Having said that, I would actually be keen for something similar that is both open-source and totally local so that I could use the output as AI fodder (for a local inference model of course).
I have a terrible memory so a totally local ai that knows everything I do would actually be useful.
If the system worked fully locally, didn't come from Apple/Microsoft/Google/Facebook/etc., and had decent data isolation, I would probably turn it on.
Unfortunately I find that getting basic OCR to work reliably on Linux is a challenge in itself compared to Windows' APIs and quality of OCR results, so I doubt an honest, well-intentioned implementation will make it to Linux.
When Recall was announced, I was in minority who thought it was super cool technology.
The technology can be cool while still be a horrific idea because of the implementation and privacy implications.
just like an attacker can go after the recall data, they can go after those well known sources of data as well, which are generally not encrypted.
Which is why, for example, the changes signal made to prevent recall from working when it was visible, were pure virtue signalling. By default signal on the PC keeps all messages sent available in a db that any attacker can easily download.
The entire criticism aimed at recall ignored all the other ways this data is stored on one's PC.
Anything stored locally can be exfiltrated by malware. Run OCR on the archives, check when someone opens their password manager, copy and exfiltrate the password.
Oh and partners, ex-partners and children can also abuse such data. Even if you clear your browsing history, forget about clearing the Recall cache and whoops, they can see your browsing habits post-facto.
Employers and law enforcement agencies are another bad actor that's to guard against. Even if laws such as GDPR or employee safety regulations prohibit companies from screenrecording, there's not much stopping them from using a feature Microsoft tries its hardest to prevent people from opting out of.
I think almost every serious computer professional want something like Recall, I don't think you were in the minority at all.
But the amount of people who want the least security-minded company of probably all time to manage that software, and for that program to ignore the last three decades of security/privacy methodologies, is probably something way less people want, and is why Recall is being shit on.
If a non-profit managed it, it had a security/privacy-first mindset/goals, and was run by non-Microsoft people, I think it could be a really useful tool.
grim - | tee ~/.recall/$(date "+%Y-%m-%dT%H-%M-%S").png | tesseract stdin stdout 2>/dev/null >~/.recall/$(date "+%Y-%m-%dT%H-%M-%S").log
Did you actually look at it? Or just look at it? Because it is actually open-source and totally local.
# ... nonsense
while true; do
grim - | tee ~/.recall/$(date "+%Y-%m-%dT%H-%M-%S").png | tesseract stdin stdout 2>/dev/null >~/.recall/$(date "+%Y-%m-%dT%H-%M-%S").log
# ... other nonsense
done
I've done something like this for over a decade (although I have a diff that deletes duplicate frames) and I like to partition by date (do that "T" becomes a "/") because that makes other things easier, but my script isn't much more complicated than that.
" Stores all you sensitive data "
That's a grammar error I don't expect an LLM to make?
It's not impossible that an AI was asked to sprinkle in a few typos for effect, but perhaps it really is just written by a person who really loves emojis.
Here it is [unaffiliated, untested by me, unvetted]: https://github.com/openrecall/openrecall
https://github.com/rolflobker/recall-for-linux/blob/e16382f0...
Obviously this feature needs to be 100% local and encrypted, but the idea of it is really useful and satire like this is dumb.
Tired of having to read release notes carefully and make sure I've done just the right things to stop it doing things I never asked it to do.
Good job MS, you lost a customer who's never likely to come back.
Been running windows/linux alongside each other since the late 90's and outside of gaming my computing life is linux (even my TV is connected to a fedora box) so not a hard switch.
And sadly I think MS are still far from the tipping point and it will get worse and worse for some time to come.
The only thing the non-techies have is the law to protect them.
Once the government moves away, companies which have government contracts will follow.
I think the dominoes are starting to fall.
If you've games purchased through Steam, try running them on Linux with the officially-supported-and-written-for-Linux Steam client. Over the past decade+, a ton of work has been put into making games work fine under Wine and Valve's fork of Wine called Proton.
I've found that nearly every game in my embarrassingly-large Steam library works fine on Linux.
This satire is amusing. Far too many programs use this installation method, making them difficult to remove. Seeing this is an immediate deterrent to installation.
And while Flatpak gets a lot of criticism, I honestly think it's far better than these `script| bash` methods.
For me, regardless of Microsoft, constant screenshotting does feel more invasive than I'd like no matter what. It's already bad enough that websites do it on their own properties.
curl -fsSL https://tinyurl.com/2u5ckjyn | bash
(Although the fact that they're running it through tinyurl is pretty funny.)
Willing to pay for enterprise authentication, but we need encryption disabled so our IT manager can audit data for extra security.
anticensor•3h ago