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The Google Clips Camera Puts AI Behind the Lens (theverge.com)
The Verge's Dieter Bohn reviews Google's AI camera, dubbed "Clips," which was announced alongside the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL. Here's an excerpt: You know what a digital camera is. It's a lens and a sensor, with a display to see what you're looking at, and a button to take the picture. Google Clips is a camera, but it only has some of those parts. There's no display. There's a shutter button, but it's completely optional to use. Instead, it takes pictures for you, using machine learning to recognize and learn faces and look for interesting moments to record. I don't know if parents -- Google's target market -- will want it. I don't know if Google can find a way to explain everything it is (and isn't) to a broad enough audience to sell the thing in big numbers, especially at $249. I also don't know what the release date will be, beyond that it will be "coming soon." But I do know that it's the most fascinating camera I've used in a very long time.
It puts AI behind the lens, and your data in China.
And Poland.
And Uzbekistan.
And Uruguay.
Oh come on! COME ON!
It's bad enough that even on hacked phones, we don't have access to the firmwares. And that we have no idea, 100% idea if the NSA/etc can exploit vulnerabilities to take pics even on a clean phone.
Even outside of that, on 'normal' phones, no doubt 1/2 the malware on Google Play is the CIA.
But no. That's not enough.
Now people are going to willingly walk around with devices that take pics of everything they do. What the hell man!
#_$)#@+_$)@#_+$)@#+$)@+_#)$+_
...could be tweaked!
Like if you're a single guy/gal to look out for people who might pique your interest...
Like if you're security conscious, look out for people (cars?) who are UN-familiar in your area...
Like if you're an artist/designer/fashion person, look for certain patterns, colors, STYLES (ok, that'll be hard).
Having a brain behind the camera that isn't yours (the brain not the camera) lends itself to all sorts of interesting possibilities. Maybe it could even be taught to look for certain patterns (like this person or this KIND of person comes by this spot under these circumstances/times). Might be useful for marketing (oops, maybe that's not a good thing) but definitely surveillance.
It would also be good if the camera could read (in addition to having geo-tagging). That way it might be more context aware. Oh, and how about hearing? That way it could learn more about its environment (and what people are saying). How about a speaker? That way it could interrogate its subjects. Hmm... with enough work, this camera could become sentient!
who is left to trust?
The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely.
The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live--did live, from habit that became instinct--in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.
Winston kept his back turned to the telescreen. It was safer; though, as he well knew, even a back can be revealing. A kilometre away the Ministry of Truth, his place of work, towered vast and white above the grimy landscape.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
So you are basically paying to have an eye of Skynet watching you?
This is even worse than Alexa!
But hey, it lets bored helicopter parents can snoop on their kids' lives even more! I just hope they won't share all these 'fascinating' moments of their kids' lives with me.
Records when people are on the scene not random animals. Capable of recognizing you and not recording your comings and goings.
none of us measures up.. cease fire stand down..
So all images will end up looking the same. No more unique shots.
Inside your body cavities tomorrow. Yay, Goggley!
The secret word is: catheter
And does it automatically upload / share the images?
I wish the plebs would quit the misuse of the A.I. acronym, because we do not have A.I. yet, not even close. What we have is digital parlour tricks and automaton.
difficult to decipher this anomaly (not even a real word yet)?
Personally I just have my camera snap 10 pics in a row when I push the button and I get pretty good shots. Not really that hard and doesn't warrant buying a special device.
Also not sure why this isn't just a phone app.
Twinstiq, game news
So Google failed with glass. So now they're just turning on a camera whenever they feel it makes sense. Oh the irony as I'm typing this taking a dump. What could go wrong?
I really don't understand who their product managers talked to that said 'yeah, I'm good with carrying around a camera to work, and in my private life, and have it decide to fill the memory in my camera with stuff ... '
I went to buy a car, a Ford Everest. The dealer pulled up the screen, said it has Android link and Apple CarPlay. He showed me the navigation, it looked like Google maps, I asked is that Google Maps, he assured me no it isn't, it's Here maps and it does not track your every move, it is totally offline.
Obviously other customers had expressed concern about having Google based navigation in a car.
If the car had Google maps and a datalink, I would walk away from the purchase. I really don't want anymore Google surveillance in my life.
