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From the README: > 4. To help us improve the editor, Atom sends usage information to Google Analytics. See [atom/metrics](https://github.com/atom/metrics ht
by sveme 13y ago
From the README:
> 4. To help us improve the editor, Atom sends usage information to Google
Analytics. See [atom/metrics](https://github.com/atom/metrics https://github.com/atom/metrics) for details.
That is quite horrible in my opinion. Do I want an application on my computer that constantly sends
information to Google and Github?
What kind of information is it sending?
(from the link)
Collected Data
+ A unique identifier that is generated by computing the SHA-1 of the machine's MAC address.
+ The screen width and height
+ The version of Atom being used
+ The name of each item opened in a pane such as EditorView, SettingsView, and MarkdownPreviewView
+ The amount of time the current window was open for
+ The amount of time the current window took to load
+ The amount of time the app took to launch
Item no. 4 is the critical one. I really don't like this. However, you can apparently disable this:
> If you do not want this information reported, disable this package from the Metrics section of the Settings view `(cmd-,)`.
(edit: removed typo)
- userbinator 13y agoThat is disturbing. I've had *.google-analytics.com nullrouted ever since I heard of GA. > SHA-1 of the machine's MAC address. There's only 2^48 MAC addresses, there are 2^160 SHA-1 hashes. With computing power at where it is today, a bruteforce over the MAC space wouldn't take long. On the other hand, spoofing the data is also an alternative way of opposition...
- qpleple 13y ago> a bruteforce over the MAC space wouldn't take long Indeed, best supercomputers are running today around 10 petaFLOPS (= 10^16 FLoating-point Operations Per Second) and there are 2^48 ~= 10^15 possible MAC addresses.
- userbinator 13y agoA FLOP is quite a lot simpler than a SHA-1 hash, however. The Bitcoin network might be a better comparison since it uses doubled SHA-256; currently it's at around 3e16 hashes per second, or 6e16 SHA-256 operations per second. That's enough to hash all possible MACs in less than a second.
- Tohhou 13y agoHow dare they collect usage data to improve their free product!!!
- jumpwah 13y agoIt's not free (as in speech nor beer). Unless something has changed (I haven't been following), it will become paid after the beta period is over.
- paukiatwee 13y agoSorry to tell you, it is not free. https://atom.io/faq https://atom.io/faq "We haven't settled on pricing yet, but you can expect it to be competitively priced compared to similar editors."
- flaviusb 13y agoIf one takes Vim, Emacs, or Light Table as 'similar', then that would imply free...
- aidos 13y agoI believe that the final product isn't going to be free - so that changes the landscape of the argument. Then again, maybe they won't have analytics in that version. Note: I'm not making a comment on it being a paid for app - they've released bucket loads of open source code they wrote to create the editor. For that they should be praised.
- sveme 13y agoIt doesn't matter whether it is free or not. My only aim was to provide information that might be relevant for some people interested in trying out Atom (admittedly I mixed this information with my personal position towards Google and the ever-present tracking aka surveillance) so that they know the implicit price of its usage. You are free to use Atom or anything else, but you should always have as much information available as possible to correctly judge what you pay for any given thing.
- 13y ago