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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

#271

Post by HomeDeLaPot »

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…

I don't think we have to quit our day jobs to change the world. What we need to do is (1) change the expectations of the public via conversations, activism, migrating away from FB/Google/Microsoft products, etc. and (2) make it easier for people to prioritize privacy by building open-source apps and hardware.

Inspiring examples that I use daily include Linux, git, and Bitwarden.

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#272

Post by taneq »

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…

On the bright side, as biotech advances eventually you’re gonna get rich powerful immortal bosses.

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#273

Post by rhizome »

dontblink wrote: post #263
TeMPOraL wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-li…

So go back to the 90s? Microsoft being the reigning king? Not sure if this time period was honestly better. Or alternatively, give users ownership of their data like the EU has taken steps to do. Advertising is here to stay and provides its own use. But there could be something that forces transparency.

>Not sure if this time period was honestly better.

Canter and Siegel was in 1994.

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#274

Post by bitL »

devteambravo wrote: post #262
TeMPOraL wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-li…

Do you know of anyone working on such an effort?

Self-hosted apps/DApps come to mind however they are still alpha-quality. It might take some time (~5 years) to replace 90% of expected FAANG functionality.

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#275

Post by bitL »

taneq wrote: post #272
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…

On the bright side, as biotech advances eventually you’re gonna get rich powerful immortal bosses.

Oh yes, the best/worst case scenario all at once.

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#276

Post by rhizome »

marta_morena wrote: post #268
II2II wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Wacom's driver an example of excessive monitoring? While the author presents the graphics tablet as a glorified mouse, tablets usually offer many more features. How those features interact with various applications is important, and they have to prioritize which applications they support. The data collection that the author describes may be viewed, internally, as part of that process. Now I am not claiming that Wa…

Or the failure may be on your end, believing that "many people are sensitive to data collection" while in fact, most people don't give a dusty fuck about it and happily share everything for saving a few bucks a month. Hackernews is NOT the people. HN represents a TINY TINY fraction of users.

You're saying this group of "most people" knows what's being sent, that they're exercising informed consent? Surely you aren't hanging this argument on "common sense."

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#277

Post by basicplus2 »

HomeDeLaPot wrote: post #271
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…

I don't think we have to quit our day jobs to change the world. What we need to do is (1) change the expectations of the public via conversations, activism, migrating away from FB/Google/Microsoft products, etc. and (2) make it easier for people to prioritize privacy by building open-source apps and hardware. Inspiring examples that I use daily include Linux, git, and Bitwarden.

The general public are too disinterested to make it possible to convince the majority to change the way they make decisions about software and hardware.

Legislation is the only effective course.

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#278

Post by catalogia »

nerdponx wrote: post #257
catalogia wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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

From what I've seen, facilitating proprietary drivers seems like the motivation of most people lamenting the lack of a stable ABI. An example of this being the comment I responded to; "Linux purposely makes proprietary drivers crap. [...]"

Discounting proprietary drivers under the assumption that they wouldn't be written anyway, what does a stable ABI afford us? Out-of-tree FOSS drivers? In other words, drivers that aren't good enough to be accepted into the kernel?

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#279

Post by Polylactic_acid »

the8472 wrote: post #261
catalogia wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

And yet google is pushing hard to keep ABI stable in the name of extending android support because manufacturers just won't release their SoC drivers.

Probably because desktop users expect their hardware to continue to work for a long time and to keep up with OS updates. For mobile people have been conditioned to accept throwing away and buying a new device every 2 years.

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#280

Post by rhizome »

jfim wrote: post #164
squarefoot wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows users should push for FOSS drivers as well also when the proprietary ones run perfectly. Privacy and security issues aside, being forced to depend on a closed driver means that the manufacturer can make the product obsolete just by stopping support on newer Windows versions, therefore turning the product essentially into trash, thus forcing the user to buy a new one.

The vast majority of Windows users don't really care about that though. In the 90s, software modems ("winmodems", see [0]) were popular because they were cheaper than using dedicated hardware for generating and decoding the audio signals sent over the phone line. Those would break if the manufacturer didn't upgrade their driver for newer versions of Windows, since they're completely software driven. I'd be very surpr…

Winmodems were not popular with anybody except manufacturers, and exponentially increased the support issues with modems as an entire technology. Read: people had more problems with Winmodems than they did before.
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