It’s a nightmare scenario for Microsoft. The headlining feature of its new Copilot+ PC initiative, which is supposed to drive millions of PC sales over the next couple of years, is under significant fire for being what many say is a major breach of privacy and security on Windows. That feature in question is Windows Recall, a new AI tool designed to remember everything you do on Windows. The feature that we never asked and never wanted it.
Microsoft, has done a lot to degrade the Windows user experience over the last few years. Everything from obtrusive advertisements to full-screen popups, ignoring app defaults, forcing a Microsoft Account, and more have eroded the trust relationship between Windows users and Microsoft.
It’s no surprise that users are already assuming that Microsoft will eventually end up collecting that data and using it to shape advertisements for you. That really would be a huge invasion of privacy, and people fully expect Microsoft to do it, and it’s those bad Windows practices that have led people to this conclusion.
Gamers will literally install root kits on their PCs just because an update pop up tells them to. They really don’t care lol.
Companies and their legal departments do care though, and that’s where the big money lies for Microsoft when it comes to Windows
Outside of the “Microsoft bad” comments, this is a prime example of why big tech companies need to stop promoting AI leads to a position where they are able to have influence over initiatives outside of AI.
The worst thing to happen to basically every product/service in tech right now is AI. It’s made Google unreliable in the eyes of normal people for the first time in decades, it’s destroying trust in Amazon content across reviews and Kindle, it’s adding features to Facebook that no one ever wanted, etc.
And the annoying thing is, this tech can be exceptionally useful when it’s actually been implemented thoughtfully.
Effortlessly cleaning up audio recordings using AI tooling is incredible, for example. There are audio recordings that I’ve been able to make sound great that previously would’ve required me to make some calls and ask for a bunch of re-recordings and added days of delays to a project.
AI in image recognition to vastly speed up medical imaging diagnosis, or analysing lab work? Amazing. Asking unpaid medical students to laboriously pore over thousands of images sounds like a nightmare.
Better offline translation? Sign me the fuck up.
Image description for the visually impaired, like my sister? Genuinely life changing. A lot of content online isn’t properly tagged, or has much attention placed on accessibility.
The list goes on. Unfortunately, with big tech being as they are, their first thoughts turn to “which implementations of AI will aid us the most in scraping userdata and showing ads?”
The list goes on. Unfortunately, with big tech being as they are, their first thoughts turn to “which implementations of AI will aid us the most in scraping userdata and showing ads?”
Don’t forget making sure the peons can squeeze out more productivity for the 1%.
Ya, a PR nightmare for the next 15 minutes until the next unbelievable thing comes along and the ADD nature of people forgets windows is watching everything they do.
A lot of people would have huge bursts of negativity about this, but at the same time remain stubborn enough to not even consider evaluating alternatives. Microsoft and Apple spent decades making sure this would work
For now at least, I block as much telemetry at the network level (DNS level) using pihole.
Annoys my wife and kid at times. I try to explain why and what it means but convenience is king unfortunately.
My mom only really browses the web, writes emails, and edits and occasional document. I’ve given her my old XPS 9350, with Fedora installed on it, and she’s been very happy with it. Keeps saying that everything just makes sense, and when she needs something, it’s easy to find. She’s far from tech savvy, but not completely clueless either
That’s cool!
I agree with your point, but I think it’s important not to forget just how shitty tech media is a holding these companies to account. Half the shit most mainstream tech journalist publish borders on hagiography for these companies.
I’m swapping to Linux finally because of it. Few things are black and white but these things do have effects and some additional percentage of users are shifting over because of it.
That’s usually what I think too, but after watching how Twitter’s gone to shit since the two big user departures, I think this could legitimately affect Microsoft’s bottom line.
That will rely on businesses moving away from Windows. That is where they make a ton of their money with Enterprise licenses and Office 365 subscriptions.
And businesses don’t give a shit about their employees’ privacy
They do care about keeping their company secrets and proprietary info though. Recall could make corporate espionage a cake walk.
