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> & telemetry Telemetry and crash reports can be done right so you should not hate the concept but the bad implementation. First step is that it should all be

> & telemetry Telemetry and crash reports can be done right so you should not hate the concept but the bad implementation. First step is that it should all be optional and it should be disabled by default or have it as an option you are forced to decider if yes or no. You should also be informed when data is sent and what is sent and have the option to deny. Like if app X crashes I send the crash report but if app Y crashes I won't send it. Also about telemetry if all power users turn it off then you can have situations where developers will drop a feature because they don't use it and there is no data to show that more then 12 people are using it.

gdfasfklshg4 7y ago
> Also about telemetry if all power users turn it off then you can have situations where developers will drop a feature because they don't use it and there is no data to show that more then 12 people are using it. Yet another reason not to put telemetry in your software.
- simion314 7y ago
  Why? So some developers and jerks can claim that you are a snowflake if you used the feature they removed? If there was data at least you can resign that you are really special and you were in a select club but without the data the vocal developer with big ego will claim whatever he wants.
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    When something important gets removed (which is happening at an alarmingly increasing pace across the board), it doesn't matter at all to me why the feature was removed. What matters to me is that the software has become less suitable for my use.
- mavhc 7y ago
  At least they can inform the 12 people that they'll have to support that feature themselves in the future
- dwild 7y ago
  >Yet another reason not to put telemetry in your software. Can you explain a bit more your way of though? How should you decide what to support if not having the information from your user? The only other alternative is to ask, and then only the one that answer will get supported, which sure is great for the one that answer, but that may means a much bigger audience that you won't support even though they need to be supported.
  - yellowapple 7y ago
    > The only other alternative is to ask I see nothing wrong with that.
    - dwild 7y ago
      ... nothing wrong with what followed? Why did you just quote the beginning when I cite a pretty good argument afterward and you don't even argue with it? We are on Hacker News please, be more thorough and defends your point.
      - yellowapple 7y ago
        > .. nothing wrong with what followed? Nope. > Why did you just quote the beginning Because the rest can be extrapolated from it. > We are on Hacker News please So? Just because we happen to be on Y Combinator's corporate propaganda machine doesn't mean I'm any more compelled to respond to things about which I care not.
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    > How should you decide what to support if not having the information from your user? There are many well-known and largely perfected methods of getting that information without the use of telemetry. The thing that general telemetry really brings is cost savings and convenience. But it also brings a peculiar kind of blindness as well, since companies largely stopped doing product research that isn't telemetry.
    - 7y ago
gsich 7y ago
>Also about telemetry if all power users turn it off then you can have situations where developers will drop a feature because they don't use it and there is no data to show that more then 12 people are using it. Firefox and the RSS situation. Mozilla did not even think 1 second that this might occur.
- kibwen 7y ago
  Live Bookmarks were no substitute for a proper RSS reader. I've been using both RSS and Firefox continually since at least 2005, but I quickly stopped using Live Bookmarks in favor of Google Reader (RIP).
  - gsich 7y ago
    True. A proper RSS reader would have been nice in Firefox. Instead Mozilla BS'd their way out.
oliwarner 7y ago
You're saying that as if the point of the software is to support the software, or report good numbers. It's not. The user should be the focus. Opt-out and hard-coded systems immediately put you no the back foot. You make people question why? and is it worth it? If all you've got it reporting numbers of users, you can go do one. The risk of genuine private data leaking out is not worth your marketing numbers to me. The Amazon link was much more egregious though. You were sending all Dash searches through to Amazon. This was unacceptable and poorly explained. I'm sure some people liked it, and they honestly could have made the integration a better trade for the user (play videos off Prime Video, etc), but only as an opt-in feature where you can see the ramifications.
- kevingadd 7y ago
  People need to understand that large scale software not having telemetry borders on malpractice if it interacts with the internet. If your software is crashing on a large scale - or worse, causing problems for other people's servers or taking out users' computers - you need to know, and you need to fix it fast. You can't just wait days or weeks to get enough complaints about it from people savvy enough to file bug reports. Look no further than how a recent Chrome update almost completely broke the software for Citrix users. Their telemetry (somehow) was not tracking this so it took days to get a fix because IT/ops people had to figure out that a Chrome update caused the bug and then escalate through chromium bug reports. Now imagine that happening any time a crash or major bug makes it into connected software... For stuff that just runs offline, like Excel or whatever, it's super justified to not want telemetry in it if that's the tradeoff users want. Incidentally this is basically the reason why all the major browsers are on rapid forced (unless you're in the enterprise) updates - the risk of having users stay on older versions with security holes is just too high because it ends up leading to massive botnets. I hate it, but hundreds of millions of people use those apps.
  - _underfl0w_ 7y ago
    Finally, a sensible argument _for_ telemetry.
  - wtetzner 7y ago
usrusr 7y ago
> or have it as an option you are forced to decider if yes or no. Bonus points for an implementation that comes with a few unbiased examples about why one might want to disable and why not. You are working under draconian legal secrecy requirements or on an exceptionally narrow/expensive uplink? Disable. You worry about secrecy but not enough to go 2FA, you occasionally wish for a bigger pipe to the internet? Disable if you insist, but it would be nice of you to contribute data.
- scrollaway 7y ago
  If you are working with such parameters, one would hope you wouldn't have to be explained that telemetry should be disabled. Not all apps will be so kind as to give you examples...
  - usrusr 7y ago
    The purpose of the examples would not be to keep those out of tracking whom you'd expect to deactivate (because you are right, it becomes entirely their responsibility once they are actively presented the option), it would be to encourage trust with those who don't really need to be that level of paranoid (but who often are). Much better than the usual "trust us, everything is so incredibly safe that we don't even know why we have the option to deactivate". Most users will take the "incredibly" at face value and not believe it, and they would be right because nothing is ever that safe. But a risk model like "theoretically there could be a bug in that totally innocent feature use counter that accidentally included a random heap sample in the upload that could include sensitive data" would be acceptable to many. Could a liar smooth-talk you with those examples into pressing accept? Sure. But that bad actor could also ignore the setting or not show an option at all.

