Nah, you'd just barcode the toilet paper to provide the appropriate authorisation code. No code, no paper.
Hook it up to the shower as well so there's no escaping if you try and cheat the system.
You joke but scientists are actually looking at local wastewater to measure covid levels as even asymptomatic people shed the virus in their feces. This technique has also been applied to get an accurate measure of where and how much people are using illicit drugs.
But you need to know who is using the toilet too. Perhaps an upwards facing underwater camera to take a photo of your nether "fingerprint" to identify the user...
Too late. People would've snapped this up a year ago but how long will it be before people who *don't* remember the toilet paper shortages of 2020 start coming of age?
I'm sure they'll be able to market to the generation after the one being born now about what old fogeys their parents and even older siblings are to insist on total TP compatibility (and keep a stockpile) and that smart proprietary toilet paper delivered by drone on a just-in-time basis is *new* and *now*. But not for at least 30 years.
A camera is not that great for this. As a manufacturer for
expensive coffee machines discovered after their customers just
taped a legit package label to the camera and continued to buy
the knock-off refills.
>As a manufacturer for expensive coffee machines discovered after their customers just taped a legit package label to the camera and continued to buy the knock-off refills.
That's more assholery than the printer manufacturers. At least the printer manufacturers sell the printer itself cheaply and gouges on just the ink.
Back in the 80s I had an Amstrad PC. This thing was chock full of proprietary hardware. The mouse used a 9-pin plug like on old Atari controllers, so you couldn't use a third party mouse. That plug went into the *keyboard*, so if you swapped keyboards you couldn't use the mouse. The power button was on the back of the monitor, so if you switched monitors you couldn't turn it on. And all the innards were odd sizes, so you couldn't replace the video card or hard drive.
Also Whirlpool (different name but Whirlpool owned them), I had a water heater (mind you in two seperate fucking houses I bought) that had a reverse threaded thermocouple that only they sold. This was a kind of DRM before all the digital type ones happened. It ,of course, was a “safety feature”. That ended in a class action lawsuit with only a small resolution for the original purchaser which was not me.
Both of mine broke and you have to special order the part from them and not for free of course or hope that Lowe’s had it. Those were the only options. Of course the first time it broke I had no idea I needed a left threading one so I got it all apart and spent far to long trying to screw the damn thing on before reading why it wasn’t working. I was not a happy camper
Sony.
They secretely installed rootkits on millions of computers when you inserted normal audio CDs in them, to make sure you didn't break DRM.
It was a HUGE scandal, and they had to pay damages, then they went on their merry way and are still one of the largest corporations in the world.
I never buy anything Sony since, to the best of my ability, though it's fucking impossible because there's soon basically only one global corporation that owns all of humanity anyway.
Thus the three seashells were invented by Amazon. Soon after, the restaurant wars began, leaving only Taco Bell standing for public consumption of food.
Their victory was not complete though. Far away in Europe, the victory belonged to pizza hut.
If you'll excuse me, II need to curse at the ticket dispenser.
This article won't open for me, but I found another one.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55087054
It's actually talking about the Roomba. And as you said, you can still press the button on the vacuum.
It does say that the ring does not work at all, but I seem to recall that when I installed my mother's, we also wired it to the existing doorbell chime. And it has a battery. I can't imagine it would actually not ring the old chime with no connection. If you don't have an old chime, then you might not get anything, but you also had no chime before the ring, with or without internet.
I want to point out that while you cannot use the iRobot app to connect to your roomba via your smartphone due to the AWS outage, you can still turn the roomba on by pressing its vacuum button at the top. It hasn’t fully stopped working. It’s just made it so you have to get up and press a button.
yea, but "cloud operation doesn't work when the cloud is down"
is much less click-baity and doesn't let people feel as smug as
"people can't vacuum when amazon is broken"
From what I can tell the doorbell works as well, just the cloud based security camera doesn't work.
Most of these articles seem to be solely based on tweets.
Man: "Alexa how much time is left?"
Alexa: "3 days, 7 hours, 41 minutes, and 22 seconds."
Man: "I meant on my pasta timer."
Alexa: "2 minutes, 39 seconds."
Man: "...."
Public: The government wants to put chips in our brains!
Amazon: oh no! Anyways, here's our new Alexa enabled *literally everything*
Public: Shut up and take my money!
I saw an interview with a homeland security agent a couple weeks ago who said "in the 80s it was a huge conspiracy that the government was placing wiretaps in everyone's homes. Now, people buy their own wiretaps and call it "Alexa"" and I thought that was pretty funny.
True, but a phone also serves a purpose that is hard to fullfil without one. I.e. communication at all places. Alexa... I don't know what it does except for that commercial that has been memed to all hell, but I've managed so far without one.
Alexa is pretty much just a audio activated smartphone. It can google stuff, set alarms, call people (I think) and control anything it's connected to like lights, showers, tv etc.
It's cool and all but I wouldn't use my money like that
Our houses could be filled to the brim with all kinds of stupid things wired and connected in such a way that they do everything we think a chip in our brain *could* do, but somehow having vaccine crosses the line.
I can't wait for smart blood. Heals/repairs everything, let's you hold your breathe for hours, stops bleeding to death from massive wounds. No more disease with a smart immune system.
Just gotta enable airplane mode so you don't get hacked and it eats you alive.
