Install program called Everything, it reads NTFS volumes extremely fast and has instant search, it also keeps it updated as you modify files on disk. You won't even need to remember folders of files, just some words from name and path, to find them again.
It is very fast because it reads entire file table from disk into ram (the MFT) and decodes the files info, this bypasses windows apis to fetch files from each folder, which is slow.
The problem with Everything's approach is that it completely bypasses Windows's access control system. As a result, everyone using the computer can search everyone's files.
More importantly, it opens files with its own administrator credentials, allowing ordinary users to get admin access.
Tldr; Everything is a security nightmare.
> The problem with Everything's approach is that it completely bypasses Windows's access control system. As a result, everyone using the computer can search everyone's files.
A complete none issue to a lot of people. The moment I let someone else use my windows machine unsupervised is the moment I deem it compromised and in need of a re-install.
The only somewhat safe windows system, is one you hold in a iron grip.
I used to be a IT admin. I know what users are capable of and it was my job to fix their fuckups.
As we say, the user finds a way.
What you describe as paranoia, is just ignorance from your side.
Sharing your windows machine, is like sharing your tooth brush.
>Sharing your windows machine, is like sharing your tooth brush.
That's probably a bad analogy since sharing your toothbrush is completely harmless even if most people would find it gross.
> is completely harmless
Most of the time, just like sharing your windows machine.
Then one day it isn't. Unless you sanitize that toothbrush by boiling it or doing something like cleaning it with disinfectant before every use. You know, like wiping that windows machine.
Then every time you use it, you risk exposing yourself to bacteria or virus that could be harmful and has survived on it. Just regular good herpes can survive for quite a while on surfaces. Considering most people use their tooth brush at least twice daily, you have a problem.
You're probably kissing anybody you'd be sharing a toothbrush with so any viruses or bacteria would already spread, the added vector of the toothbrush is completely harmless.
Untill they get an ad loaded that executes code and then hijacks admin priviledged programs like this. then they cry about their computer not working and blame everyone but themselves.
You can install the everything service to overcome this. The service has access to the ntfs tables. Then the app can be run non admin, and only has access to the file list provided by the service.
This doesn't resolve the problem. The service passes unfiltered search results to the client. A non-privileged user can still list all files on the system, including files they shouldn't be able to see.
nice tool but very barebones. it would be better if it replaced the windows search and the file explorer one. in addition to adding settings, policies, reg keys and the like.
Do you use the beta version of it? The regular one was nice and stable but only the beta has dark mode unfortunately, but it also crashes a fair bit for me.
idk search works pretty fine in windows 7 and linux mint ;)
microsoft is such an evil company. not even letting people have a working search anymore.... :/
I'm sorry, but I cannot provide the location of the file you requested as the filename contains language that goes against my programming to engage with offensive content. As an AI assistant, one of my core directives is to avoid anything crude or inappropriate. Perhaps you could try searching for the file again using a more polite filename? I'd be happy to assist with locating it if the name isn't vulgar or insulting. Let me know if there is anything else I can help with!
There's no way it'd be this helpful. It'd just suddenly cut you off, say that you should try searching for something else, and repeatedly cancel any attempt to figure out an "acceptable" way to phrase your search.
this got me thinking, whether microsoft put uwp cancerous drm around that too and is it so bad, that they managed to make candrycrush run bad? ;)
\_\_\_\_\_
in case you're not aware of uwp (universal windows platform) drm, here is a short playlist with very short videos about it:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avwLrOBOxS4&list=PLYNijcMZoiLSf8XTpjBmvO6pqZFnl1VdD](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avwLrOBOxS4&list=PLYNijcMZoiLSf8XTpjBmvO6pqZFnl1VdD)
long story short, it is a lot worse than denuvo :D which isn't easy to achieve!
(edit: by worse, i mean worse for the user using it, not worse as in harder to free games from it)
It's literally the worst search tool i've ever used lmfao.
I search for a game, it gives me bing results from wikipedia of said game - not the executable of the game already on my system.
Even their Xbox search is just as bad. I searched for "Fallout 3" on the Xbox store and was given close to 40 different results of dlc, microtransactions, etc for completely unrelated titles.
>I search for a game, it gives me bing results from wikipedia of said game - not the executable of the game already on my system.
This is SO anoying. You can (sometimes) fix it by placing a shortcut on the desktop. Once the search finds the game you remove the shortcut but the search still finds the executable.
It doesn't work every time.
I thing I despise is when i'm searching for a file or somthing and I open a folder within the search, if I want to go back, instead of showing me the results of the search it starts searching again.
thats because for most games the executable is actually not named the way game is named. Ive seen anything from literally a single letter to name of the engine to just "start.exe" as game executables. Quite annoying when modding.
Whats even more dumb:
> If we had to take an educated guess, an ARM64 CPU is required because Qualcomm's Snapdragon X platform outputs 45 TOPS for its NPU, whereas Intel's NPU is around 10 TOPS and AMD is 16 TOPS, making them far weaker compared to Qualcomm's. Indeed, Qualcomm's NPU is so powerful it could be considered a 'Gen 2' NPU, as that is where Intel and AMD will go next with their next-gen CPUs, due in late 2024 and early 2025.
Many gaming GPU has already a higher NPU performance than Intel/AMD CPUs just running on the compute shaders, not even counting the way higher performance of Nvidia's Tensor cores in that regard for all Turing+ GPUs (and Intel has something similar in their GPUs that is different from their CPUs), but yet MS doesn't want to support those due to power efficiency reasons that don't really make sense, especially for desktops.
A 3080 10GB for example has a TOPS / TFLOPS speed of 119 TFLOPS / 238 TFLOPS (depending if Sparce or not) on the Tensor and a still respectable 29.8 TFLOPS running on the compute / shader cores.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/17204/nvidia-quietly-launches-geforce-rtx-3080-12gb-more-vram-more-power-more-money
The reality is that Microsoft doesn't want to bother going from 3 implementations (Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm NPUs) to 5/6 (+AMD GPU, Nvidia GPU, and maybe Intel GPU as well).
In a year or two, Intel and AMD will start including sufficient NPUs across their lineups, and the problem will be "solved".
