Good one
Ahahaha.. roftl - Oh amazon, now that was that was a good one, now wasn't it?
ah.
There *were* joking, were they?
Amazon has teased a smartphone app and wireless wristband that employ sensors and machine-learning algorithms to depict how fat you'll get unless you do some exercise – and tell you to relax if you sound stressed. All for your own good, of course. Unlike other smartwatches or fitness trackers, this wearable does not have a …
"to just not do any exercise and wait. That way you'll find out for free.."
That's what most people do anyway... But I guess it appeals to today's 'now, now, now' immediate gratification mindset!
And what about those wanting to slide the slider the other way? Hit the gym now, lads and lasses!
Whilst the sample size (no pun intended) is pretty small, what I have found is if someone feels "fat" instead of driving them to lose weight the opposite occurs (desire to eat comfort food and be miserable) . When they feel "thin" (scales have told them they have "lost a pound") this encourages them to do more and eat better and puts a "skip in their step".
I can only assume this "fatness" band will encourage consumption and comfort shopping - hmm maybe Amazon are smarter than I gave them credit for......
Don't forget that there are people, apparently a majority of whom are women, who take a lost pound as never being enough and force themselves to lose more even though they are more than thin enough and could actually benefit from taking a pound or ten.
Anorexia is no laughing matter.
Maybe but there is a fee if you want to access all the features.
[QUOTE]The whole shebang is marketed under the brand Amazon Halo: users will eventually pay a $3.99 monthly subscription service to access top-end features of the $99.99 Amazon Halo Band, accessed via the Amazon Halo app.[/QUOTE]
I think the value is in being able to measure a very large number of people by age, ethnicity, location, wealth, weight, propensity, location and other demographics and sell that data. Presumably insurers in the US would love to know where their risks lie and pay handsomely. And Amazon too for that matter given how much crap they sell.
"We've listened to our customers and today, we're please to announce that Amazon can provide you a tailored program of food direct to your doorstop that will provide you the correct healthy nourishment for reaching that target. These will be automatically added with calories counted to your weight improvement scheme and be accessible from the FlabApp. Your happiness is guaranteed.
We also offer a premium subscription option where Alexa will monitor the sounds from your apartment. Using special AI, an alarm will sound if it detects something naughty like a Kit Kat being opened"
Or sumfin' like that.
Its a different subset of people.
On Usenet, most of the people were of the nerdy persuasion, as computers were not as prevalent back then, and most "normal people" were living and socialising physically rather than virtually.
They knew the tech, they knew the risks down the line, and guarded their privacy very strongly.
Also, machines back then were very "user centric" as well, you did not have to fight your OS to not spy on you, nor "Jail break" it in order to execute code you want, so it was much easier to control what apps ran, and how much data about you was collected.
Fast forward to 2020, those same people, still know the tech, still know the risks down the line, and still try to guard their privacy very strongly.
The difference is the rest of society have come online, and they don't understand (or care) about the implications of this much technology under the control of so few. They actively don't want a powerful user machine under their control, they want "appliances" that "just work", and that is where the tech is going.
Of course in the minds of the masses the phrase "Nothing in life is free" doesn't seem to occur, because then they may realise there is some purpose behind being given these virtual trinkets "for free", that goes beyond what they see.
Its an ever growing battle to not get absorbed by the collective, and those who do care about individual privacy and control are a minority. Open source saves us a bit, allowing us to modify/tinker and customise systems to serve us, but as we can see with Google/Amazon, its not a cure all.
Superset you mean, but even so I think it reflects the massive erosion of privacy that has happened over the last few decades. I doubt that anybody in the 1990s would have ever countenanced giving away personal info in a way that freely happens today. And probably this rot will continue and continue. The only protection is the state and strong privacy laws.
The thing about weight and fitness is that it's very rare to actually need to know the details particularly accurately. In the vast majority of cases, a doctor won't use anything more than a measuring tape and weighing scales. Assuming they even bother to do any measuring at all - most of the time they'll just say that you're looking a bit tubby (ok, they may be more diplomatic than that) and give some general advice about eating and fitness. It's only if you're obese to the point of needing serious medical intervention, or if you have other medical conditions that make weight and/or body fat more of a concen, that doctors will start breaking out the real measurements. A ballpark BMI is good enough the rest of the time.
So sure, I have no doubt that this is as good as what a doctor would use. Because most of the time a doctor will be using nothing more than a consumer-grade weighing scale.
I've asked before what the negative endgame of companies having my data is and it was a downvote magnet, but nobody even attempted an honest reply.
It sounds like you're fine with your body pictures being online albeit privately. Good for you. Maybe someone will explain what the risks are.
More than likely you'll get hit with someone else's principles. Oh they'll hoard it and maybe even leak it!!... And? Not saying that's good, but I sincerely feel sorry for anybody trying to make a couple of bucks off MY body.
as a training system to fool lie-detectors.
Trying to speak calmly while uploading one's personal boudoir photos to for the viewing pleasure of Bezos and friends would be good practice in keeping calm while being grilled about one's whereabouts on Thursday the 21st.
I'll have the premium subscription with bright lights and rubber hoses, please.
We no longer need to learn anything.
We no longer need to remember anything.
We no longer need to use common sense,
The human brain, and body, will atrophy,
On the other hand we may evolve a proboscis - a long nose for example, to tap the screen when our other hand (the one not permanently angled) drizzles away to nothing. Why didn't Steve Jobs think of that? After all our eyes will lose the ability to see more than 18 inches away.
Progress!
P.S. My Dad, an engineer, once in the long ago railed against the loss of skills in using a slide rule when calculators became ubiquitous.
Oh - slide rule : it was a..... never mind. Google it.
Governments can find ways to access your location data and other stuff on your phone, but the private sector needs a way in that you install yourself (after clicking that "I Agree" box without reading what you are agreeing to. Deleting the display makes the sensor band that much cheaper to make and gives it much better battery life so if you forget to put it on the charger one night, it's not going to be dead and unused the next day. You've made your resolution to improve your fitness and some tech is going to help out. Right? Perfect wedge to get you to pay somebody you trust (ack) and install their app. Presto, they're in.
“never get sent to the cloud, and can’t even be played back or downloaded, so no one ever hears them,"
Until an update "accidently" changes this.
Just remember, this the same Amazon tgat recently got caught recording sounds without a keyword...or was that Google.. Or Apple...or all of them?
The first thing to note that it is not available. Not available for the 95% of humanity outside the USA anyway. This follows the Microsoft/Apple/Google habit of not being fully aware of the rest of the planet.
When they do notice that they can massively expand their market by selling outside one country that is far away from most of us they will have to follow the law. The USA may not bee too concerned about user privacy and rights (although some states are). To do business here, they will need to follow the GDPR and other laws. Those fines are just going to get bigger.
I have had a FitBit for perhaps 4 years. They will keep improving their range. Competition is what capitalism should be about. When I start considering a replacement in a year or so, what will I see?
"For those of you concerned about your privacy, Amazon said the body scans are generated in the cloud – which means sending snaps of you half naked to its computers for processing. "Your body scan images are automatically deleted from the cloud after processing,"
And then a few months or years down the line it turns out there was some sort of debugging/developer feature or a bug is found and it turns out that it DID retain lots and lots of pictures. Oops...
"are generated in the cloud" -> Read: Are sent to somebody (could be anybody really) else's computer. Doesn't sound so friendly and non-threatening all of a sudden.