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Oculess – Removes account requirements and telemetry from Oculus Quest devices

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Re: Oculess – Removes account requirements and telemetry from Oculus Quest devices

#141

Post by girvo »

akerl_ wrote: post #107
malermeister wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your interaction with facebook is 100% voluntarily It is not. They used their money and power to hire some of the brightest minds in VR to design hardware and to create exclusivity deals with some of the best developers. I either take facebook's offering or I don't have access to those things at all. > With the government you have no room for flexibility. You do. You can "say bye!" as you phrased it and move to ano…

Yes. If you choose not to take Facebook’s offering, you don’t get access to the things they and others build for their product. Do we want to make exclusivity deals between businesses illegal?

> Do we want to make exclusivity deals between businesses illegal?

In certain circumstances, we already do (kind of): FRAND licensing for technical standards are a good example.

Re: Oculess – Removes account requirements and telemetry from Oculus Quest devices

#142

Post by girvo »

systemvoltage wrote: post #140
paranoidrobot wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just don’t buy their product. That works in theory, but in practice when all the products from all the vendors work that way, you no longer have a choice. Plenty of examples like that - Try buying a TV that's not a "smart" TV nowdays, you basically can't. If you want a good quality picture, then it's also coming with telemetry and in many cases advertisements, too.

Yet we refused to accept that Twitter/FB are public squares. "Just stop using it" or "It's a private company, they can ban anyone they like". Well, how is it not a public square when often official government agencies publish information exclusively on Twitter, which is starting to require accounts with phone numbers? I see these contradictory narratives on HN.

> I see these contradictory narratives on HN.

Of course you do. HN (or any platform) is not a monolith with a single opinion. I see this argument all the time, and it baffles me

Re: Oculess – Removes account requirements and telemetry from Oculus Quest devices

#143

Post by systemvoltage »

girvo wrote: post #142
systemvoltage wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet we refused to accept that Twitter/FB are public squares. "Just stop using it" or "It's a private company, they can ban anyone they like". Well, how is it not a public square when often official government agencies publish information exclusively on Twitter, which is starting to require accounts with phone numbers? I see these contradictory narratives on HN.

> I see these contradictory narratives on HN. Of course you do. HN (or any platform) is not a monolith with a single opinion. I see this argument all the time, and it baffles me

Just pointing out the incongruent bias, sorry for baffling you.

Re: Oculess – Removes account requirements and telemetry from Oculus Quest devices

#144

Post by mmis1000 »

reilly3000 wrote: post #115
rhacker wrote: post #15

Facebook keeps asking Congress to make laws. How about this one: Peripherals, including mice, monitors, keyboards, VR headsets or any other device used to process input or output from a computer, may NOT be connected to any cloud service with an account. Any such cloud connections MUST be for software updates only and software updates MUST be capable of permanent opt-out without any loss of usage. I mean I grew up wi…

I hate to break it to you, but Logitech now runs always-on ‘Cloud Settings’ sync and telemetry software called Logi Options. It comes with a way to use a mouse across devices seamlessly (Flow) which requires low-level networking permissions and a daemon on all participating devices. It’s not required that you have an account or even use the software, but of course they actively push all of the above and require it to…

It's actually totally a scam. the setting file lies plainly in your c:/users//appdata/roaming/logishrd/logiOptions

And they are just plain xml file that are not even being encrypted.

Re: Oculess – Removes account requirements and telemetry from Oculus Quest devices

#145

Post by ladberg »

ziml77 wrote: post #129
reilly3000 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to break it to you, but Logitech now runs always-on ‘Cloud Settings’ sync and telemetry software called Logi Options. It comes with a way to use a mouse across devices seamlessly (Flow) which requires low-level networking permissions and a daemon on all participating devices. It’s not required that you have an account or even use the software, but of course they actively push all of the above and require it to…

Razer is even worse than a mandatory account. When you connect a Razer device (including changing the port it's plugged into), Windows will try to execute the Razer software installer. It's really annoying.

To make it worse, the installer that's automatically downloaded and run has admin permissions and could be exploited to gain admin access on any Windows computer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28273283

Re: Oculess – Removes account requirements and telemetry from Oculus Quest devices

#146

Post by spurgu »

akerl_ wrote: post #36
rhacker wrote: post #15

Facebook keeps asking Congress to make laws. How about this one: Peripherals, including mice, monitors, keyboards, VR headsets or any other device used to process input or output from a computer, may NOT be connected to any cloud service with an account. Any such cloud connections MUST be for software updates only and software updates MUST be capable of permanent opt-out without any loss of usage. I mean I grew up wi…

Why is it desirable for Congress to make laws limiting how electronics manufacturers can design their electronics? If Facebook wants to make a VR headset that requires that you upload a monthly video of you doing the chicken dance, just don’t buy their product. Attempting to use government to make private entities build the kinds of technology you like is a pretty heavy hammer to drop on individual freedoms.

