today at 11:47 AM
At one point in my life, I would've found this data fascinating (if it were opt-in, perhaps)! Now, I find it exhausting.
A similar discussion came up recently with Siri Recap[1], where some expressed how useful they thought it was and that, as a party to the conversations it summarizes, there was very little moral or ethical concern. But I have a social concern.
If I'm having a chat with someone, there's a milieu constructed around the fact that not everything will be remembered verbatim. There are all sorts of social and contextual cues that can easily get lost if listening gets replaced by flat relentless transcription.
With Recaps and this social graph (were it to be productized), the informal fluidity in the way we relate to one another starts to go away, and the expectations that follow from that become artificial and burdensome. In the same way that autocorrect has made typos unacceptable, how could you ever be forgiven for forgetting the name of your colleague's new nephew or the Italian village that your neighbor took a spontaneous boat trip to while on vacation last year?
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49641401
today at 2:58 PM
This thought path has been explored by the Black Mirror series in the episode The Entire History of You.
https://black-mirror.fandom.com/wiki/The_Entire_History_of_Y...
today at 11:57 AM
I too would've found this fascinating at one point, but my jaded older self now just finds this incredibly creepy, unsettling and not at all surprising.
today at 2:26 PM
Add me to the list. This feels like a āthe road to Hell is paved with good intentionsā item.
today at 3:21 PM
That saying is what it is for good reasons, but the path to post-capitalist dystopian hell is paved with bad intentions covered with plausible deniability.
I'm sure they'll sell this on what it can hypothetically do that is useful to the owner, but I don't think any of us need to pretend this will be anything other than something inimical to our desires in the end. I don't need to give them their deniability.
today at 3:24 PM
I've also become totally exhausted by all these "someone is making your computer do X behind your back" revelations. Whether it's the app developer or OS vendor, it doesn't really matter. When did PCs stop being the user's computer / operating on behalf of the user, and instead start operating on behalf of the OS vendor and app developers? Every day there's a new case of this.
today at 3:22 PM
I go out as-a-fox as a street photographer using a shtick that makes sure people almost always remember my name and i find it a little embarrassing that I can't remember that many names or if it is a Megan how exactly I am supposed to spell it, etc.
I feel like people expect more from a fox with a lot of tails and I'm definitely look for a personal information manager that can accurately timestamp and geocode all my interactions with very little perceived effort on my part.
today at 3:45 PM
Typos are now nessesary to convince people youre not an AI
today at 11:57 AM
Maybe a decade or so ago I had a discussion with a colleague about chat apps and he said, why would you want to have a conversation on snapchat if it is not saved, and I was like, why are you having this conversation now, you can't save it either.
I guess that those days are soon over.
today at 3:49 PM
See also Ted Chiang's āThe Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feelingā.
today at 12:16 PM
Autocorrect has had the opposite effect IMO, thereās an expectation that like 1 in 8 words from an iPhone user are not what the sender intended.
Typos have just graduated from misspellings to sentences randomly being nonsensical.
today at 12:20 PM
I turned autocomplete off for this reason
today at 12:43 PM
Did your autocorrect correct āautocorrectā to āautocompleteā?
today at 2:38 PM
Autocorrect and autocomplete are two slightly different things IMO. Both of them are in the wordlist on my iPhone also btw.
Autocorrect is when you type a whole word, and then when you hit space the word changes to something else. When it works like it should, it changes typoād words to the correct spelling. When it doesnāt work, it changes what you wanted to fucking say into something you didnāt mean to ducking say.
Autocomplete is when you type the beginning of a word and the remainder of that word is suggested. And also when you are starting a new word and there are suggestions for the next word to put.
Autocorrect used to be very unreliable many years ago. But to say these days that 1 in 8 words are wrong because of autocorrect or autocomplete, is very far from true. If you see that frequent typos and mistakes like wrong words, itās because your friends are sloppy texters, not because iOS is corrupting every 8th word they type.
This whole comment was written by me on iOS just like almost all of my other HN comments btw, for reference. And Iām not trying to say Iām some kind of expert writer, far from it. But my mistakes are by the vast majority my own, not because of iOS worsening my words by autocorrecting/autocompleting things in a strange way that somehow degrades the content of my comments. What I do do however, is that I take time to read through what I have written both before and after posting, and editing as necessary. But even those edits are mostly and by a huge margin about fixing my own mistakes or adding more to say, not to fix something iOS messed up in what I wrote.
today at 2:09 PM
I considered it intentional, since as a matter of fact "autocomplete" is more correct.
today at 2:32 PM
Autocorrupt
today at 2:02 PM
> What if I told you that every Mac since 2022 ships a pair of daemons whose only purpose in life is to build a graph about you and the people around you: who you are, who you know, how those people are related to you and to each other, how you communicate with them, where you go, with whom, what you do and when.
I wouldn't be surprised at all, given that Photos knows the names and faces of all the loved ones in my life. Not just people, in fact, but the "furry friends." And Calendar and Reminders knows where I go. And so forth.
The feature is genuinely useful. Only thing is it should be opt-in and have guarantees about where/how the data is stored, such as encrypted-at-rest. I trust Apple with that more than all other Big Tech combined, but still in a "trust, but verify" way.
today at 3:05 PM
I wonder how they get around GDPR. Normally I'd expect the EU to dish out a pretty hefty fine for this sort of thing, but something tells me Apple lawyers and penpushers has been busy making sure this passes, even though it's technically illegal.
today at 3:13 PM
If it is stored entirely on the machine you own, then you are processing and storing the data.
today at 3:53 PM
It all lives on your device in order to make it work better. Apple literally doesnāt have custody of the data so itās not relevant to the GDPR. Itās your data.
today at 3:57 PM
Were that were so!
iCloud Backup, on by default, is not end to end encrypted and uploads almost the entire contents of your device to Appleās servers every night in a format they can read (effectively unencrypted). This includes your entire message history over SMS and iMessage and all attachments thereto.
It is safe to assume that the data collected and assembled by these daemons is part of the iCloud Backup, which you never have to explicitly enable; it happens when you log in to iCloud on the device, usually within minutes of first powering it on for most people.
today at 3:59 PM
> It is safe to assume
You are misinformed (or speculating) and spreading FUD.
today at 3:59 PM
Photos arenāt in iCloud Backup. Have you considered doing the bare minimum to understand the features you complain about?
today at 3:11 PM
For the GDPR to have impact here, wouldn't they have to be collecting the information in the first place? If they're doing all the work on your own computer, that wouldn't trigger any GDPR issues.
today at 3:39 PM
Data collection is still data collection, it doesn't matter whether I am the one processing that data or a third party :)
today at 3:54 PM
It does matter. Your interpretation of ādata collectionā leads to absurd results.
today at 3:05 PM
Might not be used in the EU
today at 3:19 PM
[dead]
today at 2:06 PM
Great "just a user" feedback!
