My landlord installed a meth detector in my home which looks like a large smoke detector on the ceiling. It apparently communicates via the mobile network, but I have no idea how it actually measures meth. I doubt it actually measures anything (the product is made by http://www.methminder.co.nz/ but there is no actual information there). Point is, it makes tenants feel less secure. Which makes landlords feel more secure (ironically, products like these exploit the moral panic and lack of security that landlords feel regarding the meth crisis). Even if this Alexa for Landlords does nothing nefarious, its real purpose is to create that feeling of insecurity that landlords want.
Maybe, just maybe, the landlord is listening. And we better not refuse the device because maybe they'll get the idea that we don't trust them...
>Q Can I discontinue my monitoring subscription at any time?
No, you'll quickly become addicted to the peace of mind and security you feel from using Meth Minder, finding it near impossible to give up. At this point our montly rate increases to $5K/month and you will do anything to ensure your monthly fix. We've secured $100M in VC on our incredibly low churn due to the addictive nature of our product.
Yeah but the landlords are just gonna pile this costs onto their tenants, aren’t they? So in the end the tenants are the ones paying for it, not the landlords.
It’ll be added to your lease. They don’t break out your rent payment into “sidewalks, hallways, carpet, walls, sink, faucet, fixtures...” but those costs are there. They’ll bury meth detection in the rent payment, and that’s that.
Then their apartment would be $50/month over the competition, so I wouldn't move there. If they could charge that, they'd already be doing it. You can't just "offload costs," it's not how pricing works.
This is correct. If some given set of landlords can get away with charging $50 more per month, they'd already be doing it. Some individual landlords might be irrational, but as a whole property isn't a market where people leave money on the table.
if this thing works and the meth epidemic is that severe for this being a serious issue and not security theater, you'll pay the 50$ just to live in the meth free area, because the 50$ cheaper neighborhood will pool all the meatheads
not overnight of course, but there will be a zoning effect at some point, as there always is, where some neighborhoods pool similarly minded people, as neither offer nor demand is really elastic.
Sort of, while prices converge to a slowly moving average, some people are indeed paying a bit more and other s bit less. Maybe people who end up getting properties with meth alarms will be the ones paying a bit more. With time, if having meth detectors is an effective way to keep out tenants who will devalue the property in some way, it will be incorporated and the tenants will be paying the price of it.
Meth contaimination is a huge problem and can be very costly to remediate. It's mostly from cooking meth but even using can contaiminate a house causing 6 figures in damages.
Re: contamination from use: If you look into it, you'll find the "contamination" is that with a sensitive enough test, you can tell it's there.
The six figures in damages tend to be self-inflicted. The NZ government spent hundreds of millions on "meth house" remediation that by any rational analysis didn't need to be done.
Sure maybe the standards are too stringent but that's cold comfort to the landlord that has to meet them. They're still out the money whether or not it was actually necessary.
It gets aerosolized and then eventually settles on every surface of the house. The residue can be washed off sometimes. If not you need to take everything down to the studs and put new drywall & flooring in.
Interesting. It deposits as crystal meth or some residue of it? Does it emit a smell? Almost all aerosol substances as far as i know deposit everywhere. Cigarette smoke pentrates walls too but usually is not a huge problem un
unless a heavy smoker inhabitated the place.
I wish my previous SF apartment had obnoxious chemical detectors. Smells and smokes and chemicals don't just stay in one apartment, and the management couldn't track down their source, despite being strong enough to cause health problems for others.
The war on drugs is total BS, but so is trashing a place and sickening neighbors just for your own selfish high. There are ways to do things that are respectful of others.
There is considerable scope for universities or any other organisation to ensure that assaults or even unwanted consensual activities are not taking place on their property.
This raises the interesting question - now prevention is more practical and thus enforceable are we likely to see a tightening of behavioural standards and social norms either because the technology allows it or because that's the easiest way to avoid the technology. In either case it seems that a relaxed attitude to social behaviour may be on the way out.
