A couple years ago it wasn’t thoroughly and transparently sucking off every bit of personal data it could get, and gearing up to put adds on the desktop on top of that.
Seems the consensus is that telemetry started with Win7, but I swear I remember privacy people freaking out about Win95 or 98 sending system specs or something back with out telling the user. It’s been a slow boil for a long time.
Yeah I think 7 was when it was a big blip on the radar. But 100% they had to start laying that foundation beforehand, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was either always there or started making its way in 98.
95 was relatively groundbreaking and a part of me thinks the PC was so new they hadn’t thought of it yet or if it was even possible given the nature of internet, but you can’t put anything past the marketing guys that would probably love to know what colour your shit is.
From what I remember from that time it wasn’t really a lot of people going on about privacy at that time. We were more concerned with how they just grabbed the BSD networking stack without saying anything about it.
There were a few things w/rt activation that people were pissed about. That was more towards the XP era though.
Though maybe someone else remembers it differently than I do since I wasn’t paying attention to privacy at that point and I don’t remember seeing anything about it in PCMAG or G4
I vaguely remember something from TechTV or Slashdot. Searches only turn up more recent discussions though. The old stories are getting buried by the more recent shit going on.
I remember when Windows 10 first came around, and people were trying to bring attention to the privacy issues in the TOS. Now it’s been widely adopted just about everywhere, and this is probably going to be the same.
I’ve always trusted them to do what they’re great at… which is get a product nearly 100% perfect, then back it up about 20%, and polish it off by shooting themselves in the foot.
Which I’ve always found it insane that EVERY product they ship is like that. The only exceptions (IMHO) to that were Office, DOS5, Win7, (Maybe XP)
I’m really hoping this shit is banned on all government and corporate computers. But, with how poor IT competence is…such a ban will be sporadic at best.
I don’t think this will bury MS because they can easily market this to enterprise clients ( if they haven’t already ). Recall is a particularly useful tool for any employer that wants to keep track of everything employees do, especially in an age of WFH. They probably figured they can take the PR hit from users concerned about privacy and move on unaffected.
For those of you that are tired of Microsoft’s bullshit, a great place to start is Linux Mint or, if you want to be on the bleeding edge with a rolling distro that still gets some testing, openSUSE Tumbleweed (which is what I’m using).
Same reason I picked it. I did some distro hopping when I made the switch and Tumbleweed was the first one I tried that my motherboard audio worked with.
No, I tried Mint and Manjaro for a couple weeks each and a couple other distros I’ve forgotten cause I just booted them up, checked audio was broken, and replaced them. But I know Leap wasn’t one of them.
I started with Mint, but for Windows users I’d advise openSUSE too.
There’s an issue, though, with them preparing for the next big release to become something like Fedora Silverblue or I don’t remember. But for now it’s a distribution with the corporate feeling in a good sense as strong as with Windows, almost none of that feeling in a bad sense, and it’s very polished.
I’ve been driving Linux for about a year now, I ended up switching to Debian because I don’t want my programs updating with bleeding edge releases that can break things. The coolest part about Linux is that you can choose like that.
I found endeavour (arch) to be a much simpler experience vs fedora or opensuse or void. Tpm chip worked right away, clear instructions for setting up secureboot with a hook that signs everything as it’s updated, etc. I could barely get void to boot, opensuse worked well but after a power outage the tpm stopped working and I was never able to get it back, fedora I had no success with tpm. I’m sure that’s all pretty variable depending on hardware.
If you aren’t looking for full functionality of your hardware most any distro should be fine, but…why sacrifice security?
Tell me about gaming on Linux. Most if my gaming is via Steam and I have a Steamdeck which I know runs on a flavor of Linux so it can be done. Is it fair to say that any game that runs on the Steam runs on Steam Linux?
I just got a new prebuilt with Windows 11 Pro and I’ve been curious about Linux for the past few months. I know the variations have gotten better over the years but haven’t done too much research into it. I hear Mint and Arch quite a bit.
Did you mean to say “any game that runs on the Steam Deck runs on Steam Linux?”
If so, the answer is yes. It’s honestly surprising these days to run across a steam title that doesn’t run in linux (though always look into the anti-cheat situation for online games).
Is it fair to say that any game that runs on the Steam runs on Steam Linux?
No, it’s not that far along. A lot works, but if there’s invasive DRM or anticheat then it probably won’t. If you have specific games you want to play in mind check out www.protondb.com
I know the variations have gotten better over the years but haven’t done too much research into it.
If you’re curious you can just create a live USB stick to test drive it. Won’t work well for gaming though.
Straw that broke the camel’s back? Every vertebra in that camel’s back has been smashed with a sledge hammer over the past 30 years.
Windows 95 was the last version I was excited about; Windows 98 SE was the last version of Windows I willingly purchased, and XP was the last one I willingly used. When they announced Win7, I downloaded Ubuntu 6.06, “Dapper Drake”. Since then, Windows has only existed on my computers as pirated, virtual machines.
I think Windows 7 was good, and their last decent desktop OS before they started backporting Windows 10 garbage into it late in the lifecycle.
I’m in the same boat as you now. Earlier this year I’d had enough and there was no way I was going from my de-shittified Win10 Enterprise install to Win11. I’m on Tumbleweed for my main PC now.
