Oh, well, it turns out that keyboard sounds leak enough entropy to make it easy to attack even very strong passwords.
Microphones on devices such as Ring doorbell cameras are explicitly exfiltrating audio data out of your control whenever they're activated. Features like Alexa and Siri require, in some sense, 24/7 microphone activation, although normally that data isn't transmitted off-device except on explicit (vocal) user request. But that control is imposed by non-user-auditable device firmware that can be remotely updated at any time.
Finally, for a variety of reasons, it's becoming increasingly common to have a microphone active and transmitting data intentionally, often to public contexts like livestreaming video.
With the proliferation of such potentially vulnerable microphones in our daily lives, we should not rely too heavily on the secrecy of short strings that can easily leak through the audio channel.
Using a password manager is an easy and useful protection against audio leaks of passwords.
But this is an example of the kind of thing the OP is talking about. You're probably not at a very realistic risk of having your password hacked via audio exfiltrated from the Ring camera at your front door. Unless it's Mossad et al who want your password.
Like "you're probably not at a very realistic risk of having your phone wiretapped", this is overindexing on past experience—remember that until Room 641A commenced operations in 02003 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A), you weren't, and after it did, your phone was virtually guaranteed to be wiretapped. Similarly, you aren't at a very realistic risk of having your password hacked via audio, until someone is doing this to 80% of the people in the world. As far as we know, this hasn't happened yet, but it certainly will.
But again, that’s the Mossad scenario - NSA in this case. You’re essentially reinforcing the OP point. There are three threat models given in Figure 1 of the OP doc, and what you’re saying really only applies to the third.
I wouldn't say it "eliminates" it. Even without ethanol, gasoline still goes bad far faster than diesel. Gasoline is full of aromatic hydrocarbons that eventually will break down, and after a few years you're left with a brown stinky liquid.
Up until a year ago where I live, Chevron 94 Octane was ethanol free. I had issues with older carbureted engines after leaving gas in them for ~2 years. With E10 I wouldn't dare go that long as it can be so corrosive.
"However, animals like us do not experience salt desire as a powerful, controlling drive as we do with oxygen, food and water." (from the article).
I disagree with that, especially when I was young. I would crave salt. I would lick my hand and sprinkle salt on it, then lick the salt off. I would break chunks off the salt lick block we had for our horses. I would lick the homemade play-doh my mom would make because it tasted like salt.
There's no substantiation for the claim in the article that we lack a salt craving. Apparently, the author hasn't, but I know a lot of people that do.
I would contend that empiricism is inadequate to discern what is real and what is true. Much of human experience and what is meaningful to being a person is not measurable nor quantifiable.
The act of curating facts itself is required to communicate anything because there are an infinite number of facts. You have to include some and exclude others, and you arrange them in a hierarchy of value that matches your sensibilities. This is necessary in order to perceive the world at all, because there are too many facts and most of them need to be filtered. Everyone does this by necessity. Your entire perceptual system and senses are undergirded by this framework.
There is no such thing as "objective" because it would include all things, which means it could not be perceived by anyone.
The subjective/objective split is useful. What good is raising the bar for objectivity such that it can never be achieved? Better to have objective just mean that nobody in the current audience cares to suggest contradictory evidence.
It's for indicating what's in scope for debate, and what's settled. No need to invoke "Truth". Being too stringent about objectivity means that everything is always in scope for debate, which is a terrible place to be if you want to get anything done.
Ah yes. People who think like you and agree with you are rational, not prone to fear, disgust outrage, or protectiveness. But people who disagree with you are obviously irrational and can't be reasoned with. You are "educated" and they are "fear-mongers".
> But people who disagree with you are obviously irrational and can't be reasoned with.
You are saying this with sarcasm, but it is a tautology.
If I am factually correct, by definition, everyone who disagrees with me is irrational and can't be reasoned with.
Anti-vax is a great example of this. We have loads and loads and loads of evidence of the harm that not being vaccinated can do (now including dead children thanks to measles) and very scant evidence to the contrary (there is some for specific vaccines for specific diseases like Polio). However, until it hits an anti-vaxxer personally, they simply will refuse to believe it.
Of course, once an anti-vaxxer personally gets a disease, NOW the anti-vaxxers want the vaccine. Thus, demonstrating simultaneously that they actually don't understand a single damn thing about vaccines and that their "anti-vaxx belief" was irrational as well.
> If I am factually correct, by definition, everyone who disagrees with me is irrational and can't be reasoned with.
No, that doesn’t follow at all. Your arguments could be bad or irrational in themselves (right for the wrong reasons), and other people could hold beliefs logically follow from plausible, but wrong, premises.
Ignoring the strawman at the end, you're making their point for them.
Anti-vax is actually a horrible example of this because it can never be proven that vaccines don't harm us. Any non-infinite evidence will never reduce the probability to zero. You even allude to this point. If there is a single case of a harmful vaccine, or even a reasonable probability of one, then it isn't irrational to be cautious of vaccines. Just because the evidence is enough for you doesnt make anyone who disagrees irrational. That line of thinking just makes you irrational.
I say this as a fully vaccinated (including COVID) vaccine enjoyer.
> If there is a single case of a harmful vaccine, or even a reasonable probability of one, then it isn't irrational to be cautious of vaccines
The problem is that humans are really unsuited to statistical thinking, especially about risk, and what it means to "be cautious" about something. In this context, "being cautious" about vaccines means "being reckless" about disease, because you're rejecting the mitigation measures. It is not a good bet to roll the dice for your children against measles.
