_Understated_

> but there are so many doing it.

Really? That's a weak argument if ever I heard one.

Perhaps it's time to take a stand and say "no more!"

What's to stop them adding in something else later that "accidentally" grabs IP addresses, and sends them "accidentally" to their third party analytics company who doesn't give a shit about your privacy. That company then takes their other data, joins it all together and adds to the picture of you that you never asked them to create!

When you open this door, there is no closing it.

The argument comes down to this (for me, at least): You got the software to this point without telemetry. Why do you need it now? Is the application all of a sudden unusable?

Edit: I forgot! They already take your IP address but my point still stands!

So is the UX unusable right now?

Edit: >but if you want UX improvements to Audacity

You insinuated that the only way to improve the UX (your comments insinuates that it needs improving) is to use telemetry

I'm not sure this is overreaction.

Don't get me wrong, I've grabbed my pitchfork at times in the past and some of them have been massive overreactions but I think this is people saying "Oh ffs! Is nothing sacred?"

Audacity is now joining the ranks (yes, the scale is much different) of Google, Microsoft, <Insert Evil Corp Here>. Whether their intentions are evil or not (I don't believe they are in this case) is irrelevant.

For me, it's another nail in the coffin of owning my own stuff and not having to be connected all the time.

For example, why do I want to use an offline application that can potentially send information about me to foreign countries? What possible benefit is there for me in that?

Of course, I'd imagine that telemetry won't break my app if I don't connect to the internet but it's all part of a pattern of software becoming more and more about what the owners of the application can do to monetise me and what they can get away with (whether that's the plan for Audacity or not... they're still playing in the same field and can easily take a stand and say "we will never use telemetry").

Even if it's made to be opt-out, what happens if an update accidentally (or deliberately) switches it on again? Will it be "oops, sorry about that"!

I thought it was more about the fact that it's opt-out (if I understand it correctly!).

Companies have existed for centuries without needing constant telemetry... we have many methods that do not require telemetry: surveys, emails, forums etc.

In fact, there is a subreddit here [0] that the devs/owners could easily ask questions.

[0] - https://old.reddit.com/r/audacity

Edit: Also, I think people are totally jaded with telemetry. There are some companies that take data whether you want them to or not so people are naturally wary... what's to stop them pushing out an update that grabs a massive pile of sensitive data and then when the backlash starts, they throw their hands up and say "sorry"... much like Google do/have done.

For me, the errors were rarely major although I do remember an update breaking access to my printer: that required reinstallation.

I sometimes had network issues after updates. Things like Outlook not being able to connect as the icon in the tray showed I wasn't online despite being online.

There were others, all fairly small but they were part of a pattern of worsening quality... they seem to be prioritizing looks and features over stability. Visual Studio is guilty of this too: feature-tastic but less stable than older versions.

Borked updates can be worked around: I disabled Windows update and put up with them but add to that the notifications, infantilization, less control, dark patterns and it all adds up to a "different" Microsoft than the Windows 7 days.

I was a bit of a fanboi too: Microsoft's ecosystem got me to where I am today in my career but no more. I'm done with the tech oligarchs and their increasing levels of control: Linux works really well for me and my clients use it for their infrastructure so no better time than the present :)

My $0.02

I've been on Windows forever. Since DOS 3 or 4 I think (giving away my age there!) and until recently (last few years) it has fulfilled every one of my requirements, that is, games, development, consumption.

I'm a .NET developer so the Windows ecosystem was a no-brainer: Visual Studio just works... sort of. As an end-user everything works: I don't need to install drivers, hit the command line or anything.

Windows has been great over the years.

However...

The last few years have been a downward spiral. Not just downward, but accelerating downwards.

It started (for me at least!) with the forced upgrade from Windows 7 (or 8, can't remember), then came the utterly shit Windows updates - The updates for Windows 10 are shite. Plain and simple. A couple of years ago I'd had enough so I disabled Windows updates so that I could install them well after their release date as I was sick of being their beta-tester. There are literally bugs with every update now. I know we are talking about a few years ago, but I absolutely did not have issues with updates on Windows 7. Ever! Windows 10 has at least one show-stopping bug every couple of months now (it seems like that anyway).

