5 ms·

The consumer element is the sugar to help the masses swallow the pill. If it was just about the consumer, the unit would never report its findings back to base

The consumer element is the sugar to help the masses swallow the pill. If it was just about the consumer, the unit would never report its findings back to base. But blurting back your information is integral to, well, all smart devices. That is the point. Once the government has that info, it will be able to come up with bespoke taxes for you according to what it ordains as fair use. 'Your showers are too long', 'your toolshed is too big a draw on the electric' therefore 'you need to buy carbon credits to offset the environmental damage you are causing'. It's the slow descent to greater tyranny, and loss of personal control. It's amazing that people put up with it, but a slight discount in the short term, or visibility of your own data, is probably enough to get most people to accept spying infrastructure in their lives forever.

gambiting 3y ago
I don't understand your point - these meters only report your overal usage, not what is using the energy/water. It's letting you skip the step where you manually upload the reads every couple months or whatever, or worse, where the energy company employee has to visit your house to read them in person. Why does it matter if I upload my meter reads to my provider every month or if the device reports it automatically? The end result is the same. (At least that's how it works in the UK - the "smart" meters don't report live usage back to providers, they just submit kWh reads, the live readout is local device only)
- userbinator 3y ago
  the "smart" meters don't report live usage back to providers Either they can be easily upgraded to do that, or they already are and the energy company merely gives you the total every month to maintain the impression that they aren't. If the meter-reader needs to visit periodically, you know with much greater certainty that they aren't gathering live data.
  - gambiting 3y ago
    >>Either they can be easily upgraded to do that I mean no offence, but you are literally just guessing and not talking about technologies that people have in their houses. The smart meters here in UK, the latest SMET2 standard ones, cannot broadcast live data back to the grid because they simply don't have the bandwidth to do so, they use low frequency communication back to the area controller and they can barely report the kWh number roughly every hour or so. The live communication with the display you have in your house is done over ZigBee and unless the energy company parks the van outside of your house to get those reads, they aren't getting them. Like, your points about surveilance are true, sure - but they address an imaginary situation you built in your head, not the actual technical solution that exists in the real world. >>If the meter-reader needs to visit periodically, you know with much greater certainty that they aren't gathering live data. Yeah and I need to let them into my house, which to me personally is a far greater invasion of my privacy than my meter automatically uploading kWh numbers to the grid. Also just as a general remark - on HN I think people are likely to divide into two groups - nerds who want ALL the data and they would gladly upload live data to an online system if they could just so they could monitor it live, and people who think any IoT functionality is a massive invasion of privacy and that it's some greater ploy by government to control you. The truth - as always - is somewhere in the middle.
    - michaelt 3y ago
      Maybe your installation is different, but usually the electricity meter uses normal GPRS to talk to the electricity company. They literally have SIM cards inside. The low energy 'HAN' stuff is used for the gas meter, so it can run for 10 years on a battery, allowing it to be installed without installing wired power. The electricity meter has plenty of electricity available, so it acts as a bridge. The portable screen thingy also uses the 'HAN'. However, it's pretty clear the policy intent isn't only to let people monitor their usage. If that was all that was needed, there are much cheaper options designed for consumer self-install. Why did they go for the much more expensive and inconvenient smart meter+gprs option, if not to enable time-of-use tariffs?
      - gambiting 3y ago
        Is that in the UK or somewhere else? >>However, it's pretty clear the policy intent isn't only to let people monitor their usage. Of course - but I contest OP's claim that it has enough granularity to tell you that you're showering too much or that your tool shed uses too much energy - it doesn't allow that in the slightest.
- CaptainMarvel 3y ago
  That’s not quite right. All new smart meters have the ability to report electricity usage minute-by-minute. You _currently_ have the choice to only report month-by-month, by kindly asking them to only do that. However, I agree with verisimi, and I believe that it’s only a matter of time before the government via energy suppliers can monitor your real time electricity usage. It’ll be dressed up, of course, as being in your best interest, but you won’t have a choice. Smart meters were sold as being beneficial for customers, but in reality they take power away from people and consolidate it in energy suppliers. At the most basic level this is a history of when you are at home or not.
  - gambiting 3y ago
    >>but in reality they take power away from people and consolidate it in energy suppliers. What kind of power did you have before the introduction of smart meters, exactly?
    - lazide 3y ago
      The power to not have someone know if you’re at home and how much electricity you’re using at any given moment - and for any given moment over an arbitrary period in the past I guess?
ZeroGravitas 3y ago
Fossil fuel interests have really rotted a lot of minds with their propaganda. In some ways this may turn out to be a bigger crime than the carbon issues you think are just a conspiracy to control shower length.
- concordDance 3y ago
  I don't think this is fair to him. He's not alleging carbon stuff is a conspiracy to control shower length, merely that moralizers will want to control everything they see as "waste".
- avgcorrection 3y ago
  Rotting minds, really?
  - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
    If someone close to me said that they fear an authoritarian government because the length of their showers might be curtailed, or the power draw of their shed might be outlawed, I'd be genuinely worried about their mental health.
    - avgcorrection 3y ago
      > close to me said Public forum though. No one has seen a psychologist because a text box intervened about their “rotting [brain]”.
beebeepka 3y ago
> Once the government has that info, it will be able to come up with bespoke taxes for you according to what it ordains as fair use. 'Your showers are too long', 'your toolshed is too big a draw on the electric' therefore 'you need to buy carbon credits to offset the environmental damage you are causing'. I am very conflicted. Deeply share your concerns regarding misuse of such info. It will be used as a weapon. But I am totally in favour of making wasters pay up, and not just fixed amounts. I hate wasting resources.
- concordDance 3y ago
  "Waster" isn't really a coherent concept when taken outside of an individual's value system. What might be waste for one person might simply be a sensible use of resources for another. Doing for a drive to the countryside for a walk? Having a long and relaxing bath? Go-karting? Using a heated pool? Keeping the heater on a single house-level timer so they don't have to think about it rather than planning ahead what rooms they will be in later? Everyone will have a different place they draw the "waste" vs sensible expenditure line. The correct economic solution to this is CO2-offsetting taxes and letting each individual decide how they want to spend their resources. Trying to centrally plan for a hundred million diverse people with different things they like and care about is a recipe for unneeded misery.
  - hgomersall 3y ago
    Taxes just push the problem into poor people. If you want a fair solution we should have carbon/resource rationing. In fact, I'd prefer a solution in which the governments work hard (much harder than they are) to bootstrap the brave new world so everyone can benefit from a sustainable world.
    - CaptainMarvel 3y ago
      Taxes don't have to push the problem onto poor people at all. For example, the proceeds can be directly given to everyone equally which will usually disproportionately benefit poor people. So why would you say that taxes would harm poor people? I think I know why. In practice, the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government, and the media have been almost completely captured by the wealthy to disproportionately benefit themselves. Wealth is essentially zero sum game despite what many would say. Power is certainly a zero-sum game. When you have power over another, they have less power over you. I believe wealth is another form of power, a little indirect and not perfect, but the correlation is strong enough. This means that there is no practical solution that won't harm poor people. This includes your proposal where you would like the government to "benefit everyone".
concordDance 3y ago
> Once the government has that info, it will be able to come up with bespoke taxes for you according to what it ordains as fair use. 'Your showers are too long', 'your toolshed is too big a draw on the electric' therefore 'you need to buy carbon credits to offset the environmental damage you are causing'. This is likely to happen and is economically awful (far better to have constant carbon taxes), but it will be done because the majority supports it, not due to some government plot against the people.
- smolder 3y ago
  Elected officials get into office with majority support of a constituency, but that's very far away from the majority of people supporting their collective actions while in office. In the US, politicians do what money wants them to, not voters. Consent of voters is often manufactured and misinformed.
autoexec 3y ago
You don't even have to worry about the government (it seems unlikely that most of us will see a "10min showers only" law anytime soon), but it's usually private companies collecting and selling the data and they're happy to use that data against you in any way that they can.

