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Audacity 4.0 is finally out! (www.audacityteam.org)
submitted 2 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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TL;DR this is a huge overhaul of the popular open-source audio editing app. The UI specifically has been the biggest overhaul, making it a lot more modern and friendly to use.

Hopefully, one day, GIMP will get some kind of update like this.

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[–] 37 points 2 months ago (10 children)

It wasn't about "shoddy tech reporting". Why would a FOSS audio editing app need to know your country, any personal "Data necessary for law enforcement, litigation and authorities’ requests (if any)", share it with a wide network of people and potential buyers, as well as their "main office in Russia"? There should be no telemetry of any sort. Any logs kept should be strictly local, which would allow users to send them to the support team voluntarily.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 months ago (9 children)

    It was to support the auto-update mechanism IIRC. It has to reach out to a server to do that, and the rest of the terms are just legal CYA for what could be possible based on that.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    I don't see how an auto-update feature would need any of those things either. The request is made by the remote user to the Audacity update server. Of course, Linux servers typically keep logs, but that would be one line saying that in order for the app to check for updates or to be updated, an IP address and connection timestamp may end up on the update server.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    You really don't realize that your ip address can tell them which country you're in? So that they're obligated to disclose in the terms that they have this info, and that if for some reason police ever come knocking, police would also get this info. Takes all of a minute to think about this.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 months ago

    Also your city and ISP, but that information isn't mentioned, so it's evident it wasn't to catch all. Nothing in the way it's worded is consistent with your rationale, and the actual policy is significantly more broad. They're not specifying the information shared with law enforcement would be limited to the IP address or data that can be gathered from it. It's a completely separate row.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (5 children)

    Why would I want an auto-update mechanism in the software? That's what my distro's package manager is for. And it doesn't care who I am or where I'm from. Nor has any other software I've encountered with such a useless-to-Linux-users mechanism demanded any information about me.

    In short, that rationale is obvious nonsense. That may be why they claim they're doing it, but it doesn't hold up.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    Indeed, all software maintainers should make their legal decisions on the fact of which OS nyan@lemmy.cafe uses.

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  • [–] -1 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Yeah it's a pretty wild mix of paranoia and technical ignorance from both Nyan and Rose here, hey?

    If you're that paranoid and that ideologically "pure", compile it your fucking self. They made it trivial to remove.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    I apologize for phrasing things so poorly that several people seem to have missed my actual point, which was: no one else with an auto-update feature requires any information about you, therefore if they claim that's their reason for asking for users' personal information, they're lying. They may have other reasons, which they have not stated. They may even be good reasons, although I'm not holding my breath.

    And yes, I have compiled my own copy with that nonsense switched off, thanks for asking. However, it's the job of people who understand that this is overreach to push back against it on behalf of the people who lack the knowledge, time, or energy to investigate it. I don't like throwing even Windows users under the bus.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    Nobody misunderstands you. You're just wrong. An auto-update system, by definition, requires you send a request to their server. That gives them access to your IP address, which potentially gives them information including your location.

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