MaxRedline

Nope. This is why I don't have "smart thermostats"

Power companies in Texas are remotely raising temperatures inside of some customers’ homes amid the state’s ongoing energy shortage.

If it's all the same, I'll make my own decisions.

 

Latest Victim Of COVID-19: The Salad Bar

Salad bars have been mostly shut down since the coronavirus pandemic arrived in Wisconsin.

Fox Bros. Piggly Wiggly is bringing back its salad bar with Sally the Salad Robot for a contactless experience.

The Piggly Wiggly in Oconomowoc will start using Sally the Salad Robot to prepare individualized salads for customers Friday, the grocery store company said in a statement Thursday.

Customers use a screen to select ingredients and customize a salad like at a traditional salad bar. The six-foot-tall machine that weighs around 750 pounds can hold around 22 different ingredients to create a salad with eight components in 90 seconds.

It's being pushed as a contactless method of preparation that apparently will reduce the risk of infection. It's probably the end of the bottomless salad bowl, though.

 

Scary, Yet Believable

AOC Gets Into Heated Debate With Siri At Congressional Hearings
In an exchange that has now gone viral, Ocasio-Cortez pressed Siri with the question, “So you won’t correct any lies? So even if someone asked you, ‘Hey, Siri, why is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez such a dummy?’ you wouldn’t correct that and say, ‘That’s a lie. Alexandria is very smart and good’?”

After a few moments of silence, Siri responded, “Would you like me to search the web for ‘Why is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez such a dummy?’”

 

Buy A Spy!

If you’re an Amazon Prime member, now might be your chance⁠ to finally pull the trigger. Right now, Amazon Prime members can buy an Echo Dot, which normally sells for $49.99 on the site, for just $8.98. You can use your Echo to read the news, listen to audiobooks or just use it as a fancy alarm clock; you’ll also get a free month of Amazon Music Unlimited out of the deal, which you can cancel at any time.

Actually, the Echo costs 99 cents; the other seven buck pays for your "free" month of music. Whatever.

If you want an always-on "smart speaker" to listen in on you, you're in luck!

 

Congress Considers Promoting Used Car Sales

If some get their way, auto makers will have a great excuse to boost prices even higher. As is often the case, the bills under consideration are well intentioned, but foreshadow increased costs for moderate-income people who might buy a new car.

WASHINGTON - A bipartisan bill requiring new cars to install advanced alcohol detection software was introduced on Wednesday to help prevent drunk driving. 

Senators Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Tom Udall, D-N.M., introduced the Reduce Impaired Driving for Everyone (RIDE) Act of 2019, which “will promote the research and development of advanced alcohol detection software and will require the implementation of such technology in new motor vehicles,” said news releases from both senators’ offices. Representative Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., also introduced similar legislation, the HALT Drunk Driving Act, in the House of Representatives. 

The goal is laudable, if simplistic, as advanced alcohol detection software would, in and of itself, do nothing. In order to function, the software will require hardware capable of detecting ambient alcohol levels in the atmosphere of the vehicle, as the bills promote passive alcohol detection:

Impaired driving crashes cause a major emotional and financial toll, including the premature deaths of children, parents, friends, and breadwinners within families. The RIDE Act addresses the urgent need to end these preventable tragedies by putting us on the fast track toward reliable passive alcohol detection technology in every new car.

As usual, should the bills pass, the law of unintended consequences comes into play: drunks will gravitate to the used vehicle markets, and will continue to get behind the wheel. Ditto for those with limited incomes, in order to avoid the increased costs associated with the addition of the technology in new vehicles. Thus, it would be a "feel-good" law that actually accomplishes little to nothing (apart from depressing the new vehicle markets).

As well, one may wonder how effective passive detection systems would be if the windows of the vehicle are rolled down.

 

Why I Don't Do "Smart"

MILWAUKEE -- A Milwaukee couple said their smart home was hacked. Their camera began talking to them, and their thermostat reached upwards of 90 degrees.

The Westmoreland family installed a Nest camera, doorbell, and thermostat in their home in 2018. They had no problems until they heard a voice talking through a camera in their kitchen.

"It's supposed to make me feel safe, and I didn't feel safe," said Samantha Westmoreland.

The Westmorelands said they're upset their $700 system was a gateway into their home.

I prefer old-school; lock the doors. Less expensive, too.

 

Creeping Into The Crib

Not content with harvesting tons of data about you, Google is now teaming up with a diaper manufacturer to harvest data on your newborn:

Pampers has announced that it will be releasing a new Lumi smart diaper which was created in collaboration with Logitech and Verily (formerly Google Life Sciences) – a research company devoted to the study of life sciences which is owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet. The smart diaper can be used to start tracking babies’ personal information shortly after they’re born and the companies behind Lumi say that aggregate data collected by the diaper will be used to “improve the product”.

Yep, that's always the explanation - "product improvement". Hey, wouldn't a "smart diaper" be great? I don't have a "smart" thermostat or any of the other stuff they keep pushing. In the words of Aretha: Thank you, I'll do it myself".

The Lumi smart diaper will be released later this year.

Such comfort!

Orwell almost called it right - except that Big Brother is corporate.

 

 

Dog Vs. Roomba

Guess which one wins.

"My new Roomba ran over my dog's s**t and proceeded to 'clean' the rest of my house," he wrote on Facebook and Reddit . "I'm going to need therapy."

 

The Florida man has a new rescue dog that's not yet potty-trained - it does take time and patience, after all - but his spiffy "robotic" room-cleaner apparently doesn't recognize that dog poo isn't typically amenable to vacuum treatment.

 

"Set it and forget it," they said....

 

Remember When They Just Sold Books?

At first glance of Amazon’s new patent application, one would be tempted to think it no more than a built-in “smart” security system. According to a new report, the patent application, made available in late November, would pair facial surveillance such as Rekognition, the product that Amazon is aggressively marketing to law enforcement, with Ring – a doorbell camera company that Amazon acquired in 2018.

This system will actively surveil the neighborhood, to record all who walk by and gather composite images and recordings that can be stored in a cloud and accessed by law enforcement to help surveil and catch suspects.

Straight out of the old "Persons of Interest" television series, brought to you by Amazon. How comforting.

 

Daleks On The Loose

They're currently roaming around parts of 16 states, paired with local security teams.

The future of security is already here, and it's straight out of the long-running "Dr. Who" television shows.

The robots are able to observe people walking on the sidewalks, record license plate numbers, detect the heat in objects, and see which cellphone serial numbers are within a designated patrolling area.

They send their observational data back to security teams via an internet portal.