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You might not own the data of your air quality monitor
- ahaucnx 3y agoThis topic is something that irked me for quite some time and I am looking forward to the discussion here.
- WalterBright 3y agoI wonder how I ever got by with my thermometer and CO2 meter not connected to the intertoobs.
- ahaucnx 3y agoI think there are quite large benefits in sharing outdoor pollution data compared to temperature and humidity due to its much larger health impact.
- stuaxo 3y agoTrue - I would like to choose which org I share it with though.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 3y agoThere is a thing called Voluntary Observing Ship (VOS) where ships voluntarily transmit weather and sea condition data for meteorological studies. Someone realized there are all these floating sensor suites moving around an managed to organize all the various ship owners to participate because it helps weather predictions for all. It's nice when people can work together. https://www.pame.is/projects/arctic-marine-shipping/amsa/voluntary-observing-ship-vos-scheme#:~:text=The%20VOS%20Scheme%20is%20an,oceanographic%20observations%20while%20at%20sea https://www.pame.is/projects/arctic-marine-shipping/amsa/vol....
- deeviant 3y agoA more surprising title would be "You might own the data of your air quality monitor."
- ahaucnx 3y agoThis is funny and sad at the same time.
- lagniappe 3y agoThe people who buy smart devices likely don't have this concern.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y agoSorry for tearing into you here, but I'm so tired of this cynical trope that gets repeated ad nauseum on HN in defence of any dark pattern at all. It's a lazy, low effort, stereotyping take that people in tech tell themselves to feel less guilty, and that's all it is.
- charcircuit 3y ago>It's a lazy, low effort, stereotyping take So is the take that average people think that facts about the current air quality should be owned by people. If you ask an average person what's the current temperature is or if it's raining outside they will likely tell you if they know. People don't feel a need to try and monopolize the knowledge of things like that.
- Spivak 3y agoIn fact if there's somewhere I can contribute my air quality data I would like to. I have self-hosted sensors which feed data to my own monitoring software but now that you say it like that I want to put it to use.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y agoI'm quite wary of talking about "average people" in general, at least without specifying what exactly is average about them, and having concrete data on where that average lies. Also, when asking people, framing is a huge confounder. If you ask a bunch of people of average or below average tech literacy if they care whether they own the data from their fitness trackers, the majority would probably say no. But if instead you asked them whether they like the fact that they have to pay a monthly subscription fee to Google/Oura/whatever, the distribution would likely change quite a lot. We of course know these questions are secretly the same question.
- 3y ago
- elif 3y agowhy do i need to own it? all i need to do is look at it occasionally
- defrost 3y agoHypothetically Suppose Corp.X distributes free cloud connected air quality monitors across neighbourhood Z in an act of seeming largesse. Fifteen years later the surviving members of the District Z Carcinoma Club are still fighting appeals to gain access to the pooled historic data which each of them have contributed to. At the very least log your own data | buy your own monitors | be sure you have right of access regardless of "ownership" | etc.
- nborwankar 3y agoYou may not, there are communities though that might. People who live in the “blast radius” of a polluting entity like a refinery might want to aggregate data over time to see if there’s a slow leak or whether the entity is emitting excessively at night which I recently learned is quite common. Knowing the instantaneous value at one point is not as valuable as owning the aggregate data over a region over time. So owning the data allows contributing to such aggregates which allow speaking truth to power about the reality of particulates in the air. Measuring air pollution is increasingly becoming a political act.
- speedgoose 3y agoIt smells like an abusive clause. I would be tempted to ignore it and never tell anyone if I had to collect data from those sensors. They would be named sensors from company "A" in the reports and papers. But to do things in a pleasing way for legal people, how could we proceed ?
- zarzavat 3y agoThe article is missing some details. It doesn’t say how you agree to the contract. I assume there’s some software you have to install to get data out of the device, and this term is in the EULA? Is the software necessary to use the device - you could just not install it, or someone could write a third party driver that doesn’t make you agree to these terms.
