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Not OK, Google

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Re: Not OK, Google

#521

Post by pmoriarty »

jordigh wrote: post #172
jacquesm wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sma…

What city do you live in where there are always payphones around?

All the cities I've been in have had virtually all their payphones torn out long ago.

Re: Not OK, Google

#522

Post by dragonwriter »

pjlegato wrote: post #443
witty_username wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google earns most of their money through ads.

Yes. Google is selling you , to advertisers, quite literally. When you aren't paying anything for something of value, YOU are the product.

> Google is selling you, to advertisers, quite literally.

No, that would be slavery, which is illegal.

Google is selling advertising space on various channels that you provide in exchange for Google services to advertisers.

> When you aren't paying anything for something of value, YOU are the product.

No, when you aren't paying money for something of value, you are probably paying something else of value for it; often, something that the person with which you are trading is then selling for money, making you a supplier of an input to the good or service they are selling for money.

Re: Not OK, Google

#523

Post by euyyn »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #373
orpheansodality wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you never use digital tools to outsource mental effort? Seems like a similar argument could be made for using a calculator.

Calculators provide you a completely fair assistance with your query. There is zero bias in a calculator. If you ask it what two plus two is, you're going to get four. Google is designed to sell ads, and subtly influence your behavior towards the most profitable results. Please do not confuse a fact-based tool with an ad generator.

> subtly influence your behavior towards the most profitable results

This is the very common theory that a company will (shadily) try to offer you a worse product to make more profit. It fails to account for competing companies that would jump on that opportunity to offer their better product, and get the market share.

But what's funny here is that the suggested alternative is to not get any product at all. As in: "Poor OP, didn't realize that it wasn't really him who was enjoying that burger he was enjoying."

Re: Not OK, Google

#524

Post by ocdtrekkie »

nine_k wrote: post #43
unprepare wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

only if you hacked together your own search, maps, calendar, etc. as well. Maybe someday that will be a realistic endeavor, but it would take a lot of effort to set up and maintain your own personal versions of all of google's services, and integrate them

Hosting your own mail, calendar, cloud storage, and even a mapping application is quite doable right now. There are open-source projects for that, and you can have your own physically secured machine in a co-location facility for a reasonably small sum. It's just not easy to do, both in setup and maintenance effort. Most people would not care about their privacy nearly enough to justify that.

My recommendation for people to look into here is Sandstorm.io. It runs either on-site or in the cloud, and it already can replace a lot of what one uses cloud services for. In time, hopefully open source projects will develop "intelligent" apps that can then tap into that data and do more with it, still within the confines of your secure, private storage.

Re: Not OK, Google

#525

Post by dpark »

majewsky wrote: post #460
dpark wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that solve anything? Either these services will have to publish the key on your behalf (so you can lookup the public key for bob@gmail.com with some public API), or you will have to provide the public key every time you hand out your email address. The former doesn't fix the issue at all, and the latter is unworkable because the guy reliably giving out the wrong email address will absolutely not remember his…

> the guy reliably giving out the wrong email address will absolutely not remember his public key Have the browser suggest the key IDs from `gpg --list-secret-keys`.

/s

Re: Not OK, Google

#526

Post by Eupolemos »

Ph0X wrote: post #245
Eupolemos wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fear you will be unable to recognize when that burger was your choice and when it was a reaction. You probably won't notice. And that is harmless. I also fear you will be unable to notice in which areas of life and information the distinction between choice and reaction is harmless and which it isn't. Of course, I'm not talking about "You" you, but just people. Me as well. I feel we are widening the field of uncons…

I'm sorry but that just sounds like blind fear mongering. What you're saying is vague and doesn't really mean much. It's like saying we shouldn't use prescription glasses, or medication, or cars, because it's not "us". Humans invent all these tools and systems to improve and optimize our life. Make our vision better. Make our health better. Make us move around faster. In the case of AI, make us do perform certain thi…

I think you misunderstand me by a large margin.

I'm not saying we shouldn't use AIs. We should, however, think about how we use them.

To build on your example, what are the dangers of having a personal secretary on the payroll of anyone but you?

What I am expecting from this is a super devious filter bubble - because that's how you make money. Google's old slogan "Don't be evil" is long gone. "For a greater good" might be more on point.

