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Windows 10 'Home Hub' Is Microsoft's Response To Amazon Echo and Google Home (mashable.com)
Microsoft's response to the Amazon Echo and Google Home is Home Hub, a software update for Windows 10's Cortana personal assistant that turns any Windows PC into a smart speaker of sorts. Mashable reports: Microsoft's smart digital assistant Cortana can already answer your queries, even if the PC's screen is locked. The Home Hub is tied to Cortana and takes this a few steps further. It would add a special app with features such as calendar appointments, sticky notes and shopping lists. A Home Hub-enabled PC might have a Welcome Screen, a full-screen app that displays all these, like a virtual fridge door. Multiple users (i.e. family members) could use the Home Hub, either by authenticating through Windows Hello or by working in a family-shared account. Cortana would get more powerful on Home Hub; it could, for example, control smart home devices, such as lights and locks. And even though all of this will work on any Windows 10 device -- potentially making the PC the center of your smart home experience -- third-party manufacturers will be able to build devices that work with Home Hub. You can read Windows Central's massive report here. Do note that Home Hub is not official and individual features could change over time. The update is slated for 2017.
Those old ways were completely exhausting.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Do people have no concept of privacy anymore? It's bad enough my DVD player wants my wifi password and my TV wants to be "smart" e.g. piping my conversations out ot the internet, but now people are actually BUYING devices solely for the purpose of eavesdropping?
Years back the government withdrew the concept of Total Information Awareness. Really, all they did was figure out a surreptitious way to accomplish the same thing.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Ah, Windows...the RC Cola in the Pepsi-Coke wars of the mobile computing space.
And do you know why MS is so successful? It's because users do not run OS's they run applications.
The vast majority of people have no problem with MS automatically pushing bug and security related fixes to their machine.
Interesting contradiction. The OS isn't important. Then comes assertion people have no problem being constantly harassed to update and then reboot their operating systems when all they care about is their applications? How does this even make sense?
Updates are widely seen as an annoyance or even harmful hence Microsoft's misguided attempt to strong arm people into having no choice. Especially as they turn the screws on transforming their customers into products we can't have people making their own decisions.
They have no problem with the anonymous telemetry being sent to MS.
In the same way people have no problem when criminals covertly case their homes without their knowledge.
I still don't see why people are upset with anonymous telemetry being communicated back to MS. Maybe they don't know what "anonymous" means.
Here is a little thought experiment for those who don't "get it". Would you accept someone sitting in a parked car in the morning waiting for you to leave your house then following you to work. When you walk across the street they are right behind you following your every move and recording everything you do? I have a feeling the response from most people would be either to call the police or get into a fist fight. The only difference between that and what tech companies are doing to users enmasse is stealth.
The top search engines use your online presence in order to feed you customized adds and links. To do this they need to capture and store enough information on me in order to target my user Id. Every corporation and telecommunication firm are in possession of quite a bit of your personal information of one type or another and to me that is a worse than anything MS might be doing.
"They do it too" isn't a justification it is an excuse. No more coherent an argument than attempting to justify a speeding ticket before a judge by pointing out the guy in front of you was going much faster asserting you shouldn't have to pay because he got away scott free.
What is even worse about this argument is that it is 100% backwards. People can chose to visit a website or not. They can elect to run software to mask their activities, encipher their communications and take other measures to protect themselves. If your own computer is always actively working against you even when you are not doing anything "online" then your fucked no matter what. It is a much more serious matter than any big content/advertising company or telecom.
There are some very intelligent people who work for MS and underestimating them is nonsense. In the beginning IBM grossly underestimated MS and ended losing control of an OS that earned MS billions in sales.
It doesn't matter how intelligent you are. The only thing that matters is what you accomplish. Technology is driven by hard work way more than it is driven by intellect.