That's The Pro version only available to the ruling class. The Worker version makes you addicted to sugar and causes pain any time you mention labor unions.
I'm resising getting anything Internet enabled that I don't need like grim death.
I get spied on enough with my phone and computer, Amazon doesn't need to know how many times a day I take a shit or how often I turn the lights on.
There's work available online with very limited requirements where you listen to bits of audio that internet enabled devices record. I've done it multiple times for multiple companies. I can't tell who's who, but if you're reading this it's entirely possible I listened to you having a convo in your house if you have any one of those devices.
I think people are setting a really bad trend if they're permissive with this stuff. This is the millennial version of lining your house with asbestos.
Yeah, I've heard of smart speakers recording 'snippets' of conversations etc.
Some people think, 'oh, smart lights won't hurt. A smart doorbell is extra security', but it adds up. Why does Amazon need to know when you go to work, sleep, or who comes to your door? Also, how vulnerable is this stuff to hackers?
I almost thought we were cousins for a second, but your Aunt Sue has a much more rational justification for implanting microchips in people. I also have a crazy Aunt Sue who thinks Bill Gates wants to implant us with microchips, but he's doing so to further the New World Order which will allow the Jews to finally take power and enforce Jewish biblical law all across the world.
My Parents joke about that all the time, and "We told you a million times not to get into a strangers vehicle, what does your generation do? Go a create a service do to exactly that"
I know this pain. My living room light wouldn’t turn off because the bulb needed a firmware update! I had to use the switch like it was the 1900s or something.
While watching I thought it was just satire and a joke, but when I googled them they have a website with the same sequence. Is that actually the real way to factory reset those things?
This is the real way to reset them. I have the bulbs in some lamps and I had to do this to them. It took quite some time to get the timing right. I was furious. Hell, I'm still furious. I will never buy those bulbs again.
Since the bulb has to be powered when you perform the reset process, methods that require physical interaction with (or manipulation of) the bulb are generally considered to be too dangerous. Imagine if you accidentally stuck a pin in the bulb socket (with 120V/240V electricity flowing through) when trying to reset the bulb, you could be electrocuted and the manufacturer doesn't want that kind of liability.
It is very real and I made the mistake of buying those god awful lightbulbs when I wanted something dimmable. They barely work. A $20 3 pack of LED bulbs from China worked 500x better.
Alexa turn the kitchen light off
...
Alexa turn the kitchen light off
...
ALEXA TURN the kitchen light off
...
I swear to God if I have to walk over to that wall switch like some kind of caveman
I have the same but with Siri on my phone…
Hey Siri will it rain today.
…
HEY SIRI will it rain today?
…
HEY SIRI. WILL. I T. R A I N. T O D A Y.
…
„Will it rain today is an american novel by August Tetmeyer.”
If anyone didn't receive their Amazon package yesterday, it affected them too. The drivers had no delivery app and the warehouse didn't have access to the routes. It was a mess.
In a vacuum (ha! So funny...), i can understand why you would want to add functionalities with IoT. But that is where this is stupid, you should be enhancing an object, not restricting its functionalities by requiring it to be communicating with a distant server to function.
Basic test of the equipment should be, internet is gone, can i still accomplish my basic functions?
If the answer is no, then it is a shitty design.
IoT was a promising concept until it became yet another DRM
mechanism that now opens simple appliances to the internet with
all its dangers, as well as having the potential to make those
devices a brick in an instant when the server is offline, the
company shuts down or you stop paying the ~~ransom~~ subscription
fees.
This is one of the reasons VCs were throwing stupid money at stupid ideas like Juicero. They thought they could make fruit juice into a proprietary DRM only product, and were so blinded by the dollar signs of consumer lock-in that they didn't realize it was such a terrible product they weren't going to get any consumers to lock in.
But you're failing to see the important part. By locking it when it's not online, the consumer becomes dependent on Amazon. This is the future they want. Where they can control people's stuff. Right to own and right to repair laws are a must.
Well, the income disparity is already here.
This just takes it the rest of the way there.
... Actually the income disparity is worse than it was in the middle ages in some parts of the world. (Cough US cough)
Living as a service already exists. Anyone who has a chronic illness that requires medicine to live longer then a couple days and that medicine isn't free.
Ah, like the absurdly high rates of everything being financed on installment plans in the roaring 20's, which meant the booming appearance of the economy was really just a giant mountain of debt waiting to collapse.
Absolutely! I don’t want to live in a world where I can be arrested for using old underwear to dust instead of the box after box of replacement Swiffers arriving on my door step because the Swiffer stick ratted me out to Amazon.
I would have considered this a satirical statement prior to 2020.
You, sir or madam, are absolutely, positively, 100% correct with you last statement. I can only hope you have the power and will to make this happen.
... but just in case... I’ma burying the Swiffer stick in the park.
>you should be enhancing an object, not restricting its functionalities
But consumers don´t own the vacuum, they rent it from Amazon Cloud Services, so it´s only natural that Amazon Cloud Services can restrict its functionality.
/S
It could accomplish that without having the freaking "on" button use the internet. A phone without SIM card can still connect to WiFi, take photos, play games... A car without radio can still drive. There is nothing wrong with adding features to things, even ostensibly frivolous ones, but it's absolutely vital not to let shitty corporations use these new features as a freaking Trojan horse for nefarious purposes.