Re: Not OK, Google

#527

Post by ocdtrekkie »

Malarkey73 wrote: post #58
unprepare wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

only if you hacked together your own search, maps, calendar, etc. as well. Maybe someday that will be a realistic endeavor, but it would take a lot of effort to set up and maintain your own personal versions of all of google's services, and integrate them

I think it's possible to create a hybrid whereby your personal AI - has access to those external systems to check public (maps, search) and cloud data (calendar, mail). But it stores the private data about your location, your searches, your purchases. this could even be an encrypted private fire-walled bit of cloud rather than a robot in your house. The point being your AI is serving you. And you can delete/edit this…

This is spot on. I'm okay with having my home automation system tap a weather API to collect data. But I don't need an Internet service to know the thermostat settings in my house.

I've designed my home automation system on the concept that the only route to the Internet is my computer (and therefore, my home automation software). My computer is a secure, well-managed intermediary that can store my data, and decide when and how to receive and send data to the Internet.

The idea of dozens of Internet-connected devices in the home is :terrifying: in comparison, especially considering that badly-secured IoT devices are now powering some of the biggest botnets out there.

My light switch, however, cannot talk to the Internet. It has local-only communication protocols that are simple. It knows how to be told to turn the lights on or off or dim or a handful of other settings, but it's literally incapable of doing anything else... and why would I want anything different? Why should my light switch have Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and software updates and a miniature flavor of Linux... It's a switch!

Re: Not OK, Google

#528

Post by ianai »

carapace wrote: post #445
ianai wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reminds me of the TNG episode where two sides of a war long ago switched to simulating attacks. When there's a strike the casualties are required to report to termination "centers" to comply with the simulation.

That was Star Trek original series, Season 1 Episode 23, "A Taste of Armageddon". Brilliant episode. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon

Right, I TOTALLY said TOS. (Damn faulty memory!)

Re: Not OK, Google

#529

Post by Eupolemos »

ubercore wrote: post #78
Eupolemos wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fear you will be unable to recognize when that burger was your choice and when it was a reaction. You probably won't notice. And that is harmless. I also fear you will be unable to notice in which areas of life and information the distinction between choice and reaction is harmless and which it isn't. Of course, I'm not talking about "You" you, but just people. Me as well. I feel we are widening the field of uncons…

To my mind, leading a simple life is enjoying a burger at a restaurant/bar I frequent already. Simplicity _is_ accepting that Google algorithmically noticed a trend and just helped me do things I already do.

Before replying, you could at least have made an effort to understand what I meant with the distinction between simple and easy.

If you do not care what I say, why even reply?

Re: Not OK, Google

#530

Post by dragonwriter »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #520
pixelbath wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely a per-ship thing, because there are several episodes where they have to down/upload updated data to/from the Federation (at least in TNG canon). I also think the comparison isn't perfect, because Federation vessels (in my mind) are similar to today's Navy vessels. All onboard systems are connected to other onboard, but opsec demands the ship systems not be influenced by external actors.

And a big point is that on a Navy-analogous vessel, it's reasonable to assume most activity on the ship is being monitored, for the safety of the ship and crew. The fact that the ship knows where everyone aboard is or that they can pull up the full Starfleet record for anyone who's ever been in Starfleet is not surprising, this is the military* and records and accountability are a big deal. But there's nothing to ind…

> But there's nothing to indicate that Federation civilians are monitored to that extent

The clearest example of extensive off-starship monitoring (within the Federation) that I can think of in TNG is a civilian (though, to be fair, a civilian in a role analogous to a "defense contractor"), Dr. Leah Brahms.

> I'd argue enough episodes are strong on fundamental individual rights, that it's hard to imagine Federation life for civilians being a surveillance state.

Actually, I'd say that its quite plausible that the Federation is a "benevolent surveillance state", that is, one with pervasive monitoring but a very low incidence of "serious" abuse (that is, the kind that substantially limits practical liberty -- casual intrusions on privacy may be more common.)

While the Federation seems keen on "fundamental individual rights", it doesn't seem to exactly mirror, say, some modern views on what those rights are -- and not just in terms of privacy.

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