Technology

Microsoft knows that the addition of adds to Windows, Recall, data mining, etc are not suicide. As far as tech news goes, Lemmy really exists in an echo chamber. The vast majority of us at least have some interest in technology. For the majority of the population, though, this isn't true. The typical person sees a computer as a tool to be used for other things. They're not reading articles about the latest release of Windows, new CPU technology, the latest GPU, etc. They're using their computer, and when it's time for an upgrade, they buy whatever suits their needs.

If I was to ask any of my family, or most of my coworkers, about any of the latest "controversies" surrounding Microsoft, they would have no idea what I was talking about. Microsoft obviously thinks that the added profits gained by monetizing their customers will offset the loss of 1% of their users that switch to Linux. They're probably right, too.

I like Windows, personally (well, Windows 10 at least). My unofficial rule has always been if it needs a GUI, then it runs Windows, otherwise, it runs Linux as a headless machine. Once Windows 10 is no longer a viable option, my unofficial rule will be "it runs Linux." Most people will not make this switch.

The problem with big companies like Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft, etc is that once all the smart & creative people have gone, all you have left are the "line must always go up" business idiots, who have no idea what their company even does or how to fix it.

CoPilot / Recall is exactly the kind of End-stage, "let's screw our customers to death" idea the CEOs come up with before just their company implodes. Seriously. No one at Microsoft has thought this through beyond "data mining our customers."

How are other governments going to react to this? Will they trust their nation's secrets to an OS with such a blatant backdoor built into it? How does this "feature" work with search warrant requests? How secure can a database connected to an always-on Internet connection possibly be?

I've thought this ever since Windows 8 (and when I went from dual-boot to Linux only). In retrospect, at least Ballmer treated Windows like a PC operating system.

Ever since Nadella took over, it seems like MS is trying to turn Windows into ChromeOS but for Microsoft's cloud services. Pretty sure they want PCs to be thin clients tied to subscriptions. No fucking thanks.

I've seen this over and over in corporate environments.

Suit A has a terrible idea but enough fawning bootlickers to get the process moving.

Worker A, an employee, knows this is a terrible idea but doesn't say anything because they wanna keep their job.

Contractor B, obv a contractor, is there to make money and hopefully turn their stint into something more, so they speak up. And get canned.

What is it about Suits that they can't listen to literally anyone but their own echo chambers? Oh yeah, they're angling to jump into a bigger echo chamber. The 1%.

No they’re simply trying to emulate Google and Facebook by becoming data gatherers and hoarders. They’ve been jealous of how much data other companies have gathered about people, and then realized they could easily do the same.

The new Recall feature they're trying to push is creepy as fuck. No thanks.

Glad I moved to linux a few years ago so I don't have to worry about any of this trash.

The HIPAA concerns are very alarming. And I agree with the spirit if the article. However, I'm not sure the article is correct when it says Recall cannot be disabled. I've already seen other articles telling you how to turn it off. The fact that it's opt-out and not opt-in is a huge issue, though.

Microsoft makes its money with Azure and M365 licenses for enterprise customers now.
Windows as a consumer operating system is a loss leader. The only reason it still exists is to breed familiarity with the MS ecosystem in all future employees.
This strategy works until a certain amount of really big businesses do the math and find out how many millions they can save each month by throwing their weight behind a Linux-based solution. Luckily for Microsoft, most CEOs and CTOs of these major corporations are forced by the shareholders to prioritize short term profit.
Rebuilding your infra and retraining your entire staff on a new ecosystem would be really expensive in the short term, even if it pays off in 5-10 years. And a high one-time cost is always harder to justify than a monthly amount that's already budgeted into your operating costs and product prices.
So it's still safer to stick to what you know, for now.

By the way, MS hasn't been fighting against Linux for a long time.
They're among the top contributers to the kernel, integrated Linux into Windows as a subsystem, run their own Azure backend on Linux servers, and post help articles on how to install Linux.

Microsoft has essentially forgotten what a desktop GUI is for. It's a program launcher packaged with a set of libraries that make it easy for other programs to do complex things like displaying video in a uniform way, plus some system administration tools. Pack-ins not related to system administration should be limited to very basic software.

There may be something that Microsoft has added to Windows lately that isn't bloat, or evil, or both, but damned if I know what it is.

Because CoPilot+ is purportedly trained on what users actually do, it looked plausible to someone in marketing at Microsoft that it could deliver on "help the users get stuff done". Unfortunately, human beings assume that LLMs are sentient and understand the questions they're asked, rather than being unthinking statistical models that cough up the highest probability answer-shaped object generated in response to any prompt, regardless of whether it's a truthful answer or not.

Hehehe.

There is no way this Recall feature doesn't backfire or gets breached.

Corporations must generate growth to please their investors no matter what. If the CEO doesn't do it the board members will replace him with someone who will.