It's now getting to the point that not only do I have less control over my own paid-for installation of Windows, but each update reduces my control ever more... I've harped on about it before (not just in this post, but others too) but disabling updates is a lesson in frustration. It's possible to do it but if you update later, they are switched back on - happens every time!

Then there's the telemetry! I'm not going to labour this point as it has been done to death already over the years but the sheer fucking arrogance of a company that takes my money, reduces my control over my paid-for product, then says "oh, we're going to take data from your operating system whether you want us to or not" is beyond the pale! Yes, yes, I know Android spying is the stuff of legend but it has been like that from day one! It's how Google makes its money. Microsoft used to not be dicks about you having control over your OS. Those days are long gone.

Dark patterns! Let me say NO to things and then just fuck off please! Why does everything have to be infantilized? Why does the YES button say "Yes please! I want rainbows and unicorns" and the NO button say "I'm a climate-denying terrorist if I click this". Worse, is when the "no" button says "maybe later" or "not right now". I hate that crap. And why do you have to make the positive button (I say positive, but I mean the button that's more beneficial to Microsoft!) massive and outlined when the other one is tiny and just text? Microsoft aren't the only ones that do that... I need to point that out!

The need for the OS to constantly keep me informed, or tell me about X, or jump in my face with this thing, or show me the latest news tipped me over the edge.

I want my operating system to do the following:

1. Store and launch my software

2. Be secure

3. Stay out of my way!

That's it.

I've had a few goes at Ubuntu and found it lacking. Nothing major but a few annoying things related to hardware: sound popping, graphics glitching, FF crashing, printer stopping working. Stuff like that but I'm on Pop! OS now. Just installed 20.04 the other day after playing with 20.10 for a couple of weeks (not a fan of 21.04 and I like the LTS idea especially when my livelihood depends on said computer!).

I can still programme .NET stuff with Rider (getting the hang of it, it's quite nice and it is way more responsive than VS which has become a buggy nightmare over the years!). Docker allows me to run SQL server (still use that quite a lot) and, interestingly the Docker SQL image runs faster than SQL server when it was installed natively on my Windows box... weird! It's very noticeable too.

Anyway, I'm too old to fight with the OS any more, and POP! seems to be ticking all the right boxes for now. I have to keep a W10 VM around for a couple of things but it's off most of the day.

Edit: I had a go at the "leaked" version of Windows 11 and I wasn't enamored. As a friend of mine once said: "Same shite, different smell!"

I built a kanban board with two goals:

1. Dark mode by default

2. Dead simple

I am looking to make a couple of WPF projects over the next couple of years and wanted to track them but found all the online Kanban tools missed the mark by miles in one way or another: in particular, they were all far, far too complicated.

So I built my own: https://allthetasks.com

It's not long up and missing a bunch but it works and scratches my itch :)

Edit: Oh, almost forgot. It was also to use some of the stuff I don't get to use in my day job... we tend to just build something and ship it as fast as possible (development speed, not application speed) so I wanted to make something as small as possible and fast as possible too!

> Look ma! I improved the autopilot in my Tesla!!

I see where you are coming from but right now, if autopilot kills someone, then Tesla are on the hook for it (ok, there may be grey areas but ultimately, they made it so that has to point back to them in a big way when it comes to court cases). However, if I jailbreak my autopilot and kill someone, it's me that has to face the music!

I don't see the harm in scaling the jailbreak hoops you need to jump through.

For example, if I wanted to safely jailbreak my iPhone, there is nothing stopping Apple having an official app that you need to get a special key from Apple for. Maybe a phone call or something, or an email to support. It would come with a caveat that says your jailbroken phone forfeits any warranty claims. Fair enough.

When you are talking about jailbreaking a Tesla, there could be other layers. Like, for example, you have to go to a Tesla dealer where they explain the legal and support ramifications and whatnot. Then you sign a bit of paper with witnesses. Then they send you out a usb dongle in the post after a few days etc. Maybe, though with the Tesla, there would be limits. Like, you can't get the source code, or you are only able to to X things with it.

You get the idea... there could potentially be a scale for stuff like this.

