4 ms·

Don't use bad tech. Some people will, but that's their loss. As long as it's a free society, we'll each individually have the choice to stay away from bad tec

by javert 11y ago

Don't use bad tech. Some people will, but that's their loss. As long as it's a free society, we'll each individually have the choice to stay away from bad tech. Paying one of my local telco monopolies too much money to watch TV full of ads is already a losing value proposition for me, so I don't have cable TV. I sure as hell am not going to get a TV that is connected to the Internet and has a microphone, much less shares information with advertisers. Same thing for a couch.

smacktoward 11y ago
The problem arises when the bad tech crowds the good tech out of the market altogether. I would like to have a smartphone that doesn't spy on me. I can't, because nobody makes one. So my personal preference doesn't matter; my only choice is between either accepting the spying, or not having a smartphone at all. Now I get to look forward to enjoying this exact same dilemma when I buy furniture! Hooray.
- javert 11y ago
  > The problem arises when the bad tech crowds the good tech out of the market altogether. That's not possible in normal market dynamics. When only shitty products are available, someone will start competing at the high end. The reason it doesn't, and won't, happen with smartphones is because the telcos have [government granted] legal monopolies. And they function as government bureaus. Look up what happened to the CEO of Quest. [1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > That's not possible in normal market dynamics. It is quite possible in normal market dynamics. It is not possible in ideal market dynamics where both perfect competition and the rational choice model hold, but where people are not -- contrary to the rational choice model -- perfectly knowledge about the actual utilities that they will individually realize from different market alternatives before making transaction decisions, its quite possible for bad-but-well-marketed-to-create-the-illusion-of-quality products to crowd out actually better products.
    - javert 11y ago
      You're attacking a straw man. If you pay attention to the world around you, you see that time after time, better products win out over worse ones. It's practically common sense. But you have your head in the clouds and your fingers in your ears. I'm not interested in arguing about this with you---take it or leave it, but this is all I have to say.
      - dragonwriter 11y ago
        > If you pay attention to the world around you, you see that time after time, better products win out over worse ones. Yes, lots of real, normal markets are reasonably well approximated by the rational choice model, even though its quite obvious that it is not literally accurate. That's one reason why its an important model. Lots of real, normal markets are not reasonably well approximated by the rational choice model, and the elements of the model that are obviously literally false, and the degree to which reality deviates from them in the particular market, are pretty good starting points for understanding why that is the case. "Normal markets" and "Econ 101 simplifications" aren't the same thing.
      - notduncansmith 11y ago
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betamax http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betamax
- soperj 11y ago
  What about the Jolla smartphone? https://jolla.com/jolla/ https://jolla.com/jolla/
  - sologoub 11y ago
    Well, there's this: http://www.jollausers.com/2015/05/sailfish-os-to-become-russias-official-operating-system-for-mobile/ http://www.jollausers.com/2015/05/sailfish-os-to-become-russ... My personal bias tells me that can't be without some compromises...
    - soperj 11y ago
      It's an open source operating system... what compromises are you suggesting? Maybe the compromise is that they don't sell Russian info out to American interests.
manachar 11y ago
> Don't use bad tech. Unfortunately my choices are only a single data point in the market for consumer goods. The choices most other people make with their dollars far surpass any buying power I possess. Certainly it's worth me doing my due diligence and try to purchase good tech, but at some point the market can and does remove my choices if more profit is made by bad tech. You mention "smart" TVs. I recently tried to purchase a dumb TV with good resolution and sufficient ports to be used as I desired. I ended up buying a "smart" TV because the dumb TVs offered were all inferior visually. I wish you luck in avoiding a "smart" TV. You see the same pressures in online video (YouTube ads are getting obnoxious), music streaming (I can't pay Songza to get rid of ads), etc. In some ways this is a good and fine thing for the market, but at some point one has to realize the market is flooded with bad tech because it makes more money. And I've never known of a market that doesn't optimize for profit.
iamthepieman 11y ago
"Don't use bad tech" That's a noble sentiment and I try to follow it as well. Unfortunately the time is coming when I'll have the choice of being a Luddite or buying the bad tech because that's all there will be. I already don't own a smart phone because I can't get one that doesn't have a secure or open source baseband processor. I don't own a smart TV and by the time mine breaks down I'll probably have to go without a television as well. The choice to go without rather than own and use invasive technology is not that big a deal when you haven't integrated it into your life yet. But giving things up that you've become reliant on is much harder. Stallman saw this early on and built his life around it. I doubt many of us are willing to go that route.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
I agree with other commenters that sometimes "bad tech" is the only tech remaining on the market, but I'd like to focus away from the invasive surveillance gizmos and point out that sometimes "bad tech" is just that - crappy equipment. Smartphone market is flooded with bad tech. Yes, you can still buy decent ones - if you pay for the highest-end ones, but available devices have much less capability than they could theoretically have. For instance, were producers to drop sensor market segmentation tactics (you have a phone model A with sensors 1, 2, 5 and an alternative phone B with sensors 2, 4, 6) and equip at least the mid-and-high-end phones with all the sensors, we could treat smartphone as a sensoric platform and develop tools for bigger userbase. But smartphones ain't that bad; the older technology, however, is. It's hard to buy decent, durable things nowadays - clothes, shoes, tools. Everything is pretty and colorful and has some cool new features, but nothing lasts more than a season of day-to-day use, even though things made decades ago can last a lifetime. I used to think that maybe military has decent hardware, only to realize they're a money-making machine now, and vendors cheat on them even more. So I guess the core observation is: as any market matures, it turns into a race to the bottom, and products quickly become as crap as possible but still good enough to make someone buy them. Is there a solution? I don't know. Custom-made things is one option, but there's less and less businesses doing that for basic things, and I don't see how I could get a custom-made smartphone at a reasonable (< $10k) price.
sologoub 11y ago
The underlying issue is who's data is this? Is it the manufacturers because the device gathered it or is it the users because it describes the user? Currently, from what I have seen, it's usually argued to be the former and not the latter. For there to be saner balance, users have to a say about how this data is used and owned. The "reasonable expectation to privacy" doctrine needs to evolve to match modern age.

