Great news. It is beyond me how people are complaining about the free version not allowing to turn off telemetry. Why don't you stick to the paid version if you are bothered by the (anonymous) telemetry?
You aren't a product? Then pay for the products you use instead of asking to get it for free. If they don't give you the option to turn telemetry off in the paid product, then go ahead and complain. But pay for what you get.
? No one asked them to release their software for free. They did it of their own accord.
They don't get to subtly mine value out of their users just because they released free stuff. That's nonsense. We're not obligated to be guinea pigs in their usability experiments.
I get to do all sorts of things. For example, I get to completely firewall their software off of my network. That "take it or leave it" nonsense simply doesn't work on my computer.
Data is not a valid currency by which payments are made. Period.
You're acting like they're gonna go out of business if they can't get their little statistics. Come on now.
There is absolutely no need for me to "prove" anything to anyone. No need whatsoever. It is my computer, and I have decided. It's as simple as that.
Why? Because I don't want it to happen. That's all there is to it. Couldn't care less what their motivations are. Couldn't care less how "justified" they are. I simply do not want data of any kind to be compiled and exfiltrated to anyone for any reason whatsoever, unless I explicitly command my computer to it.
> It’s important to note that, if you’re using a non-commercial license, you cannot opt out of the collection of anonymous usage statistics. We use this information to improve our products.
Same reason responsible technologists warned less-informed users about installing BonziBuddy. It was a free product that told jokes or whatever just as it said it would. It was also spyware.
Responsible technologists should raise the alarm on spyware products because they are harmful toward their users. Malware is often given away for "free" (sometimes even sent to you without you asking!), so it doesn't really make sense to say "well that's the deal". Somehow people seem to be forgetting this over the years (I suspect because a lot more technologists make money from participating in the surveillance/malware economy these days, and it's gotten so bad that some of them have started to think malware distribution and exfiltrating (and often selling) user data is not a thoroughly black-hat activity).
If you're okay with adware or spyware or crypto miners or botnet proxies or whatever else running on your computer as a form of "payment", great. You consider that a reasonable "transaction". Other people appreciate being warned about such behavior. In any case, one shouldn't consider the product to be "free" as advertised.
Gathering user consent is what makes the difference between malware and not. If you click "Yes, upload this crash report" or "Yes, upload stats on what buttons I click", that's the program acting according to your wishes. If the program gathers and transmits that data without you asking or reviewing it and against your wishes, that's malware (i.e. malicious software that causes the computer to undermine its owner). Basically, does the computer obey the owner or not?
Indeed, this is one of the various options one has.
Another option is to not use it and be vocal against telemetry, hopefully convincing others to do the same while dissuading other developers (especially in a forum like Hacker News where people that build stuff gather) from adding it on their products.
Genuine question. Why do you care if other people agree with you about telemetry? I almost always enable telemetry on anything I don't believe will serve me ads.
I wouldn't take people seriously who are vocal against telemetry in a product which has paid version with the option to turn telemetry off. Such people would be vocal against paying for the work others do. Also, if properly anonymised, telemetry isn't the devil people make it to be.
> I wouldn't take people seriously who are vocal against telemetry in a product which has paid version with the option to turn telemetry off.
You are conflating two separate things, a product does not need telemetry to function and if telemetry is needed it can be opt-in. Similarly a product does not need to be free to have telemetry nor does it need to be paid to not have telemetry, as i already wrote these two are completely separate.
> Such people would be vocal against paying for the work others do.
Again you are conflating two completely separate things: people being concerned about the privacy implications of telemetry (both directly and indirectly, see below) and people who are against about paying others for their work.
> Also, if properly anonymised, telemetry isn't the devil people make it to be.
Even if anonymized (which is something you can only guarantee for open source projects that either you or someone you trust has checked they do such anonymization properly - and also you either build yourself from the source that was checked or you used a binary from a reproducible build) having telemetry in place still creates and reinforces a precedent of it being acceptable which in turn can be used to excuse other programs doing the same but those programs actually not caring about doing proper anonymization (at best) or even outright spying on you (at worst).
Besides anonymized data can still be used in conjunction with other data to be deanonymized and the best way to protect users from this is to not collect that data in the first place.
I'm not conflating these two things. I didn't say they have to have telemetry to keep it free. All I am saying is, if you have the option to pay and decide whether you give them telemetry or not, then there is no reason being vocal about them giving you more for free. It is a company and they need to make profit. If more users with telemetry enabled gives them more data that they can use to indirectly increase their profit, I only applaud them. If they stopped allowing to turn telemetry off for the product in paid version as well, then you would have a valid point.
That said, nothing wrong with being vocal about privacy and high standards in collecting usage.
Privacy is a fundamental human right, not something you get to withhold from people until they give you money.
Yes, I could pay them to get a product that lets me disable telemetry. I'd much rather just use something else, so I don't have to fund their unethical business practices.
That is an extremely disingenuous framing of the topic. They make a product, which you can pay money for. If you prefer, they will also let you pay by sending them usage telemetry. In neither case are you being deprived of a human right or extorted in any way - it's a transaction where you receive a benefit in exchange for something you give to them.
It's nonetheless useful for people to warn others about spyware. You can find the tradeoff acceptable (or be willing/able to put the necessary isolation in place) while thanking the other commenter for the heads up.
I wasn't aware they were using telemetry in the free versions until this thread. Why I didn't just assume that a free service or product offered by a for-profit company isn't doing _something_ to extract value is beyond me.
