Microsoft Windows Recall, remember to disable it

[igor_kavinski]

How is this AI?

Maybe the AI is scanning the faces and objects in photos etc. and tagging names to them? Like suppose it can identify from the Outlook contact profile what Karen's face looks like. If you have photos of Karen, you can ask something like, show me the photo of Karen where she is juggling?

Also, you can ask stuff in a conversational style and the AI could give you a better experience in "understanding" what you are trying to ask it. It also gets better as you interact with it more, rather than plain old dumb search. But this is all theoretical speculation. This is how Recall should be. Microsoft giving that recipe example sounds bad to me. Like they have barely done any usability testing with it.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Maybe use better OCR?

I mean, any suggestions I would be open to at least investigating. So far, it seems to be a point that many home streamers are annoyed by.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I mean, any suggestions I would be open to at least investigating. So far, it seems to be a point that many home streamers are annoyed by.

@Tech Junky may know better.

 

[mikeymikec]

Picture graphic subtitles, a graphical version of subtitles. OCR software can turn it to a text based file like SRT. If your into media collection and home streaming, you’ll find SRT is preferable as it doesn’t require resources to render into the screen, so your server isn’t getting crushed transcoding 4k to (and maybe BR if your server is old) to put the subs onto the screen.

It’s just that the OCR software can be less than accurate. Spending hours pouring thru a text file to fix all the incorrect recognition is tedious at best

Are PGS subs better quality visually than traditional SRT?

 

[ch33zw1z]

@Tech Junky may know better.

It may also be a moot point. I heard rumor that a device from Amazon may be able to decode and present PGS without a transcode required, it’s pure rumor afaic rn tho

 

[ch33zw1z]

Are PGS subs better quality visually than traditional SRT?

Not really, but can be depending. The only ones I dislike so far are VOBSUB’s, often blocky and an ugly yellow

For me, it’s about load on the server. While it handles BR well, the 4K stuff is a monster to transcode

 

[ch33zw1z]

Anyways didn’t mean to thread hijack, this is about MS recall being absolutely garbage and opt-out should be default, while selecting opt-in should come with free legal council

 

[mikeymikec]

Maybe the AI is scanning the faces and objects in photos etc. and tagging names to them? Like suppose it can identify from the Outlook contact profile what Karen's face looks like. If you have photos of Karen, you can ask something like, show me the photo of Karen where she is juggling?

Yeah, I wondered if it was analysing photo image data it encounters, but is that actually useful in the context of analysing a person's workflow and tagging metadata to make it easier to search? It makes me think of this scene out of 'The Fifth Element' with items being orally identified which might have some fringe uses (e.g. for a blind person, or teaching someone languages), but in general day-to-day office workflow?

Also, you can ask stuff in a conversational style and the AI could give you a better experience in "understanding" what you are trying to ask it. It also gets better as you interact with it more, rather than plain old dumb search. But this is all theoretical speculation. This is how Recall should be. Microsoft giving that recipe example sounds bad to me. Like they have barely done any usability testing with it.

I assume "conversational" currently boils down to similar word searches which has been a thing for quite some time before the AI hype train.

 

[igor_kavinski]

but in general day-to-day office workflow?

I assume "conversational" currently boils down to similar word searches which has been a thing for quite some time before the AI hype train.

How about "show me that image of the presentation we saw about this quarter's profits, bring that chart into Excel and let me edit the table"? (so you can prepare projected profit for the next quarter) <<< I know sounds very futuristic but if Recall can do that in collaboration with the MS Office suite, it could be a killer combination.

 

[manly]

I wonder if this will help Microsoft convince the banks around the world to make the switch who are still using Windows XP in their ATM machines

I brought up Win10 IoT LTSC only because it has long-term support (until Jan 2032) and supposedly they won't force feed you new features that you don't want. But it's not a retail product, so only geeks like us would consider it for home use.


"Machine learning" is AI, and "deep learning" is definitely AI. Whether we like it or not.

Has anyone watched The Capture season 2, a BBC show? We're getting dangerously close to where deepfakes are indistinguishable from real video. And when that's the case, then no recorded media is "believable" anymore? It's a good show (2 seasons), and Holliday Grainger is a cutie. I think @igor_kavinski would approve.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Holliday Grainger is a cutie.

