7 ms·

The economic incentives for home automation are aligned to send them the way of the SpyTV fiasco [0]. Whatever brand you choose, it will spy on you sooner or la

by pacala 7y ago

The economic incentives for home automation are aligned to send them the way of the SpyTV fiasco [0]. Whatever brand you choose, it will spy on you sooner or later. Our speech is no longer private within the confines or our own homes. Soon, our heart beats too will become game for the creeps of the world [1]. This needs to stop. We need laws to keep internet-connected devices from spying on us in our own homes. We need an option to purchase internet-free devices. We need legislation now, as the wireless internet of things [5G] is coming online and the last drop of control we had, to not give the wifi password to the spy devices, will be taken away from us. [0] https://www.cnet.com/how-to/your-tv-is-probably-tracking-you-heres-how-to-stop-it/ https://www.cnet.com/how-to/your-tv-is-probably-tracking-you... [1] https://atap.google.com/soli/ https://atap.google.com/soli/

delfinom 7y ago
Just buy Zigbee and ZWave based home automation products. People are hyperfocused on Wifi products that end up spying on you because that's all they know. Zigbee and Zwave products have no capability to connect to the internet. They must go to a zigbee/zwave router of some sorts. There's a few vendors selling them that definitely aren't Amazon or Google and some that even run entirely internal to your network and some that are cloud based.
- unholythree 7y ago
  Granted I don't know a ton about Zigbee other than it's the approved wireless standard for BACnet, but I'm glad to see comments like this. It's seemed silly to me that all of this home automation stuff gets marketed as new and revolutionary when it's just balkanized and proprietary implementations of technology that's been in commercial buildings for decades. BACnet seems to have become the defacto standard in serious building automation. It's ridiculous that this home automation market seems to ignore a tried and true open standard for all this proprietary nonsense.
- journalctl 7y ago
  I don’t see how buying other products will help stop privacy abuses.
- pacala 7y ago
  Great point. We need to make spying costly though a 2 pronged strategy: * Develop technology that makes it expensive to spy. * Pass legislation that makes it expensive to spy. Bad actors will be still spying, but hopefully we can economically contain the spy activity to high profile targets, instead of mass deploy it for everyone.
- core-questions 7y ago
  What about rejecting this inane trend toward home automation entirely? In most homes you can realize 99% of the energy savings and convenience of a Nest thermostat with an $50 7-day programmable box. Set it up and forget it entirely; it should just blend into the background. I can't think of a situation it hasn't "handled" for me - my house is a reasonable temperature day and night, my gas bills are within the expected range. If perhaps I spend an hour cold or nobody enjoys an hour of produced warmth due to a routine change, it's not a big deal. I cannot imagine wanting to check my thermostat remotely, or have it connect to the Internet, or _track my presence_ and presumably report it to third party data gathering monstrosities. To give up such a huge piece of information (to yet another company, assuming all the phone-related companies already know this...) without any real "payment" for it besides a self-adjusting thermostat strikes me as pretty mad - especially when I can't see any real reason why such a device even needs to be on the Internet at all to accomplish that. Internet connected lightbulbs? Smart locks? Solutions waiting for problems, most of them badly built, insecure, and probably spying on you in multiple ways. More expensive than they should be, never really providing you much beyond the sort of creature comforts that a more capable person can safely disdain as being for the overly soft and comfortable set. That said, I concur that using a local bus like this makes the most sense if you must do this, but consider what you're spending your money and your time on. I think a lot of this stems from some latent desire to simulate the James Bond / Ladies Man 70's vibe with the remote control that dims the lights, puts the Barry White on, and converts the couch into a bed. It's cheesy and your guests aren't as impressed as you think they are.
  - waste_monk 7y ago
    It's not unreasonable to want various subsystems of the house to work cooperatively, or even to have some internet connectivity (although I personally would avoid products that use it). E.g. having your security system (my smart home implementation would include a data diode so the home automation cannot effect the house's security posture) notify the HVAC controller that no one's home so it can turn off the air conditioning, and have the HVAC controller manage the motorized blinds / curtains / etc. so that whichever side of the house is currently facing the sun has the blinds half or fully closed to control the temperature passively. And to know that I usually get home at a certain time (I'm not overly comfortable with GPS tracking options) and start managing house temperature again ~20m before I get home so it's comfortable when I arrive. I'd like my house to automatically close all of my blinds and turn on the interior lighting at sundown each day (not at a fixed time each day as simple controllers do - I want it referring to a pre-computed almanac or dynamically figuring out when the individual sun up / down times for each day are. Maybe integrated with a solar panel system so it can detect when energy output starts to ramp up and use that as the sunup/down times, although that doesn't account for cloud cover). Imagine having a garden irrigation controller that polls rain radar data from the local weather bureau and uses it (along with a local weather station) to decide whether to hold off on watering the plants, in case it rains. And using the local weather station to decide how much (if any) watering is needed. I don't want a smart home that does "ladies man" type stuff as you describe - I want a smart home that actively makes my life easier, by taking care of the little things that only cost a few minutes each day to do (watering the lawn, closing blinds, ...) but waste a lot of time in aggregate.
llampx 7y ago
> Soon, our heart beats too will become game for the creeps of the world [1]. Isn't it too late for that? Every $15 heart rate monitoring fitness band is already doing that, along with Wear OS watches.
- pacala 7y ago
  opt-in vs. opt-amish. 99% of the population doesn't wear fitness bands and doesn't need one. Most those that do have a fitness band don't wear it at all times. With SOLI, everyone that is in the neighborhood of a SOLI-enabled device, that is a mobile phone, or, soon, a SpyNEST heating control, or SpyTV, or SpyFridge, or a SpyCar, will have their heartbeats monitored 24/7. Changing the world from monitoring 1% of the population to monitoring 99% of the population. That's the story of Google/SiliconValley, from NielsenRatings-to-GoogleAnalytics, all the way to Fitbit-to-SOLI.