We have to recognize that there have been both incidents of vaccine contamination and of individuals who have had unexpected negative reactions to vaccines. You get advised about this every time you have one!
Perhaps the diagrams should include "one sided scale" as an argument.
Oh, no. You don't get to ignore my actual experience with people and Covid vaccines. I watched 3 different anti-vaxxers in my family die begging for a vaccine while doctors struggled to save their dumb asses (yeah, mass spreading event).
> it can never be proven that vaccines don't harm us.
That's your job to prove, Mr. Skeptical. Not mine.
I very much can prove that not getting a vaccine does harm you. I've got a handful of measles deaths to point to right now. We've got step function decreases in reproductive cancers due to HPV vaccination. We've got shingles vaccines showing decreases in dementia and Alzheimers. I can go on and on.
It's up to YOU to show the contrary that the harm a vaccine does outweighs it's benefits.
People don't seem to get that "being skeptical" is simply the first step. After that, you are required to begin the hard work of massing factual evidence as well as cause/effect relationships for your argument.
Otherwise you are simply "obviously irrational and can't be reasoned with".
> I say this as a fully vaccinated (including COVID) vaccine enjoyer.
"I'm not racist, but ..."
Sorry. Statement gives you no credibility or authority.
It’s impossible to argue with the biased framing you’ve setup: any single good outcome due to vaccines is sufficient to declare victory for your argument while opponents face defeat unless they show that all harms outweigh all benefits based on your evaluation methodology.
Anyway, for everyone else, the J&J COVID vaccine is known to cause heart problems in certain men and boys. Here’s an article about the issue from the pre-RFK HHS era:
>J&J COVID vaccine is known to cause heart problems in certain men and boys
And what is the risk if you get COVID and are unvaccinated? I can't say there is no risk to drinking water, but I can say that there is a huge risk of dying of dehydration from not drinking water.
How is your framing any better? Who claimed vaccines are 100% harmless and have zero chance of injury? The claim was that the chances are vanishingly small.
> If there is a single case of a harmful vaccine, or even a reasonable probability of one, then it isn't irrational to be cautious of vaccines. Just because the evidence is enough for you doesnt make anyone who disagrees irrational. That line of thinking just makes you irrational.
There's a difference between "(ir)rational" and "(ab)normal human thinking". What you describe is both irrational and also very normal for humans.
To illustrate what I mean, I'll put the probabilities into terms of dice rolls:
Before vaccines:
Roll a normal, fair, six-sided dice, once. If it's even, you died. (Pre-industrial society, half of us died young of what are now easily preventable illnesses).
With vaccines, at current safety thresholds for fatal reactions:
Roll a normal, fair, six-sided dice, seven times. Even for borderline cases where the vaccines are covering serious illnesses, you'd need to roll 1-2-3-4-5-6-1 in that order to see a fatal adverse reaction, otherwise the vaccine is withdrawn from the market. (~1 per quarter million cases).
But, just like people don't really have a rational intuition for how a "billionaire" is a thousand times richer than a "millionaire", people don't really have rational intuition for probabilities like these. I suspect our intuition on probability is more like "here's 8 bushes, a deer is hiding behind one, which one?", because of how often people act as though being unlucky for long enough means they're due for a win. And I really do mean eight bushes, because of how badly we handle probabilities even in the 5% range.
I agree with your view completely. I see the current use cases for AI to be very similar to the practices of augury during the Roman Empire. I keep two little chicken figurines on my desk as a reference to augury[1] and its similarity to AI. The emperor brings a question to the augurs. The augurs watch the birds (source of pseudo-randomness), go through rituals, and give back an answer as to whether the emperor should go to war, for example.
They have a pamphlet available one more click away from the link you shared that gives detailed information on how undocumented immigrants can get free/reduced-cost health care, and what all of their options are: https://www.wahealthplanfinder.org/content/dam/wahbe-assets/...
Just because it's illegal doesn't mean it isn't happening. From a May 25, 2025 article on the official CMS website: "The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced today increased federal oversight to stop states from misusing federal Medicaid dollars to cover health care for individuals who are in the country illegally. Under federal law, federal Medicaid funding is generally only available for emergency medical services for noncitizens with unsatisfactory immigration status who would otherwise be Medicaid-eligible, but some states have pushed the boundaries, putting taxpayers on the hook for benefits that are not allowed."
Emergency Medicaid is provided due to EMTALA passed in 1986. There's nothing illegal about it.
Both of those sources are just bullshit propaganda. There are no 'open borders'. You're just being manipulated.
They also are really poor about citing evidence for their claims. The best thing they've got is a vague '124 percent more' with no real figures, and 'some states have pushed boundaries'.
If they want to tighten policy around what qualifies as emergency care then be my guest. The rest of this is just pushing a bullshit narrative.
I didn't say anything about emergency medicaid being illegal. What I did was present evidence that illegal immigrants do, indeed, use Medicaid funds in the form of emergency care, and I presume those are the records that are now being reviewed by ICE. Your original claim was that illegal immigrants don't get Medicaid, but you neglected to consider emergency medicaid funds.
Can you elaborate on this? I don't understand the context for malicious microphones and how that affects secure passwords.