My current notebook, manufactured in 2023, has very thin bar on top of screen with camera, so I need a thin, U-like attachment for the switch, which is hard to find.
[1]: https://www.printables.com/model/2479-webcam-cover-slider
There is no physical microphone cover there, is it ?
And yeah, if they had access to my webcam, they would just see a guy staring into the screen or walking back and forth in the room.
Also, loudspeakers can act as microphones, too.
In other words, paranoia gets exhausting in modern times.
(And my smartphone has a replacable battery for that reason to at least sometimes enjoy potentially surveillance free time)
Possible, I have one IPS monitor with a spot on screen where the color is pale. I had a post-it note there and I guess something bad happened when I tore it off.
No shit. How is the current state btw?
I suppose still not ready to be a daily driver to replace my normal phone?
You can also use an LED as a light sensor.
and I also came across a YT vid of a console that used a piezo electric speaker for motion sensing.
I wonder if you could use a track pad to pick up sound.
So a webcam hack that lets them watch my 16 year old daughter study would also let them watch her sleeping, getting dressed, and making out with her boyfriend.
I'd say that depends on your definition of daily driver and/or how much compromises you're willing to take. I occasionally see members at my larger hackerspace running around with those or other seemingly "unfit" hardware and not complain too much about it ;)
I've never tried them on a matte or coated screen though.
My laptop is in my bedroom in winter, right now, because it's one of the smallest rooms and I can heat it easily. I use it in other parts of the house in the other seasons. I do have a sliding cover on the camera. I bought it years ago. The main issue is the microphone.
People have been making claims like this since at least the early 90s, about TV then, and no one ever credibly claims to have worked on something like this. I've worked with purchased ad data and I've never seen this data or anything that implies that it exists. It seems far more likely that its a trick of memory. You ignore most ads you see, but you remember ones that relate to odd topics that interest you.
Nobody who is themselves sane is going to judge another for random crap they say when they think themselves alone.
I would not be surprised if the same is true for some other manufacturers, too, but I can only speak definitely to Mac.
The issue is that lids close too closely + tightly now, and so anything more than a piece of tape winds up focusing all the pressure applied to the closed lid on that one spot in the glass, since the cover winds up holding the display slightly off the base of the laptop when in the closed position.
The other explanation is one of your contacts who were part of the conversation did things that either directly related to thing X, which you spoke about, or something the algorithm see other people do that relates to X, and you got shown ads based on your affiliation to this person.
I've also worked at FAANG and never seen proof to such claims anywhere in the code, and with the amount of people working there who care about these issues deeply I'd expect this to leak by now, if this happens but is siloed...
For this to work hangouts.google.com had to not include the HTTP header to block iframing but thankfully if you make up a URL the 404 page served on that domain does not include that http header.
Not a great laptop otherwise, but that was pretty good!
Not as pretty as a custom cover but cost-effective and can generally be done in under a minute with common office supplies (post-it + scissors) which has its own advantages.
There’s been no damage to the screen from the adhesive although occasionally I’ve had to clean the residual adhesive with 70% IPA, but nothing worse than the typical grime that most laptop monitors pick up.
All phones are suspect. We should go back to only carrying pagers.
Apart from the inconvenience it was somehow liberating knowing there is no microphone physically active.
I've been using it daily for 3 years for watching movies and main notebook while traveling.
It's not at all abandonware or e-waste.
It's going to happen sooner or later and people will accept it, just like they accepted training of AI models on copyrighted works without permission, or SaaS, or AWS/PaaS, or sending all their photos to Apple/Google (for "backup").
As for phone feature, reliability of that depends on reliability of firmware of the modem, which was always shaky.