Windows Recall remains controversial a year after its announcement. Now, the Brave browser has taken new measures to "protect" users from the feature.
  • MysteriousSophon21@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    18 days ago

    This is about the Smart App Control feature in Win11 that takes screenshots periodically to check for “malicious activity”. its basically a glorified keylogger built into the OS. Firefox should really follow suit and block this too.

  • flop_leash_973@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    18 days ago

    Let me know when it is discovered that they in fact replaced MS Recall with their own version that was scraping your data in yet another sketchy attempt to make money.

  • Tollana1234567@lemmy.todayEnglish
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    18 days ago

    funny thing is ban evaders(the ones that make hundreds of accounts for OF or links) use it for its anti-fingerprinting which is useful against reddit(temporarily) ability to read the browser. i used to temporarily, and kinda explains why my last acc was only shadowbanned much later than thier purges.(i was hit by thier AI moderation as soon as switched to a different browser fork of FF)

      • Tollana1234567@lemmy.todayEnglish
        0·
        17 days ago

        oh yea i used pixel scan or something similar, ban evaders use these to check thier browser profile, and it partially shields it. there other similar browser scanners, but the thing is you also need proxies and anti-detect browsers to hide the rest of your activities, because reddit is just that invasive in detection.(hence all those bans.

  • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
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    18 days ago

    Brave browser blocks Windows feature that takes screenshots of everything you do on your PC

    As does Linux.

  • NoodlePoint@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    17 days ago

    Simplewall allows direct control of internet access of any program and app; you can block CoPilot from accessing the internet.

    • Alaknár@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      0·
      18 days ago

      What feature? Recall?? That’s Windows 11-specific and hasn’t even launched yet??

    • tane69@lemmy.worldEnglish
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      19 days ago

      People are still using the os that has like 95% market penetration? Yeah man pretty sure

      • Zorque@lemmy.worldEnglish
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        19 days ago

        Any workplace with halfway decent IT will disable it by default.

        Which may be about 50% of workplaces, but still.

        • Grappling7155@lemmy.caEnglish
          0·
          18 days ago

          As much as I wish your estimates were true, you have no numbers to back you up. They seem wildly optimistic.

    • Ulrich@feddit.orgEnglish
      0·
      19 days ago

      Until Macs become cheaper or Linux becomes easier, Windows will remain the largest OS.

      • nao@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
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        19 days ago

        What’s easier in Windows compared to Linux? Except the fact that you have to install it, since it doesn’t come preinstalled on as many PCs. But many people who think Windows is easy would probably still consider installing it difficult.

        • Ulrich@feddit.orgEnglish
          0·
          18 days ago

          Doing anything requires the memorization of thousands of commands that must be formatted perfectly and are specific to your distribution, into a black box that rarely provides any feedback at all, and when it does it’s extremely generic.

          I’m sure my inbox will be blown up by delusional people claiming you don’t need it but it’s just not true.

          The simple act of installing software is crazy complicated and different on every distro.

          My current distro has 2 separate system update apps and I don’t really know how to use either of them, nor do I understand why I need to use them at all. Why does the system need me to click buttons to make it go? Just do it in the background. Then as soon as it’s done I get another popup 3 minutes later saying another package needs to be updated.

          Hardware compatibility is a huge problem, fingerprint readers, WiFi, facial recognition, Bluetooth, etc. etc. Very few companies make computers with Linux compatibility being considered at all. Everything will have drivers day 1 on Windows and then they’ll trickle down to Linux a year or two later.

          Nvidia GPUs are by far and away the most popular and they’re still very painful to use. And even though that’s entirely Nvidia’s fault, the problem remains.

          I dislike Linux the least but there’s no way I could recommend it to anyone who isn’t a giant nerd who likes fixing computers.

          • tane69@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            19 days ago

            I don’t use Linux except on my steamdeck and even I know there are a bunch of distros that look and act (minus lots of the bad stuff) just like windows

          • Tollana1234567@lemmy.todayEnglish
            0·
            18 days ago

            i wouldnt know where to begin if i had to switch, since im not in the tech industry, only 2 of my bros would switch since they are programmers.

