"The frugal economy" is a weird title for it, they are basically advocating abolishing shareholders and the whole equity system because it keeps failing us repeatedly.
I lost count of how many months its been since I paid my mortgage, just waiting for the deputies to show up now and make me officially homeless. I guess I'm a squatter now? The word "frugal" is just not in my vocabulary any more.
I'm trying to think of any company I would trust for a camera in my house and am drawing a blank. Google is pure evil for sure, but which company is better?
It it even possible to roll your own LAN solution any more? The tech giants have become so hostile to anyone who dares to try to control their own data that I never even hear it discussed any more.
You can build your own LAN system. You just need to plug a camera with a wide lens into a Pi, optionally with a PIR motion sensor. Possibly with some IR illumination for night vision.Have some code which motion triggers the camera (either in software or IR triggered) and upload the data to your own storage. That could be local on a NAS or cloud (a bucket you own).
I suggest this over an IP camera as you might as well be paranoid about those too. If you need live streaming that can be done with open source software fairly easily.
You would have to spend some time working on hardware, and it'd probably cost more, but technically it's just tedious rather than difficult. There are some projects to do this with the Pi camera already. You could even add object detection with ML quite easily, which is something you pay a lot for with other platforms.
What you miss out on is the level of embedded and mechanical integration that the commercial stuff has. Blink has a two year battery life (replaceable), the housings are IP rated etc.
Wyze is the only company I trust currently. You dont have to use their app you can save it all to an SD card and there are github repos for custom firmware. I currently just use their software.
Most IP cameras support standard methods of accessing their video feeds. A program like iSpy will work fine, you just want to also have a firewall that will block your cameras' attempts to call home and not set up any cloud access.
Is that still true? I wanted to buy an IP camera to monitor our puppy's crate a few months back and I was shocked to find that pretty much all the cheapish IP cameras that used to support this a few years back have all moved to a cloud-only offering where you have to access your video via their app which streams your video to their cloud service (hard no).
I was amazed that not a single product in the sub $100 range on Amazon seemed to support direct LAN access. I ended up going with the Wyze cam, which still has that issue, but I'd trust a bit more over the no-name Chinese brands still running 10 year old Linux kernels on their cameras.
I referred to iSpy both because it's a great free/open product, but it also has an excellent camera database with all of the video feed URLs for different model cameras. Check it out: https://www.ispyconnect.com/sources.aspx
From my experience, many cameras won't publicize/document this information, but it's still available/possible for almost every one.
Ah I see. Thanks for replying. It unfortunately looks like iSpy doesn't have a mobile client? Many years ago I used to use Robert Chou's "IP Cam Viewer" which was a no-nonsense app to connect to different IP cameras, but unfortunately that doesn't work with a lot of the changes that camera makers have made on their end to prevent direct IP connections.
In my case, I'd strongly want to avoid direct IP connections to my cameras from a smartphone. That'd suggest very easy outside access to devices that have questionable security.
It's very possible. Another alternative is to go with Apple HomeKit Secure Video products, which do send your data to the cloud, but in encrypted form which is only accessible to you.
Your comment is a case in point: the takeaway the general public will have from this letter is that the virus doesn't really matter, and you should feel free to disregard it if you can come up with a vaguely plausible reason why your particular circumstances mean you should be exempt from caring about it.
Which we kind of were at anyway, but now public health figures have given their signoff on that interpretation.
The virus doesn’t seem to matter for police forces either, spraying tear gas as salutation and forcing anyone at reach to burst out as much body fluid as they possibly can.
TBH from the outside it seems that whatever the death count is it never really mattered to a majority of people in the US.
The CDC already failed us. Public health figures have been wrong repeatedly at the local, state, and national level.
I understand people's frustration with them, and I understand why people don't care about their "signoffs" on what we're allowed to do, especially when the guidelines are completely nonsensical like in California.
Where are the free clinics? Where are the free tests? Where is the free quarantine hotel room? None of that, instead we just get chided for being stupid and uncooperative by leaders. This is completely unacceptable, they failed us, not the other way around.
