New Software Remembers Everything Your Computer Has Ever Displayed (cnn.com) 117
A Napster co-founder launched a new software this week which lets you search for anything you've ever looked at on your computer. schwit1 shared this report from CNNMoney:
Atlas Informatics Founder and CEO Jordan Ritter calls the software "a photographic memory for your digital life"... This includes web pages, emails, Slack chats, Netflix films, Spotify songs, or anything else that's appeared in front of your eyes on your screen... You can search by keyword, content type or time, and it displays all related information based on relevancy. For instance, if two documents were open at the same time and you toggled between them, they will both appear whether or not they contain a keyword. Once installed on your hard drive and browser, Atlas Recall runs in the background and begins collecting your activity. The company captures all the content you've looked at and stores it on its servers.
It's encrypted before transmission to the Atlas Cloud servers, though you can block it from capturing data from certain applications, files, and web sites. "The platform wars are over, nobody won, and no one will ever win them again..." Ritter told CNNMoney. "What we want is something that works the way we use our devices and data."
It's encrypted before transmission to the Atlas Cloud servers, though you can block it from capturing data from certain applications, files, and web sites. "The platform wars are over, nobody won, and no one will ever win them again..." Ritter told CNNMoney. "What we want is something that works the way we use our devices and data."
Self hosted solution? (Score:5, Funny)
In case I ever become Secretary of State.
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah I would totally use this if it wasn't an online only solution.
Re:Self hosted solution? (Score:4, Interesting)
A co-worker of mine actually wrote a piece of software that did this just for himself. His program took a snapshot of the screen about every fifteen seconds and saved it in a delta-compressed format he invented himself, and then archived it away on a large NAS drive sorted by date and time. Then, he could go back and look at exactly what code or project he was working on at any time, almost like a long term video replay. Of course, it was just visual data, so he couldn't search by anything but dates and times.
Personally, my projects' source control (Git or Mercurial) is good enough for the purpose of long-term work archiving, as I don't really care about anything else, like chats or e-mails or random browsing. I have no need to keep a record of my slashdot postings or what porn pics I peek at. And I certainly don't want it recording financial data from my bank, etc.
Re: (Score:2)
I am actually looking for something like in TFS but what I want to be able to save and recall every web page my browser loaded. So I don't spend hours trying to find that one post that had an answer I didn't need at the time a month ago just to find the thread with the post deleted a month later when I do need it and it's not in archive because it was deleted 10 minutes after I saw it.
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Of course, it was just visual data, so he couldn't search by anything but dates and times.
What's so ofcourseish about it? Screen-based OCR should be even easier to do than OCR of scanned documents, or photos.
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This includes web pages, emails, Slack chats, Netflix films, Spotify songs,
shemale pr0n, 4chan posts, goatse pix, bomb recipes, lemonparty, cakefarts, 2G1C, ISIS propaganda, meatspin, 420 sites, tubgirl,
or anything else that's appeared in front of your eyes on your screen.
Yeah, just what I need.
Re: (Score:2)
Started NOPEing right on out, here.
Locally I can see the appeal, would be nice if optimized. But unless you write your own I just can't see this being under the appropriate degree of user-in-control. And appropriate for this kind of logging would be Very Very High.
Besides that, you'd absolutely want this offloading securely, encrypted. Only an idiot would look at that kind of logging and not think "This has to be isolated and not an easy reach from my compromise'able machine" (in other word
Re: (Score:3)
>cloud Started NOPEing right on out, here.
If we enter an age we might be entering, you would be providing the entire case against yourself when Atlas Recall gets the orders to decrypt your file. Who knows what will be considered a crime in the near future? Not talking about illegal pr0n, or trst activities, but possibly your opinion.
LOL NO (Score:5, Insightful)
Just what I need is gigs upon gigs of ads, spam, and other garbage backed up forever.
Re:LOL NO (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
This is not a solution in search of a problem, its a solution that creates many.
