deranger @ deranger @sh.itjust.works

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2 yr. ago

Also, a ceiling coated with highly flammable material

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.

Your vision is always a singular dot in space, unless you have amblyopia or something else causing your eyes to point in different directions. Even if you’re looking at a featureless line, your eyes are fixed on a single point in space. It’s not like one eye is looking somewhere different from the other eye. The triangle still exists.

There is no difference to stereo vision depth perception regardless of how the view points are oriented in the X and Y axis. The practical proof for this is in rangefinders; neither simple consumer stereo rangefinders nor complicated military stereo rangefinders, such as those found on battleships or antiaircraft guns, are oriented in the Y axis to gain some advantage. There’s no need. The triangle is the same regardless of X-Y orientation.

I see what you’re saying about the example of two completely featureless lines oriented exactly along the X axis in a completely featureless space, as this wouldn’t work with a coincidence rangefinder, but this is an edge case and not something you’d encounter in real life. You’d also have other cues for depth perception beyond just stereopsis.

Despite living in the US my whole life, I don't subscribe to the insane mm/dd/yy ordering, it's the most ass backwards shit. That's why I wrote 22 July. Not sure how you got 22nd month out of that when it's unambiguous.

Huh? That doesn’t make sense. Depth perception is in the Z (depth) axis. It’s neither in the X (horizontal) or Y (vertical) axis. You get the exact same stereo vision depth perception regardless of the orientation of your eyes.

Imagine a triangle with your eyes and the subject at a distance as the points. This triangle can be rotated around the long axis without changing anything. Tilting your head does nothing for visual depth perception.

Real heads know 22 July is the more accurate Pi day.

22/7 = 3.1428

USPS budget was in the black until they were forced to prefund benefits for 75 years - something nobody else is required to do.

The "financial difficulties" they face are completely imposed on them by the government.

This bill was passed with bipartisan support.

For over a decade, the United States Postal Service has been plagued with the onerous burden of prefunding its retiree health care benefits as mandated by the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) of 2006. The mandate requires the Postal Service to prefund its retiree health care benefits 75 years in advance, paying for retirement health care for individuals who haven’t been born yet, let alone enter the workforce.

https://apwu.org/usps-fairness-act

The spring imparts the same amount of energy to the marble and bowling ball. The two objects are not at the same velocity, the marble would be moving significantly faster.

The same velocity doesn't necessarily imply the same amount of kinetic energy right?

Not at all.

E = 1/2mv^2

Since energy (E) is provided by the same spring in both cases, the energy of the bowling ball and the marble are equal. Since mass (m) is much higher for the bowling ball, the bowling ball's velocity (v) must be significantly lower.

Air resistance will affect the marble more since it’s traveling faster. I also feel like either mass (or more likely, density) of the object matters, which would advantage the bowling ball in this aspect too.

Where are the physics nerds at, we need answers!

I think they’ll both be exactly the same difficulty to stop due to conservation of energy. If the spring used is the same for both the bowling ball and the marble, the bowling ball is going to be going much, much slower than the marble.

There’s basically two methods worldwide for children to become citizens easily - you’re born there, or your parents are citizens from there.

You’re born there:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_soli

Your parents are citizens:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_sanguinis

Your assumption is incorrect; birthright citizenship is not the only way to become a citizen. Those who are naturalized through means other than by birthright, and all of their offspring, wouldn’t be affected.

For example, my wife became a citizen after immigrating here. Her daughter, born after my wife was naturalized, would be a citizen automatically because she was born to a citizen. Birthright citizenship is not a factor in this example.

Likewise, I would not be affected as my ancestors naturalized through whatever process existed back then, not birthright citizenship. Their children (my great grandparents) weren’t citizens because they were born in the US, they were citizens because their parents were citizens.

Get a deep UV flashlight (365nm works well, 395nm is okay, avoid anything >400nm) with a high pass filter on the end to eliminate any stray visible light it emits. Fire it up in your own home in the dark. Deep UV is great for making things fluoresce and the high pass filter increases the signal to noise ratio, so to speak. Even things that weakly fluoresce will stand out in a dark environment with this type of light.

You will be absolutely disgusted. There are drops of liquid and other flakes of random shit everywhere. There is no escape, it would be a Herculean effort to clean it all and keep it clean. I think the only place you wouldn’t see things would be one of those clean rooms at chip fabs.

Not saying that hotels aren’t nasty, but you’ve probably got a bunch of similar stains in your home or apartment right now. It’s not necessarily blood or body fluids either, UV lights show where nearly anything was spilled.

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.

Trip to Costco every 1.5-2 months to stock up on meat and whatever else we can buy in bulk and freeze. This trip completely fills the freezer and requires reorganizing it and breaking down the bulk packages and vacuum sealing smaller portions for single meals for two people. We also do a similar trip to H-Mart for Korean things and a huge bag of rice.

Trip to the grocery store weekly to grab smaller things we might need. Sometimes it’s much larger than others. Big meal prep day on Sunday so we don’t have to do as much work during the week.

Lists are essential so I can free up that memory for something else. I also will think of things at the most random times and I’d never remember them without immediately putting them on the list. Also helps ensure that if either my wife or I go to the store we can pick up things the other has thought of.