by javert 11y ago

smacktoward 11y ago

The problem arises when the bad tech crowds the good tech out of the market altogether. I would like to have a smartphone that doesn't spy on me. I can't, because nobody makes one. So my personal preference doesn't matter; my only choice is between either accepting the spying, or not having a smartphone at all. Now I get to look forward to enjoying this exact same dilemma when I buy furniture! Hooray.

javert 11y ago
> The problem arises when the bad tech crowds the good tech out of the market altogether. That's not possible in normal market dynamics. When only shitty products are available, someone will start competing at the high end. The reason it doesn't, and won't, happen with smartphones is because the telcos have [government granted] legal monopolies. And they function as government bureaus. Look up what happened to the CEO of Quest. [1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > That's not possible in normal market dynamics. It is quite possible in normal market dynamics. It is not possible in ideal market dynamics where both perfect competition and the rational choice model hold, but where people are not -- contrary to the rational choice model -- perfectly knowledge about the actual utilities that they will individually realize from different market alternatives before making transaction decisions, its quite possible for bad-but-well-marketed-to-create-the-illusion-of-quality products to crowd out actually better products.
  - javert 11y ago
    You're attacking a straw man. If you pay attention to the world around you, you see that time after time, better products win out over worse ones. It's practically common sense. But you have your head in the clouds and your fingers in your ears. I'm not interested in arguing about this with you---take it or leave it, but this is all I have to say.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > If you pay attention to the world around you, you see that time after time, better products win out over worse ones. Yes, lots of real, normal markets are reasonably well approximated by the rational choice model, even though its quite obvious that it is not literally accurate. That's one reason why its an important model. Lots of real, normal markets are not reasonably well approximated by the rational choice model, and the elements of the model that are obviously literally false, and the degree to which reality deviates from them in the particular market, are pretty good starting points for understanding why that is the case. "Normal markets" and "Econ 101 simplifications" aren't the same thing.
    - notduncansmith 11y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betamax http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betamax
soperj 11y ago
What about the Jolla smartphone? https://jolla.com/jolla/ https://jolla.com/jolla/
- sologoub 11y ago
  Well, there's this: http://www.jollausers.com/2015/05/sailfish-os-to-become-russias-official-operating-system-for-mobile/ http://www.jollausers.com/2015/05/sailfish-os-to-become-russ... My personal bias tells me that can't be without some compromises...
  - soperj 11y ago
    It's an open source operating system... what compromises are you suggesting? Maybe the compromise is that they don't sell Russian info out to American interests.

