Re:Every Mac comes with an (undocumented) family member clas...
by noduerme on Saturday November 07, 2026 @11:09PM
(#50410333)
>> the vast majority of us have been handing this data out to SaaS providers of all sizes and shapes for decades now, for free
This is truly disappointing to hear on HN.
Re:Every Mac comes with an (undocumented) family member clas...
by jen20 on Saturday November 07, 2026 @11:41PM
(#50410465)
You realize this site is run by a venture capital firm and startup accelerator whose alumni include companies like Flock and Delve, right?
Re:Every Mac comes with an (undocumented) family member clas...
by noduerme on Sunday November 08, 2026 @04:39AM
(#50411738)
There's always been a good bit of tension here between the YC founders and the people who work in the industry. I was banned for comments about PG ten years ago. Neither VC nor workers here are unaware of the consequences of widespread apathy. My disappointment is with one side of that argument capitulating or acting as if the principle is lost, or perhaps being too uneducated and ignorant to state the case.
The VC around here loses more than we do if HN ceases to be a useful barometer.
Agreed. None of this is magic, and the vast majority of us have been handing this data out to SaaS providers of all sizes and shapes for decades now, for free. Many HN people even _build_ those platforms.
Would I like to see more controls around this? Yes, absolutely. Having some random app be able to read this data with only a single permission barrier is room for improvement. I would also like to see more tooling included to inspect and correct this data. Something like a Monica[1], but local and built on local data. Suddenly address book data is no longer a list of names and numbers, but a part of a data structure that you can use to surface information, like friend's preferences or vacation photos together. Not everything that collects data is insidious and a Black Mirror episode in the making.
[1]: https://www.monicahq.com/en/