Blink has been acquired by Amazon • Hacker News Board

Re: Blink has been acquired by Amazon

#21

Post by c_r_w » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 6:48 PM UTC

neekb wrote: post #18

Amazon has their own delivery service, bought wholefoods, and now bought blink. Blink has a doorbell offering plus the camera's that you already know of. It's not a stretch to have groceries delivered all the way to your fridge and put blink cameras all over the house to make sure the delivery guy walks back out when he's done.

Amazon is definitely pushing the boundaries of what amount of privacy people are willing to exchange for convenience. I was shocked that so many people I knew bought Echos... wiring your entire house for video doesn't seem that much crazier.

Re: Blink has been acquired by Amazon

#22

Post by jjp » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 6:49 PM UTC

erohead wrote: post #8

Looks like they had to delete support for Smarthings integration as a condition for the deal going through: https://community.smartthings.com/t/blink-support-discontinu...

Would be too strange a coincidence if not, and with the increasing level of device support on Echos will be interesting to see whether they stop supporting Smartthings hubs there as well.

Re: Blink has been acquired by Amazon

#23

Post by dna_polymerase » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 6:50 PM UTC

neekb wrote: post #18

Amazon has their own delivery service, bought wholefoods, and now bought blink. Blink has a doorbell offering plus the camera's that you already know of. It's not a stretch to have groceries delivered all the way to your fridge and put blink cameras all over the house to make sure the delivery guy walks back out when he's done.

Amazon also recently started in-home delivery [0]. It all adds up. They also have their drones, so in the near future they will completely dominate every aspcet of online shopping to delivery.

[0]: https://www.amazon.com/b?&node=17285120011

Re: Blink has been acquired by Amazon

#24

Post by bob_theslob646 » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 6:51 PM UTC

benmorris wrote: post #17

I've had a 5 camera system for the last few months. It works well and didn't need any wires ran. The app needs some improvement, but overall a pretty neat product.

From a security standpoint is that as secure as a closed circuit system?

Re: Blink has been acquired by Amazon

#25

Post by Mister_Snuggles » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 6:55 PM UTC

mikestew wrote: post #5

If you own an electric car and are wondering WTF Amazon is doing getting into the car charging business, well, it isn’t this Blink: http://www.blinkcharging.com , it’s some video camera company.

I thought they were getting into the web rendering engine game[0].

[0] https://www.chromium.org/blink

Re: Blink has been acquired by Amazon

#26

Post by Mister_Snuggles » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 6:58 PM UTC

c_r_w wrote: post #21

neekb wrote: post #18

Amazon has their own delivery service, bought wholefoods, and now bought blink. Blink has a doorbell offering plus the camera's that you already know of. It's not a stretch to have groceries delivered all the way to your fridge and put blink cameras all over the house to make sure the delivery guy walks back out when he's done.

Amazon is definitely pushing the boundaries of what amount of privacy people are willing to exchange for convenience. I was shocked that so many people I knew bought Echos... wiring your entire house for video doesn't seem that much crazier.

Wiring your house for video is not crazy at all. Wiring it for video where you have to rely on the security of cloud provider (especially a free one) is what's crazy.

Re: Blink has been acquired by Amazon

#27

Post by benmorris » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 7:14 PM UTC

bob_theslob646 wrote: post #24

benmorris wrote: post #17

I've had a 5 camera system for the last few months. It works well and didn't need any wires ran. The app needs some improvement, but overall a pretty neat product.

From a security standpoint is that as secure as a closed circuit system?

It is a trade off. It isn't as nice as a wired system. My setup would have required multiple boxes and several extremely long difficult to get to runs.

I had 5 blink cameras setup and fully working in about an hour. So it was worth it to me. 24/7 recording would be better but this was reasonably priced and very easy to use.

Re: Blink has been acquired by Amazon

#28

Post by mkoryak » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 7:16 PM UTC

benmorris wrote: post #17

I've had a 5 camera system for the last few months. It works well and didn't need any wires ran. The app needs some improvement, but overall a pretty neat product.

I find it crazy that it claims to run for 20 hours on 2 double A batteries. Is battery life a problem for these things?

Also it records in 5 second clips. I imagine that being somewhat painful to review.

Re: Blink has been acquired by Amazon

#29

Post by kfriede » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 7:45 PM UTC

Mister_Snuggles wrote: post #26

c_r_w wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is definitely pushing the boundaries of what amount of privacy people are willing to exchange for convenience. I was shocked that so many people I knew bought Echos... wiring your entire house for video doesn't seem that much crazier.

Wiring your house for video is not crazy at all. Wiring it for video where you have to rely on the security of cloud provider (especially a free one) is what's crazy.

Wiring the interior of your house to a network connected device, whether cloud or not, sounds crazy to me anyways. I realize 95% of the "hacked" webstreams are due to people not changing the default password and forwarding the port, but there are enough security vulnerabilities aside from that where I wouldn't feel comfortable with them installed indoors.

Re: Blink has been acquired by Amazon

#30

Post by neekb » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 7:45 PM UTC

c_r_w wrote: post #21

neekb wrote: post #18

Amazon has their own delivery service, bought wholefoods, and now bought blink. Blink has a doorbell offering plus the camera's that you already know of. It's not a stretch to have groceries delivered all the way to your fridge and put blink cameras all over the house to make sure the delivery guy walks back out when he's done.

Amazon is definitely pushing the boundaries of what amount of privacy people are willing to exchange for convenience. I was shocked that so many people I knew bought Echos... wiring your entire house for video doesn't seem that much crazier.

The thing that bothers me most is.. Don't people want cookies any more??? When I go grocery shopping, I get a cookie from the bakery. I need to look at them all and pick out the best one. That's how it works! Although I'm sure Amazon will have a solution for that soon enough as well!