If you thought that Microsoft was done with Recall after its catastrophic reveal as the main feature of Copilot+ PCs, you are mistaken.
Microsoft wants to bring it back this October 2024. Good news is that the company plans to introduce it in test builds of the Windows 11 operating system in October. In other words: do not expect the feature to hit stable Windows 11 PCs before 2025 at the earliest.
While Recall may have sounded great on paper and on work-related PCs, users and experts alike expressed concern. Users expressed fears that malware could steal Recall data to know exactly what they did in the past couple of months.
Others did not trust Microsoft to keep the data secure. We suggested to make Recall opt-in, instead of opt-out, to make sure that users knew what they were getting into when enabling it.
Microsoft pulled the Recall feature shortly after its announcement and published information about its future in June. There, Microsoft said that it would make Recall opt-in by default. It also wanted to improve security by enrolling in Windows Hello and other features.
Their feature may come back to their OS but their OS isn’t coming back to my hardware.
Not a problem for me, since I plan to stop using Windows in 2025.
Much like Chrome forced me to Firefox, Windows will force me to Linux. It is inevitable.
I recommend at least dual booting before then, so you can get a feel for what the alternative is capable of. You don’t want to switch, run into a hiccup, then have to decide whether to push through whatever incompatibility that is, or switch to something terrible. Work through those problems at your own pace in a dual-boot setup, and once you’re ready to ditch Windows, everything is already ready.
Yeah, that’s what I actually did on my secondary computer (laptop), where I dual booted Windows 10 and openSUSE Tumbleweed, before switching entirely to openSUSE.
I am planning to do the same for my main PC, but instead of doing different partitions for each OS, I will most likely give Linux (probably openSUSE as well, but I might try Fedora Atomic this time) an entire SSD for it’s use.
Yeah, on my desktop, I have a separate disk for Windows and Linux, and since I haven’t booted into Windows in over a year, I’ll probably repurpose it as a data drive or something (or maybe upgrade my NAS boot drive).
The writing is on the wall, they are not giving up on that potential cash cow. I won’t use it, hell I don’t use windows, but there are normal computer users that will have it thrust upon on them and won’t know how to really turn it off.
I use Arch Linux… btw
Seriously, the alternatives are there… It’s time to take the leap and never look back.
MS: Here’s a cool new feature!
Users: That is spyware bullshit, fuck off!
MS: But muh ecosystem!
Users: Nobody fucking wants any of that. Now STFU and run my games, grandpa.
MS: sniffs This isn’t over, you little shits.I’m glad I don’t use Winbloat
Honestly this might be useful to the home user but everyone is right to be skeptical. The bigger value for the software is corporate surveillance. They will be able to see exactly how much time WFH workers are actually working and will probably want it for exfiltration prevention. The target user might not be able to avoid using it no matter what.
I’m glad people are starting to care about digital privacy even after three decades of people like me being annoying
It’s 1000%going to be used for corporate surveillance.
Features to do this from other vendors are already in use.
this is gonna get people to either switch to macos or linux
The whole idea of windows 11 made me switch to Linux, already unhappy with windows 10 but that was bearable for me.
Sucks that I work in windows though.
atleast windows 10 is actually good and has good app support but it has some spyware
While Recall may have sounded great on paper and on work-related PCs,
Ah yes, all those IT people were probably thrilled with the prospect of Microsoft getting sent constant screenshots of their employees’ machines, with all those company secrets, sensitive information, and everything
Boy howdy I’m just imagining HIPAA with this.
Also data retention and security it’s a nightmare for Title IX and FERPA as well.
Another thing is Microsoft hasn’t been talking about compression either, how large are these files? What does it do with networked drives? How do we know metadata collection isn’t being expanded?
It never sounded great on paper to me…
Hear me out, I actually had a similar concept in mind, but only for files, emails, calendar entries, bookmarks, that kind of stuff. Things that I actually saved on my computer, not random screenshots of what I’m looking at. This is a huge difference IMO. What I look at should never be saved. Only when I specifically save something, should it persist. I would actually love a FOSS, local and private AI solution that would allow me to simply query anything I’ve ever saved on my computer with a simple search request, without having to waste time on naming my files. Even better if it would understand the context and stuff. This would especially be useful with photos, as they never have proper filenames, just some generic random stuff. Or with code, if the AI search could understand the context of my code and I could just pull it up using a search terms like “the function for handling DNS over TLS requests a few years ago” or whatever, and it would just pull out that one function from the project. Even better if this could be integrated with a separate, generative AI model, that could make small changes to my already existing stuff. I don’t know, e.g. “refactor the function to use LibreSSL instead of OpenSSL TLS library”.
