if only we had something called "the law" that would have something to say about embedding spyware into consumer products that puts photos of people on the toilet onto facebook.
of course these kinds of things dont work for the regular guy
You would think so but alas the law isn't actually enforced in many places. It takes a long time for anything to get done as most of the regulators are woefully underfunded. Having the law written is one thing but without the funding to enforce it the law is worthless to most people.
So argue for more laws, more enforcement, and more funding for government agencies and watch the same people complaining about this "travesty" turn against you
I love the old "Laws like that are why the EU is less innovative than the US" response to critiques like that, given that the past decade or so of innovation feels like it's mostly been finding ways to leverage the previous decade's technology against the user.
I'm not trying to be flippant, but what is to stop some company from simply utilizing a Terms of Service that allows them to do whatever they want with the data? I often see people chiming in that consumers "agreed" to all of this, even though the vast majority of people never read through the ToS or privacy policy at all.
Can't believe you've been downvoted. HN isn't homogonous, but too often has apologists for immoral and illegal behaviour, provided it's done by a technology company.
Not op, but in a capitalistic economy where transactions tend to be using legal tender, companies providing things for "free" where the (hidden) cost is submission to Big Brother... well, that's exploitative at the least, dystopic in reality. Your unawareness of this being a BIG issue to those who cannot even choose to pay money for a product which is only "sold" for the price of your privacy... is pretty obviously a result of exploitative marketting and a control of tge dialogue which supercedes any source without a narketting/PR department. Especially while we're now "sold" ephemeral licenses instead of permanent products, and most of these products are bits which cost <$0.001 to reproduce, yet cost more today than a hard-copy did in the past, and the lion's share of profit goes to investors, management, CEOs, and other people who not only cannot produce product, but actively handicap and reduce functionality of products to squeeze ever more profit from the now-choiceless consumers.
Does that clarify what has been achingly obvious to many of us who see this writing on the wall?
A lot of people here were very dismissive of the Twitter files, showing how closely big govt and big tech work together. I even lamented [0] about it and got tons of pushback ("business as usual"). I had thought at the time this site was very clear-eyed about dangers like these but I'm much less confident in that now and it's apparent even us techies are easily blinded by partisan politics and self-interest.
I think there’s a pretty wide variety of opinions represented here. You’ll find actual debate on almost any issue. For example, not everyone sees government and big tech working together as necessarily being a bad thing, depending what they’re actually doing and why.
Another reason they're dismissive is because they knew it before the files were released. It's not that we aren't upset about it. It's that we were upset about it years ago and eventually (after being told we're over-reacting) stopped being upset about it.
Oh hey HN people they're doing what you said they would, but we forgot you warned us. We're ready for you to be upset now. Clearly you're not so you're dismissive.
3. Tech shouldn't imply or require privacy compromises.
4. Piracy tools often drive innovation and technological progress. (Not to mention would we have subscription music services or even Netflix's non-DVD-by-mail business without the market pressure from piracy? Would they cost more?)
5. How does a position or preference on a business model imply pro- or anti-tech?
And even #2 doesn't necessarily imply an anti-tech stance. I don't think it's anti-tech to resist putting computers in toasters, for example. The overuse of tech can be a step backwards and hurt overall technological progress, imho.
> 2. There's too much technology in modern products (cars, tv, etc)
Bad technology. Nobody would object to smarter cars with usable controls that didn't spy on you and have security holes. People, even here, would love smart TVs if they started as fast as the dumb ones, didn't have ads, didn't spy on you, and were generally actually in the user's control. People aren't against tech, they're against awful tech that's a straight downgrade from what came before.
Actually, this goes for the rest of your points, not just 2.
Exactly this - most people here aren't in any way anti-tech, they've just read enough bleak sci-fi novels to know an approaching dystopian hellscape when they see one.
So your complaint is that those (here) with an intimate understanding of tech and its capabilities are sharing their qualified and often nuanced opinion about tech implementatiioms without exclusively following the market's "everything is flawless and there are no anti-features" rhetoric?
A love of tech should mean people care to point out the problems seen from an educated vantage - what do you expect?
Are backup cameras flawless? Is collision detection flawless? Do humans lose anything by permanent delegation of their skills? What exactly are you saying is a problem here?
No they are not perfect, but they do have a proven track record. I expect a better reason than "I am a really good driver and don't need those things so they should not be mandatory" which I've seen here several times.
Me neither, but I have heard plenty of complaints about backup cameras being required in all new cars.
The idea is that the cameras require a large display on the dashboard. If you could sell a car without them, we might have a cheaper class of small street-legal vehicles with simpler controls.
