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wizehop

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This is fucked...not so much about this revolv thing, (what ever the fuck it is) but what is being implimented here. One step closer to losing total control...

http://boingboing.net/2016/04/05/google-reaches-into-customers.html

Google reaches into customers' homes and bricks their gadgets

revolv.png


Revolv is a home automation hub that Google acquired 17 months ago; yesterday, Google announced that as of May 15, it will killswitch all the Revolvs in the field and render them inert. Section 1201 of the DMCA -- the law that prohibits breaking DRM -- means that anyone who tries to make a third-party OS for Revolv faces felony charges and up to 5 years in prison.

Revolv is apparently being killswitched because it doesn't fit in with Google's plan for Nest, the other home automation system it acquired. Google's FAQ tells its customers that this is OK because their warranties have expired, and besides, this is all covered in the fine-print they clicked through, or at least saw, or at least saw a link to.

This isn't the earthquake, it's the tremor. From your car to your lightbulbs to your pacemaker, the gadgets you own are increasingly based on networked software. Remove the software and they become inert e-waste. There is no such thing as a hardware company: the razor-thin margins on hardware mean that every funded hardware company is a service and data company, and almost without exception, these companies use DRM to acquire the legal right to sue competitors who provide rival services or who give customers access to their own data on "their" data.

We are entering the era where dishwashers can reject third-party dishes, and their manufacturers can sue anyone who makes "third-party dishes" out of existence. Selling you a toaster has never afforded companies the power to dictate your bread choices, nor has making a record player given a company the right to control which records get made.

The last-millennium Digital Millennium Copyright Act has managed to stay on the books because we still think of it as a way to pull off small-potatoes ripoffs like forcing you to re-buy the movies you own on DVD if you want to watch them on your phone. In reality, the DMCA's anti-circumvention rules are a system that makes corporations into the only "people" who get to own property -- everything you "buy" is actually a license, dictated by terms of service that you've never read and certainly never agreed to, which give companies the right to reach into your home and do anything they want with the devices you've paid for.

That’s a pretty blatant “fuck you” to every person who trusted in them and bought their hardware. They didn’t post this notice until long after Google had made the acquisition, so these are Google’s words under Tony Fadell’s direction. It is also worth pointing out that even though they have my email address, the only way a customer discovers this home IoT mutiny is to visit the Revolv web site.

Look, I’m a big boy. It’s not the end of the world. The fact is that I can fix the problem by purchasing a replacement device such as a Samsung SmartThings hub. It’s not terribly expensive, a few hundred dollars. I’m genuinely worried though. This move by Google opens up an entire host of concerns about other Google hardware.

Which hardware will Google choose to intentionally brick next? If they stop supporting Android will they decide that the day after the last warranty expires that your phone will go dark? Is your Nexus device safe? What about your Nest fire/smoke alarm? What about your Dropcam? What about your Chromecast device? Will Google/Nest endanger your family at some point?

All of those devices have software and hardware that are inextricably linked. When does an expired warranty become a right to disable core device functionality?
 
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Matt Derrick

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i understand what the writer is trying to say, although i think the article as a whole is fairly alarmist.

the thing is, the idea of 'bricking' a device intentionally isn't really all that new. cable companies have had the ability to nuke your cable box for decades. this is usually done in the event they catch you pirating their services, but it could theoretically be done to anyone.

i didn't read the link to the 'third party dishes' or other things, but frankly that's pretty ridiculous. sure, corporations are going to do everything they can to make a buck, but they can only go so far before the consumer blow back is so detrimental to their sales that they'll have to back down.

not many people remember that the original design for the DVD format was to make consumers pay for another copy of the movie after 5 or so viewings. after that it was basically designed to self-destruct. of course this was total bullshit, and when people heard about it they yanked the feature in fear that people would flock to some other movie format.

now, i'm not saying this isn't fucked up; surely it is, but this level of home automation where a corporation or some other entity could 'cut you off' is a long, long, way away, even if it comes around at all, which i doubt, since hackers have been fighting this stuff since the invention of DRM. i can only hope we burn down the corporations before this becomes an issue and not just some far flung dystopian fantasy.
 
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If google really does shut down those devices without giving everybody a free upgrade or replacement I'd be surprised.

