A PR disaster: Microsoft has lost trust with its users, and Windows Recall is the straw that broke the camel's back
A PR disaster: Microsoft has lost trust with its users, and Windows Recall is the straw that broke the camel's back
The world is up-in-arms over Windows Recall, but why? It stems from Microsoft's seeming lack of care for Windows and its users.
It's a nightmare scenario for Microsoft. The headlining feature of its new Copilot+ PC initiative, which is supposed to drive millions of PC sales over the next couple of years, is under significant fire for being what many say is a major breach of privacy and security on Windows. That feature in question is Windows Recall, a new AI tool designed to remember everything you do on Windows. The feature that we never asked and never wanted it.
Microsoft, has done a lot to degrade the Windows user experience over the last few years. Everything from obtrusive advertisements to full-screen popups, ignoring app defaults, forcing a Microsoft Account, and more have eroded the trust relationship between Windows users and Microsoft.
It's no surprise that users are already assuming that Microsoft will eventually end up collecting that data and using it to shape advertisements for you. That really would be a huge invasion of privacy, and people fully expect Microsoft to do it, and it's those bad Windows practices that have led people to this conclusion.
Ya, a PR nightmare for the next 15 minutes until the next unbelievable thing comes along and the ADD nature of people forgets windows is watching everything they do.
That's usually what I think too, but after watching how Twitter's gone to shit since the two big user departures, I think this could legitimately affect Microsoft's bottom line.
A lot of people would have huge bursts of negativity about this, but at the same time remain stubborn enough to not even consider evaluating alternatives. Microsoft and Apple spent decades making sure this would work
I'm swapping to Linux finally because of it. Few things are black and white but these things do have effects and some additional percentage of users are shifting over because of it.
I agree with your point, but I think it’s important not to forget just how shitty tech media is a holding these companies to account. Half the shit most mainstream tech journalist publish borders on hagiography for these companies.
Oh please it’s not watching everything you do. It’s just taking screenshots 🙃
Ok fine, I’ll repeat it again:
You’re right - many consumers will likely forget about it and just use it anyways. But enterprise customers absolutely, categorically will not. Even with their damage control, this is still going to hurt them a lot. Moreover, it’s going to hurt hardware sales from Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm, all of which have dumped MASSIVE amounts of capital into this tech. This is going to slow the rollout of NN-optimized chip tiles, and that is going to directly hit their bottom line. Microsoft hurt themselves AND the three most important hardware partners they have.
Microsoft has built a number of safety features into Windows Recall to ensure that the service can't run secretly in the background. When Windows Recall is enabled, it places a permanent visual indicator icon on the Taskbar to let the user know that Windows Recall is capturing data. This icon cannot be hidden or moved.
Oh my, that one is really cute
Malware will disable that icon. Law enforcement will buy [that] malware.
Well find out in 10 years that that wasn’t true and that it did capture data when the icon wasn’t present whoopsies.
If chkCaptureData.checked then recall() bigNotify() Else recall() End
This icon cannot be hidden or moved.
Or what? Your computer will take out a club and beat you to death?
You can't convince me someone couldn't do it with a simple registry edit, or even just replace the icon with something else by swapping an icon file somewhere in Windows/
Apple ensures its operating systems are clean, polished, and without bloat.
Except for all the uninstallable Apple bloat such as Apple Music, Apple TV, etc. And the numerous bugs and issues, such as still not being able to have the touch pad and mouse scroll wheel have different settings.
I remember when everyone was complaining about how terrible Safari is. The lead developer started having a go and ranting on Twitter, saying that raising bug reports is not constructive feedback.
That was a mess.
Safari is still a pain for frontend developers to deal with. At least IE6 was a static target and we were well aware of all the bugs. Some of the bugs and workarounds even had names, like the "peekaboo bug" and the Holly Hack".
Safari is a moving target that has so many bugs and issues that none of the other major browsers have.
Apple is not blameless but they are a shit-ton better than Microsoft. I have to have M$ for a few work apps but I’m primarily MacOS for desktop and Linux for everything server-side. I avoid M$ as much as possible.
I agree. But everyone acts like Apple's shit doesn't stink.
Don't forget the fact they're locked onto luxury hardware, and you can't build your own flavor for it. Even worse is, notebook manufacturers copied them so much there's less variations among them. I was looking for some "subnotebook" as a potential portable PC, but I had like a few options (many of which would have included AliExpress junk), but there's an endless supply of same-looking 14-16" ones, that are thin ("real" portability according to techbros), lightweight, "desktop replacements", and run at a constant 95°C.
I mean 95% of their customers probably don't care or even know what Recall is but...
95% of their customers are businesses, who no, they don't understand that. But their IT department does.
Yeah this. Fed up with sensationalist headlines that are far from reality. Us Lemmy users have a better understanding of what's going on but we shouldn't be falling for this journalism as it's nonsense.
I'm learning about it as a result of this thread. I'm still on 10, but I know what to look for when I inevitably am forced to switch to 11.
A number of things I use still aren't supported on Linux
My dad is now pissed at both Microsoft and Adobe, and curious about Linux. If I can find a Lightroom alternative, he might actually switch.
You guys trusted MS before this???
A couple years ago it wasn't thoroughly and transparently sucking off every bit of personal data it could get, and gearing up to put adds on the desktop on top of that.
I remember when Windows 10 first came around, and people were trying to bring attention to the privacy issues in the TOS. Now it's been widely adopted just about everywhere, and this is probably going to be the same.
Is github, owned by Microsoft, the largest public code repository?
I’ve always trusted them to do what they’re great at… which is get a product nearly 100% perfect, then back it up about 20%, and polish it off by shooting themselves in the foot.
Which I’ve always found it insane that EVERY product they ship is like that. The only exceptions (IMHO) to that were Office, DOS5, Win7, (Maybe XP)
I figured on my gaming and VR rig that I’d begrudgingly upgrade it to W11 when W10 stopped receiving security updates and support but at this point the recall feature (which will be used to train LLMs regardless of what Microsoft promises or guarantees) has ensured that I never install that kind of spyware as an operating system.
I’d rather spend forever troubleshooting and getting my Valve Index to work with Ubuntu than deal with a giant backdoor.
I wouldn't go for Ubuntu. They are also run by a corporation that has done problematic things with the project. It also just doesn't work that well anymore. Better off going for something Debian or Fedora based, or even an Ubuntu derivative like Pop OS.
I would also suggest not Ubuntu, and instead say you should give Bazzite a try. They are specifically interested in gaming with Steam (they even have a spin for running on Steam Deck). They might have already put in the work troubleshooting the distro with your VR gear.
You could try win 10 iot ltsc 2021 out. It gets security support until 2032.
Not really
For the retail market, most people just have phones not computers anymore. Microsoft has already lost The Battle of Windows phone.
