The news yesterday in the tech world was that Google pulled $3.2 billion out of petty cash to purchase Nest Technologies, a three year old company that manufactures and sells household thermostats and smoke alarms that connect to the internet via wi-fi.
Nest makes some interesting things; take a look at the Nest website. The thermostat learns your activities and preferences for temperature settings, and after a learning period automatically adjusts heating and cooling for both maximum comfort and maximum efficiency. A Nest owner can even control household temperature from a smartphone or a pad.
Nest collects energy use data for your home and sends you a monthly report detailing the money you saved via increased energy efficiency. Google bought Nest because Google wants to enter the meter reading market and Nest is a good fit for that. Google wants to electronically read your electric and natural gas meters and transmit that information to your utility companies, thus eliminating the utility companies need for meter reader employees.
Because I wrote this on Blogger and you are reading it on Blogger, we are connected to Google. You may have a Gmail address, you probably use the Google maps and internet search engine. You can buy wi-fi enabled kitchen and laundry appliances. Wi-Fi enabled home security and electric lighting systems have been on the market for a few years already. Android smartphones are Google enabled. Some new cars have Android infotainment systems. Life is becoming all Google, all the time.
Google knows where you live and probably what your home looks like from the street. It knows how much your home costs, and the amount of its property taxes. In fact, Google knows darn near everything about you. And Google can use that information as is sees fit.
Have you ever read the privacy section of an End User License Agreement? No? I'll summarize: You agree to have no privacy, period. Your information are belong to Google. You can go here to learn what Google has inferred form your computer usage. And that's just the part they will show you. It isn't for nothing that government agencies and advertisers pay Google for information.
So, how connected do you want to be? You're probably pretty well connected already. Wait until hackers start messing with Nest and other home control systems. Come home to frozen water pipes, or unlocked doors, or maybe even theft if hackers determine you've been away the same time every day.
The only way to be unconnected these days it to leave the internet, never use email, get rid of your cell phone, stop surfing, stop shopping, stop reading blogs, stop using inline banking. In short: cut all the wires with the outside world.
Still want to be connected?
18 comments:
You're preaching to the choir here Haz-man. "Smart" electrical grids may be "efficient" under ideal conditions, but they're extremely "brittle" in that destructive cascade/scow-balling effects are easily introduced which can take the entire nat grid down--whether from natural causes like solar flares, hacking, or EMP induced by nuclear weapons--all of which could easily put the US back in the pre-electricity in a matter of seconds for years resulting in the end of society as we know it and mass deaths of hundreds of millions from starvation and weather effects.
Alternatively, such "smart grids" allow the government to order our lives by determining what temp we set our thermostats, when one can wash ones clothes, and monitor what TV and movies we watch.
We both as individuals and collectively as a society would be far "safer" from dysfunctional/fatal/tyrannical events were things like the electrical grid, etc., "stove-piped" at the State and regional level and key parts of the grid taken of the digital internet and returned to stand-alone analogue electro-mechanical switching systems, etc. It would be less "efficient" in both the technical and economic sense, but
VASTLY more redundant and far more immune/resistant to civilization and/or freedom destroying events/politics.
#sorry for all the typos--spell-check is my friend, but I should visit her more..
And risk getting hit by a Kerry flung potato? No way.
I'll stay indoors for as long as I can... besides, I got a cold northern vortex hunting me for my tropical skin ;)
"Snapshot" by Progressive. The Government wants to monitor our driving as well, and tax us by the mile.
All of it is for taxing-hiking purposes, anyway. All of it.
Living off the google/government grid sounds appealing. How to actually do it? Life isn't comfortable without all the wires.
For a bit of irony I Googled 'living off the grid'.
Millions of entries.
Not to mention forgoing April Apples pearls of wisdom.
I don't think I'm ready for that.
Google opt-out is like a dreary lifeless prison camp. They do that on purpose.
I cannot afford all those electronic gadgets like Nest. So until the google-government forces me to buy it, I'm safe!*whew*
(the government would never force me to purchase something I didn't want to buy.)
"The thermostat learns your activities and preferences for temperature settings, and after a learning period automatically adjusts heating and cooling for both maximum comfort and maximum efficiency"
Artificial intelligence.
We have wayyyy too much of that already.
It's been a long time since I've carved a whole chicken.
I was about to purchase a Nest thermostat. Actually, a Texas utility company will provide them one is you use them for Residential service. The ad for them wasn't all that convincing, but I like the idea of being able to remotely manage my thermostat, as it is rather inconveniently placed (although some what ideal for the poor zonal coverage that is our home air conditioning system).