Sadly, with electric vehicles being thousands of kg heavier than ICE vehicles, kei-style cars would probably get a lot of people killed if they were introduced to the US today.
I think the objections to things like this is the tech for tech sake.
Like with backup cameras that we just don't want to pay for. I've been driving for 20+ years and never once bumped my car. So the safety aspect isn't really relevant. But when I get told "We added this backup camera for free, so you're saving 500$". Honestly I'd rather have you shave 500$ off the price of the car.
I've actually had that conversation about bluetooth in my current car. 8 years old and I've never used the bluetooth. It was tech for tech sake. It adds no value.
My comment was in reply to someone who said they expected HN to be tech apologists. People down voted me because they took it as a standalone comment complaining about HN.
You seem to be conflating profit at all costs with pro-tech. Questioning how technology is used is a good thing that more engineers should be doing. And #4 is completely made up nonsense. I’ve never seen that sentiment here en masse.
I'd go one further. Consent is an intellectually lazy framework. For many things that operate under consent, it should be pretty clear whether or not it's OK to do something.
I agree. If you have to ask for consent, it probably means you've already made a bad engineering/business decision.
Engineers should ask before adding a feature, "Is this going to require user consent?"
They could have added AI to the Roomba to remove people from the video before it ever even hits the network — or drop that video completely. Or switch to a technology other than visible light, etc.
The only way I see around this is if they upgrade the beta-tester status and give him full control of the images and he's the only one making the labelling and uploading of the results.
But I don’t doubt the consent form told the user to get the consent of everyone in the house. But hey, mister sour grapes from the article now ‘doesn’t think he consented’ but doesn’t want to show the consent form.
If this ever goes to court I don’t doubt this will turn out to be one giant nothingburger.
I’m not a Luddite but I feel something like schadenfreude watching people give profit-driven companies access to their private lives for solved problems like “cleaning the floor” and “tuning the radio”.
Well, a robot vacuum cleaner is a great idea. What I don't understand is why the profit is tied to data collection. Shouldn't there be a profit in simply selling vacuum cleaner?
In this case iRobot didn't exactly lie about collecting data, but how greedy/stupid do you have to be as a company to not ensure that the data collect NEVER EVER leave the servers of your AI/QA/Process-improvement lab? The company know that people are already critical of their data collection, that should have trigged the creation of a process that would ensure that once data has been collected will never leave the department that develops their AI. You know this data is sensitive, and yet you outsource handling of if it, to poorly trained freelancers, who knows nothing of data security, privacy laws or apparently common decency.
I love the idea of robot vacuums. In fact I own one. In my opinion one of the most useful "smart home" device currently made. Too bad the good ones are all tied to some shitty cloud (whilst they could work locally 100%).
Fortunately projects like https://valetudo.cloud exist...
My Eufy does, but its wifi led has been blinking since I bought it as I never configured it nor I have found a good reason why would I want to. Pressing the clean button seems to do everything I want it to.
I feel like a product that literally doesn't have an internet connection to begin is probably sufficiently trustworthy? Pity about the rest of the company, of course
Well I like the features it can have connected to my local network like clean specific rooms or setting no-go zones but this should be done local only.
Syncing settings from my phone app to the cloud back to the robot is so dumb...
Companies right now doesn't have a good and easy way to track how data is flowing through their system. Yes, iRobot can say that it was collecting the data for improvement purposes and the data ends up in a database meant only for improvement purposes, but no tech company today can guarantee that no other processes/services are also reading/utilizing this data. All it takes is a dev from another team doing a text search for data variable names and adding that data to their db/data pipeline.
Agree in spirit but I think companies actually need to be extremely competent and consumer/privacy focused to ensure data collected NEVER leave their testing environment.
It takes constant vigilance and sadly the incentives aren’t there.
>Shouldn't there be a profit in simply selling vacuum cleaner?
I think that it's an attractive thing because it pays, and people generally don't care. So it's a free avenue for the company to make additional profits, or, to use this extra profit to lower the margin of the original product, thereby making it more attractive in a price competition.
When buying new appliances, wifi connectivity is a negative point in our decision matrix. We recently bought a new appliance and lack of wifi was one of the few criteria that helped us decide between two brands that had very similar models.
Indeed. Good news you don't have to buy a smart TV anymore because huge monitors and projectors have recently became very good and affordable. You can then add exactly the smart features you want and control them with help of whatever a set-top-box/etc you choose.
