Amazon devices will soon automatically share your Internet with neighbors
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
There is no way I am exposing myself to that kind of liability and Amazon won't be selling me or my family anything.
I think that Amazon's marketing for this is horrible, reminds me of XBox' failed marketing around their online-only plan for XBox One game purchases [1].
But really all they've done is built AirTags as a platform rather than an application, e.g. Tile is supported by Amazon's new platform.
I don't want to give random people with random apps any amount of arbitrary bandwidth; I'd rather that users of the Sidewalk platform would have to register app specific message types publicly (to ensure transparency) and with Amazon (who should enforce message type and payload restrictions).
[1] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/06/xbox-one-eighty-micro...
Can you explain your comparison?
Just by modulating whether or not the AirTag is transmitting, it seems like you could communicate at a low data rate. You could even use hundreds or thousands of AirTag IDs to get a useful data rate. Just because you could do it, though, it seems like there are plenty of other more practical covert channels.
It uses a maximum of 500 megabyte per month.
Regarding payload type registration – it seems like it would be pretty difficult to monitor that, given that payloads are encrypted.
That actually seems more like a feature than a problem to me: If my IP address does not show up in any logs and I can't even see what's being transmitted, I really doubt there would be any liability for the user here.
Source: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...
Generally speaking, are volume caps on fixed line internet a thing in many countries? I'd imagine that it would be hard to use something like a smart speaker on such a tight data budget in the first place, as I can't imagine them to be very bandwidth-conscious in general (music streaming having no "low data usage" option on them usually, etc).
It would be possible to design an encrypted protocol that allowed Amazon server side content inspection.
I remember when going around logging locations of wifi access points was "wardriving". Now apple and google do it as a matter of course using everyone's phones.
- emails
- text messages
- microphone arrays
- shared networks
- keyboard input
- file storage
- contact and communication history
It's a logical next-step from there to expand these services under the guise of subscriptions. That's why you owning a device is problematic for them. That said, owning the platform is the next best thing because they can now do many but not all of those things in the name of protecting their platform from "abuse".
Sources:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/27673175?seq=1
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123024...
Also, this does not excuse the fact that they made it opt out. If it was opt in and new devices came with it... maybe...
also, as far as illegal traffic and stuff: if the traffic goes through the amazon device, wouldn’t the isp see traffic that goes only go random amazon datacenter ? at that point they would ask amazon about it (hopefully) and do their homework.
And even if Amazon is tunneling all traffic now, that may change or someone may find a way to break out of it.
And even if law enforcement sees that the traffic is from Sidewalk, our legal system is pretty shit regarding the internet and I bet a dedicated prosecutor would try to get you for aiding a criminal because you technically allowed that access to your network. Look at the legal issues around running TOR exit nodes and the uncertainty there, in a lot of ways this is an opt-out version of that. (though I admit this might be a stretch, but I don't trust the legal system enough to handle this well).
I guess it's game over
> ... you probably aren't part of the Xfinity hotspot system.
Because of the above, I wouldn't be so sure (mostly due to Comcast's reputation).
Personally, when I was forced to use Comcast for a while, I purchased my own "dumb" (i.e., non-WiFi) cable modem. I didn't want to pay their rental fees, I didn't want to run an open hotspot for them, and I already had my own -- much better -- WiFi gear.
I wondered which neighbor is the Hot Spot over Covid. By chance I discovered it was a house a few over because they replaced their main electrical panel, and the hot spot disappeared until pg&e terminated the Service lines. Ironically, the owner of the house despises Xfinity. I don't have the heart to tell him his modem is the Hot Spot. He's also a retired lawyer, but I assume Comcast has a legal right?
Does anyone have an alternative to Xfinity? I'm in Marin County. I would like some local channels too. I looked into AT&T, but they seem as devious as Comcast. Devious in high rentals of equipment, although less than Xfinity. Good deals only for new customers. I'm thinking about switching between the two every year, but that's a hassle. My bill is $230 a month. $100 just for low bandwidth internet. New customers are getting high speed for $50. Xfinity needs to be broken up. Oh yea, I heard Comcast decided to "milk" long term customers, instead of competing on price, or worrying about "Cord Cuters".
