Interesting overall, but maybe it's just me: when I read this section in Caveats :
`- Flagged is not censored. As far as I can tell these flags decide what the keyboard volunteers, not what you can type.`
An alarm bell went off in my head. The first thing I thought of was this P.T interview [1] where he describes with certainty, what he thinks the interests are in Europe currently. I'll leave you to imagine what his sources might be for this.
And now I can't stop thinking about how these word lists might look like simple technical flags,but could also be used to distill people worries and track trends.
Anyway maybe it's the LLM world that we live in ... I don't know everything is sus now days.
There is a lot more interesting stuff to mine from this.
The phrase blocklist for the Chinese lanaguge is a lot larger (surprise, surprise). It about 281 KB for Simplified Chinese, 325 KB for Traditional and 160 KB for Cantonese, against 28 KB for English.
apparently there are `shouldShowTaiwanFlagEmoji()` and `deviceIsChinese()` functions as well but that doesn't have anything to do with this database.
I have a MacBook that was meant to replace my aging Windows and Linux laptops. This article is a microcosm of why I have just stopped using it. An endless stream of mollycoddling, obfuscation and "It's for your own good, child" trash. I can't even bring myself to sell it because I'm ashamed of it.
Would it be possible to get versions of the files to see when certain words got added and I imagine certain words got removed? Could be interesting to correlate certain events, personalities, trends, memes, controversies etc with the changes.
It was added in 23 so there's potentially 3 years of updates.
Why does Apple need to keep these in a separate database? I thought they removed filtering, maybe subject to user age or parental controls, not added a whole mechanism to manage it.
This is about autocorrect learning words you like to use that it should consider potentially intentional use of words it might otherwise think you typed accidentally
This is interesting… does anyone have data in theirs? It also feels like something they could have put on an intern and it didn’t really gain any traction. Each app would need to “tell” the OS who the receiver is, and the article indicates there is no API to do that. Maybe it just knows, but how could that be?
Apple's built-in dictionary flags on my Mac: 26.2, which is newer than the article's
15.6. Apple has changed several
things since:
┌───────────────┬────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ │ Article (15.6) │ My Mac (26.2) │
├───────────────┼────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Total entries │ 199,019 │ 199,940 │
├───────────────┼────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Vulgar │ 1,050 │ 850 │
├───────────────┼────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Offensive │ 663 │ 727 │
├───────────────┼────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Sensitive │ 2,558 │ 2,748 │
├───────────────┼────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Oedipus │ vulgar │ sensitive (sex topic) │
├───────────────┼────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ cooties │ vulgar │ clean │
├───────────────┼────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Biden │ clean │ now tagged politics topic, still no tier │
└───────────────┴────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────┘
These are unchanged:
- Trump is still sensitive with the politics topic. The lowercase card-game word "trump" is still
clean.
- Obama, Putin, Vance and Harris have no tier. Musk still isn't in the dictionary.
- Tom and Mick are still offensive, and pee, poo, niggle, underling, blacklist and Isis are still
sensitive.
- idiot is still sensitive, and now also has the catch-all "sensitive context" topic.
Words in the capitalized sensitive list that the article doesn't mention include Saddam, Grindr,
Oedipus/Oedipal, TERF and Viagra. Trump is still the only living politician among them.
Why would “trump” be considered an offensive term? My understanding of the database is to prevent you from accidentally typing offensive or words being autocorrected to something offensive. Like if I misspell “helper” I don’t want that to be autocorrected to “hitler”.
It’s surprising to me that “trump” would get the same classification. Given that he’s the current president of the US, I’m sure people intentionally type his name all the time. I don’t want my keyboard to steer me away from writing out “trump”. And typos autocorrecting to Trump don’t seem like a big deal either. Would anyone be offended by the text “don’t forget to bring your Trump to band practice”?
How do I make iOS let me swipe “fucking” everywhere? fucking
fucking fucking fucking!! After typing it manually two or three times it then swipe completes in this particular text field in this app. I've heard about adding a contact with the words, but that is ridiculous, so I have held out hoping Apple will eventually come to their senses, like a fool.
This doesn't make “fuck” swipeable either… unless I type it once, and keep it in the text field!
Somehow Mao is there. But Pol Pot isn't. I would have guessed they'd go by the number of victims. But I guess "Uncle Joe" is clean and uncontroversial, so someone was confused about history. But yeah, this has that "Cupertino interns typed this list" feel to it.
Just in time for America's ongoing discovery that "liberal" and "conservative" are in fact quite similar ideologies. New insults are called for. I propose "progtard" and "reactard".
Interesting overall, but maybe it's just me: when I read this section in Caveats : `- Flagged is not censored. As far as I can tell these flags decide what the keyboard volunteers, not what you can type.`
An alarm bell went off in my head. The first thing I thought of was this P.T interview [1] where he describes with certainty, what he thinks the interests are in Europe currently. I'll leave you to imagine what his sources might be for this.
And now I can't stop thinking about how these word lists might look like simple technical flags,but could also be used to distill people worries and track trends.
Anyway maybe it's the LLM world that we live in ... I don't know everything is sus now days.
