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Sarah Jamie Lewis

"Note that Recall does not perform content moderation. It will not hide information such as passwords or financial account numbers."

The computer, however, will stop you from recording DRM'd content.

Find it fascinating that when faced with drawing safety and security boundaries, the primary beneficiary is not the owner of the device, or the person using it, but random corporations who control the intellectual property rights.

The system doesn't work for you.

77 comments
Viss

@sarahjamielewis greatly looking forward to the mass exodus from windows systems

dieTasse

@Viss
ain't gonna happen. Most people don't care. I talk to people I tell them the repercussions and they say that they want the convenience they don't care about privacy and that I apparently paranoid that i think someone would want to misuse my data. They say nobody would target them....
@sarahjamielewis

enoch_exe_inc

@dieTasse @Viss @sarahjamielewis Given that, what exactly is the difference between this and living in a repressive, totalitarian regime where the state does all this to you anyway? Choice, I guess, and the illusion of freedom in being able to choose whether the government directly or indirectly spies on you. Also, higher standards of living, apparently.

dieTasse

@enoch_exe_inc
I think in totalitarian state yiu can get punished for things because you are uncomfortable person for somebody. Now you are just misused by companies and may be misused by gov if things go sideways in the future i guess..
@Viss @sarahjamielewis

Killick

@dieTasse

Somehow it also doesn't bother them that other people are going to get hurt if this Recall 'product' becomes widespread.

dieTasse

@killick
Not really sadly. Many ppl just don't care if it doesn't concern them. Or they just say "one person doesn't change it" :(

Sarah Jamie Lewis

I find it equally fascinating that in order to get anywhere near an integrated computing experience in 2024 we apparently need constant recording and transformer models.

No structured file systems, no permission models, no shared stores, no capabilities - just firehose the display output and hope for the best.

Frank Bajak

@sarahjamielewis Yep. The whole point of these AI tools is that they "think" for us, "organize" our information, make inferences and send out agents to do our bidding. And we become useless blobs of flesh and bone and blood.

Adrian Cochrane

@sarahjamielewis We could certainly get a simpler & more capable solution to the problem Recall addresses with modern Computer Science by essentially reimplementing the entire OS to use CRDTs, but who's got the time for that?

The next best thing would be filesystems with efficient backups... Like BTRFS!

Chumchum Tumtum

@alcinnz @sarahjamielewis nah, because then we wouldn't be training our replacement

Ted Mielczarek

@sarahjamielewis it's infuriating to me that every operating system is full of APIs for rendering text to the screen, only for us to take pictures of that text and scrape it back out with OCR.

xan

@tedmielczarek @sarahjamielewis definitely, definitely not trying to defend Microsoft at all here but it does seem the only rational response to a world which birthed Electron apps. if only they used their near monopoly power to actually innovate actually futuristic operating systems and not this mundane dystopia bullshit. shame

Dieu

@sarahjamielewis to be fair, this feature where you looked at ugly fish a while ago but don't remember where and then just type "ugly fish" and it gives you the site if you're lucky seems hard to obtain in any other way. Not saying it's worth it, though.

sidereal

@hllizi @sarahjamielewis I’m having trouble understanding how what you’re describing is different from browser history

Dieu

@sidereal @sarahjamielewis funny, I asked the same question yesterday. Answer is that it may well find the ugly fish even that wasn't part of the text but just depicted. That at least was the pitch in a propaganda video by MS, where the ugly fish was a brown bag.

StarkRG

@sarahjamielewis They've finally invented a black box that produces moderately appropriate outputs as long as you shove literally everything into them first. Apparently that's good enough to supersede the entire field of Computer science, not to mention all human knowledge and skill, at least, according to Capitalists.

Brian Clark

@sarahjamielewis I’m just glad Microsoft is letting us turn it off

sabik

@deepthoughts10 @sarahjamielewis
Ah yes, the "you do you" of safety and security

(are they, though; for how long; and it's still going to be a massive shitshow when it's a legitimate feature on by default rather than dodgy)

🐧DaveNull🐧 ☣️pResident Evil☣

@sabik For people who have bad memory: "Disabling" "telemetry" when spyware10 was introduced didn't disable shit. It merely reduced the frequency of data collections (which was still quite frequentl).

Then when people started sniffing network and noticing there was still data collection, M$ changed their options nomenclature in its menu. So M$ wouldn't be accused of lying… But still, they DID lie in the first place, by implying you can "disable telemetry"…

@deepthoughts10 @sarahjamielewis

enoch_exe_inc

@sabik @deepthoughts10 @sarahjamielewis Also, you’d just have to trust that the settings actually do what they say they do. I didn’t trust Microsoft for a bit when I turned off all their data-collecting settings, and monitoring all outgoing traffic confirmed my suspicions were correct.

enoch_exe_inc

@sabik @deepthoughts10 @sarahjamielewis So, I wrote up a whole bunch of scripts and URL filters to proxy all outgoing connections. I like to think I’ve been reasonably successful, but that’s only because I don’t want to patch all the system files that do this in the first place in case it breaks something.

