6 ms·

Good. Telemetry should have been in these video drivers for crash reporting for a decade. Would have helped a ton with various video game crashs and the low q

Good. Telemetry should have been in these video drivers for crash reporting for a decade. Would have helped a ton with various video game crashs and the low quality of video drivers.

dogma1138 10y ago
Yep, atm NVIDIA and AMD can only get display driver crash data directly from Microsoft. From what I've been told they not only have to pay for it, but while the data has statistical significance it has very low technical value on it's own. So as far as things go now what happens is, new game is released, players with card X and configuration Y N P and Z complain about driver crashes over reddit/forums, NVIDIA/AMD picks up on it and then starts to try to figure what the hell is going on. Usually some initial mitigating actions would be released within a few days, and within a week to a month a full driver update will be released. While this isn't the end of the world, it's annoying that you have issues that prevent you from enjoying a game that you paid 60$ for on a system that you likely paid at least 1000$ if not 3-4 times that.
- matt_wulfeck 10y ago
  Fair enough, allow people to click "send to nvidia" upon an actual crash, and allow a permanent opt-out. Isn't this the way companies have been handling crash reports since... forever?
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    I agree that there should be an opt-out option (other than not installing GFE, tho considering that GFE has always phoned home I don't know if that is that important), yes in an ideal world people should opt-in, the problem is that almost no one does. Anyone who ever worked on a crash report system knows that opt-in rates are below 10% even for corporate clients. Heck if you are lucky you get single digit % figures on "send this report" even if the checkbox is ticked by default, the vast majority of people just hit cancel. The stats are actually pretty darn interesting, especially for image quality vs fps I had a chance to speak to a few reps from NVIDIA once and they told me that as much as PC players bitch and moan about 60fps vsync the vast majority of them would push settings at the expense of smooth(er) framerates even if they have no to very little effect on image quality.
    - throwaway2048 10y ago
      maybe opt-in rates are low because people dont want the data sent? Assuming they are wrong because it makes your job harder is a pretty self serving deduction.
      - dogma1138 10y ago
        People aren't bothered about security or privacy, they just cannot be bothered. Giving even the slightest incentive to send data brings those numbers up extensively even if what you get is meaningless. Basically humans need a reason to tick a box. This is why this is under GFE which gives you value added services.
        throwaway2048 10y ago
        >People aren't bothered about security or privacy, they just cannot be bothered. Says who? You? Facebook? Microsoft? Google? You don't see the inherent conflict of benefiting from that position and declaring it, unilaterally, it to be so? How many people do you think would be comfortable, and explicitly approve the kinds of "opt out" data collection that goes on, if you gave them the true extent of how that data can be/is used along with the impacts of it? Frankly, fuck the attitude that you, or any other developer knows more than me, and decides that i "Just cannot be bothered", especially when its to their (often considerable) benefit.
        Karunamon 10y ago
        When using "people" in aggregate, this is a completely correct statement . It's why, for example, HN throws a fit[1] the moment a developer goes so far as to add anonymous google analytics to a package manager [2] even when that data couldn't possibly be used to harm them or track them in any way. If you make $thing opt in, most people will not do $thing, regardless of what $thing is. Defaults matter. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11566720 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11566720 [2]: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/blob/master/docs/Analytics.md https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/blob/master/docs/Analytics....
