Me: *puts small piece of tape over webcam*

NSA: Okay guys, shut it all down. No way we can record from the microphone, log keys, access the file system, USB devices, network data or watch the screen. He did the tape.

Large corporation. CEO tells everyone to attend this mandatory meeting via the internet.
I work remotely. I can't log in, meeting is full. But our colleagues have made a parallel meeting just for us in the meantime, where I could hear them make fun of the meeting, which is basically the CEO showing some Powerpoint slides to a room with 10 people. Nobody can either see the slides (bad camera or connection) or hear the CEO (crap microphone). 1000+ people watching this "mandatory" meeting that lasted for an hour. Nobody had any idea what it was about in the end. Just slides and muffled voices.

Who ya tryin to spy?????

Apparently this little music player has no transmitter, receiver, microphone nor camera, pity on you NSA!

So... I still go to school.
My English teacher (I'm from Germany) wanted to watch a video with us. There was one Problem. The sound didnt work. My teacher asked for computer Freaks in class. All pointed to me. I went to the desk where the computer was standing.

They plugged the audio output cable for the speakers into the audio input of the computer (that pink microphone input)... 😥 it made some nice sounds haha

Funny thing: other teachers didnt solve the problem before me

Just tried washing my S8.

Works completely fine with speakers and camera, microphone, etc

During the process, it said that water was detected in the charging port, so I had to wait 10 minutes to charge until the port dries.

Overall, awesome!

P.S. How do they detect water???

I found this in classroom: CIA, what are you doing?😂 (It's a small microphone)

devRant - securing our users webcams and microphones since 2016

As long as devRant lives, your firewall is useless.

A faster, better YouTube they said, 'YouTube needs permissions to Contacts, Location, SMS, Microphone, Device ID and information', they said. :/

I'm good with a slower, worse YouTube.

Today I was asked to decide on a handheld or "madonna" microphone for a conference I have to speak at in 2 weeks. Its time to come clean, I never thought the day would actually come, i'm far too terrified to actually go through with it. I just wanna write code in my dark little corner and be left alone. I wonder can I get out of this or is it too late

Very long story ahead!

Yesterday in the evening a friend of mine (calling him F from now on) became the target of something new to me...
Apparently one can fake his phone number through some fishy ways and call people with that number. Someone (we think we might know who it was, the why is at the end) did this yesterday to F.
Here's the whole story:
We were just talking together on a TeamSpeak Server (a program to talk to others on the internet) when suddenly another friend said: "F, why did you just call me three times in a row?" That was the first thing that was a bit suspicious. After that, F got calls from random numbers (even Afghanistan, we are German), and they said something like "Have fun with the police coming to your house". Then there was silence. 10 minutes later his phone rang and there were a ton of pizza delivery services in his town that apparently got pizza orders from him. Then there was silence, again. Suddenly someone with a hidden number called him, a woman's voice said they were the police and if F doesn't stop calling the police there will be consequences. F then told her what was going on but I think she didn't really care. She then wanted to know where F lives, but I told him not to say that, because if it is the police they can find it out by themself and if it's not, they don't need to know that.
Now, a short break: There is some fake information going around about where F lives. I can't remember when we found out but the attacker thought he would actually live there. No idea what happened at that location...
Now back to the story:
Time went by, nothing really happened. Suddenly F shouted: "There are blue lights outside! The police is here!" He muted his microphone and (the following is what he told us what happened) went down to the door (remember, he is 16) and there were two police men. They were asking about why he called the police. F explained what we knew until then, about number spoofing and stuff... They sent a more technical person to him, he understood what F was trying to explain. The police men drove away and he came back to tell us what happened. (Now we get back to what I heared myself.) The mom came in, screamed something that I couldn't understand, and F went offline. We searched who the attacker could have been. And we are pretty sure we found him. That guy connected to our Minecraft server (that's where I know F from) with his real IP, and his main account, which made it easy to search. He also got a static IP which means it doesn't change. We also got some information that in the recent days this guy was talking about VoIP spoofing and such stuff. Another friend of mine, a bit older, found some proofs and I think he will go to the police.