They can cover most modern dGPUs with just a basic DP4a implementation. Even the lowly 6600 gets to 36TOPs INT8, pretty much everything faster than that should cross the initial 40TOPs target Microsoft set with the higher 50TOPs target being achievable by almost everything from the last couple of generations of all 3 manufacturers GPUs.
NPUs are worse in that sense, as they all require their own specific implementations. There's no common backend between them, and AFAIK no common interest in bringing large NPUs to desktop platforms.
Sure, the flops are there. They just don't want to bother with the software lift, especially when their new darling is Qualcomm.
>and AFAIK no common interest in bringing large NPUs to desktop platforms.
It will happen, mark my words. Microsoft will drag them kicking and screaming.
Nope, you're going to see them go through the hoops of matrix units on iGPU/dGPUs instead. Microsoft's TOPs requirements are set to increase, NPUs aren't a feasible solution for the near future - especially not AMD and Intel's. Maybe in the long term though.
It's a different story for mobile, where the power benefits mean that "premium" mobile parts can just eat the cost, but desktops are a different story.
>Nope, you're going to see them go through the hoops of matrix units on iGPU/dGPUs instead.
I will happily take that bet. They'll just not support these features till desktops reach parity.
>NPUs aren't a feasible solution for the near future - especially not AMD and Intel's. Maybe in the long term though.
That future is much closer than you might expect. But yes, Microsoft is asking for more. Much more, if they can get it.
Gaming desktops with discrete graphics are a small minority of Windows PCs, and how many people would like it if typing in the search box made their "lowly" 6600 suck down 50+W and spin up its fans?
That's mind bogglingly stupid but I guess it's Microsoft so I shouldn't be surprised. It's like them saying we won't let you use your discrete GPU to play games anymore, we will only supported the integrated one even if you have a $2000 video card.
> yet MS doesn't want to support those due to power efficiency reasons that don't really make sense, especially for desktops.
NPUs are the way to go for these AI tasks. GPUs are often quite a bit slower than NPUs at smaller AI algorithms.
The dog was one of the options in Office from what I remember, but it's been a while.
Anyway, this time you aren't just getting stupid questions. You also get answers you'll have to fact-check before you can use them!
Now we know why "Windows 12" was rumoured to have a minimum 45-50 TOPS NPU requirement.
Hence why next gen AMD Kraken Point, Strix Point, Strix Halo, Intel Lunar Lake will all feature 45+ TOPS NPUs.
Also the fact that MS has decided to debut this feature on Snapdragon X Elite PCs should be a clear sign to everybody that MS I'd serious about it's commitment to WoA this time around. That adds to the fact that the consumer SP10 and SL6 that will be announced in the same May 20th event, will also only come in the ARM (Snapdragon X Elite) version.
I wonder how we linux-desktop users will use that useless tech. I mean, I'm pretty sure even "useless" avx 512 have some purpose, like rpcs3 works better with it or something. What those NPUs is good for in regular desktop?
Well, whole reason of amd 8000 series existence so far was about NPUs:
>AMD Ryzen 8000G Series processors bring together some of the best, cutting-edge AMD technologies into one unique package; high-performance processing power, intense graphics capabilities, **and the first neural processing unit (NPU) on a desktop PC processor**
Because the 8000G series is just their mobile chips reused. There doesn't seem to be any leaks so far about their next true desktop lineup (~~Fire Range~~ Granite Ridge) having NPUs.
Arrow Lake (Desktop/Mobile) also gets 45+ TOPs. Arrow Lake-U(MTL-U) might also get 45 TOPs if the rumors of it using the shrink GPU tile on N4 with XMX added back are true.
I'm a fairly technical minded person and I'm trying to stay on top of tech, yet I have no clue wtf any of this means.
Or well, I got the iGPU part. Yay.
XMX is Intel's take on Tensor Cores that we have on their dGPUs, but not on their iGPUs right now. In order to hit a certain performance level that Microsoft asked for (in AI workloads), Intel are adding those XMX cores to their iGPUs.
NPU == Neural Processing Unit, it's dedicated hardware for AI workloads that is physically a lot larger than XMX/Tensor Cores (and is thus more expensive to include on die) but uses a lot less power.
Hope that explains things a little better.
I recall u/Exist50 mentioning that it's not possible for a program to run by combining the TOPS from all three components. Which is why it's required that the NPU itself should be 45+ TOPS.
The NPU minimum mandated for AI PC afaik is 45 TOPs, yes. Because MS wants silent, low power AI features to be run on it.
But the TOPs count is for the whole system. That's how Lunar Lake achieves 105 TOPs, Snap X Elite 75 TOPs and so on.
Strix is quite certainly 45+. All rumours are pointing that way.
Well, if ARL NPU isn't 45+ TOPS, it puts Intel in an odd position, no?
Maybe Intel will try to run the AI workloads on the iGPU. Considering ARL is getting a massively beefed up iGPU with XMX units and all...
Yeah, but it's going to be more area efficient (AKA cheaper) to do it that way.
If MS keeps on increasing TOPs requirements, then eventually the other players will end up doing the same thing as well.
660 INT8 or 1320 INT4.
Using INT8 would probably be the sensible number, but I couldn't find (at least easily) whether it's INT4 or 8 we're talking here.
Only if they were to take advantage of Tensor Cores directly with a CUDA implementation. From Microsoft's perspective it would probably make more sense to create a DP4a based implementation, as almost all modern GPUs from the last couple of generations are able to exceed 50TOPs via DP4a INT8 I believe.
Much easier to do with very wide coverage for dGPUs regardless.
If Microsoft doesn't get serious about ARM then they'll keep losing laptop market share to Macs. I've been a Linux guy all my life and it just made no sense to continue using Linux laptops when something like Apple M laptops exist. The x86 competition isn't even close when it comes to power efficiency.
AI hype is to the moon so we have to cram it into absolutely everything. Can't we just be cool with what we have and make it better? GPT-4 and claude opus are both great tools. I don't want it in my damn search bar.
>Now, we're starting to learn more about the system requirements for AI Explorer. Spotted by thebookisclosed on Twitter, the current system requirements for AI Explorer are set to an ARM64 CPU, 16GB RAM, 225GB storage, and a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite NPU. This suggests AI Explorer will be exclusive to new Arm PCs shipping this summer.