If you look at sysadmin forums and groups it seems like most recommend disabling recall. Just about every enterprise will have confidentiality, security, or legislative requirements that recall is simply inconsistent with. It’s understandably been a hot topic.
Yup. It’ll depend on how they handle Recall at the institutional level.
It’s a given that hospitals and law firms will have to turn it off, as they’re required by law to honor privilege. We’ll see what choices they make.
I find the nosedive in Twitter’s stock price these last few years encouraging. It seems for many there is a red line.
I believe the biggest thing that will hurt MS is moving to subscription. The vast majority of users aren’t gonna wanna have a forever fee when they buy a laptop/PC
That’s definitely going to be a problem for them, yes, because it’s also going to drive a ton of traffic to Linux and Linux is going to get even better.
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Twitter definitely lost a ton of users and tons continue to leave. That’s why advertisers have pulled out and their stock price has tanked. Twitter is a bad example
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lol, literally just making stuff up. Their number of active users dropped by 15-20% since Elmo took over: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/mar/26/twitter-usage-in-us-fallen-by-a-fifth-since-elon-musks-takeover
Respectfully, it’s not.
The user departures, and response to further enshittify, have driven their stock price into the ground.
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X is the one telling the number of X users. Do you really trust Melon to tell the truth?
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So far in this thread only one person has actually shared a source of any kind. Care to share with the class?
It’s X.
Stop deadnaming X.
Anyone still clinging to the remnants of its former existence, please close your account. Stop kidding yourself.
I’ll stop deadnaming Twitter when Musk stops deadnaming his trans daughter.
And for the record, I’ve never used Twitter. It’s always kinda sucked. Now it really sucks.
Musk is a complete shithead and that’s not gonna happen.
Calling it Twitter is only going to accommodate the people that refuse to get off that nazi network.
Cause you know Musk gets off on the hate of people still calling it Twitter, exactly because how he treats deadnaming.
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You say that but deep down you know it’s Elon Musk’s X now. The dream is no more. You’re an X’er Harry!
What’s X? Is that the older version of Wayland or something?
It’s a shittier version of Mastodon but for right wing lunatics and russian bots.
I think that those two form a venn diagram of a blurry circle.
Ok fine, I’ll repeat it again:
You’re right - many consumers will likely forget about it and just use it anyways. But enterprise customers absolutely, categorically will not. Even with their damage control, this is still going to hurt them a lot. Moreover, it’s going to hurt hardware sales from Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm, all of which have dumped MASSIVE amounts of capital into this tech. This is going to slow the rollout of NN-optimized chip tiles, and that is going to directly hit their bottom line. Microsoft hurt themselves AND the three most important hardware partners they have.
You know what would be a nice thing to put into windows?
A fucking decent way to search for files.
Also, grep and tail, as implemented in Linux. It’s 2024 and there’s no native equivalent to
tail -f *.log. How embarrassing.Get everything: https://www.voidtools.com/ (the alpha version can also index the content of files). It’s search is instant. As in < 1 second for any file on any of your harddisks (even ones not connected right now).
For base linux cmdline tools I just install Git for Windows it includes tail, sed, grep, tee, iconv, less, scp and tons more. I need git anyways so win-win.
I do small business support. Everytime I do a windows install I do a ninite install of a bunch of things. Everything is always in the set. The fucntionality should have been in windows since NTFS was introduced
Get-Content <path> -waitOr do you mean in cmd not powershell?
IME this doesn’t work for multiple files. Not nearly as well as tail -f *.
Plenty of times I’m troubleshooting something without knowing which log file I should pay attention to. So watching everything happen in realtime with the error helps, a ton.
Windows Search used to be awesome, and then they decided to over-complicate it.
I distinctly remember that once it has indexed everything, it was pretty fast, yeah. Back in the 00s anyway
I doubt the majority of MS users need to tail a log file. And of those of us that do, how many don’t know that Notepad++ does it?
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Have you heard of WSL?
As someone who does product dev support, unfortunately I have.
You can do a commandline “dir /s *.log” to search an entire directory it works better than the normal file search generally. Unless I misunderstand what you’re asking.
