So if we want to break into your house...
...we just wait until it tweets "Elvis {$YOURNAME} has left the building!".
Thought your home was safe from corporate surveillance? Think again, because thermostat-maker Nest is set to share your personal data with its mother company, Google. Nest Labs has admitted to the Wall Street Journal that personal assistant system Google Now will be among the first non-Nest apps to connect to Nest sensors and …
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Parks itself, tells me if I am about to hit another vehicle, applies the brakes if I don't, calls the emergency services when I crash........
So WHY is it so difficult to produce a Kettle that turns on the tap and fills itself and then makes the best cup of tea in the world, a toaster that visits the bread bin, picks up a couple of slices and toasts it to perfection because the artificial intelligence knows how I like it, a knife that spreads butter and then marmite without leaving crumbs or butter behind.
Finally a plate that washes itself.
Is this too much to ask?
> So WHY is it so difficult to produce a Kettle that turns on the tap and fills itself and then makes
> the best cup of tea in the world
Shouldn't be that hard. I already want to modify the 'one cup' kettle I have with a float-controlled connection to mains water. It knows how much water to use for a mug of tea and automatically refills the high-speed boiler from the tank on the back.
We had a coffee machine in work years back that used tea leaves to make tea, via a paper filter on a roll - you could put something like that on the front of a one-cup kettle. You'd need a fridge for the milk though, UHT milk makes yucky tea (IMO), plus a conveyor belt for sugar/cubes.
> a toaster that visits the bread bin, picks up a couple of slices and toasts it to perfection
The hotel conveyor belt toasters already come close - add a dispenser for the bread slices, and some way of spreading butter and marmalade, job-done.
A camera that detects grey skies to decide to turn up the heating? A system that asks for local weather (from an earlier post)?
This is a classic case of creeping featurism. The technology is already extant: it's a thermostat. In a slightly more complex system, it's a split-zone system, with timers.
Do we really need, for the majority of people who work regular hours, more than this?
Why such complexity?
A camera that detects grey skies to decide to turn up the heating? A system that asks for local weather (from an earlier post)?
Ah - that's only a question until you realise the real aim: to get you to install cameras inside your house. Knowingly. Voluntarily. They will make ANY kind of promise and excuse to get you this far - if they cannot get you directly with Nest, they will do it with Dropcam, and if that doesn't work they'll send either a Streetview car around of a Glasshole.
They have genuinely taken over the war on privacy from the US government - it's almost like the government has outsourced it to Google which, admittedly, isn't a bad idea because they're good at dreaming up excuses - just see how many believed the "do no evil" BS.
Small BS example of this round of privacy attacks: Our privacy policy clearly limits the use of customer information to providing and improving Nest’s products and services
That is THEIR policy which they not only can adjust at any time, but which is also not independently audited. Or, in short, it's just hot air. But hey, they need that for their balloons..
"the thermostat can then turn lights off and on to trick burglars into thinking people are inside a target house" the same thing is achieved today with a 5$ device that does not data mine you. Is it really worth it?
Furthermore, the bussiness model of ad-subsidized free services, in exchange for data mining, is it becoming a barrier to entry markets and innovation, for players that dont want to enforce on their users this bussiness model?
> Furthermore, the bussiness model of ad-subsidized free services, in exchange for data mining, is it becoming a barrier to entry markets and innovation, for players that dont want to enforce on their users this bussiness model?
It does seem to be, even -- weirdly -- when it's not cheap. Nest kit is quite expensive, is it not? I have a mechanical device that fits between the lightbulb and the light fitting. Flicking the light on then off then on triggers random mode. It cost less than a tenner. But I bet Nest will somehow outcompete them. Probably because GOOGLE MAGIC!
All these devices are starting to worry me. It won't be long before there is no longer a square meter on this planet where you aren't tracked and recorded.
I think my next project will be to convert my house into a giant Faraday cage and wire up a bunch of Ir and UV LEDs to blind cameras, maybe some sub- and ultra-sonic white noise generators to deafen microphones too...
They're coming to take me away, ha-haaa!!
They're coming to take me away, ho-ho, hee-hee, ha-haaa
To the funny farm. Where life is beautiful all the time and I'll be
happy to see those nice young men in their clean white coats and they're
coming to take me away, ha-haaa!!!!!
Napoleon XIV
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Or, if you have a combi boiler like mine, just switch the boiler off.. The termostat can do what it wants then, it won't be able to heat the house
Ok, it means that you come back to a cold house, but my house warms up in a couple of minutes even when the central heating is cold started.
You have to opt in to have anonymous data sent back to Google (for statistical purposes) so it's hardly admitting they take your data,scaremongering much?
Say what you want about Google collecting data but I had a look at my behavioural profile at Google the other day and it was completely empty, so I tested it out via analytics and no data was shared not even via adwords. Why? because I hadn't ever opted in to share it. In fact many policies they have explicitly forbid you as a website owner sending them PII.
Could Google override this? yes sure and hide it away. They could also secretly send it all to the Secret Police but they seem to be as transparent as anyone is allowed to be on that.
You have to opt in to have anonymous data sent back to Google (for statistical purposes) so it's hardly admitting they take your data,scaremongering much?
Ah, and you are going to verify Google isn't "accidentally" doing that already how? It's not like they are terribly transparent or consider themselves subject to pesky local privacy laws..
It's gonna get smacked down by Apple Home Automation anyway.
> tell when a person was on holiday. Once in "away mode", the thermostat
> can then turn lights off and on to trick burglars into thinking people are inside a target house.
Unless the burgular subscribes to the underground datafeed of a haxx0r inside Nest's database, in which case a burglary will be scheduled automatically in his/her work diary.
First thermostats and lights and the "internet of things", all sending anonymous data back to Google if you opt in... and people accept it.
Next obvious step - remove the opt in... and people will accept it, because it's only a small change.
A series of these small steps later, and we all have telescreens in our homes, watching us and reporting our every move back to Google and the NSA watching over their shoulder, with no anonymity and no opt-out... and even though people may start not wanting it, it'll be too late.
... and we'll always have been at war with Eastasia...
Relative of Spouse has a nice little holiday cottage in the countryside where we go and stay occasionally. Relative recently got a new (non Nest) remote thermostat device, which is actually incredibly useful for holiday home, because the place takes a good day or so to heat up in the Winter. Relative was enthusiastically showing off iThingy app which shows temperature of house right now. Brilliant.
So the next time we go up there for a break Relative calls Spouse to say "WTF? WHY HOUSE SO HOT?" Cue emotional-blackmail-based distress. So now when we go there we just freeze. Or take our own electric heaters.
I leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide how much convergence there might be between the behaviour of Google and Relative.
Rolls-eyes...
Ramping the heat up or down based on the colour of the skies is perhaps a sign that one should stop living in a drafty old castle; and start to retrofit some efficiencies. An energy efficient house is well insulated, has some thermal mass, and requires relatively low power heaters. It's inherently more-or-less temperature stable. You're not going to yank its temperature up and down 37 times a day with each passing cloud; but night-time set-backs are still feasible.