8 ms·

VSCode deprecates Enable Telemetry, auto-enrolls you in Telemetry?

388 points by tmpfile 5y ago

VSCode has deprecated "Enable Telemetry" and now auto-enrolls you into their new Telemetry option even if you've disabled all the previous telemetry settings. Screenshot https://imgur.com/a/nxvH8cW https://imgur.com/a/nxvH8cW The changes apply to the most recent version of vscode (version 1.61.0 released Oct 7).

azinman2 5y ago
What is this telemetry? My OS, computer model, IP, and VSCode version? Why is this so bad in comparison to any other web application or many other apps these days? I know many are up in arms about it, but what exactly is the hidden danger here? More ads about computer studs sold via a the meager Bing ads market?
- neurobashing 5y ago
  for some, simply not allowing me to opt-out without using other mechanisms (some sort of internal firewall etc) is enough. It's my computer, my network, and I get to say precisely how it is used; and that includes telemetry. There are other threats and reasons, that others more versed in this can explain, but that is the one I can speak to.
  - sto_hristo 5y ago
    >It's my computer, my network, and I get to say precisely how it is used That is only realistic on linux. Everything else us just something you've rented. Besides, you can always go for independent vscode clone. I don't know how good it is as i haven't tried it myself. I just know it exists.
    - kodah 5y ago
      Linux may be the only kernel (and general class of operating systems) that is capable of robust transparency and control, but that doesn't mean that it isn't a common ideal among more general computer users. The argument I hear most frequently is that users are fairly oblivious to one or more of these points: - That data is collected - That you or your device can be identified from data - That data does not have an expiration - How the data is used (eg: multi-use, for troubleshooting, for marketing) There are multiple ways to democratize knowledge, but most ideal is having companies just be upfront and teaching engineers why it's important to stress building notifications and/or levers for these kinds of capabilities.
    - trutannus 5y ago
      A lot of the people who care this much also use Linux, so this is somewhat of a moot point.
  - d_tr 5y ago
    > simply not allowing me to opt-out ... But let's note that this is not the case here. You can still opt out. If they are just resetting your old settings silently, however, then this is not a nice move and it will annoy exactly the people that care.
    - edoceo 5y ago
      > they are just resetting your old settings silently That kind of behavior bis frowned upon in this establishment
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
  It doesn't matter. What matters - if these reports are true - is how they treat their users with these dark patterns. You just don't treat other people like that, it's just basic human decency.
  - hamburglar 5y ago
    And also there’s a legitimate slippery slope here. “Come on, this data they are sending is not sensitive” may apply today, but after you’ve opted in, now your job is perpetually keeping track of what new information they send in the future to make sure your assessment is still true. If there is a big off switch, the only thing we have to pay attention to is whether or not they are honoring that off switch.
- salawat 5y ago
  The problem is other people treating other people's hardware as their playground. We've gone too long without a reckoning as software authors in this regard. You are not entitled to do whatever you wish with someone else's hardware because of a click through. Those that continue to do so will be (in my case) blacklisted from running on my network.
  - shukantpal 5y ago
    The user entitle software when they install it & give privileges. The issue has to be solved upstream. Instead of blaming software vendors, we have to build the systems to take back control.
    - account42 5y ago
      Software that disregards the users wishes when you run it used to be called malware. An install is not an entitlement to do whatever you want. Software vendors are the ones writing this malware so why should they not be blamed.
- dspillett 5y ago
  > My OS, computer model, IP, and VSCode version? Right now, maybe. Or maybe more. Are you happy agreeing to it without being told? Being auto-enrolled without being told? What about if they add more later and don't feel the need to tell you as you didn't make the effort to opt out so must be happy with the tracking? > Why is this so bad in comparison to any other web application or many other apps these days? Because others do it doesn't make it right. People rail against web properties using what is seen as overly invasive telemetry/fingerprinting/profiling dark patterns too. > but what exactly is the hidden danger here? More information stored about you in more places, from whence it can leak further or dubious authorities can demand it be released, is a common fear in such cases for privacy campaigners and campaigners in general within the reach of certain governments. (if people downvoting would like to let me know why, I'd be genuinely interested to know your counter point(s), otherwise I'm just going to assume that what I have said is true and you don't like it)
rvz 5y ago
So from bad to worse if true. Do you have evidence or a link to this?