The crazy part to me is a local solution (shadow copy) has been around for ever. Why this is even a thing at all is just insane to me.
Shadow copy is a completely different thing. Shadow copy creates snapshots(used for version history, among other uses) of files. Recall is a screen recording software, that includes OCR and maybe some AI stuff. At this time, at least, it too is all local. It just isn’t secure in the least.
And functionaly pointless other then spying on users (and there is also software for that).
My point is, like a lot of things today, this is a solution looking for a problem.
I’m not diagreeing with that. Although it could be useful, I often forget where I saved things, and something that let’s my search my worn history would be rad, but there’s zero chance this won’t be abused by a large list of people, including but not limited to Microsoft, spouses, bosses, malware, governments, every random application, Facebook, and Microsoft.
And is just as useful as a functioning search tool…
Of course it is coming back.
It will keep coming until plebs accept parasite.
Lots of comments in here saying this sends stuff to Microsoft and yet that isn’t true. It’s an offline local feature.
I personally look forward to giving it a try.
Wanna buy a bridge?
Perhaps for a few quarters or years until you’re locked in. Infinite growth demanded by investors make the eventual harvest as sure to come as taxes and death
Did they make hard commitments to 100% keep the data local and never use it to spy on you? What does their privacy policy say? Come on dude, we’re talking about microsoft. You’re more likely to receive millions from a nigerian prince than to get some privacy from them.
A Google search later: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy-and-control-over-your-recall-experience-d404f672-7647-41e5-886c-a3c59680af15
All local. Nothing sent. You can choose to not believe it, but it’s deceptive to imply they don’t say it’s local.
If you don’t believe them it’s one thing but they said what they said.
No internet or cloud connections are required or used to save and analyze snapshots. Your snapshots aren’t sent to Microsoft. Recall AI processing occurs locally, and your snapshots are securely stored on your local device only.
That’s better than I thought. For the moment.
It only mentions the snapshot storage and processing. It’s a perfect solution for them. The AI will crunch the data and report only it’s findings to Microsoft for advertising purposes. They save on storage and electricity by offloading the data harvesting to your machine.
I see, they don’t state anywhere that the results of the screenshot analysis are never transmitted to them.
Well you don’t know that, they’re telling you that. First issue.
The second is that it can and will change in time.
Thing is, it BARELY changes performance
Windows users got no right to complain about performance.
what? Im not trying to be rude but i dont understand why you’re saying that
Lol, it’s a running joke that Windows have terrible performance.
aah ok, yeah that didnt make sense to me because for gaming pc’s at least, windows has equivalent performance
A lot of games aren’t made with efficiency in mind anyway, so you probably wouldn’t notice for your usecase.
oh, i use linux, iwas just pointing out that for games there isnt much difference
Since Recall is constantly watching what you do, is it plausible that it could summarize and quantify for an employer how much work is being done on the machine during work hours?
deleted by creator
From: [email protected]
Subject: [ACTION REQUIRED] Work Policy ViolationDear Wayge Slavei,
Your working performance has been reviewed, and you have been found to be in violation of Bigcorpo workplace policies. As per your contract, you are required to take a 30-minute break for lunch and entitled two additional 15-minute breaks to use at your discretion.
As identified to our policy review process, you have multiple periods of inactivity throughout the work week, including:
- 42 to 59 minutes of inactivity during Wednesdays at 2 PM
- 27 to 56 minutes of inactivity every day from 12:30 to 1 PM.
These periods of unsanctioned inactivity are against corporate policy, and you will be required to attend mandatory training, which will take place virtually on Wednesdays, after the company-wide weekly All-Hands Project Alignment meetings from 2 to 3. Continued violations will result in your termination.
Thank you,
Douche Nozzle
My boss didn’t need Recall to do that to me a decade ago. He called me out for going offline in our messenger app for an hour after lunch while I was helping another tech sort an emergency for a client from their machine.
I told him that’s fine, I’ll just let everyone know that I won’t be assisting and will show them that email every time anyone asks. He backed off, but not everyone is going to get that lucky to have a complete moron who is going to put dumb shit threats in writing without running it by anyone in legal, HR, or their own boss.
So based on the requirements, it sounds like a lot of PCs just can’t run recall anyways?
I can see the use case, and that some people might find this useful (not to mention many agencies and ad companies). But enough was enough, for me at least. Linux Mint rocks. Can’t see myself going back to Windows.