-ffollows the file so you can see updates as they come in to the bottom of the file. I wasn’t aware this worked with globs, but that’s neat.Is that what
/sdoes? I haven’t used Windows in years.Oh, perhaps not. I may’ve just understood how you’re using the search. /s is just a straight search if the directory, I don’t know that it can be used to generate dynamic results like that. Go figure.
File search is really awful on windows for no reason at all. Your complaints about commandline utilities is not accurate though. Windows has native powershell equivalents to both
grepandtail. You useSelect-Stringinstead ofgrepandGet-Content -Waitinstead oftail.IME
Get-Contentdoesn’t work for multiple files. Unless maybe I put it in a foreach loop or something. But that’s way more keystrokes thentail -f *Nobody ever accused powershell of being concise. Its uses a completely different philosophy, object oriented rather than string based. This makes powershell nicer to write scripts in but also makes it worse at bash style one-liner commands.
I don’t want to be the guy that always says Linux, but… …Linux
It is okay to be the person that always recommends Linux, especially if you are a kind person with the patience to explain things to people in approachable terms (and you don’t just scream at people SOMEBODY ALREADY ASKED THIS QUESTION USE SEARCH whenever a newbie walks in the door and asks the obvious questions a newbie would ask).
Now is the time, Linux is pulled up out front waiting to pick us up (with bags packed) and Microsoft is loudly shitting the bed upstairs, NOW is the time to walk straight out the front door, jump in the car with Linux and never look back. We owe it to Microsoft’s long relationship with consumers to leave Microsoft sitting confused on the porcelain throne wondering why they were abandoned and where all the toilet paper is (we are the toilet paper in this metaphor).
SOMEBODY ALREADY ASKED THIS QUESTION USE SEARCH
I don’t understand this approach, if you don’t want to answer, just don’t answer. Why would you waste time writing that you won’t answer?
I will not answer this. Just search.
I thought you were a search engine.
Most people aren’t going to bother when the specific software they want to use aren’t supported.
True but there is less and less stuff that you cannot do properly on linux.
I mean… how big really is the category of software tasks that you can’t properly do on Linux in 2024? I feel like it is getting to the point where you do genuinely have to be specific about what Linux can’t do that is a dealbreaker for you rather than just falling back on “Linux can’t do what people need to do” as a general criticism of it.
Windows can’t do what people need it to do, and it fails to do so while sucking up your private data (which if you work at a business with confidential information IS a dealbreaker). At least when Linux fails it usually isn’t simultaneously violating the IT security structure of your organization….
The funny thing is businesses and government entities can’t even claim with a straight face that they can trust Microsoft to adhere to the meager insufficient data privacy laws that do exist when there is zero evidence Microsoft would behave that way based on the track record even if the financial penalties for failing to do so were actually real to the ruling class and not just theoretical thought experiments that involve a slap on the wrist or more like a light tickling with a feather on the nose.
Oh i totally agree with you. I have a feeling that the only real obstacle on the way out from windows is proprietary software, especially adobe and some custom apps for specific hardware.
Microsoft has been relying on that for >20 years now and it’s starting to show signs of strain.
I’ve heard this before.
So you don’t think there’s a straw breaking the camel’s back?
I think people are happy to eat shit. They’ll complain about it, sure. But they’ll slurp it up like ice cream.
Otherwise, MTX heavy games wouldn’t be rewarded so heavily.
Early on, you’ll see some movement. Some people will transfer to Linux - most will go back. A bunch of outraged threads.
But it will die down. People will just accept it. They always do. They always will.
But it will die down. People will just accept it. They always do. They always will.
I understand the frustration and cynicism that comes from wanting something to happen and waiting a good stretch of your life for it to do so but I am sorry, this is not reflective of reality.
Don’t mistake your own fatigue for the behavior of people in general.
Support for software on Linux or Wine is now orders of magnitude more complete and functional than it was 5-10 years ago. There are fundamental changes going on, just because we operated in a paradigm that suffocated the possibility of Linux adoption in the past doesn’t mean that paradigm will continue indefinitely.
