“Tomar, what would you say if a lightbulb in your house grew a mouth and asked you to make an account to make it purple?”
Grew a mouth, you say?
It’s called data mining
This is but one of many reasons why people should (have) cared more about net neutrality and the abilities companies have to reduce the internet to a giant advertising platform without limits on how they can shuffle your personal info around.
If we had greater protections for personal data, we wouldn’t have an entire internet that’s now essentially a series of scams and grifts to keep you clicking.
Meanwhile, you accept that the social media hedonic treadmill needs an user account. Curious?
With Philips you don’t need to only make an account, you’ll need yet another “Bridge” device (costing about as much as your lamp give or take) to get all the features.
IIRC, Phillips devices use Zigbee and can be controlled with stuff like Home Assistant and OpenHAB.
Correct. I have a Home Assistant SkyConnect coordinator (zigbee) connected to my home server to control my RGB lighting. Fuck Phillips though, they plan to make registration mandatory under the pretence of “security”
Which is funny, cause if people cared about security they wouldnt have all those stupid useless devices in their house demanding internet connections and trackable accounts.
Apparently there are toothbrushes that use AI. What fuckery is this?
I have one of those. My partner got a pair of them with a heavy discount and it is an excellent toothbrush
I couldn’t tell you what it does differently i would need to download an app to see which is never gonna happen. I am using it as am bog standard electric brush and i cant be arsed to read the manual.
Theres a small screen that will display how long you brushed that shows you an frowning face if you cut it short. Il leave it up to others to judge how useful that is for an adult.
My dentist has no complaints and that is really the best i can ask so yeah its a great normal electronic toothbrush if you literally ignore the ai part of it.
Oh yeah, I have the same one (or similar one in the range)! I got it because it charges faster than the non-ai version. Disregarding the digital gimmicks it is an excellent toothbrush, and I couldn’t tell you if the Bluetooth/AI make it better or worse because I literally can’t care about the connectivity protocols or data processing capabilities of a fucking toothbrush.
Why do you need it to charge faster? How often are you brushing your teeth?
Between my partner and me, 4 to 6 times a day. I need to charge it faster because I don’t have the charging base in the bathroom (UK houses don’t have plug sockets in the bathroom) and I often forget to charge. When that happens, I want to wait 5 minutes to brush my teeth, not 45.
You and your partner share a toothbrush?
Seems odd.
But I’m not here to judge. Thanks for answering my question. I appreciate it.
It’s electric - we don’t share the heads!!
Oh. Alright. That would have been my follow up, but I was struggling to find the right way to word it, so I just resigned myself to not knowing.
“Heads” is an interesting, but accurate, descriptor.
I’m equally surprised you don’t have an outlet in the bathroom, but that’s a different discussion.
The way you’re doing it is efficient at least, but if the mechanical part of the toothbrush fails, nobody gets to brush… Or you have to move it around yourself I suppose, like a caveman.
Electric toothbrushes are a bit like escalators in that way. If it breaks, you can still walk up the stairs.
Not just an AI toothbrush, an A.I. toothbrush for 🧠 geniuses 🌟.
I took this the other day while toothbrush shopping so my partner and I could laugh about it. I bought the cheapest Sonicare they make and it works as well as every other one I’ve had for the last decade, but without bluetooth, wifi, AI, an app, etc.
(And it’s still overpriced garbage. My last one just stopped working out of the blue, almost 2 years to the day after I bought it, right outside the warranty period. Planned obsolescence is an exact science these days.)
To be fair, Oral-B doesn’t require an account. You can just use it as a normal electric toothbrush. I’d also say the Oral-B is a lot better than Sonicare in terms of cleaning
My favorite thing about these toothrbrushes is that they still use nimh batteries and haven’t updated to lithium ion yet.
AI is such a dumb stupid label they slap on anything these days.
It isn’t even AI, if it was it would be a fucking sentient stick you’d shove down your mouth.
Just like how they used to slap Smart on everything years ago, the device isn’t smart, it just has new features. They just abuse the terms to try and stay relevant in modern markets. It’s annoying as fuck though, because actual AI is a pretty interesting concept, but I’ve not seen any real AI, since practically all of it is just yet another feature that someone programmed to do something specific.
This is a gen x complaint. Boomers would just ask their kids to set it up because they can’t get it to work. Gen x realizes what is going on and that it is bullshit to need an account for a fucking lightbulb.
It’s also a millennial complaint.