I'm right now watching "The Billion Dollar Code" on Netflix and due to that I have an answer readily at hand: Someone needs to stand up to the big guys exerting excessive power and force[0].

[0] This phenomenom is inherent to and a natural byproduct of a free market, which is why regulation and laws are essential to keep some sort of balance.

Re: Oculess – Removes account requirements and telemetry from Oculus Quest devices

#147

Post by AlexandrB »

sgregnt wrote: post #95
malermeister wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because government power is not the only power capable of suppressing individual freedoms. Corporate power is too and we need the government to keep it in check. Case in point, Facebook trying to restrict how you use hardware you own.

The example with facebook is quite different from Gov. Your interaction with facebook is 100% voluntarily, you don't like facebook then you can say bye! With the government you have no room for flexibility.

Every time this comes up, I have to point out that Facebook will collect information about you and build a "shadow profile" even if you never visit their site once. There's no foolproof way I know of to get them to stop either. Interaction with Facebook is voluntarily in the theoretical sense that you could try to avoid every website with a Facebook tracker or hope your ad-blocker is good enough to stop them. But Facebook won't respect signals (such as DNT) that would indicate that you don't want to interact with them.

Re: Oculess – Removes account requirements and telemetry from Oculus Quest devices

#148

Post by porknubbins »

rhacker wrote: post #15

Facebook keeps asking Congress to make laws. How about this one: Peripherals, including mice, monitors, keyboards, VR headsets or any other device used to process input or output from a computer, may NOT be connected to any cloud service with an account. Any such cloud connections MUST be for software updates only and software updates MUST be capable of permanent opt-out without any loss of usage. I mean I grew up wi…

I agree with the spirit of the rule but that seems too restrictive to freedom to contract. I feel like there will always be a market solution for peripherals where someone is selling them unrestricted. With VR is the issue not that the business model itself is still not good so FB was kind of subsidising the Oculus? If VR were highly profitable it seems like other companies with less restrictive terms would come in.

Re: Oculess – Removes account requirements and telemetry from Oculus Quest devices

#149

Post by marticode »

dylan604 wrote: post #6
fartcannon wrote: post #3

Stuff like this is great fun, but if we just don't buy things from known bad actors in the first place, we can save ourselves the trouble of playing whack-a-mole.

This is similar to iOS or Android. You can stand on your soapbox and preach to the choir, but at the end of the day there is only so many choices. I like this solution because you still get to use the hardware and use the apps, but it denies the overlords of the thing they want the most.

This is not quite similar because there are VR headsets from several manufacturers that don't come with a mandatory social network login attached. (in fact FB is the only one that does)

Even with Android vs iOS, they aren't quite the same because Android clearly gives you more control and freedom as a consumer. If you care about any of this at least don't buy the worse offender.

Re: Oculess – Removes account requirements and telemetry from Oculus Quest devices

#150

Post by satellite2 »

akerl_ wrote: post #36
rhacker wrote: post #15

Facebook keeps asking Congress to make laws. How about this one: Peripherals, including mice, monitors, keyboards, VR headsets or any other device used to process input or output from a computer, may NOT be connected to any cloud service with an account. Any such cloud connections MUST be for software updates only and software updates MUST be capable of permanent opt-out without any loss of usage. I mean I grew up wi…

Why is it desirable for Congress to make laws limiting how electronics manufacturers can design their electronics? If Facebook wants to make a VR headset that requires that you upload a monthly video of you doing the chicken dance, just don’t buy their product. Attempting to use government to make private entities build the kinds of technology you like is a pretty heavy hammer to drop on individual freedoms.

Because different people have different expectations for a given product and some level of expertise is required to understand basic requirements which most people don't have.

For instance most people don't know what is an acceptable level for various pollutants in drinking water. As such if there was no government oversight most people would be happy drinking poluted water and the few that care wouldn't be serviced as the cost of cleaning water for a niche wouldn't make it profitable. But hopefully we have laws that dictate safe levels and vendors have to respect them.

For hardware it's the same, experts are pretty clear about the risks: at the most basic level if hardware stop to function when some server crash then the whole society becomes dependant on this and as such any outages starts to have catastrophic consequences by domino effect. On the spying activity linked to those accounts the risk is pretty clear as well: it opens people to leaks of intimate details about their life to Facebook employees and various hackers in case of failure.

So it seems clear that public safety would require making those two activities illegal.

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