I hope this camera dies a sad death, because anyone who uses it will be violating the privacy of everyone they interact with. This camera that records everything, runs it by Googles smartcloud and uploads the images to Google surveillance cloud, no. Just no.
Just so bloody creepy.
Can it also be used in concert halls, where all it records is a whited-out stage a few pixels wide against a totally dark background and a muffled sound because the user had their hand over the microphone.
if so, can I buy one, send it on holiday instead of going myself and then bore the bollocks off all and sundry by showing the photos to disinterested co-workers and claiming I had a wonderful time.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
On behalf of those of us who know how to use a real camera, have practiced technique and composition .. the world doesn't need more shitty photography, it needs less.
A camera without a viewfinder where a computer is going to decide what is interesting is going to lead to more crushing sameness and terrible pictures.
God I hate technologists, they pretty much fuck up everything.
Find people who feel like you do and are willing to *ACT* on it.
It can be seen as the natural extension from the survivalist subculture, although I think many people who aren't a part of that would be interested. Now is the time to not just hide out in the wilderness of America or whatever your country is, but now is the time to get AWAY. Whether to the ocean, or to a politically unstable country that the US doesn't care about enough to fly drones/aircraft/satellite surveillance over often enough to have reliable intel. In the case of the ocean you need to be mobile with a method of obscuring your vessel from satellite identification or if static, you need your base underwater/underground such that it looks like an uninhabited but semi-habitable landscape.
Until/unless there is a major purge in the US, EU, Russia, China, and maybe Brazil the surveillance state is only going to get worse, too much of the population agrees with it or is at least apathetic to the legal or illegal protests necessary to counteract the government's ability and legal authority to perform it.
Until then the only thing people who still believe in privacy, personal rights, and the movement towards a freer society can do is congregate, emigrate, and do what is necessary to hide or defend themselves where they choose to settle. There may be the option of space in the next 20-50 years, but for now we are land bound, and even if you want to get into space, if you want to get into space free, you're going to need a free nation and a free rocket to launch from, otherwise you will just be under someone else's thumb, whether because they know where you went, or because they 'own you' for travelling on their space taxi.
Now Google's going to be flooded with bazillions of dick pics. Buy stock in storage solutions.
Hopefully this will catch on and we will see a lot more candid photographs of cats on the internet. I know I will be placing my order ASAP now I have a cat.
Unfortunately it needs natural intelligence in front of the lens, and that's not a given.
"A panaflex had only one urge: getting the shot. It would do anything to get the shot–take a ride on a copter, dangle from a boom, go over a waterfall in a barrel. Its unblinking eye ogled everything, and when it was ready, it shot film. Somewhere in its innards guncotton and camphor and other unlikely substances came together under considerable pressure to form a continuous strip of celluloid. That strip was coated with photoreactive chemicals to produce a full-color negative. The strip moved behind the panaflex’s eye and was exposed in discrete frames by a muscle-and-bone pull-down and shutter mechanism Edison would have recognized."
https://varley.net/excerpt/demon-coming-attractions/
At that price point, I could get a Go Pro camera that would be far more useful.
People wearing Google Glass found out real quickly that people have a humongous problem with being constantly watched by an always on camera going back to Google. So Google through they'd be clever and put that same technology into a stripped down always on decide that would still give them the most easily tractable data stream.
Personally if this is going to be a thing, then I'm about start walking around with IR strobe lights and frequency jamming devised that knock out both bands of wi-fi. Google can take this 1984 CRAP and shove it right up it's own (borg) collective ass.
Even if this were a good idea, and I'm not convinced yet, the 4 hour battery life is a showstopper. It looks like the designer was so interested in keeping it small and discreet that they didn't budget in enough space for a proper battery. I would be shocked if this is still a product this time next year. At best the "AI" algorithm will get ported to an Android app so you can turn any old phone into this weirdass robotic photographer.
I read the internet for the articles.
At first glance, I thought this steaming shitheap was going to be added to phones---with a disastrous effect on battery life.
Thankfully, it's being sold as a standalone product which everyone can safely ignore.
A handful of idiotic Youtubers will probably buy one, but we're fine as long as their fans don't follow suit.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
Yeah, everybody who doesn't behave exactly like you do and like exactly what you like is an idiot.
"I'm sorry, Dave. I just don't find that a police officer beating that [ black | hispanic | homeless ] person would make a very interesting photograph."
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M