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I think Recall is a window into the future of computers—but this version isn’t going to be successful. It may not even be possible to succeed with this model at

I think Recall is a window into the future of computers—but this version isn’t going to be successful. It may not even be possible to succeed with this model at all. I think a lot of people would consider it a _feature_ if they could simply ask their computer “what was my banking password?” and not understand at all the difference between storing credentials in Recall vs storing them in LastPass. For me the killer compromise is that 3 months isn’t _nearly_ long enough. This wouldn’t be useful to me until the history extends to more than a decade. I don’t always need that, but for anything less than that I very rarely need the help—it’s at most a convenience, not a new capability.

Rinzler89 2y ago
>if they could simply ask their computer “what was my banking password?” And the computer would reply "I'm sorry, I have no record of Baking Pastor", based on how well these AI assistants understand me.
- TiredOfLife 2y ago
  As 99.99% of HN comments are based on 5-10 year old data, how recently and which chatbot you asked?
  - Rinzler89 2y ago
    Alexa. This week.
  - rimunroe 2y ago
    As of yesterday Siri still fails to distinguish “fifteen” and “fifty” about half the time when I set a timer, even when I’m careful about enunciation.
    - rpozarickij 2y ago
      Perhaps a day will come when tools like Siri will ask for a confirmation whether you meant "fifteen" or "fifty" instead of making a guess when they aren't fully certain that they heard you correctly.
dhruvdh 2y ago
Yeah, and any updates to the model that make Recall attractive, cannot go back in time and reanalyze the past to be more useful. At least they will learn a lot from this, in 6-12 months and perhaps a new generation of NPUs we might have something attractive.
JohnFen 2y ago
I would consider something like Recall to be a great feature if I were confident that I was the only one who had access to the collected data. But I'm not confident enough with any system or OS for that -- and I have zero confidence in the likes of Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, Facebook, etc.
- cgearhart 2y ago
  That’s really where I think the future of these features lives—in figuring out the trust model and security story for providing it. (Maybe it’s even impossible…)
  - JohnFen 2y ago
    The only way I can imagine being comfortable with it is if I'm using it on a machine that is permanently air-gapped from the internet. That complete of a record is extremely sensitive and high-value. The potential damage from having it misused is far too high to take any actual chance with.
colechristensen 2y ago
It would be great, if I trusted my computer. If it were entirely local and everything else on my computer was entirely local unless I was actively trying to connect to something external, fine. But instead everything is being sent to the void and monetized as much as possible while telling me the absolute minimum about it.

Rinzler89 2y ago

>if they could simply ask their computer “what was my banking password?” And the computer would reply "I'm sorry, I have no record of Baking Pastor", based on how well these AI assistants understand me.

TiredOfLife 2y ago
As 99.99% of HN comments are based on 5-10 year old data, how recently and which chatbot you asked?
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  Alexa. This week.
- rimunroe 2y ago
  As of yesterday Siri still fails to distinguish “fifteen” and “fifty” about half the time when I set a timer, even when I’m careful about enunciation.
  - rpozarickij 2y ago
    Perhaps a day will come when tools like Siri will ask for a confirmation whether you meant "fifteen" or "fifty" instead of making a guess when they aren't fully certain that they heard you correctly.

dhruvdh 2y ago

Yeah, and any updates to the model that make Recall attractive, cannot go back in time and reanalyze the past to be more useful. At least they will learn a lot from this, in 6-12 months and perhaps a new generation of NPUs we might have something attractive.

JohnFen 2y ago

I would consider something like Recall to be a great feature if I were confident that I was the only one who had access to the collected data. But I'm not confident enough with any system or OS for that -- and I have zero confidence in the likes of Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, Facebook, etc.

cgearhart 2y ago
That’s really where I think the future of these features lives—in figuring out the trust model and security story for providing it. (Maybe it’s even impossible…)
- JohnFen 2y ago
  The only way I can imagine being comfortable with it is if I'm using it on a machine that is permanently air-gapped from the internet. That complete of a record is extremely sensitive and high-value. The potential damage from having it misused is far too high to take any actual chance with.

colechristensen 2y ago

It would be great, if I trusted my computer. If it were entirely local and everything else on my computer was entirely local unless I was actively trying to connect to something external, fine. But instead everything is being sent to the void and monetized as much as possible while telling me the absolute minimum about it.