Brave blocks Microsoft Recall by default | Hacker News Reader

Brave blocks Microsoft Recall by default

brave.com

290 pointsXzetaU8296 comments

Until the time when Microsoft realises this and creates a privileged API just for Microsoft Recall so that It can see the screen.

Better switch to Linux. It's not perfect but I am sure that you will be fine using Linux(Unless you want to use Adobe Suite or Few Corporate applications which won't be used by many)

Or most professional audio applications...

Bitwig works on Linux, but the problem I had was that my pro-audio soundcard [1] didn’t have supported drivers and I couldn’t get the open source drivers to work. I tried switching to a Dante based solution: none of the Dante based apps worked, so I tried AES67 (open source Dante), still no joy — I just could not get my Dante/AES67 AD/DA converters (which attach to everything in my studio) to be ‘seen’ on Linux.

So after weeks trying to get a high-channel count I/O solution working, I gave in, I found the best thing to do was to just get a M4 Mac Mini for my audio/studio work. And leave Linux for everything else. I was setup within an hour on macOS.

There’s unfortunately still too much resistance and it can cost $1000s trying to get to a working solution or ultimately in my case: a non-working solution. It cost me about $6000 trying various options — not all wasted, but still, not cheap to find out that nothing works.

[1] https://rme-audio.de/hdspe-madi-fx.html

"It works BUT" summarizes my experience with running my top applications on Linux, unfortunately :(

Which apps are those?

I was able to run Ableton on Linux once, but it was finnicky and didn't give me the confidence if I ever had to do a performance live with it. Unfortunately there are fields that couldn't care less about software freedom and ownership and Microsoft abuse this for profit.

I'm an old guy who has run Linux off and on from the very beginning. Every so often I attempt to replace my windows laptop with Linux, and it always turns into days of dinking around with configuration hacks and installing this and that and the other thing trying to get all my software to work. There always some roadblock that prevents migrating completely. Eventually I always end up going back to Windows. I wish it weren't so.

As a young guy that hasn't installed Windows in 6 years, I do hope you hold out faith!

I think part of the problem is I have decades invested in proprietary software in the Windows ecosystem. If I didn't have that investment it would likely be easier. Don't make my mistake! :)

This is a sunk cost that in a few years will have been mitigated. You already understand the value proposition for Linux, otherwise you wouldn't have attempted this transition multiple times. So I think it's a matter of getting used to it.

But I also think context matters. Maybe you also need work that motivates you to use Linux or is impossible or quite inconvenient to do on Windows.

In any case, using Windows is fine. I don't think the user is to blame for the shortcomings of the brand. It's like with conscious consuming products that don't harm the environment. It's important to seek those, but if you have to go out of your way it's just not gonna happen.

For me, there's a small handful of games that keep me from using Linux on my main PC - RuneScape and League of Legends. RuneScape has some nasty bugs where the GPU isn't detected when running under Wayland, but if you run the game via Proton-thru-Steam you don't have access to all your accounts (I occasionally play on two). League of Legends just straight up doesn't work at all after they added their rootkit-as-anticheat, but it's the only way I keep in touch with some friends.

The reliable way to do this (I found) is check the kernel source tree first. The supported pro sound cards are, typically, kind of old. Because FOSS developers aren't just gifted hardware and documentation to write the drivers so they're a generation or two behind.

Counterintuitively; using the latest kernel can be more stable as bug fixes are merged.

RME does have a few supported cards (I use one) but they're mostly the ADAT ones. And the driver is in-tree.

> The reliable way to do this (I found) is check the kernel source tree first

Sure, in general that's good advice, but it becomes more complicated depending on the solution/situation...

I’d bought the RME card long before I was hoping to make it work with Linux. I'd been running Windows for a long time for work reasons, so I had my dev work and my music setup on the same computer (a 64 core Threadripper machine, with 128gb of RAM, and fast NVMe drives). A few months before, I'd sold my company, so for work at least I didn't need to be on Windows any more. Then I started getting random audio dropouts! Presumably because of all the crap Microsoft keep loading onto the OS with after every update.

The audio dropouts was the straw that broke the camel’s back. If a machine like that, with nothing else running on it other than my DAW, could start having audio dropouts, then you know something has gone horribly wrong with the OS.

That's why I wanted to get my existing RME card working on Linux. When I wasn’t able to use it, I then assumed I’d be able to get a network based protocol running (Dante/AES67). There was plenty of discussion about it online, it seemed viable, and it's a network, Linux can do networking! Also, I kinda like the idea of network based audio, I think it's likely to be more future proof.

So, I replaced one of my Ferrofish A32 Pro interfaces with a Ferrofish A32 Pro DANTE ($4300) [1]. It supports both Dante and AES67. I figure if I can’t get Dante running then the open protocol AES67 (with support in Linux-land) should work. That didn’t feel that risky. But no amount of finagling would make the interface appear via the virtual sound-card/router concept.

This had already taken weeks (maybe months) to not get anywhere, so I looked for a Class Compliant sound-card (or, one that definitely had Linux drivers) that could support the number of channels I needed (96 channels in and out), it also needed to support the AD/DA interfaces interfaces I already had (so connectivity via MADI or Dante/AES67), but there just wasn't anything. The only other sound-card out there was another RME interface.

So, that’s when I opted for a Class Compliant sound-card [2] for casual use on Linux ($324) and a new RME Digiface Dante sound-card ($1543) [3] that I could use with a newly purchased M4 Mac Mini ($3000). I also needed to replace another one of my Ferrofish A32 Pro interfaces with another Ferrofish A32 Pro Dante ($4300) to make the setup work.

I realise now that my earlier estimate of $6000 was wildly out, it cost $13467 to leave Windows and to get an alternative pro-audio setup working. There may well have been alternative approaches and I may well have missed a possible solution that could have either worked with the original RME card (which would cost nothing) or AES67 (that would still require me to replace 3 x Ferrofish A32 Pro interfaces, so would end up about the same cost), but I felt like I'd been pretty thorough.

I guess the reason I'm writing War & Peace here is that it's often not possible to know ahead of time whether any one setup might work. Drivers is one thing, but a pro-studio setup has more moving parts, and so if you don't know ahead of time whether any one setup will work, then it can be an expensive process to walk through the different options. And that's a problem that neither Windows nor Mac has. It's a real shame, because the stability of Linux should make it the best platform for pro-audio.

[1] https://www.ferrofish.com/a32pro-dante-converter-multimode/

[2] https://solidstatelogic.com/products/ssl-2-plus-mkii

[3] https://rme-audio.de/digiface-dante.html

> it cost $13467 to leave Windows

I rather think it cost you $mac_mini to buy a mac mini, and $compulsion buying hardware for reasons I still do not understand.

Paul Davis has lurked here at least as long as you have, and it would have cost $0 just to ask if that card is currently supported in Linux.

I mean, for $13467 I bet I could buy a plane ticket to Shenzhen, hire a translator, and have them send an email to Collabora to quote a price to develop the firware/driver I can afford with the money I have left over.

> Paul Davis has lurked here at least as long as you have, and it would have cost $0 just to ask if that card is currently supported in Linux

I didn’t need to ask him, I already owned it, I just needed to dual boot Linux to find out, it cost me $0.

You don’t seem to understand that a soundcard needs connecting to everything else in a studio, so there’s no such thing as just changing one thing and it not having a knock on effect (unless you’re really lucky, which I wasn’t).

You also don’t seem to know that once a setup is right, it can last a decade or more, so getting the right combo of gear to minimise friction in a studio is worth it over time, even if it is expensive upfront.

If it makes you feel a little less morally superior, I sold the original soundcard and the two replaced AD/DAs for ~$7200.

And, you still miss the point of the story completely: the point was that it’s too risky for anyone considering building a pro setup on Linux. Especially compared to Windows and macOS where everything is plug and play.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t pockets of success in Linux-land, but that it can be costly in money and time to get it right, and it might never work for the setup you have.

It is risk.

> for reasons I still do not understand.

That’s obvious.

But the reasons are:

* I wanted to move away from Windows because it was unstable and pissing me off

* I already owned a high-end PCI RME card that connected to three Ferrofish A32 Pro converters

* If I could install Linux and have the RME card work then I wouldn’t need to change my studio setup

* There’s no official or stable driver

* So, a change to the setup was required

* To try and future proof the setup I looked to modern protocols like Dante and AES67 as they are taking over pro studios and are much more flexible — I also thought there was a reasonable chance it would work on Linux

* I couldn’t get it working on Linux

* Time is not infinite

* Therefore I bought a Mac for audio

* To avoid the expense of a Mac Pro I had to switch from a PCI based soundcard to a USB based soundcard (which I could plug in to the Mac Mini)

* I still use Linux on the original machine (for dev work), but with a class compliant soundcard for casual use. It’s relatively trouble free, other than half of my usb ports don’t work, but you know, meh

* I haven’t needed to use Windows since. So I consider it a win.

Linux audio is definitely hit and miss. Even with the most standard soundcard in existence (Scarlett) I still had problems with it. After fiddling a bit it works okay-ish, but there were definitely moments of "screw it, I'm buying a Mac".

This works well for me on Linux Mint:

https://solidstatelogic.com/products/ssl-2-plus-mkii

It has pro quality converters and is plug-n-play.

The Scarlett should be USB class-compliant. I've got a Motu 2i2o DAC that I've been using on Linux for 3 years now, and before that used a Behringer U-Phoria without issues.

