R-T-B

Just a heads up. The unity analytics dll code contains random references to "achievements" and "unlocking" them. I really don't know much more. But my clean room viewer Dan tells me "you need to create a public struct in the UnityEngine.Analystics namespace named "AchievementUnlocked" that accepts a string "achievment_id" with an additional parameter than can be null. It is a template style class, no code yet." Mistake in wording. Being an american is hard.

Just an update, I raised issues with affected projects and after some Github-staff discussion, determined MIT and GPLv3 licenses are non-issues (those are really the only issue license combinations we have). You'd have to link to a "non-GPL compliant license" like Apache to get in hot water. Here's a licensing guide: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html Try to include only "green" licensed projects if you are licensed under GPL-v3, basically. Thank you to Kopernicus, and all for taking my issue reports seriously.

There really isn't anything else to say except most European Union lawyers would disagree with you. (It's not the IP that's the problem, it's the unique GUID they assign btw). I guess that's ok though. Everyone has an opinion and we all have a right to one. Just don't host a website based on these beliefs, it'll get you in a can of hot water. Ok, here's where we stand. I have discussed this with the mods. I have a legal set of replacement dlls here that can totally and completely disable telemetry. They will not be posted here. They are perfectly legal (See the ReactOS project for an idea how they are made, it's called "clean room reverse engineering," thank my associate coder, Dan). That said, the mods feel they are... not really something the company might want, I picture. I respect their wishes, frankly. There is a website that'll have them up shortly. This website makes the product GPU-Z. You will find the dlls in that companies forums. It will take a few hours to finish, and then I will need testers. If you want to be one, follow the rabiit hole above. That's all.

The beautry of .net is looking inside these isn't that hard. connect, webrequest, and streaming all can do telemetry calls, but only through the Unity.Analytics dlls. You break them you break it all. That's probably why they require them for loading now. Some days, I just love Unity's stupidly simple plugin system. More later... maybe.

From your quote. You can't get anything from the internet without at least accidentally logging these sort of things. The devil is always in the details Thank you. I was missing the last one.

I know that. I was asking mods how much casual divergence is allowed. I'm not going to even go there until I hear back, so no worries. And I wouldn't bring it up unless, like before, it was vaguely relevant. Hmmm. Speaking of.. What dlls are known to be unity telemetry related? Tell me and I may have a surprise for you.

You're just asking for definition trouble with Sphere of Influence... Anyhow, I know better. Appologies. Since you did say SOI and not topic, are all other telemetry matters off limit or fair game? Just for clarity. Will do, must've missed that one.

Why so complicated? You can just delete your cookies on every exit. OT though, better stop... Adscum isn't my study target. That said, I know a few things from... being online. I edited in my idea of a botnet powered KSP install. It sounds cool. Maybe I should make a distributed compute plugin, or something... Some guys still hate me anyways, may as well finish the job.

Good argument, until you add enough data, or more than one source. In an age of facebook, no metadata is " meta" for very long. This arguemebt also isn't legally sustainable in the EU anyway, due to the GDPR. Even metadata needs consent, and it has to be opt-in, not opt-out. As you may have guessed, if you have an actively used facebook and are concerned about this, my advice would either be to delete facebook right now, or adjust your priorities. I have a facebook, from old work days. It knows my name and that's about it. It seems to have falsely concluded that I live in Billings, Montana, and sends me stuff from there all the time. Pretty funny. Everyone knows I'm an evergreener, but facebook knows nothing but my name because I only told it my name. Poor poor facebook. Illegal computer crime of course... we are all having so much fun with our fast, botnet powered KSP installs while you all live your boring, monitored, suburban life. (/s, obvious I hope. It's a joke man)

Mine too. My point was the civilian pop is already mostly dead. That's ok though, we can educate them to vote, and then maybe they can be like, alive again. Like zombies. Who said the dead voting was bad? Ok, maybe the analogy is breaking down. Yet to see that, but it could be happening I guess. Just not on any of the above, or anything I have studied. Advertisers have a multiple decade head start on analytics though, so not surprising. You must at least have persession cookies or you'd have to login every click!

The latest Windows 10 builds include a tool option to view your metadata if you want (guides on how to use it would take us wat offtopic). It's not really that bad but it isn't that great either. It tracks what you click, open, and how long it's open/used primarily. Why? Really good question.