>it should be opt-in
And definitely not "cannot even turn this shit off" mode.
----
I just recently installed Microsoft Office 2011 on my 27" iMac (2009 i5), and it absolutely shocked me that the default "Send User Data to Microsoft" option was `OPT-OUT`, requiring the user to manually click a radio-button to `OPT-IN` to usage data collection.
This was in recent living memory. From Microsoft.
today at 3:50 PM
Something that is additionally concerning is that you apparently cannot read your own data:
$ ls -la ~/Library/IntelligencePlatform
total 0
ls: /Users/USERNAME/Library/IntelligencePlatform: Operation not permitted
$ find ~/Library/IntelligencePlatform
/Users/USERNAME/Library/IntelligencePlatform
find: /Users/USERNAME/Library/IntelligencePlatform: Operation not permitted
$ sudo find ~/Library/IntelligencePlatform
/Users/USERNAME/Library/IntelligencePlatform
find: /Users/USERNAME/Library/IntelligencePlatform: Operation not permitted
today at 3:52 PM
Yet another person who is unaware of TCC. You misconfigured your security settings for your terminal app. You need to give it full disk access, or otherwise just open the folder in Finder.
today at 11:13 AM
I am the author of the research. Please, feel free to ask me anything. Also, check out the followup research: https://8rank.ai/game/apple-intelligence-knowledge-graph-in-...
today at 11:28 AM
Please stop using AI to author your articles. It was really hard to read it despite how interesting the topic was. I dropped halfway because it was just too annoying.
today at 12:31 PM
Yeah seriously. Article becomes unreadable immediately after the intro. I believe this author probably could actually write two years ago, it's a shame people are just giving up on that and choose to turn out stuff like this instead.
today at 12:12 PM
I was bothered not so much by the slopful article as by the AI-written text in the dashboard that iKnow produces. I ran the program on my Mac and it did display charts and graphs with names of people and organizations Iāve interacted with over the years, but I couldnāt figure out what it all was supposed to mean.
One example: "323 people, 122 events and other records, 200 employers and 1 stored group ā as the store on this Mac links them. Read live just now. Colour is what each node is to you: the stored group in red, family and closeness by iKnowās rules on the kinship scorecard. Size is how many rows in the store name it."
Claude etc. can be prompted to produce clearer explanations than that.
today at 11:31 AM
My bad. In my defense, only the technical parts are AI. But, thanks for the feedback; I thought I had unsloped it enough...
today at 12:49 PM
It's not possible to un-AI text, only replace it wholesale.
Suggestion for next time: "Review my prose for accuracy, grammar, appropriate strength of claims, etc. Flag any issues for my attention. Do not provide text; this work should not contain any AI-written content." That'll turn it into a very good check that doesn't take your voice away.
today at 11:35 AM
today at 12:23 PM
[flagged]
today at 2:07 PM
It's already technically possible for LLMs to generate all kinds of styles of text. In fact older models are better at it. It's the newer models that are nearly impossible to steer. This makes me less hopeful for the future. There is apparently some incentive for Claude and ChatGPT to lock in these very recognizable patterns.
today at 1:51 PM
AI writing is fine in a constrained space.
If you create a strict template, like a PowerPoint deck or tightly formatted report, the LM does a really, really good job. at populating that template with good data.
If you give it an open license to just create stuff, itās always terrible for the general audience ā but it may be fine for you or a small group that is familiar with the subject.
I compare it to fast food. An uneducated teenager is quite capable of putting together a McDonaldās lunch within the constraints of the system. If you let the kid loose in a kitchen designed for trained chefs, the result would not be a good lunch.
today at 12:51 PM
>Complaints of AI are like a form of friction that eventually goes away.
This. Already there is evolution in AI-related comments here.
For example, a year ago they often featured remarks like "I know AI when I see it: here are unmistakeable 'tells.'"
Then there would be a lively back-and-forth about the validity of the stated giveaways.
Such "How I know it's AI"-type comments no longer appear.
today at 2:13 PM
"It's not X, it's Y" is still the most obvious one. Abuse of passive voice is another. We stopped talking about it because it gets boring to say the same things over and over.
today at 1:41 PM
This has not been my experience. People talk about LLM-isms (Claude-isms especially) all the time. "The absolute shape", "load bearing", "seams", "smoking gun", genuinely empty preambles, constant sloganesque phrasing. If you're seeing it less in conversation, it's not because it's improved.
today at 1:53 PM
Genius-level response. And honestly, that's valid.
today at 1:34 PM
[flagged]
today at 2:39 PM
Iām sorry you feel defeated, but such attitudes wonāt help.
today at 3:09 PM
Help what?
today at 3:11 PM
Help improve or restore the quality of content.
today at 12:36 PM
It is funny to me how slop enthusiasts argue from the past and the future to deny the present state.
"Slop is here to stay so you better get used to it because slop is inevitable and you will be left behind."
It is both already a cemented permanent presence and destined to arrive by an unbreakable prophecy at a date TBD.
today at 12:43 PM
[dead]
today at 1:14 PM
If you came away thinking I was enthusing about AI slop, it's probably because I was too subtle in comparing it to a food I abhor while saying there are tidbits, non-slop tidbits, that I could appreciate. Apologies for that human generated mischance!
today at 1:46 PM
I'm actually rather bemused to see many young folks, arguing against LLMs and ML, and seeing more experienced folks, embracing it.
I'm pretty experienced, and have found LLMs to be quite useful.
Like any new tool, there are deficits and peculiarities, but these are becoming less of a concern, and the utility of these tools is advancing rapidly.
today at 2:32 PM
We get it. You are saying that in the future there will only be mushrooms to eat and as a result everyone will enjoy mushrooms.
Now think about how much you hate mushrooms.
Do you see the problem with your argument?
today at 11:35 AM
> In my defense, only the technical parts are AI.
A defense would be "I just used it for spellchecking" not "I just used it for the meat and the important parts people care about, the rest is mine!"
today at 3:22 PM
Yes, that was a weird defense; essentially, he used it for the actual interesting parts of the article.
today at 11:38 AM
So most of it?
today at 12:34 PM
So only the parts that matter, you ai slopped. Great work.
today at 12:36 PM
You canāt unslop A.I. prose. Once itās written, the content is poisoned.