Rant over. I need an alternative, with tv. I live in Marin County, CA. Oh yea, I remember hearing about free local tv digital channels local channels here. I remember it being associated with UC Berkeley? I can't find it though. Does anyone remember? It was basically free local channels over the internet, which was great for Cord Cutters.
They probably remember your login based on wifi MAC, so it's probably easy to fake being somebody else, however.
"Sharing your internet with the neighbors" is an extremely misleading description of the product.
When zero days start floating around that allow people to bypass the VPN they are just sitting directly on your internal network.
Amazon is absolutely sharing your Internet with randos, they are just being picky about where the traffic goes. Still your data caps and still your qos bucket.
There's no assurance that I'll hear about the next invasive feature, which is yet another security risk in my network that I need to be aware of.
Klaus Schwab, head of "World Economic Forum" and author of "The Great Reset" [0]: "You'll own nothing and you will be happy" [1]
[0] https://www.amazon.com/COVID-19-Great-Reset-Klaus-Schwab/dp/...
You have a bizarre filter on the world if you think Amazon sharing your Internet with your neighbours without your consent is anything like socialism.
The 'material conditions', at least as far as socialist/communist/anarchist authors go, refers to the mode of production and the relationship of workers to the means of production. It is not 'measured' in terms of wealth, nor in terms of poverty levels.
It is also a mistake to say that socialism 'revolves' around material conditions. Marx himself took swift action to point out that people being happy and well-fed is by no means a 'socialist' society. This is, after all, assuming you subscribe to the theory of historical materialism - which several prominent Marxists today (and in the recent past) do not, at least strictly.
A corporation owning the means of production doesn’t meet the basic definitions of socialism since the workers have no power and it is only by the grace of the employer that their voices are heard if at all.
I appreciate that you love capitalism and want it to be the perfect system but it’s not, and you can’t make capitalism look like socialism by dressing it up in welfare and democracy.
It's about the state owning the means of production and the state is supposedly representing the people, so the textbook fairy tale goes. Of course, putting aside how evil socialist is in principle, in practice it does one better: socialism is the rule of the rich party officials over an impoverished and oppressed society. (And no, the Scandinavian countries aren't socialist.)
No, its about the people (specifically, the workers) controlling the means of production. The State is a vehicle for that in some forms of socialism, but not all. There are forms of socialism that see a role for the state but not that of vehicle of control of the means of production, and there are forms of socialism (e.g., libertarian socialism) which reject statism entirely (in fact, not only does that whole spectrum exist withi socialism broadly, the entire state socialist to anti-statist spectrum exists within explicitly Marxist socialism.)
Too many people’s ideas of “socialism” is a product of Leninist propaganda (often through the further filter of Western right-wing propaganda, which has a weird semi-alignment with Leninists in misrepesenting “socialism”.)
Under socialism, a battery factory that invents a more efficient process for creating batteries can pass that saving directly to the workers - rather than working 40 hours a week they can work 20. Their leisure time is increased. This is the future Asimov and Roddenberry envisioned.
Under capitalism, the benefits of such technological advancements gets pissed away into market forces and accumulate with the people who need them least. For some reason we still expect everyone to either inherit money or work a job - even a pointless job - just to survive. Why? We easily have the capacity to feed, clothe and house the world's population. Let people follow their passions! Imagine how many Eisteins, Picassos and Mozarts that are being born into the world right now who will never reach their potential. What an enormously inefficient and unjust system.
In socialism, you work according to your ability to the maximum society allows, and you receive according to your needs the maximum the society can provide (ideally).
If you could work 40 hours before the process, there is no reason for you to work less than that now. Your labour isn't defined by your output in batteries, but in hours. Nobody in socialist countries worked less because of technology advancements, they just had higher outputs, like in capitalist countries. The benefit-er is the factory owner, ostensibly 'the people' but really the state/party officials. You are a person, not 'the people'. You don't benefit from it directly - that would be theft from the people.
You don't get to keep your labour because you owe it to the people, comrade. Don't be greedy with the people's resources. Who are you to take from the people? You could be sent to a gulag for re-education, and then who would stand in line for your family to get bread?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_property#Personal_ver...
It’s not toothbrushes that people care about so much as their homes and jobs.
I’m not familiar with all communist countries, but the whole “can’t own property” from USSR and China probably contributes to the feeling that communism promotes no personal property.
