Microsoft’s Windows Recall feature is attracting controversy before even venturing out of preview.
Microsoft said in its FAQs that its snapshotting feature will vacuum up sensitive information: “Recall does not perform content moderation. It will not hide information such as passwords or financial account numbers. That data may be in snapshots stored on your device, especially when sites do not follow standard internet protocols like cloaking password entry.”
Mozilla’s Chief Product Officer Steve Teixeira told The Register: "Mozilla is concerned about Windows Recall. From a browser perspective, some data should be saved, and some shouldn’t.
Jake Moore, Global Cybersecurity Advisor at ESET, noted that while the feature is not on by default, its use “opens up another avenue for criminals to attack.”
Moore warned that “users should be mindful of allowing any content to be analysed by AI algorithms for a better experience.”
Cybersecurity expert Kevin Beaumont was scathing in his assessment of the technology, writing: “In essence, a keylogger is being baked into Windows as a feature.”
AI expert Gary Marcus was blunter: “F^ck that. I don’t want my computer to spy on everything I ever do.”
Yup, I’m setting up a dual boot when my thumb-drive arrives.
Actually really excited to get back to computing the way it was in 2010. :)
2010 sounds so fantastical, and such a far away time of mystery in the future. We’ll have flying cars, and robot monkey maids, and brain chips that can drive cars, and…it was 14 years ago??? It’s currently 2024? Well that sounds like a depressing year!
Actually really enjoying OpenSUSE Tumbleweed… first time on a rolling release distro and so far no major complaints.
Probably would have started with Arch (btw) but I felt a little daunted by the install process. In contrast with my ~2010 attempt, all my data is on a separate drive with automatic backups to NAS — so when I upgrade to an NVMe drive I’m going to give it a whirl.
So currently only Edge users can filter what gets picked up by Recall by site, and Chromium users get private browsing mode blocked out of the box? In the article, the Mozilla rep they interviewed says that Microsoft didn’t reach out to them or hasn’t made available any documentation on how to get non chromium browsers to pick what gets included in Recall.
Even if this is something thats off by default and is encrypted if you do turn it on, boy would I never want to turn it on.
As much as I want “Jarvis” OS system, I really don’t want the version made by Microsoft, Google, or, Apple.
I want to be able to talk with my AI PC, but I want secure AI that’s just for me and won’t steal all my data for any Corporations to browse.
I think the would becomes a lonely place if everyone started only talking with their AI friend. And you know that’s what would happen. Humans would isolate from each other ever more.
if everyone started only talking with their AI friend.
This would be super great for the ruling class behind the AI curtain. Your AI pal would compliment and flatter you while guiding you down the corporate cattle chute.
To a way you can already do AI audio chat with sillytavern or tavernAI and oobabooga llm in the backend. Its a little setup required but you can find online tutorials. For example from aitrepreneur on YT. It’s not perfect yet, but we’ll get there. It’s already fun to use, I just wish I had a better PC to run with a bigger and newer language model. Now using a recall function, that’s too new, but I’d not surprised if we get that in a few months.
The potential for self hosted AI is there! I’ve seen a few projects in the works, and if youre tech saavy you can spin up your own. It is pretty resource intensive, but could be run on a home server.
I’m pretty excited to have my own personal AI, vut i want one that is trained on data I select and who only phones home to my server lol.
What’s the point of this feature ? If it were not evil, what problem would it solve ? How often do you go to your PC and think “what was that thing I saw but never thought to create a bookmark or save the link/image”.
Even if people use it, it would be for something they missed because they thought it was unimportant or didn’t interest them, which is a very rare use case.
And still it is a highlight feature !
I wonder if it is lack of ideas or lack of commitment to create a good idea , given a technology, when these kinds of useless features are launched.
I can’t remember the last time Microsoft Imolemented a good idea into windows other than small UI changes.
Just do what video game companies do. They have an old game. It runs on old hardware. Some parts of the game feel very outdated in modern day. So they update the graphics, retool some outdated game mechanics, update it’s availability to run modern hardware.
They take 20 year old games, update them, and then sell it back to you at full price as a remaster.
I guess what I’m saying is…forget trying NEW ideas. Just give us Windows XP 2.0 that works on modern hardware with ongoing security updates.
That’s all anyone wants.
I think the problem with big companies like Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft, Bethesda, etc is that once all the smart & creative people have gone, all you have left are the “line must always go up” business idiots, who have no idea what their company does or how to fix it.
CoPilot is exactly the kind of End-stage, “let’s screw our customers to death” idea the CEOs come up with right before their company implodes.
The reason I know that’s true is because when this stupid idea for CoPilot came up, there were no smart people who immediately said, “do you have any idea what a terrible f*cking plan this is?”
Ironically the business people are terrible at business. I genuinely think LLMs (despite their economic evils) are stunning pieces of technology.
But they are money sinks and the only plans for profit are subscriptions or advertisements. It’s Social Media/Streaming/Tech Startups panicked hype investing all over again. Subscriptions and advertising just simply do not pay the bills for huge server and gpu farms.
But sustainability isn’t what they want is it? They want the stock to go up to then cash out when it’s about to fall. sigh
This is something that steve jobs talked about in an interview that I cannot find at the moment. Its ironic coming from him, but he was talking about when a company truly begins to die. His theory was that when a company is founded, the people that made and designed the product/service are in positions of power. But as a company grows and lives on they get replaced with marketing people. They dont know how to make anything, but they do have that “line go up” mentality. Instead of making something better, the marketing and sales people find ways to sell worse things. Again, hilarious coming from him but i think he had a point.
I don’t know if it’s really about a breakdown between ‘innovators’ and ‘sales/marketing’, but instead a breakdown between people who sincerely want to deliver something intrinsically valuable versus product delivery being some unfortunate obnoxious means to the end of “more money now”. A company founded from the onset of “don’t care, just make money” will generally fail, and the ones that succeed are the ones that care. Then you move beyond the “founder” generation of a company and then you get to watch the effort get scavenged to pieces.
Whatever may be said of Jobs, he really liked the company and products he was in charge of. Sometimes he would value form over function more than I would like, but it was still at least a facet of the actual product rather than hyper fixation on how to make the profit margins grow without much regard for the product itself. Yes, massive wealth flowed in as they caught the culture just right with iPod and then iPhone, but I don’t think it ever descended to cannibalizing the company to make those numbers even better than they were.
