Microsoft is adding AI powered facial recognition to OneDrive.

And it can be disabled, but get this: “You can only turn off this setting 3 times a year.”

WTF, microsoft?

I suspect its planning ahead for the expanding 'know your customer' laws.   Wonder if you cover up your camera ( like many of us do ) if your PC stops working.

Related to the above, a friend pointed me to the below tidbit.  I wonder when your stuff is no longer yours.  I think ill be repairing my Nikon with the bad switches, so i can switch to it from my phone when that happens across the board, with no opt-out.  90% of my pictures are cats and dogs, but its still none of their freaking business.

"Meta has rolled out an opt-in AI feature to its US and Canadian Facebook users that claims to make their photos and videos more “shareworthy.” The only catch is that the feature is designed for your phone’s camera roll — not the media you’ve already uploaded to Facebook. If you opt in, Meta’s AI will comb through your camera roll, upload your unpublished photos to Meta’s cloud, and surface “hidden gems” that are “lost among screenshots, receipts, and random snaps,” the company says. Users will be able to save or share the suggested edits and collages."

Windows 12. From their own mouths.

“The vision that we have is: let’s rewrite the entire operating system around AI, and build essentially what becomes truly the AI PC.”

Not necessarily a bad outcome..

Fri Oct 10 2025 17:58:47 UTC from ZoeGraystone

With the way the economy is here now..  many wont have much of a choice.

Fri Oct 10 2025 02:19:00 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar

I just felt a great disturbance in the Force ... as if millions of people suddenly switched to Linux

 

Ya.   ( tho the idea wasn't bad in principle, just not practical ) 

Annnnd clippy is back. With a new name "Mico"   https://www.theverge.com/news/804106/microsoft-mico-copilot-ai-assistant-clippy

Related to MS failures, i was one of the few people who thought the *idea* of Bob wasn't bad at the time. Adapt the interface to non-techies in a way they could identify with ( sort of like apple was doing with the newton ).  But implementation was horrendous and it needed to fail..   Of course today, that ship has sailed.  Most people dont need that level of abstraction.  ( but we are going to get it anyway, with stuff like Mico.. "hey Mico, do x" and wont even know how its being done in the background )

Thu Oct 23 2025 20:56:43 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar

“The vision that we have is: let’s rewrite the entire
operating system around AI, and build essentially what becomes
truly the AI PC.”

This sounds as ambitious as the time they tried to put a database in the filesystem.

ill pass.

Fri Oct 24 2025 12:03:35 UTC from Nurb432

 

Annnnd clippy is back. With a new name "Mico"

They don't care what you want or don't want.  If they did, they would be selling win2k. I was still not a fan of Microsoft then, but i do think it was their pinnacle. Uphill there, and downhill ever since. Of course it had a lot to do with code they stole from IBM from the OS/2 partnership years before...  IBM was stupid. you dont partner with your enemy...

Fri Oct 24 2025 21:50:02 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar Subject: Microsoft Bob

It's been 30 years and Micros~1 still hasn't figured out that we don't want this.

I donno, back then i had to support 3.51, 4.0 and for a while OS/2.  2k seemed a lot more stable for me than the NT ones.  None of them came close to the real thing, OS/2, but i did think 2k was their best effort ( even if it was using a lot of "stolen" code ).   Of course it all went down the tubes after that.  Had NT3.51 on a DEC Alpha server for a bit. Until they took it away from me and recycled it. ( was a failed experiment. i got it after that and kept it quiet..  i guess finance ran across the hole in the books 'hey, where is....' )

I agree with Xenix, but didn't they steal/re-brand/modify that too, much like MSDOS? i didn't think the core was truly theirs, i could be wrong and it was licensed. not stolen.. its been far too long and too lazy to research.

And i do put stolen in quotes for NT.. as it was technically shared with IBM.. they worked together, so it was really both of theirs to own and do with... But i can still hate them and call it stolen :)

( and unrelated: googles spell check does not even recognize Xenix as a word )

Sun Oct 26 2025 02:22:47 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar Subject: Re: Microsoft Bob

Architecturally, the best Windows was Windows NT 3.51. It looked like shit, but it worked pretty well because it still maintained most of the architecture that Dave Cutler put into it ... before the 'softies started larding up everything in the Win32 layer instead of playing downstairs in the microkernel clients where stuff belonged. That's how you ended up with printer drivers that could bluescreen the whole system in the next few versions.

But the best operating system Microsoft ever published? Well that was Xenix.
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