They know it would be bad for PR and blow up in their faces.
 

Odin

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From your car to your lightbulbs to your pacemaker, the gadgets you own are increasingly based on networked software.

This pisses me off. I don't understand this seemingly unstoppable trend to turn every single fucking thing in our lives into a "smart" device.

I don't want to live in a "smart home" environment. If I can't get off my ass to adjust the thermostat thats my prerogative. I would rather live in a fuckin cave. I don't need a car to drive itself. I don't need a watch that keeps track of and communicates my health stats to some data center.

The way we use technology should be unobtrusive to our personal freedoms and personal information security and sharing.

People are gonna keep throwing away their independence to these corporations until one day the children they bring into this world will be stamped with a QR code, hooked up to the network with an implanted wifi dongle at the base of their neck and issued an end user agreement. Ha...

The Matrix is the future... but it won't be machines turning humans into batteries. It's these modern day Fiefdoms called corporations that will be breeding Networked Humans for labor. And if you do not comply a switch will turn you off.

Now... thats alarmist. But still food for thought.
 
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etpyh

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If you don't want to turn anything into a smart device just don't do it.

I don't want to live in a "smart home" environment. If I can't get off my ass to adjust the thermostat thats my prerogative. I don't need a car to drive itself. I don't need a watch that keeps track of and communicates my health stats to some data center.
Controlling you heating system and other electricity from your phone or whatever smart device, self driving cars, watches that keep track of and communicate health stats, that all sounds pretty good to me. Imagine a small watch diagnosing all kind of diseases and alarming someone if you got a heart attack or something.
Or getting wasted at the bar and letting your car drive yourself home. "Go home car I'm drunk". That's the future.
 

Odin

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Imagine...

You tell your car to drive you home and it drives you to jail.

Your current health data is aggregated and the information sold to potential employers in order to "profile" people they will not hire with certain conditions.

Your house network is hacked and electrical supply is cut off so an invader can drink your hobo wine and plunder your secret stash of self sealing stem-bolts and reverse ratcheting routers.

Is it always smart to give up privacy and security for convenience?

Also consider what happens to your purchasing power when a company can dictate the end user application of its products. In this case the hardware for a Revolv home hub into an item that can be made obsolete when a company decides it needs to increase profits with a new product.

Seems like the fat cats are no longer satisfied with simply selling products to consumers... they also want to control how and how long you use it.

Fuck that...
 
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Matt Derrick

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Imagine...

You tell your car to drive you home and it drives you to jail.

Your current health data is aggregated and the information sold to potential employers in order to "profile" people they will not hire with certain conditions.

Your house network is hacked and electrical supply is cut off so an invader can drink your hobo wine and plunder your secret stash of self sealing stem-bolts and reverse ratcheting routers.

Is it always smart to give up privacy and security for convenience?

Also consider what happens to your purchasing power when a company can dictate the end user application of its products. In this case the hardware for a Revolv home hub into an item that can be made obsolete when a company decides it needs to increase profits with a new product.

Seems like the fat cats are no longer satisfied with simply selling products to consumers... they also want to control how and how long you use it.

Fuck that...

while i consider myself a futureist/technolgist, and it think most applications of technology are good, i can't argue that what you say is definitely a negative, and something the public needs to be on the lookout for.

but keep in mind that technology is neither evil nor good; it's just a tool that capitalism likes to use for these kinds of applications. for example, if i hit you over the head with a wrench, do you blame the wrench? of course not; the root the problem (and most problems in my opinion) is the capitalist system that allows tools to be used for the exploitation of the people.
 
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MarsOrScars

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but keep in mind that technology is neither evil nor good; it's just a tool that capitalism likes to use for these kinds of applications.

That being said, should one choose to install anything, they have that ability to modify or change it.

Also with the concern with all of the driverless cars, there's a huge concern for safety and another open door for attackers to just make people dead and have it look like a complete accident. It's been the topic that's all the rage at the past couple of security conferences.
 
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Odin

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I agree with you Matt a tool is just a tool. Be it Information age tech, guns, or knowledge...
What you do with it is what matters. I'm just saying that not everything needs to be networked. Definitely not a toaster or a pacemaker.

