Holy **** your phone has a few tiny mics hidden inside

C'mon now. I know we live in a world that forgot how to use anything but superlatives. But still, I have to agree with Charles. We have it absolutely friggin' fantastic. Have a look back at 1917-1918, 1929-1939, 1941-1945, 1962, 1963, the cold war. Go back further in time and it gets much, much worse.

And wouldn't it be a shame if all those tragedies, all that human sacrifice for the cause of freedom, concluded with their descendants voluntarily submitting to a kind of technophoric slavery?

Those events are all part of the same timeLINE, the reality that you and I share. Some physicists believe that new, minutely different universes come about every time the wave function of a quantum particle collapses to form a definite path. Which is all the time, of course. Separate from that notion, some believe that our universe is one of many universes that are appearing and disappearing or inflating in a sort of cosmic foam of universes.

Here is Michio Kaku discussing the concept of a multiverse in the Marvel series Loki:


Or there's the butterfly effect, where you go back in time and make a small change in history that has profound consequences later on. My favorite example is from the Simpsons Halloween episode V



Anyway, you can take it all with a grain of salt. five will get you ten that it's all been disproved in 20 years. But I find the concept endlessly fascinating. And physicists have a tendency to say crazy things that are borne out by reality. Black holes were theorized long before any were observed. and, as Neil Degrasse Tyson says, "The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you."
 
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Ok, I see where you're coming from. I used to be fascinated with all those sorts of things. Then I got old and grumpy.

Keep your eye out for the man with the pill and the metal cup of warm sour milk.
 
Haha well I grant you that even if parallel universes exist, they have no bearing on our day-to-day decisionmaking. At least until time travel is possible, or wormholes to other dimensions are found or made. But since people think that our universe will continue to expand endlessly until its average energy density drops to zero and all life within it perishes, then sending a subatomic packet of information to another universe through an artificial wormhole may be our only hope of salvation. But applications of this type of thinking are admittedly limited beyond that.
 
All of that kind of stuff is right up my alley - but I'm stuck in this universe right now, so it's not really on my selective-thinking radar.

I require immediate results/changes to be intrigued, not hope...at least not anymore.
 
If you enjoy quantum mechanics and the concept of multiverses (and enjoy reading fiction) I'd highly recommend the short story "Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom" by Ted Chiang (who also wrote the short story on which the movie "Arrival" was based). It's in his collection of stories called Exhalation but might also be available elsewhere.

As for hidden mics on phones: we probably only know the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how much we're all surveilled (by governments and corporations). If it weren't for Snowden's original revelations we'd still think the truths he exposed were ridiculous.
 
Haha well I grant you that even if parallel universes exist, they have no bearing on our day-to-day decisionmaking. At least until time travel is possible, or wormholes to other dimensions are found or made. But since people think that our universe will continue to expand endlessly until its average energy density drops to zero and all life within it perishes, then sending a subatomic packet of information to another universe through an artificial wormhole may be our only hope of salvation. But applications of this type of thinking are admittedly limited beyond that.

If you have about half an hour to kill one day... Fascinating and depressing.

I’ve actually watched it twice.

 
R&G, I hope you're on a no carb diet...

Absolutely none of that delicious NC BBQ, right?...

lol.
 
I don't think those referenced mics are the same thing. Snowden claims that the circled parts below are microphones. (I can't tell that they are by looking, so I'm taking his word for it.) These seem like crappy places to put microphones, so I would think that the reason to have them there is that they are difficult to discover and disable.

Wouldn't removing the mics defeat the purpose of having a phone?

I did find it interesting that there are more than one mic on a phone. Apparently these devices often use multiple mics to create arrays so that they can capture audio from different directions but they are not built that way so they can spy on you. Here's technical document describing it in more detail.
https://media.digikey.com/pdf/Applic...one-arrays.pdf

The gist of this article and I've read else where you can take precautions to make your phone more secure but if a well funded organization wants to spy on you through your phone it's really hard to prevent it. Probably the best advice is not to use your smart phone to send secure information or have it on or near you if you want to have a secure conversation.
 
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Probably the best advice is not to use your smart phone to send secure information or have it on or near you if you want to have a secure conversation.

There you go. Easy Peasy.

The article is tripe. It doesn't identify the phone so no one can check up on the claims.
 
We humans love conspiracy theories. I know I do. I remember many decades ago when many believed that subliminal advertising was common. I'm not talking about the psychological kind of advertising- using images, music and such to sway an audience - that is certainly the case. I'm talking about the flash frame kind ("buy this product NOW").
 
The younger I was the more vulnerable I was to being suckered. The worst scam I got caught in was buying 'investment diamonds' which was a fad at the time. I think I was 22. Somehow (ignorant youth) I got talked into buying two diamonds from a guy who knew a guy. Fortunately, they were real diamonds of good grade and had real value. I hung onto them for about 5 years and then sold them for about 50% of what I paid since of course, I bought retail and had to sell wholesale to a diamond merchant. The real idiocy is the trust I had to buy what could have been glass.

The lessons come hard. Wisdom can't be passed on.
 
There you go. Easy Peasy.

The article is tripe. It doesn't identify the phone so no one can check up on the claims.

Dunno. Some model of iPhone. It's possible that I misunderstood his meaning, seeing as the mic locations shown correspond to the 3 stated positions of mics on the latest iPhones. Thus I may have inadvertently created a bigtime clickbait thread. None of which moots the main points of Snowden's article, to which this microphone business was tangential.

Peter - yes, removing a phone's mics would seem to defeat the purpose a bit. I assume he would buy it for internet/camera. The problem with mics is that they are constantly receiving signal.

The main point of his article was that we should stop permitting the sale of phone hacking as a commercial service. And we should hold companies like facebook liable for violations of privacy, especially leaks of personal data. And just generally that we are increasingly vulnerable by our phones to being spied on and tracked by anyone who can pay. And it can be hard to secure all your conversations by removing your phone,even if you remember to do so.
 
A long time ago I was watching some show that was discussing vision, optical illusions and such. The guy said he was going to read my mind. He said he would put up 3 symbols and I was to pick one and he would tell me which one I picked, He showed a square, circle, and triangle. I thought, this is stupid. This isn't even live. How can he... TRIANGLE ... say what I am pick ... TRIANGLE ... ing. Then he said I picked triangle. Then he explained that they flashed the triangle on the screen.
 
Did y'all smoke too much pot today or something?

No, I had the right amount. Why do you ask?

Actually, weed-free for 2 years and counting. Now, if only I could quit coffee.

Anyway, the quantum physics that have been studied for the better part of a century and empirically proven are crazy enough to make you rethink our existence. Though I guess I dont know if you were referencing the alternate timeline business or the hidden mic business
 
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R&G, I hope you're on a no carb diet...

Absolutely none of that delicious NC BBQ, right?...

lol.

Oh God no! Never touch the stuff. Except on days that end in “Y”. It’s honestly kind of an embarrassment of riches around here with Q. And for the record, around here, BBQ Is a noun, not a verb. Unless of course, you are in-fact smoking a dead pig. There’s also a joint down in SC(he actually has about 4-5 locations, now) with probably the best brisket I’ve ever had. I pass by there on a regular enough basis, but the problem is, they are only open Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I actually made the almost 3.5-4 hour round trip to get brisket and grits from there for Super Bowl Sunday, this year.

Between my buddy that owns the NY style deli a mile from me(he’s from NY), my other friend that owns the pizza joint(also from NY) about a mile on the other side of me, the Q and my general love to eat, it kind of defies logic that I’m not 400lbs.
 
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