        • Einar@lemmy.zipEnglish
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          19 days ago

          Sadly, quite a few things. Here’s a few:

          • Application support; some popular software is built with Windows in mind.
          • One-click installers; Software usually comes with user-friendly installation wizards. No command lines or dependency juggling. Also better compatibility woth past versions
          • Driver availability; Linux is getting better, but Windows is superior
          • Better peripheral support like for printers, webcams, game controllers.
          • Gaming performance; although Linux is gaining ground, Windows is just better in this regard
          • Media codecs and formats; again, Linux is getting better, but this isn’t always an out-of-the-box experience
          • Business integration; Windows plays nicely with enterprise tools like Active Directory, Microsoft 365, and legacy business apps.

          Don’t get me wrong. I use Linux as my daily driver. That also means I get frustrated on occasion when again I must consult man pages instead of just running a troubleshooter or fiddling with Nvidia drivers instead of just running the game.

          • Novaling@lemmy.zipEnglish
            0·
            18 days ago

            Media codecs and formats

            Got burned by this recently, was trying to use MPV for playing a YT vid, and it had no video but had audio. Turns out Fedora comes with an open-source or smth version of H264 encoders, so I had to uninstall those packages for the official Cisco ones. But I was on atomic and it wasn’t fun so I ran to forums for help.

            Driver availability

            Not sure if it’s the driver or the kernel (maybe dual-booting? But it worked on both partitions originally…) but my Bluetooth is nuked on my Linux partition. I tried to do rfkill, btusb, systemctl, etc. and the only solution I got was to rollback to an older release of Fedora atomic because it’s most likely a kernel issue. That just sucks man, having to be stuck on an older version to get my earbuds to work lol. I didn’t like atomic and now I’m on reg KDE Fedora, so I’m truly fucked as that’s not a rollback distro.

            I still love using Fedora (every time I boot into Windows I cry) and it just makes me love my laptop like it’s brand-new. Tinkering is fun to me, I’ll literally sit at my desk and starve myself while trying to get something to work. But some days, I want my stuff to work with minimal tinkering, and not have to worry if it’ll break when I really need it down the line.

          • Rhaedas@fedia.io
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            19 days ago

            To be fair, a lot of those are due to a Windows legacy of dominating the market, which isn’t going to change until there are more people elsewhere. It’s a bit of a catch-22, and yet even being a small percent use in desktop Linux has started to get distros that feel and run similar to Windows enough so people who don’t dabble in Windows specific software don’t miss it. It’s also a bit much to weigh Windows as better in many of those above features when it still have its own issues often, even though it is the dominate and supported OS.

            I laughed at your last part. I have never not had to do the same for Windows as I have for Linux when a problem pops up. Google the problem. Those troubleshooters are such a waste of time, and honestly the only time I’ve had an automated fix that worked to resolve a situation was in Linux via purging the old driver and reloading it. The Windows troubleshooter is like the first tier on a tech support line, where you tell them, yeah, I already did all that.

          • Midnight Wolf@lemmy.worldEnglish
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            19 days ago

            (venting frustration)

            I’d argue with the installer point - if it’s in the repo, and it almost always is for anything a newbie would be using, it’s actually easier. Search, click, done. BUT…

            Drivers though, specifically companies not supporting Linux drivers, is shit. I’m helping a friend transition to Linux and am dual-booting myself so I can help with the actual os available for troubleshooting. And fuck me, sound drivers fucking suck ass on Linux. It’s because Creative is a bitch and won’t make Linux drivers, but also apparently literally nobody is both running a creative card and anything above 2.0 speaker setup. I have two creative cards, a decade apart, neither works with my 5.1 speaker setup. FL and FR work, the rest are some sort of fucked and come from an incorrect speaker(s). One of these cards is like 15 years old now, and nobody has noticed or rectified it. And if I reboot straight from windows to Linux, the sound is mangled. I need to shut the system down and boot it cold. Then FL and FR work. Hours of troubleshooting last week got me absolutely no progress.