That's it. Thanks for reading.

Online tutorial pet peeves
————————————

My top 10 points of unsolicited ranting/advice to those making video tutorials:

1. Avoid lots of pauses, saying “umm” too much, or other unnecessary redundancy in speech (listen to yourself in a recording)

2. If I can’t understand you at 1.5 - 2x playback speed and you don’t already speak relatively quickly and clearly, I’m probably not going to watch for long (mumbling, inconsistent microphone volume, and background noise/music are frequent culprits)

3. It’s ok to make mistakes in a tutorial, so long as you also fix them in the tutorial (e.g., the code that is missing a semicolon that all of a sudden has one after it compiles correctly — but no mention of fixing it or the compiler error that would have been received the first time). With that said, it’s fine to fix mistakes pertinent to the topic being taught, but don’t make me watch you troubleshoot your non-relevant computer issues or problems created by your specific preferences (e.g., IDE functionality not working as expected when no specific IDE was prescribed for the tutorial)

4. Don’t make me wait on your slow computer to do something in silence—either teach me something while it’s working or edit the video to remove the lull

5. You knew you were recording your screen. Close your email, chat, and other applications that create notifications before recording. Or at least please don’t check them and respond while recording and not edit it out of the video

6. Stay on topic. I’m watching your video to learn about something specific. A little personality is good, but excessive tangents are often a waste of my time

7. [Specific to YouTube] Don’t block my view of important content with annotations (and ads, if within your control)

8. If you aren’t uploading quality HD recordings, enlarge your font! Don’t make me have to guess what character you typed

9. Have a game plan (i.e., objectives) before hitting the record button

10. Remember that it’s easier to rant and complain than to do something constructive. Thank you for spending your time making tutorial videos. It’s better for you to make videos and commit all my pet peeves listed above than to not make videos at all—don’t let one guy’s rant stop you from sharing your knowledge and experience (but if it helps you, you’re welcome—and you just might gain a new viewer!)

People: I will never put one of those smart speakers in my home! You're basically just putting in a microphone that will spy on you!

Also People: Hang on I have to grab my phone/high-fidelity microphone/high resolution camera/GPS tracker/Data Aggregator and make sure I have it with me literally everywhere I go, because who knows when I will want to comment on a cute picture of a cat!?

Continuation of the story with Linux Mint 20 Cinnamon on the old Core2 Duo with 2 GB RAM and HDD. The guy has had that PC under Linux for 1.5 months now, had never had Linux before, has no IT background, and is over 70.

Upon visit, I checked how the machine was doing. OK, he had forgotten to apply the updates, so I highlighted paying attention to the red icon in the tray. Launched the updates, all ran through.

Otherwise, he had managed to install Skype all by himself (network effect because of his family...) and had bought a webcam plus a microphone. Linux had just recognised everything without any fuzz. Even his Skype buddies were impressed, he said.

On top of that, he likes how much faster that PC is compared to his much more current Win 10 laptop and actually uses the old Linux PC more than the laptop.

He also enjoys that Linux doesn't do weird things all by itself all the time. That's not his experience with Win 10.

Here's my current setup. Needs a bit of improvement still.

A few years back I thought getting two big touchscreens would be amazing to use for making music. I rarely touch them. They get dusty all the time. They are too reflective. The border around them is way too thick. They are too big to be useful in this configuration. I'll be replacing them with normal screens and probably go for a vertical arrangement instead.

As you can see, there's a fair bit of stuff on my desk. There's a USB sound interface that could be rack mounted but I've been too lazy to buy or make anything to house it. I have a pair of headphones, a wireless headset and a Rift hanging off of the microphone stand. I rarely use the microphone and guitar at the moment (considered trying some voice acting, not particularly good at guitar!)

The desk was originally 2 desks from an Internet cafe that was being refurbished. I cut the ends off them and joined them together to make a desk to fit the space I had and stuck some metal legs onto it (used to have a big ugly brown metal frame). Oh and made some holes to add cable grommets and it has an IKEA cable tray underneath.