Sincerely, elder millennial who recently had to make an account for a lightbulb and an air cooler and is sick of that bullshit.
Boomer isn’t really used as a generational term nowadays
Millennial here. We are in agreement.
I think it’s a complaint from everyone but Gen z, who are just used to it.
Somewhere between milennial and gen-z here. I can’t fucking stand making more accounts just because companies want to collect data. And neither can my gen-z younger siblings.
Used to it ≠ Not complaining about it
As genz, can confirm
Ah. Resignation is NOT acceptance.
Withdrawal in disgust is not the same as apathy.
I think this is a common-sense complaint, mostly unrelated to generation.
I mean yeah we are used to it but it’s still shitty. Are you not used to it?
Gen z to me is just the boomers mark II.
For what reason? That doesn’t make any sense.
I meet a lot of overentitled Gen z. They remind me of the boomers that I also meet a lot of. Of course neither group can see it.
This might surprise you, but people are people no matter what generation they were born in.
Boomers is a name for a specific reason.
So you agree.
Sadly these days, it’s a hold over from boomer managers making the decision that services require logins, which in turn require accounts and emails. So gen-x managers who were taught by boomers do the same thing. It’s systematic really.
I don’t think it’s boomer managers doing that, necessarily; I think it’s an unholy alliance of liassez-faire tech bro entrepreneurs and the
propagandamarketing industry.
My late 50s mum happily signs up with her Facebook to everything. Meanwhile it’s often the people in their late 20s to 30s who were introduced to computers during their youth before everything had super streamlined GUIs who know enough about software that they realize this is a privacy concern, what internet privacy means, and why it’s important. People who are older or younger than that have to go out of their way to learn how and why to look behind the easy interfaces. That’s my experience and explanation at least.
Remember when our parents were super nuts about keeping your info private online, not revealing too much info to strangers, and not signing up for stupid shit? My my, how the turntables.
My 70yo mom thinks I’m crazy paranoid because of my data privacy stances, while she’s dealing with constant spam and account hacks. Guess who hasn’t had damn near any info issues? :D
I was never allowed to be on Club penguin or the like. I also wasn’t allowed to be on Facebook when it became popular around me, until I was 14. Mum, what happened?
Tbf you weren’t missing much with Facebook. It was kinda cool in the early days when it replaced MySpace (like Reddit to Digg), but that went out the window pretty quick when all your extended family are calling your parents wondering why there are tagged pictures of you dancing around a fire half naked with a liquor bottle in your hand at 3am.
That’s because for her the only risk is about getting kidnapped or killed, stuff that needs physical contact. Getting accounts hacked and phone scams are relatively new in her life span.
Not personally, but I remember the feeling
My mom never actually had any idea what the internet was. My dad bought the PC for me, so he probably would’ve doubled down if he knew what I was seeing and maybe would’ve even said it was good for me or not a big deal or something
It’s weird to see my 11yr old brother now with the exact same access to YouTube which I’d ironically argue is a lot worse than old rotten.com. No idea if that’s true but an argument could be made, for sure
Eh the internet was a lot simpler back then. Yeah there was fucked up shit around like there is today, but social networking imo is what really screwed the pooch. Back then, people just posted screwy shit for the sake of it and had varying degrees of influence, but now almost everything out there is intended to manipulate your behavior and worldview on a mainstream level. It’s a shitton more dangerous than the weirdos in chatrooms asking a/s/l.
Then: Don’t trust everything you read on the internet, and Wikipedia isn’t legitimate because anyone can edit it
Now: Some loud moron on Youtube told me a thing and I believe it 100%.
Then: people on the internet were mostly technically adept and creating webpages because they enjoyed them.
Now: people on the internet are mostly ad tech attention economy scams and creating LLM spam blogs for PPC revenue.
It’s just easier now for a conspiracy loon to find something that matches their preconceived biases.
It really sucks now for product comparisons. It used to be the you could look up productA vs productB and get an enthusiast going on about them, now it’s purely AI generated crap.
My young family members are the worst, they just click “yes” to everything, regardless of any effort I’ve made to explain how things work.
Any barrier to convenience is too frustrating to them. They don’t like even using full applications in their laptops, always say “wheres the app, this is too complex”. 🤦🏼♂️
that’s not just young people that’s 80~90% of users
You’re not wrong. Ffs.
I’d say you made the point better than any of us.
