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Eisenstein 6 days 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 5 days ago | parent [-]

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.

bayindirh 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

Medical research and consent doesn't work like this. If you track your patients without their consent, or you share their data without their explicit consent, you'll land in very hot water, which will cook you even before you can scream.

Similarly, a medical trial will take a very detailed consent before you can start.

Your opt-out telemetry is akin to your insurance sending you powered and Bluetooth enabled toothbrushes out of the blue to track you and threaten to cancel your insurance if you don't use that toothbrush and send data to them.

Or as a more extreme example, going through an important procedure not with the known and proven method but with an experimental one, because you didn't opt-out and nobody bothered to tell you this. In reality, you need to sign consent and waiver forms to accept experimental methods.

jodrellblank 3 days ago | parent [-]

> "Medical research and consent doesn't work like this."

Yes, I agree that person's comparison to non-consensual medical research is stupid.

> "Your opt-out telemetry is akin to your insurance sending you powered and Bluetooth enabled toothbrushes out of the blue to track you and threaten to cancel your insurance if you don't use that toothbrush and send data to them."

More akin to your insurance company making a public RFC where you can discuss the coming telemetry, then you choosing to ask your insurance for an optional toothbrush, being able to opt out of telemetry if you want to, the insurance company documenting how to opt out[1], you being able to edit the toothbrush source code to remove the telemetry entirely with the insurance company's approval because it's MIT licensed, and absolutely nothing happening to you if you opt out.

inetknght 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> 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 3 days ago | parent [-]

> "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 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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.

jodrellblank 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> "You said 'but we wouldn't have a lot of improvement without telemetry'."

I did not say that. Within the context of Microsoft's internal funding, maybe, but we could have the same improvement by Microsoft throwing more money at the PowerShell team without this telemetry. The core thing I said was that the information the telemetry gets cannot be got by "talk to your users" not that the telemetry leads to amazing improvements.

It is still difficult for you to make the case that someone choosing to download PowerShell can be "not consenting" (and before you reply saying "PowerShell ships with Windows", the PowerShell which has telemetry does not [yet] ship with Windows).

3 days ago | parent | prev [-]
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