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Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)

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

#71

Post by coliveira »

dangoor wrote: post #19
Bluecobra wrote: post #12

Ahh, this is real reason why the phone manufacturers want to get rid of the headphone jack. I was so naive to think it was only about DRM/licensing.

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…

They "had seen the trends heading toward wireless headphones" or they wanted to create the trend and sell their own headphones? The second explanation seems much better.

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

#72

Post by jacquesm »

Shish2k wrote: post #68
jacquesm wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has an app?

Sony has the worst app I’ve ever seen[1], to the point where I legitimately don’t know how it passed the app store vetting process. Paragraphs of text have wrapping disabled so that the text goes off screen (important text, like the TOS!). Text which does have wrapping enabled wraps on character boundaries instead of word boundaries. Bullet-point lists don’t line up. I have no idea how they made it so bad, it feels l…

It also has two buttons. I really don't see the need for an app. Besides that I don't have a phone capable of running an app so that saves me from getting irritated at Sony. Again.

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

#73

Post by lights0123 »

Answerawake wrote: post #59
month13 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After the AirPods Pro noise-cancelling-regression (resolved, albeit after months), this may be a desirable feature.

Are you talking about Rattlegate? From what I understand, it has been resolved by Apple replacing many people's earpods.

Thanks for mentioning that, one of mine has been doing that for months and I'm contacting support now that I know that it's a common thing.

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

#74

Post by rightbyte »

jacquesm wrote: post #10
retrac wrote: 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…

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…

If you have noise cancelling there is allready mics right?

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

#76

Post by saurik »

caymanjim wrote: post #58
baochan wrote: post #22

How exactly does a headphone app have access to your alcohol use and menstruation history? Where is it pulling this data from?

They don't. The app may ask for it, and there may be some benefit to the user if they provide it, but it's not like the headphones magically acquire any of the data the author is complaining about. If people want to give their personal information out, that's up to them. I personally limit what information I share, and I get annoyed when devices or apps try to sneakily get more information than I'm willing to intenti…

They care. It exudes as a cynicism about the world and continual jokes about talking to the FBI agent assigned to watch them. They (as are we) are just powerless to prevent it as every single service and every single platform and apparently every single product is collecting data on us. And since the value of services and platforms and, sadly, even products goes up as more people are using them, the arguments of "don't use these products and vote with your dollars" that people constantly push are nonsensical: you can value your privacy but also value having a romantic partner, and most people these days use dating apps to date; you can value your privacy but also value getting invited to the birthday party, and most people these days invite everyone to their party on a social network; you can value your privacy but also value being able to travel, and so unless you want to be the one insane person in your friend group who doesn't use Lyft/Uber and never knows when the public transportation is running late and takes forever to book hotels (and always ends up spending a lot more when you do)... well, you are going to use a bunch of apps that do a bunch of data collection.

People care. They have no choice.

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

#77

Post by snvzz »

Bluecobra wrote: post #12

Ahh, this is real reason why the phone manufacturers want to get rid of the headphone jack. I was so naive to think it was only about DRM/licensing.

As usual, if there's no headphone jack, I won't buy that device. Privacy isn't even the deal breaker there. Latency and the ability to use my favourite set (Sennheiser HD600) are.

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

#79

Post by jimmaswell »

dangoor wrote: post #19
Bluecobra wrote: post #12

Ahh, this is real reason why the phone manufacturers want to get rid of the headphone jack. I was so naive to think it was only about DRM/licensing.

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 Samsung S10 line is water resistant with a headphone jack just fine.

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

#80

Post by jdkdodo »

formerly_proven wrote: post #36
dangoor wrote: 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…

The only reason? Doesn’t shallow dismissive posting violate comment rules here?

It’s almost as if “every argument I make about frugalness and standards is maybe leading me to ignore other considerations.”

“Pros” continue to make use of their wired kit, and it changes the math of recurring waste problem; I’ve thrown away many fewer pairs of $30 earbuds since iPhone 7. Saved money and generated less consumer waste over the long run. Now scale that up to the iPhone user base.

You seem to believe human agency must be functionally fixed on how we used to do things. Or at least how you have been lead to believe we did. Turns out iterating away through new invention is how we do things. Or do you have your wax cylinders ready?

And for people that want a wire a 2” dongle is available. Given all else they get with a life that affords an iPhone, oofda what a stretch.

Let’s get to the back of the line with our first world sour grapes a bit. I can see how broader utility was enabled in a variety of ways.

Sorry you haven’t been able to cope with, really, such a trivial change in 5 years.

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