Not a fan of this Amazon Sidewalk. I’ll give it some time in the real world with other people before I turn this back on.
Amazon is about to share your Internet connection with neighbors. Here’s how to turn it off.
By Geoffrey A. Fowler
Hi,
Thanks for the link. Unfortunately Washington Post wants me to subscribe before I can read the article. That has been happening at increasing frequency of late. I wouldn’t mind one or two subscriptions, but you would end up with hundreds of requests. Anyway I think I know about the subject matter having yesterday read about the objectives of the Helium network token HNT, which had me fascinating. It is possible that the entire copper landline, fibre network and 3G/4G/5G networks of today could be effectively wiped out by “decentralized services” such as HNT. A really scary prospect for big corporations. I don’t even think the global megacorporations are safe from this coming technology cycle, whatever it will be called Web 3, 4th epoch, age of the robots? It’s coming, and it’s coming a lot faster than most of us realise.
Oh no. 
I’m not a big fan of this either. Just the idea of it is very sketchy and I’m actually surprised that this got approved. I’m sure there are safety precautions but it just doesn’t sit right with me.
I think you can take the link and paste it into an incognito tab in Chrome and the article should load.
I’ll have to read up on that. Make me think about who will maintain the network. Somebody out there has to maintain/support/expand the network to some extent, right? Maybe the users will just have to pay fees to the token and the token automagically pays the network owner.
As for SideWalk, I’m not a fan of being opted-in by default when it comes to something like my internet connection being used without my knowledge, by who knows what and who knows who. And this will become a target by hackers. Not today, but definitely tomorrow.
Might be time to rethink all the IOT devices being used on the same WIFI network as personal computers.
Hi,
I have spent the last 20 years as an IT project manager with a focus on networks and applications security. I was particularly interested 10 years ago in the conceptual design of a network that has a 100% guaranteed uptime. The only way one can truly approach a 100% uptime aspiration is to go massively parallel (or to have a mesh of nodes that will survive regardless of local and regional outages. That was the objective of DARPA that preceded the creation of the internet (US defence), and that is the objective of third generation (Web3.0?). I am yet to see a downside to the business model of many of the newer crypto-currencies and realized last year that I doubt there is a business or sector in the entire world that will not be impacted by decentralisation as a design concept. So who will maintain the network? It will be self-healing by the greed nature of the miner participants (or node operators). If they are not available they do not earn mining fees or node participation fees. What is the revenue model? Well I am sure that if the business involves the “use” of your paid-for internet connection at your point of presence (home), that is no more or less than the business model of the biggest telephone companies (Telcos) in the world. They lease or install very high bandwidth capacity between major POPs (points of presence) at key centralized locations around the world, pay the wholesale rate for the use of bandwidth, and sub-let that bandwidth out to millions of customers on a contended bandwidth basis. Same for electricity, gas, water services. All can be and will be improved by distributed and decentralized leveraging of private assets and effort. Large companies who do not embrace this new business model will find themselves out of business. Pandora’s box has been opened, and will never be closed. What an exciting time to live. There will be positives and negatives. But if somebody asked me if I wish to allow other users to share my bandwidth for which I pay X and earn 3X, my answer is going to be "bring it on - how much bandwidth can I control and how much profit can I make for participating? Am I competitive, Am I willing to work and take risk? For the 90% who say no, they will be the usual suspect customers. for the 10% or 1% who embrace opportunity, there is a nice life ahead.
Great explanation! You’re right, the miners need participants and the participants need the miners.