The average person couldn't care less about privacy and security, so I don't care what they are technically capable of. Let them have their spy machines.
I care about my own survival in an environment that has turned actively hostile to customers like myself.
But if the only other ones available are cheap pieces of crap that burn your toast and fail after a year, what are you going to do?
If its cheap, I'd just replace it every year. That's not a sacrifice with toasters specifically, as I have yet to find one intended for home use that actually does a good job of making toast, no matter what the price point.
So, already, there's no point to spending more than $5-$10 on a toaster.
The antenna has to connect to the circuit board somewhere. I don't care if the antenna is still molded into the plastic after I've cut the traces leading to it.
Simply have a default I/O policy of Deny on your firewall, allow only specific devices to use your connection, and you're done. There is nothing magical about IPv6 in this regard.
Yes, this. This is what I've been doing for years, both at home and on my smartphone.
Problem is much bigger than security. Lets say I designed a very secure smart TV that I also regularly patch. The problem of this TV listening on my conversations and inserting ads into my feed remains.
Which is a security issue. Manufacturers don't see it that way, but lots of regular people do. Any device (or software) that phones home without my permission is, by definition, an insecure device even if that communications is 100% unhackable.
His point was centered around the fact that you won't be even offered a choice in the future, thanks to Greed.
Greed is what ensures that someone will be offering the choice. Someone will want to sell things to the people who simply won't buy them if they're connected.
If there's room for half a dozen companies making fitness trackers, and zero of them have decided to make a band with local-only data mode, then it's not quite a dystopian fantasy.
Then relax, because there are such fitness trackers on the market. The Jawbone Up is probably the best known one.
If they're free, I'll take every one I can get and make MY profit selling them for scrap. Which will be recycled into new free toasters that I can sell for scrap. Finally, a real use for the IoT.
Yes, I'd be on board with this. There are already several products I buy because they contain parts that I need and can't get cheaper by themselves.
Why in the world does a toothbrush have to have electricity, let alone bluetooth? Personally speaking, electric toothbrushes have exactly no advantages over normal ones, and have a lot of disadvantages. Clearly, your cost/benefit calculation differs, which is fair.
But that's also the underlying point that many people are missing here: the market is not one-size-fits-all. You can have your electric toothbrush, and I can have my ordinary one, and we're both happy. Both are for sale because there's a market for both.
Since Canon is still selling a few such printers, they're apparently doing OK. I wouldn't know firsthand, though, since the fact that the inkjet printer market turned into nothing but an enormous scam meant that I stopped buying printers entirely many years ago.
You are making a fundamental mistake by thinking than YOUR preferences (and mine too...) make the least bit of difference.
I think you're incorrect here, for the exact reason you stated earlier in your comment: nobody wants to leave money on the table. There will always be people like me who won't buy appliances that require internet connections. I literally can't think of a single electrical appliance that is so important that I must buy it no matter what, so I'll just pass.
Which means that there will be somebody somewhere who will want to tap a market that has been abandoned. Perhaps it would be considered "boutique" and such appliances will cost more than others, but they will be available.
Better stock up on all the appliances you're going to need for the rest of your life, then. Because in a few years it's going to be very hard to buy appliances that don't connect.
I don't think that day will ever come for a number of reasons, but even if you're right, it's not relevant. What's relevant is that I can modify and/or isolate any appliances so they can't communicate no matter how much they want to.
You assume that you have a choice to connect these things to the internet if you want to use them. Think again.
Of course I have a choice, even if I have to enforce it by ripping out an antenna, putting the damned thing in a Faraday cage, or just sticking to the inevitable cheapest of cheap brands that won't ever spend the extra couple of cents to put the circuitry in.
I agree. A lot of the comments here imply (or outright say) that they have some sort of right to use the store's WiFi in any way they wish (the justification being that they can't afford the hit on their data plan to use 4G.)
That they don't see the deeply flawed morality of that stance is concerning.
don't describe going to a MILF party in the Palo Alto hills where older women look for younger men, boinking the marketing girl in the utility closet at a company event, or cruising the hipster bars for pickups
None of those activities have anything to do with why Silicon Valley is sleazy. SV is sleazy because of the business practices that tend to be prevalent there.
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The average person couldn't care less about privacy and security, so I don't care what they are technically capable of. Let them have their spy machines.
I care about my own survival in an environment that has turned actively hostile to customers like myself.
But if the only other ones available are cheap pieces of crap that burn your toast and fail after a year, what are you going to do?
If its cheap, I'd just replace it every year. That's not a sacrifice with toasters specifically, as I have yet to find one intended for home use that actually does a good job of making toast, no matter what the price point.
So, already, there's no point to spending more than $5-$10 on a toaster.
Your argument is much like "If the Bluray player doesn't let me record the signal, I return it". Yes. You can. But you can't get one that lets you.
Which is why I don't own a Bluray player.
