6 ms·

Why do people use obvious spyware when free software exists?

by isatty 1y ago

arstarstttt3 1y ago
[flagged]
- yard2010 1y ago
  Or anything else from their party..
- aspenmayer 1y ago
  > We need to bring back shaming and social isolation HN is not your army, and it isn’t a theater of ideological battle. Please don’t do that here.
  - eightysixfour 1y ago
    I certainly think "hacker" implies quite a bit of ideology, and this site has substantial ideological leanings.
    - aspenmayer 1y ago
      I think I was speaking aspirationally, in that the spirit of the guidelines precludes us from relating to the site and each other in such a way. We are ends, not means to an end, if that end involves subverting curious discussion. To my reading, shaming isn’t compatible with arguing in good faith as dang has helped me to understand through breaking the guidelines in strange new ways myself. I’d be happy to email mods if you think they can tell you better. I’m no authority or guide, as my own comment history shows. I’m not better than you, or who I am replying to. I say this because I care to have a discussion that (only?) HN can enable. We can backbite anywhere (else) online, but the folks who created HN made it for something else, and arguably something greater.
      - eightysixfour 1y ago
        > shaming isn’t compatible with arguing in good faith I don't believe the behavior that is analyzed here was done in good faith, it is in fact a direct attack on things that I strongly believe in. Striving for good faith argument is only effective when both sides agree that they gain mutual benefits through agreement, otherwise your good faith is used as a tool to stall, disrupt, and do harm. In that case, shaming is an appropriate response.
        aspenmayer 1y ago
        > Striving for good faith argument is only effective when both sides agree that they gain mutual benefits through agreement, otherwise your good faith is used as a tool to stall, disrupt, and do harm. I may agree that this is an unequal yoke slung across both a good faith commenter and a rules-lawyered troll, assuming that your interpretation is accurate. However, it is not for us to say that bad faith must be answered with bad, and in fact the guidelines say that we must keep the good faith even in the face of bad. Otherwise we become the very thing we wrestle against. You’re arguing for a kind of strained logic that suggests that two wrongs don’t make a right, but three lefts do, as if that could justify driving the wrong way down a one-way street. All roads might lead to Rome, but you can’t get there from here. For what it’s worth, the comment I’m referring to in which shaming by me was perhaps not consistent with the guidelines was this one, in which I say that the commenter was wrong, their comment was bad, and they should feel bad. Dang said that this wasn’t okay, and I tend to agree to a point. We aren’t solely preaching to the choir here, so it’s not for me to say that they should feel bad per se, because that would be to stand in judgment of them as a person, and not merely to find their views contemptible. I don’t know if I find dang’s reasoning entirely convincing on the points, but I know his heart is in the right place by calling me out when I emailed him about being rate limited. You may also feel free to judge me, as I have also found myself feeling as you do. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44568173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44568173
charcircuit 1y ago
Telemetry isn't the same thing as spying on the user. People use it because it's not actually spying on them.
- malfist 1y ago
  It is literally spying on the user. Unless you're somehow saying telemetry doesn't report anything about what a user is doing to it's home server.
  - nomel 1y ago
    In my mind, the difference is that spying does or can contain PII, or PII can be inferred from it, where telemetry is incapable of being linked to an individual, to a reasonable extent.
    - gpm 1y ago
      Every single piece of telemetry sent over the internet includes PII - the IP address of the sender - by virtue of how our internet protocols are designed.
      - aleph_minus_one 1y ago
        At least spiritually not if the traffic is routed over a Tor circuit. :-)
        rvnx 1y ago
        Unless you control most of the Tor nodes :-) So many US universities running such nodes, without ever getting legal troubles. Such lucky boys
      - nomel 1y ago
        > includes PII - the IP address of the sender Apple provides telemetry services that strips the IP before providing it to the app owners. Routing like this requires trust (just as a VPN does), but it's feasible.
rs186 1y ago
Eh, I don't know how you could tell it is "obvious" "spyware", unless you are referring to the fact that it comes from Bytedance.
- jen20 1y ago
  Have Bytedance produced literally anything to that assumption unreasonable?
  - phillipcarter 1y ago
    Amongst other things they do have a division that produces OKR tracking software. Just the weird story of another multinational I suppose.
    - jen20 1y ago
      As in objective and key result? That’s… weird but ok!
- Biganon 1y ago
  The mere fact that disabling telemetry does not at all disable telemetry is enough for it to be called spyware.
  - rs186 1y ago
    That's only after you read this article. The question is how do you know it's spyware even before you install it. At least it's not clear for me from github README file that I would be knowningly installing spyware.
bowsamic 1y ago
Because there’s a huge amount of money behind smearing free software
muppetman 1y ago
Well there's a middle ground - Sublime Text isn't free but it's fantastic and isn't sending back all my code/work to the Chinese Government. Sorry, "Telemetry"
- quectophoton 1y ago
  And the other side of the middle ground, Grafana being AGPL but requiring you to disable 4 analytics flags, 1 gravatar flag, and (I think) one of their default dashboards was also fetching news from a Grafana URL. https://github.com/grafana/tempo/discussions/5001#discussioncomment-12924416 https://github.com/grafana/tempo/discussions/5001#discussion... (Yes, that's for Grafana tempo, but the issue in `grafana/grafana` was just marked as duplicate of this.)
- ddd34drf3 1y ago
  Another middle ground is CudaText, it is free and without telemetry.
throwaway328 1y ago
Yes, why do people use products from Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, ...
- davidmurdoch 1y ago
  Because the alternatives suck. In this case, the software being analyzed is the alternative that sucks.
- guessmyname 1y ago
  > Yes, why do people use products from Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, ... I work at Apple, so I’m not concerned about being monitored—it’s all company-owned equipment and data anyway. It was the same when I worked at Microsoft. I used Microsoft products exclusively, regardless of any potential privacy concerns. Employees at Google and Amazon do the same. It’s known as “dogfooding”—using your own products to test and improve them (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food). As for why people outside these companies use their products, it usually comes down to two reasons: a) Their employer has purchased licenses and wants employees to use them, either for compliance or to get value from the investment; or b) They genuinely like the product—whether it’s because of its features, price, performance, support, or overall experience.
  - throwaway328 1y ago
    Hmm. Are you aware that I was responding to this comment? > Why do people use obvious spyware when free software exists? So, even though the poster was referring to ByteDance when they said "obvious spyware", I was feigning incomprehension in order to ask the question, how do we differentiate ByteDance from what Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon (and the rest) do. It's a real question - why do technical people, who arguably should know better, and can do something about it - continue to use these data-harvesting and user-selling platforms? The answer is obvious when it's the case of an employee of those companies, I grant you that. My apologies if you feel your response did address that, and I missed it. If so, please help me see what I missed.
- krisworld11 1y ago
doctorpangloss 1y ago
Ha ha, free software also has tons of telemetry, it just belongs to GitHub.
bilinguliar 1y ago
As an asset who successfully infiltrated a rival country's tech company you want deniability. Bringing your own IDE does not look suspicious.

