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Products I Wish Existed

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Re: Products I Wish Existed

#131

Post by emayljames »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #54
runjake wrote: post #8

#4 is a no-go in my book. Things like Ring, Nextdoor, and Facebook already exist. Nextdoor and Facebook are riddled with inanity, from political rants to dumb jokes to hoaxes to common scams to law enforcement rants. I don't want more information from my neighbors -- 99% of it is garbage. I want highly-filtered information. Basically, a neighborhood watch but with an aggressive spam filter. Right now I glance at the…

The "SaaS-ification" of security cameras should also worry us. Ring — not its customers — controls the videos taken with their cameras, creating a video surveillance network that the police can access without needing a warrant. They've partnered with 400 police forces to give them access to that data [1]. Although they claim to let customers deny police requests for footage, their terms of service allow them to hand…

In the UK, you can't lawfully film another persons dwelling, in that you would break the law by having any of a neighbours property in view.

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#132

Post by blackbrokkoli »

umvi wrote: post #110
blackbrokkoli wrote: post #100

> 4. ADT 2.0: Digital neighborhood watch. That this is not only a market, but a "wish" which seems to get traction even here on HN confirms to me that the old joke "1984 is not a manual" is more relevant than ever, and scarily not only in regards to the usual suspects, corporate and nation states, but people themselves. Can anyone explain to me why anyone would advocate a profit-driven, systematic eradication of soul…

1984 is only a manual if the state or federal government implements it. If an HOA implements it, I don't see how that is 1984. If I turn my house into my own surveillance state, that's not 1984 either, that's me automating tedious things like looking out the window for suspicious characters or events.

Fully agreeing within your premise. Digitalizing the grandman standing at her window 25/7 does not change the world.

But you missed the part where not you (or your HOA) implements it:

> Services model. Part of the purchase includes a technician showing up and doing the installation. There would be no DIY component.

> Subscription only. The product would be a hardware/software/services bundle with an up front fee and ongoing subscription as default.

So, you have scale. Someone owns all the data. Or three companies, same difference. The state of the "art" security in this sector is beyond laughable (Xiamoi camera showing feed from other peoples camera [0]) and even if not, just buy the dataset. And then the real shit begins.

Give me that dataset of say 20% of the Americans and a decent laptop and I blow Cambridge and their silly facebook data out of the water.

Recognizing people gets ridiculously easy - instead of 7 billion people I only have to identify you out of maybe 100 persons frequenting an area. Cue all the low hanging fruits like your affairs, about all disabilities affecting gait, your bedtime regularity. Let me assume the role of a big store chain: I can not only see plants and garden equipment you buy, but also how you use it and how often you break stuff or let your grass grow brown. Nice!

All these habits, unfiltered, unlike in the internets! How regular is your daily routine? Are you up to some risks due to little sunlight and sport? Your insurer would like to know! Your other insurer would also like to know, should you be considered a traffic risk considering how angry you take your driveway sometimes? But your other insurer has already pattern matched: Is probably an anger management issue. Your future job interviewer thanks you for this red flag!

But hey, you did avoid getting your electric pepper mill stolen that one time, probably!

[0] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/01/cache-issue-causes-x...

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#133

Post by [deleted] »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #102
dsalzman wrote: post #2

+100 "I would love to see the following analysis: A map of repetitious tasks, spreadsheets, and manual data extraction by function in the Fortune 500. Budget breakdown of current software spend, by function, by line, in the Fortune 500. A view of what Accenture, CapGemini, and Deloitte keep building over and over for large enterprises. Undoubtedly a subset of these custom consulting projects can be turned into SaaS s…

>Global 2000 company IT needs. Splunk is a good example of this. I've worked at several public and private muti-billion dollar orgs, and they all rant and rave about how good Splunk is over whatever else they were using. So, build more splunks. Maybe something that aggregates monitoring multiple servers. A plug and play Status Dashboard for a company's internal apps. Like this: https://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en…

[deleted]

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#134

Post by munmaek »

tclancy wrote: post #119
blackbrokkoli wrote: post #100

> 4. ADT 2.0: Digital neighborhood watch. That this is not only a market, but a "wish" which seems to get traction even here on HN confirms to me that the old joke "1984 is not a manual" is more relevant than ever, and scarily not only in regards to the usual suspects, corporate and nation states, but people themselves. Can anyone explain to me why anyone would advocate a profit-driven, systematic eradication of soul…

It's one of the gaps/ downsides to tech development. We see anything not yet in existence in as an "underserved market", design a product and assume everyone thinks like we do. The whole time I was reading that section all I heard was, "Let's move from individual neighbor racism tools to group chat!"

