Telescope is a bad analogy. This is more like the neighbor is inadvertently projecting a feed from inside their house onto a display outside by the sidewalk for any passers-by to see.
Everything is a bad analogy, because the internet has something like 6 billion of us on it these days. We evolved for small tribes, e.g. Dunbar's number is ~150. Roughly 1/129 of the people on the internet are software developers, so in the days of everyone living in villages your in-group would include roughly one person who thinks like we think. "Inadvertently live-streaming to the 1/129 of the world who consider s…
“Everything is a bad analogy” is a beautiful observation——like Plato’s Cave.
I might be wrong, but I have a very very big suspicion that this website is fake and probably a scam of some way.
If you look at it, all "feeds" that are without any moving part or human are "live", and when there is anything that could have movements, then it is a "snapshot" that doesn't move.
Everyone: For a moment forget everything you know about computers and wonder if perhaps 99% of normies are just following the directions on the package of their $19 Chinese IP camera. They have no idea what a firewall is, or what the "public internet" even means. There's also a difference between your neighbor not closing her blinds and you using a telescope to look inside her apartment, which is what sites like this…
I still don’t understand how someone can end up accidentally exposing things to the public internet. With every ISP I have ever had in my country, it’s all NAT by default. Whatever I connect to my network, wired or wireless, would not be publicly accessible just like that unless I really really went out of my way to make it publicly accessible. How do so many people end up exposing these cameras to the public interne…
Everyone: For a moment forget everything you know about computers and wonder if perhaps 99% of normies are just following the directions on the package of their $19 Chinese IP camera. They have no idea what a firewall is, or what the "public internet" even means. There's also a difference between your neighbor not closing her blinds and you using a telescope to look inside her apartment, which is what sites like this…
I'd also ask us tech savvy people to practice some humility. Yes, the people setting up these cameras are not following security best practices. But are you sure that you will not make the same mistakes? Are you sure you have never exposed anything you should not have on the Internet, and never will, even as you age? Let anyone among you who is without fumbling security be the first to throw a stone.
So that's where all of that footage came from on **** leak. I mean I knew it was bad, but there's just so many and it is 2026.
Lazy manufactures and ignorant users are responsible for the majority of this nonsense.
Lazy manufacturers and ignorant users are responsible for the existence of those unsecured devices. Assholes and criminals are responsible for accessing, recording, and distributing the output of those unsecured devices.
Meanwhile I have thingino firmware on the camera with 64+ long pass running on local nvr on a separate lan reachable through vpn only, and I still physically cover the lens when I sit in the living room, crazy stuff.
@dang Shouldn't there be a warning in the title? Atlas makes it sound like pins on a map. I, for one, would be highly uncomfortable to open this and see something private that someone has unwittingly shared with the internet.
I also question whether this site really fits with HN's values. By being so highly ranked here, a great number of eyeballs are being directed at cameras that are clearly not supposed to be publicly accessible. At a minimum that doesn't seem especially kind.
Everyone: For a moment forget everything you know about computers and wonder if perhaps 99% of normies are just following the directions on the package of their $19 Chinese IP camera. They have no idea what a firewall is, or what the "public internet" even means. There's also a difference between your neighbor not closing her blinds and you using a telescope to look inside her apartment, which is what sites like this…
This website---naturally, I think---weirds me out. Many of these cameras are in private spaces, with some places you most certainly don't want people to have live feeds of. It's quite disturbing how you can see personal snapshots of people's lives without them knowing. There's a perverse feeling of dread about being able to see into someone's life and being able to paradoxically watch someone eat dinner alone, seemin…
Every consumer tech company I’ve worked for had at least one guy who was a PM or a PM like role, who would say things like “InfoSec UX is confusing! Users don’t want to deal with IP addresses and firewalls and passwords and keys. We need to make the product easier to share by default!” This scenario seems to be what happens when anyone actually listens to That Guy. Sharing on the internet should be one of the hardest…
Granted, I only have worked in B2B and never B2C, but as a technical PM, I care VERY much about security and am often the primary SME for several aspects of security (I was an engineer with a background in security for more than a decade before becoming a PM). Saying "Users don't want to deal with that and it should be easy" is not the same thing as "open a gaping security hole", the fact you are conflating them indicates either the people you're referring to or you yourself lack creativity.