
Amazon and Apple are building rival networks that know where everything is - MilnerRoute
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/amazon-sidewalk-apple-u1-networks
======
Jun8
Interesting bit:

"In its testing, though, [Amazon] sent out 700 gateway devices to Amazon
employees in the Los Angeles basin, and because each one has a range of
between 500m and up to a mile, Amazon was able to "basically cover where
everyone lives in LA"

Whoa! Article also mentions the Ring ecosystem but this may have major impact
on Amazon's home delivery bottleneck. I would totally buy a (cheap, small)
personal lockerbox for my condo if it interfaces with Ring Bridge. AFAIK, they
tested the apartment complex lockerbox idea some time ago but didn't take on.
Maybe time for a retrial.

For Apple's ultrawideband, article focuses on in-home consumer but this has
_huge_ impact for enterprise, too. Many warehouse customers are looking into
cheap ways for indoor locationing/tracking of assets, e.g. forklifts.

~~~
notJim
Couldn't you buy a regular lockbox for your condo that doesn't involve being
constantly surveilled by Jeff Bezos?

~~~
nihonde
We have lockboxes in my building in Japan. They’re just part of the
infrastructure of a high-end condo here. You tap your key to get in the lobby
door. A chime and recorded voice tells you that a package is waiting. You tap
your key again inside and the locker with your stuff pops open. The lockers
range in size from small to quite large boxes.

These work with any delivery carrier, but I’m not sure how the delivery person
enters the apartment number.

~~~
sdrothrock
If you walk around to the back side, which is generally exposed and doesn't
need a key to get to, there should be a bunch of doors that are either
unlocked or locked, and a keypad. I wondered the same thing myself about 7
years ago and, when I saw the Yamato guy, asked him to show me how he did it.
:)

~~~
alexeldeib
I moved out of an apartment building in the US which had a system similar to
this. Ours had no empty doors on the back -- carriers had to use the same
entry pads we did to deliver packages. Each carrier got a code which gave them
access to the initial room, and entered the name/apt number of intended
recipient.

Annoyingly, it was a subscription service with no other way of getting package
delivery securely to the building.

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Razengan
Going on kind of a tangent here, but a thought has been creeping up on me that
I can't wait to talk about:

I'm a major Apple fan, with several Apple devices that I use all the time, and
while they have a strong pro-privacy stance for now (though we only have their
word), Apple's _ability_ to spy on me, should they ever want to, probably goes
far beyond any other company.

Besides the usual "boring" methods like keylogging and microphone
eavesdropping, which any company can do to the users of their OSes if they
wanted to, the iPhone sees my face a hundred times a day, the Mac has my
fingerprints, and the Watch knows how I'm moving and feeling (sitting,
walking, excited, lethargic), and they can use that to infer what I'm doing or
even _about_ to do...

Has anyone thoroughly monitored and logged what these devices are sending out?

~~~
m463
The problem is that they deal themselves into the equation too much.

You can turn off bluetooth, but if you turn it on to talk to your headphones
or car, you get opted-in to ibeacon location services.

You can turn off wifi, but if you turn it on to talk to your home router,
yeah, more location services opt-in.

If you follow links in email or safari, with deep links apps on your phone
that have registered can intercept them. there's no opt-out of this added
functionality.

You text a link to someone, you also load a preview in imessage and therefore
contact the site.

It's like normal functionality have all these built-in compromises you can't
turn off.

Now with the UWB stuff, there isn't even an off switch.

I think their standard way of dealing with things is that they just shut up
and don't advertise this stuff.

~~~
machello13
> You can turn off bluetooth, but if you turn it on to talk to your headphones
> or car, you get opted-in to ibeacon location services.

> You can turn off wifi, but if you turn it on to talk to your home router,
> yeah, more location services opt-in.

Are these true? Bluetooth iBeacons, from what I understand, are now restricted
by each app's Bluetooth access in iOS 13. And for Wifi, can't you just disable
location services in Privacy settings?

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jedberg
I hope Apple’s is better than what they have now. I lost my AirPods and used
Find My to find them, and the “last location” wasn’t even the last time I used
them! It can’t even keep track of a device _actively connected to my phone_. I
only found them because I happen to sit on them.

~~~
gnicholas
Whenever I lose my AirPods, they're always in the charging case. In this
state, you cannot trigger them to play a sound. Can't wait for tech to roll
out that will help me find them in seconds instead of days.

~~~
pfranz
My current solution is to get a case for the charging case with a keyring and
attach a Tile--but I'd much prefer something integrated and slimmer.