- tmpfile 5y ago
  Screenshot https://imgur.com/a/nxvH8cW https://imgur.com/a/nxvH8cW
- agilob 5y ago
  Yea, it's real, you have screenshot in description and PRs https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/pulls?q=is%3Apr+telemetry+is%3Aclosed https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/pulls?q=is%3Apr+telemetr...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
FastEatSlow 5y ago
Source: https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_61#_telemetry-settings https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_61#_telemetry-setti... You are not enrolled into the auto telemetry yet, the deprecated options are still respected for now. The new telemtry has the levels of on, crash and off. Useful if I want not to contribute my device info, but still help them with issues with the software itself.
- anonymousab 5y ago
  > for now Looks like it should be "forever" according to this comment: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/134660#issuecomment-939163141 https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/134660#issuecomme... But telemetry is one of those things that you can never trust a company about once it's in. Especially a company with a history of both mandatory telemetry and "oops didn't mean to ;)" telemetry-related setting resets.
omreaderhn 5y ago
Check out https://vscodium.com https://vscodium.com https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium Builds of VS Code with telemetry stripped out
- PaulKeeble 5y ago
  Looks identical, runs the same plugins just without the telemetry. The perfect solution.
  - easton 5y ago
    Except for the remote extensions, Pylance, and Live Share, IIRC. Which are pretty important to a lot of people's use of VSCode.
  - 0des 5y ago
    While it can run the same extensions, some have to be requested to be added to the code-oss repository, as there are some things that I noticed aren't there, and the path recommended to those in this situation is to ask for them to be added on an as-desired basis.
  - generalizations 5y ago
    The one extension I use the most is the remote access via ssh, and that's not available on vscodium last time I checked. Only reason I'm still on VSCode.
    - edoceo 5y ago
      sshfs? Then the solve is outside the editor.
      - generalizations 5y ago
        That's my workaround, but it's less convenient.
jeff42069 5y ago
Microsoft thank you. You brought us the LSP and as thus every editor has the same capabilities as your spyware anti pattern. No need to use Vscode anyway.
username91 5y ago
Reminder that Sublime Text is constantly being improved and might be worth a look if you haven't tried it in a while ~ https://www.sublimetext.com/ https://www.sublimetext.com/
- 0des 5y ago
  A big reason why I don't buy sublime despite buying other products I don't use much is that it is not open source. That is a big one for me because even if I wanted to inspect for telemetry or other things, I'm not trusted to do so.
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    Purchase it if that bugs you. Not everything is freeware.
    - hu3 5y ago
      How is purchasing going to make it open-source?
      - oliwarner 5y ago
        Unless the "it" there is Sublime HQ Pty Ltd. That'd get you the source.
        ipaddr 5y ago
        The original comment was changed. Originally author was saying they hate the reminder in Sublime. In that case purchase a licease. The comment now says they want open source only.
        hu3 5y ago
        indeed. sigh. i'll have to start quoting comments to retain context. it adds noise tho =/
TruthWillHurt 5y ago
End of the day you're getting in bed with Microsoft. No matter ho open-source/friendly it seems.
tyrfing 5y ago
Still respects the old settings. Easy to confirm by checking network traffic.
coliveira 5y ago
This is MS, of course they'll do this kind of thing.
fartcannon 5y ago
The goal of stuff like this is to wear you down into accepting all default parameters. Then, slowly ratchet up the invasiveness.
brundolf 5y ago
As someone who's worked on multiple power-user GUIs professionally, telemetry can be genuinely useful for improving the product. You can discover features that are never used and should be removed so attention can be focused elsewhere, and others that are used frequently and deserve more attention, and others that users may frequently have trouble with and should be fixed or improved. I'm not saying this justifies dark patterns, and I have no firsthand knowledge of whether Microsoft is exclusively using this data for legitimate purposes. If it were me I'd enable it by default but make it clear and easy to disable for those who care. That said: I don't think the knee-jerk assumption that this is a wholly evil thing is justified.
- krageon 5y ago
  Telemetry that is not opt-in is not legal, that is the end of it. No amount of justification will change it and no justification should even be present, because spying on people is always wrong unless it is with consent (which is given freely and not as part of some wishy-washy dark pattern corporatism).
- Crontab 5y ago
  I strongly disagree with the opinion that telemetry should be enabled by default. I feel that it should be the opposite.
- tmpfile 5y ago
