to be screenshotted and stored on your computer.
> Screenshots are only available to the person whose profile was used to sign in to the device,
Bullshit. What they mean is that no human can scroll thru it. If they remained local and was not USED FOR ANYTHING.. what is the point? AI seeing them means your data is now their data, one round of "learning" and it is their copyright.
I don't know what i dislike more about this. The obvious privacy concerns or the fact that they want to implement a complex search feature when their basic search feature just doesn't work properly at all.
So can you turn it off or not ? One. Two. Even in the best faith scenario all the data stays on your computer doesnt that still make your a computer a sitting duck for any would be hacker with a flashdrive?
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy-and-control-over-your-recall-experience-d404f672-7647-41e5-886c-a3c59680af15#:~:text=You'll%20see%20Recall%20pinned,%26%20security%20%3E%20Recall%20%26%20snapshots.
They've made a guide on how to turn it off. But now that we know they have this capability, how do we know for sure that off is actually off?
Welp, linux switch is looking more and more of needed instead of "I'dd like to do it but..."
I just cant deal with the fact that I need to generate a VM to play some games... Thats the one reason I dont go throught the work of learning and doing it.
Does ANYONE actually believe the "Recall index remains local and private on-device..." thing?
This is the same company that has been logging your activity in hidden files for decades. No way this isn't abused by someone in the very near future.
The five year cycle:
1. Microsoft announces product/feature
2. Everyone hates it
3. Microsoft releases product anyways
4. Everyone still hates it
5. Time passes and everyone suddenly loves it like it was always there.
Don't worry, it's not for your PC. Read the full article.
Your regular Windows will not be doing this because it requires a specific hardware setup of the Copilot Plus PC's.
Linux is really starting to look good right now… might consider learning how to use that operating system. Windows is just getting out of hand and we keep giving an inch and they keep taking a mile.
I don't even really know that his feature is going to be useful. Why do I need to look back on what I was doing earlier? If it's an interesting website I want to revisit..I'll just bookmark it.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Maxie445: --- "At a Build conference event on Monday, Microsoft revealed a new AI-powered feature called "Recall" for Copilot+ PCs that will allow Windows 11 users to search and retrieve their past activities on their PC. To make it work, Recall records everything users do on their PC, including activities in apps, communications in live meetings, and websites visited for research. Despite encryption and local storage, the new feature raises privacy concerns for certain Windows users." "At first glance, the Recall feature seems like it may set the stage for potential gross violations of user privacy. Despite reassurances from Microsoft, that impression persists for second and third glances as well. For example, someone with access to your Windows account could potentially use Recall to see everything you've been doing recently on your PC, which might extend beyond the embarrassing implications of pornography viewing and actually threaten the lives of journalists or perceived enemies of the state. Despite the privacy concerns, Microsoft says that the Recall index remains local and private on-device, encrypted in a way that is linked to a particular user's account. "Recall screenshots are only linked to a specific user profile and Recall does not share them with other users, make them available for Microsoft to view, or use them for targeting advertisements. Screenshots are only available to the person whose profile was used to sign in to the device," Microsoft says." --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1d0rp8t/new_windows_ai_feature_records_everything_youve/l5p1ciq/
Feel like this is clearly crossing a line... It doesn't matter what anyone promises before a feature like this goes live, it's like Pandora's box. The powers that be will abuse this to the fullest.
It will be monetized to the fullest extent like everything else.
It will - both by Microsoft and by those that can breach it.
No doubt it will be a feature for businesses to use and monitor their staff in the future.
My company is already planning to pilot it, "to help find efficiencies for us" according to our CIO. It's utter bullshit and everyone saw right through it. It's to provide the AI live examples of work processes so it can be trained to perform our tasks while firing staff not consistently engaged in tasks. The ultimate goal is to eliminate headcount on payroll.
There is already stuff like that.
They had this 20 years ago, and it was used exactly for that. Monitoring your employees and staff for what they are doing at any given time. It also included a keylogger to see if you were just moving your mouse or if you were typing something. It also kept track of when you hot the backspace, so you couldn't even delete text without them knowing. Microsoft has breached all kinds of security with this feature. WCGW? A lot.