BTW there also are more minor annoyances advertised as features. I had hard time finding an electric kettle without a beeper (so it would just stop heatin once done but won't annoy me the way the microwave does or wake me up when I sleep and somebody wants a cup of tea). ~95% have the signal and ~40% don't even mention they do.
Yeah, wouldn't want sick folks or folks with mobility/strength issues to have these things. Also wouldn't want working parents to spend time with their kids instead of doing mundane household chores. Or the person washing dishes or feeding an infant to have the ability to change the radio.
And the truth is that folks don't get these things - at least not something affordable - unless they are introduced to greater society. That's really the bright side to a lot of As Seen on TV products: they might be lazy or weird for some of us, but for others they grant a bit of independence.
Besides, it isn't like these folks did anything wrong besides not being able to understand the legal language the contracts are written in and doing business with a company that wasn't quite upfront with their intentions as folks would like.
> Also wouldn't want working parents to spend time with their kids instead of doing mundane household chores
I love how the answer to "modern life doesn't leave enough time to do basic human tasks" is "buy a $1k+ soon to be e-waste LIDAR powered AI enabled fully autonomous vacuum cleaner" instead of "fix the damn system". We truly have completely lost our collective minds somewhere since the 90s
Over a certain threshold no matter how much time you give a person, they won't be able to perform some tasks.
You can't throw people at the problem nowadays, because there are just too few young persons.
Vacuuming robots are great because while they can't replace a fit person with a vacuum, they can do half as good a job daily and largely without supervision.
I don't understand the point of this comment. Are you expressing disbelief, are you making fun the above comment? As a impaired person I find a robot vacuum a great thing.
The robot vacuums are going to be invented, going to be sold, and going to be used, regardless of whether we fix the system.
Getting snarky with people because they are upset about a much smaller, more recent, and more visible change than our gradual slide into late-stage capitalism—and one that might actually be fixable without a complete overhaul of our society and culture—is deeply unhelpful. It's the very picture of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
You and these people are on the same side, so maybe try showing sympathy and compassion for their frustrations, rather than mocking them for not solely and full-throatedly advocating for an overthrow of the system.
No need for the hyperbole. My xiaomi was like $300 with lidar and its been chugging along for 5 years now. The app even tracks wear on replaceable parts, and all its bugged me to do is clean a sensor with a rag occasionally so far.
> wouldn't want working parents to spend time with their kids instead of doing mundane household chores
Whether we experience a net gain in saved time for the more important things is dependent on more than just the straightforward subtraction of chores as they exist now. A lot of factors influence that, so you cannot perform simple extrapolations in that manner because the "system" is dynamic. People didn't have washing machines 100 years ago, but they often had more time than we do or claim to do.
The introduction of a labor saving device introduces consequences. Markets and culture respond to the supposedly liberated time. Automation introduces new costs like the need for maintenance. Social activity and arrangements organized around certain activities evaporate and are replaced with new ones. The medium is the message, so to speak.
You bring up the notion that the wide spread introduction of washing machines might not have had an effect on how people use their time. Go and read up on that because the the introduction of labor saving devices had a MASSIVE effect of how people spent their time, especially women. It's often quoted as one of the greatest inventions and something that had a big impact on advancing equality.
Indeed how people use their free time varies greatly but that is not a reason to limit people's free time.
I’m a working parent. My children love cleaning the house with myself and my partner, it’s a great game of cooperation. Watching a robot move around, not so much.
I have also never wished for a way to change the radio with voice commands. I’ve seen friends do this and it’s like seeing people ride a unicycle - novel, but it doesn’t offer me anything of value. And of course, the privacy trade off isn’t worth it.
Just because you wouldn't want it doesn't mean that it won't be very useful for someone else. And for the robot, I'm that person simply because I absolutely loathe housework. I only do it because there isn't a reasonable choice, and I'm very happy to not have been born 100 years earlier.
I personally don't want to talk to my appliances any more than I want to talk on the phone. But to be absolutely honest, I know I carry a personal surveillance device around with me. I don't generally want more of it - but if I had a reason for voice commands - and a number of things might fit, so long as it required both hands and took some time - I might change my mind. And if they don't sell the robot vacuum without the camera, I'll probably ignore that. Depending.
I see nobody here saying that robot vacuum cleaners should not exist. The argument is that they don't need cameras and always-open Internet connections.
Valetudo[0] exists, however it requires flashing firmware, and partial disassembly depending on the model. However, the methods to gain root are sometimes patched so new exploits are necessary.
