But I can't really blame them. Who wouldn't want to know?
And who doesn't do it? It's just always MS who gets shit on for doing it. Everything and everyone tracks our every movement and click. If ET had been an android-phone he had been long called home before the intro started.
Don't get me wrong, i effing abhor these things from the depths of my nerdy heart and do everything to block them all. But we just can't avoid it anymore.
We can just hope to get it all blocked or that it at least only sends anonymous usage-data and nothing else.
OSS operating systems. The more proprietary software you run, the less and less you actually own your computer and the more it becomes a tool to advance the interests of megacorps.
Not all. Ubuntu does phone home too. But sure, most don't. But OSS is not for mainstream-users. I am protected (and just pissed), i was speaking more on behalf of the clueless mass and in general.
And btw. Your argument fails at phonee. Android and apple suck in regards to privacy.
I could use privacy-os' on my pixel but they all lack boldly. So the moment i leave my perfect private pc, I'm screwed with mobiles again...
I doubt there ever will be a viable linux-phone.
Last time i tested it, it was kinda just a barebone/PoC.
Camera worked like shit and basically everything else too. Granted it was a long time ago.
Might've changed by now, if that's what you're suggesting by that?
But even if it'd be great, it will never touch mainstream.
It's nerd-stuff, even the work necessary to get it onto non-pixel-phones suck hairy monkeyballs.
Not to make fun of it or anything. I love that these exist.
Since the sandboxed Google Play Services were developed a year or two ago it's been excellent, there are only one or two very Googley things (like Google Pay and Android Auto) which you can't run without issue.
That sounds nice. Sadly i rely on android auto as my headunit has no internal navigation.
Biggest downer for me was the camera. The FOSS-cams just couldn't compete with the stupid gcam. Or only with constant fiddling and tweaking.
Guess I'll try it again to see. My early-adopter-experience was just very unsatisfying 😁
I had many phones with customs and some with graphene. Gcam often did its job (with lots of tweaking) until the next update. Then i was fed up with the constant maintenance.
But sure. When it works, it works until you change something. Have a phone with an old lineage and gcam and it's working like a charm (no uodates in many years). But that was rare. Sadly so.
But to play devil's (angel's?) advocate for a minute, Microsoft can't fix vulnerabilities in Windows without telemetry data. There's a practically infinite combination of hardware components Windows runs on, and that makes it impossible for Microsoft to find and fix vulnerabilities and bugs in house. Older versions of Windows were so insecure in-part because Microsoft made telemetry reports opt-in, and we all know how likely the average user is to do so.
Now that's not to say that everything Microsoft collects is appropriate; I'm only saying there is a valid case for collecting some data from users.
If they only used it for that people wouldn't have a problem with it. The problem is due to their shit business practices no one trusts them (or should trust them). They've proved they don't have their users best interests at heart.
They’ve proved they don’t have their users best interests at heart.
This is true for any for-profit business. They exist strictly to make profit for the shareholders. In fact, the executives can be held legally responsible should they not act in the best interests of the shareholders. By their very nature, no for-profit organizations will EVER have the users best interests at heart.
That's why all enshittification usually starts because of publicy-traded companies, or companies trying to go there. We're mostly here because Reddit wanted to go public.
Oh i didn't mean to say that telemetry is inherently bad. If it really would just be totally anonymous stats the devs would need, yeah sure. Just tell me WHAT EXACTLY it is. Or gimme a preview-option before sending.
But it's mostly stuff that's none of their beeswax.
The amount my pihole blocks is titanic. If I'd be paying for traffic that would make a substantial difference.
Oh no worries- I didn't think you were. Just so many people jump on the "ALL DATA COLLECTION IS SPYING!" bandwagon they don't realize there can be a perfectly rational reason for doing so that doesn't reduce down to "The Deep State is watching everything you do!"
Lol. Yep. Unless you do vpn.
As a dev myself I know the need for telemetry in ever more complex things nowadays. Without a ton of data how should you improve or fix your thing.
But i would never collect data that would not be my beeswax. But i also understand how tempting it might be 😔
Speak for yourself. Besides, all-or-nothing privacy is a false dichotomy. Giving out less personal data is still better than giving out everything, and you don't need 100% privacy to be unprofitable to advertisers.
You misread. It IS unavoidable nowadays or most of the surface-web is non-functional if you block anything that isn't content. Besides the amount of work it takes to just not be tracked rises and rises.
Doesn't mean I don't do whatever i can do avoid it. To every techy it should be more than obvious that there is no binary approach. You can only do more or less to avoid more or less but never eliminate it.
So yeah, the less the better. And one might even partially reach a state where one is unprofitable to advertisers. Yet that can change tomorrow or on the next site or when you use some phone-app or or or...
That's what i meant with "unavoidable". You can't avoid a persistent ever-evolving problem.
Idk what you're talking about. I have a pi hole and use uBlock and I rarely have any issues. And, when I do, it's not even a site that I really care about anyway.
As does Android. I'm not sure why we would give MS a by for this. They're all as bad as each other and all deserve to be blocked as comprehensively as possible.
If you think they don’t use that data to try and sell apple products, I’ve got a bridge to sell.
They may not have an advertising network, yet, but they use your data for their interests. Currently, it serves their interests to pretend they are more private and secure, but they are not.
I think most software like this grows to a certain size and then they need the telemetry to identify issues. There's so many hardware configurations and most people don't submit bug reports or opt into their configuration being shared.
Windows telemetry started with Windows 10. Windows 7 was the most stable Windows ever and hardware configurations were just as plentiful. Sure, the data helps but it's hardly mandatory.
Nah, we will never have a GOOD Linux-phone. And if, it's most likely NOT without tracking and whatnot.
Why should any company put money into a thing they can't control after sale?
Sadly so, i might add.
Great. And the rest of the phone? And the adaption of the OS? The dev of all needed apps? And the marketing? And the legal stuff? And the tech-support? And the overall financing?
And how shall it be able to compete with being OSS as its only distinctive feature?
Is this your first talk with people? Ever read what they say before?
It wasn't me who painted it simple. Quite the contrary. Hence why we still don't have one and will never have one.
Rotary? Lol. Ubuntu? Lol.
Initially it was about not-phoning-home. Ubuntu does. And they also have to use propietary drivers a lot. Which maybe also do.
But with your approach to ad-hominem i retreat from this "discussion" anyway.
It's always MS who has people on the internet defending them when they do it, to the point that it looks like MS social media presence is being carefully managed, like Apple. I saw it happen on Reddit too, and it happened less and less the more they got called out. The same "$70 a year for Office 365 is so worth it" is a talking point when I was on Reddit. Apparently, people here say the same thing.
I'm not defending them. I just dislike the silly MS-hate train. As if they were the only ones doing it. If apple does it, it's a feature. MS is evil. That's as boring and old like IE-jokes that are still around. I have more Linux-machines than win-machines in my home lab.
And every major crap has its fanboys and marketing-workforce defending their shit.