From the manifesto:
>"The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few. In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property."[0]
Ctrl + Fing for 'private property' brings up a lot more. I haven't actually read this thing, but I wanted to check because I was curious what the manifesto actually did say.
Here's the German of the last sentence in case you think it's a bad translation:
>"In diesem Sinn können die Kommunisten ihre Theorie in dem einen Ausdruck: Aufhebung des Privateigentums, zusammenfassen."
[0]: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Man... (p.22)
From here[1]:
> In political/economic theory, notably socialist, Marxist, and most anarchist philosophies, the distinction between private and personal property is extremely important. Which items of property constitute which is open to debate. In some economic systems, such as capitalism, private and personal property are considered to be exactly equivalent.
> Personal property or possessions includes "items intended for personal use" (e.g., one's toothbrush, clothes, and vehicles, and sometimes rarely money).[3] It must be gained in a socially fair manner, and the owner has a distributive right to exclude others.
> Private property is a social relationship between the owner and persons deprived, i.e. not a relationship between person and thing. Private property may include artifacts, factories, mines, dams, infrastructure, natural vegetation, mountains, deserts and seas—these generate capital for the owner without the owner having to perform any labour. Conversely, those who perform labour using somebody else's private property are deprived of the value of their work, and are instead given a salary that is disjointed from the value generated by the worker.
> In Marxist theory, the term private property typically refers to capital or the means of production, while personal property refers to consumer and non-capital goods and services
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_property#Personal_ver...
Hmm... maybe I misread the Communist Manifesto or something, but I did not get this. In fact, you can almost feel his hatred about the whole idea of personal ownership. This even extends to marriage and having children i.e children should be raised by the commune rather than individual parents.
His distaste is not for “personal ownership” but for the distinct model of property that exists in the capitalist system, which is why he explicitly casts the Communist move to abolish bourgeois property (referred to equivalently as “bourgeois private property” and “private property”; the distinct system of property relations under capitalism) as consistent with the universal historical reality that new systems of property relations and economic systems involve destroying the prior system of property relations, e.g.,
“All property relations in the past have continually been subject to historical change consequent upon the change in historical conditions.
---quote---
“The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favour of bourgeois property.
“The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.
“In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.”
---end---
source: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-m...
> This even extends to marriage and having children
Viewing wives and children as part of a system of property relations, while very much a feature of the capitalist system Marx critiqued, is viewed distastefully even by many of the people who defend “capitalism” today, not just socialist critics.
> children should be raised by the commune rather than individual parents.
Where does Marx argue for this? Marx notes that the charge of destroying the family is levelled at Communists, and argues that this is hypocritical in that thr capitalist system has destroyed, in different ways, the substance of both proletarian and bourgeios families, and that what what Marxism seeks to extinguish is the hollow form of family that is left under capitalism, and not even that through any direct policy. He says that the existing family system would naturally fall away as a consequence of replacing the system of property and removing the class oppression which depends on it.
It depends on what you mean by "raised", but after calling for the abolition of the family in the Manifesto (in whatever sense that the family under capitalism is bourgeois I guess) he says that children will be educated "on a communal basis" and will not be dependent upon their parents (since private property would be abolished). [0]
Secondly, I do not see how our current understanding of "personal ownership" escapes being "bourgeois private property". It seems disingenuous to keep implying that there would not be many radical shifts in how "personal property" would be understood under Marx's ideal communist system compared to how its understood now.
[0]https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Man... (p.52)
In modern mixed economies (which while themselves quite far from the Marx’s ideals are arguably closer to it than the Leninist-derived “Communist” systems that pay lip service to Marxism), it is very common, compared to the capitalist system Marx critiqued, to have particularly strong social support networks targeting children (even the US, with its generally weak, among modern developed systems, safety net, has a much stronger one for children than generally), much less unaccountable power for parents over children, and free universal public education, often obligatory with permitted substitution of approved private instruction — children are, IOW, educated on a communal and not, or at least far less compared to the system Marx critiqued, dependent on their parents.
It is important to remember that the system Marx sought to destroy and replace is the dominant 19th Century system in the developed world that he named “capitalism” not the 21st Century system that is the product of more a century and a half of changes to that system, often pushed by Marxist and other socialist critics along with other, often more moderate allies (at least, transactional allies).
