I don’t see why everyone hates this. It’s disabled by default and you don’t have to use it. I use Linux but thank god someone’s actually trying to make operating systems interesting again, nobody else has done anything interesting in years.
But an operating system isn’t meant to be “interesting”. It’s an operating system. It should only be meant to operate the system. The interesting should be up to whatever programs it is that a user puts on top of it, something that makes it work better (like optimisations), or at most, make it look nicer. Recall is not that. Your car should be functional as a car. It doesn’t need to be capable of baking souffles, or be a fully-functional mobile office suite. An OS should follow the same principles.
I could see this as an interesting lab concept. That possibly users could install from some kind of site if they really wanted it. Not as a mainstream function pushed to evry system. Even if it’s inactive by default for now.
Ignore the luddites, this will be a very important can’t-live-without feature in the years to come. Once the privacy issues are worked through, and yes, luddites, they can and will be worked through, this will be a differentiating feature that every other OS plays catch up to. It already exists in some tools like ssh playbacks.
Imagine you’re working on a problem and solved it 6 months ago. You forgot to bookmark the site, and you just can’t find it again. No problem. Query Recall to show you what problem it was and how you solved it.
This is a memory of what you did during a user session on your computer…
This is a “I forgot my keys” type solution for the average user. For the power user, it has a ton of uses including what were those settings I changed last week, they seem to have worked and I want to document them, or recap the game I played last week so I’m not completely lost when I start my next session.
So what you’re saying is…if you remember to save things, you’re giving up your privacy/security for nothing?
Those are such weak use cases for letting Microsoft take screenshots of my computer like the DPRK. The one time a year I might find it useful is just not worth the risk. And I really don’t like this being thrust upon less-techy people who don’t understand what they’re giving up.
That is not at all what I am saying. Of course not using it is your choice and your right, but saying there is no use or value (for anyone) for this is willful ignorance at this point.
Edit: it also does not have to be a trade off of your privacy and/or security either. This tech can be done securely and with privacy-retention, but what I am seeing and hearing from this thread is that it is Bad. No. Matter. What.
I didn’t say there was no use, I said there was very little benefit.
Your only reasoning for saying it will be something people wouldn’t be able to live without is that it will save you time when you forget to bookmark something you want to find 6 months ago. I don’t find that compelling at all and I can’t fathom it being a “must have” feature for 99.99% of people.
To your edit, it is unquestionably a trade off. You are being monitored by Microsoft. Screenshots of your computer will be uploaded to their servers regularly. It doesn’t matter what happens with them - that information is now out there. Even if it was impossible to hack Microsoft (lol), there is no way to spin this to say you aren’t giving up privacy. Until this is feature is completely offline with no telemetry going to a corporation, it is a privacy nightmare.
Windows 11 is free and as the saying goes, “if you’re not paying for it, YOU are the product.” So yes, most people think this is bad no matter what.
Well you did say the tradeoff of security was “for nothing” which is why I said that. I don’t know about you, but I struggle with memory issues in my older age and would love to have a memory coprocessor that helps me. I think the interface (interaction between user and the tech) will be critical here for making it usable. Regarding privacy, M$ has been touting it is offline (unless that has changed), which is why they are going to the trouble of building out these LLMs and multimodal LLMs and the Copilot PC with accelerator chips built in. It will be as secure as any other file on your computer, but the stakes will be higher for leaks, no doubt. New encryption schemes will undoubtedly be required as it’s on the cusp of being a digital part of the users’ self.
I’m not going to downvote you, because I’m genuinely curious: Why would this be a “very important can’t-live-without feature”, what’s the argument?
Because from where I’m sitting as a user of various Windows & Linux products for several decades, this has never been anything I’ve asked for or needed, let alone wanted to take up >20Gb of my hard drive space. What is the Use Case sales pitch that convinced you?
I’m absolutely looking for a real answer, not here to downvote or troll.
When you say “the tech is useful” I don’t see it that way from my perspective because I can’t think of any specific scenarios for this tech to prove valuable to me, in terms of the way that I interface with an OS.
What I’m hoping for from you is a Use Case; what specific application of this tech would you, the End User, find to be a vast improvement in the way that you interface with Windows?
This is an accessibility wet dream. That’s the biggest use case IMO. Take all of the people who struggle with memory issues or who are blind. This will completely change their life.
A few other use cases I put in a sibling comment. Sorry, you caught me on the defensive!
This isn’t an unreasonable suggestion, but I’m not seeing accessibility mentioned anywhere on the Recall site. For those with sight issues, I’m unclear on how the process would be with the necessary screen-reader that MS is silent on compatibility with. Sure, text to voice is a thing, but that would only be useful at home unless you really want to have a computer read out loud everything it’s got in Recall.