  > make it clear and easy to disable for those who care Exactly. Telemetry can be a useful like you said and should be clear to users when they are being opted into it. Especially if someone has disabled all telemetry, they should be prompted to enable it or configure it with the new settings. If you silently re-enable it on their device when they already went thru the trouble of disabling it (and not expecting the settings to change day-to-day), you'll get some knee-jerk assumptions and reactions, whether your intentions where noble or not.
  - brundolf 5y ago
    Sure, they should have had a pop-up telling people about the change and making clear the option to opt-out. That would have been better. But seeing some of the responses here you'd think Microsoft had started streaming a video feed of your entire desktop with no way to disable it.
seabass 5y ago
Microsoft has really been pushing the telemetry lately. Edge phones home far more than any other browser. Windows itself has no way to fully disable data collection (only the option to send "basic" or "full" data, including which websites you visit--oof). If you use Pro and you are enough of a power user to feel comfortable editing registry settings, that's what is now required to turn telemetry off, and even then it's hard to know you did it correctly. And this type of tracking is pervasive across the entire Microsoft ecosystem, including within Xbox, Minecraft, Teams, and now VSCode. It's disappointing to say the least.
- hda2 5y ago
  > and even then it's hard to know you did it correctly At that point, why not copy what people do with android? Just run a dummy "vpn" on your system that null-routes traffic going to microsoft-controlled domains or IP blocks. By no means a perfect solution for sure, but a really good one in practice. You have remember to clear the telemetry cache and reconnect your system to microsoft to get updates from time to time.
  - RachelF 5y ago
    If Windows 10 can't phone home, it thinks the network is disconnected and tries to fix the problem by restarting the network stack every ~10 minutes.
    - bitwize 5y ago
      I'm sure that if not Windows 11, some version further in the future will interpret an inability to phone home as a network disconnect, and warn the user that they are out of compliance with their license agreement and their OS will stop working in 24 hours.
    - wazzaps 5y ago
      Could you provide a source for that? Couldn't find anything on Google about that
IshKebab 5y ago
Can this be removed, given that it has been proven false? Do you guys do that?
- hu3 5y ago
  They do. E-mail: hn@ycombinator.com
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  Where was it proven false?
  - hu3 5y ago
    https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/134660#issuecomment-939163141 https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/134660#issuecomme... Test if for yourself if you must. I tested with Wireshark. It does respect your previous setting if it is more restrictive.
- Cabal 5y ago
  How is this in any way false? I just updated to the latest stable release and it turned telemetry back on, despite my old settings being off. Same as the original screenshot.
chadlavi 5y ago
Microsoft microsofting. By which I mean making confusing UX choices that no user would want, with bad presets, and that get misinterpreted in the comment-o-sphere as dark patterns infringing on our freedoms. They're transforming the control of telemetry to a different option. The problem is that the new option doesn't default to being based on your old telemetry opt-out value, it just defaults to "on" as if you just downloaded VSC. And this leads people to reading all kinds of evil intent into it. But it's probably not. We've all worked on big complicated products at big, slow companies, right? This is just bad design.
- siproprio 5y ago
  "bad at design": Either their engineers are incompetent, and accidentally chose the evil thing, or they intentionally planned it to happen this way.
siproprio 5y ago
So, recapping vs code: * They implemented proprietary sync protocols * They obfuscate how 'settings' are saved - no, the settings.json is not what the editor uses and they hide stuff in the internal sqlite db they use * Capping open versions of the product * And finally, inserting proprietary "licensed" stuff and code that purposefully breaks if you're not licensed
- siproprio 5y ago
  Then they'll use your code to train an AI to replace you.
  - siproprio 5y ago
    Lot's of extensions - the ones that Microsoft decided were 'strategic' - purposefuly stops working magically when you're using the "open" vscodium version.
siproprio 5y ago
Microsoft: dishonest by default™
solarkraft 5y ago
Microsoft tries to make you think it’s not, but VSCode is proprietary if you download the official builds. Don’t use it! The Vscodium project [0] exists and provides builds directly from the source. This version has none of the user-hostile behavior! It also makes you realize Microsoft’s new round of EEE overreach when you see that the maintainers have to provide the extensions through their own repository and the default C# debugger doesn’t work for licensing reasons (everything else works perfectly). Don’t trust Microsoft. Use the code they give you (which is generally fine), not their proprietary products (which are generally very much not fine). [0]: https://vscodium.com https://vscodium.com
- stormbrew 5y ago
