Better to feed it irrelevant or wrong data rather than no data. If you’re a black hole you stand out. If the data you produce looks plausible but is inaccurate you blend in and get lost in the noise.

Oh I do that at work and on the work phone, I love feeding it delicious amount of nonsense.

Plenty of old people who are fairly off grid so I don't stand out.. yet.

I'm sure my demographic file is mighty different than most though.

We have fiber to the house and no phone/cable, but excellent comment nonetheless.

I have a couple of whole house surge protectors in the panels, but in our case the lightning hit the roof gable - so it didn't come in via the power lines. But it was REALLY interesting figuring out the path it took back to ground. Hit a peak, traveled down some trim, jumped to some roof flashing (blew a hole in the shingles) at a small soffit/roof by the garage door, then to the soffit trim that is around the entire house. From there, it jumped to the grounded cans of the soffit lights outside (including a flood light out back).

Crazy stuff, for sure.
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I like my home as I like my women. Dumb as a box of rocks!

Sheeple....it never ends.

All of these devices - anything with the word 'smart' in it - are the end of civilization. Or, your privacy and bank account, at least. Why would anyone want their power usage connected to some outside entity?

I recently saw a note that power companies were considering turning off your 'smart' thermostat so you couldn't run too much AC in the summer. Lovely.

I've had friends in the medical industry tell me all of your personal medical data/history is stored online in servers...in India. So much for medical privacy....

Then we have people who willingly sign up to let their insurance company monitor to their driving under the guise of 'saving money' for being a safe driver.

Now BMW is planning to charge customers a subscription fee each month to 'unlock' their car's features.

All of it....the product of people who are otherwise useless. No real skills or talents? Peek into your neighbor's pockets.

I have had a smart electric meter for over 10 years. It reads every 15 minutes. I'm sure all the usage data is stored on a web server because one can access it.
Hundreds of companies have been hacked and our personal data stolen many times over. Our cable, satellite, phone and internet usage is captured and sold.

I don't necessarily want my info out there but I feel it is too late to do much about it.

Never too late.

Name sounds racist.

The important stuff I definitely wouldn't go the smart home route. But lights, leak sensors, and motion sensors - I'm good with it. Easy to just unplug the box if it gets intrusive.

Since you're from Texas perhaps you can understand this. Those smart thermostats are to reduce demand on the grid. The exact opposite of the end of civilization. It can actually make the grid more stable. Or you can enjoy freezing your ass off when ERCOT can't supply enough energy. Have fun with your economic freedum.

Edit: Watch this and learn something. We are a little more connected than you think.

You will own nothing an like it.

Of course they would. Their entire goal is to NOT pay people out. That's how they make money.

That tab has the same copper thickness as a 12guage wire, even on 15 amp rated outlets the tested feed thru is over 20 amps, I wouldn't worry about those at all. That outlet in the pic looks melted at the top plug. But you aren't wrong in what you say, better to use pigtail type connections and keep the heat down at the outlets.

If only more people understood this. I have seen insurance companies deny claims for utterly trivial items.

Fighting with mine now over the surgery I just had on my back, they are trying to claim I did not have physical therapy first.

1) ignoring the fact the issue is documented for 15 years and PT was tried then.

2) The director of PT at work looked at my MRI and stated there is no way in hell they would even consider it.

They are just mad after various insurance companies kicked the can down the road this particular one got left holding the bag.

They lost, but still arguing some aspects "are not in network " which they will lose as well since they have already admitted the hospital is in network and thus anything done there is covered.

“Here insurance company, have some of my personal data and I’ll pay you to take it by buying your product”. Wow. The less any entity knows about you the better. The cats out of the bag argument, I don’t get at all. Like saying I’ve been punched 5 times, may as well keep punching me.

"Since you're from Texas perhaps you can understand this. Those smart thermostats are to reduce demand on the grid. The exact opposite of the end of civilization. It can actually make the grid more stable. Or you can enjoy freezing your ass off when ERCOT can't supply enough energy. Have fun with your economic freedum."

I love it...The idea that 'they' know what's best for me...

Here's a more enlightened idea - there is no need to reduce demand on the grid. Why would there be? It's not like there is a deficit if generation capability. What you're really seeing, again, is how people are led like sheep by the nose. The reason they want to reduce grid demand is purely economic...they had their MBA's do all the math and they've figured out that they can maximize their profits (and drive tree-hugging goals) by limiting power.

