Amazon and Apple are building rival networks that know where everything is | Hacker News Reader

Amazon and Apple are building rival networks that know where everything is

wired.co.uk

187 pointsMilnerRoute83 comments

Interesting bit:

"In its testing, though, [Amazon] sent out 700 gateway devices to Amazon employees in the Los Angeles basin, and because each one has a range of between 500m and up to a mile, Amazon was able to "basically cover where everyone lives in LA"

Whoa! Article also mentions the Ring ecosystem but this may have major impact on Amazon's home delivery bottleneck. I would totally buy a (cheap, small) personal lockerbox for my condo if it interfaces with Ring Bridge. AFAIK, they tested the apartment complex lockerbox idea some time ago but didn't take on. Maybe time for a retrial.

For Apple's ultrawideband, article focuses on in-home consumer but this has huge impact for enterprise, too. Many warehouse customers are looking into cheap ways for indoor locationing/tracking of assets, e.g. forklifts.

Amazon offers lockboxes for condos and apartments called amazon hub, it is on the order of $10k upfront for a 100 unit building, no ongoing cost.

Our building has 7 condos so this solution is an overkill. Yet, every day we have 4-5 boxes from Amazon laying around in the entrance of the building. Rarely, neighbors pick up the wrong package.

The pricing makes it seem like it's meant more for the couple dozen to couple hundred unit buildings than 7. With 7, you know your neighbors for the most part. With 25, you probably don't, so I imagine theft goes up much more quickly.

My previous block was ~100 apartments. Packages were either left in front of apartment doors, or in the mail room in front of the (very small) letterboxes.

I'd have packages delivered 2-3 times a month. In 2.5 years, not a single package was stolen.

My takeaway from this experience is that most humans are decent people. Or that I live in a sufficiently expensive block that nobody has any desire to steal anyone else's stuff.

Most people describe a package room with individual lock boxes for each parcel. I was at a place where the room had restricted access (you had a one-time code and a camera scanned you as you entered). Inside was all of the packages. The email containing the code also had a photograph of the package. There were shelves for each floor / grouping of units.

The only odd part was the one-time codes with multiple packages. I would get one code for multiple packages, things were difficult to find, and I had trouble coordinating with my wife. I'm glad I don't have to deal with it anymore.

I wonder if it's even simpler than that. Use your door activity to guess when you will be home instead of missing deliveries. They could probably ship this functionality next week if they ignored privacy concerns.

It’s not when to ship though, that’s a last mile problem which is much harder.

I’ll be home at 5:30 with everyone else. Good luck getting a delivery truck to my door at rush hour.

"between 500m and up to a mile"

Nice combination of units.

Snark aside, I didn't realize this until you pointed it out. You made me realize that I subconsciously convert metric to imperial when reading, which I didn't know prior.

I do this all the time, probably because of running track in highschool - where the 1600m run was a "mile" and the 800m dash (damn that race to hell) was the "half mile".

sounds great, this is how it should be for everyone. We're learning both unit systems for pragmatic reasons, and there's nothing special with the metre vs the yard, we can use both concepts.

Couldn't you buy a regular lockbox for your condo that doesn't involve being constantly surveilled by Jeff Bezos?

We have lockboxes in my building in Japan. They’re just part of the infrastructure of a high-end condo here. You tap your key to get in the lobby door. A chime and recorded voice tells you that a package is waiting. You tap your key again inside and the locker with your stuff pops open. The lockers range in size from small to quite large boxes.

These work with any delivery carrier, but I’m not sure how the delivery person enters the apartment number.

If you walk around to the back side, which is generally exposed and doesn't need a key to get to, there should be a bunch of doors that are either unlocked or locked, and a keypad. I wondered the same thing myself about 7 years ago and, when I saw the Yamato guy, asked him to show me how he did it. :)

I moved out of an apartment building in the US which had a system similar to this. Ours had no empty doors on the back -- carriers had to use the same entry pads we did to deliver packages. Each carrier got a code which gave them access to the initial room, and entered the name/apt number of intended recipient.

