Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Minecraft to add telemetry

minecraft.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 126 posts

Re: Minecraft to add telemetry

#101

Post by cesarb »

gtirloni wrote: post #72
ashton314 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> freebsd on a new server It always makes me happy to see how short the list returned from `ps aux` is with FreeBSD. Whereas if you go onto a typical Linux box (even just a raspberry pi!) and run that, you get at least a screenful of processes doing who knows what. (Just my small experience.)

If you install a server distro, the number of default processes is pretty minimal. Run GNOME on FreeBSD and you'll get the same huge list of processes.

> If you install a server distro, the number of default processes is pretty minimal.

It depends on which processes. If you include kernel threads (which show as processes), the number of processes can get pretty huge, especially on many-core servers (several of these kernel threads are per-core).

I don't know whether on FreeBSD kernel threads show up as separate processes; if they don't, it might explain part of the difference.

Re: Minecraft to add telemetry

#102

Post by MikusR »

hulitu wrote: post #53
conradev wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree. Telemetry is invaluable to making software better. Transparency is key here. If projects explained the steps taken to anonymize the data (either provably using Differential Privacy, or approximated via some other means), I feel like people might trust them more. Even with DP, though, the server does see IP addresses, even if it doesn't know what the telemetry is, and that alone might cross the line f…

> I totally agree. Telemetry is invaluable to making software better. Can you give 1(one) example of a program which was improved by using telemetry ? And no, trashing the UI in the name of change or modernism does not count. Thank you.

Office.

Re: Minecraft to add telemetry

#103

Post by skeaker »

swalls wrote: post #86

Even if they're not doing anything nefarious with that data, I'm against telemetry other than crash reports because data driven design makes for boring art.

This assumes that the only bugs or other glaring issues that can be found with telemetry are crashes. There can be non-design-related problems with a program that negatively affect the experience without crashing it that can also only really be found with telemetry.

Re: Minecraft to add telemetry

#104

Post by tomc1985 »

gtirloni wrote: post #72
ashton314 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> freebsd on a new server It always makes me happy to see how short the list returned from `ps aux` is with FreeBSD. Whereas if you go onto a typical Linux box (even just a raspberry pi!) and run that, you get at least a screenful of processes doing who knows what. (Just my small experience.)

If you install a server distro, the number of default processes is pretty minimal. Run GNOME on FreeBSD and you'll get the same huge list of processes.

Not so sure about that, my last fresh install of Ubuntu Server (admittedly like 4-5 years ago now) had several cores hovering in the 20-30% range while idle and nothing was installed on the server yet. "Ooop, guess I'm going back to debian"

Re: Minecraft to add telemetry

#105

Post by tenryuu »

TheFreim wrote: post #74
vitejose wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sure there are real performance improvements by moving to C++, but at the same time, I cannot believe how long this list of differences is. https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Official_pages/Parity_issu... It also doesn’t help that the two versions are separate purchases.

> It also doesn’t help that the two versions are separate purchases. Didn't bedrock edition come for free with windows 10? I have it but I am sure I never paid for it.

For a long period of time, you got a free Windows key for it if you owned a Java license. I do not believe they are continuing this promotion

Re: Minecraft to add telemetry

#106

Post by JohnFen »

drusepth wrote: post #58
sneak wrote: post #10

Are there any products whatsoever that come out of Microsoft that don't contain spyware?

It's not productive to be hyperbolic or reductive. There's a huge difference between telemetry and spyware, especially in this context.

It all depends on if informed consent was obtained first. Anything that is collecting data about me or my use of my machines without my informed consent is spying in any context.

Re: Minecraft to add telemetry

#107

Post by conradev »

JohnFen wrote: post #92
conradev wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree. Telemetry is invaluable to making software better. Transparency is key here. If projects explained the steps taken to anonymize the data (either provably using Differential Privacy, or approximated via some other means), I feel like people might trust them more. Even with DP, though, the server does see IP addresses, even if it doesn't know what the telemetry is, and that alone might cross the line f…

The problem with explanations and promises is that there's a lot of bad water that has flowed under those bridges. They amount to just saying "trust me". As a dev, telemetry makes me nervous because so many projects rely on it too heavily and make bad design decisions because the telemetry blinds them.

Absolutely. There are steps that software can take to build this trust, though, like

- Have a screen that shows all telemetry that is going to be or has been sent

- Ask for permission to send any telemetry, or certain types of telemetry (i.e. crash reports)

– Publicly share the collected telemetry.

Re: Minecraft to add telemetry

#108

Post by conradev »

hulitu wrote: post #53
conradev wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree. Telemetry is invaluable to making software better. Transparency is key here. If projects explained the steps taken to anonymize the data (either provably using Differential Privacy, or approximated via some other means), I feel like people might trust them more. Even with DP, though, the server does see IP addresses, even if it doesn't know what the telemetry is, and that alone might cross the line f…

> I totally agree. Telemetry is invaluable to making software better. Can you give 1(one) example of a program which was improved by using telemetry ? And no, trashing the UI in the name of change or modernism does not count. Thank you.

The word “telemetry” can mean a lot more than “detailed usage data to inform design decisions”

I’m talking extremely basic things, like, what are the most popular crashes in the app? Which did I introduce in the most recent version? Why is there an increase in end to end latency in fetching data from the server? Stuff that would fall under “bug fixes and improvements” that you would likely not notice.

Re: Minecraft to add telemetry

#109

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

dandotway wrote: post #76
ashton314 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> freebsd on a new server It always makes me happy to see how short the list returned from `ps aux` is with FreeBSD. Whereas if you go onto a typical Linux box (even just a raspberry pi!) and run that, you get at least a screenful of processes doing who knows what. (Just my small experience.)

This is also the experience with Ubuntu on Windows WSL: $ ps aux USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND root 1 3.5 0.0 8944 332 ? Ssl 11:38 0:00 /init root 7 0.0 0.0 8944 228 tty1 Ss 11:38 0:00 /init dando 8 1.7 0.0 16804 3396 tty1 S 11:38 0:00 -bash dando 32 0.0 0.0 17392 1916 tty1 R 11:38 0:00 ps aux A strange irony that the most purist Unix-like Linux is to be found in the belly of the Windows beas…

Tip: If a process is a service-host, run `tasklist /svc` and that way you can actually know what's going on in each process.

Re: Minecraft to add telemetry

#110

Post by sli »

pyr0hu wrote: post #44
vkoskiv wrote: post #17

The phrase "...to better understand our [users] and to improve their experience..." always rings alarm bells in my head. It's corporate lingo for "We want to increase profits by selling your private data for as long as we can get away with it."

What private data would you get by tracking minecraft players?

First one that immediately comes to mind is knowing when a person has leisure time. Since email is also known, this gets added to whatever body of data that's been collected on the person with that email. You can already make some inferences about a person just based on when they have leisure time, before you even add it to the existing body of data.
Post reply on HN