[HN Gopher] VS Code - What's the deal with the telemetry?
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       VS Code - What's the deal with the telemetry?
        
       Author : ttctciyf
       Score  : 162 points
       Date   : 2022-08-23 12:31 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.roboleary.net)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.roboleary.net)
        
       | ttctciyf wrote:
       | Found this while looking for a way to fully disable telemetry on
       | vscode.
       | 
       | After reading, this seems impossible, short of going down to DNS
       | or network blocks of some kind: the "disable telemetry" setting
       | doesn't; extensions have their own telemetry; MS consider the
       | data sufficiently anonymous to be exempt from GDPR, even the
       | vscodium maintainers say they found it impossible to block vs
       | code's eager telemetrizing.
       | 
       | I wonder what is the most effective way of actually completely
       | stopping it phoning home, apart from yanking its ethernet cable?
        
         | onion2k wrote:
         | _I wonder what is the most effective way of actually completely
         | stopping it phoning home, apart from yanking its ethernet
         | cable?_
         | 
         | Use your operating system's firewall app to block all outbound
         | connections from it.
        
           | ttctciyf wrote:
           | I was thinking of blocking its endpoints, except I don't know
           | what they are.
           | 
           | I wasn't aware I could configure firewall rules for specific
           | applications. Any hints where I could start looking at that?
        
         | chubot wrote:
         | _even the vscodium maintainers say they found it impossible to
         | block vs code 's eager telemetrizing_
         | 
         | Source for this? Does VSCodium with no extensions send
         | telemetry, or is it the extension issue?
         | 
         | EDIT: Oh the quote from VSCodium is in the article:
         | 
         |  _Even though we do not pass the telemetry build flags (and go
         | out of our way to cripple the baked-in telemetry), Microsoft
         | will still track usage by default._
         | 
         | The funny thing is that I was about to install VSCodium for the
         | first time TODAY, because I want live markdown preview. (I want
         | a doc editor, not necessarily a code editor)
         | 
         | The rationale for VSCodium says it's about telemetry, although
         | strictly speaking it's doesn't promise they removed all the
         | telemetry!
         | 
         | https://vscodium.com/
         | 
         |  _but the product available for download (Visual Studio Code)
         | is licensed under this not-FLOSS license and contains telemetry
         | /tracking_
         | 
         | -----
         | 
         | I should also say that on the dev side, crash reports are
         | EXTREMELY useful and really do improve the quality of the
         | software. But you used to have to confirm this data would be
         | sent.
        
         | smoldesu wrote:
         | https://vscodium.com/
        
           | pseudalopex wrote:
           | They said even the vscodium maintainers say they found it
           | impossible to block vs code's eager telemetrizing.
        
         | Tha_14 wrote:
         | I've been using vscodium for the most part but you cannot avoid
         | the extensions themselves sending their own telemetry.
        
           | alrlroipsp wrote:
           | You absolutely can lock down what permissions your vscodium
           | has, and what it can talk to.
        
         | mayoi wrote:
         | You can always simply install a better text editor that doesn't
         | spy on you.
        
           | bitwize wrote:
           | What better text editor?
        
             | katbyte wrote:
             | On windows notepad++ was my goto for basic text editing.
             | These days I use the jetbrains editor of choice for the
             | language in question or IntelliJ for basic text.
        
             | colordrops wrote:
             | Emacs or *vim
        
               | gabrielgio wrote:
               | And even if you don't like fiddling with dotfiles you can
               | install some really nice distribution like spacemacs or
               | doom for emacs and lunar for neovim. They have a pleasant
               | dev experience out of the box.
        
             | api wrote:
             | There are much better IDEs. Check out the Jetbrains
             | products. If you want an editor on Mac there is also Nova:
             | 
             | https://nova.app
             | 
             | The Rust and web related extensions work pretty well. I've
             | been using that for a while.
             | 
             | There are a few more around.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | falcolas wrote:
               | I use IntelliJ for $dayjob, and while I love it, it too
               | submits telemetry. I do not know how pervasive it is, but
               | the controls for it are not obvious in the general config
               | window.
        
               | api wrote:
               | The only way to _really_ escape telemetry today is a
               | local firewall that can block network access by
               | application.
               | 
               | I would like to see some analysis of the telemetry
               | Jetbrains sends and whether you can turn it off. It's a
               | paid pro IDE so it wouldn't surprise me if you can really
               | disable it because some commercial customers will not
               | want telemetry. In high security environments it's often
               | considered bad due to the possibility of accidentally
               | exposing secret information.
        
               | bitwize wrote:
               | Yeah, I almost mentioned IntelliJ, as an IDE it's almost
               | unmatched.
        
           | ttctciyf wrote:
           | Very true. But I have specific reasons for wanting to use vs
           | code in this instance.
        
         | techsin101 wrote:
         | host files?
        
       | djhaskin987 wrote:
       | It just makes me feel very happy that I use neovim. OSS used in
       | all dev tools is the only way around this problem. Not that I
       | have full OSS in my whole pipeline; I still use GitHub (though I
       | am seriously considering a move to sr.ht).
        
       | falcolas wrote:
       | Telemetry is godsend for developers, since it lets them track
       | down actual product usage and issues.
       | 
       | Telemetry is a privacy nightmare for users, since it sends data
       | to the developers outside of an average user's control - data
       | which is probably easily associated with an individual and kept
       | for eons (disk space is cheap after all).
       | 
       | I think telemetry collection is starting to become a professional
       | ethics issue for developers, and should be talked about more.
        
         | JohnFen wrote:
         | > Telemetry is godsend for developers, since it lets them track
         | down actual product usage
         | 
         | I have come to think that telemetry used to track actual
         | product usage is a bad thing. It encourages shallow thinking
         | about how users really use the product, and often leads to
         | terrible product decisions.
        
         | phantomathkg wrote:
         | As a developer tool, I think it is absolutely possible for
         | Microsoft and extension developers to write a very deep and
         | detail explanation to the users and explain why do they need to
         | collect what telemetry data.
         | 
         | As a user and engineer, I am more than happy to share the usage
         | and crash data with them, but at the same time, I would
         | appreciate if they can be fair to us the user.
        
           | zerkten wrote:
           | They publish research updates like
           | https://www.microsoft.com/en-
           | us/research/group/experimentati....
        
         | bentcorner wrote:
         | What do you think about regulation like the GDPR?
        
           | falcolas wrote:
           | I like them. I don't really understand how it would apply to
           | telemetry - it's not something I've read into - and I don't
           | think many other folks are looking into GDPR compliance with
           | telemetry either.
        
