Why Does My Remote Control Need to Know My Location? • Hacker News Board

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

#111

Post by ahjones » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 5:20 PM UTC

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.

For me the hidden video starts (hidden) when I open the page, so when I click 'Watch the video' it's already part way through.

Firefox 65.0 on MacOS 10.14.

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

#112

Post by deelowe » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 5:20 PM UTC

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.

There's a bit of history to this. Not going speculate too much on this, but I bet it has to do with some events in Germany a few years back.

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

#113

Post by Fnoord » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 5:42 PM UTC

lazyjones wrote: post #61

cr1895 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer the EU approach where the collection and use of personal data is regulated, not merely "be warned."

What difference does it make in practice? Sonos sells their products in the EU as well, do they behave differently there?

The difference is that they can be sued here in the EU now.

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

#114

Post by Fnoord » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 5:44 PM UTC

illegalsmile wrote: post #85

TuringNYC wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found Dropbox to be notorious with this. Their business plan used to be only $150/yr (Fine Print: you pay minimum 3 seats.) That magically changed to five seats at some point and now the $150/yr suddenly shows up as $750/yr auto-renewed and almost impossible to cancel.

Is there not an alternative to Dropbox that offers better service for the same if not lower cost? I understand that they could pull the same bait and switch on you but maybe there are providers who wouldn't do that or grandfather you in.

Host your own Nextcloud on a NAS, and have the most popular files synced? Be sure to make proper backups. On the short term, it will be expensive, but the investment will pay off.

I'm also using Stack by TransIP. 1000 GB for 0 EUR/month, with e.g. offers of 1250 GB for 2,50 EUR/month. TransIP is by made by the same people as bunq (its Ali Niknam's first successful company)

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

#115

Post by wiml » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 5:50 PM UTC

hedora wrote: post #78

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…

Does anyone know of a good (from a privacy and usability perspective) alternative to Sonos? I plan to buy 5-6 of them sometime later this year, and for what that costs, they have no excuse to data-harvest me.

Quite a few people run systems with a Raspberry Pi, a high-quality I2S DAC+amp, and a set of (normal, non-internet-connected, firmware-free) speakers. There's a tiny industry of producing hardware and software for this situation.

"Usability" means very different things to different people (after all, the reason Sonos asks for location access is to improve usability), but maybe look at https://volumio.org/, http://www.runeaudio.com/, http://moodeaudio.org/.

Or just install MPD and Pianobar for that old school experience.

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

#116

Post by ghostbrainalpha » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 5:50 PM UTC

conesus wrote: post #25

I designed and built a wooden remote control[1] so I know a bit about why this is. My iOS app asks the user for location permissions because without it the remote control app won't know when to attempt to connect when you walk in the door with your iPhone but your remote is sitting at home, waiting for you to hit it to turn on your lights or play music on your Sonos. If you hit the button and nothing happens, that's…

This is an awesome product.

Have you ever seen anyone with nightstand or coffee table where they hollowed out a section for the remote to go in.

I like the idea of being able to pop it out and take it withe me, but 99% of the time I would want it in the exact same place so I would love if it could lie flush and be a part of nightstand.

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

#117

Post by dreamcompiler » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 5:52 PM UTC

Once again, this stuff won't stop until it becomes impossible for apps to tell whether private data is enabled or not. And the way to do that is with a data-spoofing layer controlled by the user below the API.

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

#118

Post by tzs » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 5:57 PM UTC

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…

I don't have a Fitbit, but I do carry an iPhone which includes a pedometer in the "Health" app. It's notion of stride length is interesting. I exported my daily step count and distance walked, and divided that later by the former to get the stride length.

I plotted this data.

step counts: https://i.stack.imgur.com/x0TPU.png

distance: https://i.stack.imgur.com/sufma.png

Both quite reasonable looking.

Inferred stride length: https://i.stack.imgur.com/giz7V.png

Note that it breaks down into 5 distinct regions, with very sharp boundaries between them. Within each region the stride length has a fairly level average but a lot of variation around that. When you cross a region boundary, same patter but the average shifts down (sometimes dramatically, such as the shift in early 2016).

I have no explanation for any of these shifts except that last one and maybe the small one around Oct 2016. The last one, in the middle of 2018, corresponds to my changing phones from in iPhone 6 plus to an iPhone x. That small one before that matches up with when we switched to full time work at home

The earlier shifts were all on the iPhone 6 plus, and as far as I can tell do not correlate with iOS updates, or with anything in my life that might change my stride size such as seasonal changes (I probably take smaller strides in winter) or getting new shoes.

I asked about this on apple.stackexchange.com, but it got no answers or comments, a down vote, and was automatically deleted as a dead question.

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

#119

Post by api » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 6:00 PM UTC

Do we even need to ask this question?

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

#120

Post by periya » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 6:05 PM UTC

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 have been on the fence of buying a Sonos because I've always loved the sound quality but I could never bring myself to spend so much on them, your comment along with comments in this thread have made my decision easier. I'm going to stick with my dumb speakers and avoid all the hassle that comes with "smart" devices.