This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I've been running Pop!_OS with the Cinnamon desktop environment on my machine at home for the past 3 months. I'm very impressed with the out-of-the-box experience. All my games run in Steam or Lutris.
Fuck Microsoft.
I tried and couldn't find it on my system. I run Linux btw.
FWIW I was worried this might be on W10 (hey, they might try it) so I tried the >dism commands found earlier in this thread (thanks btw!) & got “Feature name Recall is unknown”.
Safe for now
Even on Pro or Enterprise editions? I can't imagine businesses tolerating this never mind governments.
Did not show up on my work laptop running Win 11.
Keep in mind that this doesn't necessarily mean that recall itself is actually doing recall stuff or even running a process (I haven't checked if it does but not necessarily) like it would on a copilot laptop.
It is however very stupid that you can't uninstall recall without messing up the file Explorer. My guess is that it's a bug or some weird dependency needed with explorer.exe that handles the file explorer and a bunch of other stuff like the desktop and taskbar. It could also be spying but this seems like a stupidly obvious way to do it if they wanted too.
"You can turn it off", "it's an optional feature", they didn't even last a year! What ever happened to slowly boiling the frog?
"Slowly" is relative. Also remember that windows 10 was the last windows you would need to ever buy? (To be fair that is more true then Microsoft would like these days)
The frog is a captive audience
(re)Ditched Windows on my PC a while ago, still have to use Windows at work. Just checked my work laptop running Windows 11 (standard laptop, not a "Copilot+PC") - sure enough, that Recall shit is installed and active. Disabled it, and made a post in our main company Teams channel with screenshots. Will be interesting to see if there are any reactions to this.
To find out if it is active in Windows 11, open up 'cmd' and use: (typing this from memory, hope it is correct)
dism /online /get-featureinfo /featurename:Recall
to disable it, you need a 'cmd' instance with admin rights:
dism /online /disable-feature /featurename:Recall
Mentioned this in another comment. Take that second dism line, and put it in a batch script and make it a scheduled task that runs at login. Or use a Powershell script to make it a little smarter - check if it's enabled first and then disable it if it is.
Modern problems require modern solutions.
It will be re-enabled after update : )
My company blocks screenshots (luckily we don't have high definition cameras in or pocket at all times, else that would seem stupid) so I'm wondering what they will do if those are user accessible.
Windows Recall today: Your data is private and stays on local machine.
Recall after 2 years: We may use your data to train our AI models, improve our services and personalize your experince.
Best part? It's using your hardware and electricity to train the models.
In a few years they'll charge you monthly for the priviledge of using/knowing what it collected on you.
Recall after 2 years: Your personalized ads are generated on device based on preferences detected by Recall and our partners. Recall shares these preferences with Microsoft and our 23,671.5 partners and 16 nation-state partners around the world to better serve you <3.
Pi-hole can block microsoft telemetry domains, just need to keep the blocklists up to date, and flush the Recall cache every day.
Product activation failed: Please drink verification can.
Set up a new pc for someone today. Turned off all the OneDrive backup options. Rebooted and copied their files from a USB to SATA adapter. They turned the backup settings back on again!
Can't trust Microsoft.
Yep. I’ve set up Windows a few times recently, and they don’t give even the slightest consideration for your settings. Few days later, they changed right back.
They will be configured to benefit Microsoft first. Maybe not immediately. But it sounds like a losing game.
You need to make a Powershell script or batch that uninstalls/turns off the feature and then make a scheduled task that runs the ps1/bat at login.
Its insane that this is what you have to do to keep this shit off your system, but it's effective.
I had to do this with New Outlook because it kept reinstalling after Windows updates.
They "trust me" dumb fucks
May not have been Gates that said it, but it embodies an attitude which appears prevalent throughout big business.
Edit: O&O Shut Up is a free tool that helps you easily turn off/disable quite a few of the worst "features" on Windows.
What do you think it would cost MS to sell a version of Windows that's just...an operating system, and not an ad platform? Like Windows XP? Or maybe Windows 10 on day 1?
Last time I bought a Win 10 Pro DVD to install on a customer's machine, it was AUD$195.00. And I still had to use powershell to de-provision some of the bullshit. Better than the Home version (AUD$165.00), at least I can use GPEDIT to disable some "features".
Of course, a Windows licence on a pre-built Dell or HP would be a lot less.
Windows 10 on day 1 was still 'calling home' and recommending candy crush in the start menu as I recall. I had to dig into the registry to gut the windows store from it entirely to get windows 10 to act how i want an OS to act. Windows 7 was the last good windows IMO.
I distinctly remember win 10 ignored every single setting I chose in oobe and went to default
There is no amount that could answer that because the Ad profit is on top of the already existing product. It would always be viewed as a "loss."
Not that they're losing on the cost of operations and development of the OS, but because the ad revenue is in addition to the product...
Greed fucking greed fucking greed. Greed turtles all the way down...
Switched back to Linux this week and I couldn't be happier.
Upgraded*
Saw this bullshit coming, already got a linux mint dual boot setup on my work pc.
PSA: If you have a bigger usb formatted to the ntfs file system, consider switching it to exfat file system when working with linux. I had a hard freeze up and couldn’t get my files off for a bit, and this what I suspect was the issue.
What version of Linux did you go with?
Linux Mint 22 Cinnamon