by pacala 7y ago

delfinom 7y ago

Just buy Zigbee and ZWave based home automation products. People are hyperfocused on Wifi products that end up spying on you because that's all they know. Zigbee and Zwave products have no capability to connect to the internet. They must go to a zigbee/zwave router of some sorts. There's a few vendors selling them that definitely aren't Amazon or Google and some that even run entirely internal to your network and some that are cloud based.

unholythree 7y ago
Granted I don't know a ton about Zigbee other than it's the approved wireless standard for BACnet, but I'm glad to see comments like this. It's seemed silly to me that all of this home automation stuff gets marketed as new and revolutionary when it's just balkanized and proprietary implementations of technology that's been in commercial buildings for decades. BACnet seems to have become the defacto standard in serious building automation. It's ridiculous that this home automation market seems to ignore a tried and true open standard for all this proprietary nonsense.
journalctl 7y ago
I don’t see how buying other products will help stop privacy abuses.
pacala 7y ago
Great point. We need to make spying costly though a 2 pronged strategy: * Develop technology that makes it expensive to spy. * Pass legislation that makes it expensive to spy. Bad actors will be still spying, but hopefully we can economically contain the spy activity to high profile targets, instead of mass deploy it for everyone.
core-questions 7y ago
What about rejecting this inane trend toward home automation entirely? In most homes you can realize 99% of the energy savings and convenience of a Nest thermostat with an $50 7-day programmable box. Set it up and forget it entirely; it should just blend into the background. I can't think of a situation it hasn't "handled" for me - my house is a reasonable temperature day and night, my gas bills are within the expected range. If perhaps I spend an hour cold or nobody enjoys an hour of produced warmth due to a routine change, it's not a big deal. I cannot imagine wanting to check my thermostat remotely, or have it connect to the Internet, or _track my presence_ and presumably report it to third party data gathering monstrosities. To give up such a huge piece of information (to yet another company, assuming all the phone-related companies already know this...) without any real "payment" for it besides a self-adjusting thermostat strikes me as pretty mad - especially when I can't see any real reason why such a device even needs to be on the Internet at all to accomplish that. Internet connected lightbulbs? Smart locks? Solutions waiting for problems, most of them badly built, insecure, and probably spying on you in multiple ways. More expensive than they should be, never really providing you much beyond the sort of creature comforts that a more capable person can safely disdain as being for the overly soft and comfortable set. That said, I concur that using a local bus like this makes the most sense if you must do this, but consider what you're spending your money and your time on. I think a lot of this stems from some latent desire to simulate the James Bond / Ladies Man 70's vibe with the remote control that dims the lights, puts the Barry White on, and converts the couch into a bed. It's cheesy and your guests aren't as impressed as you think they are.
- waste_monk 7y ago
  It's not unreasonable to want various subsystems of the house to work cooperatively, or even to have some internet connectivity (although I personally would avoid products that use it). E.g. having your security system (my smart home implementation would include a data diode so the home automation cannot effect the house's security posture) notify the HVAC controller that no one's home so it can turn off the air conditioning, and have the HVAC controller manage the motorized blinds / curtains / etc. so that whichever side of the house is currently facing the sun has the blinds half or fully closed to control the temperature passively. And to know that I usually get home at a certain time (I'm not overly comfortable with GPS tracking options) and start managing house temperature again ~20m before I get home so it's comfortable when I arrive. I'd like my house to automatically close all of my blinds and turn on the interior lighting at sundown each day (not at a fixed time each day as simple controllers do - I want it referring to a pre-computed almanac or dynamically figuring out when the individual sun up / down times for each day are. Maybe integrated with a solar panel system so it can detect when energy output starts to ramp up and use that as the sunup/down times, although that doesn't account for cloud cover). Imagine having a garden irrigation controller that polls rain radar data from the local weather bureau and uses it (along with a local weather station) to decide whether to hold off on watering the plants, in case it rains. And using the local weather station to decide how much (if any) watering is needed. I don't want a smart home that does "ladies man" type stuff as you describe - I want a smart home that actively makes my life easier, by taking care of the little things that only cost a few minutes each day to do (watering the lawn, closing blinds, ...) but waste a lot of time in aggregate.

llampx 7y ago

> Soon, our heart beats too will become game for the creeps of the world [1]. Isn't it too late for that? Every $15 heart rate monitoring fitness band is already doing that, along with Wear OS watches.

pacala 7y ago
opt-in vs. opt-amish. 99% of the population doesn't wear fitness bands and doesn't need one. Most those that do have a fitness band don't wear it at all times. With SOLI, everyone that is in the neighborhood of a SOLI-enabled device, that is a mobile phone, or, soon, a SpyNEST heating control, or SpyTV, or SpyFridge, or a SpyCar, will have their heartbeats monitored 24/7. Changing the world from monitoring 1% of the population to monitoring 99% of the population. That's the story of Google/SiliconValley, from NielsenRatings-to-GoogleAnalytics, all the way to Fitbit-to-SOLI.