I'm just chucking stuff out there, this isn't a realistic example so please put your pitch forks away :)

Try disabling Windows update...

Also, almost every patch has issues these days: that hardly ever used to happen. Their quality has taken a dive.

I am not saying that is isn't the perfect tool for many people: it has been for many years. The issue is that when I wanted to change things and leave them changed, I used to be able to do that. Now, they are doing their best to remove that ability! That makes no sense! Let me break it if I want! I have no warranty anyway!

Disable Windows update and it comes back on due to the Windows Update Medic Service. Ok, disable that then! Oops, you're not allowed. Ok, I can circumvent this by changing permissions on the dll and then deleting it. I'll then run updates later at a time of my choosing. Now I run updates. Oops, it's back again! Microsoft knows best.

By all means make it easy for the "typical" user. But I wish they'd stop taking away the underlying power-user stuff because they think they know best!

It's about having choice: Microsoft used to be quite good at making stuff usable but the underlying geekery was still there and could allow control to the max if you wanted it.

It worked for mom & pops and techs alike but corporations new attitude of "We'll decide what's best and remove other options" is a bloody pain in the arse now.

A particularly bad one is this insistence on not allowing me to permanently say "no" to something. It's always "maybe later" or "remind me in 24 hrs" or similar... even Firefox does it now when you set it up - I think it was to do with sending FF to my mobile or something - but the message was "do it now" or "do it later"... I don't want it EVER!

So, no! I don't want anyone else's opinion for stuff like this - let me decide what's best for me and allow me to tinker if I want!

This x 1000!

I remember back in my DOS days as a kid tinkering with autoexec.bat, himem and all that just to get an addition 10Kb or memory to run a game.

Now, with Windows in particular, they're slowly removing my ability to dick about and do what I want.

The defaults are all pretty much set to "we know best" and you have to jump through more and more hoops to disable stuff (Windows update, I'm looking at you!).

I'm moving to Linux (again) at the end of the month (got uni exams coming up... want to get them out the way). Had issues with it in the past but I will try and live with them this time as I want my freedom back.

Can someone explain to me the point of having a law that says "if you do this bad thing and we find you guilty, we'll fine you a tiny fraction of what you made from doing that thing"?

There is no disincentive from what I can see...

>He's responsible to the Board and shareholders, so if he promoted, demoted, fired, or otherwise exercised that authority unfairly, he could be held accountable, so that power is limited.

All true, but he could say to her boss "I don't like her, make life hard so she leaves". He doesn't even need to ask for her to be fired, just make life hell: move her desk near the toilets, don't invite her to meetings, give her the shit jobs etc.

What if you were her boss? Would you tell the guy at the top "No"?

Even if you had the balls, what's to stop him then going to your boss and pointing the finger at you?

It has all sorts of repercussions.

I dunno... I think they have their place.

I'm working on a personal project right now and in order to see how things look, if they work etc, I've got a bunch of vanilla js frontend code and //TODO in a few places to call an API and get actual data. It works great for now as I've hardcoded everything, got it looking broadly like the finished product, and it means that I just have to do the API calls (and programme the API too, of course).

I use them a lot.

> Think of any baller software project you use. Is it VS Code? Chrome? GitHub? NGINX? Do any of these use DDD?

That's a fantastic question. Something I've often wondered too.

I'm a fan of DDD but it's like saying "I'm a fan of hammers"... hammers have their place and there is no other tool like them... for the thing they are good at.

I used to be all "omg <FoM> is the only way to do things" but nowadays, I tend not to get too hung up on prescribed, named processes and aim for decoupling where it makes sense (for the most part!)

I disagree... can you honestly tell me that you absolutely require to have an Amazon device? Or a smart TV?

I can understand if they were putting microphones into the electrical sockets when your house was being built... you need to have electricity.

The solution is don't fucking buy the items... when they see a drop in sales, even a few percent, they'll take notice. Or, god forbid, get your old TV repaired!

Mandating that the government steps in is crazy... we're talking about governments that are paid, openly, by lobbyists from these organisations.

I've read recently about a fair few sites and browsers and whatnot that are not going to play along with FLOC.

