See the rest the comments for examples pedantic discussions about terms that are ultimately somewhat arbitrary and if anything suggest the singularity will be runaway technobabble not technological progress.
1. More cellphone companies is a good thing, especially if paying lipservice to what consumers want. Which may not be ideal but steps in the right direction, consumers themselves need to take the next step their since it is their money.
2. Feeling like your phone is listening to you implies you lack self awareness to deduce why the things you think or discuss with others are reflected in your metadata. You use the internet as a sounding board for thoughts, there is a pattern to it and that is all happening non-verbally. Turning the mic off is unlikely to make this go away.
3. If this makes you paranoid, it should and that paranoia only becomes medically relevant if it impedes your ability to do things you want to do but is otherwise a healthy adaptation that in many contexts would aide in your continued survival. This might be worth keeping in mind, not trying to run away from. Quick fixes in life generally are just traps.
Honestly if you care about privacy, leave your cellphone at home. It will do wonders for your mental health also not having a dopamine generator in your pocket.
I just want to point out that it sounds like the privacy switch doesn’t disable the cellular radio. Which I guess makes sense in a way because if you are disabling all signals from your mobile device, what’s the point of even carrying it? Might as well leave your phone at home.
Basically: "Watch me apply the UNIX philosophy to LLM agents. Look Ma, I am figuring stuff out! If I don't point out that's what I am doing, no one ever notices!"
Given that sugar pills still have a curative effect on some portion of patients and that 100% effective sounds pretty unscientific as a figure (nothing is 100% hence the need to use statistical confidence). I pray that I am wrong in smelling something being rotten in this lot but only time will tell.
As an American who values the quality of my life, there is little I wouldn't give for a working permit in any EU country, especially Germany. The grass is always greener I suppose, or maybe something of an ancestral longing (my paternal ancestor wasn't a willing emigrant, just a captured mercenary with no capo to negotiate with the British for the fare back to his Hessian homeland). Maybe a rarer inclination at present, but in another 50 years I doubt it still will be. It costs 40% less to live in Berlin (on average) than to live in my the fair Verona where I lay my scene, the San Francisco Bay Area, 40% less and a completely functional social safety net that doesn't let its old people starve to death on the streets! I am not sure what anyone means when they say freedom, its an amorphous concept but starving to death in the cold, that's a more visceral and topical thing I can see the hideous reality of by walking a block in any direction in SF. There but for God's grace go I.
------> Captain Obvious Strikes Again! <----------
See the rest the comments for examples pedantic discussions about terms that are ultimately somewhat arbitrary and if anything suggest the singularity will be runaway technobabble not technological progress.