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Wacom tablets track every app you open

robertheaton.com

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Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#251

Post by JohnFen »

hnick wrote: post #233
JohnFen wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder what the comfortable medium between privacy and letting developers get feedback about how well their code works is. I consider the nut of the problem to be informed consent. If you have user's informed consent to get the feedback, then there is no problem. If you don't, then the whole operation is unacceptable. And no, mentioning it in the privacy policy or terms of use don't count as "informed consent".

This would be a real challenge for some companies. Having a clear privacy policy creates a hard dependency between it and the code. And developers are notorious for not even being able to keep comments updated along with their code changes. It's not impossible at all, just in the current state of the industry there's a good reason we have vague agreements (also including good old-fashioned laziness, of course). It'd…

> This would be a real challenge for some companies.

Tough. If a company can't do it the right way, they shouldn't do it at all.

> in the current state of the industry there's a good reason we have vague agreements

Well, I guess that depends on your point of view. I see no good reason for this, but I have no doubt that the various companies do see a good reason by their definitions.

You're right about the current state of the industry, but the current state of the industry is a travesty.

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#252

Post by nerdponx »

bsanr2 wrote: post #234
sizzle wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"just to make somebody with a limited lifespan feel powerful and rich." Wow that last sentence really puts things into perspective. How can be reverse course and throw a wrench in the system? We are the makers, we should be able to wrestle back control and do it democratically and get politicians on our side to legislate this ad industry into the ground.

Quickest thing you can do is quit your jobs en masse. At some index level of number of people * avg skill of people quitting, the industry becomes nonviable. Then you state your terms. Sounds like a union? Also sounds like Galt's Gulch. Weird dovetail, there. The kicker is that tech workers are in a FAR better position than the other groups that are pushing or considering a general strike. I suppose that makes the pr…

This. Tech workers need to organize. Unfortunately you have to convince tech workers that moral duty to society is better than their comfortable high-salary lifestyles, and good luck with that.

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#254

Post by bigiain »

sizzle wrote: post #224
bitL wrote: post #223

It looks like everything in tech got poisoned, smart TVs taking screenshots, web apps tracking and matching user clicks, smartphones tracking locations realtime and who knows what else, desktop apps monitoring other apps and peripherals, creepy companies building profiles on everyone, health institutions selling data of their users... I want out, I didn't get into this field, keeping myself up-to-date and super capab…

"just to make somebody with a limited lifespan feel powerful and rich." Wow that last sentence really puts things into perspective. How can be reverse course and throw a wrench in the system? We are the makers, we should be able to wrestle back control and do it democratically and get politicians on our side to legislate this ad industry into the ground.

> "just to make somebody with a limited lifespan feel powerful and rich."

> How can be reverse course and throw a wrench in the system?

We start by taking the guillotines down to Sand Hill Road.

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#255

Post by nerdponx »

prawn wrote: post #248
Seenso wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

How much of this is feature creep when teams feel obliged to keep adding more and more to justify their jobs? Let's say you work for Samsung in their TV software division. Other than incremental upgrades in screen technology coming through for you to accommodate, what else can you keep pushing through the pipeline to impress your managers? Maybe smart TV features are the low hanging fruit for these employees? I mean,…

It's not to impress managers, it's to make more money. And most tech employees just don't care enough (or even have enough of a moral compass) to protest. Paycheck first, ethics second.

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#256

Post by ssss11 »

bitL wrote: post #223

It looks like everything in tech got poisoned, smart TVs taking screenshots, web apps tracking and matching user clicks, smartphones tracking locations realtime and who knows what else, desktop apps monitoring other apps and peripherals, creepy companies building profiles on everyone, health institutions selling data of their users... I want out, I didn't get into this field, keeping myself up-to-date and super capab…

Well put, I’m ashamed at the current state of our industry.

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#257

Post by nerdponx »

catalogia wrote: post #245
Polylactic_acid wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux purposely makes proprietary drivers crap. The kernel offers no stable binary interface so drivers become broken every single time linux updates unless the drivers get compiled as part of the kernel. This forces manufacturers to either decide that they will open source the drivers, not have any at all or put in the work to keep them up to date every release. It seems like forcing the all or nothing choice made a…

> Linux purposely makes proprietary drivers crap. As the situation on windows shows us, the alternative is drivers that are crap for other reasons. If Linux offered a stable binary interface for drivers, we'd have proprietary drivers that "worked" but were nevertheless still crap insofar as they were essentially malware, as is the case with this wacom driver.

A standardized ABI does not inevitably lead to malware closed drivers. That's a ridiculous assertion.

Device managers don't care about Linux anyway, and wouldn't suddenly start caring if Linux announced a stable ABI.

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#258

Post by thenewnewguy »

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #206
babypuncher wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source drivers are rare on Windows because manufacturers almost always ship proprietary drivers that are good enough, and Windows users clearly have no issues running closed-source software. Proprietary drivers on Linux are often crap, if they even exist at all.

>Proprietary drivers on Linux are often crap, if they even exist at all. Not so with Nvidia GPUs. The open drivers are awful; the proprietary drivers are good. (But IS the case with AMD GPUs, to the point where the proprietary driver seems to perform worse[0] and everyone pretends it doesn't even exist, which is upside down unintuitive coming from A.) Windows and B.) Nvidia.) 0: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page…

> Not so with Nvidia GPUs. The open drivers are awful; the proprietary drivers are good.

Good by comparison to nouveau (the open source driver) perhaps, but definitely not good compared to the open source intel/AMD drivers.

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#259

Post by nerdponx »

a_e_k wrote: post #197
Kalium wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That assumes a great deal about both the resources available to do it and the ability to get responses from a representative sample of customers. It's not challenging to see why someone might choose a one-time cost in software engineering over an ongoing cost in communication.

I really like the approach that the Steam survey uses which blends engineering and communication: 1) Pop up and ask for permission to scan the machine. 2) Show the data collected that will be sent back and give a second chance to decline. 3) Allow everyone to see the aggregate results. Being mostly automated, it's lower friction than a manual Q&A survey. But it also feels way more respectful that trying to snoop arou…

This. You aren't asking for vague blanket permission, nor are you asking for the user to manually fill out a survey. And you give them the opportunity to review what they're about to send.

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#260

Post by TeMPOraL »

sizzle wrote: post #224
bitL wrote: post #223

It looks like everything in tech got poisoned, smart TVs taking screenshots, web apps tracking and matching user clicks, smartphones tracking locations realtime and who knows what else, desktop apps monitoring other apps and peripherals, creepy companies building profiles on everyone, health institutions selling data of their users... I want out, I didn't get into this field, keeping myself up-to-date and super capab…

"just to make somebody with a limited lifespan feel powerful and rich." Wow that last sentence really puts things into perspective. How can be reverse course and throw a wrench in the system? We are the makers, we should be able to wrestle back control and do it democratically and get politicians on our side to legislate this ad industry into the ground.

First step would be to kill advertising-based models. Get them banned. Because it's the advertising industry's race to the bottom that poisons everything, and fuels the creation of surveillance infrastructure. With ad-related snooping gone, it will be much easier to rein in the remaining few players who misuse data in pursuit of optimizing their business models.

(And yes, I know ads enable a lot of free content on-line. But as countless problems like this show, it's a bad tradeoff.)

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