Chromebooks and Mild Paranoia
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@scottalanmiller I was just planning to use an SD card for development projects nothing crazy.
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As Scott and I hashed out last week or the week before, Google is responsible for properly managing your data and not to use it against you. Since then, I've began to consider getting a Google Home. Something that I would not have normally considered.
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@nerdydad I certainly hope they wouldn't do something like that, but honestly it's that thinking that's made me avoid an Alexa, Home, etc. That's interesting that you're considering one after that nonsense where someone found their Home recording every conversation and relaying the data back. I haven't read too much on it other than it may have been an actual issue that needed to be patched, so I'm not sure it was the intended behavior.
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I'd love to see the looks of horror on the faces of anyone listening to conversations (and other sounds) that might be heard in my house... They'd probably remotely deactivate the microphone.
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@r3dpand4 said in Chromebooks and Mild Paranoia:
@nerdydad I certainly hope they wouldn't do something like that, but honestly it's that thinking that's made me avoid an Alexa, Home, etc. That's interesting that you're considering one after that nonsense where someone found their Home recording every conversation and relaying the data back. I haven't read too much on it other than it may have been an actual issue that needed to be patched, so I'm not sure it was the intended behavior.
I have heard of hacks to where you can put a switch in-line with the mic on the home, but to me, that kind of defeats the purpose of the device. I've seen a switch built-in to the Home mini's but have not yet heard what it is there for.
The Home has to have the mic on in order to listen for the correct speech pattern in order to activate. There is not much hardware in the Google home itself, so it has to relay that information back for interpretation. Whether that is a bug or was designed that way, I'm not sure.
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@rojoloco LOL
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It's only because companies like Google and Amazon are public companies that I have less concern about the privacy issues. It's in their best interest to protect my data and not have hackers get it. The primary concern is who they share the data with, i.e. the government.
One of Facebook's biggest customers is the US Government. They buy tons of data from FB. I have my profile locked down, but since I haven't read the EULA, I'm not sure that they can't still just give anything I put there to the government or anyone else.
But the thing that makes me not worry so much about it is, if they are found to be breaking the trust that has been granted, they will be sued into non existence (or so we hope). Unlike the US Government, when they break that trust (get hacked, publish on insecure websites, etc) we have no recourse.
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@r3dpand4 said in Chromebooks and Mild Paranoia:
@scottalanmiller I was just planning to use an SD card for development projects nothing crazy.
You can't really do that as there really isn't software that will work with local files. It's not a bad idea, but it isn't what the device is meant to do.
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@r3dpand4 said in Chromebooks and Mild Paranoia:
@nerdydad I certainly hope they wouldn't do something like that, but honestly it's that thinking that's made me avoid an Alexa, Home, etc. That's interesting that you're considering one after that nonsense where someone found their Home recording every conversation and relaying the data back. I haven't read too much on it other than it may have been an actual issue that needed to be patched, so I'm not sure it was the intended behavior.
But that is its job. What do you expect from a "listen to your conversations" device, if it didn't listen to your conversations?
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@dashrender I deleted my Facebook account going on 5 years ago now, don't regret it at all.
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@nerdydad said in Chromebooks and Mild Paranoia:
@r3dpand4 said in Chromebooks and Mild Paranoia:
@nerdydad I certainly hope they wouldn't do something like that, but honestly it's that thinking that's made me avoid an Alexa, Home, etc. That's interesting that you're considering one after that nonsense where someone found their Home recording every conversation and relaying the data back. I haven't read too much on it other than it may have been an actual issue that needed to be patched, so I'm not sure it was the intended behavior.
I have heard of hacks to where you can put a switch in-line with the mic on the home, but to me, that kind of defeats the purpose of the device. I've seen a switch built-in to the Home mini's but have not yet heard what it is there for.
The Home has to have the mic on in order to listen for the correct speech pattern in order to activate. There is not much hardware in the Google home itself, so it has to relay that information back for interpretation. Whether that is a bug or was designed that way, I'm not sure.
Right, it is basically a microphone hooked to a NIC. The entire point of the device is to relay audio to the decision cluster, and to then action what is requested.
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@scottalanmiller I have no idea hence why I don't own them, I just know it caused some buzz. I think the issue was that it was regularly activating itself without the prompt from the user and was recording conversations then relaying them. I'll link the article I'm referring to. http://bgr.com/2017/10/11/google-home-mini-spying-on-user-fix/
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@scottalanmiller Ah okay, understandable. I can still use CodeAnywhere, no biggy.
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@r3dpand4 said in Chromebooks and Mild Paranoia:
@scottalanmiller Ah okay, understandable. I can still use CodeAnywhere, no biggy.
Right. Or just SSH into a Linux VM, that's what @QuixoticJeremy and I do.
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@scottalanmiller said in Chromebooks and Mild Paranoia:
@r3dpand4 said in Chromebooks and Mild Paranoia:
@scottalanmiller Ah okay, understandable. I can still use CodeAnywhere, no biggy.
Right. Or just SSH into a Linux VM, that's what @QuixoticJeremy and I do.
Perfect.
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@r3dpand4 said in Chromebooks and Mild Paranoia:
@dashrender I deleted my Facebook account going on 5 years ago now, don't regret it at all.
I have social groups that exist solely on FB, so I have little choice if I want to maintain them.
But since last summer, I'll go days without looking at the FB feed, and only use FB messenger on my phone as needed.
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@r3dpand4 said in Chromebooks and Mild Paranoia:
@scottalanmiller said in Chromebooks and Mild Paranoia:
@r3dpand4 said in Chromebooks and Mild Paranoia:
@scottalanmiller Ah okay, understandable. I can still use CodeAnywhere, no biggy.
Right. Or just SSH into a Linux VM, that's what @QuixoticJeremy and I do.
Perfect.
It's ideal because then we control the development VM, and can take backups, and automate things and make sure that all packages are exactly what we want for production without needing to find ways to make laptops and desktops match that environment. Which is especially hard if you try to do that on a Chromebook that is often not even AMD64 architecture. So you often can't even run the same OS, let alone have a matching version. And many things that you want for production might be problematic on a light laptop.
Examples would be Java environments, databases, caches and such. Things that suck down resources, even for just a test environment.
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Remeber, if you do have any type of voice activated device (alexa, google home, etc), be sure to put it near a TV and watch the 1st episode of thew new season of South Park...
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@dashrender Yeah I could see why that might be hard, I might be "that guy" in certain groups where I'm just more difficult to involve in things, and I may honestly get passed up on invites to things because it requires an extra step to contact me. Either way, to me it's worth not supporting that site. I despise the structure itself, the content that's regularly shared, and the business practices behind the scenes.
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@scottalanmiller said in Chromebooks and Mild Paranoia:
@r3dpand4 said in Chromebooks and Mild Paranoia:
@scottalanmiller Ah okay, understandable. I can still use CodeAnywhere, no biggy.
Right. Or just SSH into a Linux VM, that's what @QuixoticJeremy and I do.
I can and have done development with vi and/or nano for more than one or two files... I severely dislike this. Setups like Codiad or CodeAnywhere are much more to my liking.
