This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
"I see you are dual booting with Linux? I've reformatted that partition for you."
I had this happen before but not in recent times. Not sure if others have experienced the same.
For a while I had my bootloader on a single drive but I now have my Linux bootloader on /dev/sda and my windows on /dev/sdb and toggle it in the bios when I need to use Windows. I haven't had Windows overwrite anything in a long time. Could be a coincidence though.
It’s mostly an issue when you have them sharing boot drives via partitions. If you keep them isolated to their own separate drives, Windows doesn’t tend to muck with things. It’s because Windows is bad about killing bootloaders, and automatically setting itself as the default in the boot order. So if you have it sharing a drive, it’ll nuke your boot. But if you don’t have them sharing a drive, and boot via a loader on the Linux drive, there is no boot loader on the Windows drive to nuke.
I've read that dual booting Windows and Linux can have temperamental quirks and I've had my share of them.
Now, if I'm doing that, Windows fs gets isolated and I refuse to even connect it to the internet. But, outside of a legacy automotive shop program meant for XP, I've not needed Windows for a couple years.
Seems like a bad idea then. So obviously they’ll do it!
Only 10% of Microsoft revenue is Windows, they are trying to squeeze money out of the personal data of users.
It's kind of amazing how much they're willing to tear down in hopes of this "" incredible "" AI vision
they got the idea from google, and samsung is doing the same.
Why? Who's asking for this stuff, is there somebody out there who is really pleased with this news or is Microsoft really just that out of touch.
I don't want to have to start wearing rainbow knee-length socks, but Microsoft are pushing me towards it.
Consumers are not the main driver of profit, speculative value is. Microsoft knows that Windows is guaranteed to be on the majority of PC's, which means they can afford to implement hostile features that increase the speculative value on data collection and AI investment.
Once you realize this, you also realize that there's no going back for them either. If by some slim chance there's enough resistance for them to pause or rollback some features, it's only temporary. The overall course remains clear and they will continue to move in that direction regardless.
There disdain for you as a consumer could not be made any clearer.
This is well said. So many people don't get that of course these companies know you hate this shit.
They're just trying to boost their stock value and violate your privacy harder.
In theory, I could use an AI for doing stuff. For example, opening ripped videos, finding the timestamp where the episode name is given, and then copying that into the video's filename. Afterwards, it can open Handbrake, use my preferred settings for audio and subs, then start the conversion of multiple files.
However, this is all predicated on the AI not doing unwanted things - such as giving Microsoft my personal information, preferences in hentai, and passwords.
Someday I will use agentic AI, but it will be on my terms.
I've read this exact questions tens of times now. This is capitalism. Now why would a for profit company ever do anything? I leave you to your deductions.
I don't think MS is out of touch with what the customer wants, I think they just stopped listening.
The fact is nobody is asking for this stuff.
I think the hope is that they build it anyway and then people will use/want it. AI is the big buzzword of the decade, just like 'cloud' was the big buzzword of last decade.
Time to regulate the shit out of them. They don't know what consent is, they flaunt the abuse of privacy laws.
At this point I can only assume that Microsoft is actively trying to punish me for using their products.
Linux Mint Cinnamon is incredible, free to try/move to, and reversible.
The LLMs demand more data, so MS is providing it by scraping our personal hard drives. Well, not mine, but still most peoples.
I still have Win10 running on an air-gapped laptop because there are no Linux drivers for my cheap auto-feed scanner, which I'm using to scan a raft of old photos. Once that project is done, I'll put Linux Mint on it, and use it for something fun.
Gimp, Inkscape, Blender, Steam, LibreOffice, Obsidian, and Jellyfin do everything I want from a desktop.
How long until we can trick the Ai into deleting the System32 folder?
That should be a fun defcon.
So it's going to be opt-in not opt-out. Just don't turn it on. Simple as. 🤷♂️
How to disable Copilot
For Pro, Enterprise, or Education users
Press Windows + R, type gpedit.msc, and press Enter. Navigate to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Copilot. Double-click "Turn off Windows Copilot," select "Enabled," then click Apply and OK. Restart your computer for the changes to take effect.
For Home users
Home users without access to the Group Policy Editor can disable Copilot via the Windows Registry. Press Windows + R, type regedit, and press Enter. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows. Create a new key named WindowsCopilot if it does not exist. Inside this key, create a new DWORD (32-bit) value named TurnOffWindowsCopilot and set its value to 1. Restart your computer to apply the change.
cackles maniacally in Linux
Important to note here that if you are running Windows or a dual-boot, the new version of O&O ShutUp has a utility that allows you to delete CoPilot.
I never bought Windows 11 for AI shit. It wasn't even what came with 11 originally. Hey Microsoft, why not make a version of Windows 11 with all the AI stuff fully turned on and call it Windows 11-AI. You sell it separately and up charge as much as you want. Just reset 11 to no AI and have it be the bare bones 11.
Edit: 2 things too. Violating user privacy could carry a risk as far as attorney-client privledge goes because attorneys work on 11 from home. So just ransaking all data could cause that right to be waved. Subpoena much?
Also, the AI-Windows could be upsold as a luxury, which means you can charge more for AI-11.
Because they make so much more $ from selling your data. Microsoft would rather push these AI programs in an update, and bank on their users not noticing. The majority of users operate in a walled garden, they aren't editing registry files or manually running commands, so they are less likely to notice the changes. It's the power users that notice this shit, and sound the alarm.
They can't do that. They have all of their money riding on AI. They can't possess any data that might show the all-mightly Shareholders that they bet wrong.
So Microsoft is the pig whose committed to the AI chatbot ham. There's no going back now for windows scanning my personal files for their own use. It's that or nothing from Microsoft from now on.
My sib, they've been doing this kind of thing for years. This is not new. This is how they operate.
If you value your privacy at all don't use MS products.
What's the difference between big software companies and drug cartels? No, this is not the opening line of a joke.
How long before you can’t turn this off or uninstall it, just like Edge, or Bitlocker, or TPM, or mandatory Microsoft accounts?
Windows is the security risk
I've been watching Windows get worse and worse from the sidelines for years now, but it seems they are really ramping it up now. It has gotten so bad, I genuinely feel bad for Windows users now. But it's also pretty damn funny.
If I didn't know better id think they're trying to get people to switch away from windows.
Cool, you know who doesn’t have this issue? People who uninstalled the spyware called Windows from their device.
I cannot express how much peace of mind switching to Linux has granted me.
"Windows now has this horrible feature! Windows now breaks user experience! Windows has ads shoved everywhere!"
And here I am, comfortably sipping my cup of tea and watching the world burn from afar.
I'm kinda just transitioning out now. I have some projects to wrap up on Windows 10 LTS that use programs that wouldn't run well through WINE. When those are done, I'll make use of Linux alternatives to that project software, and pretty much just have my Windows boot available for dire emergencies.
As it stands, most of my gaming is transitioned over, and my Windows partition just has enough space for a few games after project work.
Same boat. W10 LTS until I'm finished wrapping up some loose ends.
Then I'll do a VM with GPU passthrough on an old Windows for non critical things.
I never loved or trusted Microsoft, but this (not just the uninvited transformers, all of it) is beyond unacceptable to me.
