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VS Code – What's the deal with the telemetry?

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Re: VS Code – What's the deal with the telemetry?

#171

Post by yencabulator »

shadowgovt wrote: post #110
pseudalopex wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Collecting data without informed consent was an ethics issue always.

Not hardly. In the early days of the Internet it was seen as tit-for-tat among peers; you're accessing my server for data I have, of course I'm allowed to log and analyze your request. That was the exchange. The exchange was rarely made explicit in any kind of formalized consent sense.

If I am typing into an editor running on my computer, I am not consciously accessing your server for data you have.

Re: VS Code – What's the deal with the telemetry?

#172

Post by scruple »

ctrlmeta wrote: post #61

I am one of those who began coding in Notepad and then quickly moved on to Vim and then to Emacs. When the whole world of internet services began consolidating around the web and then later when the whole web began consolidating around a few powerful walled gardens, I saw how these trends began chipping away at our anonymity, privacy, web performance and software performance. Computers are ubiquitous but privacy is u…

I agree with you, and I'm a long-time vimmer who moved to Emacs full-time last December, but... It's not that simple. If an entire development team is using VSCode, or you're doing development inside of docker containers, it can be hard to stick with Emacs, (neo)vim, etc.

Re: VS Code – What's the deal with the telemetry?

#173

Post by scruple »

ithrow wrote: post #170
ctrlmeta wrote: post #61

I am one of those who began coding in Notepad and then quickly moved on to Vim and then to Emacs. When the whole world of internet services began consolidating around the web and then later when the whole web began consolidating around a few powerful walled gardens, I saw how these trends began chipping away at our anonymity, privacy, web performance and software performance. Computers are ubiquitous but privacy is u…

To emacs with evil? If so, how did it go?

I struggled to make the change. I think I tried half a dozen times to go from (neo)vim to Emacs and it never stuck. My problem was that I kept reaching for spacemacs and Doom Emacs, etc., right out of the gate, and I would be mystified by Emacs itself and Emacs Lisp as a result.

Two things helped get me into Emacs full-time (and this is after > 15 years of using vim):

1. I went step-by-step through Susam's Emfy Emacs config [0]. That helped me understand some of the basics at a foundational level. I extended that base configuration a little bit and became comfortable with the environment.

2. I then went step-by-step through the entire "Emacs from Scratch" playlist that System Crafters put out [1]. I pushed my personal configuration pretty far with that over the course of 2-3 months.

I eventually moved to Doom Emacs and married in pieces of my own configuration. That's been my daily driver for months now.

[0]: https://github.com/susam/emfy

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEoMzSkcN8oPH1au7H6B7...

Re: VS Code – What's the deal with the telemetry?

#174

Post by ajdude »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #29

It's Microsoft. It's what they do. It's been 20+ years. I'm not even old. I just don't understand how people haven't figured this out yet.

I'm a bit surprised at how many of my friends have jumped ship to Visual Studio Code, including those who are very much for free software. They have always been in the business of embrace, extend, extinguish[0]. People tend to forget how evil M$ used to be because recently they have seemed like a beacon for Open Source, but I think they are just still evil[1].

I think we're still dealing with the same Microsoft that we've dealt with through the 90s. They are not a champion of open source, and they are still up to their old tricks.[2]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31966414

[1] https://keivan.io/the-day-appget-died/

[2] https://social.platypush.tech/@blacklight/108719097530863121

Re: VS Code – What's the deal with the telemetry?

#175

Post by bitwize »

throwaway642012 wrote: post #54
throwaway22032 wrote: post #29

It's Microsoft. It's what they do. It's been 20+ years. I'm not even old. I just don't understand how people haven't figured this out yet.

I'm old enough to remember the browser wars and FUD against linux. It is funny to see MS going from 'M$' to the gatekeeper of OpenSource.

"Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!"

They were losing hearts and minds in the Web dev space by waging war against open source. It makes far more sense to co-opt it, as per the Halloween-document strategy.

TBH I saw this coming 20 or so years ago, about the time when IBM started putting on its open-source cheerleader outfit. Open source is formless, shapeless, like water per Bruce Lee. You cannot oppose it with force, it will just get everywhere; but by aligning yourself with it you can direct it. That's what I saw IBM doing and I knew Microsoft would follow suit out of lack of choice. And now here we are.

Re: VS Code – What's the deal with the telemetry?

#176

Post by ithrow »

scruple wrote: post #173
ithrow wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To emacs with evil? If so, how did it go?

I struggled to make the change. I think I tried half a dozen times to go from (neo)vim to Emacs and it never stuck. My problem was that I kept reaching for spacemacs and Doom Emacs, etc., right out of the gate, and I would be mystified by Emacs itself and Emacs Lisp as a result. Two things helped get me into Emacs full-time (and this is after > 15 years of using vim): 1. I went step-by-step through Susam's Emfy Emacs…

thx, why didn't you stick to emacs keybindings?

Re: VS Code – What's the deal with the telemetry?

#177

Post by scruple »

ithrow wrote: post #176
scruple wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I struggled to make the change. I think I tried half a dozen times to go from (neo)vim to Emacs and it never stuck. My problem was that I kept reaching for spacemacs and Doom Emacs, etc., right out of the gate, and I would be mystified by Emacs itself and Emacs Lisp as a result. Two things helped get me into Emacs full-time (and this is after > 15 years of using vim): 1. I went step-by-step through Susam's Emfy Emacs…

thx, why didn't you stick to emacs keybindings?

I started using vim in 2007. It's baked into my DNA at this point.

Re: VS Code – What's the deal with the telemetry?

#178

Post by shadowgovt »

yencabulator wrote: post #171
shadowgovt wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not hardly. In the early days of the Internet it was seen as tit-for-tat among peers; you're accessing my server for data I have, of course I'm allowed to log and analyze your request. That was the exchange. The exchange was rarely made explicit in any kind of formalized consent sense.

If I am typing into an editor running on my computer, I am not consciously accessing your server for data you have.

I spend most of my time in Google Docs as the editor I'm typing in. And when I'm coding in emacs, I'm using Tramp to puppeteer a server somewhere else.

The veil is thin between the internet and offline computing these days.

Re: VS Code – What's the deal with the telemetry?

#179

Post by welder »

capableweb wrote: post #159
welder wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I meant you could see the source code not the source code's license.

That too seems to be only true in most cases but not all. How could I inspect the code of the Adobe extension linked above before installing it in Visual Studio Code for example? There doesn't seem to be any links to the actual code for it.

Just download it without installing it.

Re: VS Code – What's the deal with the telemetry?

#180

Post by saghm »

I just checked, and the only telemetry setting that I have in my VS code config is `"telemetry.telemetryLevel": "off"`. I have the non-free version installed (i.e. not Codium). I installed OpenSnitch and started running it, and it caught a grand total of 7 requests over a few minutes of coding: 2 to marketplace.visualstudio.com (one to port 443 and one to 52), presumably which occurred during startup to check for updates to my extensions, and then 5 to a subdomain of vo.msecnd.net (split across ports 443 and 53). I hadn't heard of this domain before, but from a quick google, I found it listed in the VS Code documentation as their CDN (https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/setup/network). Overall, this seems...not that crazy? I'm not sure if they just are less egregious on Linux machines or if the CDN is just where they send the analytics to, but it doesn't really seem like much sketchy stuff was happening behind my bacl.
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