It is class-compliant - but to this day, I've never figured out, how to use the multitrack out with Pulse. The widget shows all the outputs and testing individual outs works, but Reaper duplicates the sends, so the outputs overlap. Works with JACK though, but JACK is just strange. Also no control software (aside from one open-source thingy that looks awful), so any change requires reboot to Windows or VM passthrough.

The DAW is just a small part of it. You need all the plugins to work too :(

Unless you bought Audio Units (let's be honest, you knew you were fucked), VSTs have multiple options for running on Linux:

https://airwave.fxarena.net/

https://github.com/robbert-vdh/yabridge

Who uses plugins? ;)

The reason I have a need for so much IO is that nearly all of my processing goes through external hardware (EQs, compressors, delays, reverbs, filters, phasers, chorus, summing mixer, multi-FX units like Eventide H3000 & H8000) and I have a wall of modular gear + about 20 synths and drum machines.

Which are on macOS

CAD software options are severely lacking as well. There's an unofficial snap package for Fusion360 but it's hit or miss depending on the distro, the day of the week, the weather, and whether Oracle's stock price is a prime number.

Onshape (free for non-commercial) and Solidworks (50Euros a year non-commerical) both are Browser based.

Their horrible xDesign thing is browser based. Regular Solidworks is still a Windows application. Onshape is a very good alternative to Fusion assuming it has the features you need.

As mentioned at the bottom, there's another API, which is to flag the window as containing DRM'd content. Although I suppose there's not really anything to stop AI vendors doing copyright infringement if they want.

DRM'd content was never implemented out of fear of "copyright infringement" it was built to solidify corporate connections. Microsoft implements DRM mechanisms to incentivize copyright holders to provide better service on their platforms.

AI doesn't have less respect for Copyright than any other tech company. AI has less need for the corporate connections to those copyright holders.

This of course comes from the neoliberal philosophy where the only remedy you have is to withdraw service. We've gutted the actual rights of actual creatives.

If you flag your browser as DRM content then people won't be able to take screenshots, except maybe with the included browser utility

Couldn't that negatively effect accessibility tools?

Yes

> We were partly inspired by Signal’s blocking of Recall. Given that Windows doesn’t let non-browser apps granularly disable Recall, Signal cleverly uses the DRM flag on their app to disable all screenshots. This breaks Recall, but unfortunately also breaks the ability to take any screenshots, including by legitimate accessibility software like screen-readers. Brave’s approach does not have this limitation since we’re able to granularly disable just Recall; regular screenshotting will still work. While it’s heartening that Microsoft recognizes that Web browsers are especially privacy-sensitive applications, we hope they offer the same granular ability to turn off Recall to all privacy-minded application developers.

Yes and screen recoders

You have to opt in to Recall. You must have a “Copilot+ PC” which has an “NPU”. The snapshots are stored and processed locally.

> The snapshots are stored and processed locally.

Even if that's the design, it's a massive new attack surface for malware to try to exfiltrate.

Then don't turn it on?

Oh, I won't, but MS has the unfortunate recurring habit of turning features on against users' will, at best giving the option to "Remind me in 3 days".

Or the old "oops we installed an upgrade and accidentally flipped your setting by on purpose not having QA"

I don't know how many times I've had to tell Windows that I don't want Edge to be my default browser and OneDrive should not open at login.

My "favorite" tactless Windows update story in recent memory was when an update pinned a Copilot link to my taskbar. I unpinned it, then a few weeks later another update added the Copilot link back to my taskbar, but not as a pinned app. Rather it replaced the god damn "show desktop" button in the bottom right of the screen! They replaced an always on-screen OS navigation button that's been there since Windows 7 with an ad!!

I hope to god that Valve takes the opportunity they have with Steam OS to give us a potential real alternative to Windows that focuses on gaming support. Cause that's literally the only reason I'm forced to continue using this Microsoft adware slop of an OS.

> They replaced an always on-screen OS navigation button that's been there since Windows 7 with an ad!!

That must be doing wonders for the click rate. I can see the pre-promotion powerpoint slide now: "User engagement with Copilot is showing exponential growth"

Promotions all around! Line goes up and all it cost was continuing to make even more of our customers hate our product and our company!

Better yet, how about not making visual keylogger code part of the OS to begin with.

I’d be pretty nervous about running Windows with this even able to be enabled.

No way the benefit:risk ratio makes the slightest sense in this case.

This “feature” was made for corporate owned window machines, who will force it enabled via policies.

Exactly, and I think that the real goal is for enterprises (and MS itself) to collect training data for Computer Use AI agents.

There is currently no policy setting to do this. The available policy settings are "disable Recall and do not allow users to enable it" (which is the default) and "allow users to enable Recall, but leave it disabled by default".

Locally for how long? You know, all that data how you interact with a PC are just too tempting ...

Opt in for now. Locally for now.

Don't forget that Recall was initially on by default. It wasn't until users were like, WTF, did they make it off by default.

That will last for as long as it takes for the value of privacy and ownership erodes further and then it'll get switched back to on by default.

I have one of those PCs, but I have Linux running on it. Can I use the NPU for anything useful? It seems not at the moment (am using AMD)

Even if processing and storage is local, it is just too damn easy to abuse the feature from remote.

Imagine how useful it would be for software vendors (Microsoft included): "We have implemented new feature X, how are our users interacting with it? Let's ask their Recall AI about it".

This could essentially become telemetry on steroids.

In the start telemetry was seen as outrageously user-hostile spying, too. Look where we are now. We are all frogs, at least Microsoft is banking on it.

Well for those who are stuck with Windows because of some applications or simply because of familiarity. My suggestion is to stay on an older release as long as possible. If that isn't possible I would recommend keeping the computer turned off most of the time and only briefly using it for your purpose and try to keep from doing anything embarrassing or personal too much. Another thing that might help is calling up your local government and ask them to do something about this. You can also call Windows customer service up and let them know that you are displeased about what they've done and will not be recommending it to your friends as a result.

> Well for those who are stuck with Windows because of some applications or simply because of familiarity

its a pain for most people at first but its never too late to do the switch.

Most people use Windows for little more than running the web browser today. I've literally switched dozens of people over to Ubuntu variants (actually Kubuntu) over the years, and it's only getting easier and easier as everyone moves everything to the web browser.

I also recommend https://github.com/LeDragoX/Win-Debloat-Tools to debloat your Windows 10-11.

Familiarity is not really a good reason against Linux, however. Just install a Linux distro that comes close in looks. What are these Linux distributions these days? Pop OS? Elementary OS? Most people are only using their browsers anyway.

Linux Mint remains the most stable, least babysitting required, solid distro for beginners. Ubuntu is also okay. Pop, Zorin, Elementary, etc. are great choices, too. But if you ask me one, I will suggest Linux Mint. All Linux Mint releases are Long Time Support (LTS) versions, btw. With support for five years.

Pop is woefully out of date at this point due to the ongoing alpha development of COSMIC. I switched off because a whole bunch of Nvidia-related things started breaking. LTS doesn't seem ideal for Nvidia in my experience.

I just have seamless experience with Ubuntu.

Wdym about LTS not being ideal for NVIDIA?

The OS receives updates, NVIDIA drivers also do. What is the problem?

Am I missing something?

The latest NVIDIA drivers (576+ I think?) are totally broken on Ubuntu 22.04 variants and seem to require 24+. That was my experience anyway, I tried everything I could to get it to work, but PopOS would never boot under those drivers unless I upgraded to the alpha builds on Ubuntu 24. Forced me to switch to Fedora in the end (I needed those drivers for work) which worked seamlessly.

Oh, that makes sense.

Ubuntu releases LTS versions every two years. I jump from LTS to LTS by simple `do-release-upgrade` command. Takes about 30 minutes. And I only upgrade after the dust settles, i.e. after 3-4 months of the release.

Mint also releases upgrades regularly. I suggest upgrading regularly.

NVIDIA drivers work great, and receive updates.

Familiarity is shorthand for time and energy. Neither of them are infinite.

Ironically your second sentence is an example of the impact on time and energy the switch will have: someone who just decided to switch from windows to linux will have to take the time and spend the energy to chose between the dozen of linux distributions before any practical consideration.

Well, I have been told by many people to install Windows on their PC or laptop. I installed Linux instead. They were quite happy with that.

If you want it out of the box, there are laptops out there with Linux pre-installed, but it is not as common, unfortunately.

So I do not see the irony. They usually ask someone to install an OS, or they buy a computer pre-installed with an OS.

If you do all the work, they indeed don't need to spend time and energy on the switch itself, and even better if their usage is limited enough they don't encounter missing software or incompatibilities with the windows world.

The irony is that before doing the work for the switch, and even before doing the work of checking if the switch is feasible for their need, they will need to spend time and energy to select which linux distrib they should choose. Switching from linux to windows of macos doesn't have this issue

So the problem with switching to Linux is that they have to spend the time and energy to choose a Linux distribution? If we are to nitpick, it is not that easy with Windows either. Which Windows version? Which torrent is the right one? The last question is because most people here do not have a legit copy, they torrent it. It took me longer to find the right version of Windows to torrent than to search for "top Linux distributions for beginners".

> So the problem with switching to Linux is that they have to spend the time and energy to choose a Linux distribution?

You know that's not the only issue, and that it is not what I'm saying. You can try to convince yourself as much as you want that it is not an issue, the reality will not change

> Which Windows version?

