3 ms·

> VStudio is best IDE but to with a secret tunnel to nefarious practices to use when needed[ like telemetry + closed source extensions + Heavy + slow + whatnot!

> VStudio is best IDE but to with a secret tunnel to nefarious practices to use when needed[ like telemetry + closed source extensions + Heavy + slow + whatnot!] It’s telling that you needed help from “whatnot” to pad out this list. In what world is “Heavy + slow” a nefarious practice? Even assuming this is true, all of us have written software that was far from perfect. There wasn’t anything nefarious about either situation, it was only people trying to ship software under time constraints. That you ascribe evil intentions to some software being slow says more about you than them. Telemetry - so much digital ink has been spilled on this. Not one person I’ve asked can actually explain what’s wrong with this. What would actually go wrong if performance and usage metrics are sent to their server. “But they can be deanonymized!” Ok, let’s assume they can. Now we know it takes your computer 40ms to load the side bar, 20ms to create a new in-built terminal, and the version control screen crashes every time you open it. What now? How does this actually change anything? You folks complaining about telemetry think your job is done when you say “telemetry is nefarious”. But I can’t see a path for exploitation of this data in any way. No doubt you’ll tell us how. When doing so, please let’s assume that Microsoft is compliant with GDPR. Lastly closed source extensions - OP makes a compelling case that this is how we’ll end up with just one online editor. Yeah, I definitely see it. That’s the one thing I’ve been convinced of.

philonoist 4y ago
>In what world is “Heavy + slow” a nefarious practice? In M$ world and Apple's world( XCode). 2022's version was the first one to do a 64-bit release and became news titled - "awesome!", "Woah!", "amazing!", etc. [0] VStudio had nothing unique to it that the Rider din't have, but corporates and developers loved it because they could compensate by throwing some costly hardware and I must point out that it is usually from Intel that M$ is in monopoly in consumer and enterprise market. Apple is just the same, but it gets away being close to the *nix world. "performance improvements and bug smashes" are just fodder for despair that masquerades as hope, which could have been done away with long ago. Users report them and even showed what exactly could be done down to bits and bytes, but these thigs sleep there for a decade. All you need to do is create a developer account and search "for 10 years" or "since a decade" in their forums. Frustrations pour out and in galore. "Don't be evil" - Google "Be devil and also pull your greatest trick" - M$ [0]https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2516436/visual-studio-64-bit https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2516436/visual-studio-64...
- nindalf 4y ago
  > because they could compensate by throwing some costly hardware and I must point out that it is usually from Intel that M$ is in monopoly in consumer and enterprise market. It’s unclear what you mean by this sentence. Are you saying Microsoft somehow benefits if we buy more Intel? So there’s a developer at Microsoft who wrote in their performance review “yes, I’m proud to say that I worsened the experience for Microsoft users, but it’s ok because that leads to sales for Intel”. Leaving aside that Intel is playing catch up in the processor market now, do you actually believe this? Anyone else reading this comment - this is why it’s impossible for me to take these folks seriously. They concoct these conspiracy theories that are only slightly more logical than flat earth.
barrysteve 4y ago
I appreciate your good nature around telemetry, but as we have seen meta-data is trivial to abuse. The military kills people with metadata. Performance and usage metrics can tell the server when the client is being used and for how long. Combined with a license tied to a real name (or a billion other ways of IDing a person and computer), telemetry is just another way to die by metadata. Nevermind the face-value argument of performance and usage data turns into "give me a debuglog that includes every program you have open, a whole bunch of personal computing hardware information which can be trivially tied to PII". The argument that telemetry and server-side knowledge is safe entirely depends on reducing the argument down to an idealized metaphor that doesn't exist in practical reality, and then rejecting all forms of evidence that don't fit the mould. Unfortunately in this scenario, telling the truth about what needs to be kept private, is in itself, a clue to what is being kept private. So no communication can happen back up the chain if the client wants to keep something private. When the server becomes untrustworthy, so must the client.
- nindalf 4y ago
  Thank you for your response. > telemetry is just another way to die by metadata. If your threat model is a cruise missile from the military, then I actually agree - don’t use VSCode. For the rest of us who don’t live in fear of being murdered by a violent government at any moment, it’s a reasonable trade-off. I don’t see how I could be de-anonymised by these logs but I’m happy to be proven wrong. If you could cite which metrics are being collected and how you would de-anonymise someone with that data, that would be great.
  - barrysteve 4y ago
    I agree I have nothing to fear from the military. I would have hoped that example would show not that I am afraid of cruise missiles, but instead that very serious decisions at the highest level of government are being made from this information. You can bet your bottom dollar that all other high-levels of management, government, religious groups, ect have the same mindset towards the "privacy of metadata". I'm sure you'll plead ignorance of direct evidence of offenses right now and not historical, as reason enough to ignore practical truth.. Being de-anommed from logs is ez pz. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj6wfGcKFlI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj6wfGcKFlI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EaCnhC0mc0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EaCnhC0mc0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQL1jrm7Vzk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQL1jrm7Vzk There was another talk by a german lady where they de-anommed everybody in their data set, including a german judge who was looking at porn during his chambers sessions, almost like he was addicted. They brought this information to him and it was kept under wraps. Nobody is safe from this stuff, it only takes 3-4 peices of unique information (not matter how tiny) to statistically add up a probable identity with a high degree of confidence.

