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Microsoft Recall becomes a dependency for File Explorer in Windows 11 2H24 and is thus mandatory.

Zarathustra[H]

Zarathustra[H]

Extremely [H]
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Messages
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Chris Titus of WinUtil fame claims that the highly controversial AI "Recall" feature that Microsoft previously promised would become "opt in", is in fact becoming mandatory.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9FRadIkkE0

As a recap on Recall, it is Microsofts full screen AI analysis tool that records and monitors absolutely everything you do and stores summaries of it in your Microsoft account "for your convenience"

Is anyone ready for the revolution yet?
 
OnceSetThisCannotChange said:
We are ready for Linux revolution, but I am not holding my breath. ( posted from Win10 :D )
Click to expand...

I try to minimize my exposure to Windows.

For my personal use I dual boot Windows 11 and Linux. I use Linux for just about everything. The only time I boot into Windows is to run games, as I am still not happy with the performance and experience gaming on Linux provides. I put off going to Windows 11 for a long time, but once I got an HDR screen, Windows 11's HDR features became difficult to do without.

I still do not have a Microsoft account (and will never have one) and only ever run games in Windows. I am logged into nothing except Steam, and won't even as much as open a browser tab, unless it is something that is directly related to downloading a game patch or mod.

I am unfortunately stuck with windows for work. Like 99.9% of businesses out there, every one I have worked for is a Windows/MsOffice shop. I realized a long time ago that I did not want to be spied on. At first my concern was the IT department, but now it is Windows itself. I don't even as much as read the news in a browser during lunch on my work machine. I don't want to give them anything. My work machine is dedicated to work and work only.

I try to keep my exposure as minimal as possible, as doing completely without is close to impossible.

We need the political climate to change such that through regulatory change we can completely and totally end the data collection business model, and associate federal criminal charges with hard prison time for anyone who as much as tries.
 
No Microsoft account here either, but I am laaaaazy and last few years using Win10 again.

While annoyance is getting higher every year, MSFT is doing a reasonable job with cooking us like frogs while we remain comfortable with ever increasing levels of invasion. We are creatures of habit and being annoyed with Linux due to some other use cases, moves like the one above may just piss off enough people to finally trigger a more permanent conversion.
 
One of many reasons I never use a Microsoft account. I also only ever use Windows for gaming these days.
 
LukeTbk said:
I mean, the github PR issue clearly state:
Dism /online /Enable-Feature /FeatureName:"Recall"
After reboot its ok to disable again.
@zmileski, this feature is already excluded in the draft PR

There is no way that recall being mandatory will mean mandatory to be run on the system.
Click to expand...
Until it is "accidently" turned on without the users permission.
 
Linux isn't scary. Also doesn't record your screen 24/7... unless you ask it to.

For those worrying about dual boots and games. Trust me, jump in. Delete your windows partition. Give Linux a month. DO NOT leave your games installed on a NTFS windows part.... dual boot and then claim linux gaming isn't there yet. The only games that will legit not run anymore are ones with the BS kernel level anti cheat that you really should trust even less then Microsoft. If your not ok with Microsoft screen grabbing your OS... why would you be ok with a gaming company hooking into your kernel and scanning your hard drives ? Really that IS what those types of anti cheat are doing. If you want gaming that is often FASTER then windows... check out CachyOS. Is it as polished as a windows install... no. Is it faster then windows YES. There are plenty of other great distro options... if you have something specific you need. Also give Linux a shot to be fast... on game partitions Install your games on a Partition formatted to XFS. Yes has all sorts of File system options... things with copy on write and other great OS level things. If you want pure speed for game loads though run a XFS game partition at least.
 
ChadD said:
Linux isn't scary. Also doesn't record your screen 24/7... unless you ask it to.

For those worrying about dual boots and games. Trust me, jump in. Delete your windows partition. Give Linux a month. DO NOT leave your games installed on a NTFS windows part.... dual boot and then claim linux gaming isn't there yet. The only games that will legit not run anymore are ones with the BS kernel level anti cheat that you really should trust even less then Microsoft. If your not ok with Microsoft screen grabbing your OS... why would you be ok with a gaming company hooking into your kernel and scanning your hard drives ? Really that IS what those types of anti cheat are doing. If you want gaming that is often FASTER then windows... check out CachyOS. Is it as polished as a windows install... no. Is it faster then windows YES. There are plenty of other great distro options... if you have something specific you need. Also give Linux a shot to be fast... on game partitions Install your games on a Partition formatted to XFS. Yes has all sorts of File system options... things with copy on write and other great OS level things. If you want pure speed for game loads though run a XFS game partition at least.
Click to expand...

