Hacker News Reader

Comment by yjftsjthsd-h | Hacker News Reader

> This is not someone "looking in the window" this is two parties (you and the company providing some service or product to you) needing to exchange data so each can do their work properly.

The electric company probably needs to know usage for billing. Microsoft does not need any information about Windows users for the product to work. Even things like fetching updates doesn't need to leak information, although I'll grant that it's a little bit more work to avoid leaking any data.

View on HN

> The electric company probably needs to know usage for billing. Microsoft does not need any information about Windows users for the product to work.

Honestly, it's amazing you can say this with a straight face? You don't think Microsoft needs to know which parts of its product crash or not, and are used or not, in order to deliver a well-working product?

I don't know if most of you here work with large-scale products, but Microsoft has no the luxury of going to every Windows user personally and asking them how's Windows and what you want more or and less of. That "conversation" happens through telemetry.

They somehow got by for years before telemetry was an option; the answer is mostly testing, focus groups, and user studies, along with intentionally-provided bug reports.

None of what you say replaces telemetry, it's an addition to it. And the question remains why we need to willfully ignore the Internet, and do things like in the 80s. What's the purpose of this idiocy?

> You don't think Microsoft needs to know which parts of its product crash or not, and are used or not, in order to deliver a well-working product? How about asking the user and testing before delivery of the product? MS outsourced the test to the users and enforces a feedback for their faults. Imagine doing the same 40 years ago. A company employees enters your home to gather data about faulty products. You do know how many private data is stored on PCs and smartphones? Do you know what people access this data?

Isn't that what the insider community was meant to be for? Getting cool new stuff in exchange for data and performance stats collection.

Just taking it from everyone without offering the ability to turn it off is very poor practice imo. I understand they want this data to improve stuff but I should have the ability to not contribute to it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com