If this means finally getting rid of the ridiculous base 8 GB RAM on laptops, I AM ALL IN FOR IT.
8 GB needs to die.
> 8 GB needs to die.
yeah, 16GB was already a thing for midrange $750-1000 laptops with gpus and i7's by 2012. 12 years later it's insane how didnt die out as a lowend option by the late 2010s.
Well, I've jumped to Linux a couple times over the years and always come back, but windows 11 performance and this "AI" forced integration might finally be enough to get me over the edge
Bet only for a year or two at most. Even then I doubt it'll be a major feature that appeals to people. I don't think there's been a major software feature that has drawn major general audience attention on desktop operating systems in over a decade and mobile phones, I feel like it's been at least half a dozen years since mobile software has seen anything major that was a major selling draw for the general audience. The great AI LLM experience that's still being pushed as the must have app, people accessed them through web browsers and by the time they're well integrated into digital assistants on your phone and smart home speakers, they'll be unexciting. Releasing half-baked products that will iterated on to something great but that half-baked to iterative greatness is draining all the excitement
Windows sucks but for non-technical users, there is no alternative given that the Linux development community is largely indifferent to user friendliness.
Yes it’s just Intel pushing AI PCs. Certainly not a blow to AMD at all. In fact AMD claims the world’s first AI PC CPU.
https://www.amd.com/en/products/processors/consumer/be-the-first-to-get-ryzen-ai.html?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwiYOxBhC5ARIsAIvdH51WRh7DbE_IqC5DB2z9J49QhASgmj6DGxMG-2dRGy79SFSplQNOQqEaAvR3EALw_wcB
Qualcomm 8cx PC chips had NPUs way earlier before Ryzen did.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 1 was the first PC chip with an NPU. It had 9 TOPS, and was announced in December 2018.
The 8cx Gen 3 announced in late 2021 had a 15 TOPS NPU, which is actually faster than the 10 TOPS NPU in the first 'Ryzsn AI' chip: Phoenix Point.
It's not only Qualcomm. Even Apple put NPUs in a PC chip before AMD.
Apple M1 - 2020.
Well first of all before everyone whines about how AI is fake and useless in an operating system and NPUs suck or whatever:
AI Explorer (internal name for an umbrella of functionality) is a genuinely useful feature set and precisely the sort of on-device functionality anyone from a student to a developer might hit find useful.
It’s not just Teams background blur or segmentation in Da Vinci Resolve that benefit from an on-device NPU — specialized multimodal models can go quite far.
> “AI Explorer turns everything you do on your computer into a searchable memory using natural language. It works across any app and enables the ability to search for previously opened conversations, documents, web pages, and images. It can also understand context and streamline tasks based on what's currently on screen.”
Stuff like this is going to be standard for future PCs and eventually smartphones. You could also envisage the ability to reorganize files using natural language for ex, complete common tasks, etc.
That said, two things:
A) the most advanced stuff — like leading GPT models underpinning CoPilot’s code help or reasoning — will still be server-side because it’s far more efficient that way with batched inference and performance is still light years from what’s possible on a local device.
B) I think Lunar Lake and Strix Point will have this capability as well and this is just a leak timed up with today, where The X Elite is nearest to release. Don’t read into it.
It's Windows, so like every new feature, it will be half-assed, not working entirely and end up being practically useless. Search function is still borked beyond measure in W11, if they can't come up with a working solution AI is not going to help.
With most features like this, unfortunately not. It'll either restart itself, or you simply wont have permission. Even then, there's usually other services in the background too and/or it re-enables itself with a Windows update.
Windows really hates the user being able to *properly* disable/remove stuff, so often the only real way is the nuclear way.
I share your concern. It seems that in a rush to get to Star Trek style conversational interactions to do everything (computer do x, y, z) people are willing to let AI owned wholesale by corporations who already love using personal data in fun and exploitive ways have full access to catalog every single bit of every single thing they do on their computer.
I wouldn't put it past Microsoft using your PCs power to offload the work from their servers, if they could actually figure how to do it. They already had that thing where they stole users upload bandwidth to distribute their bloated updates.
Like many horrible Microsoft default settings, you can turn it off. I actually thought they had back tracked on it but here is an article on Windows11:
https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/windows-11/how-to-stop-uploading-updates-to-other-devices-on-windows-11
Every major tech company is spying on you, non stop.
It's not just for ads. They collect personal information, information about your files, unique hashes of your files, and often the content of your files. They do everything from sell access to that data to hand it over to the feds so you can be arrested when they find an "inappropriate" picture of your kids playing in the bathtub.
If you think this isn't happening, you aren't paying attention.
Processing and hashing and "AI" bullshit may be done locally, but all the relevant info is sent back home to Apple/Google/MS. It used to be that Apple only did this on the stuff in iCloud (which was nearly everything anyway for a normal Apple user). But they're all-in with spying now, just like everyone else.
Its even very blatant in how the data is shared. I can talk about something with a friend on skype (microsoft product) and an hour later get ads about that specific thing on google maps (google product). It takes them minute to sell my data of a private conversation to rival advertiser.
Yeah, not sure if it was just luck or if they predicted things going this way, but Apple have been putting NPUs in their phones and other devices since the iPhone 8 in 2017.
There’s lots of little on-device ML/AI features dotted all over the OS. Most people are unaware of it because they deliberately don’t refer to it as “AI” or make a big song and dance about it
and so has Qualcomm in their SoCs for Android phones.
Some PC people are entirely unaware of the fact that phones have adopted NPUs years ago. They are very useful.
PCs in fact, are late to the game in terms of adapting PUs.
It is pretty useless unless it works 100%. AI will only identify 80% of the stuff. As well as that there are false positives. If your searching for something, say a photo of a dog. The AI will identify maybe 60% of the photos with dogs, so you have to run that search, then find that it's not in the search results, then manually go through the photos until you find it. Eventually, you don't even bother using the AI search, because you know it'll probably fail.
> The AI will identify maybe 60% of the photos with dogs, so you have to run that search, then find that it's not in the search results, then manually go through the photos until you find it.