             | zerkten wrote:
             | All of the big companies have armies of lawyers deeply
             | familiar with these laws and regulations. They make their
             | engineering teams implement processes to mitigate the
             | issues with storage and processing.
             | 
             | Examples: replacing/removing external IDs, ensuring data
             | can't be linked to users, aggregating data, not retaining
             | data, only processing data within data centers (no data
             | extracted to laptops), deleting old data, etc.
             | 
             | This is why it's slow and painful to work at big companies
             | compared to startups. It doesn't mean that accidents don't
             | happen, but it's pretty well thought out. The same applies
             | to how they do qualitative research. It's got reasonably
             | high standards which are fairly consistently applied. It's
             | not perfect, but nothing is. There is a lot of job security
             | and motivation for people to make it better.
             | 
             | Smaller companies have almost zero understanding of how to
             | deal with this due to lack of resources and expertise. The
             | only way they get compliant is by using good tools which
             | force the user into a safer, more compliant posture.
        
         | rkagerer wrote:
         | This is not a nuanced argument or compex issue. Include an OFF
         | switch. It's that simple.
         | 
         | Personally I refuse to work with or consult for companies that
         | don't get this. It's a matter of professional pride. If I
         | wouldn't use it myself, I'm not going to foist it on my users.
        
           | shadowgovt wrote:
           | One of the challenges is defining what counts as telemetry.
           | 
           | So they include an OFF switch. Does it also switch off
           | checking for new versions of VSCode? Does it turn off
           | consulting online sources for dictionary updates? Does it
           | turn off viewing the extension library? Those requests are
           | technically also telemetry but if you disable them they look
           | like broken features. The license agreement is written with
           | open language to say "There are some things you can't turn
           | off" because MS doesn't know a priori whether a court would
           | consider "updating the extension library" telemetry until
           | someone drags them into court and presses the issue legally,
           | and they want their asses covered either way.
           | 
           | And the OFF switch doesn't switch off any extensions because
           | the API is open enough that extensions can do their own
           | network access independent of VSCode.
           | 
           | In practice, it turns out to be very hard to build one
           | guaranteed-to-work OFF switch. Not that it isn't a laudable
           | goal. But in general: if it has online features, assume
           | telemetry == true.
        
         | pseudalopex wrote:
         | Collecting data without informed consent was an ethics issue
         | always.
        
           | shadowgovt wrote:
           | Not hardly. In the early days of the Internet it was seen as
           | tit-for-tat among peers; you're accessing my server for data
           | I have, of _course_ I 'm allowed to log and analyze your
           | request. That was the exchange.
           | 
           | The exchange was rarely made explicit in any kind of
           | formalized consent sense.
        
             | uoaei wrote:
             | Informal consent (and lack thereof) is still consent (and
             | lack thereof).
        
             | yencabulator wrote:
             | If I am typing into an editor running on my computer, I am
             | not consciously accessing your server for data you have.
        
               | shadowgovt wrote:
               | I spend most of my time in Google Docs as the editor I'm
               | typing in. And when I'm coding in emacs, I'm using Tramp
               | to puppeteer a server somewhere else.
               | 
               | The veil is thin between the internet and offline
               | computing these days.
        
         | shadowgovt wrote:
         | > Telemetry is godsend for developers, since it lets them track
         | down actual product usage and issues.
         | 
         | Extremely true. Data gleaned from actual usage instrumentation
         | is radically higher quality than self-reported.
         | 
         | > Telemetry is a privacy nightmare for users, since it sends
         | data to the developers outside of an average user's control -
         | data which is probably easily associated with an individual and
         | kept for eons
         | 
         | None of that is usually true. In the common case, users don't
         | care (after all, MS has the telemetry to estimate how many
         | users disable telemetry). And product improvement data _is_
         | pseudonymized and usually worthless after a version iteration.
         | 
         | I think the folks that have an anxiety about product use data
         | collection don't realize how worthless individual data points
         | are. The data is pseudonymized out of necessity if for no other
         | reason; it comes in as such a firehose that it has to be
         | immediately analytically bucketed or it overwhelms storage at
         | the volume these tools get used. However, the telemetry options
         | get defaulted to "on" because _volumes_ of data are invaluable
         | for concrete analysis of how the product is used, counts on
         | feature access frequency, understanding pain points in usage
         | flow, etc.
         | 
         | I've done some work in this space (not for MS) and am happy to
         | answer any questions people might have that aren't "Who did you
         | work for?"
        
           | OrvalWintermute wrote:
           | >The data is pseudonymized out of necessity if for no other
           | reason; it comes in as such a firehose that it has to be
           | immediately analytically bucketed or it overwhelms storage at
           | the volume these tools get used
           | 
           | My 20TB drives say otherwise
        
         | marginalia_nu wrote:
         | > Telemetry is godsend for developers, since it lets them track
         | down actual product usage
         | 
         | This is is actually a terrible trap, as product usage tells you
         | next to nothing about which features are useful. I suspect it'
         | a big part of why a lot of software has turned to shit last
         | decade or so.
         | 
         | Look at it this way: Your average fire extinguisher sits
         | mounted on a wall its entire life and is never actually used.
         | You still rather have it and not need it than need it and not
         | have it.
        
           | falcolas wrote:
           | > This is is actually a terrible trap
           | 
           | Agreed.
           | 
           | > You still rather have it and not need it than need it and
           | not have it.
           | 
           | And there's the trap. Data is a liability, but until a
           | company gets burned for losing it, they won't do anything
           | about it. Well, being real, even if they do get burned it's
           | just the "cost of doing business".
        
             | lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
             | I get what you're saying and I agree but I also think you
             | misinterpreted the parent comment.
             | 
             | > You still rather have it and not need it than need it and
             | not have it.
             | 
             | Given the context of the fire extinguisher, "it" in this
             | case is a useful (possibly critical), not-commonly-needed
             | feature, rather than a collection of data.
        
           | fragmede wrote:
           | "trap". If feature A has 100% of users using it and feature B
           | has 0%, what should I, as the app developer spend my time
           | working on?
        
             | marginalia_nu wrote:
             | If your application keeps opening popups all the time, I
             | will use the close popup button very often. Doesn't mean I
             | enjoy closing your popups or want to have to close them.
             | The only reason I'm using the feature is to get around an
             | annoyance in your hypothetical application.
             | 
             | Frequent use of a feature is just as much a signal that the
             | feature is an obstacle as it is a signal that the feature
             | is beneficial.
        
               | robalni wrote:
               | Exactly. If I use feature X very often, that can be
               | because:
               | 
               | * Feature X is good and I like to use it.
               | 
               | * Or feature X is broken so I have to try multiple times.
               | 
               | * Or feature Y is broken so I have to try using another
               | feature instead.
               | 
               | Like, most of the times I open a settings window it's not
               | because I like settings but because the program is not
               | good enough as it is. Or if I follow a lot of links on
               | your web page, it might not be because I like your web
               | page but because I'm unable to find what I'm looking for.
        
               | kahrl wrote:
               | I do not understand this. Because this mythical moronic
               | figure everyone in this thread is talking about doesn't
               | account for confounding variables, telemetry is just bad
               | generally?
        
