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What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?

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Re: What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?

#81

Post by ygjb »

dsl wrote: post #67
xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am acutely aware of active REITs/development firms in Toronto, and I have a lot more respect for their process than for what Sidewalk did. We don't need neighborhood WiFi -- Fiber is widely available within the city and it's a lot cheaper than what I saw in the US. Due to COVID-19, there has been far more innovation in the city, mostly top-down from the government, than what we saw with Sidewalk. Who cares if they…

This is like complaining that the city sold a chunk of land to a theme park and you didn't like any of the rides they put in. For the most part the experiment was confined to the land they legally purchased. At no point did they represent the project as anything other than an experiment. If the land was sold below market, you should have spoken up at the time about that.

That would be a fair assessment, but did you miss the part where Google got a discount based on an agreement, then changed the agreement and started demanding additional concessions?

It is perfectly fair for the people of Toronto to push back and re-evaluate the value proposition of the deal if the other party is attempting to renegotiate.

Re: What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?

#82

Post by ygjb »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #37
tptacek wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine you lived there and your google account gets banned by some overzealous ML model. Do you just get locked out of your house? No.

Since Google hates passwords, I can't imagine that they would support plain old metal keys for doors. Neither can I imagine how unlocking a Google door wouldn't involve an arbitrarily closable Google account. Other incidents have shown that once your Google account is closed, Google won't talk to you.

It can be shockingly difficult to get Google to talk to you while you have an account too. Unless you are a paying Google customer, it is challenging to get support.

Re: What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?

#83

Post by wendyshu »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #79
wendyshu wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sidewalk would collect more personal, identifiable data on pass-through commuters than governments and companies already do? Maybe, and if so it's a valid point. But I'd bet (money) not. No facial recognition would be used. Doubt they'd track you in a bus. They were well aware of privacy concerns and their data collection would be under intense scrutiny. Data wouldn't be used outside Sidewalk without consent, de-iden…

Your first sentence is exactly what I was speaking to. As for the rest, I'm not much of a gambler. Alphabet's current policies on data collection are typically opt-out, so I didn't hold out much hope when I largely saw a lot of hand-waving surrounding data policies until the project was pressed by the public about it. That cost me a lot of confidence the project. And I come from the place of following the project eag…

How would they track you on a bus?

Re: What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?

#84

Post by oh_sigh »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #73
oh_sigh wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What evidence is there that "google hates passwords"? That's literally the only way to log into a google account.

https://www.trustedreviews.com/news/google-fingerprint-chrom... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/24/google-pa...

A fingerprint is essentially a password printed on your fingertip. And the second link is more about determining whether someone is who they say they are beyond passwords provided.

Re: What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?

#85

Post by nisten »

etimberg wrote: post #7

As someone who lives in Toronto, the collapse of this project is a great outcome. While the goals of the project seem forward thinking and could benefit society in the long run (in terms of renewable building, etc) Google is 110% the wrong company to be involved. Imagine you lived there and your google account gets banned by some overzealous ML model. Do you just get locked out of your house? If Google, or any other…

I disagree with that, i think the various mix of cheap insecure IP-cameras present on any small store and elsewhere poses a far greater privacy risk than a well managed and frequently audited system one would expect from google.

The cheap security cameras are relatively trivial to gain access too at scale and you can run facial recognitioning on their video with zero accountability.

At least with google and facebook you get a non-zero level of accountability.You can still summon their CEO in front of the public somewhere for questioning.

Or if you're an EU citizen you can demand you data be wiped off.

You can't practically do that with an insecure patchwork of security cameras. This is why I think the privacy concerns for this project were quite misguided.

In my opinion it's better to go with a single choice of where security video with identifiable faces is going instead of having no clue who's tracking you. I'm not personally happy that that choice is Google given their screwup with nest and with 3rd-party dev access to gmail, however I think the practical outcome is a lot worse when not choosing anything at all.

Re: What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?

#86

Post by 52-6F-62 »

wendyshu wrote: post #83
52-6F-62 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first sentence is exactly what I was speaking to. As for the rest, I'm not much of a gambler. Alphabet's current policies on data collection are typically opt-out, so I didn't hold out much hope when I largely saw a lot of hand-waving surrounding data policies until the project was pressed by the public about it. That cost me a lot of confidence the project. And I come from the place of following the project eag…

How would they track you on a bus?

I'm not sure if this is a serious question or a dig given the previous tones, but there are any number of ways being that the majority of Torontonians carry mobile devices. SWL was designed to be a data dragnet for the purposes of influencing urban civic design so outside of regulatory pressure one would assume they would gather every bit of data they can, including fingerprint and tracking unique devices and their movement patterns in their region.

Re: What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?

#87

Post by nisten »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #16
etimberg wrote: post #7

As someone who lives in Toronto, the collapse of this project is a great outcome. While the goals of the project seem forward thinking and could benefit society in the long run (in terms of renewable building, etc) Google is 110% the wrong company to be involved. Imagine you lived there and your google account gets banned by some overzealous ML model. Do you just get locked out of your house? If Google, or any other…

My big problem from the beginning was that the money flow made no sense. Why should Toronto be paying for a Google experiment? Google benefitted far more than any other party involved, and that felt slimy.

I think Toronto should deffinitely pay for new more efficiently built housing. In my opinion it's better to let Google benefit than random offshore entities that are hoarding the majority of the empty new apartments in the city.

Also, this was housing for meant their employees, most of which will have high salaries and be in high tax brackets.

So not only did we loose a few thousand housing units, now we also lost a few thousand future employees each of which would be paying $20 - 40 000 CAD in taxes to us every single year.

That is terrible.

Re: What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?

#88

Post by [deleted] »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #86
wendyshu wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would they track you on a bus?

I'm not sure if this is a serious question or a dig given the previous tones, but there are any number of ways being that the majority of Torontonians carry mobile devices. SWL was designed to be a data dragnet for the purposes of influencing urban civic design so outside of regulatory pressure one would assume they would gather every bit of data they can, including fingerprint and tracking unique devices and their m…

[deleted]

Re: What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?

#89

Post by wendyshu »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #86
wendyshu wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would they track you on a bus?

I'm not sure if this is a serious question or a dig given the previous tones, but there are any number of ways being that the majority of Torontonians carry mobile devices. SWL was designed to be a data dragnet for the purposes of influencing urban civic design so outside of regulatory pressure one would assume they would gather every bit of data they can, including fingerprint and tracking unique devices and their m…

Oh ok (see above comment).

Re: What killed Quayside, Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious smart city in Toronto?

#90

Post by sradman »

Holy bike shedding batman. I can't comprehend our inability to focus on the important things. Toronto's Port Lands need to be revitalized [1]:

> Waterfront Toronto has received $1.25 billion to clean up and protect the Port Lands. Federal, Provincial and City financial contributions cover the total costs.

> ...nearly a century ago the Don Valley became heavily industrialized and the river was re-routed to enter the lake into a concrete channel. The new project is intended to create a new opening for the Don River.

Spend some time in Google Maps [2] and explain to me why this revitalization project has to be framed in terms of smart neighbourhoods, affordable housing, and digital privacy. The plan only has to be slightly smarter than 100% condos which seems to be the default for Toronto waterfront development.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Lands#Recent_history

[2] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Port+Lands

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