If you buy this logic for universities, then surely government has an even greater interest in ensuring assaults aren't taking place. So shall we mandate every private apartment has microphones installed, to catch terrorists and child molesters, and stop the spread of hateful ideologies?
Or perhaps we want to limit activities that apartments weren't licensed for, like working from home, babysitting, exercise, more than 3 guests at a time, alcohol consumption... activities forbidden by the rental agreement unless you pay extra. By letting you pay a lower rent if you don't need those activities, landlords can pass the savings on to you, the consumer! You wouldn't want to forbid such practices and force higher prices on renters who don't need those perks, would you?
The above is satire for now, but it'll happen if we let it, guaranteed.
> The above is satire for now, but it'll happen if we let it, guaranteed.
Man am I excited for the Handmaid's Tale America!
edit: I'd written a more cynical and satirical comment than this, yet unfortunately dang asked me not to write in the ways i have written before - so i've had to file it in my notes instead. if anyone knows a place or community for 'radical leftists' like me to talk about things like this, please do let me know
> There is considerable scope for universities or any other organisation to ensure that assaults or even unwanted consensual activities are not taking place on their property.
woah i don't fully understand this or the [to you, interesting] question you posed, but I want to say that my post was satire...
landlords (even university campuses) have no business meddling in 'unwanted consensual activities'
as your naming suggests it is a 'consensual' activity, so there is no problem. being puritanical/prude about sex between young people is another thing.
if American universities don't want people having sex in shared dorms with single-beds, then they could create European university style en-suite bedrooms that share a common area + kitchen...
honestly American standards and customs scare the fuck out of me sometimes [1]
I believe gp was referring to places where sex is already forbidden by a property owner such as classrooms and offices, where if someone walks in on you having sex, you're the weird one because you shouldn't be having sex there, someone could walk in on you, there's no expectation of privacy. It's their property and they're paying you to be there temporarily to provide a service.
> landlords (even university campuses) have no business meddling in 'unwanted consensual activities'
Agreed, and I think GP would as well. Dorms are different. That's your domicile, the relationship with a university is that of a landlord/tenant. You're paying for a place to sleep and live. There's an expectation of privacy. If you walk into someone's dorm while they're having sex, why the hell are you barging into someone's room?
That being said seeing a sex detector hanging from the ceiling would make me sad.
Meth Detector, Ha! Meth heads will just place a ziplock bag with a rubber band around just like all of the weed smokers in hotels. Never underestimate the "creativity" of a tweaker.
The point still remains, a tweaker will always find a way. If the plastic bag over the detector is enough to block the smoker's fumes, why would a tweaker not think it would be good enough to block a lab's? Again, we're talking about tweakers. They can come up with crazy ideas, but it doesn't mean they are good ones.
It’s called Alexa for Residential that, according to Amazon, “makes it easy for property managers to set up and manage Alexa-powered smart home experiences throughout their buildings.”
One aspect I find particularly dystopian is the double-speak of "smart homes", "smart schools", "smart cities".
Whenever I hear the term "smart", I associate it with the countless real-life examples of privacy violations (bordering on unconstitutional), security snafus, and the power it gives to authoritarian tendencies in private companies and public institutions.
In what way? Smart home control? Alexa demonstrably does not listen to your conversations and it would be illegal for a landlord to do so. This just seems like a nice way to build smart home abilities into a house or rental so people don’t have to bring a million bulbs/hubs/sensors with them everywhere.
> Alexa demonstrably does not listen to your conversations
I won't soon forget this story[0]. It listens to everything, and if it thinks it hears the start of a command it starts doing stuff with what it hears. That detection can have bugs, some of them practically unavoidable (like differentiating between a conversation about a person named Alexa and a command).
Amazon themselves have said that "[voice] data is stored remotely" as opposed to on the device[1]. So it seems likely that most Alexa users have had at least some parts of a conversation in which they did not intend to involve Alexa stored on an Amazon server, and possibly reviewed by some number of employees[2].
I think the strongest thing you can say "demonstrably" about regarding Alexa is that it does not store _all_ your conversations.
