By default, Signal doesn't recall

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

by feross • 1 year ago

584 485 1 year ago

signal.org

contact98792• 1 year ago

it is absolutely insane that we're forced to DRM our own applications to protect ourselves from our own computers

baby_souffle• 1 year ago

Agreed. Reading this makes my head explode a little.

15 years ago, DRM was all about the DVD restricting where and when it could be played. Now it seems like we're using DRM to reassert our own rights?

This timeline is cursed.

gruez3• 1 year ago

It's not even real DRM in any meaningful sense. It's just asking the OS really nicely to not allow the window to be screenshotted.

contextfree3• 1 year ago

I think there was always a similarity or homology between DRM and many privacy scenarios that people care about:

Party A sends information to party B intended for use in a specific context, but wants to limit the risk of it being stored or forwarded for use by other parties or in other contexts.

DRM typically connotes that party A is a media company and the information is a movie or something, but - as in the case the article is about - party A could also just be a regular person and the information could be private personal info.

kristofferR• 1 year ago

Well, it's not so much our own computers we need to worry about, it's more computers we think of as ours, but we actually borrow from our school/work.

Windows Recall would be a pretty good feature if it somehow only worked for real personal computers.

lenkite• 1 year ago

Go back 10 years and tell people that MS periodically takes screenshots of your apps and sends them to MS and there would be heavy lawsuits.

AI has made people idiots in more ways than expected.

xp84• 1 year ago

They're "Sending them to MS"? Huh?

mmcnl5• 1 year ago

No, you can just turn Recall off. You don't need DRM for that.

orangecat• 1 year ago

Yeah, I'm a bit confused at all the Recall outrage. It's an opt-in app that only stores data locally. If you think they're lying and are going to secretly upload the screenshots, well they can do that already.

TiredOfLife4• 1 year ago

It is absolutely insane that FUD and misinformation is the default now.

chii6• 1 year ago

we're forced to DRM our own applications to protect ourselves from our own computers

it's an interesting irony, but it has an apt comparison to GPL - forcing the laws of copyright to enforce freedom.

It's a classic "hack" of the system!

weird_trousers3• 1 year ago

Forced to DRM for security... And people will still argue that Windows (and I will generalize to "Microsoft products") is not evil?!

Come on guys, come on...

k__7• 1 year ago

What would be the alternative?

Build your whole machine at home?

weird_trousers3• 1 year ago

Is it a joke?

There are multiple alternatives, for Microsoft Windows or other Microsoft products like Office or Azure.

BriggyDwiggs424• 1 year ago

Linux is the most obvious

ranger_danger6• 1 year ago

To help mitigate this issue, we made the setting easy to disable (Signal Settings → Privacy → Screen security), but it’s difficult to accidentally disable

It's easy to disable, but it's difficult to disable?

weird_trousers3• 1 year ago

There is a difference between "disable" and "accidentally disable".

ranger_danger6• 1 year ago

Yes but as I understand it, "easy to disable" and "difficult to accidentally disable" are opposites.

EDIT: Apparently people have different definitions of easy. Fair enough

Peacefulz• 1 year ago

One of the driving forces of my full windows exodus was Recall. I knew they wouldn't seriously scrap the project. Glad to see measures are being taken to avoid the spies. Shame it comes to DRM though.

neilv• 1 year ago

Yours is the real solution. What Signal did is a temporary kludge around the underlying problems, which include that Microsoft is hostile towards customers and users whenever it thinks it can get away with it.

Also, as you get into mechanisms like DRM, which treat the owner and user of the device as adversaries, you make it harder to detect when the device or something on it is misbehaving against the interests of the owner/user (such as for secret surveillance).

mistrial9• 1 year ago

Microsoft is hostile towards customers and users

MSFT is implementing hierarchical control and monitoring on their desktop computers. Executive branch, legal and finance are the drivers. Users are serfs.

godelski37• 1 year ago

I mean what else can signal do? You can't win against whoever controls the OS or hardware. They have effective absolute power. They do have to treat the "owner" as an adversary because companies like Microsoft make claim that they are the owner, not the user.

dist-epoch2• 1 year ago

Weird way of attacking Microsoft, when this is a feature users will soon want everywhere.

The latest Android update already introduced screen sharing with Gemini. Their web app has that too.

It wont be long until people complaining here about DRM/Microsoft will have an always on AI watching their screen by their own choice.

scubbo• 1 year ago

this is a feature users will soon want everywhere

Some users - the less privacy-conscious. Many others (who probably frequent this site) actively do (and will) not.

Firehawke• 1 year ago

I'm normally not one to attack the messenger and just attack the message, but lay off the crack.

99% of users don't want anything even remotely like this. The thought of a single database (even encrypted) that could contain random login/password information, personal information, etc. and easily exfiltrated by whatever new zero-day of the week is NOT pleasant in the slightest.

BriggyDwiggs424• 1 year ago

If I could run the model locally I would do that, but sending screenshots of everything I do + metadata to microsoft is way too much for me because, to start, I don’t want them selling my data to advertisers.

fwip3• 1 year ago

Recall only runs locally - it doesn't send any data off-device, and doesn't work if you don't have an "AI+" chip.

formerly_proven2• 1 year ago

As per the aicorp jurisprudence copyright doesn’t apply to AI usecases, so I’m sure they’ll fix the DRM „no screenshots“ flag preventing AI capture — it’s only legally self-consistent. Teams probably gets its own private API to exclude itself anyway (all Teams content must be privy only to the TeamsAI).

wmf2• 1 year ago

This isn't a copyright issue.

hedora4• 1 year ago

From a legal standpoint, it's also not a privacy issue, since the US Supreme Court eliminated the right to privacy at the same time as Roe v Wade. Certainly, it's not trademark related.

So, what legal recourse is left?

formerly_proven2• 1 year ago

DRM isn't about technical enforcement of copyright?

GuestFAUniverse• 1 year ago

Dumbest announcement. Signal lost it's track...

WD-426• 1 year ago

It’s really come to this? As if accepting the 4 different data sharing Eulas required to install windows wasn’t enough, now apps need to DRM themselves…

k__7• 1 year ago

I'd presume, this is a logical conclusion of trusting trust.

The moment you don't build your own device, TEE with provable encrypted executions or FHE is the only way to run reasonably secure apps.

IshKebab• 1 year ago

Isn't Windows Recall opt-in?

fwip3• 1 year ago

Yes.

"To use Recall, you will need to opt-in to saving snapshots, which are images of your activity, and enroll in Windows Hello to confirm your presence so only you can access your snapshots."

hedora4• 1 year ago

Oh, good. Local activities that used to be anonymous and private are now public with non-repudiation.

jajuuka2• 1 year ago

I understand people not liking Recall. I'm one of them. But for something that is opt in now and even if opt later can still be disabled. So changing OS's because of that seems like an overreaction.

elaus• 1 year ago

I'm not sure, but in recent years, Microsoft has made a lot of negative headlines by silently re-enabling settings after updates, so this doesn't seem like something you should trust.

chii6• 1 year ago

i would imagine there to be a tool in the future to constantly check for settings like these, and re-disable it when it changes.

DrillShopper2• 1 year ago

For now

We're only a single Windows Update from silently changing that

chii6• 1 year ago

It is why i disable windows update, and manually check each first, before installing it.

The security vulnerabilities you fix is no longer the only threat actor these days - you have to also model the threat of microsoft, and how their updates can break your system, change it in irrevocable ways etc.

WD-426• 1 year ago

Does it really matter? They'll assault users with "Enable recall to access this feature, yada yada" and 99% of people will just do it. Just like every other spyware feature they provide.

godelski37• 1 year ago

I wonder if 2025 will be the year of Linux.

Windows has turned itself into spyware. Apple is too expensive and going the same way.

Meanwhile the user experience of Linux has dramatically increased. Put on a good skin and most people wouldn't notice the difference. You don't need to reply that you can, I know you can. You're on HN. But most people just use their computer for the browser and most people can't tell Chrome from Firefox. Most people get their lockin by their tech friend or child. Really, Microsoft's only lockin remains Office.

It won't be a complete shift but the signs of growing userbase is there. Would be a huge win for open source! If you haven't tried Linux in a few years try giving something like PopOS a go or if you want to say you use Arch then try EndeavourOS. Both are very stable, latter slightly less.

Edit: enfuse was right, I should have suggested EndeavourOS instead of Manjaro.

x0xrx• 1 year ago

Scammers successfully sell reskinned Android phones as iPhones to unsuspecting marks, I’m sure you’re right that many people wouldn’t notice.

andy_xor_andrew• 1 year ago

just saying, the comment you just wrote could have appeared, word for word, on any HN discussion in the last 20 years. The only words that would have to change are "PopOS" / "Arch" / "Manjaro" for more timely distros. (and Chrome didn't exist until ~2009)

fsflover9• 1 year ago

This has been indeed more or less true for a long time, if you speak of preinstalled GNU/Linux, not using a "Windows-certified" hardware.

godelski37• 1 year ago

I really don't think so. We didn't have GUI installers 20 years ago. I think you're undermining the advances linux has made. I think it is harder for us on the techy side to see but having been getting people to switch to linux over the last 10 years I can say that the last 5 have been significantly easier.

