10 ms·
That's backwards. The LED should be connected to camera's power, or maybe camera's "enable" signal. It should not be operable via any firmware in any way. The
by nine_k 2y ago
That's backwards.
The LED should be connected to camera's power, or maybe camera's "enable" signal. It should not be operable via any firmware in any way.
The led also has to be connected through a one-shot trigger (a transistor + a capacitor) so that it would light up, say, for at least 500 ms no matter how short the input pulse is. This would prevent making single shots hard to notice.
Doing that, of course, would incur a few cents more in BOM, and quite a bit more in being paranoid, well, I mean, customer-centric.
- jdblair 2y agoor, you can have a physical switch, like the Framework. that also hits your BOM but its not complex!
- SiVal 2y agoWould a bit of Post-It Note (for minimal adhesion) damage the screen coating if left on most of the time? Would even that much thickness stress the screen when opened and closed thousands of times? Is there a better (self-service) material?
- pcblues 2y agoPlastic slide covers that stick on are pretty cheap if your laptop doesn't already have one. I also think that the open microphone issue is a greater problem, especially with the current ability of speech-to-text, but what you utter may not be as important as being seen "doing a Toobin" during an online meeting. YMMV :) (I won't expand that acronym!)
- cuu508 2y ago> Would a bit of Post-It Note (for minimal adhesion) damage the screen coating if left on most of the time? Possible, I have one IPS monitor with a spot on screen where the color is pale. I had a post-it note there and I guess something bad happened when I tore it off.
- grvbck 2y agoI used electrical pvc tape for many years on my macbooks, no damage but I got tired of them leaving glue residue. Switched to post-its about 10 years ago, works perfectly. I've never tried them on a matte or coated screen though.
- ARandomerDude 2y agoI use painter’s tape for a similar effect.
- moregrist 2y agoI’ve used one for years on various MacBooks and it’s very effective. The paper is very thin so it causes no real mechanical stress and also opaque, so all the camera sees is a field the color of that paper. There’s been no damage to the screen from the adhesive although occasionally I’ve had to clean the residual adhesive with 70% IPA, but nothing worse than the typical grime that most laptop monitors pick up.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- oneshtein 2y agoYou can buy/print and stick a physical «webcam cover»[1] manually on your notebook or phone. My current notebook, manufactured in 2023, has very thin bar on top of screen with camera, so I need a thin, U-like attachment for the switch, which is hard to find. [1]: https://www.printables.com/model/2479-webcam-cover-slider https://www.printables.com/model/2479-webcam-cover-slider
- ddalex 2y agoAm I the only one that is not worried at all about the camera and super concerned about microphones ? The camera may see me staring into the screen, woo hoo. The microphones will hear everything I discuss, incl. confidential information. There is no physical microphone cover there, is it ?
- klausa 2y agoModern (2019-ish? forwards?) MacBooks have physical disconnect for microphones when the lid is shut.
- jack_arleth 2y agoFramework laptops have the same solution.
- jdblair 2y agoThe Framework has a physical microphone switch next to the camera switch.
- djtango 2y agoYes I really wish we could have a physical switch for device mic
- ykonstant 2y agoAs someone who often speaks gibberish to myself due to ptsd, if someone recorded me in my room they could convince anyone I am utterly insane, beyond any hope. It is a great way to blackmail people with coprolalia or other verbal tics. And yeah, if they had access to my webcam, they would just see a guy staring into the screen or walking back and forth in the room.
- goodpoint 2y agoThis is the right solution. And a hardware switch cost is completely negligible in a $1000 laptop.
- alwyn 2y agoMy previous HP Envy x360 had such a switch on the side of the laptop that would electronically disconnect the webcam; it would completely disconnect according to the system. Enabling it would show a new device being connected in `dmesg`. Not a great laptop otherwise, but that was pretty good!
- Vogtinator 2y agoMy envy x360 has that button as well and it even puts a physical shutter in front of the webcam in addition to disconnecting USB.
- throw646577 2y ago> The LED should be connected to camera's power, or maybe camera's "enable" signal. Wiring it in like this is suboptimal because this way you might never see the LED light up if a still photo is surreptitiously captured. This has been a problem before: illicit captures that happen so quickly the LED never has time to warm up. Controlling the LED programmatically from isolated hardware like this is better, because then you can light up the LED for long enough to make it clear to the user something actually happened. Which is what Apple does -- three seconds.
- kirkules 2y agoI mean can't you just have the input signal to the light be a disjunction of signals? So it's on if the camera is on OR if some programmatic signal says turn it on? I don't see why they should be mutually exclusive
- nine_k 2y agoPray read the third paragraph of my reply :) It specifically mentions a way to make the LED be lit for long enough.
- throw646577 2y agoWhich is not an adjustable method -- without changing the hardware design later in production to just tweak a delay -- and surely causes the LED to slowly fade out?
- 2y ago
- beAbU 2y agoYet some laptops (Thinkpads ironically) come with a built in camera shutter that's entirely mechanical.
- codedokode 2y agoAnd they often cost less than a MacBook for which you need to buy an external shutter.
- ComputerGuru 2y agoCameras are now always on, to reduce the latency to taking a picture or scrubbing video feed. You’d need to wire the led to something tied to the data lines, perhaps.
- gtirloni 2y agoAny links you could share abouy someone confirming this?
- vanilla_nut 2y agoSource? This seems extremely unlikely to me, running a camera all the time consumes a fair bit of energy and they don't take long to turn on. Unless that's because they're always on? Regardless, that's a pretty strong claim. I'd love to learn more if you have a link that can back you up!
- ewoodrich 2y agoMy M1 Macbook has some pretty extreme latency going from opening Photobooth black screen -> displayed image. Roughly five seconds to useable image. :00 Photobooth window open :03 Camera LED lights up :05 First image displayed
- saagarjha 2y agoThat's generally not the case. Keeping the camera on requires power and processing its video stream is resource-intensive.
- Thorrez 2y agoFrom this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42260379 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42260379 it sounds like Apple is doing something similar to what you suggest.
- kazinator 2y agoEven if the LED were controlled by hardware, merely that you can reprogram the camera firmware on this Thinkpad is troubling. Malicious things can be done without the ability to turn off the LED during recording. Like capture images during legitimate recording, or start recording with the LED on banking on the user not noticing. Firmware programming should require physical access, like temporarily installing a jumper, or pushing some button on the circuit board or something. (I don't want to suggest signed images, because that's yet another face of the devil).
- tehwebguy 2y agoIf the LED fails the camera should be inoperable too as a security feature