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Amazon’s indoor camera drone is ready to fly around your house
Next up: cameras. Amazon's crazy indoor, flying drone camera—the ambiguously named "Ring Always Home Cam"—is actually for sale now in the US. This was announced a full year ago, but now it's available "exclusively by invitation" for $249.99. This is a "Day 1 Edition" (read: a beta product). So Amazon isn't letting just anyone buy it. You can request an invitation to give Amazon money on the product page.
In case you've not had enough dystopian future products:
Amazon’s Astro Robot is Straight Out of the Jetsons
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Amazon’s Indoor Camera Drone is Ready to fly Around Your House
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
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(1)
You will feel hungry again in another hour.
(Score: 4, Touché) by DannyB on Wednesday September 29 2021, @05:06PM (6 children)
How cool is that!?! Without disturbing you, this drone can unobtrusively fly around your home making sure everything is okay. For your own good, of course.
Dear Amazon,
Instead of a flying drone in my home, I would prefer you sell me more different IoT gadgets that are stationery and don't fly, but which also have mic and camera pickups. For my protection, of course.
Thank you! May I have another?
Poverty exists not because we cannot feed the poor, but because we cannot satisfy the rich.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Tork on Wednesday September 29 2021, @05:27PM (3 children)
I bought an 'Amazon Fire' TV on Prime Day a few years ago. It advertised "Youtube!!" on the box. A month or two after I got it Amazon got into a squabble with Google and REMOVED THE APP FROM MY TV. I was never compensated for this loss of functionality. This is reason #2 this drone will not be in my place.
I wanted to order an Apple TV with an Amazon gift card but Amazon wanted to push its video service so it refused to sell Apple's set top box. This is reason #3 this drone will not be in my place.
Granted these are two more reasons than I need, but it is fun to vent once in a while. If anyone's curious I'm also steaming mad at Amazon because they refuse to follow delivery options and now I live in a building that's an attractive target to package thieves. :)
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday September 29 2021, @07:24PM (1 child)
Many years ago now, I had a DNS name, a free account at DYNDNS, and a router that would automatically log in and update the account. That ability was programmed into the firmware. Then DYNDNS changed their policies and renamed things, breaking the crap out of that arrangement. It may have been for the best anyway, because a while later, I started getting threats from the MAFIAA, passed through my ISP, alleging that they'd detected piracy on the connection that the ISP wouldn't link to a name for them. Sure don't need to hand my name to the MAFIAA by running a web server with all kinds of identifying info. Also, somehow inbound traffic on web ports no longer gets through, and the ISP is playing stupid about it, saying it should work and they have no idea why it doesn't.
I also gave a "smart" TV a try. Went for the smallest, cheapest model there was, a 24". It mostly works okay. Can't block ads on it, however, because it's not fully under my control. And about a year ago, something changed at YouTube, and broke that TV's ability to connect to it. Before that, the TV's behavior changed. Started demanding that I log into YouTube, or select "guest", when previously, it had just gone straight to the site.
I also tried an RCA brand tablet from Walmart, when they were rolling out their answer to the Amazon Fire stuff. They were selling the tablet for $35. It worked for a year and a half, until the battery failed. It is difficult to find replacement batteries for it, and they cost more than $35. I cannot be sure whether the tablet is also dead. I've had batteries take my smartphone with them when they died. So the tablet has been gathering dust in my closet ever since.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Freeman on Wednesday September 29 2021, @08:24PM
For your non-conforming devices ad-blocking needs:
https://pi-hole.net/ [pi-hole.net]
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30 2021, @07:29PM
what a stupid fucking slave.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 29 2021, @11:53PM (1 child)
》 How cool is that!?! Without disturbing you, this drone can unobtrusively fly around your home making sure everything is okay.
Better not let the drone into your basement.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday September 30 2021, @08:49PM
If you're doing nothing wrong, you've got nothing to hide.
Poverty exists not because we cannot feed the poor, but because we cannot satisfy the rich.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 29 2021, @05:07PM (1 child)
-- END OF LINE
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Wednesday September 29 2021, @07:07PM
Yes I'm old. Old enough to remember when the MCP was just a chess program!
Poverty exists not because we cannot feed the poor, but because we cannot satisfy the rich.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by turgid on Wednesday September 29 2021, @06:00PM (7 children)
When I was at school, when I was 16, we studied 1984 by George Orwell for English. It had a profound effect on me.
I used to worry, but calm myself by thinking about it rationally. In those days, if anyone was wealthy enough to own a PC privately it was probably a 286 or 386sx. Amigas and Atari STs were popular in the home. No one had heard of the Internet. There were modems, which were expensive and slow (1200 baud) and sometimes people used them to access their banks from home, or maybe BBSes.
The thing was, the pervasive audio and video surveillance of 1984 would have needed video cameras and microphones everywhere, plus a lot of processing power and bandwidth to get it from the world to the watchers. Furthermore, it would have required authorities to force people to have surveillance in their own homes, and in those days ordinary people cared about privacy and freedom.
That, of course, never happened.
What did happen was that, for fun and convenience, as technology advanced, computers got cheaper, cameras got smaller, processing power increased, people got connected on the Internet. The people themselves willingly and enthusiastically invited the surveillance into their own homes and they paid to have fast connections to the network!
Obviously, they didn't think (irony) that they were handing over surveillance tools to a totalitarian state. They thought that they were finding convenient ways of communicating with each other (human mating/reproductive behaviour being quite a driving factor as always) and they didn't understand that the companies they were customers of (sometimes free at the point of use, making money by harvesting data) were watching, recording, analysing and sharing that data.
Out of sight, out of mind: you can't "see" Farcebook et. al. harvesting and analysing your data, or sharing it, so you don't worry about it.