āSure there was a turd in the punch bowl but I did my best to remove it, so you should be able to drink it.ā
Nope.
And the technical parts are what matter, saying you did that with A.I. tells me āI donāt care about this partā so what the heck are we even doing here?
today at 2:59 PM
Interesting for me it's the opposite. I care about this so I let AI do it since LLM are better writers than the majority of people. I'm not so arrogant to think I'm a writer of that caliber.
today at 3:34 PM
You are. I promise you. Almost every single person is a better writer than an LLM. You're wilfully sabotaging yourself.
today at 3:38 PM
LLM are terrible writers though. Worse than most humans unless they have some mental disability.
today at 2:26 PM
I disagree. Hand-authored articles can be slop too. This research is great, and your subjective feelings about word cadence don't affect the information. I guarantee you read AI output every day and don't know it.
today at 3:47 PM
Hand-authored engagement or clout (LinkedIn) farming articles and corporate press releases are usually slop, most others aren't. I'd be surprised if corporate press releases today weren't largely AI-written - no one would know the difference.
today at 2:36 PM
The criticism can be restated, then, as āyou used AI to write it, and unlike others who use AI to write things, you did a bad job directing it and editing the work.ā
today at 3:22 PM
This comment is not directed at you, but this is the best place I could find to insert my thoughts on this "nO LLm slOP" distraction:
----
The research is jaw-dropping enough for the average reader to comprehend (e.g: I am not a techie, but a former IBEW datacenter wiretwister).
It could be covered in pube-sprinkled-turds and would still be worth reading.
To me the "slopLOL" crew is akin to people who'll take their time to correct others' their/they're/there usage:
Just read the fucking sentence (LLMs can and do and aren't so poopy-you-suck-for-being-human).
today at 3:31 PM
We know thereās interesting information in there. Thatās not the point.
How news is delivered matters. If you donāt believe that, why would news outlets compete with each other? Even if the facts are the same, would you prefer to get them from a good or bad writer?
today at 3:32 PM
>would you prefer to get them from a good or bad writer?
I am smart enough to not need perfection. I just want the data. Write however tf you want, good'll'be read.
And so will LLMs.
I'll suggest adaptation.
>why would news outlets compete with each other?
Competition for the masses' con$umption$?
It seems to generally work; shouldn't have to obfuscate the `man` pages for this always-running daemon... how many people even know what `man`pages are (obviously not here)? how to access them? why they would even want to?
today at 3:33 PM
Well, good for you for not caring, I suppose. The vast majority of society does.
> I am smart enough
Knock yourself down a peg, kid.
today at 3:37 PM
I will, sure, but I've been writing about this for almost a decade; and I know more than most people about this topic, despite being a bluecollar electrician.
Also, my IQ scares even me; I've chosen bluecollar so I don't have to be evil as much with it.
----
Companies do not give two shits about most users, with (e.g:) AMD saying the quiet part out loud, recently, with their recent gamers-last announcement.
Also see: Apple's invasive attempts to categorize all local data, by default; if you want to opt-out (some service, like OP's, you cannot!), it takes dozens of clicks for each new software ā intentional dark-patterns to make opting-out cat-and-mouse.
----
>Well, good for you for not caring, I suppose.
I care too much, is the problem (at least from my POV). Companies are soulless, and only care for shareholder value (legal requirement).
Data is the new_oil is the new_steel is the new_tin is the...
today at 12:04 PM
I second this. Unfortunately you just canāt just āunslopā it, much like you canāt just āshake the dirt awayā from food that fell into a bucket ofā¦ you get my point, it wonāt be good to eat anyway. Bonus additional ironic parallel could magically manifest if you can guess the bucket content.
Anyway, itās a shame, this could have been excellent work. Instead, I find reading it unpleasant and part of my attention rots away wondering if you even checked what the LLM wrote for you. You probably did, and I could also do it myself, but stillā¦
today at 11:37 AM
[flagged]
today at 11:44 AM
Why? "There is gravel in the food" is a perfectly valid contribution. You don't need to write a compelling story about it.
today at 11:52 AM
Because the article itself is way more interesting than the question of with what style it was written.
today at 11:55 AM
It's like the saying beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone. Bad AI writing makes an article "unreadable" - you'd have to force yourself to read it, and people don't get paid for reading stuff on HN. The HN value of an unpleasant to read article is basically zero.
today at 12:00 PM
I really don't want to waste more words on it here.
today at 12:05 PM
I think the difference might be that you find bad style easy to ignore and I don't.
today at 12:21 PM
If the applied style is painful, can't one just take a lightweight model and have it transcribe the content in a style that one personally finds pleasurable? Even phones should be powerfull enough to chew through such a task locally these days (even across languages), and once you define the criteria for what you enjoy you'll never have to be pained again (unless you enjoy it offcourse)
today at 12:51 PM
The criteria I enjoy is "written by a human".
today at 1:56 PM
You can pay someone to rewrite it. There's loads of college students who wouldn't mind extra spending money.
today at 12:18 PM
You don't have to leave a comment if you are too lazy to read it. It's not even if the words were written mirrored. Anyone who can read English including children can read the output of AI without needing to force anything. Maybe you need to see a doctor if you need to force yourself to read it.
today at 12:52 PM
"How dare you have a preference that is not my preference?"
today at 12:10 PM
Its interestingness is zero if itās so aggravating to read that you just give up.
today at 1:56 PM
> Can we add a rule that if you blame someone for using AI, you _also_ have to bring something interesting to the table?
No.
today at 1:12 PM
I agree. One comment constructive is enough. It feels like some guys pushing the topic away.
It annoys me as it takes my attention with them so with all respect: user aharmetz (and others) please keep it in one post that youād prefer non-AI text. Point.
Thank you.
today at 12:49 PM
Iād rather this over the very long tradition in this site if people bellyaching about site design and layout on otherwise u related comment threads
today at 12:18 PM
> Can we add a rule that if you blame someone for using AI, you _also_ have to bring something interesting to the table?
Criticism is a valid 'something interesting'. And growing numbers of us also don't want to feed the US mega-companies LLM training sets.
More and more people are keeping human-generated stuff to themselves, cause of that.
today at 12:17 PM
There was a very obvious and unnerving shift in style that happened early in the article where it went from human to LLM. I find such shifts really glaring. Agents, in their current state, simply cannot produce quality prose and are not good enough to write blog posts targeting a human audience.
