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Microsoft is adding AI facial recognition to OneDrive and users can only turn it off three times a year
I didn't watch the whole video and I'm not familiar with the channel so I don't want to make this a link post, but here's the source: The Lunduke Journal
I watched up to the point where the author explains how Microsoft tends to turn on all the privacy invading settings every time they push an update (not surprising). I guess if I had to use Microsoft products, I'd try to disable automatic updates and just do them twice a year in one go, while also turning off the settings I want off. Would it be practically feasible? I don't know. Having to go to those lengths to use some software just seems ridiculous.
This has no bearing on the argument but careful citing Bryan Lunduke. He's whatever the equivalent of an anti-woke gamer bro is for the Linux community.
Realistically, as mentioned by @Tiraon, what's happening is that every time you turn it off all the facial recognition data is nuked as per regulations, and turning it on costs non-trivial compute to re-index every image. Though like they said, also, the default being off (or heck- just a prompt to 'enable face identification?' when open OneDrive) would have been a much easier sell for everyone.
Yea, but then user engagement would be abysmal and shareholders won't understand why they wasted money on developing it.
That is the only logical explaination for why Windows will also reset a ton of settings each update, without so much of a prompt like 'Hey, a lot has changed, care for a settings reset?' If they did that, the backlash would be virtually silent.
But then it also would be harder to perpetually shove ads in new margins.
Yeah, I must say I have watched his videos with actual interest on a couple of occasions. And that is because I really admire the mental gymnastics and skill with which he can turn the most obvious non-issues, or otherwise idiotic statements, into such a rage-inducing video based on such flimsy evidence in a seemingly objective but actually very one-sided presentation. It really is hard to pull off, and he does it so effortlessly. It is mesmerizing.
Literally just spent tonight moving files around and grabbing ISO's to switch everything to Arch Linux. I'm just so tired of the lack of privacy and Mac-ification of Windows, I can't stay on it anymore.
(noise)
As a Mac user, I’ve literally never been forced to do an update against my will. :P
While Apple does suck in their own ways, I genuinely think non-corporate Windows is a worse platform to be on nowadays.
To try and salvage my comment into constructiveness: What aspects would you say are becoming more Mac-like? Genuinely curious to hear.
Not the same user, but: oh God so much. The biggest thing is the forced walled garden and increasing removal of user choice. It used to be that the choice between Windows and Apple was a choice between customizability and easy interfacing vs stuff actually working. Now Windows increasingly prevents alternate software options, forces updates, and constantly spams its walled garden shit. Oh and it still is much buggier than Apple software to boot.
I'm a lifelong Apple hater and even I can't say Windows is a better option for anything except amount of software choices these days.
The walled garden accusation gets thrown around a lot in conversations like these. Apple’s mobile operating systems are definitely walled gardens. But macOS is absolutely not. To keep the analogy running, it’s a fenced in garden with a knee-high fence. If you want to install unsigned software, you just have to enable it the first time you run it in system settings. You get root access by default. You can disable system integrity protection to modify the underlying operating system. As far as being a walled garden, Android is more of a walled garden than macOS.
I would be shocked if Apple doesn't have plans in the works to sunset OSX, replace with iOS, and then charge increasingly exorbitant fees for admin-level access.
It seems dubious that you would be shocked by Apple merely following the same continuing trend it has for the ~25 years OS X has existed. They took a workstation OS (NextStep) and for all the cruft they added to make it more palatable to general consumers they've never made it not a workstation OS. It's always been a thing for power users as much as anyone else.
I'm not a fan of OS X for a variety of reasons but it seems clear to me that Apple has nothing to gain from alienating a significant niche it's found among e.g. software developers.
I always thought osx was built on one of the BSDs. TIL
It is. Well, in its DNA anyhow. NextSTEP was derived from BSD.
Fun fact: of the "big 3", macOS is today the only one that's Unix compliant.
Macs are quite popular among software developers, and that seems like something that’d kill all interest devs have in Macs.
