Your friendly little Roomba could soon be selling maps of your home to marketers

[Electro Detective]

Agreed, it's over the top    

Looks like I'll be shopping for older used 'Non-Smart' equipment down the track, and save a buck 

Or get a hacker mate to sort out the smartass electronics on the new gear, so the only information being sent out is a big >   


...or The Finger

[Halcyon]

The moment your home network requires more IP addresses than already available on a /24 network, it's a sign you might have too many "smart" gadgets.
 

Just doing a quick count, excluding computers, laptops, tablets and phones, I have:

3 Sonos speakers
1 TV (locked by firewall rules to only connect to the Philips update server at a specific time of day)
1 Alarm clock

None of them have microphones or cameras.

[cdev]

My last TV will be exactly that. I have no plans to ever buy another one since I never use the one I have except for the occasional video which is usually emitted from a computer plugged into it (its just acting as a monitor)

I think "dumbness" needs to be pushed as a selling point.   
Also, if they put them in, they can be taken out, like the government sometimes does with their own hardware, lets disable all the non-switchable sensors, microphones, cameras etc.  in these things-

If people want smart devices, let them be open source projects, with open hardware, so people can code what they do themselves.

Quote from: Red Squirrel on Yesterday at 20:20:56

Simple solution, just don't use or buy their sh!t    

They may just dry up and blow away as ignored sh!t tends to do   

The problem is they are putting that crap in everything now.  Soon there won't be any choices.   Look at TVs, pretty hard to find a non smart TV now days.

[Syntax_Error]

Don't know if someone already brought this up, but here goes: "Just wait" till it doesn't need your home internet connection. Just wait until they start coming with embedded 3G transcievers, and after 5G networks are common in a few decades, 4G transcievers.

The point is not that it will be unstoppable, as there will always be something you can do to intervene (just becomes less practical). It's more about the fact that with your home network, it requires/demands user interaction to at least set it up to give it access to your network. With embedded cellular connections, user interaction is not needed at all for some usage scenarios, and hardly at all for the rest. They might stop telling you about transmitted data at all.

Mull that around for a bit.

[rdl]

Don't know if someone already brought this up, but here goes: "Just wait" till it doesn't need your home internet connection. Just wait until they start coming with embedded 3G transcievers, and after 5G networks are common in a few decades, 4G transcievers.

They upgraded the alarm systems in my apartment complex last year. The new ones have a built in cell phone connection instead of being wired.

As soon as the installers left I unplugged it and disconnected the battery.

[cdev]

The problem is there is very much an incomplete social contract based on a miscalibration of trust.



Quote from: blueskull on Today at 01:25:30

Seems there are quite a few people here still believing they can keep their freedom forever. Now, this IoT trend and big brother is looking is just another example of the loss of freedom, and this is bound to happen.
We naively thought modern civilization can bring us freedom, which was thought by people in peace time of every dynasties in the past.
History repeats itself, exactly, over and over again. There will be rebellion, creating an era, then there will be a very long peaceful period which people think they get true freedom and civilization, until the new pattern of absolute power starts to emerge, triggering a new revolution, and the history repeats itself.
As long as we are still human, we will have the tendency to gather power, and that's the root of inherent instability of human society.

[PlainName]

Well you can take such a view of the patterns and cycles of history based on past experience and philosophizing about human nature etc.

Clearly, past experience hasn't taught you that people won't trust anything you say if they once catch you making stuff up.

The saying "those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it" is

... mis-remembered during stream-of-consciouness composition. The correct version is:

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Rather a subtle change in meaning rather than a simple paraphrase too.

As M.K. Gandhi said even a pebble raises the level of the entire ocean.

Unfortunately, he didn't. What he did say was:

A ppebble raises the water level a boulder creates an ocean; a pebble matters a little a boulder changes a lot.

Again, rather a different meaning to what you intended

For future reference, had the first quote actually been the right quote I wouldn't have bothered checking the second (sounds like a Gandhi inspired pebble/ocean thing, so would have passed me by). Perhaps checking your memory before committing to papBBS might improve the reception of what you write.

[cdev]

They couldn't give a fuck what we think. Nor would they stop lying just because a few people had figured them out. They would just ignore them.

Basically all our governments are increasingly shams. They don't run things, a global cabal of corporations do. Its been that way for >20 years. People still haven't figured that out.

[PlainName]

As engineers and just as people that make choices about what products / companies / technologies / ideas to "invest in" or otherwise purchase / promote / pursue / create we can influence the destination of that road.

I don't think we can, for two reasons:

1. We (who might be disturbed by this) are in a very small minority. Things change because the bigger influence gets its way, and that influence is either via numbers (for instance, in elections) or money (for example, by lobbying). Sure, cheap lobbying is possible, but that requires numbers and money pretty much always wins out.

2. We (engineer types) mostly don't give a shit. I refer you to the privacy thread I contributed in the EEVBlog-specific forum, the gist of which was cool and neat will win over privacy every time. I see grown up successful engineers raving about Windows 10 features they like and discarding the bad bits as one of those things we need to put up with so we can have the good bits. And do you want tinfoil with that paranoia or will you just stop with the inconvenient revelations.

Essentially, the population at large is easily bought, and it doesn't have to involve any financial consideration - shiny is good enough. And that's if they even notice in the first place. Keep it under the radar and even if someone shoves it in their face one breakfast time they'll forget about it by lunch.

Back when East Germany wasn't part of the West, the Stasi would have creamed their pants at just a fraction of what is now normal for us. We would have read about what went on their and shake our heads in disbelief that people would just put up with it. Yet here we are pretty much asking for more of the same, and with custard on please. This is what the technical power you refer to has given us: the benefit to us is now just the lubrication that lets the real power wielders monitor and manipulate us. You only have to check  the thread I referred to above to see that even the lowliest of us want that power to monitor other people, so it's not a surprise that, given free rein, those capable of grabbing that power will go as far as they can until they are forced to stop. If they can be.

[mtdoc]

Cdev and dunkemhigh are right. Unfortunately most people prefer to remain in the matrix. 

"Ignorance is bliss!"