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Well there are certainly folks who still don't have smartphones today because they think like you. Good luck!
by product50 8y ago
Well there are certainly folks who still don't have smartphones today because they think like you. Good luck!
- ocdtrekkie 8y agoAnd we are just now starting to figure out that those people were way smarter than those of us who bought into smartphones. Hence even Google pushing the whole "well being" thing this year at I/O. (I've had a smartphone since 2009, but am strongly considering something dumber next time around.)
- blackflame7000 8y agoThere are 7 Billion people in this world. I've have come to accept I am simply not that important. I'm sure BigBrother has too.
- ocdtrekkie 8y agoThis statement both ignores the tremendous effect smartphones have on you personally (as opposed to others being interested in you), and the tremendous effect tech platforms have on large scale groups of unimportant people.
- blackflame7000 8y agoOh no doubt, and it does so intentionally. A voice assistant in my house effects me and only me. Therefore, I am ok with the privacy/convenience tradeoff because frankly IDK what Google thinks they know about me, but I google way too much random crap to ever put together a half-way decent profile about me and my interests.
- ocdtrekkie 8y agoThe whole point of big data is finding patterns in large amounts of seemingly random information.
- blackflame7000 8y agoMaybe, but HFT have been working a long time to find a pattern in the markets. Human's are random and Sampling can only tell you so much especially when sampling bias is so easy to do accidentally
- sah2ed 8y agoHumans can be spontaneous yes, but not exactly random. In aggregate, human behavior from online activities is predictable [0] according to Seth Stephens-Davidowitz in Everybody Lies. 0: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/review/B01AFXZ2F4/R2TPT5454UEKLK/ref=cm_cr_dp_mb_rvw_1?ie=UTF8&cursor=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/review/B01AFXZ2F4/R2TPT5454UEKL...
- blackflame7000 8y agoTo Quote the link you just posted, "Secondly, it's usually quite hard to control for all possible variables that may reflect a Google search; for instance in concluding that racism contributes the most to a particular political behavior, it's very hard to tease out all other factors that also may do so, especially when you are talking about a heterogeneous collection of human beings. How can you know that you have corrected for every possible factor? Thirdly and finally, the "science" part of "data science" still lacks rigor in my opinion. For instance, a lot of the conclusions the book talks about are based on single studies which don't seem to be repeated. In some cases the sample sizes are large, but in other cases they are small. Plus, people's opinions can change over time, so it's important to pick the right time window in which to do the study. All this points to great responsibility on the part of data scientists to make sure that their results are rigorous and not too simplistic, before they are taken up by both politicians and the general public as blunt instruments to change social policies. This responsibility increases especially as these approaches become more widespread and cheaper to use, especially in the hands of non-specialists. When you are in possession of a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail." - Thank you for making my point for me.
- sah2ed 8y ago
- r00fus 8y agoGo ahead and be an unpaid data gathering tool that can be used by bigcorps, those with the right exploit or (even if they don't do now) when ToS changes and that company starts selling your information to the highest bidder. They profit at your ignorance. The fact that it will execute commands with your recorded voice should tell you there's a lot of exploits that can happen without your intervention. If I want a device to start listening I'll go and push a button for it. The always listening stuff is way too big an vulnerability (like an unsecured API into your house).
- blackflame7000 8y agoI exist, and I also need email. Seems like a win-win for me and google. Realistically, what are you afraid of? Like I said if someone wanted to listen to me it would be very boring.
- icebraining 8y agoIf the only people who use private communications are those who need it, they'll be much easier to track, and that harms you indirectly.
- blackflame7000 8y agoI mean they can only track what I choose to share with them. They don't have some magic wand that breaks HTTPS.
- 908087 8y agoActually, they do. It's called Google Analytics, and it exists on a very large portion of the web. TLS isn't going to help protect you when the site you're on is loaded with user tracking and analytics scripts anyway.
- ocdtrekkie 8y agoThis is why Google's pushing HTTPS Everywhere so hard, just like net neutrality: It eliminates Google's competition in collecting and monetizing data about your viewing. Google will claim that they make these moves because they care about your privacy, security, and freedom, but malicious tracking scripts they don't do anything about, because that would close off their own profit scheme.
- larkeith 8y agoI'm going to keep blatantly promoting the Librem 5 [1], which is designed specifically to address these concerns (not affiliated with them, just a fan). [1] https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/
- grizzles 8y agoI'd be careful about promoting vapor as people tend to get annoyed when they don't get their product. If Purism ships, I doubt it will be anything decent. They are absurdly under capitalized for what they are trying to do. I'd love to be wrong but I'd happily bet 5 figs that I'm not.
- losteric 8y agoWhy do you say they're "absurdly" under-capitalized? They already make laptops. The phone's hardware seems fairly standard, no risky R&D gambles, and the software is Linux/OSS...
- grizzles 8y agoThey re-badge laptops that someone else makes. It's not like they have their own factory in China. In this case they are not re-badging, they are building their own phone and phones are considerably harder to make. There are QA processes that require machines that cost >$1M. It puts them into a situation where they have to trust their manufacturer 100% and pray. Essential spent ~$100M making their phone and they had help from Foxconn and awesome industry connections. $2M isn't gonna cut it.