Yes, there is that. Its hard enough to go through everything already in search of archived material. If I had every screenshot of everything? Right now I have Slashdot open, and a Software Defined Radio site I'm doing some research on. A spreadsheet, and weather widgets running while I take a break. And the only thing that I need out of that dog's breakfast of useless stuff is the spreadsheet file, and a snapsot of that is damn near useless as well. The file is already backed up multiple times.
Searching
Re: (Score:2)
I can’t remember anything
Can’t tell if this is true or dream
Deep down inside I feel to scream
This archive service stops me
Not really novel (Score:1)
These solutions are already common in call centers and regulatory settings.
"and stores it on its server" (Score:1)
how convenient. i.e. you're doomed.
which is why governments the world over will immediately require every computer ever delivered to have atlas installed in a non-removable way.
Re:"and stores it on its server" (Score:4, Funny)
That's actually a great idea! Then they would have to roll out broadband so their spying system would work.
#govermentspyingforbroadband2016
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Why do you think we have broadband instead of 28Kbaud modems? It's not so you can watch Netflix, it's so Netflix can watch you!
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That was kinda the point lots of us in the US can't get broadband where we live.
Re: (Score:2)
Central Alaska may be "in the US," but I wouldn't hold my breath for services to arrive in your lifetime...
Florida has pretty good broadband coverage, even in the "boonies," since most everything is 50 miles or less to a metro area.
When you hit the Midwest, deep desert Southwest, mountains, etc. that's getting back to places so sparse that running good service fiber or cables isn't likely to be economical, ever - learn to make do with satellite or wireless. There's more than one reason the Unabomber holed
satellite and wireless caps are way to low for th (Score:2)
satellite and wireless caps are way to low for this to work.
Re: (Score:2)
Not alaska but i'm in an area just a few miles away from where the city fiber stops currently making due with an unlimited verizon cellular connection as they were the first ones with LTE in my area. Now the other providers have caught up so I could use att, sprint or tmobile without too much hassle if I needed to.
There is fiber in town and fiber down the street run by the electric coop but they refuse to sell internet service they rather stay in the electric only business.
There are also two WISPs in town s
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That's why "evil big government" declared that phone and electric utilities must serve all residents, everywhere. Broadband hasn't gotten that level of political support yet, maybe it will when it starts to replace physical travel, school and office buildings, etc.
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A station wagon of memory sticks or hard drives...infinite bandwidth, one way only
Bankrupt them (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bankrupt them (Score:5, Insightful)
Clever compression algorithms would recognize uncorrelated noise and edit it out of the data compressed and stored.
But, you're right, they won't roll that out in 1.0, or likely ever because this is a boneheaded idea with a tiny niche market that could see any value in it that outweighs the creep factor. But, if a significant number of wiseguys who were forced to be subjected to this by their employer decided to turn on the white noise, the company could eventually deal with it - probably first with a corporate "DON'T DO THAT!" ban, followed a couple of years later by a technical solution that doesn't make them look like incompetent ninnies.
I have enough faith in humanity to believe that the company will fail first for other more important reasons, before such a problem needs a solution.
What reality did I wake up in today? (Score:5, Funny)
"Everything you've ever done on your computer, uploaded to someone else's servers. Huh, huh? "
"That's genius! What could possibly go wrong?"
Re: (Score:2)
Ask George Orwell about 1984.
Security implications : Nuts (Score:1)
Does anyone trust any particular cloud-based solution with their lives? Just asking.
It's a trap!!!!! (Score:1)
Seriously, a "service" to record everything you've done on a computer? And we know how much "encryption" is worth against a FBI subpoena. This is the surveillance state's wet dream: you provide your own noose to hang yourself with.
Cardinal_Richelieu (Score:1, Insightful)
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnÃte homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.
As quoted in The Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations (1896) by Jehiel KÌeeler Hoyt, p. 763
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cardinal_Richelieu [wikiquote.org]
Now taking bets (Score:1, Troll)
im starting a pool as to how long it will take some LEO to use Atlas data to arrest/convict somebody (clock starts when this has say 3K users).
second bet how long it will take for J Random Hacker to snag somebodies Atlas data
bets in 1 week blocks each block extends from beginning of day 0 to end of day 6
Re: (Score:2)
Put me down for week 20 arrest. Week 25 convict.
