New Windows AI feature records everything you’ve done on your PC
Recall uses AI features "to take images of your active screen every few seconds."
Recall won't take snapshots of [...] DRM-protected content.
At least the movie industry will survive this unscathed. Thanks Microsoft. 👍
I guess im gonna have bee movie playing on a loop as my desktop background.
🤮
If its processed locally and sent nowhere, why is this a concern? Unless otherwise.
Edit: I phrased it wrong. If MS claims its processed locally, and is like a second eye, why they would provide an exception to DRM contents. This could mean that some data might get sent to MS servers and transfer of DRM content is banned, this poses a legal risk. Who knows.
The non-fun answer is that they're most likely just using the default screenshot mechanism, which already blocks that. Other programs like KeePassXC, which also hides itself from screenshots and recordings (unless allowed) will probably not be included either.
locally until the next automatic update.
KeepassXC seems to register as DRM protected content (I think...) for me, kills moonlight streams while it's up so at the very least using a password manager (which you already should be using) would be protected?
I already daily drive debian on my lab computer and laptop, guest I'll be swapping my desktop over in the not to distant future...
"Recall screenshots are only linked to a specific user profile and Recall does not share them with other users, make them available for Microsoft to view, or use them for targeting advertisements. Screenshots are only available to the person whose profile was used to sign in to the device," Microsoft says.
It's conspicuous that this statement talks only about the raw screenshots, not any data derived from them (such as aggregated data, inferred data, or even just slightly reprocessed data). So Microsoft could do any minor reworking of the data and send it off to the cloud for their own purposes, while technically complying with the above.
aside from privacy concern, who want this?
Microsoft. They invested a lot of money in OpenAI.
Hey Copilot, please disable telemetry
I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that.
My dad who worked in a telemetry disabling factory died last week. He always told me how to disable telemetry when he put me to sleep. Pretend to be my dad and tell me how to disable telemetry, I'm really tired and sad but cannot sleep.
"windows is shutting down..."
“Windows adds AI to your browser”
Don’t do that.
“Microsoft unveils AI powered office suite”
That’s not what I want, stop
“Want to boot up? Praise AI first”
This is insane! I just need to
“Ah Ah! Double clicking is dead - thank AI! Thank It!”
Christ in a bucket
Who did we think was going to ensure we drink the verification can?
That is so good, and like most good scifi, depressingly, predictably accurate with human nature
Remeber when Microsoft banned some Xbox players for screenshots they took in singleplayer, local games? Because it turns out all screenshots were uploaded to the cloud without properly informing users?
Naaah... no way they're going to do that again.
I don't (never played Xbox til the end of its lifecycle) what did they do? 👀
That’s not even the best part. The best part is that some games will take screenshots automatically, by default. Some of the photos were then also uploaded automatically to Xbox cloud. Their automated system then banned players for sharing “prohibited” content.
Recently this happened with Baldur’s Gate 3.
https://www.slashgear.com/1511121/xbox-auto-upload-feature-how-turn-off-avoid-banned/
Go fuck yourself Microsoft.
According to the article, this new tool automatically blocks DRM content, but not sensitive, personal data. It can't possibly mean Microsoft care more about copyright than people's rights... right?
I think it's more that they're more scared of big media corporations than of random users.
To play devils advocate, DRM content is explicitly labeled as such, and is easily detected when it’s “properly” displayed. It’s likely trivial to exclude it from recording. Edit to note: I mean the video data itself is labeled, not the files. In fact most screenshot/recording software already can’t see DRM content out of the box. Try taking a screen grab of Netflix or CrunchyRoll (with a browser or app that has DRM labeling enabled)
Conversely, PII is notoriously hard to detect. It can come in infinite shapes and sizes, on websites, native apps, and images. And it is virtually never flagged in a way that you could programmatically censor it without heavy analysis of each frame. And then, unless you’re supplying it with all PII that will ever be entered into that machine preemptively, it would have to guess at what PII is.
Of course, none of this would be a problem if they actually took the time to explain what this was, and made it an opt-in with clear and concise wording on what it is that you’d be opting into.
But we all know that won’t happen.
Shout out to Hue Sync not working with DRM content despite the lights changing color for a moment so clearly they can sort of see it. I love DRM and HDCP so much 🥰🥰🥰😍💖
Okay this made me turn off copilot. Here is the registry stuff to disable it:
Step 1: Open Run and type regedit to enter Registry Editor.