  Sadly the main thing I use vscode for doesn't work in vscodium, so it's completely useless to me: remote projects. Without that I may as well just go back to sublime, which is lighter and faster.
  - rPlayer6554 5y ago
    I assume that means it is missing the tight integration with wsl which is my primary use case.
    - jmiskovic 5y ago
      So the Linux is forcing you to use proprietary version of SW? That's wild.
    - 5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
      … or the other way around. It works fine-ish, better than using Windows directly in any case, for me at least.
    - alexeiz 5y ago
      It's not just WSL. There is "remote-ssh" for vscodium either.
Tyriar 5y ago
Hi all, I work on the VS Code team. This came up the other day in stand up and the initial plan was to deprecate and eventually remove the old setting. Several of us pushed back and said while we may deprecate the setting in favor of something else, the old setting should always be respected due to the sensitivity around telemetry. If there's any confusion around this messaging it's because this discussion literally happened 2 days ago. I'll reopen https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/134660 https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/134660 to make sure we clear up confusion.
- bloqs 5y ago
  Really appreciate the open responsiveness. I think most people on this site know the position you are in. Dont be put off by irritated people, it's easy to underestimate how much of waking life some people spend dealing with frustrations with specific bits of software.
- jiggawatts 5y ago
  Just some feedback from the field: I work with some high-security networks, and the perception from those Microsoft customers is that whatever "good" that has come from Microsoft improving security in general has been completely undermined by the pervasive telemetry. Windows 10 alone has something like 200 individual settings for disabling its various forms of telemetry. Office adds several dozen more. Dotnet itself has telemetry, then PowerShell on top of that. VS Code and Visual Studio both send telemetry. On and on, and on... and then some more, and on... and ON and ON and... There's just no end to it. As administrators, it's like playing whack-a-mole against a thousand moles that are breeding exponentially. We don't want to play this game any more.
  - Tyriar 5y ago
    Noted. I can't speak for anything other than VS Code but we have the toggle in product which is all you need to change to turn it off for the core, extensions may have their own setting or share the core toggle, but we often can't control that. There's also the very detailed page on the website detailing this as well as how to see all telemetry events that are sent in real time in the output panel and even how to print out a report of all events that get sent with their classification (code --telemetry).
b9be520d93286 5y ago
I have not trusted M$ since the mid 90s when I first installed Slackware Linux (after using OS/2 2.0 for a year or 2). I was using Vscodium occasionally and despite it being very easy to use, I'm going to uninstall it now and just focus on emacs and neovim. I do not even trust vscodium since the original codebase comes from tainted origins.
siproprio 5y ago
The vscode team needs to start treating msft as a threat as well
xvilka 5y ago
Just use Emacs or Vim/NeoVim, they will never do that.
nottaylorswift 5y ago
And it's uninstalled. Back to Atom.
pluc 5y ago
https://vscodium.com/ https://vscodium.com/
- jarcane 5y ago
  unfortunately, as I discovered with a recent fresh Manjaro install, VSCodium cannot access the standard MS extension repo, which makes it next to worthless as a production tool because no one is uploading anything to their own repo. I can't work without my tools, and I can't be arsed to manually install and build and update every extension and its dependencies that I rely on.
  - oh_boy 5y ago
    Sure you can use vscodium with the official marketplace. I use that for over a year now without issues. https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/DOCS.md#how-to-use-the-vs-code-marketplace https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/DOCS.md#how...
    - easton 5y ago
      Of course, that's against the Microsoft licensing agreement. The VS Extension marketplace is only licensed for use with Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code (as are all of the good Microsoft extensions: Pylance, the Remote Pack, Codespaces, etc). The top of the log file for the remote extension always says this: " * * Visual Studio Code Server * * Reminder: You may only use this software with Visual Studio family products, * as described in the license https://aka.ms/vscode-remote/license https://aka.ms/vscode-remote/license * "
  - solarkraft 5y ago
    What do you mean by “no one is uploading anything to their own repo”? Everything I’ve wanted (exception: dotnet debugger) is on https://open-vsx.org/ https://open-vsx.org/.
  - kova12 5y ago
    if you don't trust microsoft with telemetry, you shouldn't trust extensions written by random people either
lfaoro 5y ago
Use vscodium unless you need specific MS features. Alternatively inspect your outgoing traffic and block the telemetry sources. vscode will still try sending data to those servers but won’t be able to reach them. Little overhead.

