maestro64

First, HTC is known in the industry as an ODM more than EMS or CM, ODM is original design manufacturer, verses a contract manufacturer. The primary difference is you can go to ODM and ask them to put your name on their product or  provide them a concept of a design with design specs and they have engineers on staff who can actually design the hardware then hand it over to the manufacturing arm to make. CM can not design anything they just put things together, you have to provide them all the design files and everything. Apple only uses CM, apple does all the hard work even down to designing some of the manufacturing technology to build the product.

My understanding of what Google did with Nexus and Pixel is the following: Nexus they went to HTC and others and said give them a phone they can put their name on. That obviously did not work well so they step up to the next level and put together a design spec for a phone and then went to HTC and ask them to design and build a phone to Google designs specs. Google does not have the thousands of hardware design engineers it take to design a phone from scratch and do all the necessary testing and such. "Their Design" was them taking reference designs from chip manufacturers and put them together with their design and performance spec and handed that over to HTC and had their thousands of engineers go to work can come up with an original design which Google approved then HTC made the product for them. 

The reason Google fails is because they see no value in the hardware, this company is run by a bunch of software types and they see hardware only a means to the end like using a pencil to write on paper. The words on the paper have more value to them and who made the paper and pencil. Forget the fact some pencils and paper are far better than other so if you want your written words to out last the writer then it requires better lead in the pencil and the paper has to be of a quality which will not deteriorate over time. Google may have great feature in software but if the hardware that runs it is subpar than know one will know how good it is. 

This is something Steve Jobs always understood, you can not change the world if your work can not our last its creator.

doggone said:

I have the Ring doorbell and I don't necessarily see what use there would be in getting onto the home network.  The app works well by itself and notifications are handled well.
It is a shame that Ring was bought by Amazon since I do not trust their use of data.  Unfortunately, I bought the device about 2 months before and cannot do anything about it now.

if you want to see who is ringing your doorbell when your not home it has to connect to your wireless network in your house. This is one of the features that Ring and others heavily advertise. We all know Amazon bought ring so they can offer the service to drop packages inside your door if you give them security access to your house like the door lock and camera so they can send you a picture of your package being delivered. 

rogifan_new said:

maestro64 said:

Soli said:

racerhomie3 said:

Poor people should not have any privacy.

I hope that's just a joke.

Most likely it is, but it net result of the current situation. Google and others are taking advantage of the fact that most people can not afford the things they want so they give up privacy to have it. Apple has chosen not to make money off the backs of someone privacy.

Hmm...I can afford (and do own) Apple products yet I sometimes use Google (and others services). Why? Because they’re better. I think this whole privacy thing is overrated. If Netflix knows my watch history so its recommendations to me are better I don’t consider that a bad thing. And is Google actually collecting single person by name specific information and selling that to advertisers? Or is it just anonymized? If it’s the latter, why should I care if the services provided are better because of it?

Since you think privacy is overrate, how about you share with me your User ID and Passwords on all your email accounts. I would be more than happen to see if your life is that boring no one would be interest in it.

I agree Netflix using my usage to help me find new shows on their service is not bad since they only know what I am watching on their service and not sharing my watch habits with other people. I do not mind someone using my direct activity with them to help better serve me and provide me a better experience. This is not what Google and others are doing, and you can not be 100% sure it anonymized.

I will give you a concrete examples. I live in my house with my wife and two kids. We all have the same internet Public IP address to the outside world. Google does not know who I am specifically since I block and filter traffic on computer when i am not using my VPN, but most times google knows my Public IP. Since doing this I beginning to see ads which do not even come close to my person interest or internet activity. At first I though google advertising algorithm went haywire. Turns out what I was seeing on my computer was related to things my daughter was searching for. How do I know, she mentioned one day she was looking for something very specific and it turns out it was one of the ads showing up on my computer. For all google knew it was the same person at the same public IP address they were sending ads to. Do you really think my daughter wants her dad knowing the type of underwear she was searching for on the internet, Google just invader her privacy and share it with me.

If this one does not hit home for you, imagine you are at home looking something up on the internet about something you really do not want others to know about. Google through time has connected your work and home computers so they know for sure you are the same person at both locations. You have someone in your office or your in a conference room doing a presentation and you put up a website which uses ad sense from google and all of a sudden ads for the information you were looking for begin showing up on the website. Most people my not notice, but people will realize those ads are specific to you and now they know your secret.