> Secondly, I do not see how our current understanding of "personal ownership" escapes being "bourgeois private property".
Note that (for example, among many other prior property systems) the feudal system of property that preceded the capitalist system also was not bourgeios private propety, so what is common between that and the capitalist system is not essentially bourgeois property. The distinctive, defining element of the bourgeois property system is marketable property in means of production to which rented wage labor is applied, and it is principally that particular feature that Marx targets for elimination and replacement with control of the means of production by labor when he talks about elimination of bourgeois property.
>The distinctive, defining element of the bourgeois property system is marketable property in means of production to which rented wage labor is applied, and it is principally that particular feature that Marx targets for elimination and replacement with control of the means of production by labor when he talks about elimination of bourgeois property.
This at least points me in a direction of interest (Marx doesn't mention feudal property much in the Manifesto, but briefly reading about the historical relationship to property has piqued an interest. Surely other writings of his explore the concept more, and maybe even Hegel writes about it).
Marx in the manifesto:
>Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriations.
This also clears the focus a bit for me, even if I still don't have a solid position yet. I'm glad I poked the bear a little.
> money will become superfluous
Given your different perspective, what does he mean my this line? This one bit and the surrounding sentences is where I started to dismiss the text as quackery (compared to Das Kapital, which I did enjoy).
When hearing Marx say money will become useless, you've got to wonder what it means to have property. How do you become to posses a toothbrush if you didn't exchange money for it? Or do we go back to a barter economy?
I'd take this comment more seriously if you cited Marx in a primary text making this distinction, and not some secondary Wikipedia defense. Note that none of the citations in your copy/paste are from Marx himself.
Also, in the definitions given above, personal property could very well be private property, in cases where it was not "gained in a socially fair manner", which seems like a highly subjective criteria.
edit: for those who are silently downvoting, keep in mind that the poster I'm responding to criticized my 'surface level' reading of a primary text (which I readily admit to) and then, rather than presenting a more thorough understanding of the text, copy/pastes a vague summary of an argument, which fails to even properly make the distinction he wants to prove.
You must have missed it. And by it, I mean the whole document. Here's an extract from one of the dialogs:
> Question 3: How do you wish to achieve this aim? > Answer: By the elimination of private property and its replacement by community of property
More extracts:
> What will this new social order have to be like > ... Private property must, therefore, be abolished and in its place must come the common utilization of all instruments of production and the distribution of all products according to common agreement – in a word, what is called the communal ownership of goods.
And more:
> Finally, when all capital, all production, all exchange have been brought together in the hands of the nation, private property will disappear of its own accord, money will become superfluous, and production will so expand and man so change that society will be able to slough off whatever of its old economic habits may remain > > ... > > What will be the consequences of the ultimate disappearance of private property? > > ...
Karl Marx studied Property Law and his pamphlets before and after the Communist Manifesto were all about abolishing the personal ownership of property!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_property#Personal_ver...
So one thing Marx did say is that he wanted money to be "superfluous". If money would be useless, how do you get to own a toothbrush? Does that mean we either go back to a barter economy, or something like a social points system like Seasame Credit?
Also, speaking of false dichotomies, pinning this on the GOP is rather silly and plays into a false narrative. The Democratic party is just as much if not more entrenched in the halls of corporate and banking power. We live in an oligarchy (Chomsky calls it a polyarchy). They increasingly own the government and joust for the chance to assume high office.
Capitalism works best with good regulation but sadly the last several decades have been about eroding that understanding.
And now Texas is about to try to criminalize homelessness yet again, which I thought was settled in the 9th Circuit multiple times. Maybe it's the old "let's see what horribly-insensitive laws we can pass to rile up that other side but will probably be struck-down by the courts."
Robert Martin et al. v. City of Boise
Desertrain v. City of Los Angeles
See also https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-wef-idUSKBN2AP2...
>In a written update, she clarified that the piece aimed to “start a discussion about some of the pros and cons of the current technological development. When we are dealing with the future, it is not enough to work with reports. We should start discussions in many new ways. This is the intention with this piece.”
The "starting a discussion" is bullshit rhetoric under the guise of innocence, and you should be wiser than to believe these people don't have an agenda. No one "starts a discussion" without an agenda.
