7 ms·

Microsoft just delayed Recall again

70 points by fooey 2y ago

ethbr1 2y ago
Maybe they just wanted to wait until it was feature complete... ... some sort of Total Recall, if you will.
PapaPalpatine 2y ago
Funny that this was supposed to launch in June 2024 and now it’s being delayed for the second or third time because Microsoft needs more time to make sure it’s secure.
- hu3 2y ago
  I don't find that funny. I find that relieving if they are delaying to make it more secure.
  - wkat4242 2y ago
    Yes but it wasn't secure at all to begin with. Security and privacy are not really focus points there. Just getting it out the door seems to be the priority.
josefritzishere 2y ago
Terrible feature is delayed. Hopefully it will be delayed indefinitely and go away.
spondylosaurus 2y ago
> Earlier this week, Microsoft again clarified that Recall will not be mandatory on Copilot Plus PCs, and will be an opt-in experience that can be fully removed. The clarification came after various YouTube videos claimed Recall was being installed on any PC with Windows 11, version 24H2. Oh, thank god. I definitely heard the "You can't opt out!" line and was worried.
- readyplayernull 2y ago
  Hope they warn us of the incoming spyware, so we can uninstall on the very next second, right before it grabs all it can and runs away with it.
  - spondylosaurus 2y ago
    Seriously. Not sure if the marketer who's preparing the "Get started with Recall!" graphic that's gonna pop up on our computers realizes that they're doing us a different kind of service, lol.
  - sva_ 2y ago
    What exactly keeps people on Windows if they feel like theyre in such a relationship with their operating system?
    - spondylosaurus 2y ago
      Personally? Inertia. I hate switching tools/systems unless absolutely necessary. If I were a frog you could absolutely boil me.
    - toasteros 2y ago
      In my household it's MS Office. My partner very much enjoys the UX of KDE, but can't switch because she's highly reliant on features in MS Office that I cannot find transliterated well enough to work on Linux. Otherwise, there is no place for Windows in my house.
      - Novosell 2y ago
        It doesn't have all the features, but there is a web version of Office now. Might be worth a look?
        toasteros 2y ago
        It isn't sufficient if you're fluent in Excel, which she needs more than any other part of Office.
rvnx 2y ago
FSD for Microsoft Windows.
throwuxiytayq 2y ago
In other words, they are struggling to implement it. Software development in an average company is on some sort of a weird asymptotic curve towards getting anything done becoming literally impossible. And Microsoft is so, so painfully average. I've been waiting for Windows to get the vertical taskbar back, but I'm beginning to think that the difficulty-to-develop is increasing faster than the development itself is progressing.
_boffin_ 2y ago
Question: why are people having a tizzy about this specifically yet touting Apple Intelligence? - people are going to be using intelligence with Siri. Siri sends all transcripts to Apple, even if processed locally. Will this include text transcripts too? That’s some seriously private information that gets sent to Apple that you can’t opt out of. - have you looked at what’s in knowledge.db? People hissy with Microsoft’s product because of OCR of the screen or is that only a factor?
- scblock 2y ago
  This has nothing to do with Apple and everything to do with Microsoft.
  - ASalazarMX 2y ago
    Apple has much to complain about, but Microsoft is really outdoing itself by pushing Recall so insistently. Key/screen loggers should not be part of the default OS no matter how much potential shareholder value they have.
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago
  > People hissy with Microsoft’s product because of OCR of the screen or is that only a factor? I mean that seems like an absolute mountain of a factor. Who asked for or would want this? Delivering the ingestion of agents before the consumer use-case was never going to work. At least apple intelligence (:rolleyes:) seems to be tailored around the hypothetical needs of users.
  - footy 2y ago
    I guess some people do want it given that Rewind AI somehow exists. I don't understand it and I can't imagine how out of touch you'd have to be to make it the default, but weirdly the market for this is out there.
    - PittleyDunkin 2y ago
alwayslikethis 2y ago
> We decide on something, leave it lying around and wait and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don't understand what has been decided, we continue step by step until there is no turning back. - Jean-Claude Juncker, former president of the European Commission
jansan 2y ago
Shouldn't it be finished faster now that AI is doing all the coding? Just imagine the delay if they didn't have Copilot as a productivity booster.
mzajc 2y ago
Just like "No" has been replaced with "Remind me later," dropping bad ideas entirely has been replaced with delaying them. Way to go, Microsoft!
cedws 2y ago
Steve Jobs once said something about working back from the desired user experience to the technology. What Microsoft is doing here is the complete opposite. They’re making the technology fit the user experience.
