[Lammy]

Sure, sounds like surveillance to me. It’s pretty unavoidable if you have an HTTP server that collects logs (all of them), but I could choose not to participate here if it bothered me. What does a community forum’s privacy policy have to do with me not wanting to recommend desktop software that has surveillance silently in the background? Is it just supposed to be a “gotcha” that disqualifies me from having a nuanced opinion on the subject?

[automato]

not at all, i'm simply pointing out the irony of you recommending people not use software that has telemetry on a platform that has the same telemetry. i've personally refused to use etcher for a while, sticking with dd, then i got tired of slow speeds and downloaded it, blocked all its home-ringing with LittleSnitch and haven't had a problem since. There are ways around any spying, i'm just glad it doesn't install any bloatware like 90% of the "free" apps out there.

[Lammy]

I too love some delicious irony but personally don’t see it in this case unless I disregard all context besides “their privacy policies have some of the same words”. It feels pretty different to me to compare software analytics to a thing like HN that can’t just exist offline on my PC. I know what I’m getting when I have to make network requests to read a web page, but Etcher only uses it to phone home private info like “I’m writing Ubluntu-13.37-Heavenly-Heifer.iso to a 16GB volume named ‘KINGSTON’ with serial number <whatever>”.

[automato]

> I’m writing Ubluntu-13.37-Heavenly-Heifer.iso to a 16GB volume named ‘KINGSTON’ with serial number <whatever>

Where in the code did you see this? I can't find that in their source.

I see they show a "banner" with this url: https://www.balena.io/etcher/success-banner?borderTop=false&...

show some featured apps: 'https://assets.balena.io/etcher-featured/index.html'