I'm surprised that despite being able to concisely explain why Apple is preferable to Google due to the privacy implications of their respective business models, they're perfectly content with a Google Home in their kitchen!
Maybe I'm paranoid, but isn't it obvious how the whole Home Speaker story ends? "We're not spying on you, we're learning your behaviors to offer a better experience!"
>We're not spying on you, we're learning your behaviors to offer a better experience!
Okay I guess that makes sense, I like when stuff is designed well around what I actually want from it, this will help in that, cool!
>We're not spying on you, we're just going to report you to the police if our ML algorithm detects a child screaming for their life
Wow okay, that kinda seems like crossing a line, but I guess it makes sense and is going to be good to protect kids
>We're not spying on you, we're just going to lower your reputation on x/y/z service if we hear racial slurs
Uh, I get where that's coming from, but this is clearly spying. Well, a private company can do what they like I guess, and its understandable, who other than racists wouldn't want less racists online.
>We're not spying on you, we're just going to let your insurance company know if we hear you coughing
Woah okay what the fuck
>We're not spying on you, we're just going to block you from x/y/z service if your political views differ from our CEO and put out a warning to services provided by other companies.
Hey what the - I mean, wow what a great update. goes in seperate private room WHAT THE FUCK I NEED TO GET RID OF THIS
>We're spying on you, we're just going to arrest you if you will not comply. Don't worry about what law you're charged under, we just blackmailed the police and those who tried to protest got arrested, our company policy is your local law now.
What a great update, thanks awesome [super evil company name here] developers and all employees, what great work they do! internally oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god
Of course this goes way to the extreme, but that's my point, this is the kind of seed that makes that stuff possible. Doesn't mean its absolutely evil, but the potential is there.
@Amazon will soon give Alexa a 'rudimentary form of emotional awareness,' making her able to hear your whispers & frustrations. She will also be capable of listening for trouble such as breaking glass or a smoke alarm when you’re not home: “We’re going beyond recognizing words."
https://twitter.com/PopCrave/status/1042885315575332870
also reminds me of a parent tweeting about how her child thinks of Alexa as another person in the house, kids are growing up with every aspect of their life fully integrated with spyware-as-a-service
I don't have any smart speakers in my house, but I can also see how a rational person might accept the trade-off. Aggregate data to support advertising isn't necessarily evil, nor is using that data to improve service. In fact, you could argue that's what a good business should be doing: evaluating customer needs and adjusting to meet them.
I can't speak for the google home, but with the echo there's a lot of work that has gone into making it so it is difficult, on a hardware level, to record without showing some sign of doing so. When the mic is on the lights are on as well and the mute button is a physical hardware disconnect that stops voltage from the mics.
There is also some interesting circuitry around the mic itself- the keyword activation chip essentially has control over the mics- they buffer input until they hear the codeword ('alexa') and then activate the main circuitry and dump the buffer into it. The upside to this is that software can't turn the mic on by itself- the chip needs to help. This isn't completely perfect though as once the software has been given control it can keep that control forever (with the caveat that lights would be on).
It's possible to use technology to our advantage without having to sacrifice privacy, we just have to demand it (and, as we all should have learned from Therac-25, hardware limits are preferable over software).
Rational people are also emotional, and apathy is the default emotion. Recognizing that many products are privacy invasive becomes the same as realizing that they are produced in ways that harm the environment, or hurt workers. A fact acknowledged but accepted in exchange for the benefits they offer.
If you're equating giving up personal data to harming the environment or workers, I'm afraid I don't agree. One of these actions is under your control, is a trade off we make simply to live in society, and even provides some benefits to users and society. To bank, to get mail, to shop online, to support services we like, to receive communications, etc, etc. Privacy is also something you can control, rather than something that is being perpetrated on other people or places that do not have agency in the matter. There is a place for privacy regulation and education, but it's not the same as environmental or human damage.
The point is that these are all examples of negative choices that consumers choose to take because it’s easier to accept short-term personal gain while causing long-term, depersonalized, harm.