Why lay out more capital to invest in additional generation when you can make sure the generation you already have is running with its tongue hanging out, 24 hours a day? The idea that the power company has a responsibility to serve the market is old school; now nothing matters but making sure the profit stays above 25%.

Why maintain a staff of experienced plant engineers and grid operators to keep everything running smoothly, when you can reduce staff count, hire people off the street, and let the shit roll downhill? Out of chaos comes profits.

The power grid problems we've seen are a 100% result of incompetence married to greed. The grid can be as stable as it was 10 or 30 years ago....no need to reach into people's houses.

Evidence please.

One of the asinine things to come out of the Texas fiasco was one reason there was gas shortages was "to be green" the pumps for the pipelines were electric.

Prior to that, the pumps actually ran on the gas in the pipe. If there was gas in the pipe, the pumps ran. When you swap to electric pumps, when the electric stops the gas flow stops regardless of if there is product in the pipe or not.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Hyundai/Kia already do this. Nav mapping, remote start, pay each month or lose it. Bad enough NO ONE reads their owners manuals, now they come in angry their radios stopped working.

The microphones were disguised as capacitors. They weren't intended to be discovered.

You would think this should all be disclosed at the time of signing.

Depends on salesman and how much the customer gets overwhelmed with new car info. It’s all there. Doesn’t make it right at all. Shady AF.
CEO of HMA was asked why and he alluded to non-needed vehicle add ons that are monitored via customers phones and hot spot radio functions while driving so they are a subscription service controlled on manufacturers servers.

Geez, you and your ‘prove it with evidence.’

Internet man, internet. Not the real world.

I don’t think that’s true. I believe the mics were in Nest Secure hubs.
https://www.cnet.com/home/smart-home/google-calls-nests-hidden-microphone-an-error/

Sorry if I got the device wrong, I wasn't aware Nest made more than one device.

I just assumed it was the thermostat they have been whoring out at the big box stores endlessly. You can't walk into a hardware store without someone pushing one in your face.

Which means Googles press release was an utter lie of course.

If it was hidden, odds are you are up to no good.

100%. Google was only found out because a researcher was getting interference and couldn't figure out why, so he went component by component testing and discovered that what was made to look like a capacitor was actually a microphone. Google has become every bit as evil as Facebook, they're just harder to cut our of our lives.

OK,SO,whats this got to do with pinball?? I see the tie-in with power!

Evidence please.

They put 'smart meters' in place here and then pulled them all out after some started catching fire.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/saskpower-to-remove-105-000-smart-meters-following-fires-1.2723046

Rob

Thought it would be easy to bring up because I remember reading the paper clearly before it hit the fan. Now all the news stories I can find are saying Nest announcing that their Nest Guard would support alexa is when people realized there was a unlisted mic in the product. In any case, both versions have Google "forgetting" to tell customers remote local surveillance hardware was in their non-remote-local-surveillance-required product.

Thanks for looking, I couldn’t find anything about it being a hidden mic disguised as a capacitor either. Safe to say that’s probably a Q-Anon level piece of misinformation.

Agreed it was shady to leave the mic off the spec sheet but on a stand alone security product I can see the utility of your security system sending an alert if it detects glass breaking or several other uses.

Looks like it’s discontinued now but Google’s stake in ADT may indicate their security products aren’t completely dead. https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/3/21352360/google-adt-investment-nest-smart-home-security-alarms-machine-learning-alerts

It was a legit research paper, but since then the market has made mics that look like capacitors available, so it may have just been that the Nest product was the first consumer product to have them and mix that with the undocumented inclusion, looked suspect and made for some very bad PR.

In thermostats there's a lot of bad juju with china taking over that market and siphoning the data. Honeywell spun off their consumer thermostat division into Resideo, and even though the new company LOOKS American on the surface, it's actually Chinese, which users poo-poohing the spinoff's chinese connection found out. With the latest update all traffic now goes to Chinese servers, which was only a matter of time once the Chinese bought it, and has freaked some out (as it should).

If you want home automation with an integrated thermostat, you have to have an older honeywell unit (when they were part of honeywell proper and their defense contracts made chinese server talk a no-no) and give up newer cool features or go with an Ecobee, which as far as I can tell is the only thermostat company that's not google/nest or Chinese owned.

Could you post a link to that research paper?

That's the problem, I can't find it now. The results all come back with news stories and not the actual security researcher's paper that found it. It's tough when the responsible party also ranks information on the search engine to find stuff about them (and all other search engines are terrible).