Cute yeah but Aries. Too smart for me. I like Pisces a lot.

 

[mikeymikec]

Microsoft pushes ahead with Recall, makes it opt-in

Windows maker acknowledges 'clear signal' from everyone, then mostly ignores it

www.theregister.com

Now opt-in

 

[manly]

It's been recalled (for now).

Microsoft postpones Windows Recall after major backlash — will launch Copilot+ PCs without headlining AI feature

Windows Recall will arrive at a later date, available in preview "in the coming weeks."

www.windowscentral.com

 

[igor_kavinski]

Total Recall

 

[mikeymikec]

It's been recalled (for now).

Microsoft postpones Windows Recall after major backlash — will launch Copilot+ PCs without headlining AI feature

Windows Recall will arrive at a later date, available in preview "in the coming weeks."

www.windowscentral.com

It's probably much more profitable to sell as a rootkit anyway.

 

[mikeymikec]

Surprise!

Microsoft cancels universal Recall release

Wider release coming real soon – promise – after the Windows faithful give it a thrashing

www.theregister.com

 

[ssokolow]

I'm not sure that this is quite the glaring security hole as the article/researchers claim, simply because if an attacker has achieved the level of privs as the current user, the attacker can glean the information they want anyway, drop their screen-stealing software, keylogger etc. Does Recall really make this easier? It seems to me that it would give the attacker a tonne of data to sift through which isn't really to the attacker's advantage.

The explanation I read was that it makes exploits easier because, if it's vulnerable when it's "unlocked for use", then the attackers have a single thing, in a single know place, with a built-in search index, that they can exfiltrate as quickly as possible before they're detected and stopped.

... Being finding that recipe you were looking at earlier. I would just open up my browser history and use the search button. Recall is allegedly so much better because I open up a different page and use the search button. It's a universal search button I guess? Who are they planning to pitch this to exactly, a person with such a feeble memory that they can't remember that they were looking at a web page, an e-mail or an office document? Really?

Apparently they envision it being for people who remember visual impressions of what they were doing but don't remember relevant search keywords to type, so they need image recognition to let them search for what they remember by description.
(eg. I remember seeing a photo of a brown handbag.)

 

[mikeymikec]

The explanation I read was that it makes exploits easier because, if it's vulnerable when it's "unlocked for use", then the attackers have a single thing, in a single know place, with a built-in search index, that they can exfiltrate as quickly as possible before they're detected and stopped.

Perhaps. It just makes me think that there's some twisted logic involved in essentially demanding a higher standard of security for metadata than actual data. Or let's throw out the distinction between metadata and data, and it's therefore demanding that data X should be secured better than data Y, which IMO calls into question the perceived value of anything, which always comes down to "value to whom". In a purely generic information security context it is commonly accepted that say login credentials should be better secured than most other types of data; I would be really surprised if Recall didn't take steps to not harvest that data.

PS - I'm not pro-Microsoft, I've largely disapproved of their strategies in the last ~10 years; there was a relatively good period for a while after the browser monopoly saga and before the era of total information harvesting.

 

[WelshBloke]

So apart from the whole privacy and security issues no one else has an issue with Microsoft making an operating system so hardware demanding that it needs new CPUs designed specifically to run it?

 

[ssokolow]

So apart from the whole privacy and security issues no one else has an issue with Microsoft making an operating system so hardware demanding that it needs new CPUs designed specifically to run it?

It's an artificial limitation just mean to shift more hardware from their partners. Articles like this one on Tom's Hardware have already shown that the only real limitation is that Microsoft is only releasing builds for ARM and, with a little ingenuity, you can run it on a regular ARM device or even under emulation.

The general sentiment I've seen among reactions has been "I wonder how long until the exclusivity agreement runs out and Microsoft starts offering it to everyone to try to get people to stop downgrading Windows 11 back to Windows 10."

(The TL;DR: on that link is that Statcounter stats seem to show Windows 11 losing market share to Windows 10. Take that for what you will.)