For the Enterprise market none of this recent b******* is going to enterprise customers anyway, they would have group policies and volume licensing deals to avoid all the b*******.
For those poor retail customers who still run Windows, they suffer, but they're minor, not significant
This is for the enterprise market more than anything. Large companies are already logging and mining everything. Slack, Teams chat, Teams voice, email, keystrokes...literally everything. Microsoft's problem is that Enterprises are using third party products to do so. Recall solves that competitive issue for MS. I have no doubt that it will be tied to their cloud offerings, and I have no doubt that MS will retain the right to use it all of the data from the consumer side for AI training.
I've worked extensively in the Enterprise environment, and data exfiltration is a massive concern for any company with intellectual property, which is most of them.
Having data leak at all, another vector for exfiltration, is a huge huge risk.
Heck, I'd be surprised if Microsoft itself let its own developers run Total recall
Bunter2
baloney
For the majority of commercial users they literally don't give a fuck either. It's on techies that really care about his stuff sadly.
Why are you censoring yourself? Are you stupid?
Possibly. But I'm also definitely lazy, and my voice to text automatically censors. And I don't feel like changing it. So f*** it
I’m telling everyone I know it’s time to move to Linux, or worst case Mac.
I have down-voted this because in a worst case scenario, they should move to a less appealing version of Linux, like Arch
(waiting for my down-votes)
Mac is not better in any circumstance. Except maybe power efficiency but I doubt that's going to last for long.
MacOS is a highly mature, stable, and user-friendly OS that, at least for now, Apple does not meddle with in the same ways that MS has been doing with Windows. It has its problems, yes, but to say "any circumstance" is extreme. I don't like or agree with everything that Apple has done to MacOS but at least Apple isn't actively trashing it into the ground with forced bloat, ads, malware, etc like MS is doing.
I'm telling everyone I know
Vegan, European, CrossFit, Linux, born again
Helping people to prevent their privacy from being completely screwed isn’t the same as feeling superior and smug about one’s choices, lifestyle, or where one lives. The sooner people understand the difference, the better.
But sure.
I also use Arch, btw…got any “witty” response to it?
I don't know what this post means... but I want to learn.
Are you Vegan and moved to Europe and now do CrossFit?
That actually sounds like fun.
Especially the linux part.
Did you flee from a country that was awful and move to somewhere in Europe?
A lot of people here seem to be missing the nuance.
Sure, it’s problematic for their consumer market share, but you’re right that that’ll probably be forgotten by the mostly tech-illiterate populace over time. But that’s not the problem.
Step 0 of MS’s plan for this should have been “make sure there is an absolutely bulletproof and ironclad way to disable that stuff completely for enterprise customers”. And they didn’t do that. So now, enterprise IT writ large is going to… you know… just not buy any of these devices. Which is absolutely their right.
But the really frustrating bit is that MS may have significantly harmed the rollout of ARM-based laptops (as well as x86 chips with beefy NN-optimized tiles) with this, and additionally done real, massive harm to Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm by doing so. All three of those manufacturers have gone to ENORMOUS lengths to roll this tech out, largely at MS’s behest. They’re all going to take this on the chin if the rollout goes poorly. And the rollout is already going poorly.
But MS thought they could Apple-handwave away the details. And they can’t, because a lot of people who understand the absurd security implications of continuous capture and OCR and plaintext storage of the OCR output. It’s not something you can handwave away. It’s entirely a non-starter in the context of maintaining organizational security (as well as personal data security, but we’ve already talked about why that’s a bit of a moot point with the general public). But enterprise IT largely does try to take their job seriously, and they are collectively calling MS’s bluff.
The problem for the long term is that MS has pretty much proven to the IT industry with this stunt that they can’t be trusted to make software that conforms to their needs. That’s a stain that isn’t going to go away any time soon. It might even be the spark that finally triggers enterprise to move away from MS as a primary client OS. After all, Linux is WAY easier to manage from a security perspective.
TL;DR: the issue is that MS has significantly damaged their reputation with this stunt. And you can’t buy reputation.
Edit:
The article has an update:
Update noon ET June 7, 2024: Microsoft has released a statement noting it is making three significant changes to how Recal works including making it opt-in during setup, requiring Windows Hello to enable Recall, proof of presence is now required to view your timeline, and search in Recall, and adding additional layers of data protection including “just in time” decryption protected by Windows Hello Enhanced Sign-in Security (ESS) so that snapshots will only be decrypted and accessible when the user authenticates.
It’s definitely a move in the right direction… but it also begs the question of why didn’t they do that in the first fucking place? Seriously, some heads are gonna roll over how badly this whole release was planned, and the very clear lack of due diligence.
For anyone for whom Micro$oft’s reputation wasn’t already cartoonish villainy, sure.
For those of us from the olde worlde, who marveled at dancing monkey boy on a grainy quicktime file, it’s absolutely par for the course. They can shutter everything but cloud tomorrow and still rake in 100 Billion a year for the foreseeable future. It was a monopoly thirty years ago (convicted 20 years ago) that has eaten and shat whatever and wherever it wanted for decades.
The judiciary and congress don’t understand shit, and if they did m$ bought them. Done.
A lot of people here seem to be missing the nuance.
You don't say...
All I want from an Os is to launch my programs of choice and not suck up my battery running unnecessary junk I couldn't care less about.
The worst part is that Windows can do that, but Microsoft insists on enshittifying it. Like Windows 11 isn't that terrible if it wasn't for all of the data collection and advertisements and other shit.
I miss the Windows 7 days where you could download a stripped down ISO that was just the OS. It launched your programs of choice and didn't suck up your battery running unnecessary junk.
Last week, I went to a friend's house and asked to use her computer, which is still a core 2 duo with 2gb of ram and an hdd, running win7. I was a bit surprised to see her family having it as their only computer, but more surprised to see how fast it was. I expected to have the most laggish experience of my life, but it was.. smooth. I've used machines with much modern low end cpus, more ram and ssds that performed much worse than that on win10. The enshittification is real.
it isn't a nightmare for them. they will be fine. they normalize everything they do
Yeah like I hate Microsoft, I am migrating to Linux, and the things I read about recall were pretty fucking horrifying to me. At the end of the day though the general public doesn't give two shits about tech other than it works out of the box.
I use Arch since 2009 (BTW), but I think I'm planted in reality enough to know that the average user not only doesn't care, hasn't even heard about it. This will not even move the needle regarding usage.
Absolutely, the only thing that will ever move the needle significantly is if the average user walks into a store and comes out with a system that has linux already installed.
Pfffttt, Microsoft has been there, done this, and got a whole closet full of tee shirts for stuff like this many times over the years. In the end the users don't care and can't stop it. And they are, by in large, too lazy to change to something else to completely avoid it.
