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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

#471

Post by zombot »

pjmlp wrote: post #397
masfoobar wrote: post #376

Glad I am off Windows (officially) I've been a Linux user since 2006-7 but still had a Windows PC around just incase I needed it. The odd games or in relation to work. Windows 11 was just sloooow. It would take 5-20 seconds to load some of my popular programs and I never understood why. I am open to accepting there could be other factors at play rather than claiming "It was Windows" but considering all the other fluf…

The irony, is that it suffices Microsoft to turn WSL[0] into a more out of the box experience, running a Windows like desktop environment, to have that as the product most OEMs will actually bother to sell. Similar to Chromebooks, and Android tablets with keyboard, versus having anyone selling any GNU/Linux hardware at PC stores, past the oldie netbooks wave. [0] - https://github.com/microsoft/azurelinux

No. WSL is only half a Linux and even if it weren't, the ballast of the toxic Windoze waste that comes with it makes it unbearable.

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

#473

Post by toyg »

johnisgood wrote: post #413
pjmlp wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I do not know what is up with people and their aversion to help people be better (or at the very least more useful) at their job. Not just in IT, but even hard / physical labor-type jobs or w/e.

In a culture obsessed with individual success, helping someone else does not have any obvious upside, but plenty of clear downsides - what if he gets so good that I look worse in comparison? What if he stays the same and I look like a bad mentor? Why would I sacrifice my time for no practical reward? Etc etc.

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

#474

Post by the_other »

dansmith1919 wrote: post #325
int_19h wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Keep them?? But how else would you keep devs working hard if there are no mass layoffs to be afraid of all the time??

Get them working on interesting projects building things customers/users/peers will value.

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

#475

Post by dominicrose »

pjmlp wrote: post #397
masfoobar wrote: post #376

Glad I am off Windows (officially) I've been a Linux user since 2006-7 but still had a Windows PC around just incase I needed it. The odd games or in relation to work. Windows 11 was just sloooow. It would take 5-20 seconds to load some of my popular programs and I never understood why. I am open to accepting there could be other factors at play rather than claiming "It was Windows" but considering all the other fluf…

The irony, is that it suffices Microsoft to turn WSL[0] into a more out of the box experience, running a Windows like desktop environment, to have that as the product most OEMs will actually bother to sell. Similar to Chromebooks, and Android tablets with keyboard, versus having anyone selling any GNU/Linux hardware at PC stores, past the oldie netbooks wave. [0] - https://github.com/microsoft/azurelinux

I use WSL because I don't have the option to ditch Windows completely at work.

But here's an example of something that doesn't work well with WSL: having a git repository in Ubuntu (WSL) and reading/modifying it from Sublime Merge on Windows.

I'm forced to rely on the terminal git commands or on VS Code (because it can use a WSL back-end) and it's not ideal to be forced to a couple of options.

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

#476

Post by hackinthebochs »

kbrkbr wrote: post #429
ChicagoDave wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is not about morality. It’s about ROI focus and that OpenAI can’t and won’t ever return anything remotely close to what’s been invested. Adult content is not getting them closer to profitability. And if anyone believes the AGI hyperbole, oh boy I have a bridge and a mountain to sell. LLM tech will never lead to AGI. You need a tech that mimics synapses. It doesn’t exist.

I have also a hard time understanding how AGI will magically appear. LLMs have their name for a reason: they model human language (output given an input) from human text (and other artifacts). And now the idea seems to be that when we do more of it, or make it even larger, it will stop to be a model of human language generation? Or that human language generation is all there is to AGI? I wish someone could explain th…

LLMs aren't language models, but are a general purpose computing paradigm. LLMs are circuit builders, the converged parameters define pathways through the architecture that pick out specific programs. Or as Karpathy puts it, LLMs are a differentiable computer[1]. Training LLMs discovers programs that well reproduce the input sequence. Roughly the same architecture can generate passable images, music, or even video.

It's not that language generation is all there is to AGI, but that to sufficiently model text that is about the wide range of human experiences, we need to model those experiences. LLMs model the world to varying degrees, and perhaps in the limit of unbounded training data, they can model the human's perspective in it as well.

[1] https://x.com/karpathy/status/1582807367988654081

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

#477

Post by rvba »

pjmlp wrote: post #241
torginus wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the funniest thing, considering it lacks 90% of the features included freeware text editors written in some student's spare time back in the 90s. It's basically a fancy textbox. Microsoft's own people can't use the toolkits they write, as evidenced by the React component in the start menu(!)

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.

Do they hire from US universities?

I thought most work is outsourced now.

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

#478

Post by m4rtink »

vivzkestrel wrote: post #113
frfl wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're just describing a Linux distribution[1]. With the added benefit of being 0x the price. [1]: Assuming you're not married to some Windows only software that you can't get working using Proton/Wine, or don't want to run a Windows VM.

primary use case: gaming. needs to support everything from 90s to cutting edge modern games without hiccups

So not modern Windows, right ? ;-)

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

#479

Post by WillAdams »

If this is added, why can't one upload files into Copilot itself?

First off, it is now necessary to go into "Copilot Pages" mode, second, one can only work with 20 files at a time, and most egregiously, after a couple of hundred files, it starts generating an error and will not accept further files for uploading.

Usually, coming back the next day has things working again, but not today....

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

#480

Post by johnisgood »

toyg wrote: post #473
johnisgood wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not know what is up with people and their aversion to help people be better (or at the very least more useful) at their job. Not just in IT, but even hard / physical labor-type jobs or w/e.

In a culture obsessed with individual success, helping someone else does not have any obvious upside, but plenty of clear downsides - what if he gets so good that I look worse in comparison? What if he stays the same and I look like a bad mentor? Why would I sacrifice my time for no practical reward? Etc etc.

Yeah I understand that and I was thinking the same things, but it honestly sucks. I have been in a position where I was supposed to be taught the work on the spot but instead they expected me to know everything and do what I have never done before and it is such a bad experience. :/
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