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New Software Remembers Everything Your Computer Has Ever Displayed (cnn.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the search-engineering dept.

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."

9 of 117 comments (clear)

  1. LOL NO by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Just what I need is gigs upon gigs of ads, spam, and other garbage backed up forever.

    1. Re:LOL NO by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is not a solution in search of a problem, its a solution that creates many.

  2. Bankrupt them by ChrisMaple · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What a splendid use for a wide bandwidth white noise generator.

    --
    Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
    1. Re:Bankrupt them by JoeMerchant · · Score: 4, 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.

  3. Cardinal_Richelieu by Anonymous Coward · · 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

  4. How it must've started... by fibonacci8 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I bet we can get people to pay us to install a keylogger on their system.

    --
    Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
  5. Riiiiight.... by markdavis · · Score: 4, 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..."

  6. Does not compute by Hank+the+Lion · · Score: 4, 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?

  7. Re:Remind me... by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 4, 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.)

    --
    Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...