About 10 years ago I tried installed Little Snitch on my laptop. I set it up to check with me every time any native app tried to connect to the internet. "Here we go" I thought. "I'm going to actually see what apps are doing!".

I think I naively thought I'd end up with 10 rules or something, blocking telemetry. Oh what a sweet naive child I was. Its constant. Everything on my computer seemed to use about 8 different telemetry and update services. The sheer number of packets of environmental waste being produced every second by modern computers is breathtaking. It never stops.

Reading this article, I wonder what would happen if you tried selling software the old way again. "Buy our software! Pay once. We'll mail you out a USB stick with the program on it. Our software does not access the internet." It would be terribly inefficient, but it'd probably be fun to try. It would definitely force a lot more rigour around releases & testing.