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Amazon and Apple are building rival networks that know where everything is
- Mathnerd314 7y agoI guess "quiet" is "Jeff Bezos bringing it up in an interview with reporters". Whereas "secretive" is "Google CEO confirms leaked documents are genuine in interview with reporters". So "loud" must be buying ads in every TV slot, radio, and billboard so that nobody could possibly miss it. I don't think it's fair to apply terms humans use to corporations.
- OrgNet 7y ago> I don't think it's fair to apply terms humans use to corporations. ... but corporations are people, according to the law. (ie: you can't say someone said something just because someone else said it.)
- saagarjha 7y agoUnfortunately the context of this conversation isn’t a courtroom.
- OrgNet 7y agowhy unfortunately?
- kazagistar 7y agoIts peace is fortunate, conflict is unfortunate. Pointing out that someone is wrong is unfortunate. The fact being states is unfortunate because it contradicts the above post, implying a conflict. This is a fairly common use of the word unfortunate.
- JohnFen 7y ago> but corporations are people, according to the law. Except that's not really what the law says (in the US, anyway).
- merpnderp 7y agoExactly, the law SCOTUS ruling associated with this claim says that just because people combine their resources under a corporation, you can't take away their first amendment rights.
- GWSchulz 7y agoQuietly my ass. Both are promoting it as a way to make an estate or corner of earth internet-connected, rather than just a single structure.
- dang 7y agoOk, we've disquieted the title above.
- Jun8 7y agoInteresting bit: "In its testing, though, [Amazon] sent out 700 gateway devices to Amazon employees in the Los Angeles basin, and because each one has a range of between 500m and up to a mile, Amazon was able to "basically cover where everyone lives in LA" Whoa! Article also mentions the Ring ecosystem but this may have major impact on Amazon's home delivery bottleneck. I would totally buy a (cheap, small) personal lockerbox for my condo if it interfaces with Ring Bridge. AFAIK, they tested the apartment complex lockerbox idea some time ago but didn't take on. Maybe time for a retrial. For Apple's ultrawideband, article focuses on in-home consumer but this has huge impact for enterprise, too. Many warehouse customers are looking into cheap ways for indoor locationing/tracking of assets, e.g. forklifts.
- gnopgnip 7y agoAmazon offers lockboxes for condos and apartments called amazon hub, it is on the order of $10k upfront for a 100 unit building, no ongoing cost.
- Jun8 7y agoOur building has 7 condos so this solution is an overkill. Yet, every day we have 4-5 boxes from Amazon laying around in the entrance of the building. Rarely, neighbors pick up the wrong package.
- _asummers 7y agoThe pricing makes it seem like it's meant more for the couple dozen to couple hundred unit buildings than 7. With 7, you know your neighbors for the most part. With 25, you probably don't, so I imagine theft goes up much more quickly.
- oarsinsync 7y agoMy previous block was ~100 apartments. Packages were either left in front of apartment doors, or in the mail room in front of the (very small) letterboxes. I'd have packages delivered 2-3 times a month. In 2.5 years, not a single package was stolen. My takeaway from this experience is that most humans are decent people. Or that I live in a sufficiently expensive block that nobody has any desire to steal anyone else's stuff.
- Taniwha 7y agoOf course Apple's "unlicensed 900MHz band" doesn't exist in ITU region 3 (here in NZ, and I suspect China too) the ISM band is used by cell companies ....
- diegoholiveira 7y agoThis band is used here in Brazil too.
- saagarjha 7y agoIsn’t it Amazon’s unlicensed 900MHz band?
- AndrewKemendo 7y agoAnd Google with their Visual Positioning System: https://ai.googleblog.com/2019/02/using-global-localization-to-improve.html https://ai.googleblog.com/2019/02/using-global-localization-... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8mfQFGNdr8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8mfQFGNdr8
- nomel 7y agoMy prediction from 2008 finally came true: https://nomel-blog.tumblr.com/post/47669161/idea-picture-based-cps-city-positioning-system https://nomel-blog.tumblr.com/post/47669161/idea-picture-bas...
- chinathrow 7y agoCan anyone explain what the next play is here? Is it tracking of devices without being able to turn it off?
- pkulak 7y agoI assume it's being able to track an object, with extremely high precision, anywhere in the world (that's populated) without relying on a data or GPS network. That seems huge to me.
- alanbernstein 7y agoWhat is the problem with using GPS?
- klodolph 7y agoGPS works poorly in urban areas (newer chipsets are better at this, but it’s still rough) and doesn’t really work indoors at all. GPS will tell you that your phone is at home, UWB will tell you that it’s on the dresser in the bedroom.
- fourthark 7y agoGPS will tell a device where itself is. The device still needs to go online to tell anyone else where it is. This, IIUC, will tell you where a thing is without it being online.
- klodolph 7y agoIt’s location accuracy improvements in urban and indoor areas, which is notoriously poor. UWB is supposed to let you know how far away other devices are, and in what direction. This will let you e.g. find your device if you left it somewhere in your house, or give you an UI to Airdrop to someone next to you (rather than just showing everyone in range), etc. Other location services are supposed to let you navigate indoors. I don’t think there’s really “the next play” as much as there’s a bunch of marginal improvements, and a bunch of people who hope that there will be some killer app for location services that they can dominate.
