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Telemetry can be useful but it's hardly the only way, and it doesn't have to be opt-out. People made "product decisions" before the internet.

by simias 5y ago

masklinn 5y ago
> People made "product decisions" before the internet. People still pull numbers and assertions out their asses all the time. That doesn't mean it is, or was, good.
- simias 5y ago
  Telemetry doesn't guarantee that people won't pull numbers out of their asses. There are lies, damned lies, and statistics. Designing good telemetry is hard, interpreting the data well is harder (and it's tempting to cherry-pick post facto to justify your decisions). Are users not using functionality X because it's useless or because there's some other issue preventing its use? Or maybe users just don't know that it exists? Crash reports are more of an unmitigated good IMO however, since they can be used to pinpoint the source of crashes and identify regressions.
  - sharklazer 5y ago
    > Designing good telemetry is hard, interpreting the data well is harder The biggest problem facing any use of data is quality of the collected data. For example, if you wanted to train a model but all you had were examples of a particular class... well, you excluded yourself from being able to predict any other class from the git-go. Data collection itself require a deep understanding of statistics and probability. Otherwise you’re just shooting yourself in the foot. But let’s be honest, machines don’t “learn” things, people do. Machines have no teleology they determine for themselves. People are both the problem and solution. Anyone who thinks big data and ML will be able to generate the answers are deluded and have already turned off or lost completely their critical thinking skills. Data collection in the form of telemetry is only a mechanism for finding solutions and an incredibly INVASIVE one at that.
zamadatix 5y ago
What exactly are you saying in regards to this case about Audacity though. It was opt-in and they had already been making product decisions yet they knew they could make better decisions with more information.
- simias 5y ago
  Sorry, I was making a general case. I think being opt-in definitely alleviates most concerns. I just generally dislike this trend of putting telemetry in every singe application, it sets a bad precedent and can easily be abused by less principled developers (especially for closed source software) in order to syphon data for all sorts of purposes.
- majewsky 5y ago
  > they knew they could make better decisions with more information. That's an unproven assumption. More information does not lead to better decisions, it just leads to more confidence in those decisions (whether justified or not).
  - zamadatix 5y ago
    "could make" not "will make" - unless you're arguing that having information about what you're doing will always fail to help you do it better in which case ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
- mixmastamyk 5y ago
  There are a ton of improvements to be done on any software project (especially venerable ones) by experienced devs before resorting to telemetry. Talking to users/customers should be first.

Telemetry can be useful but it's hardly the only way, and it doesn't have to be opt-out. People made "product decisions" before the internet.

by simias 5y ago

Telemetry can be useful but it's hardly the only way, and it doesn't have to be opt-out. People made "product decisions" before the internet.

masklinn 5y ago

> People made "product decisions" before the internet. People still pull numbers and assertions out their asses all the time. That doesn't mean it is, or was, good.

simias 5y ago
Telemetry doesn't guarantee that people won't pull numbers out of their asses. There are lies, damned lies, and statistics. Designing good telemetry is hard, interpreting the data well is harder (and it's tempting to cherry-pick post facto to justify your decisions). Are users not using functionality X because it's useless or because there's some other issue preventing its use? Or maybe users just don't know that it exists? Crash reports are more of an unmitigated good IMO however, since they can be used to pinpoint the source of crashes and identify regressions.
- sharklazer 5y ago
  > Designing good telemetry is hard, interpreting the data well is harder The biggest problem facing any use of data is quality of the collected data. For example, if you wanted to train a model but all you had were examples of a particular class... well, you excluded yourself from being able to predict any other class from the git-go. Data collection itself require a deep understanding of statistics and probability. Otherwise you’re just shooting yourself in the foot. But let’s be honest, machines don’t “learn” things, people do. Machines have no teleology they determine for themselves. People are both the problem and solution. Anyone who thinks big data and ML will be able to generate the answers are deluded and have already turned off or lost completely their critical thinking skills. Data collection in the form of telemetry is only a mechanism for finding solutions and an incredibly INVASIVE one at that.

zamadatix 5y ago

What exactly are you saying in regards to this case about Audacity though. It was opt-in and they had already been making product decisions yet they knew they could make better decisions with more information.

simias 5y ago
Sorry, I was making a general case. I think being opt-in definitely alleviates most concerns. I just generally dislike this trend of putting telemetry in every singe application, it sets a bad precedent and can easily be abused by less principled developers (especially for closed source software) in order to syphon data for all sorts of purposes.
majewsky 5y ago
> they knew they could make better decisions with more information. That's an unproven assumption. More information does not lead to better decisions, it just leads to more confidence in those decisions (whether justified or not).
- zamadatix 5y ago
  "could make" not "will make" - unless you're arguing that having information about what you're doing will always fail to help you do it better in which case ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
mixmastamyk 5y ago
There are a ton of improvements to be done on any software project (especially venerable ones) by experienced devs before resorting to telemetry. Talking to users/customers should be first.