3 ms·

The ideal spy army. Nobody expects the spanish inquisition I mean, being able to spy into households via cheap house-cleaning devices.

lysace 8mo ago
Some of us do. I specifically picked a device that (supposedly) lacked cameras and microphones. LIDAR seemed okay.
- gattilorenz 8mo ago
  I picked something that can be rooted and made cloud-free with Valetudo for the same reason
  - eptcyka 8mo ago
    Why can't I pay to express my consumer preferences? Why must I deliberately buy broken stuff and fix it myself? There's enough broken stuff to fix at work.
    - joe_mamba 8mo ago
      >Why can't I pay to express my consumer preferences? Cool, I'll start a HW-FOSS robo-vac company in California tailored to your consumer preferences, that will be profitable without selling your data. Buy one for only $4,999. Orders start now. ...fast forward 12 months ... Damn, why did we already go out of business, I thought according to consumer preferences, people would pay 10x markup for privacy compared to spyware Chinese models?
      - autoexec 8mo ago
        You'd deserve to go out of business for charging customers $4,999. You could make a healthy profit selling a robot vacuum for under $200 although you'd probably want models that cost a bit more for customers who wanted something more fancy (https://cookierobotics.com/060/ https://cookierobotics.com/060/)
    - dlenski 8mo ago
      > Why can't I pay to express my consumer preferences? Why must I deliberately buy broken stuff and fix it myself? I guess it comes down to "market failure." Many people would probably say that they care about security/privacy/maintainability of their electronic devices, but in practice they buy based on cost and features, and they remain oblivious to security/privacy/maintainability unless and until there's a major problem. This is probably rational behavior for most consumers: There's no real way for them to evaluate claims about security/privacy/maintainability of their devices. Basically every Internet-connected device advertises an enormous list of security-flavored bullet points. "Supports IEEE 802.11g/n/ac/ax, including Wi-Fi Easy Connect for secure passwordless connections", "Secure Boot to ensure only authorized firmware runs on the device", "Hardware cryptographic acceleration", "24/7 monitoring by our dedicated security incident team", yadda yadda. But those claims don't in any way cover the massive attack surface of a cloud-connected device where the server and client sides have been co-developed with a bunch of rushed and dangerous assumptions about how neither the client to the server will ever talk to any misconfigured or adversarial peer. Finding those kinds of security vulnerabilities is basically my stock in trade. <elmo_on_fire.gif>
hilbert42 8mo ago
"Nobody expects the spanish inquisition…" Why not? They bought roving cameras that surveil their homes and connected them to internet servers they neither own nor control. They obviously don't give a shit about privacy or they've room-temperature IQs.
- iSnow 8mo ago
  Ordinary users don't know. They bought a robo-vac, they do not necessarily know it comes with a microphone or camera. I work in tech, I never thought about buying one, so I never looked into them. Still, I am surprised they come with microphones.
  - ninalanyon 8mo ago
    > Still, I am surprised they come with microphones. Me too, what are they for?
    - bryanrasmussen 8mo ago
      well spying, probably. But let's suppose you are designing RoboVac vers. 1.0 OS, 1.0 OS does not use microphone, but one of our smart fellows wrote a document suggesting that we might want to have RoboVac be voice controlled! Maybe we can roll that out by 1.4, with some simple commands!! Let's put a Microphone in so we can add that feature later. Later on you get fired, and smart fellow who wrote document gets fired, and OS 1.4 rolls out with spy tech to mark common product names and send them back to Amazon with your location data. RoboVac 2.2 is out now, still no voice control, and you wonder why whenever you go to buy all your favorite products online there is 10% inflation on prices although news suggests inflation should actually be decreasing for the next half year.
    - fireant 8mo ago
      I'd guess that today cameras with microphones are no more expensive than cameras without
  - hilbert42 8mo ago

lysace 8mo ago

Some of us do. I specifically picked a device that (supposedly) lacked cameras and microphones. LIDAR seemed okay.

gattilorenz 8mo ago
I picked something that can be rooted and made cloud-free with Valetudo for the same reason
- eptcyka 8mo ago
  Why can't I pay to express my consumer preferences? Why must I deliberately buy broken stuff and fix it myself? There's enough broken stuff to fix at work.
  - joe_mamba 8mo ago
    >Why can't I pay to express my consumer preferences? Cool, I'll start a HW-FOSS robo-vac company in California tailored to your consumer preferences, that will be profitable without selling your data. Buy one for only $4,999. Orders start now. ...fast forward 12 months ... Damn, why did we already go out of business, I thought according to consumer preferences, people would pay 10x markup for privacy compared to spyware Chinese models?
    - autoexec 8mo ago
      You'd deserve to go out of business for charging customers $4,999. You could make a healthy profit selling a robot vacuum for under $200 although you'd probably want models that cost a bit more for customers who wanted something more fancy (https://cookierobotics.com/060/ https://cookierobotics.com/060/)
  - dlenski 8mo ago
    > Why can't I pay to express my consumer preferences? Why must I deliberately buy broken stuff and fix it myself? I guess it comes down to "market failure." Many people would probably say that they care about security/privacy/maintainability of their electronic devices, but in practice they buy based on cost and features, and they remain oblivious to security/privacy/maintainability unless and until there's a major problem. This is probably rational behavior for most consumers: There's no real way for them to evaluate claims about security/privacy/maintainability of their devices. Basically every Internet-connected device advertises an enormous list of security-flavored bullet points. "Supports IEEE 802.11g/n/ac/ax, including Wi-Fi Easy Connect for secure passwordless connections", "Secure Boot to ensure only authorized firmware runs on the device", "Hardware cryptographic acceleration", "24/7 monitoring by our dedicated security incident team", yadda yadda. But those claims don't in any way cover the massive attack surface of a cloud-connected device where the server and client sides have been co-developed with a bunch of rushed and dangerous assumptions about how neither the client to the server will ever talk to any misconfigured or adversarial peer. Finding those kinds of security vulnerabilities is basically my stock in trade. <elmo_on_fire.gif>

hilbert42 8mo ago

"Nobody expects the spanish inquisition…" Why not? They bought roving cameras that surveil their homes and connected them to internet servers they neither own nor control. They obviously don't give a shit about privacy or they've room-temperature IQs.

iSnow 8mo ago
Ordinary users don't know. They bought a robo-vac, they do not necessarily know it comes with a microphone or camera. I work in tech, I never thought about buying one, so I never looked into them. Still, I am surprised they come with microphones.
- ninalanyon 8mo ago
  > Still, I am surprised they come with microphones. Me too, what are they for?
  - bryanrasmussen 8mo ago
    well spying, probably. But let's suppose you are designing RoboVac vers. 1.0 OS, 1.0 OS does not use microphone, but one of our smart fellows wrote a document suggesting that we might want to have RoboVac be voice controlled! Maybe we can roll that out by 1.4, with some simple commands!! Let's put a Microphone in so we can add that feature later. Later on you get fired, and smart fellow who wrote document gets fired, and OS 1.4 rolls out with spy tech to mark common product names and send them back to Amazon with your location data. RoboVac 2.2 is out now, still no voice control, and you wonder why whenever you go to buy all your favorite products online there is 10% inflation on prices although news suggests inflation should actually be decreasing for the next half year.
  - fireant 8mo ago
    I'd guess that today cameras with microphones are no more expensive than cameras without
- hilbert42 8mo ago