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There may be a steep privacy cost if you park here

latimes.com

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Re: There may be a steep privacy cost if you park here

#211

Post by erik_seaberg »

Eelongate wrote: post #165
throwaway55421 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a lot (most?) of the US most places are far enough away from each other that using a shop's car park as somewhere to leave your car (e.g. while commuting) does not happen. There is also no viable public transport. Charging for parking, then, is nonsensical. It's a cost imposed on your business just like the rent. You could try to recover your rent/land costs by charging a flat fee for people to enter your shop on…

> In a lot (most?) of the US most places are far enough away [...] I've never seen a grocery store with a parking garage (opposed to a parking lot) that wasn't in a city. If the grocery store has a parking garage instead of a parking lot, then it is almost certainly in an urban area and public transit and is within walking distance of many residences and businesses. This is in fact the case for the particular Trader…

Los Altos, CA (pop. 28,976) has a retail district that I assume they tried to keep small and dense, because it’s about five blocks across and the Safeway grocery store is built upstairs from its garage. There’s only one bus route that runs every 45 minutes and stops at 5:30 today. These are surrounded by miles of suburbs. I assume a small number of people walk to it, but a much larger number drive.

Re: There may be a steep privacy cost if you park here

#212

Post by perl4ever »

Waterluvian wrote: post #15
unicornporn wrote: post #13

Oh, great timing. Just ended a conversation with some friends who had bought a dishwasher. The display for these new machines had been removed, so the only way to tell when the machine was really finished was to... Guess what? Download an app! I suppose I don't need to tell you all the permissions it asked for...

Someone can make an absolute killing by creating an entire brand of “dumb” appliances that Just Work. Make them sensible quality, modern, entirely offline.

The fact that you are here, making this comment, as if there weren't any, proves there's no great market opportunity. Few people will seek out such things; instead they will continue to complain about how there aren't any.

I'm not making a general comment; I bought a washer and dryer for the first time in my life a couple years ago, GE branded, and they have no wifi, bluetooth, or even any kind of electronic display.

As it happens, I got them more for their dimensions fitting the space I had than anything else, as GE hasn't had the greatest reputation for reliability in recent years. But so far, they work fine.

Re: There may be a steep privacy cost if you park here

#213

Post by perl4ever »

bnjemian wrote: post #26
Waterluvian wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone can make an absolute killing by creating an entire brand of “dumb” appliances that Just Work. Make them sensible quality, modern, entirely offline.

100% agree, I've been saying this for years. I've joked with friends that I'd call it Dumb Inc. It's (mostly) in jest, but I think there's a real mismatch of expectations with a lot of modern appliances with respect to what a consumer needs and what companies use to try and differentiate their products from the competition. In evolutionary biology, there's this idea that "evolution is stingy" – in most cases, a speci…

But that's not how evolution works, is it? If living creatures didn't have more capability than they need to survive, they would necessarily go extinct the minute the environment changed.

Also, as I wrote in my other comment, there are "dumb" appliances on the market - the fact that most people won't search for them is exactly what makes them rare.

Re: There may be a steep privacy cost if you park here

#214

Post by protomyth »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #105
protomyth wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my buddy's actually had them refuse to sell him some parts. He had given them his address and all (not a confrontational person) and they denied the sale. I bought the stuff for him. I used cash and did not identify myself. I get the feeling Radio Shack had some other stuff going on.

For stores with return policies, there is value in knowing who may be abusing them and/or causing them to lose money.

He never returned anything and was a pretty frequent buyer (he was big into a lot of hobbies that he could build electronics and he built stuff for work). They rung him up and then the store employee said they couldn't sell him these items. He started ordering from catalogs after that. Didn't matter much I guess as Radio Shack stopped selling components not long after.

Re: There may be a steep privacy cost if you park here

#215

Post by Eelongate »

erik_seaberg wrote: post #211
Eelongate wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In a lot (most?) of the US most places are far enough away [...] I've never seen a grocery store with a parking garage (opposed to a parking lot) that wasn't in a city. If the grocery store has a parking garage instead of a parking lot, then it is almost certainly in an urban area and public transit and is within walking distance of many residences and businesses. This is in fact the case for the particular Trader…

Los Altos, CA (pop. 28,976) has a retail district that I assume they tried to keep small and dense, because it’s about five blocks across and the Safeway grocery store is built upstairs from its garage. There’s only one bus route that runs every 45 minutes and stops at 5:30 today. These are surrounded by miles of suburbs. I assume a small number of people walk to it, but a much larger number drive.

Parking garages only make economic sense when the cost of enough land for a parking lot exceeds the cost of making a parking garage, which is almost never true except in urban areas. I'm sure there might be rare exceptions, but the Trader Joe's in question (Trader Joe’s at Hollywood and Vine) is definitely not one of those exceptions.

Re: There may be a steep privacy cost if you park here

#216

Post by dang »

tannedNerd wrote: post #190
dang wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, we've de-Joed the title above.

I feel likes that’s not exactly fair and quite a bit of editorial censorship considering it was the original article title. Almost to the point I would ask if any of the HN admins have stock positions in Trader Joe’s… Trader Joe’s is subjecting their customers to this and should be held responsible if if it was through their landlord. They still are an accomplice to this data harvesting by the fact they have a busine…

We're just trying to respond to user complaints about titles the same way we always do! No stock positions were involved. As for scandals of the past - I can't even remember last week.

When users disagree about which title is better, we have to make a call. My call in this case is that (a) it's really not that big a deal and (b) it's best to go by HN's first principle, which is that we try to optimize for curiosity (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). It's much better to err on the side of curiosity than indignation.

Re: There may be a steep privacy cost if you park here

#218

Post by simcop2387 »

robbmorganf wrote: post #217

> need[ing] to monitor people’s unrelated web browsing and links they click Does this require some kind of vulnerability exploit? I would hope that apps can't extract this kind of information from other unrelated apps.

I suspect it does fingerprinting to tie it to another advertising id to extract it all evetnually

Re: There may be a steep privacy cost if you park here

#219

Post by dredmorbius »

34679 wrote: post #111
MBCook wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens in two or three years when they decide to stop updating the app and it no longer works on your phone? They couldn’t bother since there was no recurring revenue stream so you just have to buy a new dishwasher?

I believe the other person was talking about having the devices serve up webpage UIs, so you wouldn't need their specific app, just a browser. A lot of makers do this with their 3D printers and CNC machines, as it avoids the cost and hassle of installing a display on the machine. Two of the more popular ones, for those interested: octoprint.org cnc.js.org

And when the webpage is no longer updated?

Heck, we've even seen that model simply to use goods you've purchased, as with digital restrictions malignant books, music, videos, and games, where the restrictions-management servers were discontinued and access to the goods (bads) bought requiring them became useless.

Re: There may be a steep privacy cost if you park here

#220

Post by BeFlatXIII »

rurp wrote: post #145
jcpst wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes me wonder, when I draw a line in the sand with a clerk, how often they just enter junk data into the system so they can get on with their shift.

Many years ago I worked as a cashier (at Trader Joes no less) and occasionally had to ask customers for this sort of information. I had zero problem just punching in fake data if the customer didn't want to provide it, and sometimes I just went ahead without asking, if the customer was clearly busy with a crazy kid/pet/whatever. Some cashiers were diligent about the data collection but many, probably most, had a simi…

Poisoning data collection is one of the many small positive actions a front-line employee can make without too much risk to their livelihood.
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