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Intel's GPU Drivers Now Collect Telemetry, Including 'How You Use Your Computer'

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111–120 of 184 posts

Re: Intel's GPU Drivers Now Collect Telemetry, Including 'How You Use Your Computer'

#111

I'm not familiar with the details of such things, but would it be possible to "port" the Intel's open source Linux GPU driver to Windows? That would make for a working driver without this junk

Even if you were to overcome the massive hurdle of porting a driver between two completely different kernel architectures, you would not be able to load it without enabling driver testing mode at boot time, or without buying a code signing certificate.

> Even if you were to overcome the massive hurdle of porting a driver between two completely different kernel architectures

Hmm, would that be a massive hurdle? I haven't looked at that driver code, but I have done a lot of driver development for both Windows and Linux, and have ported a number of drivers between the two. Sight unseen, it's not obvious to me that this would be a huge hurdle.

The code signing is an issue, but that's a manageable one.

Re: Intel's GPU Drivers Now Collect Telemetry, Including 'How You Use Your Computer'

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still holding out from the days when basically everyone on the internet understood you shouldn't post intimate details about your life online (the age before social ~~cancer~~ media). I long for a return to common sense. Maybe AI will do the trick, but I doubt it. Plenty of people are happy with behavioral prediction if it means convenience without caring about the implications.

I agree. That said, there's a huge difference between voluntarily offering up personal data in a public forum and having personal data extracted without your consent.

Maybe this is a bit of a hardline stance, but at this point I'd argue that not running extensions like Ublock origin and umatrix is implicit consent to have all that data collected. Not a strongly-held opinion, but boy does it seem like a properly-informed person would use protection to interact online with how diseased the internet has become.

Mind, neither of those are perfect, but they're Pretty Damn Good and everyone should be running something similar at this point.

Re: Intel's GPU Drivers Now Collect Telemetry, Including 'How You Use Your Computer'

#115
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big part of what makes Windows so free and powerful is that it was architected during a time when security simply wasn't a concern. This is good because it enpowers users to use their computers as they see fit, but also bad because with great powers come great responsibilities that are often thrown to the wind. So to answer your question of why, the answer is simply that Windows doesn't care.

> A big part of what makes Windows so free and powerful is that it was architected during a time when security simply wasn't a concern. Wouldn't that be true for BSD and Linux as well? Windows seems to be slow with implementing meaningful security/privacy features to the end user. Windows also has a good track record with backwards compatibility (compared to Linux at least), but that might also be the underlying prob…

> Wouldn't that be true for BSD and Linux as well?

Depends on how it's done, I think. The security story in the unices is better than in Windows, but you can't lock down any system too tightly or it becomes unbearable for most to use.

But if we're talking system-level drivers, they are in effect extensions of the kernel and largely have administrator rights, whether we're talking Windows or *nix.

Re: Intel's GPU Drivers Now Collect Telemetry, Including 'How You Use Your Computer'

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how many people do you see opting out of full body scans at TSA They're all in the pre-check line.

An airline put me in precheck a few years ago due to FF status. Now it requires an application to government and fingerprint. And global entry (immigration) wants an eyeball scan. Biometric collection to avoid a TSA massage is not privacy.

If you want to ALL avoid biometric collection when you travel, you're pretty much out of luck:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biometric_passport#/media/File...

https://www.cbp.gov/travel/biometrics

Re: Intel's GPU Drivers Now Collect Telemetry, Including 'How You Use Your Computer'

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. That said, there's a huge difference between voluntarily offering up personal data in a public forum and having personal data extracted without your consent.

Maybe this is a bit of a hardline stance, but at this point I'd argue that not running extensions like Ublock origin and umatrix is implicit consent to have all that data collected. Not a strongly-held opinion, but boy does it seem like a properly-informed person would use protection to interact online with how diseased the internet has become. Mind, neither of those are perfect, but they're Pretty Damn Good and ever…

> is implicit consent

I fully acknowledge that I'm a hardliner on this issue, but I don't believe that there is any such thing as "implicit consent".

Consent must be intentional, uncoerced, and fully-informed. Otherwise, it's not consent at all.

Re: Intel's GPU Drivers Now Collect Telemetry, Including 'How You Use Your Computer'

#118
post #32
post #14

I don't understand the need to include "the types of websites you visit" in GPU driver telemetry. AMD's telemetry doesn't seem to include that: https://www.amd.com/en/legal/privacy/user-experience-program... I couldn't figure out what telemetry is collected by Nvidia.

>I don't understand the need to include "the types of websites you visit" in GPU driver telemetry. Do you visit Youtube and Twitch other streaming services often? Focus on video decoding. Do you visit sites that heavily utilize graphics[1]? Focus on 3D acceleration. There are reasons this data can be useful, especially since Intel wants to unfuck their otherwise imperially fucked drivers. Websites aren't just plain t…

I know we're supposed to assume good faith here, but it's very hard when we read justifications like this.

Re: Intel's GPU Drivers Now Collect Telemetry, Including 'How You Use Your Computer'

#119
post #13

A terrifying side-effect of AI is that everything is now potential "training data" and there's financial incentive to vacuum up any and all possible data. The situation on Windows is much worse than Chrome extensions (which have been attempting this for awhile) because of the near non-existent permission limits on Windows. I was shocked to learn just yesterday that Nvidia drivers were doing this. It feels extremely g…

"Agree to continue"

Re: Intel's GPU Drivers Now Collect Telemetry, Including 'How You Use Your Computer'

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this is a bit of a hardline stance, but at this point I'd argue that not running extensions like Ublock origin and umatrix is implicit consent to have all that data collected. Not a strongly-held opinion, but boy does it seem like a properly-informed person would use protection to interact online with how diseased the internet has become. Mind, neither of those are perfect, but they're Pretty Damn Good and ever…

> is implicit consent I fully acknowledge that I'm a hardliner on this issue, but I don't believe that there is any such thing as "implicit consent". Consent must be intentional, uncoerced, and fully-informed. Otherwise, it's not consent at all.

Oh, we're on the same page there. It is unjust and amoral that "implicit consent" is assumed when collecting data, but that appears to be how things operate.

We're in the Faustian era of the internet, though. The only winning move is not to play.

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