I know some network security folks, in their 40’s, who’ve literally said “I don’t want to be inconvenienced” when discussing why they tolerate this invasive shit.
Motherfucker, your job is securing networks. You know first hand the kind of shit going on out there.
I really wish more things just let me log in with Facebook, I don’t want to fill out and make passwords for every pointless site. At least I can be somewhat confident that Facebook will follow security standards.
Based on their long track record of privacy excellence?
They dont care about your privacy, they do care about their security, which your account being compromised would hurt.
Might I recommend a reasonably secure browser with an in-built password generator and manager? I use Firefox. You make up a username and it generates a safe password and saves it so you don’t have to remember it’d Just use a safe password for the browser itself that you can easily remember. I personally feel that’s a decent compromise between secure and convenient.
They still have a profile on everyone, established long before we could limit anything.
I love the basic instructions for someone debating security policy nuance. It’s like you don’t get that he’s way, way, way beyond “pick a password you can easily remember” despite the technical level of the discussion.
The person I’m replying to isn’t the only one reading the comment. Chances are someone who’s on the fence or hasn’t interacted with the issue yet will benefit from it a little. That’s what I like to think at least.
That’s still shifting responsibility to the users, which is great for all these crappy products, but we should be demanding better.
Of course, but meanwhile, we have to take of our own privacy.
Hahahahahaha Facebook follow security standards? Your fucking kidding, right?
Facebook, probably the first greatest scourge of privacy invading companies (worse than Google), follows secjrity standards?
The motherfuckers have a profile on me, and I’ve never once been on any Facebook website or service, let alone logged into any Facebook crap.
Gen X here and can confirm.
Boomers would get the bulb set up by their kids, then something will happen, and you come over to find your parents sitting in a rave room because they need the light and can’t fix it.
Hahahahaha “rave room” ain’t that the truth
Nope. Mom’s meross bulb got a little fucked in a power failure. She unscrewed its green self and put in a regular bulb.
Boomers WILL solve this. But they’ll go low-tech even if it means unplugging the cord to turn it off.
And haven’t mentioned the issue even though it’s been like that for months.
Gen Z doesn’t know what a “boomer” is…
Bro we need to track you in every way possible so we can sell you even more shit, what’s the big deal?
Um, how about no Scott, okay? You got my money, if you wanna keep pestering for more money, I’m gonna return this original item and you aren’t getting shit.
Ladies and gentlemen, Scotty don’t.
Scotty n’est pas
Companies just don’t get enough resistance to this behaviors if more people went against them things wouldn’t be in the state they are now.
WHAT DOES GOD NEED WITH A STARSHIP?!?!?
Wasn’t that scene from Star Trek II (specifically, when the Reliant approached them suspiciously), not Star Trek V?
Haha, yes… It’s definitely the wrong movie. Good eye!
Far from being a boomer, but 100% agree with it.
It is sad to think there are people who don’t think this is ridiculous and are just accepting that.
I wrote an email app called Port87 for this. Every account gets its own address, and everything to that address goes in its own label.
If anyone is interested in this, check out addy.io and simplelogin, which provide this exact service and are seen as privacy friendly by the community. Remember that any email service like this has the potential to read all your email, so pick a service you trust.
Those are email forwarders. Port87 is an email service. They provide a similar feature, but it’s not the same. They still rely on you to organize your email with filters and labels in your downstream email service.
How’s this different from plus aliases?
From what I can tell, not much. They use dashes “-” instead of pluses “+”.
But neither of these two options provide you with much privacy. Plus addresses, as others have pointed out, can be automatically stripped (just delete everything after the plus sign) and you get the real email behind it.
This service specifically I dont know the details, but it seems there is a unique prefix per user, but no “real email”. So for instance if you use gmail you can have “sunnie@gmail.com” as your real email. You then use “sunnie+lemmy@gmail.com” for your lemmy account. If that email gets leaked out somehow, people can easily tell your real email address is “sunnie@gmail.com”
This service seems to do something very similar with the difference there is no base email, so there isnt a “sunnie@port87.com”, there will only be “sunny-lemmy@port87.com”. It is worth pointing out you might still be tracked because all your emails will be prefixed with “sunny”. So although spammers wont be able to figure out your real email address they can just try something like “something-reddit@port87.com”, and if multiple of your addresses leak it will be easy to link them all up to the same person.
This also creates A LOT of lock in. Because if the service shuts down you now have dozens of services for which you don’t have means to access the emails anymore.