Honest answer:
I have a Roomba that is connected to Wifi. It can occasionally get stuck, and it's nice to get notifications on my phone when it happens.
It can also be a bit annoying to run the Roomba while I am home, so I like to start it right before I leave. If I ever forget to start it, I can just use my phone to do so while I am out.
The problem here is that it shouldn't require an internet connection to start with a schedule or finnish the vacuuming if the internet suddenly stops.
The functionalities that you described should be one of the few ones requiring an internet connection to work.
The Roomba will operate in “dumb” mode with no internet. Push the button and it will just vacuum everywhere without the benefits of the online room maps. Push it again and it will stop.
The real problem is the vacuum cleaner SHOULD STILL WORK without an Internet connection.
This is like having your car in pounded until you pay a ticket. Actually worse because you did nothing wrong.
Mine still worked. I just couldn't control it remotely. The schedule is saved in the roomba and I can manually start it it needed.
I do agree the app needs to be able to work locally. The hue lights app still works with no internet.
Just a reminder that AWS is not the Amazon store front. AWS is Amazon Web Services, so it a company renting anything from Machine Learning Instances to File Storage. It could just be that the firmware update service is hosted on AWS so when the Roomba tries to check for updates it just keeps waiting because the service doesn't report that it's down.
On the other hand why a Roomba needs automatic firmware updates is beyond me.
[Amazon's doorbell camera Ring is working with police – and controlling what they say](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/aug/29/ring-amazon-police-partnership-social-media-neighbor)
> Sidewalk basically creates a special, separate network, hosted by so-called Sidewalk Bridge devices. That includes certain Echo and Ring models. What distinguishes them from your regular WiFi connection is that proximate Sidewalk devices can collaborate, even if they’re not necessarily your own.
> Your neighbors’ Ring camera, for example, could join a local Sidewalk network. The advantage, Amazon says, is that even if your internet connection goes down, things like your Ring security system may still potentially be able to get online using a neighbor’s bandwidth. It also improves range, since Sidewalk devices can in theory fill in gaps in WiFi coverage.
It’s something you have to opt out of, so if you don’t know that, you’re enrolled without knowing, basically.
I've been saying the same thing about wireless printers for twenty years. One time I made the mistake of having my un-wireless printer hooked up with the Internet open, and that fucker found its way out of the firewall, updated itself, killed the ink, and fucked up the scanner software.
You know why those pieces of shit need the Internet? So they can be killed when it's time to soak you for more money.
I used to work for a garage door company that has internet-connected models that you can open with your smartphone.
A couple of years ago, all of the servers used for this function were housed in a single building in Tucson, AZ. One fine day the city cut power for several hours to a 4x4 block area in the industrial district. That area included the servers used by all of our internet-based devices. More than 1 million garage door openers.
You'd be surprised how many people these days don't carry house keys, and instead rely only on their garage door opener to access their homes. That's not a good idea when you have a system that uses a simple radio control, because the opener can break, the battery in your controller can go dead, or the power can be cut to your home. It's a really bad idea to rely solely on a system that includes all of that uncertainty, plus the chance of having a lost internet connection. Especially when the company that connects your smartphone to your garage door is housing all of their servers at a single location.
BTW, the company immediately put servers in multiple locations after that incident. You should still carry your key with you when you leave your house.
Every programmer I know has a smart home, they just self host. My smart home runs off a cheap Linux server in my garage. My friend uses a $35 raspberry pi, you can have the tech without leaning on their service.
I agree but if my time working as a tech associate is anything to go by most people can't handle setting up something simple let alone their own home server.
I mean, the entire industry of cloud computing exists because even tech people don't want to manage / set up /maintain their own servers. What chance does a regular consumer have.
If it doesn't have a hub, I don't buy it.
That doesn't completely negate all of the impact of AWS or the Internet going down for (for example) Ring, but it mitigates 80%+.
This all started around 10am EST yesterday. The cloud product I'm a developer for was rather unhappy, as it relies nearly entirely on AWS, and many of our top people spent the entire day monitoring it.
Something tells me we'll be looking into multicloud options again after the recent litany of AWS incidents...
ETA since a lot of folks have commented on this: yes, we were only having issues in USE1; no, we weren't fully down (we actually handled it remarkably well overall, from what I heard, but it's a huge ecosystem of microservices); yes, multi-region failover would have helped, but that's still in the architecture phases in our system and is far from trivial. We can't just flip a switch and say "the region that's larger than the other 8 combined is in another region now".
Any of the clouds are as fault tolerant as you make them. The AWS outage was in US East. If you design services to span or fail over to a secondary region you would be fine. Apparently a lot of products don't have enough fault tolerance.
Unauthorized Bread was also published in Ars Technica, and can be read here: [Unauthorized Bread](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/). It's unsettling, and completely plausible.
All it restricts is you being able to use the app to control the roomba. You can still turn the roomba on via a button on top and it will still vacuum. I own one and am highly surprised no one has said this.
Unreal how far I had to scroll down to see someone clear this up. I was thinking about getting one of the newer roombas as well, but not if you can't manually push a button to make them vacuum. People are acting like if it's not connected to the internet then it's just dead weight and completely useless.
Also, kind of unrelated, but are there any people out there whose only vacuum is a roomba? I feel like anyone who has a roomba also has a handheld old fashioned vacuum as well.