manachar 11y ago

> Don't use bad tech. Unfortunately my choices are only a single data point in the market for consumer goods. The choices most other people make with their dollars far surpass any buying power I possess. Certainly it's worth me doing my due diligence and try to purchase good tech, but at some point the market can and does remove my choices if more profit is made by bad tech. You mention "smart" TVs. I recently tried to purchase a dumb TV with good resolution and sufficient ports to be used as I desired. I ended up buying a "smart" TV because the dumb TVs offered were all inferior visually. I wish you luck in avoiding a "smart" TV. You see the same pressures in online video (YouTube ads are getting obnoxious), music streaming (I can't pay Songza to get rid of ads), etc. In some ways this is a good and fine thing for the market, but at some point one has to realize the market is flooded with bad tech because it makes more money. And I've never known of a market that doesn't optimize for profit.

iamthepieman 11y ago

"Don't use bad tech" That's a noble sentiment and I try to follow it as well. Unfortunately the time is coming when I'll have the choice of being a Luddite or buying the bad tech because that's all there will be. I already don't own a smart phone because I can't get one that doesn't have a secure or open source baseband processor. I don't own a smart TV and by the time mine breaks down I'll probably have to go without a television as well. The choice to go without rather than own and use invasive technology is not that big a deal when you haven't integrated it into your life yet. But giving things up that you've become reliant on is much harder. Stallman saw this early on and built his life around it. I doubt many of us are willing to go that route.

TeMPOraL 11y ago

I agree with other commenters that sometimes "bad tech" is the only tech remaining on the market, but I'd like to focus away from the invasive surveillance gizmos and point out that sometimes "bad tech" is just that - crappy equipment. Smartphone market is flooded with bad tech. Yes, you can still buy decent ones - if you pay for the highest-end ones, but available devices have much less capability than they could theoretically have. For instance, were producers to drop sensor market segmentation tactics (you have a phone model A with sensors 1, 2, 5 and an alternative phone B with sensors 2, 4, 6) and equip at least the mid-and-high-end phones with all the sensors, we could treat smartphone as a sensoric platform and develop tools for bigger userbase. But smartphones ain't that bad; the older technology, however, is. It's hard to buy decent, durable things nowadays - clothes, shoes, tools. Everything is pretty and colorful and has some cool new features, but nothing lasts more than a season of day-to-day use, even though things made decades ago can last a lifetime. I used to think that maybe military has decent hardware, only to realize they're a money-making machine now, and vendors cheat on them even more. So I guess the core observation is: as any market matures, it turns into a race to the bottom, and products quickly become as crap as possible but still good enough to make someone buy them. Is there a solution? I don't know. Custom-made things is one option, but there's less and less businesses doing that for basic things, and I don't see how I could get a custom-made smartphone at a reasonable (< $10k) price.

sologoub 11y ago

The underlying issue is who's data is this? Is it the manufacturers because the device gathered it or is it the users because it describes the user? Currently, from what I have seen, it's usually argued to be the former and not the latter. For there to be saner balance, users have to a say about how this data is used and owned. The "reasonable expectation to privacy" doctrine needs to evolve to match modern age.