this post was submitted on 07 May 2025
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Windows Is Adding AI Agents That Can Change Your Settings (www.cnet.com)
submitted 1 day ago by zaxvenz@lemm.ee to c/technology@lemmy.world
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"We set out to solve one of the most common frustrations we hear — finding and changing settings on your PC — using the power of AI agents," Navjot Virk, corporate vice president of Windows Experiences at Microsoft, said in a blog post on Tuesday. "An agent uses on-device AI to understand your intent and with your permission, automate and execute tasks."

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[–] yggstyle@lemmy.world 2 points 19 hours ago

They're still around and the various configuration technologies tap into them.

I noted this in a dismissive way... Yes they exist; but as mentioned - depreciation and outright ignoring settings has become a thing Microsoft has willingly done if they feel "they know better." (Reboots and update times are an excellent example of this.)

Yep, configuring Microsoft has sucked incredibly hard compared to free OSs. Managing plain text configuration files in /etc & ~/.config is refreshingly nice compared to the bolt-on weirdness hidden behind various interfaces in Windows. It's cute getting an error to contact your administrator when you're the administrator.

Locking some things out makes sense. This exists in all OSs... what is maddening is Microsoft almost aggressively working against admins. Want local accounts? No sir. Not allowed. Not unless you remove the network card, face the PC east at precisely 2:30 am, and type a 40 character rolling code into the terminal that appears.... twice.

Attention in that area is extremely late & overdue, so I was happy to see something like configuration.dsc.yaml.

While I agree - the point I was stressing was that many admins had perfectly workable scripts and methods that used the existing tooling as it was intended... and it's mostly been fine. With their recent push into spyware inside (tm) .... ahem engagement ... they seem to be actively punching holes in this to force management to their cloud resources which surely will not ever have problems ...

I see AI mostly as an assistant whose work I review [...] AI won't fix broken foundations.

Agreed. It does have the means to save some time - but it's just not "cooked enough" for me to use it on any meaningful level. Personally speaking.

I try to avoid Windows altogether if I can & confine it to less serious work.

Sadly some things I work with just don't play with wine just yet otherwise I'd abandon it entirely. I'd personally love to, though.

What really bothers me is late in the patching cycle windows 2000 was borderline amazing and could be tuned to an absolutely minute footprint. If it was fully updated for x64 it would have been just about perfect. Nothing got in your way: very minimal UI with "just enough" modern features. Getting to almost any administrative interface was at its lowest "clicks to access" of any (subsequent) windows version. NT dna.

I may just have rose tinted glasses but from basically that point on it was all just bolted on UI garbage that got between you, your resources, and most importantly what you wanted to be doing. And when it comes down to it - regardless of what os were talking about - something has gone horribly wrong if that is the reality.