No, not if they never agreed to it, why? Corperate espionage might be a good theory for the above happenings though.

This is a good question, but you should be asking the whole industry this, not Squad. It's a rapidly growing trend. Windows? Got telemetry, introduced with Windows 10. It was backported to 8/7 with the most recent patches too. Why was that? Dunno, but the best answer to this one if you care, is O&O ShutUp 10. Google it. Got an NVIDIA Card? Congratulations, their driver (no geforce experience required) also loads a telemetry component. Yep. The display driver. Why do they need that? They really don't. The best answer to rejecting this nonsense is produced by my old employer, look up Techpowerup NVCleanStall to remove the telemetry prior to installing. Made by my old boss, the almighty w1zzard of techpowerup.com Got an Intel CPU? You are probably running their driver update solution that includes telemetry. No solution except to uninstall. If you really want to get tinfoil hat, look into your Intel based machines Intel Management Engine, or AMDs heavily integrated "PSP" Security Processor. All these are processors in your computer that see all, and can do anything at rights ABOVE admin, and feature remote access functionality at some level. As of yet there is no evidence of abuse of this, but why do we need these platforms at all? Short answer is we don't. It's a really good question. My security consulting firm, GlacialSoftware, has been trying to answer that question for a few years now, I and my partners have focused particularly on the Intel Management Engine, which I have succesfully disabled on some motherboards here: https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/asrock-z370-z390-taichi-and-some-others-actively-modding-firmware-with-intel-management-engine-disabled-new-method.259319/ Once upon a time, it was possible to completely remove Management Engine code using tools I and several others worked on. Now that results in board bricks. The most you can do is instruct the engine to shutdown using an undocumented bios-based command intended for government targets, and trust that Intel would not cross the government, right? That command only works until next boot, btw. My bioses above address this by issuing the command repeatedly every boot. But again, why? And how this all doesn't violate EU privacy laws is beyond me, my guess is they simply claim they discard data from the EU. But I'd be a skeptic that that always happens. Unity Analytics is nothing, and no, I am not a tinfoil hat. I know way more about this than average joe. My honest advice to the average consumer? At this point in time, privacy is dead for you and you have already lost. Fixing it is either beyond you, or too inconvienient too consider. If this bothers you, vote accordingly.

You've provided some good reading and examples. Have a like.

It was a casual joke. I have zero personal concerns. Some privacy ethics concerns, yes, but that comes from a different side of me (I work in my retirement occasionally as a freelance security consultant, see my extended post on this below). My point was Windows 10 telemetry is more intrusive than Unity Analytics, which it is. Neither one should concern 99% of home users, beyond industry ethical concerns that is. More on that below. What was that? Oops. Bad assumption. A lot of telemetry clients I have seen do. To avoid precisely what you are trying. Static ips are cheap for a big company. I will check my router later, but I bet my butt it's doing exactly that.

I do too. Java or rather C# is still not the issue. I didn't say KSP was well written. It really doesn't strike me as being such. Granted, it could be a lot worse.

I wouldn't count on it. Companies push boundaries a lot these days. That being said, I'm not losing sleep on it nor am I asking you to investigate further. Just sayin'... wouldn't be surprised if "off" really means "we only talk a little bit." I mean though, I use Windows 10, so I'm already a dead duck.

I know you mean well, but he's right. The way we model physics hasn't changed much since the 70s. Why? Because physics havent changed much since the 70s, of course (it would be more correct to say they are exactly the same). They really need to be on a single core, unfortunately. That's also where the bulk of KSP processing is. The only reliable way to multithread physics is to make the objects non-collidable and unable to act on each other. That's good for particles, but it's useless for a sim.

Has anyone actually fired up wireshark to see what analytics send? I understand being upset on principle, but it's a.) supposedly opt-outable, and b.) I'd like to know if the opt-out is obeyed.

