[KirinDave]

I've watched network traffic from ghome for over a year now. It is not even remotely "always on". It's running updates and pushing voice to commands.

This seems like quite a distorted definition of spying. Is Hacker News spying on you by keeping access logs of site usage? That doesn't seem like a fair characterization either.

[goblins]

What can I say I don't trust Google. No walled gardens for me.

[KirinDave]

So, the article is about Apple and a very fair comparison is that Google is a more open and less locked in ecosystem than either Apple or Amazon.

So... I'm not sure what your point is.

If it's that you hate corporate products then... what exactly are you accessing this website on? An Amiga?

[goblins]

My point if it wasn't clear, which I thought it was, was that the article horrifies me.

Accessing this site? Linux laptop running tor browser what else?

[KirinDave]

So, a corporate browser using technology funded by corporate excess and State research efforts. Oh, and it's actually proven to be only a mediocre baffle on security when attacked at scale.

You rebel, you.

My dude, privacy is dead and we killed it. There is no hiding anymore, short of bombing us back to the victorian era.

[goblins]

That's a pathetic ad hominem strategy.

Your point is that there is no privacy so why bother, similar to the arguement that if you've nothing to hide you've nothing to worry about.

Sorry but, my dude, google, amazon, microsoft, apple, etc al, don't and won't get my business however much you think I'm wasting my time.

[KirinDave]

> Sorry but, my dude, google, amazon, microsoft, apple, etc al, don't and won't get my business however much you think I'm wasting my time.

Amazon and Google fund Linux a lot, and many of the products we use and support give money to Amazon and Google for hosting.

So no, I don't believe what you're saying. If you do, either you're incredibly careful or you're willfully misinformed.

But on topic, data leaks from using digital services is a result of physics, not avarice. While we might try to offer guidance and punish wrongdoers, demands for digital privacy are a fool's errand. You might as well demand blood from a stone. And if anyone thought it was worth anything, they'd just start mining data and reselling it out of the channels you DO use.

For example, nothing really stops this website forum from selling your IP and browsing habits and even a recognizer for your unique style of writing, other than ethics and economics.

Your solution is to turn off the computer and flee, or find ways to work within the new framework and make it so that governments and citizens, good or bad, private or public, everyone has access to the same information and information processing capability.