[HN Gopher] I record myself on audio 24x7 and use an AI to proce... ___________________________________________________________________ I record myself on audio 24x7 and use an AI to process the information Author : roberdam Score : 551 points Date : 2022-11-15 12:43 UTC (10 hours ago) (HTM) web link (roberdam.com) (TXT) w3m dump (roberdam.com) | twobitshifter wrote: | This is known as life logging with adjacency to sousveillance and | it's a fascinating topic. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifelog | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance | | We in general don't want to be watched by others, but a managed | record of our own activities can be extremely valuable, and even | more so if you find yourself wrongly accused. Further it can be | used to shine a light on corrupt officials, one example of this | is the nycplacards exposes on twitter. | manholio wrote: | The trouble with any such footage is that it can be used | against you ("as the the defendant's own records show, they | were present in the murder area") but they generally won't | extricate you when produced by you, since you clearly have a | motivation to use it selectively. So you showing a picture of | yourself reading a book during what you claim is the murder | night is not an alibi, because it could have been produced at | any other time, and you will have a massive uphill battle in | the court to authenticate that image, and risk even sink you | further if you fail ("the defendant even prepared an alibi"). | | The only way I would accept a commercial product performing | this always-on archiving is if: | | 1. It's encrypted by default with a strong key that can't be | subpoenaed or circumvented. | | 2. The encoder generates its own random key upon installation | which I don't know (recoding effectively random, undecodable | data), and I then have to manually change the key if I expect | to ever read the recording. | | Number 1 allows me to review and footage and only release it if | it's in my interest, and number 2 affords me plausible | deniability, if I don't release the key I can claim I did not | know you need to set it manually. | | Sure, as long as you are the only nerd doing this, you don't | need this complex setup, and you will probably get to use it | the unencrypted footage only in your favor. But when it becomes | widely accepted as a social norm (say, everyone wearing Google | glasses), you can expect law enforcement will become aware of | it as a cheap source of self-incriminatory evidence. | Jach wrote: | Why not just have the device occasionally send sha256 sums of | chunks to a third party service, like Twitter tweets, where | it's clear you can't forge the date of the message? If you | need to produce some chunks, the matching hashes provide an | independent time stamp showing you didn't just produce the | content at any time. This sort of trick is already commonly | done to demonstrate prior knowledge of something at a later | point in time without having to reveal it just yet (if ever). | ramblerman wrote: | Great idea, but are courts tech savvy enough to accept this | already? | | Even with a tech expert to explain it, I worry the | opposition would just get their own expert and make a whole | mess of it, confusing both the judge and jury enough to | cast doubt. | | Perhaps I have a very wrong view on how both such evidence | is presented and accepted though. | Jach wrote: | Courts are generally more tech savvy than techies like to | give them credit for. But it's worth mentioning that in | recent years several US states have already passed | legislation expressly forbidding courts from denying such | evidence (even/especially if put on Blockchains rather | than a more traditional non-decentralized | network/database), and you can find similar stuff in | other countries around the world (even China). And of | course in lower courts (like small claims) or even | mediation the standards are a lot looser, there's not | even a jury. | | If you want a more thorough view of the rules in the US | (which states deviate from to some extent), you might | like to browse https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/fre | twobitshifter wrote: | I'd be interested in knowing of any cases where someone who | recorded their own activities used it as an alibi. Right now | it's all theoretical. Dash cams are really strong evidence in | traffic court, but this isn't criminal so it has a lower bar. | From the other end, body cam footage is powerful when worn by | police, and cell phone evidence by bystanders are also strong | evidence. | manholio wrote: | The body cam footage is a good example, it's deeply hated | by the police and a frequent source of incriminatory | evidence against the wearer. | | Since "you got nothing to hide", as the old saying goes, | why not bodycam yourself and offer the authorities a great | source of evidence they can use against yourself? | iudqnolq wrote: | Bodycams are actually an example of a reform successfully | cooped by police bureaucracy. | | https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/05/16/police-pr-video- | machi... | ClumsyPilot wrote: | The American Jurors have convicted people based on a | man's interpretation of a dog signalling that a dead body | was on someone's property 5 years ago. Once people are | that gulliable, they are beyond help. | | https://www.science.org/content/article/should-dog-s- | sniff-b... | iudqnolq wrote: | Keep in mind that they're in an artificial environment | designed to lead them to that decision. One of the | judge's jobs is to ensure experts are appropriately | qualified. Another of the judge's jobs is to restrict | what the jury is allowed to hear. | artificialLimbs wrote: | "A jury of your peers consists of 12 people who were not | smart enough to get out of jury duty." | twobitshifter wrote: | I think that's right, it's a double edged sword. You | would have to ask if you're more likely to be wrongly | accused or to be caught doing something wrong by your own | recordings. | | This guy has been recording himself publicly since 2002 | after ending up on a no fly list. | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasan_M._Elahi | | I think that's taking it too far and would rather encrypt | than publish it publicly, but doing it publicly does | strengthen the alibi | iudqnolq wrote: | You're missing an option: Wrongly accused on the basis of | your own recordings. Imagine this real life situation | occured, but it was your own recordings instead of | surveillance cameras | | > A key piece of evidence in the case is video | surveillance footage showing Williams' car stopped on the | 6300 block of South Stony Island Avenue at 11:46 p.m.-- | the time and location where police say they know Herring | was shot. | | > How did they know that's where the shooting happened? | Police said ShotSpotter, a surveillance system that uses | hidden microphone sensors to detect the sound and | location of gunshots, generated an alert for that time | and place. | | (The defense argued ShotSpotter makes up data and hides | behind opaque AI they refuse to rigorously test. Instead | of responding, the prosecution dropped the case.) | | https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj8xbq/police-are- | telling-sh... | twobitshifter wrote: | If I follow, the police would need access to the | recordings to make the case, which would mean at least | probable cause for a warrant. If Herring had a camera or | mic on him running at the time of the shooting wouldn't | that contradict shotspotter? It seems more likely any | data you have would create doubt rather than bolster the | police case. | | In general, the shotspotter and surveillance cameras | already exist, so what do you have to counteract that? | Doing things like leaving no paper trail because you pay | everything in cash, or no location data because you keep | your phone in airplane mode, leaves little crumbs for | your defense, and may create the appearance of hiding | something. | iudqnolq wrote: | > If I follow, the police would need access to the | recordings to make the case, which would mean at least | probable cause for a warrant. | | PC is a very low bar. | | > In general, the shotspotter and surveillance cameras | already exist, so what do you have to counteract that | | It's not binary. Lots of areas, including the inside of | your house, probably aren't covered by surveillance | cameras. | Spooky23 wrote: | Time is really critical. Alot of police investigative work | is about stitching camera footage together in a timeline. | | I served on a jury where a case was built around camera | evidence immediately before and after an event. Of about a | dozen relevant data sources, only one had verifiable, | correct time. The defense was able