smoldesu 5y ago

Or Atom, which is free/open source: https://atom.io https://atom.io

edoceo 5y ago
I wish. Has bugs that make it unusable. (ie: read whole project depth tree on window open)
blibble 5y ago
but ultimately owned by the same company as VSCode
andrew_ 5y ago
I still use Atom as my daily driver. There are bugs, yes. Some are more annoying than others (looking at you, TypeScript plugin). But I enjoy the app's experience more than VSCode. I wish I had time to contribute to it, because it's still a solid editor, and I hope it lives on a lot longer. Also surprised there hasn't been a popular hard fork of it yet since the acquisition of GitHub.
nexuist 5y ago
Serious question: Why does Atom still exist? On the front page they advertise something called "Atom Teletype" which seems like a ripoff of VS Live Share (or was it the other way around?) Why aren't the Atom people working on VSC instead?
- Macha 5y ago
  > Why aren't the Atom people working on VSC instead? https://github.com/atom/atom/graphs/contributors https://github.com/atom/atom/graphs/contributors Looks like the original contributors have mostly moved on to other projects, and activity is significantly diminished, but it's an open source project and they've not gone out of their way to block the community from continuing.
- yepthatsreality 5y ago
  Because more than one editor based off of Electron can exist and something doesn’t have to cease just because the sheep moved to the next field. Why does Visual Studio still exist? Why does Sublime Text still exist? Why does Notepad++ still exist?
  - saagarjha 5y ago
    The question was asked because Atom doesn’t seem to see much development effort anymore, while the rest of the things you mentioned do.
    - yepthatsreality 5y ago
      So we should rid it from existence? Or is this a suggestion to delete the repository? Does Atom exist if you never need it again or the project is never maintained?
      - nexuist 5y ago
        I don't think we should get rid of Atom or anything like that, the point of my question is why the Atom contributors chose to not move on to VSC and continue to maintain Atom to the point of launching competing cloud options like Teletype. It's weird because both ventures are ultimately owned by Microsoft so it's confusing why they're paying two sets of developers to compete against each other.
        yepthatsreality 5y ago
        Atom/GitHub wasn’t owned by Microsoft when Visual Studio Code gained traction. I’m guessing that the maintainers had no interest in giving Microsoft more help in reducing Atom to an unmaintained status and promoting Visual Studio Code for free. If the maintainers work for Microsoft now, I highly doubt it was ever a choice to move on. Teletype was probably in progress as well pre-acquisition, as that sort of feature came much much later in Visual Studio Codes development.
bitwize 5y ago
Vim and Emacs are open source, actively maintained, very capable programming editors.
gizdan 5y ago
I thought Atom development was stopped? Guess I was mistaken.

