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[–] [S] 222 points 2 years ago (23 children)

Windows Recall today: Your data is private and stays on local machine.

Recall after 2 years: We may use your data to train our AI models, improve our services and personalize your experince.

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  • [–] 20 points 2 years ago (14 children)

    Interesting way to put it. The first thing it made me think is that if they did the 2nd part entirely within your PC, would it be ok privacy-wise, and would the consumers be ok with it?

    I haven't looked into the current iterations options, but I think I still want the option to turn it off. Personally I'm less concerned with privacy and more concerned with it using up my computers resources.

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  • [+] 67 points 2 years ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (5 children)
  • [–] 20 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    I ditched Microsoft on my new build back in Feb. I installed Mint and it's been a really smooth transition for me. I can still do everything I used to, although I know there are some use cases where it's a problem for people. All the games I've tried run well.

    But it does give me peace of mind that someone isn't going to change my settings in a way that benefits them in a patch. I feel like I'm working with my OS to get things done instead of wrestling against what some corporate MBA wants.

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  • [–] 33 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    No, there’s a bigger context that you’re not considering: enterprise IT orgs in privacy-sensitive/confidential domains.

    This whole feature is an absolute non-starter in biotech, defense, finance, and a bunch of other industries. It’s an infosec nightmare. Legal teams will categorically refuse to allow W11 to be installed simply due to the legal jeopardy it would put their own orgs in, since it implicitly trusts MS with who the fuck knows how much data exactly.

    I continue to be shocked and baffled that MS isn’t taking their stance on this product as an “always-on” thing back to the drawing board.

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  • [–] 17 points 2 years ago

    I consult in some companies that don’t even allow copy/paste in outlook. Like, these are actually MS security policies that can be set.

    How in all of the actual fucks could they allow MS to see everything on your screen.

    I agree with your non starter assessment.

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  • [–] 30 points 2 years ago

    Nah. Even if it's local, I'll burn my CPU cycles on what I want to, thanks. That's like installing a bitcoin miner in your PC and claiming, "But it only runs in the background." Fuck off and buy your own hardware, Microsoft.

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  • [–] 152 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (13 children)

    Set up a new pc for someone today. Turned off all the OneDrive backup options. Rebooted and copied their files from a USB to SATA adapter. They turned the backup settings back on again!

    Can't trust Microsoft.

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  • [–] 79 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Yep. I’ve set up Windows a few times recently, and they don’t give even the slightest consideration for your settings. Few days later, they changed right back.

    They will be configured to benefit Microsoft first. Maybe not immediately. But it sounds like a losing game.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago

    You need to make a Powershell script or batch that uninstalls/turns off the feature and then make a scheduled task that runs the ps1/bat at login.

    Its insane that this is what you have to do to keep this shit off your system, but it's effective.

    I had to do this with New Outlook because it kept reinstalling after Windows updates.

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  • [–] 92 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    "You can turn it off", "it's an optional feature", they didn't even last a year! What ever happened to slowly boiling the frog?

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    [+] 66 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (20 children)
  • [–] 50 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Windows 10 on day 1 was still 'calling home' and recommending candy crush in the start menu as I recall. I had to dig into the registry to gut the windows store from it entirely to get windows 10 to act how i want an OS to act. Windows 7 was the last good windows IMO.

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  • [–] 20 points 2 years ago

    There is no amount that could answer that because the Ad profit is on top of the already existing product. It would always be viewed as a "loss."

    Not that they're losing on the cost of operations and development of the OS, but because the ad revenue is in addition to the product...

    Greed fucking greed fucking greed. Greed turtles all the way down...

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago

    Last time I bought a Win 10 Pro DVD to install on a customer's machine, it was AUD$195.00. And I still had to use powershell to de-provision some of the bullshit. Better than the Home version (AUD$165.00), at least I can use GPEDIT to disable some "features".

    Of course, a Windows licence on a pre-built Dell or HP would be a lot less.

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    [–] 60 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    (re)Ditched Windows on my PC a while ago, still have to use Windows at work. Just checked my work laptop running Windows 11 (standard laptop, not a "Copilot+PC") - sure enough, that Recall shit is installed and active. Disabled it, and made a post in our main company Teams channel with screenshots. Will be interesting to see if there are any reactions to this.

    To find out if it is active in Windows 11, open up 'cmd' and use: (typing this from memory, hope it is correct)

    dism /online /get-featureinfo /featurename:Recall

    to disable it, you need a 'cmd' instance with admin rights:

    dism /online /disable-feature /featurename:Recall

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  • [–] 16 points 2 years ago

    My company blocks screenshots (luckily we don't have high definition cameras in or pocket at all times, else that would seem stupid) so I'm wondering what they will do if those are user accessible.

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    [–] 33 points 2 years ago (7 children)

    So wait, did I miss a step or is this NOT the recall feature they announced for Copilot Plus PCs? None of the screen snapshots, none of the AI search.

    As far as I can tell it's some variation on the logging search that was in Windows in Win8, right? At least when it comes to user-facing functionality.

    EDIT: As far as I can tell, people mentioning this mean the full Recall feature, but even though the package shows up on my Copilot+ PC the functionality itself is nowhere to be seen. I'm still confused about this and relatively convinced something is being missed somewhere.

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  • [–] 17 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    I've found it very interesting. So far as I can tell it's installed and enabled (even on non co-pilot PCs). However I have yet to see or hear of anyone that has found evidence that it is actually running and doing its job (capturing screenshots and creating the database for the AI model).

    To me, the fact it's installed and enabled and they've not stood up by now and said "Ooops our bad, it was only meant to be on copilot PCs and we should have added it to the features menu so you can turn it off" just suggests that, the stuff is there and at some point they will flip a switch on ALL PCs to enable it.

    It's quite lucky that a week or so ago when I got some new SSDs, I put aside 2TB for a linux boot to replace my old broken previous linux dual boot. Not booted into windows in over a week.

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  • [–] 29 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    Switched back to Linux this week and I couldn't be happier.

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    [–] 28 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Wait! The only selling point of those "AI" PCs runs on non "AI" pcs?

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    [+] 22 points 2 years ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 child)
  • [–] 17 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    For FUCK sakes....

    I have a 256GB SATA SSD machine here, that I want to put a fresh install of windows on a 1TB M.2

    And NOW is the fucking time windows puts out this fucking Win11 24H2 garbage... that's BSOD'ing peoples computers, having other issues, and now this.

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    [–] 16 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Saw this bullshit coming, already got a linux mint dual boot setup on my work pc.

    PSA: If you have a bigger usb formatted to the ntfs file system, consider switching it to exfat file system when working with linux. I had a hard freeze up and couldn’t get my files off for a bit, and this what I suspect was the issue.

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    [–] 8 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    I made this prediction before kind of joking, but I feel like it could still end up this way, where in the near future we’ll all be installing a FOSS AI after a fresh install whose sole job is to target the corpo AI’s on our local machines and continuously cripple them.

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