zlacker

>>segfau+(OP)
Why do people use obvious spyware when free software exists?

>>isatty+xi
Telemetry isn't the same thing as spying on the user. People use it because it's not actually spying on them.

>>charci+Zj
Anonymized or not, opt-out telemetry is plain spying. Go was about to find out, and they backed out the last millisecond and converted to opt-in, for example.

>>bayind+5n
Unfortunately opt-in telemetry is like no telemetry at all. Defaults matter.

>>nicce+Eq
No telemetry at all is a good thing to some (most?) people.

>>inetkn+Yq
Telemetry can be implemented well. The software you use gets bugs fixed much faster since you get statistics that some bugs have higher impact than others. The more users software has, less skills they have in average to accurately report any issues.

>>nicce+qs
> The software you use gets bugs fixed much faster since you get statistics that some bugs have higher impact than others.

Try talking to your users instead.

> The more users software has, less skills they have in average to accurately report any issues.

No amount of telemetry will solve that.

>>inetkn+3t
The PowerShell team at Microsoft added opt-out telemetry to track when it was launched so they could make the case internally that they should get more funding, and have more internal clout.

It’s easy to argue that if you are a PowerShell user or developer you benefit from no telemetry, but it’s hard to argue that you benefit from the tool you use being sidelined or defunded because corporate thinks nobody uses it. “Talk to your users” doesn’t solve this because there are millions of computers running scripts and no way to know who they are or contact them even if you could contact that many people, and they would not remember how often they launched it.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsof...

>>jodrel+WP
To take that logic to its extreme: I'm sure we could have amazing medical breakthroughs if we just gave up that pesky 'don't experiment on non-consenting humans' hang-up we have.

>>Eisens+MT
The parent said "talk to your users instead of telemetry" and I said "there are scenarios where telemetry can get information that you cannot get by talking to users". How did you go from that to "experimenting on non-consenting humans"?

To take your logic to its extreme, you have a disease and are prescribed pills, and the pharmaceutical company says "we will track when you take the pills - unless you don't want us to?" and you would prefer the researchers get shut down for not knowing whether anyone actually takes the pills, and an unlimited number of people die from treatable diseases that don't get cured.

>>jodrel+Lx2
You said 'but we wouldn't have a lot of improvement without telemetry'. I am saying that we could have a lot of improvement in a lot of things if we wanted. We could have breakthroughs in medicine if we allowed human experimentation. The question is, where is that that line? Your argument doesn't address that, it just tries to justify something that people think it morally wrong by stating that we get use from it.

>>Eisens+EH2
> "You said 'but we wouldn't have a lot of improvement without telemetry'."

I did not say that. Within the context of Microsoft's internal funding, maybe, but we could have the same improvement by Microsoft throwing more money at the PowerShell team without this telemetry. The core thing I said was that the information the telemetry gets cannot be got by "talk to your users" not that the telemetry leads to amazing improvements.

It is still difficult for you to make the case that someone choosing to download PowerShell can be "not consenting" (and before you reply saying "PowerShell ships with Windows", the PowerShell which has telemetry does not [yet] ship with Windows).