4 ms·

Unfortunately opt-in telemetry is like no telemetry at all. Defaults matter.

• inetknght 1y ago
  No telemetry at all is a good thing to some (most?) people.
  • nicce 1y ago
    Telemetry can be implemented well. The software you use gets bugs fixed much faster since you get statistics that some bugs have higher impact than others. The more users software has, less skills they have in average to accurately report any issues.
    • inetknght 1y ago
      > The software you use gets bugs fixed much faster since you get statistics that some bugs have higher impact than others. Try talking to your users instead. > The more users software has, less skills they have in average to accurately report any issues. No amount of telemetry will solve that.
      • jodrellblank 1y ago
        The PowerShell team at Microsoft added opt-out telemetry to track when it was launched so they could make the case internally that they should get more funding, and have more internal clout. It’s easy to argue that if you are a PowerShell user or developer you benefit from no telemetry, but it’s hard to argue that you benefit from the tool you use being sidelined or defunded because corporate thinks nobody uses it. “Talk to your users” doesn’t solve this because there are millions of computers running scripts and no way to know who they are or contact them even if you could contact that many people, and they would not remember how often they launched it. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsoft.powershell.core/about/about_telemetry?view=powershell-7.5 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsof...
        • Eisenstein 1y ago
          To take that logic to its extreme: I'm sure we could have amazing medical breakthroughs if we just gave up that pesky 'don't experiment on non-consenting humans' hang-up we have.
          • jodrellblank 1y ago
            The parent said "talk to your users instead of telemetry" and I said "there are scenarios where telemetry can get information that you cannot get by talking to users". How did you go from that to "experimenting on non-consenting humans"? To take your logic to its extreme, you have a disease and are prescribed pills, and the pharmaceutical company says "we will track when you take the pills - unless you don't want us to?" and you would prefer the researchers get shut down for not knowing whether anyone actually takes the pills, and an unlimited number of people die from treatable diseases that don't get cured.
            • inetknght 1y ago
              > I don't understand how you got from "there are scenarios where telemetry can get information that you cannot get by talking to users, here is one example" to "experimenting on non-consenting humans". What is the connection? The connection is clear if your salary doesn't require you to not understand it. Developers don't opt-in to telemetry? Maybe it's because they don't want to enable that telemetry, your experiments be damned. Use proper engineering to demonstrate that your scripts work instead of demanding that users be your free software test team.
              • jodrellblank 1y ago
                > "Use proper engineering to demonstrate that your scripts work instead of demanding that users be your free software test team." This telemetry is not about demonstrating that scripts work, as I have said to you multiple times.
            • Eisenstein 1y ago
              You said 'but we wouldn't have a lot of improvement without telemetry'. I am saying that we could have a lot of improvement in a lot of things if we wanted. We could have breakthroughs in medicine if we allowed human experimentation. The question is, where is that that line? Your argument doesn't address that, it just tries to justify something that people think it morally wrong by stating that we get use from it.
• mnw21cam 1y ago
  Surely that should be fortunately.
• bayindirh 1y ago
  Exactly. What users do on their computers is their own data. It's up to them to share it or not.