Microsoft once again delays launching Recall

[thewayne]

Recall, if you recall, is their replay "assistant" that no one seems to particularly be asking for. It takes screen shots of your computer and stores them so that you can look back if you lose information. During the first tests of it we learned that the storage of said snapshots were not secure, so someone who'd infiltrated your computer could conceivably see banking credentials, medical records, etc.

From the article: "Originally planned for October, Recall will now be available for preview with Windows Insiders on Copilot Plus PCs by December."

and

"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."

It'll be interesting to see the blowback when this thing finally deploys, especially if it isn't fully opt-in.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/31/24284572/microsoft-recall-delay-december-windows-insider-testing

Comments

[disneydream06]

Do they do anything that is fully opt in? :o :o :o
Hugs, Jon

[thewayne]

That's not a bad question, and I can't give you a solid answer off-hand.

[silveradept]

I choose not to believe that this thing that Microsoft has spent all those resources on will actually be fully removable and opt-in. I believe they will try to sell it to us as that, but we'll find out that if you happen to uninstall Copilot, Windows suddenly takes an addition hour to boot as it is deliberately looking for a DLL that isn't there and that has an hour-long timeout on it before they decide to go forward without it. Maybe the EU version will be, because they don't want the fines, but the rest of us will have to suffer with a Recall that's "opt-in" and always trying to opt you in, or forcing you to opt-in so that you can get to this other feature that you actually want or need.

[thewayne]

Find a way to buy an EU version and set your VPN to Germany....

[silveradept]

Certainly does seen like a good idea, doesn't it? I'm sure there will be some other reason to forbid US audiences from getting versions that actually work properly.

[thewayne]

Hard to say.  They allegedly try to be good, but you invariably find stuff that is decidedly not.

[warriorsavant]

Sounds like they have developed a visual equivalent of Clippy.

[thewayne]

Heh.  The way they intend on implementing a timeline feature, may well be.

[lovelydovely]

This is a mindfuck of colossal proportions!!

[thewayne]

One thing is certain, it's going to get uninstalled AND its ports blocked on my systems!

[lovelydovely]

If you succeed pls share how to get rid thanks!

[viridian5]

Considering that Microsoft broke its Photos programs a while ago and never bothered to fix them back to their previous usability.... ("Yes, our update made it impossible to upload photos from your device to the program on your laptop anymore, but you can still use Photos Legacy for that if you're unhappy! Oh no, we broke Legacy too....") I had to find a completely different method.

[thewayne]

Yeesh.  I'm not sure I've used their photos app.  Doesn't sound terribly unusual, though.

[armiphlage]

The fact that it takes screenshots seems like it will rapidly suck up all available storage on my harware.

The use of screenshots (rather than reading the text right out of programs running on my hardware) also suggests a possible workaround. We change the wallpaper of all programs to be AI-generated text in the smallest grey-on-white font that will display on the screen. This will be invisible to the human user. When Microsoft does optical character recognition to feed its AIs, its AI will be fed the excrement of other AIs along with your personal information.

For extra bonus, generate the text using AI prompted to write kind, ethical, conversations, to give Microsoft's AI a friendly bias.

[thewayne]

Space is definitely an issue.  I don't know the timeframe of how long Recall intends to keep screen shots, they may plan on syncing it into your cloud account, which could suck, especially if you don't want to use one.  High-compression jpeg could reduce a lot of this load.

[arlie]

I presume they'll also charge for the storage used on your cloud account. That's a popular scam - save things by default that the user doesn't want saved, and ideally doesn't know how to get rid of, such that storage quotas are exceeded, and things the user does want are at risk. Then offer an increase in storage for a small monthly fee. Lather rinse and repeat, as the junk accumulates.

[thewayne]

Yep!  I paid to upgrade my iCloud one level, and I'm okay with that.  I dropped my Dropbox when they banned more than 3 devices accessing a paid account.  Microsoft's One Drive doesn't care how many devices access it, and so far seem quite liberal on their space policy for free accounts.  I've never had a credit card associated with them, and plan on blocking Recall, so hopefully this will never be an issue.