It hasn't ever affected the bottom line enough to matter to them. They will just pull this
bugfeature and wait for a better day. Or perhaps they will figure out a way to introduce it piecemeal to disguise it better.My problem is my work provided pc. Will I know when they enable this?
Ideally i'll resign before that happens.
You can only piss on our faces and tell us it is raining for so long.
"It's raining, I see" says the blind man as he pisses into the wind
This is status quo for every large corporation. Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, EVERY SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM, Roku.... They all, ALL, push boundaries to see what they can get away with to not only sell you something, but also make you the thing they sell. Sometimes they're bold enough to make it public what they're doing, sometimes, it's a leak that happens when people find out how little the company actually cares about it's users (Apple, so many user data leaks).
I love it when Apple pushes advertising that touts their focus on privacy... when in reality, they're breaching user privacy in all the ways that every other company does.
A big reason Apple focuses on privacy and apps not being able to track the user is because they want to keep all that data for themselves. None of the restrictions they've introduced apply to first-party apps. It gives them ad targeting data that no other company can collect. They do have their own ad network (for things like ads in the App Store), and last I heard, they wanted to expand it.
My bigger concern is that almost every company now has it in their contracts/terms of services, that all users are not allowed to participate in a lawsuit, be it class action, or court case against them Most of them even have a maximum sue limit too! There's a lot that have a rule that initial arbitration cannot have a lawyer, but that won't be enforced.
Just think they might go from owning 98% of the market to 97% of the market. I am sure this is a nightmare for them.
You just wait and see. I'll bet it goes all the way down to 96 and then they'll really be sorry.
Year of the Linux destktop!
MS's frequent missteps - win11, total recall, ai inescapable etc., - may just finally catch up with them. While they continue to devour game studios and shut them down for irrational reasons, who knows?
Stop being so negative and open your mind. Hell, MS did, you can use bash on the command line now. Times do change.
Gradual shifts can snowball into huge shifts. a few years ago Linux gaming only existed for the dedicated crowd, that somehow managed to make it work. Now for many it is no different from their Windows experience for most games, sometimes even better.
Think of it like bubbles pressing against each other. It matters not only how much pressure your own bubble has, but also how much pressure the other bubbles have in finding the equilibrium. The Windows bubble isn't only weakening itself, the Linux bubble is getting stronger and stronger
For me, gaming was the one thing holding me back from really adopting Linux. When I got a PS5, I felt the time was right to make the switch, but I've been pleasantly surprised to find pretty much my whole Steam library works fine on Linux. VR still doesn't work for me, but it seems to be getting there.
There is still a lot of googling and frustration involved in using and maintaining it, but I'm slowly learning through exposure. There is nothing I want to do on a PC any more that I need windows for. If the auto update stuff worked better, I'd probably recommend it to everyone. But I've tried both Mint and Ubuntu and the software updater constantly runs into issues very quickly after install. I'm guessing because of all the different ways to install software, but I can't understand why it doesn't just apt update/upgrade behind the scenes because that seems to work just fine.
i assume you mean that sarcastically but that is a nightmare for them and every bit of lost marketshare makes it easier to lose more
Hey, if it makes some SVP not get their quarterly bonus then maybe we'll see a marginal change for sex months! Maybe!
It's also important to remember that Microsoft has no monetary incentive to force people to use Windows Recall.
With that in mind, there would be no reason for Microsoft to automatically enable Windows Recall in an update down the line. If it does happen, the user will be able to instantly tell thanks to that that visual indicator and turn it off again.
This article is nothing but propaganda. There is huge monetary incentive to force people to use Windows Recall and collect their data, and Microsoft routinely uses Windows Update to enable data collection. They began that practice years ago on Windows 7. It's a ridiculously simple matter for MS to disable the visual indicator and force This Week's Plan on their users to monetize their data.
Windows Central pretends to be critical of plans to enable a feature that can be made into malware by Microsoft in a couple of minutes, but then back peddles and says it can't be done (utter BS) and if it could be, it wouldn't be that bad.
Even if the database remains local only forever, which I don't believe for a second, the computer will eventually make hyperspecific requests for ads based on the spying.
Only data that is not stored cannot fall victim to attackers. It does not matter whether it is a 'nigerian prince', Microsoft or some agency. Even if you completly trust whatever entity with your data right now, they may become problematic in the future.
This is why a low profile is a crucial component of OPsec.
Recall is objectively stupid, even if Microsoft only had their users best interest in mind. And they don't.
Outside of the "Microsoft bad" comments, this is a prime example of why big tech companies need to stop promoting AI leads to a position where they are able to have influence over initiatives outside of AI.
The worst thing to happen to basically every product/service in tech right now is AI. It's made Google unreliable in the eyes of normal people for the first time in decades, it's destroying trust in Amazon content across reviews and Kindle, it's adding features to Facebook that no one ever wanted, etc.
I don't want to be the guy that always says Linux, but... ...Linux
It is okay to be the person that always recommends Linux, especially if you are a kind person with the patience to explain things to people in approachable terms (and you don’t just scream at people SOMEBODY ALREADY ASKED THIS QUESTION USE SEARCH whenever a newbie walks in the door and asks the obvious questions a newbie would ask).
Now is the time, Linux is pulled up out front waiting to pick us up (with bags packed) and Microsoft is loudly shitting the bed upstairs, NOW is the time to walk straight out the front door, jump in the car with Linux and never look back. We owe it to Microsoft’s long relationship with consumers to leave Microsoft sitting confused on the porcelain throne wondering why they were abandoned and where all the toilet paper is (we are the toilet paper in this metaphor).
HISTTIMEFORMAT="%d/%m/%y %T "
Then
history | grep -i "09/06/2024"
Gamers will literally install root kits on their PCs just because an update pop up tells them to. They really don't care lol.
Companies and their legal departments do care though, and that's where the big money lies for Microsoft when it comes to Windows
TL;DR:
- Windows Recall, part of Microsoft's new Copilot+ PC initiative, has sparked major privacy and security concerns.
- The feature uses AI to capture and store screen data locally, allowing users to search for past activities using natural language.
- Despite assurances that data is not uploaded to the cloud or used by Microsoft, user trust is lacking.
- Microsoft has a history of practices that have eroded user trust, including obtrusive ads, ignoring user preferences, and requiring Microsoft Accounts.
- Users are skeptical, fearing future misuse of the collected data for advertising or AI training.
- Windows Recall reportedly stores data unencrypted, making it vulnerable to access by third-party apps and potential malware.
- The open nature of Windows amplifies these risks, unlike more secure systems like iOS and Android.
- Users have compared Windows Recall to spyware, with many threatening to switch to other operating systems like Linux or Mac.
- Microsoft's attempts to keep the development of Windows Recall secret did not help build trust.
