Wacom tablets track every app you open • Hacker News Board

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#351

Post by ghostly_s » Thu, Feb 06, 2020, 3:14 AM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #170

I wonder what the comfortable medium between privacy and letting developers get feedback about how well their code works is. It seems to me like Wacom just wants to know if their drivers work, so they can focus engineering efforts around fixing the issues that are affecting their users. "Oh hey, the new beta of Photoshop breaks our drivers!" They don't make a "cloud product" and they have an obligation to make their…

FWIW, as a customer of Wacom's products they very much do not view themselves as

> [having] an obligation to make their hardware work with any software the user might want to use.

They update drivers for 4 or 5 years then tell you to buy a new product if you expect it to work with current-gen software. Despite the fact that none of their tablets have had a substantial new feature in 20 years beyond the wireless connection kit, somehow a driver for a "Intuos Pro 4" cannot be used with a functionally-identical "Intuos Pro 3".

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#352

Post by Razengan » Thu, Feb 06, 2020, 3:48 AM UTC

yoavm wrote: post #341

Razengan wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil is actually a great alternative to traditional drawing tablets, even if you use Windows.

Yeah, but a Wacom starts at $59 and an iPad Pro starts at $799, and comes without a pen.

I shouldn’t have said “Pro” as the recent non-Pro iPads under $400 have Pencil support too.

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#353

Post by odensc » Thu, Feb 06, 2020, 3:54 AM UTC

moviuro wrote: post #229

philplckthun wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, some of these list don't currently include google-analytics.com since some sites would otherwise break as a result. So when using one of these hosts files it's often a good idea to double check whether they include Google's domains first. (Also sad to say that GA is so big that a lot of websites/app rely on it)

> some sites would otherwise break as a result Wow, that's weird. I don't remember ever seeing one site like that. Can you point one out? I mean, GA has been blocked at my places since 2015, and I don't remember anything ever was broken, on phone or desktop.

Can't think of any specific sites, but it's happened to me a few times. It's usually because there's bad code that's waiting on the GA init function before doing anything else.

This is why some blockers like uBlock Origin stub out the Google Analytics interface.

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#354

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Feb 06, 2020, 4:06 AM UTC

axegon_ wrote: post #219

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

I have to use their proprietary drivers and I beg to differ. Nvidia drivers are still crap, given all the pain you have to endure to get them running. Yes, nvidia has managed to sneak into the linux world through cuda but as far as ease of use, they are still nothing short of crap. Not to mention if you want to use anything other than ubuntu.

[deleted]

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#355

Post by IggleSniggle » Thu, Feb 06, 2020, 4:21 AM UTC

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…

Great point! And being able to see the results in aggregate is also interesting. It inclines me to share, because it becomes a two-way share, even though I don't actually have use for the information.

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#356

Post by specialist » Thu, Feb 06, 2020, 4:26 AM UTC

briandear wrote: post #288

bigiain wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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.

Good grief. Many of the people in privileged positions to complain about this stuff got to those positions through Sand Hill road. Telling some poor person that they have to pay $10 per month to use Google or send Facebook messages isn’t democracy. Don’t want surveillance? Don’t use the products the employ it, but some people, especially those that don’t have means, might be perfectly fine to trade privacy for a “fre…

Do you use ad blockers, VPN, etc?

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#357

Post by Polylactic_acid » Thu, Feb 06, 2020, 4:31 AM UTC

catalogia wrote: post #278

nerdponx wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Out of tree foss drivers are still not affected since you could most of the time just recompile them to work with the latest kernel.

Also when I said linux made proprietary drivers crap I meant that as a good thing. It lead to open source drivers where there otherwise would not have been. Some OEMs like AMD eventually went open source on linux while remaining proprietary on windows.

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#358

Post by mike_d » Thu, Feb 06, 2020, 4:49 AM UTC

TomGullen wrote: post #284

lightswitch05 wrote: post #45

This is just one of many reasons to use StevenBlack's Hosts [1] list to block this type of behavior. While it doesn't currently block link.wacom.com, it would have prevented the subsequent requests google analytics. It works even better when paired with a PiHole [2] to protect all devices on the network. [1] https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts [2] https://pi-hole.net/

Microsoft has started resetting hosts files which is really annoying with Defender, can't seem to disable it either. Annoying when deving on a local server!

Operator of lots of DNS stuff here.

Hosts files are literally the devil. They break so much shit. Hostnames sometimes change behavior (like an ad server that starts hosting a redirect script for legitimate clicks), kids who are "good with computers" set them up on relatives computers over the holidays unmaintained, malware that uses them to block antivirus updates, etc.

If you want to block ads, fine. Use a content aware proxy or browser extension.

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#359

Post by bri3d » Thu, Feb 06, 2020, 4:56 AM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #328

stefan_ wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's exactly not how it works. You can not change the set of root certificates.

How does Zadig work, then?

There are two separate authentication processes for drivers on Windows: Authenticode, which is used for the kernel-mode driver (.sys) and is strictly enforced, and driver package signing (.cat/.inf installation packages), which has a mutable root storage called Trusted Publisher system store. Zadig works by adding its own certificate root to the Trusted Publisher system store and self-signing the installation packages, but the three possible installed drivers (WinUSB, libusb0, and libusbK) were all still signed by Authenticode.

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#360

Post by bri3d » Thu, Feb 06, 2020, 4:58 AM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #321

stefan_ wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also the little matter of Windows (since 7 I think?) requiring kernel drivers to be code signed, unless you want to run your system with a permanent "Development mode" text overlay, not to mention the arcane procedure required to activate that in the first place. (You can't add another cert to the trusted set, either.) So that puts a little damper on the whole "open source" thing. Of course it is also not ef…

Not too long ago I had to do some INF editing to get a driver installed on Win10, and the editing did invalidate the signature so it (silently!) refused to install, but booting with the "disable driver signature enforcement" option made it install, and it continued to load and work normally even after I booted back into normal mode. This was only a few months ago so unless something drastic has changed since then, ma…

Editing the INF de-authenticates the installation of the driver, which can also be bypassed by adding to the Trusted Publisher root store, which is mutable (as Zadig/libwdi does), but the actual kernel-mode .sys binary still needs to be signed by Authenticode unless the system is in driver Developer Mode. Your method worked for installing a modified INF file, but will not work for installing a modified binary.