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Wacom drawing tablets track the name of every application that you open

robertheaton.com

211–220 of 234 posts

Re: Wacom drawing tablets track the name of every application that you open

#211
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably the goal is that Lenovo change their practices, institute better oversight, etc..

Right. Where does boycotting Sony come into that? Do you think there’s no value in a positive action unless the person doing it also did some other, unrelated positive action? Why? I think you’re just playing gotcha.

I think if Lenovo's CEO can tell the board "look, we can see x% of customers are anti-rootkitting and avoid companies that use rootkits, therefore we want to switch away from rootkits" that's going to be a lot more effective than "some guys are boycotting us; they say it's about the rootkits but really who knows".

Re: Wacom drawing tablets track the name of every application that you open

#213
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. Where does boycotting Sony come into that? Do you think there’s no value in a positive action unless the person doing it also did some other, unrelated positive action? Why? I think you’re just playing gotcha.

I think if Lenovo's CEO can tell the board "look, we can see x% of customers are anti-rootkitting and avoid companies that use rootkits, therefore we want to switch away from rootkits" that's going to be a lot more effective than "some guys are boycotting us; they say it's about the rootkits but really who knows".

You think that a Lenovo CEO will be completely unconcerned with a boycott of Lenovo products… because their competitors aren’t also being boycotted? Or just less concerned?

If you mean just “less concerned”, then even then, that means the boycott still has some value, right? So what is wrong with someone just boycotting one of two “bad” companies?

Just to transpose the logic to a different situation: say if someone gives $10 to a charity fundraiser, but they actually had $20 in their wallet, does that make their $10 donation less valuable? If this is not a fair comparison, please help me understand exactly what the relevant difference is.

Re: Wacom drawing tablets track the name of every application that you open

#214
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if Lenovo's CEO can tell the board "look, we can see x% of customers are anti-rootkitting and avoid companies that use rootkits, therefore we want to switch away from rootkits" that's going to be a lot more effective than "some guys are boycotting us; they say it's about the rootkits but really who knows".

You think that a Lenovo CEO will be completely unconcerned with a boycott of Lenovo products… because their competitors aren’t also being boycotted? Or just less concerned? If you mean just “less concerned”, then even then, that means the boycott still has some value, right? So what is wrong with someone just boycotting one of two “bad” companies? Just to transpose the logic to a different situation: say if someone g…

> You think that a Lenovo CEO will be completely unconcerned with a boycott of Lenovo products… because their competitors aren’t also being boycotted? Or just less concerned?

I mean unlikely to take the actions you're trying to push for. If you're not consistent about when to boycott a company, how can they trust you to be consistent about when to stop boycotting a company?

Re: Wacom drawing tablets track the name of every application that you open

#215
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think that a Lenovo CEO will be completely unconcerned with a boycott of Lenovo products… because their competitors aren’t also being boycotted? Or just less concerned? If you mean just “less concerned”, then even then, that means the boycott still has some value, right? So what is wrong with someone just boycotting one of two “bad” companies? Just to transpose the logic to a different situation: say if someone g…

> You think that a Lenovo CEO will be completely unconcerned with a boycott of Lenovo products… because their competitors aren’t also being boycotted? Or just less concerned? I mean unlikely to take the actions you're trying to push for. If you're not consistent about when to boycott a company, how can they trust you to be consistent about when to stop boycotting a company?

So, completely unconcerned, or just less concerned? Which?

Re: Wacom drawing tablets track the name of every application that you open

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

macOS does this any time an application "quits unexpectedly". You can Ignore, View Report, Send Report from the dialog.

Some parts of the report are deliberately anonymized, too -- for example, if an executable is running from the user's home directory, that path is literally displayed as "/Users/USER/" rather than including the actual username.

Seems like it would be easier to use ~/ type of something. At least the path would be useable/valid while still being anonymized.

Re: Wacom drawing tablets track the name of every application that you open

#217

I don't understand why desktop operating systems still don't ship with mobile style sandboxing. It would be so darn useful to restrict applications from using filesystem, or have access to only certain folders, or restrict them from internet access. I recently wanted to install a crypto currency wallet on my linux machine but I was terrified of the fact that every single software on my machine can access the whole of…

That’s why you use a hardware wallet.

Re: Wacom drawing tablets track the name of every application that you open

#218
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You think that a Lenovo CEO will be completely unconcerned with a boycott of Lenovo products… because their competitors aren’t also being boycotted? Or just less concerned? I mean unlikely to take the actions you're trying to push for. If you're not consistent about when to boycott a company, how can they trust you to be consistent about when to stop boycotting a company?

So, completely unconcerned, or just less concerned? Which?

Overwhelmingly less likely to take the desired actions. I wouldn't presume to judge the difference between say 0.1% as likely and not at all likely.

Re: Wacom drawing tablets track the name of every application that you open

#219
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC correctly Steam has a (yearly?) hardware survey which their users have the option to take part in, collecting information about parts in the computer and about connected periphery devices, i.e. model names, no. of monitors, resolution, amount of RAM, ...

And Valve is very transparent about how that works -- the survey displays a detailed opt-in each time the user's data is collected, and the results of the survey are public ( https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey ).

Well the collection part is transparent (so there is no privacy issue) but they don't disclose how and how ofthen they select participants or even how many participants there were for each survey.

Re: Wacom drawing tablets track the name of every application that you open

#220
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

Because it makes your boycott seem entirely arbitrary, and that's likely to make it ineffective.

Even if nobody boycotts all companies that would be deserving of it, other people probably (just as arbitrarily) pick others from the same set, so it evens out and they all get boycotted by at least some people.
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