You mean the story where she said send message and it did just that? Yeah accidents happen but this isn’t some nefarious amazon is spying on you story. This could happen on any smart phone and isn’t unique to smart speakers or amazon.
> voice data is stored remotely
No, it only sends your requests to the server after the wake word is said (so that it can process it). You can test this your self by monitoring your network traffic. It is demonstrable.
> You mean the story where she said send message and it did just that?
No, the story where Alexa incorrectly interpreted some part of the conversation as a wake word, then incorrectly interpreted another bit as a send message confirmation, and finally misinterpreted yet more audio as a name in the contacts list.
Alexa does screw up, and when it does it screws up in ways that are _not at all intuitive_. It bills itself as a "smart" and as an "assistant", but it doesn't fit either of these descriptions. Tech people might call it "smart", but people who employ assistants would describe it as "dangerously dumb".
> No, it only sends your requests to the server after the wake word is said...
This doesn't contradict "voice data is stored remotely". Nobody is arguing that it is storing everything you say remotely (though it's just one government-ordered software update away from doing just that). What it does store remotely, and what is given to thousands of fresh, temporary Amazon employees to listen to, is potentially anything you say that begins with the wake word or what it thinks might have been the wake word, within a confidence interval decided by Amazon.
I think with stuff like this it's easy to assume "evil company stealing your data". And while I'm sure that accidents happen, I also feel like Amazon knows this and will go to extreme lengths to protect their users data.
Why? Imagine how much it would cost amazon in lost sales and market cap if some scandal broke about how thier Alexa device were leaking user data. Even a small story would be enough to wipe out millions if not billions of dollars of market cap and sales.
You may be underestimating the costs of _not_ archiving large amounts of potentially-sensitive data in a way that is accessible to a large number of employees (and therefor not very secure). Alexa needs training. Training requires data, as real as possible and as much as possible. It also requires reviewers, and that review process requires a lot of person-hours. So if Amazon were to decide not to store voice recordings of real-world interactions (or potential-interactions like "my friend Alexa said..."), or if they were to decide not to make that data available broadly (to thousands of employees), then they would also be wiping out millions of dollars of market cap.
The way I see it, it's not really a question of whether or not they're being cavalier with private data. For me that threshold was crossed with the large human voice-to-text farms. I don't want the list of people who might hear my private conversations that maybe contained syllables sounding like "Alexa" or "Siri" or "Google" to be thousands strong. That's orders of magnitude more than could ever be reasonably expected to constitute a secure circle.
I'm used to rented properties where you get no control over things like the thermostat (which are all Hive managed) but that's roughly where i draw the line.
Um, the United States of America (depends on the state)
In my state, landlords have to keep a property heated to a certain temperature during the winter, but there’s no law saying the landlord has to provide a thermostat. Many older buildings have a central boiler and radiators.. how do you propose thermostats in each unit with that setup?
> how do you propose thermostats in each unit with that setup?
Thermostatic or electronically controlled radiator valves (possibly z-waved to the per-unit thermostat for the electronically controlled one). Don't see why per-unit thermostat would be an issue.
And add submetering (using heat cost allocators or heat meters) to provide by-use billing.
My assumption from OP's post is that there is a thermostat but you have no control over it due to the landlords actions, not that they should be mandated. My contention is with the landlord controlling the heating remotely in any way.
I'm in the UK, usually things turn off and on automatically based on the time of year and some temperature readings.
Pretty awful at times and it leads to tenants not caring about other aspects. For instance my 1400w pc/server hybrid has 2 months uptime, why should i care?
Privacy aside, this whole concept seems like it will flop.
This is a great move for Amazon, but I don't really understand the benefit to renters or landlords.
"Luxury" apartments in NYC used to have ipod/iphone docks in the wall the connected to the speaker system. Every single agent talked about this great feature, but it just looked awful. Besides the fact that I'm an Android user, the connector was pre lightning so at some point I'm sure the landlord has to upgrade everyone's wall dock. A feature that only some can use, and fewer will use. Only so they can seem extra fancy to a select crowd.