to impeach that | evidence, and the whole case collapsed. A dude got away | with manslaughter. | RobRivera wrote: | I had an awful breakup with a woman with tortuous tendencies | and a false sense of how to abuse personal injury law and she | keeps google home devices and car devices recording | practically every moment of her life. as well as apple watch | broadcasting her location at all times. | | I observed she would always accuse me of things i never did | in front of these cameras to get me to give false | confessions. thankfully i am as blissfully honest to all | people i meet, sometimes to my own detriment, so i never | admit to fabricated stories. | | given that context, can you point me to judicial precedents | where plaintiffs had their self provided footage weakend due | to the idea of fabricating false narratives with devices, | selectively natrowing contexts etc. | [deleted] | stcredzero wrote: | _a managed record of our own activities can be extremely | valuable_ | | I've thought of this as a hardware product: A device that | records your own voice and non vocal sounds, but which does not | record the words of others. (That, plus maybe location and a | video stream, provided one is in a location without "a | reasonable expectation of privacy.") | | Perhaps it doesn't even have to be hardware at this point! | Maybe this could be installed as an app on an older smartphone? | hirundo wrote: | > Further it can be used to shine a light on corrupt officials | | Little Brother surveillance. It would be nice not to be | surveilled at all, but since that's not an option the answer to | "quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" is us. | thingification wrote: | In times past, it was obvious that it wasn't an option to | avoid pervasive violence (by orders of magnitude compared to | today). | | It was, though. | ClumsyPilot wrote: | Also it was obviois that ut wasnt an option to avoid | pervasive slavery. | | Or a class system where lords and kings have more right | than you do, although we are kinda bringing that back. | xerox13ster wrote: | Who watches the watchmen? The watched. | rzzzt wrote: | How many Watchmans would a watchman watch if watchmen could | watch Watchmans? | ben_w wrote: | None, because justice is blind ;) | pards wrote: | I think the passive part of this could be really interesting - | starting with a simple "tag cloud" of keywords by frequency | linking to audio snippets that mention them, it'd provide a way | to index conversations during the day for future reference (or | processing). | roberdam wrote: | indeed, that I guess will be the best part of the expermient, | but the longer one. | tim-fan wrote: | Further to indexing conversations, it would be | interesting/helpful to be able to pull out: * | conversation length * participants * location | | So you could search for, say, that long conversation I had in | the park with Bob. | | I'm not sure how easy it is to identify/track different | participants in a conversation. | | Edit:formatting | frontman1988 wrote: | The future will definitely have devices which record | visually/verbally all your life. VR headsets are already able to | record all your facial expressions. A google glasses like gear | which records all your life is pretty much possible in the near | future. The future influencers won't have to carry a phone/camera | to create vlogs, they would just see wherever they want and the | glasses will record not only the thing they are seeing but also | their expressions. Privacy will probably not be such a big thing | as now given most people with each generation are increasingly | becoming more and more comfortable sharing their whole lives | online. | trekkie1024 wrote: | Reminds me of the Black Mirror episode "The Entire History of | You." Could be pretty scary if misused. | crucialfelix wrote: | I've thought for 20 years that the Life Recorder is inevitable. | I figured it would be like journaling constantly, getting | insight and guidance to improve. | | Now I think it will result in unbearable self-consciousness. | You will yearn to be offline, quiet, to just forget, maybe to | enjoy the moment without it going in your permanent history. | | Arguments in relationships are messed up when you can rewind | and debate what he said she said. The actual words are often | not important, it's the emotions. The permanent record makes it | harder to forgive and move on. It's like being in court, | everything transcribed. | | > given most people with each generation are increasingly | becoming more and more comfortable sharing their whole lives | online. | | There is an entire generation who learned not to post, many who | are very anti social media, many who stay anonymous. Chat is | much bigger than public social these days. | | There are also scenes that avoid digital. They make cassette | music and black and white photocopy artwork. | yannyu wrote: | Ted Chiang explores this idea in a short story called "The | Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling" | (https://devonzuegel.com/post/the-truth-of-fact-the-truth- | of-...), which takes place in a world where commercial, | individual, always-on recording exists. Ted Chiang also wrote | the short story that the movie Arrival was based on. | mwigdahl wrote: | Halperin's debut novel _The Truth Machine_ also has people | living "documented lives", with always-on video and audio | recording, as a primary plot element. | oliwary wrote: | As does the Neanderthal parallax by Robert J. Sawyer [0]. | It describes an advanced civilization of Neanderthals who | have taken completely different societal choices. IIRC, | each neanderthal has a recording device that constantly | films and uploads a 3D feed of their surroundings. In case | of murder, the court can access this recording to determine | find the killer. | | [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/264946.Hominids | jakubmazanec wrote: | After reading The Circle, I'll definitely pass on sharing my | whole live online. | isaacremuant wrote: | > Privacy will probably not be such a big thing as now given | most people with each generation are increasingly becoming more | and more comfortable sharing their whole lives online | | That's not quite right. People are just unaware of the power of | what they share and usually react quite negatively if their | data is used against them and start shielding themselves from | surveillance of the sort that might affect them. | | So predicting "people won't care about privacy because they | share their whole lives online more and more" is a bit | disingenuous. | | It's what the tech companies like Facebook want but it's far | from the truth. | feanaro wrote: | I predict future generations (maybe even those being born right | now) to start moving away from recording and uploading | everything as it's the uncool thing their parents are doing. | frontman1988 wrote: | Current gen Tiktokers ran away from facebook and instagram, | not from oversharing on social media. I think teens will | always be very active on some kind of social media, but yes | one can certainly hope that all of it is seen in some | negative light by the coming generations. | idiotsecant wrote: | I'm not sure people are increasingly willing to share their | whole _actual_ lives online, they are mostly presenting a | curated and tailored image of themselves to project the self | that they want the world to see. 24 /7 straight-to-internet | type recording doesn't serve that goal very well. I'm not sure | that something like this would be popular among streamers, | other than maybe a small niche for who that is their whole | thing. | cameronh90 wrote: | All of the rooms/corridors in my house except my bathrooms are | covered by cameras. My initial motivation for installing them was | to keep an eye on what my pets were doing when I'm not around, | but I find in recent years that if I misplace something, I end up | tracing back my history on the cameras and finding where I left | it. | | It seems obvious that at some point, AI will be able to do that | for me and I'll just be able to say "Alexa, where did I leave my | glasses?", "Hey Google, where did I put my box of spare fuses?". | relaxing wrote: | Just having a front door cam paid off immensely this year when | I was able to prove that I had left the house with an item | (that I later misplaced, and was able to recover with that | knowledge.) | ClumsyPilot wrote: | Nah, is it much more efficient to distract you into loosing | your box of fuses and manipulate you into buying new ones. | | Alexa AI doesn't work for you, it's a hired gun in your house. | cameronh90 wrote: | Just like 2001: A Space Odyssey - but instead of Hal trying | to kill me, it just tries to get me to buy things I don't | need. | | "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave, not