[xpe]

Thinking out loud: what are the best practices to vet a tools' telemetry details? The devil is in the details.

A quick summary of my Claude-assisted research at the Gist below. Top of mind is some kind of trusted intermediary service with a vested interest in striking a definable middle ground that is good enough for both sides (users and product-builders)

Gist: WIP 31 minutes in still cookin'

[a_t48]

Hey, please don't blindly paste/post from LLMs, please.

[xpe]

I appreciate the "please", but this comes across as presumptive. First, you don't know the effort level I put in. Second, you haven't seen the end result. Third, why do you think I would "blindly paste" from an LLM? If you take a look at my profile or other comments, I hope that is clear.

I appreciate feedback in general, and I am glad when people care about making HN a nice place for discussion and community. Sometimes a well-meaning person goes a little too far, and I think it happened above. That's my charitable interpretation. It is also possible that in this age of AI, people are understandably pissed and sending that frustration out into the world. When that happens, just remember the people reading it matter too.

About me: I would not share something unless I think it has value to at least one other person on HN. I've done a lot of work about data and privacy in general (having worked at a differential privacy startup in the past), but I'm much newer to the idea of digging into ways of making telemetry gathering more transparent. I haven't found great resources on the Web about this yet, which is why I started doing the research. And I'm going to share it for others to read, criticize, build on top of, etc.

[a_t48]

Where is the gist? I assumed LLM/bot because of the disconnect between "here's a gist" and "still cookin"

[xpe]

I ask everyone to be a bit more careful about the "assume LLM/bot" thing. That hair-trigger is often counterproductive.

Anyhow, the Claude research took 36 minutes to run, so I put it to the side and didn't link it originally. I'm still thinking through it -- there is a lot to cover : https://gist.github.com/xpe/654af2731d40a145e1d0b8b694fe8fd3