7 ms·

The further down this future we travel, the less I want to do with technology. I am becoming a Luddite. None of this crappy IOT stuff will enter my home.

pacala 7y ago
I hope you enjoy washing clothes by hand.
3pt14159 7y ago
My roommate has a phone. I didn't think much of it until he said "Ok Google" while cooking. What am I supposed to say here? I don't like microphones being always on either, but it's his phone and his home too. I can't escape the millions of cameras around the city or the constant internet trackers. We should have had regulated this stuff decades ago.
- justinclift 7y ago
  > I don't like microphones being always on either, but it's his phone and his home too. But it's also your home, and he should respect your wishes for privacy when you make them known.
  - CDSlice 7y ago
    Why should his desire to not have voice assistants in the house trump his roommate's desire to utilize the technology they paid for and want to use? These are both subjective opinions and neither one is better than the other. However I do agree that 3pt14159 should talk to his roommate about it if it bugs him so that they can come to an understanding.
    - justinclift 7y ago
      > Why should his desire to not have voice assistants in the house trump his roommate's desire to utilize the technology ... His roommate didn't have the courtesy to even ask about it up front. :( That being said, his roommate may just have not thought about it. Only way to find out is by starting the discussion and seeing how it goes.
      - justinclift 7y ago
        To clarify: > Why should his desire to not have voice assistants in the house trump his roommate's desire to utilize the technology they paid for and want to use? One thing is about security and privacy (important), while the other is about convenience (trivial). That the roommate didn't even consider the security and privacy of other people is Not Ok. It seems fairly common in this early stage of voice assistants, so having a discussion about it may resolve things.
        loco5niner 7y ago
        >That the roommate didn't even consider the security and privacy of other people is Not Ok. That's a pretty ridiculous expectation to put on an end user. It's a normal phone doing normal phone things.
        justinclift 7y ago
        > It's a normal phone doing normal phone things. Listening for watch words 24/7 is not a normal phone thing. "Normal" phone conversations are between ~two people. This voice assistant crap is sending people's audio to - at least - Google for processing/analysis/storage/etc.
        loco5niner 7y ago
        > Listening for watch words 24/7 is not a normal phone thing. It is now. At least from the perspective of your everyday-person. From your perspective, this is not the case. But I wouldn't put the hacker news crowd in the "everyday-person" category. Blame the companies, but don't put that ridiculous expectation on normal people.
        justinclift 7y ago
        > It is now. Sorry, but trying to normalise this crap is just not going to work. Not sure why you're even attempting to.
- maximente 7y ago
  i mean, is it any different than having any other conversation that potentially involves interpersonal conflict? if it's important to you and you're willing to burn social capital on it, just politely ask that he not use it when [your boundaries here]. if you come to an impasse, then there's not much to be done other than part ways. i'd imagine this is similar to any other incompatible roommate situations, e.g. someone whose recent significant other recently started coming over and has annoying habits.
  - frereubu 7y ago
    I think the idea is that, rather than fight hundreds of small battles like this every day, we should collectively agree (through democratic political means) what's acceptable without explicit permission.
    - sansnomme 7y ago
