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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

#301

Post by nerdponx »

dabinat wrote: post #85

> Following a comprehensive review, we determined the planned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated. That doesn’t sound like “we’re cancelling this because our customers let us know loud and clear that they were ethically against this”. If the only thing keeping them from doing this is time and money, what guarantee do we have that they won’t do it again if time…

It's saving face. It lets them bail out without actually badmouthing Flock or any related companies, which, yes, lets them do it again later.

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

#302

Post by nerdponx »

SecretDreams wrote: post #290
crazygringo wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the end of day, Amazon is a business, not an extension of the police or the FBI. They initially partnered with Flock because they thought this would be a feature people would want. They literally bought a crazy expensive Super Bowl ad to show it off. Turns out people didn't. So now they're not doing it. Amazon's only interest is to make money.

> Amazon's only interest is to make money And they make more money when they're on the right side of whatever gov du jour is running America.

Or when the gov du jour is for sale, they can do whatever they want because they and their CEO can afford just about any price.

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

#303

Post by latexr »

harrall wrote: post #299
latexr wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You don’t get it. We are all extremely good friends and there is no friendship being hurt. 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 t…

So what you’re describing is a situation where the three of you are together and you want to cut the evening short for yourself because you don’t like one of the people? If that’s the case, I don’t think that was at all clear in your original post. Judging from the downvotes and the other responses, I think everyone assumed a situation like your friend calling you up and saying “hey, want to hang out with me and ?”.

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

#304

Post by nickthegreek »

noduerme wrote: post #108
dakolli wrote: post #95

Doesn't matter, I've come to the conclusion I'll never buy into one these networks. There's a reason "security" cameras were always on "closed circuit", there's no need give these companies money.

I've had a couple Ring cams for years. I hate the network, hate having to pay for the cloud storage, I've just been too lazy to research self-hosted alternatives. Is there solution you'd recommend that's relatively polished and easy to use?

aqara g410 can be setup so that it uploads to your private iCloud and is viewable within Apple Home. I found it to be the most polished setup that is also light work and alleviates some of the concern. Quality is great as well. But for a on prem setup, frigate and armcrest seems to get alot of love.

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

#305

Post by kbelder »

harrall wrote: post #175
hackable_sand wrote: post #172

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…

You're absolutely right, this is basic courtesy, and the sort of polite awareness that everyone should have when dealing in public. If you can't understand why you would often softpedal criticisms in public (while forthrightly addressing them privately!), you're hurting youself.

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

#306

Post by kevin42 »

noduerme wrote: post #108
dakolli wrote: post #95

Doesn't matter, I've come to the conclusion I'll never buy into one these networks. There's a reason "security" cameras were always on "closed circuit", there's no need give these companies money.

I've had a couple Ring cams for years. I hate the network, hate having to pay for the cloud storage, I've just been too lazy to research self-hosted alternatives. Is there solution you'd recommend that's relatively polished and easy to use?

I've been working on an open source, fully self-hosted network video recorder for about two months now. https://github.com/kevinbentley/ronin-nvr/

It works with cheap, generic IP cameras over RTSP. It's pretty easy to get it working with a Raspberry Pi too.

I was using the synology surveillance app, but after their recent shenanigans, I wanted something I could self host and modify on my own.

I'm using it at my property with 14 cameras right now and I'm really happy with it. There's still some work to do, but it's integrated with ML object detection, and even integration with a VLLM to describe a scene when certain things are detected.

This was my first attempt at a large-scale application that is heavily AI assisted. I need to update the screenshots and feature list for the readme, but if you have any questions or want to get involved, let me know.

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

#307

Post by dgxyz »

mrguyorama wrote: post #293
dgxyz wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A lot of us don't actually have to imagine anymore. ICE keeps harassing people in remarkably personal ways, like showing up at the homes of people who make a video of them

Exactly. That's time to pull the plug on the technology companies enabling this situation.

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

#308

Post by dgxyz »

dylan604 wrote: post #291
dgxyz wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The data doesn't have to be in someone else's hands. The interface could just be the management and extra features that just stream the data from your device(s) to your mobile app. There's plenty of things that could be added as a service that would make a SaaS viable even if all of the data is stored locally on the user's devices.

Still someone else's control point.

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

#309

Post by gib444 »

nozzlegear wrote: post #280
gib444 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Don't waste my time with little pissant gotcha bullshit. If you can't engage with my comment in good faith then just move on.

You ignored much of what I asked in my comment, so you're the 'pissant bad faith'-er. You're seriously triggered

Your poor dogs. Hopefully you at least don't get this angry with them!

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

#310

Post by harrall »

latexr wrote: post #303
harrall wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t get it. We are all extremely good friends and there is no friendship being hurt. 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 t…

So what you’re describing is a situation where the three of you are together and you want to cut the evening short for yourself because you don’t like one of the people? If that’s the case, I don’t think that was at all clear in your original post. Judging from the downvotes and the other responses, I think everyone assumed a situation like your friend calling you up and saying “hey, want to hang out with me and ?”.

Yes.

And press releases are the same way. There is a literal message but often times there is subtext. They can’t say the subtext literally because it is inherently hurtful and burns a bridge (just like me saying “this guy sucks let’s leave”) so you read between the lines.

Outright lying in press releases is different. That’s a company saying “AI caused our company to fail” but actually you invested in the wrong product and don’t want to admit it.

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