the company says that Recall will be opt-in by default, so users will need to decide to turn it on

  • eksb@programming.dev
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    21 days ago

    I feel for the hundreds of engineers at Microsoft who have been yelling about these security issues since day one, but cannot say “I told you so” because they’d get fired.

    • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      I survived a similar incident, telling our CEO at the time “you know our product can’t do that, right?” I had to show my receipts, present usability studies, and faced incredible pressure, but 2 CEOs later, I’m still here… :)

      Document everything. Keep good notes. You never know when it will be useful.

    • snekerpimp@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      This is exactly what I was thinking. There are plenty of smart people that work there that would have said something before release. They were told to not rock the boat by the yes men and now Microsoft has to backpedal and pretend no one there thought about THOSE implications.

    • Spotlight7573@lemmy.worldOP
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      21 days ago

      I’m pretty sure the main picture on the article is what the revised opt in/out message looks like. Previously it was opt-out with just a message describing the feature with a check box to have it open Settings when you were finished with the out of box experience so that you can look at the options later.

      Edit: Fixed mention of opt-in to opt-out, thanks tal.

  • jabathekek@sopuli.xyz
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    21 days ago

    The fact that it took people not involved with Microsoft to point out and initiate internal change should be everything anyone needs to know.

    • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
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      21 days ago

      To be fair I think they mentioned a button to temporarily disable the spying. Either for a time or blacklist an entire application.

      Still highly recommended people move away from windows.

      • LEX@lemm.ee
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        21 days ago

        Right, but the problem is users should be able to use the feature and be confident it’s secure. It most assuredly is not as multiple people with access to the pilot program have demonstrated.

        I bet some lower level folks within MS knew this would be an issue and screamed into the void about it.

  • bigkahuna1986@lemmy.ml
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    21 days ago

    I can never again log into my email or other private account on someone else’s computer.

  • gdog05@lemmy.world
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    21 days ago

    Too fucking late. I’ve already installed Bluefin on two machines and Bazzite on my gaming machine. I’m not going back.

    • nman90@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      Already installed Bazzite on my Legion go with my laptop and desktop next. No reason for me not to continue putting it on my devices just because they are going to rework it. Recall is always going to be a major security risk despite a few extra measures. They have definitely shown they can’t think about these things. At least there was a heads up on this one for people to point out obvious issues, but that won’t always be the case.

  • 100@fedia.io
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    21 days ago

    still dont understand why you would ever want to save screenshots of your desktop and also waste disk space

    • LEX@lemm.ee
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      21 days ago

      The AI scans all those screenshots visually and tags them for search later so, for example, an artist could open a file they don’t remember the location of from thousands of folders by typing text describing it. That’s actually awesome. I imagine lots of people could come up with really useful ways to use something like that. I mean, if it wasn’t an Orwellian nightmare.

      • Spotlight7573@lemmy.worldOP
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        21 days ago

        Yeah, it sounds like it might actually be a useful feature if it wasn’t impossible to do it securely and in a privacy respecting way.

        • LEX@lemm.ee
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          21 days ago

          I don’t know about impossible. I could see this working on a Linux distro with a local model doing all the work and storing it encrypted locally. Buuuuuut, it still feels risky! That’s a giant traunch of juicy, searchable data that just begs to be stolen.

  • Lettuce eat lettuce@lemmy.ml
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    21 days ago

    Go easy on them, they’re only a 3 trillion dollar company. It’s hard for them to get the resources to build well thought out and secure software.

    Pathetic, so glad I’ve been on Linux for years. I don’t miss Micro$oft one bit.

    • ichbinjasokreativ@lemmy.world
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      20 days ago

      Right? Before they even officially rolled it out, there are already python scripts on github that can extract your entire recall database. They need to just stop.

      • Lettuce eat lettuce@lemmy.ml
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        20 days ago

        Wild for sure. It’s pretty clear that M$ isn’t interested in making their OS anything more than a portal for their cloud products.

        The overall percentage of revenue that Windows produces for them directly has been steadily shrinking for years while their Azure and cloud services/licensing has grown dramatically.

        I guess it makes sense from that perspective. Call me old fashioned, but I still prefer my OS to be a platform for me to compute locally on and use as I see fit. Not be a bloated ad-ridden portal to a walled garden of proprietary web software.

        Windows has gotten so bad in the last year or so, that I’ve actually started telling people, “Try Linux, but if that doesn’t work for you, just go with Apple.”