Annoyingly, it was a subscription service with no other way of getting package delivery securely to the building.

Yes, but then how will the Amazon (or FedEx/UPS/etc) delivery person put the package inside? There’s a business idea here in connecting their handhelds to the Lockerbie and apps on customer phones.

The regular post boxes at my last apartments had some extra large common boxes. The letter carrier would put your package in one of them, and the key in your mailbox. Done, and no surveillance, tech, tech backdoors or batteries/power.

Who hands out the key to the letter carrier, a security guard?

Presumably each empty locker would have a key sitting in its lock - as you would see (for example) at the gym?

Yes, that.

I think it's already too late for enterprise, those needing tracking of something, be it a forklift or a single person with a handheld computer/scanner, already found solutions for this.

Actually Zebra is already offering something in this direction[1], but if you don't need such precision or have way less budget, triangulation with WiFi access points is usually enough (and they're already there for providing network access to the devices).

Then only remains the consumer market, I don't know if it'll be as big as they think it is. But I suppose they already checked that.

[1] https://www.zebra.com/us/en/products/location-technologies/u...

> capable of delivering thousands of tag blinks per second at up to 30 cm accuracy.

That's pretty useful technology regardless. Sounds like a lot of potential for innovation. Agreed re: consumers (likely) not finding much, but for business that's a big deal.

Especially it if becomes commoditized via smart phones and small devices. The niche advanced suppliers would still be serving the higher end of the market but the large tail will be low-tier devices.

Going on kind of a tangent here, but a thought has been creeping up on me that I can't wait to talk about:

I'm a major Apple fan, with several Apple devices that I use all the time, and while they have a strong pro-privacy stance for now (though we only have their word), Apple's ability to spy on me, should they ever want to, probably goes far beyond any other company.

Besides the usual "boring" methods like keylogging and microphone eavesdropping, which any company can do to the users of their OSes if they wanted to, the iPhone sees my face a hundred times a day, the Mac has my fingerprints, and the Watch knows how I'm moving and feeling (sitting, walking, excited, lethargic), and they can use that to infer what I'm doing or even about to do...

Has anyone thoroughly monitored and logged what these devices are sending out?

The risk is too high for them to fuck up, IMHO.

If someone found nefarious stuff after throughly logging and monitoring these devices, and their findings were made public, I think this would be too huge for a company which differentiates itself via their privacy stance

I would contend that only a small subset of Apple's customers care about privacy, who are usually those working in tech. For most Apple fanboys, I'd say it's the aesthetic appeal, "cool" factor and conspicuous consumption that drives them to buy Apple. Even if someone found nefarious stuff, it would be in the media for one week and hardly anyone would notice.

The lawsuits would last a fair bit longer, and result in longer reporting.

If you have been following tech news in the last 20 years, you'll know that ANY time Apple slips up in ANY way the world never seems to forgets it.

Samsung, for example, could literally nuke a small country into oblivion and it would be forgotten within a month, whereas even post-apocalypse humans will begrudge Apple's removal of the headphone jack.

The problem is that they deal themselves into the equation too much.

You can turn off bluetooth, but if you turn it on to talk to your headphones or car, you get opted-in to ibeacon location services.

You can turn off wifi, but if you turn it on to talk to your home router, yeah, more location services opt-in.

If you follow links in email or safari, with deep links apps on your phone that have registered can intercept them. there's no opt-out of this added functionality.

You text a link to someone, you also load a preview in imessage and therefore contact the site.

It's like normal functionality have all these built-in compromises you can't turn off.

Now with the UWB stuff, there isn't even an off switch.

I think their standard way of dealing with things is that they just shut up and don't advertise this stuff.

> You can turn off bluetooth, but if you turn it on to talk to your headphones or car, you get opted-in to ibeacon location services.

> You can turn off wifi, but if you turn it on to talk to your home router, yeah, more location services opt-in.

