Excursions

Finally managed to document the journey embracing IndieWeb principles on my site built with Hugo. This has been a pretty satisfying project, especially given it has inspired me again to write more - and of course post to and from micro.blog.

I am seriously considering closing my gmail account. I am weary of dumping more and more of my data to Google data farm.

But I wonder what are the alternatives? Preferably hosted ones.

So the timeline is full of individual’s HomePod reviews. And almost everyone’s loving it. Hardly seen anyway complain about Siri yet.

I guess just the experience Apple wanted. I know, the frustrations will slowly trickle in. A good first impression nonetheless.

“Understand humility. Foster dignity. Live memorably. Endure.” →

“The night before I turned 30, I found myself so surprised to have reached an age of indisputable adult that I wrote up a set of”adult principles” that I’ve been trying to live up to.” - John Perry Barlow

RIP.

It’s mesmerising to wake up to some of the most beautiful creations of nature — a lot satisfying if it’s you who’ve nurture them.

Since the day I brought Echo in my home, I always wondered how smart the ecosystem of IOT devices really is. Kashmir Hill’s great post journaling her experience shows there’s a long way to go. I captured some of my observations.

I hate that my Kindle has great battery life — I keep running it for weeks for it doesn’t need recharged. But when I need my books the most, it throws the “battery depleted” message at me. Am just wired to charge my devices every night I guess, that must not be good.

Finally managed to catch up to the Falcon Heavy launch posts/videos. Gosh, it just was an inspiring experience to watch it, and see it being watched by thousands of eyes. More than the launch though, it was the twin landing which was breathtaking. Brilliant! 🚀

In response to a great article by Kashmir Hill on living in smart homes, I have captured some of my observations. Just reiterates, smart homes are still a lot dumb.

This is a really fascinating, and an extremely detailed account from Kashmir hill journaling her experiment of wiring her house to spy on her.

Why? Why would I do this? For convenience? Perhaps. It was appealing to imagine living like the Beast in the Disney movie, with animated objects around my home taking care of my every need and occasionally serenading me (…) But that wasn’t my primary motivation. The reason I smartened up my house was to find out whether it would betray me.

Of course, Kashmir’s being extremely daring (which she is known to be) to open her (and her family’s) life up to be monitored and analysed to such levels. And of course, there are some key findings, some already known (but still appalling), some new. Here are my few key observations.

1. Smart devices are still terrible to setup and keep up. It’s a technology of future, no doubt. But future is still not here.
2. There is still a big void for a single hub that talks to all smart devices. It is a broken bridge with silos all over the place.
3. Majority of the makers of appliances are still dependent on external, barely known solution providers for adding smarts. Dado Labs? Seriously?
4. None of the smart home devices follow any principles around handling the privacy and security of the data they engulf. Rather, no such standard principles are even debated over and agreed upon.
5. Smart home devices tend to ping their original homes, the servers, dial in and report on duty very frequently. Typically, for no good reason.

An exaggerated version of this was seen in the Echo and Echo Dot, which were in constant communication with Amazon’s servers, sending a request every couple of minutes to http://spectrum.s3.amazonaws.com/kindle-wifi/wifistub-echo.html. Even without the “Alexa” wake word, and even when the microphone is turned off, the Echo is frequently checking in with Amazon, confirming it is online and looking for updates.

Finally, your router remains the prominent data collector for your online presence. Your ISP, the prominent data aggregator. And neither are really too keen to protect your data online.

I guess everyone agrees that smart homes are dumb, and there are enough evidences of that pouring in every day. Problem is they are capable of knowing so much about you. And, at times, sending it out there in open without protecting it in any way — lending them a lot of power.

Dumb and powerful, now there’s the super villain from any sane person’s nightmare.