Google chief: I'd disclose smart speakers before guests enter my home • Hacker News Board

Re: Google chief: I'd disclose smart speakers before guests enter my home

#471

Post by kelnos » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 8:21 PM UTC

0xffff2 wrote: post #463

greggman2 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate not having privacy but I don't understand singling Google out here. Siri is listening (both on phones and on Apple' homepod), Alexa is listening, Cortana is listening, ... I actually am less worried about those (since I turn them off) than I do about Netflix/Amazon knowing every movie I watch. Amazon knowing every product I order. My Credit Card and Bank company knowing every business I transact with. My Mac a…

>Siri is listening (both on phones and on Apple' homepod), Alexa is listening, Cortana is listening, ... I've disabled Siri and Cortana to the best of my ability (and I don't own any Amazon devices with a microphone). Of course I can't actually be sure that that means that they're really not listening, but it's absurd to imply that just because one owns a smart phone they must give up all hope of privacy.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that smartphone ownership means you give up all hope of privacy.

You are trusting that your efforts to disable Siri and Cortana have actually resulted in them being disabled, and that Apple and Microsoft aren't doing nefarious things to keep them enabled anyway. If you trust that, I don't think it's a stretch to trust that Apple and MS would avoid doing nefarious things with a HomePod or [whatever MS's analogous device might be]. You seem to not want to have anything around that can record you without your express permission, so sure, I get why you don't have a HomePod.

I had an Amazon Echo for a while, but decided I didn't trust Amazon, and exchanged it for a Google Home. I have an Android phone with Google Assistant enabled, and I don't see the privacy implications as materially different between the two.

Re: Google chief: I'd disclose smart speakers before guests enter my home

#472

Post by rtkwe » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 8:21 PM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #466

heavyset_go wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What does having a Nest thermostat get you? Nothing that a programmable thermostat plus a Home Assistant instance won't get you.

I run OpenHAB at home (and have tried HA), but setting all this up is not in the wheelhouse of the majority of people. Doing the in-home setup is difficult enough, but safely exposing it to the internet is not something I'd ever ask a non-technical person to do. Meanwhile, you just swap your old thermostat with the Nest, tell it how to get to your wifi, install an app on your phone, and you're done.

Yeah that's what a lot of the responses in this thread don't get or dismiss. These things could be run in a much more privacy protecting way but that comes with all sorts of configuration and setup headaches that most people don't want to deal with. And being able to access the devices from anywhere is a feature most people want even if it's only useful occasionally and a central API running all interactions means if it works while you're home it will work anywhere rather than it working while you're home then not working because something something DynDNS/NAT.

Re: Google chief: I'd disclose smart speakers before guests enter my home

#473

Post by rtkwe » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 8:24 PM UTC

seandougall wrote: post #371

outside1234 wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you can turn it on remotely, like when you are on the way home from work, and have a warm house when you get there. to me, that is the killer reason to have it online.

If you have a predictable schedule, there are plenty of offline thermostats that let you set target temperatures for different times of day. If you don't, I can see how being able to control it remotely would be nice. (But an embedded microphone is still creepy and unnecessary.)

Then you're in luck because the Google Nest thermostats don't actually have microphones in them at all!

https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9330256?hl=en

Re: Google chief: I'd disclose smart speakers before guests enter my home

#474

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 8:26 PM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #459

saluki wrote: post #115

I was a huge Google Fan but this is becoming lunacy. I understood trading some data and privacy for great search results, maps and free quality email. But people willingly bringing always on listening devices in to their homes (beyond what smartphones are already capable of) I just can't comprehend it. Why would people voluntarily do this in exchange for being able to ask for weather, play a playlist, add a todo and…

> But people willingly bringing always on listening devices in to their homes (beyond what smartphones are already capable of) I just can't comprehend it. I don't get this position: my (Android) phone can already record my voice, so how does having a Google Home materially increase the privacy risk? The GH does have access to mains power and a wifi connection, so that makes it easier to record all the time and upload…

[deleted]

Re: Google chief: I'd disclose smart speakers before guests enter my home

#475

Post by faceblob2 » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 8:30 PM UTC

irq-1 wrote: post #214

Santosh83 wrote: post #69

A few short years ago it was incomprehensible, even in the west, to have what is essentially a permanently bugged house. Now it has been normalised to such an extent that even people who claim to be aware of privacy use Alexa et al at home in a striking display of dissonance. The general public at large has been sold such attractive shiny toys that they don't realise that the price they pay for using them is to uncon…

People used to ask me why I don't use Facebook. I haven't been asked that in about two years. I predict that three years from now the majority will share our views about voice and video recording.

I disagree. There has been so much anti-facebook hype over the last few years, yet many of the people I know, smart people, have it on/open/in-the-background 24/7, and instagram, and a hundred other services shipping their personal data. These people don't read about online privacy or ruminate on the consequences of their actions, because everyone around them does the same. For younger people, it's worse. Their entire lives are uploaded. They have been programmed to accept this as reality, and it would probably seem like social suicide to disconnect. Outside of places like HN, conversations about privacy and censorship, in my experience, are only ever instigated by me.

