Daily Archives: 2024-06-04

Article note: I've been running like this for quite a while because it's the default on arch and systemd, but I had to change some habits because /tmp used to be in part scratch for shit that would be a problem to fit in RAM.

Article note: It takes some advanced incompetence to make something that seems like a terrible idea at a glance, then just keeps getting worse the more you look. It's like a supercharged Sub7 (an old trojan that kind of prestaged modern malware) built right into the OS. The ill-conceived executive FOMO AI rollouts going on across the tech industry are really destructive dumb-herd-animal behavior.

Enlarge / The Recall feature as it currently exists in Windows 11 24H2 preview builds. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Microsoft’s Windows 11 Copilot+ PCs come with quite a few new AI and machine learning-driven features, but the tentpole is Recall. Described by Microsoft as a comprehensive record of everything you do on your PC, the feature is pitched as a way to help users remember where they’ve been and to provide Windows extra contextual information that can help it better understand requests from and meet the needs of individual users.

This, as many users in infosec communities on social media immediately pointed out, sounds like a potential security nightmare. That’s doubly true because Microsoft says that by default, Recall’s screenshots take no pains to redact sensitive information, from usernames and passwords to health care information to NSFW site visits. By default, on a PC with 256GB of storage, Recall can store a couple dozen gigabytes of data across three months of PC usage, a huge amount of personal data.

The line between “potential security nightmare” and “actual security nightmare” is at least partly about the implementation, and Microsoft has been saying things that are at least superficially reassuring. Copilot+ PCs are required to have a fast neural processing unit (NPU) so that processing can be performed locally rather than sending data to the cloud; local snapshots are protected at rest by Windows’ disk encryption technologies, which are generally on by default if you’ve signed into a Microsoft account; neither Microsoft nor other users on the PC are supposed to be able to access any particular user’s Recall snapshots; and users can choose to exclude apps or (in most browsers) individual websites to exclude from Recall’s snapshots.

Article note: I'm a huge fan of this behavior. I have a bunch of complete or partial near-publication-quality thoroughly-referenced documents abut dumb shit I've become fascinated by over the years. Many of them have ended up at least in part on the internet somewhere, some that I haven't even done that with. Some of it is the trill of learning and formulating understanding (See the old 1997 William Gibson essay in Wired "My Obsession" which says it better than anything I could write). Reading other people's obsessive recreational research on topics is _also_ often the best way to get up to speed on a topic. ...And this is why I'm excited to be lining up a teaching position with some opportunity to kibitz in research and not a traditional faculty job, it's very hard to do actual honest research inside a tenure track career arc these days.