Both of these happen to me, The first one my daughter does not know since I choose not to embarrass her and I fix her computer to only use our VPN now. The second one I was not embarrass since it was something everyone who knew me knows that I work on old cars and all kinds of car part ads were showing up. But I release what I do in the privacy of my home can now show up at work, all thanks to google.

dewme said:

gatorguy said:

dewme said:

I cannot access the WSJ article due to the paywall but I assume the gist of the story has to do with third party apps being granted access to your Gmail inbox, not the (lack of?) privacy of Gmail itself. I've been using an app call TripIt that constantly asks me whether I want to allow it to scan my Gmail inbox. I always answer NO. I do forward travel related confirmation emails to TripIt so it can produce a convenient timeline with reservation confirmation numbers, links to relevant map information, reminders, etc.

It's very obvious to me what the ramifications would be of granting anyone or anything access to my Gmail inbox. While I don't knowingly allow access to my Gmail account, if I did I would have to treat the particular email account as essentially semi-public/unprotected and make sure I don't have anything in my inbox that I do not wish to share. Additionally, I would be ethically and morally compelled to let everyone I share the Gmail address with know that responding to me via that address places the contents of their email in the same unprotected category.

At some point, like several years ago, we were all aware that the privacy of many services was sketchy at best. We all knew, or should have known if we actually read EULAs and privacy statements, that there was little to no expectation of privacy with some apps, especially the freebies. We still engaged in unprotected communication and poor cyberhygiene nevertheless. I'm as guilty as anyone and have tried to regain control of the situation. However, there's no way to recall all of the horses that have already left the barn and if nasty warts, uncontrolled drips, or itchy rashes start showing up on one of my "unprotected" email accounts it will not be a huge surprise, especially where Google is involved.

If you catch something from Google, please don't feign surprise. You knew it, it smelled bad, and you did it anyway.

As long as you realize it's not specific to Google and GMail. Yahoo, Microsoft, "most major email providers" as well IIRC according to the source, and as far as I can tell including Apple? Everyone suddenly went silent when I asked for confirmation. Do you perhaps know? If you install Spark or Airmail on your Mac or iPhone can it access, aka "Read", an email I send you?

I assume Google isn't the only stinky email provider. I assume Yahoo, Outlook.com, and other services are similar. In this case it sounds like Google is allowing apps access to your inbox at the Google servers, not on your machine. 

The email pricey and security issue is a real problem for not only casual/home users but for corporate users as well. It is very easy for sensitive corporate information to leak out. One company I worked for required every email footer to have a disclaimer stating that if a recipient received the email in error - delete it. That's beyond naive and somewhat laughable. The only system that comes close to working is to have an air-gapped email system with no interconnects at all. But even then people find ways to cross the air gap including transcribing emails, copy & paste, etc. There's probably better ways to solve this issue with blockchain but for the average Schmo all we can do is use encryption, e.g., PGP, and try to have something akin to an air gapped setup by using different email accounts for different transactions and different levels of sharing. I just don't believe that services like Gmail will ever be truly secure or private because there's nothing in it for Google to make it that way. Finally, based on the popularity of services like Facebook, most people don't care about privacy.

To your point, this is something many people and companies do not understand, by allowing sensitive, private, company confidential information to resided outside the corporation, any claims you my have to protect that information is limited. If you try to sue someone and claim the information is private or confidential and the other party can show you did not do everything possible to protect the information your case may be mute, since you do not have control over information stored on Google servers. There is already case law on this subject, companies loss cases since the other side show the company did not take simple precaution to protect their information just saying it confidential is not enough anymore.

The pervious company I worked for required all external communication which contained company confidential information had to be encrypted with PGP since we have no idea where the information would be routed and stored. Only the end recipient had the key to decrypt the email.

Okay that was really funny, Gavin's response was good, took it all in stride.

Not sure what is going on with Siri lately, but I had this happen recently seem to puck up what is thought was hey say and begin listening to what you said next and tried to give you an answer.

I was Watching the World cup and they had Hey Siri advertisement that it would tell you the latest standings and my homepod heard the hey sire world cup and it began rattling of the current standings