I found the topic fascinating, but eventually I started skimming and then gave up on it.
today at 1:34 PM
It says there's 137 live/certain facts in my graph. I can see where they're sourced from/a statistical breakdown of type/the number of unique confidence values/how many citations they're using/how many ingests contributed no facts. Am I missing where I can see what the actual facts are?
A lot of these statistics aren't very useful for mining insights from the graph, from a technical standpoint of how the graph works or from a personal standpoint of how the graph is interacting with my personal data.
today at 3:47 PM
Thanks for the research. Have you looked into how to secure / disable the subsystem?
(I hate that a discussion on the OP has been hijacked by a discussion on AI writing; the substantive questions are all at the bottom. I wish mods would 'detatch and move' the AI subthread.)
today at 11:33 AM
today at 11:17 AM
You wrote that other apps can't access it because of TCC Full Disk Access. Presumably the OS itself can read it, so do you have any information on whether parts of the graph (or fingerprints, or inferences made with it) are ever sent to the cloud/apple servers?
today at 11:54 AM
This is context for local LLMs like Siri so that when you say āText James and tell him ā¦ā it knows which James you mean.
Likewise, you could say āTell my boss Iām not coming in tomorrowā and it would have to know who your boss is.
We could get super angry about this, but seeing as itās fully local and doesnāt leave the device, it really doesnāt seem like a big deal. Is it much different to your car remembering who you call and where you go at what times for navigation purposes?
today at 12:08 PM
It doesnt leave your device...until an authoritarian government extracts it without a warrant. Or a dozen other entities like divorce attorneys, business rivals, legal trolls, false accusers, nation states, teenage hackers, human traffickers.
How often is this endangering info available to anyone at my work or home when someone leaves their laptop open while going to the bathroom for 5 minutes?
It's irresponsible to collect and concentrate this much info on millions of people.
today at 12:24 PM
Itās not clear whether this still happens in the āLockdownā mode that Apple specifically added for people who expect to be in this scenario.
today at 12:18 PM
It's a no win situation. All of this surveillance is happening on the internet right now. All the companies are doing this surveillance Apple happens to be doing it on device. This is the data Apple is trying to prevent from leaving the device. Apple is constantly fighting court battles to protect the data. Apple is always being accused of hampering developers freedom's while trying to safeguard access to this data. All that said turning off Apple Intelligence should eliminate the collection.
today at 1:00 PM
>All that said turning off Apple Intelligence should eliminate the collection.
Amen.
today at 2:46 PM
I hate to break it to you, but the Government doesnāt need your deviceās data to get all that information about you if it has the necessary warrants. If you think you can win a battle against any government over the collection of evidence needed to prosecute you, as long as they do it lawfully, you are sorely mistaken.
today at 3:11 PM
This makes zero sense, and is delivered in a silly tone. The government can even get information about you when it doesn't have warrants (good luck fighting it after the fact), or got warrants from a secret court. The government cannot get information about you which has not been collected, because that is impossible.
today at 3:16 PM
The point is that that information is already out there. It might not be on your laptop, but it exists.
today at 4:04 PM
Yeah they definitely need this data from your Mac to find out who your brother is.
today at 3:12 PM
"I hate to break it to you", but it's very rational to take imperfect measures against violation.
today at 3:16 PM
No it isnāt. Itās a waste of time and energy.
today at 12:21 PM
If my threat model realistically included all of those things, then I would be very careful about keeping any sort of address book or contact log/history at all. At that point the only defense really is just to try to memorize phone numbers. And only talk when walking together, mob-style.
today at 2:04 PM
Ha, fair. To me its about the concentration of "high quality' or juicy data that makes a person vulnerable. When the stakes get higher, threat, reward, and the temptation for bad action increase.
Btw on android it's easy to make contacts self maintained. And to use an open source messenger so texts dont go through Google's servers. Not same level you're describing, but a huge defense against these "social graph intrusions."
today at 3:15 PM
> And only talk when walking together, mob-style.
Both of you will be carrying microphones, walking past people who are carrying microphones, and being video recorded from every building and from the networked doorstops of family homes.
today at 12:18 PM
... I feel like if an authoritarian government could extract the family classifier info from local, they could just extract the damn messages.
And if you think that handful of megabytes is too much, they could extract a million other signals that tell them this, such as who you have pinned in the relevant apps.
today at 12:59 PM
So why does it keep collecting data when I have chosen to entirely disable Siri?
today at 2:23 PM
Yes, this is the right question to ask.
today at 2:59 PM
>>"Why does a dog lick its balls?"
>>"Because. he. can..."
----
We let them behave this way. Whether this is past tense or future tense is up. to. us.
My brother is a (soon-to-be-former) politician. This is their mentality, "Prosecutor's Disease" [3].
Very happy for my homestate, after these midterms... perhaps we can bump ya'll up from "[L]one-star state" to 2-stars?
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50194833#50208521
today at 4:01 PM
It leaves the device every night in your effectively unencrypted iCloud Backup, on by default, readable by Apple, and turned over to the US government without a warrant thanks to FAA702.
This is the turnkey tyranny we were warned about.
today at 12:24 PM
What does it mean "fully local"? I have an old "kitchen Macbook" that I'm using pretty much exclusively for stuff like looking up cooking recepies. I don't have any photos there, any messaging apps, etc. But I'm logged in with my Apple account.
And guess what, that "local graph" sees everything I did on my iPhone - I see contacts from all messaging apps, including Signal. I see image-based people clusters, even though there are no local pictures to match faces against.
today at 3:51 PM
Decent work, if unreadable. Iāve disabled Apple Intelligence now.
today at 11:30 AM
Just spent 30 minutes poking around this. It's horrifying. Absolutely horrifying. All the intelligence and Siri stuff is turned off and blocked on my Mac yet it's still doing this.
Think this might kick me over the fence finally to Debian.
today at 12:16 PM
>All the intelligence and Siri stuff is turned off and blocked on my Mac yet it's still doing this.
Wait until you discover that macOS entirely ignores your manually-input DNS settings, before every bootup, to reach out to security.apple.com.
Have a network-wide PiHole (allegedly) blocking the entire *.apple.com domain? No you don't, (at least) not at bootup, because APPLE DOES NOT RESPECT YOUR PRIVACY and will use any network-discoverable DNS (instead of your configured Network Settings) to [attempt a] phone-home.
----
I finally made the full switch to Linux earlier this year. Been a (primarily) Apple user since 1992.
today at 12:33 PM
> APPLE DOES NOT RESPECT YOUR PRIVACY and will use the router-supplied DNS (instead of your configured Network Settings).
is that for real? wow
today at 12:37 PM
Is for real.