There is a big difference between "will run" and "will be a good experience".

I can't afford to lose 5-10% performance (or in some cases even 35%) in the titles I play.

Yes, there are some titles that perform better under Linux, but usually this is on AMD GPU's only (and there isn't an AMD GPU made that has adequate performance for my needs) and even then, only in older/lighter titles where performance doesn't matter as much anyway, as you were going to get acceptable framerates either way.

The thing is, Linux gaming has gravitated toward AMD GPU's because AMD has released better drivers for games under linux. It has gotten to the point where it is difficult to even find recent 4090/4080 benchmark comparisons between Linux and Windows 11, but the ones I can find result in significantly better performance under Windows 11.

There is absolutely no way I would downgrade to an AMD GPU in order to be able to get a good gaming experience under Linux. With a 4K Setup, being into Eye candy and thus cranking up the visual settings (which in 2024 includes RT) and absolutely hating any scaling or fake frames, even a 4090 is insufficient in many newer titles. It's a constant struggle of trying to get enough performance, and losing double digit percentages of framerate, either by moving to linux or moving to AMD or both is just not a possibility.

And that's before we even talk about how HDR is still completely absent in Linux (except for a few direct video codec to display implementations for a limited amount of video content)

Linux gaming is WAY better than it has ever been, and is getting better all the time, but in most titles there is still an unacceptable performance penalty, or other bugs.
 
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So digging into this it seems that Copilot has a bunch of hooks into the new file explorer. Copilot seems to be replacing search for many aspects.
Recall is a part of copilot and removing recall damages copilot which breaks file explorer.

Recall does not need to be functioning, but ripping out recall instead of just disabling does cause cascade failures.
 
cant watch, at work...
is he basing this off insider releases, again? 'cause im running 24h2 and am not seeing recall anywhere...
 
Lakados said:
Recall does not need to be functioning, but ripping out recall instead of just disabling does cause cascade failures.
Click to expand...

The problem is that many people (myself included) have trust issues with "disabling" and for good reason, because we have been let down many times before.

It's best to make sure something just isn't there, as opposed to leaving it there, and just disabling it.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
The problem is that many people (myself included) have trust issues with "disabling" and for good reason, because we have been let down many times before.

It's best to make sure something just isn't there, as opposed to leaving it there, and just disabling it.
Click to expand...
I don't disagree, and I get the impression that it will be fully removable when it actually comes out, hell most computers won't even get it to begin with as they aren't "Copilot ready", but the insider build this is in still has everything joined at the hips.

Recall doesn't pass the sniff test for any government agency and I for one want no part of it, enabling shadow copy and file versioning already covers 99% of the use cases that matter, and that additional 1% it doesn't is a make work situation. You could spend 8 hours investigating why it happened to spend 45 minutes fixing it, of you could spend 45 minutes fixing it and address how it happened in training, employee review, or permissions changes. Which likely would need to happen anyways as a result of anything Recall brought forward.

Recall is an invasive bit of micromanagement BS that somebody at Microsoft thought was a good idea to pitch as a form of Employee monitoring to address the made up perceptions many employers have about Remote Workers. So they can go "we just spent a work day reviewing your work day and we see that in the 8h you were scheduled you were only working for six and a half hours, care to explain yourself?"
 
Lakados said:
of Employee monitoring to address the made up perceptions many employers have about Remote Workers
Click to expand...
lol thats funny. an Oz woman, whos job was to monitor wfh compliance was fired for not doing her job. its not a "made up perception"....
"18 years working as a consultant for Insurance Australia Group (IAG), with her responsibilities including the creation of insurance policy documents and monitoring work-from-home compliance."
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/worl...60a5aca7c848278dc1c2f88d606868&ei=19#comments

agree with the rest though.
 
pendragon1 said:
lol thats funny. an Oz woman, whos job was to monitor wfh compliance was fired for not doing her job. its not a "made up perception"....
"18 years working as a consultant for Insurance Australia Group (IAG), with her responsibilities including the creation of insurance policy documents and monitoring work-from-home compliance."
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/worl...60a5aca7c848278dc1c2f88d606868&ei=19#comments

agree with the rest though.
Click to expand...
Yeah shit employees exist that’s why you need to monitor output. If an employee isn’t generating the expected output you have a problem, either expectations are too high, or the employee has unaddressed problems, or they are straight up fucking the dog.