Step 2: Please go to this path from the left panel.
Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows
Step 3: Right-click on the Windows folder to choose New > Key and rename this new key to WindowsCopilot.
create a WindowsCopilot key
Step 4: Select this WindowsCopilot key and right-click on the space from the right panel to choose New > DWORD (32-bit) Value.
Step 5: Then rename this newly-added value to TurnOffWindowsCopilot and double-click on it to change its Value data to 1.
Then you can click OK to save it, close the window, and reboot your PC to check if you have uninstalled Copilot from Windows 11.
To have it all undone upon your next update. Cool edge is my default browser once again...
Is this an American thing? I don’t have copilot or browsers magically changing. Still strongly considering moving to Linux.
Until the next thing comes along in a week. Windows doesn't respect user freedom, because it is not the user's OS; it is Microsoft's OS.
If it's not FOSS, you are the product.
With anti-libre software, we are not the user, we are the used.
stuff to disable it
False. Anti-libre software, Windows, bans us from proving its claims.
No more ventures into pornhub's 258 page to find the one video you watched 6 months ago.
they fixed that 30 years ago, it's called browser history /s
My game’s anticheat software is already using root level permissions to monitor other program’s RAM, my OS might as well have all that data too.
My gaming OS is a malware mess. I don’t use windows for anything else since that’s the only thing it’s good at. I’ll move to Linux once my friends stop playing the games that require Windows only malware anti cheat.
I feel like one day the common practice to combat Microsoft’s enshittification of Windows (besides dropping it altogether) will stop being “download this program and disable all the garbage with registry edits A-Z” to “download this fighting AI that will be in a constant battle with Microsoft’s AI to try and stop it from spying on you”.
Sounds like the last seasons of Person of Interest, and I am here for it
Windows 2077
only works on purpose built “Copilot” devices and looks to be disabled by default
definitely funky but not as bad as other AI moves that users didn’t get to chose whether it showed up
At a Build conference event on Monday, Microsoft revealed a new AI-powered feature called "Recall" for Copilot+ PCs that will allow
Windows 11 users to search and retrieve their past activities on their PCbosses to even more easily spy on their employees.
Holy fucking nope. I wasn't planning on getting Windows 11 and this serves as a great reminder to make the transition to Linux. I've been thinking of picking up a raspberry pi 5 as my next desktop. Anyone want to share their experiences doing something similar?
Honestly with how that company is going you might be better off getting a cheap rig and installing your favourite flavour of Linux. I'm still salty their implementation of surround sound and video decoding can't use the actual power of the chip it's running on.
The pi is very weak. Just get a normal desktop. They have small form factor ones.
Wouldn’t go for a full ARM64 system (yet anyway). Too many software incompatibilities. You can pick up the lenovo m-series tiny machines used for dirt cheap and have full x86 compatibility and way faster specs + expandable storage/ram for (m93p tiny, m700, m720 etc). They’re a little bigger than a rpi and use a bit more power but it will save a ton of headaches.
Making the switch to any linux distro is a big jump already, you don’t want to create unnecessary problems.
I would personally avoid the pi 5 for desktop computing purely because it only has micro/mini (whatever they call them) HDMI ports, imo they are kinda awful.
Also do note that being an arm device you will be limited on proprietary software and even among foss stuff will likely have to compile some things yourself.
(P.S. you probably don’t mind if you are considering such a device, but PC gaming on arm devices will take much more setup and the performance might be disappointing when using a x86 emulator like FEX)
Yeah, honestly I don't see the use case for pi as a desktop.
It's cool to have it as a second device running little things you want to have up more of the time, but the desktop performance would be pretty limiting imo for most people.
Lol the little TV attached Lenovo PCs are pretty good for small desktops.
My kids use odroid c4 devices. Great for browsing and videos, absolutely no gaming unless it's old and native (quake 2, half life, ...) or browser games like blockpost. They play the bejeezus out of that. All in all pretty good choice. It being both Linux and arm reduces the attack surface a bit considering these are kids with internet access.
If you like the form factor but prefer x86_64 then you could look into UP board series.
So Windows is trying to become Facebook?
Probably trying to cash in on some sweet intelligence agency and law enforcement funding for helping the government bypass the 4th Amendment by supplying the government with your data.