            Then I need software for my Logitech g903 (there is 3rd party software available) that does profiles and switches on the fly based on the application in the foreground (crickets).

            Then there is an issue where if my monitor goes to sleep, when I wake it up I get patches of graphical artifacts. On the 2D desktop. Every few seconds, for about a quarter of a second. Random location each time. Random size. I’m on a Radeon 7900 XTX, which isn’t terribly new now. But the friend I’m helping, no issues at all with drivers or hardware. An older 6700 XT. But come the fuck on.

            Both of us are on bazzite (I suggested it so they wouldn’t nuke the system as they learn) so it’s just Fedora silverblue with a few tweaks, not some out-there distro.

            And, shit. If you need cellular connectivity on Linux, as far as I can tell you’re fucked if you don’t go the Ubuntu route. Debian doesn’t work, Fedora doesn’t work, Mint doesn’t work, I went down a rabbit-hole and tried a dozen distros. I ended up with kubuntu, since I wanted kde, but I tried anything just to see what would work. This is on a modern ThinkPad, still under (extended) warranty. I thought ThinkPads and Linux were supposed to be like this holy-grail of free-as-in-freedom computing? Ugh.

            So yeah if you have a basic system, aged a bit, nothing special, it works well. Take one step outside of that perfect-scenario bubble, and paaaaaain.

          • Ulrich@feddit.orgEnglish
            0·
            18 days ago

            Gaming performance; although Linux is gaining ground, Windows is just better in this regard

            I mostly agree with you but this contradicts everything I’ve seen. Presumably you have evidence of this?

          • rakeshmondal@lemmy.zipEnglish
            0·
            18 days ago
            • Driver availability; Linux is getting better, but Windows is superior

            Doesn’t Linux have pretty much every driver built into the kernel with the only notable exception being the NVIDIA closed source drivers. Even those drivers are a single command away from installation, it even configures itself correctly out of the box for Wayland support.

        • Beacon@fedia.io
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          19 days ago

          installation of software on Linux is very bad. Literally everything else on Linux is very ready for the mass market, but installing apps is horrible to the point of making the whole OS not ready for the general public

          • voodooattack@lemmy.worldEnglish
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            19 days ago

            What? When was the last time you tried Linux?

            With flatpak, it’s usually a one-click process to install anything nowadays.

            • Beacon@fedia.io
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              18 days ago

              I use Linux regularly, and the last time i installed an app was probably within the past 365 days

            • Ulrich@feddit.orgEnglish
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              18 days ago

              That would be totally true if every software was distributed as a flatpak and every distro had flatpak enabled in the package manager out of the box. That’s just not reality.

              • voodooattack@lemmy.worldEnglish
                0·
                18 days ago

                I said “usually”, and I’m talking about mainstream distros.

                Also the original comment says “the whole OS is not ready for the general public”, which is also vague. I don’t expect the “general public” to install Gentoo and suffer from this issue.

                • Ulrich@feddit.orgEnglish
                  0·
                  18 days ago

                  I said “usually”, and I’m talking about mainstream distros.

                  They don’t all have that either

              • Beacon@fedia.io
                0·
                18 days ago

                Not even then. For example the biggest Linux distribution in use is Ubuntu, and it doesn’t have flatpak built in. So even if a flatpak of an app is available, a user of Ubuntu would have to already understand what a flatpak is, and already know that it would make the app installable on Ubuntu, and know that flatpak itself can be installed separately, and know how to use a different install method already just to get the flatpak system onto their computer in the first place

                • Ulrich@feddit.orgEnglish
                  0·
                  18 days ago

                  and every distro had flatpak enabled in the package manager out of the box

        • Passerby6497@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          19 days ago

          What’s easier in Windows compared to Linux?

