Comment by knowitnone3

3 months ago

Are you kidding? This is pure theft. If I got into your computer and accessed your Documents and Desktop, I'd be in jail but its OK when Microsoft does it.

7 comments

knowitnone3

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contextfree  3 months ago

Most apps on Windows can already access those folders though, except for UWP/AppContainer apps (which require particular capabilities to access them). I think the same is generally still true of the equivalents on most Linux distributions despite that things like SELinux exist.

  • thewebguyd  3 months ago

    That, and how many commenters in this thread are using something like Claude Code with their src directory as context? This is no different. It’s [claude code/gemini CLI/codex] but for non-devs and with a GUI instead of a TUI.

    I feel like everyone here is overly dismissive of this because it’s cool to hate Windows in these parts, but this could be genuinely useful for your average office drone. Much like we love to shit on Copilot for M365 but it’s been extremely useful to the non-tech folks at my work.

    • 8note  3 months ago

      wouldnt the more apt comparison being that anthropic uses a zero day to run claude code as root on / with "dangerously ignore permissions" turned on?

      claude code is quite useful, but its a tool that accepts the context i give it, and it asks for permissions before it does things

    • thomas34298  3 months ago

      Interesting fact: Codex has access to all the files your current user has access to as well, even if you just opened it in the src directory.

xp84  3 months ago

Microsoft is not giving themselves access to your Docs and Desktop. They're giving you a tool that allows you to give an Agent access to files when you want the agent to do things with those files. If you don't set out to use an agent, none of that even happens. They're not proposing to just add an agent that when you boot your computer scans all your files to come up with random ideas.

Normally, if you just open a random program you installed in Windows, the program also "can access" all the files in your home directory without even asking your permission. That doesn't make Photoshop, notepad or MSPaint malware. They'd be malware if they did bad things with them without your permission, but it's bad faith to assume that Microsoft plans to someday trick you into enabling this feature and using an agent that exfiltrates your files.