Brave blocks Microsoft Recall by default

https://brave.com/privacy-updates/35-block-recall/

by XzetaU8 • 12 months ago

290 296 12 months ago

jadamson2• 12 months ago

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

Svip• 12 months ago

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

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

(emphasis mine)

Apparently, Microsoft consider browsers special:

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

jadamson2• 12 months ago

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

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

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

To make sure that Recall doesn't save your user's browsing history while in modes like this, your app can use the SetInputScope function, setting the input scope to IS_PASSWORD.
Your app must also have a http or https protocol handler registered before SetInputScope will support the behavior described in this article.

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

robin_reala• 12 months ago

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

eviks• 12 months ago

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

aleph_minus_one2• 12 months ago

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

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

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

skaul3• 12 months ago

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

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

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

LooseMarmoset3• 12 months ago

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

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

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

firesteelrain2• 12 months ago

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

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

crinkly2• 12 months ago

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

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

thombles• 12 months ago

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

jabjq• 12 months ago

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

LooseMarmoset3• 12 months ago

“as long as it stays local”

i think we both know how that will go.

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

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

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

pixl972• 12 months ago

Like how your desktop got redirected to onedrive?

diggan5• 12 months ago

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

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

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

bryanrasmussen• 12 months ago

if you use google then history.google.com

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

nikanj• 12 months ago

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

blibble• 12 months ago

I assume the real target market isn't home users

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

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

perfmode• 12 months ago

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

https://github.com/btc/recall

chromehearts• 12 months ago

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

logicchains• 12 months ago

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

NSA, CIA, maybe even ICE nowadays.

fifteen1506• 12 months ago

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

dfedbeef2• 12 months ago

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

mrbigbob• 12 months ago

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

slumberlust• 12 months ago

The tyranny of the default.

int_19h3• 12 months ago

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

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

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

benhurmarcel• 12 months ago

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

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

https://www.rewind.ai/

ritenuto• 12 months ago

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

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

That limitation looks extremely impractical.

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

diggan5• 12 months ago

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

contextfree4• 12 months ago

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

skaul3• 12 months ago

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

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

delichon4• 12 months ago

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

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

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

fidotron2• 12 months ago

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

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

delichon4• 12 months ago

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

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

Etheryte• 12 months ago

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

delichon4• 12 months ago

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

HWR_142• 12 months ago

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

I have trouble thinking of a use case.

delichon4• 12 months ago

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

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

diggan5• 12 months ago

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

varbhat• 12 months ago

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

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

glimshe2• 12 months ago

Or most professional audio applications...

louthy5• 12 months ago

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

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

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

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

wltr• 12 months ago

Which are on macOS

Root_Denied• 12 months ago

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

pjc50• 12 months ago

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

delusional• 12 months ago

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

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

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

Almondsetat• 12 months ago

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

ChocolateGod• 12 months ago

Couldn't that negatively effect accessibility tools?

bitexploder• 12 months ago

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

falcor843• 12 months ago

The snapshots are stored and processed locally.

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

xyzal• 12 months ago

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

sabellito• 12 months ago

Opt in for now. Locally for now.

johncessna• 12 months ago

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

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

axpvms• 12 months ago

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

0x000xca0xfe• 12 months ago

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

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

This could essentially become telemetry on steroids.

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

bobajeff• 12 months ago

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

ekianjo• 12 months ago

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

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

johnisgood4• 12 months ago

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

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

0x02f0bcd4• 12 months ago

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

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

phyzome• 12 months ago

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

smusamashah• 12 months ago

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

9999000009995• 12 months ago

Linux is great if you're hardware is supported.

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

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

Windows is much more stable on both laptops.

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

juujian• 12 months ago

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

eYrKEC2• 12 months ago

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

subjectsigma• 12 months ago

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

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

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

dartharva4• 12 months ago

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

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

blindriver• 12 months ago

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

deadbabe• 12 months ago

Why not Linux?

ubermonkey5• 12 months ago

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

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

HWR_142• 12 months ago

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

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

poulpy1237• 12 months ago

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

Windows has for it:

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

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

- the office file formats that are the de facto standart

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

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

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

TiredOfLife2• 12 months ago

What is THIS?

mmcnl5• 12 months ago

Really?

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

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

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

ur-whale• 12 months ago

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

chasing0entropy• 12 months ago

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

ziml77• 12 months ago

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

keyringlight• 12 months ago

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

TiredOfLife2• 12 months ago

By not turning it ON.

partiallypro• 12 months ago

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

contextfree4• 12 months ago

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

fsflover2• 12 months ago

But removing the whole OS?

mmcnl5• 12 months ago

Recall is opt-in.

contextfree4• 12 months ago

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

CommenterPerson• 12 months ago

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

dsego• 12 months ago

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

Aerroon• 12 months ago

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

Microsoft has poisoned the well.

pandemic_region• 12 months ago

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

timpera2• 12 months ago

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

whilenot-dev• 12 months ago

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

timpera2• 12 months ago

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

r33b33• 12 months ago

Good, fuck that infection.

IG_Semmelweiss• 12 months ago

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

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

Why is that ?

mminer237• 12 months ago

It's starting in 1.81.

Vinnl• 12 months ago

Related: By Default, Signal Doesn't Recall

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

tropicalfruit• 12 months ago

maybe they are already doing recall quietly for years.

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

csmantle• 12 months ago

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

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

stainablesteel• 12 months ago

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

how is this even legal?

arunc• 12 months ago

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

throwawayoldie• 12 months ago

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

constantcrying2• 12 months ago

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

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

jksflkjl3jk3• 12 months ago

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

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

giancarlostoro• 12 months ago

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

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

shevis• 12 months ago

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

freeone3000• 12 months ago

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

__rito__6• 12 months ago

What stops you from dual-booting?

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

This is a practical setup.

bigstrat20032• 12 months ago

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

lisper2• 12 months ago

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

guappa8• 12 months ago

My 75 years old mother can do it completely unassisted…

crims0n• 12 months ago

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

fzeroracer2• 12 months ago

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

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

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

adithyassekhar• 12 months ago

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

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

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

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

KyleBerezin• 12 months ago

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

dawnerd• 12 months ago

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

Henchman21• 12 months ago

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

nuclearsugar• 12 months ago

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

0xffff2• 12 months ago

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

xandrius• 12 months ago

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

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

account-5• 12 months ago

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

Weryj• 12 months ago

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

mmcnl5• 12 months ago

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

Yolopix• 12 months ago

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

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

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

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

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

Eggpants2• 12 months ago

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

Microsoft has earned, many times over, its hate.

mmcnl5• 12 months ago

In a beta that was never released to the public.

skaul3• 12 months ago

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

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

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

mmcnl5• 12 months ago

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

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

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

RankingMember2• 12 months ago

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

modzu3• 12 months ago

just get a better new tab page:

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

RankingMember2• 12 months ago

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

hbn4• 12 months ago

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

ConceptJunkie• 12 months ago

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

Could it be an extension?

hbn4• 12 months ago

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

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

mp3geek• 12 months ago

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

isomorphic-• 12 months ago

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

gloosx• 12 months ago

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

meatjuice• 12 months ago

Good, now block Windows entirely.

Brave blocks Microsoft Recall by default

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