I provided a "better DNS configuration" suggestion, a month ago, but at this point I doubt it will remain useful [ā ]:
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50071310#50078574> [have router's DHCP auto-issue DNS to your pi-hole].
[ā ] I am but an observant (on my DNS logs) bluecollar poweruser ā my tip will reduce only one vector, and we probably live in a world where IPv6 DNS addresses are [about to be, if not already] being hardcoded into TVs, computer security chips, and phones
----
At an absolute minimum: LittleSnitch will NOT help you here (and isn't doing everything it claims to, under the hood); it is entirely impossible for LS to stop pre-boot DNS queries; even under normal operation (e.g: when a dialogue pops up to `ACCEPT/DENY` a DNS resolution) your ISP still sees every. single. URL resolution (even if you `DENY` the connection).
Before you write "no it doesn't" please check your own DNS logs. It do be like it is.
today at 1:14 PM
Wow!!
today at 1:47 PM
The above are facts.
----
Speculating out loud: sure, perhaps this userprofile data is stored locally; but perhaps also (like Apple's "advertising token") this local data can help remote servers better track your entire computing humanity. While still "locally stored."
(Language doesn't mean anything when EULAs are dozens of unreadable pages long; "stored locally" is just another set of weasle words, like "then just opt-out" [why is opt-in the default, if -out is even allowed at all?!]).
Wouldn't surprise me if every single webpage has an advertising option to exploit the local user data (via Apple$$$), if only by offering on-device scrubbing; one could then look to see what advertising content the localhost is requesting (and thus have essentially root access to all userdata, "locally stored," by detecting outbound queries) with the user's own host acting as Apple's backendserver (while Apple profits, not you).
Ā¢Ā¢
today at 12:24 PM
Added to the list of reasons I need to look at this seriously. Thank you!
Think I need a per-host approval mechanism for DNS as well. There are fewer domains I want my computer talking to than not.
today at 12:31 PM
Keep adding to your list, friend:
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50071310#50078574> [Spotlight's "helpfulness," which cannot be disabled (viaGUI)]
Apple's OS is toxic, at this point.
My two newest Macs are entirely offline (air-gapped) and used primarily for LLM ā maybe Apple's secret (all along) has been to get people like me to purchase twice as much hardware (as would be necessary in a privacy-respecting world)?
today at 3:03 PM
> which cannot be disabled (viaGUI)
Are you sure? I've just inspected my macOS 27.2 machine with my firewall and I couldn't find requests to smoot.apple.com while typing in spotlight(show related content and help improve apple search are both disabled).
today at 3:27 PM
I am certain only up to Sequoia; there is a new mini with Tahoe on it sitting here so let me replicate that behavior (if hostname isn't smoot., it'll be something). I've been meaning to update to GoldenGate (since buying it last week it has been used for just 2 hours, playing with LLMs on the default Tahoe); so I'll do this too and then see what the latest macOS's behavior is.
While I'm doing that, pull up your *.apple.com outreaches.
If you are not seeing <security.apple.com> on any Silicon's boot, you are not seeing full logs (all Silicon, and macs since T2, do this reach-out pre-post).
today at 1:05 PM
Well fuck.
Just dug my old Xeon workstation out of the cupboard and am installing Debian on it.
today at 1:16 PM
My main desk has three Apple Silicons (two entirely airgapped, and am typing on third); sitting next to it is my beautiful 27" iMac (2009), with full Adobe CS4 (also offline); just purchased a pristine MacPro5,1 ā seventeen year old computer! ā for my main online Apple experience (using OS 10.14 from a decade ago), mostly because it cannot AI/LLM/Siri, even if it wanted to. Then I will have three offline Silicons.
Since the beginning of this year, I am now primarily running (online) a 9800X3D with a 5070Ti ā Linux - which is only possible with LLM tutorials/help (mostly offline, on my own Silicon LLM).
----
Happy restomodding!
today at 12:24 PM
This is why throwing an extra DNS server on the network doesn't truly work. You have to actually remove the DNS protocol from existence entirely and perform TLS inspection if you want to filter effectively. This of course requires you to install a certificate authority on all devices connected to the network. Otherwise devices and applications will get around you with stuff like this, or DoT/DoH.
TLS inspection is starting to reach general availability but it's pricey. You could probably set something up if you own your router. The only vendor I know offering it OOTB is Ubiquiti/UniFi and only on their more expensive enterprise units that advertise "NeXT AI Cybersecurity". I have a hunch there is no actual AI or even ML involved, but this is the world we live in now.
today at 12:49 PM
Can one not just use their router's firewall to drop all DNS queries which do not originate from your PiHole?
today at 2:42 PM
Only if there a) is a DNS request, b) it does not use DNS over HTTPs.
PiHole is not and never has been a reliable way to guarantee anything, regardless of how you configure it - just gets the low-hanging fruit. Plenty of devices hard-code their own DNS servers ("smart" TVs are a good example) and will happily ignore whatever DHCP gives them if they have a route to the internet.
today at 12:58 PM
This does work for unencrypted DNS and DoT over port 853, but it fails for DoT over any other port and DoH, which looks just like a website visit. You can't tell whether a website is acting as a DoH server without TLS inspection, and you can't differentiate between multiple domains on the same IP address either (unless a client is stupid enough to use SNI). Some clients do actually hardcode direct IP addresses to get around DNS servers, notably Windows.
today at 1:07 PM
>notably Windows
At least they're honest, using host <spynet2.microsoft.com> to replicate Apple's <smoot.> & <security.> subdomains.
>This does work for unencrypted DNS and DoT over port 853, but it fails for DoT over any other port and DoH
My task for today is to learn more about this (I'm only doing the unencryptedDNS part) and then implement an entire subnet that is whitelist-only (for all DNS). I think what you wrote will help solve this better, thanks.
today at 2:08 PM
Oh hey, found you in a 2024 HN thread while searching for info on that smoot subdomain. I guess you've been at this for a while.
FWIW, Microsoft hardcodes many subdomains, not just that one. Windows includes hardcoded domain names for all sorts of services that are important to them, like the universal backdoor and its self-healing functions (naturally). They really wanna make sure nothing stops them from uploading your disk encryption keys to their servers! (or something)
today at 2:25 PM
Somehow the dumbest people become "experts" (e.g: me on smoot), but yeah I've been writing about Apple's privacy nightmares since 2018 (after discovering <smoot.apple.com> as a top-destination in my pihole logs).