             | paulclinger wrote:
             | Restore backups may be a rarely used feature (where
             | applicable), but it's not a good reason not to have it
             | (working properly).
        
           | jrockway wrote:
           | I'm not sure software is getting worse. It does more, and
           | there is more. A lot of complaints on HN are about businesses
           | they don't like, or technology they thought should never have
           | been invented. It's unfortunate that tracking you across the
           | web is hugely profitable, but the reason that business works
           | isn't due to software malfunction. The software is working
           | great.
           | 
           | Certainly, there is a lot of software out there with poor
           | polish. My pet peeve is that devices like multimeters that
           | used to have segmented VFDs, so had a certain design
           | aesthetic by default. Clean, straightforward, readable. Now
           | those have moved to low resolution LCDs, so you notice that
           | the font they picked is terrible, and the font rendering
           | engine they picked is even worse. It just looks bad, in
           | exchange for more flexibility and features.
           | 
           | But, none of this is indicative that the software itself is
           | getting worse. In the 80s, trivial software bugs were
           | literally killing people:
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 In terms of radiation
           | therapy machines, the underlying business hasn't changed
           | much; people with tumors want them to be killed, and the
           | difference between now and 40 years ago is that the machine
           | doesn't kill them because of integer overflows.
           | 
           | (One interesting note about the Therac-25 is that it reused
           | software for previous models that had hardware interlocks
           | that masked the software defects. They didn't have any
           | telemetry on when the hardware interlocks triggered, so they
           | didn't know that the hardware interlocks were masking bugs in
           | the software when it came time to remove them. If they had
           | the data, they might have kept the hardware interlocks, or
           | fixed the bugs before 6 people died. So maybe lack of
           | telemetry is a greater ethics issue than including it!)
        
             | marginalia_nu wrote:
             | Software is still killing people despite telemetry. Look at
             | Tesla's autopilot.
        
               | jrockway wrote:
               | I don't know if that's an interesting data point. Humans
               | are terrible at driving cars. AIs are terrible at driving
               | cars. I'm not sure that Tesla is obviously doing a sub-
               | par job here, as it's a challenging problem space.
               | 
               | The main effect of the telemetry in self-driving cars is
               | that we can all Monday morning quarterback the exact
               | defect that caused a particular crash. With human
               | drivers, we don't have as much data to get to the root
               | cause. If someone falls asleep at the wheel and drives
               | into a truck, was it their medication? Their sleep
               | schedule? An emotional conversation they just had? The
               | music that the radio station chose to play? A combination
               | of all of those factors? What actions do we take to
               | prevent it from happening again?
        
               | falcolas wrote:
               | > I don't know if that's an interesting data point.
               | 
               | And people are terrible at putting in the wrong
               | coordinates or dosages in medicinal machines. It's as
               | interesting a data point as the Therac.
               | 
               | > The main effect of the telemetry in self-driving cars
               | is that we can all Monday morning quarterback the exact
               | defect that caused a particular crash.
               | 
               | Unnecessary, and has been unnecessary for almost as long
               | as we've had cars. Investigators (the NTSB) are fantastic
               | at looking at wrecks and determining the underlying
               | cause, even in the absence of the black and red boxes.
               | There's no need for always-on-always-phoning-home
               | telemetry.
               | 
               | And this is where I get annoyed - there's no value in
               | companies having that data when their most public use of
               | it is to get popular opinion on their side in a fatal
               | wreck.
               | 
               | Seriously, fuck Elon Musk for that horseshit.
        
           | ajross wrote:
           | > This is is actually a terrible trap, as product usage tells
           | you next to nothing about which features are useful. I
           | suspect it' a big part of why a lot of software has turned to
           | shit last decade or so.
           | 
           | This seems exactly backwards to me. No one who has ever
           | managed a deployed product with good failure telemetry would
           | say that it tells you "next to nothing". Telemetry detects
           | failures that mere testing simply never can and never will.
           | 
           | And no one who lived through earlier ages of consumer
           | software would ever say that it's "turned to shit". Software
           | is getting better. It's getting better steadily and
           | inexorably, and it's been doing that for half a century. It
           | may not be doing what _you want_ , but it's doing it with
           | higher quality than people in the 90's or 00's would have
           | ever dreamed. When was the last time[1] you saw a major
           | consumer application (the TikTok or Instagram client, or your
           | web browser, or VSCode) crash hard and fail on you? This was
           | a daily (or worse) event for most of software history!
           | 
           | And certainly robust telemetry practice is one of the big
           | drivers of this quality revolution we've seen.
           | 
           | [1] Heh, cue the peanut gallery of everyone wanting to post
           | crash reports. That's on me for poor framing, I guess. But
           | seriously, everyone: Both anecdotally and via actual studies,
           | consumer-visible software is getting much better.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | Macha wrote:
             | MacOS, an hour ago.
             | 
             | Before that, Fastmail on Android, this morning.
             | 
             | Slack on iOS gets stuck a few times a week.
        
             | marginalia_nu wrote:
             | > When was the last time you saw a major consumer
             | application (the TikTok or Instagram client, or your web
             | browser, or VSCode) crash hard and fail on you? This was a
             | daily (or worse) event for most of software history!
             | 
             | Huh. I've used software since the mid 1990s, and I can't
             | recall using software that crashed daily, let alone
             | frequently. Which is honestly a bit of a miracle, since a
             | lot of software back then was shipped without the ability
             | to patch it at all.
        
             | sbierwagen wrote:
             | >crash hard and fail on you?
             | 
             | Google search on Chrome on my home computer has a habit of
             | just returning a white page after about a day of computer
             | uptime. I have to switch to a different profile to get it
             | to show anything.
             | 
             | Magento CMS will silently hang if you try to perform any
             | query on a tab that's logged out. Default login cookie
             | expiration time is one hour.
             | 
             | iOS keyboard has started suggesting german words in
             | autocorrect. A third of the words I get on swipe input are
             | now worthless. German is not in the languages list on that
             | device. I read a suggestion to uncheck "German" in the
             | dictionaries list. It was indeed checked (Why?? Because I
             | frequently type in my German last name?) but unchecking it
             | did nothing.
             | 
             | Discord app on iOS has a hard crash bug on the emote picker
             | if you type a query that has no results, backspace it, then
             | try to pick one of the new results. I actually tried
             | reporting that one and they told me to fuck off. (Which is
             | the default response of every customer service team to any
             | bug report, of course, since 99% of bug reports will be
             | from civilians who have no idea how to report a bug)
        
             | pseudalopex wrote:
             | > Telemetry detects failures that mere testing simply never
             | can and never will.
             | 
             | Product usage and failure reports are different. It wasn't
             | called telemetry when apps just asked to send failure
             | reports.
             | 
             | > When was the last time you saw a major consumer
             | application (the TikTok or Instagram client, or your web
             | browser, or VSCode) crash hard and fail on you?
             | 
             | An hour ago or so.
        
