Ah, yes, just over five attempts for every human alive. I assume they took the reply addresses at face value and have forwarded 45 billion cease & desist letters to Microsoft’s Redmond office?

Could have been MMANAA 😔

I’ll have uhh… a #9 double democracy supreme, with cheese

No, I am not contradicting myself. Let me say it again with the ambiguity removed:

1. Cox Media isn’t an advertiser, they sell a dressed-up analytics service. Think spreadsheets (that’s literally the service they’re selling in this copy, a monthly report spreadsheet).
2. The “technology partner” selling this data to Cox is accessing it by bypassing the normal and correct operation of the device using malware.
3. What does not “exist” is a shadowy cabal of smartphone manufacturers scheming to hide listening devices in the pockets of their consumers.

I’m sure you still believe this is a load of apologia and frankly you can think what you want, but you should probably know that I’d already read about the Cox story when it first broke and specifically chose my words with that knowledge in mind.

Read the document:

The growing ability to access microphone data on devices like smartphones and tablets enables our technology partner to aggregate and analyze voice data during pre-purchase conversations.

Key word is “technology partner”. They’re buying voice transcripts ripped from someone else’s spyware and selling the service of scraping it for keywords and maybe somehow tying that back to an individual by cross-referencing the hit against data from traditional above-board ad platforms.

Google isn’t buying transcripts, Facebook isn’t buying transcripts. It’s Cox Media buying shady recordings stolen from spyware-compromised devices and then trying to whitewash it into something sellable with their (unverifiable) cross-analytics middleware.

we still have people that do not believe that the phones are always listening when seemingly any website or app you use gives you advertisements about what you were just talking about in the other room with the phone locked.

Oh come on. Don’t bring this into conspiracy territory. Yes, eavesdropping does happen, but it’s not something an uncompromised Android phone will do when locked. Even when it does happen in the case of spyware, the people doing it aren’t selling your transcriptions to advertisers.

People should still opt out of as many of GAPS’s spyware-like features as possible, as you suggest, but not because it’s a special anti-listening-device warding spell.

It could probably be argued that the board didn’t do what was best for the investors, which is what they exist to do.

Incorrect. OpenAI LLC (the traded company) does not have a board of directors. The board of directors actually belong to the parent company, simply “OpenAI”, which is a nonprofit organization – the only thing that they’re beholden to is the OpenAI company charter.

Here’s a simplified breakdown:

Board of Directors =[controls]=> OpenAI (non-profit) =[controls]=> OpenAI LLC =[employs]=> OpenAI CEO

OpenAI LLC is obligated to act in the best financial interest of their shareholders, but OpenAI LLC does not actually have control over who sits in the CEO chair. That power goes to the non-profit “OpenAI” parent company – a company beholden to their board, not shareholders.

The story is more interesting than the title suggests! This guy was arrested for hacking two telecom companies, got released under investigation, then immediately hacked Nvidia before being put under house arrest. After that, he was relocated to a hotel (due to being doxxed) where all he had to work with was a Fire TV stick, which he promptly then used to hack Rockstar.

All in all, he’s believed to have stolen $14 million+. By the way… he’s 18, autistic, and enrolled in a special education school.

An IDE written in Electron?? What a terrible idea! Nobody would ever be stupid enough to let something like that take off…