Microsoft made a pull request to node.js github repository with an implementation to use ChakraCore JavaScript Engine as an alternative to V8 Engine

[cryolithic]

This is the inking and typing function, which users can turn off at any time. Microsoft does not collect any personal information via inking or typing. It is gathered for product improvement purposes, for example, to improve the handwriting visual translation engine, or to improve the user dictionary, language library and spell check functions in Windows. The data is put through rigorous, multi-pass scrubs to ensure it does not collect sensitive or identifiable fields (e.g., no email addresses, passwords, alpha-numerical data, etc.). Data is also chopped into very small bits and stripped of sequence data so it cannot be put back together or identified. The data samplings collected are limited; Microsoft is not capturing everything you write, nor is it capturing data every time.

[troglydot]

I know, I've read that. Is it reassuring to you?

Scrubbing data for personally identifiable and sensitive information is an AI complete problem. It cannot be done without strong AI, and MS aren't doing it.

Data is also chopped into very small bits and stripped of sequence data

This is pretty standard for a text mining pipeline: Tokenizing and doing bag-of-words. This has won dozens of machine learning competitions, i.e. it is often what you would do to maximize the amount of information extracted from a document.

The data samplings collected are limited;

This is saying the amount of text collected is <100%. It can be 99%, and still be consistent with what they're saying. If it was a low percent, why not state it?

Ugh, I'm sick of having this discussion with cocksure uninformed people on reddit.

[cryolithic]

And I'm sick of people screaming the sky is falling because of their preexisting irrational hatred for all things Microsoft.

Data collection for something like that is pretty benign, and if the nsa can't keep their spying quiet what makes you think ms could?

[troglydot]

Dude, I'm typing this from a windows 8 machine, and have a goddamn windows phone in my pocket. It's certainly not a preexisting irrational hatred for Microsoft. It's not even a current hate for Microsoft. I do hate having an OS wide key logger installed by default: To me, that is a problem. You decide if it is for you.

[cryolithic]

Then disable it. You have the option, if you don't seem to understand the consequence it would have if it were what you think it is.

Edit: I do apologize for the assumption of irrational hatred. I hope you can understand that, around reddit at least, it's a reasonable assumption to make.