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Amazon Sidewalk

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Re: Amazon Sidewalk

#311

Post by notyourwork »

isatty wrote: post #208
bitlevel wrote: post #196

So - Amazon want to use 1/40th of my internet bandwidth. Along with that goes 1/40th of the electric that the router and broadband modem use. Then there were the costs for me setting up my own infrastructure with my own money. At this point, I would expect Amazon to PAY me to use my infrastructure - not get it for free. After all, they won't send parcels to me without me paying for them? This is a bad BAD idea. It wi…

I would like to give Amazon 0% of my bandwidth. This is a harmful “feature” that the masses will unknowingly eat up and make life harder for everyone else.

You can disable the feature.

> Settings --> Account Settings --> Amazon Sidewalk --> disable.

Re: Amazon Sidewalk

#312

Post by ascagnel_ »

jiofih wrote: post #226
spamalot159 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right but it is pushing their advantage from the phone sector onto another and forcing out their competition in Tile. That sounds to me like monopolistic activity.

Tile can have access to the Find My network, as can others. They chose not to.

Unless Find My supports Tile hardware being able to simultaneously connect to both Find My and Tile's own network by default, this access is a Sophie's choice for Tile:

- If their hardware only connects to Find My, then the Tile network (and Android phones specifically) will have fewer connection points available, making the devices less attractive to Android users who will not have access to Find My.

- If their hardware only connects to the Tile network, then their tracker hardware is less attractive to iOS users, who have the larger Find My network available.

If Tile is able to ship hardware (or adapt their existing hardware) to connect to both networks by default, this sidesteps the issue entirely, since it'll work both with cross-platform hardware and take advantage of the first-party tracking network. And the ability to do so by default is hugely important here: putting something behind a toggle will effectively kill its adoption, and will have knock-on network effects.

Re: Amazon Sidewalk

#313

Post by SuoDuanDao »

dalbasal wrote: post #252
SuoDuanDao wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also the factor that whoever owns the platform showing the ads doesn't care whether the ads are effective. So long as your eyeballs are tracking it, they'll get paid anyway.

Only in the sense that restaurateurs don't care if the food is good. If it's selling... sure, they'll keep selling something that sucks. But generally, advertisers aren't quite the fools everyone thinks they are. There are always fools around, but prices tend to be rational enough long term. If ads aren't effective, revenue will dry up eventually. All that effort to track people for ads... these are all attempts at i…

I don't entirely agree. A better analogy might be that a restaurant's landlord doesn't care if the food is good. I've run into the problem that sellers of adspace will often prefer to work more with customers who have lower conversion rates. Makes perfect sense when you think about it, people with the crappiest products need advertising the most, while the best products can lean on word-of-mouth.

Edit: Come to think of it, the fact a product is advertising at all might come to be seen as a negative signal of value by the public at large.

Re: Amazon Sidewalk

#314

Post by detritus »

headmelted wrote: post #157

BT has been doing something similar to their customers in the UK for many years, except with general purpose Wi-Fi (i.e. sharing your home broadband on a second network to third parties that walk by your house for a fee). Joe Public don’t care as long as the Netflix works, but he probably doesn’t know either.

Yeah, I thought they'd stopped doing this, but it appears they've simply removed the option to disable it from the admin screen, presumably keeping it on in the background.

Christ, I loathe BT.

- ed

turns out you can turn it off, but have to log into your BT account, rather than direct from the router.

Re: Amazon Sidewalk

#315

Post by athrun »

adam0c wrote: post #56
KingOfCoders wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why an A/B test? Everything Apple and Tesla does is brilliant, everything anyone else does is evil. Thank me later. Putting that in the HN FAQ would prevent new users losing karma points.

name one original thing apple has done that is even good, besides the original ipod? even that isn't! original

Seems challenging because we’d need to first agree on the definition of “original”, “done” and “good”.

Also, the original iPod had less space than a Nomad. Lame.

Re: Amazon Sidewalk

#316

Post by Closi »

notyourwork wrote: post #306
spamalot159 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right but it is pushing their advantage from the phone sector onto another and forcing out their competition in Tile. That sounds to me like monopolistic activity.

At what point is a business making decisions for its own interest not a problem? We always criticism big companies for their market position. Where is the line drawn between big enough to be successful but not big enough to be unfair player using existing business to leapfrog into other areas? It seems we are quick to point a finger but its never qualified. We just think "x is big, x is doing y, x is being unfair."

It becomes unfair when domination in one market allows you to directly affect competitors in another different market.

Re: Amazon Sidewalk

#317

Post by ascagnel_ »

tssva wrote: post #84
jelling wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latest Firestick software update is a great example of this. The new UI/UX aggressively de-prioritizes apps from content producers in favor of a "feed" that lets them push their own content and intermediate content producers from their customers. They even go as far as to deliberately hide your saved items/watch next items three levels deep in a menu.

They are not alone in this. Google has switched their UI/UX in the same manner. I haven't used Apple TV in a few years but when I last did they were headed in the same direction. Roku is likely not far behind in doing the same.

Apple has made some moves in that direction, but they have a dedicated button on the remote that takes you directly to your queue (for streaming apps that support Apple's unified queue, which is all the major streamers with the notable exception of Netflix).

That said, their UI for recommendations has gotten worse. You'd get some ML-driven suggestions pulled only from services you've marked as connected and don't need to pay extra to access, but they've pushed that set of recommendations further down the interface over time, offering up a combination of paid content, first-party content, and curated content in the mix as well, with no heed paid to what you already subscribe to.

Re: Amazon Sidewalk

#318

Post by ashtonkem »

danpalmer wrote: post #162
ulzeraj wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO. There should be a market for: - Dumb panels (not monitors). Perhaps stripped down recycled smart tvs. - Smart tvs but with user replaceable firmware. Think OpenWRT for TVs. Maybe the same guy who does the dumb panels could sell those but with a raspberry pi in place of the logic board. Of course a monitor solves these issues but these are normally smaller and more expensive.

"Dumb TVs" would cost more. It's hard to market something that costs more and has what most people would perceive to be fewer features. They would cost more because post-sale content sales and advertising generate revenue for TV manufacturers, which they use to subsidise the device sale price, because it's such a competitive, low-margin, market.

I think you might be underestimating the cost of developing or licensing smart TV software.

Re: Amazon Sidewalk

#320

Post by wdn »

FroshKiller wrote: post #266
ulzeraj wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's hard to market something that costs more and has what most people would perceive to be fewer features. I'd pay for privacy and control. The other option like I've said is to recycle and mod smart tvs and rewrite their logic so that the user can do wathever he wants. Maybe marketing the modding kits. That would be more akin to those people who install custom open source bios on IBM Thinkpads.

I'd rather be protected by regulation than pay more for what I shouldn't have to pay for in the first place.

When was the last time regulation protects anything?

The Security Act of 1934 created the SEC and look at the past 20 or so years and see how many scandals has happened under their watch. All big players. Look at Madoff. Whisper blower after whisper blower to the SEC and what did SEC do? They looked the other way.

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