And the police might actually kill me today, unlike the virus.
the virus doesnt care, it's going to infect as many as possible. One thing is for certain, if there isn't a huge jump in infections then there will never be a lockdown in response to a pandemic ever again.
It seems like pushing through massive budget cuts and busting up police unions is the next logical step. I understand this is easier said than done, but the sooner we get started on actually fighting this fight the easier it will be to get through.
That isn't a good comparison, police unions have mostly different support systems and allies than other unions. Police unions are not generally helped by other unions to put it mildly.
Also, enough public support exists for both sides to try and act so which one has more "public trust" doesn't matter at all, it's about exerting power now.
Teachers' unions don't even have the power to get budgets big enough for teachers to not have to buy their own school supplies for students. Talk to me when police unions are weak enough that we can cut police department budgets back so much that police have to buy their own bullets and riot gear.
There's a lot of bad blood between the NYPD and the mayor now, given that the NYPD arrested de Blasio's daughter and then posted Chiara's arrest report -
NYPD and the Mayor were duking even before this, and NYPD have turned their back to Mayor at the Police funeral. The stakes might have gone higher, but the bad blood was there at least few years old.
I'm getting tired of the union rep who always comes out and throws gasoline around over their non-stop political fight with the mayor. He never has anything constructive to say.
There is a real problem when the second largest police force on the planet can't get its employees to stand up and do the job they signed up for. Strategically abandoning their duty so as to win political points is a disgrace.
> I'm getting tired of the union rep who always comes out and throws gasoline around over
I'm starting to think this is actually a well crafted strategy for union leaders to go out in the middle of a killing where an officer might be in the wrong where they start throwing insults and muddy the water.
Could you help me understand a little more about the situation in NYC? From an outsiders perspective, it seems that de Blasio supports the police department, but at the same time, they arrested his daughter and tweeted details. I'm kinda just curious about whats actually happening.
There is nothing praise-worthy about taking a stand now, you should have been out of there ten years ago or never started to begin with. Zuckerberg has been consistently out of control and unaccountable since the Beacon fiasco, which was in like 2008.
This is slightly more annoying than all the government officials who only dare criticize the executive branch after they retire. We have way more data over a longer period of time about how horrible this company is, you should have figured it out a long time ago.
The last thing I want to read in 2020 is essays from wealthy tech workers who already cashed out talking about "taking a stand". You're not brave, you're a coward.
> There is nothing praise-worthy about taking a stand now, you should have been out of there ten years ago or never started to begin with.
That is a ridiculous position. perhaps it would have been wise to do this 10 years ago, or perhaps not it doesn't matter. NOW, it is either the moral thing to do, or it is not. Clearly Mr. Aveni thinks it IS moral, and I applaud him for taking this step (at some significant personal cost) in accordance with his ethics.
Like when Wells Fargo investigated their mortgage department and found no problems, right? Or when Google investigated Andy Rubin and decided he wasn't that bad and protected him for three more years? Why on earth would you ever trust a corporation to police themselves? They always lie, they always fail.
It can't hurt to expect companies to actually troubleshoot their own policies. We don't have to expect that it's the only recourse (eg. government regulation, civil suits, public brand shaming, etc).
Sure it can, you’ll just end up demoralizing yourself. Expect companies NOT to troubleshoot their policies, and then when one occasionally does you’ll be pleasantly surprised. If you expect them to police themselves, most of the time you will end up being disappointed.
We have not been a democracy or a representative republic for a long time, at a bare minimum we would need a new amendment to overturn citizens united and move to publicly financed elections to get back to that. You can claim you're represented in this current system, I understand that need, but it's not really accurate.
My vote counts and is counted. That makes it a representative republic. Citizens United and publicly financed elections do not affect whether or not my vote counts or is counted. Of course they affect what messages me and my fellow citizens see, and they are important. But your claims would only make sense in a world where money guaranteed votes rather than merely influenced voters.