There is a difference between being permanently powerless and being powerless under a certain arrangement of forces and actors.
We are entering a period of the status quo being smashed for better or worse in almost every dimension of our lives, what was likely to happen in the past 20 years does not reliably predict what is likely to happen in the next 20 years.
There is actually a true opening for Linux here in a way there never has been.
Well they said the same about AI and at some point it became true enough to be a problem
HISTTIMEFORMAT="%d/%m/%y %T "
Then
history | grep -i “09/06/2024”
Yeah but there’s like 20 of them, and many are half-baked. How is a n00b to choose one?
Ubuntu is fine for all uses, and so are some of the others
Not sure about that. They try to get you to sign up for services, and they deliberately broke something with installing from certain file types.
It’s still perfectly functional and easy to use, just say no if they ask you to sign up to a service, if you come from windows you’ll ve surprised of how easy it is to dismiss those offers
OH, it was been a long time coming seeing this type of headline again, it’s…glorius!
Microsoft is most years a #1 and sometimes a #2 Funder of: Rust, Python, and Linux. Are those destined for an E^3 “rug pull” too? Will it ever stop this kind of behavior, consistently conforming our behavior to itself with the money and industry position it leverages?
Don’t forget in calculating that industry position that OpenAI is now able to contract to the DoD for offensive capability.
Linux is not dependent on money, they have no influence over it.
While the influence is much smaller than with windows or apple, it’s still there. Linux is hardened against capitalism, but if we start believing that it has no influence we set ourselves up for Debian Pro+ in the future. Just because it’s good now doesn’t mean it capitalism can’t shit all over it faster than we believe possible…
Oh you sweet innocent. Major distros like Ubuntu and RedHat already are peddling open source AI for their enterprise customers.
Debian Pro+ is here and has been for a while…
But Debian still stands, and is not going anywhere.
So does Slack. But while they are 2 of the foundational distros, neither is the first go to choice of the average user. Neither distro caters to the mainstream user. If you are choosing either of those two distros, you are definitely old school and/or are looking for a solution to problem that is perhaps more of an edge case.
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I’m using windows 11 and after hearing about recall and all the other shit they’ve done, I’ve finally decided to make the jump to Linux
So for atleast me, this was the final straw
I had dabbled in gaming on Linux but never made the jump. After reading about recall I spent a week making my choice on OS of choice ( and then I switched a week after :') ).
I’m fully on Linux now. Even if they fully back down from windows recall I dont need an OS that’s trying to sell me something based on whatever I do in it.
It was my final straw as well.
Edit: and it hasn’t really been bad either. The shader compilation after every gfx driver update is a bit annoying. That’s about it.
I’ll probably run into something at one point. Like some anti cheat that doesn’t work and is preventing me from playing the game.
Im in similar scenario. Which distro you decided on?
A couple people recommended Fedora spins but I’d recommend just sticking with the big distros (that have up-to-date graphics drivers readily available - so not Debian.) A lot of the gaming-focused distros are only saving you a few terminal commands and increase your risk of running into issues; they’re good, but they may not be as 100% stable as you’ll find in major long-running distros like Fedora or Mint.
I have settled on Fedora with KDE Plasma. Here’s basically everything I copy pasted for gaming:
# install steam, discord, nvidia drivers sudo dnf install https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm -y sudo dnf config-manager --enable fedora-cisco-openh264 -y sudo dnf update -y sudo dnf install steam discord akmod-nvidia xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda # install bluetooth Xbox driver sudo dnf install git dkms cd /tmp git clone https://github.com/atar-axis/xpadneo.git && cd xpadneo sudo ./install.shI also had to enable Legacy X11 App Support through the settings gui so that Discord could receive push to talk presses without having focus.
Sweet, thanks. I want to start something straightforward and so far Mint looks very promising.
I ended up with nobara ( KDE ). Though if i had to reinstall I might give bazzite a go.
No hate for nobara though. It’s working fine gaming wise. Had a gfx issue once after an update, which was resolved by just running the nobara system updater.
