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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

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
What's wrong with the little popup that asks you if you want to report a problem every time a crash happens? Is there really any problem with letting the user choose on a case-by-case basis? If it's happening so frequently that the popup becomes annoying, you've got bigger problems.
- blaser-waffle 7y ago
  Because people rarely click Yes, even if it's rare. Plus it means little to the end user, and outside of HN, Slashdot, or other tech forums, most folks don't even know what telemetry means in an OS context. They click No, and move on.
  - labawi 7y ago
    Are you saying all of those users whose browsers are crashing on a large scale are going to say no? Also, are you implying software should send telemetry to the mothership regardless of users' will? There used to be a time software was tested and released finished.
  - yellowapple 7y ago
    > Because people rarely click Yes, even if it's rare. In my observation the precise opposite is true; your average user will immediately click "Yes" without reading in the hopes of making the error go away.
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    So you're arguing that because people will decline to share the data, they should be forced to share the data?
  - wtetzner 7y ago
    So the solution is to deprive them of their privacy for your own benefit? I don't blame them for clicking "no" if they don't know what it will be used for.
- kevingadd 7y ago
  Providing the choice is always OK and often appropriate. The problem is when people argue that software shouldn't have telemetry or automated updates at all, because then what you get is software that respects the user's desire at a surface level - no telemetry, no automated updates - while failing to respect deeper aspects of their intent, like "I don't want to get added to a botnet", "I don't want this software to crash", and "I don't want features I like removed in future updates". You can always decide to go elsewhere of course, and software developers have the right to decide personally not to put that stuff into their apps - none of my personal projects have telemetry and most of them don't have updaters.
  - wtetzner 7y ago
    > You can always decide to go elsewhere of course The problem with web browsers is that you really can't. There are really only 2 options now, and the web has become so ridiculously complicated that creating a reasonable alternative browser is nearly impossible.
jacquesm 7y ago
That's fine, if it is opt-in and clearly spelled out. Some of us do confidential work and leaking URLs visited and field contents to parties not subject to NDA is absolutely not acceptable in any context.
- kevingadd 7y ago
  Yeah, a coherent privacy model, disclosure etc are all super important. It's just irritating to see people act like software of this type can rationally be shipped without any telemetry to a big group of users who aren't compiling it from source. Naturally a ton of work has to go into properly designing telemetry for something like Firefox or Chrome - not only is disclosing URLs a no-go, but you need to make sure your telemetry isn't unintentionally exposing details that are identifying in some other fashion, like on-stack data from a crash report or that sort of thing.
JohnFen 7y ago
> People need to understand that large scale software not having telemetry borders on malpractice if it interacts with the internet. If that's true (and I don't really agree that it is), that's an excellent argument for avoiding large-scale software.
- kevingadd 7y ago
  This is one of the strongest arguments against an Internet monoculture. Shame about all those alternative browsers dying to the point that now if you're working on one, CloudFlare/Google/etc are likely to just block your browser entirely. Everyone's using the same massive-scale app and now that it's a central point of failure it's wildly irresponsible to not load it down with telemetry. It sucks. If it were instead a healthy market of like 4-8 different browsers people were using, a major issue in one of them wouldn't necessarily be a crisis because people could just boot up a different browser and the bug would only impact say 5-25% of a website's visitors at most instead of The Majority Of Them.

_underfl0w_ 7y ago

Finally, a sensible argument _for_ telemetry.

wtetzner 7y ago

What's wrong with the little popup that asks you if you want to report a problem every time a crash happens? Is there really any problem with letting the user choose on a case-by-case basis? If it's happening so frequently that the popup becomes annoying, you've got bigger problems.

blaser-waffle 7y ago
Because people rarely click Yes, even if it's rare. Plus it means little to the end user, and outside of HN, Slashdot, or other tech forums, most folks don't even know what telemetry means in an OS context. They click No, and move on.
- labawi 7y ago
  Are you saying all of those users whose browsers are crashing on a large scale are going to say no? Also, are you implying software should send telemetry to the mothership regardless of users' will? There used to be a time software was tested and released finished.
- yellowapple 7y ago
  > Because people rarely click Yes, even if it's rare. In my observation the precise opposite is true; your average user will immediately click "Yes" without reading in the hopes of making the error go away.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  So you're arguing that because people will decline to share the data, they should be forced to share the data?
- wtetzner 7y ago
  So the solution is to deprive them of their privacy for your own benefit? I don't blame them for clicking "no" if they don't know what it will be used for.
kevingadd 7y ago
Providing the choice is always OK and often appropriate. The problem is when people argue that software shouldn't have telemetry or automated updates at all, because then what you get is software that respects the user's desire at a surface level - no telemetry, no automated updates - while failing to respect deeper aspects of their intent, like "I don't want to get added to a botnet", "I don't want this software to crash", and "I don't want features I like removed in future updates". You can always decide to go elsewhere of course, and software developers have the right to decide personally not to put that stuff into their apps - none of my personal projects have telemetry and most of them don't have updaters.
- wtetzner 7y ago
  > You can always decide to go elsewhere of course The problem with web browsers is that you really can't. There are really only 2 options now, and the web has become so ridiculously complicated that creating a reasonable alternative browser is nearly impossible.

jacquesm 7y ago

That's fine, if it is opt-in and clearly spelled out. Some of us do confidential work and leaking URLs visited and field contents to parties not subject to NDA is absolutely not acceptable in any context.

kevingadd 7y ago
Yeah, a coherent privacy model, disclosure etc are all super important. It's just irritating to see people act like software of this type can rationally be shipped without any telemetry to a big group of users who aren't compiling it from source. Naturally a ton of work has to go into properly designing telemetry for something like Firefox or Chrome - not only is disclosing URLs a no-go, but you need to make sure your telemetry isn't unintentionally exposing details that are identifying in some other fashion, like on-stack data from a crash report or that sort of thing.

JohnFen 7y ago

> People need to understand that large scale software not having telemetry borders on malpractice if it interacts with the internet. If that's true (and I don't really agree that it is), that's an excellent argument for avoiding large-scale software.

kevingadd 7y ago
This is one of the strongest arguments against an Internet monoculture. Shame about all those alternative browsers dying to the point that now if you're working on one, CloudFlare/Google/etc are likely to just block your browser entirely. Everyone's using the same massive-scale app and now that it's a central point of failure it's wildly irresponsible to not load it down with telemetry. It sucks. If it were instead a healthy market of like 4-8 different browsers people were using, a major issue in one of them wouldn't necessarily be a crisis because people could just boot up a different browser and the bug would only impact say 5-25% of a website's visitors at most instead of The Majority Of Them.