until you watch this | advert" | 6stringmerc wrote: | Wish they'd at least release a Christopher Walken package. | | "I can...NOT find your ANswer." | ysavir wrote: | When you do, can you invite me over to show me how it works? | Then I'll test it for "Alexa, in which mattress does cameronh90 | keep their savings?". | oh_sigh wrote: | "Voice not recognized. Releasing the robotic attack dogs" | cameronh90 wrote: | Like pretty much everyone in my country, I already entrust a | bunch of private corporations to safeguard my wealth. Worse, | there's nothing to stop my bank from suddenly deciding | tomorrow that I don't have any money, and I don't really have | any paper records to prove otherwise... | | I figure any AI advanced enough to monitor everything I'm | doing and where all my stuff is, is probably smart enough to | know if it's me asking. | bhawks wrote: | I agree that it is an obvious extension for AI to use this data | at scale to help users. It also is obviously a huge temptation | to abuse it for other purposes. | | Wasting a few minutes in the morning to find my glasses is a | small price to pay to not be watched and analyzed all the time. | Let's not build our own panopticons. | xcambar wrote: | I would 100% prefer to lose my keys rather than letting Amazon | or Google in. | | FYI: I have zero Alexa/Siri enabled device, zero automated home | device, a degoogled phone, etc etc. So we might have different | perspectives on the matter. | daveidol wrote: | Curious: are you concerned about data leaks or you don't | trust the employees to not access your user data? Or | something else? | jacksnipe wrote: | Not who you asked but: I'm afraid of the data being stored | and available to anybody. As long as it's out there, the | government can compel others to give it to them; and | companies can get acquired and structures and laws can | change in such a way that the data gets in others hands | perfectly legally. | | Thus, I should only be okay with it if I'm okay with the | "nothing to hide" argument, which I'm not. | xcambar wrote: | Both and more. Having my data sold to 3rd parties is an | obvious first. And if you think the terms of service are | enough to cover you, see how fast they can change in | everyday life and please reconsider. Plus, data can be sold | pseudo-anonymously and build up a profile against which | your identity is compared and metered, as in, for example, | health insurance risks or crime potential. | | Additionally, we, the consumers, have lost the right to own | things. Or at least, if we do own things, it comes with all | sorts of strings attached in the form of "features" or | "connectivity". Which is just marketing lingo to say that | you're feeding the cash cow. | ilyt wrote: | Yes, yes, and I don't like anything home automation to be | dependant on anything cloud. Enhancing function is fine but | house that stops working right the moment internet link is | down is a dystopia. | leobabauta wrote: | "Dystopia" seems like a stronger word than applies here. | gmadsen wrote: | i mean you could always run a home server for the automated | home things. heating/ac and lights are nice things to | automate | forgetfreeman wrote: | Because spending tens of thousands of dollars in home | infrastructure to avoid fiddling with the thermostat four | times a year definitely makes sense. | omvtam wrote: | I inherited a 1980's model AC/Furnace and controlling the | AC at least is extremely simple and cheap. A 12V relay in | the compressor housing activating the 220V switch, | connected to another relay controlled by a Pi zero which | is controlled by yet another PI zero with a $10 DHT 22. A | bash script check the temp and activates the compressor | via SSh when the temp goes above 74F. The furnace control | hasn't died yet so I haven't bothered replacing it. | Putting the cooling system on IoT total cost = ~ $100 | karaterobot wrote: | What if you charged someone to build and install the same | system in their house? You'd probably charge a lot more | than $100, and that's what the real cost would be for | most people. | bee_rider wrote: | Nobody has suggested professional installation though, | the original suggestion was just a nice home automatic | project to play with. | progman32 wrote: | My heat is controlled and automated with open source | software for the grand total of about fifty bucks and a | free surplus server. | xcambar wrote: | I don't know how that can be true. Can you tell us more? | seba_dos1 wrote: | I'm considering making an OpenTherm controller for my | heating boiler, I just researched this topic a few days | ago - it's absolutely true, there are ready-made Arduino | libraries for that. | horsawlarway wrote: | It's incredibly easy to do (caveat - at least if you're | familiar with software dev already). | | Most thermostats are literally just digital thermometers | that control a relay that turns the furnace/ac on and | off. | | A simple arduino (or much cheaper IC) can easily do the | same thing if you wire it in. | | And then on the software side... there's several large, | open-source projects that exist in this space and provide | nice api tooling for interacting with those devices. | Things like: | | OpenHab: https://www.openhab.org/ | | HomeAssistant: https://www.home-assistant.io/ | | HomeBridge: https://homebridge.io/ | | etc... | | Even Alexa has basically drop-in self hosted alternatives | like Mycroft: https://mycroft.ai/ or ADA/Almomd (now | Genie) https://genie.stanford.edu/ | | It's not only true - I strongly suspect you can do it for | much less than 50 bucks if you don't need the physical | thermostat to have buttons/screens. | xcambar wrote: | Makes sense. My setup doesn't allow for that. Hence my | ignorance. Good for you! | xcambar wrote: | controlled heating for my flat with open source and Zigbee | compatible devices would cost me ~1k. I did not calculate | the ROI but break even looks like it'd take many years. | cameronh90 wrote: | Each to their own. Personally the value these cloud/AI | assistants give me is worth the loss of privacy. There's | nothing I do that I think anyone would be especially | interested in spying on, other than to try and sell me | things. | | Note that I don't think anyone should be forced into this | sort of surveilance. It should always be a choice. I also | support the open source projects to bring it back to | individual control - it's just too much hassle for me, | personally. | nano9 wrote: | > There's nothing I do that I think anyone would be | especially interested in spying on, other than to try and | sell me things. | | Do Uyghurs have something to hide and are worth spying on? | How many times are we going to hear this argument? It comes | only from a position of privilege. You're only | uninteresting to be spied on as long as it's allowed by the | security apparatus you depend upon. There's a reason we | have sayings like "power corrupts"; dismissing the | potential for abuse of a cloud-based unencrypted | surveillance system is narrow-mindedness at best and | subversion at worst. | | Note: the above hardly represents me politically, it is | just a counterargument against the perennially repeated "I | have nothing to hide." | cwkoss wrote: | There is no reason this technology needs to rely on | consumers sacrificing privacy. The big players are trying | to create that perception in the public so consumers will | willingly sacrifice their privacy regardless. | | The tech is there so someone could make a box with no | external data transferred that could store and analyze | video data. I would be a customer for sure for something | that had this capability without the privacy concerns. | | Google and Amazon say they want this data for quality | control, but I suspect each of them have plans (if not | active projects) for converting video inside people's homes | into actionable marketing data. | wongarsu wrote: | Just because the data isn't interesting to anyone right now | doesn't mean that a future oppressive government won't use | it against you | gaucheries wrote: | > the value these cloud/AI assistants give me is worth the | loss of privacy | | they've got you right where they want you. | csallen wrote: | He seems to have them right where we he wants them, too. | Mutual transaction. Everybody's happy. | xcambar wrote: | The benefits of the consumer measures in comfort or | social status, mostly. | | The benefits of the producer measures in dollars. | | However you balance it, the producer wins. By many orders | of magnitude. | | And since were talking about privacy and personal data, | the more consumers there are, the more the producers | improve their margin on each and all consumers. | [deleted] | alexmolas wrote: | (Slightly off topic) If you click in the "RoberDam.com" link that | appears when you scroll a little bit you get redirected to | "http://localhost:8080/". | | It seems to only happen in the English page. In the Spanish | version of the post the link works well. | bheadmaster wrote: | Good catch. There seem to be several "http://localhost:8080/" | strings in the page source. Leftover code from testing? | [deleted] | roberdam wrote: | Fixed, thanks for the tip Alex! | ankit70 wrote: | Still goes to http://localhost:8080/ for me. | roberdam wrote: | fixed now? | AlexErrant wrote: | Would you mind linking/listing what microphones you're using? | roberdam wrote: | I bought two, both from Aliexpress, no brand both, the one on | the picture has a 5000 mAh battery, bulky but last a lot, and | the other one is tiny but with short battery life, a lot of | sellers on Ali, I pay around 30$ for each, both have the same | software and bios, only difference is the size and battery. | alkonaut wrote: | People who take notes in life (the org mode people): oh cool. | Everyone else: why would I want to know what I ate, weighed, or | thought last week? | gajus wrote: | I like this. It vibes with a language learning app concept idea I | recently shared out loud. | | https://twitter.com/kuizinas/status/1591867392220594183 | dotancohen wrote: | I've been doing this with Anki. | | When I have a conversation with someone in a language that I'm | learning (was Russian and Greek, now Arabic) I record the | conversation. I then get both native-speaker audio to add to | Anki for the things they said, plus I get a list of words that | I either needed to use or that the other person used, to add to | Anki. | | A secondary benefit is that this system encourages me to go out | and seek interactions with people, a clear benefit for a | natural introvert. | commitpizza wrote: | Very cool idea, the only question I have is how fast does this | not drain the battery of the mics? | roberdam wrote: | the device from the picture has a 5000 mAh battery (around | 10hrs), and and bought a smaller one (1-2 hrs) | emilburzo wrote: | I must be blind, where do you list the microphone(s) you are | using? | ojosilva wrote: | It's pictured in the Spanish version, under "El Equipo": | https://roberdam.com/wisper.html | roberdam wrote: | https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256803349510543.html | https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256803085687061.html | | the particular choice was for the battery and the other for | the size, both are generic and come with the same software | and bios, several vendors, if I could buy something better | I would look for one that can have a lavalier microphone | roberdam wrote: | I bought two, both from Aliexpress, no brand both, the one | on the picture has a 5000 mAh battery, bulky but last a | lot, and the other one is tiny but with short battery life, | a lot of sellers on Ali, I pay around 30$ for each, both | have the same software and bios, only difference is the | size and battery. | ClearAndPresent wrote: | It appears to be on the Spanish language version of the | blog but not the English: | | https://roberdam.com/wisper.html | | Although in the text it's just described as "a Chinese box" | with a 5000MaH battery and the ability to record to its | 32Gb of space in chunks of 30 minutes, as MP3 taking about | 28mb each. | | That section goes on to describe trying different | microphone positions, as it makes a great difference to | quality. OP originally tried it in a bag but the results | were medicore, so moved to a different configuration which, | although less comfortable, produced superior audio results. | sorwin wrote: | How would this work with other voices, like a coffee shop, would | it hear those simultaneously, and interupt a command? | | Also, how do you handle using OpenAi whisper, seems like they do | 30 second intervals - would that be an issue if your command is | cut off mid word? | [deleted] | roberdam wrote: | For now I try to give the commands when there is not much | noise, but you can lower the gain of the microphone so that it | only record my voice. | | The 30 second limit is not a Whisper model limit, but a limit | some of the free online "try whisper" put. | rolisz wrote: | I think he means that even whisper segments the audio into 30 | second bits and does transcribing on them and then stiches | everything together. | gruez wrote: | >RELATIONSHIP THERMOMETER | | >According to studies on couple relationships, it is possible to | predict with an accuracy of up to 90% if the couple is going to | divorce by studying the interactions, specifically the | relationship between positive and negative interactions between | the couple | | Apparently the studies that were used to reach that conclusion | does no such thing and were hilariously flawed. | | https://slate.com/human-interest/2010/03/a-dissection-of-joh... | | >The upshot? What Gottman did wasn't really a prediction of the | future but a formula built after the couples' outcomes were | already known. [...] The fundamental problem is that no matter | how many equations, even quite similar ones, Gottman generates, | we have no real idea of his forecasting power because of the way | he reports his data | Barrin92 wrote: | literally horoscopes for tech bros. I am starting to be | slightly concerned that there's actually people out there who | think some sentiment analysis python package is going to tell | them what their individual relationships are like. | recuter wrote: | brb, need to edit my pitch deck.. | fl0id wrote: | Oh there definitely are. | [deleted] | warrenm wrote: | Sounds very similar to the guy talked about in Albert-Laszlo | Barabasi's book (either Bursts, or Linked ... don't recall which | atm) - he was photoing/videoing his whole life, but never of | _himself_ - ie, the camera was always facing outward (like a | policeman 's bodycam) | sixstringtheory wrote: | The entire topic and many posts in this comment page also sound | like things straight out of The Circle and The Every by Dave | Eggers. | ISL wrote: | What a bonanza for opposing counsel of any kind. | | (which is a bummer, as there are lots of interesting uses for | digitizing our lives if the data could be guaranteed to remain | private) | iwillbenice wrote: | varispeed wrote: | I have recording turned on on my phone. Usually it records 6 | hours at a time, so it is annoying that I have to manually | restart recording. Another annoying thing is that it will pause | the recording when I pick up a call. | | Why Google decided to block call recording is beyond me. In the | past when I was able to record calls it saved me a lot of trouble | - for instance when insurance company lied to me over the phone | about the product I could confront them about it and get my money | back. I wish I could be able to record calls with my relatives as | well. Call recording is legal in my country. | otikik wrote: | I liked this article and find it intriguing. That said, I would | set the original sound data to expire relatively quickly, perhaps | erasing everything week or so. I like letting the past be the | past. | j_mo wrote: | Doesn't this break wiretapping laws (depending on the user's | geographic location) and possibly GDPR/NDAs(if left on while at | work)? | | Ethically most people probably wouldn't be happy to find out that | you recorded a conversation with them. | roberdam wrote: | I am using it with friends and family, and tell them beforehand | about the experiment | yuvalkarmi wrote: | I think your last sentence summarizes the sentiment really well: | "The difference between utopia or dystopia is who has access to | that information" | [deleted] | layer8 wrote: | The passive information would be useful if that would work with | your inner voice. | WaitWaitWha wrote: | I read a research paper quite some time ago that most inner | monologue is articulated at least partially by the mouth, | throat, & tongue, and can be detected. Might be a better | approach than having a chip in my brain. | | If I find the article I will update. | piperswe wrote: | Anecdotally, my inner monologue certainly is physically | articulated. It would be really interesting to build tech | that can understand it. | fragmede wrote: | what's fascinating is apparently there's a connection with | schizophrenia, where the "voices" are actually the person | saying things to themselves at a level too low for other | people to hear | | also suggests a throat mic would do wonders | luuuzeta wrote: | That would be creepy and next level. | | Isn't that what Musk's Neurolink is trying to achieve? | wildermuthn wrote: | Love this idea. Most people subvocalize when they read, and my | guess is the same for when they write. As for subvocalizing | when we think, I have no idea, but I suppose if one were | engaged in "talking