But it’s not like offices didn’t have those problems either, we’ve all worked in places that have had useless dregs that drag the whole team down that work there far longer than they should have. Hell some of us have likely been that guy.

Employees are generally easy to track, their work gets done or it doesn’t.
Managers are hard to track, because if their team is getting results then the Manager is getting the desired results, even if the Manager is playing Candy Crush all day.

Personally, I have found the Managers that call the hardest for Employee Monitoring, are projecting.
 
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Zarathustra[H] said:
Chris Titus of WinUtil fame claims that the highly controversial AI "Recall" feature that Microsoft previously promised would become "opt in", is in fact becoming mandatory.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9FRadIkkE0

As a recap on Recall, it is Microsofts full screen AI analysis tool that records and monitors absolutely everything you do and stores summaries of it in your Microsoft account "for your convenience"

Is anyone ready for the revolution yet?
Click to expand...

Clickbait headline for a clickbait video...

No way it will be mandatory.

First, it requires the AI enabled snapdragon processor...
Second, you can disable the CoPilot (screenreading/saving) with a GPO setting.
 
GoodBoy said:
First, it requires the AI enabled snapdragon processor...
Click to expand...

Probably only a matter of tie before you can't buy a new CPU without a Windows AI compatible NPU/TPU on the package.

Wouldn't surprise me if the next Windows release after Windows 11 makes that a mandatory requirement to run windows at all (like they did with TPM 2.0)
 
GoodBoy said:
First, it requires the AI enabled snapdragon processor...
Second, you can disable the CoPilot (screenreading/saving) with a GPO setting.
Click to expand...
Lakados said:
Yeah the only "Mandatory" part of Recall seems to be that it's .DLL files remain in place.
Click to expand...

...and you are supposed to just trust Microsoft to keep those .dll files dormant when you disable them?

Unlike pretty much every other example from every vendor where you disable things (like precise GPS, or microphones) and it turns out they are still using them anyway?

The only way you can trust that something is truly "disabled" is if it is not there.

Especially when the maker of the thing you want disabled has a financial incentive to have it collect data on you, there are no laws that prevent them from spying on you with or without your agreement, and they also own the OS/Scheduler/Task Manager and could use that relationship to hide whatever is running so you are none the wiser.

No, the only way to be sure is to make sure the actual software is not on the drive. And even then it could be hidden in some other file.

This is the world we live in now. You cannot trust anything.
 
Just dl’d Arch. Going to toss it on a spare NVMe and see how some of the games I am playing now work. Wish me luck lol
 
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Lakados said:
So they can go "we just spent a work day reviewing your work day and we see that in the 8h you were scheduled you were only working for six and a half hours, care to explain yourself?"
Click to expand...
Normally I shoot for four hours of work per day but felt particularly ambitious that day.
 
ERipley said:
Just dl’d Arch. Going to toss it on a spare NVMe and see how some of the games I am playing now work. Wish me luck lol
Click to expand...
Check out Cachy. Its arch with X86-64 V4 and V3 (Zen 5/4 Zen 3/2) Optimization baked in. Its the second fastest Linux distro... Clear Linux being the fastest but also not a great desktop OS. Its essentially Arch with and installer and performance tuning. There packages update 1-3 hours after Arches. They just pull and recompile optimized. You can also switch your arch distro packages over to Cachy after your arch is up. Or you can install the Cachy compiled kernel via the Arch AUR. I believe there is also a AUR entry for their cachy gaming meta would would pull in their Cachy Compiled and tweaked version of proton.
 
ERipley said:
Just dl’d Arch. Going to toss it on a spare NVMe and see how some of the games I am playing now work. Wish me luck lol
Click to expand...
I wouldn't do that. And I run arch. Try endeavorOS first if you must Arch. TBH Fedora is pretty nice too and if you're just gong to install the basic arch/gnome setup. If you insist on arch, educate yourself on 1) (NOT) using the AUR, and 2) how to properly update the system.

If you install a lot of packages from the AUR and you just "yay" every once and a while - you'll fail.

Some tips if you're hellbent. EndeavorOS - let it do btrfs, printer support, and nvidia drivers. Use flatpaks before the AUR (ya this will get some hate, but it's harder to break things this way). btfs assistant and snapper for snapshots when upgrading. learn how to use pacdiff and meld which come with endeavorOS and learn what a *edit* pacnew file is. Read the arch homepage BEFORE you ever use yay,pacman,whatever - you're looking for news pertaining to manaual upgrade steps that you'll have to do. Do those things and you'll be 99% safe.
 