The point of that antidote is that this Amazon "feature" will likely only be in "luxury" buildings as well. Most landlords don't even allow their rent to be paid online. I doubt they will get "alexa pay my rent" to work reliably.
About half the people I know will not stand have any home spy devices in their home on principal alone, and the other half already have one. Putting this in you're building seems like a way to make half your renter base dismiss you, and redundant for the other half.
>Most landlords don't even allow their rent to be paid online.
I felt like I traveled back to 1990 when I moved to Canada. In Germany I've never paid anything with cheque. We've always had free wire transfers. Online or offline is not visible even to the landlord.
When I found out this doesn't work with Canadian banks I was flabbergasted.
I moved back 10 years ago. Is this still the case in US/CAN?
When I moved to Canada last year, no landlords I talked to took cheques, thankfully. They all required E-transfer, which is free, and near instant. This is in Toronto.
It depends, really. My first apartment was in a three unit building managed by a small management company. We mailed checks.
My next apartment was a condo we rented directly from the owners. We paid by bank transfer.
Then the third place I rented years later after moving across country was managed by a large management firm and they had an online portal with rental payment, maintenance tickets, and all that. We weren't in large building, it was a townhouse, but they had properties all over the region they managed.
For what it's worth, my last several landlords in Canada have accepted Interac E-Transfers (free instant domestic transfers up to $3000) for rent instead of post-dated cheques when I asked, and many of my friends say they do the same thing.
I've only rented in America once, but in that case the property management company had their own online system that accepted (slow non-instant) bank transfers or (with a surcharge) credit cards.
US: My landlords accept checks and money orders, I have my banks bill pay service send my landlord a check every month, so I never actually have to mail or write a check myself.
> Most landlords don't even allow their rent to be paid online.
This just completely flummoxes me. The US really is a third world nation sometimes.
Here in the Netherlands it is unthinkable to pay your rent in cash. Most people pay their rent via standing order, or for the few people who haven't automated their payments, via direct wire transfer.
I assume they mean cash, in the sense of typically a bank withdrawal via check. In which case, they can almost certainly also set up a recurring check payment via their bank online. I actually send quite a few "checks" but with the exception of my housekeeper and some service people I rarely actually write out a check.
I find it more convenient to use checks for some purchases but the thing that makes them bad for small businesses is banks charging insufficient fund fees to both the depositor and the person who wrote the check.
We bought some salsa from a local business yesterday and she takes Venmo, Zelle, or cash (not the app). If she took a check and it bounced (insufficient funds), then she would be out the money and probably a $12 fee besides.
https://www.bankofamerica.com/smallbusiness/resources/fees-a... It's interesting to see how business checking accounts have changed - there's no free level. You're charged a fee for every deposit past a certain number. I wonder how many small businesses are run now without a business checking account. But a credit union like Unitus https://www.unitusccu.com/business-checking/has free business checking accounts. Deposits are charged $.15 after the first 75 but if you sweep your electronic accounts (Cash app, Venmo, PayPal, etc.) in every other day you could take 5 of them.
I only converted about 2 years ago to taking pictures of checks and depositing them. It's much easier than going to the bank or mailing the deposits to Charles Schwab. Three of us did a joint purchase and I got a check from one. The other sent me payment via PayPal but PayPal took 3% as a fee. It didn't bother me enough to say something but it definitely didn't make me happy. It'd be nice to have an option that was zero-cost or $.10 fee per transaction. I bank with credit unions that don't have Zelle yet.
> "third world nation" would probably be a bit strong
Or a bit weak. Not sure any nation has phased out cash entirely, but I'd assume many developing economies have phased out general use of checks if they ever had it.
("third-world" is very much a misnomer as it meant countries not aligned with either the US — the first world — or the USSR — the second world — so the US can't be a third-world nation by definition)
It's probably safe to say that the term has evolved into referring to less-developed nations rather than the original meaning, at least when used inside the US.
