[mikegerwitz]

Let's start gathering statistics on how many times people open their refrigerator, or use the toilet, or take a shower.

What's more concerning about these data aren't these specific numbers, but what other data that implies that they have, what they can do with it, and what they can infer about you from it. Privacy and anonymity aren't (reasonably) possible on a Windows 10 operating system.

Any entity knowing that I have even turned on my PC---without explicit action to notify someone of such, such as posting this message or sending e-mail---is a privacy violation.

[petke]

Such statistics would be very useful to society. Tracking people as a group to figure out how they behave. Its only when the tracking targets individuals that it get creepy.

"New York'ers goes to the toilet x times a day" is fine vs "John Doe goes to the toilet x times a day" is not.

[mikegerwitz]

I'm not arguing that they aren't useful---they are, and quite fascinating.

But they should always be opt-in.

[jinst8gmi]

> Let's start gathering statistics on how many times people open their refrigerator, or use the toilet, or take a shower.

Just think of the targeted advertising opportunities based on toilet usage statistics!

[sageikosa]

That can be garnered from purchase data, at least on a household level.

[jinst8gmi]

You'd want the data before the purchases were made in order to influence the purchases (e.g. medicine...).

[oneeyedpigeon]

How is that data currently collected? Are you referring to store loyalty cards?

[sageikosa]

Just saying that it can be garnered, I have no idea on whether it is used, although store loyalty cards obviously play into targeted coupons you receive at the checkout.

[serge2k]

Assumption being the data can be traced back to a user.

[cm2187]

What I would like to know if how much of this tracking is not blocked by installing something like Spybot's Anti-Beacon (https://www.safer-networking.org/spybot-anti-beacon/) and using a Local Account. If all it takes is to install a similar tool when I buy a new machine, it's not a big deal. There are many other tools I need to install anyway (winrar, etc).

[andrewchambers]

you don't need winrar, 7zip is far better.

[michaelbuddy]

can 7-zip reassemble those split rar files where you get r01, r02 and so on?

[soylentcola]

Yep. I just ran across one of those .rars the other day and was surprised that it wouldn't decompress properly. Then I realized I hadn't tried to unzip one of those on that particular computer in a long time and my version of 7zip was just really out of date. Updated to the current version and it worked fine.

[talmand]

You don't need 7zip, it's much better to unpack manually.

[rasz_pl]

>Let's start gathering statistics on how many times people open their refrigerator, or use the toilet, or take a shower.

three strong startup/KS ideas right there

[sz4kerto]

You bet that the smart-toilet manufacturers will track the usage. :/

[ourmandave]

My wife tracks how many times I don't put the lid down.