Microsoft says it has “listened to feedback” following a privacy row over a new tool which takes regular screenshots of users’ activity.
It was labelled a potential “privacy nightmare” by critics when it was unveiled in May 2024 - prompting the tech giant to postpone its release. It now plans to relaunch the artificial intelligence (AI) powered tool in November on its new CoPilot+ computers.
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When it initially announced the tool at its developer conference in May, Microsoft said it used AI “to make it possible to access virtually anything you have ever seen on your PC”, and likened it to having photographic memory. It said Recall could search through a users’ past activity, including their files, photos, emails and browsing history.
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But critics quickly raised concerns, given the quantity of sensitive data the system would harvest, with one expert labelling it a potential “privacy nightmare."
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[Pavan Davuluri, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Windows and devices says] that “Windows offers tools to help you control your privacy and customise what gets saved for you to find later”.
However a technical blog about it states that “diagnostic data” from the tool may be shared with the firm depending on individual privacy settings.
[Microsoft says in a blog post that users can remove Recall entirely by using the optional features settings in Windows.]
The whole Recall thing is what finally made me get off my lazy ass and make the jump to Linux. I chose PopOS, and I’ve been very impressed with the out-of-the-box experience. Between Steam and Lutris, I can play just about any game I want to.
It feels like I actually own my laptop now.
“When asked for further comment Microsoft fucknuts replied with: It’s the best part of being a monopoly in the PC market. Don’t like what we’re doing? Where’s the average user going to go, Linux? BWAHAHAHAHA! Hey normies, get fucked and feed my bank account! He then spat on the reporter and gave a small child the middle finger.”
MS doesn’t realize how close they are to being disposable to gamers. If a few more game companies made their catalogs linux-native, they’d be toast.
Lots of people would be shocked just how many games offer linux-native binaries, not just windows ones that work with proton.
For the time being, Proton is good enough for me. I think devs/publishers refusing to enable their chosen anticheat to work with Proton is what is holding things back now for tech people. For other people, there’s even bigger challenges, and I doubt they even read up on these “tech nightmares” so they’re good with just continuing on with Windows.
I have been using Linux off and on for 25 years (using the server pretty consistently, but always hedged with the desktop for various reasons). Since Proton and GE-Proton allow every game I want to play to work in Linux, back when Recall was first announced, I decided to finally stop hedging and went all in on the Linux desktop.
And I’m not going back. Everything is working for me and Microsoft can screw off if they think I’m going to allow such blatant spyware in my house. Their telemetry was always suspect, but this is now overt despite any assurances they attempt to make.
Edit>> And their “oh you can uninstall Recall” isn’t trustworthy when they will easily reinstall it with a Windows update (they have done this in the past with other software — notably Edge and Teams).
What the heck am I going to do when win10 stops getting security patches? I really wish Valve would open up SteamOS to desktops in a public and supported way. That kind of pressure from valve has forced MS to play nice to users in the past. Anyone remember MS demanding that all software for Win8 be sold through the MS store only? And Valve said, fine we’ll make our own OS, with blackjack! And Hookers! And steam machines became a thing. Noone bought them. But it didn’t matter. It was enough pressure for MS to open up to having 3rd party storefronts again. I feel like we need this again. Also, if linux played nice with anti cheat, and discord I would probably be fine ditching windows but as it stands I’d miss out on playing games with my friends.
Anyway. Privacy Nightmare AI tool bad.
If I were to speculate, they are waiting for the NVK (Open source NVIDIA driver) to be more mature. So, they wouldn’t have to release two versions and wouldn’t depend on NVIDIA to update their driver to work with software the Steam Deck uses. I.E. Steam Deck uses gamescope for everything outside of Desktop mode. NVIDIA’s driver didn’t work with it until 2 months after the Steam Deck release. Even though it had existed for years prior.
If you need to use abusive windows software while retaining some privacy you really have 2 options:
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Have a separate PC with windows and your games installed. Isolate your activities so all your normal work and personal stuff is on linux, and then you switch input on your display, or use sunshine/moonlight to access windows when you want to.