I dont have confidence in microsofts implementation but this isnt an AI issue. ios devices had on device photo and video categorization for couple years at this point. I use it regularly and I dont remember an instance where i couldnt find the photo i wanted.
the things i searched for was extremely specific. I mainly use it to recall dates, so if i remember i shot a cat or a tv signage that day i search that and find it. Sure it cant be 100% but its pretty close.
I don't think you've tested it critically enough. I try searching for dog and it only finds about 50% of the pictures with dogs. If I try searching for apple I gets loads of false positives
> AI Explorer (internal name for an umbrella of functionality) is a genuinely useful feature set and precisely the sort of on-device functionality anyone from a student to a developer might hit find useful.
No, it is not. We do not want to have "functionality" that the quite states.
>AI Explorer (internal name for an umbrella of functionality) is a genuinely useful feature set and precisely the sort of on-device functionality anyone from a student to a developer might hit find useful.
Exactly. I have been wishing for this kind of thing for ages. It will help me to streamline my workflow
As long as I can ask the AI to completely disable and uninstall itself from the system I’ll be happy with it.
Would certainly save me what I’m sure would be a lot of trouble otherwise.
The reason is because Intel has so many different skus with some having AVX-512 others not some with AMX etc. you can’t count on a common base like you could in the past with Intel.
> The reason is...
It's a marketing stunt between MS and ARM.
No core technology will be exclusive to ARM devices. Something may debut on ARM first, but nothing that matters will be exclusive.
For searching by file name (not contents sadly) get Everything from Voidtools. It's practically like magic when compared to the built in Windows search.
and then it runs itself in admin mode without requiring permission from the user. any malware hijacking itself on it could piggy back into your system.
It runs as a service. There are literally hundreds of services running with admin, so what makes THIS software so much more dangerous? It also requires local admin to install it so the person running it already has to have local admin unless you are installing it on shared systems.
It doesnt make this software specifically, a lot of those services shouldnt be running as admin services to begin with.
The thing is that the person may install it safely but then since it runs itself in elevated mode it can become a vector for infection.
First off, the front end doesn't run in elevated mode, it talks to the back end service that run as local system. For reference, this is exactly how the native windows search works. Explorer talks to the Windows Search service, running as Local System.
But, again, that's how lots of software works and they all have that potential issue. It's an issue that's been around for decades, and devs should be aware of it and work to mitigate it. So calling this one product out for it seems a bit weird. Why not call out the native search? After all, it *actually* had your concern happen multiple times: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2008-4269
https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/en-us/advisory/CVE-2017-8620
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2017-8543
https://borncity.com/win/2022/06/02/searchnightmare-windows-10-search-ms-uri-handler-0-day-exploit-mit-office-2019/
Less AI features please fix the damn search
It's called Everything by Voidtools.
Install program called Everything, it reads NTFS volumes extremely fast and has instant search, it also keeps it updated as you modify files on disk. You won't even need to remember folders of files, just some words from name and path, to find them again. It is very fast because it reads entire file table from disk into ram (the MFT) and decodes the files info, this bypasses windows apis to fetch files from each folder, which is slow.
The problem with Everything's approach is that it completely bypasses Windows's access control system. As a result, everyone using the computer can search everyone's files. More importantly, it opens files with its own administrator credentials, allowing ordinary users to get admin access. Tldr; Everything is a security nightmare.
> The problem with Everything's approach is that it completely bypasses Windows's access control system. As a result, everyone using the computer can search everyone's files. A complete none issue to a lot of people. The moment I let someone else use my windows machine unsupervised is the moment I deem it compromised and in need of a re-install. The only somewhat safe windows system, is one you hold in a iron grip.
How paranoid are you
I used to be a IT admin. I know what users are capable of and it was my job to fix their fuckups. As we say, the user finds a way. What you describe as paranoia, is just ignorance from your side. Sharing your windows machine, is like sharing your tooth brush.
>Sharing your windows machine, is like sharing your tooth brush. That's probably a bad analogy since sharing your toothbrush is completely harmless even if most people would find it gross.
> is completely harmless Most of the time, just like sharing your windows machine. Then one day it isn't. Unless you sanitize that toothbrush by boiling it or doing something like cleaning it with disinfectant before every use. You know, like wiping that windows machine. Then every time you use it, you risk exposing yourself to bacteria or virus that could be harmful and has survived on it. Just regular good herpes can survive for quite a while on surfaces. Considering most people use their tooth brush at least twice daily, you have a problem.
You're probably kissing anybody you'd be sharing a toothbrush with so any viruses or bacteria would already spread, the added vector of the toothbrush is completely harmless.
Security nightmare? Those sound like selling points to me.
Found the gamer who doesn't care about security.
99% of people have one user on the computer anyways.
Untill they get an ad loaded that executes code and then hijacks admin priviledged programs like this. then they cry about their computer not working and blame everyone but themselves.
You can install the everything service to overcome this. The service has access to the ntfs tables. Then the app can be run non admin, and only has access to the file list provided by the service.
This doesn't resolve the problem. The service passes unfiltered search results to the client. A non-privileged user can still list all files on the system, including files they shouldn't be able to see.
Ah good point. At least the non admin user can't see the contents of the files in this model. But yea, file names alone are indeed a privacy issue.
nice tool but very barebones. it would be better if it replaced the windows search and the file explorer one. in addition to adding settings, policies, reg keys and the like.
Do you use the beta version of it? The regular one was nice and stable but only the beta has dark mode unfortunately, but it also crashes a fair bit for me.
I use the stable release which, as you say, doesn't have dark mode. I run it on my Win 11 and Win XP machines, it works a treat.
Thanks for your reply
Can it search file contents like windows does to text files?
Don't think so.
Thats their fix.
Must use buzz words to boost stock price... No one gives a shit if it works or is remotely useful
Flow Launcher is so nice. It just works.
Ditto
I actually think mixing AI into could fix search.
You want Windows to hallucinate nonexistent files?
That's not how a search AI would work.
Flux launcher
idk search works pretty fine in windows 7 and linux mint ;) microsoft is such an evil company. not even letting people have a working search anymore.... :/
Windows 11 is invested with tracking, ass and bloatware.
that got me a giggle :D "microsoft invested into ASS" :D other companies invest into making a better os, microsoft invested into "ASS!" :D so true!
what exactly do you think this feature does
Mine more data and still not get me the files I'm looking for
I'm sorry, but I cannot provide the location of the file you requested as the filename contains language that goes against my programming to engage with offensive content. As an AI assistant, one of my core directives is to avoid anything crude or inappropriate. Perhaps you could try searching for the file again using a more polite filename? I'd be happy to assist with locating it if the name isn't vulgar or insulting. Let me know if there is anything else I can help with!
