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You're getting downvoted because you are complaining about something you don't understand, which puts into question the "after reading this" part of your post.

Jumping on the first opportunity to rant about telemetry without even checking what the article is talking about will do that.



then why name it open "telemetry" in the first place? you know it has an extremely bad connotation to spyware.

> which puts into question the "after reading this"

> without even checking what the article is talking about will do that.

please don't do that, this is against the HN guidelines.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


Telemetry is the in situ collection of measurements or other data at remote points and their automatic transmission to receiving equipment (telecommunication) for monitoring. The word is derived from the Greek roots tele, "remote", and metron, "measure".

Why name it the precise thing that it literally is?

Telemetry is used everywhere: rockets, drones, airplanes, boats, water meters, microservices, applications, and yes spyware, bots, viruses, and keyloggers. All spyware is telemetry by definition: "remote measuring." Not all telemetry is spyware.


And how do you know if GitHub is spying on you with this system? Am I able to "opt-out" of this telemetry on GitHub?

In a closed source backend system like GitHub (Microsoft) how do you exactly know that this tool is also being used for spyware?

I wouldn't be surprised if this 'OpenTelemetry' system is being used for exactly that.


You're doing it again.

"Telemetry" doesn't have spyware connotations. You choose to view it as such. Telemetry means taking remote measurements.

OpenTelemetry facilitates this. It doesn't facilitate Github installing spyware on your system. It's an internal tool. Something you'd understand, even as someone unfamiliar with it, if you would actually have paid any attention to the article.

And OpenTelemetry IS in fact open source, so your argument, confusing as it is, falls flat on that too.

Note that it's very hard to give you the benefit of the doubt when you're so incredibly hostile to a word you've chosen to view as bad, it sounds like telemetry is just a trigger word for you.


The fact that this thing is open source is entirely irrelevant.

It's quite simple. You don't know what Github is doing privately with this tool running in their backend systems.

I still don't understand the praise and the excitement of telemetry (open or not) at all from engineers.

They may think that they are doing this 'tracing' or whatever that is, when in-fact it is still spying.

Again, can I opt-out of this 'telemetry' on GitHub? If I cannot and I did not agree to this, then this is very troublesome.


> You don't know what Github is doing privately with this tool running in their backend systems.

What of it? You don't know what they're doing regardless. You're attacking a strawman, because of its name. Please for the love of everything, take a step back and understand what you're even arguing about.

YOU are not the target of said telemetry. Their frickin' servers are.


> YOU are not the target of said telemetry. Their frickin' servers are.

Extremely naive claim.

What data do you think is included in their traces/metrics/logging with this telemetry tool? Do you know more of this?

You should know that a single blogpost doesn't tell you the entire story. What data are they collecting with this? Are these metrics/traces/data transparent? if not, why has GitHub not made this transparent?

Again, Am I able to "opt-out" of this telemetry on GitHub?

If I cannot, then they are spying. pure and simple.




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