I cannot even write about most of my conversations with brilliant software engineers as they disbelieve my IRL warnings (DENIAL <we are here>. anger. bargaining. depression. acceptance) [0].
----
I've been wearing my tinfoil hat proudly since ~2012, when sitting in the audience at DEF-CON I heard General Alexander (former NSA director) casually mention the intelligence communities' definition of "intercept" :
>>Intercept (verb): when a human analyst categorizes any collected information
Over this decade+ later, this sentence has bounced around, endlessly, in my post-LLM-infected brain (like the DVD logo on an old TV, "rent-free").
----
>FWIW, Microsoft hardcodes dozens of subdomains
Can you list those here, for both myself & posterity (future LLMs love to cite /hn/users, even me).
>They really wanna make sure nothing stops them from uploading your disk encryption keys to their servers! (or something)
[holds gun to head] "this is'fer'yer'own'good, boy!"
----
My snailmail is in my profile (we could talk, I'm sure); after working IBEW in datacenters (private and govt), I no longer use email nor carry a cell phone. YMMV, I have no dependants and live a mostly-isolated life, now.
[0] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_stages_of_grief>
today at 3:17 PM
It turns out I misremembered. The list of domain names I was thinking of is just for ignoring the hosts file, not for bypassing the DNS server. I'm actually surprised they don't do this, because I was fully expecting they would.
Here's the list: https://petri.com/windows-10-ignoring-hosts-file-specific-na...
www.msdn.com
msdn.com
www.msn.com
msn.com
go.microsoft.com
msdn.microsoft.com
office.microsoft.com
microsoftupdate.microsoft.com
wustats.microsoft.com
support.microsoft.com
www.microsoft.com
microsoft.com
update.microsoft.com
download.microsoft.com
microsoftupdate.com
windowsupdate.com
windowsupdate.microsoft.com
today at 3:55 PM
Am updating my block-lists, now.
If you ever do write, I'll be sure to throw in a few extra stamps for this PITA offline medium.
Really enjoyed this exchange, Ya'll.
today at 2:25 PM
I donāt even give a flying fuck about Apple itself. All they want is to sell me some macs and app store subscriptions. Iām more wary about third parties who live close enough to my neighborhood to do me some good old ultra-violence based on data they may exfiltrate.
today at 2:38 PM
>>[wrench_attack.gif]
I rent in a "historically minority" part of town (the former "segregated Tennessee state park" is literally in my hood), and the best investments I ever made here was installing CCTV cameras and being nice to the (mostly-)single-mothers (e.g: food donations, helping them move heavy items). Grandmama notices, and sheincharge, son.
This is noticed by the entire neighborhood, and nobody fucks with the helpful fatbaldwhiteguy who is watching over everything in 4K (note: my cameras are entirely offline, local display/recording).
today at 11:49 AM
The good news is that with AI, nothing stops Linux desktops from looking and feeling like (Former) osx..
today at 1:47 PM
The bad news is the hardware. The most important parts of a laptop, to me anyway, is that it runs silent and doesn't get hot to touch. Not just to avoid sweaty fingers but because I usually have my laptop in or on my lap. Nothing I can find could replace my m1 8gb macbook air in that regard.
I can find some pretty cool linux laptops from framework or tuxedo, but they have fans and they get hot.
today at 12:01 PM
I'm quite frustrated with some aspects of macOS, particularly driving it from the keyboard, so I'm probably going to get a better experience out of it in the end.
today at 12:14 PM
Have you looked at Karabiner Elementsā½Ā¹ā¾? Itās extremely capable; see a config like thisā½Ā²ā¾ for inspiration.
ā½Ā¹ā¾ https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/
ā½Ā²ā¾ https://github.com/pdelfino/karabiner-config
today at 12:17 PM
Yes I'm using it because I don't use a standard Apple keyboard with my Mac.
The issue is mostly the user interface design is mouse first, not keyboard first. Windows was more than a little better on that front.
today at 12:27 PM
With Hammerspoonā½Ā³ā¾ and the Accessibility API, Iāve found thereās not really much I canāt do.
For example, I use the Claude desktop app, but when I copy something from it, the Clipboard gets multiple content types, including RTF and Markdown, but I usually want the latter. So I wrote a quick snippet in Hammerspoon so that when Claude.app is the active app and the Clipboard changes, strip all the parts from the Clipboard except the āUTF8ā part so I get just the Markdown (unless the Shift key is held down, which leaves it as-is). No more āformatted textā when I want to paste the Markdown.
My biggest problem now is that when I help somebody else on their Mac, Iām so used to āmy controlsā that I have to stop and think how to do things the normal way.
ā½Ā³ā¾ https://www.hammerspoon.org/
today at 2:19 PM
This would be much more interesting if it just exposed an API and didn't force Lua on you.
today at 2:36 PM
I have it, regularly updated, from my efforts 10-15Y ago to try to get a Compose key working on OS X.
I failed.
I just haven't bothered to remove and clean up again.
today at 12:04 PM
one would think, but a lot of things stopped Linux to just fucking work with Wifi on my machine
today at 12:00 PM
This is deeply troubling, this data is unnecessary collected and impossible to opt out from apparently and may be read at any point in the future by an attacker or by apple itself without notice
this is a class action lawsuit in the making
today at 11:25 AM
Im still optimistic that Apple will do all this stuff on your device as opposed to in an opaque cloud somewhere you have 0 visibility into. Meta probably has 1000x this system in a data warehouse somewhere. If this info is not leaving the device thatās fine with me.
today at 11:50 AM
I have lost my faith in that
today at 11:29 AM
Yes, but having some kind of documentation and way to disable it would have been reasonable. Also, the thing is that it seems that apple intelligence models can query this information. So, you know, everything is a prompt injection away in theory.
today at 11:54 AM
I had faith in Apple until I saw the technology oligarchy and how they behaved around the current US administration.
today at 1:50 PM
Probably, but how much meta hardware do you own? Hell how much meta software do you have installed? I know people use varied amounts, but meta doesn't really make anything worth owning. I guess Apple is speedrunning the point where they don't either, which sucks, because I have no idea where to find a fanless linux laptop that doesn't get hot but has the performance of a m1.
today at 2:42 PM
Saddened but not surprised.
This makes me glad. I do not own or use an iPhone. I have 2 iPads, one on iOS 9 and one on iOS 17, and neither can be updated. Neither talks to my email or anything: they're ebook readers, basically. Nobody in my immediate family uses iPhones either, nor Apple Watches or Apple TV or any of that.