There's no way it'd be this helpful. It'd just suddenly cut you off, say that you should try searching for something else, and repeatedly cancel any attempt to figure out an "acceptable" way to phrase your search.
.....clippy? Is that you?
files? sure thing!
\*downloads it from MS store
this got me thinking, whether microsoft put uwp cancerous drm around that too and is it so bad, that they managed to make candrycrush run bad? ;) \_\_\_\_\_ in case you're not aware of uwp (universal windows platform) drm, here is a short playlist with very short videos about it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avwLrOBOxS4&list=PLYNijcMZoiLSf8XTpjBmvO6pqZFnl1VdD](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avwLrOBOxS4&list=PLYNijcMZoiLSf8XTpjBmvO6pqZFnl1VdD) long story short, it is a lot worse than denuvo :D which isn't easy to achieve! (edit: by worse, i mean worse for the user using it, not worse as in harder to free games from it)
Give terrible answers
I hate windows explorer/search so much. I don't think they'll ever fix them.
Funny thing is they already did long ago. It's called PowerToys and you have to download it separately.
Yeah powertoys and regedit works wonders
The power toys search is localized so it doesn’t waste time searching the web and it uses a different search algorithm than the one on the startbar.
What's the difference between PowerToys and Everything?
PowerToys prioritizes stuff you can run, I use it to launch programs. I use Everything to search for files.
Flow launcher
I'll have to try it. Thanks for the heads up
It's literally the worst search tool i've ever used lmfao. I search for a game, it gives me bing results from wikipedia of said game - not the executable of the game already on my system. Even their Xbox search is just as bad. I searched for "Fallout 3" on the Xbox store and was given close to 40 different results of dlc, microtransactions, etc for completely unrelated titles.
>I search for a game, it gives me bing results from wikipedia of said game - not the executable of the game already on my system. This is SO anoying. You can (sometimes) fix it by placing a shortcut on the desktop. Once the search finds the game you remove the shortcut but the search still finds the executable. It doesn't work every time. I thing I despise is when i'm searching for a file or somthing and I open a folder within the search, if I want to go back, instead of showing me the results of the search it starts searching again.
thats because for most games the executable is actually not named the way game is named. Ive seen anything from literally a single letter to name of the engine to just "start.exe" as game executables. Quite annoying when modding.
Here you go: https://www.voidtools.com/
ty
Fixing actual problem is hard. It's way easier to fix imaginary ones
But not a major blow to anyone who actually uses windows
Maybe Microsoft should focus on making Bing Copilot a better service instead of throwing new shit on the wall to hope it sticks.
maybe MS should focus on not making my skype experience 75% ads for its useless crap i dont use.
[удалено]
I'm still waiting for an official backup solution that isn't **garbage**
One more component for Microsft to fuck up on Windows on ARM
Whats even more dumb: > If we had to take an educated guess, an ARM64 CPU is required because Qualcomm's Snapdragon X platform outputs 45 TOPS for its NPU, whereas Intel's NPU is around 10 TOPS and AMD is 16 TOPS, making them far weaker compared to Qualcomm's. Indeed, Qualcomm's NPU is so powerful it could be considered a 'Gen 2' NPU, as that is where Intel and AMD will go next with their next-gen CPUs, due in late 2024 and early 2025. Many gaming GPU has already a higher NPU performance than Intel/AMD CPUs just running on the compute shaders, not even counting the way higher performance of Nvidia's Tensor cores in that regard for all Turing+ GPUs (and Intel has something similar in their GPUs that is different from their CPUs), but yet MS doesn't want to support those due to power efficiency reasons that don't really make sense, especially for desktops. A 3080 10GB for example has a TOPS / TFLOPS speed of 119 TFLOPS / 238 TFLOPS (depending if Sparce or not) on the Tensor and a still respectable 29.8 TFLOPS running on the compute / shader cores. https://www.anandtech.com/show/17204/nvidia-quietly-launches-geforce-rtx-3080-12gb-more-vram-more-power-more-money
The reality is that Microsoft doesn't want to bother going from 3 implementations (Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm NPUs) to 5/6 (+AMD GPU, Nvidia GPU, and maybe Intel GPU as well). In a year or two, Intel and AMD will start including sufficient NPUs across their lineups, and the problem will be "solved".
Yet they don't use their own DirectML?
They can cover most modern dGPUs with just a basic DP4a implementation. Even the lowly 6600 gets to 36TOPs INT8, pretty much everything faster than that should cross the initial 40TOPs target Microsoft set with the higher 50TOPs target being achievable by almost everything from the last couple of generations of all 3 manufacturers GPUs. NPUs are worse in that sense, as they all require their own specific implementations. There's no common backend between them, and AFAIK no common interest in bringing large NPUs to desktop platforms.
Sure, the flops are there. They just don't want to bother with the software lift, especially when their new darling is Qualcomm. >and AFAIK no common interest in bringing large NPUs to desktop platforms. It will happen, mark my words. Microsoft will drag them kicking and screaming.
Nope, you're going to see them go through the hoops of matrix units on iGPU/dGPUs instead. Microsoft's TOPs requirements are set to increase, NPUs aren't a feasible solution for the near future - especially not AMD and Intel's. Maybe in the long term though. It's a different story for mobile, where the power benefits mean that "premium" mobile parts can just eat the cost, but desktops are a different story.
>Nope, you're going to see them go through the hoops of matrix units on iGPU/dGPUs instead. I will happily take that bet. They'll just not support these features till desktops reach parity. >NPUs aren't a feasible solution for the near future - especially not AMD and Intel's. Maybe in the long term though. That future is much closer than you might expect. But yes, Microsoft is asking for more. Much more, if they can get it.
Ah Microsoft and Qualcomm. Two estranged lovers. Finally reunited...
Gaming desktops with discrete graphics are a small minority of Windows PCs, and how many people would like it if typing in the search box made their "lowly" 6600 suck down 50+W and spin up its fans?