Basically, we're seeing the industry start to panic and flail at how long replacement cycles are growing for tech that works just fine for people without forced obsolescence. Cathode Ray Dude has an excellent mini essay on the topic at the end of his video on the abomination HP released to try to drive more sales back around 2010.

 

[WelshBloke]

(The TL;DR: on that link is that Statcounter stats seem to show Windows 11 losing market share to Windows 10. Take that for what you will.)

Basically, we're seeing the industry start to panic and flail at how long replacement cycles are growing for tech that works just fine for people without forced obsolescence. Cathode Ray Dude has an excellent mini essay on the topic at the end of his video on the abomination HP released to try to drive more sales back around 2010.

I mean all I want out of an OS is it to be rock solid stable, get the most out of the hardware available to it, run the software I choose to put on it and to get out of my face as much as possible.
I don't hate win11, but it did take an inordinate amount of tweaking, third party (possibly shonky) apps and some massive law suits (goodbye Edge!) to make it suit my needs.

 

[ssokolow]

I mean all I want out of an OS is it to be rock solid stable, get the most out of the hardware available to it, run the software I choose to put on it and to get out of my face as much as possible.
I don't hate win11, but it did take an inordinate amount of tweaking, third party (possibly shonky) apps and some massive law suits (goodbye Edge!) to make it suit my needs.

No argument.

I'm one of those technically skilled, stubborn "It's my ****ing computer" people who refused to upgrade from Windows 98SE to Windows XP for a while because of WGA and my first impression of Luna and then got fed up with how crashy Litestep made it back when I was still in high school, so I've been limiting my use of Windows to my gaming and hobby machines ever since and running Linux on the machine I get stuff done on since the days when you really did need to be a geek-zealot to do so.

Hell, I ripped out the Lubuntu update notifier and whipped up a minimal one with no "please reboot" nags at one point, and only upgraded off a dual-core Athlon from 2011 this January because, until I got fed up trying to retrofit an AVX-less build of something without good documentation on how to do so, I was quite happy with how much efficiency I managed to squeeze out of my software.

 

[WelshBloke]

No argument.

I'm one of those technically skilled, stubborn "It's my ****ing computer" people who refused to upgrade from Windows 98SE to Windows XP for a while because of WGA and my first impression of Luna and then got fed up with how crashy Litestep made it back when I was still in high school, so I've been limiting my use of Windows to my gaming and hobby machines ever since and running Linux on the machine I get stuff done on since the days when you really did need to be a geek-zealot to do so.

Hell, I ripped out the Lubuntu update notifier and whipped up a minimal one with no "please reboot" nags at one point, and only upgraded off a dual-core Athlon from 2011 this January because, until I got fed up trying to retrofit an AVX-less build of something without good documentation on how to do so, I was quite happy with how much efficiency I managed to squeeze out of my software.

I'm fairly tempted to set my main PC up as a Steam box next time it needs a format, I just don't want to download a couple of TB of game data again! But that depends on how steamOS works as a general OS.

 

[mikeymikec]

So apart from the whole privacy and security issues no one else has an issue with Microsoft making an operating system so hardware demanding that it needs new CPUs designed specifically to run it?

1) the feature is opt-in
2) an OS is like any other bit of software: what is deemed to be a requirement of that software changes (let's be frank: increases) over time. The topic of including a web browser in an OS was once hotly debated, now no longer.

I mean all I want out of an OS is it to be rock solid stable, get the most out of the hardware available to it, run the software I choose to put on it and to get out of my face as much as possible.
I don't hate win11, but it did take an inordinate amount of tweaking, third party (possibly shonky) apps and some massive law suits (goodbye Edge!) to make it suit my needs.

IMO Windows (technically speaking) is in desperate need of a cycle of innovation followed by a cycle of streamlining.

On Linux I find that resource usage (apart from what I'm using the computer for) is pretty static over a day-long session; I've got resource monitoring applets on the taskbar and I basically never see them start cranking up for no apparent reason, whereas this is completely ordinary behaviour for Windows. In fact on Linux the first time I've seen unexpected resource usage (aside from a browser tab going bonkers) was because I had a Win10 VM running

 

[ssokolow]

1) the feature is opt-in

It wasn't originally, and people are worried about Microsoft's propensity for changing/resetting options during system updates.