For the second week -4. Or if you meant publicly week 75. (unless a presidential candidate or a kardashian uses the service in which case week 40)
Do you think that Atlas will report its own user's first or LEO will request the data first?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You have to admire their audacity, though. Why write viruses and trojans if you can just ask people to use your "service" voluntarily? And they actually do sign up for it! Absolutely brilliant idea.
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In related news, virus writers everywhere are kicking themselves for not thinking of this earlier. "What, you mean I could have got people to *pay me* to install my malicious, devious, dangerous crap? Why oh why didn't somebody tell me that earlier!? I could have made a fortune!" one parasite was hear to mutter.
Absolutely legit (Score:2)
Nice (Score:1)
What could possibly go wrong? I give it $100 billion in valuation.
How it must've started... (Score:5, Insightful)
What? (Score:4, Funny)
What we want is something that works the way we use our devices and data.
Recklessly? Blindly? I'm missing something here.
Riiiiight.... (Score:5, Insightful)
>"It's encrypted before transmission to the Atlas Cloud servers"
Yeah, right. Closed source binary blob program, right? So you just "promise" that it is done a certain way. Sounds a lot like those "wonderful" closed-source password storage databanks, put everything of highest value in it and just hope it actually IS encrypted the whole way and that there are no backdoors, no spyware, no three-letter-agency access, no undiscovered security holes, etc. Some things are better left to yourself.
"Danger, danger Will Robinson..."
Re: (Score:2)
Well I believe them, it will be encrypted before it leaves your machine. The real question is who will have the key.
Possibilities... (Score:2)
If this was an encrypted, local-only archive and search? Sure, I could see some uses for it. I'd make very sure that it was saved to a specific encrypted drive and ensure that *nothing* was allowed to access that drive except for said program, impose a lot of limits on that, too. And when my screen locks or I logoff, the drive gets locked tight and absolutely nothing gets access until I explicitly unlock it again.
But as an online service? Really? Sure, I'll sign up for it... But only when they start paying
I'm out of a job (Score:2)
Isn't the exact sort of thing that I get paid good money and given generous budgets to make sure it isn't installed?
This isn't solving a problem, it's causing one (as many have said.)
So i can use it to pirate netflix? (Score:2)
I guess it isn't such an photographic memory, but more an index, isn't it? So it may remember the netflix url, but when netflix is gone, the movie is gone as well.
Remind me... (Score:3)
... why on Earth would I want this?
Re:Remind me... (Score:5, Insightful)
... why on Earth would I want this?
So someone could plant faked evidence of child porn or extramarital affairs into your browsing history.
(Seriously though, I'm with you. This would be the last and I mean last kind of thing I'd ever willingly install on my PC.)
Re: (Score:2)
(Seriously though, I'm with you. This would be the last and I mean last kind of thing I'd ever willingly install on my PC.)
What makes you think the target market is people who willingly install it on their own PCs ?
Does not compute (Score:5, Insightful)
They claim that all your data is stored on their servers in encrypted form, yet they will be able to search that data - on their servers - for something that you are looking for.
How will they ever achieve that?
The data is encrypted so they don't have themselves access to it, yet, when you want to search something, they apparently have it all indexed for you.
How can they ever index it if they cannot read the data itself?
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How can they ever index it if they cannot read the data itself?
Dude, stop harshing my buzz by getting all "facty" on us. Just swallow the marketing hype and all the contradictory statements and install it.
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They didn't say it was encrypted in a way that they don't have the key. Much like iCloud and every other cloud service, they encrypt it such that a hard drive falling out of a truck wouldn't be terabytes of plaintext. But when they want to search it, you bet they can- they have the key, not you.
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Probably the same technicality as always: indexes of your data and the data itself are separate things.
They're totally not collecting all your personal information! They're just... interpreting it.
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If I were designing this, I'd keep an index on your local HD, which the cloud server never sees, and which you can search for whatever file you want to pull down.
Even things I viewed years ago? (Score:2)
New Software Remembers Everything Your Computer Has Ever Displayed
How does the software remember things my computer has displayed years ago, before the software was even written?