- Windows Recall will only be available on new Copilot+ PCs, requiring specific hardware not present in existing PCs.
- Users will have the option to disable the feature, but there are concerns about it being enabled by default.
- Despite security issues, the feature is effective in helping users find lost or forgotten data.
- It could improve productivity if trust and security concerns are resolved.
Windows Recall does NOT require NPU hardware to run. Currently Recall has been tested on Windows 11 with only a CPU and it seems to be fully operational. Of course performance is not as good as with an NPU. I believe Microsoft will try to push AI to local computing by only enabling on computers with NPUs to begin with. In the future it will most likely be able to be enabled on PCs which does not have an NPU but with a warning of bad performance in front of it.
In the future most CPU's will prolly have an NPU built in. We already seeing it with ryzen
You know what would be a nice thing to put into windows?
A fucking decent way to search for files.
Also, grep and tail, as implemented in Linux. It's 2024 and there's no native equivalent to
tail -f *.log. How embarrassing.File search is really awful on windows for no reason at all. Your complaints about commandline utilities is not accurate though. Windows has native powershell equivalents to both
grepandtail. You useSelect-Stringinstead ofgrepandGet-Content -Waitinstead oftail.Get everything: https://www.voidtools.com/ (the alpha version can also index the content of files). It's search is instant. As in < 1 second for any file on any of your harddisks (even ones not connected right now).
For base linux cmdline tools I just install Git for Windows it includes tail, sed, grep, tee, iconv, less, scp and tons more. I need git anyways so win-win.
Windows Search used to be awesome, and then they decided to over-complicate it.
I distinctly remember that once it has indexed everything, it was pretty fast, yeah. Back in the 00s anyway
Get-Content <path> -waitOr do you mean in cmd not powershell?
IME this doesn't work for multiple files. Not nearly as well as tail -f *.
Plenty of times I'm troubleshooting something without knowing which log file I should pay attention to. So watching everything happen in realtime with the error helps, a ton.
I doubt the majority of MS users need to tail a log file. And of those of us that do, how many don't know that Notepad++ does it?
get listary it’s freemium (i use free version forever and it works fine) you can search by double tapping control and it instantly gives you the files you search for
Have you heard of WSL?
As someone who does product dev support, unfortunately I have.
Isn't that one of the things this does? It was in the advert wasn't it?
You can do a commandline "dir /s *.log" to search an entire directory it works better than the normal file search generally. Unless I misunderstand what you're asking.
Stallman just keeps being right*
*About software freedom
lol, yeah that’s an important asterisk for sure!
Linux ftw!
For those of you that are tired of Microsoft's bullshit, a great place to start is Linux Mint or, if you want to be on the bleeding edge with a rolling distro that still gets some testing, openSUSE Tumbleweed (which is what I'm using).
Signed,
Linux daily driver convert of ~3 months now.
I started with Mint, but for Windows users I'd advise openSUSE too.
There's an issue, though, with them preparing for the next big release to become something like Fedora Silverblue or I don't remember. But for now it's a distribution with the corporate feeling in a good sense as strong as with Windows, almost none of that feeling in a bad sense, and it's very polished.
I found endeavour (arch) to be a much simpler experience vs fedora or opensuse or void. Tpm chip worked right away, clear instructions for setting up secureboot with a hook that signs everything as it's updated, etc. I could barely get void to boot, opensuse worked well but after a power outage the tpm stopped working and I was never able to get it back, fedora I had no success with tpm. I'm sure that's all pretty variable depending on hardware.
If you aren't looking for full functionality of your hardware most any distro should be fine, but...why sacrifice security?
If you're still using Ubuntu, I'm not sure what you're expecting
There is more than one distro.
Tell me about gaming on Linux. Most if my gaming is via Steam and I have a Steamdeck which I know runs on a flavor of Linux so it can be done. Is it fair to say that any game that runs on the Steam runs on Steam Linux?
I just got a new prebuilt with Windows 11 Pro and I've been curious about Linux for the past few months. I know the variations have gotten better over the years but haven't done too much research into it. I hear Mint and Arch quite a bit.
Is it fair to say that any game that runs on the Steam runs on Steam Linux?
No, it's not that far along. A lot works, but if there's invasive DRM or anticheat then it probably won't. If you have specific games you want to play in mind check out https://www.protondb.com/
I know the variations have gotten better over the years but haven’t done too much research into it.
If you're curious you can just create a live USB stick to test drive it. Won't work well for gaming though.
Did you mean to say "any game that runs on the Steam Deck runs on Steam Linux?"
If so, the answer is yes. It's honestly surprising these days to run across a steam title that doesn't run in linux (though always look into the anti-cheat situation for online games).
Straw that broke the camel's back? Every vertebra in that camel's back has been smashed with a sledge hammer over the past 30 years.
Windows 95 was the last version I was excited about; Windows 98 SE was the last version of Windows I willingly purchased, and XP was the last one I willingly used. When they announced Win7, I downloaded Ubuntu 6.06, "Dapper Drake". Since then, Windows has only existed on my computers as pirated, virtual machines.
I think Windows 7 was good, and their last decent desktop OS before they started backporting Windows 10 garbage into it late in the lifecycle.
I'm in the same boat as you now. Earlier this year I'd had enough and there was no way I was going from my de-shittified Win10 Enterprise install to Win11. I'm on Tumbleweed for my main PC now.
My job is in the early stages of planning for updating everything to windows 11. I just got my testing VM with it the other day which is my first experience with it and I had an almost physical reaction to how bad the gui looks when I first logged in. I haven't even done anything with it and I already hate it.
On the other hand the Linux VM I set up at home to test my personal stuff out on has been going swimmingly.
When they announced Win7, I downloaded Ubuntu 6.06, “Dapper Drake”.
Windows Vista was so bad that it gets forgotten even in a retrospective about how Windows versions sucked. But yeah, Win7 didn't come out for another few years after that, to rescue the world from Vista.
I have a unique memory of people saying that XP sucks ; after Vista nobody remembers that.
I hated Windows from the day I saw the 3.1 floppies had no write tab (that tiny piece that allowed you to write the disk). My first though was "we've payed for this and they forbid us to write on them? Fuck MS". It was the last original Windows in any PC at home. And I used DRDOS, so even worse (Windows 3.11 had a "bug" that made it crash if it ran on DRDOS).
and XP was the last one I willingly used.
Same.
When they announced Win7,
I, eh, still used it for some time, but then went to Linux.
You lasted until Windows 7? I'm guessing you didn't have to deal with Windows Vista's bs then. I changed ship thanks to Vista.
I also suffered Windows Me, but I was too young and at that time I didn't know there was an alternative.
