OT:Echo dot

[spdrun]

I don’t care to know whether I’m out of eggs. Any place that I will forseeably live in the future will have a grocery or bodega within 2-3 blocks, and walking three minutes is not a hardship.

[FlyerInHi]

[quote=spdrun]I don’t care to know whether I’m out of eggs. Any place that I will forseeably live in the future will have a grocery or bodega within 2-3 blocks, and walking three minutes is not a hardship.[/quote]

That’s a good lifestyle, spdrun. I plan to live that too.

But that’s not lifestyle to maximize productivity and wealth. If your groceries are automatically delivered, you have more time to work, earn money, or spend time with your kids.

[millennial]

There’s a lot of talk about privacy vs. technology and I found everyone has different thoughts about it. My belief is whether you choose to or not, in the very near future (if not already) personal privacy will be a thing of the past to make way for convenience and productivity for the masses. Almost every item on the market has a cloud/smart/internet connected component which can be hacked into.

http://www.infowars.com/samsung-tvs-can-be-hacked-to-spy-on-viewers/

So either you get over it and say “whomever wants to watch me eat breakfast in my drawers in the morning are more than welcome to”, or you can do the opposite and become a recluse.

[spdrun]

FlyerInHI: I’d rather live in a poorer immigrant neighborhood where people pay cash, mind their own fuckin business, and where housing is relatively cheap. Cash/underground economy for life!

Cheap housing cost means that I have to work less. Far more effective than saving 5 min buying groceries. I don’t really care about others’ perceptions of me and where I live.

millennial: why be a recluse? Just hammer a large icepick into the camera and mic of the TV and continue as before. BTW, if anything, such tech is likely to turn us into recluses, since it will reduce the perceived need for human interaction. Almost everyone will be a recluse — the people who avoid that sort of shit will be the ones with the most real social interaction.

[millennial]

[quote=spdrun]
millennial: why be a recluse? Just hammer a large icepick into the camera and mic of the TV and continue as before. BTW, if anything, such tech is likely to turn us into recluses, since it will reduce the perceived need for human interaction. Almost everyone will be a recluse — the people who avoid that sort of shit will be the ones with the most real social interaction.[/quote]
You are naïve if you believe that putting an ice pick in your camera will stop it. If you have internet, a smart phone…shit if your neighbor has internet or a smartphone you can be traced. Anything that you post online can be traced to you. Anything that you click on people can sell you.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/#767d750634c6

ha ha… putting a pick in a TV. You will need to do a lot more than that buddy.

Your thoughts on human interaction is pretty asinine also. There are so many ways to socially interact now. You have the old fashioned ways like going to the bar/church/school, or you can also rant on a blog at any time and have people from around the world discuss things with you. If anything, it gives those introverts and OCD people a way to interact. It also allows extroverts a way to find more people to meet up with. To label people that use technology to interact as not “real” is pretty ignorant on your part.

[FlyerInHi]

[quote=spdrun] BTW, if anything, such tech is likely to turn us into recluses, since it will reduce the perceived need for human interaction. Almost everyone will be a recluse — the people who avoid that sort of shit will be the ones with the most real social interaction.[/quote]

I have friend who turned like that. Orders everything online. Has a short fuze dealing with people. Turned into a fat ass alcoholic horder. Really sad to see because he was a star athlete in college.

BTW, my dad worked aboard so I lived in Thailand, Taiwan and other countries. Love street life and small mom and pop stores. I remember in Bangkok, we lived in a walled villa but it wasn’t far from the shack stores by the river. Us kids would walk over and buy groceries and snacks. Maybe that’s the way to happiness.

But corporate America is the way to wealth. Standardize and monetize everything. Try to find ways to generate transactions and consumption that’s why tech is going the subscription model. Same as real estate rent that generate infinite flow of income. Don’t you want that?

[spdrun]

I have zero interest in being part of that world or profiting from it. Real estate is enough, innovation in that area is over-rated and not something I’d enjoy being part of.

[spdrun]

millennial: my smart phone is either off or in flight mode most of the time unless I’m on call or working.

There’s also a big difference between a camera that’s sitting on a shelf facing up as the phone charges and one facing the front of a TV with a clear view of the room. The latter needs an icepick through it. Or at least some black tape.

I wasn’t speaking to interaction as much as non-interaction. Interaction through online forums can be great. The problem is people who use delivery of everything to AVOID interaction.

[millennial]

[quote=spdrun]millennial: my smart phone is either off or in flight mode most of the time unless I’m on call or working.