Ownership is an integral part of free societies and is immensely important for our economic system, which doesn't work any other way. People are not motivated to do their jobs properly without incentives, that's basic human nature and systems that tried going against this have failed every time in history.
In a capitalist system, you can have more central authority and planning, but it will lead to inefficiencies and corruption by design. The only way you can sustain such a system then is by increased oppression and censorship of the ill effects. China is a perfect model for this. It works well, granted, at the price of freedom. This is basically what they're steering western countries too as well, only with the billionaires in charge instead of the CCP.
I bought my mom a tv and a few months later she mentioned a new wifi network she didn't understand...turns out with an OTA update the TV now broadcasts its own Wifi network and lord knows what it does on it.
I would not have bought it under those terms, the terms changed, and now I have to take a loss to replace the TV with something that doesn't do that.
So instead, if the functionality of the device changes after the fact, the company who updated the app should be liable for cost to replace the device with a new one that doesn't have the new behaviour.
> I would not have bought it under those terms, the terms changed, and now I have to take a loss to replace the TV with something that doesn't do that.
Same as above: the terms didn't change and they aren't what it can do now; the terms are that this device might update functionality and that future change, if applied to your device, will be applied to your device under the current terms that allow it. If you don't like that, you don't have to use the device's software and you still have the right to hit the hardware you possess a hammer.
As for if you ethically should be entitled to a refund, well, how do you determine the point where someone is entitled to grievances? What if someone buys a $1000 laptop for the purpose of playing high-end games, but in 10 years game developers start dropping support for the old architecture it uses or new games simply don't run well on it. Should they be entitled to a refund? What if, on surface devices, Windows moves the start menu to the middle (a la Windows 10X), and you didn't expect that - does Microsoft now have to refund or replace your product?
Regarding:
> turns out with an OTA update the TV now broadcasts its own Wifi network and lord knows what it does on it.
That's probably a way to directly stream to the TV without a separate wifi network, or part of the setup experience (eg. connect to its wifi, type in your real wifi password, it shuts down the network then connects to your main wifi). They don't just throw extra wifi chips on their boards for no reason, so it's probably one of these.
Disagree. Starting a wifi network in my home I have no control over and can't disable was not part of the device feature set when I bought it, and I would not have bought it if it was.
The functionality that was lost was my ability to control the wifi my own devices make.
>Same as above: the terms didn't change and they aren't what it can do now; the terms are that this device might update functionality and that future change, if applied to your device, will be applied to your device under the current terms that allow it. If you don't like that, you don't have to use the device's software and you still have the right to hit the hardware you possess a hammer.
Disagree. The terms changed because the terms never contained an uncontrollable wifi network in my home. Terms of use that allow unending changes with no thought to consideration (in the legal sense) aren't contracts of any merit. Contracts that allow one side to unendingly damage the other side without consideration have no merit, no matter what anyone says.
If I hit it with a hammer I'm still out the money due to their changes to the device I purchased. I'm taking a loss due to changes in the terms that have no consideration and are different than the terms I agreed to.
>As for if you ethically should be entitled to a refund, well, how do you determine the point where someone is entitled to grievances?
There is no such thing as ethically being entitled to a refund. It's fantasy.
>That's probably a way to directly stream to the TV
The TV does it whether you're streaming or not. You can't disable it, there is no setting to turn it off. The TV is hardwired to the router and isn't streaming anything. Even if I was streaming to the TV, it would be on my own wifi network, on theirs. There's no reason for them to control a wifi network in my house, period.
"Smart" devices are just devices that act against your interest interest because 'the terms of service you agreed to when you set it up had unlimited changes for one party'.
> Contracts that allow one side to unendingly damage the other side without consideration have no merit, no matter what anyone says.
You'd probably have a hard time convincing a judge of damages given you have the option to turn this off and Amazon gave warning to customers about this functionality well in advance (November 24, 2020 is when I received the email https://i.judge.sh/right/Armor/chrome_lbf9jmauwR.png ).
> The TV does it whether you're streaming or not. You can't disable it, there is no setting to turn it off. The TV is hardwired to the router and isn't streaming anything. Even if I was streaming to the TV, it would be on my own wifi network, on theirs. There's no reason for them to control a wifi network in my house, period.