             | falcolas wrote:
             | > When was the last time you saw a major consumer
             | application (the TikTok or Instagram client, or your web
             | browser, or VSCode) crash hard and fail on you?
             | 
             | Yesterday. The kindle app. It has a habit of soft locking
             | on a book's cover. TikTok's failure mode tends to be more
             | of a "refuses to play a video" kind. Especially if you're
             | scrolling through videos and one does not exist. It doesn't
             | like that. Instagram soft reboots pretty often (you can
             | tell because you're back to the home feed, as opposed to
             | where you left off), especially after being suspended.
             | 
             | I have to reboot my Mac weekly, both for updates and to
             | keep it from misbehaving oddly.
             | 
             | It's one thing our development culture actually fosters
             | these days - let it fail and restart in a known state; as
             | opposed to doing what you can to keep the software alive
             | through non-fatal errors.
        
             | dogleash wrote:
             | When was the last time[1] you saw a major consumer
             | application [] crash hard and fail on you? This was a daily
             | (or worse) event for most of software history!
             | 
             | The apps I use are now riddled with hang bugs rather than
             | crash bugs. Huzza.
        
               | 0x457 wrote:
               | Firefox. I googled "robots.txt forbid all robots", there
               | was a blog post from Google. Opening that page would
               | crash my entire browser.
               | 
               | Applications not often, but video games hard crash all
               | the time.
        
           | majormajor wrote:
           | Why are we just focused on the "stupid" developer here - the
           | sort who thinks your later "wow the 'close popup' button is
           | so popular" example is a good reason to add more popups?
           | 
           | Do we think the people making calls like that would suddenly
           | have great ideas in the absence of data?
           | 
           | Meanwhile, there are plenty of folks out there who can reason
           | about data in less blindly idiotic ways.
        
             | marginalia_nu wrote:
             | Let's take a different example. Let's say you have a search
             | box.
             | 
             | Option A generates 10 times more searches than option B.
             | This may mean the search box is 10 times more useful than
             | in the B case, or the users require 10 times as many
             | searches to find what they want. Looking at the data, you
             | really can't tell. Even without the data, you can dogfood
             | your application and fairly quickly tell whether the
             | feature is good or bad.
             | 
             | I'm not saying anyone is stupid. Naive, perhaps, but not
             | stupid.
             | 
             | The problem is that interpreting data is difficult.
             | Incredibly difficult. Scientists, who construct experiments
             | and interpret experimental data for a living, with a decade
             | of education behind their back, get this wrong _all the
             | time_.
        
             | cardanome wrote:
             | > Do we think the people making calls like that would
             | suddenly have great ideas in the absence of data?
             | 
             | Personally, I would be so bold to suggest that yes the
             | availability of data for people ill equipped to interpret
             | it can lead to WORSE decisions than the absence of data.
             | 
             | That is because statistics and the general skill to
             | correctly interpret data is actively counterintuitive.
             | Untrained people will be more likely to generate wrong
             | conclusions than right conclusions.
             | 
             | So, yes data in the wrong hands can and will be harmful.
        
       | Lio wrote:
       | The TL;DR is Microsoft won't tell you what they collect and
       | ignore settings that limit telemetry.
       | 
       | If you use VSCode or its extensions you can't keep commercial
       | secrets from those working at Microsoft unless you block network
       | traffic from VSCode. This seems to be true even in the open
       | source builds like VSCodium.
        
         | webmobdev wrote:
         | > _This seems to be true even in the open source builds like
         | VSCodium._
         | 
         | Which is ironical given that you should be able to completely
         | strip any telemetry code if the complete source is available
         | ...
        
         | rstat1 wrote:
         | So I guess this page on their website is fiction?
         | 
         | https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/getstarted/telemetry
        
           | pseudalopex wrote:
           | The article went into detail about it.
        
             | jsmith45 wrote:
             | Except the article does not. If you turn off telemetry and
             | crash reporting, then there is no telemetry. (Except
             | possibly the telemetry from plugins that choose not to
             | honor the telemetry toggle). This post provides no examples
             | of telemetry being sent when the option is turned off.
             | 
             | Now the program does have a variety of spots where it is
             | designed to contact Microsoft services, like say the
             | extension store, or update checks, or other similar
             | functionality. Those services will (obviously) keep some
             | level of logging data, which you cannnot opt out of if
             | VSCode Talks to those services. This is what the terms are
             | talking about when they indicate that not all collected
             | data can be opted out of.
             | 
             | There is no "Don't talk to any Microsoft cloud service"
             | feature toggle, sure, but would not really be a sane toggle
             | people actually want. For example that toggle would need to
             | forcibly disable the git support to ensure those features
             | don't try to talk to GitHub if you open code in some GitHub
             | checked out repo. It would disable the extensions store. It
             | would prevent the update checking, etc. VSCodium would end
             | up wanting to rip chunks of that toggle's functionality
             | back out, since for example, VSCodium uses a different non-
             | Microsoft extension store by default, so would want want
             | the extension store to remain disabled.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | Lio wrote:
           | Yes. That is what the article is telling you.
        
       | whywhywhywhy wrote:
       | I honestly wouldn't mind the telemetry but seen as VSCode on
       | Windows will always inevitably completely freeze the entire OS to
       | the point of requiring a restart if you leave it open for long
       | enough, it doesn't give me much faith anyone is looking at it
       | that closely in terms of using it to fix fundamental issues.
        
         | nominusllc wrote:
         | I have never experienced this, on any OS.
        
           | cassianoleal wrote:
           | From all the anecdotes in this thread, I estimate a 50%
           | chance of it happening.
        
           | whywhywhywhy wrote:
           | It's just Windows and how long are your uptimes and do you
           | leave it open all the time?
           | 
           | I know it's not just me because I did find the github issue
           | and there was no fix so I just stopped using VSCode
        
             | d_tr wrote:
             | I guess you are not referring to some MS extension but to
             | the editor itself, right?
             | 
             | I had an issue around a year ago with cpptools on Linux,
             | where a single 80k LOC header would cause obscene memory
             | usage (10+ G) and the extension would basically stop
             | working.
        
       | pleb_nz wrote:
       | What we need, and this may already exist, is away to sanbox apps
       | with the ability to firewall of incoming and outgoing http
       | request.
       | 
       | Does this exist?
       | 
       | What would be even better was a solution that had profiles for
       | common usages and apps, and the profiles could be created by all
       | and shared via a community or repo and could be extended and
       | tweaked.
       | 
       | Does this exist, is it feasible, or does anyone have a better
       | simpler idea?
        
         | treesknees wrote:
         | On MacOS you can use Little Snitch [1] to do exactly this. You
         | can watch all network connections per app, even grab a pcap of
         | traffic just for the app as well. You can setup restrictions to
         | block incoming and outgoing traffic. It basically is a per-app
         | firewall.
         | 
         | [1] https://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html
        
           | kylehotchkiss wrote:
           | I just came here to ask how Little Snitch can disable these.
           | Do you know which domains are specific for telemetry in VSC?
        
