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Amazon Sidewalk

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Re: Amazon Sidewalk

#671

Post by crazygringo »

t-writescode wrote: post #646
crazygringo wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you claim is completely false. Key quotes from the articles you linked: > Ring, she added, “does not own or otherwise control users’ videos, and we intentionally designed the Neighbors Portal to ensure that users get to decide whether to voluntarily provide their videos to the police.” > The user can click to share their Ring videos, review them before sharing, decline or, at the bottom of the email, unsubscribe…

"Police can get your Ring doorbell footage without a warrant, report says" https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/08/police-can-get-y...

Yes. But ONLY if the user VOLUNTARILY shares the footage on a per-incident basis. As the article says explicitly.

Guess what? If the police come to my house and ask me for physical photos and I show them photos out of the kindness of my heart, that's without a warrant too. I'm under no obligation though, and neither is a Ring user.

You're making it sound like police have access to footage without a user's consent, or without consent per individual incident. That's simply FALSE.

Re: Amazon Sidewalk

#672

Post by stanmancan »

pupdogg wrote: post #558
stanmancan wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could be wrong, but I would imagine most people consider a dumb TV to be exactly how pre-smart TV's worked: Screen, speakers, multiple inputs, and a remote.

I think a survey would be needed to correctly understand definition of a dumb tv. To me, a dumb tv is actually equivalent to a dumb monitor but with a remote and without a tuner or audio IO/speakers.

All that stuff is easy to not use. Anecdotally, everyone I’ve spoken to wants a fully functioning TV that they can plug their own devices into since they’re going to plug an AppleTV/XBox/PlayStation/Roku/Chromecast into it anyways.

If you want to use your own speakers or external video input switcher or whatever then you can still do that, just like you could before, but not including multiple inputs or speakers on a dumb set makes it an incredibly niche product.

The TVs coming out today are great if they just ditched the smart aspect of it.

Re: Amazon Sidewalk

#673

Post by dang »

criddell wrote: post #661
dang wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27116416 .

Just out of curiosity, when do you do that?

There's probably at least three different kinds of when we do this: (1) when a subthread is off topic but the parent comment isn't; (2) when a subthread is a step into flamewar or into more generic discussion, or otherwise breaks the site guidelines; (3) when a comment was posted as a child but isn't replying to anything specific in the parent—this happens a lot, especially when the original parent is the top comment at the time.

Edit: oh also (4) when a subthread is particularly good and on-topic and there's some problem with the parent (e.g. it's downvoted or downweighted) that is preventing the good subthread from getting the attention it deserves.

Edit: oh, also (5) when a subthread is extremely top-heavy and we're trying to prune it to make the tree more balanced.

Often I'll post "We detached this subthread" (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...), but not always. Especially if it's a #3.

Re: Amazon Sidewalk

#674

Post by ksec »

justicezyx wrote: post #593
devman0 wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is the rub, the smart features subsidize the price instead of adding to it as it becomes an expected revenue stream. You can already get dumb TV, they are often used for signage or other commercial purposes, but they cost a lot more than consumer equipment.

I did not know that. Is the "smart features" actually making money for the TV manufacturers? A good question to think about. How can we, as consumers, incentivize the TV manufactures to focus on building good product that actually liked by users, and still making good money. Very difficult to answer though...

It is quite well know ( mentioned multiples times in this thread and in every other TV discussions for he past years ) the smart features collect data and shows you ads which earn the manufactures a continuous stream of revenue.

Re: Amazon Sidewalk

#675

Post by t-writescode »

crazygringo wrote: post #671
t-writescode wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Police can get your Ring doorbell footage without a warrant, report says" https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/08/police-can-get-y...