I dual booted Vista/7 and Ubuntu/Mint for a while but after not using Windows in years ended removing it completely. Now I'm a happy
AntergosArch user ¯\_(ツ)_/¯Wow, I actually forgot about Vista. I never actually had it installed on anything. XP was the last OS I had installed on hardware. Win 7 was the first I knew only from VM installations.
I finally switched to Linux Mint a week ago. I've just had enough of Microsoft and I couldn't think of any more reasons why I shouldn't switch.
I've got Libre Office for all my productivity needs. All my Steam games work under Linux. My VPN works just fine. Firefox for web browsing. Thunderbird for email. And Wine to run those 1-2 Windows programs that I just can't do without.
There's no reason to run Windows unless there's specific software that won't run in a virtual highly contained environment of Windows within Linux.
Friends don't let friends use windows.
You might try OnlyOffice 😄
Hey, I replace LibreOffice on my Linux installs every time with OnlyOffice. I don't really need a full up office suite anymore. And I find OnlyOffice is a bit simpler and easier to use. But it's not for everybody.
Plus, it keeps me away from trusting Google Docs.......
vpn with network manager is amazing. All my client's vpn solutions just work. On windows I needed 5-6 different vpn clients that bluescreen each other on Linux I need zero proprietary software.
Wireguard with systemd is even better. You set it up and then literally never touch it again.
Microsoft: oh no we might loose 0.0000001% of users, it doesn't matter since we can shove our software down people throats
I see no broken backs here. People have been composing songs about Bill Gates being a removed (I'm not homophobic, that was just the climate back then) since he entered the general conscience. Microsoft being both clumsy and criminal has been the butt of too many jokes since Windows 95 at least.
I'm too young to remember anything older than 98SE, but I remember that when XP came out, people were complaining that it's slow ugly shit as compared to 2K, and it felt that if MS doesn't change the general direction, people will remain on older stuff or move to alternatives, Vista was hated so badly that everybody suddenly forgot the hate for XP, 7 was first advertised as something sky cool and impossible, then turned out to be kinda mundane, but usable. Actually with every Windows OS new brand there's an outrage. With every MS big news there's an outrage. They always deliver the opportunity.
TL;DR - Hoping that MS will kill itself is stupid.
The thing is, during the 95/98/ME/XP/Vista days Microsoft had less competition in the consumer computing space, smart phones weren't really a thing, and a PC was "the" way to get online. Nowadays everyone and their dog has an iPhone or Android device instead, and ever dwindling numbers of people even bother to have a PC anymore. So in modern times, there is a nonzero possibility that on a consumer level at least, Microsoft might finally slide into irrelevance. That's not to say they'll go out of business anytime soon, but they might not be able to remain the Microsoft we've known so far for too many more years.
Nerds use Linux. A lot of people who want to buy an off the shelf computer that "just works" buys a Mac. And everyone else just uses their phone for everything.
Microsoft doesn't actually do anything (except make the XBox, I guess) that non-corporate users give a shit about except "make computer machine go" and "stupid subscription ribbon bar program I need to use to open files work sends me."
This is why M$ has been so gung-ho about their path to enshittification in recent years, I'm sure. This is a profitability thing. They see the writing on the wall that just selling operating system and office suite licenses to rubes is not going to remain a profitable business model much longer. Instead, they have to scrape and datamine and sell adds and push subscriptions and all the rest of it for alternative recurring revenue, because no member of the public will willingly pay for a Windows license anymore. I sure as hell won't... If I need Windows, I'll pirate it. And there's no way they are shifting as many OEM licenses as they were in the early 2000's. People aren't buying computers like that anymore.
They make their money in azure now. AzureAD, cloud services, intune (managing win/mac/android even Linux). Windows and office are just hobby projects compared to the revenue those generate.
I'm glad you mentioned actual work somewhere along the way.
You have also omitted PC gamers.
Buy a mac or support steamOS adoption or just get a linux distro. This will drive the improvement of nontechnical consumer GNU/Linux
I cant believe im actually supporting the sentence "buy a mac" but its far far better than what ever microsoft is doing, and if you arent computer literate enough to install linux, its a decent alternative to windows.
I can't believe I'm actually upvoting that statement.. coming from a former windows nerd (until 7).
Apple is going to start cramming their AI the throat of all users in the next year or two as well.
Just... No.
Nah thanks
I know it's WindowsCentral but the article has some pretty naive takes. Given the propensity of threat actors to target Windows due to its market share it's impossible to not see a system that records user activity as a huge treasure trove for both malware and hackers.
It also doesn't mention that Microsoft claimed that it would be impossible to exfiltrate Recall data and of course researchers found it not only possible but trivial, with the data lacking even basic protections. Assurances that there are mechanisms to prevent Recall from secretly monitoring you mean nothing when prior assurances about safety have been found to be paper thin at best.
Further it ignores that telemetry gathered by Windows has dramatically increased in the last several years with methods to disable it being eliminated or undone by OS updates. Microsoft is hungry for user data and it would be absurdly naive to think that Recall won't be a tool they use to gain more of it. If not now, then definitely later.
The author does point out that Recall has been weirdly under wraps, avoiding the usual test bed for new feature rollout. Microsoft has been acting shady about the feature and then the feature itself does shady things (like record PII, credit card data, etc.), of course users are going to think the worst. At this point it's a survival tactic.
Microsoft doesn't have trust issues because of bad PR or a few missteps. Microsoft has trust issues because they have violated user trust repeatedly for decades. They have done nothing to make users feel like they care at all about keeping Windows secure and safe and they clearly have no regard for user privacy. This only question is whether this backlash will do anything to make Microsoft reconsider the way it treats its users. I predict they will learn all the wrong lessons from this.
Both Apple and Microsoft are two sides of the same coin....
One went left, the other went right, both going to the same location....
The only thing to consider is how you prefer to travel and how quickly you want to arrive....
I built a kit car, painted a penguin on the side, and forgot to include the telemetry module. Oops.
I think I'll travel somewhere else.
Microsoft and Apple are not the only choices
So true!
Agreed
The day Windows 10 loses support is the day I primary (or solo) boot Linux on my gaming desktop. The more news I read the more certain I am in this.
Why wait?
I have a laptop solo booting Ubuntu and a Steam Deck, they're great. But on my desktop where I'm primarily playing games, many of which wirh anti cheat, it's not worth making the switch just yet. I think another year of development into Proton and stability will make it worth it. Also, I got a NAS recently with OpenMediaVault and I only have the time to tinker with one thing at a time :P
Any advice on the switch though, or tools you use lmk!
I do think that the concept of recall is very interesting, I want to explore a FOSS version where you have complete ownership of your data in a secure manner
Yeah the concept is pretty damn cool. It's just horrifying to have a company own and control that data. I suspect this is like Xbox One launch disaster in 2013, in which Microsoft initially required all consoles to have an always-online connection. People rebelled, but today and certainly on our current trajectory, it now looks like Microsoft was just a little ahead of the curve. I think people will eventually become a lot more comfortable with companies owning their data because the benefits will be so enormous. I'm not happy about that future, but I think I understand it.