kabdib 2y ago
near as i can tell, the "ai revolution" consists largely of nontechnical climbers trying to get a promotion package (or scamming VCs, just like the XML craze of 1999) it's very much along the lines of "i've got a great idea for a video game, all you have to do is implement it". that and two bucks will get you a cup of coffee also, get off my lawn :-)
xyst 2y ago
MS is such a mess of a company. The existence of MSFT is only proof that profitability doesn’t mean jack shit when it comes to the products themselves. Haven’t liked windows in a long time (XP?). But still sad to see it go down this way.
citizenpaul 2y ago
I'm making the first effort in many years to finally be rid of windows,because of recall. I'm really uncomfortable with the idea that once that is implemented I really will have no un-monitored/spied source of computer usage. It used to be almost impossible to reach some sort of usability parity linux/windows but I think its possible now. A big part of that is with computer power long surpassing daily usage needs the lack of cutting edge driver support on linux is no longer as big a deal. I started with ubuntu, but I also am pairing it with NIX package manager. I'd like to use this experiment to get familiar with the disposable OS paradigm. I think that could be a killer feature to move away from windows. I don't see them ever getting windows to be rebuildable on demand. I realize NixOS has some hurdles and learning curve though.
- mrinfinitiesx 2y ago
  <rant> Been using Manjaro XFCE for a minute, KDE is great if you're rocking ~32GB of RAM but for lightweight, MX Linux (Debian), Lubuntu (LXDE) Lightweight Ubuntu. Most distros come with drivers that trackpads and wireless just ..work. So many flavors but with KDE you can customize everything with rightclicking, no config edits. It's fun, but lower end machines I'd suggest XFCE, KDE will use 2GB of RAM just idling on desktop. I ditched Windows completely back in 2017-2018 and haven't looked back. I'm no star-programmer or star sys-admin or anything but the love of tinkering with things, VMs, networking, sockets, SSH, SCP, rsync, having direct access to my kernel (like sysctl stuff), managing my ssh keys in ~/.ssh/, using a drop-down Quake style terminal (Tilda) has been a dream. Why would somebody want to sign on with a 'cloud account' for their desktop login, have forced stuff like Teams, Edge (Are you SURE YOU WANT TO SWITCH TO CHROME/FIREFOX? notifications), OneDrive, and have things like Recall pushed on them. Linux isn't rocket science any more there's Add/Remove programs on every distro and people can browse from there, there's software pulled straight from github for compiling/installing as well as the 'app store' for exploring. It's been my tinkerer's heaven. Most you need is a trustable VPN with a killswitch that runs Wireguard and your linux install is going to be great. Gaming wise, well gaming needs to get their heads out of their asses and dev for Linux and respect that just because there's not yet manjority market share doesn't mean there won't be. Disposable OS now adays is just boot a live CD (USB) that loads everything in to RAM with NVidia drivers already loaded. My suggestion to anybody, check out Ventoy: https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html Try a bunch of linux distros .isos in oracle VMs or any VM managers, use Ventoy to put the ISOs on a flash drive, my 128GB stick lets me have dozens of them, and boot any distro you want you can have as many ISOs that will fit, they'll all boot when you select which one you want. For the nerds: https://www.ghostbsd.org https://www.ghostbsd.org - BSD Desktop. Say no to Recall. </rant>
qntmfred 2y ago
I mentioned this in another post recently https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41699265 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41699265 but I've been using something of a homegrown equivalent of Recall most of the year and I really do think the concept has a lot of potential. definitely understand the privacy concerns (and especially if there's no opt-out), but I just want to encourage y'all to be open minded and consider the potential benefits. anybody use google photos? I've got almost 20 years of photos and videos on it. But there's so many gaps in the timeline! so why not just record everything. and with an AI layer on top to help surface and search interesting/relevant moments. same thing for facebook and twitter and ig and hn and whatever social media you might use. it's such a privilege to be able to go back and look at our digital artifacts from years and decades past. so why not do it in 4k+audio.
- citizenpaul 2y ago
  Do you have any sharable info as to how you setup your own private version of recall?
  - qntmfred 2y ago
    I talk about it a little bit here (high level not technical) https://youtu.be/2zqXkNhaJx0 https://youtu.be/2zqXkNhaJx0 but it's basically private daily youtube livestreams whenever I'm at my PC (so like 8+ hours a day) + limitless.ai for real time audio transcription (and whisper for local/offline transcription) + every 30 minutes throughout the day I do a quick status update+reflection in my obsidian notes, or ad-hoc annotation of notable moments in the day. WIP is using local multimodal models to add additional more fine-grained annotation from my livestream videos.
