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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

#351

Post by keyringlight »

internet_points wrote: post #282
AlexandrB wrote: post #129

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.

> I long for the halcyon days of Windows 8. That's a phrase I would never have thought I'd see. I remember Windows 8 as being generally despised when it first came out.

On the UI side of things the trouble with 8 was the push towards touch as the latest shiny object to chase, coming a few years into the boom of smartphones/tablets. The start menu was full screen with no option and many OS applications were either full screen only or by default until you clicked a new title bar button. The 8.1 release pulled back from a lot of that.

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

#352

Post by pjmlp »

deafpolygon wrote: post #349
pjmlp wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can, the problem is that apparently they aren't able to hire people nowadays with Win32 development experience, so they get interns that have grown in US universities with macOS and Linux, which sundenly have a Win32 developer role. That is how you end up with web garbage in what was supposed to be native code, or .NET. I think this is also a reason why WinUI efforts went down the drain.

> this is also a reason why WinUI efforts went down the drain. That may be, but there is PLENTY of people with the expertise to develop WinUI apps -- IMO, the glaring problem would be that Microsoft can't get their head straight on which UI to support in the first place!

Win32, Windows Forms, WPF, even MFC, I do agree.

WinUI, only Microsoft employees on the Windows team, and fools that aren't aware of all the WinRT tooling reboots since Windows 8 was introduced, buying into WinUI marketing of how great it is.

As one of the fools that thought WinRT was a great idea, what .NET 1.0 should have been, I doubt there are many of those left.

WPF wasn't brought back into active status at BUILD 2024 by accident.

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

#353

Post by Draiken »

dombili wrote: post #293
krige wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but linux gaming absolutely does not support "support everything from 90s to cutting edge modern games without hiccups" I'm sure for some users it's acceptable, solid even, but I know several people, including myself, that keep hitting edge cases and invisible walls when on Windows these games "just work". And no, it's not about kernel anti-cheats or any other DRM.

Agreed and it's frustrating that people don't admit this. I recently started dual booting Linux again and tried both Arch and CachyOS. Former with Hyprland, the latter with Gnome just to see how well the games run. I knew going in that tiling window managers don't behave well with games and that was indeed the case. With Gnome, even some native games made by Valve had terrible performance issues where I have none on…

I use i3wm and I have this issue with escaping mouse in CS2. I thought about using gamescope but never did. You mention you found a solution so would you be kind enough to share it?

That would definitely save me part of that hour you lost :) But honestly, I'd trade that hour on linux a thousand times to not have to close another notification from Windows about this amazing new game they have for me to install. And I don't even have Windows 11.

Linux has quirks, of course, but every OS has them. People like to dismiss quirks on Windows because they're used to it, but a lot of the time they're worse than Linux's quirks.

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

#354

Post by marvinblum »

On the plus side, this has prompted many people to finally switch to Linux. Even people I would never have thought would consider it are now thinking about it, or have already moved over. Companies are also recognising the issues with Microsoft.

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

#355

Post by embedding-shape »

jstanley wrote: post #343
fsflover wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want years, just choose Debian.

In my experience the problem with Debian is that sooner or later you're bound to want to use something that is only 5 years old and therefore not included yet, so you end up having to install it from source or something else, but something doesn't quite work right so you have to hack it one way or another, and over time all this cruft adds up and you end up with a broken system caused precisely because the base distr…

I no longer use Debian, but when I did, I always used Debian Testing, never had any major issues that weren't my own fault, and packages are way more up-to-date. Worth trying if you're in that ecosystem still, and you want later stuff than 1-2 years old softwrae.

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

#357

Post by pjmlp »

int_19h wrote: post #279
pjmlp wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can, the problem is that apparently they aren't able to hire people nowadays with Win32 development experience, so they get interns that have grown in US universities with macOS and Linux, which sundenly have a Win32 developer role. That is how you end up with web garbage in what was supposed to be native code, or .NET. I think this is also a reason why WinUI efforts went down the drain.

They laid off a lot of people with Win32 experience in the past couple of years. If that was really a problem they could just hire some of them back (or, I dunno, keep them in the first place).

Agreed, or I don't know, actually promote internal trainings for the folks that lack the experience.

The problem isn't hiring people that only know macOS/Linux, we always argue about how bad HR hiring processes are in our field.

The problem is apparently the lack of management motivation to bring those peoples up to speed, and is confortable pushing for Web widgets instead.

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

#358

Post by natebc »

jstanley wrote: post #343
fsflover wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want years, just choose Debian.

In my experience the problem with Debian is that sooner or later you're bound to want to use something that is only 5 years old and therefore not included yet, so you end up having to install it from source or something else, but something doesn't quite work right so you have to hack it one way or another, and over time all this cruft adds up and you end up with a broken system caused precisely because the base distr…

brew is a decent compromise between "breaking debian" and running newer stuff and newer versions of things for desktop use at least.

For servers, we just use containers.

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

#359

Post by dspillett »

luke727 wrote: post #150
ChicagoDave wrote: post #127

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…

> Office products are bastardized with copilot buttons everywhere. They put copilot in notepad. NOTEPAD.

> They put copilot in notepad. NOTEPAD.

Every time I see a new CoPilot button, or a toast nagging me because I've not clicked any of them and they think I really should want to, a phrase crosses my mind…

“Thank you the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation”

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

#360

Post by keyringlight »

guelo wrote: post #109
tbrownaw wrote: post #85

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?

Security is the catchall excuse for every bad big tech behavior because they know "security" professionals will defend every f-the-user move they pull [1]. Is it improved security when I lost days of work because microsoft (and you apparently) think their patch is more important then my data? Notice, by the way, that security incidents can cost big tech a lot of money but my lost data is no skin off their back. [1] I…

The other angle is that if annoying enough it gets people to make their own workarounds so it works as they want. The real trouble is when it escalates as each side wants to have authority over the other as they each think they know best, and you get things like laptops on standby waking to try and update themselves in a bag. I've been thinking for a while that windows has been going away from a 'personal computer' OS in that it isn't "mine", it's at the mercy of someone else and efforts to fight that aren't worth it long term.
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