Are you kidding ? there is only one in 2025 : windows 11.

> Which torrent is the right one?

Why are you even talking about torrent ?

Then what are the other issues? Because you repeatedly cited that as the reason it makes it ironic.

I told you why I am talking about torrent. No one has a legit copy of Windows 11, no one actually buys it here, especially not individuals. Companies might.

Oh yeah, how would they know Windows 11 is the latest if not by looking it up?

Either way, as I said, someone will be asked to install an OS, or they will buy computers with an OS pre-installed (and they will eventually ask, even then). None of which require them to pick anything.

With windows 10 lifetime coming to an end, even though the Enterprise edition still going to be supported for some while, eventually the world will move on to Windows 11.

Unless someone breaks that cycle of Windows being the dominant OS.

And RIP my perfectly good and working computer without a TPM chip. Guess I'll switch it to Linux ...

Are you sure your computer really doesn't have TPM? Because Intel CPUs since Haswell and AMD CPUs since Zen 1 have firmware-level TPM (implemented at the Intel ME / AMD PSP side) built in, but disabled by default, but you can mostly turn it on in BIOS/UEFI setup interface (if the BIOS supports it), and Windows 11 will work with it. And sometimes even discrete TPMs on motherboards come disabled by default.

If you haven't already, check your BIOS for TPM/fTPM settings (or if you're on Intel also look for "Intel Platform Trust Technology" or "Intel PTT").

Go ahead. You're not their customer, they couldn't care less. Enterprise is their customer.

You're not "stuck" due to familiarity. That's a choice. A choice you're free to make, but still a choice.

Video games. Linux can play lots with Proton I have heard but not all.

It's multiplayer games with anti-cheat that are the ones not supported (with developers now having to go out of their way to turn OFF support for Linux); everything else works fine. If you're only into singleplayer (like me), games often run better on Linux.

To expand on this and provide some examples, I've recently played Wuthering Waves, Tower of Fantasy, The First Descendant, Phantasy Star Online 2, Black Desert, Lost Ark, Throne & Liberty, probably others I'm forgetting, all of which contain anti-cheat of some variety and all on Linux.

There are some that don't support Linux and likely never will like Valorant or Call of Duty, and even fewer that dropped Linux support like Apex Legends.

Mostly mobile ported gacha and Korean MMOs. It's good that it runs on Linux for you, but most people don't play these games. Most people are interested exactly in the ones you've listed as not supported.

Windows 10 cannot play a lot of non windows 10 games.

Linux is great if you're hardware is supported.

I've never been able to get Linux working right on one of my laptops, on another only rolling releases work.

These rolling releases like to break every 3 to 6 months.

Windows is much more stable on both laptops.

With my mini PC eGPU combo Linux just won't recognize the eGpu at all.

Obligatory "my experience diverges." Which manufacturers were those? New flagship devices or more established hardware?

5k screens over DP are two screens in a trenchcoat. I saw this abstraction broken with menubar (only on half the screen), blue light filter (have to program both harlves), screen placement (have to drag both halves into place). FreeDesktop Gitlab has been tracking this since 2017 but IME only 2023 Ubuntu got it perfect, IIRC KDE got it perfect later.

https://www.asus.com/laptops/for-home/vivobook/asus-vivobook...

Maybe it's been fixed, but I brought this on release last year, it never worked right with Linux.

Hours upon hours of trying to fix it for naught.

I actually prefer Linux as a daily driver, I have the Ultra Core V2 version of the same laptop and rolling releases are generally fine for 3 to 6 months. At which point I just reinstall , while leaving Windows intact.

I guess if you want to buy a slightly older laptop or at least one with a slightly older CPU things are fine.

Refurbished Thinkpads excel particularly well here.

This was true for me until ~2014. I haven't had substantial hardware compatibility issues on Ubuntu since then. Sure, a few google searches for the right nvidia driver, but otherwise I've found Ubuntu to just work for many years.

It's a lottery that largely depends on what exact hardware you have.

I have one machine that I can't even install Linux on because no Linux installer or live CD will even boot on it. No idea why, and I don't want to spend a lot of time and effort figuring that out given that it's my dedicated gaming box, a "PC console" basically.

OTOH I have a laptop that I specifically purchased to run Linux on it. Which it does, and all devices work just fine. The only catch is that battery life when browsing is about 20-30% less, and, as far as I can tell, this is entirely due to Linux browsers disabling video hardware acceleration by default on most configs. If I enable it, things get much better for the battery, but at the cost of an occasional browser crash.

Never post anything like this on HN, you will get a torrent of people A) trying to help, but not being very helpful B) telling you that you’re dumb C) telling you that you’re holding it wrong and that you need different software/hardware/preferences/etc.

I have had tons of grief with NVIDIA cards that work stellar on Windows and the answer I always get talking to Linux folks is “LOL NVIDIA? You’re an idiot for buying NVIDIA.”

My friends who daily drive Linux have accepted that I’m particularly cursed. Either that or they privately think I’m a moron. Regardless none of them seem to be able to explain my issues or help.

I welcome a good conversation.

Linux still isn't really ready for normal people who have other things to do.

Arguably if it's within your budget and you just want your computer to work, buy a Mac.

I make music and I don't want to fiddle with external drives so I'm basically stuck on Windows.

My biggest issue with Macs is not being able to replace the SSD. Eventually all SSDs must fail. Might not be in 2 years, might be in 6 or 7, but at that point the entire laptop is useless.

"It just works" was always a marketing slogan for Apple, not an actual reality. It's certainly not appropriate for an OS where perfectly standard mice have frustrating, decades-old limitations like scroll direction being tied to the touchpad settings and forward/backyard buttons not working.

If you stay in the Apple Box of supported use cases it's fine.

The customer support story is also much better. Instead of dealing with IRC channels and Reddit post trying to figure out why the latest kernel ruined everything, you go to the Apple Store.

I literally run Tumbleweed on my second laptop, I like Linux.

It's just not for people who don't want to invest time into understanding how computers work.

I wouldn't consider products you can buy on apple.com like this corsair M75 outside their supported use cases: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/HRYT2ZM/A/corsair-m75-wir...

This whole thread is about how Linux is difficult because you need to understand what hardware is actually supported and you're arguing that MacOS is different because you still need to understand what hardware is supported, but the apple store will sell you something else with a smile.

I'm not even denying that MacOS is a perfectly acceptable OS, I just don't understand your argument.

Actually, you kinda have a point.

They shouldn't be selling 3rd party hardware, with an over 100% markup, that isn't well supported.

https://www.corsair.com/us/en/p/gaming-mouse/CH-931D101-NA/m...

It's less than half the price anywhere else.

But Apple's argument is it's not on them if a 3rd party mouse they happen to sell has issues.

With Linux you need to do significantly more work to get setup and every now and then a kernel update can ruin your day.

I want something Ubuntu stable that actually supports newer hardware, but that's just not where Linux is at.

The Linux community is amazing, but they lack the capacity to QA every possible laptop on the market.

Just a few days ago the sound on my Tumbleweed install decided to stop working. I thought about reinstalling, Chat GPT suggested I just accept audio not working and using a USB sound card.

Eventually, thinking as a last ditch effort, I asked Chat GPT how to completely reinstall the audio stack.

This went and removed my KDE desktop for some reason. Cool, I'll install Xfce from the tty.

I then installed Budgie since it's a bit easier to use.

All this because for some reason my sound didn't feel like working.

We, the types of people who visit this site, enjoy the process.

Not everyone does.

Macs definitely have issues too.

But you can go to the Apple store and have them figure it out.

Plus a routine update probably won't stop audio from working.

I've been using Desktop Linux for about 20 years.

It's better now, but it's still work to use.

I might have one of the very rare cases where my laptop works much better with Linux than with Windows (both 10 and 11).

Both Wifi and Bluetooth doesn't work on a fresh Windows install, I have to physically connect a USB DVD player to install the drivers from the DVD that came with the package (in 2024! btw). On Linux everything just works out-of-the-box. Okay maybe not everything, I did have to patch my kernel for bluetooth drivers, but other than that it's a LOT smoother in every way than on Windows.

Who, exactly, is clamoring for Recall in the first place?

And who is to say that Microsoft will honor the toggle, “for analytic and performance metric” purposes?

EDIT: the rant above shouldn’t cast aspersions on Brave, good on them for trying.

It seems it enables Copilot to assist the user in finding things on their PC.

Somehow find . -iname has worked for years in Linux without AI

They are where I put them. Never used a search function once like this.

Perhaps it’s because I lived in the days before search was even a thing.

There definitely is a sort of pseudo generational gap of how peole interact with computers. I was having a conversation with a 20ish year old the other day about computer for storage and they didn't understand the filing cabinet analogy. Like, for then everything had to be in the desktop folder, but the concept that C:\Users\User\Desktop was like having a folder in a filing cabinet, where C: was the actual cabinet, was so alien to them.

Windows seems to make this deliberately confusing, eg displaying "Desktop" as the root of the hierarchy in the default Explorer window makes no sense (Desktop > Home > Desktop?). Then layer in typical corporate MS software like OneDrive, and it gets even weirder and harder to determine what's where on the local fs.

That's by design. They don't want you to store your files locally. They want you to store them in the cloud... their cloud.

Then, you have Personal which is using OneDrive and everything else. If you have Google Drive or Dropbox then it shows up too.

