The real question IMO: Is how come these cameras don't have a 256 GB SD card, or some other backup storage tech
that data can be buffered to while network is down, and simply Buffer saved video locally while the network is offline?

The answer to that question is obvious: adding a $10 memory card might impact Amazon or Google's revenue stream. They can't have customers realizing that maybe you don't need to pay that monthly subscription fee. Whether or not the camera is actually effective is completely secondary to Amazon and Google.

The only major cloud camera manufacturer that provides the means to add internal memory is Wyze. You still need a subscription to access their AI services (e.g. figure detection or face recognition), but continuous-time recording is free.

... was convincing the general public that Ring makes security cameras, instead of video doorbells.

Most cloud camera providers follow the Ring model. Unless you have a WiFi connection, nothing is recorded. The camera has no internal storage. It's all about the business model of ensuring that you pay the subscription fee.

A $10 memory card would provide a Ring camera with a week of continuous-time rollover video storage, but Amazon would never dream of incorporating one, because they don't want to impact their revenue stream. Instead you have millions of owners paying Amazon for cameras that are only marginally better than useless, and turn into paperweights if something happens to the WiFi.

A wired PoE camera system is the way to go for home security, but I know from long experience that you can only convince one person in a thousand to install them. So instead I tell people that if you're going to install WiFi cloud cameras, then get them from Wyze, and install memory cards. It won't prevent the cameras from being jammed, but at least you'll be able to review the video footage after the fact.

Human figure detection has already filtered down to the lowest end of consumer security cameras. I can buy a $50 Wyze camera that does an excellent job of it. You can wear a hoodie and a face mask, but you can't hide your body.

The next step is right on the horizon - networked neighborhood cameras that are constantly monitored by AIs, watching for suspicious behavior, especially late at night.

Within a decade it will be standard for "trusted" neighborhood security systems to send real-time alerts to the local police along with images of the behavior in question. It'll be the ultimate defense against late-night door checkers and burglars, so long as the police have the resources to respond to the alerts.

I agree this story is suspicious, but playing along for now.... ....what do they mean landscapers noticed it was missing?

Like no one called in and said 'hey, there's no AM broadcast'?

Sounds like a case of 'no one was even listening anyway'. Hopefully the thieves make better use of it!

"No one was even listening" would also have to include the DJ, the chief engineer, the owner, or whoever was the operator at the time.

I've worked at two radio stations in my life, and in both cases there was monitoring equipment that immediately generated an alarm if the transmitter went off the air. The chief engineer's job was to get the station back on the air ASAP when that happened. The FCC requires this. The privilege of operating a commercial radio station comes with the obligation to keep it on the air, per FCC regulations.

There's no way that a transmitter, tower, and antenna could have been stolen and carted away before the people who worked there noticed it, much less a landscaping crew. Suspicious, indeed.

Should read: Bicyclist Strikes Waymo Driverless Car In San Francisco, Causes Minor Injuries To Himself

The fact that the cyclist immediately rode away says everything. If someone hits me, and I know it's their fault, I'm not going anywhere until I get their license and insurance information.

But if I hit them, and I know I'm at fault? I'm not going to hang around and make an issue of it, especially if I'm the one who is uninsured.

Indeed. Cyclist runs stop sign, gets hit. Happens every day.

Cyclists have been hit by cars twice in the past week where I live. In both cases, the cyclists were instantly killed. But note the difference in this case: After the incident, Waymo contacted the police, but the cyclist left on their own, reporting only "minor scratches."

That Waymo vehicle instantly went into full braking mode as soon as the bike became visible to its sensors, far faster than any human could have reacted. That's probably what saved that cyclist's life. Had this been a human driver, we wouldn't be reading this story. Yet another cyclist killed by a human driver isn't the least bit newsworthy.

But you're not getting into a place like Dartmouth with unexplained mediocre grades and great test scores.

Maybe not, but great GRE test scores can help overcome a mediocre undergraduate GPA, and they can absolutely help get you admitted to graduate school if you got your B.S. at a university no one ever heard of.

High school GPAs mean next to nothing, and likewise for a lot of university GPAs. Grade inflation is out of control, and no one trusts an admission essay that was probably written by ChatGPT.

Standardized tests like the SAT, ACT, and GRE are one of the few yardsticks left that can truly distinguish a student's potential. Everyone is finally figuring that out. Now that the Ivy League is returning to requiring them, and COVID is over, it will only be a matter of a couple of years before everyone requires them again.

I see Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles as a temporary step to allay the worries of "range anxiety" that new EV owners are experiencing. The scarcity of fast chargers on ALL long-distance routes has people worried that an example trip from Portland to Denver might be a series of short drives with plans and back up plans of where to charge, how to handle construction delays, overcrowded charging locations, and cold weather performance degradation.

