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…
The Dark Knight was released in the summer of 2008. This was almost 7 years after 9/11. Many aspects of that film were deliberately done to explore post 9/11 America. This includes the methods Harvey Dent uses, the things the Joker says, and the surveillance scenes and more. These discussions surrounding surveillance have been around long before 2008.
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
#282Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
I knew plenty of people growing up who thought Fight Club was just a fun movie about guys who like to fight and make a club to do so and it gets a little crazy, then cut to credits. They then theorized making their own such club. This to say, yeah, I think sometimes the audience can be overestimated in their ability to understand deeper meaning in art.
And some extreemist are using fight clubs to gather followers, emulating the movie in the other direction. So-called "active clubs" are springing up using "fitness" to gather young angry males to the cause. Most join without realizing. Even gym owners are surprised to discover thier facilities have become clubhouses. https://www.jfed.net/antisemitismtoolsandresources/neo-nazi-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_…
Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pulled from IMDB, Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox voices the consternation perfectly: > Batman: [seeing the wall of monitors for the first time at the Applied Sciences division in Wayne Enterprises] Beautiful, isn't it? > Lucius Fox: Beautiful... unethical... dangerous. You've turned every cellphone in Gotham into a microphone. > Batman: And a high-frequency generator-receiver. > Lucius Fox: You took my sonar concept an…
That system is nothing compared to the geolocation databases curated by Apple and Google, with GPS sensors combined with Wi-Fi wardriving, IMEI tracking, cell tower handoffs, and the rest of the insane amount of telemetry they collect collect in real time. And that’s before even considering BLE and the Find My network. Imagine the “God mode” dashboards they could have in Cupertino (or more likely, in Mountain View).
Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance
#285Earlier 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." "..."
Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is all intentional. The film is emulating the type of film that would be produced by this fascist regime, of course it isn't going to include proof of the fascists being wrong. But we also don't see any evidence in support of their claims of an "existential threat" beyond the fascists claiming there is one. And since it's from the fascist perspective, the lack of evidence justifying their actions ends up support…
For fellow HN'ers reading this epically long back and forth: sig appears to be taking the more mainstream stance that Starship Troopers is satire. This is reinforced my popular interpretations from, say, Wikipedia, but refuted by others, like say, IMDB. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers_(film) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120201/ mrob is part of the coalition (that included many critics when the film w…
> Robert Heinlein’s original 1959 science-fiction novel was militaristic, if not fascistic. So I decided to make a movie about fascists who aren’t aware of their fascism. Robocop was just urban politics – this was about American politics. As a European it seemed to me that certain aspects of US society could become fascistic: the refusal to limit the amount of arms; the number of executions in Texas when George W Bush was governor.
I really have no idea why Wikipedia says what it does. Someone should edit it.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2018/jan/22/how-we-made-...
Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
As in: no mass protests, no anti-ICE measures but most importantly: no more pesky journalists filming and photographing everything. If we then disable the upload of amateur videos of social unrest to TikTok, we're halfway there, just a little more intimidation of civil rights advocate's via observing their every move via the cars and people will behave even better. /s
Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance
#288There would be less backlash to the Ring ad if the ad was honest about how people actually use it. Show us porch pirates, burglars and stupid neighbor who backs into your car being caught on camera. But instead, they have to come up with something "wholesome" like finding your lost doggo. The wholesomeness is so forced and cringe that it makes you think they have something to hide. It almost feels like the people who…
Isn't the whole point of the ad that they have a new feature and they want people to know about it? They're not making up the idea of finding lost dogs. They have a new feature where you upload a photo of your lost dog and it automatically looks for the dog in camera feeds.
Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance
#289For days it was explained that, while she had a Nest doorbell camera (which was stolen by the kidnapper) it was sadly useless because Nancy wasn’t paying for cloud storage. Just live video and notifications.
Well what do know happened today? The video of the kidnapper was magically produced by Google. I guess, even when you don’t pay for storage, they’re… you know…. Recording and saving the video anyway.
No one’s really bothered to point this out as they’re all just so excited that the video has turned up.
Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
> porch pirates It absolutely boggles my mind that it's legal in the US for a deliverer to just leave a package out in the open for anyone to pick up and consider it "delivered". Might as well just throw it out of the window of your car, it has the same chance of getting picked up by the recipient. Where I live the package has to be handed over to the recipient. If the recipient is not available it will be handed ove…
Do you live somewhere with high crime? The reason deliveries work this way in the US is that porch pirates are uncommon. There is a flurry of them during the holidays, but even then, the vast majority of deliveries are just fine. > What are you going to do with that information? Nothing, because by the time I look at my doorbell camera I would already have told the shipper the package was swiped and they will have sh…