I'm not sure what their goal is with this data.
Do they want to use this data to create a good tool?
Or do they want to use the data to create a tool that appeals to the average user?
Microsoft/.Net Foundation added telemetry to the dotnet command line last year
61–70 of 101 posts
Re: Microsoft/.Net Foundation added telemetry to the dotnet command line last year
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
The data is also public, at: -q .tsv" rel="nofollow">https://dotnetcli.blob.core.windows.net/usagedata/dotnet-cli... So, the latest would be: https://dotnetcli.blob.core.windows.net/usagedata/dotnet-cli...
I think it's noteworthy that they even include command line arguments that are mistyped, for example "bulid". What happens if you accidentally paste an AWS secret key or similar in the middle of a command line argument? Will that too appear in public csv files a year later?
Hi. Team member here. We used a simple algorithm to prevent that. We essentially got the data itself to vote on what a real command was for exactly this reason. This means that a lot of people typed "bulid" since the vote passed on that one. I don't have a count, but many rows were not included in the data since they didn't pass the minimum threshold for being a real command. Imagine you spelled "build" backwards for some reason. That would have been quite uncommon.
Re: Microsoft/.Net Foundation added telemetry to the dotnet command line last year
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mozilla asks you, whether you want to send the telemetry. If you say no, it won't send anything. No, the settings do not mysteriously reset themselves.
Firefox tracks users with Google Analytics in the add-on settings | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14753546 "Someone submitted a PR to Mozilla to fix this, and the Mozilla devs closed it" Impossible to opt-out until about 2 weeks ago.
Come on, that was a bug in the new preferences pages.
The telemetry I was talking about is exactly the one, where you get a bar at the bottom during first launch. Try it, you will see it.
Re: Microsoft/.Net Foundation added telemetry to the dotnet command line last year
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
So this is yet another case of someome blowing something completely out of proportions and spending their time working on something completely useless that will never benefit them.
"Out of proportions" for now. Nothing stops them from changing this later, updating the small print saying "oh we changed that" and blaming you for not checking for changes to their EULA regularly.
If this is your fear how do you use any software?
MS could update your OS to do anything tomorrow, Canonical could hide some literal malware in any number of packages for Ubuntu tonight, Intel could write a backdoor into your machine in it's next microcode update.
And OSS doesn't fully prevent this either. GCC could add some kind of nefarious exploit in the next version of it's compiler (knowingly or otherwise). Just take a look at the underhanded c competition for just how scary easy it is to hide exploits in plain sight!
I can't even fathom the amount of work it would be to personally review every line of code that goes into your machine from the microcode up to the newest NPM module (even if it were all open and it was possible to do). At some point you need to trust someone else.
Re: Microsoft/.Net Foundation added telemetry to the dotnet command line last year
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
The author must not be used to the new spyware-by-default mentality coming from Microsoft. Hard to believe, but they used to sell products a while ago and had no telemetry. If you want to see how it's done properly, look at OmniGroup: their apps have toggleable telemetry and it's off by default.
What use is off-by-default? Who turns telemetry on?
Debian pop-con is opt-in. http://popcon.debian.org/
Re: Microsoft/.Net Foundation added telemetry to the dotnet command line last year
#66I just wish they would officially support this kind of spying on FreeBSD
Re: Microsoft/.Net Foundation added telemetry to the dotnet command line last year
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Out of proportions" for now. Nothing stops them from changing this later, updating the small print saying "oh we changed that" and blaming you for not checking for changes to their EULA regularly.
If this is your fear how do you use any software? MS could update your OS to do anything tomorrow, Canonical could hide some literal malware in any number of packages for Ubuntu tonight, Intel could write a backdoor into your machine in it's next microcode update. And OSS doesn't fully prevent this either. GCC could add some kind of nefarious exploit in the next version of it's compiler (knowingly or otherwise). Just…
That's why betrayals of trust - such as adding spyware that takes data without the user's informed consent ("opt-out") - are such a big problem.
You're right - there isn't enough time to audit everything, so we have to rely on trust. "Relying on trust" means instead of reviewing code, you have to review trustworthiness.
Re: Microsoft/.Net Foundation added telemetry to the dotnet command line last year
#68We are struggling, philosophically, with anti telemetry posts (like this one).
We are turning on telemetry in the next release for our open source tool. https://github.com/getgauge/gauge
We are small team with limited resources.
In our tool, it's easy to turn telemetry off, inspect what data is sent and the data collected is public.
The data "really" helps to make the tool better and an opt-in skews the data.
We've published an blog post https://blog.getgauge.io/why-we-collect-data-b19df366b677 and will put it up in the release notes and the download section.
What else can be done so that users don't blow up?
Re: Microsoft/.Net Foundation added telemetry to the dotnet command line last year
#69We are struggling, philosophically, with anti telemetry posts (like this one). We are turning on telemetry in the next release for our open source tool. https://github.com/getgauge/gauge We are small team with limited resources. In our tool, it's easy to turn telemetry off, inspect what data is sent and the data collected is public. The data "really" helps to make the tool better and an opt-in skews the data. We've p…
The minimum should be a clearly presented option to turn off telemetry either during install or at first startup.
Re: Microsoft/.Net Foundation added telemetry to the dotnet command line last year
#70We are struggling, philosophically, with anti telemetry posts (like this one). We are turning on telemetry in the next release for our open source tool. https://github.com/getgauge/gauge We are small team with limited resources. In our tool, it's easy to turn telemetry off, inspect what data is sent and the data collected is public. The data "really" helps to make the tool better and an opt-in skews the data. We've p…
Just a mere suggestion: you may look into how it's done in yeoman (https://github.com/dotnet/cli/issues/3093#issuecomment-22034...) and read this https://github.com/dotnet/cli/issues/3093 as there's lots of user input there.