361–370 of 469 posts
On Linux you'd be using the community-maintained drivers[0], so I assume this wouldn't be a problem (correct me if I'm wrong). But as far as I can tell, there's not equivalent Open Wacom drivers for Windows. People with more Windows knowledge than me: any thoughts on why? Is it just that someone using Windows probably doesn't care about Open drivers, so the demand isn't there? Or is there something about Windows that…
FWIW that isn’t a unique identifier for the author, it’s for Wacom’s GA account. I didn’t see any meaningful identifier being sent. Of course the set of most opened apps and your IP are probably enough to identify you. That said, yep, it seems lame they don’t disclose this tracking. I can understand why they’d want to know what apps their device pairs most often with, but tracking all app opens seems aggressive, but…
This tracking becomes a big issue when aggregated with other data. As someone who works for an analytics company, you should be well aware of this.
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Huh? I don't think you own or bought a Wacom Tablet nor do you do any digital art. It is safe to say this is a troll/no effort comment.
This sort of commentary is not welcome here. Please check the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html [...] Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. [...]
Wacom makes premium products for professionals, is a vendor for their premium digitziers and uncontroversial. You don't need two minutes to find what products they make to find that ADs are not remotely viable on the hardware.
The comment was hastily posted and lazy and for that one can assume that the poster did not own the products and I was correct, so read what was posted before coming to your conclusion that what my comment was done in bad faith.
Nowhere else in article or comments under it has anyone mentioned the possibilty of ADs on a drawing tablet or the digitizer hardware they provide for many products outside of their own. It is like saying because you bought a Mac that Apple can use your data for advertising even though they explicitly said they use it for product development.
There is no strong interpretation or defense of that person's comment. If you have a strong interpretation of that post that you want to add, put a comment with the interpretation or go to another and ignore this one thanks!
They have all the data from the uninformed, ambivalent or defeated already. We develop things to crush the remaining resistance. Walled garden devices, cert pinning, signed applications, DNS over HTTPS, yes they are all more secure, but not for you. If well implemented, these serve as tools to make sure the privacy policy is the only thing informing you of collection.
But essentially, coming from a 3rd world country where censorship was the norm before Internet came along, and seeing how TLS and DoH is giving similar states like China a headache, I have to say that I am extremely happy, but concerned.
I believe it is a regulatory problem. In essense, make collecting data punishable but personally (i.e. Person X signed on decision to collect data, person X gets jail time)
I know that's probably not even remotely possible because employees "operate on behalf on the company" but removing that shield will effectively eliminate this. The same way dumping stock at a company means the FTC/SEC/FBI will have you ass on a platter, personally.
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Huh? I don't think you own or bought a Wacom Tablet nor do you do any digital art. It is safe to say this is a troll/no effort comment.
I didn't say they collect that information but I can see how they could use it. FWIW, I don't use a Wacom tablet but my daughter does. I personally use Procreate on an iPad Pro.
> Wacom’s privacy policy does say that they only want this data for product development purposes, and on this point I do actually believe them.
That piece from the post alone makes me wonder if you read that in the post as well before you commented. There are many things one can do with data, assuming they could use it for advertising with no reasoning behind it is very low effort.
https://angel.co/company/wacom-1/funding - Doesn't take two minutes to find this. >_>
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> "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…
That’s as simple as saying “don’t like crime? Don’t be near criminals.”
Data’s being stolen and we’re being watched whether we like it or not. Only sometimes can we easily opt out and have those decisions respected.
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IMO the more simple explanation is they want this data to sell to data aggregators, who can in turn enrich the profile they have on you. There's a similar thing going on with smart TVs, right?
I know this is the popular conclusion - but from a developer perspective, data such as what software your product is used with is INCREDIBLY valuable for project planning and prioritization. People hate web tracking, but knowing what browsers or devices are visiting your website can be enormously helpful. Also I don't know all the details here - I know that Vizio TVs where collecting data and explicitly kept the IP a…
> In section 3.1 of their privacy policy, Wacom wondered if it would be OK if they sent a few bits and bobs of data from my computer to Google Analytics, “[including] aggregate usage data, technical session information and information about [my] hardware device.”
What wasn't upfront about this? That they didn't add more details about what the session information was? Legally why would they? The post includes an image the section where they legally disclosed it. People not reading the privacy policy before using a product is not Wacom's legal problem.
Can you ask them to put this section on a separate screen? Sure. Will they do it? Who knows. I'm sure they'd want to know if you are a customer giving ideas than a low priority non customer as would any person.
How many blogs or websites disclose the use of Google Analytics in their privacy policy?
You could talk to many customers and this is the least thing they have on their minds. Paranoia displayed by commenters here is amazing.
As the post concludes, if you are a (prospective) customer who does not like what they collect then there are other brands. I might add who probably have a hidden, more intrusive way to track you because they are smaller, have smaller volume/margin and have the incentive to build and sell your profile like other small companies not in the field.
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I know this is the popular conclusion - but from a developer perspective, data such as what software your product is used with is INCREDIBLY valuable for project planning and prioritization. People hate web tracking, but knowing what browsers or devices are visiting your website can be enormously helpful. Also I don't know all the details here - I know that Vizio TVs where collecting data and explicitly kept the IP a…
> I know this is the popular conclusion - but from a developer perspective, data such as what software your product is used with is INCREDIBLY valuable for project planning and prioritization. Maybe if it were only used for that it wouldn't be so bad. But I don't trust a company not to take another bite at the apple by selling customer data if they think they can get away with it. Matter of fact, refusing to do so is…
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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.
It would be a full two years before I would see any other home users on anything other than dialup. 750k down in 2001 was so impressive, you could start listening to songs on Kazaa as soon as the download started!
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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…
This is just a non starter and a pipe dream. It goes against the principles of capitalism and free enterprise. You need to think about incentives. You have two tablets, identical in functionality and performance. But the one without the ads and surveillance features costs twenty percent more. Which one do you buy? Actually Kindle did this for a while (maybe they still do...). I ended up buying the cheaper one with th…
But that's why I wrote that advertising-based business models need to be banned. Not discouraged, not badmouthed, but banned. They're anticompetitive and poisonous; when one company starts doing it, others in the whole sector are drawn to follow suit (it's e.g. why it's hard to actually sell apps on mobile or make subscriptions for publications on-line profitable; ad-supported operations create a baseline cost of zero).