I'm not anti progress or tech... just it boggles my mind how people consider the full implication of handing over certain parts of your life to it.


I'm gonna rant away one last time here then stop.

Now Specifically to this thread and tech it's the networking crap I'm considering.

Take the example of pacemakers from the quote in my first post. If I had one of those I would be very suspicious of it having any wireless connectivity/control. Sure someone could keep up with vital stats but you could do that with ... uh say a data port instead to download and upload stats and software. Better yet it should be a self contained device that doesn't need that. (I don't know much about pacemakers... but yea I don't feel good handing over control of a vital body process to the "network")

Because... here I'm gonna let my imagination fly again... but say I wanted to control large swaths of the population. Now you gotta also consider no tech develops in a vacuum, that is many developments from other fields of science and society converge.

So I'm a maniacal despot bent on world domination. I have my biologists develop a genetic retrovirus that gives people heart disease and failure. I make so mosquitoes spread this among the population. Then when they all are implanted with my EVILCOR LLC pacemakers with super wifi connectivity I got em!

At any time I can single out an individual or population and TURN them OFF.

Yea thats a far stretch... it is... but let me compare the way tech is penetrating every aspect of our lives to boiling a frog.

They say if you want to cook yourself a frog, toss him in a pot of cold water and Slowly heat it up. The frog wont notice and with patience soon you got your self some amphibian soup.

This is how I get a feeling the population is when I see these kind of issues raised in tech news.

So yea... I love tech. (behind the curve myself in some ways) I mean I'm a huge fan of star trek, scif fi, science, space exct...

(Ha... I'm reminded of the Star Trek TNG episode Family. Where Picard visits his brother after the Battle of Wolf 359. His brother tells him all the new technology "replicators" exct has made life TOO convenient.)

Any way these ideas and rants are a bit crazy and out there... but I can't help when over the years I see people give up independence and personal freedom for technological convenience that is not even always that convenient or necessary... I don't get it.

Who knows... maybe in the end resistance is futile... and I will have to comply.
...

Fuck that. Hack the Planet! ::drinkingbuddy::
 

drynyn

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I am not saying that there is nothing to worry about in the future but with regards to this incident, all I see is google shutting down a service. What I don't understand is why they didn't try to get the current proven customers onto the newer service they are favouring. Give them free installation - after all it is the monthly fee that they will be making money from. Instead they just piss everyone off.

I remember when Google used to be cool.
 

Odin

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drynyn

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Just looked at the Revolv website. Looks like they are refunding the initial purchase of the kit:

"If you're a current Revolv customer, please email us at help@revolv.com so we can help you out during this transition and provide you with a refund of the purchase price of your Revolv hub."
 

MarsOrScars

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Fuck that. Hack the Planet! ::drinkingbuddy::

I'm developing a little, nefarious tool that actively and automatically audits 802.11/IoT tech. Hoping these findings will push people to learn and adapt methods of electronic encryption. Otherwise, they risk everything.

I'm still skeptical of kitchen appliances becoming widely network. I could understand the reason to put a coffee maker or oven on a network. i.e. you want to preheat your oven before you get home with that delish frozen pizza or you want the coffee maker to wake with your alarm clock, simultaneously.
 
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I'm developing a little, nefarious tool that actively and automatically audits 802.11/IoT tech. Hoping these findings will push people to learn and adapt methods of electronic encryption. Otherwise, they risk everything.

Yeah, so is the NSA and all of worlds' intelligence agencies. I get the sneaking suspicion that all of this shitty IoT garbage is being introduced in such a shoddy state on purpose, i'm sure it's probably littered with backdoors anyway. Ditto for the new 'smart city' bullshit cloud providers seem to want to foist on us.

Hopefully it doesn't catch on, as in it might become yuppie popular but not necessarily ubiquitous. Smart cities excluded, that shit is just fucking Orwellian.
 
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MarsOrScars

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Hopefully it doesn't catch on, as in it might become yuppie popular but not necessarily ubiquitous. Smart cities excluded, that shit is just fucking Orwellian.

Yep. At any point a person wishes to add more convenience to their life - they sacrifice security.

It's like building a house, but giving more and more doors and windows.