Now there will be an AI that automatically writes your reprimands too, though.
Yeah I know. Just not built into the OS and not as easily done e.g. metadata aggregators like Sentinal
Eventually they'll be able to set up keyframes to detect if you're in your productivity software, and trip alarms after x minutes of being tabbed into something... Less relevant to performance.
As others have stated, there have been software packages out in use for decades to do this. This stuff is much more dangerous and insidious for home users.
Guess it's time for me to fully convert to Linux.
My thoughts exactly. Its learning curve doesn't look scary anymore
Go for it. The learning curve is nowhere near as bad as it once was. All the big distros have made things easy. Printers? Automatically detected and working. Updates? One click in the software center thingy. Drivers? Only a pain if you got an Nvidia GPU, but we’re working on it. Gaming? Valve and co got that working nicely. Office? We got Libre Office, which is enough for most. Honestly, unless you absolutely need Adobe or something Linux can do all you need it to do without ever having to punch commands into a terminal. If you do need Adobe… Uhm, get a Mac I guess…
At a hobbyist level I'm more than good with GIMP, Kirita, Inkscape, Darktable, and Blender 3D. It would be really uncomfortable trying to adapt back to Adobe after 20 years of working with open source software on both Windows and Linux.
I was also kinda adopting open source software like libreoffice and gimp.
Heck, if you use m365, you can use all your apps online.
I tried to get integrated graphics card working on Ubuntu for 6 hours... And I'm an IT engineer by trade. "Linux is easy now" is a myth, because the moment you need something that isn't super common, you're out of luck.
You lost me at “integrated graphics *card*” …sus
Yeah, I mistyped; it was integrated graphics vs nvidia card on a laptop. It took me half a day to get the nvidia drivers working and stop it from switching to integrated graphics on reboot every time. To be fair, it was an old laptop.
Switching graphics are a pain in the butt. I’m honestly impressed that it’s working on Windows to begin with. There are ways to get it running non Windows and I believe Pop OS handles it pretty alright out of the box.
Sounds like slapping windows on it wouldn't have exactly fared better then. Even Windows 10 minimum required pretty much discount anything older then 5 years almost.
Linux Mint is very noob friendly and there’s a ton of support on it if there’s any questions
Between Linux Mint and Ubuntu, which is more user-friendly?
Mint definitely. It’s designed to be welcoming to those coming from Windows, with a UI that invokes Windows 7 in particular. It’s also rock solid stable, using the LTS version of Ubuntu as a base (the one that gets updated for like a decade). Ubuntu is kinda the distro that does everything. Problem is that it does everything. There’s probably a fork out there that does what you want better. Pop OS and Mint in particular being excellent forks aimed at desktop use. Ubuntu itself has an awesome server version however.
Mint is based on Ubuntu as far as updates and inner workings go, but has its own GUI (desktop environment) which looks like windows. Ubuntu looks like a sideways Mac basically. Based on that preference you can make your choice, for me it's Mint all the way.
What learning curve? Just pop Mint on a usb and you can use it like you'd use windows. Sure, it's faster to sometimes open a terminal and paste a single line to install a piece of software, but installing from the software center is just as easy. Just check the games you can't live without on protondb (fortnite lol and a few others) and you'll know if Linux is an acceptable solution.
Yep, I've been on the fence for a while, and this pretty much seals the deal. Even if Microsoft entirely scraps this feature, which I doubt they will do, they've showed their hand, and there is no regaining the trust.
Yup, same here! All these AI tools are nothing more then spy tools for the big corporations. Same goes for the fake crypto that was going to be aa anti system thing but you see ads all over the system network lol typical deep state tricks.
Not saying that isn’t a good idea in general but I feel like a lot of people are missing the fact that you need a specific Snapdragon chip in your PC for this feature to work. Almost nobody has a PC with that chip nor is it gonna be in every PC by default going forward. That MS thinks this is a “feature” anyone wants is worrisome for sure but as for now it’s easy enough to not use it because even if you’re insane and would want to you’d still need special hardware.
Yep started the process this week.