And now the world seems to be in a mad rush to bug their houses. Obviously there are plenty of people who are repulsed by this, but we're all swept up in the surveillance state anyway. If people start to get the idea that these surveillance devices are bad, they'll be reminded to trust their govt with a brand new terror event.

Re: Google chief: I'd disclose smart speakers before guests enter my home

#476

Post by prepend » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 8:31 PM UTC

solidasparagus wrote: post #430

prepend wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Apple the only big tech that’s using AI on device in a privacy protecting way? I appreciate their approach to user functionality that doesn’t dump all my data into a near infinite number of collectors. I also think it’s a neat way of distributed computing to use the cpus of all these phones sleeping at night to crunch stuff is actually cheaper than cloud. I think because the phones are sunk cost that is idle a few…

Believe it or not, Google is the leader in the space of privacy-centric AI - see Federated Learning.

I find that hard to believe as Google’s definition of privacy is not mine. I believe Google could be awesome if they wanted, but it’s in conflict with their business mode.

Re: Google chief: I'd disclose smart speakers before guests enter my home

#477

Post by daveslash » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 8:31 PM UTC

>> Why would people voluntarily do this in exchange for

I live in an apartment. Having a Nest thermostat installed was not my choice -- I would not have opted for that myself, but alas, my apartment complex installed them in every apartment. I have chosen not to connect it to any network. I've heard speculation that we're not far off from having hard social-discussions about the rights of renters -- what is the relationship between tenants and landlords going to look like in regards to smart devices?

Re: Google chief: I'd disclose smart speakers before guests enter my home

#478

Post by dreamcompiler » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 8:32 PM UTC

oppositelock wrote: post #304

saluki wrote: post #115

I was a huge Google Fan but this is becoming lunacy. I understood trading some data and privacy for great search results, maps and free quality email. But people willingly bringing always on listening devices in to their homes (beyond what smartphones are already capable of) I just can't comprehend it. Why would people voluntarily do this in exchange for being able to ask for weather, play a playlist, add a todo and…

What does having a Nest thermostat get you? I'm a tech dude, I build modern software, but I live in a dumb, old fashioned house. My programmable Honeywell thermostat, which has no internet connection, does a perfectly fine job of keeping my home the right temperature. My door locks use a key, and keys have great battery life, and my smoke detectors beep instead of speaking to me. What am I missing by not having inter…

I loved my Nest thermostat when I first bought it. I could change the set point with my phone without getting out of bed, or set the house to the right temperature before I got home. It would automatically go into energy-saving mode if nobody was home. I could track my long-term energy usage with an app on my phone.

That was all very nice, but then Nest blew it. They kept forcing firmware updates to the thermostat that I had no control over. Some of them bricked the device for a period of time; some merely changed the UI so that options on the thermostat moved around or literally disappeared. I finally got fed up and reset the thing and refused to give it my wifi password. Then Google bought Nest which made me doubly sure I'll never connect the thing again.

Now it just works as an ordinary dumb thermostat. A rather expensive dumb thermostat, but it does the job. The extra features that came from connectivity are not worth the company's disrespect for my right to control the devices in my home.

Re: Google chief: I'd disclose smart speakers before guests enter my home

#479

Post by prepend » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 8:33 PM UTC

dawg- wrote: post #86

prepend wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Apple the only big tech that’s using AI on device in a privacy protecting way? I appreciate their approach to user functionality that doesn’t dump all my data into a near infinite number of collectors. I also think it’s a neat way of distributed computing to use the cpus of all these phones sleeping at night to crunch stuff is actually cheaper than cloud. I think because the phones are sunk cost that is idle a few…

I think Google is trying to do this with the new update to Assistant - the language model is only 500mb so it can all be processed on the local device. I saw in a blog post somewhere they are trying to get to where individual devices hold data and compile these aggregated profiles on the device, the send the profiles to google for their ad services and other big data stuff

I use Google Translate and that works well with offline datasets to do CV and translation without any network or cloud usage.

I don’t think the photo app or assistant app allows this functionality although they likely could.

Re: Google chief: I'd disclose smart speakers before guests enter my home

#480

Post by prepend » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 8:35 PM UTC

astral303 wrote: post #113

prepend wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has implemented this asshole design/nagware in many products to push unnecessary to me and invasive data collection or functionality I want won’t be available. For example, their maps app on iOS won’t save locations for me unless I sign in an enable web history tracking. I get prompted every time I try to save a pin as well as every once in a while I’m case I change my mind. It’s a free app and it’s Google’s p…

I think Google Maps not saving your history as you described is an incredibly bad, frustrating experience. FFS, my phone has gigs of RAM, why can’t Google Maps remember the address I searched for ten minutes ago? One minute ago? This is 2019. It has been this bad for a decade plus. Embarrassing IMO and demonstrates true UX myopia and true UX incompetence.

Similarly, I wish Google.com wouldn’t prompt me about how awesome chrome is every time I visit and not logged in. At least with this, I can just keep a chrome instance for only google products. So I stayed logged in, but it’s not of my real web usage.