My job is in the early stages of planning for updating everything to windows 11. I just got my testing VM with it the other day which is my first experience with it and I had an almost physical reaction to how bad the gui looks when I first logged in. I haven’t even done anything with it and I already hate it.
On the other hand the Linux VM I set up at home to test my personal stuff out on has been going swimmingly.
I hated Windows from the day I saw the 3.1 floppies had no write tab (that tiny piece that allowed you to write the disk). My first though was “we’ve payed for this and they forbid us to write on them? Fuck MS”. It was the last original Windows in any PC at home. And I used DRDOS, so even worse (Windows 3.11 had a “bug” that made it crash if it ran on DRDOS).
You lasted until Windows 7? I’m guessing you didn’t have to deal with Windows Vista’s bs then. I changed ship thanks to Vista.
I also suffered Windows Me, but I was too young and at that time I didn’t know there was an alternative.
I dual booted Vista/7 and Ubuntu/Mint for a while but after not using Windows in years ended removing it completely. Now I’m a happy Antergos Arch user ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Wow, I actually forgot about Vista. I never actually had it installed on anything. XP was the last OS I had installed on hardware. Win 7 was the first I knew only from VM installations.
When they announced Win7, I downloaded Ubuntu 6.06, “Dapper Drake”.
Windows Vista was so bad that it gets forgotten even in a retrospective about how Windows versions sucked. But yeah, Win7 didn’t come out for another few years after that, to rescue the world from Vista.
I maintain one baremetal Windows install that gets fairly regular use. It’s on a major OEM business class workstation with a legit Windows 10 pro license.
Recently, I had to wipe and reset and goddamn do they try and trick you into choosing all the worst spyware settings AND even if you successfully duck and weave past them, they’ll just cheat and enable them, or reinstall shit like co-pilot during an update.
They just made me sign into that shitty M365 app to install a legit subscription of Office, and on the next reboot, it converted the local user account into an online user account.
Make no mistake, Recall is going to be enabled by hook, or by crook, for the vast majority of Windows 11 users in due time. No matter how many times they disable it, or opt out.
Yup. We’re back to the old days where Microsoft didn’t give a damn and enabled things by default.
It’ll take less than a decade before they get sued, yet again. By then, the penalty will be <5% of what they’ve made, but the merry go round will circle back and start all over.
Exactly. Running fedora desktop and I am thinking why the move does.not do more poeple. The only Microsoft junk I am using is the corporation laptop and that I am sure wont get this function.
Glad I switched from PC to Mac back in 2022 because I was pissed Microsoft was forcing me to upgrade hardware to switch to Windows 11 which I didn’t want. Apple to me is more private and will be more thoughtful with their AI tools to expand user functionality. Screw Microsoft. This is a user that had used PCs since the late 1980s…
I don’t even care if it’s opt-in. I don’t want dormant malware on my PC either.
To be clear. I actually like Windows 11. I don’t care about the general telemetry, though I disabled the typing data crap. Most of the things in the last few months about ads in Windows, about blocking apps, etc have been overblown and aren’t actually big problems in isolation. Even this is a little overblown right now as it requires an NPU which the vast majority of systems don’t have. But, this is just so tone-deaf and an obviously terrible idea that it needs to be put down hard.
Most of the things in the last few months about ads in Windows, about blocking apps, etc have been overblown and aren’t actually big problems in isolation.
Any telemetry sent without a very clearly informed opt in is malicious. Any ad in an OS is malicious. There is no valid justification for either.
It’s also important to remember that Microsoft has no monetary incentive to force people to use Windows Recall.
With that in mind, there would be no reason for Microsoft to automatically enable Windows Recall in an update down the line. If it does happen, the user will be able to instantly tell thanks to that that visual indicator and turn it off again.
This article is nothing but propaganda. There is huge monetary incentive to force people to use Windows Recall and collect their data, and Microsoft routinely uses Windows Update to enable data collection. They began that practice years ago on Windows 7. It’s a ridiculously simple matter for MS to disable the visual indicator and force This Week’s Plan on their users to monetize their data.
Windows Central pretends to be critical of plans to enable a feature that can be made into malware by Microsoft in a couple of minutes, but then back peddles and says it can’t be done (utter BS) and if it could be, it wouldn’t be that bad.
Even if the database remains local only forever, which I don’t believe for a second, the computer will eventually make hyperspecific requests for ads based on the spying.
Only data that is not stored cannot fall victim to attackers. It does not matter whether it is a ‘nigerian prince’, Microsoft or some agency. Even if you completly trust whatever entity with your data right now, they may become problematic in the future.
This is why a low profile is a crucial component of OPsec.
Recall is objectively stupid, even if Microsoft only had their users best interest in mind. And they don’t.
“Haha windows 10 EOL is soon and no your computer cannot upgrade 😏”
Followed by the
“We’re thinking about… no? Okay well anyways, we’re gonna shove ads into the UX, even after backpedaling after backlash”
Then the
“Listen the security situation is p bad and we’re not too sure what to do about it. Lots of internal accts have been compromised. Probably yours too, we don’t really know. Shhh, we got big AI news soon.”
And lastly the
“Unveiling, the biggest security nightmare tool in the history of connected devices. From the writers of Total Recall and the masterminds behind Ads in your OS comes: Recall!”
I don’t care what windows does to rectify this. My parents next machines are either Linux or Chromebooks.
If windows 12 isn’t FOSS, Microsoft can pound sand.
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