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Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

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Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

#251
post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Person of Interest is really good. Unfortunately I learned too much about the lead's IRL behavior, and it's on my shelf of shows I'll enjoy once the involved parties aren't collecting royalties anymore. It absolutely takes people on a police procedural that drags viewers unwittingly into watching a science fiction show, and I'm totally here for all of it.

I see it as a textbook approach of a show that built up the characters with "number of the week" episodes and then integrated the world-building and big arcs gradually. Very hard to do and less common these days with shorter series. oh and the actor will be getting royalties until he dies so you are are effectively waiting for that. Maybe get the episodes in a way that doesn't give him money.

> you are are effectively waiting for that

That's essentially what I was saying. I sort of hope when people are dead I can enjoy their performance more fondly even if I know they sucked before.

> Maybe get the episodes in a way that doesn't give him money.

I've owned the whole series on Blu-ray for a number of years. It really is just one of those things that feels tainted, at least for now. :/

Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

#252
post #247
post #240

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>We see the asteroid fired at Earth. No, we don't. The bugs have no technology. How could they send an asteroid from light-years away with enough speed and accuracy to hit Earth on any reasonable timeframe? It's not even a good lie. It's a story that strains credulity the second you actually think about its logistics. The only reason you believe it is that characters in the movie say it. >We see Buenos Aires destroye…

>The bugs have no technology. The bugs are shown firing projectiles to orbit. This is a setting with FTL travel; it's clearly not hard sci-fi. By the standard narrative conventions of soft sci-fi action movies, the bugs are capable of firing asteroids at Earth. >The true cause of the destruction is irrelevant It's critically important to the ethical justification for military response. According to the information ac…

I refuse to believe that you are actually engaging with the issues being discussed if you're claiming that needing a license to have children is "objectively more freedom in times of war than any real life society." Your stubbornness has bested my patience, so I'm done here.

Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My read is that it's immoral because it's a surveillance hijack without the knowledge of the users, as opposed to an opt-in.

And its not just opt in for the camera owner/licensor it should be explicitly optin for anyone who gets recorded

In the US, you don't have an expectation of privacy in public places.

Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about ROT13? Ideally applied twice for twice the encryption.

ROT13 is cheap enough that you can afford to apply it many more times. I use one million iterations to store passwords securely.

640k oughtta be enough for anybody.

Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

#255

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> the reduction in crime is not solely due to Flock, but is has definitely helped. what's the theory? murderers see flock cams and decide not to murder? most of the general public doesn't even know what these cameras are (or that they even exist).

People tend to behave if they know they are being watched. Yeah it's not going to stop crime 100%, but I bet you it will (and it has) help reduce crime by double digit percentages. Look at places where there are CCTV cameras all over, there is very little crime there compared to the United States. I won't use China as an example because then you are going to attack me for saying it's an authoritarian state. In that c…

> People tend to behave if they know they are being watched

People tend to behave in the ways that the people who own the surveillance apparatus want them to behave. This assumes that the people who own and operate the apparatus (oftentimes private corporations) can be trusted to monitor and act in the best interests of society. Unfortunately, the people who own and operate these have shown that they are largely untrustworthy and motivated by profit and power.

Regardless, most people would not sacrifice personal agency and democracy for supposed safety. "Behave" just means "obey" or "comply" when used in the context of "people tend to behave if they are being watched"; consent is notably absent.

Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

#256
post #252
post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The bugs have no technology. The bugs are shown firing projectiles to orbit. This is a setting with FTL travel; it's clearly not hard sci-fi. By the standard narrative conventions of soft sci-fi action movies, the bugs are capable of firing asteroids at Earth. >The true cause of the destruction is irrelevant It's critically important to the ethical justification for military response. According to the information ac…

I refuse to believe that you are actually engaging with the issues being discussed if you're claiming that needing a license to have children is "objectively more freedom in times of war than any real life society." Your stubbornness has bested my patience, so I'm done here.

I support reproductive freedom. I oppose slavery. My opposition to slavery is stronger than my support for reproductive freedom. When there's a conflict between the two, reproductive freedom has to be sacrificed.

Anybody who didn't support raising a slave army to liberate the Chinese from their one-child policy implicitly agreed with me.

Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, Nancy's camera was a Nest, not Ring.

My mistake. Despite that, I don't have much confidence that nest isn't also uploading everything at all times.

I do. The battery life on our units varies depending on the amount of foot traffic that they see. One is at our front door, where package deliveries and entry/egress trigger 5-10 times daily, and the other is in our backyard, where it is triggered a 5-10 times weekly. The backyard camera lasts much longer per charge.

This tends to indicate that they are only recording/uploading in response to specific triggers. They also have LEDs that supposedly light up whenever they are recording.

Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

#258
post #96
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to not become disillusioned with our industry when most of it is just the manifesting of that Torment Nexus tweet. It's like no one in the tech world actually understands any piece of fiction that they have ever consumed.

I've had a startling number of conversations exactly like this: "Oh, you read as well? What do your read?" "[this book], [that book]" "Those are all non-fiction, any fiction?" "I don't read fiction. If I'm not going to learn anything, it's a waste of time." "..."

Fiction is my favorite, because the authors admit they are just making it up.

Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

#259
post #250
post #20

The Dark Knight was released in 2008. In that movie, Batman hijacks citizens' cellphones to track down the Joker, and it's presented as a major moral and ethical dilemma as part of the movie's overall themes. The only way Batman remains a "good guy" in the eyes of the audience is by destroying the entire thing once he's done. Crazy to think that less than two decades later, an even more powerful surveillance technolo…

Surely it's problematic that Batman doesn't have consent to hijack phones? Whereas participating in Ring is voluntary? Anyway, movies aren't, like, the arbiters of truth. Sometimes they just have simplistic themes.

Is it voluntary to be recorded by Ring cameras?
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