I have some issues getting devpods to work. But that is completely unrelated to gaming :D
Edit: and it hasn’t really been bad either. The shader compilation after every gfx driver update is a bit annoying. That’s about it.
If it’s shader compilation under Steam, turn it off in settings. With advancements in graphics drivers and Proton, it really isn’t needed anymore.
I disabled it about 12 months ago and haven’t noticed any difference in performance whatsoever.
Which distro did you end up on? I’ve been looking into them and after using steamos on my deck, I think I will go with Bazzite kde
I ended up with nobara. I might give bazzite a go at one point, but more out of interest. Nobara is treating me just fine!
I get that. And, playing the devil’s advocate here…what happens in a couple of years when the time comes to purchase a new Laptop/desktop that comes pre-installed with Windows? Will your current ire and consternation hold up until then, meaning you’ll take the effort…long after this current “trust crisis” is over…to install Linux once again. Or, with this current scandal a faint memory from a few years back, will you just kind of shrug and say “Hey…it’s there, I might as well just go with it.”
I mean no offense, and I by know means want to presume your answer here. But I’d be willing to bet 90% of the people who, in a pique of ire, replace their current windows with a linux distro, won’t bother to do the same when they purchase a new laptop down the road.
But I’d be willing to bet 90% of the people who, in a pique of ire, replace their current windows with a linux distro, won’t bother to do the same when they purchase a new laptop down the road.
Linux is superior to Windows. Not only do I get more done and faster, I enjoy the process much more. For example, you know AHK? That useful application on Windows where you can make macros?
Well, on base Fedora you have an AHK built right into the system without any modification and you can use shell scripts- aka a real language instead of the wonky AHK language.
That’s one example. I can list them off rapid fire but I’d just write a wall of text unnecessarily.
My point is just that Linux is better. I don’t use Linux because it’s cool or interesting or I’m a hobbyist or anything like that. I use it because it’s the better option for the things I do on my computer.
That may be different for you. If you are a graphic designer or a music producer that may be different. But I’m usually in a terminal and Unix is the superior terminal. Windows terminal is such a joke they literally had to port in the Linux terminal through WSL
Installing Linux is a pretty trivial process at this point. Not much additional work beyond what already comes with setting up a new laptop. Especially of you’ve already done it before.
Unless it’s arch lol.
Some, maybe 1-2% of Windows users keep yelling “I’ma switch to Linux”. They then try it for a few days and give up.
You didn’t matter in the first place, but also you will most likely not make a successful transition anyways.
Crab
the vast majority don’t care or they would have stopped using it a long time ago
It’s a little disingenuous to claim people should’ve stopped using something that hasn’t come to market yet. I was looking for other options when they started trying to force me to upgrade to Windows 11, but this absolutely is the last straw that I won’t use Windows on my next computer.
the vast majority don’t care or they would have stopped using it a long time ago
Try reading the sentence with this implied bit explicitly added. I’m pretty sure this is what was intended, and is why you are getting the response you are.
the vast majority don’t care (about Microsoft’s continuous bullshit) or they would have stopped using it a long time ago
The bit I added is communicated by the context from the preceeding sentence in the original comment:
MS has been doing this kind of shit for decades and their market share has never changed significantly.
Man, there is a LOT of people in this thread hoping to normalize this, or pretend it will happen anyway, or that it’s ‘not really a PR disaster’, or that people will ignore it, or-
Go make your money elsewhere, christ.
I finally switched to Linux Mint a week ago. I’ve just had enough of Microsoft and I couldn’t think of any more reasons why I shouldn’t switch.
I’ve got Libre Office for all my productivity needs. All my Steam games work under Linux. My VPN works just fine. Firefox for web browsing. Thunderbird for email. And Wine to run those 1-2 Windows programs that I just can’t do without.
You might try OnlyOffice 😄
vpn with network manager is amazing. All my client’s vpn solutions just work. On windows I needed 5-6 different vpn clients that bluescreen each other on Linux I need zero proprietary software.