I used Windows for a few times for development before the Linux integration thing. It was so hard, and not helped by the company managed software. Several times a day work would grind to a halt so Macafee could do it's thing for what felt like a couple of hours. And of course we had to get someone from IT to help out anytime we wanted to do something crazy like install intellij.
Powershell is at least an improvement on the old cmd language, but the console it comes with is terrible. I really don't understand why selection works like it does. Also docker wouldn't work with any Linux os, though I'm guessing that's better with the new integration.
I am dreading this and hoping the opposite. I think this walled garden philosophy is what's sinking their new product categories too.
The iPad is super intuitive and nice. But there's no terminal access. So it remains a thin client for an actual computer.
The Apple Vision Pro is interesting. $3500 for a computer that I can't run whatever I want on, however, is a complete and utter joke.
This turned into a ramble, so I've collapsed it into this summary. To be clear, it was less about the update and more about what the changes to Windows 11 have brought. There's a lot of pent up angst behind my original comment...
From the general user-side experience, there are a lot of 'nuh-uh-uh, you have to say the magic word' moments with Mac that are just jarring. I don't have any intricate examples at the moment, but having to hold specific keys before entering certain menus to... change your resolution? To access basic server connectivity options? Why are some of my home folders subject to permission blocks, so I just save/use the Documents folder on the fly to toss photos into and avoid it?
Now I've learned how to get through all of that properly at this point, and for the general public it can be great to have a system that points you away from things that may be potentially damaging. As someone who does more wacky stuff, I've learned all the tricks and have gotten really good at jumping through the hoops, but I don't... want to jump through hoops when I can just search and click through to the thing I need.
Windows (generally speaking) was a lot more open in that you could click through to find anything, and even just break stuff if you wanted. If you're someone who does niche things on a computer, you can really feel the amount of times you have to strong arm through some superficial wall that isn't just a limitation of the computer's inner-workings. Windows fit the niche of someone that wants to tinker around a bit more, or at the very least use the system with confidence.
Now, unfortunately, Windows has gone from suggesting what you should and shouldn't access or change to forcibly removing your control. This has covered issues as big as the Copilot updates to incredibly small dumb stuff like accessing your audio devices quickly. I'm going to Arch in part because I use it for work, but also because I have a lot more patience for issues I run into because open source developers are trying to figure things out, versus a large company putting their thumb over the switch and handing me a rattle. Mac has esstablished what it wants to be and does it well: It's a fairly closed system for security that handles segmented apps well with a polished branding to boot. Windows is trying to copy that aesthetic and formula with the charisma of a cement brick to the temple.
I've been a Mac user since 2008, and had to use windows for the first time in years for a work project...what a trash fire.
"Macification" would be a massively good thing. The whole windows experience is terrible in every way, including just...existing. The comparably priced and specced ThinkPad P series just freezes up (even the trackpad stops clicking) for seconds at a time and blasts its noisy fans. It feels like time travelling back to 2004.
And that's to say nothing about the disgusting terminal/development situation. No Unix, no want. PowerShell is awful.
I'm at a loss as to how people tolerate this madness and then somehow still talk shit.
In case anyone else reading is also thinking of switching to Linux, please consider something other than Arch. If you know what you are getting into it can be a fun experience, but Arch is not a beginner friendly distro.
If you havent used Linux before, some easier options would be Ubuntu/Debian or Mint.
I've started just recommending Mint unconditionally, especially to those coming from Windows. Cinnamon (the UI) just clicks for them and being that it's basically Ubuntu you can still use most StackOverflow answers and such for when you run into driver issues.
I'm not exactly new to Linux, but I chose Mint for my most recent gaming PC build and I can't imagine using anything else in the future. Mint is every bit as user friendly as MacOS and Windows. It's been such a joy to have the OS there when I need it with zero additional configuration. Literally the only config I've had to do relates to making the performance overlay work in steam. Everything else I've wanted to customize was right in the provided settings UI. I'm even using an Nvidia card, and it "just works".