Your local representative is spending 90% of their day talking to lobbyists who pay to talk to them and doing fundraising calls with rich people.
People press the button on a machine in lots of countries, that doesn't necessarily make them a republic. The practical reality of the situation is they are spending every day NOT representing people as much as possible. This isn't an abstract thought experiment in political science definitions, this is the actual reality we are living under.
It sounds like the public need to wake up to the reality that politics are driven by money, and instead of using a voting system, we should just crowdfund sponsor our candidates and lock them into contracts.
The longer we keep our head in the sand instead of facing reality, the more delusional we get.
If we, as the public, are unwilling to actually pay our candidates the way that lobbyists are, and if we are unwilling to change the laws that allow lobbyists to continue influencing politicians in this manner, then we effectively have no representation.
Google appears to be claiming that because they warn you about 3rd party trackers this is all fine. They are just another 3rd party tracker it seems.
Maybe it's time to stop treating Google like a technology company. They don't seem to be pushing the internet forward, instead every decision makes the internet worse and has to be rallied against. There is very little research going on outside of increasing advertising effectiveness to scale up the size of the stock buybacks. Watching them continually screw up products like hangouts and chat and stadia and then just abandon them to increase stock buybacks yet again is just infuriating.
Maybe it's time to start treating Google like they are just another annoying 3rd party tracker. That seems to be what they want now.
I saw an armored Mercedes car on the streets of Denver for the first time a couple years ago. I have seen dozens of them in Africa and Latin America, but it was a really depressing moment for me when I first recognized that in my home town.
I think that people who are not well traveled are not even aware of this slide, but we have been moving towards becoming a highly stratified developing nation for 20 years now. The armored car is just one striking example, but there are dozens more I can think of off the top of my head.
Being in Denver, that particular example may be related to someone in the cannabis industry. The bank lockouts and cash build up that's common in that industry make individuals in it prime targets for robbery[1]. With extreme violence[2] involved in some cases, it'd make sense for those stuck in this situation to invest in things like an armored vehicle if feasible.
While still a situation that's a direct result of and reflection on US policies, it may be a more specific issue than a general national trend towards greater stratification.
This had nothing to do with marijuana. They usually use GMC Suburbans + men with rifles, but sometimes you see Brinks armored trucks too. I am quite familiar with the weed trucks.
I concur, but coming from a more historical/legal perspective.
The U.S. has always fundamentally been like the Central and South American countries, just with a thin layer of Lockean rule of law and property rights.
That layer is quickly eroding. The U.S. will become more like Mexico or Argentina (for instance) over time.
Love him or hate him, Trump did a lot to advance this timeline. You can see that his style is much more reminiscent of Central and South American politics. His followers want to replace the Lockean style with a political system built around a strong central personality.
A Mexican friend, long living in the USA, told me how much the Trump family reminded him of corrupt elite families in Mexico: "The dad thinks he's above the law and constantly cheats on his wife. The sons wear their hair slicked back and boast about how good they are at business even though they've never done anything in life but sponge off their dad's companies. And the daughters think they are glamorous fashion models and dream of owning a lifestyle brand."
Politics is downstream of culture, and as the demographics of the country shift more towards those of Mexico or Argentina (for instance) we should not be surprised when our political climate reflects that.
If that were true, I would expect the demographics of the supporters of the current administration to be skewed towards immigrants, especially from Central and South America, and I would expect to see opposition to the current political climate from the demographics most culturally different from those- non-immigrant, white males.
But it seems to me the opposite is instead true. Are you perhaps suggesting the non-immigrant, white males supporting the current political climate look up to the immigrants as role models?
This is exactly what people speculated would eventually happen when they first announced AMP. Google continues to disappoint and harm the internet in a very predictable way, year after year.
I lost count of how many months its been since I paid my mortgage, just waiting for the deputies to show up now and make me officially homeless. I guess I'm a squatter now? The word "frugal" is just not in my vocabulary any more.