- JohnKemeny 3y agoUnder Norwegian law, data is not protected, hence it cannot be owned. If you have access to some data, by all means, it's "yours" (under Norwegian jurisdiction).
- Havoc 3y agoHow does that work with copyright? Like a film etc
- reaperman 3y agoThat’s not “data”. Relevant is how phone books or recipes can’t be copyrighted, because they’re just data.
- EForEndeavour 3y agoWhat about the precise configuration of 1s and 0s that just happen to induce playback of human-interpretable audio and video when interpreted by specific software? What about the digital representation of a film doesn't count as "data"?
- Eddy_Viscosity2 3y agoPhone book I get but recipes? Technically speaking, how is a recipe different then technical instructions on how to build a specific microchip? The latter not being considered as just 'data'. Not that I think recipes should be copyrighted, the question is more for how legally they are different.
- lbotos 3y agoIf you write a manual for making a TSMC microchip that presentstion is copyrighted. It may also contain patented and trademarked things. But the process itself of - get sand - mold - make wafer Is not copyrighted. This is called idea - expression. You can’t copyright the idea but you can copyright the expression. (It’s why recipes have stories about grandma. If someone scrapes that story that’s copyright infringement)
- voytec 3y agoA little off-topic but does anyone know of pressure sensors suitable for home-baked blood pressure monitor? I'm planning to build a little Arduino- or raspi-based device to own the data. All I managed to find were (non-blood) pressure sensors and I'm unsure whether these could be used for blood pressure monitoring and how I'd place them against the hand to get readings of reasonable quality. If this approach is a no-go, a ready device with some physical interface (and no "cloud"-related garbage) allowing readings would do.
- bmitc 3y ago> a ready device with some physical interface (and no "cloud"-related garbage) allowing readings would do. https://omronhealthcare.com/blood-pressure/ https://omronhealthcare.com/blood-pressure/
- Mayzie 3y agoYep! I have the Evolv, and I use the third-party MedM BP apps[1][2] to sync the readings from the device via bluetooth to my phone (and HealthKit). No first-party app needed. [1] (iOS) https://apps.apple.com/au/app/medm-blood-pressure/id1040909532 https://apps.apple.com/au/app/medm-blood-pressure/id10409095... [2] (Android) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.medm.medmbp.diary https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.medm.medmb...
- voytec 3y agoIs it possible to connect to these devices from BT-enabled device like raspi with a dongle? I'd like to avoid sharing any health-related data with VC-funded businesses (Apple, Google, not only app developers)
- voytec 3y agoThanks! The smartwatch-like thingie looks nice, albeit pricey as hell. Think I'll go with one of the bigger devices for now.
- jaclaz 3y ago
- Mayzie 3y agoI'd love to be able to purchase something like this and a weather station that will submit data to a free public service so people can receive better and more accurate / timely weather data. I can't tell if that is possible out of the box via AirGradient from this website (or if such a service even exists, as they only mention "24 months AirGradient data platform / map" which implies proprietary)? Do people know of a similar solution for a weather station?
- ahaucnx 3y agoWe are working on an integration with openAQ [1] to share air quality with them (opt-in for people that use our data platform). OpenAQ is an NGO with the mission to collect air quality data from all kinds of sources from around the world and make it available to the public with its free API. However this would only cover the air quality part -not weather data. [1] https://openaq.org/ https://openaq.org/
- lamp_book 3y agoThe US NWS has a citizen reporting system for weather: https://www.weather.gov/iln/cwop https://www.weather.gov/iln/cwop. I don’t know what the integration looks like.
- stuaxo 3y agoThis is why I didn't plug in the BlueAir my gf kindly bought us. People have figured out how to run them off raspberry pis since I believe though, so I should sort it out to run cloudless.
- javascript_obso 3y agoHow do they protect from false data injection? Are the sensors cryptographically signing their data? BTW are there any sensors that encrypt and sign data before sending out for real security? I am not able to construct such a device, so I hope anybody did already? preferably open hardware?