4 ms·

Amazon Astro: What If Wall-E but Evil?

22 points by ourmandave 5y ago

ALittleLight 5y ago
I don't get why the author just assumes this will be evil. Does it share video, house maps, whatever with Amazon? The author doesn't even try to find out, just snarky cynicism. There are privacy concerns, for sure, but it seems toxic and negative to disregard the product and focus only on the concerns and blow them out of proportion too.
- voakbasda 5y ago
  Fool us once? Amazon's track record destroyed my willingness to give them the benefit of the doubt. They deserve extra scrutiny, because they have abused their customers' trust on multiple occasions.
  - ALittleLight 5y ago
    There's a difference between scrutiny and assuming Amazon's products are bad without evidence or explaining why. This article is more of the latter. I'm all in favor of scrutiny. I don't think we should naively trust anyone. Especially not big companies and especially not with cameras and microphones in our homes. However, I expect commentators and reviewers to actually present some flaw, error, or evidence of a problem before they start calling things evil.
    - solarmist 5y ago
      They've earned that as default position. They need to work hard for me to view anything they make in a neutral light. That said is this piece garbage without substance. Yup, but no more than an overly optimistic piece without substance about other tech stuff.
- lapinot 5y ago
  Fully agree the piece isn't saying anything. But imho it's justified. There's another link on astro on hn.. What is this "product" exactely? What is actually the use of this thing. I'm not meaning what can it be possibly, in the future, maybe be used for, but really why has it been made? I'm sure getting tons of indoor maps and data points is juicy. This is a luxuous gadget, wasting time for people (to "use" and to build), wasting materials and electricity (i'd be curious about the mean use time). And it adds yet another set of fingers to the data monster. > Does it share video, house maps, whatever with Amazon? The most i'd trust it not to share is the continuous navigational image feed. I imagine it has some web dashboard which would be surprising if hosted on the thing and not in amazon's DCs.
- solarmist 5y ago
  Look at what's happened to Oculus after Facebook bought them. Optimism is not warranted when dealing with Amazon or Facebook. You are a black box to be experimented on to find out how to extract the largest amount of money from your wallet. Apple and Microsoft are the only big tech companies with any credibility (very little, but it's >0) in privacy, but look at the photo scanning issue recently. So I'm honestly baffled you can be optimistic about an Alexa on wheels.
- atatatat 5y ago
  > Does it share video, house maps, whatever with Amazon? Ring...?

22 points by ourmandave 5y ago

I don't get why the author just assumes this will be evil. Does it share video, house maps, whatever with Amazon? The author doesn't even try to find out, just snarky cynicism. There are privacy concerns, for sure, but it seems toxic and negative to disregard the product and focus only on the concerns and blow them out of proportion too.

voakbasda 5y ago
Fool us once? Amazon's track record destroyed my willingness to give them the benefit of the doubt. They deserve extra scrutiny, because they have abused their customers' trust on multiple occasions.
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  There's a difference between scrutiny and assuming Amazon's products are bad without evidence or explaining why. This article is more of the latter. I'm all in favor of scrutiny. I don't think we should naively trust anyone. Especially not big companies and especially not with cameras and microphones in our homes. However, I expect commentators and reviewers to actually present some flaw, error, or evidence of a problem before they start calling things evil.
  - solarmist 5y ago
    They've earned that as default position. They need to work hard for me to view anything they make in a neutral light. That said is this piece garbage without substance. Yup, but no more than an overly optimistic piece without substance about other tech stuff.
lapinot 5y ago
Fully agree the piece isn't saying anything. But imho it's justified. There's another link on astro on hn.. What is this "product" exactely? What is actually the use of this thing. I'm not meaning what can it be possibly, in the future, maybe be used for, but really why has it been made? I'm sure getting tons of indoor maps and data points is juicy. This is a luxuous gadget, wasting time for people (to "use" and to build), wasting materials and electricity (i'd be curious about the mean use time). And it adds yet another set of fingers to the data monster. > Does it share video, house maps, whatever with Amazon? The most i'd trust it not to share is the continuous navigational image feed. I imagine it has some web dashboard which would be surprising if hosted on the thing and not in amazon's DCs.
solarmist 5y ago
Look at what's happened to Oculus after Facebook bought them. Optimism is not warranted when dealing with Amazon or Facebook. You are a black box to be experimented on to find out how to extract the largest amount of money from your wallet. Apple and Microsoft are the only big tech companies with any credibility (very little, but it's >0) in privacy, but look at the photo scanning issue recently. So I'm honestly baffled you can be optimistic about an Alexa on wheels.
atatatat 5y ago
> Does it share video, house maps, whatever with Amazon? Ring...?