Sean

@sarahjamielewis Microsoft Information Protection will certainly require a massive overhaul for any of these devices to be permissible in sensitive networks with “Recall”. From what I can see, they’ve essentially limited the existing screenshot protection functionality to Microsoft apps like Word and Outlook where you can apply sensitivity tags.

Or we’re about to see a lot of vendors advertise 3rd party tools to mask/blank application windows system-wide with dummy DRM flags

Killick

@eccentric_econ @sarahjamielewis

This is going to be a tool for bosses to micromanage staff. Staff won't be able to turn it off or block it, whether they work on or off premises.

Alan

@sarahjamielewis it will be fascinating to see how Recall interacts with environments where data access is legally required to be controlled. Medical offices, financial data (eg pci dss), defense secure processing. They’ll probably have to pay more for a custom version.

sabik

@metaphase @sarahjamielewis
I suspect the vast majority of places where data access is legally required to be controlled have neither the expertise nor the funding nor the institutional support to do anything of the sort

Every teaching assistant entering last week's marks (or, worse, sick notes)

Alan

@sabik @sarahjamielewis I am prepared for my 50 cent check and year of sketchy identity theft monitoring for breach of my personal data from multiple institutions.

nawan 🇮🇩

@sarahjamielewis I wonder if this change is going to affect all of the Windows editions?

Negative12DollarBill

@sarahjamielewis
They will let us turn it off … if we even know it exists … if we have the technical skills … if we don't live with an abusive partner who turns it on again … or demands to know why we wanted it off …

Adam's Notes

@negative12dollarbill @sarahjamielewis Or didn't notice that the last set of security patches turned it on without notifying us.

Tinker ☀️

@sarahjamielewis - Damned astute observation. Wow. I am just flabbergasted at their approach. It makes sense in their own perverse logic... but, as you point out, this system is meant to exploit us, not work for us. Wow. Just wow.

Scotty Trees

@sarahjamielewis Thank god for Linux! Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, etc, there are so many alternatives to Windows out there!

geoffl

@scottytrees They're still not suitable for the huge number of users who expect things to just work (touchpads, graphics, scanners, etc). Or want to easily install the software they need without going through dozens of tutorials that don't work because your setup isn't *identical* to the person who wrote it.

I dual boot Windows and Ubuntu. I use Windows to get stuff done quickly and Ubuntu when I've got ample time to tinker. Windows boots faster too.

dieTasse

@geoffl
they are. Or are very close. I installed it for my sis and she had no issue whatsoever. For people that need a browser and maybe picture gallery, Linux is already good out of the box. Now we need more laptops with preinstalled linux and maybe support included.
@scottytrees

geoffl

@dieTasse @scottytrees When I installed Ubuntu on my laptop the touchpad failed to work, the screen was refreshing at a much lower rate, the USB scanner failed to work. I still can't get it to scan at full resolution and have now given up. I use Windows to scan stuff. And why is Ubuntu so slow to boot? Windows 10 from a full shutdown is faster.

dieTasse

@geoffl
to be honest ubuntu is the worst. I also always had issues with ubuntu. If you want ubuntu based system install pop os, its very refined. Or very stable is fedora. But its also that you are installing linux on unsupported hardware. You wouldn't also install windows on macbook and expected it to work. The linux disadvantage is that it will likely work and then people blame linux if it dont.
@scottytrees

NicoRey

@scottytrees @sarahjamielewis unfortunatly not, if you need (have to) to work with adobe product. I am fed up swaping from #Linux to #Windows all time.

jack will miss this server

@scottytrees @sarahjamielewis there are not "good alternatives" as they are not accessible. Good for you if you're lucky enough not to rely on screenreaders etc to use a computer though!

Jonno

@sarahjamielewis AI is turning out to be an Orwellian wet dream. It’s only a question of time before it will be used to report queries or activities by possible "terrorists" and "pedophiles" to authorities. This opening the gateway to unchecked discrimination against minorities not adhering to the cultural "zeitgeist".

Killick

@jonno @sarahjamielewis
Which Linux distro will be first to offer AI 'improvements?' RHEL? Ubuntu?

𝔑ℭ𝔎𝔫𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱

@sarahjamielewis I'm sure this is also to avoid potential lawsuits. Create the problems and make everyone else suffer the consequences. That tracks.

Skjeggtroll

@sarahjamielewis

If this thing is so secure and without downsides, why does it need to exclude DRM'd content?

Sparky 💡

@skjeggtroll @sarahjamielewis Now that is, quite frankly, a pretty good question.

Killick

@skjeggtroll @sarahjamielewis

Some lawyer probably said it would be a copyright violation to have backups of licensed content.

