"Why not? A Sentinel for every man, woman, and child in Zion. That sounds exactly like the thinking of a machine to me." - Morpheus
Smart streetlights are casting a long shadow
11–20 of 36 posts
Re: Smart streetlights are casting a long shadow
#12the tldr seems to be that these streetlights are being presented as automated maintenance systems, but are being used by the police for surveillance. This is worrying, I would definitely support a law that said all government owned audio/video/3d/biometric/etc recording devices must be clearly marked as such. I might also be in favor of the same law for privately owned devices that are recording public areas. I didn'…
What was your signal that it was bumped by mods?
It came out of the second chance pool (go to the bottom, Lists -> Pool). Originally posted yesterday.
Re: Smart streetlights are casting a long shadow
#13the tldr seems to be that these streetlights are being presented as automated maintenance systems, but are being used by the police for surveillance. This is worrying, I would definitely support a law that said all government owned audio/video/3d/biometric/etc recording devices must be clearly marked as such. I might also be in favor of the same law for privately owned devices that are recording public areas. I didn'…
What was your signal that it was bumped by mods?
The original few comments had different timestamps if you clicked on them. That seems to have been updated since, but if you look in the commenters history it still has the old time stamp.
It could just be an unrelated glitch, but my guess is that the story was submitted yesterday, never made it past new, and one of the mods thought it was important enough to deserve a boost and reposted it. Or maybe there was a natural dupe unrelated to mods. but then the two threads merged and the previous comments had their timestamps updated. Maybe there was a validation error and it was done manually to have the timestamps on the comments be larger than the timestamp on the story, or maybe its a bug in the merging process. really it was just a guess at hn internals.
Re: Smart streetlights are casting a long shadow
#14the tldr seems to be that these streetlights are being presented as automated maintenance systems, but are being used by the police for surveillance. This is worrying, I would definitely support a law that said all government owned audio/video/3d/biometric/etc recording devices must be clearly marked as such. I might also be in favor of the same law for privately owned devices that are recording public areas. I didn'…
Geez, streetlights ARE surveillance technologies. They get put in so people can see each other and surveille them. And what do they suggest police are going to do? Track the movement of political dissidents? Ain't no one got time for that kind of spy shit. People need to stop imagining they live in a dystopian movie. The one realistic use/abuse I can see now is tracking homeless people and keeping them from stopping…
Geez, streetlights ARE surveillance technologies. They get put in so people can see each other and surveille them.
The article makes that point too, but from the perspective that they have always been bad. Which I find almost as absurd as thinking it's ok to have disguised electronic surveillance run by the government and deployed at scale.
Re: Smart streetlights are casting a long shadow
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
What was your signal that it was bumped by mods?
The original few comments had different timestamps if you clicked on them. That seems to have been updated since, but if you look in the commenters history it still has the old time stamp. It could just be an unrelated glitch, but my guess is that the story was submitted yesterday, never made it past new, and one of the mods thought it was important enough to deserve a boost and reposted it. Or maybe there was a natu…
It's not a glitch or an error, it's how the second chance pool works. They give them a new time when they get a fresh start. Their timestamp is temporarily updated, and any existing comments get that same timestamp. I think (but have never seen this confirmed) that this is a way to game the existing voting system (posts are ranked by a combination of votes, age, and comment activity). By giving them an artificially "young" age they move up in the ranking to hit the front page, giving them a chance for more votes (to remain on the front page) and comments.
After a few hours the original timestamp gets restored. Revisit this tomorrow (certainly) or in a few hours and the times will change.
Re: Smart streetlights are casting a long shadow
#16Look. I'm the target audience- a bleeding heart liberal with a long history of wokeness to the point of annoying others on this site, and a deep mistrust of surveilance. Even _I_ an exhausted with arguments like "Citizens of Ancient Rome started to install an oil lamp in front of every villa to prevent tripping or thefts, and an enslaved person would be designated to watch the lamp—lighting was already paired with th…
No kidding. I got to the same paragraph and closed the tab. The author seriously buried the lede. What exactly is a “smart streetlight” and why is it of concern? I have no idea.
The same paragraph resulted in immediate closing of the article for me as well. lol
I figured if the author was going to be reaching that hard, nothing of value was lost by not reading it.
Re: Smart streetlights are casting a long shadow
#17Look. I'm the target audience- a bleeding heart liberal with a long history of wokeness to the point of annoying others on this site, and a deep mistrust of surveilance. Even _I_ an exhausted with arguments like "Citizens of Ancient Rome started to install an oil lamp in front of every villa to prevent tripping or thefts, and an enslaved person would be designated to watch the lamp—lighting was already paired with th…
The use of "enslaved person" here is pretty laughable given the origin of "slave" as "Slav," because people liked to capture and sell Slavs hundreds of years ago (https://www.etymonline.com/word/slave). Also interesting that the Slavic word for "slave" is the origin of the word "robot."
Re: Smart streetlights are casting a long shadow
#18Meanwhile this morning I was wondering if I could drop a remote control LED light next to the solar sensor on the street light across the street with a drone and fool it at night into turning off so I can use my telescope without being blinded in my front yard.
Re: Smart streetlights are casting a long shadow
#19Look. I'm the target audience- a bleeding heart liberal with a long history of wokeness to the point of annoying others on this site, and a deep mistrust of surveilance. Even _I_ an exhausted with arguments like "Citizens of Ancient Rome started to install an oil lamp in front of every villa to prevent tripping or thefts, and an enslaved person would be designated to watch the lamp—lighting was already paired with th…
The use of "enslaved person" here is pretty laughable given the origin of "slave" as "Slav," because people liked to capture and sell Slavs hundreds of years ago ( https://www.etymonline.com/word/slave ). Also interesting that the Slavic word for "slave" is the origin of the word "robot."
Huh?
Re: Smart streetlights are casting a long shadow
#20All right I have a question, why are there all these purple and blue street lights? You can barely see anything with them and they produce a ton of glare