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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?

#151

Post by RealStickman_ »

csmattryder wrote: post #91
nathanaldensr wrote: post #71

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…

Ha, vindication. I posted a while back about I used to use OpenSnitch to block VS Code's telemetry requests. One of the comments mentioned that there's already a setting to disable it, ain't that enough..?! I'm once again recommending OpenSnitch: because Microsoft won't take "No" for an answer. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30865152

I'll recommend VS Codium instead of VS Code then. It provides fully open source binaries of VS Code without all the telemetry enabled.

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

#152

Post by westurner »

fariszr wrote: post #143
nathanaldensr wrote: post #71

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/

Here's open-vsx's page for the Microsoft/vscode-jupyter extension: https://open-vsx.org/extension/ms-toolsai/jupyter

I think it's great that open license terms enable these sorts of forks and experiments so that the community can work together by sending pull requests.

Is there a good way to install code-server (hosted VSCode/vscodium in a browser tab) plugins from openvsx?

(E.g. the ml-workspace and ml-hub containers include code-server and SSH, which should be remotely-usable from vscodium?)

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

#153

Post by hajile »

belter wrote: post #46
edgyquant wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay but companies don’t just add telemetry because it’s a fun and exciting engineering challenge. They do so for legitimate engineering and business reasons. These solutions have privacy nuance they are not black and white/evil v good

Enabled by default -> Bad Give user option to enable to improve product -> Good

Not to mention that if you do anything requiring security, then this all becomes a giant nightmare that results in the entire editor and toolchain being disallowed.

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

#154

Post by hajile »

mmebane wrote: post #106

The extension author docs [1] say that extensions _should_ obey the global setting, even if using their own telemetry libraries: > Extension authors who wish not to use Application Insights can utilize their own custom solution to send telemetry. In this case, it is still required that extension authors respect the user's choice by utilizing the isTelemetryEnabled and onDidChangeTelemetryEnabled API. I suppose the qu…

I can't take a "maybe it does what it says" to my boss and expect approval to use that extension. It might be different if the license didn't agree to telemetry, but that means they can't even sue if the extension leaks private or secure information.

That's a legal minefield.

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

#155

Post by kahrl »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #115
fragmede wrote: post #114

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.

I do not understand this. Because this mythical moronic figure everyone in this thread is talking about doesn't account for confounding variables, telemetry is just bad generally?

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

#156

Post by kylehotchkiss »

treesknees wrote: post #136
pleb_nz wrote: post #134

What we need, and this may already exist, is away to sanbox apps with the ability to firewall of incoming and outgoing http request. Does this exist? What would be even better was a solution that had profiles for common usages and apps, and the profiles could be created by all and shared via a community or repo and could be extended and tweaked. Does this exist, is it feasible, or does anyone have a better simpler id…

On MacOS you can use Little Snitch [1] to do exactly this. You can watch all network connections per app, even grab a pcap of traffic just for the app as well. You can setup restrictions to block incoming and outgoing traffic. It basically is a per-app firewall. [1] https://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html

I just came here to ask how Little Snitch can disable these. Do you know which domains are specific for telemetry in VSC?

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

#157

Post by [deleted] »

nathanaldensr wrote: post #71

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?

#158

Post by naikrovek »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #118
ctrlmeta wrote: post #61

I am one of those who began coding in Notepad and then quickly moved on to Vim and then to Emacs. When the whole world of internet services began consolidating around the web and then later when the whole web began consolidating around a few powerful walled gardens, I saw how these trends began chipping away at our anonymity, privacy, web performance and software performance. Computers are ubiquitous but privacy is u…

Right? It's baffling. I still don't understand why developers use Microsoft tools. At all. About the only valid use case I can think of is creating Windows native apps and _maybe_ testing on IE/Edge. Otherwise, why? Just why would you wade in the shit when there's a lovely clean pool right over there?

> Just why would you wade in the shit when there's a lovely clean pool right over there?

this pool isn't filled with shit, and the water over there isn't very clean, thats why.

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

#159

Post by capableweb »

welder wrote: post #135
capableweb wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably true that many Visual Studio Code extensions are Open Source, but there are plenty that are not. Here is one from a random person on the internet which has the license "All rights reserved": https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=LiamNevi... Here is another by Adobe that doesn't have a license linked to it (presumed proprietary): https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=com-adob.…

Sorry, I meant you could see the source code not the source code's license.

That too seems to be only true in most cases but not all. How could I inspect the code of the Adobe extension linked above before installing it in Visual Studio Code for example? There doesn't seem to be any links to the actual code for it.

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

#160

Post by Tijdreiziger »

fariszr wrote: post #143
nathanaldensr wrote: post #71

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/

> Even though we do not pass the telemetry build flags (and go out of our way to cripple the baked-in telemetry), Microsoft will still track usage by default.

source: https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/DOCS.md

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