Why do people use obvious spyware when free software exists?

by isatty 1y ago

Why do people use obvious spyware when free software exists?

arstarstttt3 1y ago

[flagged]

yard2010 1y ago
Or anything else from their party..
aspenmayer 1y ago
> We need to bring back shaming and social isolation HN is not your army, and it isn’t a theater of ideological battle. Please don’t do that here.
- eightysixfour 1y ago
  I certainly think "hacker" implies quite a bit of ideology, and this site has substantial ideological leanings.
  - aspenmayer 1y ago
    I think I was speaking aspirationally, in that the spirit of the guidelines precludes us from relating to the site and each other in such a way. We are ends, not means to an end, if that end involves subverting curious discussion. To my reading, shaming isn’t compatible with arguing in good faith as dang has helped me to understand through breaking the guidelines in strange new ways myself. I’d be happy to email mods if you think they can tell you better. I’m no authority or guide, as my own comment history shows. I’m not better than you, or who I am replying to. I say this because I care to have a discussion that (only?) HN can enable. We can backbite anywhere (else) online, but the folks who created HN made it for something else, and arguably something greater.
    - eightysixfour 1y ago
      > shaming isn’t compatible with arguing in good faith I don't believe the behavior that is analyzed here was done in good faith, it is in fact a direct attack on things that I strongly believe in. Striving for good faith argument is only effective when both sides agree that they gain mutual benefits through agreement, otherwise your good faith is used as a tool to stall, disrupt, and do harm. In that case, shaming is an appropriate response.
      - aspenmayer 1y ago
        > Striving for good faith argument is only effective when both sides agree that they gain mutual benefits through agreement, otherwise your good faith is used as a tool to stall, disrupt, and do harm. I may agree that this is an unequal yoke slung across both a good faith commenter and a rules-lawyered troll, assuming that your interpretation is accurate. However, it is not for us to say that bad faith must be answered with bad, and in fact the guidelines say that we must keep the good faith even in the face of bad. Otherwise we become the very thing we wrestle against. You’re arguing for a kind of strained logic that suggests that two wrongs don’t make a right, but three lefts do, as if that could justify driving the wrong way down a one-way street. All roads might lead to Rome, but you can’t get there from here. For what it’s worth, the comment I’m referring to in which shaming by me was perhaps not consistent with the guidelines was this one, in which I say that the commenter was wrong, their comment was bad, and they should feel bad. Dang said that this wasn’t okay, and I tend to agree to a point. We aren’t solely preaching to the choir here, so it’s not for me to say that they should feel bad per se, because that would be to stand in judgment of them as a person, and not merely to find their views contemptible. I don’t know if I find dang’s reasoning entirely convincing on the points, but I know his heart is in the right place by calling me out when I emailed him about being rate limited. You may also feel free to judge me, as I have also found myself feeling as you do. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44568173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44568173

charcircuit 1y ago

Telemetry isn't the same thing as spying on the user. People use it because it's not actually spying on them.

