I’m just now realizing it isn’t “Alarmy”

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deleted by creator

I’m not saying it’s not possible

There is no argument from ignorance fallacy in what I said. I am not claiming these devices never send audio without you wanting because there’s no evidence to the contrary.

However, the idea that everyone’s microphones are always listening, and that’s why you saw an ad for whatever after talking to your friend, yet not a single person has observed a device uploading this kind of data, nor has anyone ever leaked any kind of information on this supposed system, is extremely unlikely to be true in my opinion.

They don’t need microphones to do this. Regular tracking is plenty to do a good job at suggesting you a highly relevant ad, and frequency illusion does the rest. You’re not noticing the thousand times you see ads that are irrelevant to whatever you were talking about, but the one time you do notice really sticks out.

Frankly there are plenty of more concerning ways of violating our privacy that are out in the open that I believe are a much higher priority than mics always recording, of which there is no evidence for.

Sure, but that’s not the commonly repeated conspiracy, even by non technical normal people, that everyone’s mics are listening all the time and they’re being used to serve you ads or whatever. The scale of this is not at all comparable to what I’m talking about. Yeah, I’m sure sometimes devices are inactivated inadvertently, those responses are uploaded, and people have listened to those recordings when they didn’t have permission. That is a far cry from all devices listening nearly all the time, using some surreptitious method to upload the data, and what was being recorded being used for some nefarious purpose.

Again, I’m not excusing these devices for being a privacy nightmare, but I just think it’s extremely implausible that Alexa, Siri, Google, etc. are always listening and nobody has discovered a device uploading.

The real privacy nightmare is that recording your conversations is completely unnecessary to build a richly detailed profile of you and your contacts. Regular old device / browser fingerprinting and a few people in your group sharing contacts with apps is enough for that, and it’s not a top secret conspiracy.

Why has no security researcher published evidence of these devices with microphones uploading random conversations? Nobody working on the inside has ever leaked anything regarding this potentially massive breach of privacy? A perfectly secret conspiracy by everyone involved?

We know more about top secret NSA programs than we do about this proposed Alexa spy mechanism. None of the people working on this at Amazon have wanted to leak anything?

I’m not saying it’s not possible, but it seems extremely improbable to me that everyone’s microphones are listening to their conversations, they’re being uploaded somewhere to serve them better ads, and absolutely nobody has leaked anything or found any evidence.

The author is stating the specific Apple Intelligence term is not one specific feature or app, it’s a collection of all related features, like Continuity.

It’s a fine idea for Apple to brand its AI features under an umbrella term like that, similar to how a bunch of disparate features that allow different Apple devices to interoperate are under the “Continuity” umbrella. But there’s no such thing, technically speaking, as “Continuity” … It’s a marketing term, but a useful one — it helps Apple explain the features, and helps users understand them.

I’ve got a Samsung that works just fine completely offline with no app. I don’t need some app to block it from going somewhere I just put some things in the way. Takes 3 minutes to prep for it driving around.

Dope, I’ll get a large SUV or truck to replace my small hatchback so I don’t have to slow down at all. Larger vehicles improve pedestrian safety right?

Speed bumps are a bandaid being used as a solution. They fuck with emergency vehicles, encourage rapid braking and acceleration, incentivize getting a larger vehicle, reduce gas mileage, and create noise from braking and acceleration. I’ll take literally any other traffic calming measure over a speed bump.

Giants trucks and SUVs are getting more and more prevalent and don’t have to slow down as much. This trend doesn’t appear to be slowing down. You can’t make the bumps big enough otherwise it’s going to wreck cars. People also haul ass immediately after getting off the bump, so you end up with lovely brake squeals and engine sounds for a few hundred feet of decreased speed. They prematurely wear suspension components and brakes and lead to increased fuel usage.

They’re shit and I’m so glad I’ve moved out of the southern US and back into snow country where speed bumps simply can’t exist. I don’t know why speeding through residential areas is so much less prevalent in the north, where there are far fewer speed bumps, but I love it.

Speed bumps are such a shitty solution to speeding. I’d prefer speeders to speed bumps.