gdfasfklshg4 7y ago

> Also about telemetry if all power users turn it off then you can have situations where developers will drop a feature because they don't use it and there is no data to show that more then 12 people are using it. Yet another reason not to put telemetry in your software.

simion314 7y ago
Why? So some developers and jerks can claim that you are a snowflake if you used the feature they removed? If there was data at least you can resign that you are really special and you were in a select club but without the data the vocal developer with big ego will claim whatever he wants.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  When something important gets removed (which is happening at an alarmingly increasing pace across the board), it doesn't matter at all to me why the feature was removed. What matters to me is that the software has become less suitable for my use.
mavhc 7y ago
At least they can inform the 12 people that they'll have to support that feature themselves in the future
dwild 7y ago
>Yet another reason not to put telemetry in your software. Can you explain a bit more your way of though? How should you decide what to support if not having the information from your user? The only other alternative is to ask, and then only the one that answer will get supported, which sure is great for the one that answer, but that may means a much bigger audience that you won't support even though they need to be supported.
- yellowapple 7y ago
  > The only other alternative is to ask I see nothing wrong with that.
  - dwild 7y ago
    ... nothing wrong with what followed? Why did you just quote the beginning when I cite a pretty good argument afterward and you don't even argue with it? We are on Hacker News please, be more thorough and defends your point.
    - yellowapple 7y ago
      > .. nothing wrong with what followed? Nope. > Why did you just quote the beginning Because the rest can be extrapolated from it. > We are on Hacker News please So? Just because we happen to be on Y Combinator's corporate propaganda machine doesn't mean I'm any more compelled to respond to things about which I care not.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > How should you decide what to support if not having the information from your user? There are many well-known and largely perfected methods of getting that information without the use of telemetry. The thing that general telemetry really brings is cost savings and convenience. But it also brings a peculiar kind of blindness as well, since companies largely stopped doing product research that isn't telemetry.
  - 7y ago

gsich 7y ago

>Also about telemetry if all power users turn it off then you can have situations where developers will drop a feature because they don't use it and there is no data to show that more then 12 people are using it. Firefox and the RSS situation. Mozilla did not even think 1 second that this might occur.

