Turtles all the way down.

It plays into the generalisation that people aren't good about saying what is the right way to do something, but much more open to saying what something is doing the wrong way.

In a previous job we used to do prototypes in languages like Perl because we couldn't ship them and knocking something non-production ready was easy. We were able to quickly come up with the PoC, iterate on it, and then plan and write the whole thing in $LANGUAGE_OF_CHOICE.

Yes they are constantly listening, but this is just for the watch word (as a cue to start listening/sending) but they lack the on-device ability to convert anything else to text on their own. All they can do on their own is listen out for the watch word.

Certain smart TVs on the other hand, are known to constantly stream audio back to their HQ as they don't have on-board watchword detection.

I have all of my IoT devices on separate Wifi network(s) and VLANs and almost all of them are isolated so they can't talk to each other, plus I occasionally look at how much data they are sending/receiving from the Internet (some is expected obviously, and it differs by device).

Doing this requires a considerable amount of admin work and IT knowledge though. It also requires something a step above most consumer grade or supplier provided networking equipment.

I've never spotted anything egregious like the coffee maker in the OP but if I did I'd be making sure other people knew about it and the device itself is either firewalled off properly or replaced by a brand that isn't a security risk.

We had a similar thing, the other team wouldn't back down.

We ended up implementing a kind of rate limiting internally.

If the previous request (from that IP) was more than 4.5 seconds ago we let the check request through as normal.

If the previous request (from that IP) was more recent than that we just returned a cached "there is no update" payload that had a TTL of 60 seconds.

We told them this and left it up to them, they soon changed their polling frequency.

https://www.oralb.co.uk/en-gb/product-collections/oral-b-app for an example.

As I said it showed me I was neglecting certain areas over time and fixing that saved me more than the price of the toothbrush in under a year.

But feel free to continue to disagree with it as a gimmick. In my experience most people that do this are some of the lucky people that could brush their teeth once a week with a stick and still have no dental trouble, meanwhile a small percentage of people seem to have to take great care of their teeth, avoid a vast array of food/drink, and still end up paying out thousands each year to a dentist. Genetics plays a big part in it and you don't get to pick your genes.

https://www.royalmail.com/sending/barcoded-stamps

There are still some "Forever" stamps (those with pictures on or Christmas Stamps) but the old non-QR code non-forever stamps stopped being legal a while back (but you can always swap them for the new ones for free).

I've had people try and reuse a QR-coded stamp, you just get a postcard saying there's an item of mail with invalid postage for you to collect (and pay for). You get to look at it before you decide whether to pay the fine or not and then your argument is with the sender to reimburse you or not.

My $150 "smart toothbrush" (some Oral B iO model) has accelerometers to track its head position and the app lets you know if you're not covering certain areas well enough. Since using it properly (i.e. checking the app and adjusting my brushing) I don't have to go to the hygienist as often.

Needs changing at 100,000 to 150-000 miles or every 10 years.

The 10 year service is a spendy one.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2910vrrygo

SpaceX groundstations look a bit different, they are a bunch of white domes about 1-2m in diameter, usually 8 or 9 of clustered together.

Here's an example in the UK: https://maps.app.goo.gl/Zy61dfdyp5xrq4w1A

It's handled by Arqiva here in the UK it seems, so no SpaceX branding on anything.

SpaceX also applied for two new grounds station sites in the UK, one a few miles West of Telehouse, south of Rainham. The other site is up in Harlow, Essex.

(I don't think any of this is secret, all of the info above can be found with some googling and scrolling in maps.)

Proposed venue looks in keeping with this theme. Capacity of 600 and I'm sure whatever tickets will be priced to keep the hoi polloi away.

Sure there are things like an Elgato StreamDeck that you can do similar things with but they still require you to move a hand from the keyboard.

I suppose it is similar to using voice control things like Alexa. Setting a timer by hand in the kitchen isn’t exactly hard but it is so much more convenient to do it by voice if your hands are covered in raw chicken juice or the like.

My kids school puts some information that I need to see (not just "would like to see") on Instagram. Same with the sports team they play for.

I've complained to both about it but change is glacial. I'm lucky in that I know how to work around it, and I do my best to keep others who aren't so tech savvy updated about things they need to know but may have missed.

Irony is they moved most of this info from Twitter/X to Instagram.

The one I did (QbCheck) was a similar setup but you were presented with shapes on the screen, either a square or a circle, and either blue or red. All you had to do was press the spacebar when the shape on the screen was the same shape and colour as the previous one. No sound distracitons (or maybe I just had the volume muted.)

You also had to do the test on a laptop with a forward facing camera so the software could track eye movement.

I remember starting the test and thinking "This is exactly what my brain is wired for, I'm going to be awesome at this test!"

Within a minute my mind had already moved on to "I wonder how they score this test? I guess they're looking at accuracy, reaction times, how those trend over time, whether the accuracy/reactions goes up/down if they show the same shape/colour more than twice in a row?" etc...

It didn't take long for me to then get jolted into a "wait, did I just zone out a bit there and miss one?"

Then I became overly conscious of my eyes wandering around and not looking at the screen.

Then my mind moved on to "what if I'm too good at this and it means I won't get a diagnosis?"

Soon it was "When will this ever end? This must have been going on for ages!" only to find it had only been about 3 minutes.

The test took 20 minutes or so and I was mentally exhausted by the end of it.

My actual ADHD diagnosis was backed up by an 80 minute interview, basically doing the DSM-5 questions but linking it all back to childhood experiences too. I've no idea how much weight the QbCheck test had.

Glad I got the diagnosis, I've been masking both for years (diagnosed in my late 40s) but just got burnt out doing so. Medication helps but isn't perfect and since I'm probably AuDHD I find the ADHD medication amplifies some of the Autism traits and makes me into a bit of an emotional zombie, but that seems to be better than having zero motivation (aside from stress/deadlines and serious consequences).