Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft's 'Recall' feature can't be uninstalled after all

mashable.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 249 posts

Re: Microsoft's 'Recall' feature can't be uninstalled after all

#161

Post by BallyBrain »

imposterr wrote: post #100
dartharva wrote: post #48

The Enterprise/IoT LTSC versions of Windows 10 with extended support up to 2032 are available with commercial Visual Studio licenses iirc. If you can't somehow get hold of an ISO from your office's IT admin you can always sail the high seas :) You can evaluate it here: https://info.microsoft.com/ww-landing-windows-10-enterprise....

Getting an unverifiable iso for Windows seems like a bigger security risk than Recall tbh. Does MS publish hashes for the LTSC versions to at least let you ensure what you have hasn't been altered?

Internet Archive has a copy https://archive.org/details/en-us_windows_10_iot_enterprise_...

Be sure to check the hash with the link provided in comment from dartharva's. Hint, it checks out.

Re: Microsoft's 'Recall' feature can't be uninstalled after all

#162

Post by ItsBob »

Microsoft shenanigans is the reason I switched recently to a Chromebook (Acer 516 GE 16GB - bought for £400 on EBay) and with minor exceptions it's been really easy.

I am a .NET dev who needs to remote into work via Citrix. I work locally on my own .NET stuff in JetBrains Rider and I can do it on the Chromebook now.

It's not perfect but, damn, it's really close: After installing the Linux Dev Environment I have all the tools I need.

The only issue is that sometimes when I open Rider, the font sizing is off - sometimes it's small, other times it's large. But Ctrl + MouseWheel takes care of it. Once or twice I had to restart the linux VM (right click, Close Linux and it's done) but that's it.

Anyway, the point is that nowadays there is becoming less and less reason to stay on Windows and I think Microsoft knows this too, hence trying to lock you into their ecosystem as much as possible and trying to dangle things in front of you to keep your attention.

But who would have thought that for £400 I can run all my .NET stuff on a Chromebook. Not only that, I switched from a 14700K on Windows to a 1260p running ChromeOS and coding/compiling is just as fast. It's nuts.

Side-note: Windows peaked at 2000...

Re: Microsoft's 'Recall' feature can't be uninstalled after all

#164

Post by jorvi »

varunnrao wrote: post #132
ezst wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wish this were a more accessible path for non-tech people. It should be forbidden to ship PCs with Windows preinstalled, unless the user made it a conscious purchase decision (and offered to choose between several options). I suspect fewer and fewer users would be willing to fork hundreds of bucks for something that's objectively terrible (and only getting worse), tech literacy would only improve as a result. But…

> It should be forbidden to ship PCs with Windows preinstalled, unless the user made it a conscious purchase decision (and offered to choose between several options). I don't know where you're buying PCs but where I'm from there is always an option to buy the PC with FreeDOS at a discount of about ~$20-30 compared to the Windows version. Lately, I also see an increase in Ubuntu computers. > But then you can bet Micro…

> MSFT have spent a lot of time, effort and dev years ensuring that their customers can run their software without breakage and downtime

I don’t know about that, but they have spent a lot of hours making sure you can run .exe’s from 30 years back, which is wildly valuable to slow-moving corporations.

Re: Microsoft's 'Recall' feature can't be uninstalled after all

#165

Post by Gazoche »

hrnnnnnn wrote: post #137
Sol- wrote: post #126

Is that not consistent with how Microsoft always introduced its "features"? Especially all the crap that came since Windows 10/11. First you could still create a local account after there was backlash against cloud-everything, nowadays a local only Windows is quite complex to set up. The Cortana/search bar stuff was also regularly re-enabled or parts of it made non-configurable, with them only occasionally backtracki…

I set up a local only Windows 11 machine recently. 1. Install with throwaway Microsoft account 2. Create new local admin account 3. Use local admin account to delete setup account Not ideal, but not difficult either.

Until the day they remove the option to create a local admin account. Or force you to login into your online account every XX days.

Re: Microsoft's 'Recall' feature can't be uninstalled after all

#166

Post by shirro »

stackghost wrote: post #4

National Defense runs almost entirely on Windows workstations, including "high-side" or classified networks. I can't imagine the powers that be are too thrilled with this feature, and much like the Intel TPM High Assurance bit, I bet there's an undocumented way to remove it.

They won't put this shit in enterprise versions of Windows. Those customers will demand their own spyware.

Given time it will be twisted into a method for profiling consumers and delivering targeted marketing that goes far beyond cookie tracking and search histories. That doesn't work as effectively on a business or government system.

Re: Microsoft's 'Recall' feature can't be uninstalled after all

#167

Post by newdee »

euroderf wrote: post #133
cmcaleer wrote: post #95

Unfortunate. Luckily, Windows itself can be removed. It's incredible how much Microsoft is resting on their laurels in terms of seeing Windows as insurmountable and so consumers must take whatever Microsoft decide to dish out. I would have been totally resigned to this fact a decade ago, but middle-school+ kids these days don't use Windows - they use Chromebooks. A huge minority of them use iPhones. Familiarity with…

Windows+Micro$oft still seems to be the default for big installations, like tens of machines on a LAN needing centralized authentication. What is the state of Mac/Apple for this ? Can it be done ? Can MS be banished from the premises, perhaps traded for a Linux server here & there ?

Macs work well in enterprise and get better with each major release. If you’re referring to a completely air gapped lab environment, then not so much; most of the management functions are designed around having outbound internet access.

Re: Microsoft's 'Recall' feature can't be uninstalled after all

#168

Post by dustypotato »

Why would Microsoft push something that no user wants, is a privacy nightmare, a PR disaster, entails additional costs for them in storage, network and compute?

It's to train a multimodal AI model on what each employee role is doing and to replace employees. Because a lot of our jobs are looking at one set of windows and typing/clicking on another set.

Re: Microsoft's 'Recall' feature can't be uninstalled after all

#169

Post by nolist_policy »

varunnrao wrote: post #132
ezst wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wish this were a more accessible path for non-tech people. It should be forbidden to ship PCs with Windows preinstalled, unless the user made it a conscious purchase decision (and offered to choose between several options). I suspect fewer and fewer users would be willing to fork hundreds of bucks for something that's objectively terrible (and only getting worse), tech literacy would only improve as a result. But…

> It should be forbidden to ship PCs with Windows preinstalled, unless the user made it a conscious purchase decision (and offered to choose between several options). I don't know where you're buying PCs but where I'm from there is always an option to buy the PC with FreeDOS at a discount of about ~$20-30 compared to the Windows version. Lately, I also see an increase in Ubuntu computers. > But then you can bet Micro…

Web browsers are remarkably backwards compatible as well. 20 year old websites continue to work fine.

The only difference is that the web platform wasn't very capable 20 years ago.

Re: Microsoft's 'Recall' feature can't be uninstalled after all

#170

Post by nolist_policy »

hrnnnnnn wrote: post #137
Sol- wrote: post #126

Is that not consistent with how Microsoft always introduced its "features"? Especially all the crap that came since Windows 10/11. First you could still create a local account after there was backlash against cloud-everything, nowadays a local only Windows is quite complex to set up. The Cortana/search bar stuff was also regularly re-enabled or parts of it made non-configurable, with them only occasionally backtracki…

I set up a local only Windows 11 machine recently. 1. Install with throwaway Microsoft account 2. Create new local admin account 3. Use local admin account to delete setup account Not ideal, but not difficult either.

Doesn't sound like a supported configuration to me. Wouldn't surprise me if it breaks one day.
Post reply on HN