- batrat 7y agoTime to start making tin foil hats. They will sell like crazy. (looking for investors)
- GhettoMaestro 7y agoAlso time to make those shape-shifting suits from A Scanner Darkly (reference being from the movie version - it actually isn't too bad if you have not seen it).
- bookofjoe 7y ago>it actually isn't too bad if you have not seen it Does that mean it IS bad if you have seen it?
- egypturnash 7y agoThe scramble suits were straight out of the book.
- robocat 7y agoI think Philip K Dick would deeply be into the surveillance aspect of what we're discussing. Any well written fiction published over the last few months that tries to tie recent events together (ignoring the deepstate chemtrail anti crowd?).
- Havoc 7y agoApples approach seems far superior. Medium range stuff tech is already out there. See z wave and zigbee. You can hack that stuff together without much cost. Precise location indoors has no real equivalent currently
- giancarlostoro 7y agoMan I use the heck out of Z wave. Basically after buying my first home not too long ago I noticed the alarm system could update the weather without wifi... It intrigued me so I looked into it and sure enough its all z wave. I bought a USB adapter for my Raspberry Pi 3 and installed OpenHAB on it. I can now control my thermostats (I have 2 AC units) from a web UI. Who needs a NEST? And its in other things too. As for tracking... It depends on what I want to track but with a couple Raspberry Pi Zero Ws you can probably hunt down specific devices around the home if they have bluetooth / wifi. Whatever Pi has it closest to it is the one you wanna search near. Not sure if bluetooth can tell you signal strength but I am pretty sure wifi does since you see the signal bars. Those come from somewhere.
- spydum 7y agofor what it's worth, signal strength is not usually a great indicator of distance. I would think some sort of beacon/latency measurement would be far more robust way to measure relative distance?
- bookofjoe 7y agoWhat? No Microsoft? They could call it "the internet of Bing"
- jedberg 7y agoI hope Apple’s is better than what they have now. I lost my AirPods and used Find My to find them, and the “last location” wasn’t even the last time I used them! It can’t even keep track of a device actively connected to my phone. I only found them because I happen to sit on them.
- r00fus 7y agoThe only use for Find My for Airpods I’ve seen is the ability to have either earpiece emit a chirping sound. The current location tracking is limited I think for battery life preservation - I also find that inaccurate.
- glouwbug 7y agoMaybe the battery died and someone moved your airpods
- jedberg 7y agoNo they fell out of my pocket. After I found them I knew exactly when I lost them — when I got out of the chair. And either way it should have at least registered the last time I used them. The last know location was from two days before I lost them.
- dmix 7y agoIs this being stored locally?
- gnicholas 7y agoWhenever I lose my AirPods, they're always in the charging case. In this state, you cannot trigger them to play a sound. Can't wait for tech to roll out that will help me find them in seconds instead of days.
- pfranz 7y agoMy current solution is to get a case for the charging case with a keyring and attach a Tile--but I'd much prefer something integrated and slimmer.
- Razengan 7y agoGoing on kind of a tangent here, but a thought has been creeping up on me that I can't wait to talk about: I'm a major Apple fan, with several Apple devices that I use all the time, and while they have a strong pro-privacy stance for now (though we only have their word), Apple's ability to spy on me, should they ever want to, probably goes far beyond any other company. Besides the usual "boring" methods like keylogging and microphone eavesdropping, which any company can do to the users of their OSes if they wanted to, the iPhone sees my face a hundred times a day, the Mac has my fingerprints, and the Watch knows how I'm moving and feeling (sitting, walking, excited, lethargic), and they can use that to infer what I'm doing or even about to do... Has anyone thoroughly monitored and logged what these devices are sending out?
- antipaul 7y agoThe risk is too high for them to fuck up, IMHO. If someone found nefarious stuff after throughly logging and monitoring these devices, and their findings were made public, I think this would be too huge for a company which differentiates itself via their privacy stance
- ctchocula 7y agoI would contend that only a small subset of Apple's customers care about privacy, who are usually those working in tech. For most Apple fanboys, I'd say it's the aesthetic appeal, "cool" factor and conspicuous consumption that drives them to buy Apple. Even if someone found nefarious stuff, it would be in the media for one week and hardly anyone would notice.
- oarsinsync 7y agoThe lawsuits would last a fair bit longer, and result in longer reporting.
- Razengan 7y agoIf you have been following tech news in the last 20 years, you'll know that ANY time Apple slips up in ANY way the world never seems to forgets it. Samsung, for example, could literally nuke a small country into oblivion and it would be forgotten within a month, whereas even post-apocalypse humans will begrudge Apple's removal of the headphone jack.
- Amendeson530 7y agoDo you think they’ll know where my dad has been for the last 13 years?
- jpalomaki 7y agoFind my iPhone, find my friends and Tile provide a lot value to our family every day. Really waiting for the Apple branded products. While I’m quite happy with the tile, it would be convenient to have all i devices scanning for my lost stuff. Also being able to see the more exact location inside house would be great.
- edf13 7y agoiOS13 update... now Facebook messenger, G Maps, various others all requesting access to Bluetooth so they can "look for devices near to me". This is the map that they are all building.