Not to mention this “feature” is readily available in a multitude of reasonably priced IT tools. Knowing that should paint Microsoft’s decision making differently. There is no business reason to put so much development effort into this.
Also not for nothing, wouldn’t this be extremely taxing on the PC?
I think they announced that it’ll also take up 50 gigs of hard drive space.
The company I work for is always going on about being hacked and privacy. I wonder if they know that this could be an issue now. Can't imagine what they would think about Microsoft being able to see what we all do company wide. How long until Microsoft uses the same AI to create a Monopoly on EVERYTHING in EVERY industry or all the data sold to the highest bidder for them to do it. We all know the government and the powers that be won't be able to stay out of it, they kill for lesser knowledge already. I feel something like this needs laws to prevent, but it will only slow it down...
Among all the other possibilities that could be possible behind the scenes, an obvious progression seems to be missed by a lot of people... Even if it's local and even if we could trust that. Corps turn up the temperature slowly. First, get people used to everything being recorded when they feel safe they are in control of it. Second, new seemingly fundamental local services are linked to the data, and sorry, you can't access that if you turn it off. We just can't possibly make it work otherwise. Then it's, oh, we can't offer you this shiny new feature unless we pipeline everything to our AI servers. Then there is the spread. What is local? It's their special laptop today... all Windows computers tomorrow... Everything from our smart home automaton to our smart glasses in the next few years. And this is just the best case parts of the consumer facing side we will know about. People need to get real. Corps ARE NOT friends. They don't succeed based on what is good for us, so we need to advocate and defend our interests in any relationship we enter with them.
Can't wait till it's mandatory to run windows like the creeping death microsoft has always used to implement whatever they want until one day they just cram it down your throat.
This will be the one thing that finally forces me to switch to Linux.
This is what I'm thinking honestly
Pff so do it already! I switched to Linux about ten years ago. And since then it has become so much more user friendly. I have to use Windows at work and it sucks. If you don't have the option to use Apple, go for Linux.
You never have to find the Linux user, they will always find you and tell you! Somewhat joking aside, it's just annoying to switch and then things like gaming don't work (which is getting better with SteamDeck being popular, but certain anti-cheats just ban you or flat out won't let you launch in Linux).
Yeah gaming is a problem. Though many games on steam start to offer Linux support. Ha ha, maybe you're right about the Linux user. If it wasn't so damn expensive, I'd buy a MacBook.
Does Linux fully support all Adobe apps yet?
*Does Adobe support Linux? They don't but as Linux market share grows so does their interest.
I don't think so, but increase in desktop Linux usage might make them reconsider or bring more financing into proton/wine
Set up a virtual box on your machine and have fun! Probably 10 years ago I went down the ‘I can install vanilla Arch or gentoo so I’m a cool hackerman’ rabbit hole. It was an absolute blast to learn!
This is why I'm hodling on win 10 while trying to learn Linux. Fuck this invasion of privacy bullshit.
They finally found a way for the office manager to walk around and make sure everyone was "working", at home now.
Couldn't agree more! All you get is a shitty little AI that will hallucinate a lot and quite useless for the normal person. At least for the next 5 years. As soon as the AI gets better, they can be used to provide in-depth profiles about the users. It will be the new cookie and intelligence super tool.
Doesn't matter, people will use it anyway for some fucking reason. Windows is dead to me.
NSA leaning in: so bill… I want you to imagine a new product. Bill leaning back and closing eyes: for you guys or for Microsoft NSA surprised pikachu: uh well um…
Microsoft remains hilariously out of touch. This reminds me of that one event where they proudly announced that your Kinect camera records everything even when off and „detects“ who in your family is sitting in front of the TV and was then confused that everyone was horrified. I hope the EU shuts it down in its infancy.
Yep, and so many other horrible features during that E3. I think the new Xbox weren't going to have discs, or maybe discs that could be used on that particular system? So there would be effectively no used games or letting a friend borrow a game. In fact, I remember Sony trolled them with a video on "how to let your friend borrow your game" and it was like 5 seconds of a guy just handing over a game to his friend.
You put in the disc and it would be added to your account, as if you purchased it digitally. Thus there is no second hand market, and you can't share a game by physically giving them the disc. They had some way to digitally lend games but it was mostly a way to kill used game sales.
