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politician • yesterday at 6:50 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

Later, AcmeTV has a 1MB lookup table of wake words that can be updated OTA. Whenever a wake word is detected, it triggers an alert flag with the device id, word id, and timestamp, and then broadcasts it out as high-frequency sound through the speakers.

Nearby, another AcmeTV or business partner device picks up the sound and sends it to AcmeHQ.

The former device "never transmits your viewing behavior to Acme". The latter device "never records your viewing behavior".

Replies

Terr_ • yesterday at 6:53 PM

I endorse the cynicism, but I feel that's moving the goalposts a tad, from "good is impossible" to "good is improbable".

Or, in a heavily-paraphrased nutshell:

    Politician: "Watch-words are ALWAYS evil-mode. They have to be lying."
    Terr:       "No. Here's a watch-word which would be good-mode."
    Politician: "Well, it'll still *become* evil-mode, eventually."
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