Lots of options, plenty of opportunity for confusion.

My parents use their email inbox as a filing system. Specifically, a top of bucket filing system. They need something? Email it to them. Did you email it to them? Email again. They can find it if (and only if) it's near the top of their inbox.

A special kind of insanity that puts me in a mild, cold sweat. Such filesystems can come for your family too!

Worth noting, my father was an early adopter of the home computer. It's somehow regressed over the years.

The desktop metaphor makes it look like the desktop is the starting point. You can understand why someone who has not interacted with a directory through a terminal would think this.

Be glad you've gone through life without having a partner or friend that just puts everything on the desktop.

And then complains to you all their files have disappeared.

Usually it's because they've run out of diskspace and windows has created a temporary profile for them (which is crazy default behaviour when you think about it). Not sure if that's still a thing.

Of course they just closed the popup saying "you're running low on diskspace" last week. After all, what are they supposed to do about that?

I was married to someone for over 20 years who did that. She got told to stop doing it at work as well years ago because it took 40 minutes to copy her profile on login/logout.

I save everything to my desktop and when it gets too messy, move the stuff I'm done with to a folder called archive. If I'm looking for something recent, it's on my desktop, else it's in my archive folder. Works pretty well for me.

I often ask myself, where _would_ I put such a thing. Rarely do I have to check more than two or three directories before finding the document I'm looking for, when I pretend that I'm looking for a place to file it now.

I'm wondering if you're either a savant or just have very few documents?

The more documents you have, the more likely you are to have strict classifications. The stricter the classifications the more likely you are to run into something like Russell's paradox.

At least on OneDrive for Android, a bizarre thing is that search is _not_ equivalent to find . -iname. It is able to find search terms in the _content_ of documents but not their filenames.

Well, you can have the same functionality with find if you want it:

find -type f -exec grep -Hn "_content_" {} \;

  grep -RHn "_content_" .

Though I much prefer this solution, the GP solution is better when there are non-text documents in the directory tree. Find is nice and that you can narrow it down by file name or file extension, without relying on bash globs.

Yep

I just did it more tongue-in-cheek like the unneeded cat commands.

There’s definitely use cases. If you want to search for a keyword on the file name, that one’s great.

I think it’s a cool and potentially useful feature as long as it stays local.

“as long as it stays local”

i think we both know how that will go.

first, Microsoft will exfiltrate data for the purposes of performance and analytics, in scare quotes.

Next, they’ll do it in order to train copilot, in an unannounced update, and tell us this is a wonderful new feature.

Finally, they’ll bundle this data that they said would always remain local, and offer it for sale as training data, which government users will then buy, for obvious reasons. this will be done in the name of safety, and for the children.

Yep. Same kind of behavior as Oracle. Do not anthropomorphize the lawnmower.

Like how your desktop got redirected to onedrive?

exactly. “ we have altered the deal. Pray that we don’t alter it further.”

> Who, exactly, is clamoring for Recall in the first place?

I'm not clamoring for any Microsoft software for the last two decades, but the idea itself is interesting, like being able to catalog and look back at what I did at specific times in the past, or be able to query "What was the website where I saw X at?", would have been useful just last week for me when I was trying to find some document I read but didn't bookmark/download.

But I'd probably trust BP to not spill oil into our oceans again over Microsoft not having security/data leak issues.

if you use google then history.google.com

It is a totally worthwhile and useful bit of tech, unfortunately the scumbags have it and so you want to disable it because you don't want them to benefit even though they are giving you something useful in exchange.

> if you use google then history.google.com

I use gmail from time to time, and YouTube, but literally everything else I do on the computer won't be visible there.

What would be cool would be to ask "What documents about ICs did I have open last night around 23:00?" and have it give me a list of local paths that I looked at, and it's all outside of browsers/Google. And of course, have it all be local.

Google's Activity History has gotten less and less useful ifself. The searh function basically doesn't work anymore, particularly past a few years ago. They probably keep the data to use themselves, but good luck accessing it without doing a Takeout request.

Windows already tracks file usage (e.g. recent files), maybe that could be set to keep more history.

I'm not sure if both you and previous parent don't know, but the main useful thing with Recall is understanding whatever is on the screen, not just file accesses, or URLs visited but basically anything. So while Google's activity might see some parts, recent files sees another and so on, deriving that from screenshots captures everything you'd see on the screen.

I'm aware. You suggested querying local file access history based on their contents, that could be achieved without taking screenshots and OCRing them.

We've given up top much ground to scumbags who give us cool stuff that ends up being a Trojan Horse. Anything these scumbags give us is not to add value to our lives, it's to extract value from society in underhanded ways. "Wow look at how nice this drink is! It was given to me by that professional date rapist!"

At this point, Microsoft should be treated as a threat to society and the individual, and we should probably start shunning Microsoft engineers & executives from public spaces.

Who? Investors. If your company is not "doing" AI, your stock price goes down.

I assume the real target market isn't home users

it's shitty invasive employers (e.g. amazon)

they'll be able to notice you stopped working for 2 minutes to go to the toilet and punish you accordingly

This concept is certainly in the zeitgeist. I actually built and named a product 'Recall' with identical functionality eleven years ago:

https://github.com/btc/recall

This is crazy! Can I ask how to run this ? I'm not an advanced developer & can't really tell how exactly to run this on my machine .. maybe an update on readme.md could help?

>Who, exactly, is clamoring for Recall in the first place?

NSA, CIA, maybe even ICE nowadays.

Guessing they are going to analyse your screenshots to attribute you a productivity index.

Someone wanted a pitch for new AI powered features and this was something they thought would work and would look impressive in a commercial, probably.

THe same people who wanted web searches to appear in windows search bar, the higher ups at microsoft. they juice their numbers and say "See, look how many people are using our recall product. just like "See, look how many people are using Bing (in case of the web searches in windows search).

The tyranny of the default.

The most interesting part of TFA is that Microsoft is apparently deliberately restricting the ability of apps to opt out:

This is not the kind of thing you'd do if you expect app developers to be enthusiastic about the feature.

> Who, exactly, is clamoring for Recall in the first place?

Well some people currently pay $19/month for that feature.

https://www.rewind.ai/

I can never understand how anyone with an interest in tech hasn't switched to Linux for their personal desktop/laptop at some point in the last 20+ years.

Why would you want to use a closed source OS controlled by a corporation with a past as checkered as Microsoft's?

Personally I still hold that if Microsoft made an OS that is stripped down with only true essentials, I would go back to Windows. Until then, Linux is my home, outside of work or my dedicated Windows device (a Surface laptop) which I rarely if ever need to bust out to do something.

My last hurdle which I kind of sucked up was Discord, I was holding off on it for ages, till I got irritated enough with Windows to ignore it. It didn't let me stream with audio, but when they switched from 32-bit to 64-bit it seems Linux finally got streaming with audio.

Gaming. Linux gaming has come a long way (especially thanks to the steam deck) but the vast majority of games are still only released on Windows.

Right, but thanks to Proton that’s just not relevant? Blue Prince, Clair Obscure, Lost Records, The Alters, Doom: The Dark Ages, Oblivion Remastered, South of Midnight… all run just fine on Steam on linux.

If you have older hardware and play older games, Proton often doesn't run those as well as windows on the same hardware. On my laptop (win10/ubuntu dual boot, about 6 years old) windows is significantly faster in every game I have tried. I also had to do a futzy ad-hoc binary search to find a proton version that works with one game (either fallout 3 or fallout new vegas, can't remember which). And proton generally crashes more.

> If you have older hardware

So Windows 11 won't work, will it?

It won't, but since 10 still exists I'm just running that now and will probably do so as long as I can - then maybe I can get a hardware upgrade, do the proton switch, and my games will run about as well as they used to with 10 on my old hardware - with some fiddling naturally.

My point is it isn't a universal truth that everybody currently running 10 can just switch to linux/proton now and it is seamless. Really depends on what you run and your hardware, as with everything linux.

I also hack some games with dll injection and I don't know how I'm going to get that working with proton, maybe it works, maybe it doesn't.

As a counterpoint; I've primarily played games that are old or jank as hell to setup in general. Septerra Core, Nox, Diablo 2, various assortments of RPG Maker games across different engines. They all worked perfectly fine and arguably were easier to setup on a modern machine than trying to figure out how to get them working on Windows.

The only game that didn't work out of the box for me was Path of Exile 2.

Every single game you mentioned has some sort of tinker step reported on protondb even though it may be marked platinum. Here’s the one for oblivion:

    DRI_PRIME=1 WINEDLLOVERRIDES="xaudio2_7=n,b" PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=90 %command%

Or maybe it’s this one that the next user reported…

    DXIL_SPIRV_CONFIG=wmma_fp8_hack FSR4_UPGRADE=1 game-performance %command%

I personally don’t want to have to do stuff like that to get them to work.

These are almost always unnecessary. I have 460 games in my Steam library (most of them are popular games, including ones mentioned in the parent comment, not obscure indies) and all of them work great out of the box without command line options. That's a higher success rate than my Windows machine. For example, the latter command is for someone who wants to hack in FSR4 support on 9xxx AMD cards; this is for power users.

I haven't played most of those games, but I can at least attest that I could run Clair Obscur with no tinkering whatsoever. A lot of times even if some people had to tinker with a game, you will be just fine and not have to tinker.

