61–70 of 431 posts
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.
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…
What sound algorithm uses menstruation data to optimize sound output?
Seems pretty clear it is advertised to do more than play audio.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can do the opposite of noise cancellation too: determine the back emf from the speaker compared to the audio input, that will give you the audio in the room. So you can use the same circuit both to drive the speaker and use it as a microphone. As good as undetectable until you trace the circuitry of what looks like an ordinary amplifier. The difference is on the order of a few mV but that's more than enough. My p…
No need to use a laser if there’s an incandescent bulb in the room: https://www.wired.com/story/lamphone-light-bulb-vibration-sp...
Why in the world would anyone need headphones that need personal info?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do my headphones need firmware updates? Presumably they work fine at purchase.
Because we cut a corner somewhere to make a budget device and realized it was a lot more popular and now we have to patch it like if it was a fucking nuclear reactor....
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 are thicker now than they ever were with the headphone jack. In fact, the 7 was the last version to get thinner. https://i-cdn.phonearena.com/images/articles/301929-image/iP...
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…
... Which makes total sense from a market efficiency point of view, at least as long consumers doesn't have perfect information and the time to stay informed about almost everything. Which isn't true, and people won't be, especially since the most basic decision theory that we can derive from our behavior would go almost entirely counter this.
... Which isn't strange at all as the number of new or changing facts that could affect our living situation probably didn't change as much from 150000 years ago, as changed last week alone.
Sometimes I think one of, or maybe the most damaging lie of our century is that we are generally capable of individual, rational thought for everyday decisions. We really are not, not to any significant fraction.
Almost all our decision are derived from observation of very few instances, judging based on survival instincts, and social cost/benefits.
In contrast much of rules regarding eg advertising and much of economic theory seems predicates that everyone has the time and energy to figure out which toothpaste company also are not totally exploiting some workers in some country five shell companies and thousands of miles away. But I digress.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It has an app?
[1] Circa 2018, I switched to Bose after that...
Everything spies on you. There's money in it. I've come to believe that this can only be fixed with legislation and regulation. There are no technical fixes that could practically be deployed as there is far too much "attack surface" and anyway there is zero incentive to deploy them. In the meantime: install as few apps as possible on phones, be careful about IoT and personal assistance devices, and use Apple or Linu…
Mine don't because they're hard wired into whatever device I use.