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Microsoft to delay release of Recall AI feature on security concerns

reuters.com

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Re: Microsoft to delay release of Recall AI feature on security concerns

#151
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From all three major OS vendors on the consumer market, Microsoft is still the one that pushes more C and C++ into production on their OS, in detriment of .NET, despite all the security discussions. All the efforts from other teams to have .NET reach Swift, Java, Kotlin levels of adoption on Windows, have always hit a wall against WinDev culture. Also the 90's spirit from features over security hasn't yet gone away f…

My personal feelings aside, Microsoft is Too Big to Suck like this, regarding security and privacy. At this point, their culture is a national security liability. We have seen some recent efforts, but how does one right such a large ship? https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/14/brad_smith_microsoft_... https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/3/24119787/microsoft-cloud-e...

Your post could've been written in 2004, when Microsoft was pinky swearing it was gonna refocus on security-first development, starting with XP SP2

Re: Microsoft to delay release of Recall AI feature on security concerns

#152
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My takeaway is that Microsoft has been trying to boil the frog, but slipped and turned the temperature up too quickly. They're retreating for now, but make no mistake that Recall will slowly trickle back into Windows under another name. Every major power broker wants something like Recall to become the norm - bosses to spy on their employees, governments to spy on their citizens/enemies, and tech CEO's to collect tra…

This is a very cynical take. I've not seen anything to make me think this feature is intended for surveillance as opposed to personal utility. The personal utility benefits are very clear to me - the problem is the ease with which malicious attackers might steal the data (if they can breach the system).

I cant fathom someone writing this and not doing so in bad faith.

Re: Microsoft to delay release of Recall AI feature on security concerns

#153

This is only the beginning of AI-centric offerings that were oversold and will be delayed or quietly abandoned. LLMs are nice for simple things, but they’ve already reached their limits. No amount of data will solve the iteration and complexity problems.

Wait how do we know that they’ve reached their limits?

Re: Microsoft to delay release of Recall AI feature on security concerns

#154
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite true: The other huge group of customers is simply gamers.

Genuinely asking: is that huge in terms of their install base or revenue, or is that huge in terms of PR ramifications (like, "vocal minority" type of deal)? In my younger days I'd've had a heavily skewed pro-gamer and pro-authority-of-the-gamer-rabble viewpoint, but now at this phase of my life I can't help but feel the majority of the places I see Windows are all in business and education contexts (so just business…

Was "gamer-rabble" the word of the day?

Re: Microsoft to delay release of Recall AI feature on security concerns

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal feelings aside, Microsoft is Too Big to Suck like this, regarding security and privacy. At this point, their culture is a national security liability. We have seen some recent efforts, but how does one right such a large ship? https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/14/brad_smith_microsoft_... https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/3/24119787/microsoft-cloud-e...

Your post could've been written in 2004, when Microsoft was pinky swearing it was gonna refocus on security-first development, starting with XP SP2

To be a bit fair, Windows security has gone from a laughing stock in 2004, to having Windows Defender in the 2020s. I ain't no city slickin' infosec guy, but Defender appears to be state of the art end point protection today.

They can figure this stuff out sometimes, right?

How did they get from Windows/AVG/ESET to Windows Defender, and how can they make that happen on Azure?

Re: Microsoft to delay release of Recall AI feature on security concerns

#157
post #55

This is confusing and vague to me, which I believe is exactly the intent. It focuses on security, reiterates that security is their top priority (and we know that this is untrue). What were the security problems? They don't even allude to the existence or detection of any specific security problems. It sounds to me like they're figuring out a new marketing approach, or they're softening the blow by "listening to user…

My takeaway is that Microsoft has been trying to boil the frog, but slipped and turned the temperature up too quickly. They're retreating for now, but make no mistake that Recall will slowly trickle back into Windows under another name. Every major power broker wants something like Recall to become the norm - bosses to spy on their employees, governments to spy on their citizens/enemies, and tech CEO's to collect tra…

> Every major power broker wants something like Recall to become the norm - bosses to spy on their employees...

Isn't that already the norm, or at least very very common? It's just a 3rd party package totally focused on surveillance, not built into the OS and used for some user-accessible features.

> ...governments to spy on their citizens/enemies, and tech CEO's to collect training data for AI and target more ads at end users.

These applications would be novel, at least on a widespread basis in Western liberal democracies.

Re: Microsoft to delay release of Recall AI feature on security concerns

#158
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From all three major OS vendors on the consumer market, Microsoft is still the one that pushes more C and C++ into production on their OS, in detriment of .NET, despite all the security discussions. All the efforts from other teams to have .NET reach Swift, Java, Kotlin levels of adoption on Windows, have always hit a wall against WinDev culture. Also the 90's spirit from features over security hasn't yet gone away f…

My personal feelings aside, Microsoft is Too Big to Suck like this, regarding security and privacy. At this point, their culture is a national security liability. We have seen some recent efforts, but how does one right such a large ship? https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/14/brad_smith_microsoft_... https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/3/24119787/microsoft-cloud-e...

The same way as .NET FOSS, MS <3 Linux and such happened, by having a captain on the bridge that actually cares to make it happen, not sure if that is still Satya though.

Re: Microsoft to delay release of Recall AI feature on security concerns

#159

I'm impressed that Microsoft seems to be listening to the tech community - now if only they would address telemetry I'm back in!

I work on dev tools at my company. Telemetry really helps a ton to figure out if you're prioritizing the right things and if changes that you made are really for the better

Re: Microsoft to delay release of Recall AI feature on security concerns

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal feelings aside, Microsoft is Too Big to Suck like this, regarding security and privacy. At this point, their culture is a national security liability. We have seen some recent efforts, but how does one right such a large ship? https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/14/brad_smith_microsoft_... https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/3/24119787/microsoft-cloud-e...

Your post could've been written in 2004, when Microsoft was pinky swearing it was gonna refocus on security-first development, starting with XP SP2

They did improve their story, with SAL exactly introduced for XP SP2, and having for many years having one of the few C++ standard libraries with bounds checking enabled by default in debug builds.

However that was it, WinDev fought against Longhorn, Office folks redid the .NET ideas in COM for Vista, and so on.

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