Console Do Not Track – Proposal for a standard environment variable

Re:Console Do Not Track – Proposal for a standard environmen... by TeMPOraL on Tuesday July 06, 2021 @02:19PM (#27752326)

I know you're sarcastic, but it wouldn't be a bad outcome. Sure, the vendor would have to be particularly dumb in their usage of telemetry[0], but the result would be... software that is useful to you. All the professional features you need would be in there, with none of the glitter.

Of course, I would opt-in too, with the same mindset but different use cases, and the software would provide equally for both of us. Add in a few more people like us, and we'd end up with a quality tool, offering powerful and streamlined workflows. Those who don't like it would start using a competing product, and tailor it towards their needs. Everyone wins.

Reality of course is not that pretty, but at face value, it still beats software optimized to lowest common denominator, serving everyone a little bit, but sucking out the oxygen from the market, preventing powerful functionality from being available anywhere.

[0] - It's a mistake that's much easier to make when you're flooded with data from everyone, rather than having a small trickle of data from people who bothered to opt in.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Console Do Not Track – Proposal for a standard environmen... by renewiltord on Tuesday July 06, 2021 @03:01PM (#27752868)

I am actually not being sarcastic. It is a life goal for me to have most policy organized to serve me or people like me (along whatever genetic/social/cultural/economic grouping is most likely to benefit me). i.e. I encourage communities not like me to refuse participation in medical research, forcing participants to be in my ethnic group; I encourage stringent data sharing norms and a culture of fear around what is done with health data in socio-economic and ethnic groups that are not mine; I encourage organizations to have strict opt-in requirements, in general, which I have no problem meeting, so that tools are built to be best used by me and adequate for others.

My dream is that everything is above the adequacy threshold for everyone else so that they don't build their own equivalent tool but that everything is also past my pleasantness threshold. I think the most effective means of doing this is to focus existing products into being past my pleasantness threshold while ignoring others since high switching costs keep most people on the same path they were before, and because things like medical research they don't really get to re-optimize.

I understand that this sounds sarcastic, but it is not.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Console Do Not Track – Proposal for a standard environmen... by TeMPOraL on Tuesday July 06, 2021 @03:05PM (#27752927)

Well... then I apologize for assuming. I'm not sure how such philosophy sits with me, I need to think about it more. One thing for sure, what you say makes you the model of an ideal free market participant :).

[ Parent | on HN ]