Retr0id2• 1 year ago

I'd like this to be true, but Windows has been getting incrementally more user-hostile for a long time now. I'm not sure this change is going to mark any particular tipping point.

matthewdgreen• 1 year ago

I just want to vent here about the recent experience I had buying and installing MS Office 365 for my wife’s small business. I had assumed since the competition is effortless and free, MS would at least make Office for Desktop relatively easy to pay for. Instead I got suckered into paying for “Basic”, which doesn’t support desktop apps. The “supports desktop apps” version costs more, but the big problem is it’s not explained within the apps what you need to upgrade to (there are many plans.) Then once you finally figure out how to upgrade, the subscription and payment sites repeatedly error out. Once you force through an immediate upgrade, it turns out that it’s not immediate and takes an hour to go through.

This is mostly just venting, but if the “please take my money” pathways of MS’s most popular product work this badly, I don’t even want to think about ever going back to Windows.

godelski37• 1 year ago

I think it can be true, but we have to make it happen. One of the biggest problems I see is that we complain about things like Linux in these comparative settings, as if we don't have to make a choice. It's like saying you don't want to eat a cookie because the chef sneezed in it and instead giving you a cookie the chef took a shit in. Sure, I'd rather have neither, but if I have to eat a cookie I know which one I'd choose.

neogodless3• 1 year ago

Average computer users could probably switch... but it would require one of two things:

Some way to make it ridiculously low friction for existing hardware owners to get into Linux. Like, less friction than downloading an ISO, mounting it, and installing it on your computer.

Or make computers come with it when people buy them. (This is still vanishingly rare.)

As a power user... I still have a few issues, some that might be common, and some that might be quite rare/unique to me. For example, post-concussion I really can't stand low refresh rates, and screen brightness is important to me. During my last 2-month Linux experiment, I had issues with controlling those things which was a mix of hardware, drivers, Linux kernel, GPU modes, etc. These sort of issues seem to be less and less common in Linux, and I'm optimistic, but I also am hesitant to sacrifice my own health to make a switch away from Windows. (Mental health aside.)

And some games still don't work right, at least not on launch. Which can make me sad as someone who plays games socially.

As a photographer, I bought and use DxO PhotoLab. I've compared alternatives, and I like it much better. It doesn't mean I couldn't use darktable but I definitely don't like it anywhere near as much. (And no, DxO does not support Linux.)

twosdai• 1 year ago

System 76 makes a great product in this space honestly. I always recommend them to people who are interested in trying linux. They ship with linux pre-installed, its exactly like buying a dell with windows.

https://system76.com/

I am not affliated with them, I am a customer and I like their products.

godelski37• 1 year ago

I agree making ISOs is too cumbersome now. But I think the install is 90% there. Realistically hiding options under an advanced menu would make it no different than when you first get a windows or Mac.

Fwiw, you can get it preinstalled on System 76, makers of Pop. I'm a bit surprised Framework doesn't do it. But this seems easy to expand

**

Maybe I or someone else can help out. What's your distro, GPU, Linux kernel, and driver? Sometimes that interplay can create weird mismatches but I have rarely experienced them in the last 5 years (but extremely common prior to that!). Pop and EndeavourOS specifically target NVIDIA GPUs and can be the easiest "fix". Pop being more Ubuntu like and EndeavourOS being more Archy. Being power user I'd suggest the latter as it has a lot less bloat. Fwiw I daily drive EndeavourOS with a 4080S (previously 3080Ti) without too many problems. Only getting HDR at 60fps when trying to use my TV as a display. Other then that two issues where a kernel driver mismatch happened, solved by a rollback and avoidable by using stable releases.

I'm not much of a gamer but will play some AAA and a handful of indie games. Occasional issues like Steam not loading the GUI (right click menu bar and directly open library fixes), and occasionally sync issues because VPN, or minor like needing to launch a game twice. But FWIW, past 3 years I've never needed to touch proton. I'm really hoping SteamOS gets a broader release soon. I'm not sure if I can help much here but I do know graphics cards which might help?

I'll definitely agree UI/UX in many apps needs major improvements. I've seen a trend in the right direction though. Alongside the same improvements in OS. We need people to realize that your backend doesn't matter if people can't use it. Design is hard. The magic is the interaction between awesome backend and awesome design. I think this philosophy is growing. Hopefully. Momentum appears to be building

caseyy3• 1 year ago

People say more Linux availability would make it mainstream. However, Chromebooks are one of the most available laptops. The software is 100% compatible with hardware, and in many cases, the Play Store is included to address the lack of software. That is more than enough for casual computing and office work—two massive segments of the PC user market. And people still don't like them. ChromeOS's market share is similar to that of all the other Linux distributions.

I think the Windows and MacOS brands have become lifestyle choices. Windows is the "gamer" and "corporate" choice. MacOS is the "student" and "luxury" choice. Linux is the "hacker" choice (they use Arch, by the way). Like iOS vs Android, Xbox vs PlayStation, Toyota vs BMW, and all other brand tribalisms, it seems like most people are emotionally drawn to one or another.

WD-426• 1 year ago

The problem is, until laptops sold at Walmart or Best Buy start coming with Linux pre-installed as an option, adoption will never happen. Installing an aftermarket OS is just an incredibly unrealistic expectation from the average user.

Microsoft knows this, and they will do everything they can to prevent OEMs from shipping anything other than Windows. Apple of course, forget it. Their profit comes from leeching off FOSS and selling it, they would never allow distribution of it directly.

CalRobert• 1 year ago

For what it's worth, it can almost be done (but is still a minority) https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/scr/laptops/app...

fsflover9• 1 year ago

Purism and System76 offer laptops with preinstalled GNU/Linux.

LexiMax2• 1 year ago

This seems like a worldview borne from an era where the PC was _the_ definitive, ubiquitous computing device of choice for the layperson. These days, that crown is taken by the smartphone.

If you need a PC in 2025, you're probably a fair bit more knowledgeable than someone buying one in 2005. You're also almost certainly buying one online, possibly even directly from the manufacturer or builder, which means the seller can simply give you options and doesn't have to worry about competing for store shelf space.

ethagnawl3• 1 year ago

Microsoft knows this, and they will do everything they can to prevent OEMs from shipping anything other than Windows

You're right and they effectively licensed XP to Asus for free for use on the Eee PC (which originally only shipped with Linux) when it was shaping up to be a hit.

This is a worthwhile watch if you're interested in this corner of computing history: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bVno8dlM3E

amatecha3• 1 year ago

Adoption is already happening, as it has been for years, but especially now that MS and Apple are producing worse and worse OS/software that treats the people who use it worse and worse. I'm frequently pleasantly surprised by hearing that someone uses a Linux machine with regularity. It used to be a really rare, techie-only kind of thing. Pulling people away from literal decades of complete personal-computing domination with a completely free, near-zero-marketing alternative is a very slow, gradual process. It's great that those dominant vendors are doing their very best to push everyone to the alternatives :)

godelski37• 1 year ago

  > until laptops sold at Walmart or Best Buy start coming with Linux pre-installed as an option

This is a circular problem though. They'll do it if Linux starts becoming more popular.

If you want to see this, make sure your browser agent is broadcasting Linux[0]. Make sure you're using Steam in Linux.

But right now Steam has Linux at <3%[1]. It is more than OSX, but not enough. I do think above 5% and it'll start to be taken seriously, and 10% we'll start seeing moves. Linux doesn't need 90% of the marketshare to dramatically change the world. 10% is more than enough. Even 20% would be momentous and force both Microsoft and Apple to change strategies. Don't feel like there's no hope. Just because it is an unrealistic expectation today doesn't mean it will be tomorrow. And your actions today change the odds of what happens tomorrow. So don't give up.

You don't have to change the world overnight. But you do need to make steps in the right direction, even if small, to make the world move.

[0] You can even do this while using Windows! Hell, you can use Chrome and tell people you're using Firefox on Linux if you believe in those things but just are unwilling to make the switch yourself. The signaling still does something (it is better than nothing).

[1] https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...

jayofdoom• 1 year ago

ChromeOS is the desktop linux you can get installed on Wal-Mart PCs. It is linux even if not the linux we want :D

90s_dev• 1 year ago

Most people just don't care that they're being spied on. Most people don't care about anything actually, they're in a constant state of despair and see no point to anything so they just try to make the best of the time they have.

caseyy3• 1 year ago

You can buy a PC with Linux off the shelf in some countries. In practice, it's an open secret that the machines are for people who don't want to pay for a Windows license but will use Windows anyway.

enfuse• 1 year ago

or if you want to say you use Arch then try Manjaro

EndeavourOS preferred over Manjaro.

jamespo• 1 year ago

EndeavourOS with the niri window manager is a wonderful experience

godelski37• 1 year ago

You're right. Not sure why I didn't say that. I updated:)

MeruMeru• 1 year ago

I am definitely moving to Linux this year. I'm a not a developer, but I am willing to tackle the learning curve. I have been a Windows user from my very first computer, my first internship was at Microsoft. But I am done with the directions they have taken these past years!

