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Why Does My Remote Control Need to Know My Location?

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Re: Why Does My Remote Control Need to Know My Location?

#51

Post by mhb »

conesus wrote: post #45
lultimouomo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi! You might be interested to know that the Turn Touch homepage starts playing audio as soon as it is opened. This was enough for me to close it and never come back, and I think this sentiment is reasonably widespread. I'm genuinely curios about the reason some people decide to add audio (or video for that matter, but audio is way worse) on autoplay. Do you enjoy when web pages you visit do it? Did you see from some…

Yikes! It's part of a hidden video that shouldn't play until you explicitly open it. What's your browser/OS? I tested on Chrome, Safari, and FF on mac as well as iOS. I also just added a muted attribute to the `video` tag so it should no longer do that even if I messed up the JS for some browser somewhere. I encourage you to try it once again to confirm.

Also FF on Win 7.

Re: Why Does My Remote Control Need to Know My Location?

#52

Post by edent »

codetrotter wrote: post #12

> Google, in its wisdom, has tied "Location" into things like BLE Scanning and WiFi scanning. The excuse is that you can use these things as a proxy for location. That is, if I know you are near access point X your location is probably near Y. It’s not an “excuse”, it’s a fact. If you allow an app to scan SSIDs you are allowing it to know your location. No amount of sarcasm on the part of OP is going to change that.

Perhaps I am being harsh on Big G here. But is there a better way to do this? Could an app request a list of all BT/WiFi devices starting with the first few digits of a MAC?

In this case, the remote wants to know if it is near the receiver. It doesn't want to search all devices - just to know if it is near a specific group.

Re: Why Does My Remote Control Need to Know My Location?

#53

Post by VLM »

mosselman wrote: post #5

Fitbit does this as well: if you want to sync your 'steps' to the app (on android at least) you have to enable location services... wtf?

four or five sig figs of internal pedometer step counts is rubbed up against four or so sig figs of phone-gathered GPS distance data after formal activities in the fitbit app to fine tune your stride length. In my case my stride length is about 75.821 cm per step. Then it can use that calculated stride length to estimate distances when not doing official activities. As if my hiking boots are identical to five sig figs to my urban walking shoes or my sandals, LOL. Well, in theory, at least, its a good idea.

Fitbit UI, weirdly, explains what its doing but refuses to provide the actual numeric result.

To some extent its overkill... from my experience orienteering as a civilian and in the military, your average stride length might vary up to 5% based on conditions. You can't use dead reckoning alone to do land nav on foot for long distances, you need a map (or GPS). Which I guess is kinda the point of the fitbit needing GPS access. Doing theoretical calculations to 4 sig figs means at least on average its not too far off, and frankly most athletes use the same boring path every day with the same shoes etc so averaged track data is going to be more accurate than a wilderness land nav course anyway.

I have not decompiled the fitbit code or done anything illegal but IF I were to implement this I'd include GPS/map based ground slope data as a correction factor because I know that has a major impact on stride length. I have no idea if fitbit does that, but they should.

Re: Why Does My Remote Control Need to Know My Location?

#54

Post by jacquesm »

conesus wrote: post #34
derriz wrote: post #13

At least they acknowledged it, responded to the feedback and fixed it. Unfortunately I have a Sonos system which became effectively bricked unless I signed a new user agreement allowing the collection of data. There are no physical controls on Sonos so the system becomes useless without accepting. They used to sell dedicated controllers/remotes years ago but these were also bricked as part of an upgrade about a year…

If you're interested, I sell a dedicated Sonos music controller (built out of wood no less). It's available at https://turntouch.com and it's entirely open source so you don't have to worry about me taking your data and selling it. Earning money based on the initial sale is all that I want out of my users. That and props.

That's a neat and well executed product. Kudos.

Re: Why Does My Remote Control Need to Know My Location?