Human nature got us here. Not as in the novel, through force by a totalitarian state, but through our own limitations and weaknesses. We brought it on ourselves and most of us are oblivious.
Ignorance is bliss as a great man once wrote.
We are the dead.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 29 2021, @07:29PM
The crying shame is that although some humans like me have read and grown from your sharing this, so too will scrapers' bots.
Thank you nonetheless for sharing these expressions of your thoughts.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by BsAtHome on Wednesday September 29 2021, @07:34PM (2 children)
The totalitarian state seldomly comes as a surprise. Most of them are welcomed by the people cheering the change. Then silence falls.
And, history is told by the survivor(s).
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30 2021, @09:10AM
That's bullshit.
It's more the case that propaganda and censorship drown out or suppress other voices, so everyone thinks that they are alone.
A small percentage will truly agree with the regime, but we've all seen how quickly such things collapse the moment control wavers.
You are not alone. Most people think things like Ring or Drones-In-My-House(TM) and mass internet surveillance are absurd, unwanted, unnecessary or dangerous. But the corporate media never gives those people a platform. It just castigates them for being luddies, or conspiracy theorists, or $(ENEMY_OF_THE_STATE)-$(DE_JOUR) at its convenience. Or better yet scapegoats them for problems.
Learn to tune out the corporate message and pay attention to opinions in (unregulated) comment sections. Those are closer to the true swell of ground opinion than you realise.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by DannyB on Thursday September 30 2021, @08:53PM
Red states passing new voting laws which enable the legislature to arbitrarily decide the vote was corrupt and declare what the outcome will officially be.
Not realizing their short sighted idea may just be creating mechanisms for tyrants to come into power and stay there.
Poverty exists not because we cannot feed the poor, but because we cannot satisfy the rich.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 29 2021, @07:52PM (1 child)
Sometimes I wonder if these surveillance companies are encouraged to perform the tasks the Constitution prevents the government from doing. They're popping up quite frequently.
Tyranny via private enterprise.
(Score: 5, Informative) by HammeredGlass on Thursday September 30 2021, @12:01AM
'Fascism should rather be called corporatism, as it is the marriage between the corporation and the state' (paraphrased) - Benito Mussolini
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 29 2021, @09:09PM
A remarkable satire. [thenewamerican.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by stretch611 on Wednesday September 29 2021, @06:04PM (4 children)
Wow, The always on recordiong audio of Alexa, combined with the always on video recording Ring Doorbell isn't enough.
They now want a robot monitoring you/your house (yesterday's article) and a personal drone.
And to top it all off... THEY CHARGE YOU for the privilege of removing all of your privacy.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 4, Interesting) by DannyB on Wednesday September 29 2021, @07:12PM (3 children)
The Ring Doorbell is video recording OUTSIDE your home.
These new must have gadgets offer you the excitement of video recording INSIDE your home too! It's so good, people will want to pay for it.
It's not that you're giving up your privacy. It's that you're letting Amazon helpfully do more and gradually more of your thinking for you. Thus relieving the burden of having to think for yourself. Life is so much easier when a machine can tell you what to do next. Ask any Amazon warehouse worker.
Poverty exists not because we cannot feed the poor, but because we cannot satisfy the rich.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by stretch611 on Wednesday September 29 2021, @09:24PM (1 child)
While the Ring Doorbell only records outside, in many cases it does have your driveway in its recordings whuch means it can tell when you are leaving/returning too your house. Every little piece of surveillance adds to a better profile on you.
As for the Amazon Warehouse worker being told what to do by a machine, that job only lasts until it becomes cheaper for the machine to do it without the human.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30 2021, @06:44PM
Jobs like that should be automated, the problem is that we haven't done anything to ensure that those displaced by technological advance will still have a decent lifestyle afterwards.
(Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Thursday September 30 2021, @10:07PM
Manna [marshallbrain.com]by Marshal Brain
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Wednesday September 29 2021, @06:27PM (1 child)
Anything that flies in my house gets sprayed and swatted. I don't need any pests in my home.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 29 2021, @11:44PM
I want to do the reverse -- there is a big paper wasp nest in a tree, about 30 feet (9m) above my back yard. I'm looking for a friendly drone owner who is willing to use their drone to chop a hole in that wasp nest, and generally annoy the wasps until they move elsewhere.
Not a new idea, there are a few YT videos of this. The drone props smash a lot of wasps and the drone needs to be cleaned off (carefully--the venom may still be active!) once the job is done.
(Score: 1) by zzarko on Wednesday September 29 2021, @08:05PM (2 children)
... and your partner. If you do not want this video showing up on our new video service Amazon Porn, make a payment of $2000 until tomorrow to this account.
Your Amazon
P.S. Either way, we'll keep the video in our database, just for your protection.
C64 BASIC: 1 a=rnd(-52028):fori=1to8:a=rnd(1):next:fori=1to5:?chr$(rnd(1)*26+65);:next
(Score: 3, Funny) by choose another one on Wednesday September 29 2021, @09:39PM (1 child)
Dear Amazon,
that is not me, does Prime have discount on divorce lawyers?
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 29 2021, @10:32PM
Your query has been forwarded to Jeff Bezos.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by choose another one on Wednesday September 29 2021, @09:41PM (1 child)
Been a long long time since I watched the Jetsons, but they were dystopian???
How? They had flying cars.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30 2021, @09:25AM
We are living in the shittiest possible cyberpunk dystopia.
All of the surveillance, oppression, corporate oligarchies; but none of the fancy tech, bio-neural-cyberspace, or space exploration. We don't even have weird alternate political systems!
The sci-fi future you ordered is no longer in stock.