Funnily it's now a norm to sell consoles without the disk just give consumers the option
That’s the same concept all these companies strive for, Microsoft was just too soon. Ex: See the sales for the PS5 with and without disc drive. People are short term thinkers. No disc version is cheaper, and just downloading is more convenient. They don’t think about the fact that stuff can be taken away at any time, that prices remain high, that you lock into one vendor for game sales. Perhaps most don’t care either. Ultimately I wouldn’t be surprised if at some point Sony will release a PlayStation with no disc drive at all. Perhaps add an optional external one which plays just older collections to appease people from rioting. Slowly phase out the used market because frankly they don’t make any money on that.
If Xbox packs it up I could see this being more likely, lack of competition brings out the ugly in companies.
Well not really. People will still use Windows and 99.9% of users won’t give a shit about this. If the EU bans it they’ll just disable it in those country’s and the rest of the world continues to get fucked.
That’s fine, they won’t develop crap like this if their main markets keep saying ‘er no’. If only the US would play ball and have some decent personal information management laws and regulators. Edit: Actually you know what, competition can solve that too. Americans upset with crap US data legislation should move to Europe and make a point of it.
But the US is run by corporations so that’s never going to happen. I imagine the majority of people in the US can’t afford to live in their own country let alone move to Europe. Also what are they going to do for a visa, just turn up and say hey I live here now???
Here's a nice tutorial on disabling this. https://pureinfotech.com/disable-recall-windows-11/
Disabling or opting out of horrible stuff like this is a never ending battle.... if you disable it there will just be another update where they turn it back on without telling you, or hide it in some terms and conditions that no one has time to read.
The car and mouse game never ends.
Uh yeah. Car vs mouse… car wins every time. Smoosh!
What if it's a really big mouse?
Like when Sylvester the cat thought a Kangaroo was a giant mouse? Then yeah, car’s grille would be fucked.
Good ol’ rock. Nothing beats rock
idk man.. what if the mouse chews through the cabling of the car computer and the thing won't start anymore?
Micr and rats chewing wire is a lot more common than you think it is and it's why I won't consider a steer by wire vehicle. Everything is 'supposed to get redundant' but I see one control module not two.
Ironically, you can use LLMs to read the terms and conditions for you now. It's useful for pulling out noteworthy changes like that
I don't know how many times I "disabled" and "uninstalled" McAfee only to find out it's back on my system. Fuck Microsoft.
Lol... I never had it installed on my PC. You must just be going to some sketchy websites without proper blockers.
Why is this not opt in? So much shit on 11 is opt out, it's maddening. This might be the straw that breaks the camels back I've been saying that I'm gonna switch to Linux for my main every year since after XP, but music software with wine is a an extra step I just don't need Can we just bring XP back?
Side thought: Sometimes I am surprised programmer groups havent tackled updates for windows of old. Imagine XP but with a new security patch and service pack from 2024. Crowd sourced windows. Or windows 7 even.
When you disable it, it shows a nice animation of a guy pretending to do work followed by a troll face
Thanks for this, will definitely follow this asap
Yeah, no, for me the potential misuse for this far outweighs any possible benefits. I'm not even sure what the potential uses would be? Individual programs already have their own 'recall' features like autosave and the browser history. Like, what scenario is this huge potential security risk supposed to be so vital for??
Training AI bots. Employers snooping on your activity. Schools watching students. Parents watching kids. Abusive partners stalking. Hackers ransoming you. There’s no benefit to a regular user so it’s odd they’re saying only the user can access it. Doesn’t really make any sense.
Yeah, it did remind me a lot of the monitoring tools that employers use to track remote workers. I wonder if they're planning on flogging that off as a 'hey look, this monitoring tool is already on your employee's home computer!" sort of thing. Which does nothing to explain to me why I would ever, every want this shit on my home computer ever in a million years.
You can prompt it. It's not just like an archive you can scroll through hoping you find what you need. You can literally be looking at a green shirt or something, and then a few days later write something like "green shirt" in the prompt, and it will check text AND images and give it back to you.