WD-426• 1 year ago

Enjoy! Keep an open mind and you'll discover computing can still be very fun!

godelski37• 1 year ago

Awesome! Great to hear!

There definitely can be some hurdles depending on what your goals are. If you're mainly browser user, don't stress. If gamer, go PopOS (if want to be a bit more, EndeavourOS is a good recommend).

If you do want to learn linux, then I actually suggest doing things "the hard way". That is installing Arch (fastest newbie I've seen is install on the 4th attempt) and try living in the terminal. The failures lead to a lot of learning. But it is a good way to learn because it forces you to get your hands dirty and makes you quick to not be afraid because well... you will have already experienced fucking up and it is less scary once you have haha. It's one of those things where you don't feel like you're making progress but boy do you learn fast this way.

But this of course is not what everyone should do! I just wanted to offer the advice in case you or anyone does. I am being serious about it being the hard way. But it pays off.

immibis• 1 year ago

Linux still suffers the same flaw as always, though: it's just bad. And the projects that claim to make it better end up being a lot like Microsoft or Apple.

You or I can use Linux, because we're the same type of people who visit Hacker News. It's also completely possible to get your great-grandma on Linux, since the web browsers work the same and you can install the specific apps they need to use and they'll never care about anything else. But the middle user is working in an office exchanging Microsoft Office documents all day, making video calls through Teams, and using one out of a zillion business apps developed specifically for Windows.

We need more free and good projects, and the problem is, that costs time, and in between Richard Stallman's heyday and now, the rent's quadrupled.

astrolx2• 1 year ago

I'd like to see stats about that middle user though, I would think that this usecase decreases fast as things are moving to the browser (Office366, Drive, mail, even corporate apps).

Other types of usecases have gone very Linux-friendly recently (e.g video games thanks to Valve).

palata5• 1 year ago

Linux still suffers the same flaw as always, though: it's just bad.

It's not bad for me. "Bad" is subjective.

Sure, it's not a good fit for "normal people". But as long as it's not targetting "normal people", I don't see how this is a problem.

umanwizard• 1 year ago

Average people nowadays don't really use general-purpose computers at home. They use whatever their work provides at the office (which will continue to be Windows for most people and macOS for prestigious or highly-paid jobs), and use phones at home.

numpad02• 1 year ago

Put on a good skin and most people wouldn't notice the difference.

I doubt it. Common people can't interpret GUI and discover features unlike developers who'd prefer dynamic "intuitive" interfaces. They rely more on dumb fixed rote memorization.

Most recent example of failure of this approach is Windows Settings app. Not only a lot of configuration panes started to mimic old Control Panel in both features layouts, even verbiages, many had become a mere shortcut links to old Control Panel applets.

godelski37• 1 year ago

To be fair, I can't figure out how to use OSX. I'm constantly going down the wrong menu paths. Same when someone asks me to use Windows, and in a completely different manner.

My point is that it's not like there's an objectively good way to do this. That people just get used to doing things one way or another. And frankly, with Linux you can copy those same structures and that's what I mean by "skin". You really can make it feel a lot like Windows or OSX and that really reduces the dissonance.

noman-land4• 1 year ago

Here's one data point. My grandmother and mother now both use Raspberry Pis as their primary computers and are 100% satisfied. My father is looking to switch as well and he's been setting up a GrapheneOS phone I made for him which runs flawlessly.

If year of Linux doesn't arrive by choice, authoritarianism will force the issue one way or another.

mikepurvis5• 1 year ago

My kids have an old Thinkpad T440p that's their Scratch/Roblox/Minecraft machine, and overall it works well enough running Ubuntu (originally 22.04, then 24.04, now 25.04). But it has been far from seamless:

- the built in bluetooth and wifi can't be used at the same time; for a while we mitigated this with a USB wifi module, but that eventually broke and so now bluetooth is just disabled.

- it's hard to figure out what apps and app data are shared between users. AFAICT there's one Steam install my kids are sharing, but each one installs their own copy of a game, which is terrible for disk usage.

- a bunch of games don't work, especially from non-steam sources like Epic and Itch.io. I've heard about the Heroic Launcher, and I will try it at some point, but it's just... one more fiddly thing to have to mess with.

- several Minecraft launchers / mod-managers have been tried, but I can't seem to keep my Microsoft account logged in on there, so I eventually just put my password on a sticky note so they could re-auth it whenever needed (fortunately I don't use it for anything else).

- unattended-upgrades pulled a new kernel and the thing just panicked on startup until I went into the grub menu to get the previous one and reverted.

- until 25.04 the power management story was terrible, the machine would chew through the whole (newly replaced) battery in less than an hour.

As a competent nerd I've been ~fine with all this, but it's honestly right on the edge of acceptable. I expect a normal person would immediately give up in the face of most of these— either give up in terms of ditching the machine/OS or give up as in accepting a limitation like it just doesn't play that game or I just can't use my earbuds.

TiredOfLife4• 1 year ago

Give starving person a rotten potato and they will gladly eat it. It doesn't make the rotten potato a good source of nutrition.

heresie-dabord• 1 year ago

Which models have you given them? Linux has been my computing best friend for more than a decade and I have also enjoyed using the Raspberry Pi 400.

But the Raspberry Pi 500 (keyboard model) is even better and (literally and figuratively) a cool design. You get 8GB RAM, boot from NVME, Debian with Wayland (labwc), and the R.Pi community.

31337Logic2• 1 year ago

+1 for setting up parents with Linux. In my case, a Chromebook I hacked to run Mint. Like fucking hell I'm going to let senior parents navigate the virus known as Windows 11, complete with forced updates and reboots, disappearing customizations, and the constant and unrelenting spyware?! No thanks.

DrewADesign3• 1 year ago

Linux is great for technical people, or at least technically-inclined and patient people, who can overcome the inevitable technical obstacle that most of us don't even think about. It's also great for people whose needs are so basic-- email client and web browser basic-- that once they're set up with a default everything, they have no interest in doing anything that might present a technical obstacle.

Neither of those user groups are the problem. The problem is the majority of computer users that have real practical skill born from computer use at school, work, while gaming, doing art, etc. They want to do enough with their computer to run up against technical obstacles, but

a) don't have the significant amount of prerequisite knowledge we take for granted to generalize what they know to other operating systems

b) don't have the subject matter interest to inspire them to get that knowledge

and those two things mean

c) view any extra steps required to do something on Linux (e.g. use wine to run software they've been using for a decade) as a needless hassle that prevents them from doing what they really want to do, rather than a satisfying problem to solve because configuring the computer is part of the fun.

So if they hadn't already given up on Linux, they might ask one of the bazillion "Hey I'm a bit of a noob here, but..." questions on reddit or whatnot only to receive a barrage of conceited responses by zealots who make it very clear how put-out they are by their question-- which they didn't have to read, let alone answer-- and how rude it was for them to not read entry 427 on the FAQ which leads to a page of resources that might have addressed part of their problem. If nothing else has already discouraged them from continuing, that sure will.

Unless someone with those users' needs at the forefront of their design practice Bluesky's Linux (some like pop os are making a solid effort), it will never ever work as a general-purpose desktop OS.

zahlman5• 1 year ago

use Raspberry Pis as their primary computers

It honestly wouldn't have occurred to me that this is feasible - my mental model of a "Raspberry Pi" is basically what the first-gen models were. But apparently it's been a while now, and their newest models use an ARM Cortex-A76 CPU, which is actually pretty respectable - only a bit behind my 2014 desktop, from the numbers I can find. Absolutely capable of running a web browser on modern Linux.

cheald• 1 year ago

My household of 5 has been running exclusively Linux desktops for the past several years. Coming from Windows, I installed KDE distros and nobody has had any trouble with it.

They average user needs to be able to turn on the machine and have it boot, log in, use a web browser, connect Bluetooth devices, and print stuff. Linux desktops are more than capable of that sort of thing with zero additional training.

This weekend, I actually booted an old Windows XP machine that I've had sitting in a closet, and was astonished at just how...clunky Windows XP felt to me. It's not that it was hard, but it really helped highlight to me just how actually-usable Linux desktops have become.

nickthegreek• 1 year ago

Windows has turned itself into spyware. Apple is too expensive and going the same way.

There is nothing too expensive about an M series mac mini.

godelski37• 1 year ago

They're great little computers but you're kidding if you think $400 to upgrade to 1Tb (from 256G) is not priced. I can get 2Tb of gen 5 NVMe for under $300. Same issue with RAM, but at least at 16Gb most people don't need to upgrade.

Come on. You can still think they're great while admitting they're over priced. Those aren't in contention.

mingus882• 1 year ago

You will need to cite your sources that Apple is going the same way.

From what I see, Apple has launched private cloud compute with better privacy safeguards than any other big tech firm. In fact, their personal assistant is the worst one because it is so dumb.

They don’t seem to make money from your data because, as you say, they have already made huge margins on hardware and apps.

fsflover9• 1 year ago

You will need to cite your sources that Apple is going the same way.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43047952

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43003230

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42014588

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34299433

https://appleinsider.com/articles/24/04/10/apple-makes-it-re...

https://sneak.berlin/20231005/apple-operating-system-surveil...

