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Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

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Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ability to “Hey Google, play Spotify” in every room and shower is pretty great. That’s literally the only reason I’ve been using it for 5+ years. Oh, and it was practically free.

This is still unthinkable to me. Trading that much privacy for a little bit of convenience? How does it not make you uncomfortable to know that every conversation in your house is live streamed to someone else's computer?

Yeah I'm definitely in the "I keep my laptop powered down and in a Faraday cage" camp so I guess a lot of these products aren't really aimed at me.

Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right..Or instead of STUN/TURN just use Tailscale for now. I think the reason no one's packaged this into a slick Ring-like plug-and-play probably comes down to corporate greed and how hard it is to raise money if your intention is to start a business that doesn't have ever-expanding verticals. Like, this is a set of solved problems. They just need to be smoothed and packed for the user.

You seem pretty sure of yourself. So when will you be releasing this product that you claim is such low hanging fruit? Right, now you know why this product doesn't exist.

He just explained why. Because packaging, QA, setting up a storefront, customer service, the sum total requires significant up front investment to get off the ground. Good luck raising money when your pitch is "we won't be greedy and do the things that could make even more money".

Or was your intent merely to taunt him for failing to be independently wealthy?

Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? I like to keep an eye on my dogs when we're away, and it's all done securely using HomeKit video. My iCloud is e2e encrypted and the camera doesn't upload anywhere besides there. What's the invasive part? Not giving my dogs privacy when we're out of the home?

Like, its fine that you use it for that, you do you... but I don't understand the actual use case? What are you watching the dogs for? Like are you going to rush home if they shit on the carpet or something?

The use case is peace of mind lol, what's not to understand?

Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

#194
post #88
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s actually another alternative: Just don’t install surveillance in your home. Approximately nobody had it 20 years ago. Before asking which unreliable, overpriced, invasive gadget to buy, think about whether you really need any of them.

Tons of people had cameras 20 years ago. It was 2006, not 1906. Besides, we've had pets for surveillance for hundreds of thousands of years. Literally nobody in history has thought "nah no need for security". What a ridiculous way to try and be on a high horse.

Pets as surveillance... now we watch the watchers.

Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

#195
post #83

Frigate NVR + Amcrest cameras. 100% local, private, on-device AI object recognition and classification. Can use a Google Coral USB TPU to speed that up. Runs on hardware as modest as a Raspberry Pi.

Glad to hear an open source option getting more adoption

Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but we have to call it out every time.

What? This is basic human social skills. It’s like when you don’t like someone’s friends but you’re not actually going to say that out loud. Instead you say “I'm just too tired to go out” — it’s a “diplomatic out.” Yes it’s a lie at face value but you leave people with their dignity while simultaneously signal your intent. Your friend, who presumably has social skills, picks up the subtext and you successfully commun…

No, what you call "basic human social skills" is literally opposite of it. Having good social skills also involves saying "this person/institution is lying". Or even "this person/institution is harming people".

Having social skills means also being able to distinguish between innocent nicer phrase, outright enabling and being coconspirator.

Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

#197
This should be a wakeup call for users of all cloud connected cameras that once they send their video to the cloud provider, they have no real control over how it's used.

Ring does support end to end encryption (which disables most of the cloud features), but users are still at the mercy of Ring to trust that it really is e2e encrypted and not the "fake" end to end encryption that some marketers have used to mean "Well it's encrypted from your end all the way to our end where we decrypt it". I don't trust that Ring doesn't have a law enforcement toggle to break the e2e encryption on demand if the police ask for it.

Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

#198

I still don't understand how otherwise sensible people can have an Alexa or Google Home. Like what part of that seems like a good idea to them?

Ability to “Hey Google, play Spotify” in every room and shower is pretty great. That’s literally the only reason I’ve been using it for 5+ years. Oh, and it was practically free.

I used mine for two things: setting a timer while cooking, and adding things to my shopping list, again, while cooking. I still miss that second feature a bit since I unplugged it, but it isn't too big of a deal

Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

#199

I still don't understand how otherwise sensible people can have an Alexa or Google Home. Like what part of that seems like a good idea to them?

Having an Alexa or Google Home doesn't seem any worse (or even less worse) than carrying a phone around everywhere I go. If you're worried that the device can be hacked to listen to you full-time (or that the provider is lying about it only listening to you after it hears the wake word), you should be worried about your phone for the same reason. Plus my Alexa isn't going to give google a map of everywhere I travel so they can see where I work, eat, shop, etc.

Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but we have to call it out every time.

What? This is basic human social skills. It’s like when you don’t like someone’s friends but you’re not actually going to say that out loud. Instead you say “I'm just too tired to go out” — it’s a “diplomatic out.” Yes it’s a lie at face value but you leave people with their dignity while simultaneously signal your intent. Your friend, who presumably has social skills, picks up the subtext and you successfully commun…

I say: "I don't like your friend because they are a neo-Nazi", and then I don't go out with them.
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