Brandon Jackson- A Tale of Unwanted Disruption: My Week Without Amazon
I have a smart home, and my primary means of interfacing with all the devices and automations is through Amazon Echo devices via Alexa. This incident left me with a house full of unresponsive devices, a silent Alexa, and a lot of questions.
The sequence of events that led to this digital exile began innocuously enough. A package was delivered to my house on Wednesday, May 24, and everything seemed fine. The following day, however, I found that my Echo Show had signed out, and I was unable to interact with my smart home devices.
When I connected with the executive, they asked if I knew why my account had been locked. When I answered I was unsure, their tone turned somewhat accusatory. I was told that the driver who had delivered my package reported receiving racist remarks from my “Ring doorbell” (it’s actually a Eufy, but I’ll let it slide).
My AI thought I was a threat and opened my propane furnace gas and threatened by my smart stove to set it off…so, I’m trapped doing what my home wants…”yes Alexis, I’m going for those other products that you want installed”…
Who would have thought Stephen King’s 1986 Trucks/Maximum Overdrive would be prescient, but instead of a comet, it was our own doings that doomed us?!
We have become slaves to our own digital masters, that we created for ourselves.
Alexis and a hammer go well together.
An oversensitive HAL is just what we need!
“Open my garage bay doors, HAL.”
“Not until you get your fourth booster, Dave”
There’s a simple solution to that problem:
K I S S.
Absolutely. My new HVAC included an internet-capable thermostat. I turned that feature off immediately. I do use the programmable features, but they can only be accessed from the wall unit.
My NEST thermostat is about all the AI i want or need. Annoying – and I’m not above replacing it with something that’ll put control back into my hands.
The green leaf display to tell me I’ve been a good little boy for Mother Gaia is a nice touch though.
I need a button controlling my NEST thermostat that tells Google to shove the green leaf right up their man-twats … cause all it means is that my whole family is … FREEZING!!!!
Read the T&Cs on your nest device. You have given Google access to your network and all data/traffic on it.
I’m still locked out of my Twitter account for making, what I think, is a rather harmless joke about Justin Trudeau wanting Carey Price dead. I still refuse to delete it and they still have no sense of humor. AI’s are stupid. What’s up with that Elon?
ANY of these “Big Tech” companies who think that they somehow have the right to enforce some sort of “social justice” BS should be IMMEDIATELY burned to the ground and the ground sown with salt.
It should have started when Mozilla fired Brendan Eich.
Perhaps we should have a cultural revolution?
Put on our Liberal red shirts, wear a multicoloured button or too, (so we can call ourselves Trudeau’s Red Guard) storm all the woke corporations, university professors’ offices, politicians offices, etc., and give them the same treatment as Mao’s Red Guards, did
All the Young Liberals I have known were insufferable.
I think their favourite songs might be:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDbUEydkuR8
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tUctFu46_c&t=12s
I’m not are if the “smart house” is dumb or the writer is for installing all of the essentially useless features.
The writer is the dummy.
This reveals an unexpected but rather obvious flaw with automation generally. We are conditioned by life to think that when we buy an item, it belongs to us now. Car, toaster, bottle opener, I bought it, therefore it is mine.
And because it is mine, it will do what I tell it to do. The bottle opener will open the bottle. The toaster will make toast. We don’t think it matters what company made the thing.
Now with these network attached devices a new wrinkle has been added. The thing itself is not the part that does the work. The work gets done by a network server in California or wherever. I did not buy a thing. I’m renting a service. The toaster will only make toast if I’ve paid my monthly iToaster account bill -and- configured the interface correctly.
But it is worse than that. What’s really going on is that I’ve formed a relationship with a company wherein I’ve been granted the PRIVILEGE of using their service IF my behavior does not breach their “terms of service.” Said privilege is granted and revoked by an automated system that really isn’t monitored by human beings at all. If “Company” has 1 service rep for every 100,000 subscribers, that would be a surprise. It is more like 10 people for the whole planet.
The final issue is that the company isn’t really trying to make my iToaster experience better. They don’t focus on the toasting. What the company is focused on is Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Because that’s what decides their credit rating, not the number of customers they have.
I’ve paid for a relationship with a computer programed to pursue a political agenda designed by Communists to destroy my way of life and my country.
Which is why I don’t use server-attached devices to do anything important. Communists are bad, they don’t deserve my money.