Are these true? Bluetooth iBeacons, from what I understand, are now restricted by each app's Bluetooth access in iOS 13. And for Wifi, can't you just disable location services in Privacy settings?

>while they have a strong pro-privacy stance for now (though we only have their word)

So you have nothing. Nothing concrete at all. You have a black box on your hands, running whatever code Apple desires, effectively an infinite-privilege backdoor, with acessos to loads of data, with no possibility of scrutiny or verifiable privacy. Oh but you have their word. Come on...

As long as they're making it a selling point and a marketing message, they have incentive to stick to their word.

You're either the most naive person in the world or you are wilfully looking the other way. Let's just say that corporations don't have the best track record in the world when it comes to being honest and upfront...

This is true, and the future direction of the corporation may change.

However in the present, given the numerous public statements about their pro-privacy stance, if it turned out to all be a giant fabrication and they were actually data mining in the same way Google does (which Google publicly states), I'm reasonably sure that would be (at the very least) securities fraud.

Well, either their belief that privacy attracts customers is wrong (i.e. they shouldn't be using that as marketing), or their customers will leave if privacy violations are exposed. I don't have reason to believe I have a better idea of what gets Apple customers than Apple itself, so...

I would suggest taking off the watch before starting a revolution or committing a crime.

What if taking off the watch is a crime.

Think I'm crazy... imagine the watch being confused, and calling 911 repeatedly. Best to destroy it, or at least kill its life somehow.

Who needs mandatory surveillance when everyone just buys it anyway?

Being explicit about it only makes it easier and more cost effective.

Put it in a Faraday bag.

Anyone asks, say that you accidentally put it in your chainmail jeans.

I wonder if there is a market for a portable Faraday cage

You could make a burqa using conductive fabric. Silk, cotton, or nylon. Either plated with silver, or woven with fine silver wire. I don't find that online, but close:

https://emfclothing.com/en/home/10-electromagnetic-protectiv...

https://www.beneficialenvironments.co.uk/product/sleeping-ba...

I hope Apple’s is better than what they have now. I lost my AirPods and used Find My to find them, and the “last location” wasn’t even the last time I used them! It can’t even keep track of a device actively connected to my phone. I only found them because I happen to sit on them.

The only use for Find My for Airpods I’ve seen is the ability to have either earpiece emit a chirping sound. The current location tracking is limited I think for battery life preservation - I also find that inaccurate.

Maybe the battery died and someone moved your airpods

No they fell out of my pocket. After I found them I knew exactly when I lost them — when I got out of the chair. And either way it should have at least registered the last time I used them.

The last know location was from two days before I lost them.

Is this being stored locally?

Whenever I lose my AirPods, they're always in the charging case. In this state, you cannot trigger them to play a sound. Can't wait for tech to roll out that will help me find them in seconds instead of days.

My current solution is to get a case for the charging case with a keyring and attach a Tile--but I'd much prefer something integrated and slimmer.

And Google with their Visual Positioning System:

https://ai.googleblog.com/2019/02/using-global-localization-...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8mfQFGNdr8

My prediction from 2008 finally came true: https://nomel-blog.tumblr.com/post/47669161/idea-picture-bas...

Apples approach seems far superior. Medium range stuff tech is already out there. See z wave and zigbee. You can hack that stuff together without much cost.

Precise location indoors has no real equivalent currently

Man I use the heck out of Z wave. Basically after buying my first home not too long ago I noticed the alarm system could update the weather without wifi... It intrigued me so I looked into it and sure enough its all z wave.

I bought a USB adapter for my Raspberry Pi 3 and installed OpenHAB on it. I can now control my thermostats (I have 2 AC units) from a web UI. Who needs a NEST? And its in other things too.

As for tracking... It depends on what I want to track but with a couple Raspberry Pi Zero Ws you can probably hunt down specific devices around the home if they have bluetooth / wifi. Whatever Pi has it closest to it is the one you wanna search near. Not sure if bluetooth can tell you signal strength but I am pretty sure wifi does since you see the signal bars. Those come from somewhere.

for what it's worth, signal strength is not usually a great indicator of distance. I would think some sort of beacon/latency measurement would be far more robust way to measure relative distance?