       | tedmiston wrote:
       | > Are there more privacy-focused alternatives to VS Code?
       | 
       | Sure, Sublime Text.
        
         | maxlath wrote:
         | VS Codium https://vscodium.com/
        
           | ProAm wrote:
           | How often is this updated? I looked at it previously but
           | there were enough caveats/comments to make me weary on using
           | it. I checked the website too but couldnt get (or missed) a
           | definitive answer
        
         | hitpointdrew wrote:
         | I feel like we are in the minority. I still use, and love,
         | sublime.
        
       | jacknews wrote:
       | There's always vscodium which which doesn't have the tracking,
       | similar to Chromium browser vs Chrome: https://vscodium.com/
        
         | phantomathkg wrote:
         | As the post mentioned, even the VSCodium team cannot shutdown
         | all telemetry. Seems some do not have switches?
        
           | techsin101 wrote:
           | wont just blocking from host file would be sufficient? add
           | certain domains and ip addresses to the list
        
           | jacknews wrote:
           | You are correct, I didn't read the whole thing completely.
        
           | ensignavenger wrote:
           | Why not just remove it from the source code?
        
             | robotnikman wrote:
             | Maybe there are dependencies on closed source libraries or
             | API's which report telemetry? I'm no expert on this though.
        
             | 5d8767c68926 wrote:
             | Given the frequency of updates, maintaining a privacy fork
             | with anything but minor changes would be a Sisyphean task.
        
               | Tijdreiziger wrote:
               | ungoogled-chromium and Bromite do it for Chromium, so it
               | should theoretically be possible for VSCode.
        
               | npteljes wrote:
               | Which is exactly what I'd expect from a privacy fork.
        
         | nerdjon wrote:
         | I love VSCodium.
         | 
         | I wish they could find a way around some missing plugins, but
         | it does what I need it to.
        
           | alrlroipsp wrote:
           | Just fix your marketplace settings and use official plugins
           | :)
           | 
           | https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/DOCS.md#ext.
           | ..
        
             | nerdjon wrote:
             | ... please tell me this is a recent fix and not something
             | that I missed when I looked a year or so ago?
             | 
             | Thank you! Was always annoying when coworkers would tell me
             | about a plugin that I could not install (or worse, had an
             | old broken one)
        
             | any_spite wrote:
             | Does VScodium support WSL now ? I need windows
             | unfortunately for office apps.
        
               | 0x457 wrote:
               | Remote-WSL (and all other remote plugins) plugin is
               | proprietary MS plugin, so no.
               | 
               | You can go a bit different way: run code-server or
               | OpenVSCode Server in WSL and open them in a browser.
        
       | NGRhodes wrote:
       | Worth noting that extensions may separately send telemetry, that
       | do not have to adhere to the main VSCode telemetry configuration
       | settings.
        
         | gabrielgio wrote:
         | What a gross oversight from their part. Not only they build a
         | product that, as pointed by the post, sends a excessive amount
         | of data, but also allows anyone to do the same.
         | 
         | > Why have licenses like these if they are just concerned with
         | product improvement?
         | 
         | That nails it for me. I have no reason whatsoever to use
         | vscode.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | welder wrote:
           | That's kinda the point! For ex, my wakatime extension sends
           | metrics about vscode usage so the developer can see their
           | code stats.
        
             | gabrielgio wrote:
             | That is fine from my point of view. You, vscode and the
             | extension have an agreement of how the data is handled,
             | where is sent to and how it is processed. It becomes a
             | problem when the vscode or an extension ignores the no
             | telemetry settings, keeps sending data, and we have no much
             | of a clue how it is going to be store/processed/used for.
        
               | welder wrote:
               | vscode extensions are open source so the community should
               | report and vscode should ban extensions behaving badly.
               | That's the same way all plugin marketplaces work, nothing
               | bad vscode is doing with their extension setup.
        
               | capableweb wrote:
               | It's probably true that many Visual Studio Code
               | extensions are Open Source, but there are plenty that are
               | not.
               | 
               | Here is one from a random person on the internet which
               | has the license "All rights reserved": https://marketplac
               | e.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=LiamNevi...
               | 
               | Here is another by Adobe that doesn't have a license
               | linked to it (presumed proprietary):
               | https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=com-
               | adob...
        
               | welder wrote:
               | Sorry, I meant you could see the source code not the
               | source code's license.
        
               | capableweb wrote:
               | That too seems to be only true in most cases but not all.
               | How could I inspect the code of the Adobe extension
               | linked above before installing it in Visual Studio Code
               | for example? There doesn't seem to be any links to the
               | actual code for it.
        
               | welder wrote:
               | Just download it without installing it.
        
           | kroltan wrote:
           | What's the alternative? Blocking extensions from accessing
           | the Internet? How are you even supposed to do that given
           | extensions already have (completely justified) access to the
           | filesystem and can invoke executables?
           | 
           | There certainly is a valid argument for Internet access, for
           | example for documentation lookup, schema validation, database
           | editing, etc.
           | 
           | There would be a strict, and yet fallible, vetting process on
           | the extension marketplace to make sure every extension
           | complies with whatever rules are defined.
        
             | gabrielgio wrote:
             | You have a point. There is no way to block access to
             | resources given the nature of the product, but they could,
             | at least, make more effort to create a better
             | community/environment around the tooling (regarding data
             | handling).
             | 
             | > extensions may separately send telemetry, that do not
             | have to adhere to the main VSCode telemetry configuration
             | settings.
             | 
             | From what I see things that should never happen and should
             | yield a block from the marketplace.
             | 
             | Like you mention, in the end of the day that is not
             | enforceable, but more transparent data privacy policy would
             | show some good faith from their side.
        
             | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
             | > What's the alternative?
             | 
             | Expose the setting to extensions (if it isn't already), and
             | set a policy in their extension catalog that extension
             | telemetry must honor the global setting. It isn't perfect,
             | but it's better than nothing.
        