gambiting 3y ago

I don't understand your point - these meters only report your overal usage, not what is using the energy/water. It's letting you skip the step where you manually upload the reads every couple months or whatever, or worse, where the energy company employee has to visit your house to read them in person. Why does it matter if I upload my meter reads to my provider every month or if the device reports it automatically? The end result is the same. (At least that's how it works in the UK - the "smart" meters don't report live usage back to providers, they just submit kWh reads, the live readout is local device only)

userbinator 3y ago
the "smart" meters don't report live usage back to providers Either they can be easily upgraded to do that, or they already are and the energy company merely gives you the total every month to maintain the impression that they aren't. If the meter-reader needs to visit periodically, you know with much greater certainty that they aren't gathering live data.
- gambiting 3y ago
  >>Either they can be easily upgraded to do that I mean no offence, but you are literally just guessing and not talking about technologies that people have in their houses. The smart meters here in UK, the latest SMET2 standard ones, cannot broadcast live data back to the grid because they simply don't have the bandwidth to do so, they use low frequency communication back to the area controller and they can barely report the kWh number roughly every hour or so. The live communication with the display you have in your house is done over ZigBee and unless the energy company parks the van outside of your house to get those reads, they aren't getting them. Like, your points about surveilance are true, sure - but they address an imaginary situation you built in your head, not the actual technical solution that exists in the real world. >>If the meter-reader needs to visit periodically, you know with much greater certainty that they aren't gathering live data. Yeah and I need to let them into my house, which to me personally is a far greater invasion of my privacy than my meter automatically uploading kWh numbers to the grid. Also just as a general remark - on HN I think people are likely to divide into two groups - nerds who want ALL the data and they would gladly upload live data to an online system if they could just so they could monitor it live, and people who think any IoT functionality is a massive invasion of privacy and that it's some greater ploy by government to control you. The truth - as always - is somewhere in the middle.
  - michaelt 3y ago
    Maybe your installation is different, but usually the electricity meter uses normal GPRS to talk to the electricity company. They literally have SIM cards inside. The low energy 'HAN' stuff is used for the gas meter, so it can run for 10 years on a battery, allowing it to be installed without installing wired power. The electricity meter has plenty of electricity available, so it acts as a bridge. The portable screen thingy also uses the 'HAN'. However, it's pretty clear the policy intent isn't only to let people monitor their usage. If that was all that was needed, there are much cheaper options designed for consumer self-install. Why did they go for the much more expensive and inconvenient smart meter+gprs option, if not to enable time-of-use tariffs?
    - gambiting 3y ago
      Is that in the UK or somewhere else? >>However, it's pretty clear the policy intent isn't only to let people monitor their usage. Of course - but I contest OP's claim that it has enough granularity to tell you that you're showering too much or that your tool shed uses too much energy - it doesn't allow that in the slightest.
CaptainMarvel 3y ago
That’s not quite right. All new smart meters have the ability to report electricity usage minute-by-minute. You _currently_ have the choice to only report month-by-month, by kindly asking them to only do that. However, I agree with verisimi, and I believe that it’s only a matter of time before the government via energy suppliers can monitor your real time electricity usage. It’ll be dressed up, of course, as being in your best interest, but you won’t have a choice. Smart meters were sold as being beneficial for customers, but in reality they take power away from people and consolidate it in energy suppliers. At the most basic level this is a history of when you are at home or not.
- gambiting 3y ago
  >>but in reality they take power away from people and consolidate it in energy suppliers. What kind of power did you have before the introduction of smart meters, exactly?
  - lazide 3y ago
    The power to not have someone know if you’re at home and how much electricity you’re using at any given moment - and for any given moment over an arbitrary period in the past I guess?

