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Blink has been acquired by Amazon

blinkforhome.com

71–80 of 92 posts

Re: Blink has been acquired by Amazon

#71
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...

Reading articles like that make me very happy I'm in the self-hosted Home Assistant ecosystem. I couldn't imagine _someone else_ deciding two things that used to work together no longer do for me.

Re: Blink has been acquired by Amazon

#72
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 Doctor Who episodes about statues that come to life.

That's Don't Blink.

Re: Blink has been acquired by Amazon

#73
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.

Anyone concerned about Amazon being both the watcher and the watchee? Isn't this a conflict of interest?

Re: Blink has been acquired by Amazon

#74
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.

We are racing towards a society where the poor cater to the rich.

Amazon has got to know their workers aren't that happy, and they need to be monitored.

Amazon, and the rest, figured out how to eliminate the the drudgery, and angst, of having to get things yourself.

Now--they need to keep an eye on the help.

The buy makes sense.

Re: Blink has been acquired by Amazon

#75
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.

Absolutely! Wiring your house for video is awesome, for a huge array of potential reasons.

I bought a cloud-connected Nest camera to use as a baby monitor. Quickly realized how awesome it would be to have cameras in (almost) all rooms in my house, so I threw the Nest in the trash (terrible product) and got a few Amcrest cameras and hooked them up to a good, well-maintained Mac IP camera app called SecuritySpy[1].

It's great, and completely private, as it (obviously!) should be.

It's also way faster (obviously!) and lower latency when using it on the local network, than viewing video feeds routed through some advertising company's servers in the cloud, even on gigabit fiber.

I love it! Oh and the cameras were only $75 each.

[1]: http://www.bensoftware.com/securityspy/

Re: Blink has been acquired by Amazon

#76
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Absolutely! Wiring your house for video is awesome, for a huge array of potential reasons. I bought a cloud-connected Nest camera to use as a baby monitor. Quickly realized how awesome it would be to have cameras in (almost) all rooms in my house, so I threw the Nest in the trash (terrible product) and got a few Amcrest cameras and hooked them up to a good, well-maintained Mac IP camera app called SecuritySpy[1]. It'…

> how awesome it would be to have cameras in (almost) all rooms in my house

Why?

Re: Blink has been acquired by Amazon

#77
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...

Reading articles like that make me very happy I'm in the self-hosted Home Assistant ecosystem. I couldn't imagine _someone else_ deciding two things that used to work together no longer do for me.

Is there a good watering hole for self-hosted home assistant development? I was at a Micro Center this evening and saw a AIY Google Voice Kit (not sure if it phones home) and a Matrix Creator (very interesting) plus a lot of other doodads that one could use to build same.

I just don't want to spend a year trying to cobble together my own software.

Re: Blink has been acquired by Amazon

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought they were getting into the web rendering engine game[0]. [0] https://www.chromium.org/blink

If Amazon made a browser engine, it'd be a cloud service. …wait, they already did! The Fire has that.

The Fire is not using an original rendering engine.

Re: Blink has been acquired by Amazon

#79
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Amazon has already been using machine learning to separate fresh vs. moldy strawberries; I'm sure AI will be able to identify the freshest cookies better than humans in the near future.

I’m having difficulty finding any reference online to them using machine learning to sort fruit. It also seems odd they would given they are a distributor/retailer and not a grower/wholesaler.

Got a link to share?

Re: Blink has been acquired by Amazon

#80
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading articles like that make me very happy I'm in the self-hosted Home Assistant ecosystem. I couldn't imagine _someone else_ deciding two things that used to work together no longer do for me.

Is there a good watering hole for self-hosted home assistant development? I was at a Micro Center this evening and saw a AIY Google Voice Kit (not sure if it phones home) and a Matrix Creator (very interesting) plus a lot of other doodads that one could use to build same. I just don't want to spend a year trying to cobble together my own software.

How to use home assistant: 1. buy any compatible smart thing listed as compatible on the home assistant website 2. Buy a raspberry pi and any necessary RF adapters. 3. Install home assistant on the raspberry pi and edit the config.yaml file to work with your devices.

It was much easier than I expected, and works with more DIY things as well (like 315/433Mhz RF Sockets).

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