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Use linux and do all your gaming etc. in a windows VM. This is what I do but it is not easy to set up, if you’re interested in this idea keep it in mind and come back to it later.
If you’re using VM hostile software though which it sounds like you are, #2 becomes even more complicated so I say bite the bullet and do #1.
Would games with anticheat work in a windows 10 vm? I am not interested in games that go out of their way to not work in wine but if it works in a vm of windows 10 you might be able to use that for gaming and whatever host os for your web browser emails etc.
If you know what you’re doing yes (not guaranteed to work in all games), but you’re always at constant threat of being potentially banned.
The info is hard to find but I assure you tons of people play anticheat games in VMs all the time. I personally avoid those games so I don’t know the specifics of all the tricks they do to hide the VM.
Being it’s a VM I could see some people just restoring from a template if they get banned and not really caring. No way to be hardware banned afaik.
This VM detection and VM anti detection is a reguarly evolving arms race, and some games invest a LOT more effort into staying on top of it than others.
SteamOS is focused on gaming, so its not a full replacement for Win10. There are ton of Linux operating systems for general use (even those that SteamOS is based on), without gaming focus and being a “normal” operating system like Windows. And if you want a gaming oriented OS, then there are plenty alternatives already: HoloISO, aiming for a SteamOS like system, and bunch of other: https://github.com/ChimeraOS/chimeraos/wiki/OS-Comparison . So there is no need to wait for SteamOS to open up as a general installation media on desktop.
I honestly don’t want to leave windows. I did use linux for years and I don’t want to tinker with my OS or my applications anymore. And you’re right SteamOS isn’t a general purpose OS. My comment was more in the hopes that if it were pushed out like that, that MS would respond with more consumer friendly approaches to the desktop so I wouldn’t HAVE to switch again and deal with the jank. And there will be jank. I know a lot of games work now with proton but how about the Affinity Suite? I found a github that describes how to set up the process in like 18 easy steps so you can begin to install a custom wine for it and just like no I don’t want to do that. I want to just keep using my pc that works with the OS I actually paid money for and not get harvested. I am so tired.
I do think linux needs some tools that automate that sort of thing so the 18 steps becomes like 3. It doesn’t even need to be by the distro itself but scripts made for it. I managed to make a script that does the same thing as robocopy does on windows to replace a certain rundata file for gamemaker 8.1 since it had that glitch that caused the the rundata to become invalid. I did share that script on my magazine in kbin.run and kbin.social unfortunately both are defunct but I could always share it somewhere else or make a community where people ask for help with installing stuff and people make a script for it like /c/makemeascript or something. I will have a look at the affinity suite and see what steps it takes to see if It is something I am skilled enough to automate.
Very relatable. Unfortunately we just don’t live in a world where that’s currently possible right now.
I’m planning to switch to some Linux or other at end of support for W10. I’m hoping Proton will take care of most of the games I want to play, and a single-purpose Windows VM will take care of the rest, if that’s not too big of a security risk to the host OS.
This is why I never really understand when people go “Just use Linux!!”. It isn’t a feasible option for everyone. For me, I work full time and I don’t have the energy to constantly fix things if they break. When I switched to Linux, I took great pains to ensure that my computer use case is one that could work in Linux, built a computer with parts known to be fine in Linux(including an AMD graphics card) and run Debian Stable on because I wanted something that wouldn’t be constantly updating. I’m in a comfy situation now, but I did a lot of planning beforehand that you can’t really expect people to do. Like, it’s great if we get more people using Linux, but that’s not a trivial ask.
Also, I too love Linux, but when I ran a dual-boot for six weeks last summer I had to troubleshoot it almost every single day. Because of that I ended up just going back to Windows and making sure I keep it clean with O&O ShutUp. Some systems just aren’t compatible with Linux and mine is one of them.
Even when it was working, only approximately half of my games ran on it, so I needed Windows anyway. (Though that may be on me for choosing Mint instead of a more gaming-centric distro.)
