What a strange strawman. You are deciding now to substitute a different complaint than what was originally sense, because it is simply true that if you don't want to use Apple Intelligence, you don't need to.
The complaint now shifts to that you'll still have files on your system, or can't control exactly what models are stored on your computer. Apple has reasons not to give this fine control: what you have on HN is a group of people who are vehemently anti-AI, use Apple products, and still want features very specific to their control of the system.
Apple caters to the general user. If they think a setting is going to be confusing or likely to be misused, they won't implement it. People know the reality that if Apple intelligence is successful and if this feature is implemented, the general user won't know which parts of their workflow use which features. Removing the models will be advertised as a cheap hack to save storage, and people will be confused when they can't turn intelligence on again.
The fact that the core premise of the article (repeated in the title and first sentence) is about "phoning home":
> The nice thing about keeping a blog is that I can say at precisely 9:51am, Wednesday 5th February 2025, I discovered that macOS 15.3 had enabled a feature that was phoning home every 15 minutes with personal data. And that I said “no” and turned it off.
The entire basis of this complaint is not understanding the difference between "duration" and "interval". And not being able to click the link that is given to you in the settings menu or just search Apple's docs for the setting ( https://support.apple.com/en-mn/guide/mac-help/mchlfc0d4779/... )
This is literally the main point of the article:
"The nice thing about keeping a blog is that I can say at precisely 9:51am, Wednesday 5th February 2025, I discovered that macOS 15.3 had enabled a feature that was phoning home every 15 minutes with personal data. And that I said “no” and turned it off."
I assume they're using a more candid definition where they're not counting all the countries a company may be based, but rather the primary country they're based in.
I don't think they're trying to flex this as a large number. They don't want to give an exact number, as that may change etc / is fuzzy, but also want to give you an idea of the scale.
They say "In the future, we intend to expand our geographical reach much further". I imagine this commentary is somewhat related to the concerns that AI will create an even worse "global underclass". AI developments are first accessible to Americans, then allies, and then later the whole world.
There's a comment on the GitHub thread which also mentions pinning rsync version would be a bad idea. Many of the people affected by reversions are those with workflows vulnerable to the prior CVEs.
I don't actually see much evidence the usage of AI here was an issue. I think you can obviously identify areas where the code isn't perfect. I'd blame this slightly on human prompting, slightly on AI.
But I'm not a sure a human on their own would've done better. There aren't enough resources to make the changes required.
Can you tell me any of the bugs? All claims I have seen so far of people being affected by bugs seem deeply implausible.
The current ones I see are:
* Can't build on Linux < 5.6. But people aren't complaining strongly about this, since it requires a build from source / isn't a result of an update from a distribution (and people can wait for updates / implement them themselves).
* An issue hit with chroot false + daemon. People running this in an automated manner (as some claims suggest) are already using it in a way fairly likely to be insecure, chroot false is strongly discouraged here, and the whole point of these commits was that they fixed CVEs impacting precisely these people.
> Just because you got shat on the head once it doesn't mean it's fine to be shat on the head every day now.
This happens frequently when there are fixes for CVEs, since regression tests can't catch many things which incremental rollouts can. It happened for example in 2025. People are right to imply the reaction is totally outsized here, and it's almost certainly the case that people are overreacting to AI (rather than the somewhat weak idea that it's because of the frequency of these issues).
What's really funny is that the people opposing AI here are showing far less literacy than those who wrote the code. People claiming to be affected by this bug severely are likely exposing themselves:
* One bug is for Linux < 5.6, where it didn't hit distributions. This is a low severity bug where it can't build, where distribution maintainers may be reasonably expected to fix it themselves (although rsync will also fix it eventually too).
You probably don't want to revert in this scenario. If someone is hit by this bug and is running rsync in an automated manner, it is highly likely they're ignoring very many security practices: you're usually not supposed to run native rsync in an automated manner (the main use case is for public users, where you can't SSH etc; since it's unencrypted, you're supposed to check a checksum against a website etc); these cases are hit with chroot false, which is deeply discouraged and leads to far larger attack surfaces.
