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Microsoft Recall is now an explorer.exe dependency

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Re: Microsoft Recall is now an explorer.exe dependency

#221

Post by giancarlostoro »

victor9000 wrote: post #50
giancarlostoro wrote: post #12

Every single day I am given more reasons never to use Windows again. Glad I moved to Linux early this year. My next desktop will likely be a System76 to ensure Microsoft doesn't get a cut from my next purchase, and it supports a business that supports Linux.

Having followed the same path, you won't regret it. I jumped ship 15 years ago after starting off my career as a C# dev and I never looked back. Linux makes it easy for you to be a developer, while other platforms fight you every step of the way. You'll eventually get into situations where you need to update something manually or rollback a dependecy, but it will be possible, and you'll find bug tickets describing th…

I am still a C# developer :) I just use Linux for my personal devices, and with a license for JetBrains, I use their Rider IDE. While not perfect, it is just good enough for my use case.

Re: Microsoft Recall is now an explorer.exe dependency

#222

Post by DrammBA »

GrayShade wrote: post #38

> To those that arrive here from any Youtube or Twitter posts, please know that disabling Recall via DISM works fine, and preserves the modern File Explorer (though some might consider this an anti-feature). CBS correctly disables it, and the disablement is preserved through reboots, just like with any other feature.

Also previous comment about the tool being updated:

> the latest commit to the draft PR now does the following. It leaves Recall enabled, but then it disables it on the first run. During my testing, it kept the explorer look intact

Re: Microsoft Recall is now an explorer.exe dependency

#223

Post by sub7 »

I just spent an hour and a half getting my friend's email account untied from my local Windows account after she typed it into Windows Store once.

Involved having to remove all kinds of system files and many registry keys, some that did not contain the email string at all, but encrypted versions of it (IdentityCRL)

This spyware is out of control. The worst part is they do all this and all their telemetry based products are still useless Clippy garbage that helps absolutely nobody do anything better or faster.

Re: Microsoft Recall is now an explorer.exe dependency

#224

Post by sub7 »

brink wrote: post #3

Does anyone know any good "debloat" scripts to disable all these modern features of Windows 11 and bring me back to something that resembles the Windows I grew up with? I'm having a hard time keeping track of all of the registry keys and config settings I need to update to keep this crap at bay.

O&O ShutUp is the first thing to install on every windows system, followed by netlimiter

Re: Microsoft Recall is now an explorer.exe dependency

#225

Post by hulitu »

eksu wrote: post #178
KTibow wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you say that it uses OpenAI models? From what I understand right now it only has search functionality, which could be easily done with a local embedding model (similar to the open-weights CLIP) and possibly OCR.

No need for OCR as it has access to the compositor as they explained at the Build conference.

> No need for OCR as it has access to the compositor

Learning from past mistakes was never one of Microsoft's strong points. /s

Re: Microsoft Recall is now an explorer.exe dependency

#226

Post by LinuxBender »

thomasahle wrote: post #52

For those who don't know, Microsoft Recall is a system that screenshots what you do every few seconds, and uses OpenAI's vision api to allow search on eveything you did in the past. There's an article from Sep 27th where they promise you'll be able to uninstall Recall: https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/27/24255721/microsoft-window... , not sure what that means for this explorer.exe dependency.

O&O's "ShutUp10" [1] used to be able to disable as apposed to remove this as of July 16th. Did they change it so it can't be disabled any more? If so is there a way to put an arrow in it's knee such as mounting a ram disk overlay where it stores data or creating a scheduled task that runs in the same security scope to truncate files?

[1] - https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

Re: Microsoft Recall is now an explorer.exe dependency

#227

Post by smileybarry »

blibble wrote: post #198
smileybarry wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows Recall doesn’t use OpenAI or any online API. The indexing and OCR is done by a local model, in a Secure Enclave powered by VBS and encrypted with the system TPM. AKA: a virtualization-separated process with storage inaccessible to the OS (all lookup etc. is done over RPC). Source: https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2024/09/27/updat...

given Microsoft's excellent security record how long do you think that'll take to break into? an hour? maybe two?

Do you hold Apple Intelligence's local LLM to the same standard?

Apple Intelligence will index all of your messages, app data, etc. into a queryable index. That will also obviously reside on disk somewhere, encrypted. And it could be just as exfiltratable as your hypothetical. (Because both cases require compromising the host computer)

Re: Microsoft Recall is now an explorer.exe dependency

#228

Post by great_kraken »

joshdavham wrote: post #4

I'm not a windows user myself, but I'm curious what you windows users think about this.

I'll just keep disabling everything I don't like insofar as it's possible. I'm focusing on pragmatism. I've used Linux on the desktop in the past, and the amount of work required to make things keep running smoothly and the amount of things I can't run natively outweigh the feel-good benefits of less data collection. It's vastly more convenient to know my computer will be working every day, and I can run whatever Windows-targeted software I want without any hassle. Whatever I need for development can be run on WSL with minimal effort as well (occasionally WSL will have minor issues, but it's infrequent and the solutions are pretty easy to find).

None of this is to insult anybody who prioritizes things differently, or anybody who feels more strongly about how much of a problem the stuff that MS does is. I just view it as one of the many things that it's easier not to worry too much about in order for things to go more smoothly.

Re: Microsoft Recall is now an explorer.exe dependency

#229

Post by layer8 »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #96
layer8 wrote: post #5

If this is a reliable way to revert Explorer back to the non-ribbon version, I hope they’ll keep this in.

> revert Explorer back to the non-ribbon version Don't you mean to the ribbon-UI version? Explorer switched from having a traditional menubar with a text-only context-sensitive toolbar (as in Vista and 7) to using the ribbon in Windows 8 and Windows 10; Windows 11 had the new dumbed-down explorer UI design since day-one (though in earlier builds of Win11 the ribbon UI could still be restored in Windows 11 using tweak…

I wasn’t really familiar with the Windows 11 changes. I’m still on Windows 10 and use Ribbon Disabler, and also hide the toolbar by patching an XML resource in shellstyle.dll (IIRC). Ideally I’d want a no-context-sensitivity “just normal menus” version.

Re: Microsoft Recall is now an explorer.exe dependency

#230

Post by layer8 »

antisthenes wrote: post #40
layer8 wrote: post #5

If this is a reliable way to revert Explorer back to the non-ribbon version, I hope they’ll keep this in.

Yes, install Windows 10 LTSC, use it until end of support, then switch to Linux. There are no new features in W11 that are worth enduring the absolute bloated spyware-ridden POS that it is.

Windows 10 LTSC is either too old (2016?) or only lasts until 2027. It’s not worth it. Linux is fine for CLI use, but the GUI doesn’t cut it for me, not to speak of the many Windows software and drivers that won’t work or will be awkward to use. There is no good solution, but ditching Windows entirely is still the worse (non-)solution for me.
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