Not OK, Google • Hacker News Board

Re: Not OK, Google

#531

Post by ocdtrekkie » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 10:48 PM UTC

euyyn wrote: post #523

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: "P…

"Worse" is often subjective. And the problem is often just the removal of the possibility of a better product to take hold. For example, Google prioritizes Google services. It gets you on as many Google services as possible. Let's use, say, that it pushes you towards Play Music when you search for songs.

Maybe Play Music is the best thing. Maybe it is not. Neither of us can answer that. But if a definitively better product comes along it will have no way to make a foothold because Google is still pushing everyone to their own product, from their other product (Search), and even when people try your product, if they use Google's other products, they'll tend to stick to other Google products.

Honestly, the worst problem with companies like Google is vertical integration. The ability to provide a wide product line where you integrate best with other products your own company makes has an incredibly chilling effect on competition, and therefore, innovation.

And if your theory that companies prioritizing results for profit would lose to companies that always prefer the best products, why is DuckDuckGo still in what... fourth or fifth place?

Re: Not OK, Google

#532

Post by euyyn » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 10:50 PM UTC

internaut wrote: post #441

msabalau wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There 50 million domestic workers in the world: living, breathing, naturally intelligence, autonomous human beings that people welcome into their homes. Not surprising, given that during almost the entirety of our evolutionary experience everyone one knew knew everything about one. The notion that people would object to a company knowing some things about one in order to place slightly more relevant ads is silly. It…

Almost everybody screens their cleaners and babysitters in some way. Either they are connected through well known friends and family, or for the rich they get checked out for criminality/dangerousness by professional services. Even then, we have 'nanny-cam'.

Which is why giving your credit card info to Google, Apple, or Amazon is more sensible than giving it to cheapelectronics.com.

Re: Not OK, Google

#533

Post by euyyn » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 11:00 PM UTC

pdkl95 wrote: post #221

halflings wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, there are some trust issues, but just regarding your two first points: A very limited number of Google employees have access to private user data (only when it's vital to their work) and they have strict policies in place (data does not leave the data centers etc.). Which third parties are you referring to? As far as I know, Google does not give their users' private data to a third party.

> they have strict policies in place What guarantee do you have that these policies will never change in the future? Or are you simply assuming that risks never change?

I think the strongest guarantee is that the sustainability of their business very much depends on that. Billions of incentives to make not a single ex-employee able to say "I managed to hack my way to user personal data".

Re: Not OK, Google

#534

Post by Nursie » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 11:00 PM UTC

kps wrote: post #479

Nursie wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

> ... it was creepy as all hell that the people [...] knew enough about me No people know. Software metaphorically ‘knows’, but don't anthropomorphize it (it hates that).

But it's accessible to people, that's the issue. Not my tech, but systems far away that belong to others.

Re: Not OK, Google

#535

Post by euyyn » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 11:02 PM UTC

probably_wrong wrote: post #80

aRationalMoose wrote: post #21

I 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…

The way you phrased the question sounds to me like "what are the shortcomings, leaving aside these terrible shortcomings?" Having said that: Google is not in the business of making your life easier, but in the business of selling you ads. The data that Google collects about you is incredibly powerful, allowing them to go from a "simple" manipulation to sell you stuff you wouldn't otherwise buy, to full-scale blackmai…

> but if they wanted to, who would stop them?

The law, and the economic interest of all the rich shareholders that care about the company's reputation.

Re: Not OK, Google

#536

Post by euyyn » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 11:12 PM UTC

throwaway98237 wrote: post #327

tantalor wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=deforestation

First off let me put this out there, people that send me "lmgtfy" links annoy the f#ck-sh#t out of me. I'm proficient at utilizing search engines, thanks pal. More directly to the point, I was (clearly) comparing the relative resources Google invests in some data sets vs others. Are you arguing that Google invests comparable resources in this type of data compared to the resources it invests in understanding Google's…

Google Scholar, Google Books, and Google Earth data for researchers existed before the Google Assistant was even an idea.

Not sure what your point is, either: do you want to get a notification in the morning saying "try to leave early today, as an accident has caused increased traffic," along with another one saying "remember to save to buy an electric car"?

Re: Not OK, Google

#537

Post by funkymike » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 11:15 PM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #368

CapitalistCartr wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a fairly uncommon name and predominately use Gmail. Still, I receive a surprising amount of other people's mail in error. Apparently lots of people guess at email addys. I do often wonder at both the lack of privacy this engenders and what the Goog machine must make of it all.

I just got a funny email last week... welcoming me to the NRA. I was like... but I didn't join the NRA. I sent them an email about it, but I'm probably going to have to CALL the NRA to tell them to remove my address from their database.