Having played Doom, Oblivion, Blue Prince, and Clair Obscur on linux, I can tell you that the tinker steps are unnecessary. I have literally just clicked play and didn't need to think about it. This didn't require a bunch of manual setup to get to that point either; I installed Endeavour and it installed the drivers I needed, then I installed Steam as normal and it was like nothing had changed from my Windows install.

People will post their tinker steps for everything. It's often just to disable the steam overlay, or inject their own overlay, or whatever they think gets them an extra 2 fps. It's linux and people love to configure it their way, but honestly steam/proton handles it automatically 99% of the time.

They run "just fine" meaning their developers and publishers just tolerate the fact that someone out there may be running them on unsupported OS's, and that too only barely. Many will straight up lock their games out of Linux, let alone support them.

There are very few games that run "better" on Linux, and that too only on specific benchmarks and after a lot of tweaks and hacks. Nvidia is a lost cause, many devices, parts and peripherals don't bother providing Linux driver support, and HDR & VRR have either bog-standard implementations or are straight-up unsupported. There is no way any current nontrivial game runs better out-of-the-box on any Linux distro for a layman than on Windows on most retail "gaming" computers.

What stops you from dual-booting?

You use Windows for games, and only games. For everything else, you use Linux.

This is a practical setup.

I go one step further. I have a Windows PC primarily for gaming, on its own physical LAN all to itself, that can only talk to the Internet (not any other LANs). I have an almost-identical PC (sans GPU) for Linux Mint, which I do all of my actually important or meaningful work on.

Like you alluded to, I never use the Windows PC for anything else -- nothing even remotely sensitive -- nothing with identification like logging into government websites, no financial activity, etc. It has no access to my e-mail, instant messaging, calendar, contacts, pictures, videos, and so on. While it has Steam on it, I don't buy Steam games on it; I go to Steam's website on my Linux desktop and buy games there, then they show up in my Steam library on the Windows desktop. I do also use it for 3D CAD since I'm still very much in my infancy learning FreeCAD (which will remove that Windows dependency).

It spends the vast majority of its time turned off and if the entire contents of its drives were published publicly I wouldn't lose a minute's sleep over it. I still image the drive every couple months so I can revert to a known-good config should the need arise, as breaking itself for no reason is what Windows is really good at.

Which makes those god-awful prompts to "Finish setting up Windows Backup" every couple of weeks bloody hilarious...

What about steam chat, discord, etc?

Don't use, don't have.

I am using Discord in Firefox for years without any issues. I also created a container for it after containers became a thing.

I use Discord only for programming groups, study groups, etc. Not for games or in-game chatting.

> This is a practical setup.

What if you need to check emails or take care of some other task mid-game?

This is what stops me from dual-booting. I don't enjoy Windows as much as the next person, but dual booting inevitably requires me to just duplicate logging into services and installing the same programs in both OSes, and then if I don't boot into one of the OSes for a while, I end up having to wait for updates (admittedly this is a much worse problem on Windows, but it's not not a problem for Linux) and any other things that need to happen just so I can use the computer.

FWIW you have a partial solution here which is to run a VM that boots into the same system that you also dual boot into. It's still inconvenient, but not nearly as bad as having to terminate your app and reboot.

> check emails

I just do it on my phone if needed.

> some other task mid-game

Like what? Something taking long, serious, and business/work related? Then you are stopping to play anyway.

Or want to order something via Amazon? You can do it on the phone. The app or any browser is sufficient.

> I just do it on my phone if needed.

Do you have your phone by you all the time? Mine is always sitting somewhere, probably charging. On my laptop I just get a notification instantly showing me an email preview without me having to do anything. Having to go check my phone isn't a substitute for that.

> Like what? Something taking long, serious, and business/work related?

Like replying to a message? Going to fetch your phone and type on it is way more painful from than just pressing alt-tab and doing it on the computer.

> Like what? Something taking long, serious, and business/work related?

Do you have nothing long or serious outside of work? I just had to fill out some forms and do some shopping yesterday online for my personal life. That'd have been painful on the phone.

> Then you are stopping to play anyway.

Stopping the app loses your exact state... that's kind of the whole point of pausing the game.

I'd argue it isn't a practical setup.

Dual-booting means supporting 2 OSes on my personal machine. My personal machine is for doing personal things, not supporting OSes.

I use windows on my main PC because it supports all the games I want to play, and it also supports all the software I want to use. Linux does not. Simple as that, for me.

I also use Linux and Mac at work daily. I prefer to use the right tool for the job.

I will bite. I have this exact setup. And indeed at the very beginning I would mostly use Linux, then I started playing more games on Windows. And that's when the convenience factor makes windows win. Having to reboot to use linux after a gaming session is annoying when I can just open another app in windows and achieve the same result (and don't forget I would have to reboot yet again when it's time to resume play).

More practical would be to use Windows and then use WSL to host Linux applications.

That is certainly true, but they usually work fine on Linux thanks to Proton. I'm a big gamer and I've been primarily Linux (for gaming too) for something like 4 years now.

Not if you care about online gaming. Anti-cheat measures generally don't work well in Proton.

I’ll tell you why I still use a Mac: it’s because my non-techie wife still uses one. Even then I still have to provide her with regular tech support. For someone like her using Linux is not yet a viable option.

My 75 years old mother can do it completely unassisted…

Congratulations. The planet has ~8 billion people on it and everyone is different.

Most people are not THAT different.

That’s great but I think that says more about your mother than it does about Linux.

Yes I'm sure that a lifetime of teaching literature prepared her to use linux better than average.

Completely agreed. Contrary to popular belief, my experience is that the elderly get along better with Linux than most people. The elderly typically memorize exactly how to do what they want to do. They learn to click this, click that, and get what they want without taking any deviations. And Kubuntu is nice because each update doesn't change their workflow.

Considering that most elderly that I've met do their entire workflow through the browser, that just adds to the ease of moving to Linux.

Same, I have my whole family on MacOS because the marriage of hardware and software across the ecosystem is unmatched. I totally get why people wouldn't want "i" and "pod" everything, but when you do have everything - it all just plays so nicely together. Even stupid little things like being able to remotely control the tv with your phone, or automatically unlock your computer by simply wearing your watch, add up to reduce a ton of friction day to day.

There's an almost violent resistance to switching to Linux because there's perceived fears of it being too technical. The mere thought of potentially needing to open up a command prompt sends people into a fear panic and needing to solve problems freaks people out.

I wish I was exaggerating but I've had these arguments with people that really should know better and there was nothing I could do to convince them. There's a lot of people that are strangely proud in being completely technically illiterate and they don't care to actually have control over their computer or personal data. This isn't an age thing either; this was from people that were otherwise my age or younger that simply got angry at the mere thought of Linux.

I myself made the full switch last year with the advent of them forcing copilot shit everywhere and everything just works out of the box. I originally thought I might need to switch back to Windows every now and then for gaming but no, everything I've thrown at it works great and often better than it did on Windows. I only keep Windows around on my separate dev/work machine for the sake of game dev and coding.

Just yesterday I wiped my dual booted linux mint. As bad as Microsoft is, there is a certain sense of polish and dare I say confidence to using windows. Lol I can't believe I'm saying that even though just now I saw chris titus's video on AI code inside windows.

Say when an application starts being slow for memory issues or io issues or downright freezes, I can still click a button or start typing something in that application, wait and it'll work eventually. I can push windows as far as I can, I can be absolutely careless and it'll still work.

On mint, if things start going slow, I'll stop clicking and wait for it to die so I can restart the app again. I don't feel confident enough to push it.

It's like buying a boring, easy to maintain japanese car and a fancy, one of 100, exotic super car from some obscure european brand. I know which one I can confidently thrash about.

I reinstalled Arch 4 times before setting up btrfs. It has it's own issues but it is nice to be able to work with confidence again.

I use Mac daily but a windows desktop for gaming. I tried to switch. There’s still too much incompatible although proton has made huge advances.

Because I have work to do and lost the interest in tinkering with my OS back when flying toasters were a popular screen saver.

Those of us doing creative production work really don't have a chance since the majority of apps only support Win/Mac. I understand the tech but cannot escape it.

Much to my annoyance, no one seems to have any interest in making a Linux compatible Quicken alternative. Until they do, I'll have to deal with Windows in some form. That's just my example though. The broader point is that there is a lot of Windows only software out there and each person only needs to have one piece of mission critical Windows only software in their life to make the friction of switching too high to bother with.

Game development, design, photography, gaming, ease of accessing torrents to trial applications before purchasing, etc.

Windows still wins, mac is great for most of those points except for gaming and torrents, Linux bad at most of those.

Interestingly, the linked Recall docs[1] mention a way to filter apps and/or websites from being saved; however:

> This setting applies only to Enterprise and Education editions of Windows.

That limitation looks extremely impractical.

[1]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/client-management/...

I think what's only available in Enterprise/Education editions is the users ability to configure that filter themselves, while what Brave is doing should be available everywhere, where the application itself registers as a browser + what specific window is "sensitive" (which Brave registers all windows as, when the toggle is active). That's my understanding at least.

The linked document is about how IT admins can manage the filter via policy, which is exclusive to Enterprise/Education. Users can set up filters through the settings UI (on all editions).

(disclaimer: I lead privacy at Brave and wrote the article)

See the blog post for how we implemented this: https://brave.com/privacy-updates/35-block-recall/#how-we-im.... We took Recall's guidance for web browsers and extended it to apply for ALL windows, not just Private Browsing: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/ai/recall/recall-w...