- aluhut 10y ago
  So would it hurt them in some way if they would ask first?
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    Yes and no, while opt-in is important for privacy and other concerns the problem is that virtually no one opts in.
    - andromeduck 10y ago
      Real issue here though is it doesn't seem like they have an opt out option.
      - dogma1138 10y ago
        There is, don't install Geforce Experience, GFE has always sent some data to NVIDIA now they are also collecting driver telemetry. GFE requires a separate installation and for you to signup and login. This isn't a service required for you to get GPU drivers. The only thing you lose is NVIDIA's screen capture software and game optimization (and some deals sometimes). You can still use your card to the fullest without it. Source: I have the latest drivers and don't have GFE, the telemetry software is part of the update core which is currently installed with GFE.
        throwaway2048 10y ago
        >This isn't a service required for you to get GPU drivers. That is not true, beta drivers require the login. They are often needed for new games to run without crashing, or bad performance.
        dogma1138 10y ago
        Beta drivers can also be downloaded from the geforce.com website.
        aluhut 10y ago
userbinator 10y ago
No, crash reporting is easily done with logs, preferably in some format you could redact any sensitive information from. This seems more like the "I will secretly phone home and not tell you about it or what I'm sending" kind of thing. These are GPU drivers. It's not at all unreasonable that there may be something sensitive shown on the screen when a crash occurs. It might not even be shown on the screen but still present in GPU memory: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10873059 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10873059 I would not be surprised if the telemetry included some parts of GPU state which could contain sensitive data.
- KirinDave 10y ago
  > No, crash reporting is easily done with logs, preferably in some format you could redact any sensitive information from. This seems more like the "I will secretly phone home and not tell you about it or what I'm sending" kind of thing. It's not terribly secret, now was it? It was... you know... immediately discovered and I'm pretty sure my driver changelog AND firewall asked about it. > These are GPU drivers. It's not at all unreasonable that there may be something sensitive shown on the screen when a crash occurs. Pardon me, could you please explain exactly what in the telemetry or common crash logs might reflect "sensitive" information? You seem to me like you're arguing from some sort of grand final consequence, "Well I assume there is sensitive data here!" And while perhaps that's not an unreasonable default policy to take, you might want to state it as such rather than implying (as you have) that it's been observed already. In general, telemetry doesn't include bulk memory dumps. The technology for collection strongly discourages this, as the endpoints collecting standard telemetry need to run at the scale of your customer base. I'd be much more concerned about sharing log dumps if you've filled your framebuffers with confidential information.
  - lukeschlather 10y ago
    I'm playing a game, I alt-tab out, game crashes, and literally anything can end up in the framebuffer related to a crash.
    - 10y ago
throwaway2048 10y ago
they are sending way more than crash data. Just like most of the people that claim "telemetry" is only to fix bugs... https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/5bcppp/nvidia_has_added_telemetry_to_their_windows/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/5bcppp/nvidia...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
yuhong 10y ago
On crash reporting, I just submitted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12883823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12883823 about a privacy-related feature invented in 2011.