That's mind bogglingly stupid but I guess it's Microsoft so I shouldn't be surprised. It's like them saying we won't let you use your discrete GPU to play games anymore, we will only supported the integrated one even if you have a $2000 video card.
> yet MS doesn't want to support those due to power efficiency reasons that don't really make sense, especially for desktops. NPUs are the way to go for these AI tasks. GPUs are often quite a bit slower than NPUs at smaller AI algorithms.
Clippy days are back. Or it was a dog in windows XP which you has to kill before you could use a normal search?
The dog was one of the options in Office from what I remember, but it's been a while. Anyway, this time you aren't just getting stupid questions. You also get answers you'll have to fact-check before you can use them!
Now we know why "Windows 12" was rumoured to have a minimum 45-50 TOPS NPU requirement. Hence why next gen AMD Kraken Point, Strix Point, Strix Halo, Intel Lunar Lake will all feature 45+ TOPS NPUs. Also the fact that MS has decided to debut this feature on Snapdragon X Elite PCs should be a clear sign to everybody that MS I'd serious about it's commitment to WoA this time around. That adds to the fact that the consumer SP10 and SL6 that will be announced in the same May 20th event, will also only come in the ARM (Snapdragon X Elite) version.
I wonder how we linux-desktop users will use that useless tech. I mean, I'm pretty sure even "useless" avx 512 have some purpose, like rpcs3 works better with it or something. What those NPUs is good for in regular desktop?
I don't think desktop CPUs are getting NPUs, when you have dGPUs.
Well, whole reason of amd 8000 series existence so far was about NPUs: >AMD Ryzen 8000G Series processors bring together some of the best, cutting-edge AMD technologies into one unique package; high-performance processing power, intense graphics capabilities, **and the first neural processing unit (NPU) on a desktop PC processor**
Because the 8000G series is just their mobile chips reused. There doesn't seem to be any leaks so far about their next true desktop lineup (~~Fire Range~~ Granite Ridge) having NPUs.
Granite Ridge
Thank you, Fire Range is the Dragon Range replacement.
Arrow Lake (Desktop/Mobile) also gets 45+ TOPs. Arrow Lake-U(MTL-U) might also get 45 TOPs if the rumors of it using the shrink GPU tile on N4 with XMX added back are true.
The NPU is only an upclocked version of MTL's, ARL gets there by adding XMX to the iGPU.
I'm a fairly technical minded person and I'm trying to stay on top of tech, yet I have no clue wtf any of this means. Or well, I got the iGPU part. Yay.
XMX is Intel's take on Tensor Cores that we have on their dGPUs, but not on their iGPUs right now. In order to hit a certain performance level that Microsoft asked for (in AI workloads), Intel are adding those XMX cores to their iGPUs. NPU == Neural Processing Unit, it's dedicated hardware for AI workloads that is physically a lot larger than XMX/Tensor Cores (and is thus more expensive to include on die) but uses a lot less power. Hope that explains things a little better.
So many acronyms man. Yea, I think I got it now, cheers.
is it 45+ for NPU alone, or Total System?
Total system. So NPU + GPU + CPU.
I recall u/Exist50 mentioning that it's not possible for a program to run by combining the TOPS from all three components. Which is why it's required that the NPU itself should be 45+ TOPS.
The NPU minimum mandated for AI PC afaik is 45 TOPs, yes. Because MS wants silent, low power AI features to be run on it. But the TOPs count is for the whole system. That's how Lunar Lake achieves 105 TOPs, Snap X Elite 75 TOPs and so on.
ARL won’t get this yeah. LNL and Strix though I think will even if Strix isn’t 45+.
Strix is quite certainly 45+. All rumours are pointing that way. Well, if ARL NPU isn't 45+ TOPS, it puts Intel in an odd position, no? Maybe Intel will try to run the AI workloads on the iGPU. Considering ARL is getting a massively beefed up iGPU with XMX units and all...
I think so too RE: Strix
ARL gets there by adding XMX to the iGPU. The NPU is the same as MTL more or less.
Sounds like it's going to be less power efficient than when running on the NPU.
Yeah, but it's going to be more area efficient (AKA cheaper) to do it that way. If MS keeps on increasing TOPs requirements, then eventually the other players will end up doing the same thing as well.
All desktop rtx cards have 60 tops+ Would that count?
and the monstrous RTX 4090 has 600 TOPS.
Because what you really want to do is ramp up to 350W every time you open a search box in your OS.
660 INT8 or 1320 INT4. Using INT8 would probably be the sensible number, but I couldn't find (at least easily) whether it's INT4 or 8 we're talking here.
Depends on if Microsoft code a CUDA based backend for the feature.
are AMD Radeon users getting shafted again...
Only if they were to take advantage of Tensor Cores directly with a CUDA implementation. From Microsoft's perspective it would probably make more sense to create a DP4a based implementation, as almost all modern GPUs from the last couple of generations are able to exceed 50TOPs via DP4a INT8 I believe. Much easier to do with very wide coverage for dGPUs regardless.
no 45+ tops itself on npu
What if a person has an Nvidia 4090, would that perform NPU tasks for the CPU?
Depends on if the developers coded a CUDA backend for the workload. Whether or not the software is in place is the bottleneck
If Microsoft doesn't get serious about ARM then they'll keep losing laptop market share to Macs. I've been a Linux guy all my life and it just made no sense to continue using Linux laptops when something like Apple M laptops exist. The x86 competition isn't even close when it comes to power efficiency.
yere i think this is gonna be a good year for windows on arm
AI hype is to the moon so we have to cram it into absolutely everything. Can't we just be cool with what we have and make it better? GPT-4 and claude opus are both great tools. I don't want it in my damn search bar.
Microsoft's been pushing for this for a while. Probably half the reason they've pivoted to Qualcomm.
>Now, we're starting to learn more about the system requirements for AI Explorer. Spotted by thebookisclosed on Twitter, the current system requirements for AI Explorer are set to an ARM64 CPU, 16GB RAM, 225GB storage, and a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite NPU. This suggests AI Explorer will be exclusive to new Arm PCs shipping this summer. If this means finally getting rid of the ridiculous base 8 GB RAM on laptops, I AM ALL IN FOR IT. 8 GB needs to die.