What's wrong with checks/cheques? I prefer paying by check and I'd be pretty miffed if ever I had a landlord that didn't accept them. I don't understand why Europeans think the option of paying by check is so derisible. I could just as easily have the money sent automatically by my credit union every month, but I want to pay by check.
Because of the frequent fraud and anti-fraud problems checks have. As far as I know, most people in the USA need that money that day or that week. Any delay is risky. ID-fraud or a flagged check seems like a nerve wracking incident.
As far as I'm concerned checks are simple and low stress. If you don't prefer them that's as valid an opinion as mine, but why is the option of paying by check seen as so awful?
For instance, elsewhere in this discussion (emphasis my own): "no landlords I talked to took cheques, thankfully."
What's so great at other people being denied their preference??
Checks are the #1 lowest friction way to pay. You don’t need internet connectivity, don’t need to make change, don’t need their bank account number — you don’t even need the recipient to have a bank account at all.
They suck to receive, but I love paying with them.
I don’t even have to write them out if I don’t want to, I can schedule them to be sent by my bank automatically.
And a ton of US banks already have a way around this I believe. You can setup bill pay and the bank will basically dropship your landlord a rent check.
This is done in America mostly for tax evasion purposes. Most larger buildings run by a real entity allow for bill pay, it's mom & pop landlords that usually ask for cash.
What seems to often happen in cases like my town is that they've farmed out online payment to some third party processor. I'm guessing they do this for free or a reduced charge in exchange for a fairly hefty processing fee. As a result, it's cheaper for me to pay town bills via check even if they're usually online check via my bank.
Take that with a grain of salt. I've been renting in the US since I got into college, 5 apartment complexes later and I have yet to see a single place that will not let you pay online. This might be the case for some smaller apartments, but anything bigger and they will always have online payments.
I think OP might be a renter in NYC / SF where you have smaller landlords that aren't running 300+ unit complexes.
I pay my rent by "check" but it's still fully automated. You just log into your bank and set up a recurring payment; they print a check and mail it every month (for free).
And? This implying Alexa is spying on your conversations crap is getting out of hand on HN.
The dude is ceo of a cybersecurity company and has very unique and deep insights into global security threats. He’s definitely someone you would want to have around to advise on security especially as foreign threats are ramping up on the digital front.
Alexa, Google assistant, Siri are demonstrably not listening to your conversations, us in the tech industry should know better than to spread this sort of FUD.
Renting a home is a special case since housing is a necessity. It is heavily regulated because of that, but we have to be vigilent to ensure that regulations keep up with the times
For most other items, the amount of control that you need really comes down to priorities. Given my use of computers, I buy the hardware and prefer open source applications since there is a large degree of control. When it comes to entertainment (games, music, etc.) rental is fine since they are not all that important. Some product categories is a blend of the two: some books I buy, others I "rent" (rather, borrow through libraries).
As for Alexa for landlords, this may be a case where some laws need revision. Even if it is not used as a surveilance device, it must be classified as such since the potential is there. It doesn't matter whether that potential is used by Amazon, the landlord, or another authorized or unauthorized party.
If you buy something you no longer control it either. Cars nowadays can be disabled remotely with the press of a button and are not repairable because you don't have access to the software.
That is too often true. But at least you have the right to attempt to control it. Sadly even that is under attack, with laws against circumvention and "reverse engineering" (i.e. looking at how something works).
I agree - the situation described in the article is so so illegal. If a landlord did this they could be sued out of existence. As we move into the future smart homes are becoming ubiquitous. It is only natural that they become built into homes including rentals for those that want it.
If a landlord wanted to spy on you there are far less obvious ways to do it (that are also very illegal).
But it's not entirely unwarranted given Amazon's history of their privacy declarations not being 100% reliable. Their track record isn't as bad as some companies, but I wouldn't trust them without an outside review and they're not going to let that happen for a host of reasions.
Agreed, just pointing out the basis of this article is an assumption that amazon won't have thought about drop in when thinking about their other privacy measures for this product.
