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VS Code – What's the deal with the telemetry?

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Re: VS Code – What's the deal with the telemetry?

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just fix your marketplace settings and use official plugins :) https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/DOCS.md#ext...

Does VScodium support WSL now ? I need windows unfortunately for office apps.

Remote-WSL (and all other remote plugins) plugin is proprietary MS plugin, so no.

You can go a bit different way: run code-server or OpenVSCode Server in WSL and open them in a browser.

Re: VS Code – What's the deal with the telemetry?

#142

A warning for people who, like me, long ago disabled telemetry in Visual Studio Code: Microsoft introduced a new setting that deprecates the two older settings... and the new setting defaults to "all" [1]. I just noticed this now after double-checking my settings. Sneaky, sneaky, Microsoft (but still totally expected). [1] https://imgur.com/a/RbrsuyA You will want these three settings in your default settings JSON (t…

[deleted]

Re: VS Code – What's the deal with the telemetry?

#143

A warning for people who, like me, long ago disabled telemetry in Visual Studio Code: Microsoft introduced a new setting that deprecates the two older settings... and the new setting defaults to "all" [1]. I just noticed this now after double-checking my settings. Sneaky, sneaky, Microsoft (but still totally expected). [1] https://imgur.com/a/RbrsuyA You will want these three settings in your default settings JSON (t…

Or just use VSCodium, the actually open source build, with no added closed source blobs and of course no telemetry.

It uses https://open-vsx.org, an open source host for VSX plugins.

https://vscodium.com/

Re: VS Code – What's the deal with the telemetry?

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Telemetry is godsend for developers, since it lets them track down actual product usage This is is actually a terrible trap, as product usage tells you next to nothing about which features are useful. I suspect it' a big part of why a lot of software has turned to shit last decade or so. Look at it this way: Your average fire extinguisher sits mounted on a wall its entire life and is never actually used. You still…

Why are we just focused on the "stupid" developer here - the sort who thinks your later "wow the 'close popup' button is so popular" example is a good reason to add more popups? Do we think the people making calls like that would suddenly have great ideas in the absence of data? Meanwhile, there are plenty of folks out there who can reason about data in less blindly idiotic ways.

> Do we think the people making calls like that would suddenly have great ideas in the absence of data?

Personally, I would be so bold to suggest that yes the availability of data for people ill equipped to interpret it can lead to WORSE decisions than the absence of data.

That is because statistics and the general skill to correctly interpret data is actively counterintuitive. Untrained people will be more likely to generate wrong conclusions than right conclusions.

So, yes data in the wrong hands can and will be harmful.

Re: VS Code – What's the deal with the telemetry?

#146
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Telemetry is godsend for developers, since it lets them track down actual product usage This is is actually a terrible trap, as product usage tells you next to nothing about which features are useful. I suspect it' a big part of why a lot of software has turned to shit last decade or so. Look at it this way: Your average fire extinguisher sits mounted on a wall its entire life and is never actually used. You still…

> This is is actually a terrible trap, as product usage tells you next to nothing about which features are useful. I suspect it' a big part of why a lot of software has turned to shit last decade or so. This seems exactly backwards to me. No one who has ever managed a deployed product with good failure telemetry would say that it tells you "next to nothing". Telemetry detects failures that mere testing simply never c…

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Re: VS Code – What's the deal with the telemetry?

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software is still killing people despite telemetry. Look at Tesla's autopilot.

I don't know if that's an interesting data point. Humans are terrible at driving cars. AIs are terrible at driving cars. I'm not sure that Tesla is obviously doing a sub-par job here, as it's a challenging problem space. The main effect of the telemetry in self-driving cars is that we can all Monday morning quarterback the exact defect that caused a particular crash. With human drivers, we don't have as much data to…

> I don't know if that's an interesting data point.

And people are terrible at putting in the wrong coordinates or dosages in medicinal machines. It's as interesting a data point as the Therac.

> The main effect of the telemetry in self-driving cars is that we can all Monday morning quarterback the exact defect that caused a particular crash.

Unnecessary, and has been unnecessary for almost as long as we've had cars. Investigators (the NTSB) are fantastic at looking at wrecks and determining the underlying cause, even in the absence of the black and red boxes. There's no need for always-on-always-phoning-home telemetry.

And this is where I get annoyed - there's no value in companies having that data when their most public use of it is to get popular opinion on their side in a fatal wreck.

Seriously, fuck Elon Musk for that horseshit.

Re: VS Code – What's the deal with the telemetry?

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"trap". If feature A has 100% of users using it and feature B has 0%, what should I, as the app developer spend my time working on?

If your application keeps opening popups all the time, I will use the close popup button very often. Doesn't mean I enjoy closing your popups or want to have to close them. The only reason I'm using the feature is to get around an annoyance in your hypothetical application. Frequent use of a feature is just as much a signal that the feature is an obstacle as it is a signal that the feature is beneficial.

Exactly. If I use feature X very often, that can be because:

* Feature X is good and I like to use it.

* Or feature X is broken so I have to try multiple times.

* Or feature Y is broken so I have to try using another feature instead.

Like, most of the times I open a settings window it's not because I like settings but because the program is not good enough as it is. Or if I follow a lot of links on your web page, it might not be because I like your web page but because I'm unable to find what I'm looking for.

Re: VS Code – What's the deal with the telemetry?

#149

> Are there more privacy-focused alternatives to VS Code? Sure, Sublime Text.

VS Codium https://vscodium.com/

How often is this updated? I looked at it previously but there were enough caveats/comments to make me weary on using it. I checked the website too but couldnt get (or missed) a definitive answer

Re: VS Code – What's the deal with the telemetry?

#150

A warning for people who, like me, long ago disabled telemetry in Visual Studio Code: Microsoft introduced a new setting that deprecates the two older settings... and the new setting defaults to "all" [1]. I just noticed this now after double-checking my settings. Sneaky, sneaky, Microsoft (but still totally expected). [1] https://imgur.com/a/RbrsuyA You will want these three settings in your default settings JSON (t…

Futhermore, by the time humans react and disable the telemetry, things like system information and non-real time telemetry is already uploaded to Microsoft.

The case that we allow users to control privacy needs to be scrutinized more.

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