Microsoft is relaunching its AI-powered Recall feature, which records everything you do on your PC by constantly taking screenshots.
  • In December, an investigation by Tom’s Hardware found that Recall frequently captured sensitive information in its screenshots, including credit card numbers and Social Security numbers — even though its “filter sensitive information” setting was supposed to prevent that from happening.
  • simop_jo@lemm.eeEnglish
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    1 day ago

    WHAAAT? I would NEVER expect that from a company so good that cares about me and my data. They even tell me that in the perfect operating system! Windows! I just love bloat and ads and ai everywhere on my 150$ piece of software!!!

  • yarr@feddit.nlEnglish
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    3 days ago

    That AI is going to be copying a lot of “I put on my robe and wizard hat”

  • Psythik@lemm.eeEnglish
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    3 days ago

    I don’t understand why Lemmy is so obsessed with Recall. It only works if you have an ARM CPU with an NPU. Nearly every Windows user is on an x86-64 chip.

    Yes I agree that it shouldn’t exist in Windows at all, but everyone is complaining about a feature that less than 1% of users even have access to; the amount of people who opt into using is going to be even smaller.

    Stop obsessing over it so much and find something different to hate on Microsoft over. God knows there’s plenty of other reasons to dislike them. Seriously, it’s so annoying. I’m about to set a filter for the word “recall”.

    • moonburster@lemmy.worldEnglish
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      3 days ago

      I get that it is annoying for you since you obviously don’t have a pc that will run it, yet.

      But a lot of problems in tech started because it was just there and didn’t do that much yet. Lots of governments are still catching up to the big tech to stop them from having too much power, because they slept on it.

      I dislike the recall stuff too, I don’t have a pc that will be able to run it and probably won’t have one for the coming 10 years, unless there is a huge leap in performance. But I do appreciate all the people here making their voices heard and actually bending MS their knee as well.

      So please filter it and get out of the way of the nice people, thank you

    • FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.auEnglish
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      3 days ago

      Not to mention it’s optional, entirely on device, and secure.

      Let’s be honest, most of Lemmy users complaining about it are on Linux or a Chromebook anyway. They can’t use it even if they wanted to.

      • Psythik@lemm.eeEnglish
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        3 days ago

        And how many people have the latest CPU? Most Lemmy users don’t even have an HDR monitor—tech that’s been mainstream for over a decade at this point—let alone the latest and greatest processor.

        • SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.orgEnglish
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          3 days ago

          So it’s just a matter of time then? When can we complain? A year from now? Two years? Do we have to wait for the next garbage thing Microsoft does? Hey, why don’t you just tell us exactly when it’s okay for us to complain? We bow to you oh great one. We live by your command.

          • Psythik@lemm.eeEnglish
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            3 days ago

            About time someone recognized my authority; thank you.

            Let’s wait until the average user has an NPU before we start complaining again, okay? If that doesn’t work for everyone, let’s have a meeting in my palace tomorrow afternoon to decide on a date, and if I’m in a good mood, I’ll allow it.

  • Hastur@lemmy.caEnglish
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    3 days ago

    everywhere is copying your private messages. Google, facebook, microsoft, reddit, your phone texts, anything you’ve ever posted anywhere. This isn’t news

  • Mr. Broken@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
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    3 days ago

    This is top tier comedy: Microsoft won the PC war to be benevolent and give it to Linux. How kind of them to shoot themselves in the foot for the good of mankind.

    • lennivelkant@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
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      2 days ago

      They didn’t fully hand it to Linux yet. We still have to earn that. Ideological appeal / privacy concern alone isn’t enough for many people if the jump seems too scary, particularly if it feels like a one-directional leap of faith. What if they don’t like it on the other side? Better the devil you know…

      We need to build bridges, in both directions: help and encourage people to switch to Linux, but also promise them help to get back, basically an “out” if they don’t like it. I see plenty of guides for migrating to Linux, but how about getting back to Windows?

      It’s okay not to like Linux, it’s okay to be scared or apprehensive, and it’s okay to get cold feet and return to the familiar. Maybe some time in the future they’ll try again.

  • Septimaeus@infosec.pubEnglish
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    3 days ago

    Just a tip: if you must use consumer editions of Windows regularly, consider adding an automatic provisioning tool like AME to your workflow.

    The example above uses customizable “playbooks” to provision a system the way docker compose would a container image, so it can fill the role of a VM snapshot or PXE in non-virtualized local-only scenarios.

    The most popular playbooks strip out AI components and services (there are many more than just Recall) but also disable all telemetry and cloud-based features, replace MS bloatware with preferred OSS, curtail a truckload of annoying Windows behaviors, setup more sensible group policies than the defaults, and so forth.

    I have a few custom playbooks for recurring use cases so that, when one presents, I can spin up an instance quickly without the usual hassle and risk.

    • SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.orgEnglish
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      3 days ago

      We did not take the easy path of writing our app in Java or a web-based Java-script heavy framework. Using C# and .NET allows us to craft an experience that minimizes resource use and is very fast.

      This got me good. I just love how they try to make using .NET for making a windows application “not the easy path”.

