My first thought: You don't say?

Right? What kind of person does not follow the news but subscribes to the State Department notifications?

All the people who decided to stay in the Middle East even when the second carrier group was en route, and then thought they were news worth enough to get on camera and comment about there being no commercial flights out of there.

I'm curious to know what software you're referring to.

Yes

Good point about the telemetry part. I've been using Little Snitch for the past few years and just block all the telemetry calls.

This is certainly a very useful resource - even for a seasoned data scientist!