The "external monitor" phrasing makes me think you're using a laptop, which probably has its own microphone. Typically that microphone is accessible even when you're connected to an external monitor (even if the laptop is closed).

You may want to visit your control panel/system preferences/whatever to see how things are configured and perhaps explicitly disable/mute the laptop mic.

> my AirPods. You had me until that L0L. Anything with a mic (especially the AirPods) would need to be "unpaired" (or better yet, never paired) to avoid activation by covert code. Apple once sold EarPods that had no microphone (for use on iPods) that do the trick. (However, I would wager that it's possible to remotely activate and pair a set of AirPods laying by your Mac using the Apple protocols designed to make it easier for legit users to set them up.)

The Chinese app called "genie" used with devices like cheap Merkury cameras, sold at places like Walmart for impossibly low prices and that livestream thru "Tuya" (which likely provides the inputs to China-based deep learning models) also does this on all Apple Silicon platforms. Yes, the "Terms" for that app would seem to allow for it, just like other Chinese apps: https://www.npr.org/2021/01/05/953515627/facial-recognition-... Such streams help China develop models that interpret emotions and behaviorally profile all types of people, not just Uyghurs: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57101248 They can also be used like https://www.aei.org/articles/chinas-olympics-app-is-pure-spy...

Pretty sure China has hacked all of the telecom companies to know which IPs (Tuya streams) would go with which Experian® profiles (https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/chinese-hackers-charged-in-...) too, though such a hack probably involves somethingStupid™ like keyboard firmware injected into customer service terminals at multi-provider offshore customer/provisioning centers. (Those account number to DHCP lease servers/loggers are probably the least protected part of the consumer networks...BigTech has erybody thinking it's about surveillance capitalism, when it's really about surveillance period.) Apple's iCloud Private Relay service doesn't help much here either, as "Tuya" can associate the Apple-device running the app with the IOT devices that are streaming through the "Tuya" platform, providing a pretty good estimation of the identity of the user of the app on the Apple-device (which, of course, can be passed along in realtime to other apps in the "Tuya" family, even as Private Relay is rotating the IP addresses, so long as the "genie" like app is running in the background enough to phone home with an IP update packet).

(Originally posted to someone's duplicate of this thread.)

Well, it still works, but the UX is terrible, and usually one has to reload the page after something like 20 clicks or so because it stops responding or UX elements disappear.

So yeah, not really that subtle, I agree.

I see it as a feature. Using Facebook's deliberately shitty mobile interface with Firefox Focus, which clears cookies every time I close a browser tab, helped me to kick my Facebook habit by making it too inconvenient to check except for a specific purpose. I now log in about once a month.

https://i.reddit.com/ and https://old.reddit.com still work - when they don't I'll likely stop using reddit entirely.

I won't install the app and the mobile experience is broken.

Which is a shame since I've used it for 14 years.

I used to use RedReader[0]. But I eventually quit, because it works very well and is dangerously addictive. Beware.

[0] - https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.quantumbadger.redreader/

They're not blocked if you login on the mobile website.

just use old.reddit.com