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The Banality of Surveillance

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Re: The Banality of Surveillance

#21

Post by coldtea »

Noaidi wrote: post #13

Because of this I am finding the internet more and more useless. I cannot tell you how much reading this freaks me out. I mean, is anyone else here as freaked out as I am? The only way out is to unplug. Something I am realizing is very hard to do mainly because of my conditioning. My goal it to become the next Jesus (in the human sense), or the next St. Francis. Just like my compulsive intent to keep coming back here…

>Just like my compulsive intent to keep coming back here to make these useless comments. What does it really do for me?

The same thing it does for everybody else: gives them some rare in real life engagement in discussing topics they care about, and subtitutes for interested friends.

Re: The Banality of Surveillance

#22

Post by foogazi »

phil21 wrote: post #19
bluepeter wrote: post #5

I'm in my 50s and when I was early 20s I crossed from US to Canada for a business meeting. "Why are you coming to Canada?" "To work." "Where's your work permit?" "Huh, I don't have one." That simple "wrong word" slip STILL gets me flagged and cordoned off into hours-long border diversions whenever I go to Canada. Just imagine how it'll be now... for decades you'll be fending off some hidden receipts from an IG commen…

Back in around 2012 or so, some friends and I decided to book a canal house in Amsterdam to all pitch in together and live there for about 2 months. Celebrating a few coinciding life achievements before moving onto the next phase of adult life sort of thing. I worked remotely, so planned to simply do work for half the time I was there. As such, I brought a proper monitor, keyboard, etc. with me. As I have my 20" boxe…

Not your fault but another lesson here is lying to border guards is ok if they say it is.

Which proves how much theater there is in security and that laws are not there to be blindly followed, but to enable the state to pursue its perceived enemies

Re: The Banality of Surveillance

#24

Post by tlavoie »

phil21 wrote: post #19
bluepeter wrote: post #5

I'm in my 50s and when I was early 20s I crossed from US to Canada for a business meeting. "Why are you coming to Canada?" "To work." "Where's your work permit?" "Huh, I don't have one." That simple "wrong word" slip STILL gets me flagged and cordoned off into hours-long border diversions whenever I go to Canada. Just imagine how it'll be now... for decades you'll be fending off some hidden receipts from an IG commen…

Back in around 2012 or so, some friends and I decided to book a canal house in Amsterdam to all pitch in together and live there for about 2 months. Celebrating a few coinciding life achievements before moving onto the next phase of adult life sort of thing. I worked remotely, so planned to simply do work for half the time I was there. As such, I brought a proper monitor, keyboard, etc. with me. As I have my 20" boxe…

I worked for a small company that did work for a cross-border manufacturer. Coming from Canada, we were told explicitly that "meetings" was a perfectly good reason for a day trip, and we were never there "to work". US customs has been historically as humourless a bunch as ever existed, and the factory on the other side was unionised, so meetings it is.

What cracked me up was driving back late one evening, arriving back at the Canadian side. The agent asked where I'd been, and I mentioned the town just behind me.

"Oh, _meetings_, eh?" wink

Re: The Banality of Surveillance

#25

Post by antonvs »

a3w wrote: post #12

The original quote is "The banality of evil", about the shoa in the third reich?

Yes, by Hannah Arendt.

But the concept is broadly applicable, and certainly applies here. The point is that evil actions at the state level depend on ordinary people who conform to expectations without thinking about the societal consequences of what they’re doing.

Re: The Banality of Surveillance

#26

Post by ninalanyon »

bluepeter wrote: post #5

I'm in my 50s and when I was early 20s I crossed from US to Canada for a business meeting. "Why are you coming to Canada?" "To work." "Where's your work permit?" "Huh, I don't have one." That simple "wrong word" slip STILL gets me flagged and cordoned off into hours-long border diversions whenever I go to Canada. Just imagine how it'll be now... for decades you'll be fending off some hidden receipts from an IG commen…

Of the seventeen countries (including China, Saudi, Thailand, USA, etc.) I have visited over the last four decades the only time I have been taken out of the queue at passport control to be interviewed was at Toronto flying in from Europe. Actually the tone of voice was more suited to interrogation than polite inquiry. It was very odd, and quite at odds with both my impression of and experience of Canadians themselves.

Re: The Banality of Surveillance

#27

Post by [deleted] »

grey-area wrote: post #18
delichon wrote: post #3

I was using Grok with speech and discovered their "paralinguistic" information storage. At first it claimed that the storage was temporary, but then admitted that long term data was stored for training. Some of the dimensions they store are prosody, intensity, timbre, non-verbal vocalizations, pauses, timing and emotional inflection. In other words, another large layer of information on top of just the prompt text. T…

It was highly likely confabulating about its inner workings, it was not trained on its tech specs.

[deleted]

Re: The Banality of Surveillance

#28

Post by delichon »

grey-area wrote: post #18
delichon wrote: post #3

I was using Grok with speech and discovered their "paralinguistic" information storage. At first it claimed that the storage was temporary, but then admitted that long term data was stored for training. Some of the dimensions they store are prosody, intensity, timbre, non-verbal vocalizations, pauses, timing and emotional inflection. In other words, another large layer of information on top of just the prompt text. T…

It was highly likely confabulating about its inner workings, it was not trained on its tech specs.

  “The underlying model that brings Grok to life is a voice-to-voice model which understands the expressive range of human speech... The model is able to do this because of how it internally, within a single model, processes speech (including paralinguistic cues) and generates expressive speech output.” https://blog.livekit.io/xai-livekit-partnership-grok-voice-agent-api/
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