Amazon details its low-bandwidth Sidewalk neighborhood network(techcrunch.com) |
Amazon details its low-bandwidth Sidewalk neighborhood network(techcrunch.com) |
That's why I also own shares in the company. They are just too damned sticky and too damned good at so many things.
It reminds me of that scene from Clerks II. It's the most disgusting company I've ever seen... but I can't make myself move away.
Anything you can buy on Amazon can be bought somewhere else online. Usually you can buy products directly from a companies website and cut out all the middle men.
And its not even much effort to do so. Finding an alternative place to buy a product takes just a single Google search
a company like Arris that sells DOCSIS3/3.1 cablemodems and GPON end user CPEs to big ISPs like Shaw, Comcast, Charter, Wave/RCN, etc. The main problem with that concept is that if a manufacturer of residential CPEs such as Arris made a unilateral decision to incorporate the tech into their cablemodems and other devices, their $BIGISP customers might not be pleased about it and would buy elsewhere.
https://starry.com/ and https://volkfi.com/ are doing their bits.
The problem with this was that you had to know somebody who would be willing to be the other side of your connection. That obviously didn't scale very well.
Portland tried having a [free WiFi](https://www.oregonlive.com/breakingnews/2008/06/portlands_wi...) setup with antennas mounted on streetlights. The goal was to have 95% of the city covered but most people needed a signal booster to reach the antennas and very few people did that. My guess is that even if they did that the bandwidth would have been really slow.
There have been a couple of attempts to do a mesh network in Portland with hobbyists but it's really hard. People have moved from computers to phones, tablets, and dedicated devices like Rokus or smart TVs.
A tech support manager I worked with said "these people don't want to be taught how to catch a fish. They want us to catch the fish, cook it, and serve it with a smile."
Some people are OK with amateur performance - there's no internet because Betty went away for the weekend and isn't there to re-boot the router - but most people aren't.
The alternative, a network that is not fast and reliable enough for home internet use, is another option. But in that case, what IS it useful for? These efforts usually just end up turning into weekly hack nights / hangouts for the mesh group, since there’s no real point in putting up hardware.
A third hurdle is that if you put together 12 random nerds in a hacker space, the odds that any of them can see any of the other nerds houses from their house is basically zero. Since wireless internet radios require line of sight, it’s very hard to even create the first link in the network in this scenario. Getting critical mass to form any kind of network in a neighborhood requires door to door sales, something that most mesh networking nerds are very bad at.
I’m coming from a position of limited knowledge on both platforms, so curious.
https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/10/8/20903536/amazon-ring-do...
Makes you wonder that even if you choose not to share with police, if your amazon devices will help someone else's device do so...
Otherwise no.
I think it states 500mb cap for device to device comms. That's a decent pipe for comms.
Alot of you are devs, let your mind run wild with the data you could collect and sell, and then tell me if anything amzaon released yesterday isn't creppy.
You mean entirely new ways to get our data?
Why do you think Google home devices are sold at a loss?
It is so painful to watch Comcast fail a completely captive customer base in IoT. It would be so easy for them to become the centerpiece of a wide array of independent companies developing devices. Instead they hand the customers to Gooplezon for zero benefit.
Comcast, you ignored my job application to do this for you years ago. That’s okay; I will consult for you for free, and you will become the good guys in this market.
Basically with the fixed Amazon endpoint it bypasses direct illegal activity and general network abuse. Of course this means that everything goes through Amazon and that if someone gets your IP from Amazon you still might have some difficulty.
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/G/01/sidewalk/privacy_secu...
Per day? Per month? Per year? For the device's lifetime?
Doesn’t that make it the very definition of a mesh network?
Education has come to a standstill for marginalised communities in several parts of the world, online education has become a norm as access to devices/Internet has been taken for granted, but it is causing irreversible harm to those who were already at the receiving end of the inequality.
Obviously low-bandwidth network isn't going to deliver Zoom classes, but I think a combination of broadcasting educational content through traditional free-to-air television/radio and low-power computer on a low-bandwidth network for text communication with the educator can help deliver remote education for the underprivileged[1].
[1] https://needgap.com/problems/149-remote-education-for-underp...
For a massive e-commerce platform, it would be great info to digitally retarget the physically-abandoned shopping carts.
That is sarcastic but definitely not a straw-man. I had those conversations and its quite sad to see how shortsighted people get when you attach free to something.
People are going mad over wearing mask since its a tool of control. But expose a mass surveillance system and noone bat an eye. Implement free grid wifi that will be able to track you across city and you are the next jesus.
They will probably try to fingerprint you even if you are not connected.
Very interested to see how this will be protected against exploits.