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AndrewKemendo
And Google with their Visual Positioning System:

[https://ai.googleblog.com/2019/02/using-global-
localization-...](https://ai.googleblog.com/2019/02/using-global-localization-
to-improve.html)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8mfQFGNdr8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8mfQFGNdr8)

~~~
nomel
My prediction from 2008 finally came true: [https://nomel-
blog.tumblr.com/post/47669161/idea-picture-bas...](https://nomel-
blog.tumblr.com/post/47669161/idea-picture-based-cps-city-positioning-system)

------
Havoc
Apples approach seems far superior. Medium range stuff tech is already out
there. See z wave and zigbee. You can hack that stuff together without much
cost.

Precise location indoors has no real equivalent currently

~~~
giancarlostoro
Man I use the heck out of Z wave. Basically after buying my first home not too
long ago I noticed the alarm system could update the weather without wifi...
It intrigued me so I looked into it and sure enough its all z wave.

I bought a USB adapter for my Raspberry Pi 3 and installed OpenHAB on it. I
can now control my thermostats (I have 2 AC units) from a web UI. Who needs a
NEST? And its in other things too.

As for tracking... It depends on what I want to track but with a couple
Raspberry Pi Zero Ws you can probably hunt down specific devices around the
home if they have bluetooth / wifi. Whatever Pi has it closest to it is the
one you wanna search near. Not sure if bluetooth can tell you signal strength
but I am pretty sure wifi does since you see the signal bars. Those come from
somewhere.

~~~
spydum
for what it's worth, signal strength is not usually a great indicator of
distance. I would think some sort of beacon/latency measurement would be far
more robust way to measure relative distance?

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batrat
Time to start making tin foil hats. They will sell like crazy. _(looking for
investors)_

~~~
GhettoMaestro
Also time to make those shape-shifting suits from A Scanner Darkly (reference
being from the movie version - it actually isn't too bad if you have not seen
it).

~~~
egypturnash
The scramble suits were straight out of the book.

~~~
robocat
I think Philip K Dick would deeply be into the surveillance aspect of what
we're discussing.

Any well written fiction published over the last few months that tries to tie
recent events together (ignoring the deepstate chemtrail anti crowd?).

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jpalomaki
Find my iPhone, find my friends and Tile provide a lot value to our family
every day.

Really waiting for the Apple branded products. While I’m quite happy with the
tile, it would be convenient to have all i devices scanning for my lost stuff.
Also being able to see the more exact location inside house would be great.

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chinathrow
Can anyone explain what the next play is here? Is it tracking of devices
without being able to turn it off?

~~~
klodolph
It’s location accuracy improvements in urban and indoor areas, which is
notoriously poor.

UWB is supposed to let you know how far away other devices are, and in what
direction. This will let you e.g. find your device if you left it somewhere in
your house, or give you an UI to Airdrop to someone next to you (rather than
just showing everyone in range), etc. Other location services are supposed to
let you navigate indoors.

I don’t think there’s really “the next play” as much as there’s a bunch of
marginal improvements, and a bunch of people who hope that there will be some
killer app for location services that they can dominate.

~~~
dillondoyle
I can see a lot of value for big brands / retail, where location tracking via
bluetooth etc already exists. Same with FB offline conversion tracking, walk
into store after seeing an ad analytics etc.

And I think Apple envisions value when combined with AR

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bookofjoe
What? No Microsoft? They could call it "the internet of Bing"

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edf13
iOS13 update... now Facebook messenger, G Maps, various others all requesting
access to Bluetooth so they can "look for devices near to me".

This is the map that they are all building.

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Taniwha
Of course Apple's "unlicensed 900MHz band" doesn't exist in ITU region 3 (here
in NZ, and I suspect China too) the ISM band is used by cell companies ....

~~~
saagarjha
Isn’t it _Amazon’s_ unlicensed 900MHz band?

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Mathnerd314
I guess "quiet" is "Jeff Bezos bringing it up in an interview with reporters".
Whereas "secretive" is "Google CEO confirms leaked documents are genuine in
interview with reporters".

So "loud" must be buying ads in every TV slot, radio, and billboard so that
nobody could possibly miss it.

I don't think it's fair to apply terms humans use to corporations.

~~~
OrgNet
> I don't think it's fair to apply terms humans use to corporations.

... but corporations are people, according to the law.

(ie: you can't say someone said something just because someone else said it.)

~~~
saagarjha
Unfortunately the context of this conversation isn’t a courtroom.

~~~
OrgNet
why unfortunately?

~~~
kazagistar
Its peace is fortunate, conflict is unfortunate. Pointing out that someone is
wrong is unfortunate. The fact being states is unfortunate because it
contradicts the above post, implying a conflict. This is a fairly common use
of the word unfortunate.