Getting these things corrected can actually be quite difficult. I regularly get emails from an optician in another state. I have replied multiple times that they are sending information to the wrong person, but they continue to do so. Fortunately this has never included detailed health information, but merely revealing a patient relationship with a specific medical provider can be a breach.

In another instance I was getting emails about an account someone created with American Express using my email address. I sent multiple emails to their customer support to get them to stop sending financial information to the wrong person with no results. In this I also found it difficult to even figure out what agency to report them to for failing to take action when notified. Eventually I took the time to call them. It took around 20 minutes (not counting time on hold) of talking to multiple people to get them to remove the email address from the account. This included them asking me several times for my social security number - which I flatly refused to provide since I had zero business relationship with them. This refusal actually seemed to confuse them.

Re: Not OK, Google

#538

Post by timv » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 11:18 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #488

sangnoir wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Our expectations of how "Star Trek AI" would actually be implemented were completely different than how highly connected cloud-based services like Google Assistant work today. The trope-namer (Star Trek AI) was a ship-wide AI - when considering the ship sizes, it definitely is closer to the "cloud" model and not limited to a private instances on officers' bunker/bridge terminals/tricorders. Perhaps a hardcore Trekk…

The AI for the Enterprise D was run from three computer cores on the ship (two in the saucer, one in the engineering section), made up of Isolinear Chips subjected to a small warp field (iow, it makes computes using light faster than the speed of light). Subspace communication bandwidth is too limited (and potentially affected by latency, since it had to travel through repeaters throughout the galaxy) to provide real…

What about when someone was (permanently) transferred between ships?

Was there ever an indication that their AI-level data was transferred along with their personnel file? For example did the replicator know what food to offer them on day one?

If so, then it's seems reasonable to assume that the Enterprise's AI data was backed up at Federation HQ during routine maintenance, and that the "IT department" at Federation knew exactly what you liked to do on the Holodeck.

Re: Not OK, Google

#539

Post by sangnoir » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 11:25 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #488

sangnoir wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Our expectations of how "Star Trek AI" would actually be implemented were completely different than how highly connected cloud-based services like Google Assistant work today. The trope-namer (Star Trek AI) was a ship-wide AI - when considering the ship sizes, it definitely is closer to the "cloud" model and not limited to a private instances on officers' bunker/bridge terminals/tricorders. Perhaps a hardcore Trekk…

The AI for the Enterprise D was run from three computer cores on the ship (two in the saucer, one in the engineering section), made up of Isolinear Chips subjected to a small warp field (iow, it makes computes using light faster than the speed of light). Subspace communication bandwidth is too limited (and potentially affected by latency, since it had to travel through repeaters throughout the galaxy) to provide real…

Thank you for that very thorough answer!

Re: Not OK, Google

#540

Post by funkymike » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 11:29 PM UTC

throwaway98237 wrote: post #291

mojuba wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One tiny caveat being that, Google (and others as well, to be fair) will be able to indirectly collect data even on the privacy-aware part of the population who don't use Google much. The simplest example being, even if you don't use GMail, still some part of your emails inevitably end up in GMail inboxes. Now also consider this: just being a guest in a Google-stuffed house means you are under surveillance. So no, it…

Perhaps we need to start normalizing encrypted email. Just like https everywhere is no longer considered necessarily "tin-foil hat" SOP, moving this direction for email needs to be socially normalized. Going further, given that an encrypted email to Gmail will simply be unencrypted and then available to GMail, include in the protocol authorized (via both white and black list means) agents of the recipient. So, if you…

I was thinking about this just yesterday. It would be great if email providers made tools to painlessly create encryption keys and get them synced up to all your devices securely. From there each email you send can include an automatic signature of where to find your public key. On the other side when you receive emails from others with such a signature you can then choose to have the email reader fetch the key and let you start trusting it with a single confirmation click. From then on your emails to that person will be encrypted without you having to think about it.

For almost all users getting a message from someone you personally know containing a message that they would legitimately send would be sufficient to trust the referenced key. If you are a little paranoid you could ask them over the phone or in person to send a specific message that you would then trust, or just ask for the URL itself. I believe that in-person key exchanges utilizing large trust networks are overkill for the vast majority of people sending everyday communications.

Make it so simple as 1) one time key creation and copying to each device 2) one time trust per other person that is completely streamlined by the software. If the gmail team implemented this for example other email providers would soon do the same and it would spread like wildfire. Very quickly a huge amount of email would be encrypted. Of course this would require an open design that anyone can implement.

Maybe there's a fundamental flaw with this idea that I'm not seeing. If so, please say so because otherwise I'm going to just be disappointed in five years when email is still 99% unencrypted.