As the original commenter, aaabsolutely. I use Arch for work, and while the skill ceiling and bugginess have all dropped significantly in the last 3 years, it is not an intro-distro. Bop around on the Debian distros for a bit and then you'll be fine, but it will feel incredibly overwhelming to start with Arch.
Most of the people I know who were using Windows have done the same, except those whose employer mandates them to continue. I guess corporate clients are the main reason Microsoft has been able to retain their position as well as they have, despite the rampant shitty policies and products.
I got fed up long ago and switched over to Apple, but never adopted most of their "helpful" built-in stuff like iTunes, Mail, Photos, iCloud etc. I just do my best to disable all of that. Getting around iTunes used to be a massive PIA but eventually I found a way to remove it and stop it from constantly reappearing. Removing update notifications and other nags was also a lot of work. The things we have to go through to be able to work in peace! (I have ADHD so any interruptions are truly poisonous to my workflow and can cause an impulse to smash the piece of hardware into the nearest wall.)
Yep. I love my MacBook pro. Ive been Mac-only since 2008 and Ive never had an Apple ID.
At this point, I don’t think macOS would be usable to me without the help of a package manager system (i.e., Homebrew). The Mac App Store sucks!
I dislike Homebrew and so far I’ve managed to avoid it. Most developer tools can be installed in other ways.
Interesting! I take it you’re also not using MacPorts, then? wink
For me the reason I like it as much as I do is probably twofold: I do spend the larger portion of my
day, ahem free time that’s dedicated to the Mac, in a terminal emulator already, and I like having a declarative(-ish) setup. Do you have any particular gripes withbrewor is it just a general dislike for that style of package/app management? And does that extend to the JS/Python/Rust/what have you ecosystems, or do younpm i -g, uv, cargo etc. install tools from there without disliking it?One gripe I have is that they drop support for older versions of Mac OS too quickly. Until recently I was runnng older hardware that Apple doesn’t support anymore, so the OS couldn’t be upgraded. But most applications worked fine.
Also, there are too many unnecessary dependencies. I remember it erroring out installing some Python thing when the program I actually wanted to run had nothing to do with Python.
For most tools, there is a .dmg file containing an installer that you can run. Since it doesn’t use a package manager, it won’t have any dependencies other than the OS.
I do use language-specific package managers, though.
The US government is also a huge user. Maybe Red Hat would go through the certification trouble, but I doubt any other Linux distro would.
Some unsolicited advice.
Grub + btrfs + snapper + kde
KDE is extremely customizable, but has sane defaults and should feel familiar if you're coming from windows. Having global hot key configuration as a first party feature is reaaally nice, and I've bound a few to be similar to windows (E.g. Ctrl + shift + esc to bring up system monitor + window rules to make it appear on always on top)
Btrfs + snapper + grub allows for restore point like functionality. Arch is a bleeding edge distro, and every so often (rare, but it happens) you'll hit a breaking change - either the system is foobar'd or some program/feature is. Being able to rollback and deal with the breakage later instead of "I can't do my work/use my system until I fix this now!!!!" is oh so nice.
Btrfs also has lots niceties, namely atomic filesystem snapshots (which has benefits beyond restore point like functionality), transparent compression, and CoW (copy on write).
Ive been using Linux Mint for like ten years now so all those words you just threw out there sound like nonsense to me hahaha
Mint has a built in backup and restore with a GUI. I use it, its easy, amazing, easier than it was on Windows even.
Especially on NVME drives, pretty much every downside of BTRFS is negated by 'but if you're willing to set it up, you can have database-like point in time recovery for your whole disk'
Honestly, that's the primary selling point of btrfs for me. I shoot myself in the foot at an embarrassing frequency, and once in a while arch updates come bite me. It's just soooooooooo nice being able to go "uno reverse" and ignore the problem until it gets fixed upstream, or if I caused it... not do that again :P
Is it local facial recognition or cloud-based? The way Apple Photos does facial recognition is pretty simple to understand and offline since they include the ai hardware on all their products. If you use iCloud, the faces aren’t uploaded and decrypted somewhere for processing, it’s encrypted metadata of mathematical vectors describing facial geometry leaving your device.
