Brave blocks Microsoft Recall by default

As mentioned at the bottom, there's another API, which is to flag the window as containing DRM'd content. Although I suppose there's not really anything to stop AI vendors doing copyright infringement if they want.

Well for those who are stuck with Windows because of some applications or simply because of familiarity. My suggestion is to stay on an older release as long as possible. If that isn't possible I would recommend keeping the computer turned off most of the time and only briefly using it for your purpose and try to keep from doing anything embarrassing or personal too much. Another thing that might help is calling up your local government and ask them to do something about this. You can also call Windows customer service up and let them know that you are displeased about what they've done and will not be recommending it to your friends as a result.

Or most professional audio applications...

You have to opt in to Recall. You must have a “Copilot+ PC” which has an “NPU”. The snapshots are stored and processed locally.

Linux is great if you're hardware is supported.

I've never been able to get Linux working right on one of my laptops, on another only rolling releases work.

These rolling releases like to break every 3 to 6 months.

Windows is much more stable on both laptops.

With my mini PC eGPU combo Linux just won't recognize the eGpu at all.

> Who, exactly, is clamoring for Recall in the first place?

I'm not clamoring for any Microsoft software for the last two decades, but the idea itself is interesting, like being able to catalog and look back at what I did at specific times in the past, or be able to query "What was the website where I saw X at?", would have been useful just last week for me when I was trying to find some document I read but didn't bookmark/download.

But I'd probably trust BP to not spill oil into our oceans again over Microsoft not having security/data leak issues.

This concept is certainly in the zeitgeist. I actually built and named a product 'Recall' with identical functionality eleven years ago:

https://github.com/btc/recall

It seems it enables Copilot to assist the user in finding things on their PC.

Somehow find . -iname has worked for years in Linux without AI

> Who, exactly, is clamoring for Recall in the first place?

Well some people currently pay $19/month for that feature.

https://www.rewind.ai/

Someone wanted a pitch for new AI powered features and this was something they thought would work and would look impressive in a commercial, probably.

THe same people who wanted web searches to appear in windows search bar, the higher ups at microsoft. they juice their numbers and say "See, look how many people are using our recall product. just like "See, look how many people are using Bing (in case of the web searches in windows search).

Guessing they are going to analyse your screenshots to attribute you a productivity index.

Who? Investors. If your company is not "doing" AI, your stock price goes down.

>Who, exactly, is clamoring for Recall in the first place?

NSA, CIA, maybe even ICE nowadays.

The most interesting part of TFA is that Microsoft is apparently deliberately restricting the ability of apps to opt out:

> We were partly inspired by Signal’s blocking of Recall. Given that Windows doesn’t let non-browser apps granularly disable Recall, Signal cleverly uses the DRM flag on their app to disable all screenshots. This breaks Recall, but unfortunately also breaks the ability to take any screenshots, including by legitimate accessibility software like screen-readers. Brave’s approach does not have this limitation since we’re able to granularly disable just Recall; regular screenshotting will still work. While it’s heartening that Microsoft recognizes that Web browsers are especially privacy-sensitive applications, we hope they offer the same granular ability to turn off Recall to all privacy-minded application developers.

This is not the kind of thing you'd do if you expect app developers to be enthusiastic about the feature.

I assume the real target market isn't home users

it's shitty invasive employers (e.g. amazon)

they'll be able to notice you stopped working for 2 minutes to go to the toilet and punish you accordingly

I think it’s a cool and potentially useful feature as long as it stays local.

Just yesterday I wiped my dual booted linux mint. As bad as Microsoft is, there is a certain sense of polish and dare I say confidence to using windows. Lol I can't believe I'm saying that even though just now I saw chris titus's video on AI code inside windows.

Say when an application starts being slow for memory issues or io issues or downright freezes, I can still click a button or start typing something in that application, wait and it'll work eventually. I can push windows as far as I can, I can be absolutely careless and it'll still work.

On mint, if things start going slow, I'll stop clicking and wait for it to die so I can restart the app again. I don't feel confident enough to push it.

It's like buying a boring, easy to maintain japanese car and a fancy, one of 100, exotic super car from some obscure european brand. I know which one I can confidently thrash about.

Gaming. Linux gaming has come a long way (especially thanks to the steam deck) but the vast majority of games are still only released on Windows.

Personally I still hold that if Microsoft made an OS that is stripped down with only true essentials, I would go back to Windows. Until then, Linux is my home, outside of work or my dedicated Windows device (a Surface laptop) which I rarely if ever need to bust out to do something.

My last hurdle which I kind of sucked up was Discord, I was holding off on it for ages, till I got irritated enough with Windows to ignore it. It didn't let me stream with audio, but when they switched from 32-bit to 64-bit it seems Linux finally got streaming with audio.

There's an almost violent resistance to switching to Linux because there's perceived fears of it being too technical. The mere thought of potentially needing to open up a command prompt sends people into a fear panic and needing to solve problems freaks people out.

I wish I was exaggerating but I've had these arguments with people that really should know better and there was nothing I could do to convince them. There's a lot of people that are strangely proud in being completely technically illiterate and they don't care to actually have control over their computer or personal data. This isn't an age thing either; this was from people that were otherwise my age or younger that simply got angry at the mere thought of Linux.

I myself made the full switch last year with the advent of them forcing copilot shit everywhere and everything just works out of the box. I originally thought I might need to switch back to Windows every now and then for gaming but no, everything I've thrown at it works great and often better than it did on Windows. I only keep Windows around on my separate dev/work machine for the sake of game dev and coding.