siproprio 5y ago
"I only speak for my product" Well, I speak from a customer perspective: MS is unethical.
- dang 5y ago
  Please don't flame people like this on HN. Regardless of how strongly you dislike or disagree with $BigCo, we want HN to be a place where people with inside knowledge can speak freely about what they know, without being attacked for it. It would be a bad outcome for HN to disincentivize this. Past explanations of this point: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=disincent%20by:dang&dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=disincent%20by:dang&dateRange=.... https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: I just noticed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28814819 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28814819 - appreciated.
- selfup 5y ago
  This comment isn't constructive at all. Keep it on topic and don't blame the messenger.
  - siproprio 5y ago
    Sorry, I take it back, but I don't have access to the delete button.
    - saagarjha 5y ago
      You can’t delete comments once they have been replied to. Just take the feedback into account for next time, I guess.
lazyeye 5y ago
I'd like to express the same sentiment against all-pervasive telemetry in a far less civil way but dont want this comment deleted. I really wish I could use stronger language though....
- tragictrash 5y ago
  This
Silhouette 5y ago
If you're interested in collecting feedback and passing it on, the other criticism I have in this area is that Microsoft's privacy policies are incomprehensible. Everything seems to refer to the same huge document in the first instance and that document seems to depend by reference on numerous supporting documents. Even figuring out which supporting documents might be relevant seems to require understanding ambiguous terminology about whether any given application or service fits into various categories. Personally, I'm not interested in messing around with that kind of nonsense. I don't want to engage a lawyer just to find out if I can safely run some software and in the modern world where we're dealing with things like personal data and sensitive business information (including code and clients' proprietary information used to write it) an organisation with Microsoft's recent track record on privacy isn't going to get the benefit of the doubt.
tekknik 5y ago
With all this backlash on telemetry, is it worth it? What are you actually getting from it beside ruining the progress MS has made with the dev community? Trust is hard to earn and takes seconds to lose. Remove it. Then champion removing it from the rest of MS’s products. If you must spy to learn your market, you should not be in that market. I still hold onto a Sublime Text license waiting for the day MS shows it’s true purpose of making VS code free. Has this day come?
- markus_zhang 5y ago
  Telemetry is like bureaucracy. Once you have one it's extremely difficult to get rid of it.

lou1306 5y ago

It's high time OSs try and implement something akin to what DoNotTrack was intended to do in web browsers. Of course it will have the same adoption issues faced by DNT, but if first-party apps (like VSCode, DotNet, and PowerShell under Windows) honored a centralized setting it would make life so much easier.

KronisLV 5y ago
Well, for Windows there is https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 to help manage telemetry and other settings, though the OS resets certain user choices after updates. Though, if possible, consider using GNU/Linux whenever possible - distros like Debian have historically had little controversies around them, even package popularity metrics are presented as a choice to you during install time: https://popcon.debian.org/ https://popcon.debian.org/ Certain other distros like Ubuntu have a bit more controversy surrounding them, for example, the snaps package mechanism which takes away the user's control over updates by default, though that's more of a security hole and a stability risk, rather than aggressive telemetry related (unless it's introduced by the package creators, a la Audacity's plans that were later rolled back https://github.com/audacity/audacity/pull/835 https://github.com/audacity/audacity/pull/835). Of course, if you truly care about your privacy and open software, you might as well use a fully GNU distribution, such as Trisquel, though there are factors like hardware compatibility and software availability which could pose challenges in such cases: https://trisquel.info/ https://trisquel.info/
jiggawatts 5y ago
This almost exists. Windows comes in many flavours. The most "just stop it, okay?" version is the Long Term Servicing Channel (LTSC). It's like the Windows you used to like, back in the XP days. No Xbox gaming bar or Minecraft. Minimal (no?) telemetry. No forced updates every 6 months that break things randomly. In my line of work we used it a lot for things like virtual desktop fleets with thousands or even tens of thousands of instances Why? Because the "normal" builds would every now and then just 'decide' to force update themselves despite our best efforts to stop that. All at once. On an ephemeral environment, where the machines would reset on boot, and then try to apply the forced update again. And again, over and over... Some Microsoft manager wanted their KPIs met, so they just.. rammed something through. Fuck everyone running a VDI fleet, a billboard, a kiosk, a test environment, or anything that needs any kind of stability at all. Big man at Microsoft needs a bonus for that new Tesla! This was common practice in our line of business. LTSC or failure, those are the options. Meanwhile, Microsoft, whenever they turned up to a customer site, would just keep harping on about how LTSC is not intended for users, how it's "bad", and how the six-monthly releases provide Enhanced Experiences(tm) or whatever. They would stop just short of calling us unprofessional in front of our customers. Just. It was the most absurd thing to watch happen. The disconnect between Microsoft and their customers is almost comical now...
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  LTSC as of 2019 also includes telemetry now. You get the same choice as on regular Windows: all telemetry or just the basics