The maximum bandwidth of a Sidewalk Bridge to the Sidewalk server is 80Kbps, which is about 1/40th of the bandwidth used to stream a typical high definition video. Today, total monthly data used by Sidewalk enabled- devices, per customer, is capped at 500MB, which is equivalent to streaming about 10 minutes of high definition video.
My reading is that there are two caps that both apply to the same, device-to-cloud data usage:
- 80 kbps instantaneously per bridge device (e.g. Echo)
- 500 MB per month "per customer" (not sure if this is different from per bridge)
This seems reasonably consistent. At 80kbps, 500 MB would take about 14 hours to transfer, which is much less than a month, but I think the expectation is that bridges rarely max out the 80kbps.
[1] https://m.media-amazon.com/images/G/01/sidewalk/privacy_secu...
1) Maintenance. What are the challenges of maintaining? Hardware? Balancing network? Software integration?
2) Speed. What are the barriers for making fast and affordable?
3) Distance. What are the hurdles for last mile?
This has been telecom's unicorn for a long time. Fiber, wireless, satellite, cable where all promised to deliver. I think there is something with mesh networks and free software that can break this barrier. I don't know exactly what it would be but it still seems like a possibility to me.
I think there's a strong argument to be made in California for having community-operated communications infrastructure in case of earthquake or disaster but it's got to be completely turnkey, with something people can just take home, plug in, and forget about.
Also, at least in my experience, most private households just use the (usually horrible) ISP supplied CPE.
Why yes, this is why I'm invested in Amazon.
> Anything you can buy on Amazon can be bought somewhere else online.
The problem with other sites is often (still!) I have to deal with annoying setup. Then once I create an account, I end up with yet another damned weekly newsletter[1]. Then I opt out, but I still get changing terms of service emails for the next 100 years.
There are some sites where I don't have these issues, but it is common enough that it makes me averse to signing up for new sites.
It is almost a perfect prisoner's dilemma. If every single site on the net stopped doing this, I'd be more likely to use more sites and they would all benefit. But individually, sites find it more profitable to spam/ newsletter the hell out of their users by default.
Also, often I get thing cheaper on Amazon then on the third party seller's own site. Just recently I was shopping for bike parts and recognized the seller's name and went directly to their site. The product was the same price, but on Amazon I get a 5% rebate plus I use smile.amazon.com so a few pennies goes to the charity of my choice as well... plus I didn't have to deal with setting up and account and dodging an email newsletter.
So yes, lazy, plus tired of the gamble of dealing with user-hostile sites.
[1] I know most sites let you avoid the newsletter sign up, but too often they use dark patterns or opt in by default.
In my country, Amazon operates surprisingly well, and the local companies have a long way to go till they catch up.
The only exception is MercadoLibre, they upped their game considerable after Amazon entered the market.
This is a false choice, because police don't need your permission to obtain video evidence on Amazon's servers if they have a warrant or court order. They don't even have to notify you if they look at it or use it as evidence, either.
Most of the time law enforcement just asks providers nicely for the data they want access to, and providers comply. No warrant is even needed in that scenario.
Don't use cloud based cameras.
Products like ring could easily be designed so that your data would be protected-- e.g. encrypt on the device, all storage is encrypted.. you give a password to any client to view it that amazon never sees. Yet even though its straightforward to do so this is not available in any commercial product that I'm aware of. I don't think that's an accident: These products exists to spread monitoring, -- mostly for marketing purposes, the fact that they can be abused by authorities for dragnet surveillance without (adequate) due process is just a "bonus".
It's not just a bonus, it's a selling point. Not for normal consumers, but for law enforcement, and Amazon would like to keep the police surveillance use case secret[1].
From The Secret Scripts Amazon Gives to Cops to Promote Ring Surveillance Cameras[2]:
> Documents obtained by Motherboard reveal that Ring provides 46 standardized comments that cops can post on social media, and several documents with scripted responses to possible questions from the public.
[1] https://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-ring-wants-police-to-keep-t...
[2] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wjwea4/revealed-the-secre...
https://nypost.com/2020/09/24/amazons-new-dashcam-gadget-all...
If they can get a warrant then yeah it's moot, but that's not always the case.
https://www.govtech.com/security/Amazons-Ring-Video-Camera-A... (warrant part right the end)
It's safe to assume whoever's buying a ring doorbell probably has internet access as well so it's a moot point.
And of course the neighbor can freely hand over their own data to the cops if they want to; the cops should need a warrant to get that video from Amazon directly.
I also delete anything over 3 days(thanks rclone) and use a script which detects the presence of either my wife's or my phone on our LAN so the cameras auto-start when we're not home.