They don’t seem to make money from your data

It's changing:

https://www.macrumors.com/2024/11/19/apple-now-directly-sell...

And finally:

Apple's Software Quality Crisis (eliseomartelli.it)

1196 points by ajdude 79 days ago | 1213 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43243075

presbyterian2• 1 year ago

Apple is too expensive

Is it? You can get an M1 MacBook Air at Walmart for $699 now. That's more than many of the bottom-of-the-barrel Windows machines out there, but it's not an unreasonable price at all. It'll keep away the lowest-end users, but most of those users 1) are not going to care about the security issues, because they don't know anything about computers beyond base utility, and 2) have mostly switched to doing everything on their phone/tablet, and aren't as big of the computer demographic these days anyway.

Almondsetat• 1 year ago

$699 for a computer that will stop getting updates in just a few years

AnthonyMouse8• 1 year ago

The $699 MacBook Air has 8GB of RAM. That's hardly enough now, much less if you plan to keep it for a few years. Which hardly matters when you can get 64GB of DDR5 to put in it for less than $100. Except that it isn't upgradable.

bobajeff• 1 year ago

No, $699 is too much. That being said price isn't the only thing that keeps me away from Apple. They are beautiful systems but very annoying to use IMO. Speaking as a long time Linux user who occasionally helps people with their computer problems (Mac and Windows).

wyager• 1 year ago

Apple is too expensive

On literally what metric? Even if you do the most naive comparison of compute and storage, Apple now comes out ahead much of the time, to say nothing of differences around quality, display, controls, etc.

MisterBastahrd• 1 year ago

On the metric that people see PCs as disposable appliances and don't consider a small format box like a Mac Mini to be a real computing device. They don't give a crap about "compute," they care if they can open their web browser, outlook, and play their little slot machine game. You're not gonna get Meemaw who spent her entire career as a secretary working with Windows machines to go to Mac just because you like the specs. Hell, my mom has owned the same PC for 15 years now and I can't get her to move away from THAT.

fsflover9• 1 year ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44055640

anal_reactor• 1 year ago

I cannot recommend Linux to my parents simply because they're too attached to MS Office.

Anyway, I wonder to what distribution should I switch to.

throitallaway7• 1 year ago

Do they use MS Office for work, or just simple hobby stuff? If it's work stuff - leave them alone. For hobby stuff LibreOffice is a good replacement that you can trial on Windows. As far as distros go, I don't like some of the decisions that Canonical has made with Ubuntu, but it's hard to argue with how simple, reliable, and complete it is. I don't want to run it for myself, but it's great for some people.

oweiler• 1 year ago

I have read almost the same thing 5yrs ago. And 5yrs before that. And so on.

Klonoar• 1 year ago

I remember posting basically their comment on /. something like 20 years ago.

godelski37• 1 year ago

Same about AI

Could have happened 5 years ago. Could have happened 5 years before that. But it won't ever happen if the techy people that have the capabilities of making it happen are too busy self-righteously laughing about how it hasn't happened yet. Luckily that doesn't stop progress, but it sure doesn't let it get to the speed it could.

Meanwhile, I hope you're happy with the state of things. You have every right to point and laugh if you are happy with the direction Microsoft, Apple, and Google have led us. But if you aren't, it isn't too late to make efforts to change those directions.

If we're going to reference the past, let's not hyper-fixate on every failed "call to arms" while ignoring how future they were trying to fight actually happened...

amatecha3• 1 year ago

A couple years ago was "the year of" open source OSes for me. I only have one remaining machine running Windows, and it just sits there doing nothing because I don't actually use it anymore. Same with my one remaining Apple machine. Well, I mean I have a couple retro machines that aren't in everyday use of course. Everything else is running Linux or BSD.

jimbob45• 1 year ago

Apple is too expensive and going the same way.

Apple would have had near 100% OS market share if they’d have tossed their hardware restrictions.

lxgr2• 1 year ago

The time of Linux on the desktop is now, but the era of desktops itself has passed.

bluebarbet• 1 year ago

This is the crucial point that makes the whole question somewhat moot. Only one other of the 20-odd peers in this thread acknowledges it. Once again I'm disappointed by how out of touch the techies here seem to be.

dokyun• 1 year ago

Windows has turned itself into spyware

Has?

chronid• 1 year ago

I have plenty of hard disagreements on the "user experience improvements" in Linux. "Adding a skin" is not easy and making the experience somewhat coherent is extremely hard (GNOME is sort of successful at an extreme cost and plenty of limitations, KDE is still an incoherent mess with plenty of bad defaults starting from the base CDDM skin). It's full of things like the missing icon view in the GNOME/GTK file chooser [1] and while it's true that Windows11 is atrocious, all those little things add up.

I actually recovered a laptop my family was using to launch firefox by installing linux on it (soldered ram went bad, linux is the only OS I could use to tell it to skip the bad blocks through kernel command line) but I hold no illusion about its level of "user experience". Just look at the comments in this recent thread [2]. And as a power user I am baffled by some of the choices at the kernel level (which I mentioned in that thread) and others closer to the user by distros (ubuntu and snaps, name an iconic duo), or things like flatpak not being close to ready and still shoved down user's throats...

I spent years when I was younger submitting bug reports for the papercuts I noticed - some ignored for years, some closed and forgotten forever when some project decided to move on from bugzilla - and I have no more time or energy to continue doing so. The maintainers after all write the code, I'm just a user and get no voice :)

I've been reading about the "year of linux" for years now, it's a meme for a reason. People that are not "prosumer" will keep using the preinstalled OS even if it's garbage - assuming they buy a laptop or desktop at all - and the prosumer will probably keep an OSX or a Windows machine close by anyway. Linux is usable as a browser kiosk sure but there is still plenty of friction on everything else. Enshittification will continue, and possibly infect also linux.

[1] https://www.omglinux.com/gnome-thumbnails-file-picker/

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43945373

godelski37• 1 year ago

  > "Adding a skin" is not easy and making the experience somewhat coherent is extremely hard

I don't mean to imply this is easy. But I also do know that these efforts have been in the works for quite some time. They can get more dedication if that's the direction we need to go.

Quick Google

  - 3 free Linux distros that look and feel like Windows: https://www.pcworld.com/article/2532994/3-free-linux-distros-that-look-and-feel-like-windows.html

  - 5 Linux Distributions That are Inspired by the Look and Feel of macOS: https://itsfoss.com/macos-like-linux-distros/

  > soldered ram went bad, linux is the only OS I could use to tell it to skip the bad blocks through kernel command line

IDK how to tell you this, but for 90% of people this is "throw the machine out, buy a new one." I'm really not sure what the critique is here. Even if running with more problems seems unsurprising given what you described. And you're talking about the kernel.

I don't deny that there are problems with Linux, nor that things need to improve to get better mass appeal. But I do think you should look at your own words. They're highly technical. And we should not forget how this would compare when discussing Windows or OSX. That's the choice! It's that these conversations of "Linux sucks" are not just complaints about Linux, they are also suggestions of using Windows or OSX. The context of our conversation is about choosing between these systems, not the existence of problems.

I want to be very clear

  Linux is a dumpster fire.
  This does not mean Windows isn't!
  This does not mean OSX isn't!

The argument I'm making is that this doesn't matter for the general user. Fuck, it generally doesn't matter for the technical user. But there is a good reason why technical/power users have a strong bias towards using Linux. Because at least it is a dumpster fire they can fix. It is absurd to have the framing that we should not encourage people to use Linux in favor of them using systems that are user hostile and destroying all sense of personal privacy!

These arguments become equivalent to: "You don't want to eat that, the chef sneezed in it. Here, eat this cake instead. The chef only took a shit in it."

Idk about you, but give the choice, I'd rather take the sneeze than the shit. I'd (strongly) prefer neither, but frankly that isn't an option now, is it?

And let's be honest, if you want to get more resources to put out more fires, the only way that's going to happen is if there are more users.

sapphicsnail• 1 year ago

Has anyone had success setting up a Linux machine and handing it off to a less tech savvy friend? I've had some people asking about it but I have techie brain and I don't know what's usable to normal people.

fsflover9• 1 year ago

Debian with Xfce has been flawless for my non-tech-savy relatives for years.

encom4• 1 year ago

One data point: I installed Fedora on my moms machine. She hasn't even mentioned it. She just clicks the Chrome icon.

__aru2• 1 year ago

Depends on how the user uses their computer.

Web browser + maybe some printing? Throw on Linux Mint + Firefox + uBlock origin, hook up a compatible printer via usb cable, and call it a day.

That's what I did for my 65 year old relatives, and it's been maintenance free.

acaloiar• 1 year ago

I love linux. It's been my primary OS nearly my whole life. It's not the year of linux.

TimTheTinker• 1 year ago

Would be a huge win for open source!

Just keep in mind that widespread Linux adoption means it will lose something special it has had from being relatively small on the desktop. This would be another Eternal September ... including a massive influx of entitled users and all that.