In Houston, the weather can go from freezing cold to balmy pretty quick during the winter. The Nest also doesn't require you to switch from cool to warm system modes, like my current thermostat.
Alas, I don't trust Google with my information.
"The thermostat learns your activities and preferences for temperature settings, and after a learning period automatically adjusts heating and cooling for both maximum comfort and maximum efficiency"
No matter WHAT the actual outside temperature or weather conditions in the world are. You will be adjusted to the maximum efficiency that the computer THINKS you should have.
In CA PG&E went to the "Smart Meters" which are supposed to read your usage and send it electronically to the mother ship. The downside was, the smart meters were not reading correctly especially if they were positioned in the sun and reached internal temperatures that baked the components. They interfered with other wireless objects in your house including medical devices...gee what could go wrong.
We opted out in writing and pay and additional fee to have a real person come and read the meters (we have a gas meter in one location and two electric meters in others). I like it, because I feel like I'm giving someone a job and Big Brother doesn't need to be monitoring my utility usage. I'll pay for what I use and what I think I can afford. If I want to turn my thermostat up to 80 degrees and run around the house in the buff....that is only my business.
Actually, our home is very energy efficient and uses solar contribution for heating, zone heating and is very well insulated. Still.....none of their business.
We are so rural, that Google doesn't know much about us. If we use Google maps as a starting point for a trip....everyone starts out in the middle of the valley at an old historic church. LOL.
Many people in this area do not have fancy schmancy heating cooling systems.
Wood stoves. Swamp Coolers. Propane heaters. Also no municipal or public water systems in the majority of the area. Wells, pumps, septic tanks. Whole house generator back ups for when the power, always, goes out. Some people ARE completely off the grid. It isn't that hard to do. Call phone reception is spotty and unreliable. You have to park at that historical church and hold your mouth just right to get really good reception. Maybe that's why Google thinks we all live there? I don't even have a cell phone.
Most people do not have internet access at all, unless they have a satellite system. They are too far from any wired availability. We are luckily placed to have availability through our telephone system of a high speed connection. We are the exceptions.
If the NSA or anyone wants to track my internet usage, they are going to be really bored. Ravelry, Knitting Daily, a few blogs like this, some archeology blogs, shopping on Amazon and Zappos. The Kahn Academy (brushing up on my algebra for fun). Reddit. [if it says NSFW or NSFL really....believe it and do not click]
Americans have willingly and perhaps unknowingly given up their rights to privacy and freedom, especially in the last five years.
Obama wants to close the coal powered electric generators that provide about 40% of our power. How to make that up? Easy, the government uses smart tech to control how you heat, cool and light your home.
Using too much gasoline? Beginning with model year 2014, the black box in your car tracks where, how far, and how fast the car is driven. You can be fined and taxed.
The NSA knows everything about you. Everything.
The IRS because of ObamaCare has limitless power to access your financial information. Complain about your premium and you'll be told that you need to sell one of your cars, or buy a home with a smaller mortgage payment, etc.
Drones can watch how you use your land. The government can look in your windows and listen to your telephone conversations.
How much more freedom are you willing to give up?
Ha ha, it's mostly blank for me, and the "interests" based on my searches are mostly things that are in fact not interests of mine. I read widely and curiosity-Google a lot, which has little to do with what I actually might buy.
They're flat not trusted. Not Google, not the city or state or fed. It takes only an ideologue and BAM they decide how much air conditioning you're having, instead of fortifying the grid or whatever. Too easy.
I like the kind of thermostat that i go up to and it does what I tell it. No lip.
I'm on my third set of washer/dryer since moving in. They are all great. I had no problem at all. The new one turns on all kind of lights and forces an array of difficult decisions.
Incidentally, I learned though all that, the way the choices are arranged; cotton, mixed, white, wool, hand wash, something, something, infant, suggest that infant setting is most gentle of all. You know, gentle babies and all that. No. Not so. That is the setting that allows extra super-duper hot and a much longer cycle, mostly of it just sitting there. The intermittent rests between sloshing are stretched to the maximum for extended time. It makes sense. Barf and poo and wee and snotty nose and all the gushy things that come out of stinky babies.
Like a circus, a circle of lights go on, a visually stunning and confusing and annoying array. So if I just go, "Screw it." Whap. "Just do it, bitch." Ignore all the lights, skip all the choice, hit "GO!" It does. All nonsense lights shut off. Like Data on Star Trek shutting up. It reasonably assumes you mean ordinary cotton and gives you regular cycle, warm, cold. The default setting for impatient dunces.
I was about to leave to go somewhere I go every week, and I looked at my Android phone to see the time. A box popped up listing the usual weekly destination with estimated travel time. Little creepy.
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