That's the worst project naming ever. Will my vacuum get on steroids and coke and then take me down and proceed to headbutt me until my corner throws the towel? Because that's what Vale Tudo as a project name makes me imagine. Or perhaps "anything goes" means that the robot can do anything it wants, like taking pictures and uploading it to facebook :)
I have a non-robotic, modern battery vacuum. It has some extra features you can activate by connecting to an app. The one I remember is that it can estimate the quantity of dirt you vacuumed which sounds interesting, though obviously not vital to vacuuming.
Unfortunately, I would never consider connecting the app for fear of what info it might be phoning home with (even if it's just my vacuuming habits). It's too bad that "connected" is basically synonymous with stealing personal information. There are lots of cool non-spying things internet connected stuff can do, but companies have ruined it by using them mainly for bad.
Not sure if they've become worse since mine but I have a D7 Neato that can connect to the cloud but works just fine without connecting it, learns the room without any outside connection.
I have the lowest end Roomba purchased in 2019 that I block from internet access at my router. I can’t use the app but there’s a button on the vacuum I can use to start it. Works enough for me shrug.
Lately, my app says "Can't connect right now". "right now" can be described as months. So, the big button has been getting used a lot. The only thing about not using the app, is that was the only way I could be sure it got to the rooms I thought it did. The roomba is basically an idiot that just finds its way literally by bouncing off of things. There are times I've seen it clean the same area multiple times while never going to a different room at all in the same cleaning cycle. So by viewing the map, I can know if I need to pick it up and lock it in the room it missed.
The fact that it needs an internet connection for that is maddening.
If intimate images can be taken without consent, then they will end up public. It's human nature at some level.
Not victim blaming; but this will not end unless those complicit can be identified and some inevitable punishment is created. Without that negative feedback then the positive thrill is too great for many humans to resist.
It is building a map, and knowing when you place it in a random room what room it is (even if you like, buy a new rug). I don't think you can just stare straight down and build a good 3d map of a building?
Why do you need to know what things are? You are a vacuum cleaner. You just need to see that you aren’t on the edge of a step (achieved with foor facing sensors for a xiaomi vacuum) and that you don’t have an obstruction ahead of you (detected by the onboard lidar and confirmed with a pressure plate on the xiaomi).
Thats not how this device works. You can pick it up, walk around, set it down in the den, and push the button, and it will say "vacuuming den". It draws a 2d map of your floor, using 3d images
It's cheaper to have a camera read the celling photo data and combine that with it bumping into walls to find its way around than to use a sensible solution like a lidar.
Thats flawed because the room can change. My vacuum uses lidar and just makes a new scan, you don’t need to cache any data to plot a route on the floor.
There's no privacy, in terms of sensors that send data to other people. Well, correction: There can be privacy between you and those other people.
Who wants a camera, roaming their house, constantly sending photos to another person?
Quite a few people, apparently!
Most people rationalize this, because they don't think about the other people at all. They're not visible, so they don't exist. This isn't the "panopticon" because we don't see our watchers ever appear, even when those watchers are posting our intimate photos on social media.
So many "smart" devices needlessly send data to the companies that produce the product. Society has built the technology to keep data on the devices, yet that's not how things have worked out.
Another point: a huge percentage of these devices are produced by Chinese companies. The Chinese government effectively has an ownership stake in all of these companies. However, we too, can rationalize this, because it's so abstract. The consequences aren't visible to us right now, so we can go ahead and ignore them. Right?
Amazon is buying Roomba. Same thing. We can ignore the consequences. It's easy!
When I saw the Roombas with the cameras on them, I said no, I bought the cheaper one without the camera. Something just feels strange about a camera wandering around my house.
My reluctance in having an internet connected camera in my house 24/7 is why I bought a LIDAR vacuum. For similar reasons I had the security cameras removed from the house when I bought it. I've worked in IT long enough to know not to trust either the code or humans involved.
Yeah, definitely don't buy cameras with those features as a possibility if you don't personally desire it. Getting regular onvif cameras is pretty easy if that's what you desire.
Restrict them from internet access and you don't have to worry about firmware updates too.
But people want to be able to see what's going on at home while they're away, either at work or on vacation. That's the use case these cameras were invented for.
Except that in 2023 the police won't even try to look for them. Maybe if you can provide their real address they will consider perhaps doing something about it.
Do actual photos or video footage not help solving burglaries? I have tried looking for statistics on this. The Pew Research Center[1] wrote this in 2020:
When it comes to property crime, law enforcement agencies cleared 18.4% of larcenies/thefts, 14.1% of burglaries and 13.8% of motor vehicle thefts.