There's also a slide out music keyboard underneath (made from some bits of wood and a drawer runner, it's quite clunky and I'm tempted to use some rack rails instead).

The drawers were to store stuff from my desk in but I just replaced that stuff with other stuff...

Fuck, I am really exhausted.
I am really burnt-out, I can't do this shit anymore.
Fuck this shit, here is my letter of resignation.
It is already signed, I won't do this shit anymore.
I will be jobless, but fuck this, I won't spend any more minute here.
*drop microphone*
The party is over.

FUCK LINUX

now that I have your attention, and you’re probably angry, too, please, even if you don’t read this rant, never use code.org again. now, onto the rant…

god dammit, code.org sucks. I mean, anyone who created it or associates with it should, well, be considered a terrorist. they’re bombing students futures in computer science with false, useless, bullshit information. not to mention, their sponsors like bill gates, mark zuckerburg, and other rich asses, talk in a video about some boring ass shit that is hard to understand for anyone who doesn’t program, and not to mention, they use a fucking five dollar microphone. ear rape. even if you look at a textual version of it, then read the information on it, it’s practically useless because it's so terribly explained, and also useless. ironically enough, they focus on their animations more than their actual explinations, or their students for that matter. the fact that we had to encode a picture in binary, made me about 50% dumber, give or take a 0 or 1. then, we had to do it in hex, which wasn’t really much better, although more realistic I supposed. what's really the most depressing thing about this class is its application in the real world. I've learnt nothing whatsoever that will help me in the real world, or in computer science. I suppose there's two things that may be useful (that I already knew): hex, and that TCP doesn't lose packets. that's it. those two things. five seconds worth of knowledge from the first quarter of the year. the ideas just make me want to throw up. teaching the main ideas of computer science without actually teaching it? one of the teachers (probably a good one) enrolled her students in an online programming course just so they could understand, because the explanations are just so terrible. this is the only [high school] computer science course offered by code.org, and I signed up because it's an AP computer science class (tried to get into AP Java, the day I was supposed to take the test to get into an upper level class, I was told it didn't count as a tech credit). seriously, fuck code.org. it makes you dumber. their 'app lab' environment is pointless, just like everything else. the app lab is basically where you have a set of commands and have to make a dog bark() or a storm trooper miss() [and that's hell when they haven't introduced while loops yet]. the app lab is literally code.org going out of their way to make everything that their students are learning pointless in the real world. seriously, why can't we just use a <canvas> like an ACTUAL PROGRAMMER would do if they were to make a browser game, not use an app engine so slow it would be faster to update windows and android studio each time I run an 'app' in their 'environment'. their excuse is that the skills "transfer over" to the real world. BITCH! IF I DIDN'T KNOW JAVA, AND I WANTED TO MAKE A GAME IN JAVA, I'M NOT GOING TO LEARN PYTHON, THEN "TRANSFER" THE SKILLS I LEARNT, I'M GOING TO LEARN FUCKING JAVA. AND THAT GOES FOR EVER OTHER LANGUAGE, PROJECT, ETC.

I'm begging you code.org, stop, get help.

My trusty old Nexus 5 had a broken microphone for a long time (only worked on speaker phone) and a couple of weeks ago the display died as well. Yesterday, I decided that I can't afford a new one so I took it apart. After a while I had successfully repaired both the microphone and display with small pieces of tissue paper. I guess anything is possible when you're a stubborn problem solver!

Meeting host: "So now that I've finished rambling on does anyone have any questions?"

Me: "Why are we not marketing the time dilation machine you appear to have developed and deploy during the course of this meeting?"

Co-workers laugh.

So glad that it turned out our microphone was muted...

!rant

In july chrome will mark all http-pages as not secure and firefox will follow.
Worst of all, those insecure pages won't be allowed to access the microphone and other features any more. What will i do in cafes now?

THE FUCK!!!!