Because of that effect, I think there needs to be one or more for-profit Linux OS vendors prepared to absorb all the support and feedback needs (and contribute upstream, of course), and OEMs should only use it/them for anyone besides "advanced users and developers" or similar verbage.

SteamOS maybe?

nan602• 1 year ago

I've never understood why Red Hat never tried breaking into this space. People clearly don't mind paying for an OS and RHEL is pretty much as polished and well supported as you can get. A fork of RHEL geared towards home use would be fantastic. I know Fedora exists but it isn't backed by RH the way RHEL is.

godelski37• 1 year ago

  > This would be another Eternal September ... including a massive influx of entitled users and all that.

Isn't that Ubuntu?

Jokes aside, I'm not too worried considering the plethora of distros. There's always been a range of them that target different subgroups. Which I think is where a lot of the magic comes from. Realistically, the kernel is about making an environment that everyone can build on top of. You can't make a product that meets the needs or desires of everyone, but you can certainly build environments which can be transformed to meet any needs. (Actually, I think that's the magic of programming and something we kinda lost sight of. Too focused on making "products" instead of environments)

Tistron• 1 year ago

Has anyone else managed to make a trackpad that is even close to as good as what apple makes? I've never tried a non-apple trackpad that didn't suck.

palata5• 1 year ago

Would be a huge win for open source!

Not sure.

I don't want people who want Windows to come to Linux because Windows has become a spyware. The result will be a bunch of entitled users asking for Linux to look more like Windows.

Anyone who has maintained an open source project knows how consumers of open source suck. "Your free project that you develop in your free time sucks" or "I won't make you the honour to use your project if you don't spend 2 weeks adding this feature I want". A mass influx of Windows people who want Windows-without-the-spyware would probably make this worse for Linux.

ajsnigrutin2• 1 year ago

getting windows users to linux is a pain....

"I want BSplayer, how do I make it work?", and no other player will ever be good enough as BSplayer. And sometimes it's not even a good piece of software, but some stupid windows only thing that not even windows users use anymore.

asadm• 1 year ago

Apple is expensive? I can get an refurb M1 for $400, which is still worthy (I use it for my main dev work, docker, cmake, qemu, nodejs and all)

bigfatkitten• 1 year ago

Still blows the doors off a good many x86 machines you can buy new today, with twice the battery life.

palata5• 1 year ago

I feel like we are getting closer to the year of convergence... but with Android. Google is apparently working on it.

Many of my friends don't even have a computer: they do everything on their phone. If they could plug their phone to a dock station for the few times they need a keyboard and a bigger screen, they would be fine.

shmeeed• 1 year ago

If they could plug their phone to a dock station for the few times they need a keyboard and a bigger screen, they would be fine.

Samsung DeX does this, and I think similar solutions or workarounds are available for other manufacturers via USB-DP Alt Mode and BT for input devices.

I don't know anyone who uses it, though, and can't vouch for practicality.

pseudosavant3• 1 year ago

The year of Linux already happened quite a while ago (check your router, Android phone, TV, or countless other smart devices).

The year of desktop Linux on the other hand? It will never happen. It is a value like ∞ that you can never reach.

singron• 1 year ago

Linux marketshare is steadily increasing, especially among English speakers. It's complicated by how you want to count the Steam Deck, but the steam hardware survey has a clear upward trend: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/steam-tracker/

We could get to 30% in just 60 years!

steamrolled• 1 year ago

I wonder if 2025 will be the year of Linux.

I know it's a running joke, but we had a decade (+) of Linux in many other consumer use cases, such as smartphones. The problem is that if you're selling a consumer computing platform, you're subject to the same exact incentives as Microsoft. You want to be Microsoft! You want their revenue, their profit margins, their nice offices, their talented engineers.

Android is Linux, but your typical Android phone ships with invasive AI features, has a locked bootloader, a variety of components that collect data about you... and unless you jump through hoops, it only lets you install apps from the company store.

bongodongobob• 1 year ago

It will never be the year of Linux. That statement doesn't even mean anything. Businesses desktops run on Windows. Linux wont replace the ease in which MS allows you to manage thousands of people in the near future. There will be billions of Windows computers for the forseeable future because they can be managed easily by sysadmins with AD/M365.

Out of curiosity, have you had any experience managing 100s or 1000s of users/workstations?

cptskippy• 1 year ago

Meanwhile the user experience of Linux has dramatically increased. Put on a good skin and most people wouldn't notice the difference.

As someone who spends time using MacOS, Windows, and Linux ... even if you managed to make them look pixel perfect identical, everyone would notice something is off immediately. MacOS, Windows, and Linux desktop environments all feel distinctly different.

MacOS feels like you're waist deep in the shallow end of the pool trying to run. You feel like you're being held back in terms of speed but never out of control. Window max/min is easy, want to resize a window? That'll be 5 minutes of your life you'll never get back.

Windows is like an overeager dog, it's fast and nimble but don't blink or you'll loose your mouse cursor. Max/min/resize? Sure it's effortlessly easy right up until your mouse hits a zone and then it snaps the window exactly how you didn't want.

Linux gives you the freedom to do whatever you want, and that's exactly what every single app developer has done with their app experience. Will a click of the scroll wheel move at light speed or a glacial crawl? You never know, but what you can count on is that it will be entirely different if you use a touch pad. Want to resize a window? The mouse cursor might change to the resize icon, but damned if it doesn't activate the window beneath when you try to click and drag.

justinator• 1 year ago

Apple is too expensive

M4 Minis are like, $500.

cookiengineer4• 1 year ago

I just use Windows in a seamless VM with Office 2013.

It's fun, every time somebody sends me an exploit or dropper I am eager to click on the attachments to find out how it works. And after seeing what it does I just reset the filesystem snapshots back to the lsst step.

And for newbies to Linux I'd heavily recommend trying out KDE as a desktop environment. They're are really nicely integrated, even phone sync and other shenanigans work out of the box.

vel0city29• 1 year ago

I'm happy to have this setting. It's a great setting and I appreciate Signal adding it.

However, if an attacker has the ability to directly query the Recall database, they almost certainly have access to read all your Signal messages on your device. The locations where Recall files live are even more protected and isolated than your %APPDATA%\Roaming\Signal directory is.

Everything running as you on your computer has full control of all your Signal messages and your identity assigned to the device. This is untrue of your Recall data, which from last I saw required a lot of finagling to get the permissions right for you to access it raw.

advisedwang• 1 year ago

At least this gives forward secrecy, so if someone takes control of your computer they can only spy on signal messages AFTER that point, and can't access prior messages that Recall has captured.

vel0city29• 1 year ago

This is only forward secrecy for messages that were deleted and would have been captured by Recall and are still within the snapshot history which has a maximum number of days.

All the messages you've previously synced to the device exist in that Signal AppData directory and can be trivially searched and read by any application running as your user account. And all attachments are also just sitting there.

For example:

https://vmois.dev/query-signal-desktop-messages-sqlite/

cookiengineer4• 1 year ago

It's kind of funny that this argument always comes up when talking about Windows security.

What if I told you that botched sandboxing by default is not the standard we should accept? And that Windows' lack of competence to isolate processes isn't even what the NT Kernel envisioned (see e.g. ReactOS)?

I'd never run Windows as a host system, given the track record of how Microsoft deals with RCEs and privilege escalation issues that have been unfixed for decades at this point.

vel0city29• 1 year ago

It's the same security for the Signal as on MacOS and Linux. Your user has full control to it, generally all processes running as you can see it and mess with it.

didntcheck3• 1 year ago

* Arguing about what should be doesn't alter the facts of the current situation

* It's unfair to single out Windows here, when other platforms are not much better. Mechanisms for stronger sandboxing and storage firewalling do exist on all platforms, but in practice these are barely used on desktops, and this is true across all three major OS families. E.g. Flatpaks exist, but I believe they still represent the minority of actual application installs

And ironically Wayland also gets frequent, heavy criticism for doing the right thing here - treating screen or input capture as a privileged operation, rather than a default right of any random application you have running (though I agree they should have standardized an escape hatch earlier)

alexjurkiewicz• 1 year ago

Right, this feels like an entry to Raymond Chen's "it rather involved being on the other side of this airtight hatchway"!

I have nothing against Signal implementing screenshot hiding. But it's not exactly fixing a gaping security hole.

ruined• 1 year ago

signal desktop keeps database keys in the os keystore via electron safestorage api

on linux that’ll be kwallet or something, on mac it’s the keyring. it’s as secure as your password manager

edit: okay, you’re right, on windows it’s useless lol https://www.electronjs.org/docs/latest/api/safe-storage

[on Windows] content is protected from other users on the same machine, but not from other apps running in the same userspace.

lovetox• 1 year ago

It's not different on Linux, every App can access any key in kwallet. To make this not possible the os would need to generate some kind of unique app id that can access only what it stored. This would probably result in a lot of lost passwords for normal users.

shakna7• 1 year ago

Recall is encrypted with a key in the TPM. But getting access to that encrypted sqlite db is a yawn.

Getting the key is harder, but possible. You can breach into Microsoft's group with a particular set of GPOs - if you can run a particular set of server commands on the local network.