My point is that if you assume giving up some privacy is going to cause long-term harm, then you are correct. But a rational person can weigh the cost/benefit of giving up privacy for some convenience and decide there's a net gain to it. People who use the internet or carry cell phones or even vote or do banking have given up personal information, and likely know they've given that information. If they found the trade off beneficial, it's not necessarily apathy, but a decision. It may be a bridge to far for you, but perhaps not for everyone.
If you read carefully, he didn't actually say iPhones were preferable: "Apple’s less data-focused approach has allowed it to take the high road on privacy. That strategy has potentially insulated the company from regulations and public scorn, but it also could leave Apple with dumber products than its rivals."
I disagree. It's a cliche at this point that when Wal-Mart enters a town, all the mom and pop stores close up. The profit margins from distributing these goods now contributes to $WMT rather than staying in the local economy.
The presence of Walmart also helps the low-income members of a community by providing a one-stop shop for low priced, generally acceptable quality goods.
When I graduated from college and had my first job and apartment, a relatively large amount of my income was spent at the local Walmart. It was a godsend for me at the time. What I didn't spend at all those too inefficient to compete mom and pop stores was money that I could use to pay off student loans, rent, utilities, and still have a little money left over to save up an emergency fund.
It's not accurate. Looking at the arxiv link (https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.02325), the idea is you fix some elliptic curve E, and you look at its "twists" E^d, where the parameter d is a nonzero integer.
If you only look at twists where |d| < N, you can ask "What proportion of these are rank zero, rank one, rank two, ...?" The Theorem in the paper is that as you let N go off to infinity, these proportions tend to 1/2, 1/2, 0, 0, 0, ... respectively.
Here's the thing: this does not correspond to a measure on the set of rational elliptic curves, and indeed, there is no reasonable way to define a uniform probability measure on a countable set. Consequently, statements like "half of all elliptic curves..." are kind of misleading and meaningless.
To back up my last claim, let me prove that 100% of positive integers are even in the same spirit:
Fix any odd positive integer x, and consider its "twists" x{d}, which for positive d I define to be x*2^d. Every integer is of the form x{d} for a unique choice of x and d. Now, for fixed N, if I consider all "twists" for which d<N, the proportion which are even is (N-1)/N. Thus, as N tends to infinity, the proportion tends to 1.
I never say anything about d being even. Rather, as soon as d > 0, x{d} is even, so "almost all" x{d} are even. As you vary x and d, you cover all integers exactly once, so from this perspective, "almost all" integers are even.
My point is that this is very similar to how elliptic curves are being counted here.
There are lots of things more severe than death. Imagine the treatment gave you an aggressive form of Alzheimers, for instance - would you really rather have that?
Agreed, yet most countries have laws that assume we would all offer to live, no matter what. “Sanctity of life” somehow means maximum suffering is best.
I'm not sure if you were serious, but I actually think completely getting rid of timezones is not that crazy of an idea. It would take some getting used to, but naively I don't think it'd be any harder than say, switching to metric in the US.
That is, I like the idea in principle, but I know it'll never happen.
Has anyone pointed out how flawed that first argument is?
If you're going to argue that Google can solve the problem of "what time is it over there" in our current system, then Google can solve the problem of "what times are office hours over there" too.
That website doesn't call it crazy, it just points out many of the difficulties, and the comments refute many of them.
I do have to admit, it did not occur to me that the work week would still effectively enforce an "ordering" on longitudes which somehow takes the beauty out of it.
It's true, the website doesn't say crazy, that's my word.
You know what's beautiful? The fact that the vast majority of humanity is awake, engaged in their major activities (school, work or leisure) at 12:00, no matter where they are in the world, and that this is a shared point of reference.
It's not an exaggeration to say that timekeeping is at base, about the daily cycle of day and night. Every development we have created in the past four millenia is an iteration on that same idea. There is day, and night, and our clocks are just more precise ways of marking that cycle. You want to abolish that, for what? A nicer API?
