Microsoft's Recall, AI Blunders, and Remembering Doge
The last two weeks have been a converging in the timelines of sorts. We had new announcements for the future, troubles in the present, and leaving beloved icons in the past. Let’s piece them together!
The Big Story
Windows Recall: Microsoft’s Latest Windows Feature
Microsoft recently announced Recall, a feature that takes regular snapshots of all your activities on your computer, storing them in a virtual timeline for future reference. This could be useful for remembering past actions on your PC or finding a paragraph you read but can’t recall where. This seems like a privacy nightmare already, but Microsoft have stated the Recalls will remain local and will not capture content on private browser tabs. You’ll also have full control over pausing or deleting said snapshots and even excluding certain apps from being captured. Not everyone will be able to use this as it requires one of the new Copilot Plus certified PCs built with AI support and needs at least 256GB hard drive space minimum, of which 50GB needs to be free for the Recall captures. Only time will tell if this feature becomes a landmark feature or another bad call for Microsoft.
Read more about it here:
Quick Bytes
Google’s AI Kerfuffle - Google announced its AI Overview feature will be an official part of its Search results moving forward by offering AI generated snippets of answers to your question. However, recent incidents have shown the AI struggling to differentiate between legitimate answers and jokes or sarcastic comments online. It’s disheartening to see how far the search giant has stumbled in its rush to compete with ChatGPT, but hopefully such a public blunder makes them reassess their strategies moving forward.
Read more about it here.
RIP Doge - The Internet’s beloved mascot, Kabosu, the female Shiba Inu from the Doge meme, has sadly passed away. She exploded in popularity online over a decade ago, quickly spawning its own genre of memes and even becoming the face of a cryptocurrency named after the meme. Kabosu was 18 years old and was sadly plagued with various health complications towards the end of her life. While she’s no longer with us, the legacy left behind by this one dog will forever live on in cyberspace.
Read more about it here.
Steam Games Die with You - In a recent exchange with a Steam user, Steam has confirmed that your game library cannot be transferred to someone else should you die. While companies like Facebook and Google morbidly remind you to set up contingency plans for your accounts should you pass away, it’s refreshingly surprising that Steam has decided against it. Still, in an age where digital content is beginning to feel more restrictive, maybe outliers like this make the case for physical media even stronger.
Read more about it here.
You Should Check Out:
X-Men ‘97 (Spoiler Free)
Like many, I was skeptical when the trailer dropped in February but fortunately this wasn’t more Disney+ nostalgia bait.
The creators behind this show love the source material and the animated medium which you can clearly feel. The writing is incredible and dare I say poetic at times. A lot of the themes touched in this show are pretty hard topics especially for something on Disney+ but the show is all the more thought provoking because of it. Also, the fight scenes are amazing. The creators have clearly done their homework on how each mutant would fight with their abilities and it made me giddy in a way very few action shows have. And no, you don’t need to have any prior knowledge of the old X-Men show from 1995 to watch this. That’s how good it is!
Season 1 just ended so now’s the perfect time to catch up with this gem before Deadpool & Wolverine drops in July.