The Furby source code is public and heavily commented. For example, it turns the microphone off when the motors are running.
Furby was the 1998 version of ChatGPT and tons of people thought it actually slowly learned English words. The NSA was alarmed. However it turned out the "learning" process was just on a timer and the "microphone" only triggers on loud sounds.
https://archive.org/details/furby-source
@SwiftOnSecurity My daughter had one of these things that was dormant for eons and then suddenly started talking in the middle of the night 😩
@jcurries @SwiftOnSecurity And they have no off button! And removing the batteries requires a fucking screw driver!
My wife vetoed the universal off button several times. I still think she was wrong.
@SwiftOnSecurity @mattb @jcurries the number of 90s parents who have VERY special words to share with her…
@jcurries @mattb @SwiftOnSecurity (otoh as a former 90s kid my honest open is that that was a legendary stroke of genius)