Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A new Copilot key to kick off the year of AI-powered Windows PCs

blogs.windows.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 88 posts

Re: A new Copilot key to kick off the year of AI-powered Windows PCs

#61

Post by Xeamek »

jacquesm wrote: post #36
naikrovek wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As if. You may find it difficult to believe, but the people who work at Microsoft are people just like you. They have goals and get caught up in the whims of management, who are also people who get caught up in the whims of various things at various times.

No, sorry. If you work for Microsoft you've lost me. That takes a departure from any kind of ethics. I'm fine with it, people want to get paid. But you do this sort of thing if you don't care about the world of software or where it is headed. This isn't exclusive to Microsoft, but it definitely applies to them.

Why?

Re: A new Copilot key to kick off the year of AI-powered Windows PCs

#62

Post by shdon »

ryanklee wrote: post #58
shdon wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My question wasn't about the key per se (which is just a trigger for Copilot, it seems), but about what Copilot itself brings. Can it do any of the stuff you describe?

I'm addressing your particular point about not seeing any use for this in the OS. I disagree. If there is a flexible layer that can consume and correlate context, there are tons of use cases

Then indeed there might be. I'm not saying AI is useless in general, even though it might be totally irrelevant to my personal workflow. But my question is still what Copilot brings. Does it do what you describe? If not, what does it do?

Re: A new Copilot key to kick off the year of AI-powered Windows PCs

#63

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

Hamuko wrote: post #52
pzmarzly wrote: post #11

MS has previously been experimenting with replacing Right Windows and Context keys (with Office and Emoji keys): https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/11/20909475/microsoft-offic... Copilot key doesn't sound all that useful, but still will be much better than Office key

The Office key is apparently just CTRL + SHIFT + ALT + WIN, as Office Key + W is advertised to open Word and Office Key + L is advertised to open LinkedIn, but you can perform both of those actions in plain Windows by just using CTRL + SHIFT + ALT + WIN + W and CTRL + SHIFT + ALT + WIN + L respectively. https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/15/23874798/microsoft-window...

I'm well aware since I wanted to bind tgose shortcuts and of course windows has crap there too

Re: A new Copilot key to kick off the year of AI-powered Windows PCs

#64

Post by xg15 »

naikrovek wrote: post #31
xg15 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with very good intentions. As if.

> As if. You may find it difficult to believe, but the people who work at Microsoft are people just like you. They have goals and get caught up in the whims of management, who are also people who get caught up in the whims of various things at various times.

The employees at Microsoft, sure. Microsoft-the-company, i.e. the board and management? Nope. Or otherwise, explain to me where the myriads of nagscreens, the push for locked, hardwired bootloaders, the embrace/extend/extinguish stance and the general anticompetitive behaviour comes from. (Not even starting with all the tracking).

Re: A new Copilot key to kick off the year of AI-powered Windows PCs

#67

Post by naikrovek »

xg15 wrote: post #64
naikrovek wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As if. You may find it difficult to believe, but the people who work at Microsoft are people just like you. They have goals and get caught up in the whims of management, who are also people who get caught up in the whims of various things at various times.

The employees at Microsoft, sure. Microsoft-the-company, i.e. the board and management? Nope. Or otherwise, explain to me where the myriads of nagscreens, the push for locked, hardwired bootloaders, the embrace/extend/extinguish stance and the general anticompetitive behaviour comes from. (Not even starting with all the tracking).

SecureBoot comes from wanting a secure boot process. If you’ve ever had a rootkit or boot sector virus you understand what this is for. If you hate Microsoft you say that SecureBoot is stealing your freedom or something else equally insane.

Nag screens and ads in the OS are things which an MBA tell you to do. Do not single out Microsoft for putting ads for their own products in their own products, because Microsoft weren’t the first to do this, they weren’t even the millionth company to do this. Being an OS doesn’t make Windows immune to this, as much as you or I may hate it.

If you’re a developer you understand telemetry. If you hate Microsoft you call it spying because “telemetry” doesn’t get people angry like “spying” does, so you say “spying.”

You’re gonna need to be specific about the EEE stuff. I don’t know of an example of that since the 1990s or maybe the early 2000s.

Re: A new Copilot key to kick off the year of AI-powered Windows PCs

#68

Post by perryizgr8 »

Xeamek wrote: post #60
maximus-decimus wrote: post #51

I plan to use it just as much as my Bixby button on my Galaxy phone (not at all)

You can rebind it to the normal 'hold-to-shutdown' behavior. Also you can assign custom action under quick double press.

You can also download good lock and make it do whatever you want. It functions as a macro key too.

Re: A new Copilot key to kick off the year of AI-powered Windows PCs

#69

Post by dreamcompiler »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #39

You can imagine how this came about. Nadella issued a decree that every division has to come up with an idea of how to integrate AI into their product. The keyboard people thought they would add another key. I dread to think what the mouse designers are planning.

"We just bought ten billion dollars worth of dog food and you are all by god going to eat it."

Re: A new Copilot key to kick off the year of AI-powered Windows PCs

#70

Post by xg15 »

naikrovek wrote: post #67
xg15 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The employees at Microsoft, sure. Microsoft-the-company, i.e. the board and management? Nope. Or otherwise, explain to me where the myriads of nagscreens, the push for locked, hardwired bootloaders, the embrace/extend/extinguish stance and the general anticompetitive behaviour comes from. (Not even starting with all the tracking).

SecureBoot comes from wanting a secure boot process. If you’ve ever had a rootkit or boot sector virus you understand what this is for. If you hate Microsoft you say that SecureBoot is stealing your freedom or something else equally insane. Nag screens and ads in the OS are things which an MBA tell you to do. Do not single out Microsoft for putting ads for their own products in their own products, because Microsoft w…

> If you hate Microsoft you say that SecureBoot is stealing your freedom or something else equally insane.

Secure Boot itself is perfectly sensible, for the reasons you describe. What's not sensible is hardwiring a key so that not even the user itself can change it.

> Nag screens and ads in the OS are things which an MBA tell you to do [...] Being an OS doesn’t make Windows immune to this, as much as you or I may hate it.

I can't think of any other operating system that has nag screens built in (as opposed to "hey, look at this new feature" toasts, which are also annoying but at least not deliberately designed to block your workflow).

> You’re gonna need to be specific about the EEE stuff. I don’t know of an example of that since the 1990s or maybe the early 2000s.

I'll give you that. I was actually thinking about the historical stuff here, but, true, that doesn't have to reflect current strategy.

> If you hate Microsoft you call it spying because “telemetry” doesn’t get people angry like “spying” does, so you say “spying.”

I can get just as angry about "telemetry" from other companies, no worries. To a certain degree, it's a useful improvement for the development process. What I see not as legitimate is e.g. using telemetry data to train AI, or give no options to turn off collection. Microsoft does the first e.g. with handwriting recognition, the second with "mandatory" information.

You're absolutely right that all of those are industry-wide trends where the competition is no better. I think where Microsoft is currently special however is the pure manner of aggressiveness of their nagscreens. It's also a difference if you implement this stuff in an application that the user can uninstall or directly in the OS.

Post reply on HN