- sureglymop 2y ago
  I take screenshots and use pHash to see if I should save them. Then I OCR them etc. It's basically a homegrown little recall. Then a timestamp of when the screenshot was taken goes into a db. I also have a keylogger and some more personal data collectors. Still working it out into a "usable platform" though.
jimmar 2y ago
I'd never owned an Apple computer until last week. I couldn't buy a new Windows computer knowing Microsoft's trajectory with intrusive tracking, Recall being the most prominent example.
geor9e 2y ago
There's a lot of FUD about Recall. Recall was always opt-in. Windows 11 24H2 installs the feature for everyone by default, in the same way Japanese might be installed for everyone by default. It's there, but not on until you opt in. If it detects a Copilot+ NPU in device manager, the update shows a full screen splash screen explaining Recall, with a No & Yes button. Spamming Spacebar/Enter doesn't do anything. You must tab or mouse to the Yes button, as there is no default. As for paranoia that Microsoft may one day switch you to Yes, or the idea that one ought to go further than saying No and uninstall the feature as well, I will leave those arguments to the youtubers. I understand folks distrust of Microsoft's dark pattern tactics, and the willies they get about AI watching their screen. Personally, I think you either have to trust a company at the kernel level to not abuse your Print Screen button, or stop using the company products entirely. Anything in-between doesn't make sense. You either have to take Microsoft at it's word or don't, because if they are lying about this then why would they stop there?
- blibble 2y ago
  it's also a shitty employer's dream it will be forced on using group policy, feeding some dashboard which then will inevitably form part of promotion/payrise/layoff process
  - wkat4242 2y ago
    Yep this. Though I was relieved to see the hatred of this feature at our privacy certification team. They're seeing GDPR nightmares already. At least at our place this isn't going to happen any time soon. But not all companies care about ethics of course.
defrost 2y ago
From this thread: > I definitely heard the "You can't opt out!" line and was worried. > Microsoft is known for being utterly user-hostile when pushing features on people. In truth ( so far ) .. you can opt out (not easily) and here Microsoft is guilty of poor engineering rather than active hostility (although hard to seperate). Chris Titus, the source of a two week(?) old HN thread about Recall being "Mandatory" and unremovable from latest Windows w/out breaking file explorer released an eight minute update video on the matter: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42002418 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42002418 For those not watching, the problem was a bad Microsoft dependancy manifest - a common DLL not marked as a file explorer dependancy got removed along with Recall causing file explorer to glitch. This is now 'solved' and included in his cleanup | debloat scripts for those that want the feature gone. He closes with some other thoughts on Microsoft feature software deployment going forwards into the future. 'Recall' for now is little more than a placeholder stub for most, incapable of activation or more for many w/out specific hardware, and intended to be "removable" provided the engineers get their manifest dependancies sorted out.
- wkat4242 2y ago
  > In truth ( so far ) .. you can opt out (not easily) and here Microsoft is guilty of poor engineering rather than active hostility (although hard to seperate). I find that a bit hard to believe given how aggressive Microsoft is putting copilot in the market. Copilot buttons on keyboards, in edge, in the windows toolbar, all without being asked for it. I think it's more of a combo of both elements. I'm sure the marketing people don't like it being too easily removable. And the "not easy" opt out process is something I already call user hostile for such an invasive feature. Sure it's only on copilot+ hardware but soon that'll be the only thing one can buy. And there's more reasons to want local AI without having a big brother spyware integrated.
  - defrost 2y ago
    Chris Titus is skeptical and has a community of windows hackers and former (and likely current) Microsoft engineers commenting on his work and offering tips. _So far_ to date it's plausible to see what's happened with Recall being hard to "safely" remove as casual incompetence rather than deliberate malicious behaviour. He expands on this in the latter part of the video linked above - but a very good point is that moving into the future, whether intended or not, care will likely not be taken to ensure ease of removal and seamless operation after scapel applied simply because the Windows stack of cards is getting big, unwieldy, and harder and herder for single engineers to grasp all of. > And the "not easy" opt out process In this specific instance it looks more like human error on a dependancy tree .. generally these are correct in Microsoft packages, screwups can happen.

