No, more like Siri, bruh. To sell some too-expensive slippers. You used the word "absurd", didn't ya?
> accidentally recording siri queries
Sure. Apple does things by accident. Gotcha.
Motive, means, oppotunity. Which is missing?
The dice analogy is clearly a separate scenario than your guci slippers story, I'm not sure why you're trying to bring siri into that analogy. The point is that you can't just invoke "Technilogical causes are much more likely than accidental causes for such effects to appear, in today's world" without justification. If there's spooky stuff happening at a rate far higher than to be expected by pure chance, and there was proper documentation of this, I might be amenable to the above argument, but you haven't done that. In previous comments I listed multiple reasons issues with relying on random anecdotes, but you failed to rebut them.
>Sure. Apple does things by accident. Gotcha.
Is it really so unbelievable that automatic speech recognition would have false positives? There's plenty of things to criticize about Apple's behavior in that case (eg. not taking steps to ensure audio from accidental triggers are deleted), but the implication that they're intentionally doing it is totally unsupported.
>Motive, means, opportunity. Which is missing?
Proof that a crime has actually been committed. With that logic we should be arresting people for murder every time their ex/spouse goes missing, even if there's no evidence that foul play occurred. If it's been actually proven (ie. more rigorous evidence than random anecdotes) that people are getting targeted advertisements based on their conversations, maybe we can start assigning blame, but we haven't even established that's happening yet.
Bye.
> "The only clue that users seemingly had of Siri's alleged spying was eerily accurate targeted ads that appeared after they had just been talking about specific items like Air Jordans or brands like Olive Garden"
This is from William Gibson's BlueSky account.
Thanks for playing! "Accidentally"? You're either a rube or a shill. Either way, your karma points are quite an idictment of HN, dude.
> One Siri user said his private discussions with his doctor about a “brand name surgical treatment” caused him to receive targeted ads for that treatment, while two others said their discussions about Air Jordan sneakers, Pit Viper sunglasses and “Olive Garden” caused them to receive ads for those products.
The whole point of my article is that these random claims that were part of the original lawsuit in 2021 are being mindlessly quoted as if they are proven facts, when they are not. Here's my link again: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jan/2/they-spy-on-you-but-not...
You think a company that builds iPhones in China in a building with nets to catch people who attempt suicide is doing this by accident?
It happened to my wife in realtime within the last year while I was in the room. You think they accidentally left it on? C'mon, man. I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you; let me know, it's on sale just for you.
All some people care about is money, and they rule the top of this country, and probably damn near every other one, too. C'mon, man. Are you being naive on purpose, or is it just a side effect of your willful ignorance?
This is absurd. The chances of rolling snake eyes twice in a row is 0.07%. However, that doesn't mean if I do get snake eyes back to back, I should think it's caused by "Technilogical causes" (aliens? CIA remotely controlling the dice?). At best, it's an incomplete argument. The power of the birthday paradox, along with the factors I explained in my previous comment means such occurrences are virtually guaranteed to occur if you're on the look out for them. This can't be dismissed with an off-hand with "Technilogical causes are much more likely than accidental causes for such effects to appear, in today's world".
>Occam's Razor and the answer to the question, "What kinds of companies are at work in the environment?" push that probability in a specific way, because the motives and means are definitely there. Do you think they are the kinds of companies that would waste such an opportunity?
Apple got sued for accidentally recording siri queries, and that cost them class action lawsuit, along with the requisite discovery. Some company intentionally doing this, all the while actively engaging in a conspiracy is far harder, and much easier to fall apart due.