81–90 of 234 posts
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Any examples for those proper OSes? I can only imagine those often critized for being walled gardens, namely iOS, Android, and proprietary hardware like gaming consoles. On any UNIX used as a desktop, you will not have trouble finding a list of running processes.
Qubes. It's essentially VMs around every application, browser instance or service.
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The need to know what art applications to test their product against and what hardware configurations they might need to write drivers for. For example, is 99% of their customer base using GiMP or are they using Photoshop? Its important to know how to allocate their testing resources. They could ask permission first but this sort of telemetry is a nothingburger in my opinion, as unpopular as that might be on this for…
> They could ask permission first No, they must . > this sort of telemetry is a nothingburger I strongly disagree, what runs on my computer is my business and if Wacom wants to know, they can ask, and I'll tell them 'no, sorry that is not something you need to know'. It's called consent and it's not up to Wacom to decide that I will think it is a nothing burger. > in my opinion, as unpopular as that might be on this…
Don't like it? Read the privacy policy for software you run. That, or you can write or rely on libre drivers for the tablet to run on your specific hardware setup. And deal with all the issues unsupported/maintained drivers have.
There is a myth that if you are a paying customer then you are not a product. As we see, for more and more companies like Wacom, Microsoft or Apple you are a product no matter if you pay or not. Have some self respect and vote with your wallet against such companies.
Do Wacom tablets have any relevant competition? I have one that I use for hobbyist purposes and when it comes time to upgrade I'd be interested in not buying another Wacom.
I'm not a professional artist though, so maybe Huions are bad for pro work. Idk, but I'm happy with my Huion.
This was a wonderful read I think when I was younger I’d assumed the sheer number of technical users out there would mean it would be hard for companies to get away with things like this but these days I realize this sort of analysis and public exposition is actually rare and the number of skilled developers investing time in this is slim Perhaps collectively as a community we can create public bug and privacy bounti…
Not only is this kind of technical user rare, but public response to a post like this is also demonstrably rare. Of the people who read this, only a fraction will consider changing their configuration to stop Wacom from sending this data. Incentives are well aligned for a corporation to just try it.
For example, one thing that jumped to mind was we seem to be lacking any objective measures of the speed of various OS versions, so everybody is always upgrading and claiming its faster, but is it objectively faster every time? What kind of regressions might happen?
There's nobody that is spending the time figuring out this kind of information, so everyone is kind of uninformed and there's more pressure to always upgrade.
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You're right. I shouldn't have said "walled garden" — a permissions system is a perfectly adequate solution.
We could go a bit further with MAC (Mandatory Access Control). Something like SELinux. Properly understood, SELinux can provide rock-solid security. Of course, it's not a replacement of other security software, but it can prevent most of sneaky leakages such as the we had just seen in this post. MacOS doesn't ship with SELinux, but I believe it has something similar.
Would I be compromised if I once ran `$ important-command --key=secret-key`, having a drawing tablet?
> we can also come up with scenarios that involve real harms. […] I personally use Google Analytics to track visitors to my website. This was a well-written fun read, and I also both care about privacy a lot and have also used Google Analytics on a site too, but at the same time I’m a little bit floored how quickly his own use of GA was assumed benign while Wacom’s was assumed malicious. (Using GA is handing tracking…
Consent and control. Do not collect anything without obtaining the user’s active, voluntary, informed consent, and give the user the control to withdraw consent later. That’s really all there is to it.
Active: you don’t hide it in the TOS. You make consent an action that the user is requested to do.
Voluntary: to the user, the software should behave identically with or without user consent for data collection. Don’t make consent a condition of using the product or features.
Informed: the user knows what he is consenting to and can understand what data is in play. No simple “check this box to help us understand stuff LOL”.
Reading the article: Last week I set up my tablet on my new laptop. As part of installing its drivers I was asked to accept Wacom’s privacy policy. And this is where I stopped. You're doing it wrong. Drivers belong to the kernel. You should not have to manually install it. You should pressure the vendor to correctly support their devices. I have a Wacom device, tried it in different recent distros, different computer…
>And this is where I stopped God I'm so sick of these holier than thou Richard Stallman level unrealistic dismissals. This take isn't brilliant - we all, at all times, know that we have the option to not ____ if we so choose. Not unlike how people say things like "well I would just choose not to work at ____". That we often choose otherwise means we can't but. >You should pressure the vendor to correctly support thei…
I'm sick of those that proselytize electric cars, since not everyone has the option.
I'm sick of those that proselytize walking/biking to work, since not everyone has the option.
I'm sick of those that proselytize recycling, since not everyone has the option.
I'm sick of those that proselytize philanthropy, since not everyone has the option.
I'm the first one who thinks these small sacrifices are probably not worth it since the sacrifice is usually way too much (handicapping yourself significantly) and the benefits practically negligible (i.e. small droplet in the ocean and all that). Much better to spend your efforts on political campaigns rather than this type of small-time stuff which yes, is mostly just for the show.
But what I'm sick of is the people who not only refuse to just bow down and shut up when presented with people that do make the sacrifice, but are instead outright hostile to them.
There is a myth that if you are a paying customer then you are not a product. As we see, for more and more companies like Wacom, Microsoft or Apple you are a product no matter if you pay or not. Have some self respect and vote with your wallet against such companies.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do Wacom tablets have any relevant competition? I have one that I use for hobbyist purposes and when it comes time to upgrade I'd be interested in not buying another Wacom.
Huions are pretty great. Very affordable and very high quality. I'm guessing the premium you pay for Wacom has more to do with the brand name than the actual product. I'm not a professional artist though, so maybe Huions are bad for pro work. Idk, but I'm happy with my Huion.
With a Huion 1060+ the pressure response felt amazing; however that was on Windows, I never got it to work under Linux. For a hobbyist it is a really much better choice than the cheap Wacom (e.g. Bamboo line), because it is important to have a big drawing area, so that you can draw from your elbow and not from your wrist.