this is the part I can’t understand. no one wants this. if you understand what this is doing, you wouldn’t want it. holy shit why

Your idea of making “operating systems interesting” is to screenshot and spy on a users activity in the odd event that they want to go back and have a photographic memory of it? You and I have VASTLY different ideas of what “interesting” means.

I think it’s a combination of the security risk and a slippery-slope argument. The security risk is that, at the very least, it opens up an avenue for hackers to more easily extract personal information from your PC. The slippery-slope argument is that Microsoft can just choose to enable this feature, or parts of it, without your consent. It used to be that you could turn of all telemetry in Windows (XP/Vista I believe), but now you can’t do that for 10.

• It’s incentivized by monies
  (ie for private data collecting),
• it won’t be optional for much longer
  (error: explorer.exe needs Recall to work, please enable recall & try again after the data has been synced to MS servers), and
• you won’t be able to turn it off, that is when it will deliver you mostly (recalled) ads you might have missed from a few days ago when it showed them to you the first time.

“Please click on at least 3 targeted ads to continue to use calc.exe.”

I could see this as an interesting lab concept. That possibly users could install from some kind of site if they really wanted it. Not as a mainstream function pushed to evry system. Even if it’s inactive by default for now.

I’d much rather Microsoft work on improving windows than adding features that I don’t need or want.

I want an interesting operating system as much as I want to live next to an interesting nuclear powerplant.

Operating systems should be boring, they should just handle basic tasks and support whatever program I am running on top of them.

Calling Recall interesting just makes me want it less, it is one more huge vector of personal information that can and will be mined or breached and then mined.

But an operating system isn’t meant to be “interesting”. It’s an operating system. It should only be meant to operate the system. The interesting should be up to whatever programs it is that a user puts on top of it, something that makes it work better (like optimisations), or at most, make it look nicer. Recall is not that. Your car should be functional as a car. It doesn’t need to be capable of baking souffles, or be a fully-functional mobile office suite. An OS should follow the same principles.

s disabled by default

And how long do you think that will last? They only changed it to opt-in after millions of enterprise IT cybersec directors screeched in agony. And with all of these monopolies, getting a backpedal concessionis only hitting a temporary pause button for them to wait two years and try again.

“You don’t have to use it” has never worked as a defense against Microsoft ever, Recall exists as the greatest possible privacy violation and should not even be a legal feature.

you don’t have to use it.

On windows, “its optional” means somthing diffrent than on linux.

On linux a feature like this is just a command or a toggle switch in the settings.

Its admittedly a neat concept, I use OBS for this verry reason, to capture moments where I didnt think to press “record” beforehand. An (unprivlaged, no internet access) userland foreground app with “start/stop/delete past hour” buttons. All from the easy to understand from a glance taskbar icon.

Sadly, we only got a few of these safety features later on because like software, people will also refuse to buy a car without seatbelts or working breaks.

People are saying “no!” now so they dont have to say no later when its much harder to say no (when its in your home, on your pc). Microsoft plugs their ears when their customers say “it’s unsafe” and “no means no” because they want you to partake in this transaction with them reguardless of if you do.

An OS really shouldn’t be “interesting” it should be boring, just work and be secure.

This was their stance 2 months ago:

https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/windows-11/turns-out-you-wont-be-able-to-uninstall-windows-11s-recall-feature-after-all

I don’t think that would have changed if not for the backlash Microsoft has received for it.

Now, supposedly it’s optional and off by default, but that could change again anytime…

It will be likely installed even if disabled, so your eventual malware attacker can enable it and live off the land instead of installing a key/screen that your antivirus might catch.

They disabled it by default after shipping it as a security nightmare in preview builds.

You can’t add security after the fact. If it isn’t planned out with security as a primary design goal months before you write a line of code, it will never be secure.

Ignore the luddites, this will be a very important can’t-live-without feature in the years to come. Once the privacy issues are worked through, and yes, luddites, they can and will be worked through, this will be a differentiating feature that every other OS plays catch up to. It already exists in some tools like ssh playbacks.