From some tart at PJMedia:
I got my dad an Amazon Alexa (shhh…don’t tell him). I plan to set him up with the Pandora polka station, the weather, and sports scores and see how that goes before we move on to more advanced skills like controlling the lights. He doesn’t “do” technology, so I’m not sure what’s going to happen. Who am I kidding? I know exactly what’s going to happen: he’ll be throwing it at the wall by day’s end.
If my kids installed that creepy little piece of technology in my home without me knowing about it, I’d be throwing them at the wall.
Fucking “Internet of Things”… what a load of utter bullshit. Malevolent bullshit.
“My wife asked me why I always carry a gun with me around the house. I told her I think the CIA is spying on us. She laughed, I laughed, our Amazon Echo laughed. I shot the Echo.”
– Anon –
Why would you buy such an awful thing for someone who doesn’t “do” technology? Why would you want to torment your father?
Malevolent crap, indeed.
The IOT makes sense in an industrial or comercial context for a lot if reasons, at home – F-no!
Not a fan of IOT either. We need at least some of our world to remain permanently unplugged. Besides, we should heed the lessons from the 2003 remake of Battlestar Galactica.
As someone who breaks these things for much of their day job… They don’t have a place in critical or relating to life safety. I could tell stories that would chill you to your very core.
There was a news story in California about a little girl ordering a dollhouse from Amazon using an unsecured Alexa. During the story, they asked the girl to repeat what she said to the box.
And over a thousand Alexa infested homes, with that damned thing near the TV, ordered dollhouses that night.
now that’s funny!!! but only because it didn’t happen to me!
I have nothing to hide but I also have nothing I want to share with an information people. I don’t need gadgets that I talk to or that talk to me and certainly not ones that remember what I said, my wife does a good enough job at that.
I have one of those Siri thingys on my phone and I refuse to use it because I don’t believe in talking to things that are not people, except for dogs, I will talk to dogs.
Many moons ago, before my father passed, he expressed an interest in coming up to speed with computers and the internet. He enrolled in a course at the local community college. They thought teaching people to type was how you cultivated an interest in technology– as you may well imagine, he made it through one and a half classes before keyboards were accelerated beyond their design velocity, and that was the end of that.
Or it was, until I bought him a machine that wasn’t shit, and eased him into it from another angle. He’d always loved painting, so I got him a tablet and photoshop and left him to his own devices, just offering shortcuts and tips whenever he became frustrated. Inside of six months he owned four computers and had become a pretty damn impressive digital artist.
Moral of the story: Technology is a tool like anything else, and a power drill is better than a chisel. One just needs to have the right motives, and the patience to see it through. I owed my dad that much, and a hell of a lot more. After all, the man taught me to shoot and bought me my first (and second through tenth) gun. I’d be a pretty shitty son if I didn’t return the favor with proper conviction.
A power drill is only better than a chisel, if you need to drill a hole. If you need to do a dovetail, not so much. IMO, tech is the same. Look at your needs, choose accordingly.
BIL got FIL one for Christmas and he LOVES it.
Then we showed him a video of Alexa running a Big Mouth Billy Bass.
Guess what he wants to do now!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3TNGDVOMA4
I do NOT want a device that would allow a hacker to wind up controlling the heating/cooling/refrigerator/lights/locks in my home. HELL no.
For that matter, you actually trust Amazon not to use/misuse the data it collects? I don’t.
I’m convinced that every computer company has a secret department called the “department of inventing shit that people didn’t ask for and don’t want and we’re going to make them take it anyway.”
Their most notorious product is Windows 10, which not only screwed up many of my programs but they deleted the Windows DVD maker that was the one thing I liked about Windows 7.
People who design computers and other electronics do this so often that it has to be deliberate. It’s as if they get pissed off that people finally learn how to use their machines and so it becomes neccessary to “update” the software to make everything complicated and unusable again.
Might as well call the next Operating System “Sisyphus” because that’s what you’ll feel like when you figure it out, only to have it “updated” and made incomprehensible again. You know, for your convenience. đ
I still don’t understand the fascination with the IOT some people have.
For someone suffering from various disabilities or medical issues, I can kinda see it. But if I want to change the temperature or switch a light on, damn it, I’m going to get up and -do- it.
What’s utterly hilarious, to me, is that the security vulnerabilities were predicted YEARS ago. I remember a sourcebook for the Shadowrun roleplaying game, with one section that specifically talks about the vulnerabilities of various household systems inside a local area network. And this was at least 15-20 years ago.
And this was fiction! Gaming fiction! For RPG nerds! Did nobody else pay attention?
*facepalm*
we have and electronic device that acts like a phone. You press the button and say the person’s name. It is incredibly frustrating because it’s like trying to get a toddler to reason. The voice recognition software isn’t accurate. Siri on the apple phone isn’t much better. I only use it because the state I live in has those stupid laws about using a phone while driving.
I’m finding that the older I get I want a TV remote control with no more than 15 or so buttons, on/off, volume and channel up and down, number digits, guide button, previous channel and switch to DVD/VCR/Netflix/Amazon Prime. NO OTHER BUTTONS. Then I see the rubbish on cable and network TV and I just want current baseball, old movies and reruns of well written shows.