kadup

I used to think the same. I'm all for digital privacy, but listening to a microphone? That's ridiculous, the legal ramifications would be enormous. Plus, encoding and sending all this data? Not practical, and of course, we are fully aware of confirmation bias and selective memory so for sure those personal anecdotes must be coincidences.

Then it happened to me. I use a VPN, all my devices have a billion types of ad blocking, private DNS, JavaScript disabled by default and so on. Then I mention a product next to my girlfriend, a product that only interested me and I had recently discovered, nothing she was ever aware of... and while I was still right next to her, five minutes later, her phone is showing up ads for said product. Her phone, not mine. The product is not Coca-Cola, it's not something that often pops up.

What other explanation could there be? The coincidence of the year? They are listening.

I'm sure calling it a "dev kit" and not a product "expected to sell many units" whilst having inventories full of the thing and a few failed attempts at pushing sales is how they're going to try to spin this failure.

I'd entertain your theory, but Facebook is pretty much only kept alive by boomers and Mark's AI multiverse web 3.0 became a commercial failure, so I don't think your idea that he understands young people and is just ahead of me holds.

I think Zuckerberg fundamentally misunderstands humans. I don't even mean the memes of calling him a robot or lizzard or whatever, I truly believe being a billionaire in a tech bubble from a young age severely harmed his notion of his own species to the point of being pathological.

The US is not the "role model" for how a country should be or what a strong democracy is. Other countries aren't inspired by or jealous of you.