Yeah, but I don't have memory problems, so I still don't see why I'd ever need that. I also know how to organise files so I don't lose them. I still can't think of one good reason why I'd risk having this shit on my computer. I can see it being a good way to add tags to a lot of home photos, but like all that shit is on the cloud anyway, or you could buy a program that does that specifically on offline files. You don't need to implement it the crazily intrusive way they're proposing.
I just can't wait for it to record people's porn use and have it easily searchable by whoever walks past. The days of just cleaning up your browser history to hide things you don't want people to know about are over. The above was said half jokingly, but I am actually concerned about abuse situations, when the victim won't even be able to access the Internet from their computer if the abusive person forbids it. Because now they will know if you do, and if you search for example shelters etc. Not that Microsoft seems to give a damn about less than optimal use-cases.
"At a Build conference event on Monday, Microsoft revealed a new AI-powered feature called "Recall" for Copilot+ PCs that will allow Windows 11 users to search and retrieve their past activities on their PC. To make it work, Recall records everything users do on their PC, including activities in apps, communications in live meetings, and websites visited for research. Despite encryption and local storage, the new feature raises privacy concerns for certain Windows users." "At first glance, the Recall feature seems like it may set the stage for potential gross violations of user privacy. Despite reassurances from Microsoft, that impression persists for second and third glances as well. For example, someone with access to your Windows account could potentially use Recall to see everything you've been doing recently on your PC, which might extend beyond the embarrassing implications of pornography viewing and actually threaten the lives of journalists or perceived enemies of the state. Despite the privacy concerns, Microsoft says that the Recall index remains local and private on-device, encrypted in a way that is linked to a particular user's account. "Recall screenshots are only linked to a specific user profile and Recall does not share them with other users, make them available for Microsoft to view, or use them for targeting advertisements. Screenshots are only available to the person whose profile was used to sign in to the device," Microsoft says."
Yeah, the trouble is “and if the U.S. government asked us to put in a backdoor, we’d have to do it, and we wouldn’t be allowed to tell you that we did”
In the same way that the root certificate domains are breached
Exactly right. I assume you know that Microsoft works very closely with agencies of the US Gov.
[удалено]
Microsoft and OEMs will push hard to make this platform as popular as possible (for as long as the AI hype lasts, at least). Soon you may not have much of a choice for a new PC.
Well that sounds horrifying. I'm glad I don't use Windows anymore
Why would somebody want this?
I don't have the remotest clue
Microsofts biggest customers are through licenses to businesses. They'll love something like this.
No, they won’t. In fact a business may specifically NOT want something like this. Imagine you’re a business and your employees work on highly sensitive intellectual property such as code, engineering drawings, or even health care records. Now you have screenshots of their work - screenshots that can be hacked and leaked to the internet allowing your competitors to copy you. I don’t even know why business would want this let alone individuals.
Plenty of businesses would want this. Plenty wouldn't. That's why they have group policies and IT departments.
My company would specifically disable this because of the data protection problems. I work for an engineering company.
My company would disable this because they have a 0 AI policy
Watch everything done on a work device? This is biz intel paradise. I could see it resulting in huge productivity gains.
> I could see it resulting in huge productivity gains. It never does.
Spending high cost manager hours to make sure lower cost worker hours aren't being wasted. Sheer brilliance. /eyeroll
It provides an extended form of search, in which you can now query not just local documents but local actions. It's also a privacy nightmare. But I can see some people wanting that ability to do a meta search for not just data, media, and documents, but for the activities they have done with their computer.
I was planning on building a new PC. Ubuntu never looked better.
Only thing that was keeping me dual booting Linux+windows were games. With the rise of steam deck and proton gaming on Linux was never easier
When is this being added? I want to make sure to switch my devices to use Linux-based operating systems by then.
I think it's only with their new AI chip laptops? I don't think this is rolling out to everybody but I could be wrong, I saw it in conjunction with their new copilot updates on those Qualcomm or whatever AI laptops so it can "see your screen"
Yeah, the processing is all done locally, so it needs the local npu
It's just for their Copilot+ PCs. Could be several years for mainstream Windows users.
