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Comment by tosti | Hacker News Reader

OIC: https://github.com/bjarneo/cliamp/blob/main/telemetry/teleme...

Should be easy to nerf, but the build instructions are kinda vague. Clone, and then what? Something like "go build" or something I guess.

Looks cool though

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It's gone: https://github.com/bjarneo/cliamp/commit/085734a86343a80176d...

I just woke up this morning and I am amazed. I am taking all my nasty words back and I starred the project and followed the author who reacted so fast to my dull negative feedback and this reaction shows how much he cares about the project.

Thanks for pointing this out, to me it seems quite a good response.

I wouldn't mind opt-in telemetry, but possibly the participation rate would be too low to make use of it.

My issue with telemetry is that 99% of software ends up not using it. Why have it? And definitely don't have it by default. Your users will come tell you what they want, making telemetry useless, especially when it's an OSS project you're mostly building for yourself.

Except that telemetry can give you more complete (and foolproof) information than what users report. But yeah, that could also be solved by having debug info that users can attach to their report, the app doesn't have to "call home" for that...

I agree, but it's a cost/benefit thing. Most OSS projects aren't big enough to do anything with the telemetry, so you're just paying in goodwill for no reason.

Opt-in via extension, fine. Opt-in via flag, unreliable. The spyware code should never be anywhere near the main codebase.

Yay! Also, I hadn't noticed an entire section about building from source. Sorry about that. Good work!

Woo, good on them

No personal data is collected

IP address (which can be geolocated) along with a unique identifier is not considered "personal data"? This is basically a tracking cookie. It also seems to use HTTP, which is itself widely fingerprintable based on what request headers it sends.

There's a config variable and a cli flag to disable.

That seems reasonable to me.

to disable

All such surveillance behaviour should strictly be OPT IN.

I saw it, it is NOT spyware. It just sends a random UUID. It is just a personal disappointment for the fact that it is something so simple as a console player and yet connects somewhere. But that's just me. I grew up in other times.

Also I just compiled mp3blaster and I am listening to it again. So cool!

If it phones home without explicitly asking the user for permission in advance, it's spyware.

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