      Well if you care about it so much, contribute either money or code and create ecosystem with the same level of layman UX. It's difficult to get legislation when you cannot demonstrate alternatives that do not severely reduce convenience. This is a forum of overpaid software engineers. Distributed neural network training isn't science fiction anymore. Go ship or pay others to do so. Brave and DuckDuckGo built entire businesses on the premise of privacy. Many an arrogant reader here HN have no qualms claiming that they can replicate Facebook in a weekend. Go forth and walk the talk. Yet another Mastodon client is cool, but do you know what's cooler? A production quality OCR competitive with Google Cloud Vision API, voice transcription on par with AWS Transcribe, or personal assistants with the ubiquity of Siri.
      - frereubu 7y ago
        I care about it enough to contact my local representative (my MP because I'm in the UK) and he agrees with me that there should be explicit legislation to control the use of these technologies. The EU's GPDR is a step in that direction when it comes to things like automated decision-making. Open source is not a solution here, and to suggest otherwise seems like it misses the wood for the trees. Besides which, I hardly think that restricting the use of cameras on doorbells (which is what this sub-thread is about) is "severely reducing convenience."
- catalogia 7y ago
  More privacy has been one of the perks of not having a roommate since... forever. This isn't a new consequence of technology.
- MobileVet 7y ago
  I have had first hand experience (several times) with ads being shown immediately after a conversation that were spooky at best and tin foil hat inducing at worst...
  - cjsawyer 7y ago
    I tried it in a restaurant once with a conversation with the word “hottub” about 30 times. Two of the three of us at the table got hottub ads on google minutes later. I’m looking forward to the documentary in 20 something years about the things these companies are doing.
- StreamBright 7y ago
  Law and regulation are always lagged behind of new technology. I think there is going to be a pivotal moment (maybe the introduction of GDPR was already) when we start to go after our privacy. My apartment is also free of Google, Amazon, Facebook microphones. Unless there is a vendor that gives me a device that stores data a way that only I can access there is no way I am going to buy any of these devices.
Erlich_Bachman 7y ago
But would you still use strictly on-premises devices and/or uploading to the cloud with local (managed by you) encryption?
- MobileVet 7y ago
  I do actually... but I also don’t have much need for them. I have two web cameras in the kids‘ rooms, but they are fully fire walled and have zero external access. But now that they aren’t infants... do we need them? I do backup our pictures and documents to an external provider, but the backups are encrypted and not browsable per say. I have no need for a fridge that orders groceries or a thermostat I can control from the office...etc. Ironically, I write software for a living and love computers... I just value privacy more than most I guess.
coleifer 7y ago
Yeah it's dystopian as hell. What an incredible amount of waste, too. The storage, the engineering hours that go into it, the electricity and bandwidth...all to track you a little better so you can be sold more shit.
- mbrumlow 7y ago
  Would you feel the same if you had 100% control of the data ?
  - MobileVet 7y ago
    Depends on the application, but that definitely is an important factor for me.
- MobileVet 7y ago
  Yea... if there is real value in something I adopt it. But only if it actually decreases a life complication. Many times the overhead involved isn’t worth the gain (to me at least) I revisit the idea of a NAS at least once a year... each time I come to the conclusion it is more hardware to configure and keep up to date and just not worth it (being the fun of it)
- netsharc 7y ago
  I can't share this sentiment that it's all to track and sell you shit. It probably started out as a good idea, a virtual assistant that can tell you stuff by you just asking it with natural speech. But since this is capitalism, sadly someone asked "But how can we make money out of this?".
Gibbon1 7y ago
More and more I feel the whole system is designed to make people feel isolated and paranoid. And products like these are part of that cycle. People buy this stuff because they are afraid. But it doesn't help it does the opposite.