to oneself" type thinking, that it could be | possible that many subvocalize their internal monologues. | | Is there some kind of sensor that one could wear that would be | unobtrusive enough to measure subvocalization? If so, building | a training dataset for an ML model would be as simple as having | many people read and write a significant amount of text while | using the sensor. | | Even better if that text corpus overlaps with text that has | been used to train text-to-speech models like Whisper, as you | might get away with knowledge transfer with such a model. | | It's definitely worth looking into! | twobitshifter wrote: | With feedback, it is likely possible for you to train | yourself to subvocalize your thoughts as an act of recording. | I thought this sentence before writing it, but I | subvvocalized while typing. | driverdan wrote: | That technology doesn't exist yet. | tegiddrone wrote: | I did an experiment where I lived for awhile with a sony | recorder/mic on me 24/7. It was nice to be able to refer back to | conversations and events when I wanted them. Biggest issue was | sorting through the data-- timestamps and recorder bookmarks were | OK but I really needed full text search on the audio. It would | have been great to tag via `Robert, mark timestamp, end Robert`. | AI seems to be required, especially when dealing with wind noise | and other issues (like the mic twisting around and all of a | sudden one channel is my heartbeat.) | | The sony voice recorder out there easily last 24 hrs on 1 AAA | battery.. dumping to mp3 on a large sd card. | troydavis wrote: | I did a similar experiment in about 2005 using a small iRiver | iFP [1] and reached the same conclusion. | | It needed a physical "Something interesting just happened" | button that could be annotated later. At the time, creating | custom hardware as well as the entire software/service stack | was more than I was willing to bite off. | | The iFP is tiny, roughly a 4" long by 1.5-2" cylinder. It | easily covered a full day, the silence detection worked great, | and quality was fine when used in a pocket or on a belt. | Basically, the stuff that I expected to be difficult was | already solved. | | [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRiver_iFP_series, | https://www.cnet.com/reviews/iriver-ifp-790-digital-player-r... | jconley wrote: | This is a cool project. One of my pet ideas that I haven't done | is to build a home assistant where all data is stored and | processed by a home "server". The biggest benefit I see is that | it could truly be omnipresent. There in the background, answering | questions, jumping into your conversations without prompt. And | it's much less creepy if all that data isn't going to someone | else's computer. | | Also piping in and processing the data from my mobile would be | cool, but I wouldn't want to invade other people's privacy if I'm | in public. | jeffbee wrote: | It does not sound like a realistic capacity plan. The reason | this works in the cloud is the inference can be run in parallel | on a huge amount of hardware for a short time. To run those | kind of models on your rinkydink computer would take forever. | tsejerome97 wrote: | this is also one of my pet ideas, but I keep procrastinating. | Have your idea transformed into any kind of repos that we can | contribute to? | karol wrote: | What are the limitations of numbers as descriptors of Being? | specialist wrote: | Excellent. Just terrific. | | My future perfect system also logs my location and what I'm | doing. And probably health metrics too, like heart and breathing | rate. | | Instead of initiating my exercises, I just want to say "Robert, | start jog". The "modal" nature of my Apple Watch's Activities | really frustrates me. | | I don't want to take notes while I'm listening to a podcast. I'm | generally doing something else at the time. I just want to say | "Robert, bookmark". And magically a link will be made to whatever | I'm listening to at the time. (Audio book, radio, stream, | podcast, whatever.) | | Ditto identifying songs (Shazam!). | | I don't want to fart around with exchanging contact information. | My hands are usually full or whatever. Just say "Robert, contact | info" and then repeat out loud whatever I hear. | | I also want to rewind after the fact. When trying to recall a | tidbit, I'll remember the song, where I was (eg while walking the | dog), who I was with, what I was eating. So if I want to remember | which podcast I was listening to while at the park, I'd just | start with my location log and jump over to my podcast listening | log. | | What could be more simple? | | FWIW, I'm still waiting for my "bicycle for the mind". | | PS- I've tried, half-heartedly, to use the voice recorder app, | and notes with voice transcription. But then it quickly becomes a | treasure hunt. And my attempts to do this stuff with Siri just | leaves me more frustrated. | | Thanks for listening. | | Great project. Please keep us posted on updates. | roberdam wrote: | thanks!, you should try to transcribe your recordings now for | free with whisper and see what you can make of them: | https://replicate.com/openai/whisper | Ninjinka wrote: | The advent of Whisper gave me a similar idea, except instead of | uploading the recording once a day, it worked by calling my | computer from my phone and recording and processing in batches. | Realized pretty quickly that most of my day is silent though, and | would rather be able to trigger it on demand, which I haven't | gotten around to. | artursapek wrote: | _insert men with autism meme_ | effnorwood wrote: | bluenose69 wrote: | I'm a bit concerned about the calorie level I see here, 832/day. | That is about 1/3 of the NHS recommendation [1] for males. | | 1. https://www.nhs.uk/common-health-questions/food-and- | diet/wha... | mikedelago wrote: | I agree, but looking at the actual food eaten, it doesn't seem | to line up. | [deleted] | lars512 wrote: | It's typical in calorie tracking that people start the day | strong, but then forget or lose will to track later in the day. | Ideally days without a full record should be excluded; I'm | assuming that's just not happening here. | pelorat wrote: | Those recommendations are for people that are on their feet all | day, not for office workers and home dwellers that never go to | the gym. | lolinder wrote: | No, you add more calories if you're active. The USDA has a | breakdown by age, gender, and activity level [0]. 2400 | calories is recommended for an adult sedentary male between | 21 and 40. | | Sedentary is now the norm in the developed world, so it would | be weird to use active as the baseline for health | recommendations. | | [0] https://www.fns.usda.gov/estimated-calorie-needs-day-age- | gen... | Tyr42 wrote: | Estimations for roman soldier on the march come closer to | 3000 calories. | rjh29 wrote: | The lamb sandwich, orange juice and almonds alone could | approach 800 calories, even excluding the other three meals. | People are quite bad at estimating calories though, it takes | practice. | dsalzman wrote: | I've been experimenting with this recently as well, but with an | app on my apple watch. Looking for a method/model to split | different speakers into different tracks to only look at audio | from myself and certain people. | dsalzman wrote: | Someone is experimenting with diarization (speaker | identification) + Whisper here | https://github.com/openai/whisper/discussions/264 | fragmede wrote: | If you know how many speakers there are, | https://twitter.com/dwarkesh_sp has it working here: | | https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1V-Bt5Hm2kjaDb4P1RyM. | .. | TOMDM wrote: | Check out this model, I've had limited success with it. Best | I've done so far is to just add the labels it gives to the | overlapping segments whisper spits out, which means some | sentences have multiple speakers, but that's mostly the case | because of cross-talk. I'd say it gets it right ~80% of the | time with the 5 speakers I've done it on across ~16 hours of | audio. | | https://huggingface.co/pyannote/speaker-diarization | dsalzman wrote: | I will! | roberdam wrote: | Speaker identification is the next step, you might want to read | about Pyannote's Diarization: | | https://lablab.ai/t/whisper-transcription-and-speaker-identi... | waprin wrote: | Ahh I'm working on exact same project. I applied to YC with the | idea and was told that "nobody wants this" during the | interview. | | There's a ton of problems in the space around privacy and UX. | But I'm incredibly excited about projects in this space because | in modern society we're basically surrounded by a million | unhealthy things designed to tempt us. Logging forces you to | "stay honest". I've been shocked already by how many unhealthy | habits I underestimated