I’m talking more abstractly about the tech vs your concrete here today Microsoft Recall implementation of the tech. It’s unfortunate M$ isn’t working towards accessibility now, but this tech will enable such things.
I appreciate the positive outlook for the possibility of things, but I live in a world where Microsoft has already violated customer trust and privacy, so I’ll stick with what evidence supports. Evidence supports that this is not about customers, and is instead a new way for them to get additional data.
The risks of this being done incorrectly, at all, are much more worrisome than any speculative fiction I might want to entertain about them.
That is seriously deranged. Copyright exists for the corporations. Any individual artist that goes up against them Loses. Every. Time. That’s my biggest gripe about AI=Bad people, my opinion of them is that they are hypocrites, have they seriously never file shared a mp3 a day in their lives?
There is also other uses for this tech than “theft” from artists. How about driving tech that learns from people’s driving footage.
That’s a great first step but by no means the only component. You forgot analyzing the images, cleaning any privacy issues, and securely deleting the images, and of course indexing the information and making it available for queries. Best to not even store the images, IMO.
Oh… you weren’t serious? At least try to understand the tech if you’re going to badmouth it.
I want an interesting operating system as much as I want to live next to an interesting nuclear powerplant.
Operating systems should be boring, they should just handle basic tasks and support whatever program I am running on top of them.
Calling Recall interesting just makes me want it less, it is one more huge vector of personal information that can and will be mined or breached and then mined.
I think it’s a combination of the security risk and a slippery-slope argument. The security risk is that, at the very least, it opens up an avenue for hackers to more easily extract personal information from your PC. The slippery-slope argument is that Microsoft can just choose to enable this feature, or parts of it, without your consent. It used to be that you could turn of all telemetry in Windows (XP/Vista I believe), but now you can’t do that for 10.
It will be likely installed even if disabled, so your eventual malware attacker can enable it and live off the land instead of installing a key/screen that your antivirus might catch.
It’s incentivized by monies
(ie for private data collecting),
it won’t be optional for much longer
(error: explorer.exe needs Recall to work, please enable recall & try again after the data has been synced to MS servers), and
you won’t be able to turn it off, that is when it will deliver you mostly (recalled) ads you might have missed from a few days ago when it showed them to you the first time.
“Please click on at least 3 targeted ads to continue to use calc.exe.”
Your idea of making “operating systems interesting” is to screenshot and spy on a users activity in the odd event that they want to go back and have a photographic memory of it? You and I have VASTLY different ideas of what “interesting” means.
They disabled it by default after shipping it as a security nightmare in preview builds.
You can’t add security after the fact. If it isn’t planned out with security as a primary design goal months before you write a line of code, it will never be secure.
And how long do you think that will last? They only changed it to opt-in after millions of enterprise IT cybersec directors screeched in agony. And with all of these monopolies, getting a backpedal concessionis only hitting a temporary pause button for them to wait two years and try again.
“You don’t have to use it” has never worked as a defense against Microsoft ever, Recall exists as the greatest possible privacy violation and should not even be a legal feature.
On windows, “its optional” means somthing diffrent than on linux.
On linux a feature like this is just a command or a toggle switch in the settings.
Its admittedly a neat concept, I use OBS for this verry reason, to capture moments where I didnt think to press “record” beforehand. An (unprivlaged, no internet access) userland foreground app with “start/stop/delete past hour” buttons. All from the easy to understand from a glance taskbar icon.
Sadly, we only got a few of these safety features later on because like software, people will also refuse to buy a car without seatbelts or working breaks.
People are saying “no!” now so they dont have to say no later when its much harder to say no (when its in your home, on your pc). Microsoft plugs their ears when their customers say “it’s unsafe” and “no means no” because they want you to partake in this transaction with them reguardless of if you do.
I don’t see why everyone hates this. It’s disabled by default and you don’t have to use it. I use Linux but thank god someone’s actually trying to make operating systems interesting again, nobody else has done anything interesting in years.
But an operating system isn’t meant to be “interesting”. It’s an operating system. It should only be meant to operate the system. The interesting should be up to whatever programs it is that a user puts on top of it, something that makes it work better (like optimisations), or at most, make it look nicer. Recall is not that. Your car should be functional as a car. It doesn’t need to be capable of baking souffles, or be a fully-functional mobile office suite. An OS should follow the same principles.
I could see this as an interesting lab concept. That possibly users could install from some kind of site if they really wanted it. Not as a mainstream function pushed to evry system. Even if it’s inactive by default for now.
I’d much rather Microsoft work on improving windows than adding features that I don’t need or want.
They would have enough to do instead of implementing new features.