           | xeromal wrote:
           | Sounds like install rogue extensions is on the user. lol
        
       | mmebane wrote:
       | The extension author docs [1] say that extensions _should_ obey
       | the global setting, even if using their own telemetry libraries:
       | 
       | > Extension authors who wish not to use Application Insights can
       | utilize their own custom solution to send telemetry. In this
       | case, it is still required that extension authors respect the
       | user's choice by utilizing the isTelemetryEnabled and
       | onDidChangeTelemetryEnabled API.
       | 
       | I suppose the quote in the article is technically correct,
       | because there's no guarantee that _will_ follow this. I'm curious
       | if I could report an extension for abuse and have it removed if
       | it doesn't honor the global setting.
       | 
       | The article also says
       | 
       | > Microsoft's C# extension (ms-vscode.csharp) sends data to
       | Microsoft. There does not appear to be any setting offered by the
       | extension to turn telemetry off.
       | 
       | I unzipped the extension and looked at the package.json, and it
       | appears to use Microsoft's recommended extension-telemetry
       | library, so I presume it is following the global setting.
       | 
       | I wish Microsoft required extensions to publish detailed
       | telemetry info (or, really, info on _any and all_ external
       | connections an extension might make) on their Marketplace page.
       | 
       | [1]: https://code.visualstudio.com/api/extension-guides/telemetry
        
         | hajile wrote:
         | I can't take a "maybe it does what it says" to my boss and
         | expect approval to use that extension. It might be different if
         | the license didn't agree to telemetry, but that means they
         | can't even sue if the extension leaks private or secure
         | information.
         | 
         | That's a legal minefield.
        
       | ctrlmeta wrote:
       | I am one of those who began coding in Notepad and then quickly
       | moved on to Vim and then to Emacs.
       | 
       | When the whole world of internet services began consolidating
       | around the web and then later when the whole web began
       | consolidating around a few powerful walled gardens, I saw how
       | these trends began chipping away at our anonymity, privacy, web
       | performance and software performance. Computers are ubiquitous
       | but privacy is under attack. Hardware is faster but software is
       | slower. Internet pipes are faster but websites are sluggish.
       | 
       | In all this turbulence I thought at least my software development
       | tools are not affected by these terrible user-hostile trends.
       | Emacs has become faster with faster hardware. While Vim was
       | always fast, I am sure the Vim folks too would agree that they
       | can now run Vim with a lot of plugins thanks to faster hardware.
       | These editors do not do hidden telemetry. They don't add user
       | hostile features. The core editor experience remains more or less
       | the same year after year.
       | 
       | Even after all the disruption (I mean literally, disruption, not
       | in some positive metaphorical way) in the rest of tech world, I
       | have found consolation in my modest code editor, Emacs for me,
       | Vim for some, other editors for other people. My code editor has
       | always served my best interests. It helps me write code and
       | documentation without any distractions. But when I read articles
       | like this about VSCode and its telemetry, it really makes me
       | anxious. Perhaps Emacs or Vim will never be afflicted by issues
       | like this. But still ... If developer tools meant for ordinary
       | software developers like me are going to start sneaking on my
       | data and begin bundling user-hostile features, what hope is there
       | for all other kind of software tools!
        
         | throwaway22032 wrote:
         | Right? It's baffling.
         | 
         | I still don't understand why developers use Microsoft tools. At
         | all.
         | 
         | About the only valid use case I can think of is creating
         | Windows native apps and _maybe_ testing on IE/Edge.
         | 
         | Otherwise, why? Just why would you wade in the shit when
         | there's a lovely clean pool right over there?
        
           | lunarplague wrote:
           | because Microsoft Shop jobs are well paying, not terribly
           | difficult, and allow people to work on personal projects
           | without burnout.
        
           | naikrovek wrote:
           | > Just why would you wade in the shit when there's a lovely
           | clean pool right over there?
           | 
           | this pool isn't filled with shit, and the water over there
           | isn't very clean, thats why.
        
         | ithrow wrote:
         | To emacs with evil? If so, how did it go?
        
           | scruple wrote:
           | I struggled to make the change. I think I tried half a dozen
           | times to go from (neo)vim to Emacs and it never stuck. My
           | problem was that I kept reaching for spacemacs and Doom
           | Emacs, etc., right out of the gate, and I would be mystified
           | by Emacs itself and Emacs Lisp as a result.
           | 
           | Two things helped get me into Emacs full-time (and this is
           | after > 15 years of using vim):
           | 
           | 1. I went step-by-step through Susam's Emfy Emacs config [0].
           | That helped me understand some of the basics at a
           | foundational level. I extended that base configuration a
           | little bit and became comfortable with the environment.
           | 
           | 2. I then went step-by-step through the entire "Emacs from
           | Scratch" playlist that System Crafters put out [1]. I pushed
           | my personal configuration pretty far with that over the
           | course of 2-3 months.
           | 
           | I eventually moved to Doom Emacs and married in pieces of my
           | own configuration. That's been my daily driver for months
           | now.
           | 
           | [0]: https://github.com/susam/emfy
           | 
           | [1]: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEoMzSkcN8oPH1au7
           | H6B7...
        
             | ithrow wrote:
             | thx, why didn't you stick to emacs keybindings?
        
               | scruple wrote:
               | I started using vim in 2007. It's baked into my DNA at
               | this point.
        
         | scruple wrote:
         | I agree with you, and I'm a long-time vimmer who moved to Emacs
         | full-time last December, but... It's not that simple. If an
         | entire development team is using VSCode, or you're doing
         | development inside of docker containers, it can be hard to
         | stick with Emacs, (neo)vim, etc.
        
       | throwaway22032 wrote:
       | It's Microsoft.
       | 
       | It's what they do. It's been 20+ years. I'm not even old. I just
       | don't understand how people haven't figured this out yet.
        
         | throwaway642012 wrote:
         | I'm old enough to remember the browser wars and FUD against
         | linux. It is funny to see MS going from 'M$' to the gatekeeper
         | of OpenSource.
        
           | bitwize wrote:
           | "Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!"
           | 
           | They were losing hearts and minds in the Web dev space by
           | waging war against open source. It makes far more sense to
           | co-opt it, as per the Halloween-document strategy.
           | 
           | TBH I saw this coming 20 or so years ago, about the time when
           | IBM started putting on its open-source cheerleader outfit.
           | Open source is formless, shapeless, like water per Bruce Lee.
           | You cannot oppose it with force, it will just get everywhere;
           | but by aligning yourself with it you can direct it. That's
           | what I saw IBM doing and I knew Microsoft would follow suit
           | out of lack of choice. And now here we are.
        
         | ajdude wrote:
         | I'm a bit surprised at how many of my friends have jumped ship
         | to Visual Studio Code, including those who are very much for
         | free software. They have always been in the business of
         | embrace, extend, extinguish[0]. People tend to forget how evil
         | M$ used to be because recently they have seemed like a beacon
         | for Open Source, but I think they are just still evil[1].
         | 
         | I think we're still dealing with the same Microsoft that we've
         | dealt with through the 90s. They are not a champion of open
         | source, and they are still up to their old tricks.[2]
         | 
         | [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31966414
         | 
         | [1] https://keivan.io/the-day-appget-died/
         | 
         | [2]
         | https://social.platypush.tech/@blacklight/108719097530863121
        
         | edgyquant wrote:
         | Okay but companies don't just add telemetry because it's a fun
         | and exciting engineering challenge. They do so for legitimate
         | engineering and business reasons.
         | 
         | These solutions have privacy nuance they are not black and
         | white/evil v good
        
           | throwaway22032 wrote:
           | Telemetry is malware. Always has been.
        