14.1% is very low. But this figure is not broken down by the type of evidence available to the police. Can a large part of the 14.1% be cases where recordings from security cameras were available?
The implementation wasn't great but SimpliSafe used to have these cameras with an automatic reflective (so you could see it) shutter on them; it was a good concept and I went with it because of that.
This is what security systems used to be and they’re still available. People like the idea of being able to see into their houses themselves but don’t like the idea of anyone else being able to see into their houses. The very small likelihood of the latter is enough to dissuade me from the former.
Inviting indoor-facing cameras is a disaster waiting to happen. There is a reason why Zuckerberg tapes over his laptop and why the Pelosi family only have exterior security cameras
Neither does taping the webcam because the mac has that thing wired in serial to the led. I wonder what other security measures he accepts without thinking critically about them?
How does the saying go? Tech enthusiasts get smart/connected everything; tech professionals keep a gun next to the printer in case it makes any funny noises?
I find it fascinating people are so concerned about cameras. I am much more concerned about microphones. And I’ll betcha you’re typing on something with an always on microphone right now.
First it’s about what’s easily controllable. Second it’s about threat impact of the release of any media taken from my house. I am very boring and so audio of me asking my wife what she wants for dinner for the 15,000th time wouldn’t cause any reputational damage compared to having naked photos of us shared on Facebook.
I guess it depends. I am alone and almost never say anything, but I'm almost always wearing only underpants 23/7. Perhaps for other people, home conversations are more sensitive and they dress sensibly inside the house.
Have you never read a credit card out over the phone? Your social security number or other sensitive identification? Discussed private medical information with a provider? I think people overestimate how boring their conversations are. It’s not about blackmail usually, although that’s what folks care about for video. But would you really be blackmailed by a picture of you on the toilet? I might be mildly embarrassed but I won’t go very far to prevent it from being published. But I talk about sensitive stuff quite often on the phone, or when I work from home.
No, I really don't do any of those things. Everything is online these days, which is a different attack surface. I also don't think that my iPhone is listening to me, for advertising or blackmail purposes.
I’m more worried about the details of my credit card. Personally I’d be willing to sell a video feed with audio of my using the bathroom for extra cash if there’s a big market for it. But I know some people are embarrassed someone might learn they have bodily functions.
My old dumb roomba with naught but bumpers, ultrasonic and IR sensors works just fine. It's my understanding that it doesn't map/remember room layouts at all, it seems to rely on stochastic bumping around rooms for an hour. When I want it to run in another room, I pick it up and carry it there. I don't understand why robot vacuums need more advanced sensors, let alone internet connection.
It's worth noting here (to those who are writing about unauthorized uploading of images) that those were testers. The Roomba they got was there explicitly to gather images to be used for development purposes. It's obviously still not OK that those images leaked publicly, but it's not like it was spying on them without their consent.
Having bought the Roomba J(+) recently, the contribution of images for testing purposes is opt-in so done properly in that sense. The camera is also completely covered when the Roomba is docked, while the advantage of recognizing obstacles and properly driving around them is great. My previous Roomba was completely useless because it would get stuck on cables, shoes, anything.
All this to say it's not that black-and-white to me. I still don't do explicit stuff in front of the Roomba, but it doesn't mean I can't use it in a controlled way.
> but it's not like it was spying on them without their consent
Actually that's exactly what they did because the "their" here encompasses all humans in the building. Unless there was a requirement to post prominent notices "you will be subject to filming if you enter this facility" around the place, then no there wasn't consent.
Not really. At least in the EU “consent” on its own doesn’t exist, the concept is “informed consent”. So Roomba, if relying on consent, should have informed the user of the need to get informed consent from every non-child family member and visitor that might come into contact with that Roomba and to transmit that informed consent to Roomba.
(Children’s consent can be given by their guardians.)
It's black and white to me in the sense that I don't like the idea of something that I buy to clean my carpets having a NIC inside of it. Even if I don't opt-in to enabling certain features, I'm not comfortable paying for the hardware and having a device in my home that is even capable of sending data about my private living space to some remote server.
It reminds me of that time a bought a dust collector called a "Playstation 4" and it required me to connect it to the Internet before I could use it. I almost returned it for that very reason. Not everything needs to be connected to a network.
At what point does a Roomba need to identify and report potentially problematic household items to the authorities?
I honestly couldn't imagine letting something like this roam around my house collecting a database of everything that's in it. This level of object recognition seems completely inappropriate for a vacuum.
