Live data from Hacker News

Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)

soundguys.com

41–50 of 431 posts

Re: Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)

#41
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also can't get firmware updates if you don't install the companion app and allow them to spy on you.

which is why bose for example only let you configure noise cancelling through the app.

That's news to me. Guess I won't be ditching my QC25's soon/or ever

Re: Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)

#42
post #20
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this really only an issue if you use the companion app? I doubt the usb-c/lightning/bluetooth headphones can exfiltrate data if you don't have the companion app installed.

You also can't get firmware updates if you don't install the companion app and allow them to spy on you.

Or just update your firmware and then remove the app.

Not just Bose, the Sony WH* series is also guilty of this. Great cans, awful app.

Re: Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)

#43
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also can't get firmware updates if you don't install the companion app and allow them to spy on you.

which is why bose for example only let you configure noise cancelling through the app.

I got some Bose 700 this past week. There is still a button on these to adjust noise cancelation.

Re: Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)

#44
post #34
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also can't get firmware updates if you don't install the companion app and allow them to spy on you.

Why do my headphones need firmware updates? Presumably they work fine at purchase.

Noise cancellation sometimes gets better (or worse) after a firmware update.

Re: Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)

#45
post #8

Only a slightly related tangent, but most headphones and other loudspeakers can be very effective microphones when wired into the right circuit. While speakers are often wired directly to a one-way DAC, that's not always the case. Sometimes the analog lines are all fed into a multiplexer and it can be routed to a ADC. Sometimes it's wired to a general purpose IO pin. In such cases, reprogramming could turn that speak…

Most bluetooth headphones already have a mic ^^. At least the ones I own and the ones I found after a short Amazon search.

Re: Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this comment or a variation on it a thousand times now and it is getting boring. Just like all the other times: please comment on the message rather than on the means of delivery, finding pages without social media embeds is becoming more and more rare and besides that the party writing the article content may not have control over that particular aspect. But that doesn't mean they don't have a point.

They author may not be able to control the social media embeds of this particular site, but they certainly have control over where the choose to publish. I see nothing wrong with taking them to task for this sort of hypocrisy.

No, they don't always have that control. Maybe in this case they do, maybe they don't. But your typical author is in someone's pay. And they probably don't have the pick of where to publish besides the bulk of the places where you can work and write articles that reach a sizeable audience will have this kind of environment.

Anyway, seeing the same comment over and over again reduces its value. It was a cool observation the first time, boring the second, redundant after that.

Re: Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)

#47

Re: Personal fitness and menstruation history - Is that shocking? They're earbuds, but they're marketed as fitness buds that track personal data. It looks like Fitbit for your ears. Fitbit and Apple Health (or whatever it is called) does these kinds of things as well. Re: Bose collecting all that stuff I can see "why" they would want all that, in order to optimize their sound output of their buds to the kind of music…

Ordinarily when you pay $350 for headphones it is assumed that the vendor has already invested money in doing R&D to make them work properly and isn't planning to do testing on you without telling you or compensating you for it, to enable the functionality you already paid for.

I bought headphones, I did not sign up for a research project.

We went from paying for software to getting it for free in return for our data and now we're apparently giving over our data even for physical devices that we pay top dollar for.

Re: Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)

#49
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also can't get firmware updates if you don't install the companion app and allow them to spy on you.

which is why bose for example only let you configure noise cancelling through the app.

My QC35IIs have a button on the side to adjust noise cancelling. No need for an app.

Re: Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)

#50
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were two things that happened when Apple got rid of the headphone jack: (1) they added water resistance, (2) the phones got thinner. Plus, Apple had seen the trends heading toward wireless headphones. They still included a dongle to give you a standard headphone jack. While Apple could likely have gotten their water resistance even with the headphone jack, they couldn’t have made the phones as thin. People may…

> the phones got thinner No. They didn't. iPhone 5: 7.6 mm thin, 6: 7 mm iPhone 7: 7.1 mm > While Apple could likely have gotten their water resistance even with the headphone jack, they couldn’t have made the phones as thin. Except that's a pretty obvious lie. Not just that the phones did not get thinner (or lighter), they stayed around the same thickness (+- 0.5 mm), while getting larger, much heavier and much more…

Thank you! I stand corrected.

It looks like the reason most cited, in hindsight, for Apple removing it was to pave the way for a design without bezels and with more speakers

https://screenrant.com/why-apple-removed-the-headphone/ https://bgr.com/2017/10/06/pixel-2-headphone-jack-iphone-x-d...

Which is, indeed, a very different reason.

Post reply on HN