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PSA: Intel Graphics Drivers Now Collect Telemetry by Default

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Re: PSA: Intel Graphics Drivers Now Collect Telemetry by Default

#411

Post by gorjusborg »

gambiting wrote: post #385
gorjusborg wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of niches that use proprietary tools that don't work across platforms. I don't think that's a fair criticism of the platform 'working'. That's just status quo / profit maximizing on the part of the tool selectors and developers. Linux works very well with regards to hardware. Calling out microsoft tools like visual studio as proof linux doesn't work is sort of dumb. It's a tool that targets windows (…

>>Calling out microsoft tools like visual studio as proof linux doesn't work is sort of dumb Oh sorry this wasn't my intention at all. I'm just countering the argument that I see a lot on HN(and tbf, maybe this isn't what OP was saying) - that Linux is so good that there is literally no reason for anyone to ever stay on Windows. Like......yeah, it's great and a lot of things work really really well - but some things…

Yeah, it isn't all roses on the linux side, for sure. It really isn't perfect on any of the platforms though. I have had no end of USB issues with MacOS, and with no indication it will be fixed. I am told to buy 'supported' (Apple) devices. That's not very 'universal'.

It is amazing how much improvement there has been in recent years. The main thing that makes me want linux ecosystems to be used is that at least they are slowly improving, not simply positioning for a rent-seeking position in the 'market'.

Re: PSA: Intel Graphics Drivers Now Collect Telemetry by Default

#412

Post by NoGravitas »

o1y32 wrote: post #153
inktype wrote: post #31

Windows and its ecosystem have already become a telemetry monster; if you're fine with everything else, you ought to be fine with this. The linked Intel support page shows the simple instructions for opting out of the telemetry. Having said that, 2022 was already the year of the Linux desktop. Everything works. KDE gets better every week. Be the owner of your technology. Join us!

> Everything just works No it doesn't. Every Linux desktop requires me to spend hours tweaking things or finding workarounds to make it usable for myself. Window management is horrible compared to other OS. Fractional scaling mostly doesn't work. The Pomodoro timer in the "Software" store is no longer maintained and doesn't work at all on the latest Gnome. (Windows 11 has it built-in). Even so, I have to live with ce…

To be fair, fractional scaling on Windows is kind of garbage, at least if you don't have the same scaling set on every display. If I have one screen at 100% and one at 125%, any application will look okay only on the display it was started on, and blurry on any others. I don't think the situation is any better on Linux, but I'm pretty sure that as long as you're using Wayland (only), it's not any worse.

Re: PSA: Intel Graphics Drivers Now Collect Telemetry by Default

#413

Post by antoineMoPa »

Aerroon wrote: post #318
antoineMoPa wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would make any site using mixpanel/google analytics/sentry/etc. illegal. Not so easy to enforce.

But these are two very different scenarios though. When I use a website I'm actively interacting with that website. I want something from their web servers. When I'm using an Nvidia graphics card I'm not actively looking to use their web services. I want the graphics card that I bought to work and that's it. The graphics card doesn't improve as a device by connecting to the internet.

But metrics could help nvidia fix issues and add features in the next driver update?

I'm mostly playing devil's advocate here, what I truly think is that all monitoring and analytics should require user approval a bit like cookies. E.g.: you visit a website and it would ask for permission to send monitoring data to listed sites.

Re: PSA: Intel Graphics Drivers Now Collect Telemetry by Default

#414

Post by hardware2win »

gavinhoward wrote: post #403
hardware2win wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would I have to? Concept is solid and stays on its own.

If the concept has had no benefits, then it is not solid and does not stay on its own. Especially if you cannot think of a single example.

I do not follow OSS projects and their decision making processes in order to provide links.

Re: PSA: Intel Graphics Drivers Now Collect Telemetry by Default

#415

Post by JohnFen »

hardware2win wrote: post #390
JohnFen wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What if I collect data about the way you use my software? That's collecting data about me, my machine, or my use of my machine. If you aren't getting people's informed consent before you do this, you're spying. If you have consent, then that's people sharing data with you and isn't spying. > As a dev im using telemetry to provide better product for my users Cool. I'm not saying you shouldn't. I'm just saying that y…

This is not spying. The purpose of spying is to gain advantage over e.g enemies. There is no good faith. The purpose of telemetry is to collect some data about how my product is used in order to make it better. Also telemetry is documented, so it is no secret, but it is just that users dont give a shit. Meanwhile spy tries to be undisclosed as long as possible. Intention makes difference

> There is no good faith.

We in the software industry have already burned that bridge. There's been so much abuse for so long that there can be no reasonable assumption of good faith. Trust now has to be proactively earned.

> Intention makes difference

I disagree. If some guy decided to follow you around and write down every place you go and when you go there, wouldn't you say he's spying on you? Even if he has no ill intent, you can clearly see him doing it, and he literally does nothing with the data he records?

"Spying" is when you're collecting personal data without consent. What that data specifically is and what purpose it's to be put to don't enter into it.

> Also telemetry is documented, so it is no secret

An activity doesn't have to be secret to be spying. And sometimes telemetry is documented, but certainly not always. And often, even when it is, that "documentation" is buried and is hard to find. But regardless, simply documenting a thing is not equivalent to getting consent for the thing.

Think of it this way... why is there so much resistance to getting consent to collect telemetry data? The most common answer I've seen to that question (from the pro-telemetry camp) is "because if we give people a choice, too many will decline to provide telemetry". Which means that they know that lots people don't want this data collected, but want it so badly that they don't care. How in the world is that not spying on people?

