I haven't seen any credible evidence that any of the reputable brands of smart speakers send anything other than what you want to send (e.g. the sentence after you say the watchword) to their servers.
Yes they are constantly listening, but this is just for the watch word (as a cue to start listening/sending) but they lack the on-device ability to convert anything else to text on their own. All they can do on their own is listen out for the watch word.
Certain smart TVs on the other hand, are known to constantly stream audio back to their HQ as they don't have on-board watchword detection.
Of course you can set up firewalls and VLANs to have the best of both worlds. You can remotely interact with an IoT device like this to set them off or check the status, but the device itself can't see anything else on the local network.
I have all of my IoT devices on separate Wifi network(s) and VLANs and almost all of them are isolated so they can't talk to each other, plus I occasionally look at how much data they are sending/receiving from the Internet (some is expected obviously, and it differs by device).
Doing this requires a considerable amount of admin work and IT knowledge though. It also requires something a step above most consumer grade or supplier provided networking equipment.
I've never spotted anything egregious like the coffee maker in the OP but if I did I'd be making sure other people knew about it and the device itself is either firewalled off properly or replaced by a brand that isn't a security risk.
> Doing this requires a considerable amount of admin work...
As someone who has done this, it's a one-time cost (as long as you're not the sort who simply can't stop tinkering with it and ends up totally rebuilding it like once a quarter (don't ask me how I know)) and -if you have even just a shaky understanding of how to do it- it's not _that_ large of a cost.
> ...and IT knowledge though.
I definitely agree that doing this requires quite a bit of IT knowledge... but it's all stuff that's pretty easily learnable for anyone who's interested in technical stuff and/or technically-inclined.
For folks who are looking to do this on their home LAN, I have some hardware manufacturer recommendations:
All of this VLAN work will be entirely pointless if your switches can't be programmed to enforce the separation, so one will need "managed" switches of some kind. I'd recommend anyone who wants to try to do this to have a look at Mikrotik switches... they are inexpensive and definitely more than good enough for a fancy home LAN.
Mikrotik also sells routers and WiFi APs. I can't comment on the quality, as I have slapped together my own router PC and use OpenWRT Ones for my APs... but I've found their switches to be more than good enough for my fancy home LAN. Perhaps their routers and AP are equally good?
Mikrotik publishes pretty comprehensive documentation here [0]. If you want to dick around with the Mikrotik management CLI for RouterOS -which is their name for their fancy management software- you can install the x86 version of RouterOS in a VM by booting a VM from one of the x86 install images at [1]. They also have a much simpler management software that you can run on all of their switches called "SwOS" -documented here [2]- but that doesn't have any x86 installation media so you can't play with it on your PC.
There are still some "Forever" stamps (those with pictures on or Christmas Stamps) but the old non-QR code non-forever stamps stopped being legal a while back (but you can always swap them for the new ones for free).
I've had people try and reuse a QR-coded stamp, you just get a postcard saying there's an item of mail with invalid postage for you to collect (and pay for). You get to look at it before you decide whether to pay the fine or not and then your argument is with the sender to reimburse you or not.
This was almost my thought for mitigating USA stamp fraud. Exchange Forever stamps for $currentValue stamps, but show your ID so you’ll be subject to extra scrutiny if you try to trade in a million of them. (QR code’s better and more fair.)
Rhetorical question aside, federal elections use voter rolls that identify each potentially eligible voter and actively monitor for issues like double voting. There's no "forever stamp-holder" roll for the USPS to check.
I think they’re saying there is more evidence of fraud in stamps because of the direct monetary value, where there is no evidence that our current registration-time voting controls need to be supplemented with additional friction at voting time, because what little evidence there is of voter fraud is mostly just lies: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/24/us/politics/nevada-voters...
“Forever” stamps in US terms are what 1st class / 2nd class stamps have always been in the UK since they appeared in the ‘80s, where they remain valid for a level of service forever. The US went through a weird phase where they had 1st class stamps, but they would only actually be for the monetary value of whatever the 1st class rate was when issued, so if the rate went up you’d have to add extra postage.
The basic split between what has barcodes and what doesn’t it that the everyday “definitive” stamps (both 1st/2nd etc. and those with a direct monetary value) were withdrawn and reissued with barcodes, but commemorative and special stamps weren’t. Basically, stuff sold to stamp collectors to be put in a box and never used on postage doesn’t have them.
> but they would only actually be for the monetary value of whatever the 1st class rate was when issued, so if the rate went up you’d have to add extra postage.
Reminds me of our monetary stamps. They were the old fashioned monetary value stamps which had a fixed value on it, so when the price hiked you could get 5ct/1ct stamps to add to get to the new rate, fixed value of the stamps stayed the same. People added real money to it since they were not going to buy a full sheet of 5ct stamps for one older one to compensate. And since the mail usually didn't care you sometimes got a free 5ct coin as recipient! (As a kid this was always fun to receive).
Fun thing is that those coins are way heavier than the paper so adding them might get you onto the next cost bracket making the whole excersize pointless.
Stamp value still matters in the US for normal letters because of the janky way extra weight is priced. In particular, the current price of a max-weight letter is two stamps plus 5 cents.
My $150 "smart toothbrush" (some Oral B iO model) has accelerometers to track its head position and the app lets you know if you're not covering certain areas well enough. Since using it properly (i.e. checking the app and adjusting my brushing) I don't have to go to the hygienist as often.
As I said it showed me I was neglecting certain areas over time and fixing that saved me more than the price of the toothbrush in under a year.
But feel free to continue to disagree with it as a gimmick. In my experience most people that do this are some of the lucky people that could brush their teeth once a week with a stick and still have no dental trouble, meanwhile a small percentage of people seem to have to take great care of their teeth, avoid a vast array of food/drink, and still end up paying out thousands each year to a dentist. Genetics plays a big part in it and you don't get to pick your genes.
None of the original 5 buildings at Telehouse in London have any dishes on the roof but the new Telehouse South a few hundred yards to the South seems to have some on the roof but they don't look like they are for a SpaceX groundstation.
SpaceX groundstations look a bit different, they are a bunch of white domes about 1-2m in diameter, usually 8 or 9 of clustered together.
It's handled by Arqiva here in the UK it seems, so no SpaceX branding on anything.
SpaceX also applied for two new grounds station sites in the UK, one a few miles West of Telehouse, south of Rainham. The other site is up in Harlow, Essex.
(I don't think any of this is secret, all of the info above can be found with some googling and scrolling in maps.)
I used to have private peering with a satelite provider at telehouse, one which downlinked from GEO in Amsterdam and presented traffic direct. They simply backhauled it over their own network (tagged as mpls I guess). Indeed it would arrive on that link even when downlinked on other stations around the globe.
Yes they are constantly listening, but this is just for the watch word (as a cue to start listening/sending) but they lack the on-device ability to convert anything else to text on their own. All they can do on their own is listen out for the watch word.
Certain smart TVs on the other hand, are known to constantly stream audio back to their HQ as they don't have on-board watchword detection.
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