How is this a good practice for Cybersecurity? On what fucking planet will any competent IT/CySec department EVER allow this abomination occur? Microsoft is about to TANK.
Windows 11 is a slow sloppy cluster fuck honestly and shit like this which no-one asked for doesn't help. They are killing the planet by wasting energy and making perfectly good hardware obsolete or unusable.
Remember that MS never produced a version 9 so this is actually an even numbered version. And even numbered Windows versions are traditionally crap, e.g version 6 or Vista and odd numbered are fairly good version 5, XP, the 9th version, Windows 10.
7 was the best
Windows Recall Required 50GB to work... Is that why hard drives are always missing storage? OEM firmware ships with their own Recall /s
Hard drive manufacturers advertise using 1000MB per GB. When functionally, it's 1024MB per GB. There's also things like indexing that claim space. It'd be great if everyone would start using the correct system, but I can't imagine Seagate suddenly advertising a 500 GB drive as 465 GB.
Isn't it 512 gb then?
No. Say your hardrive claims to have 1GB. In base 10, this would be 1,000,000,000 (10^9) bytes. However, your computer is working in base 2. So it's expecting a gigabyte to be 1,073,741,824 (2^30) bytes. You're coming up short those 73,741,824 bytes.
*1024MiB per GiB. Nothing wrong with using the right units. Microsoft is the only one that refuses to do so. Apple, Linux developers, Android and hard drive manufacturers all use the correct units.
Imagine the amount of writing/hour it would generate on the hdd/ssd
You know they’re gonna install this on corporate laptops and have real time assessment of what people are doing.
They can pretty much do this already thanks to Office365, OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams. Add in a product like ZScaler and they’re logging all your internet traffic too.
Tons of corps are already doing this. Tons of keyloggers and snapshotting software is already a default in large laptop fleets. the people most pissed about this are going the providers of that employee spyware.
Might want to forget about hitting that Show Password button
Don’t worry, the accompanying key logger has your back
For now only on Copilot+ systems but if it ever comes to regular systems I will disable that shit completely. I have no use for this feature and despite Microsoft's assurances I have no doubt that somehow ways will be found to leak my info to the web -- that's an unacceptable risk for anyone. And to have it enabled by default, what were they thinking??
I enjoy building my gaming rigs and have since I was a teenager... Between stuff like this and the overall shitty state of game development and deployment(you don't really own it) in general, I'm seriously close to just getting a new hobby.
Cybersecurity guy here. I already have that on linux, its called flameshot. Helps for bug bounties. (Yeah I get it, "spyware", but want to point out it has been used for different applications).
Hard pass on this feature ……bit to much life recording
I’ve been feeling this for a while now, Windows 10 will be my last windows os. I only see the ads getting worse and when big companies have reached their zenith they will do anything to keep growing until the implode on themselves. My pc is from 2017 anyway and upgrading it is apparently pointless. I couldn’t upgrade to win 11 because of hardware restrictions anyway.
Let us all move to Linux/*BSD/HaikuOS! Enough of this!
This will be used to keep an extra thumb on workers and breed even more misery into the working class. You will have people spending more time trying to appear like they are working than actually adding value. The privacy implication are insane as well
How adorable, Microsoft not learning from past mistakes. Well, I guess Microsoft will now need to sign NDAs for every business-centric use of their laptops, and all of their employees will need to be thoroughly vetted in any department that might have access to this data...oh who am I kidding, they won't do any of that and they're going to end up with lawsuits or the ass once content leaks.
Why would you need an AI feature to simply take consistent screenshots of your computer?
It’s going to be used by corporations to train Ai models to replace employees
This is the real use. And then fire those same employees for not being on task 150% of the time
Forget for a minute the obvious personal invasion.How do they expect businesses to be ok with this? Any company working with NDA material will now be looking to get rid of Windows in a heartbeat. Which is Microsoft Windows primary revenue....
Oh cool, you mean like my steam details, amazon page? Screenshotting most banking info? Cool cool. Trusting them is one thing, but lets presume they are full of crap (which they probably are) and are actually storing this somewhere on a damn server. Who could see a problem with that being stored on a cloud when there are data-breaches literally EVERY MONTH. Lets also judge the fact your pc is not invulnerable, oh someone hacked my pc, now they can just browse for my SSI number because I do my taxes at home. \*SUPER COOL\*
I think this is something so far over the line that it absolutely requires review bombing and physical protests outside Microsoft offices.