and how many healthy habits I | overestimated. | | My #1 priority is just to improve my own physical and mental | health. Whether there's a market for this stuff, who knows. | | Good luck! | dsalzman wrote: | My original inspiration is to better understand how I talk to | others and study my own behavior | waprin wrote: | A noble goal. One of my bad habits I've been tracking and | trying to reduce is rude behavior to people, online or in- | person. | jordanlwalker wrote: | we're experimenting building out a version of this too, but on | desktop with www.usebacktrack.com - should have splitting | speakers/inputs early next year and seeing what that's like | AndrewKemendo wrote: | Expanding on the structure the OP created, this is how I see us | getting to human level AI: | | 1. Record video sound etc... (trajectories) egocentrically | | 2. Analyze the data and assign reward labels (more/good, | less/bad) to state and transitions actions | | 3. Use the reward feedback and trajectories to build the policy | for some set of actions in certain environments | | This is why I'm bullish on anything sousveillance - so AR cameras | on your head, always on mics etc... | | The challenge is doing this democratically, without it being | intermediated by a giant for-profit mega corp that doesn't care | about you and wants to mess with your head | pa7ch wrote: | Honest question,how does this make the lives of humans better? | AndrewKemendo wrote: | Well, for example. Lets say that I have a goal BMI I want to | maintain | | If I reach for the Oreos, I can choose to have a flag set | with a heuritic I created myself that will tell me: | | "Having 5 oreos means you need to reduce other calorie intake | by n calories to maintain your BMI" | | That data can also be aggregated to give me my macro/micros | for everything I've eaten etc... without me having to log it | like I do now | | Think about it as the ultimate personal assistant and all you | need to do to instrument it is attaching a camera and mic to | your face. You can decide what your goals are, and this kind | of instrumentation will capture the data that you need | without you having to actually annotate everything. | | Your personal life API | unbalancedevh wrote: | > all you need to do to instrument it is attaching a camera | and mic to your face | | It's funny that this is a reasonable thing to say. | crtified wrote: | Likewise, if we go back to 1995, and tell a tech-fearing | farmer that within 20 years he and all his salt-of-the- | earth colleagues would soon be voluntarily (and gladly!) | carrying in their back pocket (in the form of a cell | phone) a small cheap generic device connected 24/7 to | global corporate networks, with built-in high def | cameras, microphones, location detectors, and data | gatherers, and would casually store much of their | personal and financial information within them. | | They would find that notion preposterous. But now, some | short years later, they would give it barely a thought. | AndrewKemendo wrote: | It really is. | | I've been in CV since 2009 and it's face melting how many | things we thought were impossible are effectively | "solved." | mahathu wrote: | Sounds like a nightmare! | azeirah wrote: | I'd just get really annoyed at that AI | | ...being annoyed increases stress, which increases appetite | bick_nyers wrote: | I've been thinking about doing this for a while now, | cameras all over the house hooked up to ML algorithms that | help you audit and tweak your behavior towards some | specified goal. | | When I used to play video games ultra competitively, I | would analyze recordings of my gameplay to try and get | better, and it worked wonders. | ar_lan wrote: | I've honestly thought about recording my work sessions to | do the same thing. RescueTime works _somewhat_ to track | when I get distracted on something, but moreso I'm | interested in identifying when I do something | suboptimally and playing it back to identify why I went | with that path and try to course-correct the next time | around. | bick_nyers wrote: | Recording the desktop 24/7 and making those videos | searchable could be an incredible tool as well. Text on | screen as well as audio from meetings. If you didn't | document how you initially configured something, you | could just go back and watch what you did. | | Edit: Another comment has informed me of rewind.ai, which | does this on Mac, interesting! | thingification wrote: | Another challenge is industry-wide bad security fundamentals. | | Godspeed to work/people like agoric.com and seL4. | apienx wrote: | Well done! | | Got a similar PoC that uses Tasker to record sound on my phone, | Whisper to convert it to text, and neatly organizes everything | into Obsidian.md. The continuous recording kills the battery life | on my phone so it's only usable if you don't mind going around | with a powerbank. Would be great if a manufacturer would put in a | separate low-energy chip with a good ADC. | | P.S. "Active functions" with custom home automation is easy as | pie with joaoapps's suite. I use BusyBox to SSH into a Pi with a | Tellstick Duo. And some RFID tags for the system to know where I | am (e.g. bedtime routine gets triggered when I place my phone on | the bedside table). But yeah...traffic goes thru Google. | roberdam wrote: | you should write about it! | moritonal wrote: | Handling the privacy of other people might be oddly easy. If you | can detect the voice accurately enough the AI might be able to | _drop_ the other participants. | unstatusthequo wrote: | Dropping after the fact still means it was recorded, this | violating two party notice statutes. | TOMDM wrote: | What if it was never written to disk? The identification and | trimming happening before any audio is actually saved. | | Is picking someone else up on microphone at all a violation | of two party consent? For example walking past someone in | public with a loudspeaker call active. | riiri778 wrote: | I think there is even legal precedent for that. Dragnet | surveillance recording of all phone calls. It was argued | that recordings are only "stored". Judge order is needed | for "retrieval", that may be several weeks later. | morsch wrote: | Does that mean that every phone recording audio to detect its | assistant trigger phrase villages two party notice statutes? | humanistbot wrote: | Yes. | morsch wrote: | These assistants have been around for a while, seems like | that would have been established in court if it was the | case. | Void_ wrote: | Not as hardcore as OP, but after Whisper came out, I quickly | built an app that allows me to record from lock screen: | https://whispermemos.com/ | runjake wrote: | This app apparently sends data to their servers. If you don't | want to share this information, you can use an app like | Lockflow (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lockflow-lock-screen- | shortcuts...) to put an Apple Shortcut on your home screen. | | That Apple Shortcut could be the Dictate Text action hooked to | create/append to an Apple Note (thereby not leaving your | device) or fire off an email or send a message via your | favorite bot service (Discord/Telegram/Slack/etc). | | Bonus: That Shortcut will also work on your Mac. | | There's also the minimal friction app Just Press Record | (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/just-press-record/id1033342465), | which will transcribe and has a decent Shortcut library. | Void_ wrote: | Yeah I tried JPR before but missed the workflow of sending it | to my email. (Maybe they have it and I didn't notice) | | Also Whisper is better for my Slovakian accent. | toss1 wrote: | That looks like it's iOS only; I've been using a similar app on | Android, Voiceliner, but it doesn't yet also record from the | lock screen. That would definitely make it more useful! | kettleballroll wrote: | As you'd be recording all of your conversations, this is illegal | under some legislations, unless all your conversation partners | agree with being recorded/their convos being stored. | roberdam wrote: | I am using it with friends and family, and tell them beforehand | about the experiment | humanistbot wrote: | What about going out to a restaurant, a party, a date, or | even somebody you bump into on the street? You're recording a | lot of people, which to me is a huge invasion of privacy. | What do you do if someone is uncomfortable with being | recorded? | sixstringtheory wrote: | Same question applies for any photograph you take in | public. Isn't the fact that the people are in public | material to whether or not they can be recorded? That's | different than calling them on their phone and recording | that conversation. | | I mentioned it in another reply but this is discussed in | The Every by Dave Eggers, there is essentially an entire | area of San