Beep boop - this is a robot. A new show has been posted to TWiT…
What are your thoughts about today’s show? We’d love to hear from you!
With regard to the discussion about the Australian ban on social media for under 16s, this comes back, in part, to something I have been arguing for over 20 years.
In some respects, Big Tech only has itself to blame for the current situation. For too longer time, startups ignored the laws and social responsibilities, “hey, we are a start-up, putting in security/obeying copyright law/restricting social damage would cost us money!” Only a couple of years later to claim, “we are too big, it is not economical to follow the law, change the laws!”
And law makers were too soft on the start-ups, turning a blind eye (E.g. YouTube showing copyrighted content and ignoring take-down requests for years, before they were forced to do so and claimed it was “impossible at such scale, we would need to re-engineer everything, so we will pay the copyright owners a pittance and they should be grateful they get anything.”
If they had been forced to obey the law and compensate copyright owners from the beginning, the system for paying copyright owners would have been in place and YouTube would have had to scale it as the business grew, as opposed to ignoring it and then claiming it is too late to do anything about it.
Facebook and Twitter had a similar cases, but with security and visibility of information that was illegal and also problems securing the platform. They argued that they were small companies and having to comply with the law and actually making their system secure would be too expensive, so the authorities should just leave them alone to get on with things… Until the fines became too big and they had to re-write big chunks of their systems to comply. Complying at the beginning would probably have been easier and cheaper in the long run, but stood in the way of short term profits.
None of these companies seem to do the right thing, until they are faced with bans or fines and lawyer fees that are actually higher than doing the right thing in the first place.
As long as their products aren’t getting kicked out of markets and their directors/executives aren’t being held personally responsible for the misbehavior of the entities they are in charge of, these companies will carry on flaunting the law.
In the case of Australia, I think they are taking the responsibilities of the parents and putting that on the social media platforms, but, on the other side, they only really have themselves to blame for this, because they ignored the problems building up around them so they could chase down short-term profits…
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I really enjoyed today’s cast of panelists. I’ve also been enjoying watching Leo’s advent of code. I have a tendency to wake up in the middle of the night and he’s either streaming or just posted!
It was so cute when Samantha just decided she wanted to be annoying hahahah
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I was brought up in an area without a “hood”, so I had no concept about “bad areas” to go into… So I never thought about it, and, touch wood, I’ve never had any problems going into troubled neighbourhoods.
With regard to home automation, I use Apple Home to control my Hue light and a Hama smart electrical socket (currently turning the Christmas tree lights on and off twice a day). I did have to install the Hue app to pair up the Hue light, but it works directly in the Apple Home app, so I never even open the Hue app and I never even looked to see if there was a Hama app, it is a Matter device, so I just scanned the QR Code in Apple Home and it was all set up.
I have over 50 devices from 8 manufacturers on my IoT network. It all works together with no issues.
Yes, it’s quicker to flick one switch than a voice command. But it isn’t quicker to walk around downstairs turning off 20 lights than one voice command.
The concern about being reliant on someone is real though. Not so much how to use it - but who has the password for all the accounts all the smart hardware relies on, and what happens if they are not around?
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We have everything in a password manager. I have 1Password Family and my wife is my emergency contact and vice versa, so if I die, after a set period of time, she gets full access to my passwords.
I can share passwords she needs to know the rest, which would just annoy her - “why do I need all this useless stuff?” - are hidden away, to be revealed in the case that I become incapacitated or die.
The emergency recovery codes for the manager are also in a sealed envelope in a safe as a fall back.
Hint: we have just purchased 1Password for Business at work and everybody who has a 1PB account gets a free 1P Family account.
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We do the same. Everyone uses Bitwarden, and my password and 2FA recovery codes are in the safe. I’m not convinced it would be used, though 
More smart stuff needs to support family setups IMO, multiple users, more than one admin etc. I’m setting up some Eufy security cameras for my parents, and that allows more than one admin person.
Bought quite a bit on Black Friday this year. Some OK deals for a change. Still stuff like this goes on though. They have put the price up by 20% but claim you are saving 19%. So annoying!
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I don’t really understand what mean when they say Matter is supposed to let your devices talk to each other, and they don’t do that. Wouldn’t that all be handled by the HomeOS (Apple Home, google Home, Home Assistant, etc) automations? As I understand it, Matter is really(simplified) a set of universal controls so the devices can be controlled and shared through a unified HomeOS, instead of individual apps. But there are 3 layers. The device needs to support the current Matter standard, as does the HomeOS, and the Matter standard needs to support device features. And these 3 layers will be VERY slow to update, much as the same rate. For example, I have Matter light strips, which I can change color in both Apple Home and Home Assistant (shared through Matter), but the fun effects are only accomplished through the app, because said effects are not supported at the Matter layer at this time.
For the most part, most of my smart devices are in Apple Home and/or Home Assistant. There’s a few exceptions but I don’t know if my microwave needs to talk to anything.
@Leo, You probably don’t need Homebridge and Home Assistant. I would imaging whatever Homebridge plugins are also in Home Assistant. And Home Assistant can round trip anything back into Apple Home.
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I think that is a potentially very Apple specific view of the approach? Matter is a series of protocols, technologies and definitions. The definitions part is somehow key, it defines what a device type is so other things know how to interact with it. This is why the latest Matter standard is adding new things like "added support for water and energy management devices as well as appliance support for ovens, microwave ovens, cooktops, extractor hoods, laundry dryers, and Matter-casting media players. Scenes and command-batching were also added." (from the Wikipedia.)