Probably just faulty engineering then, ie
if !wifi.connected:
wifi.enable_wifi_direct()
And this is what I mean by direct play:
I bought the device just as much for what it didn't do as what it did. It did not create its own wifi network against my wishes. Now it does. I am damaged because I have lost the ability to control the wifi networks in my home, unless I choose to take a loss on this TV and replace it.
>You'd probably have a hard time convincing a judge of damages
Again, the damages come from the cost of replacing this device with one that doesn't do what it was updated to do against my wishes. My TV isn't made by amazon, and has nothing to do with amazon, so your point about amazon warning users to 'opt-out' of being damaged by amazon doesn't matter. Amazon knows the great majority of old folks and idiots who buy their devices won't turn it off because they can't be bothered to read and 'AMAZON SIDEWALK' doesn't raise alarm bells like 'AMAZON STEAL YOUR INTERNET'.
>Probably just faulty engineering then, ie
Alternately, as you say, I'm unlikely to convince a judge that it's damage so they have no reason not to do it. They can do whatever they want and as long it wasn't disabling a feature, it's kosher. They could sell my location and browsing habits, they could check the network to see what other devices are on it and when they log in, the could do anything at all apparently.
> And this is what I mean by direct play:
My idea of direct play is an hdmi cable - its much more secure and doesnt' require any wifi at all.
https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/adv...
> In addition, an act or practice is unfair if the injury it causes, or is likely to cause, is: substantial, not outweighed by other benefits, and not reasonably avoidable.
> They could sell my location and browsing habits, they could check the network to see what other devices are on it and when they log in, the could do anything at all apparently.
Quite literally, yes, assuming you're in the United States and you check the box that specifies the terms of data collection. If you live in the E.U,, your GDPR rights mean they have to ask for explicit permission to do so.
> My idea of direct play is an hdmi cable - its much more secure and doesn't' require any wifi at all.
I'm not trying to be witty, i'm showing why devices might create their own wifi network and 'direct play' is just the name used on some TVs for wi-fi direct.
Making its own wifi network is not keeping it up to date. There's no reason for it to control it's own wifi network having to do with the keeping it up to date, that is a red herring.
If 'keeping things up to date' includes any predatory feature they can conceive of, then it's sort of meaningless.
>Quite literally, yes, assuming you're in the United States and you check the box that specifies the terms of data collection.
Terms they could update at any time to add any data, so are meaningless. Maybe I agreed to the terms of data collection before they updated the terms of data collection to new data collection. Now it's taking pictures of you sitting on the couch and selling them on onlyfans that's ok under the new terms that you agreed to forever by signing the previous terms that say they can change the terms whenever they want, and add 'features' like selling your pictures under the auspices of 'keeping your device up to date'.
That's the problem with one sided 'contracts' that don't have any consideration. They're vile and they're actively damaging. When attached to expensive physical goods it's almost certainly directly damaging.
>I'm not trying to be witty, i'm showing why devices might create their own wifi network and 'direct play' is just the name used on some TVs for wi-fi direct.
Again, it doesn't matter. I don't want it, it wasn't part of the TV when I bought it, I have no interest in a wifi network someone else controls attached to devices in my home or in my family's home, and it can't be disabled.
Adding this 'feature' has made the TV completely not ok with me. 'Keeping the device up to date' does not include make a wifi network broadcasting in my home against my wishes and outside of my control. That's some kind of dark corporate animal farm speak.
Oh, and the hardware isn't repairable and only has a 90 day warranty. It broke? Here's a 15%-off coupon to buy another landfill stuffer.
Seems like it's operated by customers at no cost to Amazon.
The key thing to understand is that devices providing access via Sidewalk aren’t broadcasting a wifi SSID. They’re using LoRA, a low bandwidth (kilobits/second at the most) long range radio protocol. Even if I wanted to I couldn’t connect to the network with standard consumer hardware to compromise your network.
On top LoRA Sidewalk implements what is essentially a tunnel to specific configured endpoints hosted by AWS. Traffic is routed without you having any control over that, so all a Sidewalk device can do is send packets to an endpoint associated with that device family.
Can we as a society for once stop making the airwaves proprietary?
> LoRa (Long Range) is a proprietary low-power wide-area network modulation technique. It is based on spread spectrum modulation techniques derived from chirp spread spectrum (CSS) technology. It was developed by Cycleo of Grenoble, France and acquired by Semtech, the founding member of the LoRa Alliance and it is patented.
