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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

#601

Post by LocalH »

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…

EEE

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

#602

Post by eimrine »

nikanj wrote: post #579
eimrine wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which case is 100% FOSS and which one is a proprietary obfuscationware? Which case has been heared by you just because it is good and which case has been heared by you just because some adware? Which case is from human to human and which one is from alien for hunter (or from hunters for aliens)? Which case has been made to make the humanship rich and which one has been made to make the maker rich? Sad you can even co…

But which one is which?

shit is shit, chocolate is chocolate - calm down man.

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

#603

Post by rand17 »

Mashimo wrote: post #194
rand17 wrote: post #185

A secret agent running in the background, with my data stolen from the foreground? How queer! I see the battlegrounds shift from large networks to the personal computer, where malware, hand in hand with AI will steal the virtual crown jewels day after day, slurping and leaking PII data non stop. AI will be baked in so deep into the Windows eco- and subsystem, that it's a wet dream come true for hackers and nation sta…

Is it any more "secret" then other background services like search index?

Probably. Apart from the pun about a certain good looking employee of MI6 and his gadgetry, at this point I'm relatively sure not even Redmond knows how many different products they have called Copilot Something, let alone how to kill them with a single switch, but of course we will see.

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

#604

Post by eimrine »

tavavex wrote: post #586
eimrine wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which case is 100% FOSS and which one is a proprietary obfuscationware? Which case has been heared by you just because it is good and which case has been heared by you just because some adware? Which case is from human to human and which one is from alien for hunter (or from hunters for aliens)? Which case has been made to make the humanship rich and which one has been made to make the maker rich? Sad you can even co…

There is nothing inherently bad about LLMs, and there is nothing inherently good about blockchains. What matters is how the technology ends up being used. I thought it would be obvious to someone who loves one of these modern technologies enough as to think that it's a "cultural cornerstone" (what, like music or something?). There are local, non-megacorp LLMs, ones that are put to niche, but acceptable uses, just lik…

There are some inherently good things, the best possible example is Lisp. It is not even matter how it is being used.

Cultural cornerstone is not just like music, it is like Mathematics or like sedentary way of life. They change too many in too many crucial ways. Bitcoin changes how we get forbiddensies therefore it changes how people are waging trade, how tsars are waging war, inevitably it interfere with government's aggressive coertion and eventually it is the only real anti-fascist technology existing.

Your vacuum cleaner example is ignorant, blockchain is humanity's last way to resist censourship. Bittorrent, the main part of Blockchain, exists a quorter of the century and this is the only technology which makes a PITA to any counter-freedom actors. Where the hell vacuum cleaners involved in the anti-censourship research?

Local LLM is not a thing yet, they are too niche, something as poweruful as "AI" solutions which are enough good to put into UAV for the sake of make it hunting people with no pilot - but existing realization which your mom uses regularly are coming from megacorps.

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

#605

Post by x______________ »

rightbyte wrote: post #302
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(!)

> It's basically a fancy textbox. That was the lure. But the real Notepad has been decommissioned and there is some bloated one now.

Uninstall bloated version and the AI-less stock version of Notepad returns.

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

#606

Post by torginus »

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).

It's weird that Linux people are still seething to this day that the reason for Linux's lack of success on the desktop comes from the unfair pushing of Windows, when it's clear that Microsoft has been barely putting any effort into Windows, and gutting development save for AI stuff.

I'm sure Microsoft would be perfectly fine ditching Windows as long as they could keep pushing Teams, Azure AD and Office 365 to companies.

It's crazy how no one actually competently working towards a shared goal is invested in the desktop OS game any more.

Linux people still have some fire left in them, but lack organization and shared vision to deliver a high quality product in a timely manner. macOS is the best contender, but other than pushing weird mobile-driven UX design and locking down the OS, the macOS of today hasn't changed that much from the OS X of 20 years ago.

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

#607

Post by torginus »

ponector wrote: post #395
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 aren't able to hire people nowadays with Win32 development They can hire pretty much anyone. They choose to not hire people with Win32 experience. They choose to implement hiring process which results in hire other kind of people.

Do you honestly think you could hire a staff a project (requiring hundreds) with young(ish) people of at least decent skills who all know Win32/COM/C/C++?

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

#608

Post by dartharva »

toephu2 wrote: post #189

This is why I format any Windows 11 pre-installed machine and install Windows 10 on it (Windows 10 is much leaner and has less bloatware than Windows 11).

+1.

Immediately followed by downloading and running Sophia Script for thorough debloating.

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

#609

Post by tavavex »

eimrine wrote: post #604
tavavex wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing inherently bad about LLMs, and there is nothing inherently good about blockchains. What matters is how the technology ends up being used. I thought it would be obvious to someone who loves one of these modern technologies enough as to think that it's a "cultural cornerstone" (what, like music or something?). There are local, non-megacorp LLMs, ones that are put to niche, but acceptable uses, just lik…

There are some inherently good things, the best possible example is Lisp. It is not even matter how it is being used. Cultural cornerstone is not just like music, it is like Mathematics or like sedentary way of life. They change too many in too many crucial ways. Bitcoin changes how we get forbiddensies therefore it changes how people are waging trade, how tsars are waging war, inevitably it interfere with government…

> Your vacuum cleaner example is ignorant, blockchain is humanity's last way to resist censorship.

You're missing the same point. I was pointing out that the conversation was about hype, not best-case scenarios. The point is that if the tech industry latches onto some new thing, it will be shoved into absolutely everything regardless of its relevance or usefulness to a particular problem. For every open-source project that's driven by smart, passionate developers with a clear goal in mind, you will have ten vacuum cleaners. The new thing that is the object of the hype doesn't matter in this context. That's why they called AI the "new blockchain" - it's not an assessment of how good or bad one is against the other, it's pointing out that both have attained the status of a VC buzzword after being popularized enough.

Local LLMs are actually pretty good, and I've used some in the past when I was more interested in them. Certainly there's a gap between them and the hyper-centralized corporate offerings that can afford to throw endless free compute at you just to retain you as a customer, but it's not like they are inadequate or something. Once the hype dies down, local will probably be the choice of any sane, security-conscious company and open-source devs.

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