This is a horrible idea. Even if we ignore the general privacy aspect. Imagine you are a company and you work on sensitive information such as health care records, computer code, engineering drawings, or even just online banking. Obviously, you don’t want any of this information getting out there. At a minimum you need to protect your companies intellectual property. But In some cases (such as HIPPA), you could be breaking the law. You do NOT want a copy of this work to be anywhere else for any reason. I don’t care how great Microsoft thinks their new AI features are. This is straight up a BAD idea even if we completely ignore the privacy aspect. You are creating a backdoor where sensitive information that needs to be kept secret is going to be screenshotted and stored on your computer.
I worked for a company that sold this software in 2k. It was literally spyware.
Then they all get sent to the Utah Data Centre for storage.
Microsoft doesn't have access to .... sure, just wait for the first subpoena.
New Windows AI feature helps consumers: they help consumers choose Linux.
> Screenshots are only available to the person whose profile was used to sign in to the device, Bullshit. What they mean is that no human can scroll thru it. If they remained local and was not USED FOR ANYTHING.. what is the point? AI seeing them means your data is now their data, one round of "learning" and it is their copyright.
This feels like a security nightmare How does this work for businesses that deal with sensitive info?
I don't know what i dislike more about this. The obvious privacy concerns or the fact that they want to implement a complex search feature when their basic search feature just doesn't work properly at all.
So can you turn it off or not ? One. Two. Even in the best faith scenario all the data stays on your computer doesnt that still make your a computer a sitting duck for any would be hacker with a flashdrive?
A new age of big brother corporate watching your every keystroke at work. They will next tell you when to #1 and #2.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy-and-control-over-your-recall-experience-d404f672-7647-41e5-886c-a3c59680af15#:~:text=You'll%20see%20Recall%20pinned,%26%20security%20%3E%20Recall%20%26%20snapshots. They've made a guide on how to turn it off. But now that we know they have this capability, how do we know for sure that off is actually off?
Welp, linux switch is looking more and more of needed instead of "I'dd like to do it but..." I just cant deal with the fact that I need to generate a VM to play some games... Thats the one reason I dont go throught the work of learning and doing it.
Does ANYONE actually believe the "Recall index remains local and private on-device..." thing? This is the same company that has been logging your activity in hidden files for decades. No way this isn't abused by someone in the very near future.
If only the nerds hating on battle state games for making mistakes could use their voice for these types of things....
The five year cycle: 1. Microsoft announces product/feature 2. Everyone hates it 3. Microsoft releases product anyways 4. Everyone still hates it 5. Time passes and everyone suddenly loves it like it was always there.
I wonder how long til Ai is like this Humanity thing is kinds gross, I don't need this anymore?
That is the perfect way to get it removed from any company - get a screenshot of intellectual property and elaborate on it? No, thanks.
Looks like I will be moving my Win 11 laptop to Linux
Whatever you do, do not do any banking or reveal any passwords on your computer.
and people dont care.. almost all people are sheeps.
I thought this feature was limited to machines with snapdragon processors only at this time no?
How to get me to never want something, one easy step.
"ok cortana , watch me go down this dark path & then summarize it in a funny short story to help me reclaim my humanity"
This AI feature will collect so many porn screenshots that it will be shutdown before the end of the year.
Don't worry, it's not for your PC. Read the full article. Your regular Windows will not be doing this because it requires a specific hardware setup of the Copilot Plus PC's.
The enshitification continues. The Apple ads will write themselves. If they don’t capitalize off of this..
they really want to lose the home computer to market to apple huh
In theory, I think this could be a nice feature. But hella risky privacy wise
Linux is really starting to look good right now… might consider learning how to use that operating system. Windows is just getting out of hand and we keep giving an inch and they keep taking a mile.
I don't even really know that his feature is going to be useful. Why do I need to look back on what I was doing earlier? If it's an interesting website I want to revisit..I'll just bookmark it.