* People with linux < 5.6 can't build this from GitHub. This to me seems like a fairly minor regression: people using maintained versions of 5.6 (mostly extended security) will have distro maintainers pick up that the build is failing, allowing for it to be corrected in a timely manner.
* Hardening against path-traversals causes failures for users with: no chroot; using the native rsync protocol. Ironically: chroot = no is deeply discouraged;
you shouldn't really be using native rsync in an automated manner (and perhaps it seems I wouldn't advise using it at all); the CVEs the commits fix apply exactly to this use case.
Is your justification in dismissing Fields medalists that they are impressed by funding? Not even receiving it (I assume you say this because Tao is not funded by AI for Math, but rather an advisor for it)?
Not only would it be a leap to suggest that people automatically lose their integrity by taking funds for projects they believe are useful, especially after involvement with adjacent fields, but you are suggesting merely being impressed by a fund is enough to dismiss their views?
You also have no evidence that Renaissance Philanthropies is a front for VC companies. All news coverage indicates that they seek to be an alternative for high net worth individuals engaging in philanthropy.
Many people discovering Erdos results, engaging in Olympiads etc, are doing so with publicly available models and publish the resources used in the process.
This is getting insane. You have no evidence for your initial claims and didn't respond to a thing I said, and are now claiming using AI for education is "child abuse". Please get help.
There is also no evidence that Radio Free Europe is still linked to the CIA. Just look at the donors of Renaissance Misanthropy.
But we are feeding a sealion who does not know how the math proof logic in LLMs work, probably because it is a highly computationally expensive random restart hack calling Lean that is unpublishable.
You're not seriously trying to explain that a kWh is equal to a kWh. Why not cut the crap? Are you trying to say washing clothes is of equal importance to convenience features in a browser, given that we can use each clean kWh only once? I can't tell what you truly mean like this
What do you mean you "disagree"? I pay for the electricity I use and I use it however I want.
Instead of trying to control other people, why can't you start with yourself? Throw away your phone/computer. Go live in a small hut. Practice what you preach.
>You are incurring debt and forcing it upon others.
You seem to have no problem whatsoever with using electricity yourself. So when do you get to tell me (or anyone else) how to live? And when does it stop? Btw, this is all bizarrely dramatic since we were talking about small local models anyway.
>future generations
Yeah, and some will also say (using the same arguments) that having children is harmful to the planet and we need "measures" to limit that too.
I’m not telling you to do one thing or another. I’m taking issue with your argument that because you pay an electric bill, it follows that you can do whatever you want.
That does not follow logically for me. As humans we disagree about many things, but we generally agree that things that we do often affect others, so one way or another, we need to come together and decide which things are agreed to be acceptable and which things are not.
And I'm not inclined to entertain this nonsense, not even as a hypothetical. I'm not giving up on my most basic and fundamental rights, doubly so when these draconian restrictions won't apply to the people who want to impose them.
The complaint now shifts to that you'll still have files on your system, or can't control exactly what models are stored on your computer. Apple has reasons not to give this fine control: what you have on HN is a group of people who are vehemently anti-AI, use Apple products, and still want features very specific to their control of the system.
Apple caters to the general user. If they think a setting is going to be confusing or likely to be misused, they won't implement it. People know the reality that if Apple intelligence is successful and if this feature is implemented, the general user won't know which parts of their workflow use which features. Removing the models will be advertised as a cheap hack to save storage, and people will be confused when they can't turn intelligence on again.
The fact that the core premise of the article (repeated in the title and first sentence) is about "phoning home": > The nice thing about keeping a blog is that I can say at precisely 9:51am, Wednesday 5th February 2025, I discovered that macOS 15.3 had enabled a feature that was phoning home every 15 minutes with personal data. And that I said “no” and turned it off.
The entire basis of this complaint is not understanding the difference between "duration" and "interval". And not being able to click the link that is given to you in the settings menu or just search Apple's docs for the setting ( https://support.apple.com/en-mn/guide/mac-help/mchlfc0d4779/... )
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