Why the hell do I need my VACUUM to have a camera and an internet connection?!
cameras for object detection, fine ... but there are VERY few things in my home that I need or want to be connected to a network, and my vacuum cleaner is not one of them. And why do I even need this thing to persist images in any capacity (even locally, let alone remotely)?
Despite being a software engineer for 25 years I'm starting to become a luddite because of things like this. One of these days I might just pack up everything and go live off grid.
My xiaomi uses wifi to communicate to the app on your phone and its dock. The app is useful, you can specify a zone to clean from a previous lidar scan of your place, have it come and do a spot cleanup, establish schedules or trigger a clean while you are away, or you can control it manually with directional controls.
That being said I think it would still work fine without the wifi doing a whole area clean with the button on the top, it just might say its having trouble finding its dock and you would need to carry it home after its finished.
Perfect for those occasions when I'm away on vacation but the dirt on my kitchen floor back home is bothering me...
Honestly half these features only exist because they're easy to implement and make the feature list longer, not because they're actually useful. And the other half don't require the internet, I set schedules on my roomba that has no radio in it, it has four buttons and a seven segment display.
I have a cat and its pretty much a guarentee I need to have the vacuum run every few days. Its still useful to check in with it. Sometimes the vacuum gets stuck. Sometimes something blocks it and prevents it from cleaning a room, and I can tell that because I have a map of the lidar scan with a path drawn of the vacuum route on it in the app.
I bought a Roborock S7 because of this issue. I wanted a capable vacuum with no camera. It's my first robot vacuum, so I don't have any points of comparison, but it's been excellent.
It's mapped the rooms really well and leaves perfect lines on the carpet - no ranom navigation or ping-ponging. We pick things up before we run the robot, but that's fine because it means the house is tidier.
I don't have a pet so I don't know how good it is at avoiding poop on the floor (apparently a selling point of vacuums with cameras) but poop on the floor is not something I would accept in my house anyway.
New slogan and company name: “eyeRobot - we clean your floor and keep an eye on your stuff!”
These types of leaks of information only damage the reputation of smart product makers even further. There really needs to be a push towards local processing on the smart devices. Most of them call home for nefarious reasons either to gain or gather marketing information or to outright spying on their customers.
Putting the photo of the woman on a toilet in the article seems a bit dubious even with the face obscured, particularly given that this is an article about lack of consent.
The problem is with all of these new devices using AI related features. They all seem to decide that it's a good idea to use contractors to "verify" or "categorize" the pictures. There is always a leak because they have to rely on the contractor's security protocols to make sure that these pictures don't get out. And, surprisingly, contractors might not have the best security, and it doesn't seem like the companies have any incentive to verify the security.
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 238 ms ] threadThis whole thing is disgusting.
of course these kinds of things dont work for the regular guy
I'm not trying to be flippant, but what is to stop some company from simply utilizing a Terms of Service that allows them to do whatever they want with the data? I often see people chiming in that consumers "agreed" to all of this, even though the vast majority of people never read through the ToS or privacy policy at all.
ToS are often made to be hard to understand.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33917602
Oh hey HN people they're doing what you said they would, but we forgot you warned us. We're ready for you to be upset now. Clearly you're not so you're dismissive.
3. Tech shouldn't imply or require privacy compromises.
4. Piracy tools often drive innovation and technological progress. (Not to mention would we have subscription music services or even Netflix's non-DVD-by-mail business without the market pressure from piracy? Would they cost more?)
5. How does a position or preference on a business model imply pro- or anti-tech?
And even #2 doesn't necessarily imply an anti-tech stance. I don't think it's anti-tech to resist putting computers in toasters, for example. The overuse of tech can be a step backwards and hurt overall technological progress, imho.
Not sure what #1 means.
Bad technology. Nobody would object to smarter cars with usable controls that didn't spy on you and have security holes. People, even here, would love smart TVs if they started as fast as the dumb ones, didn't have ads, didn't spy on you, and were generally actually in the user's control. People aren't against tech, they're against awful tech that's a straight downgrade from what came before.
Actually, this goes for the rest of your points, not just 2.
I've seen many people complaining about modern safety features such as back up cameras and collision detection, I wouldn't call that bad technology.
I have literally never heard a complaint about reversing cameras in my life
The idea is that the cameras require a large display on the dashboard. If you could sell a car without them, we might have a cheaper class of small street-legal vehicles with simpler controls.
Sadly, with electric vehicles being thousands of kg heavier than ICE vehicles, kei-style cars would probably get a lot of people killed if they were introduced to the US today.