Ignore the luddites, this will be a very important can’t-live-without feature in the years to come. Once the privacy issues are worked through, and yes, luddites, they can and will be worked through, this will be a differentiating feature that every other OS plays catch up to. It already exists in some tools like ssh playbacks.
What is important about this?
What will this allow me to do that I wasn’t able to before?
What benefit does this feature have to the average user? What about the power user?
Great questions!
Imagine you’re working on a problem and solved it 6 months ago. You forgot to bookmark the site, and you just can’t find it again. No problem. Query Recall to show you what problem it was and how you solved it.
This is a memory of what you did during a user session on your computer…
This is a “I forgot my keys” type solution for the average user. For the power user, it has a ton of uses including what were those settings I changed last week, they seem to have worked and I want to document them, or recap the game I played last week so I’m not completely lost when I start my next session.
So what you’re saying is…if you remember to save things, you’re giving up your privacy/security for nothing?
Those are such weak use cases for letting Microsoft take screenshots of my computer like the DPRK. The one time a year I might find it useful is just not worth the risk. And I really don’t like this being thrust upon less-techy people who don’t understand what they’re giving up.
That is not at all what I am saying. Of course not using it is your choice and your right, but saying there is no use or value (for anyone) for this is willful ignorance at this point.
Edit: it also does not have to be a trade off of your privacy and/or security either. This tech can be done securely and with privacy-retention, but what I am seeing and hearing from this thread is that it is Bad. No. Matter. What.
I didn’t say there was no use, I said there was very little benefit.
Your only reasoning for saying it will be something people wouldn’t be able to live without is that it will save you time when you forget to bookmark something you want to find 6 months ago. I don’t find that compelling at all and I can’t fathom it being a “must have” feature for 99.99% of people.
To your edit, it is unquestionably a trade off. You are being monitored by Microsoft. Screenshots of your computer will be uploaded to their servers regularly. It doesn’t matter what happens with them - that information is now out there. Even if it was impossible to hack Microsoft (lol), there is no way to spin this to say you aren’t giving up privacy. Until this is feature is completely offline with no telemetry going to a corporation, it is a privacy nightmare.
Windows 11 is free and as the saying goes, “if you’re not paying for it, YOU are the product.” So yes, most people think this is bad no matter what.
FWIW I did not downvote either of your comments
Well you did say the tradeoff of security was “for nothing” which is why I said that. I don’t know about you, but I struggle with memory issues in my older age and would love to have a memory coprocessor that helps me. I think the interface (interaction between user and the tech) will be critical here for making it usable. Regarding privacy, M$ has been touting it is offline (unless that has changed), which is why they are going to the trouble of building out these LLMs and multimodal LLMs and the Copilot PC with accelerator chips built in. It will be as secure as any other file on your computer, but the stakes will be higher for leaks, no doubt. New encryption schemes will undoubtedly be required as it’s on the cusp of being a digital part of the users’ self.
I’m not going to downvote you, because I’m genuinely curious: Why would this be a “very important can’t-live-without feature”, what’s the argument?
Because from where I’m sitting as a user of various Windows & Linux products for several decades, this has never been anything I’ve asked for or needed, let alone wanted to take up >20Gb of my hard drive space. What is the Use Case sales pitch that convinced you?
There was no sales pitch. I hate Microsoft and do not talk to their sales people.
The tech is useful.
I’m absolutely looking for a real answer, not here to downvote or troll.
When you say “the tech is useful” I don’t see it that way from my perspective because I can’t think of any specific scenarios for this tech to prove valuable to me, in terms of the way that I interface with an OS.
What I’m hoping for from you is a Use Case; what specific application of this tech would you, the End User, find to be a vast improvement in the way that you interface with Windows?
This is an accessibility wet dream. That’s the biggest use case IMO. Take all of the people who struggle with memory issues or who are blind. This will completely change their life.
A few other use cases I put in a sibling comment. Sorry, you caught me on the defensive!
To Microsoft, sure. But what about the users? Which problem or problems were being solved?
Biggest impact is accessibility. Think people with memory issues or blind. This tech will change their lives.
This isn’t an unreasonable suggestion, but I’m not seeing accessibility mentioned anywhere on the Recall site. For those with sight issues, I’m unclear on how the process would be with the necessary screen-reader that MS is silent on compatibility with. Sure, text to voice is a thing, but that would only be useful at home unless you really want to have a computer read out loud everything it’s got in Recall.
I’m talking more abstractly about the tech vs your concrete here today Microsoft Recall implementation of the tech. It’s unfortunate M$ isn’t working towards accessibility now, but this tech will enable such things.
