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We need physical audio kill switches
391–400 of 443 posts
Re: We need physical audio kill switches
#392Good point, I know the librem 5 has cut off switches for the inputs--camera, mic, cellular. I'm not sure anyone ever thought of the output side.
Kill Switches
3 – WiFi, Cellular, Microphone/Cameras (all 3 will turn off GPS)Re: We need physical audio kill switches
#393Earlier quoted context omitted.
The advent of touchscreen technology and its subsequent ubiquitous adoption replacing physical controls of all kinds across devices of all kinds is easily the single most ruinous thing to happen to UI in the modern history of design.
For many people, the convenience of touch controls outweigh the negatives. They're easier to clean and they can look nicer. Not that it's always a good idea to use them though.
It is technically possible to build touch controls offering comparable UX to their analogue counterparts. Smartphones have done it since 2007. Why do stoves still force users to sequentially step through 14 settings using shitty +/- buttons in order to get what they want?
Re: We need physical audio kill switches
#394Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of my favourite features (if you could call it a feature) of gas stoves is that you can immediately tell if it's on or not. It's a lot easier to accidentally melt a plastic chopping board onto an electric stove than a gas one, and much harder to clean off when you do.
> much harder to clean off when you do That's only true for the type of electric stove that is still (bizarrely) popular in the US, with exposed spiral heaters. At least in the EU electric stoves are all glass. And many of them are induction heaters, which means your plastic chopping board wouldn't even notice being on the heater.
Induction hobs tend use 3 phase lanes 230v/400v, around 7kW. The US suffers from low voltage mains. It'd take around 60A to get 7kV.
OTOH, leaving a plastic (PP or some other thermoplastic) board on non-induction glass heater top would smear in a horrific way, close to impossible to clear it. The heaters do have LED illumination, though.
Re: We need physical audio kill switches
#395After glancing over the title I first thought the topic is physical microphone kill switches. That being said We need physical microphone kill switches. Even if you are super careful about getting your laptop infected or hacked, you have probably tons of legit software installed on your laptop that can be hacked, or spy on you for purpose, there are OS and vendor backdoors, zero days, and many of us use laptops manag…
Traditionally, "spying" meant to record video or audio. I think voice recordings aren't the most precious thing on my laptop. It's my passwords, cookies, e-mails, and pictures.
We need to integrate fine-grained permission APIs into our Desktop OS, those we know from iOS or Android.
Hardware switches create the notion that even with malware on-board, no harm to the real-world can be done.
Re: We need physical audio kill switches
#396Earlier quoted context omitted.
The advent of touchscreen technology and its subsequent ubiquitous adoption replacing physical controls of all kinds across devices of all kinds is easily the single most ruinous thing to happen to UI in the modern history of design.
For many people, the convenience of touch controls outweigh the negatives. They're easier to clean and they can look nicer. Not that it's always a good idea to use them though.
You can have both. My old microwave had physical buttons (upraised so you could find them by touch, and that 'clicked' down when depressed) under a wipe clean plastic coat. It worked very well.
Re: We need physical audio kill switches
#397Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you RTFM?
Every oven for the last 65 years has been easy to figure out by reading the labels on the controls. It wasn't until the javascript generation started designing them that you needed to read a manual to preheat it to a temperature and set a timer.
What does it have to do with Javascript?
Re: We need physical audio kill switches
#398Nothing will ever come close to convenience of analogue volume knobs. They give both immediate action and infinite granular control. Same goes for kitchen stoves. All the modern touch controls with step-based control is the absolute nightmare in terms of UI.
This. I recently had to buy a small 15€ USB sound card because, as it turns out, my new Dell laptop's built-in audio card doesn't work properly on Linux(×). Not only is the sound orders of magnitude better, it also comes with a handy volume knob! It's so much fun to use!
(×) I can't believe it's 2020 and I'm writing this. I haven't had any significant hardware issues on Linux in almost a decade. What's even worse is that Dell specifically claims that the laptop is fully compatible with Ubuntu.
Re: We need physical audio kill switches
#399Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of my favourite features (if you could call it a feature) of gas stoves is that you can immediately tell if it's on or not. It's a lot easier to accidentally melt a plastic chopping board onto an electric stove than a gas one, and much harder to clean off when you do.
I don’t get why stoves don’t have some more obvious visual indicator for this. Could imagine a circle of red LEDs around each stove.
Re: We need physical audio kill switches
#400Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really hate those. When your house is dark and it's calm and all you see are little eyes of Sauron floating in the darkness. I've gone around my house with masking tape and covered every unnecessary visible light. Google Wifi is one of the worst offenders. They might as well market it as a wifi-repeating lamp.
You can adjust the brightness of the light ring from the Google Wifi app (all the way down to "off"!).
Thank you. This helps a lot. I didn't think to look for it.