      Sounds kinda interesting though. If I’m ever so unlucky as to having to use Win11, I will give it a try.

      • Septimaeus@infosec.pubEnglish
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        3 days ago

        Lol I noticed the same. They evidently have some ongoing internal disagreement as to their target audience. Docs and functionality says “our audience is enterprise developers” but their marketing definitely says “our audience is end users.”

        It may be explained by recent partnerships with former custom ISO devs (seeking legitimacy and offering a sizable user base in turn). I expect the plan is eventually to sell premium support for an enterprise toolset, but for now their target audience is the non-dev-but-tech-savvy end user. And those happen to be surprisingly opinionated re: java and electron.

    • BearGun@ttrpg.networkEnglish
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      3 days ago

      consider adding an automatic provisioning tool like AME to your workflow.

      The example above uses customizable “playbooks” to provision a system the way docker compose would a container image, so it can fill the role of a VM snapshot or PXE in non-virtualized local-only scenarios.

      I know what most of these words mean individually

      • spooky2092@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
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        3 days ago

        Basically, a playbook is a set of instructions or baselines for how you want the system to look/be setup, and the provisioning tool will engage in however many tasks are required to configure the system to your specifications. I played around with something similar with PowerShell DSC, and its pretty cool to be able to eliminate config drift when it checks against the config and remediates any changes that weren’t updated in the playbook.

        • demonsword@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          2 days ago

          Basically, a playbook is a set of instructions or baselines for how you want the system to look/be setup, and the provisioning tool will engage in however many tasks are required to configure the system to your specifications.

          so… ansible?

    • arakhis_@feddit.orgEnglish
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      3 days ago

      You for sure feels so good being this helpful. But TIN really don’t understand SHT if you use so many Technical terms(TT)

      But there’s a solution in brackets I just presented, that’s commonly accepted in academia if you still want to use TT like that

      • Septimaeus@infosec.pubEnglish
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        3 days ago

        Forgive me for not explaining better. Here are the terms potentially needing explanation.

        • Provisioning is just initial system setup, but usually implies a more regimented or repeatable process.
        • Virtual Machine (VM) snapshots are like a save state in a game, and are often used to reset a virtual machine to a particular known-working condition.
        • Preboot Execution Environment (PXE, aka ‘network boot’) is a network adapter feature that lets you boot a physical machine from a hosted network image rather than the usual installation on locally attached storage. It’s probably tucked away in your BIOS settings, but many computers have the feature since it’s a common requirement in commercial deployments. As with the VM snapshot described above, a PXE image is typically a known-working state that resets on each boot.
        • Non-virtualized means not using hardware virtualization, and I meant specifically not running inside a virtual machine.
        • Local-only means without a network or just not booting from a network-hosted image.
        • Telemetry refers to the data harvesting apparatus. Most software has it. Windows has a lot. Telemetry isn’t necessarily bad but it is easily abused by data-hungry corporations like MS, so disabling it is a precaution.
        • MS = Microsoft
        • OSS = Open Source Software
        • Group policies are administrative settings in Windows that control standards (for stuff like security, power management, licensing, software and file system access, etc.) for user groups on a machine or network. Most users stick with the defaults but you can edit these yourself for a greater degree of control.

        Many of these concepts are IT-related, as are the use-cases I had in mind, but the software is simple to use if you pick one of the premade playbooks. (The AtlasOS playbook is popular among gamers, for example.)

    • Jay@lemmy.worldEnglish
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      3 days ago

      This is really interesting! I’ve usually installed Winaero Tweaker back when I still used Windows, if I knew this existed I probably would’ve gone with this instead. Having access to “playbooks” would be quite handy.

    • boatswain@infosec.pubEnglish
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      3 days ago

      This looks like useful stuff; thanks for sharing. I’m not on Windows myself any more, but this looks like info with passing on to those in my life who are.

    • reksas@sopuli.xyzEnglish
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      3 days ago

      to vast majority of people this is unthinkable. They will also likely just not even notice news like this because they dont pay attention to such things and likely dont even care about their personal info until something bad happens to them because of that.

      • Fluffy Kitty Cat@slrpnk.netEnglish
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        3 days ago

        Stealing this info and posting it publicly is an important way to fight back. Once prole hear their credit card is being defrauded because of recall it will be untenable for it to stay

  • floofloof@lemmy.caEnglish
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    3 days ago

    Well at least there are all kinds of checks and balances to prevent big tech and the US Government from abusing this information, right? Thank goodness we have no reason to worry about it being used for political surveillance and identifying who to send to foreign concentration camps, or anything like that.

  • rottingleaf@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    3 days ago

    Makes sense why they want this technology so much, one thing has really been achieved - in year 2005 you couldn’t make a program that would be a keylogger and a useful thing all in one, so you had to make a keylogger somehow detect those rare events one can risk it running, or something like that. You couldn’t instruct it in English “send me his private messages on sites like Facebook”, you had to be specific and solve problems. Now you can. And these “AI”'s are usually one program with generic purpose. To stuff everything together with kinda useful things.