There’s also a big difference between a camera that’s sitting on a shelf facing up as the phone charges and one facing the front of a TV with a clear view of the room. The latter needs an icepick through it. Or at least some black tape.[/quote]

I see, so in terms of privacy you just mean being able to literally watch you while you stroll around your living room. Well everyone has different degrees of tolerability. Just to be clear though, my point is that privacy is a pretty subjective term and the degree of seclusion associated is significantly less than it was 5 years ago and will be significantly less in another year. Personally, I don’t think it’s a good thing, but it is what it is and we just need to accept it and move on.

[quote=spdrun]I wasn’t speaking to interaction as much as non-interaction. Interaction through online forums can be great. The problem is people who use delivery of everything to AVOID interaction.[/quote] Well like anything there are always positives and negatives. My point is that “real interaction” happens everywhere; online and otherwise. In terms of using the internet to AVOID interaction (introverts/antisocial people/hermits), well you can see it as a negative, or a positive. I would say the majority (>80%) of people buy stuff online cause it’s convenient, including me. I hate going to the malls to price compare and have to deal with coupons and biannual sales and lines and parking; it really is a big pain in the ass. I agree that there may be some people that do it to avoid interaction (such as the alcoholic horder), but I think those people would be the same way regardless. What I’m trying to say is that I don’t think that technology creates those people. At the very least, it avoids having the alcoholic from having to drive to get his booze, or me having to deal with him.

[FlyerInHi]

Yep, it is what it is.
Can’t expect companies to sell things at give away commodity prices without a subscription or information gathering/marketing component.
Corporations are always looking to squeeze out the next marginal dollar. What better way to do that than a connected device that can be updated with software to provide additional sales and services?

Maybe with IPv6 there an opportunity for competitors to provide non cloud solutions for home automation. They could charge a lot more. People concerned about privacy would like that.

[spdrun]

Why accept it? There’s no added value for me in having a TV with a room-facing camera. None.

I don’t see the problem with having to use a remote control. In fact, my 2008-era 20″ LCD screen does exactly what I want it to, and not a bit more or less.

Same goes for an Amazon Echo. I got a trial of an Amazon Prime account because I needed to order something specific for work. For the rest of the month, I didn’t feel moved to order anything else via Amazon, so I dumped the membership.

I can buy 99% of what I need for cash within 5 min walking distance of my home, so what do I need a bug in my room for? Frankly, I don’t want shopping to be entirely easy or convenient — if it’s either, it would mean that I’d consume more, and I’d rather keep my consumption to a minimum.

BTW – I don’t go to malls either. For housewares, there’s a big hardware store that also sells home goods. For hardware, there’s another hardware store. For groceries, there are a few grocery stores and supermarkets. Clothing, there’s a whole street of random clothing and shoe stores near where my GF lives, it’s great.

[spdrun]

It’s not a huge deal with ipv4, quite frankly. The only role of a server needs to be as a dynamic DNS, and the router can open a VPN channel for whatever outside device needs it.

(This can be an automated process that’s simple to set up and secured with long public/private keys.)

[millennial]

[quote=spdrun]
Same goes for an Amazon Echo. I got a trial of an Amazon Prime account because I needed to order something specific for work. For the rest of the month, I didn’t feel moved to order anything else via Amazon, so I dumped the membership.
…[/quote]

Good for you man. According to the WSJ roughly 22 million households in America feel the same way for a lot of the reasons you mention.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/not-everyone-wants-to-shop-on-amazon-1483007401

According to the demographics, these are the people that holdout.

“Those Amazon holdouts tend to be older than U.S. shoppers overall, with an average age of 57 versus 49, respectively, according to Kantar, and they tend to earn less—$45,700 in annual income, compared with $62,800 among all shoppers. They are less likely to have or live with children.”

Not sure if you fit in this, but from what you said it seems like you may. This being said, you need to understand that there are many people that do not fall within this demographic and just because they don’t, doesn’t make them antisocial nor wrong for doing so.

[spdrun]

I sspect that the real number is higher than 22 million once you add in the numbers of the undocumented and unbanked, who are also unlikely to get contacted by interviewers.

Also, I wonder how good the results from online surveys are — many media outlets do the “answer these questions to continue reading” thing. I deliberately answer the questions randomly (pick a box without reading) to feed the pollsters erroneous data.

Are Amazon users antisocial? No idea.
Are they wrong to support a service that’s destroying decent jobs, destroying privacy, etc? At the very least, they don’t care about the harm their shopping habits are causing.

[millennial]

[quote=FlyerInHi]Maybe with IPv6 there an opportunity for competitors to provide non cloud solutions for home automation. They could charge a lot more. People concerned about privacy would like that.[/quote]

There are a lot of non-cloud solutions out there for home automation, just run a search and you can find them.

[Author]

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