this post was submitted on 24 May 2024
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Windows OS: "We have a brand new feature called Windows Recall that you might like!"

Guy: "Oh boy! What does it do?"

Windows: "It helps you find anything you've seen on your PC by using clues you give or by letting you scroll through your past activity!"

Guy: "Wow! How does this tech work?"

Windows: "Our Windows AI constantly takes pictures of your screen and saves all that data"

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[–] Juice64 34 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Gross, I got my pc setup for dualboot with Linux. Maybe one day soon I’ll be brave enough to delete windows all together. If I didnt play so many video games I wouldn’t have anything to worry about 😅

[–] [email protected] 21 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I've been trying to make the switch for years and just recently decided to bite the bullet when I replaced some hardware, going linux-only. There's surprisingly few games that don't work in Linux, even if they require a bit of tinkering to get there. Especially if you play mostly indie games (since DRM and anti-cheat seem to be a big reason for many of the ones that don't work in Linux). My feeling is that there's enough games out there (and unplayed ones in my library, even) that if I can't play a few AAA titles on Linux, I can just use that as a reason to skip them entirely.

Edit: If you're playing Steam games, you need to check "Enable Steam Play for all other titles" in Settings -> Compatibility. This makes it try to use Proton to play things that it hasn't verified will work, which works for most things.

For non-Steam games, if you use Lutris, it can largely handle installation including compatibility layers via WINE or whatever else for you. Makes the process very painless.

One of those two use cases apply to about 95% of games I've tried, including stuff like old games from GoG (even DOS games that use GoG-supplied compatibility tools run fine, surprisingly).

[–] Juice64 4 points 5 months ago

Yeah I’ve been using Bazzite which has been the most idiot-proof distro I’ve been able to find. It does work great overall but there are of course a handful of easy anti cheat games that gum things up and a few games that I play most that simply doesn’t get the same performance (unfortunately). GranBlue Fantasy Relink for example runs at the 120 cap in just about every quest with a few dips in the town hub but through proton drops to 40fps when all gears are flying and stutters wildly without warning. Ghost of Tsushima which I’ve been grinding it solid overall but does give me some weird physics things flashing in my eyes here and there (enough to put up with though if I didn’t have other options). Overall I do love it and boot into Linux as long as I know that I’m going to be playing a game that doesn’t have issues or just plan on web browsing, I just can’t quite let go of stupid windows.

[–] SpaceNoodle 8 points 5 months ago

That's why I have one beefy gaming PC hooked up to my big screen TV and surround sound, and do all of my important shit on a Linux laptop.

[–] TotallynotJessica 32 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Considering how bad the basic search function and file explorer have become, I bet it would make it harder to find what you're looking for. I already scroll past Google's new search engine AI, and I would probably learn to filter out the tips from programs like this because they're unreliable. Consistency is what actually helps me do things quicker, not features that change constantly to personalize the experience.

[–] Psaldorn 19 points 5 months ago

For real. It would rather take me to a bing results page for (AppName) than open the fucking app that is actually installed.

[–] Geek_King 20 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I thought that feature was related to the expensive for pay Copilot feature? The recall feature listed a huge amount of space required for it to work, something like 275 GB, SSD. There is no way that'll just be a baked in feature in normal home Windows. Am I wrong Lemmy? To be clear, that feature can F right off.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah it won't be in regular PCs anytime soon, since this feature apparently requires

  1. 256 GB of SSD
  2. 16 GB of RAM
  3. An "NPU" which AFAIK most computers don't have
  4. Windows 11

~~But the point is that they market Recall as this great new premium feature when it's actually very dystopic. Even if you trust Microsoft that it's gonna be entirely local (which I don't), there are lots of other things that could go wrong. Like Recall having your passwords/private conversations/stuff under NDAs in it's database, bugs that could potentially leak the data, malware whose purpose is to exploit it to get access to everything you do on your computer, or a government forcing Microsoft to add a backdoor~~ edit: damn I've read this like 10 times before replying and just realized that you did say that the Recall feature sucks

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That is such a ridiculous requirement for a thing that's already done better without AI or spying on you.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

If it is for just taking images of your screen a cron job or systemd timer can do the trick taking a screenshot twice an hour.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I'm pretty sure the requirements are so high because (at least for now) the AI that will process the screenshots and search queries will run locally

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

I just dont really see use for this, you could have a historic record of opened programs (filtering system programs) and for the work you are doing in them, the timed screenshot option.

As with everything Microsoft, it's just an exvuse to cram their New Product^TM^

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago (2 children)

like, as far as features go it's not a bad concept.
being able to go "what's that post about the thing i saw a week ago" is nice and i might even use it if every part of the system was open source and, you know, not made by microsoft, but as it stands even it it works as advertised and is 100% local i just don't trust them to not have some "telemetry" that's collating everything i ever do, ask, or think

[–] Darorad 11 points 5 months ago

Eh, even then it's a gold mine of information on you if your PC ever gets a virus or stolen.

Encryption would help, but not for all scenarios.

[–] riodoro1 6 points 5 months ago

Microsoft struggles for years to make a good video calling software and the bought skype. What makes you believe this feature would work at all?

[–] kelargo 6 points 5 months ago

Nothing beats this "grep $1 ~/.bash_history"

[–] StaySquared 1 points 5 months ago

Hellllllll naw lmao...