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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!
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.
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
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
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/