It seems to me that we've reached a crossroads. I've been very aware of the data mining, garden walls, data trading, privacy violations, security issues, ownership issues, etc. - for roughly 30 years. I regularly make the choice to be exploited for the benefits I extract, largely because the data they've gotten from me thus far I don't highly value. But the necessity to develop strategies to keep the devil's bargain beneficial has reached a fevered pitch. I want to train my own AI and public AIs. I want to explore the vast higher dimensional semantic spaces of generative models without API charges. APIs are vanishing as we speak, anyway, companies fearful of their data being extracted without compensation. Can't really sit on the Open/Closed fence anymore.
TIL: There are still people that trust Microsoft.
Man, there is a LOT of people in this thread hoping to normalize this, or pretend it will happen anyway, or that it's 'not really a PR disaster', or that people will ignore it, or-
Go make your money elsewhere, christ.
The switch to Linux will have to come from the bottom up. Corporations will NOT switch until Microsoft costs them serious money.
I wish Linux weren't completely fucking impenetrable for casual users.
It's gotten a lot better over the years
When I first tried it (back in 2010) it was pretty rough all around but after trying it again recently due to the whole TPM requirement for Windows 11 I've found it to be really straight forward
Linux Mint is really user friendly and is what I've even put on my grandma's pc
It's not that it hasn't gotten better, but that the entire infrastructure that's underpinning the GUI is simply completely different than what people are used to. And I'm not just talking CLI here, because the average Windows user likely doesn't use that to begin with – it's things like filesystem organization, software management, driver installation, configuration files, etc.
And it's not that these barriers are insurmountable either, but they DO require a significant amount of cognitive effort that not everyone is willing to put in.
I don't think a casual user would in many cases even be able to tell the difference. I mean you have a desktop with some icons which most of people only use to start the browser which is absolutely identical in both systems.
You have a start menu with other programs and you have a task bar which shows the open programs and some status icons and a clock.
It is really not that different. Most people just start a browser and go on Facebook or eBay or whatever, use a simple word processor for the daily needs. I don't think they would be able to tell the difference.
My wife's 91 year old grandmother used Mint without any issues whatsoever. All she needed was solitaire and the internet.
But, a lot of people do look at something different and just throw up their hands and say, "I don't know how to use it," without ever trying.
It isn't impenetrable. ChromeOS and Android are Linux based after all. If you don't want to be prayed upon by Google you can use things like UBlue (inc. Aurora, Bazzite), PopOS, or Mint.
The advantage of PopOS and UBlue being you can download an image with Nvidia drives pre installed.
PopOS is a very mac like interface so you might not like it. Otherwise it's pretty much install and go, has good community support, and even comes pre installed on some high end machines.
In the case of UBlue they include images for specific manufacturers of laptops like ASUS, Framework, and Microsoft surface. You also get fully automatic atomic upgrades with rollback in case of failure, similar to Chrome OS. This means even if you do something very stupid like reboot in the middle of an OS update, it won't matter. It's engineered to be almost unbreakable even for new Linux users thanks to being partly immutable. You get a choice as well between varieties for normal users called Aurora, one of gamers called Bazzite, a development one called Bluefin, and a server version too. Being based on Fedora it's also reasonably up to date as well, but without sacrificing stability like Arch does.
Linux Mint is the classic easy to use Linux that runs on most computers made in the last 10 years and often older. It does sometimes struggle on newer machines with drivers though as it's not using an up to date kernel. What it's good for is that it pretty much just works when you have it installed and set up. It's popular so you should get plenty of community support. It's a quite similar interface to Windows while arguably looking better and definitely using less resources.
I've heard this a few times lately. It makes me curious how recent the impenetrable experience was.
I'm shocked at the idea that an average Windows user who tried this year's version of Debian Stable would find it even mildly confusing, much less impenetrable.
I switch between Windows 10 and Debian 12 Stable, daily.
I find that, on Debian, all the expected features are in the same spots, acting the same ways.
Disclaimer: I don't have an Nvidia graphics card to cause me headaches.
And I do understand that depending on hardware, installation can be tough. That's true with Windows, too, of course. At least installation doesn't have to be an issue for new purchases, since enough PCs can now ship with either pre-installed.
The only real limiting factor is that most computers that you just walk into a store and buy (and are not made by Apple) come with Windows, and people just use whatever comes with their computers.
People rarely switch even default settings, let alone the entire OS.
I'm sure if computers came with Linux, there wouldn't be that many complaints from casual users after they got used to it.
The hardest people to switch over are the Windows power users in my experience.
2002 called, they want their Linux attitude back
I’d say it’s really easy. The only requirement is making a choice to use something else, which most unfortunately is already asking too much for the vast majority of users.
It's just a little different nowadays. Like the other user said, they just don't know they have a choice or what to choose and follow whatever they know...
And what was one of the early bolsheviks' regime strongest points? They created schools and made people literate en masse, and did it with their own curriculum. People became less suspective to ex elites and religious propaganda, and became their target audience.
Adobe, Google, MS give discounts and special programs for education because this way people get used to their products. Many local organizations that touch these casual users don't have a real IT department and just flow with what's given, they don't make an informed choice like corporations. And that's probably the place where this switch may even start to begin. A class of students who started with e.g. KDE Plasma would be used to it more than they used to Windows, same with other software. They can already do their homework and play most games. What else do they need?
The sharp corner is to find money to fund select schools to show others it's not scary and makes it even cheaper for them in the long run, maybe some special troubleshooting team to teach them the ropes. I've heard from some users there and on reddit that their computer classes with a geeky teacher who installed Linux is how they've rolled in without a problem.
It's the 1, 2, 3, 4 punch of
"Haha windows 10 EOL is soon and no your computer cannot upgrade 😏"
Followed by the
"We're thinking about.. no? Okay well anyways, we're gonna shove ads into the UX, even after backpedaling after backlash"
Then the
"Listen the security situation is p bad and we're not too sure what to do about it. Lots of internal accts have been compromised. Probably yours too, we don't really know. Shhh, we got big AI news soon."
And lastly the
"Unveiling, the biggest security nightmare tool in the history of connected devices. From the writers of Total Recall and the masterminds behind Ads in your OS comes: Recall!"
I don't care what windows does to rectify this. My parents next machines are either Linux or Chromebooks.
If windows 12 isn't FOSS, Microsoft can pound sand.
OH, it was been a long time coming seeing this type of headline again, it's....glorius!
Microsoft is most years a #1 and sometimes a #2 Funder of: Rust, Python, and Linux. Are those destined for an E^3 "rug pull" too? Will it ever stop this kind of behavior, consistently conforming our behavior to itself with the money and industry position it leverages?