Last edited:
ERipley said:
Just dl’d Arch. Going to toss it on a spare NVMe and see how some of the games I am playing now work. Wish me luck lol
Click to expand...

Yeah, I did criticize Linux gaming as not being ready above, but I looked at my previous posts, and realized it has been a little longer than I realized since my last Linux gaming test.

I do know AMD tends to do better than Nvidia in linux gaming (relative to windows) and HDR is all sorts of half-assed without some serious tweaks right now (I've also seen people get it working on AMD GPU's in Linux distributions with Wayland, but it is still unclear if it works at all with Nvidia, on either Wayland or Xorg)

So, maybe I'll throw a second Linux install more tailored to gaming (Maybe Nobaru?) on a second partition and give it another try.

I would absolutely love it if I never had to boot into Windows again.
 
pendragon1 said:
lol thats funny. an Oz woman, whos job was to monitor wfh compliance was fired for not doing her job. its not a "made up perception"....
"18 years working as a consultant for Insurance Australia Group (IAG), with her responsibilities including the creation of insurance policy documents and monitoring work-from-home compliance."
Click to expand...

There are always going to be shitty unmotivated employees, and for some employees the very fact that they are surrounded by other employees helps motivate them to get shit done.

It's not a one size fits all solution.

That said, all the research I have read on the subject is that on average productivity actually increases in a WFH model. Some employees do worse, but their worse performance is generally outweighed by those who do much much better when they have that flexibility. It was actually funny. The biggest study on this (I am going to have to google to find it again) was actually amusing, as they were looking to find how much productivity loss they would get from WFH, and instead found that they were surprised, and productivity increased.

This is - of course - for general office work. There are going to be types of jobs that don't lend themselves at all to working from home.

I tend to think that there is a happy middle ground.

A hybrid work model allows for flexibility a couple to a few days a week when needed, and face to face time a couple to a few days a week when needed. It's the best of both worlds.
 
Last edited:
GoodBoy said:
Clickbait headline for a clickbait video...

No way it will be mandatory.

First, it requires the AI enabled snapdragon processor...
Second, you can disable the CoPilot (screenreading/saving) with a GPO setting.
Click to expand...
One can't even fucking trust microsoft to not upgrade to windows 11 after explicitly selecting the option not to, what makes you think one can trust microsoft to keep copilot disabled?

In fact, I wouldn't even trust that company to not install copilot in the background after it has been removed.

As others have observed, windows has become adversarial. The user's choices and settings have become mere guidelines for the os to follow, right up until the moment that they conflict with microsoft's interests.
 
emphy said:
The user's choices and settings have become mere guidelines for the os to follow, right up until the moment that they conflict with microsoft's interests.
Click to expand...

I would even call them mere suggestions at this point.

Anyone remember all the reports of clicking X on the window for the upgrade prompt from Windows 7 to Windows 10, only to have the upgrade proceed anyway?

There are so many "malicious compliance" methods that you wind up playing whack-a-mole and in the end they just wear you down, and that's exactly what they want.

Like,

Oh, all that shit you removed or disabled when you installed the OS? Guess what, it's back after the 2H24 upgrade. Or after you install a random patch from Windows Updates, or if you create a new user, etc. etc.

Or maybe they give you a prompt after an update with an intentionally poorly designed UI making it easy to click the unintended choice and enable that thing Microsoft wants you to enable.

Or on a shared computer, require admin access to disable something, but any goddamn user, even an unprivileged one, can turn it back on again.

But to be fair, most of this UI/Design based malicious compliance is so 2015. These days they just tend to do whatever the fuck they want, silently in the background.

For a while there I was able to remove Edge, but then a few months later, there it was again. I certainly didn't do anything to bring it back.

It's bullshit like this that gives me absolutely zero faith that Recall will stay "disabled"


This is the problem throughout the tech world. They think the user is stupid. That the user doesn't even know what they themselves want. That they have to force new "features" on them, so that they get used to using them and then love them. And they don't even care that they are often (usually?) wrong. Because the incentive is to push this stuff on them so it becomes inevitable and they can make money off it, either through data collection or selling subscriptions once they integrate it so thoroughly that you can no longer avoid using it and are forced to.

