Google’s watching you
Nothing to worry about. That Barcode on your forehead is just an electronic Tattoo.
Google has announced that its own Pixel Android phones will soon gain the power to measure users heart rate and respiratory rate. With the help of the Google Fit app, Pixel phones will measure breaths if users “place your head and upper torso in view of your phone’s front-facing camera and breathe normally.” Heart rates will …
"With a little bit of Google AI magic we can presume that it will automatically add a Calendar entry into your GMail account reminding you when you are likely to die be renewed."
There, FTFY
Well my mothers breathing slowed down more than that last night, and movement detection would have come in useful, as we weren't sure for a few minutes whether she had actually gone. Alternatively something to chill the screen of the phone, so it can be used as a mirror for detecting breath.
to be ticked.
This is well beyond anything that Apple has proposed.
I'd expect users to see targetted AD's for medication to counter the diagnosis that their AI has made.
you will know that you are in deep do-do when you get ads for Funeral Directors.
Another reason NOT to use anything with a Google brand or stamp.
Orwell would be turning in his grave if he read this.
Pixel phones will measure breaths if users “place your head and upper torso in view of your phone’s front-facing camera and breathe normally.”
Is this intended for measuring a heathy person's breathing rate during gaps during a training run or the like?
Whether useful for that, or indeed anything, rather depend on what thye mean by "normally".
Does it exclude deep or accelerated breathing? Shallow breathing? Require a static upper body? Hmmm...
There is at least one app, "Heart Rate Monitor" by REPS, that has been able to do the heart rate via camera thing since forever, I've used that on my last few phones. Respiratory rate, I don't know if there's an app for that, I haven't looked, so I guess that bit at least may be an innovation.
So has Google Fit improved much in the last few years? When I last used it, it would insist that I had done several miles of cycling every day, when I don't even own a bike; it was classifying some of my walking or driving as cycling, and there was no way to tell it otherwise. Hence I assigned it to the shit-by-design category and haven't felt the need to revisit it since.
I've used Heart Rate Monitor in years past, on previous phones. However, I have a very irregular heartbeat due to chronic A-Fib; the app doesn't count for a long enough time to give an accurate result.
As I said, it's been a few years and a few phones ago; maybe it works better now.
... human beings have somehow managed to cope without Google; and yet, even with Google, we still all die.
So, in the grand scheme of things, does Google really serve any good purpose at all? If Google disappeared tomorrow would civilisation come crashing down?
Who actually NEEDS Google?
And Lineage works just fine - once you've figured out how to install it!
> You could make that argument for any technological advancement more sophisticated than fire.
Utter nonsense. "Technological advancement" means precisely making stuff available to the general public, the advancement of humanity/civilization as a whole.
Besides, what would you say if you had an appendicitis, and the doctor just shrugged and told you to go learn to perform surgery? I think "Jerk" would be most peoples' first choice.
For years I advised my mum how not to be tracked by the police by her phone/devices. Then she said, "I'd quite like to be tracked by the police if I ever wandered off". She trusted the police more than herself.
The fragility and insecurity of old age throws up the mirror image of privacy concerns. I've since bought my parents all types of intrusive devices. I got them oximeters, stand-alone so not monitor-able, but I - and they - would like their blood oxygen level to be online. Apparently a sudden drop is a sign you are about to die from covid-19, yet my parents only remember to check their level when I prompt them. Stick that on a phone and we'll buy it.