Pro-tip: Invest in a pistol grip dispenser guns, cheap ones start at like $10 and pay for themselves in saved anger quite rapidly.

No matter how rarely you think you’d use it - it’s worth it.

It probably wouldn’t meet the strict legal definition, as no copy (physical or digital) is left behind for any period of time - as RAM is volatile and its contents disappear on power cycle.

I should look forward to Trump getting charged with that, then?

But more seriously, there would be countless lawyers happy to argue that a general statement such as “$500 to every adult in the county if John Smith wins” does not technically break that particular law because it’s not explicitly targeted at any one individual recipient, nor is it contingent on them participating in an election whatsoever.

Just as I’m also sure there would be more than one sympathetic Trump-appointed judge to side with the defendant too.

US laws mean nothing if they aren’t actively being followed.

Technically, the equivalent would be you standing outside a polling place with a sign saying “I will give every adult in the area $500 if Candidate X wins”.

Ostensibly, you could just be lying (just like Trump) - and that would probably be covered under your 1st Amendment rights.

It’s stupid, but there is enough of a disconnect between action and reward that it might skirt past.

There is probably some technicality in that since it doesn’t record audio, but rather just keeps a transcription - that it might not fall afoul of two-party consent?

I would still be extremely wary; HDMI as a spec has the ability to carry Ethernet data.

I wouldn’t put it past the manufacturers from giving it a couple of years for this news cycle to pass from user memory, before trying more nefarious methods to try and exfiltrate data by piggybacking through connected devices like a Chromecast.

That’s mostly because I don’t trust Google to not help facilitate that for a share of the profits and access to the data for AI training.