Signal data is encrypted at rest. The key is stored in the OS store - usually meaning the TPM.

However, the key isn't in Microsoft's main grouping. To date, no one has extracted the Signal key this way. Other exploits are required.

Signal being smaller than the whole of Microsoft, reduces the attack surface.

vel0city29• 1 year ago

no one has extracted the Signal key this way

This is incorrect. Any process running as your user can trivially get the key.

smileybarry• 1 year ago

If Signal uses the Windows Data Protection API for saving/encrypting the key (and some data online suggests that it does), then it’s trivial to fetch it back with the same APIs if you’re running as the same user. (I use `keyring` on Windows to access the key(s) VMware Workstation uses to encrypt Windows 11 VM vTPMs)

It’s kept secure by a chain of keys that may be backed by the TPM, but the security boundary is the user, not the app identity. IIRC Store/UWP apps may get their own boundary for credentials (due to how .appx is implemented).

mmooss7• 1 year ago

I agree with Signal here and love their commitment. Strangely (to me) they do 'recall' things in other ways:

* They have a message retention setting, 'Disappearing messages'; it works on message correspondents' devices too (if Ali sets Disappearing messages' to '1 day' for the chat with Barry, and then texts Barry, 1 day later Signal deletes the message on both Ali's and Barry's devices).

However, 'Disappearing messages' applies only to text messages. For every voice and video call, Signal retains a record of the date and time and the participants, and Signal saves it on the devices of each participant. Beyond a doubt, Signal's developers are well aware of the value of such metadata - as valuable as call content, in different ways - and the need for confidentiality (if you aren't familiar with that particular issue, I promise that every security professional is).

I'm shocked that they do it. What about a human rights dissident who is arrested - or whose phone is stolen - their phone won't show any sign of the text messages but it shows everyone they called and when, implicating all those other people and putting them at risk, and also evidence against the phone's owner. And even if they are disciplined and manually delete each of those records - afaik you can delete each call record one at a time - the other call participants' phones still retain the records. There is nothing someone can do to protect themself.

Better security here doesn't seem hard to implement. Also, I think having different settings for text messages and for voice/video calls makes retention settings more confusing for users. Many will believe they are safe without realizing the risk of this metadata - they trust the experts at Signal to understand these things and keep them safe - and many will assume everything disappears. Just have one setting for all data and metadata in the chat.

* Also, afaik if you delete the entire correpondence with someone - delete their entire chat history and delete them from the Signal address book - Signal retains information on them, such as settings for that chat. It seems that an attacker could identify all the deleted correspondents; again, there's no way to protect yourself.

lblume• 1 year ago

Better security here doesn't seem hard to implement.

You seem to assume it would be very simple to implement this — how do you come to this conclusion? My priors would suggest that the vast amount of effort that went into the Signal protocol renders low-hanging fruit regarding privacy fairly unlikely.

mmooss7• 1 year ago

vast amount of effort that went into the Signal protocol

If it requires protocol development, I'd agree. I expect - knowing no more than Signal's blog posts - that it has two components:

* Local database: These records need a retention period column, somehow - however they implement it with text messages. That seems straightforward.

* 'Distributed retention' - implementing the retention period setting on the remote devices of other call participants. I expect they would do it the same way they do with text messages, and I would guess it's just a field in a packet somewhere; e.g., establish a secure connection and then in the call's initial packet,

   time = 2025-05-21T22:13:11Z
   call.from = lblume
   call.to = mmooss
   retention.period = 1440 minutes

stavros3• 1 year ago

The GP is actually right here, Signal keeps the call log in the message history (deleting the call entry from the message history deletes it from the call log), but the disappearing messages setting doesn't get applied to the call log.

It's weird to see a bunch of messages, a call, more messages, and a day later the messages around are gone, but the call remains in the history. They could have just applied the disappearing messages settings to the call entries too, as it would be natural to do, and this problem wouldn't exist.

I don't think it's malicious, because what the server knows is independent of what the UI shows, but it's a very odd UI issue that does reduce privacy.

anigbrowl• 1 year ago

Correct. Signal also saves changes to the disappearing messages timer by default.

nottorp4• 1 year ago

but it shows everyone they called and when

Let's not forget that Signal uses real life phone numbers as identifiers, making the secret police's job even easier.

ale42• 1 year ago

It can use usernames now. I don't have any of my Signal contacts in my contact list, and I can't see their phone numbers any more since they introduced the usernames. Not sure if by digging in the database files I could extract the numbers or not.

kiririn• 1 year ago

It's nice to see them add an option to disable this behaviour, now if only we could get an option to include Signal messages in iOS backups...

hedora4• 1 year ago

Yeah; the lack of backup support is getting really old. I was hoping the article meant that you could optionally set it to recall your chat history across backup/restore.

iOS <-> Android account migration would also be good.

I last used Windows in the Windows 8 days. That was when they added the telemetry "feature" that lets MS engineers copy files off your box without your permission (and without notifying you).

At the time, they claimed it's only for debugging software failures, and even then, only with managerial approval. My reading of the US CLOUD Act says they're obligated to let the US gov't copy arbitrary data off your machine, regardless of what country it's in.

I'm not sure if they still do it. The documentation of this stuff is well-buried.

plingbang• 1 year ago

Fighting with the OS is futile. The OS is always in control and apps can only ask it nicely to do things.

Microsoft can simply change Recall to capture DRM-marked content too. And to avoid copyright issues, it will store some kind of visual summary (or whaterer the neural network can use) instead of plain screenshots like it is doing now.

bfors• 1 year ago

My company now blocks signal.org, it must be a nefarious tool meant for ill intent.

habitue• 1 year ago

Continue to be happy to have deleted windows from all my computers, including for gaming. There are issues with closed source OSs in general, but microsoft has continually shown that they make bad decisions and just aren't trustworthy.

vladms• 1 year ago

Gaming on Linux using steam works great for me. There are more games than I have time to play and I don't even need to worry how they work (emulation vs native) as I had to do many years ago.

amelius• 1 year ago

I'm surprised that Signal isn't kicked out of the Windows app store for abusing DRM like that.

(saying this as a Signal fan)

CobrastanJorji2• 1 year ago

Is it abuse? Are there rules about what sorts of media can and cannot be protected by DRM?

contextfree3• 1 year ago

Yeah, technically this seems like exactly a DRM scenario: Party A sends information to party B intended for use in a specific context, but wants to limit the risk of it being stored or forwarded for use by other parties or in other contexts.

debugnik2• 1 year ago

It's not even DRM, just a Win32 call that hides the window from screen capture. There's no anti-tamper or protected media path.

contact98792• 1 year ago

Signal isn't in a Windows app store to be kicked out of, though

vel0city29• 1 year ago

I don't think Signal is in the Windows app store, is it? I've never installed it from there.

And this isn't really abusing anything. It's just a flag a window can set to say it's sensitive and shouldn't be included in screen grabs.

chii6• 1 year ago

it's good that microsoft isn't the arbiter of what should be allowed to be installed onto a machine.

I actively dislike walled gardens. It's fine to have a store, and to sell via a store, but it should never be an exclusive option.

CobrastanJorji2• 1 year ago

If you’re wondering why we’re only implementing this on Windows right now, it’s because the purpose of this setting is to protect your Signal messages from Microsoft Recall.

To nitpick, that doesn't tell me why you're only implementing this now. That tells me why it's more important now, but it doesn't tell me why it wasn't good before now. But the word "only" suggests that there was a reason you didn't do this before now.

notable_chuckle• 1 year ago

I think they mean only Windows as in 'Windows but not other platforms yet'. The wording is confusing.

vel0city29• 1 year ago

They do support this feature on other platforms though. It works on my Android phone.

artimaeis• 1 year ago

I don't think they meant that 'only' in a temporal sense. Rather, they meant why that's the only platform they're implementing it on for the time being.

"If you're wondering why we're [not implementing this on other platforms right now] [...]"

tasuki3• 1 year ago

Yes sure. There isn't much a userland app can actually do if your OS wants to spy on you. I wonder why they spend their time on this?

Meanwhile, Signal still requires a phone number to register and use. It's terrible: phone numbers are easy to lose, and not everyone has a phone number.

I like the ideas behind the Session[0] messenger: create an account with no authentication (no phone number, no email, no nothing), get a list-of-words-to-note-down, which allows you to access your account from any device. You get a UUID or something as your user id. Share that with a QR code or send a link over an existing channel to connect to someone.

To me this seems way ahead of Signal. I'm not affiliated with Session and haven't actually persuaded anyone to start using it just yet, so I don't really know how it is in practice. But the UX of creating an account made me weep tears of joy and hope <3

[0] https://getsession.org/

gruez3• 1 year ago

It's terrible: phone numbers are easy to lose

At least in the US they're nearly impossible to lose because of phone number portability.

and not everyone has a phone number

Most people do, not least because plenty of other services (eg. banks) require a phone number.

ethagnawl3• 1 year ago

At least in the US they're nearly impossible to lose because of phone number portability.