pacala 7y ago

I hope you enjoy washing clothes by hand.

3pt14159 7y ago

My roommate has a phone. I didn't think much of it until he said "Ok Google" while cooking. What am I supposed to say here? I don't like microphones being always on either, but it's his phone and his home too. I can't escape the millions of cameras around the city or the constant internet trackers. We should have had regulated this stuff decades ago.

justinclift 7y ago
> I don't like microphones being always on either, but it's his phone and his home too. But it's also your home, and he should respect your wishes for privacy when you make them known.
- CDSlice 7y ago
  Why should his desire to not have voice assistants in the house trump his roommate's desire to utilize the technology they paid for and want to use? These are both subjective opinions and neither one is better than the other. However I do agree that 3pt14159 should talk to his roommate about it if it bugs him so that they can come to an understanding.
  - justinclift 7y ago
    > Why should his desire to not have voice assistants in the house trump his roommate's desire to utilize the technology ... His roommate didn't have the courtesy to even ask about it up front. :( That being said, his roommate may just have not thought about it. Only way to find out is by starting the discussion and seeing how it goes.
    - justinclift 7y ago
      To clarify: > Why should his desire to not have voice assistants in the house trump his roommate's desire to utilize the technology they paid for and want to use? One thing is about security and privacy (important), while the other is about convenience (trivial). That the roommate didn't even consider the security and privacy of other people is Not Ok. It seems fairly common in this early stage of voice assistants, so having a discussion about it may resolve things.
      - loco5niner 7y ago
        >That the roommate didn't even consider the security and privacy of other people is Not Ok. That's a pretty ridiculous expectation to put on an end user. It's a normal phone doing normal phone things.
        justinclift 7y ago
        > It's a normal phone doing normal phone things. Listening for watch words 24/7 is not a normal phone thing. "Normal" phone conversations are between ~two people. This voice assistant crap is sending people's audio to - at least - Google for processing/analysis/storage/etc.
        loco5niner 7y ago
        > Listening for watch words 24/7 is not a normal phone thing. It is now. At least from the perspective of your everyday-person. From your perspective, this is not the case. But I wouldn't put the hacker news crowd in the "everyday-person" category. Blame the companies, but don't put that ridiculous expectation on normal people.
        justinclift 7y ago
        > It is now. Sorry, but trying to normalise this crap is just not going to work. Not sure why you're even attempting to.
maximente 7y ago
i mean, is it any different than having any other conversation that potentially involves interpersonal conflict? if it's important to you and you're willing to burn social capital on it, just politely ask that he not use it when [your boundaries here]. if you come to an impasse, then there's not much to be done other than part ways. i'd imagine this is similar to any other incompatible roommate situations, e.g. someone whose recent significant other recently started coming over and has annoying habits.
- frereubu 7y ago
  I think the idea is that, rather than fight hundreds of small battles like this every day, we should collectively agree (through democratic political means) what's acceptable without explicit permission.
  - sansnomme 7y ago
    Well if you care about it so much, contribute either money or code and create ecosystem with the same level of layman UX. It's difficult to get legislation when you cannot demonstrate alternatives that do not severely reduce convenience. This is a forum of overpaid software engineers. Distributed neural network training isn't science fiction anymore. Go ship or pay others to do so. Brave and DuckDuckGo built entire businesses on the premise of privacy. Many an arrogant reader here HN have no qualms claiming that they can replicate Facebook in a weekend. Go forth and walk the talk. Yet another Mastodon client is cool, but do you know what's cooler? A production quality OCR competitive with Google Cloud Vision API, voice transcription on par with AWS Transcribe, or personal assistants with the ubiquity of Siri.
    - frereubu 7y ago
      I care about it enough to contact my local representative (my MP because I'm in the UK) and he agrees with me that there should be explicit legislation to control the use of these technologies. The EU's GPDR is a step in that direction when it comes to things like automated decision-making. Open source is not a solution here, and to suggest otherwise seems like it misses the wood for the trees. Besides which, I hardly think that restricting the use of cameras on doorbells (which is what this sub-thread is about) is "severely reducing convenience."
catalogia 7y ago
More privacy has been one of the perks of not having a roommate since... forever. This isn't a new consequence of technology.
MobileVet 7y ago
I have had first hand experience (several times) with ads being shown immediately after a conversation that were spooky at best and tin foil hat inducing at worst...
- cjsawyer 7y ago
  I tried it in a restaurant once with a conversation with the word “hottub” about 30 times. Two of the three of us at the table got hottub ads on google minutes later. I’m looking forward to the documentary in 20 something years about the things these companies are doing.
StreamBright 7y ago
Law and regulation are always lagged behind of new technology. I think there is going to be a pivotal moment (maybe the introduction of GDPR was already) when we start to go after our privacy. My apartment is also free of Google, Amazon, Facebook microphones. Unless there is a vendor that gives me a device that stores data a way that only I can access there is no way I am going to buy any of these devices.

Erlich_Bachman 7y ago

But would you still use strictly on-premises devices and/or uploading to the cloud with local (managed by you) encryption?

MobileVet 7y ago
I do actually... but I also don’t have much need for them. I have two web cameras in the kids‘ rooms, but they are fully fire walled and have zero external access. But now that they aren’t infants... do we need them? I do backup our pictures and documents to an external provider, but the backups are encrypted and not browsable per say. I have no need for a fridge that orders groceries or a thermostat I can control from the office...etc. Ironically, I write software for a living and love computers... I just value privacy more than most I guess.

coleifer 7y ago

Yeah it's dystopian as hell. What an incredible amount of waste, too. The storage, the engineering hours that go into it, the electricity and bandwidth...all to track you a little better so you can be sold more shit.

mbrumlow 7y ago
Would you feel the same if you had 100% control of the data ?
- MobileVet 7y ago
  Depends on the application, but that definitely is an important factor for me.
MobileVet 7y ago
Yea... if there is real value in something I adopt it. But only if it actually decreases a life complication. Many times the overhead involved isn’t worth the gain (to me at least) I revisit the idea of a NAS at least once a year... each time I come to the conclusion it is more hardware to configure and keep up to date and just not worth it (being the fun of it)
netsharc 7y ago
I can't share this sentiment that it's all to track and sell you shit. It probably started out as a good idea, a virtual assistant that can tell you stuff by you just asking it with natural speech. But since this is capitalism, sadly someone asked "But how can we make money out of this?".

Gibbon1 7y ago

More and more I feel the whole system is designed to make people feel isolated and paranoid. And products like these are part of that cycle. People buy this stuff because they are afraid. But it doesn't help it does the opposite.