        Both are scummy, evil mega corps that try to lock you into their platform forever. But at least with Apple, the cage is 24K gold with a little cushion, and you’re fed avocado toast & kombucha.

        Windows is a rusty, filthy prison cell where the guards randomly come in to rough you up and you’re fed a steady diet of stale bread heels and gruel.

  • simple@lemm.ee
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    21 days ago

    With that in mind we are announcing updates that will go into effect before Recall (preview) ships to customers on June 18.

    I doubt they can do much with last-minute changes. It being opt-in is better, at least.

    our review units of the new Surface hardware are being delayed by a week or so, presumably so Microsoft can update them.

    GROAAAAAAAN. I just want to see proper benchmarks of Qualcomm’s new chips and they keep delaying it despite the laptops releasing later this month.

    • MudMan@fedia.io
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      21 days ago

      Yeah, right? The biggest bummer of this entire stupid thing that should never have existed is that it’s overshadowing perhaps the most exciting hardware launch on Windowsland since the original Surface. I am VERY interested in seeing if Windows on ARM is viable this time, and as a longtime Windows 2-in-1 user I am incredibly excited about the prospect of a similarly performant version that doesn’t need to be plugged in basically at all times.

      But because MS can’t come up with a feature without shooting itself in the foot with a bazooka we’re all here talking about the stopgap they had to implement to save face while they wait to be able to quietly kill this dumb thing for good. I swear, they are incredibly bad at this.

      • simple@lemm.ee
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        21 days ago

        The average person doesn’t even know that new hardware is coming because the only thing MS is advertising is “AI AI AI AI AI AI AI”. Is that seriously more appealing than saying “hey our new laptops have better performance and 2x more battery life than older laptops”? Because I’m feeling the latter is what they should’ve leaned on.

        • MudMan@fedia.io
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          21 days ago

          I’m torn about the marketing, because a) MS clearly wants to own “AI”, and they do have the cheapest, best version of multimodal chat at the moment, and b) I do think to normies it’s more marketable than “we did the MacBook Air, finally”.

          On the other hand, I 100% agree with you that I give zero craps about their stupid certification for 40 TOPS on laptops. I already own things with GPUs in them and I use very little in the way of LLMs or image generators, and certainly not offline, so the battery life and the matching improvements in weight are THE feature for me.

          I mean, it doesn’t really matter either way, the market is what it is, and I get to use the devices the same way regardless of how they’re marketed, so sell whatever you have to sell. It’s still fascinating and kinda sad to witness the self-sabotage, though.

    • Spotlight7573@lemmy.worldOP
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      21 days ago

      The Microsoft accounts are already required (without resorting to increasingly convoluted methods) and I think the hardware for Hello might be too now for OEM built computers, I’m not sure.

      • Evilcoleslaw@lemmy.world
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        21 days ago

        I mean, technically Windows Hello also includes signing in with a PIN or passkey. It doesn’t require biometrics, although it does support them.

  • Swordgeek@lemmy.ca
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    19 days ago

    Bullshit.

    This whole endeavour is looking like a careful plan to implement a smaller, slightly less horrible idea in Win11, and then creep forward from there.

    Remember the model to move the goal line, folks:

    • Overreach
    • Capitulate publicly and fall back to your true target
    • Repeat

    Best of all, these large steps can be supplemented by nudging things forward with ‘adjusttments.’

    • Crozekiel@lemmy.zip
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      19 days ago

      They’ll probably come to the “logical conclusion” that storing the data locally on the machine poses “too much risk” and just move the storage to their servers “for your safety”…

  • CrazyLikeGollum@lemmy.world
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    21 days ago

    So, between the inherent security nightmare that is this feature and the myriad of other things in Windows that push ads, steal user data, and generally make the simple act of using the computer less secure, when do we give Microsoft an APT designation and start treating them as the world’s largest vendor of malware on the planet?

    • ruse8145@lemmy.sdf.org
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      21 days ago

      I think you should take a calm and sober look at what Microsoft actually does.

      You may be right, I don’t know, but what I do know is any time I ask people for facts I get “read the end user license agreement” which is typically the furthest from factual a lawyers will get (it’s filled with claims that are designed to not hold up, but give a legal leg to stand on for other moves) or “remember candy crush!?!?” But few things in the realm of concrete facts.

    • GoodEye8@lemm.ee
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      19 days ago

      So that you can find that one porn video you watched six months ago that really got you off but you don’t remember how you found it.