The Windows Control Panel is slated to be removed in favor of the Settings app. Also....

[thewayne]

This was kind of inevitable, so many things are moving there and sometimes it's hard to what obscure thing you're looking for is where. In the end it will probably be a good thing, but it'll take a decade before it's stable. ;-)

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/system-configuration-tools-in-windows-f8a49657-b038-43b8-82d3-28bea0c5666b

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/08/23/031251/microsoft-says-its-getting-rid-of-control-panel-in-windows


In other Windows news, Microsoft announces the return of Recall. That's the system where your operating system watches everything you do, OCRs it and stores it in a local database to help you remember what you were doing in the past for your convenience. This was announced back in June, and it was discovered in beta deployments that there was absolutely no security being deployed in the database in terms of encryption or permissions, so if someone gained access to your PC - which never happens - then they could see your bank credentials, credit card numbers, health insurance info, you know - trivial things.

Details have not yet been released as to what security protections have been put in place. A non-existent Microsoft PR flack was quoted as saying "Trust us!"

The revised feature will go to Insider Program testers in October. Microsoft says more details will be disclosed at that time.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/08/microsoft-will-try-the-data-scraping-windows-recall-feature-again-in-october/

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/08/22/1648253/microsoft-will-try-the-data-scraping-windows-recall-feature-again-in-october

Comments

[moonhare]

As careful as I think I am with my computer use, I’m amazed at what I don’t realize. When transferring files from my old machine I came across over 4K of photos and such in a file I didn’t know was storing them. On the new computer I see that everything I do leaves a trail, presumably for my convenience. And things sneak off to One Drive, or try to :D

[armiphlage]

I work in a factory making products that fall under the Canadian Controlled Goods Program. Everything involving the products is highly classified. Recall is going to make our Designated Official cry.

[thewayne]

Hopefully it can be disabled by your IT group with a group policy.

[armiphlage]

We can't even get Adobe to stop spamming our (paying!) users with offers to use their AI assistant to provide summaries. Which would involve transmitting unencrypted classified data across international borders to their servers.

[thewayne]

SMH

[moonhare]

I left the marine/aerospace field back in… 1992? Things were simpler then ;o) All of the really proprietary, classified material was on paper in locked areas.

[armiphlage]

We are still building products designed in 1992. All the classified stuff from them has been scanned, so instead of someone needing a truck to steal all our secret info, they can just email it.

Actually, we're building even older stuff. We are using antique wire-wrap machines on a daily basis.

[moonhare]

That’s probably the case for my former employer, as well. And they’ve been bought and sold a couple of times, and personnel involved with the top secret programs have moved on, so how secure is all that knowledge?

[disneydream06]

thanks for nothing Microsoft. :o :o :o
Hugs, Jon

[richardf8]

Happy to have almost inadvertently slid into the Apple ecosystem at this point.

[thewayne]

I went Apple around '08, he says typing this on a PC.  I still use a PC at work, and for gaming, but for my personal stuff it's Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch.  My wife's observatory it's all Linux in the data center, so Mac makes it so much easier for the user workstations.  I find they're so much more trouble-free.  I have a really weird situation up here on the mountain: WiFi routers only last 1-2 years, then they die.  We are at 9,000'.  EXCEPT for the Apple Router.  That thing lasted a good five years, except they got out of that line!  So I'm back to short-lived routers, just replaced it last weekend.  AGAIN.  It's on a UPS and the incoming internet line is fiber optic, so it's not power surges nuking them.

[richardf8]

That is weird. Is it just a matter of there not being enough air pressure at that altitude to keep the magic smoke in?

[thewayne]

My wife's an astronomer, been up here for 27 years.  The observatory is at 9200'.  They've noted some weird behaviors over time.  Plasma TVs don't work there, nor did early model iPods: apparently the vacuum in the tiny little hard drive loosened enough to cause the drive heads to misalign.  Go back to lower altitude, everything realigns and the device works just fine.  High altitude causes faster growth of cataracts because you don't have as much atmosphere shielding you from UV, higher blood pressure because of the lower air pressure, and frequently thyroid problems.  So maybe the air pressure is causing premature loss of magic smoke, I'm also a fan of the cosmic ray theory just flying through and nuking the boards.  I wish I understood it.

[arlie]

Ugh! Just Ugh!

[silveradept]

Of course they're moving it to the Settings app, because eventually everyone has to be on Windows 11 and adopt its paradigms and decisions about what's actually important enough, rather than leaving the tools that people have been familiar with since Windows 3.0 (okay, maybe Windows 95) to use if it is what suits them.

That Recall is being re-launched probably means that my workplace will have to deal with it in the future when it is rolled out more generally. I'm hoping they decide to disable it with group policy and then find a way of uninstalling it. There's a Copilot key on the newer computers that we're getting, so I know full well that it's something that will have to be dealt with. And then possibly be dealt with again as updates sneakily try to re-enable it or suggest that we should enable it and not let their pop-ups be dismissed.

Having enough ept built by running various Linuxes for decades and better has put me in the position of being able to shift away from Windows and to adopt a working distribution before I have to upgrade to 11. Found one that seems to be very smooth and made good default decisions, so it's working very well for me at this point. It's making the shifting of stuff over very smooth and unhurried and I'm really liking it. I would like the option for my work machines as well, and for the public systems to shift over, too, but I know that won't happen.

I wish more people had that option, the ept, and the confidence to install, configure, and get familiar with a Linux of their own, just to have something in the back pocket if/when Windows or macOS does something they really hate and want to get away from.

[thewayne]

It will be interesting to see what happens when Recall hits EU regulators, I can't imagine they'll be too happy with it without it being easily disabled.  And there will have to be group policy locks available to IT admins to block it.

[silveradept]

They well have those locks and blocks, but group policy is usually limited to Pro versions where there's likely to be an IT department managing things. Home versions usually don't have those kinds of controls present, so they often can't defeat things like Recall as easily.

[thewayne]

Excellent point about Pro editions and Policies.