Live data from Hacker News

Thanks to Siri Recaps, your Apple Watch is always listening

techradar.com

101–110 of 128 posts

Re: Thanks to Siri Recaps, your Apple Watch is always listening

#101
The most pernicious thing about all of these matters is that now even if you don’t carry or own any kind of device, you don’t have a smart tv or any similar device or even WiFi at all … all of those around you are effectively the STASI spy network of friends and family and neighbors and random people all spying on you passively if not out or ignorance and carelessness.

Short of owning several acres and being able to essentially build a faraday home, you’re effectively going to be in the United Stasi of America.

This is not partisan matter short of the people against the ruling class tyrants that always exempt themselves of everything they impose on others. This started a long time ago and all ad insertions went along with it, that includes those the system has presented to you as your champions as well as those they’ve dialectically framed as your arch nemeses.

Re: Thanks to Siri Recaps, your Apple Watch is always listening

#102

There has always been the myth/rumor/belief that our devices are always listening. I wonder if this is an overton window moment, get people used to a device actually listening and slowly move to all devices listening.

The myth is that the devices are streaming audio back to be ingested into ad/recommendation algorithms, which is testable and generally not true. I really wish these conversations would shift to the scarier truth: companies collect so much metadata on everyone that they can make pretty good guesses without processing what you're saying. If you think "oh hey I was just talking about socks, how did they know to show me…

genearlly not true except LG just got caught making it true

Re: Thanks to Siri Recaps, your Apple Watch is always listening

#103
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our devices are always listening, if you have them set up to listen for hail words like "Siri" or "Hey Google," so I think the Overton window on listening already shifted about 10 years ago. The device actually recording/transcribing what it hears is newer, but you're right that it's becoming more and more normalized. With Granola, I think most people assume that any video call is being transcribed, even if there's n…

It depends what you mean by ‘listening’. If you look at how this actually works - it’s basically only ever looking for a certain waveform ‘Listening’ sort of implies intelligence is paying attention to what is said. It’s more ‘hearing’ than ‘listening’ There are documents on how these activation words work

To look for a certain waveform, wouldn't you need to obtain all of the mic data at all times? I think that's what's implied by "listening" here, but semantics are rarely an interesting discussion.

Re: Thanks to Siri Recaps, your Apple Watch is always listening

#104

The most pernicious thing about all of these matters is that now even if you don’t carry or own any kind of device, you don’t have a smart tv or any similar device or even WiFi at all … all of those around you are effectively the STASI spy network of friends and family and neighbors and random people all spying on you passively if not out or ignorance and carelessness. Short of owning several acres and being able to…

> Short of owning several acres and being able to essentially build a faraday home, you’re effectively going to be in the United Stasi of America.

my boss did that, and i'm not kidding. sort of a sport, and not faraday cage for home but for the office area he works in. has spent tons on this as a nerd hobby.

Re: Thanks to Siri Recaps, your Apple Watch is always listening

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's been plenty of evidence that nothing is recorded or sent back, hardly "absence of complete proof". You may have a different understanding of the word "complete" than the standard definition. Unless you are claiming the verifiers kept the watches being tested under constant survellance for several years, the proof you are alluding to may only prove that it is not routinely sending or recording data. It does n…

Uh sorry guys I phrased it weird I meant "complete absence of proof" more like.

Yes, that would be accurate :)

Re: Thanks to Siri Recaps, your Apple Watch is always listening

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Eh, I hope Apple continues to provide this and it forces the needed discussion about how two-party consent requirements are nonsensical Really disagree on this, I think all states should be two party consent, personally. > Why should it be illegal for me to remember exactly a conversation that I participated in, instead of only being allowed to have a vague recollection? It's not illegal, it's just that the other p…

People are fucking liars. Everyone, everywhere, always. I want to record every conversation surreptitiously, because that’s the only way to catch them. The reason we can’t is because our politicians and legislators are the biggest liars of them all. It would spell their immediate downfall.

Everyone being liars means you and I are both liars, same as the politicians. But the politicians have the power and if we remove two party consent then they get to surreptitiously record you and leverage that power. It doesnt even the power playing field.

We can alreay write notes down for every conversation and then send them to the person involved saying "we talked about X, Y, and Z." That last step is the key because it lets them object in writing if you mischaracterize things. From a "catching someone in a lie" the most important step is that one, because you form a paper trail where the other party can correct or contest what was written and bring that up now, and the fact that they didn't is itself evidence in case of a dispute later. The apple watch feature doesn't do that, it just dragnets everything. Even if it recorded the audio, we are in a faked-audio world so unless you have some signal that they agreed that they said a thing ahead of time, they can always deny it later.

Re: Thanks to Siri Recaps, your Apple Watch is always listening

#107

Alarming normalisation. Issues I see off the top of my head: - Governments can now learn even more about you when they confiscate your device. - Devices confiscated at airports provide a full history of you. - Privacy issues: will my conversation with someone using this tech truly be private? Do I have to be careful what I say around everyone by default? Always have clear thought out opinions? - Personal relations: s…

We already have the answer to many of these questions.

Re: Thanks to Siri Recaps, your Apple Watch is always listening

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Eh, I hope Apple continues to provide this and it forces the needed discussion about how two-party consent requirements are nonsensical Really disagree on this, I think all states should be two party consent, personally. > Why should it be illegal for me to remember exactly a conversation that I participated in, instead of only being allowed to have a vague recollection? It's not illegal, it's just that the other p…

People are fucking liars. Everyone, everywhere, always. I want to record every conversation surreptitiously, because that’s the only way to catch them. The reason we can’t is because our politicians and legislators are the biggest liars of them all. It would spell their immediate downfall.

Our politicians and legislators lie on camera constantly. But it doesn't really seem to matter much these days. So I'm not sure why this would make a difference.

Re: Thanks to Siri Recaps, your Apple Watch is always listening

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The myth is that the devices are streaming audio back to be ingested into ad/recommendation algorithms, which is testable and generally not true. I really wish these conversations would shift to the scarier truth: companies collect so much metadata on everyone that they can make pretty good guesses without processing what you're saying. If you think "oh hey I was just talking about socks, how did they know to show me…

> If you think "oh hey I was just talking about socks, how did they know to show me an ad for socks" Or you’re talking about socks because of the previous ad for socks you saw. I suspect ads drive our collective behaviour more than we realize.

Or you were at a friends house and they googled socks yesterday

I'm not kidding about how insidious this is... there's so much metadata to exploit that these companies know who you're with, when you're with them, how often you're there, etc they don't even need to explicitly ask for location because they can pick it up based on network info. In some cases they probably could tell you more about a person than that person could tell you themselves.

Re: Thanks to Siri Recaps, your Apple Watch is always listening

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The myth is that the devices are streaming audio back to be ingested into ad/recommendation algorithms, which is testable and generally not true. I really wish these conversations would shift to the scarier truth: companies collect so much metadata on everyone that they can make pretty good guesses without processing what you're saying. If you think "oh hey I was just talking about socks, how did they know to show me…

genearlly not true except LG just got caught making it true

right, generally not true but still something we need watchdogs regularly checking
Post reply on HN