70 points by fooey 2y ago

Maybe they just wanted to wait until it was feature complete... ... some sort of Total Recall, if you will.

Funny that this was supposed to launch in June 2024 and now it’s being delayed for the second or third time because Microsoft needs more time to make sure it’s secure.

hu3 2y ago
I don't find that funny. I find that relieving if they are delaying to make it more secure.
- wkat4242 2y ago
  Yes but it wasn't secure at all to begin with. Security and privacy are not really focus points there. Just getting it out the door seems to be the priority.

josefritzishere 2y ago

Terrible feature is delayed. Hopefully it will be delayed indefinitely and go away.

spondylosaurus 2y ago

> Earlier this week, Microsoft again clarified that Recall will not be mandatory on Copilot Plus PCs, and will be an opt-in experience that can be fully removed. The clarification came after various YouTube videos claimed Recall was being installed on any PC with Windows 11, version 24H2. Oh, thank god. I definitely heard the "You can't opt out!" line and was worried.

readyplayernull 2y ago
Hope they warn us of the incoming spyware, so we can uninstall on the very next second, right before it grabs all it can and runs away with it.
- spondylosaurus 2y ago
  Seriously. Not sure if the marketer who's preparing the "Get started with Recall!" graphic that's gonna pop up on our computers realizes that they're doing us a different kind of service, lol.
- sva_ 2y ago
  What exactly keeps people on Windows if they feel like theyre in such a relationship with their operating system?
  - spondylosaurus 2y ago
    Personally? Inertia. I hate switching tools/systems unless absolutely necessary. If I were a frog you could absolutely boil me.
  - toasteros 2y ago
    In my household it's MS Office. My partner very much enjoys the UX of KDE, but can't switch because she's highly reliant on features in MS Office that I cannot find transliterated well enough to work on Linux. Otherwise, there is no place for Windows in my house.
    - Novosell 2y ago
      It doesn't have all the features, but there is a web version of Office now. Might be worth a look?
      - toasteros 2y ago
        It isn't sufficient if you're fluent in Excel, which she needs more than any other part of Office.

rvnx 2y ago

FSD for Microsoft Windows.

throwuxiytayq 2y ago

In other words, they are struggling to implement it. Software development in an average company is on some sort of a weird asymptotic curve towards getting anything done becoming literally impossible. And Microsoft is so, so painfully average. I've been waiting for Windows to get the vertical taskbar back, but I'm beginning to think that the difficulty-to-develop is increasing faster than the development itself is progressing.

_boffin_ 2y ago

Question: why are people having a tizzy about this specifically yet touting Apple Intelligence? - people are going to be using intelligence with Siri. Siri sends all transcripts to Apple, even if processed locally. Will this include text transcripts too? That’s some seriously private information that gets sent to Apple that you can’t opt out of. - have you looked at what’s in knowledge.db? People hissy with Microsoft’s product because of OCR of the screen or is that only a factor?

scblock 2y ago
This has nothing to do with Apple and everything to do with Microsoft.
- ASalazarMX 2y ago
  Apple has much to complain about, but Microsoft is really outdoing itself by pushing Recall so insistently. Key/screen loggers should not be part of the default OS no matter how much potential shareholder value they have.
PittleyDunkin 2y ago
> People hissy with Microsoft’s product because of OCR of the screen or is that only a factor? I mean that seems like an absolute mountain of a factor. Who asked for or would want this? Delivering the ingestion of agents before the consumer use-case was never going to work. At least apple intelligence (:rolleyes:) seems to be tailored around the hypothetical needs of users.
- footy 2y ago
  I guess some people do want it given that Rewind AI somehow exists. I don't understand it and I can't imagine how out of touch you'd have to be to make it the default, but weirdly the market for this is out there.
  - PittleyDunkin 2y ago

alwayslikethis 2y ago

> We decide on something, leave it lying around and wait and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don't understand what has been decided, we continue step by step until there is no turning back. - Jean-Claude Juncker, former president of the European Commission

jansan 2y ago

Shouldn't it be finished faster now that AI is doing all the coding? Just imagine the delay if they didn't have Copilot as a productivity booster.

mzajc 2y ago

Just like "No" has been replaced with "Remind me later," dropping bad ideas entirely has been replaced with delaying them. Way to go, Microsoft!