I appreciate the positive outlook for the possibility of things, but I live in a world where Microsoft has already violated customer trust and privacy, so I’ll stick with what evidence supports. Evidence supports that this is not about customers, and is instead a new way for them to get additional data.
The risks of this being done incorrectly, at all, are much more worrisome than any speculative fiction I might want to entertain about them.
That’s some genuine ghoul logic. You’re a Luddite if you value your privacy and resist predators. Great take lmao. Totally hinged.
Seems like I struck a nerve.
If calling it that will make you feel better, who am I to stop ya?
https://thenib.com/im-a-luddite/
That is seriously deranged. Copyright exists for the corporations. Any individual artist that goes up against them Loses. Every. Time. That’s my biggest gripe about AI=Bad people, my opinion of them is that they are hypocrites, have they seriously never file shared a mp3 a day in their lives?
There is also other uses for this tech than “theft” from artists. How about driving tech that learns from people’s driving footage.
$ scrot “${XDG_CACHE_DIR:-”$HOME"/.cache}“/shot-$(date +”%D-%H").png
Put in /etc/cron.hourly, make executable, done.
Edit: right, copilot analyzing. Just run OpenCV over the images.
That’s a great first step but by no means the only component. You forgot analyzing the images, cleaning any privacy issues, and securely deleting the images, and of course indexing the information and making it available for queries. Best to not even store the images, IMO.
Oh… you weren’t serious? At least try to understand the tech if you’re going to badmouth it.
I should extend that program and call it
scrotumI want an interesting operating system as much as I want to live next to an interesting nuclear powerplant.
Operating systems should be boring, they should just handle basic tasks and support whatever program I am running on top of them.
Calling Recall interesting just makes me want it less, it is one more huge vector of personal information that can and will be mined or breached and then mined.
I think it’s a combination of the security risk and a slippery-slope argument. The security risk is that, at the very least, it opens up an avenue for hackers to more easily extract personal information from your PC. The slippery-slope argument is that Microsoft can just choose to enable this feature, or parts of it, without your consent. It used to be that you could turn of all telemetry in Windows (XP/Vista I believe), but now you can’t do that for 10.
It will be likely installed even if disabled, so your eventual malware attacker can enable it and live off the land instead of installing a key/screen that your antivirus might catch.
An OS really shouldn’t be “interesting” it should be boring, just work and be secure.
This was their stance 2 months ago:
https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/windows-11/turns-out-you-wont-be-able-to-uninstall-windows-11s-recall-feature-after-all
I don’t think that would have changed if not for the backlash Microsoft has received for it.
Now, supposedly it’s optional and off by default, but that could change again anytime…
By anytime, it’ll be hidden in a hot fix 6 to 12 months from now.
Some more reading, for those following along:
(Oct 11th) https://www.notebookcheck.net/Removing-Windows-Recall-breaks-File-Explorer-in-latest-24H2-update.899991.0.html
(ie for private data collecting),
(error: explorer.exe needs Recall to work, please enable recall & try again after the data has been synced to MS servers), and
“Please click on at least 3 targeted ads to continue to use calc.exe.”
Your idea of making “operating systems interesting” is to screenshot and spy on a users activity in the odd event that they want to go back and have a photographic memory of it? You and I have VASTLY different ideas of what “interesting” means.
They disabled it by default after shipping it as a security nightmare in preview builds.
You can’t add security after the fact. If it isn’t planned out with security as a primary design goal months before you write a line of code, it will never be secure.
And how long do you think that will last? They only changed it to opt-in after millions of enterprise IT cybersec directors screeched in agony. And with all of these monopolies, getting a backpedal concessionis only hitting a temporary pause button for them to wait two years and try again.
“You don’t have to use it” has never worked as a defense against Microsoft ever, Recall exists as the greatest possible privacy violation and should not even be a legal feature.
Enable recall : ⬜later ⬜yes
That’s how they will gain adoption. They will gain it through fatigue and apathy.
It was the straw that broke the camels back to get me to switch to Linux.
On windows, “its optional” means somthing diffrent than on linux.
On linux a feature like this is just a command or a toggle switch in the settings.
Its admittedly a neat concept, I use OBS for this verry reason, to capture moments where I didnt think to press “record” beforehand. An (unprivlaged, no internet access) userland foreground app with “start/stop/delete past hour” buttons. All from the easy to understand from a glance taskbar icon.
Sadly, we only got a few of these safety features later on because like software, people will also refuse to buy a car without seatbelts or working breaks.
People are saying “no!” now so they dont have to say no later when its much harder to say no (when its in your home, on your pc). Microsoft plugs their ears when their customers say “it’s unsafe” and “no means no” because they want you to partake in this transaction with them reguardless of if you do.