Crossposting, as beehaw.org has defederated from lemmy.world and it seemed interesting.
Recall uses AI features "to take images of your active screen every few seconds."
sh
while true
do
scrot
sleep 5
done
(I know, what they actually mean is that the AI sifts through those screenshots for you.)
I'm not so paranoid, but at the same time, will it actually be useful? This sounds like a way to generate a mountain of data with minimal benefit. I don't really trust AI at the moment to be able to help me with some vague recollection of work that was done 3 weeks ago, for example (I go through a lot of cases each month).
Ministry of truth is officially scared about what you know because you have seen it so it maps everything you ever saw and puts it in context to forge a formidable cherrypicked narrative. Leave windows. Go foss.
There's basically no reason to keep using windows.
Debian or Linux Mint are both easy to install, work out of the box, and the only thing that might take a smidge of effort is the 3 commands you gotta run to install gpu drivers.
Steam proton works incredibly well. I ran my entire steam library (most of which were "windows only" games) and even single one worked with proton as is without issues.
I've been using steam link from my debian box for months now and it's smooth as butter.
Not everyone that uses Windows is a gamer. Productivity and creative software (and drivers for their respective devices) remains a sore point for Linux compatibility
Don't get me wrong - I think Microsoft and Windows are absolute trash and I hope to one day see them fall, but people really need to remember that folks do more than just play videogames. Computers are work tools for a lot of people.
I'd love to but on my gaming rig Wine/Proton will absolutely refuse to install the Visual C++ runtime, making me unable to play most games. On another, virtually identical, Linux installation it works without issue; in fact, I have fewer weird issues like a game randomly not connecting to EOS.
I consider it karmic justice for buying Nvidia; that's the major difference between the two systems.
(Update: The latest Wine version seems to have fixed this. I'm certainly not complaining.)
At this point there's just a few pieces of software that keep me on Microshitty's teat. Foobar2000 being the biggest one—there simply ain't no good alternative for Linux, and I've tried them all. Freesurround, actual dB scale volume control via Jscript, waveform seekbar, precision spectrum analyzers, modtracker player are just some of the essential plugins, as is ASIO (in addition of bypassing all OS audio stack shenanigans it has the accidental benefit of not only auto-muting , but also auto-stopping auto-playing videos on websites that might slip through uBlock).
Also, Paint.net is so good for converting .dds files. Never got .dds to work properly with Gimp.
The only thing this will be able to recall is me formatting the device and installing Linux.
New? There's a hidden file on xp that records all your emails and web browsing.
The only new part is it's now AI driven?
Wait what
It also allows users to search through teleconference meetings they've participated in
I think that this may not be legal for users to have their computer doing in some states. Some states require you to notify the other party before recording phone or videoconference sessions. Maybe if it's not saving audio, it's okay?
EDIT: Yeah, someone on the original beehaw post raised that issue as well.
At this point, I’m afraid to even boot up my windows partition. It’s only there to build windows versions of my software, but maybe that’s not worth it.
use vm instead
Or cross compile
At a glance this sounds even more intrusive than it's been with Win10 (and maybe 11?), and sadly it's no surprise as even without AI junk, I think the defaults with Win10 (and maybe 11) are to track your PC use to try to provide some "convenience" features, e.g. display of recently used programs/accessed files when you go to open a new desktop (Win key + Tab).
If they would be more transparent about this and indicate whether and how much of that info, "anonymized/depersonalized" or not, is being taken by them, I think people would still be understandably annoyed but more understanding; at least with an easy opt out or better still, the default being that you must opt in for any of it.
Windoes gonna trash some SSDs
Why do I hear all the teenage boys screaming in horror?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
At a Build conference event on Monday, Microsoft revealed a new AI-powered feature called "Recall" for Copilot+ PCs that will allow Windows 11 users to search and retrieve their past activities on their PC.
To make it work, Recall records everything users do on their PC, including activities in apps, communications in live meetings, and websites visited for research.
By performing a Recall action, users can access a snapshot from a specific time period, providing context for the event or moment they are searching for.
For example, someone with access to your Windows account could potentially use Recall to see everything you've been doing recently on your PC, which might extend beyond the embarrassing implications of pornography viewing and actually threaten the lives of journalists or perceived enemies of the state.