- auslander 8y agoIt is impossible to run Intel or AMD laptop without using their firmware blobs. Check Libreboot FAQ. Only free thing at the moment is ARM, like Marvell CPUs.
- mwcampbell 8y agoWhy not Android without the Google services, e.g. LineageOS or CopperheadOS? IMO, for the category it targets -- devices for users that have neither the skill nor desire to be their own sysadmin -- Android is technically superior to the usual GNU/Linux stack. GNU/Linux is moving in the right direction with sandboxed Flatpak apps, but Android is already there. Also, Android is a thoroughly mainstream platform. So if you don't want to be a free-software purist, you can run individual proprietary apps, as long as they're available outside the Play Store and don't require Google services. With a GNU/Linux system, unless it can run Android inside a container, you're basically limited to web applications for anything mainstream.
- jhall1468 8y agoI don't feel dumber. I traded information to Google in exchange for convenience. Now maybe that wasn't worth it to you, but I'd avoid speaking for all of us. My smart phone makes me a functional member of society, that's worth a bit of privacy.
- millstone 8y agoWhat if you could have that convenience without trading information? Weather, stock prices, recipes, music, traffic, timers, shopping lists, etc. don't require sharing any of your personal information.
- ReverseCold 8y agoRight, what if? Someone needs to make it happen.
- Zombieball 8y agoFor free?
- ctz 8y agoI'm interested in how you think weather or traffic (for example) would work. Would you download all weather and traffic for every location/road on earth? That's quite a lot of data.
- Majestic121 8y agoI don't think it is required to have a smartphone to be 'a functional member of society'.
- jhall1468 8y agoFor me it is. I have ADD and my phone is a God send for not forgetting things.
- thoughtpalette 8y agoI can never go back to not having the worlds map/navigation in the palm of my hand. I would love to go back to a dumb phone if not for the very crucial feature for me.
- product50 8y agoThe corollary of being privacy conscious is NOT being stupid. Folks may be privacy conscious and all power to them to navigate the web/mobile world by making respective choices. However, A LOT of folks are perfectly fine trading off their privacy with convenience and value-add that comes with sharing data with companies (that use the said data to provide better and customized experiences to them). Categorizing people who make these trade offs as less smart is missing the point - and probably cynical since you can't accept them.
- taurath 8y agoOne would argue that it’s only because they’ve nothing to lose at the time. I imagine sometimes all the smart motivated people who would never ever run for office or be a public figure of any sort because they’re afraid of their search or post history of their teens or 20s cropping up. I’ll bet it’s actually quite a massive amount. I’m certainly in that boat.
- ehsankia 8y agoNot at all, those things are mutually exclusive. You can have a device that is useful and makes many facets of your life much better, but is also hurting other parts. You can still keep the former, and try to reduce the impacts of the latter. If smartphones were completely useless, then we wouldn't actually need well-being features, we would just throw away our phones...
- CaptainZapp 8y agoIf I could get a dumb phone with reasonable fast WiFi hotspot functionality I'd jump on it in a heartbeat. It just doesn't seem to exist.
- jacobush 8y agoIIRC Nokia had one.
- seabrookmx 8y agoI know it's less convenient, but there's dedicated WiFi hotspot devices that exist. I considered getting a "dumb phone" and one of these devices because in some cases a tablet-style internet-only plan + pay-as-you-go minutes for the odd time I use a phone would be cheaper than a bundled smartphone plan. At this point saving the $10/month isn't worth the hassle to me though and now I use Slack on my phone so damn much it'd never work :\
- pjmlp 8y agoSymbian phones, sadly now dead (yes I don't miss Symbian C++, but the phone was great).
- vazamb 8y agoLook at the new Nokia 'matrix phone' 8110. It is a dumb phone with some smart features and most notably 4G and WiFi hotspot functionality. At only 80 dollars or so. I am seriously considering getting one just as an experiment
- CaptainZapp 8y agoThank you very much. Sounds exactly like what I'm looking for.
- Kiro 8y agoNo, people are not "starting to figure out" anything here. That's just your and a small minority's opinion.
- larkeith 8y agoThis is a false equivalence; There is a slight difference between owning a smartphone with privacy and data collection management options and actively bringing into your home a device designed and acknowledged to constantly record and transmit data.
- function_seven 8y agoThey aren't designed to constantly record or transmit. If they were sending that kind of info out the WAN connection, it would be noticed the day it's enabled. If you trust Google to honor the privacy and data collection management options, then I see no reason not to apply that same level of trust to their home speaker product. Now, whether these devices are capable of doing this on a targeted basis, that's possible. That same possibility exists with the closed source baseband chip in all our smartphones as well, though.
- lwansbrough 8y agoAre they wrong? It's not like phone (hardware or service provider) companies have exactly proven their ability to not spy on or advertise to you.
- StreamBright 8y agoAnd your point? I am thinking about not having a smartphone since non of the companies offer a product that does what I want to do with a smartphone.
- Sir_Substance 8y agoTextbook strawman argument. "A straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not presented by that opponent.[1] One who engages in this fallacy is said to be "attacking a straw man." - Wikipedia. We don't know anything about how the parent poster uses his smartphone, if he has one. Learn to recognise 'em people :)