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Have you ever debugged issues in production apps without logs? It’s awful. Production apps running on machines you don’t control? Even worse. To suggest that ze

Have you ever debugged issues in production apps without logs? It’s awful. Production apps running on machines you don’t control? Even worse. To suggest that zero value has been derived by the client side analytics is naive at best.

flukus 8y ago
Do you think your inconvenience somehow gives you a right to violate users privacy? > Production apps running on machines you don’t control? Yes I have. Last time I did it via a dialogue that would pop-up asking the user to submit the information along with a text area that contained all the information being sent. It's possible to get the information you want and respect your users.
- NullPrefix 8y ago
  But that takes way too much effort. It's simpler to just demand admin access and remote to the user's machine.
  - flukus 8y ago
    I know you're being sarcastic, but with this particular software we offered support like that as well. 90% of the time the first level support (and eventually QA) would use this dialog and add in stuff like replication steps manually. It was much better way to triage and debug issues than the usual email with an "it doesn't work" title and an excel document containing a screenshot. So add "it saved the company buckets of money" to the list of reasons this is a better approach.
- setquk 8y ago
  This is the correct way to handle it.
  - viraptor 8y ago
    For single issues - yes. If you have a large deploy base that you can't easily talk to, aggregate reports which can give you don't easy correlation results are much better. For example https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/home/product/Firefox https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/home/product/Firefox results in much more stability for FF users. Asking everyone would not be possible.
    - setquk 8y ago
      It's more "something crashed, can we send this information to help diagnose the problem? Here's a big textbox from which you can review what we're sending if you want". Versus "screw you we're taking it anyway". In some environments this is a massive compliance issue.
    - flukus 8y ago
      Funnily enough, my tab crashed opening the .net core bug linked and firefox has changed this to prompt users before sending the report. Unfortunately it's still opt-out, doesn't show what data it's sharing and looks to be purposefully misleading, so no info from me.
      - ptx 8y ago
        > firefox has changed this to prompt users before sending the report Wasn't it always that way? I remember those opt-in crash dialogs from a long time ago – I think they already had them in Netscape, or at least the (pre-Firefox) Mozilla suite.
  - krotton 8y ago
    No, it's not. Unless used very sparingly, it makes for a shitty user experience. I'd risk a guess that the average user doesn't have any problem with aggregate, anonymized data being collected for statistical and debugging purposes. A lot of people here on HN do and they like to extrapolate that to the whole society, but it's a stretch.
    - setquk 8y ago
      The average user clicks through privacy agreements and contracts without looking. It's up to us to promote good behaviour by technology vendors rather than say I told you so later which is the current status quo.
      - simooooo 8y ago
        A white knight of data protection?
- jsmeaton 8y ago
  Your argument wasn’t about privacy. I was contending your claim that they did nothing with the data - which is obviously false if you do software debugging, and clearly false if you read the sibling link with what they’ve actually done.

flukus 8y ago

Do you think your inconvenience somehow gives you a right to violate users privacy? > Production apps running on machines you don’t control? Yes I have. Last time I did it via a dialogue that would pop-up asking the user to submit the information along with a text area that contained all the information being sent. It's possible to get the information you want and respect your users.

NullPrefix 8y ago
But that takes way too much effort. It's simpler to just demand admin access and remote to the user's machine.
- flukus 8y ago
  I know you're being sarcastic, but with this particular software we offered support like that as well. 90% of the time the first level support (and eventually QA) would use this dialog and add in stuff like replication steps manually. It was much better way to triage and debug issues than the usual email with an "it doesn't work" title and an excel document containing a screenshot. So add "it saved the company buckets of money" to the list of reasons this is a better approach.
setquk 8y ago
This is the correct way to handle it.
- viraptor 8y ago
  For single issues - yes. If you have a large deploy base that you can't easily talk to, aggregate reports which can give you don't easy correlation results are much better. For example https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/home/product/Firefox https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/home/product/Firefox results in much more stability for FF users. Asking everyone would not be possible.
  - setquk 8y ago
    It's more "something crashed, can we send this information to help diagnose the problem? Here's a big textbox from which you can review what we're sending if you want". Versus "screw you we're taking it anyway". In some environments this is a massive compliance issue.
  - flukus 8y ago
    Funnily enough, my tab crashed opening the .net core bug linked and firefox has changed this to prompt users before sending the report. Unfortunately it's still opt-out, doesn't show what data it's sharing and looks to be purposefully misleading, so no info from me.
    - ptx 8y ago
      > firefox has changed this to prompt users before sending the report Wasn't it always that way? I remember those opt-in crash dialogs from a long time ago – I think they already had them in Netscape, or at least the (pre-Firefox) Mozilla suite.
- krotton 8y ago
  No, it's not. Unless used very sparingly, it makes for a shitty user experience. I'd risk a guess that the average user doesn't have any problem with aggregate, anonymized data being collected for statistical and debugging purposes. A lot of people here on HN do and they like to extrapolate that to the whole society, but it's a stretch.
  - setquk 8y ago
    The average user clicks through privacy agreements and contracts without looking. It's up to us to promote good behaviour by technology vendors rather than say I told you so later which is the current status quo.
    - simooooo 8y ago
      A white knight of data protection?
jsmeaton 8y ago
Your argument wasn’t about privacy. I was contending your claim that they did nothing with the data - which is obviously false if you do software debugging, and clearly false if you read the sibling link with what they’ve actually done.