What I'd like to see is some good open source software that can compete with Google Assistant, Siri, and Alexa. It looks like there are some promising projects, but nothing turn-key yet. I'd like to be able to simply apt-get a package, and have voice recognition on my box.
Not OK, Google
171–180 of 594 posts
Re: Not OK, Google
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm even more Luddite than you are. I don't have a phone at all (landline or otherwise). You wanna reach me, you email me. The people in my life that care about me have come to accept this. For other things, I read paper maps, plan appointments ahead of time[1], memorise routes, and look up stuff online from my laptop when I find a place to sit down and wifi. Reading stories like this makes me want to carry a persona…
Can you mail 911 where you live? If not, for that reason alone I would carry a phone.
People always say that. What about the real emergencies? There's a lot of anxiety and dread that carrying a phone seems to alleviate.
I live in a big city. There's always a phone nearby, including landlines and payphones (they're still there precisely for emergency reasons). There are also passerbys who can help me. The risk of being all alone, having an urgent need to call 911, and be unable to do so is much too small to warrant carrying a phone around at all times.
Re: Not OK, Google
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It is completely possible to do what they are doing by keeping everyone's individual privacy intact. And if I go by Google's ToS, that's exactly what they are doing. Could you give examples of how that can be achieved and how the ToS goes about stating that they are doing this?
Also, how do we know they haven't?
We don't know for sure if they are violating their privacy policies. But as I said, if they are doing it, and it comes out by any means, it will be the dead end of their business. So it's in their best interest to not to do that and only improve upon users' trust. So yes, there's certain level of trust I put into them, just like the trust I put into big food product companies that they'd respect the ingredients list, and have a certain level of quality and hygiene. All of them can break my trust, but it will be detrimental for them if it comes out.
Re: Not OK, Google
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols?pli=1 do what you're asking for? It's fairly fine-grained.
As was mentioned below, in Google's case I'm particularly looking for ease of use and a UI that lets me turn things on and off quickly and intuitively. That might sound odd, as if I care deeply enough about my privacy to complain about it, but not enough to quickly switch the settings on my Google account, but I do think it matters. The more specific work I need to go through to set up my privacy, the less inclined I…
The link above is very intuitive. One toggle disables search history in all Google products, another one removes location history, etc. You can also click on "Manage activity" for more fine-grained details in some apps.
Re: Not OK, Google
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think we just envisioned a highly anthropomorphized AI: essentially, a very smart and entirely obedient person to serve as the perfect aide. The Star Trek dream emerged before computing technology was very far advanced, and well before the idea of constantly mobile wireless communication. We thought our AIs would be small and physical, easy for a single person to entirely own and unable to remember more details tha…
> The Star Trek dream emerged before computing technology was very far advanced, and well before the idea of constantly mobile wireless communication. We thought our AIs would be small and physical, easy for a single person to entirely own and unable to remember more details than a human; instead we got unfamiliar algorithms run on machines far away. Which is kind of funny, because even if it might be accessed by per…
I think Star Trek was very prescient here as well: Security is terrible in the Star Trek universe. Nearly every antagonist is able to break into the computer within about a minute.
Re: Not OK, Google
#176I'm not worried what the engineers who built this will know about me. I'm not worried that Google will centralize this data so if someone hacked it and could drill through the data they could find me. I'm worried about who Google wants to sell this information to and what they want to do with it. I'm worried about Google working with intelligence agencies to try and target me politically, feed me propaganda, or put m…
I am more worried about subpoena on steroids than individual hackers. Big budget crackers are a different thing.
> I'm worried about Google working with intelligence agencies to try and target me politically, feed me propaganda, or put me on some list of undesirables.
This.
Re: Not OK, Google
#177Google Now has done the same for me, told me how long it will take to get to a bar I frequent. My reaction was quite exactly "Oh that's neat, thanks!" and I went and had a great burger that night. Totally OK for me Google. I respect that people have different privacy thresholds, but I think the fact that it's different for everyone is being lost in articles like this.
When it first told me it knew hiw long my commute would take, I realised it was creepy as all hell that the people (in another country with few protections on data) providing my phone software knew enough about me to tell where I worked and when I was going there.
And it annoys me that on maps, when you turn off all the spying capabilities there's no fallback to local history. You either share it with us or you get none.
Re: Not OK, Google
#178I have an open ended question-- mostly born out of ignorance; But why is this a bad thing? Isn't an artificial assistant that not only knows and understands us but anticipates our needs incredibly useful? In the process, sure they'll collect your info for better advertising, but short of Totalitarian Surveillance or Data Breach Concerns (The former is a bit of a reach if you live in the west, and they can survey you…
> incredibly useful
Sure it would be useful. Sell the assistant as a locally-installed app that guarantees personal data never leaves the LAN and will sell.
> sure they'll collect your info
Only if you let them. Demand better behavior from their software and business practices.
> Totalitarian Surveillance or Data Breach Concerns
What you seem to be missing is that the concern isn't about today's level of surveillance or today's data breach risk. Data generally persists indefinitely once it makes its way into a database or logfile.
To make a claim that these are low risk requires that at no time in the future will surveillance risk increase or data breaches become more common, ... or that the company will run into financial trouble and need to sell your data, ... or that a breach will be forced by a government (not necessarily your's or Google's), ... or that your data will be aggregated into other databases, increasing the "predictive" power and attack surface, ... or any of the other unknown ways your data could be used in the future.
Humans are already known to be terrible at assessing risk, especially when there is a very large separation between the cause and effect. Smoking today giving you cancer many years later is a traditional example. We already know data breaches happen, well meaning employees make mistakes or succumb to corruption, and external powers such as governments or organized crime occasionally take away your agency. Do you really want to claim that none of these risks will ever happen? Because that's the actual wager you're making when when you use Google's products.
Re: Not OK, Google
#179Google Now has done the same for me, told me how long it will take to get to a bar I frequent. My reaction was quite exactly "Oh that's neat, thanks!" and I went and had a great burger that night. Totally OK for me Google. I respect that people have different privacy thresholds, but I think the fact that it's different for everyone is being lost in articles like this.
I remember the huge smile I got on my face the first time Google Now picked up on the fact that I went to the same bar every Wednesday evening.
One Wednesday afternoon, at work, I got a notification saying "Travel time to the Lion & Crown". The first thing that ran through my head was "oh my god, I'm living in the future".
Re: Not OK, Google
#180Google Now has done the same for me, told me how long it will take to get to a bar I frequent. My reaction was quite exactly "Oh that's neat, thanks!" and I went and had a great burger that night. Totally OK for me Google. I respect that people have different privacy thresholds, but I think the fact that it's different for everyone is being lost in articles like this.
hypothetically: you express radical political ideas to your friend with the expectation of your statements remaining in confidence-- but google was listening. now, your feed recommendations steer you further down the path google thinks you were already on. you are ready to attend a protest and perform civil disobedience, as google now knows based off of your interest in what it has been suggesting to you. it suggests (as facebook does now regarding making events for birthday parties etc) that you and some other people form that protest, and, because it said so, you do it. except it's a trap. the police's google feed tells them that some undesirables have planned a protest, and you're imprisoned.
is this story unrealistic, or has it already occurred?