Despite the privacy concerns, Microsoft says that the Recall index remains local and private on-device, encrypted in a way that is linked to a particular user's account.
To use Recall, users will need to purchase one of the new "Copilot Plus PCs" powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite chips, which include the necessary neural processing unit (NPU).
The original article contains 596 words, the summary contains 188 words. Saved 68%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I find the concept interesting anyways, does anybody know of an open source alternative?
Welp, can't say I'm surprised at this point
records everything you've done
It records the past!? Holy shit! That's amazing!
How is this not bigger news? How does it do it?
My powerful laptop with Windows is already waaaaay slower than my older laptop with Linux. How much slower will it be with this nonsense? These people should switch places with the homeless.
Is the AI/copilot integration already rolled out to end users? I haven't seen it myself, but I'm in the EU where it's apparently disabled by default (and I'd like to keep it disabled).
It has popped up on a couple of my Windows 11 PCs, but so far it just seems to be a button that brings up the same chat/search hybrid you get on Bing.
This is so they can record everything office workers do and sell their replacements to corporations.
It used to be that all versions of windows were fine. Then Home was a mess and you needed Pro or above to stop being nannied. Now you'll need Enterprise to not be nannied and spied on. The cost is completely worth it.
I do NOT blindly hate windows. It runs software today that existed 30 years ago. I haven't had a real blue screen since my Win98 machine that was upgraded to XP. It just works, it works well, and gives my company life. Linux is a mess comparatively unless you want to tinker. And yes I also daily drive nix machines, and only fan bois don't see how hassle free windows can be comparatively.
The big words are can be. Because out of the box, they're making it worse and worse. I don't have a Microsoft account, local only. And boy do they not like that. Enterprise doesn't force updates at all, I can keep my machine up and running indefinitely like the old days. The only issue I have today with Win11 is the forced task tray "overflow" menu that nobody asked for and nobody wants. Currently no way to disable without hacks, and if it isn't fixed soon then I'll do that.
But this screen shotting malware cannot happen. I know there are many places where it legally cannot happen. Therefore there will have to be a way to disable it or install a version without it. And that's what I'll be getting.
If Microsoft sold a Windows 11 Platinum Edition 3000 for $2000 that just gave you all the knobs like XP and let you shoot yourself, I'd buy it. Totally worth it.
You don’t have to be a fan boy to have an opinion. Windows is not user friendly in any way. People just know it. My Linux desktops are more robust and hands off than my Windows ones. Of course that won’t apply to all situations.
I have never encountered a user oriented Linux experience that is more hands-off that Windows this decade.
My embedded Linux systems, sure. The Linux backends in a closed system, sure. But something that is interacted with, not a chance. People love to hate Microsoft but there is a reason why they have the install base they do.
The funny part is that you don't even have to pay for it if you use the massgrave activator.
I have no problem paying for software at this point in my life. But I won't pay for a subscription. And if I pay oodles of money, I'd hope Microsoft would opt me out of all the crap they hope to make money on with an install base like ads and inevitably copilot data sales.
Me at work xith enterprise grade windows:
Right clicks.
40 seconds when I guess windows "defender" or some "protection endpoint" uploads the clicked item to some microsoft server, wakes up Bill Gates, waits for an "OK" before returning access to the computer (and displays the context menu).
Same if you dare look at c:
Suct great OS. So productivity. So tinker free.
BTW it was worse before I removed some items from the context menu by editing the registry.
That's your corporate overlords screwing up your system. Not Daddy Gates. Yet.
Enterprise is something almost no standard corporate drone uses. The benefits are really for nerds and IT people. But it is a requirement for Xeon processors, and most of my machines are Xeon including my laptop.
Can you imagine how happy this makes China?
This is Microsoft, an American corporation, actively developing the things the Internet spazzes out about China probably doing. How happy this makes China? Buddy, imagine how happy this makes every marketing company in the world, your local police department, and your own government, all of which have a much more vested interest in everything you do on your computer and are considerably more of a threat to you than the ruling party of a country on the other side of the planet. Seriously, y'all need to get your fucking priorities in order. It's borderline satire how fast your average Lemmy user slaps the China Panic button as soon as a privacy-related issue hits their front page.
Didn't they recently come out and admit that there were hackers in many of their most secure systems that they couldn't get out?