None of these seem like problems to me. This is just adding some commands to Alexa for convenience, like being able to submit an apartment maintenance request.
Amazon isn't making it possible for your landlord to spy on you -- first of all, as the article notes, the landlord would have to associate the Alexa account with their own, which makes no sense, since the point of Alexa is it's tied to your Amazon account, so you can order things from Amazon. (Unless my landlord wants to pay for all my shopping...) But more importantly, spying is highly illegal. I don't care about Amazon -- I trust the police and courts here.
Second, Amazon has zero business reason to allow landlords to spy on their tenants. It would be a huge PR backlash for virtually zero financial benefit. So I'm not even remotely worried about that, because capitalism.
Third, the idea that one day you might only be able to fulfill apartment requests through Alexa, instead of a website, is just ludicrous fearmongering. It's about as likely as requiring it all to go through an Apple Watch.
Finally, one random author's opinion about whether or not an included Alexa is an amenity worth paying for is completely meaningless. Every apartment comes with a set of amenities (or not) and the market determines the ultimate rental price for that set. Landlords aren't dumb. They're not installing amenities nobody wants. If the author thinks it's not worth the price, they're just not the target demographic for that building, which is fine, but it's not exactly news that's worth publishing.
I see you're already being downvoted, but I feel the same - I don't understand why does anyone have any of these devices at home. It's nuts. Yet apparently Alexa sold 50 million smart speakers or something like that.
I read alot about them, but I have never come across one in the wild despite living in a fairly wealthy, gadget friendly environment. I agree that the whole idea of voluntarily installing something like this seems mind-blowingly nuts. Are real people actually using Alexa? If so- what for? Are there killer reasons for using Alexa like there are for, say, a Tesla or an iPhone?
Some buy it to play music in their living spaces. My dad came back with a free Echo after moving his phone plan to Verizon. Thankfully I got him to be skeptical of it just because they are giving them away for free. Sibling got a google one for novelty. Over time they also stopped using, it got annoying having to plug it back in every time (since I dont let it stay plugged in). cus fuck google, amazon, fb, apple, microsoft, am I missing anyone? Samsung seems to stay lowkey but eff em too.
Owned three, threw all of them out. The AI was underwhelming in understanding, even finding music. We ended up using it to tell the time when sitting at the table without a computer. Now I own a wrist watch.
My use case is small children and music. It's incredibly convenient to say "alexa, play songs by pink fong" or whatever they're in the mood for, while cleaning or cooking or what have you, compared to getting a phone or tablet out and browsing to the music app and trying to find the same song or playlist.
Additionally, my oldest child can put music on for herself with her voice, but can't read or spell enough to do it otherwise.
It has access to everything on amazon music, a much larger playlist than anything I own. I can also say "play show tunes" or "play 80s" and it will do that.
I know about homebrew options. I've tried some of them. The problem is convincing others. They want something that works every time all the time, not something I have to fiddle with every so often.
As for the security, it was my concern from day one, but when laypeople see the convenience and not some hidden boogeyman, you can't convince them otherwise. I lost that argument to my wife and it wasn't a hill I chose to die on. I'm just careful what I say openly, as you should anywhere. Plus we all carry phones around already.
IMO the GP is being downvoted because irrespective of one's personal feelings regarding 'smart home' devices, it's difficult to see how someone could genuinely have never encountered any users of those devices (assuming you're living in the US). I can understand how someone extremely tech-savvy and cognizant of the privacy and other downsides of those devices may have friends who similarly would not use or purchase the same; but to have genuinely never seen one, whether it be in the home of a relative, an acquaintance, in popular television or movies - and having never read any reporting about their popularity - seems beyond the realm of possibility. Given that, the GP's question seems conceited. I can see how they might have intended to direct the question towards HN users in the assumption that most HN users would be wary of the aforementioned devices, in which case it'd be interesting to read the perspectives of those individuals who use them despite their downsides. But that isn't immediately evident.