The switch to Linux will have to come from the bottom up. Corporations will NOT switch until Microsoft costs them serious money.
TL;DR:
- Windows Recall, part of Microsoft’s new Copilot+ PC initiative, has sparked major privacy and security concerns.
- The feature uses AI to capture and store screen data locally, allowing users to search for past activities using natural language.
- Despite assurances that data is not uploaded to the cloud or used by Microsoft, user trust is lacking.
- Microsoft has a history of practices that have eroded user trust, including obtrusive ads, ignoring user preferences, and requiring Microsoft Accounts.
- Users are skeptical, fearing future misuse of the collected data for advertising or AI training.
- Windows Recall reportedly stores data unencrypted, making it vulnerable to access by third-party apps and potential malware.
- The open nature of Windows amplifies these risks, unlike more secure systems like iOS and Android.
- Users have compared Windows Recall to spyware, with many threatening to switch to other operating systems like Linux or Mac.
- Microsoft’s attempts to keep the development of Windows Recall secret did not help build trust.
- Windows Recall will only be available on new Copilot+ PCs, requiring specific hardware not present in existing PCs.
- Users will have the option to disable the feature, but there are concerns about it being enabled by default.
- Despite security issues, the feature is effective in helping users find lost or forgotten data.
- It could improve productivity if trust and security concerns are resolved.
Windows Recall does NOT require NPU hardware to run. Currently Recall has been tested on Windows 11 with only a CPU and it seems to be fully operational. Of course performance is not as good as with an NPU. I believe Microsoft will try to push AI to local computing by only enabling on computers with NPUs to begin with. In the future it will most likely be able to be enabled on PCs which does not have an NPU but with a warning of bad performance in front of it.
In the future most CPU’s will prolly have an NPU built in. We already seeing it with ryzen
Microsoft has already taken a step back: Microsoft implements drastic changes to Recall after criticism
- Recall needs to be enabled during installation
- Windows Hello is needed so that only the users can view it’s own screenshots
- Recall database will be encrypted
It’s what they should have done from the beginning, there must be a horde of MSFT employees holding back the urge of saying “told you so” to their boss right now lol
there must be a horde of MSFT employees holding back the urge of saying “told you so” to their boss right now lol
🤣
And no one is going to trust them on this. They’ve burned that bridge.
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Or are trapped in their ecosystem, some never forget
I guess if you want to verify the truth of this statement, look at Unity. They walked back their per-install system, but the indie community still moved away from them because it seemed clear they might try to do that at some point in the future.
Yeah bur for the non tech oriented user it’s still difficult . Most devices bought come with OEM install.
Even for a regular user it’s going to sound like There is a virus that reads and remembers everything on your computer but you can turn it off and trust us it would be off.
Even for PCs that come with Windows preinstalled, there’s still the need to set it up at the first start (account, privacy and such), so I think that the option to enable Recall will be there.
I really hope the damage is done. They need to be knocked down a peg. This all should have been done first. Whoever thought this was a good idea is horrible.
Microsoft has built a number of safety features into Windows Recall to ensure that the service can’t run secretly in the background. When Windows Recall is enabled, it places a permanent visual indicator icon on the Taskbar to let the user know that Windows Recall is capturing data. This icon cannot be hidden or moved.
Oh my, that one is really cute
Malware will disable that icon. Law enforcement will buy [that] malware.
Well find out in 10 years that that wasn’t true and that it did capture data when the icon wasn’t present whoopsies.
If chkCaptureData.checked then recall() bigNotify() Else recall() End
This icon cannot be hidden or moved.
Or what? Your computer will take out a club and beat you to death?
You can’t convince me someone couldn’t do it with a simple registry edit, or even just replace the icon with something else by swapping an icon file somewhere in Windows/
Stallman just keeps being right*
*About software freedom
lol, yeah that’s an important asterisk for sure!
Microsoft lost my trust a long time ago. For the last 10-15 years, my only relationship with them is, “how much sh*t am I willing to put up with before I switch to something else?”
And CoPilot/Recall was the breaking point.