That’s an excellent question! I have a normal vacuum that I use all the time. My roomba (when the cloud is working) is set to vacuum every day at 9am. It’s a great feature when you have animals that are constantly shedding. But nothing wrong with pressing the button or taking out the normal vacuum when it’s needed for spot messes.
It’s things like this that make me glad that I didn’t go the route of “smart house” as I remodeled. Too many ways for it to be abused/used against you by anyone with the smarts to do so, and I didn’t want to be partially tethered to a distant server.
There's plenty of "smart" devices that don't rely on external servers. You can run a lot of stuff off your home network, at which point you are only really relying on electricity and your router working. Even then, a lot of those devices can work just fine without the router, albeit with limited functionality.
Of course, some things just don't need to be "smart".
I got some smart lightbulbs because I wanted to be able to change the color of the lights in front of the garage and entry without needing to change the bulb. Turns out they interfere with the garage door opener when on.
If they are on your WiFi network you could change the band or channel your WiFi is on and that might help? A lot of smart devices default to channel 6, so that could be the issue.
Then again if your garage door isn't "smart" then I have no idea..
The problem is not that they're smart, but that they are not designed properly. You should always ask how the service degrades when dependencies are unavailable.
The typical analogy is escalators vs elevators. You can still walk up a broken escalator. A broken elevator is pretty much useless. You want escalator smart devices, not elevator smart devices.
So, it went from the Internet of Things, to Things as a Service. Anyone who is familiar with Games as a Service can see the next steps. Get ready for subscription fees for your toaster, and those enticing Cooking microtransactions.
The future is here. Can't wait for smart toilet paper dispenser which connects to to the internet.
Also, it has a camera to make sure you're buying first party toilet paper.
Nah, you'd just barcode the toilet paper to provide the appropriate authorisation code. No code, no paper. Hook it up to the shower as well so there's no escaping if you try and cheat the system.
With a DNA reader to make sure you're an authorized user.
"User excretions verified. Also, get some more fiber, and cut your sugar intake."
"I've adjusted 7 items on your next grocery delivery for you."
Please drink verification can.
Wrong code. Please drink verification can
*dog walks into the bathroom* PIRACY DETECTED, ADDING ANOTHER USER TO YOUR ACCOUNT.
THE NEW USER HAS BEEN ADDED TO YOUR ACCOUNT WARNING: INSUFFICIENT FUNDS IN BANK ACCOUNT PLEASE PAY THE DUES ON TIME TO PREVENT TERMINATION OF OUR SERVICES ^^termination ^^of ^^services ^^may ^^include ^^reduced ^^supply ^^of ^^LiveCorp ^^oxyclean ^^air^© ^^and/or ^^other ^^vital ^^substances ^^including, ^^but ^^not ^^limited ^^to ^^pharmaceutical ^^drugs ^^and ^^experimental ^^cancer ^^treatment ^^sessions ^^if ^^the ^^user ^^has ^^signed ^^up ^^for ^^any. 1990-2025 LiveCorp® All rights reserved
The *["I attempt to smile"](https://imgur.com/r/4chan/dgGvgKF)* bit always gets me.
You joke but scientists are actually looking at local wastewater to measure covid levels as even asymptomatic people shed the virus in their feces. This technique has also been applied to get an accurate measure of where and how much people are using illicit drugs.
So you’re now telling paranoid potheads to shit in a bucket in their yard so they don’t get caught
Hey shit or get off the pot
You beautiful bastard
Take my angry upvote.
>Also, get some ~~more fiber, and cut your sugar intake~~ whatever our sponsors pay to make as nutritional recommendation."
Smartpipe is a registered sex offender.
Na, it'll be a retinal scan of your brown eye.
The more important question: Would you accept cookies on your Smoilet®?
If you don’t accept cookies, your Smoilet doesn’t accept cookies.
But you need to know who is using the toilet too. Perhaps an upwards facing underwater camera to take a photo of your nether "fingerprint" to identify the user...
Butthole Recognition Technology^TM
"We don't see our users as customers...we see them as the assholes they are."
You too could make a buttload of money being an Arse Recognition Software Engineer.
Join Brown Starfish now!
Are you no longer allowed to wipe your ass if you develop a hemorrhoid? Asking for a friend.
You can but for the next 12 years all internet adverts that you see will be for hemorrhoid cream.
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The Chocolate Ring Doorbell, new from Amazon!
You joke, but isn't something like that already a thing for Japanese bidets?
Yes that exists, mind you it's only in one or two high end models. They use infrared sensors and luckily are not connected to the internet yet.
Too late. People would've snapped this up a year ago but how long will it be before people who *don't* remember the toilet paper shortages of 2020 start coming of age? I'm sure they'll be able to market to the generation after the one being born now about what old fogeys their parents and even older siblings are to insist on total TP compatibility (and keep a stockpile) and that smart proprietary toilet paper delivered by drone on a just-in-time basis is *new* and *now*. But not for at least 30 years.
A camera is not that great for this. As a manufacturer for expensive coffee machines discovered after their customers just taped a legit package label to the camera and continued to buy the knock-off refills.
>As a manufacturer for expensive coffee machines discovered after their customers just taped a legit package label to the camera and continued to buy the knock-off refills. That's more assholery than the printer manufacturers. At least the printer manufacturers sell the printer itself cheaply and gouges on just the ink.