Re: (Score:2)
Joint program with the NSA to fill in the missing blanks.
I'm sure (Score:2)
"The company captures all the content you've looked at and stores it on its servers."
Oh, I bet it does, and it'll be 100% secure with absolutely no chance of being hacked, spied on, or modified.
Because no one would ever want to use this for malicious purposes, like planting faked evidence of child porn, bomb-making, death threats, or extramarital affairs.
No, no one would ever want to do that!
Excellent. Mac and Windows only (Score:2)
No need to worry about it accidentally getting installed on any of my computers, which are all linux
Ob (Score:2)
*shrug*
Dumbest Idea Since... (Score:2)
...sexless reproduction.
Re: (Score:1)
No Linux Support (Score:5, Informative)
This is one of the cases where a lack of Linux support is a feature!
Check out their privacy page, where they eventually get around to admitting they have all your data forever.
https://www.atlas.co/privacy-p... [atlas.co]
It starts with stuff like:
"
You retain ownership and control of your data.
You can review and remove your digital items from the system at anytime.
You control what the system remembers. You may temporarily pause the system or permanently block by URL, file, application, and more. This excluded content never leaves your computer or phone.
Each digital item remains encrypted at rest and in motion.
"
But what does that really mean? And "encrypted" is only really meaningful if YOU have the key, which obviously, you do not- all the services they offer require that they access your data, after all. When it says you can remove the "digital items", they don't mention if that also removes the DATA. If it were to upload a personal LibreOffice document, what meaning is "digital item"? Is that the combination of my data plus the identifier that lets me see it? Have they provided a legal need to purge the data when I remove the document, or are we just deleting the reference, while the data still chills there? Also note the "block list" is itself a massive deal: the blacklist is a list of things that you DO NOT want transferred. This means that they have a list of things you do not want transferred, should that ever be something that can be used against you, hey, there it is.
Can they snoop through your data? Here's what they say on that:
"however, we do not have access to the contents of the items (documents or files) remembered through Recall beyond the minimum required to operate Recall and its associated services"
Let me translate that: "we have access to the contents of the items (documents and files)". The clause on the back COMPLETELY ELIMINATES the statement on the front.
The "privacy promise" does not appear to be a legal document. I can't find their EULA anywhere, and I will bet ANYTHING that the EULA both (a) doesn't actually have the legal safeguards that would be required to render them liable for breaking their promise and (b) allows them to update the EULA at any goddamned time. Again, I can't find it.
As a note: I wonder what a secure version of this would actually look like. The searching would have to happen on your machine, or a machine you own, and the data could still pass through their server as long as it was encrypted with a key that the owner (you) know, and the server (they) do not. Pretty much every search and voice recognition is doing this crap now, and they never offer an option for someone who runs their own server. I'm sure this is all by design.
Anyway, the big thing is this: anyone who uses this program gets exactly what it looks like, and fully deserves whatever results occur as a result. It is offered as a feature, and anyone who opts in must presumably want this.
Finally, ladies and gents, we've definitive proof (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Before you go, can you link to some of the comments defending it?
Re: (Score:3)
Slashdot isn't suggesting installing it, it is publishing a news article bringing said software to our attention so when the boss asks for Atlas Cloud to be installed everywhere next week, you can immediately tell him he's a moron instead of you having to go out, research it and then come back to tell him he's a moron.
Explanation of why he's a moron is optional.
I read that as "New malware remembers..." (Score:2)
Seriously, who but an extreme narcissist in urgent need of help would want something like this?
Test their claim of privacy / security protection (Score:1)
Anyone else thinking of "Black Mirror"? (Score:3)
Season 1, Episode 3: "The Entire History of You"
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Desktop search engines have been doing this 4 yrs (Score:1)
what... (Score:2)
The company captures all the content you've looked at and stores it on its servers.
What could possibly go wrong?
Seriously, no one during the design process stood up and said "are we maybe having a stupid idea here?"
???
Mandatory for all government employees!!! (Score:1)
curso NR 10 (Score:1)
Encrypted and Searchable? How? (Score:1)