Thank you for the feedback. These are all really good points that I’d like to address.
The vendor lock in part I agree is very important. I’m working on adding support for custom domains, which would let you migrate to another provider if Port87 ends up not working for you.
Regarding the privacy part, a long term goal is to let you create private aliases for your labels that are randomized addresses on a different domain. I haven’t started working on that yet, and supporting enterprise features will take priority.
Thats really nice. I appreciate your concerns with privacy and user experience!
Ill be sure to keep my eyes on the project
It is plus aliases*. It’s got additional features for them that other providers don’t have though. Like for each label (alias) you can toggle whether to get notifications, mark as unread, screen new senders, and show them in the “aggbox”. The aggbox is like an inbox, but since you don’t ever use your “bare address”, it just shows the labels you want. Your bare address autoresponds with a list of your public addresses.
* It’s technically subaddressing, using either a dash or a plus as a delimiter.
It kinda isn’t, however I found that some websites refuse to acknowledge that plusses are valid. I see this one uses dashes which might have a similar issue. Only thing I think is universally accepted are periods
I haven’t found any place that doesn’t accept a dash.
As a kid I had an email address that started with a dash. Back then I regularly encountered websites that flagged it as invalid (but only if it started with it)
But then again, that was almost 25 years ago
I found that some websites refuse to acknowledge that plusses are valid.
I’m not saying that they won’t, but they’re non-compliant then.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_address#Local-part
The format of an email address is local-part@domain, where the local-part may be up to 64 octets long and the domain may have a maximum of 255 octets.[5] The formal definitions are in RFC 5322 (sections 3.2.3 and 3.4.1) and RFC 5321—with a more readable form given in the informational RFC 3696 (written by J. Klensin, the author of RFC 5321) and the associated errata.
Local-part
The local-part of the email address may be unquoted or may be enclosed in quotation marks.
If unquoted, it may use any of these ASCII characters:
I don’t want to try to escape the following for Markdown, so I’m just gonna dump it in a blockquote:
uppercase and lowercase Latin letters A to Z and a to z digits 0 to 9 printable characters !#$%&'*+-/=?^_`{|}~ dot ., provided that it is not the first or last character and provided also that it does not appear consecutively (e.g., John..Doe@example.com is not allowed).[8]If quoted, it may contain Space, Horizontal Tab (HT), any ASCII graphic except Backslash and Quote and a quoted-pair consisting of a Backslash followed by HT, Space or any ASCII graphic; it may also be split between lines anywhere that HT or Space appears. In contrast to unquoted local-parts, the addresses ".John.Doe"@example.com, "John.Doe."@example.com and "John..Doe"@example.com are allowed.
Just chiming in, if you’re using + aliases for privacy some people can just remove the plus and see your email
For example if you sign up with supercoolemail+spoof@beans.com the service can remove everything between the + and the @ and see your real email is supercoolemail@beans.com
Your app looks amazing. Looking forward to it becoming available!
Thank you. :)
“Or sign in with your Facebook account”
No, this isn’t Facebook!
@The_Picard_Maneuver I once bought a TV sound bar that wanted me to download an app, make an account and give it detailed location information just to use it as a wired speaker. I returned it.
The only radio with Bluetooth that fits my older car requires a fucking Android app to sync Bluetooth… Fuck you pioneer!
Thankfully there’s a ton of workarounds for that.
If there’s a tape deck, you can do headphone jack to cassette tape. If you don’t have a headphone jack on your phone you can get a little bluetooth reciever to headphone jack type thing.
There’s also the route of using a small device to broadcast your own little AM station (same deal, gets audio from jack or bluetooth), then tune into it with your existing head unit.
Best way is to just rig up your own aux in, but that requires some doing.
Was it a Bose? I once bought Bose headphones and downloaded an app to pair it. When Bose recognized the headphones, it told me that I had used the wrong app to pair to those headphones.
@snow_bunny Nah, it was Sonos. Which, I guess the app ecosystem is their whole thing - but I didn’t know that at the time. I just wanted a basic sound bar, and the reviews didn’t really mention that all that extra fluff was mandatory.
In retrospect Sonos sucks for a lot of other reasons too, so I guess it was a bullet dodged.
I wish more people would do this!
If more people acted this way this wouldn’t be the standard
This is something Matter was supposed to address at least for IoT stuff, but it’s still not great.
Why does my TIVO think I want to record Swamp Loggers?
