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Google in, Google out

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Re: Google in, Google out

#51

Post by hdhzy »

glandium wrote: post #32
huhtenberg wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the car is not connected to the Internet Except, of course, that they are. For example, OnStar has been around for ~20 years and there are documented cases of FBI using it to eavesdrop on their suspects.

That's also true for baby cams. Worse than that, a lot are actually sending the video over the internet and watching it "locally" actually goes through the cloud.

I believe pacala was talking about regular mics in cars and baby systems that are not connected to internet (I have products like that).

Of course there are different products that are constantly connected to the Internet, we hear a lot about them on HN's front page.

Re: Google in, Google out

#52

Post by Ajedi32 »

paradite wrote: post #14

On the topic of Google Lens, I don't really understand the hype around it. People are talking about how it is able scan a bar code of SSID and password to connect to router. Isn't that ancient technology? And for other uses like overlay maps info, aren't those just running standard CV/ML algorithms on their mega-servers plus simple integration with other apps in their ecosystem?

What's not to be hyped about? It's pretty much the first step towards ubiquitous sci-fi style augmented reality. Even in it's current form it's already fairly useful (you can get info on pretty much anything just by snapping a photo of it), and it's only going to get better from here.

Re: Google in, Google out

#53

Post by mondoshawan »

afarrell wrote: post #29
MrQuincle wrote: post #2

> And yet. Like every I/O attendee I received a free Google Home device as part of the I/O experience. (I attended as an engineer, not as press.) But I don’t want one; I’ll be giving mine away. Sorry, Google. It’s not that I mistrust you. It’s just that I don’t want to have to trust any profit-driven megacorporation quite that much. Not Apple, not Amazon, and not even you. It is very interesting to me why certain mic…

> However, it is a no no to embed a cam in a pair of glasses. If someone is holding a phone up and taking a photo of you to post online, you can object. If someone is wearing glasses with the little red indicator light turned off, you can't.

Interestingly enough, if you're wearing a pair of glasses without microphones and a camera but with a display, people still ask the question, "are you recording me?"

Re: Google in, Google out

#54

Post by Analemma_ »

MrQuincle wrote: post #48
jlg23 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is very interesting to me why certain microphones and cameras are fine, while others are not. If you film yourself during sex that's one thing. If I film you during sex without your explicit consent that's a completely different thing. > However, it is a no no to embed a cam in a pair of glasses. Building a mic into a speaker is not okay. Building is not the problem, usage is. People don't complain about the new…

The deeper question then is the following: Why is it so hard to have people care about privacy enough? If there would be such a strong gradient towards privacy-favoring products and services, why does society so slowly adapt? + It might be that the risks are not yet understood. As argued here: http://laoutaris.info/index.php/2016/09/11/oh-but-people-don... + It is politically a much stronger move to act upon feelings…

Because the benefits of giving up your privacy are certain and immediate, and the drawbacks are uncertain and in the future. Humans are really bad at evaluating tradeoffs of this kind; see global warming, poor rates of retirement savings, etc.

Re: Google in, Google out

#55

Post by ocdtrekkie »

Chathamization wrote: post #41
Loic wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By framing this as "luddite/anti-tech" you do not address the fundamental question: Do you really want your life to have such high dependency on a single corporation? I am in no ways anti-tech, but the history has shown that putting your life in the hands of a single corporation is not a sane decision.

And a secretive organization at that. That's one of the big issues, the same as with the NSA - not just privacy, but the privacy differential. When an organization is able to learn everything about you, but you are able to learn little about them.

This is huge. I can't even count how many times I've argued about privacy with Googlers and run into "trust me, we take this very seriously, but I can't say anything about it". We're asked to share everything with them, but these tech companies are incredibly, incredibly secretive, all under the guise of protecting their interests from competition.

People in support of these companies running people's lives are all in favor of transparency and sharing on the Internet... until it gets turned around on them. For all it's other faults, The Circle movie captured this perfectly with one line from Tom Hanks: "We are so f###ed."