But if facial recognition is being done on a Microsoft server somewhere, your photos are being decrypted and analyzed somewhere other than on your device.
The only time your cloud data should be decrypted is when there is a local copy on your device.
While I know what I'm about to say is a gross oversimplification, I always get the vibes that what you said in this quote is akin to we didn't upload a circle, we just uploaded metadata about the circle.
When it comes to facial recognition, uploading your face and uploading metadata about your face are basically the same thing.
If the only facial data that’s uploaded is encrypted, then it doesn’t really matter since it is theoretically garbage unless you have the encryption key. Which is only the user, not Apple, if you have advanced data protection on.
But I agree that I find saying “it’s not the X, it’s a mathematical description of the X” vaguely useless, technically speaking everything in your computer is mathematical descriptions, that’s all that we can do since everything is a number at the bottom. I was recently trying to understand the term biometric template which is basically the same thing again. Feels unnecessarily confusing.
I think they key difference is that it is always encrypted in the cloud and only you can use the decrypted data.
The most invasive aspect of this would arise if your personal details like your name and birth date are actually stored with your facial scan somewhere by any service.
But at that point (and I think we may have reached it long ago) it doesn’t matter what you use for cloud storage, it’s easy to connect the dots. I really really hope Apple isn’t lying when they say the metadata is encrypted.
I don't think it's that alarming? Facial recognition is a fairly table-stakes feature at this point for image hosts. Apple Photos has it, Google Photos has it, hell even the open source self-hosted Immich has it!
The limitation is likely due to server costs. It's fairly resource intensive to do the initial scan of all the photos.
In that case, the prudent thing for Microsoft to do would be to make it opt-in only. So only users that want it turn it on.
But for some reason, they don't do that. They make an expensive to use feature on by default in an operating system that is, to most users, essentially free. Like they might be getting something out of it in return. Like free training data.
Eh, I feel like that this is pretty table stakes behavior at this point. Apple Photos and Google Photos have had it for years. Most users would expect Microsoft's offering to do the same. Having it on as a default would be what most users would want.
I mean, like I said, it's so common that Immich implemented it, and that's a project made by one dude for free.
I'm curious how they will force facial recognition for people that don't have or don't use PCs with cameras. I have a single Windows PC for work I do for our strictly Windows-Only company and I have the camera hardware disabled. If they try to force its use, then I guess I will be locked out of that companies One Drive.
It's not that kind of facial recognition. It's the thing where in Apple Photos or Google Photos it'll allow you to, say, see every picture with your friend Bob in it.
OH, lol. That explains why this news sounded so weird. Thanks.
The video itself is actually warning against the dangers of hosting your data in the cloud, not having backups and depending on personal account with for profit provider for important data. It illustrates that mainly by an incident on github.
The single policy for setting ai facial recognition is almost reasonable. Like the author says there are legitimate engineering concerns in letting users change this setting as they want. If it was only possible to turn it on three times a year and the default was off I don't think there would be any story here.
100% agree. I was reading through these comments and came to the same realisation, that if it was “can only be switched on X times per year” then it would be a complete non-story
I currently just use my Windows desktop as a server for game streaming or other GPU tasks. I’ll try to see if I can switch it to LTSC which should be the version with the least amount of BS.
Edit: Success
Onedrive pro tip:
You can use
rcloneto move files out of Onedrive in a fast and reliable way. Just did it about a month ago, I've got enough space on my own machines + other cloud services that I don't need to pay them for it too.The official Onedrive client is dirt slow at moving anything large, but rclone cleared out my Onedrive pretty much overnight (a few hundred GB of crap)