Good. Telemetry should have been in these video drivers for crash reporting for a decade. Would have helped a ton with various video game crashs and the low quality of video drivers.

dogma1138 10y ago

Yep, atm NVIDIA and AMD can only get display driver crash data directly from Microsoft. From what I've been told they not only have to pay for it, but while the data has statistical significance it has very low technical value on it's own. So as far as things go now what happens is, new game is released, players with card X and configuration Y N P and Z complain about driver crashes over reddit/forums, NVIDIA/AMD picks up on it and then starts to try to figure what the hell is going on. Usually some initial mitigating actions would be released within a few days, and within a week to a month a full driver update will be released. While this isn't the end of the world, it's annoying that you have issues that prevent you from enjoying a game that you paid 60$ for on a system that you likely paid at least 1000$ if not 3-4 times that.

matt_wulfeck 10y ago
Fair enough, allow people to click "send to nvidia" upon an actual crash, and allow a permanent opt-out. Isn't this the way companies have been handling crash reports since... forever?
- dogma1138 10y ago
  I agree that there should be an opt-out option (other than not installing GFE, tho considering that GFE has always phoned home I don't know if that is that important), yes in an ideal world people should opt-in, the problem is that almost no one does. Anyone who ever worked on a crash report system knows that opt-in rates are below 10% even for corporate clients. Heck if you are lucky you get single digit % figures on "send this report" even if the checkbox is ticked by default, the vast majority of people just hit cancel. The stats are actually pretty darn interesting, especially for image quality vs fps I had a chance to speak to a few reps from NVIDIA once and they told me that as much as PC players bitch and moan about 60fps vsync the vast majority of them would push settings at the expense of smooth(er) framerates even if they have no to very little effect on image quality.
  - throwaway2048 10y ago
    maybe opt-in rates are low because people dont want the data sent? Assuming they are wrong because it makes your job harder is a pretty self serving deduction.
    - dogma1138 10y ago
      People aren't bothered about security or privacy, they just cannot be bothered. Giving even the slightest incentive to send data brings those numbers up extensively even if what you get is meaningless. Basically humans need a reason to tick a box. This is why this is under GFE which gives you value added services.
      - throwaway2048 10y ago
        >People aren't bothered about security or privacy, they just cannot be bothered. Says who? You? Facebook? Microsoft? Google? You don't see the inherent conflict of benefiting from that position and declaring it, unilaterally, it to be so? How many people do you think would be comfortable, and explicitly approve the kinds of "opt out" data collection that goes on, if you gave them the true extent of how that data can be/is used along with the impacts of it? Frankly, fuck the attitude that you, or any other developer knows more than me, and decides that i "Just cannot be bothered", especially when its to their (often considerable) benefit.
        Karunamon 10y ago
        When using "people" in aggregate, this is a completely correct statement . It's why, for example, HN throws a fit[1] the moment a developer goes so far as to add anonymous google analytics to a package manager [2] even when that data couldn't possibly be used to harm them or track them in any way. If you make $thing opt in, most people will not do $thing, regardless of what $thing is. Defaults matter. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11566720 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11566720 [2]: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/blob/master/docs/Analytics.md https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/blob/master/docs/Analytics....
aluhut 10y ago
So would it hurt them in some way if they would ask first?
- dogma1138 10y ago
  Yes and no, while opt-in is important for privacy and other concerns the problem is that virtually no one opts in.
  - andromeduck 10y ago
    Real issue here though is it doesn't seem like they have an opt out option.
    - dogma1138 10y ago
      There is, don't install Geforce Experience, GFE has always sent some data to NVIDIA now they are also collecting driver telemetry. GFE requires a separate installation and for you to signup and login. This isn't a service required for you to get GPU drivers. The only thing you lose is NVIDIA's screen capture software and game optimization (and some deals sometimes). You can still use your card to the fullest without it. Source: I have the latest drivers and don't have GFE, the telemetry software is part of the update core which is currently installed with GFE.
      - throwaway2048 10y ago
        >This isn't a service required for you to get GPU drivers. That is not true, beta drivers require the login. They are often needed for new games to run without crashing, or bad performance.
        dogma1138 10y ago
        Beta drivers can also be downloaded from the geforce.com website.
      - aluhut 10y ago

userbinator 10y ago

No, crash reporting is easily done with logs, preferably in some format you could redact any sensitive information from. This seems more like the "I will secretly phone home and not tell you about it or what I'm sending" kind of thing. These are GPU drivers. It's not at all unreasonable that there may be something sensitive shown on the screen when a crash occurs. It might not even be shown on the screen but still present in GPU memory: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10873059 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10873059 I would not be surprised if the telemetry included some parts of GPU state which could contain sensitive data.

KirinDave 10y ago
> No, crash reporting is easily done with logs, preferably in some format you could redact any sensitive information from. This seems more like the "I will secretly phone home and not tell you about it or what I'm sending" kind of thing. It's not terribly secret, now was it? It was... you know... immediately discovered and I'm pretty sure my driver changelog AND firewall asked about it. > These are GPU drivers. It's not at all unreasonable that there may be something sensitive shown on the screen when a crash occurs. Pardon me, could you please explain exactly what in the telemetry or common crash logs might reflect "sensitive" information? You seem to me like you're arguing from some sort of grand final consequence, "Well I assume there is sensitive data here!" And while perhaps that's not an unreasonable default policy to take, you might want to state it as such rather than implying (as you have) that it's been observed already. In general, telemetry doesn't include bulk memory dumps. The technology for collection strongly discourages this, as the endpoints collecting standard telemetry need to run at the scale of your customer base. I'd be much more concerned about sharing log dumps if you've filled your framebuffers with confidential information.
- lukeschlather 10y ago
  I'm playing a game, I alt-tab out, game crashes, and literally anything can end up in the framebuffer related to a crash.
  - 10y ago

throwaway2048 10y ago

they are sending way more than crash data. Just like most of the people that claim "telemetry" is only to fix bugs... https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/5bcppp/nvidia_has_added_telemetry_to_their_windows/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/5bcppp/nvidia...

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

yuhong 10y ago

On crash reporting, I just submitted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12883823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12883823 about a privacy-related feature invented in 2011.