It's infuriating to take the time to draft & send a thought out email to my representatives only to receive a canned email 8 months later.
Most of the time the response is even something like "ok cool opinion but I believe the opposite so bummer" (obviously exaggerated but the meaning is identical).
I will try a letter at some point, email feels completely useless.
Time is of the essence, so I might just have a chatbot draft me something quickly and edit it or rewrite it to more what I want to say. Just emphasize the main points that even the linked article mentions - hugely bad for business, loss of taxes, bad for veterans, people will just go back to the black market for their needs, etc. I'm kind of surprised I'm not finding sites like NORML have any of those "take action" forms on their site you just fill in and it sends it out to all your representatives automatically.
Regardless, it doesn't need to be something you spend hours pouring your heart into.
Some representatives respond differently than others. I've gotten boilerplate letters back, and I've even had phone calls back with someone from their office. It really just depends.
EDIT: It's already been signed into law, so now they have 1 year to try and remedy the situation... :(
In the last few months I've seen many advertisements for a device they call the "Super Box" - it's essentially an (Android based?) IPTV device with every channel imaginable. The people I know with them paid around $300 and there isn't a monthly fee.
I have a hunch they're trading free TV for becoming a residential proxy unknowingly. Would love to capture network traffic from one and see what's really going on.
The fact that people are willing to buy these super sketchy devices and plug them into their networks without a second thought is kinda scary.
Well didn't lookup Super Box but I assume it's less sketchy than you image.
It probably just pulls from something like https://github.com/iptv-org/iptv and so the provider of Super Box doesn't have to maintain pretty much anything or use any of their own bandwidth. So the $300 minus the cost of the hardware is the profit and they don't have real reoccurring costs.
I've never seen a $300 one but I've seen $70 ones. I don't think they're nefarious in that sense, but these boxes are usually scams.
They come preloaded with a pirate iptv service that only works for 1-2 months then they ask you to pay something like $70/year to keep watching. There's tons of providers for these IPTV services so bundling them with the boxes is a way to make it easy to access while gaining subscriptions, you can just buy a cheap android TV box yourself, install the apk and get a cheaper IPTV provider.
Most of these boxes/providers don't last more than a couple years as authorities tend to go after them when they get too big. My dad uses them to watch portuguese TV--it would be impossible to watch certain channels outside the country otherwise--and in the past 10 years he changed provider 3-4 times.
Similarly most fire stick pirate streaming and side loading tutorials use an app called “downloader” which includes a URL shortener. Users are given an 8 digit “downloader code” and most blindly download and sideload APKs on their device. Probably a field day for anyone wanting to bundle and distribute malware.
These have been a thing for a while - check your local Craigslist for "fully loaded" Fire sticks or other streaming TV devices. I wouldn't be surprised at all if you're correct - these devices are marketed to technically unsophisticated users, by vendors who have every incentive to maximize profit.
They’re generally not selling a million of these or even tens of thousands of these, so setting up residential proxy software on the boxes would almost certainly not be worth the time spent.
I wouldn't expect the installers to be setting a proxy network themselves, but rather acting as an affiliate for an existing network and collecting commissions from that.
Alternatively, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the apps installed on these devices have their own embedded malware - the operators of the pirate TV networks are looking to get paid, too.
I don't think the common analogy of "key to a house" makes any sense. For starters, a significant portion of people in existence aren't trying to break into your house 24/7.
Thanks for the heads up, just went in and disabled it on my 2 cameras. Next step will be to throw these privacy invading pieces of junk in the trash. Just need to find a comparable product.
Are there any wireless (running power to these locations is not an option) doorbell cams that record to local storage instead of the cloud? I refuse to pay a subscription for these things.
Ideally they would record to my server instead of onboard SD card so that the footage can't just walk away if someone grabs the camera.
Reolink has some good options in this area. Both wired and wireless security and doorbell cameras with microSD storage by default, but FTP and SFTP can also be used. I've been happy with my (wired) doorbell camera with just a microSD card.
Most of the time the response is even something like "ok cool opinion but I believe the opposite so bummer" (obviously exaggerated but the meaning is identical).
I will try a letter at some point, email feels completely useless.
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