Don't forget in calculating that industry position that OpenAI is now able to contract to the DoD for offensive capability.
Linux is not dependent on money, they have no influence over it.
While the influence is much smaller than with windows or apple, it's still there. Linux is hardened against capitalism, but if we start believing that it has no influence we set ourselves up for Debian Pro+ in the future. Just because it's good now doesn't mean it capitalism can't shit all over it faster than we believe possible...
dumb fucking corporations will still line their pockets with money.
The struggle is real for M$ - recall is a Security Incident waiting to happen.
I don't think this will bury MS because they can easily market this to enterprise clients ( if they haven't already ). Recall is a particularly useful tool for any employer that wants to keep track of everything employees do, especially in an age of WFH. They probably figured they can take the PR hit from users concerned about privacy and move on unaffected.
Any enterprise working with sensitive data certainly has to disable the feature. And turns out, that's most enterprises.
I have heard very little, if any, enthusiasm about this. Nobody seems to be excited about it at all.
I love the concept.... I think it should remain a concept
Microsoft has already taken a step back: Microsoft implements drastic changes to Recall after criticism
- Recall needs to be enabled during installation
- Windows Hello is needed so that only the users can view it's own screenshots
- Recall database will be encrypted
Linux!: Had set It up years ago when it was a slog. Came back recently after Windows did this— and it was so much easier.
Work? Yes. The comfort of knowing I’ve put off for one more day the tech ubergods carving my life open? Also yes.
Microsoft lost my trust a long time ago. For the last 10-15 years, my only relationship with them is, "how much sh*t am I willing to put up with before I switch to something else?"
And CoPilot/Recall was the breaking point.
Aside from the security nightmare, I'm really curious what havoc the LLM can cause by hallucinating stuff, based on how suggestive a question is asked.
Wife on husband's account: "What dating sides did I visit this year?"
"Here are the 5 most popular dating sides you visited last year:...""When was the last time employee X watched porn and on what side?"
...Microsoft should go further and further with this so that windows becomes worse so that less people use it.
As much as I liked Visual Studio, its privacy intrusiveness was my final straw.
I know that I shouldn't, but here's what I think about this whole deal, illustrated with a single image macro:
Get wrecked, Microsoft.
I think that the article does a good job highlighting how much of a trainwreck this is, because Microsoft is not to be trusted. The Windows users hysterically complaining about this are not expecting Microsoft to behave in some outrageous way; they're expecting Microsoft to behave as usual.
Every generation needs to learn what microsoft is all over again, but they only learn the hard way.
They say this like anyone is going to do something...
Perhaps if I wish really, really hard they will. I just will not hold my breath!
The article was revised with a PR release from Microsoft saying they'll make the feature opt-in.
Let's of course not forget that things like upgrades to Windows 11, and use of an MS Account instead of local account, were opt-in...until they weren't. Require them to sign a contractual agreement that this feature will remain opt-in forever.
The average user is not even going to know this was a thing
Once again, the penguin was been vindicated.
I'm old for using Linux. I just wish my software was.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
As CEO Satya Nadella described it, Windows now has a photographic memory that uses AI to triage and index everything you've ever done on your computer, enabling you to semantically search for things you've seen using natural language.
Your favorite web browser, video editor, or music streaming app of choice could release an update that begins scraping data from Windows Recall and uploading it to its own backend.
Many have already assumed the worst; that Windows Recall will eventually be used as a means to sell data to advertisers and train AI models, and that if it's not happening today, it's only a matter of time.
It's a feature reserved exclusively for new PCs shipping under the Copilot+ umbrella, which means if you want to use it, you'll have to buy a new device with a neural processing unit (NPU) that can output 40 TOPS of power first.
But there's a very dark cloud hanging over this feature right now, and a lot of privacy conscious people are simply not going to be able to subscribe to the idea of Windows Recall in its current form.
I suspect this means we will see new features and capabilities added to Windows Recall over the coming months, along with updates to ensure the data it collects is secure on the device.
The original article contains 2,259 words, the summary contains 219 words. Saved 90%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Well, getting their OpenID Signing Key for Azure Active Directory stolen was magnitudes worse in my opinion.
Why is Lemmy showing me news from the 00's?
Um.... I actually want this feature. Maybe if its FOSS and I own the data. But the idea is amazing.
It's like some of the Pokemon games where it tells you what you did. Seriously amazing, but yeah needs to be FOSS and secure.
Then be able to query it. That would be amazing.
What would you use this feature for?
It takes images of your screen and stores it with context and then you can query it. Images, text, graphs, etc.
“Hey, I was working on an automation for my home assistant and it stopped working. I had an automation that worked about 6 months ago. Can you pull that automation up and show me”
“My boss showed me a slide about a month ago talking about the TPS report, can you pull that up and show me that slide deck?”
The use case is endless.
Borrowing from something I saw elsewhere: Set up a task / cron job / whatever it is on your OS that takes a full screenshot every minute and then sends it to Microsoft's AI team.
Or save it to a drive or something, I'm not the boss here. And neither is Microsoft.
Screencap and screencapture programs have existed forever, just use any, it's not a new idea
I think you misunderstand what Recall actually does. It takes images of your screen and then you can query it. Images, text, graphs, etc.
"Hey, I was working on an automation for my home assistant and it stopped working. I had an automation that worked about 6 months ago. Can you pull that automation up and show me"
"My boss showed me a slide about a month ago talking about the TPS report, can you pull that up and show me that slide deck?"
The use case is endless.
Whatevs, sheeple will continue to bleet about how bad things are but not take any steps to enact change.
This other side of the coin, and this is coming from a long time Linux user, is that for the vast majority of its life Linux has focused on functionality and not toward anything the majority of people care about. Only relatively recently is it a fairly good experience for the average user, but it still has some issues that will mean most users won't even consider it.
I really wish it could become mainstream, but until it fixes that fine tuning then most people won't consider it vs a Mac or Windows.
Remember the Zune? It has way more features and functionality than the iPod. But nobody cared. There's a reason it lost.
A lot of us put up with Linux because of our principles or because we're developers.
Is this article some kind of apple propaganda?
P. S: I fucking hate Windows.
Microsoft has done nothing to earn any good will or trust. Everything seems to spite the user or just harvesting maximum user data.
Glad I switched from PC to Mac back in 2022 because I was pissed Microsoft was forcing me to upgrade hardware to switch to Windows 11 which I didn’t want. Apple to me is more private and will be more thoughtful with their AI tools to expand user functionality. Screw Microsoft. This is a user that had used PCs since the late 1980s…
Forcing advanced keylogger to your system that anyone who has skills to break into your system can exploit freely does that
Though I doubt is as bad as described, I do hope that might soft will.dig it's own grave, I would be so happy when everyone just uses Linux
you can use O&O shutup10++ to disable recall now
The fact that we need a third party program to make our computer respect our privacy should say it all for Windows.