philonoist 4y ago

>In what world is “Heavy + slow” a nefarious practice? In M$ world and Apple's world( XCode). 2022's version was the first one to do a 64-bit release and became news titled - "awesome!", "Woah!", "amazing!", etc. [0] VStudio had nothing unique to it that the Rider din't have, but corporates and developers loved it because they could compensate by throwing some costly hardware and I must point out that it is usually from Intel that M$ is in monopoly in consumer and enterprise market. Apple is just the same, but it gets away being close to the *nix world. "performance improvements and bug smashes" are just fodder for despair that masquerades as hope, which could have been done away with long ago. Users report them and even showed what exactly could be done down to bits and bytes, but these thigs sleep there for a decade. All you need to do is create a developer account and search "for 10 years" or "since a decade" in their forums. Frustrations pour out and in galore. "Don't be evil" - Google "Be devil and also pull your greatest trick" - M$ [0]https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2516436/visual-studio-64-bit https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2516436/visual-studio-64...

nindalf 4y ago
> because they could compensate by throwing some costly hardware and I must point out that it is usually from Intel that M$ is in monopoly in consumer and enterprise market. It’s unclear what you mean by this sentence. Are you saying Microsoft somehow benefits if we buy more Intel? So there’s a developer at Microsoft who wrote in their performance review “yes, I’m proud to say that I worsened the experience for Microsoft users, but it’s ok because that leads to sales for Intel”. Leaving aside that Intel is playing catch up in the processor market now, do you actually believe this? Anyone else reading this comment - this is why it’s impossible for me to take these folks seriously. They concoct these conspiracy theories that are only slightly more logical than flat earth.

barrysteve 4y ago

I appreciate your good nature around telemetry, but as we have seen meta-data is trivial to abuse. The military kills people with metadata. Performance and usage metrics can tell the server when the client is being used and for how long. Combined with a license tied to a real name (or a billion other ways of IDing a person and computer), telemetry is just another way to die by metadata. Nevermind the face-value argument of performance and usage data turns into "give me a debuglog that includes every program you have open, a whole bunch of personal computing hardware information which can be trivially tied to PII". The argument that telemetry and server-side knowledge is safe entirely depends on reducing the argument down to an idealized metaphor that doesn't exist in practical reality, and then rejecting all forms of evidence that don't fit the mould. Unfortunately in this scenario, telling the truth about what needs to be kept private, is in itself, a clue to what is being kept private. So no communication can happen back up the chain if the client wants to keep something private. When the server becomes untrustworthy, so must the client.

nindalf 4y ago
Thank you for your response. > telemetry is just another way to die by metadata. If your threat model is a cruise missile from the military, then I actually agree - don’t use VSCode. For the rest of us who don’t live in fear of being murdered by a violent government at any moment, it’s a reasonable trade-off. I don’t see how I could be de-anonymised by these logs but I’m happy to be proven wrong. If you could cite which metrics are being collected and how you would de-anonymise someone with that data, that would be great.
- barrysteve 4y ago
  I agree I have nothing to fear from the military. I would have hoped that example would show not that I am afraid of cruise missiles, but instead that very serious decisions at the highest level of government are being made from this information. You can bet your bottom dollar that all other high-levels of management, government, religious groups, ect have the same mindset towards the "privacy of metadata". I'm sure you'll plead ignorance of direct evidence of offenses right now and not historical, as reason enough to ignore practical truth.. Being de-anommed from logs is ez pz. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj6wfGcKFlI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj6wfGcKFlI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EaCnhC0mc0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EaCnhC0mc0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQL1jrm7Vzk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQL1jrm7Vzk There was another talk by a german lady where they de-anommed everybody in their data set, including a german judge who was looking at porn during his chambers sessions, almost like he was addicted. They brought this information to him and it was kept under wraps. Nobody is safe from this stuff, it only takes 3-4 peices of unique information (not matter how tiny) to statistically add up a probable identity with a high degree of confidence.