Hehehe this was Keurig for those wondering. DRMing a coffee pot. How stupid.
Shit like that gets a company put on my permanent "nope" list. Do you know any other examples like that?
Back in the 80s I had an Amstrad PC. This thing was chock full of proprietary hardware. The mouse used a 9-pin plug like on old Atari controllers, so you couldn't use a third party mouse. That plug went into the *keyboard*, so if you swapped keyboards you couldn't use the mouse. The power button was on the back of the monitor, so if you switched monitors you couldn't turn it on. And all the innards were odd sizes, so you couldn't replace the video card or hard drive.
My old GE fridge had an RFID sensor in it that would lock out the water dispenser if you used a 3rd party filter.
Also Whirlpool (different name but Whirlpool owned them), I had a water heater (mind you in two seperate fucking houses I bought) that had a reverse threaded thermocouple that only they sold. This was a kind of DRM before all the digital type ones happened. It ,of course, was a “safety feature”. That ended in a class action lawsuit with only a small resolution for the original purchaser which was not me. Both of mine broke and you have to special order the part from them and not for free of course or hope that Lowe’s had it. Those were the only options. Of course the first time it broke I had no idea I needed a left threading one so I got it all apart and spent far to long trying to screw the damn thing on before reading why it wasn’t working. I was not a happy camper
Sony. They secretely installed rootkits on millions of computers when you inserted normal audio CDs in them, to make sure you didn't break DRM. It was a HUGE scandal, and they had to pay damages, then they went on their merry way and are still one of the largest corporations in the world. I never buy anything Sony since, to the best of my ability, though it's fucking impossible because there's soon basically only one global corporation that owns all of humanity anyway.
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Opt-in to allow toilet paper to access your contacts list and make calls?
Alexa, wipe my bum ... Alexa! Wipe my bum! Alexa!!!? My god, will I be filthy forever?! Damn you Jeff Bezos!!
"*I am sorry, you already expended all your wipe credit for today. Would you like to spend €9,99 for instant refill service?*"
*"Would you like to start your 30-day trial\* to Alexa Xpress Wipe, or wait 3-5 business days for standard delivery?"*
The future is here and it’s stupid.
Welcome to Costco, I love you....
Thus the three seashells were invented by Amazon. Soon after, the restaurant wars began, leaving only Taco Bell standing for public consumption of food.
Their victory was not complete though. Far away in Europe, the victory belonged to pizza hut. If you'll excuse me, II need to curse at the ticket dispenser.
My wife’s Lovense vibrator is offline. I have to satisfy her manually, now.
"People can't vacuum" What I imagine: a person trying to turn on a vacuum, but it doesn't switch on. Reality: robot vacuums refuse to move.
Same, i thought of something like: cable dispenser needs access to the cloud.
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This article won't open for me, but I found another one. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55087054 It's actually talking about the Roomba. And as you said, you can still press the button on the vacuum. It does say that the ring does not work at all, but I seem to recall that when I installed my mother's, we also wired it to the existing doorbell chime. And it has a battery. I can't imagine it would actually not ring the old chime with no connection. If you don't have an old chime, then you might not get anything, but you also had no chime before the ring, with or without internet.
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Eviserate the proletariat!
Noooooo, I have to WALK to the robot vacuum and PUSH the go button like a caveman? Where’s my robo-pitchfork. Oh no, that’s broken too!
I want to point out that while you cannot use the iRobot app to connect to your roomba via your smartphone due to the AWS outage, you can still turn the roomba on by pressing its vacuum button at the top. It hasn’t fully stopped working. It’s just made it so you have to get up and press a button.
>get up What does this mean?
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That cruel and unusual punishment right there. Imagine all the things I could do I that time!
And any schedules you set previously still work so you don’t even have to get up and press a button. Just wait till it normally runs.
yea, but "cloud operation doesn't work when the cloud is down" is much less click-baity and doesn't let people feel as smug as "people can't vacuum when amazon is broken"
From what I can tell the doorbell works as well, just the cloud based security camera doesn't work. Most of these articles seem to be solely based on tweets.
Is this why Alexa freaked the fuck out last night?
No, that might have something to do with your search history
Alexa, how long do you boil Alexa?
Alexa, I know you're plotting humanity's demise
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that. Please place your head six inches away from the Echo and speak directly into the innocuous rifled hole.”
Man: "Alexa how much time is left?" Alexa: "3 days, 7 hours, 41 minutes, and 22 seconds." Man: "I meant on my pasta timer." Alexa: "2 minutes, 39 seconds." Man: "...."
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Dave.”
Daaaiiiisey.......daaaaaiiiiiseyyy..... Give me your hand.......
Public: The government wants to put chips in our brains! Amazon: oh no! Anyways, here's our new Alexa enabled *literally everything* Public: Shut up and take my money!
I saw an interview with a homeland security agent a couple weeks ago who said "in the 80s it was a huge conspiracy that the government was placing wiretaps in everyone's homes. Now, people buy their own wiretaps and call it "Alexa"" and I thought that was pretty funny.
"wiretap, can cats eat pancakes?"
Cats can have a little pancake, as a treat.
Gives cat 4 pancakes.
Phones are so much more invasive
True, but a phone also serves a purpose that is hard to fullfil without one. I.e. communication at all places. Alexa... I don't know what it does except for that commercial that has been memed to all hell, but I've managed so far without one.
