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> Nobody seems to be asking whether/why you need cameras in the first place. Oh, come on. Go install a Nest or Ring for a week and see how much you come to re
by ajross 4y ago
> Nobody seems to be asking whether/why you need cameras in the first place.
Oh, come on. Go install a Nest or Ring for a week and see how much you come to rely on it. "Do I need to answer the door or is it just girl scouts selling cookies?" "Do I have time for coffee or should I head home to grab the package?" You can chat with the folks at the door! You can say thank you to the Grubhub driver as they drop the meal. You can see what the neighbor's cats are doing on your doorstep in the middle of the night. You can point one into your backyard trivially and see if it's the rabbits eating your leeks.
I mean, no, you don't "need" this, just like you don't need a dishwasher. But don't pretend it's just about paranoia, it's a fun tool for the modern era.
(Conversely, the folks here arguing about the terrible abuses possible with third party access to this data about girl scouts and cats are the ones who seem maybe a little paranoid.)
- rex_gallorum2 4y agoI do not need a dishwasher and I do not own a smartphone either. Why would I want to create all of that extra data about my habits needlessly? :P
- batiudrami 4y agoI wonder if this is one of those signs that I’m getting old. I can understand the benefits of all this smart home tech, but I just want any of it or feel like it would improve my life? I’d probably like finer control over my air con so that it automates to on when the solar is producing enough electricity to cover it, but otherwise I just don’t really get it.
- ajross 4y agoI'm in my 50's, FWIW. For me the defining characteristics of whether I embrace tech is whether it helps me do things I'm already doing or whether it represents a new activity I'm supposed to engage in. Resistance to the latter is, indeed, getting stiffer and stiffer as I age. I don't TikTok, I don't Instagram, I mostly just don't understand the culture. Alexa never did it for me as I'm almost never far from a keyboard. Obviously I'm way out of the market demo for Bumble. Those aren't my thing and probably never will be. But I still have a front door to interact with the rest of society, and automating (even partially) my interaction with all the junk and people that need to use it straight up saves me time. It's great.
- batiudrami 4y agoI am only in my mid 30s; but I feel like this smart home stuff might have excited me 15 years ago when now it doesn’t. The doorbell and security camera stuff do seem to be a cultural difference between the US and where I live though; I don’t have strangers routinely come to my front door and don’t really have security concerns that aren’t solved by locking my front door. A couple of my friends have smart doorbells but none that I know of use security cameras at home.
- blitzar 4y agoSmart doorbells are the (currently) acceptible version of a constanly twitching lace curtain. curtain twitcher someone who is very interested in what their neighbours (= people who live near them) are doing and tries to find out by looking out of the window without being seen: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/curtain-twitcher https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/curtain-...
- TheHappyOddish 4y agoIt sounds like you have a lot of people who come to your door, which I'd expect is abnormal for most people.