Some stupid assholes on my company have adquired the idiotic habit to call me to supervise some videoconferences using Skype, Hangouts or other fucking systems that i never heard about. I hate it because is a big fat waste of time.You don't need a engineer to handle your stupid password mismatch, your "why this is so slow? can you fix the internet". Or why the sound is so crappy or why don't you have a better microphone. This are your fucking computers, and your fucking calls. what the next? sending your emails? Wipe your asses? is not my fucking role.

Next time I will put your notebooks inside your assholes. Your crap will be better transmitted for sure.

I assume this only happen in my country (Malaysia). We have multiple inconsistent lockdown...

So most of us went from working in the office to Working From Home. During this time Our employers expects us to clock in to Zoom Meetings or Dingtalk meetings for 24 /7 , microphone must be turned on and camera must be turned on at all time, other wise it consider as a void(that means salary deduction, not consider working) .

Employers here have the mentality of ""IF I DON'T SEE WHAT ARE DOING WITH MY OWN EYE , I CONSIDER YOU ARE NOT EVEN WORKING.".

I'M sick of this shit tbh.

OBS is advertised as the expert's screen recording and streaming tool, every list on the internet makes it out to be some incredibly difficult program not recommended for newbies.

It's also the only linux screen recorder that works out of the box on Pipewire, records both microphone and system sounds and all configuration was to
1. select recording as my main use case in the setup wizard which is a very verbose English popup, then accept all defaults
2. add a new source, following the instructions written in the box which are also the only instructions on screen after application launch
3. set the output directory (optional) by going to File > Settings > Output > Recording Path, all of which were the first items I guessed. If I had not done this, it would've written everything to my home folder which is a bit dumb but not confusing at all
4. click Start Recording
5. click Stop Recording when done

Some newbie-oriented screen recorders have a more complicated setup procedure than this super advanced experts' tool don't touch without safety gloves and a degree in video engineering.

Finally got my Bluetooth earphones!
It's called Pamu Scroll, funded in Indiegogo.
I bought it for $49 without shipping fee.
Now let me write a review about it here after using for about an hour or so.

1. Shipment
Shipment from China is slow and hard to track unless it is classified as EMS, which mine wasn't, obviously.

2. Packaging
It has some shock protection layer, but without that, nope! It was staying still inside the packaging though.

3. Design
Beautiful. Just beautiful. Period. Just see the picture below.
It opens as a papyrus, maybe that's why it is called Pamu Scroll. Both the case's end, and earphones itself has magnets to hold each other.
It has a leather feeling to both the inside and outside of the case, and the touch control area of the earphones is also leather feeling, adding a nice touch that differs with other earphonnes.
The diamond feeling finish in the end of the case makes the case itself isn't earphones, more like some expensive jewelry case.

4. Fit
My ears are smaller than most people, for I am young, so it sometimes fall off when I jump, but when I put it the correct way, never falls out.

5. Audio
I am not an audiophile. I don't really care about the audio quality and how it sounds like unless the sound is too cringy and has so many white noise.
This earphones has white noise, but just a little bit, you won't notice except when you are in a quiet room.
The bass is boosted, but low sounds, and vocals can be cringy sometimes, so I should manually tune them with my phone's equalizer.

6. IPX6
Not tested yet, but they advertise as using it in the shower.

7. Stereo call
Yup. Stereo call. Call in both ears. But only right microphone seems to get the voice.

8. Pairing
Using BT 5, it is a breeze to connect.
Take both of them out, put to your ear, then ding! "Connected"
Done.

9. Charging
with micro-usb
wireless charging for optional purchase - 10 bucks

10. battery
Reasonable amount
You have 3.5 hrs of listening time in both ears, and you can charge 2 times more each by putting in the case.

===============

Overall, it is awesome and let's just pray it doesn't break for at least for an year.

One side note, I can activate assistant by double tapping in the left ear (yes it is touch control), but my S8 asks me if I want to customize with Automate/Tasker. Yup!
Will share that later as well.

If you have any questions, ask me! Thanks for reading my first ever product review in devRant! <3

why do i have an iphone?

well, let's start with the cons of android.