Like with backup cameras that we just don't want to pay for. I've been driving for 20+ years and never once bumped my car. So the safety aspect isn't really relevant. But when I get told "We added this backup camera for free, so you're saving 500$". Honestly I'd rather have you shave 500$ off the price of the car.
I've actually had that conversation about bluetooth in my current car. 8 years old and I've never used the bluetooth. It was tech for tech sake. It adds no value.
My comment was in reply to someone who said they expected HN to be tech apologists. People down voted me because they took it as a standalone comment complaining about HN.
Quite annyoing
It's not anti-tech, it's just savvy enough to be skeptical and not to be enthusiastic about tech for tech's sake.
A lot of people just uncritically buy into sales pitches, or are not confident enough to challenge them.
If these issues are regulated now, what happens when it's their turn to be the millionaire startup CEO?
Engineers should ask before adding a feature, "Is this going to require user consent?"
They could have added AI to the Roomba to remove people from the video before it ever even hits the network — or drop that video completely. Or switch to a technology other than visible light, etc.
Happened to me last week actually :)
If this ever goes to court I don’t doubt this will turn out to be one giant nothingburger.
In this case iRobot didn't exactly lie about collecting data, but how greedy/stupid do you have to be as a company to not ensure that the data collect NEVER EVER leave the servers of your AI/QA/Process-improvement lab? The company know that people are already critical of their data collection, that should have trigged the creation of a process that would ensure that once data has been collected will never leave the department that develops their AI. You know this data is sensitive, and yet you outsource handling of if it, to poorly trained freelancers, who knows nothing of data security, privacy laws or apparently common decency.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/30/23486753/anker-eufy-secu...
It takes constant vigilance and sadly the incentives aren’t there.
I think that it's an attractive thing because it pays, and people generally don't care. So it's a free avenue for the company to make additional profits, or, to use this extra profit to lower the margin of the original product, thereby making it more attractive in a price competition.
BTW there also are more minor annoyances advertised as features. I had hard time finding an electric kettle without a beeper (so it would just stop heatin once done but won't annoy me the way the microwave does or wake me up when I sleep and somebody wants a cup of tea). ~95% have the signal and ~40% don't even mention they do.
And the truth is that folks don't get these things - at least not something affordable - unless they are introduced to greater society. That's really the bright side to a lot of As Seen on TV products: they might be lazy or weird for some of us, but for others they grant a bit of independence.
Besides, it isn't like these folks did anything wrong besides not being able to understand the legal language the contracts are written in and doing business with a company that wasn't quite upfront with their intentions as folks would like.
I love how the answer to "modern life doesn't leave enough time to do basic human tasks" is "buy a $1k+ soon to be e-waste LIDAR powered AI enabled fully autonomous vacuum cleaner" instead of "fix the damn system". We truly have completely lost our collective minds somewhere since the 90s
You can't throw people at the problem nowadays, because there are just too few young persons.
Vacuuming robots are great because while they can't replace a fit person with a vacuum, they can do half as good a job daily and largely without supervision.
Getting snarky with people because they are upset about a much smaller, more recent, and more visible change than our gradual slide into late-stage capitalism—and one that might actually be fixable without a complete overhaul of our society and culture—is deeply unhelpful. It's the very picture of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
You and these people are on the same side, so maybe try showing sympathy and compassion for their frustrations, rather than mocking them for not solely and full-throatedly advocating for an overthrow of the system.
Whether we experience a net gain in saved time for the more important things is dependent on more than just the straightforward subtraction of chores as they exist now. A lot of factors influence that, so you cannot perform simple extrapolations in that manner because the "system" is dynamic. People didn't have washing machines 100 years ago, but they often had more time than we do or claim to do.
The introduction of a labor saving device introduces consequences. Markets and culture respond to the supposedly liberated time. Automation introduces new costs like the need for maintenance. Social activity and arrangements organized around certain activities evaporate and are replaced with new ones. The medium is the message, so to speak.
Indeed how people use their free time varies greatly but that is not a reason to limit people's free time.
I have also never wished for a way to change the radio with voice commands. I’ve seen friends do this and it’s like seeing people ride a unicycle - novel, but it doesn’t offer me anything of value. And of course, the privacy trade off isn’t worth it.
I personally don't want to talk to my appliances any more than I want to talk on the phone. But to be absolutely honest, I know I carry a personal surveillance device around with me. I don't generally want more of it - but if I had a reason for voice commands - and a number of things might fit, so long as it required both hands and took some time - I might change my mind. And if they don't sell the robot vacuum without the camera, I'll probably ignore that. Depending.
