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Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

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amelius·

Your phone also has a microphone.

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Yes, but I tried to say "ok google" to my phone, and if I don't press anything, it doesn't switch on.

Not to say it couldn't, but by default, it's not supposed to be listening.

While alexi is.

My intent is different.

This line of reasoning is akin to someone giving up on their diet entirely because they ate a single cookie.

Might as well open the floodgates! There’s no point anymore.

That's overly reductionist. It's more like saying that there's no point in raising the drawbridge because there's an open window the enemy can shoot arrows through.

Yours is certainly a more fitting metaphor. But either way the point is that it’s ridiculous to assert that one must be 100% perfect in all their endeavors in order to criticize or critique an action.

In iPhones when you lay down your phone screen down the mic is physically cut off. That's why you can't call "Hey Siri" with a phone laying like that.

Wrong. That's a software switch, not physical hardware.

That just proves Siri is disabled, not the microphone.

If the hardware switch is controlled by software then it isn't much of a hardware switch.

Thank you, hadn't realised. I also don't have Amazon or Google apps on my phone so have never worried about it.

Might as well buy all the devices you can then of course!

"One sec, I'll just turn my house off, I don't want it listening."

Theirs an age old saying in Hindi which basically means "walls have ears".

Now it's literally true.

There is an old saying in Persian which says "Walls have mice, and mice have ears".

دیوار موش داره و موش گوش داره Divar Moosh Dareh, Moosh Goosh Dareh.

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