It's proprietary, patented, and not open. It shouldn't be on the airwaves.
> Open the Alexa app . > Open More and select Settings. > Select Account Settings. > Select Amazon Sidewalk. > Turn Amazon Sidewalk On or Off for your account.
I don't see Amazon Sidewalk listed under Account Settings. Anyone seeing it?
Is there any mention anywhere that I missed about what devices qualify for this?
Edit: I also have a Ring doorbell - disabling Sidewalk for that was through the "Control Center" section of the Ring app.
> The Amazon webpage linked above says Sidewalk "is currently only available in the US."
https://old.reddit.com/r/HomeNetworking/comments/nnugs0/psa_...
It seems Amazon is ignoring the Opt Outs or resetting them for some reason that they arent clearly disclosing.
Note i cant really test because i dont keep these types of devices in my home. In fact i dont even install the Amazon app. I just set a bookmark on my homescreen in IOS for smile.amazon.com
Why can't we have nice things? Why are corporations so endlessly greedy...?
You(not you the poster, but generic you) are providing free money to amazon and Bezos' pet projects by defending Amazon and buying Alexa.
Previous discussion about this: https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Sidewalk/b?node=21328123011 via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27115809&p=2
The wireless tech behind this is called LoRa (Long Range) radio https://enterpriseiotinsights.com/20201208/channels/news/lor...
Most use cases I have head about base don LoRa radio are for tracking (clients send GPS coordinates once every 10 mins), transmitted packets are caught by one (or more?) gateway, which FWDs the packet to a server on the internet. I think ACKs can be sent back from the server, but not required.
Further reading - Physical layer = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoRa - network layer LoRaWAN = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoRa#LoRaWAN - helium network is also based on LoRa, see https://www.helium.com/lorawan and https://docs.helium.com/lorawan-on-helium/ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chirp_spread_spectrum
It's like running a Bitcoin mining station without paying electricity costs. Amazon should be paying your electric bill too.
Good thing I don't rely on HN comments for facts.
If you think the following statement on their site is false, please feel free to sue them:
Note: I think such laws are rediculous, but what liabilities is Amazon inviting to their users?
This has already been done by ISPs in several countries, Amazon is not breaking any ground here.
Nah, that’s not even a little bit the same. With the ISP versions they’re using _their_ bandwidth, not yours and they own every part of the user sign-on (making them, not you, responsible for abuse).
> During setup, the Echo connects to a local wireless network. After that, it is in constant contact with Amazon’s cloud environment. In fact, if the Echo is not connected to the Internet, it does not work, because all the voice commands are processed in the cloud, and not locally on the device.
https://www.napier.ac.uk/~/media/worktribe/output-2653851/us...
ridiculous
Opening the Alexa app
Opening More and selecting Settings
Selecting Account Settings
Selecting Amazon Sidewalk
Turning Amazon Sidewalk Off
I can't understand why people seem to be missing this. Make it optin and give people credit for providing this service to amazon. Seriously,the lack of these two make this whole thing so shady and duplicitous
Amazon makes billions upon billions. They could have easily paid the cost to roll this out.
Streaming is not owning. Buying a cheap device as a service is not owning. This is why the companies are fighting right to repair. And they don't care about long lived open standards.
This is privacy and ownership infriginjng.
In terms of privacy - my current traffic is monitored by my ISP (and data is sold). They say that this does even more but what - a lot of these systems actually encrypt and hide from ISP.
In that sense, the economics seem pretty comparable to ad support on the internet to me: By letting advertisers use your internet connection, processing power, screen space, and time, you get access to content that would otherwise be behind a paywall. And ads use up data caps and congest networks as well, in some cases even more so than the actual "pay"load!
I know that some people object to ads on the internet on the same grounds (usage of one's resources without compensation or consent), but this is a wholly different story from the liability issues that operating an open wi-fi hotspot can cause.
This stuff is designed for low power devices sending out a kb status update every few hours, otherwise they'd just put a normal wifi radio in it, and all the people here complaining that the Amazon devices they already put on their networks are now sending more data would just connect them to their wifi networks without an issue.
Good try though.
It would be pretty hypocritical for them to complain, since Xfinity and others already do this exact same thing.