[0]: https://valetudo.cloud/
Unfortunately, I would never consider connecting the app for fear of what info it might be phoning home with (even if it's just my vacuuming habits). It's too bad that "connected" is basically synonymous with stealing personal information. There are lots of cool non-spying things internet connected stuff can do, but companies have ruined it by using them mainly for bad.
I own both types and I found the cloud version to be less reliable and less convenient.
I'll tell you.
None. None more cleaner.
The fact that it needs an internet connection for that is maddening.
Not victim blaming; but this will not end unless those complicit can be identified and some inevitable punishment is created. Without that negative feedback then the positive thrill is too great for many humans to resist.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34057699
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simultaneous_localization_and_...
It's just a cost cutting measure.
But it should be done on the device, without sending images anywhere.
Who wants a camera, roaming their house, constantly sending photos to another person?
Quite a few people, apparently!
Most people rationalize this, because they don't think about the other people at all. They're not visible, so they don't exist. This isn't the "panopticon" because we don't see our watchers ever appear, even when those watchers are posting our intimate photos on social media.
So many "smart" devices needlessly send data to the companies that produce the product. Society has built the technology to keep data on the devices, yet that's not how things have worked out.
Another point: a huge percentage of these devices are produced by Chinese companies. The Chinese government effectively has an ownership stake in all of these companies. However, we too, can rationalize this, because it's so abstract. The consequences aren't visible to us right now, so we can go ahead and ignore them. Right?
Amazon is buying Roomba. Same thing. We can ignore the consequences. It's easy!
But it's barely used these days, as the real vacuum is 1000% more effective in my carpet.
That might work, but might also be circumvented at some point. I.e Amazon security cameras can use the neighbors cameras network to phone home.
Restrict them from internet access and you don't have to worry about firmware updates too.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/20/facts-about...
Source: https://www.hackread.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Mark-Zuc...
That doesn't stop the camera from working, it only notifies you. And it only notifies you if you're paying attention to your computer.
So yes, taping your webcam does work.
Easily one of my fave purchases of the past 10 years, would replace in a heartbeat if it broke.
Having bought the Roomba J(+) recently, the contribution of images for testing purposes is opt-in so done properly in that sense. The camera is also completely covered when the Roomba is docked, while the advantage of recognizing obstacles and properly driving around them is great. My previous Roomba was completely useless because it would get stuck on cables, shoes, anything.
All this to say it's not that black-and-white to me. I still don't do explicit stuff in front of the Roomba, but it doesn't mean I can't use it in a controlled way.
Actually that's exactly what they did because the "their" here encompasses all humans in the building. Unless there was a requirement to post prominent notices "you will be subject to filming if you enter this facility" around the place, then no there wasn't consent.
(Children’s consent can be given by their guardians.)
It reminds me of that time a bought a dust collector called a "Playstation 4" and it required me to connect it to the Internet before I could use it. I almost returned it for that very reason. Not everything needs to be connected to a network.
I honestly couldn't imagine letting something like this roam around my house collecting a database of everything that's in it. This level of object recognition seems completely inappropriate for a vacuum.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34057699
cameras for object detection, fine ... but there are VERY few things in my home that I need or want to be connected to a network, and my vacuum cleaner is not one of them. And why do I even need this thing to persist images in any capacity (even locally, let alone remotely)?
Despite being a software engineer for 25 years I'm starting to become a luddite because of things like this. One of these days I might just pack up everything and go live off grid.
That being said I think it would still work fine without the wifi doing a whole area clean with the button on the top, it just might say its having trouble finding its dock and you would need to carry it home after its finished.
Perfect for those occasions when I'm away on vacation but the dirt on my kitchen floor back home is bothering me...
Honestly half these features only exist because they're easy to implement and make the feature list longer, not because they're actually useful. And the other half don't require the internet, I set schedules on my roomba that has no radio in it, it has four buttons and a seven segment display.
"Feel misled?"
No, I would e.g. feel misled if I showed up to the burger spot and found that the cheeseburger special doesn't apply to bacon cheeseburgers.
This is .. something different from that.
It's mapped the rooms really well and leaves perfect lines on the carpet - no ranom navigation or ping-ponging. We pick things up before we run the robot, but that's fine because it means the house is tidier.
I don't have a pet so I don't know how good it is at avoiding poop on the floor (apparently a selling point of vacuums with cameras) but poop on the floor is not something I would accept in my house anyway.
These types of leaks of information only damage the reputation of smart product makers even further. There really needs to be a push towards local processing on the smart devices. Most of them call home for nefarious reasons either to gain or gather marketing information or to outright spying on their customers.