cedws 2y ago

Steve Jobs once said something about working back from the desired user experience to the technology. What Microsoft is doing here is the complete opposite. They’re making the technology fit the user experience.

kabdib 2y ago

near as i can tell, the "ai revolution" consists largely of nontechnical climbers trying to get a promotion package (or scamming VCs, just like the XML craze of 1999) it's very much along the lines of "i've got a great idea for a video game, all you have to do is implement it". that and two bucks will get you a cup of coffee also, get off my lawn :-)

xyst 2y ago

MS is such a mess of a company. The existence of MSFT is only proof that profitability doesn’t mean jack shit when it comes to the products themselves. Haven’t liked windows in a long time (XP?). But still sad to see it go down this way.

citizenpaul 2y ago

I'm making the first effort in many years to finally be rid of windows,because of recall. I'm really uncomfortable with the idea that once that is implemented I really will have no un-monitored/spied source of computer usage. It used to be almost impossible to reach some sort of usability parity linux/windows but I think its possible now. A big part of that is with computer power long surpassing daily usage needs the lack of cutting edge driver support on linux is no longer as big a deal. I started with ubuntu, but I also am pairing it with NIX package manager. I'd like to use this experiment to get familiar with the disposable OS paradigm. I think that could be a killer feature to move away from windows. I don't see them ever getting windows to be rebuildable on demand. I realize NixOS has some hurdles and learning curve though.

mrinfinitiesx 2y ago
<rant> Been using Manjaro XFCE for a minute, KDE is great if you're rocking ~32GB of RAM but for lightweight, MX Linux (Debian), Lubuntu (LXDE) Lightweight Ubuntu. Most distros come with drivers that trackpads and wireless just ..work. So many flavors but with KDE you can customize everything with rightclicking, no config edits. It's fun, but lower end machines I'd suggest XFCE, KDE will use 2GB of RAM just idling on desktop. I ditched Windows completely back in 2017-2018 and haven't looked back. I'm no star-programmer or star sys-admin or anything but the love of tinkering with things, VMs, networking, sockets, SSH, SCP, rsync, having direct access to my kernel (like sysctl stuff), managing my ssh keys in ~/.ssh/, using a drop-down Quake style terminal (Tilda) has been a dream. Why would somebody want to sign on with a 'cloud account' for their desktop login, have forced stuff like Teams, Edge (Are you SURE YOU WANT TO SWITCH TO CHROME/FIREFOX? notifications), OneDrive, and have things like Recall pushed on them. Linux isn't rocket science any more there's Add/Remove programs on every distro and people can browse from there, there's software pulled straight from github for compiling/installing as well as the 'app store' for exploring. It's been my tinkerer's heaven. Most you need is a trustable VPN with a killswitch that runs Wireguard and your linux install is going to be great. Gaming wise, well gaming needs to get their heads out of their asses and dev for Linux and respect that just because there's not yet manjority market share doesn't mean there won't be. Disposable OS now adays is just boot a live CD (USB) that loads everything in to RAM with NVidia drivers already loaded. My suggestion to anybody, check out Ventoy: https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html Try a bunch of linux distros .isos in oracle VMs or any VM managers, use Ventoy to put the ISOs on a flash drive, my 128GB stick lets me have dozens of them, and boot any distro you want you can have as many ISOs that will fit, they'll all boot when you select which one you want. For the nerds: https://www.ghostbsd.org https://www.ghostbsd.org - BSD Desktop. Say no to Recall. </rant>

qntmfred 2y ago

I mentioned this in another post recently https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41699265 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41699265 but I've been using something of a homegrown equivalent of Recall most of the year and I really do think the concept has a lot of potential. definitely understand the privacy concerns (and especially if there's no opt-out), but I just want to encourage y'all to be open minded and consider the potential benefits. anybody use google photos? I've got almost 20 years of photos and videos on it. But there's so many gaps in the timeline! so why not just record everything. and with an AI layer on top to help surface and search interesting/relevant moments. same thing for facebook and twitter and ig and hn and whatever social media you might use. it's such a privilege to be able to go back and look at our digital artifacts from years and decades past. so why not do it in 4k+audio.