           | squarefoot wrote:
           | Telemetry can be an invaluable source of information to
           | improve products, everyone knows that; it's sorta like having
           | 100% of the users continuously reporting bugs and information
           | from which software vendors can infer most wanted features or
           | modifications to improve usability. Which business wouldn't
           | want that? If done right it could be great for everyone,
           | including users. Unfortunately there's no way to ensure that
           | invaluable tool won't one day be used against users to sneak
           | out data that wouldn't contribute in any way to products
           | improvement, namely making profits from users profiling.
           | 
           | But the point isn't being good or evil; businesses have no
           | sense of morals, they don't obey to common sense but rather
           | take the path that leads to the higher profits, and these
           | days profiling users unfortunately brings high profits. It's
           | not a matter of which company is good or bad, or if telemetry
           | can be done right or not, but rather how long until a
           | software with built in telemetry will use it the wrong way,
           | because soon or later everyone of them will be presented the
           | scenario in which doing a bad thing brings them more profits;
           | and this principle applies way beyond telemetry.
        
           | npteljes wrote:
           | Factory farming is also an engineering challenge, with
           | legitimate business reasons - its way more economical. I
           | think most of the time horrible things just make sense, in
           | some other framing.
           | 
           | My point is - something being useful is a very low bar. It's
           | not the point of the discussion here. Maybe some privacy
           | zealots won't acknowledge this, but telemetry can be very
           | useful, and at the same time a breach of privacy.
           | 
           | And regarding Microsoft, it's also about their attitude
           | towards it. It's their way or the highway. It has always been
           | like this - the software might be the way it is, but
           | regarding their business dealings they are and always were
           | ruthless. That's what made them great. So now what we see is
           | a continuation of their previous attitude. And a slice of the
           | current zeitgeist which is always-on internet with everyone
           | slurping up user data.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | belter wrote:
           | Enabled by default -> Bad
           | 
           | Give user option to enable to improve product -> Good
        
             | squarefoot wrote:
             | And possibly keep telemetry data (all of it) auditable by
             | users, so that they know exactly what they are opting in to
             | transmit.
        
             | hajile wrote:
             | Not to mention that if you do anything requiring security,
             | then this all becomes a giant nightmare that results in the
             | entire editor and toolchain being disallowed.
        
           | falcolas wrote:
           | My concern is that anybody at a company can suggest a
           | telemetry point and it's added with little or no oversight,
           | and store it forever. It may not be a fun engineering
           | challenge (though it could be, depending on the metric), but
           | sifting through the results is a "fun data interpretation"
           | event. Especially for marketing and sales groups.
           | 
           | The solutions _should_ have a privacy nuance... but don 't.
           | For example from TFA, collecting git branch and repo names.
           | That seems like a terrible idea, since it's not like
           | Microsoft's devs will have access to reproduce issues from
           | those repos. It's also a potential leak of sensitive
           | corporate data.
        
         | declnz wrote:
         | IMO it's because they've done very smart pivots / rebranding
         | (VSCode, Github, NPM, even the Surfaces) and people who even
         | know start thinking "new Microsoft"
        
       | azlev wrote:
       | "If you're not paying for the product, then you are the product."
        
         | AdmiralAsshat wrote:
         | That stopped being true about ten years ago.
         | 
         | Now, you pay for the product, and you are _still_ the product.
        
           | mixmastamyk wrote:
           | True and True != False
        
         | rstat1 wrote:
         | There are soo many exceptions to this phrase that's borderline
         | false.
        
         | Narishma wrote:
         | You are still the product even if you're paying.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | lawxls wrote:
       | How is PyCharm WSL2 support these days? WSL2 is the biggest
       | reason I switched to VS Code 1 year ago.
        
         | sam_lowry_ wrote:
         | Dunno about PyChsrm, but IntelliJ developers solve WSL2 issues
         | in low-priority mode. I posted a few and followed a few others,
         | resolution time is many months long.
        
           | colejohnson66 wrote:
           | JetBrains just in general treats all issue as low priority.
           | There's issues open for literal _years_ that they refuse to
           | do anything about. They say "we looked at this issue, and
           | it's not on our roadmap, so no." Ok, but what is your
           | roadmap? Why can't it include a fix for a 5 year old bug? Oh,
           | because you're working on a replacement that'll take 3 years
           | to finish. It's extremely frustrating sometimes.
        
       | sampa wrote:
       | Is there any AppArmor profile for VSCodium that denies it all
       | internet access on Linux?
       | 
       | I'm too afraid to run it.
        
       | gonzo41 wrote:
       | It's a fair price for a free product.
        
         | krono wrote:
         | How can you possibly tell without knowing what exact data is
         | being collected, how it is being used, for how long it will be
         | kept, and where it will end up?
        
           | gonzo41 wrote:
           | I work around and with a climate scientists. What I worry
           | about has changed.
           | 
           | Metrics and crash statistics are fine. And if they are
           | collecting some dystopian level of data, then I bet that
           | google and facebook has them beat already.
        
             | krono wrote:
             | We don't know the true cost of using this application, is
             | what I was trying to say.
        
       | gentleman11 wrote:
       | Why even make vscode if not for telemetry? It's the whole point
       | of the app, isn't it? It's like chrome or edge or that open
       | source png viewer that started selling your info a few months ago
       | 
       | Telemetry is a major focus of windows since the current ceo too
       | over. It's kind of his thing
       | 
       | Note there is an open source version called vscodium that iirc
       | has telemetry disabled but I found my extensions didn't work with
       | it last year when I tried it
        
         | npteljes wrote:
         | It's good PR for Microsoft.
        
       | nindalf wrote:
       | It's safe to assume Microsoft is GDPR compliant. There's no sense
       | in risking the fines GDPR could potentially levy for the sake of
       | ... what exactly? There's no upside even if this data was somehow
       | de-anonymized. The sensible thing to do is to delete everything
       | within 90 days. Even if the developers behind VS Code didn't
       | agree with that, legal and privacy at MS would make sure they
       | would.
       | 
       | All this talk about how this data can be used to target people
       | seems far fetched. Microsoft doesn't have a serious ads business.
       | What they do have are various products and services to sell to
       | developers - Github and Azure among them. That's the whole point
       | of VSCode - give it away for free so they can understand
       | developer practices and also upsell paid products. And if anyone
       | doesn't like that, they can simply ... not pay Microsoft any
       | money.
        
         | techsin101 wrote:
         | > There is no way to turn this off.
         | 
         | What if you added domains to host list
        
           | nindalf wrote:
           | What if you took a hammer to your WiFi router.
           | 
           | Yes, it's always possible to turn it off but what I meant to
           | say was that the VSCode team makes it hard.
        
       | effnorwood wrote:
        
       | Bootvis wrote:
       | I think I'm out of the loop: what exactly is so valuable about
       | this telemetry?
       | 
       | I don't believe my coding habits can be used for advertising.
        
