Yeah, that's very annoying.

Zoom, for example, will tell you, when you are muted and you begin to speak. It's a very nice thing.

I have a microphone (that wasn't expensive) that has a hardware mute. I use it when I really want to make sure I'm not heard, even for "speaking" detection.

MS Teams has that feature too.

TBH I'm not surprised: when you mute the mic in an app, you're still letting the app in control. If you really want to be safe, you need to mute at OS level or in hardware. That's why cameras have a hardware cover in modern laptops.

> How about we not make the default that companies can do whatever they want and users have to take steps like a hardware-muted mic (which isn't always an option) to ensure a basic expectation of privacy?

Sounds nice on the surface, but is ultimately silly. Sure, it'd be nice if everyone did the right thing, but you can never guarantee that, and hence if you really care you need to perform the mute at a lower level than what the app has access to.

And the increasingly (or is it just perceived?) shady behavior of big companies are not helping.

I am afraid this eludes our leaders across the board.

It would be so nice to have a mute-mic button which lights up when muted.

Most of the actions just duplicated existing UI elements.

So when you go to the deck to perform an action, you mentally context switch away from the keyboard, so your brain is looking for different clues.

So even with a touch bar + function keys, the function keys stay in keyboard context, but the touch bar requires that switch in any case. Maybe taking your eyes to the touch bar is enough of a context switch, mentally.

The problem was that it was too much of a tradeoff. Either a touch bar or function keys. I need function keys. The touch bar was useless for this purpose (no tactile feel).

Apple could easily have done both. There's more than enough space even on the 13" macbooks. It would have taken a bit of space from the vertical range of the touchpad but it's already comically large anyway.

I carefully made sure I didn't mention the touch bar. I waited until 2022 to finally be able to buy a MBP without a touchbar (and with magsafe charger).

I would very much like a physical button with a reassuring tactile feeling to it. Like the mute button on the function keys row.

The mic mute button of course works at the OS level but still...

Zoom was discussed 2 months ago in "Why is the Zoom app listening on my microphone when not in a meeting?"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30266894

For libel and slander cases though, telling the truth is a valid defense.

Which is neither here, nor there, as some are more likely to sue you than others.

>For libel and slander cases though, telling the truth is a valid defense.

Which is neither here, nor there, again. Not everybody wants the hassle of going through a lawsuit or the time and money costs associated, even if they have a "valid defense".

Should i hazard a guess, it would be either Zoom or Teams.

As well as, I assume, to archive a text indexable/searchable log of your conversations. I say this latter part based on multiple experiences I've had receiving clearly targeted advertising for topics I make random passing jokes or commentary about in live conversation, but which I've never once searched, click-imprinted, etc. for online. But, this is purely suspicious speculation. The live closed-captioning feature is a real thing and a thing I could absolutely see resulting in Google always sending audio streams to their backend for.

It makes some sense here on HN where people often post under their real names and want to think carefully before badmouthing a former employer, or otherwise picking a fight.

I agree that journalists have little excuse.

Except wanting anyone, ever to talk to them again about something controversial.

Bob Woodward has gotten PLENTY of high level politicians to talk to him candidly even though he's publishing what they are saying often in an unflattering light.

If someone as famous as the watergate guy can STILL get politicians to talk to him, what does a random journalist have to fear?

I mean, FFS, the gamer nexus guy got newegg to talk to him even after blasting them about ripping him off and letting them know "we are recording everything".

Journalists are acting like a single inkling of a bad word said will lock them out of access to everyone everywhere. The truth is, there are so many journalists out there that one could make a career of asking hard questions and publishing unflattering statements and the STILL would likely not be recognized by most individuals if they asked for an interview.

Woodward is absolutely one of the few exceptions, if not the only one.

He publishes on a long timescale with dozens of sources, not a short timescale with one or two.

So everyone knows the story will come out but not immediately, and everyone knows everyone talks to Bob.

But like it or not, most (not all) of the people he talks to have less to lose, because they are at or close to the apex of power in DC; there will always be jobs for them elsewhere in the USA, in a thinktank or on a board somewhere.

(It's also worth noting that Woodward's most famous source was anonymous for essentially his entire life)

In the real world outside seats of government, talking to a journalist on the record about stuff you should not often means you are the single source -- the only person who made the unflattering or damaging story possible, in a story that maybe won't wait even a week to be published.

It puts you out there on your own, gets you fired, makes it difficult to get immediately re-hired, and I suspect for an American with a family in an at-will state makes telling the truth on the record a luxury they can't afford.

Nothing about that situation has bearing on whether people first think of safely concealed sources or being publicly dragged through the mud like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden before sharing things far more important than entitled rants about customer service for entertainment-related products. My lord.

Why not finishing their research first, discussing with lawyers how not get sued, and contacting the company about it so that they can fix it or comment on it, and only then publishing the proper, responsible research that is actually useful to someone?

People can be irrationally attached to the things they use.

As a farm kid growing up, you didn't step between two guys arguing the merits of I-H and J-D farm equipment (1970s...)

[1] https://wiscprivacy.com/papers/vca_mute.pdf

It is doing this for the ultrasonic room detection feature, which can be turned off.

You're reading it incorrectly.

The paper outlines that as far as they can tell Webex is not sending audio when the mute button is pressed, but is gain and other parameters, based on this audio. And this has been reported to Webex, and they are investigating.