Another way to use up disk space and push cloudification. In addition to all the concerns already listed.

You would think a trillion-dollar company could use its resources to build something useful and move the technology forward with something like a new file system with versioning or a global file system, or updates that don't require a restart, maybe immutability of some sort, something useful for a change. Instead their breakthrough feature is a tool that takes a screenshot every few seconds and fills up the drive space, sigh. And they even couldn't get that right on the first try, the first version was a privacy nightmare.

I think Recall could very easily be useful. The problem is that Microsoft has trampled on people's trust so much that they don't trust this new tool and probably never will.

Microsoft has poisoned the well.

I hope Brave considers eventually removing the crypto aspect from their product, because once all that crap is turned off it's my preferred browser. Just hard to recommend to anyone not savvy enough to turn all the goofy stuff on their "new tab" page off.

just get a better new tab page:

https://github.com/conceptualspace/yet-another-speed-dial

The problem is that needing to direct a non-techie to do this to "fix" something that shouldn't be broken immediately makes it fail the "grandma test".

if someone cant click "install" they probably dont need a computer

I'd argue that blindly clicking "install", especially for extensions, is one of the reasons you shouldn't use a computer. It takes knowledge and effort to find or even invent solutions to problems.

thats my point. its a skill everyone should have or develop, like reading or writing

There was a flurry of FOSS and local-first alternatives appearing when Recall was first announced (and more afterwards too), did anyone here end up using any of them and found them good enough? I remember trying one or two but most were basically hacks/prototypes at that point, I'm guessing at this point at least one of them developed enough to actually work well for daily use?

> We tell the operating system that every Brave tab is ‘private’, so Recall never captures it.

Without this loophole Recall could take pix of password managers and other such sensitive windows. So it doesn't seem closeable without per app exceptions.

But privacy is a bug on a school laptop used by a child. Brave could have a toggle on the feature if it wants to serve that market.

> But privacy is a bug on a school laptop used by a child.

What you're going to learn is how many people that think like this consider you to be in the same position as the child.

  "The whole principle (censorship) is wrong; it's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't eat steak.”  ― Robert A. Heinlein

The opposite is true too. Infants shouldn't be handed knives because grown men need to cut their steak.

It's more like, "Only licensed chefs need pointy knives, so the logical thing to do is ban pointy knives for everyone else."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ianmorris/2019/03/14/yes-a-poli...

Cigarette lighters and matches would probably be banned, or at least heavily restricted, if smoking had never been a thing.

Having passed a toddler a steak knife, it's fine. There are even practice knifes for this purpose.

(An infants hands are too small to hold a steak knife)

> Having passed a toddler a steak knife, it's fine.

That time. With that child. I don't think "a steak knife per toddler" is a scalable value proposition.

I disagree. Most children (including toddlers) can be taught quickly to safely handle even "scary knives" and controlled exposure to real tools with real consequences is actually high value.

You can also give infants who are ready for food meat and other real foods, just keep in mind the lack of teeth.

If we were to seriously take that advice, children wouldn't have access to laptops in the first pace, let alone "school" ones.

Your manager would say that privacy is a bug on a corporate laptop used by an employee. Luckily there are a number of countries where the legal framework doesn't let that fly.

If the law required allowing children to use their school owned laptops to browse the web without oversight or limitation, many schools could not provide them and students would lose a very valuable educational tool.

There's a limitation in the form of inaccessible domains which is, predictably, also used by employers.

No need to go all 1984 on children because those who can bypass such restrictions will figure out a way to see what they want.

Like with everything about parenting your main weapon against the evils of this world is the trust your child puts into you.

It would unironically be much better for everyone involved if they didn't use laptops in the first place and went back to pen and paper.

How does it help parents/teachers/children to have Microsoft spy on your children?

I have trouble thinking of a use case.

As a teacher it's "I wasn't able to monitor Tommy's screen while I was helping other students, but Tommy is struggling with the material that he usually gets easily and I'd like to know if he was on task. If not I want to bring back his focus; if so I'd like to understand what he has trouble with so I can help."

If you're thinking "just ask", unfortunately students often don't have that level of introspection.

Related: By Default, Signal Doesn't Recall

https://signal.org/blog/signal-doesnt-recall/

A side note: there's a group policy "Allow Recall Enablement" that, it claims, when disabled "the Recall component will be in disabled state and the bits for Recall will be removed from the device".

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/client-management/...

It's wild that applications now need to defend themselves against OS 'features'.

They don't need to. It's performative virtue signalling. Recall is encrypted, opt-in and on-device. Apple Intelligence sends your personal data to the cloud and claims it's a feature and no one bats an eye.

I am so glad that every time Microsoft comes up with another insane thing to make their users hate them I do not need to care, as I am running Linux on my Desktop and Laptop.

Good on Brave for doing this, but having to continually deal with these absurd Microsoft manufactured problems has to get exhausting.

This is only tangentially related, but I just started using Brave (on Windows) in the past couple weeks in preparation for uBlock Origin being blocked in Chrome. Once I disabled all the weird service integrations/upsells it's been a decent enough experience. But the one bizarre thing I've found is typing in the YouTube comment box is laggy as hell for some reason. No other text field that I've found has this issue, just the YouTube comment box in particular is super laggy in Brave. Has anyone else experienced this?

I've been using Brave since forever and comment on YouTube a fair bit and have never experienced this. There are a few instances where I had to go to another browser to make a website work, but even those have become vanishingly small.

Could it be an extension?

Yeah, I suppose I'll have to play the disable-one-extension-at-a-time game.

It's one of those issues that's so infrequent and just tolerable enough because it's not like I'm writing essays in youtube comments, it's easier to just tolerate it for 10 seconds than to put the effort into figuring it out!

First I heard of this. do you have any other extensions installed? Is HW acceleration enabled?

I'm tired of all these apps using Recall as a lazy way to create pointless "privacy improving" features. This is pure marketing and there is absolutely no actual intention of improving user privacy.

As far as I know, Recall has never been enabled by default on any Windows-PC, even the new "Copilot+ PCs", so this should not be a concern as users have to explicitely opt-in to enable this privacy-invading feature.

First it was Signal which pretended being "forced" to create such a feature. I love Signal but I found this absolutely ridiculous.

Preventing a Window to be seen by other programs has the side-effect of making it completely invisible when using Windows remotely with tools such as Sunshine. How am I supposed to use Brave or Signal if the setting to disable this feature is not accessible because I can't even see the settings screen first?

HN really loves making Microsoft (especially Windows) appear even worse as it already is...

Cool story bruh. It was initially enabled by default and by design had intern level security.

Microsoft has earned, many times over, its hate.

In a beta that was never released to the public.

(disclaimer: I lead privacy at Brave and wrote the article)

> How am I supposed to use Brave or Signal if the setting to disable this feature is not accessible because I can't even see the settings screen first?

Brave's implementation shouldn't block screen readers or screenshot tools. It only blocks Recall. See the blog post: https://brave.com/privacy-updates/35-block-recall#disabling-...

You are absolutely right. Most people here are probably commenting from their MacBooks while their personal information is being sent to the cloud by Apple Intelligence and somehow that's fine. Both Brave and Signal are seeking attention by doing performative active that do absolutely nothing to increase the privacy of the end user.

Recall is already opt-in. It's fully on-device, nothing gets sent to the cloud (unlike Apple Intelligence which gets no hate at all but is worse because it sends your data to the cloud). You can disable Recall for specific apps at the OS level.

Both Brave and Signal add a feature that already exists at the OS level and then write ludicrous attention-seeking blog posts about it. Why? If you don't trust the OS to honor your settings and not spy on you, then you should consider the device compromised and you shouldn't be using it anyway. And if you're somehow still using it, why would you enable Recall on a device that you don't trust? That scenario simply doesn't exist, yet both Brave and Signal fail to mention that in their blog posts they write to gain internet points on communities like HN.

Man I'm so hoping for Ladybird to get us out of this browser-as-a-trojan-horse world we live in today.

This is why I’m not moving off Windows 10. I’d rather move to MacOS than Windows 11 and if they force me I’ll do it.

Why not Linux?

I'm not who you asked, but the reason I migrated to Macs years ago, and the reason I stay, is that I don't want my computer to be a maintenance hobby unto itself. I need to do actual work.

I also enjoy the polish Apple provides in other ways -- the platform features you get if you're on a Mac, use an iPhone, have a Watch, etc, are all pretty great. Cobbling together something like that on my own under Linux probably isn't possible.

Using a sane distribution Linux just works without needing to do anything special or needing to do a "maintenance hobby".

Linux isn't a maintenance hobby unto itself if you don't make it one. After the initial migration struggles (which you'll get on MacOS too), if you choose a boring distro like Debian, the maintenance burden is similar to Windows. Lots of Linux users love customizing the crap out of their stuff, so it becomes one, but it isn't inherently like that if you keep your configuration somewhat close to stock on whatever distro you use. (I've also heard good things about immutable distros for that, since if something doesn't work, you can just rollback and it will work again)

It isn't until you need something like Microsoft Office or Photoshop. At which point you're either using FOSS alternatives (and dealing with it's incompatibilities with the proprietary file formats) or dealing with a very fragile wine setup.

If you don't need that kind of thing then Linux is indeed pretty good these days. But especially in a business context, a lot of people do.