kibwen 7y ago
Live Bookmarks were no substitute for a proper RSS reader. I've been using both RSS and Firefox continually since at least 2005, but I quickly stopped using Live Bookmarks in favor of Google Reader (RIP).
- gsich 7y ago
  True. A proper RSS reader would have been nice in Firefox. Instead Mozilla BS'd their way out.

oliwarner 7y ago

You're saying that as if the point of the software is to support the software, or report good numbers. It's not. The user should be the focus. Opt-out and hard-coded systems immediately put you no the back foot. You make people question why? and is it worth it? If all you've got it reporting numbers of users, you can go do one. The risk of genuine private data leaking out is not worth your marketing numbers to me. The Amazon link was much more egregious though. You were sending all Dash searches through to Amazon. This was unacceptable and poorly explained. I'm sure some people liked it, and they honestly could have made the integration a better trade for the user (play videos off Prime Video, etc), but only as an opt-in feature where you can see the ramifications.

kevingadd 7y ago
People need to understand that large scale software not having telemetry borders on malpractice if it interacts with the internet. If your software is crashing on a large scale - or worse, causing problems for other people's servers or taking out users' computers - you need to know, and you need to fix it fast. You can't just wait days or weeks to get enough complaints about it from people savvy enough to file bug reports. Look no further than how a recent Chrome update almost completely broke the software for Citrix users. Their telemetry (somehow) was not tracking this so it took days to get a fix because IT/ops people had to figure out that a Chrome update caused the bug and then escalate through chromium bug reports. Now imagine that happening any time a crash or major bug makes it into connected software... For stuff that just runs offline, like Excel or whatever, it's super justified to not want telemetry in it if that's the tradeoff users want. Incidentally this is basically the reason why all the major browsers are on rapid forced (unless you're in the enterprise) updates - the risk of having users stay on older versions with security holes is just too high because it ends up leading to massive botnets. I hate it, but hundreds of millions of people use those apps.
- _underfl0w_ 7y ago
  Finally, a sensible argument _for_ telemetry.
- wtetzner 7y ago

usrusr 7y ago

> or have it as an option you are forced to decider if yes or no. Bonus points for an implementation that comes with a few unbiased examples about why one might want to disable and why not. You are working under draconian legal secrecy requirements or on an exceptionally narrow/expensive uplink? Disable. You worry about secrecy but not enough to go 2FA, you occasionally wish for a bigger pipe to the internet? Disable if you insist, but it would be nice of you to contribute data.

scrollaway 7y ago
If you are working with such parameters, one would hope you wouldn't have to be explained that telemetry should be disabled. Not all apps will be so kind as to give you examples...
- usrusr 7y ago
  The purpose of the examples would not be to keep those out of tracking whom you'd expect to deactivate (because you are right, it becomes entirely their responsibility once they are actively presented the option), it would be to encourage trust with those who don't really need to be that level of paranoid (but who often are). Much better than the usual "trust us, everything is so incredibly safe that we don't even know why we have the option to deactivate". Most users will take the "incredibly" at face value and not believe it, and they would be right because nothing is ever that safe. But a risk model like "theoretically there could be a bug in that totally innocent feature use counter that accidentally included a random heap sample in the upload that could include sensitive data" would be acceptable to many. Could a liar smooth-talk you with those examples into pressing accept? Sure. But that bad actor could also ignore the setting or not show an option at all.