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Products I Wish Existed

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Re: Products I Wish Existed

#161

Post by RussianCow »

gradstudent wrote: post #153
munificent wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Yo…

Do US postal services offer a shipping option where you need to sign for the parcel? I'd try and opt for something like that, if possible, rather than trusting the courier to leave the package on my doorstep. What I'm saying is, the problem isn't people stealing your packages. It's that you leave valuable property outside. Perhaps a good analogy is locking your door.

They do, but the sender would have to pay extra for a signature requirement, so this is not something the receiver can do anything about.

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#162

Post by ctdonath »

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.

HOAs are practically incorporated hamlets - local governments. There is a government (board) which imposes taxed (dues) and imposes zoning & other laws (rules), and can impose debilitating punishments (liens) against subjects (residents). Some are little more than friendly neighbors trying to keep neighborhood home values stable, others are wannabe tyrannical dictatorships.

I could certainly see an HOA installing (increasingly cheap!) license plate & face recognition to monitor local activity "for security reasons"; seems innocuous enough if actually used sparingly to help police solve real crimes, but could quickly become obnoxious/oppressive when meddling board members with hyperactive imaginations start "looking for trouble before it starts".

Yes, "HOA going 1984" is not full blown 1984, but it can terrorize & harm locals until they manage to move (i.e.: persuade someone else to move into a place locals are fleeing for reasons), and if less problematic still proceeds to normalize progression of 1984-ish governance.

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#163

Post by wffurr »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #25
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…

> focus on forming good relationships with their neighbors in meatspace Remember that garbage you mentioned. We don't want to deal with other people's garbage in meatspace any more than we do online.

Many people self-censor to a much greater degree in person interactions vs what they post publicly online.

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#164

Post by Zelphyr »

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…

I cancelled my Nextdoor account in part because I got tired of all the paranoia and inevitable devolvement into political bickering, but also in part as a protest against Nextdoor that they need to police this kind of activity. It was only afterwards that I realized that Nextdoor wants this activity. Like Facebook, they see it as encouraging engagement thus traffic they can use to sell ads.

It confirms to me that cancelling was the right move for me but it also saddens me that we've gotten ourselves into a state in technology where the business model is to get people riled up and then profit from that discord.

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#165

Post by ctdonath »

ksdale wrote: post #139
umvi wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Less capable of violence, yes, but still able to low-level terrorize or cause serious financial problems.

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#166

Post by blackbrokkoli »

munificent wrote: post #135
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. Yo…

Fair enough, but as you literally state yourself, the security system does not even help. I repeat, it does nothing.

> I literally have video of the dude grabbing shit off my porch, but can do nothing about it.

The only thing all this security theater does is aiding super convoluted scenarios where your neighbors system informs you to take your package in, if you have one currently out, and are fast enough, and are at home. In the long run, all this does for prevention is creating an arms race easily won by covering up your face and randomizing routes as the thief...

So: Make a startup selling big-ass secure post boxes. Minimize crime by, you know, education and financial aid. Kill this excessive package-delivery culture which is super damaging anyways somehow. Make the police force more efficient. Make small package-taking centrals. Whatever. I understand. But this cloud-based security is the absolute worst thing you can do.

edit: spelling

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#167

Post by triceratops »

munificent wrote: post #135
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. Yo…

> get things shipped to work, use Amazon lockers,

These seem like reasonable solutions. Why not just do them?

> I literally have video of the dude grabbing shit off my porch, but can do nothing about it.

So what will more surveillance technology do? Maybe the innovation needed is apartment-community style mailboxes or dropboxes where only the mailperson and the tenant can have access, but scaled to single-family-home use.

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#168

Post by ghaff »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #145
ghaff wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite a few years ago, I was at a very small company and we made the decision to move from hosting our own Microsoft Exchange to Gmail--partly for cost reasons and partly because we had had a couple of serious mail outages. A couple of people at the time were really unhappy about the change because there were some differences, at least at the time, in the ability to create nested folders/labels like they were accusto…

My mind thinks hierarchically in everything I do so I understand that Google's "Search, don't sort" is difficult to adopt to. (Note, FWIW, though I think we're on the same page - the "business processes" I'm talking about in relation to ERP are less interface/program-mechanic based, and more along the lines of "Who is authorized/must approve" "How do we run accounting" "What is our procurement workflow" "How do you c…

I used to put a fair bit of effort into curating and filing emails, documents, etc. Over the past decade or so, aside from making sure that I put things I wanted to hang onto over the longer term into Archive folders so they didn't get deleted, I mostly stopped filing things and figured I'd just search for them if necessary.

Doesn't always work especially if I don't remember quite what I'm looking for. But it's overall a reasonable tradeoff compared to filing a bunch of stuff, most of which I'll never look at again. It is a shift in mindset though.

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#169

Post by JohnFen »

secabeen wrote: post #80
jakelazaroff wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Although they claim to let customers deny police requests for footage, their terms of service allow them to hand video over to police if they deem the request "reasonable". Defining what is a "reasonable government request" is a valid question, but it's really just not that high of a bar to get a records subpoena/search warrant for video like this. Courts sign off on those routinely, so I don't think you can really…

> Ring is reducing the overhead of asking somewhat, but they're not enabling mass surveillance or building AI systems that track suspicious people across multiple ring devices.

It really looks to me like this is exactly what they're building.

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#170

Post by blackearl »

cortesoft wrote: post #94
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…

Yeah, that sounds horrible... if it is anything like Nextdoor, there will be three posts a day about "There was a black guy sitting in his car!"

He was sitting there...menacingly!
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