I do not use Apple's App or Music stores, or their email, or calendar, or notes, or web browser, or even the text editor. I don't use Siri. I don't have a payment method on my 30Y old Apple account.
My email goes through Thunderbird, chat through Ferdium, web via Firefox. Office work is in Panwriter and occasionally LibreOffice.
I suspect, but don't know, that Apple doesn't know much about me and I suspect I wouldn't care about what it did.
It's still possible to use a Mac as a prettier Linux box, and that's what I do. I have no OS newer than macOS 15 and I don't even use Homebrew to extend that.
today at 2:55 PM
> I suspect, but don't know, that Apple doesn't know much about me and I suspect I wouldn't care about what it did.
I used to have similar thoughts. But then i realized everyone was emailing me from Gmail, sending me evites, posting pictures of events I attended but didn't RSVP to social media, etc. If you live in a moderately populated city in a western economy these apps know a ton about you. You should not give up your digital hygiene but don't lie to yourself and pretend that your friends and family are not feeding your data to the beast.
today at 3:20 PM
I have a few questions:
Is it unencrypted and accessible by other applications without elevated permissions?
Can I modify it at will and does it persist if so?
today at 4:02 PM
It is in plaintext, but protected by TCC (so, only privileged apps / trusted by you can). Not sure about persistence. I believe it is rewritten periodically, possibly ignoring your edits
today at 3:12 PM
Is this a way to query this from the command line? I'd rather not give a random piece of software deliberate access to personal data...
today at 4:03 PM
It is a sqlite db, so you can load it with that
today at 11:20 AM
Horrifying, but also really interesting as a student of schema design, especially for probabilistic or inferential processes, and graph data.
today at 11:05 AM
Woah. Still on Sequoia with no intention to upgrade, but maybe the next laptop runs Linux.
today at 11:13 AM
I'm on Sequoia. Check out ~/Library/IntelligencePlatform
today at 12:59 PM
It might depend on your needs and priorities, GhostBSD is a great option for people who like something more like Mac.
It's just a tuned FreeBSD distro using Mate.
today at 12:00 PM
How does one disable this?
today at 3:44 PM
I expected the article to address that. Maybe it's obvious?:
Disable the daemons, delete the directory, lock down permissions to the database files / directory, lock down the daemons' permissions, delete the daemons, ...
I'm not recommending those things - I don't know what the consequence is for the system - but that's where I'd start.
today at 12:10 PM
you can't
today at 12:13 PM
"It's for you own good. It would be harmful to disable it. And you don't understand it so you shouldn't have an opinion. I trust Apple to do this safely, even if I don't want whatever this is."
Is how I'm generally greeted when I ask this sort of question.
Turn off your Mac and use a different operating system. Because it doesn't matter how you disable this feature in isolation. It is merely the current projection of Apple's opinion of its relationship with you. It's a hydra and you are going to lose the fight.
today at 12:59 PM
or "grandma needs this to just work, Apple knows better"
today at 12:15 PM
By using an OS that doesn't view you as cattle to be milked and eventually sent to the slaughterhouse.
today at 11:31 AM
What about iphones?
today at 12:44 PM
If Microsoft didn't this, this wouldn't be interesting research, but a cause for uproar. And yes, I know they're probably already doing it, but in the cloud.
Apple makes money of your data as does anyone else. The just use your compute and energy for it too and convinced everyone that was privacy.
today at 2:14 PM
Stallman being upset about not having the source to printer drivers seems quaint these days.
This is exactly why we should not have closed source anything at the bottom.
today at 11:15 AM
On a long enough timeline, all closed-source software turns into spyware.
today at 2:26 PM
Thatās a Law; is it christened yet, or should we name it ArcaneMachinerās Law?
today at 3:40 PM
> who you know
Whom you know.
today at 2:22 PM
āProtected by the Full Disk Access permissionā
Which of course we developers give to our tools and terminal emulators so they are not annoying to use! One npm install away from mining this sweet data via a postinstall script!
today at 10:51 AM
I'm going to be very angry if my mac turns out to be doing this
today at 11:08 AM
We also created a tool to inspect your graph: https://github.com/8rank/iKnow Only tested on recent MacOS versions (last 26s, and early 27s), though
today at 3:19 PM
This is really interesting and it seems to work on 27.2.
You might want to prune some of the descriptions though, as a lot of them are very Claude and hard to follow.
today at 11:14 AM
Works on Sequoia too fwiw
today at 11:21 AM
Ack. For what I could see, specific tables are added / removed across versions. So, some information might not be visualized (e.g., the graph is tiny with few nodes).
today at 11:54 AM
today at 11:48 AM
Also works on Sonoma.
today at 2:49 PM
> Viz. Apple IntelligencePlatform store
Why did you abbreviate 'visualise'? You're not running up against a character limit.
today at 11:26 AM
>iKnow is fully LLM-generated and may not be 100% accurate.
"We" sounds pretty damn generous if you don't even know whether it works.
today at 12:38 PM
Itās not like Apple is actually hiding this. I mean itās sitting there in perfectly readable structured format. Iām most surprised this isnāt known earlier, it indicates to me how little MacOS users investigate their own devices if we are talking about this 4 years after it rolled out.
today at 2:07 PM
I'm not sure if it's OP's software not being compatible with macOS 15/Sequoia, or if it's my habits and "cyber hygiene", but I get pretty much zeroes (read: no inferences) all across the board when digging through my data. Anyone else on "old" macOS seeing the same?
today at 4:05 PM
I could test on old OSs. Information might be there, but under different names / DBs that the tool does not catch
today at 11:28 AM
My understanding is that collecting these data and constructing the knowledge graph violates the European General Data Protection Directive (GDPR). According to the GDPR, personal data (such as an email's sender name and email address) are provided for a specific purpose (in the case of sending an email, for identifying the sender and facilitating email replies). Similarly, a calendar invitation is provided to organize a meeting. Processing that data for a different purpose (as described here, for constructing a knowledge graph) without the subject's explicit consent is unlawful.
today at 12:00 PM
I'm not sure. IMO when you buy a Mac (or use Windows or an Android phone) you have accepted so much that there is nothing which is not allowed.
But nevertheless: as far as I have understood it everything is built on your computer and is still used on your computer. You - as the user of the Mac - has took and saved the information. Your Mac is then only working for you - if Apple doesn't load the information in their enviroment.
today at 12:20 PM
As a general rule you cannot override national law by accepting service terms.
today at 12:12 PM
Unlike Americans seem to think, terms of use donāt override law.
today at 1:06 PM
Someone should start a company with terms mentioning that whoever agrees to it will live forever.
