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Performance and telemetry analysis of Trae IDE, ByteDance's VSCode fork

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Re: Performance and telemetry analysis of Trae IDE, ByteDance's VSCode fork

#181
post #99

Why do people use obvious spyware when free software exists?

Yes, why do people use products from Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, ...

Because the alternatives suck.

In this case, the software being analyzed is the alternative that sucks.

Re: Performance and telemetry analysis of Trae IDE, ByteDance's VSCode fork

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't pay any attention to people giving you shit for using translation software. A lot of us sometimes forget that the whole world knows a little English and most of us native speakers have a ridiculous luxury in getting away with being two lazy to learn a few other languages.

I wasn't annoyed about it, I just said it might be good to mention because people will notice anyway, and at this point there's enough AI slop around that it can make people automatically ignore it so it would be good to explain that. I'm surprised I got downvotes and pushback for this, I thought it was a common view that it's good to disclose this kind of thing and I thought I was polite about it

To be clear I think this has good information and I upvoted it, it’s just that as someone else said it’s good to get ahead of anyone who won’t like it by explaining why and also it can feel a little disingenuous otherwise (I don’t like getting other people to phrase things for me either for this reason but maybe that’s just me)

Re: Performance and telemetry analysis of Trae IDE, ByteDance's VSCode fork

#183
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately opt-in telemetry is like no telemetry at all. Defaults matter.

No telemetry at all is a good thing to some (most?) people.

Telemetry can be implemented well. The software you use gets bugs fixed much faster since you get statistics that some bugs have higher impact than others. The more users software has, less skills they have in average to accurately report any issues.

Re: Performance and telemetry analysis of Trae IDE, ByteDance's VSCode fork

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telemetry isn't the same thing as spying on the user. People use it because it's not actually spying on them.

It is literally spying on the user. Unless you're somehow saying telemetry doesn't report anything about what a user is doing to it's home server.

If anything it is spying on the application itself. This is limited in scope compared to spyware which is software which spies on users themselves.

Re: Performance and telemetry analysis of Trae IDE, ByteDance's VSCode fork

#185
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like Signal users. The only thing it signals is that the user is interesting. There is also a reason why it is not allowed for classified use.

This isn't true, this is the sort of toxic "if I have nothing to hide then why value privacy" ideology that got us into this privacy nightmare. Every single person has "something to hide", and that's normal. It's normal to not want your messages snooped through. It doesn't mean you're a criminal, or even computer-saavy.

Mhhh it is not really about “nothing to hide”, it was more that if you use niche services targeted at privacy, it puts a big target on you.

Like the Casio watches, travelling to Syria, using Tor, Protonmail, etc…

When it is better in reality to have a regular watch, a Gmail with encrypted .zip files or whatever, etc.

It does not mean you are a criminal if you have that Casio watch, but if you have this, plus encrypted emails, plus travel to some countries as a tourist, you are almost certain to put yourself in trouble for nothing, while you tried to protect yourself.

And if you are a criminal, you will put yourself in trouble too, also for nothing, while you tried to protect yourself.

This was the basis of Xkeyscore, and all of that to say that Signal is one very good signal that the person may be interesting.

Re: Performance and telemetry analysis of Trae IDE, ByteDance's VSCode fork

#187
post #136
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my mind, the difference is that spying does or can contain PII, or PII can be inferred from it, where telemetry is incapable of being linked to an individual, to a reasonable extent.

Every single piece of telemetry sent over the internet includes PII - the IP address of the sender - by virtue of how our internet protocols are designed.

This is like saying every physical business is collecting PII because employees can technically take a photo of a customer. It's hard to do business without the possibility of collecting PII.

Re: Performance and telemetry analysis of Trae IDE, ByteDance's VSCode fork

#188
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No telemetry at all is a good thing to some (most?) people.

Telemetry can be implemented well. The software you use gets bugs fixed much faster since you get statistics that some bugs have higher impact than others. The more users software has, less skills they have in average to accurately report any issues.

> The software you use gets bugs fixed much faster since you get statistics that some bugs have higher impact than others.

Try talking to your users instead.

> The more users software has, less skills they have in average to accurately report any issues.

No amount of telemetry will solve that.

Re: Performance and telemetry analysis of Trae IDE, ByteDance's VSCode fork

#189
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't true, this is the sort of toxic "if I have nothing to hide then why value privacy" ideology that got us into this privacy nightmare. Every single person has "something to hide", and that's normal. It's normal to not want your messages snooped through. It doesn't mean you're a criminal, or even computer-saavy.

Mhhh it is not really about “nothing to hide”, it was more that if you use niche services targeted at privacy, it puts a big target on you. Like the Casio watches, travelling to Syria, using Tor, Protonmail, etc… When it is better in reality to have a regular watch, a Gmail with encrypted .zip files or whatever, etc. It does not mean you are a criminal if you have that Casio watch, but if you have this, plus encrypte…

1. I don't really think this is true generally.

2. Using a secure, but niche, service is still more secure than using a service with no privacy.

Sure, you can argue using Signal puts a "target" on your back. But there's nothing to target, right? Because it's not being run by Google or Meta. What are they gonna take? There's no data to leak about you.

If I were a criminal, which I'm not, I'd rather rob a bank with an actual gun than with a squirt gun. Even though having an actual gun puts a bigger target on your back. Because the actual gun works - the squirt gun is just kinda... useless.

Re: Performance and telemetry analysis of Trae IDE, ByteDance's VSCode fork

#190
post #135
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disabling telemetry might be interpreted as a self-indicated signal of "I have something to hide", so they jack up the snooping.

Or "I'm a power user" of sorts. Probably a very small minority of users fiddle that setting. Dang said a similarly small minority of users here do all the commenting.

This is true of practically every online community. The vast majority of the users are passive participants, a small fraction contribute, and a small subset of contributors generate most of the content. Reddit is a prime example of this, the numbers are incredibly lopsided there.
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