Maybe it includes a list of fonts installed on your system, your screen resolution, etc. You don’t need much to get a “fingerprint” that is anonymous but can be correlated with those collected by other tools’ telemetry.
In theory yes? But if state actors, the ones with the sophistication to literally build a signature based on your fonts using your IDE, and then infiltrate a second application to do... whatever... if they want you that bad, they're eventually just going to get you, even if they have to just send someone to your house with a rusty wrench to retrieve all your passwords. Those guys can get the job done much more cheaply anyway.
Compared to most UI dark patterns and scummy tactics to get you to "consent" (actually tricking you into agreeing, because nobody can't be bothered to jump through like a bunch of legalese and dialogs), them just giving you that choice of straight up paying feels better.
Not really interested in their services, but at least that sort of payment would let me expect less trickery in the future.
> Critics of this consent model have called it "pay-or-okay", claiming that the monthly fee is disproportional and that users are not able to withdraw their consent to tracking as easily as it is given, which the GDPR requires. Massimiliano Gelmi, a data protection lawyer at NOYB, has stated that "The law is clear, withdrawing consent must be as easy as giving it in the first place. It is painfully obvious that paying €251,88 per year to withdraw consent is not as easy as clicking an 'Okay' button to accept the tracking."
Under this model, you'd just have to refuse service to everyone who doesn't pay (killing your platform) or let people partake in your platform with no revenue off of them (killing your platform). Neither seems reasonable from the perspective of that business? Are they just supposed to find other ways of monetizing their users or perish then?
Not that people are obligated to use IntelliJ IDEs, but it's sad that it boils down to "You can have privacy if you can afford it". But admittedly is better to have the option to use it than not being able to use it at all
Their telemetry promises not to collect private data. Yes, your code will probably used for training their models. But so it would be if you publish it on GitHub.
All data on my computer is private unless I specifically make it public. Data thieves like to make a rhetorical sleight of hand where they say they're not really collecting data about you (this happens especially with the topic of "differential privacy"), but that's just gaslighting (i.e. trying to manipulate you into thinking you simply don't understand what they are doing). e.g. I'm not willing to share noisy correlations about my preferences either. That information is private, and it is information, or they wouldn't want it.
My privacy is indeed differential. I am willing to give them the information on my coding patterns and even non-commercial code for a free license, if it is not linked to my identity. This is a fair exchange. I am not willing to do this if they will use this information to sell me ads, or sell it (unless properly anonymized) to some other company. And most certainly I won't agree if they collect any information beyond what's happen in the IDE.
Not _everything_ I do on my computer is fully private. I apply much stricter standards to things that are _really_ private. But not everything is like this.
This comment is public. It will probably be used to train yet another LLM. I am fine with that.
Sure, but as I said elsewhere, it's still important that people point out that past the headline ("it's free") is that it is also malware (it spies on you). People were free to not use BonziBuddy as well, but it was rightfully characterized at the time as spyware. If the product also functioned as a proxy for botnet traffic, you wouldn't simply say "well you're free to not use it". You'd say "beware, the 'free' version is malware". Spyware is similar.
Posting to a public online forum is of course specifically making the post public.
You don't have to use their products, though. Nor is there a shortage of free C++ IDE alternatives that don't have telemetry in them, for those to whom it is important.
Finding early-early apes in Turkey is cool but it in no way challenges the out of Africa hypothesis unless you’re really grasping at straws wanting that hypothesis to be false. I don’t even know why that’s part of the story. It’s just as cool and much less speculative to frame it as chimp-like apes living in Turkey/Asia.
My initial reaction was one of suspicion, but the story as it was laid out seemed pretty persuasive. One detail that swayed me was the reported lack of fossils in Africa of early hominin species:
While the remains of early hominines are abundant in Europe and Anatolia, they are completely absent from Africa until the first hominin appeared there about seven million years ago.
Is there another explanation for why these fossils might have been missing despite early hominines inhabiting Africa?
Türkiye may have an environment that is very suitable for the preservation of fossil, and one where said fossils remain near the surface. Africa is huge, but may lack areas that both has those hominids and preserved their fossils well.
Fire example, there are very few footprints on sidewalks, but lots in the mud beside them - should we conclude people must prefer to walk in the mud?
>Is there another explanation for why these fossils might have been missing despite early hominines inhabiting Africa?
Most biological and organic things decompose quickly. Every time we find a fossil, we are winning an insanely rigged lottery. We barely have significant remains from 10k year old towns, so you can't really take any info from a supposed lack of fossils
i always open to any new findings about it. if it turns out that it really is a new hominid, then great! scientists will have more than enough on their plates. if not, then it's also ok! just keep digging and digging and analysing until something worthy of closer inspection come up.
This was my path, so it's possible. I dropped out after year two of my degree to join a startup and worked for 10 years in industry.
I converted 8 years of that experience to 2 years of a bachelor's degree to make the full 4 required, and had a University professor provide a letter of endorsement.
I was applying from Europe, and even then it was apparently a fairly expensive process for my sponsor.
Absolutely correct. The requirement is a four-year U.S. bachelor's degree or it's equivalent which can be a foreign degree or a combination of education and experience (or even just experience) evaluated to be the equivalent of a U.S. bachelor's degree. The rule of thumb is that 3 years of professional experience is the equivalent of 1 year of college education.
Thanks for the clear answer! is proving the years of experience usually difficult? e.g. references from 12 years ago can be hard to get (although I have those 11 years ago myself).