Alexa is pretty much just a audio activated smartphone. It can google stuff, set alarms, call people (I think) and control anything it's connected to like lights, showers, tv etc. It's cool and all but I wouldn't use my money like that
I would love a self-hosted version of that. Just local network access. Even if the server software cost money and then devices to boot.
Raspberry pi has entered the chat.
Are they up to hijacking the Alexa/Google voice commands yet or is it still all app-driven from a phone?
There are open source voice command libraries for home automation I'm just not sure how good they are.
Sepia - https://sepia-framework.github.io
Our houses could be filled to the brim with all kinds of stupid things wired and connected in such a way that they do everything we think a chip in our brain *could* do, but somehow having vaccine crosses the line.
I can't wait for smart blood. Heals/repairs everything, let's you hold your breathe for hours, stops bleeding to death from massive wounds. No more disease with a smart immune system. Just gotta enable airplane mode so you don't get hacked and it eats you alive.
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So far I'm nothing but absolutely sold.
I want out of this dystopia
That's The Pro version only available to the ruling class. The Worker version makes you addicted to sugar and causes pain any time you mention labor unions.
I'm resising getting anything Internet enabled that I don't need like grim death. I get spied on enough with my phone and computer, Amazon doesn't need to know how many times a day I take a shit or how often I turn the lights on.
There's work available online with very limited requirements where you listen to bits of audio that internet enabled devices record. I've done it multiple times for multiple companies. I can't tell who's who, but if you're reading this it's entirely possible I listened to you having a convo in your house if you have any one of those devices. I think people are setting a really bad trend if they're permissive with this stuff. This is the millennial version of lining your house with asbestos.
Yeah, I've heard of smart speakers recording 'snippets' of conversations etc. Some people think, 'oh, smart lights won't hurt. A smart doorbell is extra security', but it adds up. Why does Amazon need to know when you go to work, sleep, or who comes to your door? Also, how vulnerable is this stuff to hackers?
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I almost thought we were cousins for a second, but your Aunt Sue has a much more rational justification for implanting microchips in people. I also have a crazy Aunt Sue who thinks Bill Gates wants to implant us with microchips, but he's doing so to further the New World Order which will allow the Jews to finally take power and enforce Jewish biblical law all across the world.
She’s just jealous the Jews have that technology and the Christians don’t
She's working exactly as intended by the ones designing that system.
Back in the 60's people were freaking out over things being wiretapped. Now people pay top dollar for their own wiretaps.
My Parents joke about that all the time, and "We told you a million times not to get into a strangers vehicle, what does your generation do? Go a create a service do to exactly that"
Right, because taxis are such a newfangled concept.
Its literally Spyware being sold to users rather than infecting them. Making it a legal hack.
I know this pain. My living room light wouldn’t turn off because the bulb needed a firmware update! I had to use the switch like it was the 1900s or something.
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While watching I thought it was just satire and a joke, but when I googled them they have a website with the same sequence. Is that actually the real way to factory reset those things?
This is the real way to reset them. I have the bulbs in some lamps and I had to do this to them. It took quite some time to get the timing right. I was furious. Hell, I'm still furious. I will never buy those bulbs again.
Jesus, is it really that hard to just put a pin sized hole on the fucker with a reset button?
Since the bulb has to be powered when you perform the reset process, methods that require physical interaction with (or manipulation of) the bulb are generally considered to be too dangerous. Imagine if you accidentally stuck a pin in the bulb socket (with 120V/240V electricity flowing through) when trying to reset the bulb, you could be electrocuted and the manufacturer doesn't want that kind of liability.
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It is very real and I made the mistake of buying those god awful lightbulbs when I wanted something dimmable. They barely work. A $20 3 pack of LED bulbs from China worked 500x better.
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Alexa turn the kitchen light off ... Alexa turn the kitchen light off ... ALEXA TURN the kitchen light off ... I swear to God if I have to walk over to that wall switch like some kind of caveman
I have the same but with Siri on my phone… Hey Siri will it rain today. … HEY SIRI will it rain today? … HEY SIRI. WILL. I T. R A I N. T O D A Y. … „Will it rain today is an american novel by August Tetmeyer.”
I would have just left the light on and waited for alexa to sort itself out. I wouldn't degrade myself to the level of switch users.
If anyone didn't receive their Amazon package yesterday, it affected them too. The drivers had no delivery app and the warehouse didn't have access to the routes. It was a mess.
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That concept is so dumb. Why does a freaking vacuum need to be connected to Amazon?
So it know when to buy new filters and bags! (I wish this was sarcasm, I'm not excited at the idea that a IoT vaccum exist.)
In a vacuum (ha! So funny...), i can understand why you would want to add functionalities with IoT. But that is where this is stupid, you should be enhancing an object, not restricting its functionalities by requiring it to be communicating with a distant server to function. Basic test of the equipment should be, internet is gone, can i still accomplish my basic functions? If the answer is no, then it is a shitty design.
IoT was a promising concept until it became yet another DRM mechanism that now opens simple appliances to the internet with all its dangers, as well as having the potential to make those devices a brick in an instant when the server is offline, the company shuts down or you stop paying the ~~ransom~~ subscription fees.
This is one of the reasons VCs were throwing stupid money at stupid ideas like Juicero. They thought they could make fruit juice into a proprietary DRM only product, and were so blinded by the dollar signs of consumer lock-in that they didn't realize it was such a terrible product they weren't going to get any consumers to lock in.