Flauschfläche :verified:

@sarahjamielewis we simply need to add DRM to password managers and banking software to fix this 🤡

Sparky 💡

@nofollownoindex @sarahjamielewis I could see a addin becoming quite popular in the future for Firefox, Chrome, Chrome, Chrome, Chrome and Chrome that just constantly tells the OS that you are currently viewing DRM-protected content.
Or, heck, an application that always runs in the background to spoof that constantly.

John Gordon

@nofollownoindex @sarahjamielewis Can we have ourselves individually and as a people declared to be corporations so all our data is protected per DRM policies?

sidereal

@nofollownoindex @sarahjamielewis It is somewhat frustrating how the tech industry collectively seems to care more about large media companies’ profitability than my bank account’s security

Joe Vinegar

@sarahjamielewis it's the obvious and so far unavoidable consequence of capitalism and copyright (that is, the extreme commodification of information): who will sue the producer of the hw/software, the user, or the corporations going after copyright fares? Besides the new EU directive on product liability the user has virtually no rights whatsoever. europarl.europa.eu/legislative

tasket

@sarahjamielewis Maybe, on closer examination, we would find those corps aren't random.

If a tiny percentage of people own most of the wealth, then the corporate wagon-circling isn't surprising at all. They're literally sleeping with each other.

Val Packett 🧉

@sarahjamielewis come on, the DRM thing is a bit of a cheap shot, you know it's not so much them specifically excluding DRM'd content but rather mostly the way high-end video DRM itself works

Kg. Madee Ⅱ.

@valpackett @sarahjamielewis and why does it work that way?
Because Microsoft specifically built it into their product. They could trivially do it differently, but they don't want to.

Stefan

@sarahjamielewis
When you bought and using a so called modern Smartphone with an official Operating System on it from Apple or Google, you're already Part of this non in your Favor working System. 🙄

Including you're Desktop PC with the next version of Windows into the existing Loop of Surveillance, sorry official called rewinding your digital History, by BigTech will just be a another obvious small Step with awesome Implications for you.

(Sarcasm included)
#Microsoft
@IzzyOnDroid

@sarahjamielewis
When you bought and using a so called modern Smartphone with an official Operating System on it from Apple or Google, you're already Part of this non in your Favor working System. 🙄

Including you're Desktop PC with the next version of Windows into the existing Loop of Surveillance, sorry official called rewinding your digital History, by BigTech will just be a another obvious small Step with awesome Implications for you.

Sparky 💡

@sarahjamielewis It doesn't, and I don't trust Microsoft to *not* eventually offload it into the cloud at some point into the future.

However, at least for the time being, they seem to promise that Recall is being done exclusively locally, including analyzing the periodic screenshots.

support.microsoft.com/en-us/wi

That being said... if I was using Windows still, I would turn that off *immediately* anyway. Even with their promises of only processing it locally.

@sarahjamielewis It doesn't, and I don't trust Microsoft to *not* eventually offload it into the cloud at some point into the future.

However, at least for the time being, they seem to promise that Recall is being done exclusively locally, including analyzing the periodic screenshots.

support.microsoft.com/en-us/wi

Sparky 💡

@sarahjamielewis One thing of note though is that filtering out websites or Private browsing sessions will apparently only work in Edge and other flavors of Chrome, so not Firefox.

Sparky 💡

@sarahjamielewis Okay, looking further into this... people would presently have to explicitly purchase a Copilot+-PC with built-in AI accelerator anyway to even use that.

lily 🏳️‍⚧️

@sarahjamielewis@mastodon.social apparently the reason they can't record drm'd content is because of something called "encrypted surfaces" which is copyright lawyer for "a portion of your screen is an illegal number"

🚲

@sarahjamielewis i believe it’s already not possible way before this bs

Kotaro

@sarahjamielewis@mastodon.social It's funny how they go to such lengths to protect their copyrights.

gulthaw

@sarahjamielewis Oh that's brilliant! Then I just need to have a movie using 1/4 of the screen at any moment. Awesome!

Ronan

@sarahjamielewis it will not do content moderation except when it's doing content moderation. Well ok then

Theriac

@sarahjamielewis@mastodon.social
better yet that they are taking content from random users and teaching AI to plagiarise it.

Mark Fraser

@sarahjamielewis So if you have a DRM'd video on your desktop playing in the background it won't record any content?

j5v

@sarahjamielewis So begins the cat-and-mouse game of unapproved utility software to fight it, and people downloading malware by accident.

j5v

@sarahjamielewis
>The system doesn't work for you.
[Strong agree] It's 'bait and switch', pitched as user benefits, but their use of the data is open-ended.

j5v

@sarahjamielewis I realise I'm just adding to the conversation for readers - I respect your experience and knowledge, and I'm not adding to _your_ knowledge :)

decapitae

@sarahjamielewis The system doesn't work unless you have rich monies. There's not many people in lower and middle 'class' that have that anymore.
The fragile ego'ed have maxed out the upper 'class' arena and made it clear they don't value anyone except for their use as a cash cow.

pinkdrunkenelephants

@sarahjamielewis We can and should push everyone to switch over to Linux.

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