> It isn't until you need something like Microsoft Office or Photoshop

I run both of those on Linux, with no trouble. Who told you this?

How do you run ms office on Linux?

I've been waiting for years for an acceptable way to run Onenote on Linux. The browser does not count, it fetches pages on demand and is painfully slow. There are some wrappers around the browser, those don't count either. Running a Windows VM is unacceptable. People don't have success running it through Wine so I'm not going to try.

Why do I have to use Onenote? It's free. It syncs well with other computers and mobile apps. Sharing notebooks with other people works and is free. It's intuitive enough that my wife can use it. The search works, the formatting is rich enough, you can paste in pictures.

I don't need the rest of Office. The online versions or Google docs are good enough. If I can get Onenote and Fusion360 working well on Linux, I would likely switch to Linux.

Are you seriously suggesting someone new to Linux use Debian, one of the most annoying distros to set up for desktop use?

I used Linux Mint for about a year and gave up because everything was constantly breaking and the software was a direct downgrade from MacOS in terms of usability and prevalence. Oh, and new hardware usually doesn't even work on Linux.

Linux is like Communism, sounds great in theory but in reality it doesn't work.

What's so hard about debian to set up?

Besides having to boot from an ISO and the arduous process of installing Linux in general compared to not having to do this with MacOS or Windows, hardware compatibility is by far the most annoying part of Linux desktop. Want to use a new laptop to run Linux? Well it probably will have a bunch of hardware issues you need to monkey patch.

It appears a site for software engineers can get lost in the sauce with the concept of something being "easy" - but Linux absolutely will never take off if it's a pain in the ass for the average computer user to install and use.

> Linux is like Communism, sounds great in theory but in reality it doesn't work.

Man I'm using windows and defending it's usage in this very thread but that's totally stupid

Care to explain why you think this analogy is stupid?

because whatever you think of communism, linux is not an ideology and it works very well

Let me quote the guidelines:

> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously

> Don't be curmudgeonly. Thoughtful criticism is fine, but please don't be rigidly or generically negative.

> Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

> Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.

Well - I think this should start to cover it.

"Similar to Windows" is not a great rec, IMO.

YMMV

I switched from Mac to WIN a few years ago, because maintaining MB Pros became a nightmare, after having had six burned mainboards (with Macbook Pro devices each) within 3 years. I had definitely enough. Happy my former employer had to shell out the money for repairs/replacements. But each time getting back into a workable state with my backups still took north of two days.

And while for my day job I still need to use Windows, for my freelance business I am using Linux for quite a while now. Without any maintenance except regular updates (like with any OS out there). There is exactly nothing I am missing in terms of tools/software (for my line of work), while I am also benefitting from better performance, longer battery life and overall a smoother user experience.

Not going back anytime soon.

Can’t say I blame you after such an experience. To give another data point, I don’t think I’ve ever had any of my MacBooks fail. My old ones are still happily being used by my in-laws.

That being said, I am eyeing up Framework for next laptop.

Yeah, same here -- my Macbooks (and the Powerbooks before them) have been the most solid, reliable, and long-lived laptops of my entire life (and I'm 55).

I'm still using a 10 year old one as a poor-man's-NAS-controller. And the backup system that ships with the tool is insanely solid -- while I don't trust any single backup solution alone, the one time I did have to recover from backup (we were robbed), Time Machine had my new machine in exactly the same state as my stolen one within about 2h. I'm sure with faster bus speeds and drives now, it'd be even faster.

Yeah, as I mentioned in another comment - I really wish I could have kept that 2014 model. Hands down the best laptop I've ever used.

Unfortunately when we got acquired, we had to return all secondary devices with no buyout option (they used to let us keep older machines, but corporate policy changed that).

These days I'm running an older Lenovo Yoga that's actually holding up pretty well. Since I don't game and stopped doing video work, it covers my needs just fine. Swapped in a 2TB SSD and replaced the battery after about 6 years - can't complain about that longevity.

When this one finally gives up, Framework is definitely on my shortlist. Also planning to grab a mini PC for NAS/home server duties in the next few months - been putting that off way too long.

The repairability aspect of Framework really appeals to me after years of dealing with machines you basically have to replace entirely when something breaks. Seems like a much saner approach.

> That being said, I am eyeing up Framework for next laptop.

Same here. Had the 2017-era MBP (pre-M1 days). Still miss my 2014 though - that thing was solid.

The newer Intel ones ran stupidly hot, especially driving 4K externals at full res. Add corporate "compliance software" (read: bloatware that shall not be named) and those machines basically lived at 80-90°C. Heat up in the morning, thermal throttle all day, cool down overnight, repeat.

Our IT dept tracked failure rates - roughly 0.5-1.5% (depending on holiday season or not) of the MBP fleet was always out for thermal-related repairs at any given time. Not exactly confidence-inspiring for a $3k+ machine.

>getting back into a workable state with my backups still took north of two days.

It sounds like you're not very good at backups, then.

I've only ever needed to do a real DR once, after we were robbed, but my Time Machine restore had my replacement Macbook up, runing, and with my application states in place within about 2 hours.

>longer battery life

As an Apple Silicon user, I doubt that. ;)

Ah yes, clearly a skill issue on my part. Thanks for that insight.

I'm sure you've never had the pleasure of working in a corporate environment where IT has banned Time Machine, external drives, and replacement machines that actually match your storage capacity. Where "backup and restore" means navigating a Kafkaesque ticketing system on your phone to get someone in a different timezone to temporarily unlock your account because you're now on an "untrusted device."

The actual data backup? 2-4 hours, worked fine. The rest was dealing with invalidated certificates, version mismatches in corporate "security" software (that ironically required Flash to be "compliant"), and finding a replacement machine that wasn't a 256GB base model when you need to restore from a larger drive.

But you're right - back when we were independent, before the corporate acquisition, Time Machine worked exactly as advertised. Two hours, everything restored perfectly. Then came the security theater that somehow made machines less secure while being infinitely more annoying to manage.

So yeah, clearly I'm just not good at "backups." Got it.

> As an Apple Silicon user, I doubt that. ;)

Feel free to doubt away - yours is definitely longer. For context: I'm comparing Windows vs Linux on the same dual-boot hardware (old Intel workhorse), not against whatever "M" you are running. Linux consistently delivers 40-45% better battery life than Windows on identical hardware. Still need the Windows partition for certain freelance client work, but working on eliminating that dependency entirely.

>I'm sure you've never had the pleasure of working in a corporate environment where IT has banned Time Machine, external drives, and replacement machines that actually match your storage capacity.

Well, I mean, it kinda DOES seem like my critique was on point. It just wasn't YOU that was bad at backups. It's that your IT department is worthless.

But either way, it's not an Apple problem.

>Apple Silicon

The power management on the Apple chips is really just amazing. It's like nothing I've ever used before. This level of performance AND insane battery life feels like a magic trick.

Oh, and the heat management is all part of it. I've had this machine for 4 years, and a few weeks ago it started making a disturbing noise I'd never heard before. "WTF????", I thought.

And then I realized what it was: I'd finally triggered the fans, which had never come on before. Turns out, rendering a shitload of high-def 360-degree video down into a flat file for Youtube sharing is computationally intense enough to trigger the M1's cooling system.

Use a stable distribution like Debian and maintenance only happens every 4-5 years, if you don't mind staying with older software.

> if you don't mind staying with older software.

The problem is: it depends a lot on the specific program whether I want the newest or stay with some older version of some program. Many GNU/Linux distributions make this hard, while Windows makes this easy.

There's backports to install specific programs.

But I'm not here to convince anyone.

Huh, what? With Linux you can at least dockerize apps and run multiple versions with negligible performance impact. Doing the same in Windows is a mess at best.

Or did you mean that you want to pin an app to a specific version? This can be done also, trivially - not that it is a good idea in general.

Ah yes, dockerize apps. Jump through hoops to use an app, compared to Windows where it's just some clicks.

Nobody ever disputes that there are workarounds to the default packaging workflows of Linux distros. The problem is, your average user, even technical ones don't want using an OS to be a second job outside their real job.

Is this the moving the goalposts Olympic games?

Can attest to that. Also, no annoying "Get to know Copilot!" and similar nag-screens.

And no "update to windows 11" (even though it would make the whole system unbootable)

> I don't want my computer to be a maintenance hobby unto itself

That hasn't been the case with Linux, any more than other OSs, for some time now. At least not if you chose an LTS release of a big “getting work done” oriented distro rather than something geared around the bleeding edge or customisability.

There are issues with some software support, but that is almost all Windows stuff that you'll have the same problems with on Macs as Linux.

There are occasional hardware issues, which is where Apple limiting choice in favour of known reliability can look attractive, but that is mostly on the bleeding edge too which isn't a concern if you are “getting work done” (I had issues with some 2.5GbE NICs a while ago and swapped them back out, retried with the same kit last month, at least on apt-release-update later, and things are working just fine).

> if you're on a Mac, use an iPhone, have a Watch, etc,

I can see that.

Though I prefer to select my devices based on what they are best at rather than being locked to a single manufacturer's ecosystem. My watch (Garmin) and phone (Android) talk to each other just fine and integration with the desktop when I need it (mostly for planning routes & pacing plans using maps on the big screen) is web-based so works just as well with Linux as Widows or Macs.