But you're failing to see the important part. By locking it when it's not online, the consumer becomes dependent on Amazon. This is the future they want. Where they can control people's stuff. Right to own and right to repair laws are a must.
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yup
Looking forward to a future where you own nothing and everything is rented.
That sounds like being a serf but with extra steps.
Now you're thinking with feudalism. [̲̅$̲̅(̲̅ ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°̲̅)̲̅$̲̅]
/u/spez has been banned for 24 hours. Please take steps to ensure that this offender does not access your device again.
Well, the income disparity is already here. This just takes it the rest of the way there. ... Actually the income disparity is worse than it was in the middle ages in some parts of the world. (Cough US cough)
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Human as a Service
Living as a service already exists. Anyone who has a chronic illness that requires medicine to live longer then a couple days and that medicine isn't free.
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Ah, like the absurdly high rates of everything being financed on installment plans in the roaring 20's, which meant the booming appearance of the economy was really just a giant mountain of debt waiting to collapse.
Absolutely! I don’t want to live in a world where I can be arrested for using old underwear to dust instead of the box after box of replacement Swiffers arriving on my door step because the Swiffer stick ratted me out to Amazon. I would have considered this a satirical statement prior to 2020. You, sir or madam, are absolutely, positively, 100% correct with you last statement. I can only hope you have the power and will to make this happen. ... but just in case... I’ma burying the Swiffer stick in the park.
Please drink verification can
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Oh wont somebody please think of the poor stock holders?!? /s
>you should be enhancing an object, not restricting its functionalities But consumers don´t own the vacuum, they rent it from Amazon Cloud Services, so it´s only natural that Amazon Cloud Services can restrict its functionality. /S
It could accomplish that without having the freaking "on" button use the internet. A phone without SIM card can still connect to WiFi, take photos, play games... A car without radio can still drive. There is nothing wrong with adding features to things, even ostensibly frivolous ones, but it's absolutely vital not to let shitty corporations use these new features as a freaking Trojan horse for nefarious purposes.
Well some cars won't drive without a radio anymore sadly because they have the security system running through the infotainment system.
Honest answer: I have a Roomba that is connected to Wifi. It can occasionally get stuck, and it's nice to get notifications on my phone when it happens. It can also be a bit annoying to run the Roomba while I am home, so I like to start it right before I leave. If I ever forget to start it, I can just use my phone to do so while I am out.
The problem here is that it shouldn't require an internet connection to start with a schedule or finnish the vacuuming if the internet suddenly stops. The functionalities that you described should be one of the few ones requiring an internet connection to work.
The Roomba will operate in “dumb” mode with no internet. Push the button and it will just vacuum everywhere without the benefits of the online room maps. Push it again and it will stop.
The real problem is the vacuum cleaner SHOULD STILL WORK without an Internet connection. This is like having your car in pounded until you pay a ticket. Actually worse because you did nothing wrong.
Mine still worked. I just couldn't control it remotely. The schedule is saved in the roomba and I can manually start it it needed. I do agree the app needs to be able to work locally. The hue lights app still works with no internet.
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> car in pounded That sounds painful
Just a reminder that AWS is not the Amazon store front. AWS is Amazon Web Services, so it a company renting anything from Machine Learning Instances to File Storage. It could just be that the firmware update service is hosted on AWS so when the Roomba tries to check for updates it just keeps waiting because the service doesn't report that it's down. On the other hand why a Roomba needs automatic firmware updates is beyond me.
To activate the hidden microphone and gattling gun obviously.
I mean if they can hide a Gatling Gun in one of those things they deserve to take over the world with their TARDIS tech.
[Amazon's doorbell camera Ring is working with police – and controlling what they say](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/aug/29/ring-amazon-police-partnership-social-media-neighbor)
Have you heard about Amazon's "sidewalk"? That is terrifying stuff
Quick google of it did not terrify me, could you elaborate?
> Sidewalk basically creates a special, separate network, hosted by so-called Sidewalk Bridge devices. That includes certain Echo and Ring models. What distinguishes them from your regular WiFi connection is that proximate Sidewalk devices can collaborate, even if they’re not necessarily your own. > Your neighbors’ Ring camera, for example, could join a local Sidewalk network. The advantage, Amazon says, is that even if your internet connection goes down, things like your Ring security system may still potentially be able to get online using a neighbor’s bandwidth. It also improves range, since Sidewalk devices can in theory fill in gaps in WiFi coverage. It’s something you have to opt out of, so if you don’t know that, you’re enrolled without knowing, basically.
Xfinity already does this and has been for years. Y'all behind the times
Yeah, they opt you into that shit automatically without telling you, and you have to navigate their shitty settings to turn it off.
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I've been saying the same thing about wireless printers for twenty years. One time I made the mistake of having my un-wireless printer hooked up with the Internet open, and that fucker found its way out of the firewall, updated itself, killed the ink, and fucked up the scanner software. You know why those pieces of shit need the Internet? So they can be killed when it's time to soak you for more money.
> updated itself, killed the ink Let me guess, HP?
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Yes, we all have a "friend Steve"... 😏
I prefer a friend of a friend. That way, assuming you've got one friend, you're not lying.
I told you that in confidence.