Out of curiosity, what would be the kind of figure that would make Google stop using it? I mean, at what point does the data from a smaller pool become useless?

Any ideas?

Anecdata, but the company I moved to a few months ago have 18 staff: only 3 of us have a dedicated work space (from the morning standups that I can see).

My brother works from home now and he's either in his living room or kitchen and my sister has just moved house and has converted one of the bedrooms to an office but prior to that worked from her dining room.

I've worked from home for a few years and have an office (spare bedroom we didn't use) so it's no big deal for me.

I'd love to see a large-scale survey around home office working.

Thanks for the clarification. It appears I can't edit my original comment to add in a mea culpa!

No idea how I managed to get it so far off the mark there... :(

For anyone reading this, downvote my original comment up the top please to get it off the top as it's inaccurate: I know it's cool to bash Google on here but my original assumption was waaaaaay off.

Ok, so let me see if I understand this correctly:

I run a website with no trackers, no ads, nothing at all to do with Google or any other company in any way. You come along, with Google Chrome, and visit my site. Google adds the fact that you visited my site to their massive dataset (as well as who-knows-what-else) And to opt out of something I have never been asked to be involved with in any way, I need to contact Google and ask them to please leave my site alone?

Am I understanding this shit correctly?

Whether I like it or not, my site, by proxy, is participating in Google's data mining?

If my guess is correct, how the actual fuck is this not illegal?

Edit: Ok, I guess I'm off the mark here with my assumptions so I'll put my pitchfork down.

Google are just using your Chrome browsing data, matching it with site id's (or hashes?) and then analysing the shit out of it for their gain.

As a website owner, nothing has changed other than I can tell them not to use my site as part of their analysis... that sound about right?

> I live near an air force base and over the last few weeks have seen (and definitely heard!) an almost daily fighter jet exercise. This hasn't happened in years.

Funny you should mention that... I live in the UK and a few weeks ago there were military maneouvers near my house. I've been here 18 years and this is the first time they've happened.

Happened across the country too.

Haha, that's crazy!

I will say that running natively on Windows is still faster but the VM of Windows 10 in VMWare Workstation on Linux is noticeably faster and smoother than running that same Windows 10 VM on VMWare Workstation on Windows 10... it just defies logic!

It's not like it's a Type 1 hypervisor in Linux and Type 2 in Windows (well, I assume it isn't!).

Here are my thoughts on Linux...

I used Ubuntu on my sole/main machine for a month up until recently: i9 10900K, 32GB, 1TB NVMe SSD, GTX1080, MSI Z-490-A Pro, 3 x screens.

In my day job I'm a .NET developer so I created a Windows 10 VM for VS 2019 and allocated 4 cores and 12GB RAM. I used VMWare Workstation 16. It was smooth as hell.

I developed PHP/Laravel/Wordpress stuff in Linux using PHP Storm and VSCode. Docker on Linux natively is faster than in WSL2 (I know it's to do with accessing the file system but still...).

I learned a whole bunch of commands in this time and learned to live inside the terminal for a chunk of my work. It was fantastic. I loved it.

I also loved being able to configure Ubuntu and make it look like I wanted with new icons and whatnot: I didn't go mental, but it looked cool when I was finished.

All in all, as a dev machine (and browsing 'n' stuff) it worked... quite ok, sort of: it wasn't all plain sailing. Here are the issues I had

1. Realtek 2.5GB nic would not work so I bought a 1G USB nic and it ran fine without all kinds of tweaking (yes, I tried a bunch of stuff I found online but I can't get the realtek nic to work: something to do with the older kernel)

2a. When waking from sleep it sometimes lost network so had to reboot

2b. When waking from sleep AND with NordVPN on in the background it always failed to find a network card... reboot fixed it

3. Printer (HP MFP M477DW) would disappear frequently. Ubuntu would find it again when I asked but it wouldn't print to it. This required wizardry to get it running... more miss than hit so I ended up only using it through the Windows 10 VM

4. It would hang sometimes. Music would still be playing in the background but would become unresponsive. Happened maybe 5 times in a month. Reboot to fix.