Time to start making tin foil hats. They will sell like crazy. (looking for investors)

Also time to make those shape-shifting suits from A Scanner Darkly (reference being from the movie version - it actually isn't too bad if you have not seen it).

>it actually isn't too bad if you have not seen it

Does that mean it IS bad if you have seen it?

The scramble suits were straight out of the book.

I think Philip K Dick would deeply be into the surveillance aspect of what we're discussing.

Any well written fiction published over the last few months that tries to tie recent events together (ignoring the deepstate chemtrail anti crowd?).

Find my iPhone, find my friends and Tile provide a lot value to our family every day.

Really waiting for the Apple branded products. While I’m quite happy with the tile, it would be convenient to have all i devices scanning for my lost stuff. Also being able to see the more exact location inside house would be great.

Can anyone explain what the next play is here? Is it tracking of devices without being able to turn it off?

I assume it's being able to track an object, with extremely high precision, anywhere in the world (that's populated) without relying on a data or GPS network. That seems huge to me.

What is the problem with using GPS?

GPS works poorly in urban areas (newer chipsets are better at this, but it’s still rough) and doesn’t really work indoors at all. GPS will tell you that your phone is at home, UWB will tell you that it’s on the dresser in the bedroom.

GPS will tell a device where itself is. The device still needs to go online to tell anyone else where it is.

This, IIUC, will tell you where a thing is without it being online.

It’s location accuracy improvements in urban and indoor areas, which is notoriously poor.

UWB is supposed to let you know how far away other devices are, and in what direction. This will let you e.g. find your device if you left it somewhere in your house, or give you an UI to Airdrop to someone next to you (rather than just showing everyone in range), etc. Other location services are supposed to let you navigate indoors.

I don’t think there’s really “the next play” as much as there’s a bunch of marginal improvements, and a bunch of people who hope that there will be some killer app for location services that they can dominate.

I can see a lot of value for big brands / retail, where location tracking via bluetooth etc already exists. Same with FB offline conversion tracking, walk into store after seeing an ad analytics etc.

And I think Apple envisions value when combined with AR

You can't turn off Apple's version of this already.

Being able to track the location of objects (or other people) through walls, for displaying in AR glasses. That's my guess.

What? No Microsoft? They could call it "the internet of Bing"

iOS13 update... now Facebook messenger, G Maps, various others all requesting access to Bluetooth so they can "look for devices near to me".

This is the map that they are all building.

Of course Apple's "unlicensed 900MHz band" doesn't exist in ITU region 3 (here in NZ, and I suspect China too) the ISM band is used by cell companies ....

This band is used here in Brazil too.

Isn’t it Amazon’s unlicensed 900MHz band?

I guess "quiet" is "Jeff Bezos bringing it up in an interview with reporters". Whereas "secretive" is "Google CEO confirms leaked documents are genuine in interview with reporters".

So "loud" must be buying ads in every TV slot, radio, and billboard so that nobody could possibly miss it.

I don't think it's fair to apply terms humans use to corporations.

> I don't think it's fair to apply terms humans use to corporations.

... but corporations are people, according to the law.

(ie: you can't say someone said something just because someone else said it.)

Unfortunately the context of this conversation isn’t a courtroom.

why unfortunately?

Its peace is fortunate, conflict is unfortunate. Pointing out that someone is wrong is unfortunate. The fact being states is unfortunate because it contradicts the above post, implying a conflict. This is a fairly common use of the word unfortunate.

> but corporations are people, according to the law.

Except that's not really what the law says (in the US, anyway).

Exactly, the law SCOTUS ruling associated with this claim says that just because people combine their resources under a corporation, you can't take away their first amendment rights.

Quietly my ass. Both are promoting it as a way to make an estate or corner of earth internet-connected, rather than just a single structure.

Ok, we've disquieted the title above.

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