Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Cloud connected doorbells must die as well as dragnet surveillance. I'd disagree and restate that cloud services willing to make these kinds of deals must die, painfully, in a fire after being stung by a million killer bees, after receiving a million paper cuts and having lemon juice poured all over them. It is possible for a company to charge a monthly fee to provide a service and only that service without attempt…
Cloud services change. Politicians change. Once the data is in someone else's hands it is at risk. Imagine our current data corpus in the hands of the Stasi for example.
Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash
291–300 of 331 posts
Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash
#292Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Cloud connected doorbells must die as well as dragnet surveillance. I'd disagree and restate that cloud services willing to make these kinds of deals must die, painfully, in a fire after being stung by a million killer bees, after receiving a million paper cuts and having lemon juice poured all over them. It is possible for a company to charge a monthly fee to provide a service and only that service without attempt…
Cloud services change. Politicians change. Once the data is in someone else's hands it is at risk. Imagine our current data corpus in the hands of the Stasi for example.
Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash
#294How long until Flock is a nationally toxic brand? They're just as bad, if not worse, than Ring. Difference being they're not a consumer brand I guess, but far more pervasive in everyday life.
The more wwe talk about Flock with our friends the faster t will happen. I like just pointing them to https://deflock.org/ for a start.
Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Anthropic ads are heavily into the uncanny valley. The services they are demonstrating looks horrible - even before the ad. A soulless psychiatrist who'll give you generic cookie-cutter advice about deeply personal issues? Why would you want that!? Same with the personal trainer, the startup coach, and the professor. Any of them would be incredibly creepy in real life, with their fake smiling, uncanny repeated st…
Aside from the ads/no-ads, they're also trying to lampoon chatgpt (especially the "sycophantic" 4o style), since Claude is supposed to be a more "human" LLM (or at least Anthropic likes to think so given their focus on constitutional rlaif, "soul doc" and whatnot). But it's not a good ad when the only people who will get the reference are those plugged into "ai twitter". But association by implication doesn't work, t…
It might also work for people who watch "South Park". I've never used any LLM speech interface, and until recently had only ever asked ChatGPT short one off questions and so had never seen the sycophantic tendencies, but immediately recognized the creepy people in the ads were supposed to represent ChatGPT from its portrayal in the South Park episode "Sickofancy" from August of last year.
Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash
#296Amazon knew exactly what they were doing… they’re just scrambling because they got caught and underestimated the public backlash from their actions. They made a calculated decision, and calculated wrong. Every tech savy person I know is working up plans to rip these things out and go with solutions that have more rigorous privacy controls. For example the UniFi setups keep all your data on prem so you can avoid these…
Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash
#297Skip the movie; the ending sucks and there's too much drama.
The book neatly lays out how little steps towards a better life (like being able to find your lost dog) lead to an oppressive surveillance state. Every step is a good thing and makes logical sense. The end result is not good.
Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash
#298Amazon knew exactly what they were doing… they’re just scrambling because they got caught and underestimated the public backlash from their actions. They made a calculated decision, and calculated wrong. Every tech savy person I know is working up plans to rip these things out and go with solutions that have more rigorous privacy controls. For example the UniFi setups keep all your data on prem so you can avoid these…
I was worried it would be a lot of work to replace Ring stuff. While Reolink’s setup experience isn’t quite as smooth, it was still trivial to get working. Highly recommend it for everyone who wants a decent alternative.
Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
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’m sure this is also cultural, but that approach is terrible. Your friend can’t automatically guess you’re lying, not for the first few times, anyway. Of course they’ll believe you if you say you’re too tired to go out. Then they inadvertently catch you or you reject them so many times they start to believe you don’t want to go out with them , not the other friend. All the while they became closer with the other per…
Talking in private is different where we are bluntly truthful.
This is how we talk in public.
It’s like doing steganography[1] on language. I can pass a secret message to my friend plainly in front of someone else using subtext.
And it’s not even contrived most of the time. Sometimes someone inadvertently leaks out subtext by their posture or tone and an observant person can read that the person is uncomfortable or comfortable.
Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash
#300Amazon knew exactly what they were doing… they’re just scrambling because they got caught and underestimated the public backlash from their actions. They made a calculated decision, and calculated wrong. Every tech savy person I know is working up plans to rip these things out and go with solutions that have more rigorous privacy controls. For example the UniFi setups keep all your data on prem so you can avoid these…
What I don't understand is how they get blindsided by the public's reaction. Do they not have high-powered PR teams to do market research? Or did they fire them when they came back with news that the self-centered execs didn't want to hear?
The Amazon Go stores and “Just Walk Out” were a good idea on paper but terribly executed because Amazon leaders didn’t understand how customers think and the awkward aspects of the design. Same with the palm reader tech they just scrapped. Similar here where someone thinks this is a good idea but is completely out of touch with customer mindsets. It’s a recurring pattern for Amazon.