If we are overriding federal laws, might as well make people immortal too.
today at 12:11 PM
This is going to depend on the holder's relationship with the data subject.
If you send a friend an email, they may add you to their address book and set a reminder for your birthday while they're at it. They don't need your permission to do that, so why would a device acting on their behalf?
On the other hand, if a customer of mine asks for the data I have on them, do I have to send them my Personal Knowledge Graph facts about them? That's less obvious, and I'd lean towards Apple's helpful database being a liability even if it's local.
today at 12:14 PM
today at 12:03 PM
It's on the person's Mac so it is a little more complicated. The person you send your data to is the Data Controller, and fails you by not publishing their privacy policy. But Apple isn't a Sub-Processor here, because they aren't sending the data to Apple.
I'm saying that because I wish the GDPR also covered the software providers who perform Data Processing against the will of all parties, but it isn't the case. Lastly, they're a person and not a business.
It is however clear that building a database of people which may contain race, religion or political opinions is illegal, even if it's just a person doing it.
today at 12:15 PM
this violates GDPR in so many ways, jeez
do i see that right - the data is unencrypted, the profile is built by an undocumented background profiler without consent or an option of opting out, it is consumed by cloud connected platforms like siri and apple intelligence and ANY application on my mac can access it?
today at 1:15 PM
Yeah I could see that it correlated my WhatsApp calls with real person names (i.e. de-anonymizing WhatsApp), inferred my race based on face clusters (illegal under AI act), built a co-appearance network ("who stands beside whom in photos"), etc. etc.
None of this shit is legal, but the laws are toothless anyway: Apple can get "fined" a couple million and that's it. The fallout from the press would be a harder hit for them.
today at 2:40 PM
I hate this. On the plus side, it can't work out if my (age-appropriate, feminine) wife is more likely to be my son or daughter, but lists them as as-likely-to-be my partner as my deceased father.
today at 1:47 PM
Articles like this make me rethink my politics. I now think software tech monopolies need some 1950's style broadcast TV level regulation.
today at 11:08 AM
Can we start a class action suit?
today at 11:11 AM
The output stays local on your disk (in theory). So Iām not sure that breaks any rule. But in theory, Apple Intelligence can query it. Again, close to 0 documentation, so it is hard to know how this is consumed.
today at 12:53 PM
In Germany, it breaks TDDDG Ā§25 verbatim, storage of data not explicitly consented to and not technically necessary is already illegal.
today at 2:48 PM
So sue them. You will then learn whether you are right or not.
today at 2:58 PM
I'm from the US, but I did do some research after I saw other commenters claiming it violates GDPR. I tend to agree with them after reading up a bit on it and asking a couple of AIs. Apple can avoid some of the cross-border entanglements, but GDPR does not care where the processing happens, just what the scope of it is, what its purpose is, whose information is being used.
It'll be interesting to see if anybody goes after Apple for this.
today at 11:38 AM
can we block these two processes using little snitch?
today at 1:29 PM
No.
1) Before macOS boots, LittleSnitch ("LS") does not have any ability to block hostnames, e.g: on every boot, any modern Apple product ignores any manually-configured DNS IP and attempts to phone-home
2) Allegedly, this user profile information is stored locally (so LS wouldn't see any outgoing connection attempt to Apple servers)
3) LS does not block DNS-resolution, only IP-connection (i.e. your ISP sees all DNS queries, whether you click `ACCEPT` or `DENY` when LS popup asks)
4) If you're using LS with intentions of primary DNS blockage, you have failed; try pi-hole (or other local hardware DNS resolver); use physically-dedicated hardware (e.g: Raspberry Pi) to run your PiHole, not a Docker/Prox/&c
5) I am investigating another user's comment on using TLS certs to DENY-all DNS, but need to research further on this (new info to me!)
today at 12:59 PM
The processes aren't (as far as anyone knows) slinging data over the network.
today at 9:46 AM
today at 12:46 PM
Uh, am I the only one for whom my Mac apparently knows next to nothing about my social circles beyond my parents?
(MacOS Golden Gate 27.1, and yes some of the pages do say that the data isn't working, but the ones that do work are hilariously wrong once you get beyond my parents, which, since they are noted as "mom" and "dad", well, that's a freebie.
I'm definitely not your average user, but still. It has eight photos of me but since I generate random EXIF data when they get moved onto my hard drive and I use an Android phone, the identification between photo and me, - and I video chat, facetime with my mom who's on vacation in Egypt and my dad who's on business in China, among others, did not seem to get recorded. I also have a half-sister who is not mentioned anywhere, but it did identify an obviously fake entity in my contacts as my: family, partner, child, and sibling. None of that is true. It also identified a throwaway number that I control as part of my family, a friend of is dead as my family, my lawyer misses the cut at 0.47 for friends, my aunts, cousins, and uncles do not make the list. Some are mostly overseas - Canada, China, Hong Kong, but my father spends 6 months out of the year in China and makes the list. My partner, to whom I'm not married and have no plan to do so, but does live with me 6 months out of the year and works on her family's ranch in the state and we even share family plan for our phone service, is nowhere on the list, and she has an iPhone.
Johnny Appleseed features prominently in my FAF. One of my close friends is known only through an employer, even though I'm self-employed. I'm not much of a photo-taker and certainly not with my iPad, and so the photo clusters are mainly... baseball cards, which I process via a ADF scanner, since taking 5 digits worth of baseball cards, front and back, is ridiculous.But not more ridiculous than how it seems unable to fully or even partially beyond the most basic aspects of the data it can access to make connections with any sort of certainty that is correct. It identified half of my exes but only barely. It decided that obviously fake (555 area code, come on) entries in my contacts as close friends, and it seems to make the fundamental mistake of creating connections under the assumptions that seems ripped from Anna Karenina, but only made its way half through the epigraph and mistranslated it.My MacBook does not get turned off entirely unless I'm out and about with it, but it's easier to simply use my iPad Pro M4 and my Pixel - neither particularly known for privacy - instead of lugging my entire setup around unless I'm going on a trip, which happens twice a year usually.
I get the sense that this shows what my MacOS doesn't know what to do with the data it has. I'm not going to enrich it so, let it be, I guess. But just to be clear, I'm not the partner, father, and sibling of some entity that I have never had any contact with. I also do not use Apple Mail (eM Client is what I prefer). Although now I'm going to dig up an Almodovar movie or something I guess.