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Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

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431–440 of 696 posts

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marketing teams are constantly out of touch with the message they want to convey vs the message that gets conveyed. The creative team is usually not even talking to the other teams that would drive decisions like this - they almost exclusively are an isolated team (purposefully, like how engineers are often isolated from customers) that talks to a separate marketing team that then manages things like legal/compliance…

I worked in that world for a solid decade as a “creative” (video production) and when it comes to the big dogs, that is absolutely not true. They are incredibly top down and have to review everything. We have to pitch our ideas even when we’re in the door. They have strict brand bibles we have to adhere to. Ones that gave us free rein were the exception, not the rule. Sometimes it was for no other reason than a bunch…

Are any of these brand bibles public?

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#432
As a side and probably fully off topic note (although...), I asked ChatGPT an innocent code question while not giving my code. It basically answered with the variable name I had written in my own code (da.ma.st) (a variable inside an object inside an object : data.main.stance). I still have to understand how and why it happened (I am not using anything else than ChatGPT in my browser and I absolutely never provided this chunk of code to the AI).

I further noticed that while I had a chatgpt window open, my dev site window was becoming laggy after many refreshes as if something was deliberately trying to scan it every time it got refreshed. I suspect the AI to scan other open tabs and simply reading through everything it can encounter. It is actually the only explanation up to date (but I unfortunately don't have much time to try to validate this speculative opinion: I will surely give other shots in order to narrow my suspicions).

I tend to think that this kind of data extraction frenziness may be a big problem in the future. Read it as : "let's collect everything, just tell everyone we are not collecting it, and then we'll see what we can get from it." Imagine such data being used in the future versions of governments if things get wild.

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would probably help if you made a more specific point rather than just ranting in very vague terms. Grouping terms like "the west" can be broad enough to include over half of all living humans or so narrow that it applies to a small village. It is, admittedly, not a particularly useful term, but it's not like americans are reaponsible for it.

Where have you seen it used outside of Americans pretending their culture is somehow a standard and NATO apologists? The world doesn't even exist as such in my own language. It's a staple on Hacker News and nearly always for the bad reasons. I'm supposed to politely nod and shut up when people are casually erasing my culture?

What are you talking about? Nobody is erasing your culture except for maybe you because you aren’t even talking about your culture. You’re just ranting about Americans.

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#434
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need something similar to FIPS for interoperable software and standards. Organizations will fall in line when money is at stake. Say for example your local/state/federal agency publishes (or accepts) documents exclusively in ods/odf instead of proprietary formats, that will automatically drive adoption of software and prevent lock-in.

Agressive interoperability at the protpcol and exchange format - its why email mostly works even forcing Google to back off when they tried to change email to be rendered by their cdn (i forget the name of the offering - but was similar to what news pages were being pushed for speedup). Bad actors will always abound - like Microsoft spiking the documnt standards by pushing through ooxml when odt/odf was gaining tract…

Re: ooxml vs odt/odf

I've heard that both have parts of the spec that are hard to implement if you don't have the software to verify.

How is it a bad thing that both major office software are now documented?

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone has known Google reads your email since day one. In the early days they would spin it as a good thing: "that's why the spam filtering is great!" Why is everyone suddenly outraged Ring has access to your footage? These cloud-connected cameras...hosted on someone else's servers. It's literally how they work. "But I didn't think they would use the video in a way I didn't personally approve after giving it to th…

> But I didn't think they would use the video in a way I didn't personally approve after giving it to them! This is exactly the sort of thing there should be legislation for. To a somewhat weaker extent than I’d like this is what GDPR and friends covers, the law says that companies must state what data they’re gathering and what purposes they’re gathering it for. If they overreach then they can be fined into oblivion…

'then they can be fined into oblivion' with capital CAN. Give me an example where this actually happened. (not just a statement that it will be done, but an actual example of a company going under because of the fine)

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#436
post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even in the EU we can't use a lot of "society important" smartphone apps without Google Play or the Apple Store. Install GrapheneOS on a Pixel. Most Android apps just work, and unlike the stock OS, it does not spy on you.

A Pixel is depending on Google.

Parent mentioned not using the Play Store or the Apple Store. The hardware Graphene runs on is kind of irrelevant for that. I don't see a problem with paying Google for hardware that I am free to use as I like; unlike other manufacturers the bootloader is unlockable, which means the stock OS can be replaced.

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not. There are no human rights for the lowest castes in Hinduism, there are no human rights for polytheists in Islam, there were nothing like the modern idea of human rights in Japan or China before they westernized. That's why the west was able to leapfrog other nations economically (and hence militarily), because it was the first place where people had enough rights for something resembling a modern economy…

I mean, nobody knows why "the west" (whatever that is) leapfrogged anyone, and this is a fairly small period in terms of total human history.

The industrial revolution is quite well documented

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#438

This type of centralization breeds authoritarianism. See also the Iran protests. There’s too many single points of failure in technology. These systems become sources of oppression inevitably. How do we build a resilient system that doesn’t rely on single platforms?

Functioning antitrust is really all it takes. The last significant US antitrust action was on AT&T in 1982.

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#439
post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He needed to verify his identity via an app at pick up time, and needed an gmail/apple account as part of the process. I don't remember which app.

bring my kids now or i will call the police and you will be charged with abduction.

and how are you going to prove your ID? you might as well be the one abducting them, and especially if you refuse to use an app to identify yourself... (playing devils advocate here)

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#440
post #237

Reminder: Glen Greenwald doesn’t think Jan 6 was an insurrection and now aligns with people like Tim Pool and Alex Jones.

Do people still believe Jan 6 was an insurrection? Didn't the police invite protesters in?

> Didn't the police invite protesters in?

They did not.

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