#55

Post by _ea1k »

icebraining wrote: post #38
jfnixon wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, no, that's not correct. SSIDs aren't tied to geographic location. The mothership might infer location by looking at the list of SSIDs and checking it against a geotagged list compiled by a mapper, but that's a completely different thing that saying if you let an app look for an SSID you are allowing to it to know your location. You might as well say that by giving a camera the ability to know the time, you are al…

By that reasoning, nothing is; even GPS signals aren't tied to geographic locations, you infer it based on timing calculations. BSSIDs can be easily mapped to a location using free and readily-available services. They are as good as most geolocation mechanisms you can get.

Thanks to how difficult GPS signals can be indoors, they can be better than some other geolocation mechanisms.

Google did this for the right reasons.

Re: Why Does My Remote Control Need to Know My Location?

#56

Post by kalleboo »

neilsimp1 wrote: post #7
tyingq wrote: post #6

The coarse permissions and alarming text from the OS is a problem with both Android and iOS. Often, an app wants something fairly innocous, but has to ask for more, because it's grouped with other things in the same permission ask. Then, the OS message shifts all the blame with scary messages about what the app wants to do.

Well I agree lots of times what the app wants is innocuous, I'd still rather have the message than not. Maybe an option to open up a more detailed description of what the app wants the permissions for?

On iOS, applications are required to submit a reason why they require the permissions which is then displayed to the user along with the permission request. I believe it's also looked at in app review if it's a valid reason.

Re: Why Does My Remote Control Need to Know My Location?

#57

Post by icebraining »

moring wrote: post #39
tyingq wrote: post #6

The coarse permissions and alarming text from the OS is a problem with both Android and iOS. Often, an app wants something fairly innocous, but has to ask for more, because it's grouped with other things in the same permission ask. Then, the OS message shifts all the blame with scary messages about what the app wants to do.

This is a pet peeve of mine with Android (don't know about iOS). Another example: Browser wants to download a file, so I have to give carte blanche permission to access all my files. Why can't I just give permission to place new files with app-supplied content, i.e. no reading of existing files, no overwriting / deleting of existing files, and OS-managed name collision resolution? The same applies to the camera app.…

I'm not an Android developer, but I think they've introduced SAF (Storage Access Framework) in 4.4 just for those cases; the app just asks the user for a specific file or directory, which is selected using the system's UI.

Re: Why Does My Remote Control Need to Know My Location?

#58

Post by brlewis »

mosselman wrote: post #5

Fitbit does this as well: if you want to sync your 'steps' to the app (on android at least) you have to enable location services... wtf?

You can get the answer to that question by reading the section of the article headed with "Cause #2", or from this page: https://help.fitbit.com/articles/en_US/Help_article/2134

Disclosure: #fitbitemployee but speaking only for myself.

Re: Why Does My Remote Control Need to Know My Location?

#59

Post by CyberDildonics »

derriz wrote: post #13

At least they acknowledged it, responded to the feedback and fixed it. Unfortunately I have a Sonos system which became effectively bricked unless I signed a new user agreement allowing the collection of data. There are no physical controls on Sonos so the system becomes useless without accepting. They used to sell dedicated controllers/remotes years ago but these were also bricked as part of an upgrade about a year…

I can't see how situations like this aren't anything but a bait and switch. You buy something, it changes out from under you.

Re: Why Does My Remote Control Need to Know My Location?

#60

Post by brlewis »

VLM wrote: post #53
mosselman wrote: post #5

Fitbit does this as well: if you want to sync your 'steps' to the app (on android at least) you have to enable location services... wtf?

four or five sig figs of internal pedometer step counts is rubbed up against four or so sig figs of phone-gathered GPS distance data after formal activities in the fitbit app to fine tune your stride length. In my case my stride length is about 75.821 cm per step. Then it can use that calculated stride length to estimate distances when not doing official activities. As if my hiking boots are identical to five sig fig…

Fitbit UI, weirdly, explains what its doing but refuses to provide the actual numeric result.

Look under "How do I change my stride length?" on the page below. The same place you change it you can also see it.

https://help.fitbit.com/articles/en_US/Help_article/1135

Disclosure: #fitbitemployee but speaking only for myself.

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