I am a lifelong tech enthusiast, and it makes me want to burn it all down to the ground. Go back to ~2006 and start that phase of Computer/Internet/Tech all over again, but this time with STRICT privacy and other regulation that is strongly enforced to keep the tech-bros in check.
 
Last edited:
Zarathustra[H] said:
I would even call them mere suggestions at this point.

Anyone remember all the reports of clicking X on the window for the upgrade prompt from Windows 7 to Windows 10, only to have the upgrade proceed anyway?

There are so many "malicious compliance" methods that you wind up playing whack-a-mole and in the end they just wear you down, and that's exactly what they want.

Like,

Oh, all that shit you removed or disabled when you installed the OS? Guess what, it's back after the 2H24 upgrade. Or after you install a random patch from Windows Updates, or if you create a new user, etc. etc.

Or maybe they give you a prompt after an update with an intentionally poorly designed UI making it easy to click the unintended choice and enable that thing Microsoft wants you to enable.

Or on a shared computer, require admin access to disable something, but any goddamn user, even an unprivileged one, can turn it back on again.

But to be fair, most of this UI/Design based malicious compliance is so 2015. These days they just tend to do whatever the fuck they want, silently in the background.

For a while there I was able to remove Edge, but then a few months later, there it was again. I certainly didn't do anything to bring it back.

It's bullshit like this that gives me absolutely zero faith that Recall will stay "disabled"


This is the problem throughout the tech world. They think the user is stupid. That the user doesn't even know what they themselves want. That they have to force new "features" on them, so that they get used to using them and then love them. And they don't even care that they are often (usually?) wrong. Because the incentive is to push this stuff on them so it becomes inevitable and they can make money off it, either through data collection or selling subscriptions once they integrate it so thoroughly that you can no longer avoid using it and are forced to.

I am a lifelong tech enthusiasm, and it makes me want to burn it all down to the ground. Go back to ~2006 and start that phase of Computer/Internet/Tech all over again, but this time with STRICT privacy and other regulation that is strongly enforced to keep the tech-bros in check.
Click to expand...
Yeah. Microsoft sucks. Every new update, all the crap I removed is reinstalled again. For now, it's easy to keep removing all the junk, but it's getting to the point where this may no longer be an option in the near future.
 
LukeTbk said:
I mean, the github PR issue clearly state:
Dism /online /Enable-Feature /FeatureName:"Recall"
After reboot its ok to disable again.
@zmileski, this feature is already excluded in the draft PR

There is no way that recall being mandatory will mean mandatory to be run on the system.
Click to expand...
In any case, someone will hack Windows enough to disable this feature. I don't know how, but I have faith in the hackers. Heck, I'd even pay you-name-the-company to do the job.
 
Lakados said:
So digging into this it seems that Copilot has a bunch of hooks into the new file explorer. Copilot seems to be replacing search for many aspects.
Recall is a part of copilot and removing recall damages copilot which breaks file explorer.
Click to expand...

So just get a third-party replacement.
 
ChadD said:
Linux isn't scary. Also doesn't record your screen 24/7... unless you ask it to.

For those worrying about dual boots and games. Trust me, jump in. Delete your windows partition. Give Linux a month. DO NOT leave your games installed on a NTFS windows part.... dual boot and then claim linux gaming isn't there yet. The only games that will legit not run anymore are ones with the BS kernel level anti cheat that you really should trust even less then Microsoft. If your not ok with Microsoft screen grabbing your OS... why would you be ok with a gaming company hooking into your kernel and scanning your hard drives ? Really that IS what those types of anti cheat are doing. If you want gaming that is often FASTER then windows... check out CachyOS. Is it as polished as a windows install... no. Is it faster then windows YES. There are plenty of other great distro options... if you have something specific you need. Also give Linux a shot to be fast... on game partitions Install your games on a Partition formatted to XFS. Yes has all sorts of File system options... things with copy on write and other great OS level things. If you want pure speed for game loads though run a XFS game partition at least.
Click to expand...


The issue is that any Linux shell has UX deficiency compared to Windows, which is really REALLY sad considering that Microsoft keeps making Windows worse and worse, more bloated and less useful, yet it's STILL more pleasant to use than any Linux distro I've tried. And not a single Linux user of any kind will admit it, and simply dances around it and says 'oh, well just deal with it' or 'that's just how it's supposed to be' or 'well you aren't a real tech then'. And until that mindset changes, Windows will still be the number one OS on consumer PCs.
 
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