malfist 1y ago
It is literally spying on the user. Unless you're somehow saying telemetry doesn't report anything about what a user is doing to it's home server.
- nomel 1y ago
  In my mind, the difference is that spying does or can contain PII, or PII can be inferred from it, where telemetry is incapable of being linked to an individual, to a reasonable extent.
  - gpm 1y ago
    Every single piece of telemetry sent over the internet includes PII - the IP address of the sender - by virtue of how our internet protocols are designed.
    - aleph_minus_one 1y ago
      At least spiritually not if the traffic is routed over a Tor circuit. :-)
      - rvnx 1y ago
        Unless you control most of the Tor nodes :-) So many US universities running such nodes, without ever getting legal troubles. Such lucky boys
    - nomel 1y ago
      > includes PII - the IP address of the sender Apple provides telemetry services that strips the IP before providing it to the app owners. Routing like this requires trust (just as a VPN does), but it's feasible.

rs186 1y ago

Eh, I don't know how you could tell it is "obvious" "spyware", unless you are referring to the fact that it comes from Bytedance.

jen20 1y ago
Have Bytedance produced literally anything to that assumption unreasonable?
- phillipcarter 1y ago
  Amongst other things they do have a division that produces OKR tracking software. Just the weird story of another multinational I suppose.
  - jen20 1y ago
    As in objective and key result? That’s… weird but ok!
Biganon 1y ago
The mere fact that disabling telemetry does not at all disable telemetry is enough for it to be called spyware.
- rs186 1y ago
  That's only after you read this article. The question is how do you know it's spyware even before you install it. At least it's not clear for me from github README file that I would be knowningly installing spyware.

bowsamic 1y ago

Because there’s a huge amount of money behind smearing free software

muppetman 1y ago

Well there's a middle ground - Sublime Text isn't free but it's fantastic and isn't sending back all my code/work to the Chinese Government. Sorry, "Telemetry"

quectophoton 1y ago
And the other side of the middle ground, Grafana being AGPL but requiring you to disable 4 analytics flags, 1 gravatar flag, and (I think) one of their default dashboards was also fetching news from a Grafana URL. https://github.com/grafana/tempo/discussions/5001#discussioncomment-12924416 https://github.com/grafana/tempo/discussions/5001#discussion... (Yes, that's for Grafana tempo, but the issue in `grafana/grafana` was just marked as duplicate of this.)
ddd34drf3 1y ago
Another middle ground is CudaText, it is free and without telemetry.

throwaway328 1y ago

Yes, why do people use products from Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, ...

davidmurdoch 1y ago
Because the alternatives suck. In this case, the software being analyzed is the alternative that sucks.
guessmyname 1y ago
> Yes, why do people use products from Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, ... I work at Apple, so I’m not concerned about being monitored—it’s all company-owned equipment and data anyway. It was the same when I worked at Microsoft. I used Microsoft products exclusively, regardless of any potential privacy concerns. Employees at Google and Amazon do the same. It’s known as “dogfooding”—using your own products to test and improve them (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food). As for why people outside these companies use their products, it usually comes down to two reasons: a) Their employer has purchased licenses and wants employees to use them, either for compliance or to get value from the investment; or b) They genuinely like the product—whether it’s because of its features, price, performance, support, or overall experience.
- throwaway328 1y ago
  Hmm. Are you aware that I was responding to this comment? > Why do people use obvious spyware when free software exists? So, even though the poster was referring to ByteDance when they said "obvious spyware", I was feigning incomprehension in order to ask the question, how do we differentiate ByteDance from what Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon (and the rest) do. It's a real question - why do technical people, who arguably should know better, and can do something about it - continue to use these data-harvesting and user-selling platforms? The answer is obvious when it's the case of an employee of those companies, I grant you that. My apologies if you feel your response did address that, and I missed it. If so, please help me see what I missed.
krisworld11 1y ago

doctorpangloss 1y ago

Ha ha, free software also has tons of telemetry, it just belongs to GitHub.

bilinguliar 1y ago

As an asset who successfully infiltrated a rival country's tech company you want deniability. Bringing your own IDE does not look suspicious.