- its less secure. this isn't even arguable. it took the fbi a month or something (i forget) to break into an ios device

- permission, permissions, permissions. many of the android apps i use ask for the not obscure permissions.
· no, you don't need access to my contacts
· no, you don't need access to my camera to take notes
· no, you don't need access to my microphone to send messages
· no, you don't need access to my saved passwords to be a functioning calculator

- not being able to block some apps from an internet connection

- using an operating system created and maintained by an advertising company, aka no more privacy

- i like ios's cupertino more than material design, but that's just personal preference

pros of ios:

- being able to use imessage, at my school if you don't have an iphone you're just not allowed to be in the group chat

- the reliability. i've yet a data loss issue

- the design and feel. it just feels premium

- if i could afford it, ios seems like a lot of fun to develop for (running a hackintosh vm compiled a flutter app 2x as fast as it did on not-a-vm windows)

so that's why i like iphones
google sucks

Joins Skype group dev talk
20mins in mutes microphone
Co worker mentions something I am working on
Me: starts talking for a minute
Coworker: randomly interrupts me, like legit no warning, he just started talking....
Me: wait what da faq

OH wait I'm not mute....

Shit

So in near future I'll buy myself some new nice headphones to hear amzing music alongside coding and the help of my new expensive DAC.
They problem is that I need to voicechat and the famous Modmics cost at least 50€.

So I made my own Modmic for 0€ out of an old headset (free) and a suction cup.

Voilà:

/*
"Not wk135, but blah blah blah"
Please don't misuse wk135 (Sorry)
It's about coding tests
Thank you. */

=>
A company took their technical test on this really weird website. There was a Windows Narrator guy's voice giving instructions while a timer was running. I had to flash my ID to the webcam and then fit my head on an outline on the screen. It was for a web dev position. I had to speak into the microphone to answer the Narrator's questions and then send the video to them. The questions were weird and hypothetical, mostly. I just thought that their process was dumb and unnecessary.

=>
I don't like aptitude and algebraic tests. One company, I remember, had their test on Google Forms. For some multiple choice questions, they put check boxes instead of radio buttons. So, I could just blaze through it selecting all options. Some of the questions had their first option as "All of the above" 🤔. Fortunately, I didn't pass the test.

=>
The company I'm interning with, starting from next month, had a good interview process. They asked me questions on JavaScript, CSS, and a few on algorithms and data structures. I was also given a task where I had to make a css animation of trees. I'm glad they didn't have an algebra entry test.
😊

Gdpr thing aside...

Does anybody read the new policy...

I just did for 2 apps (intel driver software and 9ga.. You know it)...

On the things that they collected on the side without you knowing include:
9ga:
Device memory, language, battery level, timezone, unique device identifiers, compass, accelorometer and microphone... Even service provider and signal strength

Intel:
Website you visit, how you use your computer(vague too vague) and computing environment.

Did anybody knew for sure before this that their apps are listening to them? That they just made a profile of you with all the data?

With all this they dont even need your ip they already know who you are and what you do on a daily basis...

There are 20 more but it will be waaay too much to write about. These 2 are way worse since 9ga doesnt use microphone for anything... And why a driver reads what websites i am going to?

my CTO is on 2 week vacation, guess what he did on his last day...
installed a camera with a microphone in our office. coincidentally right near the devs...

i'm afraid to talk with my colleagues...

Found out why Apple removed the headphone jack. Why need that if there are Bluetooth alternatives. Microphone might have a utility.

Joy is when you learn that long press on microphone button on your earphone changes the track..
No more need to Everytime unlock the phone to change the track..

While attending an internal training session (some joining the meeting online and some present in the room), an online attendee did not mute their microphone and proceed to eat a packet of crisps/chips. And not softly, but like a horse.

We were also recording it, so now we can listen to it over and over ...