citizenpaul 2y ago
Do you have any sharable info as to how you setup your own private version of recall?
- qntmfred 2y ago
  I talk about it a little bit here (high level not technical) https://youtu.be/2zqXkNhaJx0 https://youtu.be/2zqXkNhaJx0 but it's basically private daily youtube livestreams whenever I'm at my PC (so like 8+ hours a day) + limitless.ai for real time audio transcription (and whisper for local/offline transcription) + every 30 minutes throughout the day I do a quick status update+reflection in my obsidian notes, or ad-hoc annotation of notable moments in the day. WIP is using local multimodal models to add additional more fine-grained annotation from my livestream videos.
sureglymop 2y ago
I take screenshots and use pHash to see if I should save them. Then I OCR them etc. It's basically a homegrown little recall. Then a timestamp of when the screenshot was taken goes into a db. I also have a keylogger and some more personal data collectors. Still working it out into a "usable platform" though.

jimmar 2y ago

I'd never owned an Apple computer until last week. I couldn't buy a new Windows computer knowing Microsoft's trajectory with intrusive tracking, Recall being the most prominent example.

geor9e 2y ago

There's a lot of FUD about Recall. Recall was always opt-in. Windows 11 24H2 installs the feature for everyone by default, in the same way Japanese might be installed for everyone by default. It's there, but not on until you opt in. If it detects a Copilot+ NPU in device manager, the update shows a full screen splash screen explaining Recall, with a No & Yes button. Spamming Spacebar/Enter doesn't do anything. You must tab or mouse to the Yes button, as there is no default. As for paranoia that Microsoft may one day switch you to Yes, or the idea that one ought to go further than saying No and uninstall the feature as well, I will leave those arguments to the youtubers. I understand folks distrust of Microsoft's dark pattern tactics, and the willies they get about AI watching their screen. Personally, I think you either have to trust a company at the kernel level to not abuse your Print Screen button, or stop using the company products entirely. Anything in-between doesn't make sense. You either have to take Microsoft at it's word or don't, because if they are lying about this then why would they stop there?

blibble 2y ago
it's also a shitty employer's dream it will be forced on using group policy, feeding some dashboard which then will inevitably form part of promotion/payrise/layoff process
- wkat4242 2y ago
  Yep this. Though I was relieved to see the hatred of this feature at our privacy certification team. They're seeing GDPR nightmares already. At least at our place this isn't going to happen any time soon. But not all companies care about ethics of course.

defrost 2y ago

From this thread: > I definitely heard the "You can't opt out!" line and was worried. > Microsoft is known for being utterly user-hostile when pushing features on people. In truth ( so far ) .. you can opt out (not easily) and here Microsoft is guilty of poor engineering rather than active hostility (although hard to seperate). Chris Titus, the source of a two week(?) old HN thread about Recall being "Mandatory" and unremovable from latest Windows w/out breaking file explorer released an eight minute update video on the matter: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42002418 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42002418 For those not watching, the problem was a bad Microsoft dependancy manifest - a common DLL not marked as a file explorer dependancy got removed along with Recall causing file explorer to glitch. This is now 'solved' and included in his cleanup | debloat scripts for those that want the feature gone. He closes with some other thoughts on Microsoft feature software deployment going forwards into the future. 'Recall' for now is little more than a placeholder stub for most, incapable of activation or more for many w/out specific hardware, and intended to be "removable" provided the engineers get their manifest dependancies sorted out.

wkat4242 2y ago
> In truth ( so far ) .. you can opt out (not easily) and here Microsoft is guilty of poor engineering rather than active hostility (although hard to seperate). I find that a bit hard to believe given how aggressive Microsoft is putting copilot in the market. Copilot buttons on keyboards, in edge, in the windows toolbar, all without being asked for it. I think it's more of a combo of both elements. I'm sure the marketing people don't like it being too easily removable. And the "not easy" opt out process is something I already call user hostile for such an invasive feature. Sure it's only on copilot+ hardware but soon that'll be the only thing one can buy. And there's more reasons to want local AI without having a big brother spyware integrated.
- defrost 2y ago
  Chris Titus is skeptical and has a community of windows hackers and former (and likely current) Microsoft engineers commenting on his work and offering tips. _So far_ to date it's plausible to see what's happened with Recall being hard to "safely" remove as casual incompetence rather than deliberate malicious behaviour. He expands on this in the latter part of the video linked above - but a very good point is that moving into the future, whether intended or not, care will likely not be taken to ensure ease of removal and seamless operation after scapel applied simply because the Windows stack of cards is getting big, unwieldy, and harder and herder for single engineers to grasp all of. > And the "not easy" opt out process In this specific instance it looks more like human error on a dependancy tree .. generally these are correct in Microsoft packages, screwups can happen.