If you miss a few payments, you'll be at risk of losing your phone number.

tasuki3• 1 year ago

At least in the US

I'm not in the US. My current phone number is from a different country than the one I'm currently residing in. Endless headaches. Could I get a local phone number? Sure, but different kinds of headaches: updating all those asshole services who required me to give them a phone number.

phone number portability

Portability? That makes me think "possible to hijack", ie "easy to lose".

Are you immune to SIM swap? If so, how have you achieved that?

ikmckenz• 1 year ago

Except for the fact that the security of Session is drastically worse than Signal.

https://soatok.blog/2025/01/14/dont-use-session-signal-fork/ https://soatok.blog/2025/01/20/session-round-2/

tasuki3• 1 year ago

Ah that's too bad then!

At least you should admit it's conceptually much nicer than Signal, even if they got the details wrong and/or intentionally backdoored.

I'll continue using Facebook messenger then, until someone figures out secure messaging without requiring me to hand over my phone number and/or email...

DrillShopper2• 1 year ago

To me this seems way ahead of Signal. I'm not affiliated with Session and haven't actually persuaded anyone to start using it just yet, so I don't really know how it is in practice.

Begone, fed.

calvinmorrison• 1 year ago

if signal tried to do something this bad themeselves, we wouldnt really be able to for it or switch to another client. Just another bad actor bitching about worse actors, huh?

overgard• 1 year ago

Microsoft really seems out of control. Yesterday I noticed that OneDrive was turned on automatically (I've always been very clear about not turning it on). Which was incredibly shocking to me, that they'd just turn on uploading my data to the cloud on the sly. And of course, it's nearly impossible to turn off Edge loading things. I'm really on the verge of switching to Linux, it's getting too awful

throitallaway7• 1 year ago

I absolutely hate how Windows now basically forces you to sign in with a Microsoft ID in order to facilitate this kind of stuff. I just want a local system; I don't need all this online crap built into my desktop OS.

For the last two decades or so I've been running Linux for everything (personal and work) except for gaming. I'm to the point of being sufficiently annoyed with Windows that I'm going to set up a Linux disk for gaming to see how that goes. I've used Wine etc. for gaming sporadically throughout the years. Recently that landscape has improved quite a bit thanks to Valve.

firen777• 1 year ago

While it's been improved a whole lot, it's not all sunshine and rainbow as some game companies decided to drop support after they decided kernel anti-cheat is the way (notably GTA onlin & Apex legend).

That being said, I personally use proton compatibility to gauge whether a game is worth my time so I'm not too bothered by this. And I'm constantly surprised by how much the Venn diagram of games that don't run on Linux and games that have off-putting bullshit unrelated to Linux looks like a single overlapping circle.

sierra1011• 1 year ago

I recommend Bazzite, a Fedora SilverBlue image customised for gaming on Linux. I've been gaming on it exclusively for over a year and between it, Steam, and Proton, I'm yet to encounter a game in my steam library that doesn't run.

https://bazzite.gg/

coldpie• 1 year ago

Just do it, man. There will be some pains in the first year or two, but it's so, so much better on the other side.

ajsnigrutin2• 1 year ago

Chrome on linux does the same sadly... prompts to be the default browser, never remembers the "no" option, and if you misclick the small 'x', it sets itself as the default again.

People have actually written apparmour configs to prevent that: https://sergei.nz/stop-google-chrome-from-hijacking-mimes/

fireflash38• 1 year ago

Android will also use chrome over the default Firefox on a lot of random apps.

sedatk• 1 year ago

I thought OneDrive asked for your credentials separately. Did you previously sign in to it, but remove it from startup?

kevingadd• 1 year ago

If you ever sign into a Microsoft account - i.e. when setting up your PC since it's nearly mandatory - Windows turns on OneDrive automatically even if you explicitly opt out of it during the setup wizard because apparently user consent doesn't mean anything. Happened to me a couple times.

turtletontine• 1 year ago

I’ve been running Linux distros on my primary machines for over a decade now, and there’s no way I’m going back. Even a few years ago I figured “when I finish grad school, I’ll probably get a Mac just for a smoother experience working with colleagues.” But even in the past few years the volume of complaints I hear from friends and colleagues seems to have skyrocketed - updates randomly breaking their environments, new annoying barriers to installing real software, pestering notifications that you can’t seem to turn off. Meanwhile, my Linux experience only seems to improve! And I hate Windows with a burning passion - just no way I’m using it on my personal machines.

encom4• 1 year ago

Been using Linux for ages, but only for a few years on my home desktop, because Steam is now that good, and gaming is a major part of that computers duties.

HOWEVER - I've yet to find a good email client. Kmail is good, but uses Akonadi with is a disaster, and literally doesn't work. I have to restart it multiple times a day, because it silently stops working. I have found bug reports about this issue going back years which are either ignored or marked fixed, which it clearly isn't.

Don't say Thunderbird.

duxup• 1 year ago

Everything about Microsoft these days feels like they're working to point their software AT me ... not help me in any way, or even think of the end user at all.

monksy• 1 year ago

I feel like that's the entire tech and b2c space lately. It's a restriction of options and forced compliance into things that take away value and give the company money.

sexy_seedbox• 1 year ago

Are you living and breathing Copilot yet?

WuxiFingerHold3• 1 year ago

I'm using Linux (Ubuntu LTS is a no brainer) on my desktop for years. It enables me to just do the things I want or need to do with my computer. Windows is much more in our way than it's helping us just using our devices.

Groxx4• 1 year ago

Yep. 11 was my breaking point.

I don't really care how easy or difficult Linux is, I'm done with Windows.

(On the upside: holy cow some computers work way better with Linux. A crappy $100 Chromebook I had lying around gets over 30 hours of battery life with my normal use now, it's insane. It has become my go-to "just chuck it in a bag for whatever" machine because I can forget to charge it for weeks and it's fine)

-__---____-ZXyw3• 1 year ago

What model chromebook, and what distro do you run on it? Sounds lovely!

brian-armstrong2• 1 year ago

It's really easy to just try different distros and desktop environments out. For me, KDE Plasma has been an excellent vaguely Windows shaped Windows replacement.

With MacOS dropping subpixel support for text and with the cleartype patents expiring, Linux font rendering just keeps getting better while the others stay the same or get worse. I can't really conceive any reason to stay on Windows now unless you're a hardcore gamer.

71bw4• 1 year ago

...or use industry-specific software like AutoCAD for example...

Yeul• 1 year ago

OneDrive is pure evil. They force it on now and dupe their unwitting users into paying hundreds of eurodollars for cloud storage.

cobbaut• 1 year ago

Linux works. At home I made the switch in 2003, after a couple of years triple booting Win98, OS/2 and Linux. I feel lucky to have never used XP/Vista/7/8/10/11.

datatrashfire• 1 year ago

Fedora desktop is actually a really nice experience in 2025. I switched in maybe 2022, after getting annoyed by the surge in nagging. The last time I tried desktop Linux was maybe 2008. Things have come quite a long way since then.

subliminalpanda• 1 year ago

Recently rebuilt my PC and installed Fedora 42 KDE, it's been great so far, except that I've been running into a reboot/shutdown bug that freezes the system.

wezdog1• 1 year ago

Ive been distro hopping and landedon Fedora KDE plasma edition. It is amazing, so much configurability yet its super slick and clean. It is a real joy to use. Kudos to the dev community.

fschuett• 1 year ago

“Take a screenshot every few seconds” legitimately sounds like a suggestion from a low-parameter LLM that was given a prompt like “How do I add an arbitrary AI feature to my operating system as quickly as possible in order to make investors happy?”

No, actual AI is smarter than Microsoft managers, it seems:

Here are some ideas for adding an arbitrary AI feature to your operating system quickly to make investors happy:

- AI File Search: NLP for file/setting search (search files by NLP querying)

- Auto Window Layouts: AI-suggested window organization ("coding mode", "research mode" depending on detected usage patterns)

- Smart Notifications: automatic notification condensing to reduce clutter

- AI Clipboard: Keeping a categorized clipboard paste based on content

- Predictive App Launcher: Suggests apps based on daytime, usage, recently opened files

- AI Wallpaper/Theme: Smart visual suggestions, i.e. wallpaper based on current weather, mood, etc.

- Voice Quick Commands: AI-based voice OS control ("Open browser")

- AI System optimization: for example, content-based disk space cleanup

Any of the above are better than this nonsense.

vel0city29• 1 year ago

Some of these features already exist in Windows such as the predictive app launcher, voice commands, and system optimization.

For example, when a meeting that had an attachment of some spreadsheet is coming up, it's already in my start menu.

mmcnl5• 1 year ago

I think this is quite strange, imo this is just virtue signalling / activism and much less about privacy. I install Signal on the Windows operating system on the computer I trust. If I wouldn't trust Windows, why would I install Signal? Also Recall is an opt-in feature, it's not spyware, that's simply FUD.

Second, Apple is doing something similar except they send all your data to the cloud (yes I know Apple says private cloud, but there's no such thing). What's Signal's take on that?