Microsoft cannot significantly generate growth by increasing their user base by making a more attractive product anymore. They have maxed out their share of the market. So they must pursue other ways to generate "growth", like data mining their customers to generate an additional source of income.

In this kind of situation you will see all sorts undesirable behaviors emerge from corporations like that, like lowering the quality of their products or cutting down on their workforce to "reduce cost" event though they are already turning a profit.

We will see this shit happen over and over again until we come up with a solution to this "infinite growth" problem.

No. Lots of normies will happily turn these new features on.

I feel like the headline and all these comments have WAAAAAYYYYY too much faith in the technical savvy and/or privacy concerns of the average pc user. They are not committing suicide. They know that a very small minority will be upset by recall and AI but the vast majority don't know enough to care and definitely won't take the time to learn about why they should care.

I think they are preparing to go full cloud soon. You can make much more when customers have to pay something like 29$ a month to use the operating system. At home or work there will be just a thin client left. And this recall database will be worth much more to harvest data when you have to store it on azure. I am sure this will come eventually. Storing it local is just the first step. Once the backslash is over and everyone is using it they will move the stuff to the cloud. "You will own nothing and be happy".

I've been a user since Dos 5.0 and Windows 3.0.

Today I mostly use Linux Mint on my dual boot laptops and need to convert my main PC over to dual boot Mint next. I rarely boot into windows at home and if it wasn't for proprietary software at work running only on Windows I would have been done sooner.

I was mostly able to go from XP to 7 and avoided Vista and 8 altogether. Windows 10 was sort of ok with the ability to go back to a Windows 7 control panel when needed but it always felt half baked and unfinished to me.

I've just not been interested in 11 at all and the tidbits I'm hearing about Co-pilot reminds me of not only Clipit but the forcing of IE/ Edge constantly on user's especially after every larger update but to mention resetting the default PDF reader to edge. In a work environment of 20 plus shop PC's I was managing for low tech skill employees it was a pain in the ass chasing down the changes that were not made on my behalf.

What will be the Co-pilot's flavor of this new round of BS from Microsoft? The forcing of a cloud account is another headache I don't want to deal with either.

I will say Mint just mostly does what I need for my web browsing and general productivity needs without the constant game of trying to keep it the way I want it versus what MS wants for me with every update.

I'm at the stage of get off my lawn and screaming at a cloud in the sky next. That cloud is MS these days when adding in the annoyances of their Android keyboard *Swiftkey injecting Co-pilot and Bing into my searches. I've not played in Office 365 for a bit now but I can only imagine it's just as bad now.

They really are screwing it up. I’ve long been a proponent of dual booting. Yes I spend 99% of my time in linux, but I’ve always kept a windows drive going for the things that I’m just too lazy to get working. RGB lights, nicehash miner, exact audio copy, my aio cooler’s nzxt software for its blingy screen, the very off chance game that’s got a couple of glitches.

But like now, I don’t even want that OS on my PC. Even sitting on a drive that I hardly ever boot from. I view my password vault and it takes a screenshot of my credentials? Does it grab my bitcoin wallet too? At what point does windows 11 start scanning my local files simply because I booted the OS? When does it start scanning my other drives and OSs?

They just can’t be trusted anymore. And the fact that I’m actively solving the above mentioned pains in Linux and actively working to deleting the dual boot win11 os…. Well… when lazy people start doing work against you - you’ve screwed yourself.

I'm flummoxed for sure. I need a computer to be a bit of a power house, ideally well equipped for music production software and live performance, DJ software, graphic design/animation/illustration, and at least for the desktop gaming. Been in the market for a laptop so I can take at least the music & design production on the go, but damn I hate laptop shopping.

Unsuuuure if Linux is compatible with the graphic/music production software I'm working with, or if there are viable work arounds. Windows 11 looks like a dumpster fire I do not wish to support. I'd really like to avoid Apple as I have my own grievances there too. Windows 10 obviously seems on the way out.

Long story long, feeling a bit lost on how best to proceed. If anyone uses Linux for similar creative endeavors, would love to hear your roses and thorns on the matter. Certainly open to recommendations for a sturdy war horse of a lappy as well.

Microsoft wants to lock up business dollars while the AI feeding frenzy is still fresh.

They do not care about any other markets or segments, which is why their products are getting so bad so fast for literally everyone else.

I never thought I'd see one of Charlie's blogs posted around Lemmy unless it was about his books. Good to see him getting some recognition.

there’s no 5 year plan, it’s 5 one year plans in a trench coat.

Suddenly every PC becomes a target for Discovery during legal proceedings. Lawyers can subpoena your Recall database and search it, no longer being limited to email but being able to search for terms that came up in Teams or Slack or Signal messages, and potentially verbally via Zoom or Skype if speech-to-text is included in Recall data.

Discovery includes personal devices too, btw.