[1] https://youtu.be/vV7YgnPUxcU?t=3153
There is a lot more interesting stuff to mine from this.
The phrase blocklist for the Chinese lanaguge is a lot larger (surprise, surprise). It about 281 KB for Simplified Chinese, 325 KB for Traditional and 160 KB for Cantonese, against 28 KB for English.
apparently there are `shouldShowTaiwanFlagEmoji()` and `deviceIsChinese()` functions as well but that doesn't have anything to do with this database.
I have a MacBook that was meant to replace my aging Windows and Linux laptops. This article is a microcosm of why I have just stopped using it. An endless stream of mollycoddling, obfuscation and "It's for your own good, child" trash. I can't even bring myself to sell it because I'm ashamed of it.
Install Linux on it and carve a big X over the apple logo
I have Asahi on my mac book mini - it turns a nice piece of hardware into a wonderful computer to use :)
But ... the point of that vulgar words list is to STOP autocorrecting them when it detects intentional use.
The parent post is a microcosm of why he's actually not using the Macbook - he doesn't understand how it works.
Also you can disable autocorrect. I don't even have this list.
> I dumped Apple's word list
Claude dumped Apple's word list, and obviously wrote the article too.
The calculator did the math!
Would it be possible to get versions of the files to see when certain words got added and I imagine certain words got removed? Could be interesting to correlate certain events, personalities, trends, memes, controversies etc with the changes.
It was added in 23 so there's potentially 3 years of updates.
Edits: This comment shows differences between 15.6 and 26.2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50358223
The vulgar db doesn't exist at all (nor the ~/Library/Keyboards directory) on my Tahoe install. Weird
Why does Apple need to keep these in a separate database? I thought they removed filtering, maybe subject to user age or parental controls, not added a whole mechanism to manage it.
This is about autocorrect learning words you like to use that it should consider potentially intentional use of words it might otherwise think you typed accidentally
It’s adaptive non-censorship
This is interesting… does anyone have data in theirs? It also feels like something they could have put on an intern and it didn’t really gain any traction. Each app would need to “tell” the OS who the receiver is, and the article indicates there is no API to do that. Maybe it just knows, but how could that be?
Apple's built-in dictionary flags on my Mac: 26.2, which is newer than the article's 15.6. Apple has changed several things since:
if autocorrect is disabled this will be empty
ah that explains it
I'd appreciate if someone could dump the iOS "adult websites" list (which are blocked by default in the UK unless you submit government ID etc.)
Wait, are you saying iOS UK Edition blocks adult websites on the OS level?
Yup! Any webkit web view, and iOS doesn't allow any non-webkit web views (in this jurisdiction at least)
It's not a list, it's a series of ML classifications. Basically, you've got "child mode" locked on. The solution is to not use a UK apple id.
An ML classifier running against the DNS name? Really?
Why would “trump” be considered an offensive term? My understanding of the database is to prevent you from accidentally typing offensive or words being autocorrected to something offensive. Like if I misspell “helper” I don’t want that to be autocorrected to “hitler”.
It’s surprising to me that “trump” would get the same classification. Given that he’s the current president of the US, I’m sure people intentionally type his name all the time. I don’t want my keyboard to steer me away from writing out “trump”. And typos autocorrecting to Trump don’t seem like a big deal either. Would anyone be offended by the text “don’t forget to bring your Trump to band practice”?
They're really passionate about Euchre (in a negative way) over in Cupertino
Here in the UK it means fart
just read the article and trump (unless its the word for fart as in the uk) is marked as sensitive.
A reasonable explanation is proposed in the article
Trump is marked as sensitive, not offensive; along with words like "God", "Jews", and "gun"
Does this play a role in why the keyboard on iOS is so fucking enraging? It used to be amazing.
giving fixing ducking
How do I make iOS let me swipe “fucking” everywhere? fucking
fucking fucking fucking!! After typing it manually two or three times it then swipe completes in this particular text field in this app. I've heard about adding a contact with the words, but that is ridiculous, so I have held out hoping Apple will eventually come to their senses, like a fool.
This doesn't make “fuck” swipeable either… unless I type it once, and keep it in the text field!
> Every other real person on that list is dead, and nearly all of them are Nazi officials, dictators or terrorists. Then there's Trump
If the shoe fits....
Surely the first HN user to be named after a Brummie drag queen
you must acquit
Right on Trump and wrong on Putin.
Somebody please kill Claude I'm so fucking tired of reading this grating writing. Technology was a mistake
If you find something funnier than Oedipus, I want to hear about it.
'Bacchus', 'Hooters' are also in the lists. 'Pornhub' but not 'OnlyFans'/'OF'.
Incredible that 'conservatards' is in there but not 'libtard'. I thought the right was always being censored!
Just in time for America's ongoing discovery that "liberal" and "conservative" are in fact quite similar ideologies. New insults are called for. I propose "progtard" and "reactard".
I don't think I have ever seen 'conservatards' before today
That is odd. Hadn’t occurred to me.
libtard and conservatard are both there on when I tested on my Mac 26.2
The author must have bought MAGA edition of the MBP. The AOC edition has 'libtard' in it, surely.
It's the exception that proves the rule