TWIT 790: The Snaggletooth Network

Beep boop - this is a robot. A new show has been posted to TWiT…

What are your thoughts about today’s show? We’d love to hear from you!

I found Peter Rojas to be appallingly obtuse (culminating at ~50:00) to the threat to privacy posed by Amazon’s latest crop of surveillance @Leo among too few in media had the wherewithal to accurately identify (far beyond the “internet of things for the internet of things”), particularly incisive that all benefit of control via such surveillance accrues to Amazon at the expense of not only its customers but any and everyone, similarly to the dragnet effect of Facebook “like” buttons that has (finally/belatedly) triggered the tracking rejection arms-race in mainstream browsers, metastasizing into meatspace as Leo rightly pegged to be a “watershed moment”. The reason it is a “strange grab” by Amazon is that it slaughters autonomy on the altar of logistics for a single company. I think it’s shameful that Peter would counter that spectre with the milquetoast platitude that there’s a business interest in it for them. As much as I love the collegial cordiality Leo extends his guests, Peter sadly proved himself incapable of offering the caliber of commentary to which the TWiT audience is accustomed, in my estimation, and I hope that Leo, far from inciting “moral panic”, is in future able to air a discussion featuring participants better equipped to grapple with the gravity of the subject at hand.

2 Likes

Yes, I am glad I live in Germany, where something like that would be quasi-illegal.

Certainly any cameras etc. used for surveillance are legally not allowed to monitor public areas - i.e. if you have a Ring doorbell, it cannot record your front yard or the road beyond. If you live in an apartment with a common corridor, you cannot record people passing in the corridor.

There are some exceptions, shops can record on their premises, but, again, they cannot monitor what happens in front of their premises.

I read Foundation in my late teens and reread it last year so it would be familiar when Apple’s series comes out. I loved it just as much. I read so many of Asimov’s books back then. He was my hero.

I’d love to see someone try to do Hyperion.

And Heinlein was cringeworthy in his chauvinism even 40 years ago. It wasn’t that his work didn’t age well lol. I did love Stranger in a Strange Land, and Lazarus Long.

2 Likes

Let’s get Greg Ferro on TWiT again. I’m sure he’d have a much stronger take on Amazon’s network ambitions.