3d ago

Abandon Ship!

https://infosec.exchange/@winterknight1337/114906298563785317

here is the referenced article: https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/23/microsoft_copilot_vision/

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To be fair, this is not Recall, as per the article:
While the screen snooping only happens when the user expressly activates it as part of a Copilot session, unlike Recall, which is constantly active in the background when enabled, it's also designed to be more proactive than previous releases.
So... it's Google Lens?
I don't know, man, people keep telling me about all these Microsoft features and none of them ever show up on my devices. I think technically the next time I reboot my PC on Windows I'll have the black blue screens of death, but I'll believe it when I see it.
Also relevant:
At the time of writing, Microsoft was only offering Copilot Vision in the US, with the promise (or threat) that it will be coming to very specifically "non-European countries" soon – a tip of the hat, it seems, to the European Union's AI Act.
- all these Microsoft features and none of them ever show up on my devices
  Lemmy tells me I have a dozen Windows issues I don't have. I should also uninstall a bunch of crap I don't have.
  Guessing most of the hate is from users with factory installed Windows on their laptops. Good god, the crap they throw on there. When I deployed company laptops it was easier to activate Windows, wipe and install from a vanilla ISO. No problem.
  
  I'm sure the features do exist, but there's a big mix of people being semi-disingenuously mad at features you toggle off on install and never think about again, features in preview buids and features that don't quite do what people say they do.
  That's not to say I wouldn't prefer many of those to... you know, not exist, but it's also true that my copilot button does nothing (that's a lie, it brings up the start menu), I don't have Recall, there are no ads in my Start menu and the extent of my interaction with "Click-to-do" was accidentally stumbling upon the shortcut, turning it off and never thinking about it again.
  I shudder to think how much development time Microsoft dumps into things that work that way for all of their tech-savvy users and only exist as gimmicks and adware for normies. It's a dumb, dumb way to make software, but it's much more manageable than some corners of the internet say it is, be it due to the ragebait economy or just how weirdly partisan and irrational the Linux rah-rah gets.
  As a long term dual-booter the whole thing seems kinda dumb to me on all sides for different reasons. I'm mostly just annoyed that I can't get Bazzite to hibernate properly and that I have to keep paying people to make my Windows taskbar float on the side of the screen like KDE does by default. And nobody is fixing either anytime soon because everybody is too busy being rich or smart or whatever other useless thing people like to be on the Internet.
  It's a very stupid century.
  
  While I mostly agree with what you are saying here, the problem is with these "features" being opt-out vs opt-in. I don't want ads on my start menu unless I go into my personalization settings and turn them off. I don't want to have to disable copilot. I don't want to have to jump through the hoops of turning off one drive. These things should be something I can turn on, not something I have to turn off. I get that it doesn't take long for someone remotely tech savvy to do, it's not like it's a struggle. The problem is that for most people, these services are extremely predatory.
  You say it's much more manageable that people claim, but you're wrong. I know more normies that own computers than I do tech savvy people. All of these people aren't good enough with tech to be able to just go find the setting, so they go to the internet to look it up. The top search results are often predatory ad-riddled sites that pitch their weird middleware software as the only solution to the problem. Oops, now the normie has malware. Their computer chugs because their computer is mining bitcoin or something stupid. They go online to look for help. There's anti malware software available, so they pay for it and install it. It takes up most of their laptop's crappy specs, making it worse than the malware. They go online for help. One of the top search results is a number for a tech support scammer. They pay them, often an aggregious amount of money, hoping for help. The tech support scammer takes their money, but does nothing (or installs malware of their own, or heaven forbid gets the normie's banking details). Rinse and repeat this process.
  That doesn't sound manageable at all, and I personally know 4 people who have gone through that entire process, and I can't imagine that I'm unique in that.
  And on top of that, even if you turn off all the settings for all of these windows "features" they are still collecting and selling your personal usage info to the highest bidder, it just is slightly less valuable.
  
  I was gonna say I hadn't had issues with Bazzite's hibernate function in a while, but then I remembered I turned it off completely.
  
  As far as I can tell it's turned off by default. It has a sleep mode, but in my PC it still draws too much power to leave it in that state indefinitely. Windows Hibernate is surprisingly good in my setup, and it allows me to start a session on Windows, go to sleep, boot into Bazzite, then switch to Windows and pick up where I left off.
  It'd be great to be able to bounce back and forth, but... yep, Hibernation not working for me. I'm sure troubleshooting can figure it out, but I don't have the time or energy at this point.
  
  Last time I checked I found some info about it being an incompatibility with AMD CPUs that nobody who's able to is interested in fixing. Or at least in my case that seemed to be it.
  
  sigh
  Well, I didn't know about the specifics, but that kinda tracks, sadly.

60 comments