Well the GP might not live in the US. I don't, and I have never seen anybody use one of those and I don't know anybody who does either, and I haven't seen them in series or movies either (except sci-fi AI movies). For all I know, an Alexa is just a device to order toilet paper from Amazon when it's out or maybe use it to turn on and off the light in the room if you're too lazy to do it yourself.
Is the demographic that uses these preferentially si-valley people or is it widely spread in the US?
BTW I'm not particularly against home AI assistants myself. But I'm fairly against streaming my audio to a third party that can transcribe and give everything to any snooping fourth party though :) I did read about Google doing this with their assistant's audio, it ended up at contractors doing manual transcribing.
I don't live in the US either. But this website is primarily US-focused, and most people on it readily assume the context for everything is the US, so I conform to the same habit.
My anecdotal examples would be mostly middle-class families and college students in the US, not particularly valley-related. In my country these type of devices are on the market but not popular (only seen a couple), but they're priced out of the range of the majority of the population anyway.
They seem a bit silly until you get one and then the idea of going without it feels frustrating. I have a couple (kitchen/living room and bedroom). I use it daily for setting timers when cooking, turning on/off the lights and adjusting them (e.g. turning to a specific setting if I'm watching a movie) and when I finish reading in bed at night I can just tell it to turn off all the lights to save me getting out of bed and getting back in the dark.
Obviously none of this is necessary and could be done in other ways but it's useful and relatively cheap (I got both echo dots in sales and 3 out of 4 bulbs in sales too).
Edit: I presume you're talking about Alexa in general and not this specific landlord product.
All those uses sound like they could be accomplished without connecting the Echos to the internet. If the connection is interrupted, can they still perform those tasks?
The speakers don't have the hardware needed to run speech recognition and (realistic) text to speech, so no. This is the reason why I'm interested in Mycroft—with just a bit more hardware it actually can do a pretty okay job offline, though the TTS is very robotic.
As someone living not in the US, I feel the same. I see all sorts of giveaways and deals (ie, free echo dot if you buy a newspaper subscription), but I've never met anyone who uses one. Never seen one in a friends house. Here it seems like they're desperately trying to get people to use them (to the point of giving them away), and failing. I figured it was probably a cultural split between US / everywhere else.
Another thing is I think we don't like voice activated control in general. An American colleague used to use voice activated calling all the time on his phone. I've literally never seen anyone else use that, unless they're driving.
I live in an EU country and travel quite a lot. I see them and google homes very frequently. This article is from Australia. Maybe it is just your circles?
Just to add - per-capita as % of internet users market saturation is in the same ballpark between US/EU countries.
It was higher than I would have expected even in 2018 (17.2% of Germans with internet access reported having used one regularly)
This guy is an internet detective :D Could be done as a mod via the lua api, if you really wanted (would need an external relay program to communicate with the voice thing, like eg clusterio does).
Most of the devices have a switch for the microphone that is supposedly implemented in hardware rather than software. And the vast majority of smart home devices do not have cameras.
Granted, the ease of use of their functionality is largely dependent on the microphone being on at all times.
I know of people (in real life) who use Alexa devices and are quite enthusiastic about them. In some respects, they are quite sensible and look at how the device contributes to their lives. In other respects ...
... well, let's just say that I'm in the category of people who find the technology creepy. My tendency to avoid prying into other people's lives and desire to lead a quiet life leaves me with uneasy feelings with the massive amounts of data collection happening these days.
The thing is, not everyone is like that. If someone is okay with the noise of world intruding into their lives and are curious about the lives of other people, I can think of very few reasons why they would find these voice assistants creepy. That list includes the realists concerns about security and plain old paranoia.
I have a couple of Google Home Minis but I never paid for them, one was gifted by Spotify and one by Google when they were getting rid of their stock of the old model. I usually use them to control the lights and Spotify/Netflix when I am too lazy to get off the couch in the middle of an episode. They are also getting less and less useful because the voice recognition is getting steadily worse (false negative and false positive recognition of wake-up sentence has easily doubled since I got them). I could easily live without them but I still think the technology is cool. When they stop working I will probably look for a full-blown local alternative that doesn't rely on the Internet.