That's pretty much what NextDoor is for my neighborhood.

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#135

Post by munificent »

blackbrokkoli wrote: post #100

> 4. ADT 2.0: Digital neighborhood watch. That this is not only a market, but a "wish" which seems to get traction even here on HN confirms to me that the old joke "1984 is not a manual" is more relevant than ever, and scarily not only in regards to the usual suspects, corporate and nation states, but people themselves. Can anyone explain to me why anyone would advocate a profit-driven, systematic eradication of soul…

I agree with your overall point. However:

> low-impact black-swan events like serial packet thiefs?

I live in Seattle. Package theft is a white swan event here. Everyone I know has had packages stolen. Most people are forced to come up with some strategy to deal with it: get things shipped to work, use Amazon lockers, get a camera on your porch and make sure to bring the package inside as soon as it shows up, etc.

You are right that materially it is a low-impact event. However, psychologically it isn't. It sucks having shit stolen from in front of your own home. It immediately undermines that "sense of trust and community" you mention. My home no longer feels like a sanctuary, and random people ambling down my street no longer feel like friendly neighbors. Any of them could be a thief scoping out porches and the evidence is clear that at least some of them are.

It is a maddeningly disempowering feeling to know that I am unable to prevent someone from stealing shit from my own property. Worse, I know the police won't do a thing about it either. I literally have video of the dude grabbing shit off my porch, but can do nothing about it.

I think it is that feeling of helplnessness that leads people to buy security systems.

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#136

Post by jcadam »

> 7. Software-only defense contractor.

Yea, I keep thinking of doing this but there's so much red tape in starting a defense company, it's seriously daunting. I'm a software developer in the defense industry, btw.

> ...be focused on a more SaaS-centric software-driven model...

Actually, I think the time may finally be right for something like this in my industry.

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#137

Post by munmaek »

runjake wrote: post #8

#4 is a no-go in my book. Things like Ring, Nextdoor, and Facebook already exist. Nextdoor and Facebook are riddled with inanity, from political rants to dumb jokes to hoaxes to common scams to law enforcement rants. I don't want more information from my neighbors -- 99% of it is garbage. I want highly-filtered information. Basically, a neighborhood watch but with an aggressive spam filter. Right now I glance at the…

NextDoor is great because I can learn who is and isn't racist in my South Carolina suburban neighborhood.

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#138

Post by scarejunba »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #59

"Unlike Palantir, which seems to have a services-centric model, this new company would be focused on a more SaaS-centric software-driven model." I thought Palantir was extremely software-driven. Could someone clear up what the above sentence means?

Palantir does really well for what they do, but this article is as true today as it was in 2016 in terms of what they are https://simplystatistics.org/2016/05/11/palantir-struggles/

They're almost just a consultancy.

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#139

Post by ksdale »

umvi wrote: post #110
blackbrokkoli wrote: post #100

> 4. ADT 2.0: Digital neighborhood watch. That this is not only a market, but a "wish" which seems to get traction even here on HN confirms to me that the old joke "1984 is not a manual" is more relevant than ever, and scarily not only in regards to the usual suspects, corporate and nation states, but people themselves. Can anyone explain to me why anyone would advocate a profit-driven, systematic eradication of soul…

1984 is only a manual if the state or federal government implements it. If an HOA implements it, I don't see how that is 1984. If I turn my house into my own surveillance state, that's not 1984 either, that's me automating tedious things like looking out the window for suspicious characters or events.

Since HOAs are much less capable of doing violence to people, it's certainly not as harmful for them to implement this technology as it is for the state to do so, but I think the impulse to view every single person passing through the neighborhood as a potential threat can create a very dystopian vibe.

There's always a house or two for sale in our neighborhood, and naturally people will slowly drive by the houses to check them out, and without fail, someone will post on the HOA FB page to watch out for such and such sketchy vehicle.

The house we bought was vacant for a short time and some kids came along and threw rocks at some of the windows, but for a few weeks after we bought the house, people would ask us if we knew about the "break-in."

We live in one of the nicest neighborhoods I've ever seen and it's some combination of the news and technology like this that makes people think they're about to get Purged every night.

I don't think the technology is the problem so much as the attitude it creates toward the world, and I think the technology can be quite useful, but when everyone believes it is necessary, it creates a 1984 vibe without government intervention. No government involvement is necessary for us to be suspicious and mean toward each other.

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