Wouldn't be the first time Google downranked negative stuff about them to make it harder to find. When there's negative appeals or ruling results (for them) in the 12-years-and-running-DDR seminal patent IP theft case Netlist has sued them for and won multiple ways you will often find the results nowhere on the top google results for the day's financial news, but if you search bing, they're right at the top. Has happened many times. They say they don't do it, but they do. Just like Twitter says they don't shadowban, but there are checkers that prove on demand it's been done.

No such research paper exists. I’m disappointed that you’re pushing this baseless conspiracy theory because I expected better from you based on your generally high quality posts.

The microphone was “discovered” Feb 4th 2019 when GOOGLE announced “ The Google Assistant will be available on your Nest Guard”.

Here is the announcement:
https://www.blog.google/products/assistant/nest-secure-google-assistant/

Business Insider broke the story but it’s behind a paywall:
https://www.businessinsider.com/nest-microphone-was-never-supposed-to-be-a-secret-2019-2

As I said, that's all I was finding now as well, but I have a clear memory of reading a paper about it from a researcher. Maybe that paper was bogus and that's why I can't find it now. Dunno. I didn't sponsor the research or make the paper.

However, it doesn't change the material facts of the transgression by Google, slipping a mic into a product with literally no notice or listing that there was a mic in it until AFTER the public freaked out, which was only acknowledged TWO YEARS after it was released and had been used in people's homes all that time. It's not a conspiracy if it's true.

And how did Business Insider find out? Do they have thier own lab?

Google has made it abundantly clear they are not to be trusted. Giving them the benefit of doubt by this point would be considered foolish.

Not to mention, you do find something and then its behind a paywall.

Yeah guys stop worrying about all this Q level nonsense. Who cares if theres microphones in your smart devices? Its for your benefit and theres no way it could ever go badly for you!

Back in 2012
https://www.wired.com/2012/03/petraeus-tv-remote/

https://time.com/5568815/amazon-workers-listen-to-alexa/

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/technology/lawsuits-say-siri-and-google-are-listening-even-when-theyre-not-supposed-to/

No, you have it wrong. I don't understand (nor do I care to) how folks mind's have this pathological thought process where everything is political and think that "they" (the bad guys) know what is best for you. Not the point in this instance, at all.

In this case, "they" are the power company and are trying to protect "their" grid. It is a numbers game, economics as you mention. Not some sort of "agenda" from the people you don't like.

If folks in on my grid, Ameren, do this they get a subsidized T-stat and an annual rebate. It is much less expensive to do this than build another power plant. This is America, what do you have against profits? Based on some of the rhetoric you are spouting off, I am scratching my head that you are acting like this is a bad thing? Profits matter, everything else be dammed, right? Anything other then that is (you fill in the blank)!

That being said, the current and inevitable continual population increases will keep stretching the grid. No, I'm sure the number of electric meters, heaters and air conditioners are much higher now than they were 10 to 30 years ago. But hey, you are Texas! No need to interconnect to other grids, rugged individualism right? You won't be told what to do! Well, the past few hiccups in the power supply have shown that maybe working together might be a better way to go. Or you can just go to Cancun when things get cold.

Maybe using sources of electricity that reliable would help more.

I looked this up yesterday and looks like State Farm only offers this in 5 states right now. They wanted me to put a monitoring device in my car for a 10% premium savings and I said no thanks. I would use this Ting device though.

Class action lawsuit with snapchat if you live in IL. Shocker, those cute filters you can use store your face data and is used to keep a profile of you and other stuff and oopsie they also forgot to tell you about that. Make sure you sign up for the settlement if you've used a filter in snapchat between like 2015 and 2020 and you live in IL. I'm not sure if other states are in on the class action or not

The fact is that there was a hidden microphone regardless of how it was identified. Not a cOnSpiRaCy tHeOry...

Kind of stupid to tell the world about a microphone you want to remain hidden isn’t it?
The baseless conspiracy theory part is the ridiculous claim that it was a hidden microphone, disguised so people couldn’t find it.

The reality is the product had been shipping with a normal embedded microphone for more than two years before GOOGLE announced the product was getting Google Assistant functionality.

The shady part is there was no mic on the spec sheet so practically no one knew it was there before Google announced it.

Occam’s Razor applies.

I completely agree but unfortunately in this instance the stalwarts, gas and coal, fell on their faces. The renewables are nowhere near ready to take on that load. Hence being interconnected would increase reliability by a lot.