I'm not really active on social media, aside from the book of faces. I don't partake in the whole instagram/date-app/snapchat subculture. I find it disingenuous and honestly, a bit invasive.
 
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Whereamiwhatdoido

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I am going to make a t-shirt. Something along the lines of "Google is a new religion" is going to be stated on it.
Honestly, and sadly, I am quite convinced that google is going for world dominion. They'll make a set-up where either you play their game, or you'll miss out on the "google-wave" like those platforms mentioned above, i.e. instagram asf.

What if you'll need to link-up all your personal files, as in family fotos, pictures of your grand mothers funeral, the essay you're writing for graduation... I'm not saying that this is super bad, but if the scenario expands into these online servers holding down your entire harddrive as google were planning some years ago, (might be those nests? haven't updated myself in some years) then basically there's no way to tell who's in charge of your files, there's no plug to pull if you think something's wrong.. It's not that simple to let your personal data flow on something called a server, somewhere, somehow.. When they invented the PC it was called PC as in Personal Computer, right.. It's becoming more of a "statistics, computing sales agent-device" - they just call it search engine, but what you see on the screen isn't just a hard take of what you've searched for, it's programmed in so many ways already, to show you, what they would like you to see, and sure it's good, because they already know your preferences so they're pretty good at hitting spot on.
 

MarsOrScars

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Take a look a the creepy tech patent google just filed for:

==================

http://www.forbes.com/sites/aarontilley/2016/04/28/google-device-eyeball/#46d0b4854141

Screen-Shot-2016-04-28-at-10.05.54-AM-1200x685.png


Google has a penchant for far-out tech that never reaches the market. The latest is a method of injecting an device into an eyeball, mostly as a means to correct poor vision. Described in a patent dated April 28, 2016, the device is injected in fluid that then solidifies to couple the device with the eye’s lens capsule, the transparent membrane surrounding the lens. Injection would take place ”following the removal of the natural lens from the lens capsule,” the patent reads.

The planned device injected into the eye contains a number of tiny components: storage, sensors, radio, battery and an electronic lens. The eyeball device gets power wirelessly from an “energy harvesting antenna.” The patent describes what looks like an external device to interface with the eyeball computer. The two will communicate through a radio and the ”interface device” contains the processor to do the necessary computing.

According to the patent, the electronic lens would assist in the process of focusing light onto the eye’s retina.

This isn’t the first time Google has worked on technology you can stick right into your eyeballs. In early 2014, it began talking about the Google Contact Lens that measured glucose levels in tears to help people with diabetes. The glucose-measuring contact lenses are now a part of Verily, the division under the new Alphabet organization focused on life sciences. Most likely this kind of eyeball device is also being worked on by Verily.

Andrew Jason Conrad is listed as the inventor and he’s the head of Verily. Before, he was the co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Laboratory Corporation of America. Conrad was associated with the Google Contact Lens project. He has a PhD in cell biology from the University of California Los Angeles. An article last month in Stat News describes an exodus in talent from Verily because of difficulties working with Conrad.

I’ve reached out to Verily for comment and will update this post if I hear back.

The Google patent was unearthed by legal tech firm ClientSide.

=======================

I wouldn't want this shit in my eye despite how much I would love to have perfect, hawk-eye vision. Mainly because of the fact it's literally a window into your life and on top of that there is the potential ad companies will literally want to force you to watch ads because it will be a surgically attached billboard in your eyeball. No fucking thank you.
 
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Odin

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on top of that there is the potential ad companies will literally want to force you to watch ads because it will be a surgically attached billboard in your eyeball. No fucking thank you.





Now for these messages brought to you by Google.​







Can't they give us the modified body tech without the wireless control.
Run some fiberoptic down my arm to a data plug or something?
 
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Whereamiwhatdoido

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[QUOTE="
Can't they give us the modified body tech without the wireless control.​
Run some fiberoptic down my arm to a data plug or something?[/QUOTE]
Then they wouldn't be able to switch off their devices and sell you something new anymore.

@MarsOrScars
On another note I don't know if I'll want to really believe what said guy posted about that patent. Like, I'm not saying that I believe it to not be true, but it doesn't sound well in my consciousness, so I'll rather deny it.
 

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