So a few months ago, I got a half-broken old iPhone (microphone, speaker and cameras not working) for testing purposes and it lays 99.9% of the time on my shelf turned off. Today, I turned it on and after I opened Safari, I surprised in not exactly the most pleasant way.
When I started writing in the address bar a strange suggestion from Siri came up for a website my mom searched a few hours ago on her android tablet. Like what the actual fuck?? There is absolutely 0 connection between these 2 devices, there is PiHole running on local network. The only thing that I can think of is that she is using Google (logged out) and it looks like they are actively sharing their data based on IP addresses. Wow...

Lately I'm running into quite some negative atmosphere in meetings. Raise your hand if you think we all should improve our soft skills.

For example, we had a meeting with our client the other day. It was supposed to be only with the two most senior guys in the team and a couple of the less senior (just because one of us knows better the maths of it and the other one knows better about the limitations of the hardware), but in the end some other team members also joined.

In this meeting, we wanted to discuss an issue that had to be fixed. Quite a complex one. The main speaker from the clients, even though also technical, was having a hard time trying to explain properly to us what the issue was about. He was doing quite well, but it was complex enough. Well, one of the guys in my team kept interrupting him to ask very detailed questions (that would not help us understand it better, not until we got first the big picture). When I say "interrupting" I mean that the guy would half shout a question in the middle of a word from the client.

The client was patient and tried to answer, but our nice guy would keep answering back in a "gosh you really don't have a clue" tone.

We muted our microphone and one of the senior Devs asked the guy to please let them conduct the meeting, and that if he had such questions, he could mute the micro and ask them to us, so we knew we might have to ask about that.

Good. We unmute the microphone and 2 minutes after, our star guy goes in again and he even directs his question to someone else than who was talking (from the client).

Client gets pissed - I mean, I taught 12-16 year old teenagers for years and I don't think I would have hold it together for as long as the client did - and from then on all the meeting went in a really negative tone. Ending up with a call from the client to our senior guy to finish explaining in private the thing.

Well, our friend the interrupting guy not only got amazingly mad at the senior guy that (in private and constructively) gave him some advice on this kind of meetings. No, he also ended up spiraling into a close to insulting chain of emails towards the client -with his and our colleagues in copy- when he needed some specification.

Interrupting guy is 35yo and has been working with clients quite long. Our HR department still doesn't think we all should get communication workshops or something

The ones I said hi on microphone, grab wireless headphones and start playing fifa on PlayStation with friend, beat him couple of times and said bye.
Well maybe it was productive overall cause I had lots of fun.

People that don't realize their microphone is feeding back everyone's voice into the meeting. Mute your fucking mics people, or better yet buy a fucking pair of headphones or earbuds!

What the f*ck Microsoft, you made me go trough whole shitton of troubles just to play a music into microphone so I can play music in VRChat while pulseaudio in Linux can redirect the audio without any hassle. You total piece of shit!

It's fucking sad that when you buy a new laptop with good specs, good nvidia graphics, good sound and install Arch Linux because you hate fucking windows and arch way is the right way. But, then Linux fucks you because there is no proper nvidia support and you have to use wine which doesn't support new games and you run frequently into problems like audio (P.s. maybe in linux 4.10.11). You have to configure microphone everytime while using Skype and see some other guy having same laptop playing happily latest games without much burden.😣😣😥😥😔😔

When will Linux kernel be amazing for gaming??

Some of these apps might be using your microphone to extract your conversation and display you related Ads. 😱🙄

I'm trying to express a simple thought

I fucking love web and graphic design.

Bye. [Drops the microphone]

Just went to whatthefont on my phone and uploaded an image and it asked me for microphone permissions lol

I just called somebody beside me an idiot while the call microphone was on. Quick question: how do I dig a hole and bury myself?

Just did my interview with Turing & OMG!

2 questions, total of 30 mins to answer both questions, and there's a dude with access to your screen, camera & microphone watching your every move.

Went horribly. Utter failure. Not expecting to hear back from them.

Questions weren't related to the skills I said I had. They were general questions that could be answered in any language. I honestly wasn't ready to write code to split an array of numbers into 3 equal parts whose values when added would equal.

FML. Fuck this shit. I'm tired of all the bullshit (mine included)!