You still need to configure things in every linux distro to make it work. And apple doesn't allow you to configure anything that matters at all
Seen gamers install things worse then Recall. So to them they won't care. Unless it hurts their latency or fps.
It's not gonna affect their bottom line though. Microsoft are doing it because they know they can get away with it and drag the bar so low that they'd make RealNetworks circa 1999 look like privacy-respecting saints.
Your average Joe cannot afford the second mortgage needed to finance a MacBook purchase, and they'd have an aneurysm if presented with a Linux terminal.
And don't even get me started on business and professional use. Many businesses rely on proprietary or even bespoke software that doesn't run well, sometimes not even at all on Linux. Cheap (even FOSS) alternatives are often dogshit. And before you dispute me on that fact, can you name one web designer that would use Affinity Photo, GIMP or PDN over Photoshop? Or could you name one person that prefer AbiWord, OpenOffice or LibreOffice to Microsoft Word?
PC Gaming is one of those use-cases that has evolved by leaps and bounds... until you realize just how many multiplayer games rely on a form of anticheat. Many of these solutions are straight-up incompatible with Linux.
Where are at point no where new features added to something (phone, OS, website, etc) are only to further monetize the user while providing a minimal benefit.
People are losing trust with technology providers.
If this technology existed back in Windows 95 days people, would have gone wild for it.
Probably not only for Mucroshit. The industry as a whole is intrusive. Soon there won't be a single place to run to between our home, our place of work, and everything in between. Churches, parks, roads everything is just micro spying on us constantly.
For those of you that don't know about this OS and are tired of Microsoft's bullshit, you can look into supporting ReactOS as a true Windows alternative which needs it, and you feel you want to give the middle finger to Copilot, Copilot+ PC initiative, and Windows Recall. It can even be made to look like you have went back in time to the Windows XP era with the use of a theme and yet its not Windows, and could run things that you could already run in Windows 10. If even says you can fork it on Github, meaning you could choose to labor for months using it and Linux Technology to build a better OS to replace Windows using it and Linux Technology. And if you already going going FOSS by using Libra Office instead of Microsoft Office, LibraWolf instead of Firefox, and are currently looking to FOSS for your paint program and other things you use, why not look into going FOSS with your OS as well.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/I5qAshY2jkw?t=27
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Im cryin over here, honest injun
you can disable recall in regedit by adding a key and a DWord 32 bit value
Yeah .. regedit should not be considered a solution for the user base. In fact any time the user base knows that regedit exists we in IT have failed.
Woof you must absolutely loathe linux
O&OShutup10++ can now be used to disable windows recall as well
Most male computer uses watch porn and would not want an AI to log that. Many women find porn sickening and don't understand it and will never understand male urges that result in watching it. The fact that this got into a finished product tells you a lot about Microsoft's corporate culture.
No one working there really cares about the company enough to bring up uncomfortable issues, they are all there just to get their paycheck and actual outcomes be damned. The culture their must be toxic for this product to have been put into a product enabled by default.
If this was a top-down decision and there was no input by others into it, it leads to questions over whether this feature was forced to be included by the government, which can easily require corporations to do anything and then issue gag orders and whether it was some sort of test to see how much intrusive spying bullshit that regular consumers will tolerate now. If this was a feature that was forced into the product, the plan may have been to turn it off by default after negative feedback, but then just keep it in the program for when governments want to turn it on. Governments may have realized it in any capacity such a terrible feature would result in outrage and may have thought this was the path of least resistance, like saying "Would you like to eat a bowl of shit? No, okay, we'll just give you these brussel sprouts"
Most male computer uses watch porn and would not want an AI to log that. Many women find porn sickening and don’t understand it and will never understand male urges that result in watching it. The fact that this got into a finished product tells you a lot about Microsoft’s corporate culture.
Excellent point. We saw exactly the same phenomenon play out with Google and Gemini. The tool created racially diverse Nazis. Even a few minutes with the tool revealed major issues. There must have been hundreds of people who witnessed the slow moving train crash in realtime, but were either unwilling or unable to speak out. I think these companies have clearly cultivated a hierarchical culture of fear and intimidation. I recently left a job in which my manager was ex-Google. The stories she would tell were appalling. Her command-and-control style was, frankly, disgusting. She permitted zero critical feedback or discussion. It was her way or "fuck off." I found that very instructive as to how these companies have morphed into shells of their formers selves. I'm not bullish on the future of these companies. They're coasting very well on the fumes of their historical successes, and I think their demise is all but assured.
There needs to be a way to have an inclusive corporate culture that celebrates cultures and backgrounds but also allows brutal honesty about products without people being afraid of accidentally offending others or being too indifferent to the corporation's success to speak up.
A lot of it probably relates to how often people are fired and how short tenures are with companies. If you have a short tenure with a company or are expecting to, does it matter if Company A does well instead of Company B or Company C? It probably doesn't, and with social media capturing one wrong offensive faux paus for eternity (by which I mean until the planet becomes uninhabitable 300 years from now), workers have every incentive to let disasters like this go to market.
I am judging Microsoft employees but likely would have said nothing if I were there too. With all the layoffs in tech, why risk it to say something controversial? Even my initial post on this got down-voted into the depths of an abyss just for mentioning that men and women see pornography in different ways sometimes, which should hardly be controversial. I don't know whether the votes were from men or women, but actually I imagine more women than men down-voted it, and even this guess will probably lead to additional down-votes.
I dislike people like Elon Musk for his cruelty towards transgender people (despite his admirable intelligence), and I dislike Donald Trump for his cruelty towards those who are different in any way, but I also feel like people should be able to have discussions about actual uncomfortable subjects without it being automatically offensive. The fact I was so heavily down-voted immediately tends to illustrate my point.
Lol! How incredibly detached from reality!
Nobody cares! Well a few people care that make a big fuss, but most people don't ever think about their os. I bet a pretty big percentage don't know what os they use and I bet more than half don't know what version of the os they are using.
Nobody cares!
They don't care, but their nephew that has to fix the PC is it acts up cares, and when the nephew says he's not touching that thing with a 10 foot pole they'll consider that for their next purchase.
And if in the news there is an article that thanks to copilot they could identify the culprit in a crime, they'll look at any Windows version and their stroking material in a map on that drive a little different.
This. Normal users give zero shit, they neither understand nor care about any of this. If they can use a cool feature they will. How many use Facebook again? What do they care about privacy? Exactly.
They lost trust from some niche <10 %, that's it, from which most use/want to use Linux anyway.
If we could tackle the idea that Privacy matters and get more common folk aware of what they are losing, then I would like that very much.
.