I tried bitcoin/crypto and it was awful, so yeah. Seriously, who wants a good completely offtopic read from my past? https://www.techpowerup.com/240672/confessions-of-a-crypto-miner-the-setup https://www.techpowerup.com/240951/confessions-of-a-crypto-miner-efficiency https://www.techpowerup.com/242685/confessions-of-a-crypto-miner-green-er-mining The part I never got to write: I broke my arm and caused severe nerve damage in my right hand tripping while getting up to sign for some mining related hardware (this is probably the geekiest injury in history), and was forced to abruptly retire. Yeah, not being able to do a ton of WPM hurts your career in this. It was a dark age for gaming too, and these articles did not make me friends (not that that has ever really mattered to me). I will say physical money is easier for me to handle now that my hand shakes badly... my old key-based wallets are too hard to type in. That and it's more reliable. Crypto value bounces up/down like a kerbal on a bad rocketship launch. Yes, I know you meant plastic cards like mastercard and things like paypal, etc. I don't like them too much so I conveniently forget they exist. Humor me, I know I'm being intentionally dense.

Unity has a lot of C++ code in the actual engine. This really is an invalid way to look at it. That, and C# and Java are actually quite performant when given enough memory. Not that any of that makes a point... because this is a silly comparison in the first place.

Frankly, as a dev I'd be more disturbed if I heard they were writing their own engine. Why? With the turn around time they are expecting, there are way too many ways that deadline could become a runaway one and take two could NOT extend it and force their hand to make cuts. Then, they'd either decide to take shortcuts with the engine (bad performance, likely sub unity, you can do a bad engine quickly but that's not what anyone likes) or they'd take shortcuts with the end game product (game that just... is buggy or not fun). Neither of those appeal to me. Unity is the fastest and most performant way to produce a game quickly. And honestly, it's no slouch either. They make several solarsystem simulation games and models in it. It's not a new idea. They COULD have went with Unreal or Cryengine, but neither of those have been tested for a large scale Solar System simulation, so that'd be totally uncharted waters. The only other one that is marketed that might fit is Cobra: The one "Elite: Dangerous" is made in. But it's entire ecosystem is closed, limited, the product is very expensive and can only be worked on by Frontier directly, and to my knowledge right now it has almost 0 physics systems and is focused purely on a complete galaxy worth of generation and then fixing things to orbits at scale based on one "big bang seed." After that you can't change much. Not ideal.

And everytime someone recompiles it, a kitten dies? Love you man. Sorry about the kittens. In seriousness, if you have steam, you CAN just revert to 1.7.3 using the beta system tab under game properties, in case people don't know. It'll stay there until you tell it to opt-out again.

That may be the only requirement, but i've yet to see anyone else pick anything lower, that's why I used that phrasing. I can't think of one release in existence that is using lower, and again, you shouldn't if you link dependencies because crosslinking .net code versions tends to get weird. Yes, technically you could. But there is no real reason. I mean, I guess you could have a reason and use case if you REALLY needed to support Windows Vista or something... I said as much. I didn't explicitly say they seperated, but I think we all know that. Honestly, I'd worry less about updating the references. That's nothing. It's more about the internal unity changes we don't see, and have to adapt to. Like, I'm pretty sure scatterer's horizon code imploded because of some simple constant change... What constant? Dunno. But something went wacky. But yeah, we are agreeing basically. I hope you only apply that to mods that you know, actually have issues after a recompile testrun. I'm really not sure anymore though. It's so weird around here I'm sort of scared to try anything. So I'm just saying what I learned and hoping someone else will jump off the iceberg into the shark infested waters below... (it's fun, really. Honest.) In the end, scatterer seems to work after a recompile. That is really all I can confirm.

Don't. I will always be one step ahead of you and several dollars shorter. It comes with being a former IT journalist, I must have the latest for no reason at all. Heck, until last year, I was still getting retail samples and having to return them explaining I don't do reviews anymore (ethics mandate that). I had a fully boxed Ryzen 1800X that I'm sure was cherrypicked (because you know they want that for reviews, if you didn't buy it retail pretty much everyone does that) as the last thing I returned. Now that my free parts supply has dried up, right now my brain is telling me I want a RTX 2080 Super and I have absolutely no valid reason to get one (I don't even write reviews anymore and everything runs fine on my 1080). Guess what I'll probably be ordering before months end? Oh, and this 9900k I love? It has no games that take advantage of it's cores, and I upgraded from an 8700k that still probably had at least 1 core free at any given scenario. It also clocked even higher, so I actually am doing worse. It's a disease, and it wastes away at your wallet. Too bad it's lots of fun otherwise. Totally off topic but really, this is real advice. Run.