Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by fossr 741 days ago
We've made an open source alternative OpenRecall to address some of the concerns https://github.com/openrecall/openrecall We want to make it fully auditable, privacy focused and aim to have a better security model. Everything runs and is stored locally and only analyzed using open source models.
3 comments

Nice, I might check this out since it works on Linux and is coded in Python.

Honestly, if Microsoft came out tomorrow and just said "Look, here's the source code to Recall, we will not diverge it from this codebase in any way, and you should be able to create builds that match what's on your machine" that would be fine.

Microsoft, STOP FORCING GARBAGE MARKETING AND NEW FEATURES ON USERS. You have a high quality product you're trashing up. I've sworn off Windows since Windows 10/11. I am a daily Linux user thanks to all the nonsense. The only time you see me on Windows is my employer pays for it, but given a choice, I'd just ask for a Mac or Linux device instead. I'm done. When you make an OS that's just that, an OS. Come talk to me. I would gladly pay money out of my own pocket for "Windows Core OS" and its just stripped down, and NEVER forces to advertise Office, or OneDrive, or Cortana or any of the things we never asked for.

> I am a daily Linux user thanks to all the nonsense.

Microsoft's misbehavior is a blessing in disguise.

Been a Linux user on and off, but mainly used Windows for gaming. Linux has gotten good enough, especially Ubuntu and POP OS, its just a breeze to use.
What if the real purpose was not simply the function of Microsoft's Recall to run AI on snapshots and create functionality for the end-users, but to train AI on how to perform the most common functions of the average employee? Point being that it is not likely they developed this as a feature to entice end-users at all, and the other purposes are more sinister and invasive, unless one can stop the ex filtration of data usage back to Microsoft.
I feel I'm one step closer to being buried with a shiny hat, but I agree.

Training on commodity things at scale, surveillance, there are just too many useful bits of data for the government to not use the same procurement channel as usual: private businesses

One can freely spy on us, the other "can't". They can exchange money and information, though. So it's a distinction without a difference.

> I would gladly pay money out of my own pocket for "Windows Core OS" and its just stripped down, and NEVER forces to advertise Office, or OneDrive, or Cortana or any of the things we never asked for.

i'm only going from win10 LTSC to either a similar version of 11, or debian

for me it was the purposely depressing news articles just showing up all over the start menu :(

I make software, I don't want my OS restarting without my telling it to do, or tricking me into restarting for updates I don't need immediately. I'm stuck on Linux until Microsoft makes a version of their OS for power users.
Windows 10 LTSC really is amazing and I am anxiously (and slightly nervously that Microsoft is going to screw it up somehow) waiting for 11 LTSC.

Particularly for gaming, takes care of all the compatibility problems with none of the crap thrown in. Even performs better as a bonus.

Win 11 lstc so far isn't bad, but I saw there is a tab for ai components, which means Microsoft is still probably going to hawk copilot and recall even for lstc.
I did not realize it was out yet!

That is disappointing, but at least the way you describe it, it sounds like it still isn't there by default.

Which I guess does make sense, you can install a lot of the missing components.

Win 11 iot enterprise lstc is out and so far it's not horrible.
Recall has local storage too, and lack of auditing or open source models are not the primary complaints. It’s the existence of this data store at all. If you can find a way to let the user see it without letting Infostealer (or the user’s boss, or the user’s abusive spouse) see it, you’re getting somewhere.

Recall is kind of the same expectation violation as when Snapchat users figured out you could take screenshots.

Not sure how this addresses some of the real concerns behind Recall, an example being if my password manager is open and showing data I don't want saved anywhere else.
You can exclude arbitrary apps. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/retrace-your-ste...:

Of course reading documentation or investigating is not necessary for writing clickbait.

On macOS (I assume a similar feature is on Windows) I believe an app/window can specify that it has secrets or is "private". I think is this what rewind.ai uses to skip capture, or maybe it's that the screen capture API's in macOS already filter out those private windows.
Yeah you're right. We have it on our roadmap to allow the user to blacklist apps. A default list of apps will be included such as password manager.
If you care about privacy and security it should be a whitelist, not blacklist.