“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?
The frog is a captive audience
“Slowly” is relative. Also remember that windows 10 was the last windows you would need to ever buy? (To be fair that is more true then Microsoft would like these days)
(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:Recallto disable it, you need a ‘cmd’ instance with admin rights:
dism /online /disable-feature /featurename:RecallIt will be re-enabled after update : )
Mentioned this in another comment. Take that second dism line, and put it in a batch script and make it a scheduled task that runs at login. Or use a Powershell script to make it a little smarter - check if it’s enabled first and then disable it if it is.
Modern problems require modern solutions.
Any IT admins in the audience: this is what remediation scripts were made for
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.
I’m going to check at my work tomorrow too. I’m gonna be quite unhappy if I find it.
What do you think it would cost MS to sell a version of Windows that’s just…an operating system, and not an ad platform? Like Windows XP? Or maybe Windows 10 on day 1?
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.
I distinctly remember win 10 ignored every single setting I chose in oobe and went to default
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…
But think of the shareholders. They would loose so much money they would probably have to sell their third yacht!
But think of the shareholders
I have many thoughts of the shareholders.
Most of those thoughts are quite violent.
I would totally do that. Only problem is that the third yacht really is my favourite, so I’m gonna pass if that’s okay. Thanks!
Love the outside the box thinking though. Really inspirational!
A real straight shooter with upper management written all over em
Shareholders ought to be thankful we don’t know their names, addresses or anything or we’d be knee-capping them dumbasses.
you wouldn’t do anything keyboard warrior
Neither would you, “Champ”.
put the keyboard down and back away
I mean they would have to charge enough to make it financially viable. Maybe no one else would buy it but me…
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.
You can’t ungrind ground meat back.
While using Linux with Mate is perfectly possible
But you can feed a scrambled egg back to a chicken.
Of course you can.
Linux is great if you’re a software developer and don’t ever plug any hardware in.
Maybe 5-10 years ago, apparently these days driver issues are less of a concern. Plug & play is the norm now, from my experience at least
I’ve had the odd issue with wifi drivers and very new gpus but that’s about it.
There is the LTSC version (not sure if 11 is released yet, but 10 definitely is) which is basically debloated windows. Made by Microsoft, and targeted towards embedded devices.
Switched back to Linux this week and I couldn’t be happier.
Upgraded*
If it’s free, you’re the product… Oh wait.
Unless it doesn’t make money.
Apparently, my irony missed the mark.
The irony that’s with the paid OS that you’re the product.
That wasn’t clear to me, but it is a pretty funny point.
Luckily my installation was free
FWIW I was worried this might be on W10 (hey, they might try it) so I tried the >dism commands found earlier in this thread (thanks btw!) & got “Feature name Recall is unknown”.
Safe for now
I’ve been running Pop!_OS with the Cinnamon desktop environment on my machine at home for the past 3 months. I’m very impressed with the out-of-the-box experience. All my games run in Steam or Lutris.
Fuck Microsoft.
For me the same, but with kubuntu. Linux is really ready to be used as a desktop.
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.
What version of Linux did you go with?
Linux Mint 22 Cinnamon
Even on Pro or Enterprise editions? I can’t imagine businesses tolerating this never mind governments.
Did not show up on my work laptop running Win 11.
Didn’t show up on my win11 pro desktop pc.
Keep in mind that this doesn’t necessarily mean that recall itself is actually doing recall stuff or even running a process (I haven’t checked if it does but not necessarily) like it would on a copilot laptop.
It is however very stupid that you can’t uninstall recall without messing up the file Explorer. My guess is that it’s a bug or some weird dependency needed with explorer.exe that handles the file explorer and a bunch of other stuff like the desktop and taskbar. It could also be spying but this seems like a stupidly obvious way to do it if they wanted too.
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.
The guys using FOSS Ai would be the same guys using an operating system without an hostile Ai built in.
I tried and couldn’t find it on my system. I run Linux btw.
Oh no! Anyways…
Why do people still use that legacy proprietary malware-ridden morally obsolete operating system?
Why do you think they do? Logically think it through.
Market sharen and incumbent advantage. Ease of adoption (or appearance of). Ubiquity and lack of need to retain. Predatory behaviour by MS. Different priorities for users.
Unless you actually consider the real reasons why Windows is so widespread you’ll never make a dent in it.
