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Comment by fsflover | Hacker News Reader

The correct solution would be to have a hardware kill switch for the microphone (and camera). This is exactly what Purism laptops offer.

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When it comes to privacy, for the vast majority of users, sane defaults are better than requiring the user to take manual action.

Exactly!!!

This might seem like I am an Apple fanboy but I am not, I have plenty issues with Apple products but when it comes to Privacy Apple is the only company amongst the big tech we can trust.

Microsoft, Google, Facebook are all anti-privacy and just about using dar patterns to steal users info. It’s disgusting.

> when it comes to Privacy Apple is the only company amongst the big tech we can trust

No, it's not: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34299433, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26644216.

I wouldn't leap that far, I'm just talking about the lid switch on a laptop here.

It is still the correct solution. A sensible default doesn't conflict here, but hardware switched are the only solution where you can be entirely sure.

The problem is a separate switch leaves mainstream non-paranoid users unprotected, because it requires conscious activation by the user.

And anyway, a lid switch is a hardware switch. But most importantly, it activates passively during normal usage patterns.

No, that's not the "correct solution". It's another valid solution, with a different set of costs and benefits.

This is a hardware kill switch, in the form of a (set of) transistors

Can it be reprogrammed?

No. It is bare logic.

Interesting. Note however that my comment was a reply to "I can't use my mic in clamshell mode". A normal kill switch would solve this.

Probably not in Apple’s “it just works” design philosophy. Also that’s another moving piece that can break.

I mean... it doesnt seem uncommon to have people dock a closed laptop so I would argue it doesnt "just work".

How would a microphone work with the lid closed anyways? It’d be muffled. If you’re docking your laptop closed, you’ve got an external webcam / mic if you need those inputs.

Why would I need to get mic if I have it in laptop? It makes very little sense to me.

So then you dock it with the lid open, in which case the mic and camera work fine and aren’t muffled…

For the same reason you might have other external peripherals. A laptop, realistically, can only fit something so decent inside of it. The 2020+ MacBooks do have surprisingly OK internal mics, but that's about all they are: OK.

Maybe I'm just an extra-big baby about it all. But what I find a little annoying with the COVID-era of work-from-home and distance learning is how few people seem to care about audio. Even as a teenager on TeamSpeak, rather than getting a more expensive graphics card or whatever, I spent my money on an SM7B. Now it is more important than ever.

Maybe this isn't reasonable, but I feel like if not for yourself, to prevent "sorry, can you repeat that?" moments, you kind of owe it to the people who have to listen to you. Like as an autistic person, hearing a dozen people's overlapping background static, tinny compressed audio, etc, it really, truly slowly drives me nuts. I can't deal with that level of auditory sensory stuff all day. If someone has a bad microphone, I want out of the call ASAP.

A Shure SM58 will last you a lifetime, fit on your desk, cost <$100, and no one will ever complain about sound again.

People don't know how bad they sound. It's as simple as that I think, there is no easy monitor functionality in Teams and friends like the preview image for camera, so there is no urgency.

The laptop microphone will pick up whatever noise is in the room. It's easier to filter out background noise with a microphone that is closer to your mouth.

Two+ tiny holes at the top of the lid facing upwards when the lid is open and at you when the lid is closed

The position of the mic on the newer laptops is unmuffled. It's actually a very high-quality signal that can't be muffled. The only way to quiet it is to "kill" it; disconnect it.

The same way it used to work, by putting the input on the external facing portion of the case. Or even better, have both so that it can optimize for the current clamshell mode.

I'd rather have an LED on the same circuit as the microphone. If it's live, it has to send current through it. Easy to observe.

A cool feature on laptops would be a jumper you could physically disconnect, and a tiny window (on say, the bottom of the laptop) to verify it hasn't been reconnected.

If you need a window on the case of your laptop to verify that your hardware hasn't been tampered with, you've got bigger problems.

You're against transparent technology?

Even if it was configurable to disable either.

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