Yes. But ONLY if the user VOLUNTARILY shares the footage on a per-incident basis. As the article says explicitly. Guess what? If the police come to my house and ask me for physical photos and I show them photos out of the kindness of my heart, that's without a warrant too. I'm under no obligation though, and neither is a Ring user. You're making it sound like police have access to footage without a user's consent, or…

From their privacy policy:

We also may disclose personal information about you (1) if we are required to do so by law or legal process (such as a court order or subpoena); (2) to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights; (3) when we believe disclosure is necessary or appropriate to prevent physical or other harm or financial loss; (4) in connection with an investigation of suspected or actual illegal activity; or (5) otherwise with your consent.

https://ring.com/privacy-notice

It says both “by court order” and “to help solve a crime”, separately.

Amazon is within its policy to help the police without a warrant.

Re: Amazon Sidewalk

#676

Post by trompetenaccoun »

discardable_dan wrote: post #653
rhizome wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As noted elsewhere, broadcast hardware has much higher manufacturing and performance requirements, so it's not an apples-to-apples price comparison. I'm sure there's a market for $600 (or $1000) TVs that don't have all the "price-lowering" (I'm skeptical) features of $300 TVs. I mean, maybe the prices of ad-TVs are so low as a loss-leader to get a new advertising vector into your house? Yes, of course TVs already hav…

Ironically, they sell those $300 TVs at a profit of about $500, after advertising deals.

Do you have a source for this? Not that I don't believe it but that sounds like a really good deal for them.

Re: Amazon Sidewalk

#677

Post by trompetenaccoun »

herbstein wrote: post #628
mPReDiToR wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the whole concept of choice. Being forced into something "for your own good" is still being forced, and is anathema to some.

And yet people are generally fine with seat belts, driver's licenses, etc. being "forced" "for your own good" in modern society.

A seat belt isn't capable of spying on you. Pretty sure people would have an issue with "smart" seatbelts that contain microphones and cameras.

Re: Amazon Sidewalk

#678

Post by mcdevilkiller »

nine_k wrote: post #598
patmorgan23 wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Existing manufacturers make more by locking their hardware into their platform for ads.

This is not a show-stopper. You can buy a simple office keyboard for $25, but there is a market for custom mechanical keyboards 10x as expensive. You can watch YouTube for free, but a lot of people buys the premium subscription to remove ads. Sam thing here: there may be enough people wanting to buy an ad-free, surveillance-free premium TV with user-inspectable, user-updatable open-source firmware, latest HDMI, and i…

>You can buy a simple office keyboard for $25, but there is a market for custom mechanical keyboards 10x as expensive.

Or 100x even

Re: Amazon Sidewalk

#679

Post by sofixa »

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #677
herbstein wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet people are generally fine with seat belts, driver's licenses, etc. being "forced" "for your own good" in modern society.

A seat belt isn't capable of spying on you. Pretty sure people would have an issue with "smart" seatbelts that contain microphones and cameras.

Which is why i explicitly qualified that the smart stuff in question should only be smart to do its job ( e.g. a smoke detector to alarm you and the fire department, not to have a microphone and camera to spy on you), like the French smart electric meters, which only report consumption to the utility ans nothing else.

Re: Amazon Sidewalk

#680

Post by trompetenaccoun »

sofixa wrote: post #679
trompetenaccoun wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A seat belt isn't capable of spying on you. Pretty sure people would have an issue with "smart" seatbelts that contain microphones and cameras.

Which is why i explicitly qualified that the smart stuff in question should only be smart to do its job ( e.g. a smoke detector to alarm you and the fire department, not to have a microphone and camera to spy on you), like the French smart electric meters, which only report consumption to the utility ans nothing else.

Except even if they can only do that, it's still possible to spy on the consumer's habits through their electricity consumption. What time do they sleep, are they really sick at home or did they they leave town, are they on holiday,...

And since they are connected to the internet, they're vulnerable to hacks, so this information could not only get into the hands of governments and energy companies, but all kinds of random people.

Btw in reality it's much worse than that. Many of the smart smoke detectors have microphones in them, which is a really smart idea. Sometimes companies even "forget" to tell the victims, er... I mean users about it: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/02/googles-nest-securit...

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