Eavesdropping by phone's microphone and speech recognition to serve targetted ads by Google? Anyone here had a feeling this happened to them or knows is this already a thing?

Happened to me on my Android phone multiple times over last year on different subjects, that I was talking live with a person, for example how someone had eyelid surgery (my phone was locked in my pocket the whole time and I didn't google search what that is, or made any text input into device whatsoever) and couple minutes later an ad came on my phone for exactly something we were discussing before. Weird coincedence or something more? 🤔

My pc has this weird glitch where anytime I install or uninstall a Steam game my headset microphone (Logitech G933) mutes, and I can only unmute it again after a couple of seconds. It's been this way for the longest time (though not always) and I have not the slightest fucking clue what could be causing it. Anyone else ever heard of something like this?

As we all know(or suppose) that Google is silently listening to us, is there any way to stop him without covering the microphone physically (I know it can be a suggestion)?

Like some trustable app to take the mic permissions so that Google will not be able to use that resource, or something else.

When your boss makes everyone cram around a single computer in the conference room for a video conference while yelling into the microphone because he thinks that each person on their own machine with headphones on attending the same meeting is unproductive and equivalent to playing online games on company time.

Anyone have an inexpensive (relative to...I dunno) microphone they use for recording audio?

I'm recording screen captures and adding narration for some 'how to' videos for my employer's apps.

The audio on my headset is really 'tin-y' and I want something that does better. Doesn't have to be spectacular.

Dear windows,

you maybe protecting my privacy when you block my microphone from all apps, including discord, audacity, OBS, Skype, everything.

Why do this though? I may as well completely protect myself from everything by turning off my PC.

Thanks for telling mw btw, I thought my microphone was broken.

Conference calls are all about playing the thrilling game of "Guess who's speaking?" 🤔🎭
The symphony of awkward pauses, microphone feedback, jitters, and the delightful sound of someone else's breathing into their mic. 📞🎶

Since day 0, I have been fond of computers. One of my first plush was called "DataDog" and looked like a CRT screen with dog ears around. According to my mum I was "addicted" to it.

At year 2, my dad was arranging some music on some software while I was watching him on his lap. Quick jump to the present: nowadays and since 10 years I run my own home studio with three guitars, two keyboards, one bass, three monitors, a microphone, an amp and a cabinet... coincidence? I think not!

Fast forward 5 years later (so I'm 6-7 years old), and I was playing with the legendary pinball game on Win95, as well as Flight Simulator. Then I was hogging mum's laptop to play settlers II (<3 that game), I eventually got my computer, and got into Quake III Arena being aged 10 (and had to tell my mum that game was safe for my age haha - I eventually removed the blood effects).

The Quake 3 Arena chapter is interesting: it got me into router configuration as I wanted to open a port through the router to host my own dedicated games with friends, it got me into DNS configuration (I was running a no-DNS client that allowed friends to join me through a DNS while having a dynamic IP) and eventually... to modifying .cfg files to tune my server as I wanted it. No programming here but a nice intro into :)

Then I hated the fact everybody would point their finger at me and say "geek" - I was only 13, fragile, sensitive, and I wanted everything but a bad image on me.

Meanwhile I continued on getting interested in hardware and configure my own computers, and investing myself into music production.

Then, university. "What do you want to study?" I thought of everything but IT, fleeing the image of a "geek". Turns out it was a waste of time, and at 21 yo I got into web development (well, just html and css), then learned a bit of PHP, finally got a specialized 2-year training and now here I am!

I was bound to be in IT either way since day 0, and funny fact, I've used every windows edition since Win95.

That feel when you realise that your 3 years old laptop's microphone has problems making it hard for others to hear you clearly and that the external microphone you have is useless (probably a bad batch tho).
And most shops are closed due to the lockdown here and you can't afford getting a new one or going to a store to test microphones.

First XLR microphone setup, €265..
Sending my USB mic back.
I really hope im satisfied with the new stuff when it arrives.

