Microsoft has started rolling out a.i. to its Windows Operating System for PCs. This “feature” pretends to make it easier to find documents on a computer.
What they should have done is create a reverse index for document retrieval by contents keyword. That proven technology has been around for decades, and doesn’t use a.i.
Microsoft’s tendency to force a.i. unto users of its Windows operating system poses significant threats to privacy and the safety of corporate secrets.
For those of us who have a business to protect, what operating systems help safeguard privacy?
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most likely it will be a group policy which most it departments will turn off anyway.
For now…
Seriously though why do they do this to us. Before you know it Windows will be tied to Azure with no local AD.
At public services too, like schools and hospitals, where admins mostly couldn’t care less?
here’s hoping. would be a nightmare if it somehow reached the healthcare industry
Don’t be so sure! For a few percents off the price some greedy executives would give anything to Microsoft (and/or others).
Its kind of crazy how that works. Microsoft is blinded my success in many ways.
You can turn off a lot of it with group policy. I would also do testing on the desktop so you can stay ahead of the antifeatures.
Edit:
I like this line:
My problem is, even if it’s encrypted, only local blah blah blah, if your Microsoft account is compromised, what then?
I worked on account services for msft. The amount of people with compromised accounts is astounding.
You linked to a shitty website that blocks hardened browsers instead of the article on Ars. Downvoted.
Please re-post with a link to the actual article.
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To quote Microsoft themselves on the feature;
“No content moderation” is the most important part here, it will happily steal any and all corporate secrets it can see, since Microsoft haven’t given it a way not to.
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No content moderation means it ISN’T reading the screen.
It’s screen shots saved to your hard drive just like when you hit the print screen key in Arch. It’s a stupid feature but saying MS is stealing everything because of this feature makes no sense.
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Soon it’ll be safer to use a Chinese Linux distribution than Windows.
Red Star OS ftw.
That’s northkorean I think.
I know, but NK politically isn’t that far away from PRC.
I recall a statement from an article I’ve read several years ago on the presentation of Will Scott, a professor who has been in NK, at 31C3 2014.
After the Covid lockdowns there is a saying in China:
Ok, so this is a Lemmy post that links a r/ailess post that links a r/privacy post that finally links this Ars Technica article.
Why not just link the Ars Technica article to begin with? I don’t think there’s any good reason to link all these separate chained discussions.
There’s even the cross-post feature!
This. Please collectively downvote. This sort of thing is the proper use of the downvote button.
This sounds a LOT like the plot of a terrible 90’s movie that was thinly veiled to portray MS as a mini-surveillance state, with some murder thrown in. I’ll try and find it.
Edit: Released in 2001, it was ‘Antitrust’. I remember it being bad, but not good-bad like ‘Hackers’
That sounds familiar. I was thinking of one called something like Sawfish? But maybe Antitrust is what I’m thinking of.
‘Swordfish’. I don’t even know what in the hell that movie was supposed to be, but it was basically Hugh Jackman as Wolverine as “Hacker”, but just filled with ridiculous nonsense.
Great episode of ‘How Did This Get Made’ going over it. Worth a listen.
Direct, non-Reddit link
I’ve been using Linux for near enough a quarter of a century as my main desktop and I haven’t regretted it yet.
Linux today is plenty easy to use today for a non-technical audience, runs with less resources, has global communities, comes in your language and it’s free.
I hear you.
Being able to search and read was the hardest part (read as not at all difficult)
99.9 % of my computer usage is FF and libreoffice.
Other than (maybe) initial setup there is nothing stopping “your mom” from being able to have Linux as a daily driver.
Microsoft is for some reason $$$$ shooting them selves in the foot they seem hell bent on making windows unusablely crappy. Oh look enshitification.
Case in point, my late 50s father was recently fired from his job of 36 years. They told him not to return the ancient E series thinkpad they had given him as an email checker, but wouldn’t give him a password to be able to use it. After finding the bios wasn’t locked I chucked Debian on it for him and he’s been using it for months to send applications with only a light introduction libreoffice and some minor tinkering with system settings to make it feel more familiar.
You are a good kid. Kudos.
They’ve been doing this shit since Windows 8 and haven’t lost any users so I don’t think “shooting then selves in the foot” makes sense.
Kinda yeah. Like many things it is complex.
Back in the day… I was so chuffed when MS released 95, and 98 and was amazed at 2000.
But yes 8 was a horror show, and to that point— is anyone excited about a new release?
When there is really nothing wrong with XYZ machine running 10; but it is not supported in 11 and your EOL on 10; yeah there’s nothing compelling me to want a new computer
MS for a short while was or seemed happy for people to use 365 , but to me it seems like they are just shitting on windows as an os.
I wouldn’t say they’re not losing users. Rather, the tide is going out. The whole market is shrinking in favor of mobile devices for the non-technically inclined. An increasingly higher proportion of their users are enthusiasts and business over the casual user.
Is this windows 11 and up or windows 10 as well?
The Windows 10 equivalent, Timeline, got discontinued in 2021. At this point in time it is unknown whether Microsoft will retrofit Recall into Windows 10. Knowing Microsoft it is safe to assume they’ll try anything for profit.
I thought that surely it couldn’t be that bad. But…
“Recall uses Copilot+ PC advanced processing capabilities to take images of your active screen every few seconds,” Microsoft says on its website. “The snapshots are encrypted and saved on your PC’s hard drive. You can use Recall to locate the content you have viewed on your PC using search or on a timeline bar that allows you to scroll through your snapshots.”
“Encrypted”
It must be secure if it is encrypted. The problem with the Microsoft secret storage is that they key is on the disk.
For individuals, yes. For organizations, no. Orgs who know what they’re doing use a HSM for their data encryption. Thus the title of this post is inaccurate.
But from the consumer side, I am absolutely never going to buy a “Copilot Plus” device, whatever that is.
You may not get much of a choice.
Your username is becoming more and more relevant daily
Funny how that possibly happens
So it’s a security camera pointing at your screen, but with AI involved.
Honestly though, this sounds like the kind of thing you could hack together with a shell script and OCR on a *NIX system in an afternoon. Cronjob to take screenshots and run them through OCR, keywords to a database. Add hooks to your window manager to take additional screenshots on relevant events (change desktop, application opens/new window on screen, etc.).
bUt iTs Ai InTeGrAtEd
This sounds very much like on of those claims that has an invisible “for now” attached to it. It’s always going to be a slow roll out with these kinds of things.
Can’t wait to see 3rd party software trying to use this to “improve your experience” while using their app.
Can’t view the post without the reddit app, have a direct link to the actual article?
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/microsofts-new-recall-feature-will-record-everything-you-do-on-your-pc/
Had to dig but found it https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/microsofts-new-recall-feature-will-record-everything-you-do-on-your-pc/