Ease of adoption (or appearance of)
Thank you for acknowledging that point. Because since Win7 or so, Almost all major Linux distributions are shitloads easier to learn that any windows environment, no matter how unfamiliar you are with Linux. Basically, all major desktop environments behave like an optimized WinXP desktop.
What’s not user friendly about learning multiple different settings panels? /S
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It came with the machine.
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There are a few things that still don’t quite work as good in Linux.
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For me personally, VR is the last thing holding me back. Hopefully that changes soon though. My laptop has already been Windows-free for a while.
let me be the one to say: the only people who “need” VR are those earning their money with selling VR products. No one else in the whole wide world actually needs VR.
Yeah. But this person spent money on it so they want their devices to run it. I don’t get your point.
There’s a lot of stuff everyone has that they don’t need. What’s your point? Are you going to go vegan? because technically you don’t need meat. Are you going to stop driving an automatic transmission? Because you don’t need that. Oh, social media (Lemmy included), you definitely don’t need that.
I’m getting a gaming PC soon because I want to use VR and while I do want to primarily use Linux, I will be keeping a Windows install for it.
A gaming PC is also not something that anyone needs, but I want to own one and I want to play VR games on it. Your point is not as good as you think.
So how good did I think my point was? VR is an artificial hype, especially in a time where almost all major game releases lack in story and already put way too much money into graphical effects. It’s a gadget.
A phone is also a gadget…?
Mobile one absolutely. And they make humans more stupid and the world worse.
No one needs a computer at all. We all know that already.
Normies doesn’t care. Instead they watch brainrot content on TikTok
(and most don’t have desktops or laptops to start with)
On Windows? You sure about that?
BOGU!
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.
Best part? It’s using your hardware and electricity to train the models.
In a few years they’ll charge you monthly for the priviledge of using/knowing what it collected on you.
Recall after 2 years: Your personalized ads are generated on device based on preferences detected by Recall and our partners. Recall shares these preferences with Microsoft and our 23,671.5 partners and 16 nation-state partners around the world to better serve you <3.
Pi-hole can block microsoft telemetry domains, just need to keep the blocklists up to date, and flush the Recall cache every day.
Product activation failed: Please drink verification can.
I wonder who the 0.5 partner is…
The user? Not even worth a full share.
The user is definitely 0.0 partner’s worth
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.
Even if all the processing remained on my devices, I still wouldn’t want or trust it. Microsoft could change that policy at any time, claim something like my logging in to my local account constituted agreeing to their new terms, and expose screenshots of my password manager in an unsecured public data store.
Fuck Windows Recall, and fuck Microsoft generally for being so fucking awful to their customers but mainly fuck them for forcing me to finally make good on my threat to switch to Linux. I’ve been using Windows for over thirty years and switching off their spyware for ten, but this is the final straw.
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.
No joke, that’s the distro I’m going with 🙌 Mint is great!
Mint is the distro of choice for people who want to work on their computer, not work on their computer.
Like I’m glad for all the nerds who change distros as often as they change pairs of pants and enjoy fiddle-fucking around with their setup, but some of us only want a computer that just works and doesn’t give us shit.
It’s funny you say that, because in my experience what you’re describing is Arch. Mint, meanwhile, was the first time I’d used Linux and had it “just work”. What distro are you using that you don’t have to “fiddle-fuck around” with it at all?
Fuck Windows Recall, and fuck Microsoft generally for being so fucking awful to their customers
Always has been.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah I work for a major company in healthcare and they don’t allow Windows 11 for several reasons.
But also outside of the healthcare data issue, there’s the legal issue of retaining data. Our company doesn’t allow us to retain emails for more than 2 years and there are lots of other retention policies, and software to enforce them, that don’t require keeping data, but instead require deleting it. This is a common trend in major corporations right now. You can’t have data hacked or subpoenaed in a court case if it doesn’t exist. Recall is great for micromanagement of employees, but bad for just about all other parts of a company. I don’t get who is behind this and who they think they’re appeasing with it.
Don’t they already have a non copilot version of Windows 11? I believe the OPM is already using it.
Even if the storage were strictly local, there would still be some privacy concerns. Hackers can’t steal data that isn’t there.
At that point, you’re just paying for training Microsoft’s AI.
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 mean Chrome works exactly like that now so, yes?
Depends on how you define “okay”. Do people understand how it works, and want it to work that way? Absolutely not. Even if they did, would they do absolutely anything to change it? Also no. And that’s talking about software that has a dozen excellent and free alternatives.