Probably more like $30-$50, which is a price people are already willing to pay for toasters.
the problem is rather that it will not only invalidate the warranty
Who cares about the warranty? Those things are pretty useless to begin with.
The antenna has to connect to the circuit board somewhere. I don't care if the antenna is still molded into the plastic after I've cut the traces leading to it.
Then both of those devices were, in my opinion, defective and I'd return them.
Simply have a default I/O policy of Deny on your firewall, allow only specific devices to use your connection, and you're done. There is nothing magical about IPv6 in this regard.
Yes, this. This is what I've been doing for years, both at home and on my smartphone.
It's an IoT firewall with "cloud service", so basically their cure is to install another of the very things that makes it insecure in the first place.
That's insane. Any firewall with a cloud component is automatically a firewall not worth having.
Problem is much bigger than security. Lets say I designed a very secure smart TV that I also regularly patch. The problem of this TV listening on my conversations and inserting ads into my feed remains.
Which is a security issue. Manufacturers don't see it that way, but lots of regular people do. Any device (or software) that phones home without my permission is, by definition, an insecure device even if that communications is 100% unhackable.
His point was centered around the fact that you won't be even offered a choice in the future, thanks to Greed.
Greed is what ensures that someone will be offering the choice. Someone will want to sell things to the people who simply won't buy them if they're connected.
Capitalism is about *freedom of choice*. In a capitalist system, these manufacturers would be punished. Capitalism as we knew it is dead.
Umm, no, that's not at all what capitalism is, or was. You're talking about the "free market" which is an entirely different thing from capitalism.
"Capitalism" is the private ownership of trade and industry.
"Free market" is about the manner in which trade is regulated.
If there's room for half a dozen companies making fitness trackers, and zero of them have decided to make a band with local-only data mode, then it's not quite a dystopian fantasy.
Then relax, because there are such fitness trackers on the market. The Jawbone Up is probably the best known one.
If they're free, I'll take every one I can get and make MY profit selling them for scrap. Which will be recycled into new free toasters that I can sell for scrap. Finally, a real use for the IoT.
Yes, I'd be on board with this. There are already several products I buy because they contain parts that I need and can't get cheaper by themselves.
it's getting to be impossible to find "dumb" TVs with anything but the shittiest bargain-basement LCD panels in them.
But I have yet to see one of those stupid smart TVs that refuse to function without an internet connection.
My electric toothbrush already has bluetooth.
Why in the world does a toothbrush have to have electricity, let alone bluetooth? Personally speaking, electric toothbrushes have exactly no advantages over normal ones, and have a lot of disadvantages. Clearly, your cost/benefit calculation differs, which is fair.
But that's also the underlying point that many people are missing here: the market is not one-size-fits-all. You can have your electric toothbrush, and I can have my ordinary one, and we're both happy. Both are for sale because there's a market for both.
The same thing applies to IoT.
Since Canon is still selling a few such printers, they're apparently doing OK. I wouldn't know firsthand, though, since the fact that the inkjet printer market turned into nothing but an enormous scam meant that I stopped buying printers entirely many years ago.
You are making a fundamental mistake by thinking than YOUR preferences (and mine too...) make the least bit of difference.
I think you're incorrect here, for the exact reason you stated earlier in your comment: nobody wants to leave money on the table. There will always be people like me who won't buy appliances that require internet connections. I literally can't think of a single electrical appliance that is so important that I must buy it no matter what, so I'll just pass.
Which means that there will be somebody somewhere who will want to tap a market that has been abandoned. Perhaps it would be considered "boutique" and such appliances will cost more than others, but they will be available.
Not in my house, it won't.
Better stock up on all the appliances you're going to need for the rest of your life, then. Because in a few years it's going to be very hard to buy appliances that don't connect.
I don't think that day will ever come for a number of reasons, but even if you're right, it's not relevant. What's relevant is that I can modify and/or isolate any appliances so they can't communicate no matter how much they want to.
You assume that you have a choice to connect these things to the internet if you want to use them. Think again.
Of course I have a choice, even if I have to enforce it by ripping out an antenna, putting the damned thing in a Faraday cage, or just sticking to the inevitable cheapest of cheap brands that won't ever spend the extra couple of cents to put the circuitry in.
Not in my house, it won't.
I hope Lyft (and the others) stay around a long time, I agree. I hope Uber goes out of business as quickly as possible.
I'm not so sure it was timing as much as Uber has incredibly bad business practices that would sink any company.
I agree. A lot of the comments here imply (or outright say) that they have some sort of right to use the store's WiFi in any way they wish (the justification being that they can't afford the hit on their data plan to use 4G.)
That they don't see the deeply flawed morality of that stance is concerning.
don't describe going to a MILF party in the Palo Alto hills where older women look for younger men, boinking the marketing girl in the utility closet at a company event, or cruising the hipster bars for pickups
None of those activities have anything to do with why Silicon Valley is sleazy. SV is sleazy because of the business practices that tend to be prevalent there.