I’m going to go back to Linux when get a new system and can have a gaming-dedicated PC, but for now, I’m stuck with Windows.
I use Bazzite (which is steam now but community maintained for more PCs) for my htpc and PopOS for my main PC, both play every game I can throw at it. Maybe it’s time to try it out. I started with a windows dual boot and found myself using it less and less, until just a couple months ago I deleted windows completely
I would not recommend Bazzite to anyone who already complains about software tinkering in regular distros. Immutable distros are very much incompatible with a lot of shit - basically almost anything that is not in their regular repos or on Flathub, and it is an absolute pain in the ass to get those type of applications running on it.
I recently tried Bazzite, and I have to agree. Switching from a traditional Linux distro to an immutable distro is harder than switching from Windows to Linux. I’m not kidding. When it comes to immutability, my experience can be split into two general cases:
- I don’t notice any difference at all.
- It’s a giant pain in the ass.
I have yet to encounter a scenario where immutability offered a tangible benefit. The supposed advantages seem rather abstract. I can’t break my system? Okay…but…well, I already had snapper for the rare occasions when something got royally borked. This is a problem that has already been solved without major compromises, so why are we now compromising so much to solve it again?
It comes with 4 different package management systems (or 6 if you count Distrobox and Waydroid), and they all come with big caveats. I’ve had to reboot more in the past week than I previously had in the past year on Debian, because every time I need to install something from the main Fedora repo with rpm-ostree (which has been many times already), it needs to reboot. They recommend against using rpm-ostree, but there is no reasonable alternative for a rather wide array of software. It’s either rpm-ostree or build a whole mess of things from source and manage them manually. Both options suck very hard.
Still, overall, Bazzite delivers. Everything you see on their web site works out of the box. It’s hard to recommend, but it’s also hard to criticize. I’ve never had a smoother gaming experience, and this is the first time I’ve ever had to spend zero minutes configuring my GPU drivers (outside of macOS, anyway). You get CUDA and ROCm out of the box. You get the latest drivers. It’s awesome.
If you’re wondering if an immutable distro is right for you, the answer is probably “no”. But if you’re up for the, erm, “adventure” of learning this new paradigm, Bazzite fucking rocks.
Discord works great on Linux nowadays. Depending on the game, anti-cheat might also be fine. I play Helldivers 2 without any issues. It’s fine if you don’t have the oomph, but Pop_OS and Bazzite are both super solid ditros with a gaming focus. I have been using Pop as my only OS on my desktop for months now and really only needed the command line for VPN access and Switch modding
You can keep using win10 without security updates, just be smart about it. Have a good firewall, and just use it for gaming and bills or whatever and you’ll be fine
You can keep using win10 without security updates
if you want to be part of a botnet in a few years, sure
just be smart about it
being smart about it means not using an unsupported os
being smart about it means not using an unsupported os
Or do not connect to the internet. I have Windows 98 SE installed in an emulator… I know it’s a bit old, but I don’t connect to internet. :D
Yeah nah, I’ve had updates turned off for years and have no issues. All I do is game on my windows comp
… until you inevitably need to use the shell. Linux, no matter the flavor, has been very easy to use in the 22 years that I’ve tried to use it - until you need to dig ever so slightly deeper for something and then it very much isn’t. I started out with a Knoppix live-CD back in 2002. Remember that distro?
Besides what other users said: if you feel comfortable with SteamOS you might want to give EndeavourOS and Manjaro a check - all three distros are based on Arch Linux, and while Arch is geared towards experienced users the later two try to “sell” it towards a wider audience.
Oh my god if you are a new user please do not go straight to Arch or Manjaro. By far the two distros most likely to breaky irreparably.
I’m not suggesting Arch, but Arch-based distros. Manjaro doesn’t break anywhere as often as Arch does.
…or alternatively go with Mint and re-learn how to handle the packages. pacman vs. APT is not a big deal anyway.
@Butterbee @tardigrada steamos is just manjaro with steam installed.
