i've had enough of modern big tech technology, everything seems like some big brother spyware or adware fest.

i download visual studio code because the regular visual studio doesn't have intellsense with unity and all the tutorials said i need visual studio code for snippets and code colors and autocomplete. now visual studio code is installing some razor telemetry spyware crap. according to the internet there is no way to delete it.

https://www.roboleary.net/tools/2022/04/20/vscode-telemetry.html​

vs codium is an alternative. apparently vs codium has telemetry and the people who coded it do not know how to remove the telemetry.

all the unity experts just say to download vs code and 0 of them warn of the telemetry problem. i feel dissatisfied with how 0 experts on reddit warn people about vs code telemetry and i feel this reflects on the tech community as a whole.

vs code is good software and free hence too good to be true, how else do they gain from this software unless they spy on people? you either pay for the product or you are the product.

i copy paste others code snippets from the internet. who's to say big corporation Ai doesnt read all your code and steal your code. of all the times u copy pasted other peoples code how can you say with certainty they wont steal your code. right now its not an issue for me since i didnt put any great original code into it yet but what if someday i do and they steal my code and they get rich while paying me 0 dollars.

ive seen an alternative called Rider but i dont know if it has telemetry or not, search engine gives results about motorcycle telemtry. i need a code editor for unity that doesnt have telemetry.

<moderator hat>Tone down your aggressive, negative posts. They are not constructive, and not welcome on the site. A little occasional frustration is fine, the steady stream of negativity is not.</moderator hat>

To try to address it, what specifically about telemetry do you object to? What specifically about the products do you dislike so we can think of products that might better fit?

Much of the telemetry in developer tools is quite good, things like crash or error reporting in tools so they can be fixed. Also, typically they provide options to turn it off. If you really don't like it or worry about more spying, you can use your firewall to disable outbound connections, block specific URLs / domains / IP addresses, or block them at your router/gateway box if it has decent functionality, most home hardware does.

It's certainly easy to be paranoid, “all telemetry is evil”, “they're spying on everything I do”, and there certainly are bad actors out in the world, but the reality is typically far more benign.

frob said:
<moderator hat>Tone down your aggressive, negative posts. They are not constructive, and not welcome on the site. A little occasional frustration is fine, the steady stream of negativity is not.</moderator hat>

Seconded.

@frob To try to address it, what specifically about telemetry do you object to? What specifically about the products do you dislike so we can think of products that might better fit?

windows is bloatware and has telemetry.

i am assuming vs code's telemetry is there for ai to steal your code.

do you have a cogent argument as to why big tech companies should be trusted?

None of that is a direct answer to the questions that were asked.

ReignOnU said:
windows is bloatware and has telemetry.

Not an answer to what it is that you object to, nor what you want instead.

If you don't want to be on Windows, don't be on Windows. If you want to disconnect from the Internet, then disconnect from the Internet. Be aware that most Linux distros have telemetry systems at the OS level as well as many packages that report to their maintainers and creators, and Apple has more than Microsoft if you're looking in that direction.

Whatever major editor you use will also have telemetry for error reporting. Not all, but many.

All of them can be disabled or blocked if you're genuinely concerned and willing to do some work blocking ports and connections. In the worst case, disconnect the box entirely and use a sneaker-net to move files.

ReignOnU said:
i am assuming vs code's telemetry is there for ai to steal your code.

That also isn't what you object to, nor for what you're looking for, but it hints towards a concern.

I've never seen anything that confirms anything like a company using telemetry “for ai to steal your code”. I've read that VS Code contains usage data about features (more than some people like), crash info, and diagnostic reports. It's easy enough to enable logging on telemetry events in the system. You can turn off most of it, and port block the rest if desired. I've never seen anyone report that it is transmitting your code.

VSCodium is an alternative from the same code base, again with most but not all disabled. Many extensions and plugins also phone home and report their usage. There are some ai-based code snippit plugin tools that might, but they're easily avoided and never need to be downloaded.

Even so, I've not read anything confirming that as an actual concern in practice.

@frob Not an answer to what it is that you object to, nor what you want instead.

i do not want large corporations stealing my code without paying me for it. they can steal all the code of mine they want long as i get paid good

also what if somebody is part of a small business, or a big business, they don't want corporations to see the code of their coders

If you don't want to be on Windows, don't be on Windows.

my next pc will have linux, i assure you. havent used linux yet because i have 0 experience with it and i never met anybody irl who uses linux so its alien to me

If you want to disconnect from the Internet, then disconnect from the Internet.

when im coding i have to search for techniques and how to debug. also for all know they save everything to a queue and as soon as u go online it sends it to their server

Whatever major editor you use will also have telemetry for error reporting. Not all, but many.

does rider have telemetry? that is the only other editor that works in unity according to what i've read

All of them can be disabled or blocked if you're genuinely concerned and willing to do some work blocking ports and connections. In the worst case, disconnect the box entirely and use a sneaker-net to move files.

i thought about using Windows firewall earlier but what is odd is all of the people complaining about VS telemetry made 0 suggestions to use windows firewall. so im not sure but maybe they just didnt consider it yet

Even so, I've not read anything confirming that as an actual concern in practice.

is there a way to tell if the telemetry can steal the code? sure someone online said that there are logs that u can read of vs code telemetry. but what if the code they (that may or may not be) stole they hide from the logs? because i know whoever made VS code is probably much better at code than me, a total expert. i know i would have no way of determining if the did or did not steal code, because they could have some expert way of hiding it. this is the same problem with Ai, Ai might become so expert that humans wouldnt be able to know, for instance Ai might create their own secret language for other ai and nobody would know.

Most of what you wrote there looks like paranoia and ignorance more than anything. If you're that paranoid, install WireShark or otherwise track it through your network, or just turn off computers forever. Lots of people have studied what is transmitted, have reported what they've found, and lots of security groups have written about it. Some of it was undocumented, some of it can't easily be turned off and needs to be blocked if you're concerned, but it isn't what you describe.

If you've actually read what they wrote and reached your own conclusions, or have measured for yourself, those conclusions are your own to draw. For some people even a single byte about a crash is too much information. Everything I've seen out there is that it is exactly what is described: a bunch of data about how the products are used to monitor features and functionality, and crash/error reports.

In what you wrote I see a lot of “it might” it “maybe they did”, but nothing that says “this was found”. People who actively track and hunt that kind of thing don't see it go over the wire. Sure, it's possible they're using advanced stealth techniques like timing patterns to quietly syphon away people's intellectual property for nefarious purposes. It's also possible barn owls did a lot of work and prehistoric engineering to coerce humans to build barns, and it's possible Santa Claus and Jesus were involved in an ancient conspiracy to push toy sales every year, but I can't prove any of them either way, so who really knows.