          Graphics drivers. I can’t say I ever had a graphics driver update in Windows that rendered my system borderline unusable, but I 100% blame Nvidia for me running windows until recently. I tried a dozen times over a decade and ended up back on windows when the Nvidia update trashed my system and I got sick of dealing with it.

          On team green and running Bazzite with no issues

        • That Weird Vegan@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          0·
          18 days ago

          it’s easier because they’ve been using it all their life. If they’d been using linux all their life, they’d say that windows was too hard to use, nod oubt.

          • hisao@ani.socialEnglish
            0·
            19 days ago

            Hmm, I have kinda opposite opinion, hardware is pretty good, build quality is great, but the OS itself is meh. File manager is bad and clunky, desktop customization is very limited, network manager is buggy, especially with VPNs, no built-in functionality to import VPN config files like in Linux. Also, I used it for years and still couldn’t get used to all the shortcuts and "Mac-way"s of doing things. Just not for me perhaps. Not bad, but in terms of UX worse than both Windows and Linux for me.

            • NotSteve_@piefed.caEnglish
              0·
              19 days ago

              I’m the opposite of both of you. The build quality is good and the OS is good. I love having a familiat UNIX system while also having a polished desktop environment that supports 4k scaling very well (though the polish has been lacking a lot lately)

              The issue for me is the insane price of their computers and the fact that you can’t (officially) install MacOS on your own hardware. I have a Linux desktop and a MBP but I’d run MacOS on both if it was officially supported

          • muusemuuse@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            0·
            19 days ago

            Modern Mac hardware is excellent. The software is good too, but’s more a matter of taste. Not everybody likes how macOS works but Asahi Linux has made incredible progress so it’s a daily driver option for some already.

            • Ulrich@feddit.orgEnglish
              0·
              18 days ago

              Mac hardware is a fucking atrocity. $2k for a “pro” laptop with 8GB RAM and 256GB storage and no i/o except 4 USBC ports, that’s completely and intentionally irreparable and unupgradeable? SSDs and RAM that are marked up 3000%? That’s what you call “excellent”? If they were cheap I might not completely object to them being disposable but it’s the opposite. It’s fucking gaslighting. You’ll never convince me it’s anything other than a cult.

              • muusemuuse@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                0·
                18 days ago

                I will give you the RAM and SSD capacities are atrociously priced. USBC is perfectly acceptable for the people apple is targeting. Nobody is trying to use a MacBook as a server. Ignore the “pro” name in any consumer electronic device. It has nothing to do with anything other than marketing, and that’s not exclusive to apple. Apple did give up on the 8GB bullshit already though.

                You need to take a closer look at how the M-series chips work and why they work they way they do. There are design considerations in how PC does things and Apple does things and they are not 1 to 1. What makes sense the PC world doesn’t always make sense int he Mac world.

                Apple does a lot of anti-consumer bullshit which we should absolutely club them over the head for, but many of the things they pulled off with the M-series Macs were NOT possible with traditional PC methodologies. One thing’s for sure though, the hardware performs and it does so with very little energy. It’s so great a difference the entire industry is changing course to try to outdo Apple. They eventually will too, but they haven’t yet. They are just cheaper.

                • Ulrich@feddit.orgEnglish
                  0·
                  18 days ago

                  USBC is perfectly acceptable for the people apple is targeting.

                  It’s literally called a “pro”, who do you think they’re targeting?

                  Ignore the “pro” name in any consumer electronic device.

                  I do, thanks to Apple. It doesn’t make it any less shameful or ridiculous.

                  You need to take a closer look at how the M-series chips work and why they work they way they do

                  You’re going to have to elaborate because I already have and I don’t understand what bearing that has on this discussion.

                  Apple does a lot of anti-consumer bullshit which we should absolutely club them over the head for,

                  You shouldn’t “club them over the head”, you should just stop buying their trash. That’s literally the only thing that will work.

