I'm certain that it can all be disabled, but is there any ready to use recipe to do so? I mean, I want all the non-network-related software I use to literally never try to do anything network-related (besides loopback connections, okay), except when explicitly told to do so.
I mean, I want local software (esp., FLOSS one) to be configured civilized enough on its own to not do anything I don't want it to do, even when the guardian tools leave them unmonitored.
That's why I've asked if someone possibly already did so and has a configuration preset or something like that.
Atom automatically downloads updates and also hits a google analytics URL every time you open it. The latter can be prevented if you disable the metrics package but you can't turn off update auto-download. This is unacceptable for what essentially is a text editor.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that using the internet to collect data on usage patterns is a sufficiently powerful technique that if web apps were the only apps able to do it, web apps would probably eventually drive out native apps (and I don't think I would like that).
I suppose, would I've asked if there's a guide on, say, how to make fonts larger everywhere in the UI - it likely wouldn't raise anyone's eyebrow. Don't really see why disabling any non-explicitly-requested outgoing network connectivity is suddenly a controversial question that drove any up or downvotes.
No-one is saying that's a bad thing. What's bad is that it does this automatically without your consent, so long before you can even disable it, it's already leaking data.
What's even worse is that it also send potentially sensitive data that appear in exceptions to bugsnag.com and AFAIK, there's no way to disable that by disabling the metrics collection. In fact they don't seem to tell you about it at all.