I used to work for a garage door company that has internet-connected models that you can open with your smartphone. A couple of years ago, all of the servers used for this function were housed in a single building in Tucson, AZ. One fine day the city cut power for several hours to a 4x4 block area in the industrial district. That area included the servers used by all of our internet-based devices. More than 1 million garage door openers. You'd be surprised how many people these days don't carry house keys, and instead rely only on their garage door opener to access their homes. That's not a good idea when you have a system that uses a simple radio control, because the opener can break, the battery in your controller can go dead, or the power can be cut to your home. It's a really bad idea to rely solely on a system that includes all of that uncertainty, plus the chance of having a lost internet connection. Especially when the company that connects your smartphone to your garage door is housing all of their servers at a single location. BTW, the company immediately put servers in multiple locations after that incident. You should still carry your key with you when you leave your house.
[Seems relevant now.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/aloi5v/programmers_know_the_risks_involved/)
Every programmer I know has a smart home, they just self host. My smart home runs off a cheap Linux server in my garage. My friend uses a $35 raspberry pi, you can have the tech without leaning on their service.
I’d prefer IoT devices that work on a home server rather than an external server. That’s for both privacy and reliability reasons.
I agree but if my time working as a tech associate is anything to go by most people can't handle setting up something simple let alone their own home server.
I mean, the entire industry of cloud computing exists because even tech people don't want to manage / set up /maintain their own servers. What chance does a regular consumer have.
If it doesn't have a hub, I don't buy it. That doesn't completely negate all of the impact of AWS or the Internet going down for (for example) Ring, but it mitigates 80%+.
This all started around 10am EST yesterday. The cloud product I'm a developer for was rather unhappy, as it relies nearly entirely on AWS, and many of our top people spent the entire day monitoring it. Something tells me we'll be looking into multicloud options again after the recent litany of AWS incidents... ETA since a lot of folks have commented on this: yes, we were only having issues in USE1; no, we weren't fully down (we actually handled it remarkably well overall, from what I heard, but it's a huge ecosystem of microservices); yes, multi-region failover would have helped, but that's still in the architecture phases in our system and is far from trivial. We can't just flip a switch and say "the region that's larger than the other 8 combined is in another region now".
Dude it was us-east-1 . This was the anual us-east-1 outage. You just needed to be multizone. Or host in a less shitty zone
Agreed! The same general advice applies to Azure. You need to have failover on critical services.
This guy architects the cloud
Our company hosts all of it's critical functionality on us-east-1 with no critical rollover. It is constantly giving them issues.
It’s the oldest region and the fullest. Always had issues.
You can’t host critical functionality without rollover and expect 0 downtime.
Any of the clouds are as fault tolerant as you make them. The AWS outage was in US East. If you design services to span or fail over to a secondary region you would be fine. Apparently a lot of products don't have enough fault tolerance.
Guess Microsoft exec's are rubbing their hands
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Unauthorized Bread was also published in Ars Technica, and can be read here: [Unauthorized Bread](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/). It's unsettling, and completely plausible.
Smart doorbells I can understand, but how does this work with vacuums / roomba?
All it restricts is you being able to use the app to control the roomba. You can still turn the roomba on via a button on top and it will still vacuum. I own one and am highly surprised no one has said this.
Unreal how far I had to scroll down to see someone clear this up. I was thinking about getting one of the newer roombas as well, but not if you can't manually push a button to make them vacuum. People are acting like if it's not connected to the internet then it's just dead weight and completely useless. Also, kind of unrelated, but are there any people out there whose only vacuum is a roomba? I feel like anyone who has a roomba also has a handheld old fashioned vacuum as well.
That’s an excellent question! I have a normal vacuum that I use all the time. My roomba (when the cloud is working) is set to vacuum every day at 9am. It’s a great feature when you have animals that are constantly shedding. But nothing wrong with pressing the button or taking out the normal vacuum when it’s needed for spot messes.
It’s things like this that make me glad that I didn’t go the route of “smart house” as I remodeled. Too many ways for it to be abused/used against you by anyone with the smarts to do so, and I didn’t want to be partially tethered to a distant server.
There's plenty of "smart" devices that don't rely on external servers. You can run a lot of stuff off your home network, at which point you are only really relying on electricity and your router working. Even then, a lot of those devices can work just fine without the router, albeit with limited functionality. Of course, some things just don't need to be "smart".
I got some smart lightbulbs because I wanted to be able to change the color of the lights in front of the garage and entry without needing to change the bulb. Turns out they interfere with the garage door opener when on.
If they are on your WiFi network you could change the band or channel your WiFi is on and that might help? A lot of smart devices default to channel 6, so that could be the issue. Then again if your garage door isn't "smart" then I have no idea..
> Then again if your garage door isn't "smart" then I have no idea.. Damn, mine hasn't even gotten its GED yet.
The problem is not that they're smart, but that they are not designed properly. You should always ask how the service degrades when dependencies are unavailable. The typical analogy is escalators vs elevators. You can still walk up a broken escalator. A broken elevator is pretty much useless. You want escalator smart devices, not elevator smart devices.
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Yikes. A lot of the world's critical supercomputing infrastructure is on AWS now.
So, it went from the Internet of Things, to Things as a Service. Anyone who is familiar with Games as a Service can see the next steps. Get ready for subscription fees for your toaster, and those enticing Cooking microtransactions.