Yes! This Is Also An Excellent Point! The Issue Here Is Not One Inherent In Smart Devices, Its Created

Yes! This is also an excellent point! The issue here is not one inherent in smart devices, it’s created because of how they’re designed and built. It would be very possible (and in some ways easier) to build devices that did not suffer from these issues. If it’s not possible to connect to the device from outside your home network, there’s no way anyone else could get to it! I don’t do this kind of work personally, but my (semi-educated) guess is that the “phone-home” functionality is a substantive proportion of those devices software and it really doesn’t need to be (most of the time).

The issue is that it’s hard (on a technical level) to separate “bad” internet usage (i.e. to send usage data or to grant remote access) from “good” internet usage (i.e. sending a firmware update or re-ordering more soap). While there’s a certain degree that you can manage that on a personal level, at some point you simply have to trust the manufacturer to not be evil. Which... yeah they’re evil :(

So how do we fix this? Well, you can just not buy smart products (that’s what I do!), but what they’re huge quality of life improvements? Or maybe you just think they’re fun and want to play around without putting your privacy at risk.

The only really good solution to all these issues is that companies need to stop creating products that do these things. And the only way to force that to happen is through legislation. We need more legislation like the GDPR in the EU which explicitly describes your privacy rights on the internet (among many other excellent features).

So! Next time you see a call-to-action to “call your legislator” to “protect internet privacy” -- actually do it. It really does make a difference :)

hell world hell world hell world

WHY DOES YOUR SOAP NEED INTERNET

shut up its the trans train

Something I like about Tumblr is that the science tumblrites are fucking to-the-wall feral and the writers are strange kitchen witches but the computer enthusiasts are polite helpful anarchists and the artists are mostly sensible people who teach you to do hand stretches and enjoy a short walk. It's like I'm in a best timeline AU where someone took my high school and inverted it.

This is how things should be. A gremlin biologist teaching a fantasy novelist about the Ancient Terrifying Cornfields while a graphic designer uses a friend's homebrewed tablet to draw a nice picture of a nearby horse.

so this happened to me today

I would like to formally thank She-Ra tumblr for inspiring me to re-watch this show. I’m 4 episodes in and I’m having such a blast. Every single character is so loveable and HORSE and GLIMMER and ADORA and BADASS SWORD, AAAARGH it makes me SO HAPPY

blog is pretty now i can go back to thinking about other (probably more important) things >:)