Scan your comment:

That hasn't been the case with Linux...for some time now

There are issues

There are occasional hardware issue

You're arguing against yourself.

Windows has plenty of issues and hardware problems! It’s just that nobody ever blames Windows for them. It works like this:

Headset does not work on Linux: “This is crap, I’ll tell everybody I know to stay away from Linux!”

Headset does not work on Windows: “This is crap, I’ll tell everybody I know to stay away from these headphones!”

(Re-post from 2022: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32541772>)

Admitting that it isn't perfect is called being adult and offering a realistic assessment. I've had more issues with hardware with Windows in the past than Linux. Under the Apple system hardware issues are “solved” by simply limiting what is considered compatible.

Maybe actually read the my comment, in which I mention such caveats, instead of just scanning to pluck out the few words which agree with your existing blinkered view. Your reply is like film posters paraphrasing quotes like “Terribly written, nothing good to say about it!” to “Terribly good!”…

Some software has excellent Windows/Mac versions but no Linux version. And some only has a Windows version.

If WINE eventually works well enough I can confidently use random Windows programs, esp. if they can be installed in a nice sandbox, that would let me go to Linux.

For the same reason that I didn't replace my linux at home and at works by windows: because they have different strengths.

Windows has for it:

- the gazillion software, free or crazily expensive, that do not exist on linux

- the hardware compatibility, whatever is built, it is with windows on mind

- the office file formats that are the de facto standart

- the software installation model that is very crap but infinitely better than on linux

- the OS upgrade path also has it's issue but still much better than on linux

Of course linux has its strength also, and you can find it better in some cases on the points I listed

I use both Windows and Linux, and while I agree with your first three points for specific proprietary software depending on your job, the last two seem a bit odd. I thought these are often considered advantages of Linux?

I know that my opinions on these 2 topics are controversial, but they come from decade to usage of both of them as end-user that just want to click and use.

Moreover I think that not only windows' model is bad, and worse what makes it better than linux's model is the monopolistic and proprietary nature of windows.

At first, comparing both model can be thought as a joke: on windows, discovery and installations are manual, update are either manual or have to be implemented by the software developer, uninstallation is a bad joke that can let several gigabytes somewhere on your hard drive without even your knowledge or knowing how to find them (I'm not considering the app store, winget, etc because they are either bad or not well integrated).

But because windows versions last long, that they are very few of them and because the software is decoupled from the OS, installing a software on any windows machine that is less than 10 or 15 years old is downloading one of the maximum two installers, click to install and it's done. To update is just to accept the update for most software, but indeed to check first if there is an update for still many software and repeat the installation step. There is now redeeming the uninstallation: going to the parameter windows, uninstalling the software, and praying everything is properly removed.

In theory, on linux everything is better: click on the app center/use a command and look for what you want, clink install/type a command to install, everything is updated in one click/command, a software is uninstalled in on click/command.

But practice is different: discovery is still manual because you need to have more information and know the alternatives. Installation and update are where the real issue is: at the difference of windows, there is a close coupling of the OS and software. Every software has to be built and packaged for the dozen of distributions and all the versions of each distribution. The work is often duplicated: both the distrib managers and upstream propose their own packages. if you need or want to install from upstream, the dev must have their own repository that you have to add or you have do install the package manually. Update has the same issue: cross your fingers that your distribution and its version is covered either by the distribution or upstream, and that there is no conflict several sources are available. If you installed a package manually, it's not better than on windows. And because of the software-OS coupling, updating the OS means updating the software, and updating the software may mean updating the OS. Uninstallation is much better: afaik the issue of removing the dependencies is mostly resolved, and if sometimes some stuff is not removed, it's either small, not safely removable or easy to find.

For the OS updat, in theory again linux is much better, but in practice and since windows 7, here again because of the longevity of the OS versions and the decoupling OS-software I had less issues under windows

I think I understand where you're coming from, since I used to feel the same way. For system packages, and for Windows installations, I also have plenty of nightmare stories across decades. I haven't had as many issues lately with Linux (running Fedora GNOME), while Windows has become even worse somehow. Flatpak and AppImages address these concerns to a large extent (but has its own problems with disk space, of course), but that's my experience anyway.

What is THIS?

Really?

> Apple Intelligence is designed to protect your privacy at every step. It’s integrated into the core of your iPhone, iPad, and Mac through on-device processing. So it’s aware of your personal information without collecting your personal information. And with groundbreaking Private Cloud Compute, Apple Intelligence can draw on larger server-based models, running on Apple silicon, to handle more complex requests for you while protecting your privacy.

Source: https://www.apple.com/apple-intelligence/

All the marketing fluff aside, Apple literally says Apple analyzes your personal information in the core of your device and sends it to the cloud for more complex tasks. That's orders of magnitude worse than Recall which is on-device, opt-in and fully encrypted.

What are the prerequisites hardware-wise for Recall? If it's the case you need certain hardware for it to run properly then not having that hardware is a good migration.

I'm curious about the last paragraph relating to Signal. How, exactly, have Brave managed this without also blocking screenshots? Is there a flag Signal missed?

According to the same paragraph, it's because Signal isn't a "browser app":

> Given that Windows doesn’t let non-browser apps granularly disable Recall, Signal cleverly uses the DRM flag on their app to disable all screenshots.

(emphasis mine)

Apparently, Microsoft consider browsers special:

> While it’s heartening that Microsoft recognizes that Web browsers are especially privacy-sensitive applications, we hope they offer the same granular ability to turn off Recall to all privacy-minded application developers.

Oops. Yeah, I shouldn't have missed that.

Still, does this mean Microsoft maintains an approved browser list for this? Would the various other less-known Chromium/Firefox forks be unable to take advantage of the same thing?

Edit: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/ai/recall/recall-w...

> To make sure that Recall doesn't save your user's browsing history while in modes like this, your app can use the SetInputScope function, setting the input scope to IS_PASSWORD.

> Your app must also have a http or https protocol handler registered before SetInputScope will support the behavior described in this article.

I now wonder if you can register a handler that never gets used since you won't be the default browser (and if you do end up as the default somehow, warn the user when called).

Microsoft specifically allows software in the category “browsers” to disable Recall.

How is this category defined? Can an app resister itself as a browser?

> Microsoft specifically allows software in the category “browsers” to disable Recall.

1. "Browser" does not mean "web browser": many kinds of applications can be considered a browser.

2. Even if you identify "browser" with "web browser": Electron apps are basically (web) browsers (though not fully functional ones). Nobody claimed said for a software to be in the "browser" category, it has to be a fully functional web browser.

How does the OS know that foobar application is a [[fully functional] web] browser?

It doesn't. Windows is just checking if there's a protocol handler entry in the registry for http/https.

In theory you don't abuse that because it will come up as a possible browser option for users. :shrug:

(disclaimer: I lead privacy at Brave and wrote the article)

Windows lets browser apps (more technically, apps that have an `http` or `https` protocol handler registered) to use `SetInputScope` function to set `IS_PRIVATE` for a window. We were able to use that and have it apply for all Brave windows, and thus granularly turn off Recall without affecting non-Recall screen readers or screenshot capabilities.

Signal doesn't have protocol handlers for `http` and `https`, so it can't do the same.

I'm on Brave 1.80.122 (Official Build) (64-bit) Chromium: 138.0.7204.157

I can't find this option under brave://settings/privacy

Why is that ?

It's starting in 1.81.

An important feature of the Microsoft corporation – weak respect for customers and greed.

Obligatory reminder that Brave has been caught doing nefarious things such as 1) injecting cryptocurrency affiliate links into your pages; 2) installing paid VPN software without consent; 3) injecting their own ads into pages; 4) scraping and reselling data; 5) their website taunts browsers that use Mozilla user-agents; 6) and more. With that sort of immoral development team, I wouldn't trust their browser or products.

Pretty cool move, it's great to give users the choice. I'm personally very excited for Recall, but unfortunately it's still not available in the EU.

...unfortunately? I consider it privacy nightmare, especially since Windows is so widespread in the enterprise space in Europe. What is exciting about it for you?

I think it's going to be really useful for me, but I get that it's not for everyone! If it's opt-in, on-device, and encrypted, I don't see it as a problem.

The real question is: can recall be forcibly torn out of your system, not if a specific application tries to "block" it.

Probably no more than explorer.exe (i.e. internet explorer integration) can be torn out of windows.

explorer.exe is the graphical shell and file browser...

With windows I wouldn't put it past Microsoft to helpfully 'repair' it after any given update, similar with a lot of the privacy tweakers you can find. Then it becomes a monthly task after patch Tuesday to confirm your system is how you want it.

By not turning it ON.

Recall is off by default, it's no more enabled on a clean install than Hyper-V. I think the idea is actually very good, but obviously the privacy concerns are not great. Microsoft has made a lot of changes from what I've seen to allow you to block it on x, y, z, etc.

It's off by default but still present on the system. You can remove it entirely via the "Turn Windows features on and off" dialog.

But removing the whole OS?

Recall is opt-in.

Yes, it can be removed via the "Turn Windows features on or off" dialog.

Good, fuck that infection.

Good, now block Windows entirely.

microsoft is just malware at this point, it's intelligence gathering to spy on people

how is this even legal?

It is about investors vs users. Microsoft chose you know who.

They have shitloads of money, which they use to bri--sorry, "lobby" politicians.

maybe they are already doing recall quietly for years.

wikileaks was 15 years ago. tech has come long way.

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