         | api wrote:
         | * Profiling what languages you code in
         | 
         | * Profiling your work hours
         | 
         | * Tracking the physical locations of software professionals
         | 
         | * Profiling the nature of the projects you are working on
         | 
         | * Perhaps: training GitHub Copilot?
        
           | Bootvis wrote:
           | I get these are huge privacy infringements and I don't like
           | that but except for improving Copilot I don't see how they
           | would make money from that.
           | 
           | On the other hand, sites such as StackOverflow and Google
           | (possibly even Bing) can get a good guess of the others as
           | well.
        
             | rightbyte wrote:
             | MS sale team would probably love to get a grep of all
             | "#include <foo.h>" of a company to see of they can do some
             | sales pitch to eat some vendors lunch.
        
         | savanaly wrote:
         | FTA: "Visual Studio Code collects telemetry data, which is used
         | to help understand how to improve the product. For example,
         | this usage data helps to debug issues, such as slow start-up
         | times, and to prioritize new features."
         | 
         | I don't work at Microsoft but I work somewhere similar on a
         | product that collects similar types of telemetry and those
         | words are not empty, they are very, very true. We absolutely
         | add, remove, and change things about the UI based on what our
         | telemetry says people do.
         | 
         | And it's not just about moving things around (which I know HN
         | hates), it's about making the page load faster (which I know HN
         | loves!). We are going through a concerted effort to lower page
         | TTVC at the moment and a big part is going to have to be
         | turning off some features that show by default that take too
         | long to load and guess how we'll be making the call about which
         | features to turn off?
        
           | ttctciyf wrote:
           | > We absolutely add, remove, and change things about the UI
           | 
           | Please consider stopping with that UI changing thing :)
        
           | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
           | I agree but I think this is a niche case where we are talking
           | specifically about a development tool. I assume VSCode
           | developers are dogfooding VSCode. They know what users want
           | because as developers they themselves are VSCode users.
           | Telemetry, other than crash information, seems unnecessary.
        
             | Tijdreiziger wrote:
             | VSCode supports a wide range of languages and workflows.
             | The workflow of the VSCode developers doesn't necessarily
             | align with the workflows of other VSCode users.
        
         | falcolas wrote:
         | IMO: Whether they make money off of it or not doesn't matter.
         | They're collecting and storing gobs of data that they don't
         | need. It's arguably not their data (i.e. the branch and repo
         | from my .git directory), so they shouldn't be collecting or
         | storing it.
        
       | nathanaldensr wrote:
       | A warning for people who, like me, long ago disabled telemetry in
       | Visual Studio Code: Microsoft introduced a new setting that
       | deprecates the two older settings... _and the new setting
       | defaults to "all"_[1]. I just noticed this now after double-
       | checking my settings. Sneaky, sneaky, Microsoft (but still
       | totally expected).
       | 
       | [1] https://imgur.com/a/RbrsuyA
       | 
       | You will want these three settings in your default settings JSON
       | (the first two just to be safe):                   {
       | "telemetry.enableTelemetry": false,
       | "telemetry.enableCrashReporter": false,
       | "telemetry.telemetryLevel": "off"         }
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | tjoff wrote:
         | Just as showing ads to people willing to pay to not see ads is
         | supposedly the most lucrative thing humans can envision (not
         | sure how royally pissing off your users is profitable but hey,
         | that's me) it seems that tracking people that don't want to be
         | tracked reveals the most precious data imaginable.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | rcxdude wrote:
         | If the message is to be believed (and the source code does
         | agree: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/blob/d32b92bd7a49ce8
         | 667b...), the old settings still apply, the new one may default
         | to 'all' but the old settings will override it, so they've
         | avoided turning telemetry back on for those who had disabled it
         | (in fact if you didn't update the settings and for some reason
         | had only turned off one of the telemetry options, they have in
         | fact reduced the amount of telemetry they are getting from
         | you).
        
           | alberth wrote:
           | > @returns OFF, ERROR, ON
           | 
           | > ...
           | 
           | > return TelemetryLevel.NONE;
           | 
           | You gotta love how the documented function return value
           | (TelemetryConfiguration.OFF) doesn't match the actual return
           | value (TelemetryConfiguration.NONE).
        
         | fariszr wrote:
         | Or just use VSCodium, the actually open source build, with no
         | added closed source blobs and of course no telemetry.
         | 
         | It uses https://open-vsx.org, an open source host for VSX
         | plugins.
         | 
         | https://vscodium.com/
        
           | westurner wrote:
           | Here's open-vsx's page for the Microsoft/vscode-jupyter
           | extension: https://open-vsx.org/extension/ms-toolsai/jupyter
           | 
           | I think it's great that open license terms enable these sorts
           | of forks and experiments so that the community can work
           | together by sending pull requests.
           | 
           | Is there a good way to install code-server (hosted
           | VSCode/vscodium in a browser tab) plugins from openvsx?
           | 
           | (E.g. the ml-workspace and ml-hub containers include code-
           | server and SSH, which should be remotely-usable from
           | vscodium?)
        
           | 1MachineElf wrote:
           | The end of the article mentions that VS Codium, while having
           | less telemetry, still calls out to Microsoft services.
           | 
           |  _They try to remove all telemetry, read more about that
           | here._
           | 
           | ...
           | 
           |  _However, VSCodium can't shut out all the data collection as
           | it is the same codebase. And since extensions act
           | independently with regard to data collection, you still need
           | to be mindful of what extensions you install._
        
             | joecool1029 wrote:
             | I mean that's the same deal with browser extensions. Good
             | to mention, but hardly a surprise.
        
           | Tijdreiziger wrote:
           | > Even though we do not pass the telemetry build flags (and
           | go out of our way to cripple the baked-in telemetry),
           | Microsoft will still track usage by default.
           | 
           | source:
           | https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/DOCS.md
        
         | systemvoltage wrote:
         | Futhermore, by the time humans react and disable the telemetry,
         | things like system information and non-real time telemetry is
         | already uploaded to Microsoft.
         | 
         | The case that we allow users to control privacy needs to be
         | scrutinized more.
        
         | csmattryder wrote:
         | Ha, vindication. I posted a while back about I used to use
         | OpenSnitch to block VS Code's telemetry requests.
         | 
         | One of the comments mentioned that there's already a setting to
         | disable it, ain't that enough..?!
         | 
         | I'm once again recommending OpenSnitch: because Microsoft won't
         | take "No" for an answer.
         | 
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30865152
        
           | RealStickman_ wrote:
           | I'll recommend VS Codium instead of VS Code then. It provides
           | fully open source binaries of VS Code without all the
           | telemetry enabled.
        
             | JohnFen wrote:
             | TFA says that VS Codium removes as much as it can, but it
             | cannot remove all of the telemetry.
        
             | Tijdreiziger wrote:
             | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32571867
        
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