We could install superchargers every 20 miles along every interstate in the U.S., and you're still not going to overcome the fact that even "fast" charging is slow compared to filling up with gasoline. I can pull into a gas station and add another 550 miles of highway range to my Prius in five minutes, as opposed to 200 miles in 15 minutes with a supercharger and a BEV. A plug-in hybrid is truly the best of both worlds.

I, for one, am really scared that the clock is pegged at 90 seconds before midnight.

I mean, really, really, really scared.

Does anyone have any idea what this means, that the hands are at 90 seconds before midnight?

I don't either, but I remain scared.

Like Zeno's Paradox, the publicity-whoring "Atomic Scientists" can only keep themselves in the news by pushing the clock in ever-decreasing intervals towards midnight.

I can see the headlines twenty years from now: "The Doomsday Clock is now 500 milliseconds before midnight!" It'll be just as meaningless as 90 seconds is today.

I've spoken at length to a couple of police officers about the Amazon Ring camera program. They considered it basically useless, for a few reasons:

(1) If police need camera footage, they just look around the area of the crime and knock on residents' doors. People who have cameras are almost always happy to provide video footage.

(2) Residents send Ring footage to the police all the time. The police are overwhelmed with voluntarily submitted video clips.

(3) Ring video footage is rarely of much value. Ring makes good video doorbells, but terrible security cameras. Most Ring users turn down the motion sensitivity to prevent random people and vehicles on the street from triggering the camera. So unless the crime takes place right on their front porch, nothing is recorded.

My assumption it that Amazon did a cost-benefit analysis and came to the conclusion that the program really wasn't providing significant benefit. I doubt very much that they had any sort of epiphany concerning privacy.

Anybody can set up a license plate reader on their property including an HOA, but it certainly doesn't mean the police will know about it or have access to it.

What the EFF refuses to come to terms with is the proliferation of surveillance technology that has absolutely nothing to do with the police, e.g. privately owned LPR cameras. To them, everything revolves around "How can the police abuse this?" when in fact the technology has grown far beyond that.

Right now you can buy a Wyze OG Telephoto camera that will legibly record license plates of moving vehicles from about 40 feet away in the daytime. This is a $35 camera, by the way. If Wyze wanted to, they could market a home LPC camera for less than $100. Eventually someone will if they don't.

Along the same lines, Wyze just announced a facial recognition feature in Cam Plus Unlimited for $99 a year, which will work with up to 99 cameras in your personal system.

Very soon, the police will become minor players compared to what you and your neighbors will be collecting. I predict in less than a decade that neighborhoods will deploy networked camera systems managed by AI "sentries" that will contact the police whenever suspicious activity is detected. People will embrace such systems in red and blue states alike. The horse has already left the barn, and the EFF wants to pretend otherwise.

Living in a very red state I know NO ONE who wants surveillance of any kind.

Excuse me? Living in a very red state myself, there are cameras everywhere - on the roads and highways, around businesses, around homes, you name it. Not to mention the multitude of people who pull out their cell phones to record and repost everything on social media.

It's the same wherever you go - people may pay lip service to being anti-surveillance, right up to the point where someone steals the package from their front porch, and then they buy a Ring camera. I've seen some extremely ardent anti-camera types suddenly have a change of heart when their own property is stolen and the police can do nothing.

Many people are anti-surveillance, until they decide that they can be the exception to the rule with their own cameras.

You can't trust the police because they don't have cameras. You can't trust the police because they have cameras. I am sensing an agenda.

When I talk to a responding officer to report a crime where I live, he or she will inform me at the outset that our conversation is being recorded by a body cam. I've sometimes wondered what would happen if I said, "I object to you doing that. You're violating my privacy!" It's not as if the officer can turn off the camera - they'd be disciplined for doing it.

The police I've spoken to are extremely supportive of wearing the body cams. There's been a huge decrease in complaints about police brutality and misconduct since they were deployed. Not surprisingly, both cops and criminals behave better when they know they're being recorded.

Ringworld exists !!!!

Those structures are far too large to be Ringwords. It's Stephen Baxter's Xeelee building cosmic megastructures to escape to a different universe.

If someone's using 1,000 IPv4 addresses on AWS, they're already being ridiculous. But what they'll do instead is just NAT/proxy that traffic to one IPv4 address and save $4,000 a month. But nobody's going through recertifying all their applications, retraining their devs and others, and whatever else to work on IPv6 when 95% of the world is still primarily using IPv4 and 100% of the world still fully supports IPv4 just because Amazon decided to charge a few bucks a month for it.

IPv4 will still be the primary 10 years from now. Probably 20.