I've been wondering about the difficulties and security risk of allowing web apps to interact with native functions, such as file management. What would be the difference of letting web apps access native functions, and native apps doing it? I mean, we can already request access to features such as camera and microphone?

Is it all worth it? We feel its freedom, We feel it's just me and my phone or my PC. Is it? Is it that private? That camera you have ​on your phone, what if someone is watching you right now? That microphone you have, what if someone is listening to you right now? Those stuffs you Google, Those sites you visit, you're tracked, you're tapped. Ohh Incognito, Good Luck, there's no such thing called Incognito. Is it all worth it? In fact you're getting so much out of it. Is it all worth it? Or Am I just too obsessed? Is this Internet really that free?

It's freedom but you're compelled to use. Its freedom!
#internet_vibes

Fuck, I love my new Varmillo keyboard with black silents, its actually somehow quieter than my colleagues membranes. The membranes those guys use have a sharper "thump", whereas mine sounds muted.

Before buying a mechanical for use at work, I watched a lot of youtube videos on sound comparisons between different switches. I was worried about the noise levels because it didn't seem like there was a whote lotta difference between a dampened switch and a regular switch. It seems like everyone is cramming a microphone right on top of the switches and not a whole lot recording from further distances.

I recently bough a HifiBerry Pro DAC+ ADC for my raspberry pi.

That is when I remembered....

Linux is bad, but embedded Linux is worse.

I just wanted to connect via Bluetooth to a speaker and play sound through a microphone.

Unfortunately, after hours of configuring software, Bluetooth drivers and then testing python scripts with PyBluez, I still hate my life.

I guess the fancy new Linux GUIs (that compete with windows) really do not work correctly, because I swore the Bluetooth symbol was lit up in the top right.....

Kill me.

Interesting (worrying) thing that happened to me a few weeks ago:

One day, every time I clicked on youtube the button "add to playlist" on any video, youtube requested access to my microphone.

I'm in a GoToMeeting with a client right now and her baby is screaming into the microphone. Boy, I sure do love working with clients.

These days browsing through some sites firefox asked me to access to my mic and camera... According to you, why?

I think (and I hope) that was because of some specific sites...

I wish they always did this...

(Taken from my watch)

I heard Facebook hears your talks and gives u as recommendations when u speak about a thing frequently. I want to know if it still hears even if I have disabled microphone permission to the app?

My new microphone arrived.
I used to own Razer Seiren, but it died few weeks ago.
Now this cheap 60 dollar mic bundle's sound quality is on par with that Razer Seiren.

It just lacks all the functional buttons and knobs, and of course, a switch for illuminating logo.

Does anyone stream or run a YouTube channel here?
If so, what kind of content?

PS: Please, no links.

Glad to know I'm not the only one making such mistakes.

Edit: says: "Say "null" or tap on the microphone "

I have a website that requires microphone permission. How can I wrap it in ionic to make it into a mobile application? Any references, tutorials for this will be appreciated...

How come that nowhere on the entire internet it's mentioned whether the AirPods Pro also cancel ambient noise while using the microphone to talk to other people? Am I the only person in the world that would love to have a conversation through the AirPods while being at a noisy place without them complaining about my noisy surroundings? Why is literally no review talking about that (maybe missing) feature? Seems important to me...

ghub piece of shit

damn fucking shitty software. It happened to me in the past(like thrice times) that my mouse got randomly locked at the highest dpi until I uninstalled and reinstalled ghub... well it improved with the time and lately I haven't had that issue anymore, but hey today just for my daily stand up the mic decided to stop working out of the blue(headset is logitech too)... then fuck it didn't have time to troubleshoot that, made my way around using camera mic 🤪

Soon after I finished my meeting, decided to check on ghub to see if the software didn't detect the headset or whatnot... as soon as I tried to open it "ghub is updating", because of course, it can't tell you in any way that you should update it or your devices would not work until you open the goddamned software

So its strange to me, I can't seem to find a trustworthy method of converting android audio to microphone input to another android or linux device.

I found this thing called AudioRelay but I have some doubts.