Who is surprised?
At this point, I think they are actively trying to drive us away.
They will certainly succeed at driving some people away. I was a lifetime Windows user and I currently don’t have it installed on any of my machines now. I think the average Joe is blissfully unaware other than the occasional dialog about a new feature coming their way.
I think they are going to lose more of the hardcore tech community with decisions like these, but I don’t know that they care.
In most situations i agree with you, but i think when it comes to the purchase of techie things (like which computers and OS a company should use) then the opinion of techies matters. Their opinion may not matter as much as it should, but in aggregate over time it can cause large changes in purchasing decisions
I hate being bothered. Linux, while overall almost botherless, still looses to windows.
But damn me, when Win 10 loses support, I am jumping to nobara. Win 11 seems to be win 10 with every addon being something I harbor dislike for.
Linux, while overall almost botherless, still looses to windows.
Been using mint for around 2 months and I would say this is pretty accurate. Pretty much every game I play works out of the box. Discord however crashes the whole system sometimes and I can’t figure out why. Would still recommend Linux over windows but you will for sure encounter more issues.
but the “hardcore tech community” guys are the IT guys of all companies. so this means a lot of the people who are in IT related meetings and have a say in which OSes to install will now be opposed to Win11. A lot will probably suggest waiting to hopefully be able to skip 11, but some will choose alternatives.
News flash, a lot of the hardcore tech community already used Linux and would’ve pushed for it in related meetings.
Using Windows isn’t a sign of advocacy, it’s a sign of legacy. Companies don’t want to swap and change things.
To be honest, they probably are. My pet theory is that they’re trying to do what do many politicians are doing - drive away everyone but the strongest base electorate that will stay with them no matter what they do. And then, the grift starts. I’m reasonably sure sooner rather than later they’ll start charging a subscription fee to use Windows, and people and companies will bend over and pay it…
If it was listed incorrectly as a feature that could be turned on or off and it was a bug, then the bugfix would seem to be making it listed correctly as a feature that can be turned on or off.
Who else has ever invented such a powerful spyware?
Serious question. Because usually Microsoft are not the first ones with anything, it is very likely that there is a predecessor.
Now I am quite disturbed because I don’t know how and where we are being spied on already in such an infamous manner!
There is a Mac app called Rewind that came out a couple of years ago that does the same thing. There was also an open source thing for Windows. Everyone is desperate to show that they are hip and can do AI. It looks like someone at Microsoft saw a demo of one of those apps and thought that putting it into Windows would let them brag about how much AI Windows can do. They clearly tried to rush it out in time for their Copilot PC marketing push.
The idea is that you can use local LLM models and image scanning to talk to your computer. You could ask it to summarize your day, ask what you were working on last week, or find those articles you vaguely remember reading last year and can’t find anymore. I can almost see the merit, but the security risk is so high.
I wonder if people will eventually stop caring about the security risk of features like this. Those AI girlfriends some people dream about will have access to so much private information. Give this thing a voice and you can market it as a companion who learns the things you like and can talk with you about the things you are reading. Hackers might be able to see literally everything you’ve done on the computer for the last few years, but you’ll get to feel like Iron Man with your own personal Jarvis.
I think the average Joe doesn’t really understand or care about the security risk of such a feature, because they assume that there are competent people at the company who have considered the security risk and took sufficient steps to address it. It’s not by accident that there’s a meme about some guy having a smart fridge and watch and everything, and his friend the IT expert, who doesn’t have a single piece of smart tech and keeps a gun in the kitchen in case the toaster makes a wrong move…
This is where we say switch to Linux, right?
Yeah but I think most of us have already… We are not many enough to matter though. Microsoft and Google will continue to do what they want with 99% of users.
If they keep going at this pace, even the average person will be sick of it. My company was already considering it (after some input from myself and a couple coworkers) after they first announced recall. We sometimes deal with sensitive information that we can’t share with anyone outside the company. Periodic screenshots, regardless of what Microsoft says they will do, is a huge security risk.
It still can be disabled in windows enterprise using a intune policy, at least.
Eh, I switched. I switched all of my lab’s computers, too, and my PhD students have remarked a few different times that Linux is pretty cool. It might snowball.
The problem is like that xkcd comic about experts underestimating the common person’s knowledge in their field. Linux is still not user friendly enough for the vast majority of people. Linux users just don’t seem to understand that most people are in the “wtf is a distro?” level of knowledge and would absolutely panic at the mere sight of a terminal.
True. Most people wouldn’t know how to install windows. They use it because it’s preinstalled and works. It’s a lot of risk for the average user to attempt an install from media even if it’s well guided. There’s also the roadblock of having media for local backup and the migration of personal data to cloud obfuscating the access to the data even further.
It’s hard enough to get professionals to rtfm.
I’ve used Linux for 20 years and don’t even know what MPV is without looking it up.
Pretty sure that’s not an issue for any average user.
It’s not “linux”’s job to be userfriendly, it’s up to the distro. Look at android, steam deck and chromebooks, three very userfriendly linux distros. Now we just need some billion dollar company to do what google and valve did with those for a desktop and we’re good to go.
