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GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

cli.github.com

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Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#221

Post by embedding-shape »

johnfn wrote: post #208
embedding-shape wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure, you can spend the weeks to months of expensive and time consuming work it takes to get a fuzzy, half accurate and biased picture of what your users workflows look like through user interviews and surveys. Or you can look at the analytics, which tell you everything you need to know immediately, always up to date, with perfect precision. Yes, admittedly, the first time you do these things, they're difficult, ha…

You seem to be interpreting my position as saying that one should only use telemetry to make decisions. Of course, no one reasonable would hold that position! What I’m saying is that only relying on user interviews without supplementing them with analytics would be knowingly introducing a blind spot into how you understand user behavior.

Yes, probably because someone else said "If you dont have analytics you are flying blind" which I initially replied to, then when you replied to my reply, I took that as agreeing with parent, which isn't necessarily true.

> What I’m saying is that only relying on user interviews without supplementing them

I also took your "spend the weeks to months of expensive and time consuming work [...] Or you can look at the analytics" as a "either this or that proposition", where if we're making that choice, I'd go with qualitative data rather than quantitative, regardless of time taken. But probably it comes down to what tradeoffs we're willing to accept.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#222

Post by 7bit »

jubilanti wrote: post #118
Sytten wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to believe that it was not necessary until I started building my own startup. If you dont have analytics you are flying blind. You don't know what your users actually care about and how to optimize a successful user journey. The difference between what people tell you when asked directly and how they actually use your software is actually shocking.

Wow, it really is sad how literally unthinkable it is to you and so much of the industry that you could actually talk to your users and customers like human beings instead of just data points. And you know what happens when you reach out to talk to your customers like human beings instead of spying on them like animals? They like you more and they raise issues that your telemetry would never even think to measure. It…

Get off your high horse.

Talking to users when you have hundreds of customers does no more than give you an idea of what those specific people need. If you have hundreds of users or more, then data is the only thing that reliably tells you these things.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#223

Post by mckn1ght »

kodablah wrote: post #89
Sytten wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to believe that it was not necessary until I started building my own startup. If you dont have analytics you are flying blind. You don't know what your users actually care about and how to optimize a successful user journey. The difference between what people tell you when asked directly and how they actually use your software is actually shocking.

> If you dont have analytics you are flying blind More like flying based on your knowledge as a pilot and not by the whims of your passengers. For many CLIs and developer tooling, principled decisions need to reign. Accepting the unquantifiability of usage in a principled product is often difficult for those that are not the target demographic, but for developer tools specifically (be they programming languages, CLIs…

Actually it's more like flying in the clouds with no instruments which can lead to spatial disorientation when you exit the cloud cover and realize you're nosediving towards the earth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatial_disorientation

Flying based on the whims of your passengers would be user testing/interviewing, which is a complementary, and IMO necessary, strategy alongside analytics.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#224

Post by bastardoperator »

a2128 wrote: post #14

Why we collect telemetry ...our team needs visibility into how features are being used in practice. We use this data to prioritize our work and evaluate whether features are meeting real user needs. I'm curious why corporate development teams always feel the need to spy on their users? Is it not sufficient to employ good engineering and design practices? Git has served us well for 20+ years without detailed analytics…

You have three features, A, B, and C. They are core features. Two of the features break. How do you prioritize which feature gets fixed first? With telemetry its obvious, without it, you're guessing.

Also, gh cli is not about git, its about the github api. In theory the app has its own user agent and of course their LB is tracking all http requests, so not anonymous ever.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#225

Post by stronglikedan »

a2128 wrote: post #14

Why we collect telemetry ...our team needs visibility into how features are being used in practice. We use this data to prioritize our work and evaluate whether features are meeting real user needs. I'm curious why corporate development teams always feel the need to spy on their users? Is it not sufficient to employ good engineering and design practices? Git has served us well for 20+ years without detailed analytics…

> always feel the need to spy on their users?

If it's truly pseudoanonymous then it's hardly spying, just sayin'...

Others have answered your actual question better than I could have.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#226

Post by groby_b »

junon wrote: post #196
AlotOfReading wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It goes the other way as well. Usage data isn't equivalent to asking users either. A solid percentage of bad decisions in tech can be traced to someone, somewhere forgetting that distinction and trusting usage data that says it's it's okay to remove because it's infrequently used.

This. If I'm forced to use a feature I hate because it's the only way to do something, the "ground truth" reflects that I like that feature. It doesn't tell the whole story.

Most metrics teams are reasonably competent and are aware of that. Excepting "growth hackers"

I haven't been in a single metrics discussion where we didn't talk about what we're actually measuring, if it reflects what we want to measure, and how to counterbalance metrics sufficiently so we don't build yet another growthhacking disaster.

Doesn't mean that metrics are perfect - they are in fact aggravatingly imprecise - but the ground truth is usually somewhat better than "you clicked it, musta liked it!"

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#227

Post by hahn-kev »

ryanshrott wrote: post #155

> you're going to have to opt out of a lot more than this one setting The opt-out situation for gh CLI telemetry is actually trickier than it sounds. gh runs in CI/CD pipelines and server environments where you may not want any outbound connections to github.com at all, not because of privacy but because of networking constraints. In those environments, the telemetry being on by default means your CI fails or your Ba…

Isn't the gh CLI useless if it can't connect to GitHub.com? Or does it work with enterprise GitHub and that's the use case you're talking about.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#228

Post by a_t48 »

xpe wrote: post #126
tornikeo wrote: post #95

Good for GitHub. All companies need this. Some use it to improve products, some use it for less commendable goals. I know HN crowd is allergic to telemetry but if you've ever developed a software as a service, telemetry is indispensable.

Thinking out loud: what are the best practices to vet a tools' telemetry details? The devil is in the details. A quick summary of my Claude-assisted research at the Gist below. Top of mind is some kind of trusted intermediary service with a vested interest in striking a definable middle ground that is good enough for both sides (users and product-builders) Gist: WIP 31 minutes in still cookin'

Hey, please don't blindly paste/post from LLMs, please.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#229

Post by ptx »

Well, that validates my decision not to install it. Of course Microsoft will eventually abuse any trust you place in them and any access you give them. They always do. Don't let Microsoft run code on your machine and don't give them your data.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#230

Post by halapro »

consp wrote: post #113
dualvariable wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it not sufficient to employ good engineering and design practices? Git... Git has horrible design and ergonomics. It is an excellent example of engineers designing interfaces for engineers without a good feedback loop. Ironically, you just proved your point that engineers need to better understand how users are actually using their product, because their mental visualizations of how their product gets used is us…

Apparently I use git wrong since I do not feel this design and ergonomics issue.

How many years of experience with git do you have? How much of git do you use? I bet you use 5 commands and 10 flags at most. Take a look at git's docs
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