Welcome to the neighbourhood, have you read the terms of service? • Hacker News Board

Re: Welcome to the neighbourhood, have you read the terms of service?

#31

Post by dsfyu404ed » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 6:17 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #25

jstanley wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A "smart", unnecessarily Internet-connected kettle or lightbulb or juicer isn't going to usher the second coming of fascism to the Western world. Each individual one isn't, but in aggregate they start transferring more and more control over your daily activities to faceless corporations thousands of miles away. That is dystopian.

Thing is, most of that isn't dystopian. I can sort of buy people feeling orwellian about Alexa or Google Assistant - but as it is now, most IoT is just random startups hoping that if they abuse some users through a SaaS, they'll get to be the next Google. It never works out, and we're left with tons of electronic junk, that shouldn't even exist in the first place.

>most of that isn't dystopian

Remember that time a city in CA sent Cointelpro-esqe letters to the registered owner for vehicles their plate readers recorded going down a particular street?

There's nothing that prevents similar bad behavior from HOAs or cities/towns that have access to other data sets.

I don't want a HOA sending me brochures about recycling because my smart house reports that my ratio of trash to recyclables doesn't meet some arbitrary value. What goes on within the privacy my home is my business and mine alone to the fullest extent possible.

You can't abuse a data set you don't have. The value to society vs the potential harm of many datasets is so low they shouldn't exist at all.

Re: Welcome to the neighbourhood, have you read the terms of service?

#32

Post by TeMPOraL » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 6:21 PM UTC

jstanley wrote: post #30

toss1 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yup, I just want a thermostat that I can remotely access -directly- and not through someone else's server. Just keep track of my IP addr myself, and yes if the ISP swaps it out for another I'll have to update it when I get there again... blah, blah, blah, yes' it'd be fine with me. Yet I cannot fine one. Every single 'smart' thermostat has some corporate service I have to negotiate through for access, and of course i…

It's relatively easy to build one yourself. I did it, it works great. I used 2 ESP8266's - one in the temperature sensing and control box in my office, and one controlling a relay inside the boiler. When it's too hot the relay is opened to switch the boiler off, when it's too cold the relay is closed to switch the boiler on.

The question is, do you trust your own handiwork to the extent you're not worried it'll malfunction and burn your house down, or freeze your pipes during winter? Personally, I'm reluctant to have electronics I built myself connected to mains and running unsupervised for longer periods of time.

Re: Welcome to the neighbourhood, have you read the terms of service?

#33

Post by TheRealEdAbbey » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 6:34 PM UTC

toss1 wrote: post #26

TeMPOraL wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding "smart devices" and IoT, honestly, I don't qualify it as dystopian . To me, it's just pathetic . A "smart", unnecessarily Internet-connected kettle or lightbulb or juicer isn't going to usher the second coming of fascism to the Western world. Even data breaches connected to those devices aren't going to have any meaningful impact on an average person's life. But it's sad, because it's wasteful. It's ugly. I…

yup, I just want a thermostat that I can remotely access -directly- and not through someone else's server. Just keep track of my IP addr myself, and yes if the ISP swaps it out for another I'll have to update it when I get there again... blah, blah, blah, yes' it'd be fine with me. Yet I cannot fine one. Every single 'smart' thermostat has some corporate service I have to negotiate through for access, and of course i…

The problem is there isn't really much of a market for something like that. Sure, you can have detailed documentation on such a product that explains how it's functioning, why it might drop out when your ip changes, etc., but who is going to understand that? People like you and me, yes, but we're a pretty small market.

In order for there to be a reasonable audience for a product, you have to target the least knowledgeable person - or at least someone pretty far south of the median. Those people aren't going to understand what's happening, and they're going to get upset each time their ip resets and they can't connect to their thermostat anymore. They're going to take the frustration to the thermostat company, they're not going to understand what the service rep tells them, and they're going to return the product, leave a bad review, and buy a nest.

No one wants to be in the position of making and selling such a product. That's why you pretty much need to make your own with an esp8266. And that's why so many of these IoT devices end up being far too bloated.

Re: Welcome to the neighbourhood, have you read the terms of service?

#34

Post by whatshisface » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 6:38 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #32

jstanley wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's relatively easy to build one yourself. I did it, it works great. I used 2 ESP8266's - one in the temperature sensing and control box in my office, and one controlling a relay inside the boiler. When it's too hot the relay is opened to switch the boiler off, when it's too cold the relay is closed to switch the boiler on.

The question is, do you trust your own handiwork to the extent you're not worried it'll malfunction and burn your house down, or freeze your pipes during winter? Personally, I'm reluctant to have electronics I built myself connected to mains and running unsupervised for longer periods of time.