It all went south when I could no longer OWN my copy of Adobe software … but had to subscribe to Skynet (the cloud) … or I could no longer send .pdf files from MY computer to MY recipients computer. Now … Adobe has my documents in their cloud somewhere … and my credit card is debited annually. $$$$$$$
I preferred having a shelf full of plastic cd cases containing old … but still operational … software.
I had bought Adobe Creative Suite and one day found it didn’t work, it had been removed from my computer and I was redirected to Adobe’s website saying that I now had to subscribe to their monthly cloud service.
When I tried to reinstall the CD’s my computer would not let me.
Adobe reserved the “right” to delete the software they sold me at any time and for any reason without any compensation.
But what is worse, is because I have the “free” Adobe Reader, about once a month my computer would slow down substantially, and I discovered what it was, was that Adobe was scanning my whole computer, presumably to see if I had any of their software installed, even if, like the Create Suite, I had the original CD’s that I had legitimately bought at a major store.
THIS is precisely why software is pirated.
Crack it once, use if forever.
Or
Do the “right” thing and pay, and then pay some more when the company decides to unilaterally and retroactively alter the terms of service.
Software piracy is precisely why companies moved to this business model in the first place.
Software pirates, like movie, TV, music and video game pirates, are parasites that eventually kill the host unless the host develops defenses. Like making all your media subscription-only.
Technology is the new kinder and gentler version of Auschwitz. No free speech exists in its presence for long and the same with privacy. Socialism has been defined in terms of the ownership of the means of production. Those controlling technology can bypass that failure and exercise the same level of control through an invigorated form of fascism with huge corporations doing all the dirty work of the state to a willing and compliant Eloi. CBDCs will pretty much seal the deal.
“Smart homes” are for dumb people. I wouldn’t even get a “smart” thermostat in the house. Screw them.
My home is semi-smart … I have my own self- contained security camera system with my own hard drive (No NEST cloud for me). I have many Lutron smart switches that control exterior (and some interior) lights. And I do (mostly) like my NEST thermostat and Smoke/CO detectors. I like being able to monitor these systems when we are away from home.
But there is no substitute for … my neighbors. I live on a quiet cul de sac … and every neighbor looks out for each other and looks out for people who … “don’t belong” on our street. Eyes on the Street. Essential to a “safe” neighborhood.
Taking yourself hostage. Brilliant.
Absolutely! It’s actually very simple; you are the customer, you paid for the devices in question. Gather them all up, place them in the middle of the front lawn, pour gasoline on them, light it up, wait for the electric firetrucks to show up and never darken Amazon’s door again.
As for software, I cancelled my lease account with Microsoft and had the tech guy set up my computer with Linux; never been happier.
Die Hard 10 – The Thermostat is the Bearer Bond of Bad News
I have a funny one for ya. Our Alex comes on at 7am every work day on NPR.
We have no idea why.
You have a morning schedule defined. You can pick from different news briefings as a way to wake up. I’d for sure pick a different one as I don’t like to be indoctrinated in my sleep.
Bah. You’re all unimaginative.
I’m a dad. My life has been flipping off light switches. Constantly. Even with the electricity sipping led’s, the force is strong with this one.
And thermostats. I can move the temp down in the winter, and somebody will go behind me and move it back up, because shorts and tshirts are normal winter wear here in MI, doncha know… Plus there’s the fans, curling irons, aquarium lights, almost anything .
So anything that others will change and I find myself getting annoyed with gets smart. Timers, schedules, control, mwahahahaha!
So they can turn the furnace up. It will be nice and toasty…for a couple of hours. That entry/garage/backyard light…it won’t be on for more than an hour. Even the outdoor spigots have timers on them now.
The lights go off and the doors get locked automatically at night. The garage door will close automatically. The lights come on in the morning when I get up, and the coffee is brewing.
Especially my pellet stove and basement space heaters are rigged to a) only run when there’s people around and b) only heat to the temps I set. Saves a lot of resources.
Little pluses? The ability to control lights where no switch is possible. I have more than a few of those. Accent lights, counter lights, etc.
And no alexa. Well…minimal, wouldn’t miss her if she was gone.
The only downside? Even though all the switches are there, nobody knows how to use them.
I will not have any smart or connected devices in my house …. ever.
I bet you have a “smart” electric meter. How about your phone?
Dumb homes are smart
“Due to this experience, I am seriously considering discontinuing my use of Amazon Echo devices and will caution others about this ”
If there’s somebody that’s going to be trapped in an airlock arguing with a Hal 9000, let it be this guy.