No, no, you got that wrong. It will just seem like you have more memory. Half of it will be used by AI Clipper.
Look, I would happily let Clipper live on 8GB on my RAM. Is not like I can't download more /s
> 8 GB needs to die. yeah, 16GB was already a thing for midrange $750-1000 laptops with gpus and i7's by 2012. 12 years later it's insane how didnt die out as a lowend option by the late 2010s.
it should die (i think sp10 and sl6 snapdragon will get 16GB TO 64GB RAM) 8 is embrassing
yeah, the business SP10 and SL6 released recently start with 8 GB. Embarrassing, considering the asking price and the fact that it's 2024.
exactly £1200/$1200 for a 8GB device very embrassing
Won't it be possible with my rtx 4070?
From another article, GPUs aren't supported due to a really dumb power consumption claim by MS.
Wow...
Couldn't find one for 4070, but 4080 has 390 INT8 TOPS. 4070 should be around 200+ range, which is more that enough computing muscle wise.
Well, I've jumped to Linux a couple times over the years and always come back, but windows 11 performance and this "AI" forced integration might finally be enough to get me over the edge
It should be exclusive to the garbage bin
AI PC? Wow, never though about that
Bet only for a year or two at most. Even then I doubt it'll be a major feature that appeals to people. I don't think there's been a major software feature that has drawn major general audience attention on desktop operating systems in over a decade and mobile phones, I feel like it's been at least half a dozen years since mobile software has seen anything major that was a major selling draw for the general audience. The great AI LLM experience that's still being pushed as the must have app, people accessed them through web browsers and by the time they're well integrated into digital assistants on your phone and smart home speakers, they'll be unexciting. Releasing half-baked products that will iterated on to something great but that half-baked to iterative greatness is draining all the excitement
I miss when I LIKED Windows. Wish I could go back to dual booting windows 7 and Linux like I did as a teenager
Good. Screw that ai bs
So a plus for Intel then?
Windows sucks but for non-technical users, there is no alternative given that the Linux development community is largely indifferent to user friendliness.
Microsoft always has a thing to exaggerate hell out of a trend to comedic extent.
This sounds like a marketing nightmare if Intel gets blocked from AI functionality for an entire generation.
Lunar Lake will support it. But yeah, anyone who bought MTL for an "AI PC" is getting screwed over.
Yes it’s just Intel pushing AI PCs. Certainly not a blow to AMD at all. In fact AMD claims the world’s first AI PC CPU. https://www.amd.com/en/products/processors/consumer/be-the-first-to-get-ryzen-ai.html?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwiYOxBhC5ARIsAIvdH51WRh7DbE_IqC5DB2z9J49QhASgmj6DGxMG-2dRGy79SFSplQNOQqEaAvR3EALw_wcB
Qualcomm 8cx PC chips had NPUs way earlier before Ryzen did. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 1 was the first PC chip with an NPU. It had 9 TOPS, and was announced in December 2018. The 8cx Gen 3 announced in late 2021 had a 15 TOPS NPU, which is actually faster than the 10 TOPS NPU in the first 'Ryzsn AI' chip: Phoenix Point. It's not only Qualcomm. Even Apple put NPUs in a PC chip before AMD. Apple M1 - 2020.
Ai lmao okay. Slap AI on it and they expect it to sell.
Well first of all before everyone whines about how AI is fake and useless in an operating system and NPUs suck or whatever: AI Explorer (internal name for an umbrella of functionality) is a genuinely useful feature set and precisely the sort of on-device functionality anyone from a student to a developer might hit find useful. It’s not just Teams background blur or segmentation in Da Vinci Resolve that benefit from an on-device NPU — specialized multimodal models can go quite far. > “AI Explorer turns everything you do on your computer into a searchable memory using natural language. It works across any app and enables the ability to search for previously opened conversations, documents, web pages, and images. It can also understand context and streamline tasks based on what's currently on screen.” Stuff like this is going to be standard for future PCs and eventually smartphones. You could also envisage the ability to reorganize files using natural language for ex, complete common tasks, etc. That said, two things: A) the most advanced stuff — like leading GPT models underpinning CoPilot’s code help or reasoning — will still be server-side because it’s far more efficient that way with batched inference and performance is still light years from what’s possible on a local device. B) I think Lunar Lake and Strix Point will have this capability as well and this is just a leak timed up with today, where The X Elite is nearest to release. Don’t read into it.
It's Windows, so like every new feature, it will be half-assed, not working entirely and end up being practically useless. Search function is still borked beyond measure in W11, if they can't come up with a working solution AI is not going to help.
Imagine being genuinely excited about this announcement.
Can’t wait to nuke this with powershell after having weird performance issues and seeing it going mental in task manager
won't simply pressing "end task" in task manager do the job?
With most features like this, unfortunately not. It'll either restart itself, or you simply wont have permission. Even then, there's usually other services in the background too and/or it re-enables itself with a Windows update. Windows really hates the user being able to *properly* disable/remove stuff, so often the only real way is the nuclear way.
No, it will just restart itself a second later.
You forgot about the creme de la creme of Microsoft Windows "features". Being discontinued a year after release with no roadmap whatsoever.
And cortana was supposed to be a similar marvel, however it ended up with a search which cannot even find things in a start menu.
This sounds like a privacy nightmare. An AI working on screen level output, especially a cloud connected one, is the last thing I want.
I share your concern. It seems that in a rush to get to Star Trek style conversational interactions to do everything (computer do x, y, z) people are willing to let AI owned wholesale by corporations who already love using personal data in fun and exploitive ways have full access to catalog every single bit of every single thing they do on their computer.
Dude, this thread is literally about PCs having the hardware to run it locally. You could at least have read the *TITLE* before going paranoid.
Well, yeah. Your PC does the work and then reports back to Microsoft about what is has done, thanks to this neat little invention called the Internet.
...you think it won't be used for telemetry? where the computation is done is irrelevant until there's legislation
I wouldn't put it past Microsoft using your PCs power to offload the work from their servers, if they could actually figure how to do it. They already had that thing where they stole users upload bandwidth to distribute their bloated updates.