          • Cornelius_Wangenheim@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            18 days ago

            Apple’s entire software design philosophy is god-awful. There’s only one way to do things and if you don’t like “The Apple Way”, fuck you. “It just works” only works for very basic normie stuff. If you try to do anything advanced, it most likely won’t work and it’ll give zero feedback as to why.

            • Ulrich@feddit.orgEnglish
              0·
              18 days ago

              I mean I don’t particularly like it either but not having tons of choice is not always a complete negative, it simplifies a lot of things. And having an OS that mostly functions like an OS instead of a fucking billboard is nice. Just keeping things in context here.

              • Novaling@lemmy.zipEnglish
                0·
                18 days ago

                “It just works” only works for very basic normie stuff.

                I think that was @Cornelius_Wangenheim@lemmy.world’s main point. Apple is great if you’re a normie, but if you even think about tinkering with things, have an unusual issue on your system, or creatures forbid… want to play games, you’re fucked.

                My mom is an Apple diehard who has used Android and Windows in the past (2000s), but got burned by Window’s shitty security and really only switched to iPhone due to iMessage being more reliable than SMS at the time. She knows a little bit of tech stuff (I guess I get it from her), but overall, she’s a “normie” compared to me, so Apple (90% of the time) does what she needs.

                It simplifies a lot of things

                If this was me about 3 weeks ago, I wouldn’t have debated this as hard. But recently my grandma had to call my mom and I to help her get her iPhone pictures to work on her Windows laptop, and she almost thought she downloaded a virus when trying to get an HEIC app. Apple’s asinine proprietary file format is a plague on society, and I hated when I had to send pictures from my iPhone to my Google drive for school in HS. That’s not simple, and now we have to help grandparents understand that they need to screenshot their camera pictures or else literally no website will take their damn photos.

                The little things add-up for me, and so yeah, it’s nice having something that “just works”, but only if you literally accept everything and never complain about any of their choices.

          • Opisek@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            18 days ago

            I despise their business model, their design decisions, and their walled garden. I will agree that the OS is fine. I was forced to use a MacBook at a software development job in the past. It being UNIX was a big point why I didn’t immediately hate it. I will still agree with the other users and say that their hardware is pretty nice and well thought-out (not praising the anti-consument measures like soldered RAM). Still, I would personally never buy their devices due to the aforementioned business practices.

      • alk@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        0·
        18 days ago

        I’ve been gamin on Linux for over a year with 0 issues, the only games that should be keeping people back are a small handful of competitive games with certain types of anticheat. (Most anticheat does work on Linux)

      • pivot_root@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        18 days ago

        Aside from anticheat BS, Linux has come pretty far. It’s not perfect, but it’s not the frustrating mess like it used to be half a decade ago.

  • SpaceScotsman@startrek.websiteEnglish
    0·
    18 days ago

    They haven’t blocked the windows feature, they’re using DRM to interfere with it. Microsoft could easily change how the DRM works any time they want, rendering all these hacks useless.

    • moe90@feddit.nlOPEnglish
      0·
      18 days ago

      then people can complained it on Brave Github or their official forum and it will be fixed by their team

      • SpaceScotsman@startrek.websiteEnglish
        0·
        18 days ago

        My point was that brave’s solution, like Signal’s, is dependent on microsoft playing fair. If microsoft decides they don’t want brave, signal, or anyone else using DRM to interfere with their screen scraping chatbot, there is not going to be an easy way to fix it.

        • Womble@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          18 days ago

          No way they’d do that though, because then they’d have the mouse and the other members of the content mafia breathing down their necks.

          • redjard@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            0·
            18 days ago

            It’s an image every few seconds. Not that piracy is currently even interested in tech that reencodes the content.
            And for training, copyrighted stuff is already everywhere; AI tools seem to be limited on the output side rather than raw training data.

    • thevoidzero@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      18 days ago

      Exactly, how do you even fight with the OS except just making it bit hard for them lol. You have to tell the OS what pixels to put in the screen, there’s literally no way you can hide things from the OS if they want to know.