101–110 of 158 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or USB amps for that matter.
If the USB amp uses the same RealTek chip, then good luck with trusting it.
"Great. Now Even Your Headphones Can Spy on You" Ironic coming from Wired, one of the most ad/tracker infested sites you could visit.
Serious question: I understand the argument against the classic "why should I care if someone records my conversations? I don't do anything illegal.", being that once the government starts recording everything you say the freedom of being able to say anything negative against them goes away knowing they could be listening. That said, why should I, a boring law abiding citizen, go around disabling my hardware and cove…
All that said, I never liked the "well one day the government will accuse you of a crime somehow or otherwise severely limit your speech" argument. To me the better counter-argument is: "Fine, you don't care at all, you don't have to care. Similarly some people are super paranoid and live in a faraday cage etc., they can do that all they want. But a lot of people care to some degree in between, and a lot of other people are uneducated or unaware of the actual risks so aren't even aware of the problem that they could decide to care/not care about. If you don't care at all, again that's fine, just get out of our way as we try to protect people by default. Mass education of every issue is infeasible."
Here's a neat party trick for you. I had a MacGyver moment in the past where I made a phone call with only are pair of old earbuds and a phone cord (no switches, no dial pad). A speaker is basically the same thing as a microphone in reverse. Normally it takes an electrical signal to move a physical element that creates the sound waves. But you can also move the element and it will generate an electrical signal. To di…
Would be cool if Purism or similar companies had a nice big hardware switch that controlled access to any recording equipment.
A camera/mic switch should be required by law on every laptop and phone. Please don tell me a 5c switch is too expensive for a $300 phone.
Cameras are easier, blocking light is even more low-tech than closing a circuit. Unfortunately, cameras are already the limiting component in the current craze for ever thinner devices, so adding a slider on top would not be very popular. Theoretically, cameras could also be physically disabled by shifting some elements that are already there out of the optical axis. The precision requirements to reliably restore it to working condition would be insane.
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That bar seems a lot lower in the last few weeks.
Constitutional amdendments require ratification by 3/4 of states. 20/50 states voted for Clinton. That is still quite a high bar.
Amendment XXVI, 18-year-olds can vote, ratified in 1972. Amendment XXVII, left over from 1789, relates to Congressional pay increases, ratified in 1992.
I didn't even know about the last one (I assume I can trust Wikipedia about it)? Which means the last "real" amendment was 44 years ago. None of the currently unratified amendments seem at all close to reaching the required number of ratification votes.
Here's a neat party trick for you. I had a MacGyver moment in the past where I made a phone call with only are pair of old earbuds and a phone cord (no switches, no dial pad). A speaker is basically the same thing as a microphone in reverse. Normally it takes an electrical signal to move a physical element that creates the sound waves. But you can also move the element and it will generate an electrical signal. To di…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems like something that would work for built-in speakers too. They're driven by the same audio codec chips (eg realtek), but wired directly instead of through an external socket.
I think the opposite. Speakers are driven by an amplifier that will not let the audio in reverse, even if the soundcard output was switched to act as an input.
I suspect it may be possible, depending on what the firmware allows - amplifier circuitry often utilizes feedback in some form or another, which is essentially coupling the output to the input. And even if the amplifier is powered off, there's bound to be capacitive coupling between the input/output lines, but that's probably too small to be useful.