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Windows 11 adds AI agent that runs in background with access to personal folders

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Re: Windows 11 adds AI agent that runs in background with access to personal folders

#151
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's hilariously tone deaf that travel booking and shopping are the two examples of "agentic" AI that keep popping up.

The main reason I shop online is the joy of hitting that Buy button every now and then for something I want. I don’t want some dumb bot doing that for me (and getting the wrong thing 2/3 of the times) The real chore is having to go to the store to get groceries, doing laundry, pairing socks etc … but solving any of that would require more than just bullshit LLM capabilities.

Every time I hit a "buy" button it brings nothing but horrible anxiety over what future bullshit I'll have to deal with, either because the product will be garbage or the seller will be garbage. And that's after doing an hour of more research for every god damn thing.

Getting groceries is practically relaxing at this point

Re: Windows 11 adds AI agent that runs in background with access to personal folders

#152
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> shown they don't respect the user when they force shutdown for system updates Are you familiar with the prior state of things that explicitly motivated this change?

The amount of money lost when millions of small restaurants and other retail shops suddenly become unable to accept customer payments for an unknown amount of time because Microsoft thinks Windows should force update during rush hour rather than allowing the computer owner to wait until closing time, would seem to be far greater than the amount of money lost with once-in-10-years WannaCry attacks

Don't you get out of forced updates if you set yourself regural update point ? (e.g. every Sunday night)

Most users, for better or worse, don't want any update ever, unless they wish for a specific feature. We're at a state where there's only once-in-10-years massive attacks exactly because of mandatory security updates that will be forced on the user if they have no intention to install it ever.

Re: Windows 11 adds AI agent that runs in background with access to personal folders

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Satya had been a bright spot in Microsoft What? How? From a user's perspective, everything has gotten steadily worse under his reign. Solitaire is now a subscription service. I long for the halcyon days of Windows 8.

Everything before CoPilot was pretty standard CEO stuff. The real change was internally. Satya is well-known for eradicating the "Art of War" environment and bringing workers together. He also fully embraced open-source (Balmer hated OSS) and R&D has continued to innovate. (Still boggles the mind that F# exists and is awesome) Prior to CoPilot, my only beef was that Azure needs a ground up re-architecture. They bolte…

Given the option, I always favour Azure over AWS or GCP.

AWS is a complexity maze, whereas GCP seems Google only does the minimum and one can only talk to bots.

Re: Windows 11 adds AI agent that runs in background with access to personal folders

#156

Microsoft has gone full-blown evil corporation again. No customer validation on any of the AI cruft. No full OPT OUT. Office products are bastardized with copilot buttons everywhere. I've been a Windows user from day one and I now see a future without it. Satya had been a bright spot in Microsoft, but this blind lust for AI, especially in bed with Altman who is pure con artist, is unforgivable. Some of the investment…

Meanwhile have you used the latest Excel for Mac?

1. Open a sheet. Type anything.

2. Hide Excel (Cmd+H).

3. Bring Excel forth.

4. Stare at a blank screen where your grid should be for anywhere from 0.5 to 3 seconds.

Re: Windows 11 adds AI agent that runs in background with access to personal folders

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are describing Windows 11 LTSC which is a product that exists because Microsoft knows people want to turn this crap off. It is of course only available in volume licensing to keep it away from normal users. Only businesses get to control their computers.

which shows that only businesses care about that stuff. normal people don't give a fuck, they actually like the things HN bitches about - online account, data storage and services

Word on the ground is this is turning around

Re: Windows 11 adds AI agent that runs in background with access to personal folders

#158

Microsoft has gone full-blown evil corporation again. No customer validation on any of the AI cruft. No full OPT OUT. Office products are bastardized with copilot buttons everywhere. I've been a Windows user from day one and I now see a future without it. Satya had been a bright spot in Microsoft, but this blind lust for AI, especially in bed with Altman who is pure con artist, is unforgivable. Some of the investment…

"again"? What they did in the past seems absolutely neighbourly compared to what they're doing now.

Get a VM of Windows 9x/2k/XP to experience what "good Microsoft" was like.

Re: Windows 11 adds AI agent that runs in background with access to personal folders

#159

>For example, if you ask ChatGPT’s Agent to book a travel, it’ll open Chromium on Linux in an Azure container, search the query, visit different websites, navigate each page and book a flight ticket using your saved credentials. An AI Agent tries to mimic a human, and it can perform tasks on your behalf while you sit back and relax. Big tech has repeatedly shown that they are not good stewards of end users' privacy a…

Ironically, Microsoft's slogan in the 90s was "where do you want to go today?"

These days, it's more like "where do we want to make you go today?"

Re: Windows 11 adds AI agent that runs in background with access to personal folders

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you aware that MS already sells an operating system that can install patches without rebooting? Are you also aware that Linux can do the same? Why can't a supposedly mature 40 year old operating system do the same? Do you have any concept of the number of man-hours it would save globally? The amount of lost work? The impact on patching compliance and security? My guess is they don't actually believe they have any…

every week when I login into my Ubuntu with unattended updates enabled I see this: "system restart required". the hot patch feature you mentioned is paid

On Ubuntu, when this message is shown, most of the updates except the kernel are already applied so you are mostly pretty secure. And you can choose when that will happen. And it’s just a normal reboot.

On Windows, IIRC, you are blocked during the whole update process which can take several minutes.

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