5. VMWare workstation wouldn't work properly if I had display scaling turned on inside Ubuntu: it had no idea what resolution to show so I had to turn it off making things smaller than I'd like on the Ubuntu DESKTOP

6. Sound would fail regularly: usually crackled when I opened a web page. So I either close every browser window or stop all sound playing for a minute or so. I use a soundblaster something-or-other card.

7. OnlyOffice would open off-screen every single time. I had to do Alt+Space every time. Works perfectly on Windows 10. I switched to Libreoffice

All in all, it has come a long way since I last used it a few years ago but I NEVER have any of these issues in Windows 10. Ever. And, whether we like it or not, we tend to remember the bad stuff and I can't get away from the fact that W10 is just more stable.... for me, on my hardware, at least.

But I should caveat that by saying that I've disabled literally EVERYTHING in W10 using O&O Shutup, including updates (I've also deleted the Windows Update Medic Service dll so it doesn't turn updates back on). I hate notifications and I want to pick when I run updates myself - given the spotty nature of the updates I usually wait a while, like when I've finished some client work and can afford a bit of downtime if the update fails)

In Linux' defense, VMware workstation 16 running Windows 10 is smoother than a Windows 10 VM on VMware workstation on Windows. No idea why, it just runs smoother. If Linux stability was fixed (waking from sleep especially) I would switch immediately but all the tiny, annoying niggles that I just don't get with W10 are enough to keep me on W10... W10 is a tool and, for me, it's a better one for now.

>How hard is it to change to a new app? Three minutes maybe? That’s not hard is it, come on.

If that's all it took, then no, it's not hard.

However, they all require you to login, provide email/phone details, prove who you are etc.

Also, that their Ts and Cs say that they'll share data with their partners, which you can go lookup on a massive list somewhere...

That's umpteen more companies that I know nothing about with a copy of my details.

It all adds up.

I'd be more than happy to see the likes of Facebook and Twitter go down the drain: I think they have had a negative effect on society.

However, this display of authoritarianism by the gov is chilling and should not be allowed: this is the start of fascism, plan and simple.

I heard it was deliberately scuttled by the right-wing owner of a competing canal... just sayin!

My take on this is that Nvidia knew fine well that their code would be broken. And in short order too.

I reckon this was just lip-service to consumers, and possibly their investors, that they're "doing something about those bad cryptominers that are making us loads of money".

Plus, whenever something is marketed as unbreakable, I picture guys reading it saying "Oh really? Challenge accepted!"

You know, in some ways I'm actually glad that Azure AD is down: I ran a SQL update and right after it I started seeing errors and thought I'd done something wrong... I've been shitting myself for an hour :D

> That's the kind of change that turns an unviable business into a viable one.

What, like going from 1 in every billion people clicking on your ad to 1 in every 100 million?

I'm sure that in some niches there is going to be a particular data set that yields mega results for someone. But I'm talking as a general concept, that the whole advertising industry is built on total lies all the way down and that all the data mining hardly moves the needle compared to context-related ads like my example.

I suspect that no one wants to know if it actually works or not. It'd be like pulling on a thread that everyone can see, plain as day, but no one wants to touch it as there are hundreds of billions of dollars on the line if they do. That, plus people are employed and have livelihoods built around ads so they won't jeapordise that.

I don't buy it. I still think it's all bullshit.

But let's say it's true. There still remains the fact that many don't want their data in anyone's database in the first place. It's an industry built on gathering data without consent - and before you say there are opt-outs and all that, the industry built itself up long before any rules came into effect.

I get what you are saying, however I do not believe for one second that there is a measurable change in sales (for the company that places an ad) for an ad like the one I mentioned above vs the mega-targetted, data-mined tracked-to-hell-and-back ads that companies like FB and Google tell you about.

Sure, a scattergun approach would be pointless but someone in Minnesota searching for carburetors has provided enough data in that one search that I don't believe targetted, mined, tracked users will be more lucrative.

I've asked on here before if anyone had a link to research that wasn't commissioned by an ad company about targetted and mined data and no one has provided one.

I'd love to be proven wrong but I don't believe targetting, mining, whatever you want to call it, moves the needle enough except for the ones at the top of the tree selling the belief (Google, FB etc.)