I respect their stance on privacy, but this doesn't feel like a rational decision to me.

lurk22• 1 year ago

Apple is doing something similar except they send all your data to the cloud

They do? Since when?

mmcnl5• 1 year ago

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

Draws on your personal context without allowing anyone else to access your personal data — not even Apple.

Personal context === privacy sensitive data.

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.

They can use nice sounding words such as "privacy at every step" and "protecting your privacy", but that's marketing. The facts are that Apple Intelligence is baked into the core of your iPhone for analyzing personal data and they send the data to the cloud.

contextfree3• 1 year ago

You might trust Windows and even actively want Recall and simply not want private Signal messages, specifically, to be captured by it. For the same reason that Recall already tries to exclude browsers in incognito mode, as mentioned by the article.

mmcnl5• 1 year ago

Yes, I can see why the feature would be valuable. But the blog post is an emotional rant against Recall. Signal is lacking a lot of valuable features, I doubt this is high on the list of most users, yet time and effort has been spent on it. If you don't want Recall, then don't use it.

TiredOfLife4• 1 year ago

If only Recall had the option to configure which windows or apps to exclude. Wait. It does. Since announcement.

NotPractical• 1 year ago

Unfortunately Apple is in $HN_GOOD_COMPANIES and Microsoft is in $HN_BAD_COMPANIES so facts don't matter, but yes Windows Recall is objectively more private than Apple Intelligence.

bcoates• 1 year ago

Maybe I'm nuts, but I absolutely love timesnapper (the non-LLM predecessor of Recall, but the same screenshot every few seconds concept).

I originally got it for it's main advertised function--making it easy to record hours for contract billing--but once I had it running I was hooked.

It's just incredibly useful to be able to pull up what you were doing at any given moment, or how you did a particular thing, a few months after the fact.

I haven't used Recall yet but hooking it up to a multimodal LLM seems like an obviously useful thing.

jasonjayr• 1 year ago

Then it should 100% be a clear opt in, with no weasel words. No yes/no dialogs with "Yes" or "Maybe later".

OneDrive being on by default and hoovering up your data automatically has burned at least one family member, and it seems like recall will follow the same path.

j-bos• 1 year ago

Ha I love that DRM is being turned for protection of actual people instead of industry giants.

DecentShoes• 1 year ago

No OS or app should be able to stop me taking screenshots. Not my phone, not my desktop. It's MY device. I should be able to take screenshots of whatever the hell I want.

palata5• 1 year ago

That's off-topic:

1. You can disable that feature in the Signal settings (they say it in the post)

2. They don't have another way because of Microsoft (they say it in the post)

Did you read the post?

RomanPushkin• 1 year ago

Second this. What's the point of this security aspect when everyone has their pocket cameras in their phones? This is nonsense.

The same is true for spyware installed on employee computers. Google laptops will snitch on you if you even attempt to attach USB drive. While there is HDMI and KVMs, there is no point of having these restrictions.

jasonlotito• 1 year ago

What's the point of this security aspect when everyone has their pocket cameras in their phones?

It's not to stop the people from screenshotting. It's to stop the accidental exposure via some screenshot or some other mechanism.

alkonaut• 1 year ago

Apps take screenshots all the time, e.g for crash reporting. Then they phone home with them. Most apps obviously ask politely when this happens but I’m sure there are exceptions. Not to mention malicious apps. There is no real security or isolation for screenshots that I’m aware of so app one will happily snap a picture of app two, without needing special permissions. That other app can be your password manager or baking browser tab. So apps explicitly opting into being in the picture is perhaps not such a bad idea.

QuadmasterXLII• 1 year ago

“ To help mitigate this issue, we made the setting easy to disable (Signal Settings → Privacy → Screen security), but it’s difficult to accidentally disable. Turning off “Screen security” in Signal Desktop on Windows 11 will always display a warning and require confirmation in order to continue.”

phildenhoff• 1 year ago

Are you upset about DRM in general? Or that Signal, by default, prevents Windows from capturing the Signal window when it screenshots the screen every few seconds?

because it sounds like Windows is the problem here, doing this screenshotting at all. And Signal allows you to disable the anti-screenshotting measure

exegete• 1 year ago

And I have the expectation that my OS not take constant screenshots of what I’m doing (Microsoft Recall), which is what this Signal feature is trying to prevent. You’re welcome to turn the feature off so that Microsoft can store screenshots of your Signal chats.

drewbeck• 1 year ago

As are you welcome to turn Recall off.

aranelsurion• 1 year ago

I agree with you, but this particular one seems to be a feature you can toggle off. It's a tradeoff between that said freedom and privacy.

pseudosavant3• 1 year ago

Does anyone else feel like Signal is acting like Recall is the only app that could record your screen on Windows? It seems like this is something they should have been stopping for a long time and they are finally addressing this loophole?

nerdsniper• 1 year ago

The penetration of other apps that record your whole screen 24/7 is pretty low. Whereas this will be close to 100% of windows users.

pseudosavant3• 1 year ago

Will it though? They are acting like it is already 100%, when it isn't only in a difficult to access preview that only Windows 11 users with Copilot+ PCs can use, and even when installed, it requires opting in.

How many hours a day does Zoom/Google Meet/etc record many users' screens? I'd suggest that it unbelievably common for a screen to get recorded many hours every day already. I had always (incorrectly) assumed Signal required a desktop app so that they could block screen capture like they finally do now.

vel0city29• 1 year ago

Very few computers support Recall, even if they support 11. So no, it won't be 100% of Windows users.

andrewclunn• 1 year ago

As somebody who had to use signal messages as evidence in court, there are legitimate reasons to capture screenshot of signal. If people have spyware then that’s on them. When the OS becomes the spyware… well I support signal’s timing on this.

trinsic2• 1 year ago

If you have to have this kind of monitoring on your OS, to circumvent spying on your apps, something is really wrong and you should probably take the nearest exit.

tempestn• 1 year ago

Hopefully Signal manages to turn all the recent press into a positive for user acquisition. It's a fantastic app and service. In an ideal world, laws could be updated for the digital age such that automated disappearing messages were not considered equivalent to deleting records, but rather to an in-person conversation or phone call for which records would not be expected to be kept in the first place. I'm not holding my breath on that one though.

alex1138• 1 year ago

You know I understand this is HN so I might get downvoted for saying this (with no explanation) but we should start enforcing computer crimes when corporations do it

If Microsoft decides spying on you and inflicting DRM or whatever or any of the other companies they should be liable in criminal prosecution

At least some of these you could plausibly argue even violate the CFAA and is about on the same level of some lone black hat hackers

OsrsNeedsf2P2• 1 year ago

they should be liable in criminal prosecution

What's the crime? What's the damage? Nobody is forcing you to use Windows, in fact most developers I know are on a Mac

OsrsNeedsf2P2• 1 year ago

they should be liable in criminal prosecution

What's the crime? What's the damage? Nobody is forcing you to use Windows, in fact most people I know are on Mac

14• 1 year ago

I look forward to the first report of domestic abuse or worse caused by recall. I really hope this never happens and pray it doesn’t but I am 100% sure someone is going to utilize this feature to see exactly what their bf/gf is doing when online. Those who are not very tech savvy will ultimately do something online and their partner will look and see exactly what they did and snap. This scenario will be Microsoft’s fault. They are literally installing spyware as a feature. I hope no one gets killed.

fdlaks• 1 year ago

Can't wait for the day when I can have my gaming PC be on a Linux based OS, thats really the only reason I have it at all

CHB0403085482• 1 year ago

sigh Time to go full *nix?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm51xZHZI6g

gfhopper• 1 year ago

I switched to Linux permanently in 2015. Didn't know it would get this bad but forced updates was what convinced me to switch. It seems every time I see Microsoft in the news, it's very specifically NOT for good reasons. Grabbing my popcorn...

8note• 1 year ago

as the official communication tool for the US government national security team, isnt signal required by law to recall now?

WuxiFingerHold3• 1 year ago

I have a very nice Microsoft Surface Pro running Windows 10. I refuse to update to Windows 11. Has anyone tried a Linux distribution on such a device? Which one would you recommend?

compsciphd• 1 year ago

this would presumambly also prevent signal from working over RDP/remote desktop.

With that said, anyone by default this seems somewhat pointless (though I might be wrong), as by default it seems signal keeps the entire message history in a sqlite DB on the machine. While one can argue that the screenshot history is problematic, the sqlite DB is just as problematic if one views it as a need to have good privacy defaults, and I'd argue that the sqlite DB is much more valuable to exfilitrate than the screenshot history.

Now, one can counter that one can purge the message history (all or in part) in a manner that is easier than with Recall, and I'd agree that Recall would be better if it gave the users fine grained ability to purge things from it, but that doesn't change the argument that we are simply seeing virtue signaling here (pun slightly intended), as this change to defaults doesn't really improve a user's privacy.

josephcsible• 1 year ago

If an app did this without an off switch, what would be the easiest way to bypass it and take a screenshot anyway, assuming the goal is a higher quality result than taking a picture of the monitor?

JohnFen• 1 year ago

I never thought I'd see the day when DRM would actually be used in a positive way. Good job, Signal.

By default, Signal doesn't recall

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