Re: PSA: Intel Graphics Drivers Now Collect Telemetry by Default

#416

Post by JohnFen »

Zuiii wrote: post #382
JohnFen wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I prefer "informed consent" over "permission". And even "informed consent" is redundant, as it's not possible to provide real consent if you're not fully informed about what you're being asked to consent to.

Informed _uncoerced_ consent like what we're starting to see thanks to the GDPR ([Allow All] and [Deny All], and not [Yes] [Later] or worse, [Yes] [Back])

I agree -- coerced consent is not actually consent at all.

Re: PSA: Intel Graphics Drivers Now Collect Telemetry by Default

#417

Post by bee_rider »

caeril wrote: post #356
bee_rider wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is unfortunate that people recommended Ubuntu as a starting distro for so long. It does too much. It will update things for you, or give you a pop-up to tell you to update. Updates happen all at once, rather than a little at a time, so you get these big dramatic updates with combinatorial bug explosions. Maybe the repos will be gone if you don’t update in time. Maybe your favorite packages have moved from apt to s…

Agreed, Arch is likely the best introductory option, especially now that archinstall comes with the iso. Dead simple to install, and the documentation is fantastic for setting up the rest of your environment.

Arch is a good into to Linux, for people that want Linux.

It might not be the best for people who want a web browser/computing appliance, but I’m not sure what is, there just might not be a good one yet.

Re: PSA: Intel Graphics Drivers Now Collect Telemetry by Default

#418

Post by wnoise »

hardware2win wrote: post #388
wnoise wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because spying is useful for someone doesn't make it not spying.

This is not spying. The purpose of spying is to gain advantage over e.g enemies. There is no good faith. The purpose of telemetry is to collect some data about how my product is used in order to make it better. Also telemetry is documented, so it is no secret, but it is just that users dont give a shit. Meanwhile spy tries to be undisclosed as long as possible. Intention makes difference

Allies spy on each other all the time.

* https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2013/10/28/241384089/...

* https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d9bp8/us-spies-allies-south...

And good faith and intent is not a sufficient guard.

Intent makes a difference, but it's not magic. It only makes a meaningful difference if it changes what data gets collected and stored. The data gets collected either way. Data breeches happen, and intent isn't stable (or even fully coherent in companies. You might trust them now, but you probably shouldn't trust them a few years down the line. Look at how different google of today acts than the google of 2000.

For the case in point, that data includes "The categories of websites you visit, but not the URL itself, Includes universal plug and play devices and devices that broadcast information to your computer on a local area network: for example, smart TV model and vendor information, and video streaming devices.", so far more than "data about how my product is used in order to make it better". That's some other purpose. We already have evident of bad intent. Bad faith is not at all uncommon with large companies. You do remember the sony rootkit[0], right?

And even with good intent it's easy to overcollect data, because of the fear of missing out on something useful. It really could be useful be useful to see if crashes correlate with other running software, various registry settings, etc, but collecting that absolutely should be considered way beyond the line. (That rootkit was packed with telemetry too, collecting e-mail addresses and listening habits)

Telemetry we _know about_ tends to be documented, however there's an unknown amount of sampling bias. Further, secrecy is not binary, things can be poorly disclosed. I'd argue they often are, with documents that are neither obviously visible nor transparent about what is collected. This is in no way surprising. Disclosure doesn't directly help any bottom line, it just guards against possible reputation and legal damage if it is discovered.

As you say, users mostly don't care. We live in an age of mass surveillance and have raised generations who think it normal.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...

Re: PSA: Intel Graphics Drivers Now Collect Telemetry by Default

#419

Post by hef19898 »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #313
bee_rider wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is unfortunate that people recommended Ubuntu as a starting distro for so long. It does too much. It will update things for you, or give you a pop-up to tell you to update. Updates happen all at once, rather than a little at a time, so you get these big dramatic updates with combinatorial bug explosions. Maybe the repos will be gone if you don’t update in time. Maybe your favorite packages have moved from apt to s…

Please use Ubuntu LTS, you can live with 2-year old versions at its worst, specially when snaps can deliver up-to-date applications. I'm not happy with some of Canonical's decisions, but I can't deny that using LTS as a daily driver is boring because most things just work without fiddling. I don't have as much time to fiddle with the OS nowadays.

My first fall back was to downgrade from 22.04 to 20.04 again. Steam worked fine, wifi worked. I was happy. Until, that is, I tried reinstall Darktable, in version 4.x as that was the one that used for basically all my photo edits in the last year. Turned out Ubuntu 20.04 only supports darktable 3.x, and darktable 4.x edits are not backwards compatible (kind of logic, so the loss of around 100 edits is totally and absolutely on me and only me). For now, I use the Linux installation as my daily (as soon as I re-imported my passwords to Firefox, as of course I lost those as well during reinstall number 3...) and Windows as my gaming "console". Until, that is, the official Steam installer works under 22.04 again. The Steam client from Canonical sucks IMHO.

Re: PSA: Intel Graphics Drivers Now Collect Telemetry by Default

#420

Post by iraqmtpizza »

nwallin wrote: post #383
iraqmtpizza wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

did you have to enter some magic string like ppa:chien that literally no one would ever know

No. They're not in an overlay. They're in the primary, central repo. maven 3.9.4: https://packages.gentoo.org/packages/dev-java/maven-bin gradle 8.2.1: https://packages.gentoo.org/packages/dev-java/gradle-bin ant 1.10.9 (upstream is 1.10.13): https://packages.gentoo.org/packages/dev-java/ant Oddly there's no overlay that has a more up to date version of ant. So even if I did want to enter magic strings, that wouldn't…

lol gentoo. that's not available in debian, bruh
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