artificialLimbs 5y ago

So we should keep a copy of the old installer around?

Tyriar 5y ago
Why would you need to do that given what I said?
- mejari 5y ago
  Presumably so someone installing for the first time can install an older version where they can set the toggle before upgrading to when the toggle is removed?
  - Tyriar 5y ago
    Maybe there's a misunderstanding. The old toggle is deprecated, but the plan is that you will always be able to use it. The new toggle is just a different setting and can still be used there on newer versions ("telemetry.telemetryLevel": "off").
    - tremon 5y ago
      And how do both toggles combine? Is this the implemented truth table? telemetryLevel newTelemetryLevel result off off no telemetry sent on off telemetry sent off on telemetry sent on on telemetry sent
      - judge2020 5y ago
        https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/blob/be75065e817ebd7b6250a100cf5af78bb931265b/src/vs/platform/telemetry/common/telemetryUtils.ts#L120-L137 https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/blob/be75065e817ebd7b625... If either are 'off', it's sending no data. The new one also allows you to only send error logs, so the truth table would be more complex.
      - rnotaro 5y ago
        It used the most restrictive setting. [1] > @john-aws It does respect your prior settings. If you disabled telemetry before it will still be disabled even though telemetryLevel is set to "on" by default. We always take the most restrictive of the two settings. You can confirm this by setting Log level to trace and seeing no telemetry is flowing in the output channel. The old setting will never be completely removed to prevent enablement of people who previously disabled telemetry but it is deprecated so we recommend setting this new setting to "off" and removing the older settings from your settings.json So the truth table would look like this : telemetryLevel newTelemetryLevel result off off no telemetry sent on off no telemetry sent off on no telemetry sent on on telemetry sent The new telemetry level can be set to Off, Error, On. The actual code is on github[2] and looks like this : const newConfig = configurationService.getValue<TelemetryConfiguration>(TELEMETRY_SETTING_ID); const oldConfig = configurationService.getValue(TELEMETRY_OLD_SETTING_ID); // Check old config for disablement if (oldConfig !== undefined && oldConfig === false) { return TelemetryLevel.NONE; } switch (newConfig ?? TelemetryConfiguration.ON) { case TelemetryConfiguration.ON: return TelemetryLevel.USAGE; case TelemetryConfiguration.ERROR: return TelemetryLevel.ERROR; case TelemetryConfiguration.OFF: return TelemetryLevel.NONE; } [1] https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/134660#issuecomment-939163141 https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/134660#issuecomme... [2] https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/blob/be75065e817ebd7b6250a100cf5af78bb931265b/src/vs/platform/telemetry/common/telemetryUtils.ts#L120-L137 https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/blob/be75065e817ebd7b625...
siproprio 5y ago
Yes. Those get harder to find every day unless you know exactly where to look. I also wouldn't put it past them retroactively patching builds to cover them up.