ZeroGravitas 3y ago

Fossil fuel interests have really rotted a lot of minds with their propaganda. In some ways this may turn out to be a bigger crime than the carbon issues you think are just a conspiracy to control shower length.

concordDance 3y ago
I don't think this is fair to him. He's not alleging carbon stuff is a conspiracy to control shower length, merely that moralizers will want to control everything they see as "waste".
avgcorrection 3y ago
Rotting minds, really?
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  If someone close to me said that they fear an authoritarian government because the length of their showers might be curtailed, or the power draw of their shed might be outlawed, I'd be genuinely worried about their mental health.
  - avgcorrection 3y ago
    > close to me said Public forum though. No one has seen a psychologist because a text box intervened about their “rotting [brain]”.

beebeepka 3y ago

> Once the government has that info, it will be able to come up with bespoke taxes for you according to what it ordains as fair use. 'Your showers are too long', 'your toolshed is too big a draw on the electric' therefore 'you need to buy carbon credits to offset the environmental damage you are causing'. I am very conflicted. Deeply share your concerns regarding misuse of such info. It will be used as a weapon. But I am totally in favour of making wasters pay up, and not just fixed amounts. I hate wasting resources.

concordDance 3y ago
"Waster" isn't really a coherent concept when taken outside of an individual's value system. What might be waste for one person might simply be a sensible use of resources for another. Doing for a drive to the countryside for a walk? Having a long and relaxing bath? Go-karting? Using a heated pool? Keeping the heater on a single house-level timer so they don't have to think about it rather than planning ahead what rooms they will be in later? Everyone will have a different place they draw the "waste" vs sensible expenditure line. The correct economic solution to this is CO2-offsetting taxes and letting each individual decide how they want to spend their resources. Trying to centrally plan for a hundred million diverse people with different things they like and care about is a recipe for unneeded misery.
- hgomersall 3y ago
  Taxes just push the problem into poor people. If you want a fair solution we should have carbon/resource rationing. In fact, I'd prefer a solution in which the governments work hard (much harder than they are) to bootstrap the brave new world so everyone can benefit from a sustainable world.
  - CaptainMarvel 3y ago
    Taxes don't have to push the problem onto poor people at all. For example, the proceeds can be directly given to everyone equally which will usually disproportionately benefit poor people. So why would you say that taxes would harm poor people? I think I know why. In practice, the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government, and the media have been almost completely captured by the wealthy to disproportionately benefit themselves. Wealth is essentially zero sum game despite what many would say. Power is certainly a zero-sum game. When you have power over another, they have less power over you. I believe wealth is another form of power, a little indirect and not perfect, but the correlation is strong enough. This means that there is no practical solution that won't harm poor people. This includes your proposal where you would like the government to "benefit everyone".

concordDance 3y ago

> Once the government has that info, it will be able to come up with bespoke taxes for you according to what it ordains as fair use. 'Your showers are too long', 'your toolshed is too big a draw on the electric' therefore 'you need to buy carbon credits to offset the environmental damage you are causing'. This is likely to happen and is economically awful (far better to have constant carbon taxes), but it will be done because the majority supports it, not due to some government plot against the people.

smolder 3y ago
Elected officials get into office with majority support of a constituency, but that's very far away from the majority of people supporting their collective actions while in office. In the US, politicians do what money wants them to, not voters. Consent of voters is often manufactured and misinformed.

autoexec 3y ago

You don't even have to worry about the government (it seems unlikely that most of us will see a "10min showers only" law anytime soon), but it's usually private companies collecting and selling the data and they're happy to use that data against you in any way that they can.