In 2018 (I’m sure it is a lot higher now) 17.2% of Germans with internet access reported having regularly used a smart speaker. 26% in us, 18% in Canada.
I would say between 10-20 of my friends have some variety of smart home device? Most are Alexa, with a few Google Homes. They span the spectrum from tech-savvy to the opposite.
Hold on now. I havent watched 'TV' in years but I use one daily. The shows I do watch are mostly from phone/tablet streaming/downloads as I refuse to watch ads. My tv is mostly for video games and movies.
I really think Nielsen is being willfully ignorant and praying here.
I agree that this is nightmarish and gross, but I have another question.
> But we all know landlords are, by default, shitty.
What is with journalists for normal/non-political publications and Marxism/Maoism, particularly recently?
I have literally never had a problem with a landlord. While I'm sure unpleasant landlords are as common as unpleasant people, I can't help but think that the only way to have had exclusively bad experiences with landlords would be where the tenant inherently sees the nature of their relationship as exploitative.
I've had more than one landlord that insisted on stopping by once or twice a month. "stopping by" was usually hanging around outside the property, sometimes just knocking to "make sure everything is OK". And weirdly enough, I've never had this while living with a man - only when I was living alone or with another woman. It makes me feel unsafe and like I had no privacy in my private home.
And my problems were pretty mild. The places I lived in were fairly well-kept. Lots of folks have issues with roaches, leaks, and a slew of other issues that fall on deaf ears. Lots of folks are actually unsafe. Lots of folks get overcharged for things that come out of a security deposit (oh, a nail hole... that'll be $300 plus paint - nevermind that we'd paint anyway). And so on.
This is, of course, because in many areas, there is little to no oversight of landlords and no one really to help a tenant with issues. Decent folks being landlords are the exception, not the rule.
I can only congratulate you and offer a huge "YMMV". I personally have made really very bad experiences with multiple landlords so I can 100% of the author's sentiment. I certainly wouldn't consider it a political stance.
I would say it's as much of a satirically accepted ground truth as "gyms generally try to screw you into an auto-renewing yearly contract."
I'm just curious... how are they evicted? Eviction is generally extremely difficult.
Do you just mean they jack up the rent on the next lease renewal?
Regardless, making improvements to a rental is something that ought to always be explicitly negotiated and in writing. It baffles me anyone would be so gullible to pay out of pocket for improvements and expect the landlord to pay that back... gradually in the future in good faith?
I mean, if you want to go that bizarrely circuitous route anyways, then do it together with signing a new lease at the lower rate. And if your landlord tries to evict you, take them to court because that's illegal as all hell.
1. Unemployment is at 8.5%, and was double digits until recently. Wingcuck ideologies are more popular when the economy is poor.
2. The US is going through another red scare right now. Lots of evidence for this between BLM protestors, the rise of "antifa", and (finally) a right-wing reaction to institutional left-wing post-modernism and critical theory (e.g. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trump-wants-white-privileg...)
3. In the early part of COVID, when there were policies put into place by the feds to prevent people from being kicked out, there were viral campaigns for people to do "rent strikes" and refuse to pay any of their rent. Such forms of economic organization are Marxist and were successful for some of the participants. This feeds into my 2nd point.
4. Trump has strong reasons for drumming up his image as the law and order candidate. He's likely instructed the spooks and glowies within the intelligence agencies to do something similar to Operation Mockingbird for manipulating public opinion to be in his favor. Maybe the intelligence agencies are doing it on their own initiative. Right-wing journalism about "google engineers who are antifa members" is shocking good at swinging undecided voters who care about law and order.
Also, I think even most Capitalists concede that landlords are shitty (unless they are a landlord) - but they don't advocate for expropriation or putting them against the wall...
Maybe, just maybe, the landlord is listening. And we better not refuse the device because maybe they'll get the idea that we don't trust them...