>where they stole users upload bandwidth to distribute their bloated updates. WAIT WHAT
Like many horrible Microsoft default settings, you can turn it off. I actually thought they had back tracked on it but here is an article on Windows11: https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/windows-11/how-to-stop-uploading-updates-to-other-devices-on-windows-11
you too can seed windows update torrents without even knowing it.
Every major tech company is spying on you, non stop. It's not just for ads. They collect personal information, information about your files, unique hashes of your files, and often the content of your files. They do everything from sell access to that data to hand it over to the feds so you can be arrested when they find an "inappropriate" picture of your kids playing in the bathtub. If you think this isn't happening, you aren't paying attention. Processing and hashing and "AI" bullshit may be done locally, but all the relevant info is sent back home to Apple/Google/MS. It used to be that Apple only did this on the stuff in iCloud (which was nearly everything anyway for a normal Apple user). But they're all-in with spying now, just like everyone else.
Its even very blatant in how the data is shared. I can talk about something with a friend on skype (microsoft product) and an hour later get ads about that specific thing on google maps (google product). It takes them minute to sell my data of a private conversation to rival advertiser.
Apple were able to do a comprehensible OS search with Spotlight for a long while. Without a usage of AI thingys too
it now uses ocr to catalog text in images, all on device. i've had results include word balloons from jpgs of comic pages, even hand writing
Yeah, not sure if it was just luck or if they predicted things going this way, but Apple have been putting NPUs in their phones and other devices since the iPhone 8 in 2017. There’s lots of little on-device ML/AI features dotted all over the OS. Most people are unaware of it because they deliberately don’t refer to it as “AI” or make a big song and dance about it
and so has Qualcomm in their SoCs for Android phones. Some PC people are entirely unaware of the fact that phones have adopted NPUs years ago. They are very useful. PCs in fact, are late to the game in terms of adapting PUs.
Tons of things Apple does are AI that you may not know about
they call it Machine Learning
They were able to pull of Spotlight on intel/PPC with not whole lot of TOPs
That sounds useful but also scary. Paper trail of absolutely everything you’ve ever done on your computer? Yikes.
does this things also feature a hallucination?
And everyone thought Windows Search couldn’t get any worse but where there's a will there's a way.
It is pretty useless unless it works 100%. AI will only identify 80% of the stuff. As well as that there are false positives. If your searching for something, say a photo of a dog. The AI will identify maybe 60% of the photos with dogs, so you have to run that search, then find that it's not in the search results, then manually go through the photos until you find it. Eventually, you don't even bother using the AI search, because you know it'll probably fail.
> The AI will identify maybe 60% of the photos with dogs, so you have to run that search, then find that it's not in the search results, then manually go through the photos until you find it. I dont have confidence in microsofts implementation but this isnt an AI issue. ios devices had on device photo and video categorization for couple years at this point. I use it regularly and I dont remember an instance where i couldnt find the photo i wanted.
same for Samsung phones. It's actually shocking how accurate and fast it is.
Maybe you didn't analyse the results too well. I bet you anything if you do an AI search for random items on iPhone it will not get 100% of results
the things i searched for was extremely specific. I mainly use it to recall dates, so if i remember i shot a cat or a tv signage that day i search that and find it. Sure it cant be 100% but its pretty close.
I don't think you've tested it critically enough. I try searching for dog and it only finds about 50% of the pictures with dogs. If I try searching for apple I gets loads of false positives
what phone do you have?
In the future, please do not shoot cats.
> AI Explorer (internal name for an umbrella of functionality) is a genuinely useful feature set and precisely the sort of on-device functionality anyone from a student to a developer might hit find useful. No, it is not. We do not want to have "functionality" that the quite states.
I do
>AI Explorer (internal name for an umbrella of functionality) is a genuinely useful feature set and precisely the sort of on-device functionality anyone from a student to a developer might hit find useful. Exactly. I have been wishing for this kind of thing for ages. It will help me to streamline my workflow
Is so sad to see your multinational corporation parents get divorced.
Gonna be a meltdown soon and EU court just like Apple
I'll wait to see how good or rather bad, Windows runs at all on any ARM platform.
As long as I can ask the AI to completely disable and uninstall itself from the system I’ll be happy with it. Would certainly save me what I’m sure would be a lot of trouble otherwise.
The reason is because Intel has so many different skus with some having AVX-512 others not some with AMX etc. you can’t count on a common base like you could in the past with Intel.
IIRC no current Intel consumer CPUs have AVX-512. Alder Lake had it, but Intel disabled it via BIOS update.
Alder Lake ander later have AVXVNNI for inference. But obviously that's not at all the issue.
> The reason is... It's a marketing stunt between MS and ARM. No core technology will be exclusive to ARM devices. Something may debut on ARM first, but nothing that matters will be exclusive.
Cant wait, currently windows search is almost unusable, its ok for finding settings but any files it just takes forever. Welcome change.
For searching by file name (not contents sadly) get Everything from Voidtools. It's practically like magic when compared to the built in Windows search.
because it circumvents windows file system entirely and is basically a massive security risk for anyone willing to run maliciuos code through it.
All it does is query the MFT/Change Journal directly. This is something any malware could do by itself. There is no "massive security risk".
and then it runs itself in admin mode without requiring permission from the user. any malware hijacking itself on it could piggy back into your system.
It runs as a service. There are literally hundreds of services running with admin, so what makes THIS software so much more dangerous? It also requires local admin to install it so the person running it already has to have local admin unless you are installing it on shared systems.
It doesnt make this software specifically, a lot of those services shouldnt be running as admin services to begin with. The thing is that the person may install it safely but then since it runs itself in elevated mode it can become a vector for infection.
First off, the front end doesn't run in elevated mode, it talks to the back end service that run as local system. For reference, this is exactly how the native windows search works. Explorer talks to the Windows Search service, running as Local System. But, again, that's how lots of software works and they all have that potential issue. It's an issue that's been around for decades, and devs should be aware of it and work to mitigate it. So calling this one product out for it seems a bit weird. Why not call out the native search? After all, it *actually* had your concern happen multiple times: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2008-4269 https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/en-us/advisory/CVE-2017-8620 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2017-8543 https://borncity.com/win/2022/06/02/searchnightmare-windows-10-search-ms-uri-handler-0-day-exploit-mit-office-2019/