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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

#481

Post by close04 »

npteljes wrote: post #309
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…

Microsoft was never not a full-blown evil corporation. What they had, at their peak, is some software that worked well. In the background, same evil corporation as ever. I can't even write a top example why. Just take a glance at the documentation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft

There was a time when it looked like they were less "evil". There was a period punctuated by less anticompetitive behavior, embracing open source, no significant user-hostile moves, etc. and naively it did look like they are focused on the product not on abusing competitors or users. Can't say if this was a step in a carefully crafted plan, or just made business sense to be like this at the time. But Microsoft did look less evil for a brief time.

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

#482

Post by bluescrn »

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.

Yet Apple can find decent developers to work with their Apple-specific tools+tech.

Yeah, there's been complaints about some Apple's old polish and consistency being lost, but it's usually very nitpicky stuff, nothing compared to the complaints about Win11.

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

#483

Post by toyg »

Neil44 wrote: post #440
bondarchuk wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was WordPad, right? Except it also loaded instantly, probably.

Wordpad was good for some stuff, I forget what, iirc it loaded in 0.1 seconds vs 0.01 for notepad.exe

> Wordpad was good for some stuff, I forget what

It was a proper WYSIWYG editor working with rich text, effectively a poor man's Word.

Microsoft should have turned it into a markdown editor, instead of killing it.

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

#484

Post by gavinward »

bux93 wrote: post #341
luke727 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They put a copilot button in Outlook. Which, when ask, gladly confesses it doesn't have access to your mail or calendar, completely negating any value it could possibly have.

The same with the AI thing Meta added to Whatsapp. After spending a while trying to search for a message whose exact wording I couldn't remember, but whose content was easily described, I thought I'd give the bot a try. Turns out it doesn't have access to my messages.

I expect MS will get there long before Meta does given they don't have the encryption issue to contend with.

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

#485

Post by mosura »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #389
hnlmorg wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "again"? What they did in the past seems absolutely neighbourly compared to what they're doing now. As someone who lived through Microsoft’s actions in the 90s, I really don’t agree with your sentiment there. There’s a reason many of us old greybeards still refuse to use anything MS even 30 years later.

The abomination that was IE6 - it poisoned the internet at the time with developers designing specifically for it and its random bullshit bugs. The number of admin tools (e.g. SAN interface) that specifically required IE6 to run ActiveX or some monstrosity.

This is the kind of opinion you can only hold if you never had to develop for Netscape.

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

#486

Post by zwolbers »

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…

What's frustrating is there's a half decent operating system underneath all of this crap. I don't know how much can be attributed to a corporate license, or if our IT department is just working miracles, but on my work laptop there's no bloatware, no spyware, and it boots and loads programs quickly (for Windows).

I have no intention of moving away from Linux on my machines, but this is the most I've enjoyed Windows since 7 (or maybe even XP).

Then I try to use my dad's computer and I want a douse it and myself with bleach.

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

#487

Post by npteljes »

close04 wrote: post #481
npteljes wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft was never not a full-blown evil corporation. What they had, at their peak, is some software that worked well. In the background, same evil corporation as ever. I can't even write a top example why. Just take a glance at the documentation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft

There was a time when it looked like they were less "evil". There was a period punctuated by less anticompetitive behavior, embracing open source, no significant user-hostile moves, etc. and naively it did look like they are focused on the product not on abusing competitors or users. Can't say if this was a step in a carefully crafted plan, or just made business sense to be like this at the time. But Microsoft did lo…

Looks-wise, I agree, the "MS heart Linux" era was better than the current one.

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

#488

Post by larrybud »

Is ANYONE reading the article or going to the source prior to posting with outrage? Source: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/experimental-age... (the original article is not available at the moment due to the ongoing Cloudfare outage)

What I see is that the AI agent is an optional, experimental off-by-default service that is configured to only have access to the folders you specifically choose.

From the MS article: "An agent workspace is a separate, contained space in Windows where you can grant agents access to your apps and files so they can complete tasks for you in the background while you continue to use your device. Each agent operates using its own account, distinct from your personal user account. This dedicated agent account establishes clear boundaries between agent activity and your own, enabling scoped authorization and runtime isolation. As a result, you can delegate tasks to agents while retaining full control, visibility into agent actions, and the ability to manage access at any time.

Agents typically get access to known folders or specific shared folders, and you can see this reflected in the folder’s access control settings. Each agent has its own workspace and its own permissions—what one agent can access doesn’t automatically apply to others.

[..]

Agent workspace is only enabled when you toggle on the experimental agentic feature setting. The feature is off by default."

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

#489

Post by The_President »

mapontosevenths wrote: post #136
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?

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…

I'd wager further, is they've by this point long since bled out their top talent. Pretty soon that motor is going to run out of oil.

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

#490

Post by [deleted] »

eimrine wrote: post #443
OsrsNeedsf2P wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you ever keep private thoughts on your PC? That's asking for trouble

European attitude has such a thing as an unthinkable thoughts. Non-European cultures can think in a lot of ways which is impossible for people of European culture. Let's just agree that free computing is good and solves this issue but non-FOSS spyware makes humans into slippery slope heading to dumb and obeyish minds. If I am incorrect then please clarify what kinds of troubles are waiting for somebody storing "illeg…

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