Maybe I wouldn't be so bothered by Google knowing where I am every five minutes if I could track Larry Page and Eric Schmidt in near realtime too.

Re: Google in, Google out

#56

Post by j_s »

techdragon wrote: post #24
MrQuincle wrote: post #2

> And yet. Like every I/O attendee I received a free Google Home device as part of the I/O experience. (I attended as an engineer, not as press.) But I don’t want one; I’ll be giving mine away. Sorry, Google. It’s not that I mistrust you. It’s just that I don’t want to have to trust any profit-driven megacorporation quite that much. Not Apple, not Amazon, and not even you. It is very interesting to me why certain mic…

I'm least offended by the door bell type devices. They are on the outside and offer no more information than someone could gain by snooping at my house from the street. The benefits of being able to pretend to be present at home when the doorbell is answered is significantly better security of my personal goods against casual burglary. The downside is someone could remotely harvest a profile and recordings of who ent…

Most outdoor security cameras would fall under this classification as well.

Re: Google in, Google out

#57

Post by ocdtrekkie »

paradite wrote: post #14

On the topic of Google Lens, I don't really understand the hype around it. People are talking about how it is able scan a bar code of SSID and password to connect to router. Isn't that ancient technology? And for other uses like overlay maps info, aren't those just running standard CV/ML algorithms on their mega-servers plus simple integration with other apps in their ecosystem?

The open source Barcode Scanner app by ZXing can do the SSID thing. The text translation feature is actually lifted straight from Word Lens, a company they bought and absorbed a couple years ago. And Google Goggles did most of the rest.

Re: Google in, Google out

#58

Post by jcastro »

buro9 wrote: post #11

> They don’t just want to remake the world in their image. They want to remake our individual lives. Each Stack — bar Facebook, for now — offers the same awkward bargain: commit wholly & wholeheartedly to our ecosystem, and we will better your life. And it just might work, if any of the newer Google experiences worked on all Google accounts. My experience as a Google Apps / G Suite user, is that few to none of the ne…

> Android TV seems to lack integration with Photos (which I assume is because of my G Suite account but maybe it's just crappy).

That's not your account, the google photos app doesn't support AndroidTV natively, only casting is supported.

Re: Google in, Google out

#59

Post by ocdtrekkie »

mwexler wrote: post #47

It is interesting that of the 5, Microsoft is still in the mix. Look back 10 years, or 20 years, and ask which companies you would have thought would also be present. MS may have made the list, but wouldn't a lot of others as well? Apple is also surprising, but then again, that's what they were so good at. You expect someone to come out of nowhere, but MS just keeps on chugging when so many others failed out.

Microsoft's scale and early dominance gives them incredible staying power. Apple, at this point, too. Huge companies have the money to coast by in mediocrity for years, and can simply buy assets to fill in gaps in their product line.

Don't have a chat app? Buy one. Don't have machine learning yet? Buy a couple of those too.

Even if a company like Google lost most of it's income overnight, it could coast for years on pure cash reserves. The amount of money these big tech behemoths have to work with is incredible. As long as they strike gold once or twice every several years, they'll be fine.

Re: Google in, Google out

#60

Post by fixermark »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #39
jpalomaki wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they open this to developers, it could be quite powerful and interesting feature. Point your phone to something, Google recognizes what's in the picture and makes this information available on platform. Applications can then be activated based on context and they can additional information to screen. Of course things like this already exist, but my phone does not feel particularly "smart" when I need to be making…

Having 7nth way to pay for something is cute, but not exciting. The real bother is fragmentation. The amount of time wasted integrating to each vendor speech, vision, backend API's is just going to be enormous. > Maybe one reason for introducing it already now is to start collecting data With Google, this is always the reason. This is sort of cleverness I admire about them.

This has generally been resolved in the past by third-parties acting as an infrastructure glue---building one API that can manipulate the other APIs.
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