[0] s02e02
Imagine what's available to those who work in multi terahertz bands with joyous abandon.
Alphas were good for that, but the financial industry (at least) wanted them too.
[1] Just to reduce interference from external WiFi, mostly as a curiosity
I hope amazon has some way of making sure that the person being raided searched, and interrogated is the person actually guilty of the crime, and some way of clearing up spoofing or proxying.
the intern may have coded it to only communicate with awass but the exploit that will undoubtedly drop soon will not care.
How does this work?
Does this mean wifi kindle? And you have to install the Alexa app to opt out and can't opt out through your browser or you kindle itself?
https://support.ring.com/hc/en-us/articles/360032492292-Side...
"This IP is creating spam, add to google/cloudflare/aws/whatever disallow-list"
2. Headphone jacks were never removed. They just replaced the legacy outdated 3.5mm jack with a USB C port instead. Both can handle the exact same analog audio, but one of them can handle much more.
No, why do you think so? I have bought my hardware from them to fulfil some purpose of mine. That doesn't give them the right to abuse my hardware for their profit.
> Headphone jacks were never removed.
Yes, they were removed.
I wonder how many other companies may be already doing it?
It's possible that Comcast's sharing could contribute to congestion, but this is different from having devices that your ISP doesn't know don't belong to you taking up some of your bandwidth and monthly caps.
They can't keep counterfeit items and scams out of their store, what makes you think they can manage who your internet is shared with?
Would that be possible?
just sit tight and wait, it will come soon.
No one signed up for this
https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-opt-out-of-amazon-sidewalk-5...
By default, a home BT router makes a second Wi-fi network available as a hotspot which any BT customer can log in to.
Means that there are maybe 5 million hotspots available to you as a BT customer.
Amazon is perfectly capable of shipping exploitable devices, as well as devices that stop receiving security updates.
we have communal low bandwidth wifi in my area following openwireless.org ideals. That requires trust from both parties. This is trust I couldn't have in Amazon/FB/Google to not fuck me over with a "free" service they provide
While I love the idea of the librem5, I don't love it $1200 more than my dumb phone.
Soon, every connected device in your home will share your internet?
I guess plausible deniability will get easier.
The only downside is that if you use your own equipment, the first thing they will do when you call for tech support is tell you that it is the fault of your equipment.
I would rather buy a second brand new one then pay Comcast an extra $15 per month... and that second router will pay for itself in just a few months. But most of the time, I don't have to do that.
However, I view this as a fantastic development and will probably buy at least one Amazon network device (IF I can find one without a microphone) because it enables some really useful functionality that I would love to see catch on.
It’s easy to bash it. But I hope it achieves critical mass for supporting IoT in most populous areas. If anyone has a hope of pulling this off, it would be Amazon.
But as you yourself know because you specifically don’t want an Amazon device with a microphone that the positives are for many outweighed by the part where it’s owned and operated by Amazon.
Worse, you’re right Amazon is in the limited group that can pull this off (largely because this is explicitly opt-out instead of opt-in) but it’s also this behavior that makes the whole thing gross and unpalatable.
We shouldn’t be paying for corporate spy robots in our own homes. We shouldn’t be subsidizing an Amazon-specific mesh network to make Amazon’s products work better. Even if this gets extended to third parties those third parties are going to have to play ball with Amazon to use it.
There is a version of this that could benefit everyone but as it is this really only benefits Amazon and that’s a net negative for everyone in my opinion.
For most (>75%) of households it will be a under two dozen megabytes. For urban dwellers who see a lot more devices pass them by, I'd back-of-napkin estimate 99.9% will see under 100MB.
It's a feel-bad situation, but this IS an example of the press riding what ought to be a non-issue. This really isn't much of a problem.
Alas Amazon is also not doing themselves any favors. There doesn't seem to be any visibility afforded to those whose networks they are using. There's no charts, no bandwidth used, nothing. Amazon seems content to just take. I really think Amazon's ask here is very small, especially/at least for the first couple years, and I'm even ok with them just taking- net bandwidth will look like a firmware update or two- but there should at least be some respect, some visibility into what is happening, somewhere.
Without being able to see anything, no one is fit to judge whether it's a problem or not. By just taking, by not making a view, Amazon is turning a non-issue into a real issue.