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.
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.
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.
That will rely on businesses moving away from Windows. That is where they make a ton of their money with Enterprise licenses and Office 365 subscriptions.
Twitter is a great example of the exact opposite being true. Are people upset? Absolutely. Did they leave the platform? Nope. Maybe a small percentage.
Respectfully, it’s not.
The user departures, and response to further enshittify, have driven their stock price into the ground.
It’s X.
Stop deadnaming X.
Anyone still clinging to the remnants of its former existence, please close your account. Stop kidding yourself.
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.
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.
-f follows the file so you can see updates as they come in to the bottom of the file. I wasn’t aware this worked with globs, but that’s neat.
Is that what /s does? I haven’t used Windows in years.
As expected, there is no evidence that this is “the straw that broke the camel’s back”. Don’t waste your time reading this article.
MS has been doing this kind of shit for decades and their market share has never changed significantly.
Was it stupid? Yeah. Are people upset? Sure. Is anyone going to do anything about it? No, because the vast majority don’t care or they would have stopped using it a long time ago.
I’m using windows 11 and after hearing about recall and all the other shit they’ve done, I’ve finally decided to make the jump to Linux
So for atleast me, this was the final straw
I had dabbled in gaming on Linux but never made the jump. After reading about recall I spent a week making my choice on OS of choice ( and then I switched a week after :') ).
I’m fully on Linux now. Even if they fully back down from windows recall I dont need an OS that’s trying to sell me something based on whatever I do in it.
It was my final straw as well.
Edit: and it hasn’t really been bad either. The shader compilation after every gfx driver update is a bit annoying. That’s about it.
I’ll probably run into something at one point. Like some anti cheat that doesn’t work and is preventing me from playing the game.
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.
better get W10 LTSC in VM and use it until EOL and beyond, it’ll be more privacy friendly this way
Using an internet connected OS past EOL is definitely not privacy friendly.
He said until EOL. Windows LTSC, the IoT version in particular is supported until 2032.
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.