Well, some parts of it are a lot more likely to fail-deadly than others. A commercial power supply that outputs 12V or whatever your servo wants basically can't burn anything.

As for bugs in the control code freezing your pipes? Well, just give the code as much care as you give to driving and you should be fine. ;)

(The serious solution to that is to have a dead simple failsafe controller that switches between on, off and auto, where auto is controlled by your crazy inventions.)

Re: Welcome to the neighbourhood, have you read the terms of service?

#35

Post by Animats » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 6:59 PM UTC

I wonder what Apple would do if you leased some rooftop space in the mall across the street from the entrance to their new HQ and aimed cameras at the entrance, recording every license plate going in and out? Then buy the CA DMV records, which you can do for marketing purposes, and use that to build an employee list to be sold to recruiters.

Re: Welcome to the neighbourhood, have you read the terms of service?

#36

Post by bo1024 » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 7:14 PM UTC

vorpalhex wrote: post #16

ISL wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you can correlate the timeseries of crosswalk events that leave from one city block, follow a regular pattern, then a bus boarding, then a bus departure, then a regular trash-can event. Do a thing regularly, or have enough "anonymized" sensors with sufficient resolution, and one can mine a lot from apparently very little.

Even if the system doesn't do this directly, it's easy for a contractor with the data to do as much if the data is highly accurate. I hope that some mitigations are being put in place by limiting data accuracy to relatively wide windows (and the wideness of those windows will need to vary depending on how busy a thing is).

This is the kind of thing that the field of "differential privacy" excels at and should be used for!

Re: Welcome to the neighbourhood, have you read the terms of service?

#37

Post by shyn3 » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 8:03 PM UTC

dcole2929 wrote: post #29

shyn3 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they can build a stable, private, secure system which can increase the quality of life, then I am all for it. The data seems to be needed to be able to adapt to the ever changing conditions. Two big issues they can help alleviate, homelessness and addiction.

Ok I'll bite. How can collecting this data, in any way, help alleviate homelessness or addiction?

If you don't try to enact these projects how are you going to know the value they derive. The data collection is a necessary part of optimizing the solution.

Edit: The Sidewalks Lab project is building a city. Toronto can move any people who need assistance into the society. It almost sounds like a thought experiment, but with the resources they have access to, they would be better able to assist than the city.

For example, Toronto doesn't have enough safe injection sites. The data would help to highlight that if it is collected.

Re: Welcome to the neighbourhood, have you read the terms of service?

#38

Post by donarb » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 8:08 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #35

I wonder what Apple would do if you leased some rooftop space in the mall across the street from the entrance to their new HQ and aimed cameras at the entrance, recording every license plate going in and out? Then buy the CA DMV records, which you can do for marketing purposes, and use that to build an employee list to be sold to recruiters.

How would you correlate an Apple employee's job title with a recruiter's requirements using just a license plate number?

Re: Welcome to the neighbourhood, have you read the terms of service?

#39

Post by dhimes » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 8:12 PM UTC

toss1 wrote: post #26

TeMPOraL wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding "smart devices" and IoT, honestly, I don't qualify it as dystopian . To me, it's just pathetic . A "smart", unnecessarily Internet-connected kettle or lightbulb or juicer isn't going to usher the second coming of fascism to the Western world. Even data breaches connected to those devices aren't going to have any meaningful impact on an average person's life. But it's sad, because it's wasteful. It's ugly. I…

yup, I just want a thermostat that I can remotely access -directly- and not through someone else's server. Just keep track of my IP addr myself, and yes if the ISP swaps it out for another I'll have to update it when I get there again... blah, blah, blah, yes' it'd be fine with me. Yet I cannot fine one. Every single 'smart' thermostat has some corporate service I have to negotiate through for access, and of course i…

Why don't you just turn the damn thing up when you get home?

Re: Welcome to the neighbourhood, have you read the terms of service?

#40

Post by reaperducer » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 8:15 PM UTC

donarb wrote: post #38

Animats wrote: post #35

I wonder what Apple would do if you leased some rooftop space in the mall across the street from the entrance to their new HQ and aimed cameras at the entrance, recording every license plate going in and out? Then buy the CA DMV records, which you can do for marketing purposes, and use that to build an employee list to be sold to recruiters.

How would you correlate an Apple employee's job title with a recruiter's requirements using just a license plate number?

You don't need to. That's the beauty of spam, whether e-mail or paper.

If your client wants to target developers at Apple, you've narrowed the mailing list size from several million to just a few thousand. If 30% of those are developers, then you've already improved on the usual mass mailing targeting average, which is in the single digits.