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Comment by Rapzid | Hacker News Reader

The consumer of the DNS is the Chromecast. Its preference is 8.8.8.8 .

The owner of the Chromecast decides which DNS to use, unless we decide that Google keeps owning it and the sale is not a sale.

A Chromecast isn't an agent with free will and intentions, the user is. When I set my DNS settings to a different DNS server than Google's, my preference is just that: different from Google's.

I think your humor detection algorithm needs some enhancement.

Chromcasts are sentient now? Wow, that should be the headline!

I'm clearly meaning the choices made by the Chromecast via the product and service owners and creators. The thing is a consumer IoT device with a lot of blackbox going on. It's consuming the DNS service to provide another service to the end user. How that happens is trivia to most people.

I think it's fine to want that configurable and maybe, maybe even expect or ask for it.. But I believe concocting conspiracy and assigning malicious intent so readily, as many are, displays either an ignorance of how products get built for the mass market or a feigning of such. As others who have worked on IoT devices have pointed out, there are rather valid user experience concerns behind baking these "preferences" into the products.

Obviously, I knew what you meant. You just expressed it in a humorous (and, I think, not entirely valid) way, granting agency to the device rather than people.

> As others who have worked on IoT devices have pointed out, there are rather valid user experience concerns behind baking these "preferences" into the products.

Which is something that I have not denied. What I assert is that there absolutely needs to be a way to change that behavior if users wish. The lack of that ability is, in my opinion, something that is harmful, both technically and socially.

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