Francisco that is deliberately kept free of any | and all devices that can record A/V and in order to enter | you have to deposit your phone and be wanded to detect | surreptitious recording devices. | ajkjk wrote: | I mean, at a practical level, you don't tell them and | ignore it. The fact that it is illegal to record people | doesn't mean it's against your personal ethics. | magic_hamster wrote: | In some countries it's enough for one party to consent, which | can be you, so it's legal. | m-watson wrote: | In the US it even varies by state, which has gotten people in | trouble with recorded phone calls. | 3-cheese-sundae wrote: | Is it illegal to record it, or is it simply inadmissible in | court? | [deleted] | chatterhead wrote: | This is awesome! I've been recording myself (video/audio) for the | last couple years on and off (thousands of hours) and have no | efficient way of processing the info. Was not aware of Whisper | and what he's done is exactly what I'm looking to pull off. | | The GPT-3 idea is scary and most certainly the future. I can't | stand the world of never ending 'Moviefone' menus and chatbots, | but when it's me that gets to be the machine response the future | doesn't seem so annoying. Would be nice to have my own GPT-3 | model that I can use to "get to a real person" when calling | places. | newaccount2021 wrote: | vachina wrote: | Awesome idea. However people would find it weird that I talk to | myself all day long. | nashashmi wrote: | A case for neuralink. | rdevsrex wrote: | Yeah, I can see how this would be easier if you work from home, | but you could explain that you are running a long lived | experiment on yourself. Then again, that doesn't exactly scream | "I am fully sane" :) | jamesgreenleaf wrote: | Well, genius borders madness, and it's been said that talking | to oneself is a sign of intelligence, so you may be right. | riiri778 wrote: | I do that as well. I had a few arguments with police patrol over | driving tickets. Once dog attack and very aggressive dog owner. | Player6225 wrote: | I'm curious if there was other work you were inspired by. I have | also been a bit interested in using this style of "personal | database/logger/journaling"; | | task-agnostic input -> processing -> visualization/recall | | My assumption is you are just storing post-processed conclusions | in a local db on your computer + raw audio for possible future | re-processing, and not currently storing other media input (ala | food pics)? | roberdam wrote: | I'm trying to catch up with all the opensource AI stuff out | there and explore the posibilities, on the spanish part of the | website is a test with stable diffusion and twitter, and now | I'm trying to finetune Donut document transformer. | adamgordonbell wrote: | An off the shelf solution for recording your whole life: | | I have a Sony recorder, ICD-UX570, and it has a setting where it | turns on or off based on sound, and also adjusts the gain to best | record. It takes a micro-SD card and has pretty solid battery. | | I think you could put it in a breast pocket and run it for | several days on a single charge. Because it would just record | when you are talking or making noises you could likely run it for | a year on a big SD card recording in mp3. | | Change to a wifi SD card and suck the files off and process them | and you might have something kind of cool. | [deleted] | ycombinete wrote: | Would the sound of jostling in your pocket/bag not set off the | recording? | adamgordonbell wrote: | I'm not sure about jostling, but lots of noises would set it | off. It's erring on the side of recording when there is | sound, and it can't tell speak from not speach, though you | can set a sensitivity level. | sdze wrote: | That calorie tracking will be WAY off and useless if not | dangerous. Nothing beats a kitchen scale. | hawski wrote: | Great idea. However always recording is a disadvantage for me. | | I thought about a device that could look a bit like Star Trek | badge. It should react to pushing it slightly and it would have a | microphone. It would connect to a phone with Bluetooth. | | Main use for me would be push-to-talk as I use Zello with my wife | quite a lot. But all those reliable assistant/voice-notes uses | would be also sweet. | edw519 wrote: | Too bad Abbot and Costello aren't around to attend a standup with | a bunch of people using your app. - Robert Robert | what did you do yesterday End Robert - Robert I met with | Robert in accounting to finish Jira 12392 story on the Robertson | patches End Robert - Robert Then I took a break to have | coffee and watch a Julia Roberts short with Robert in System | Admin End Robert - Robert Robert what are you going to do | today End Robert - Robert It depends if Robert Roberts has | internet access End Robert - Robert If he doesn't, that'll | be the end of Robert Roberts End Robert - Robert No | impediments for either Robert in the Robert epic End Robert | - Robert Robert's on Help Desk, Jean Robert's in Code Review, and | Sam Robertson's running the Roberton's retrospective End Robert | - Robert But then who is Robert Robertson? End Robert - | Robert Oh Robert Robertson's our scrum master! End Robert | [deleted] | roberdam wrote: | MORE INFO ON THE DEVICES: | | https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256803349510543.html | | https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256803085687061.html | | both recorders are using the same generic bios, you have a .txt | file called FACTORY.TXT, by changing the values of the file you | configure the device, this is the content of the file. | | --------------- | | TYP:1 (0:WAV 1:MP3) | | VOR:0 (0:voice-activated off 1-7:voice-activated | sensitivity,higher means record less) | | BIT RATE:2 (0:32Kbit 1:64Kbit 2:128Kbit 3:192Kbit 4:Translate ON | 5:512Kbit 6:768Kbit 7:1024Kbit 8:1536Kbit 9:3072Kbit) | | GAIN:5 (0-7 record sensitivity 8 grades) | | SECTION:(30) (1-999 record time exceed this,file will auto | save,uint minutes) | | DATE:2022-10-15 (year-month-day) | | TIME:08:36:24 (hour:minute:second) | | TIMER:1 (timer record 1:on 0:off) | | START:08:39:32 (timer record start time) | | TIMELONG:(120) (1-720,timer record length,uint is minute) | | CYCLE:(030) (1-999,how many dyas,0:everyday) | | -------------------------- | | I got the 32gb version of the bigger one and the 16gb version of | the smaller one. | | I configure the device to save a file each 30m, each 30m mp3 file | takes 28.125kb, so around 56mb per hour at 128kbps | tezza wrote: | So where _was_ the remote control ? | luuuzeta wrote: | I'd be so self-conscious with my speech being recorded roughly | 24/7 by myself. I'd probably get used to it but it'd take some | time. | ogicar wrote: | Very interesting idea. | | Would you be willing to share more info on the tech used in the | process? | | >I bought a couple of Chinese microphones | | Which exact microphones? How long does their battery last? | | As well as other parts of the process. | roberdam wrote: | https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256803349510543.html | | https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256803085687061.html | | the particular choice was for the battery and the other for the | size, both are generic and come with the same software and | bios, several vendors, if I could buy something better I would | look for one that can have a lavalier microphone | rmac wrote: | Not the OP but I've been tinkering with the same concept (24/7 | processing). | | 'm using vosk browser: https://github.com/ccoreilly/vosk- | browser | | To do speech to text locally and it works very well for | English. | baldr333 wrote: | You're mentally ill | hit8run wrote: | Interesting article. Thanks for posting this. I think when | wearing something like google glass and recording everything the | potential is even bigger. The AI can extract so much more | context. Analyse faces, gestures, locations and more. Dystopian | and yet so interesting. | onemoresoop wrote: | This sounds horrible. Nobody should freely record and analyze | others without consent. This is not only dystopian but also | very rude and possibly illegal. | | As far as recording oneself to capture thoughts, processes, | this is a fine idea that I'd like to give it a try. | mikro2nd wrote: | Why are you so self-obsessed? | gradascent wrote: | Why are you so mean-spirited? | thro_213r692s wrote: | Why is this being upvoted ? There is no code | ajkjk wrote: | Did you think there was a requirement to have code? | mtlynch wrote: | For normal blog posts, no, but OP is submitting as "Show HN" | which requires it to be something readers can try on their | own: | | > _Show HN is for something you 've made that other people | can play with. HN users can try it out, give you feedback, | and ask questions in the thread._ | | https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html | | This is an on-topic blog post, but it doesn't seem to fit the | criteria of a Show HN. | ajkjk wrote: | Hm, how can you tell it was a Show HN? Doesn't seem to be | in the title. Maybe it was before? | Waterluvian wrote: | > My biggest problem with "OK Google" is that I don't know by | heart what it can do interactively | | Maybe it's just me but this feels unaddressed and that seems | ridiculous. | | Why is it so hard for me to find a single, precise location on my | phone with an enumerated list of every command Siri or Google can | work with? | jononor wrote: | I would not count on Google to make public any such thing. But | a third party could test it out to build such a list. And that | could include caveats like "works if you ask in this form, no | if you ask in this other form". | throw7 wrote: | Other OK Google problems: | | o it changes. who cares if you know even some "commands"... | it'll break. I used to ask google maps when driving "Ok Google, | ETA". It's been many many years since that stopped working. | | o can't change name/ATTN keyword. how dumb is your AI that you | can't even rename _your_ assistant. /s | krono wrote: | Oh yeah the constant syntax changes got me to stop using it | entirely. | | Commands would suddenly lead to web searches, I'd then have | to _Google_ the new set of magic words to make it set a | reminder or whatever, only for it to break again two weeks | later. | ninkendo wrote: | > Why is it so hard for me to find a single, precise location | on my phone with an enumerated list of every command Siri or | Google can work with? | | The likely answer here is that the engineers who work on such | products would scoff at the idea that their work amounts to a | simple list of commands. In their minds, they're working on a | natural language virtual assistant, whose understanding of user | input is "intelligent", and it should know what you want | regardless of how you phrase it. Want to do something? Just | ask! Treat it as if it's a person! The possibilities are | endless! | | Never mind that its _actual functionality_ (y'know... the | things it can do when it understands you) is embarrassingly | finite and boils down to a "list of commands" anyway. | albertzeyer wrote: | Yes, is there a list of every command a human can execute or | can work with? | TheOtherHobbes wrote: | There isn't, but a partial list could be assembled. | | Most human interactions are context-triggered and heavily | scripted. | | This is easy to see on social media where responses to a | popular trigger post fall into groups. A lot of people make | one of a small number of generic expected responses, and | there's an even smaller number of funny/off-beat posts - | which all make the same joke. | | Occasionally you get a truly original inventive reply. But | only very rarely. | | I have a vague memory of a fringe AI startup which has been | trying to formalise that contextual database since the 90s. | recuter wrote: | Yes, actually, here: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_English | If one were to take the 25,000 word Oxford Pocket English | Dictionary and take away the redundancies of our rich | language and eliminate the words that can be made by | putting together simpler words, we find that 90% of the | concepts in that dictionary can be achieved with 850 words. | The shortened list makes simpler the effort to learn | spelling and pronunciation irregularities. The rules of | usage are identical to full English so that the | practitioner communicates in perfectly good, but simple, | English. We call this simplified language Basic | English, the developer is Charles K. Ogden, and was | released in 1930 with the book: Basic English: A General | Introduction with Rules and Grammar. | | Even Includes 200 picturables: http://ogden.basic- | english.org/wordpic0.html | | _" A widely known 1933 book on this is a science fiction | work on history up to the year 2106 titled The Shape of | Things to Come by H. G. Wells. In this work, Basic English | is the inter-language of the future world, a world in which | after long struggles a global authoritarian government | manages to unite humanity and force everyone to learn it as | a second language."_ | | - Sounds pretty close to Siri and the other digital | assistants to me. Ever watch people from none English | countries use their smartphones? Not all of it is | implemented yet but this is almost all you need to run an | empire. | | Here it is deployed in favor of much needed disciplinary | action for two Scottish people: | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOUTfUmI8vs | MezzoDelCammin wrote: | Anyone reminded of XKCD's "Up goer five" strip | (https://xkcd.com/1133/), or is it just me? | 314 wrote: | He expanded the idea into a book: | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing_Explainer | QuantumSeed wrote: | I would love to see something similar to Basic English: A | General Introduction with Rules and Grammer for other | languages. It seems like it would be a great tool for | learning a new language. | MikePlacid wrote: | > Here it is deployed in favor of much needed | disciplinary action for two Scottish people | | There was a moment when call centers started deploying | "just say it" en masse - and I was literally in panic. | Luckily, they brought back "or enter" pretty soon and | also en masse. | | To be fair to robots you protein constructs are not much | better. In a two mile radius of our company's office | humans trained themselves to understand Russian accent | pretty well. But beyond that... | ninkendo wrote: | Not sure what side of the debate you're taking here, but I | think you've outlined the issue perfectly. | | Engineers: "We couldn't have a list of commands, that's not | how humans work, you're supposed to treat Alexa like a | human, and the possibilities are endless" | | Users: "Ok, then. Alexa, take out the trash." | | Alexa: "Sorry, I can't do that." | | (Ok, so obviously the possibilities aren't endless, right?) | | I can somewhat understand general knowledge queries. For | those, you can totally make the case that there's just too | many things you can ask about to enumerate them all. | | But imperative commands, like sending text messages, | setting timers, or home automation? There's a finite list | of those, since at the end of the day they actually have to | be authored by some human who's writing a (say) Alexa | skill. The number of utterances that may map to those | skills are unbounded, but _the number of skills aren 't._ | So yes, at the end of the day, for "command" like things, | they really should be able to give a list of them. | sofetch wrote: | > (Ok, so obviously the possibilities aren't endless, | right?) | | This does not follow from the above. The set of positive | integers is countably infinite. So is the set of positive | even integers. Even if "half of the positive integers are | missing!" there are still "endless" even postive | integers. | serverholic wrote: | You should do some self reflection on why you felt the | need to make a comment just to make yourself look smart. | sofetch wrote: | > why you felt the need to make a comment just to make | yourself look smart. | | I hardly think it made me look smart. It's borderline | trivial. The parent comment was insanely reductive in the | stadnard HN style. I was hoping to help reduce the | appearance of future such comments. | | Sibling comments indicate that it had no positive effect. | Such is life. | ninkendo wrote: | > This does not follow from the above | | Well, I elaborated after. There's an actual finite set of | skills that are coded up by actual engineers. A natural | language system isn't hallucinating the ABI for the | function calls that send text messages. There's code | there which takes the utterance and sends the texts. What | I'm saying is that you can take an inventory of what | skills have been written (and/or are installed), and | y'know... _document them_ somewhere. | sofetch wrote: | > you can take an inventory of what skills have been | written (and/or are installed), and y'know... document | them somewhere. | | Sure. I didn't take exception with anything except the | standard HN middlebrow dismissal. | ninkendo wrote: | I'm not giving a middlebrow dismissal. There exists a | real discoverability problem with virtual assistants, and | asking users to "just try things" leads them to try | things that _don 't work_, and then conclude that the | assistant must not be as useful as they thought. | | Moreover, when an assistant doesn't do a thing, you're | unlikely to try it again later; instead most people will | conclude "I guess it can't do that" and move on. If they | add the feature later, it's too late. | | With every failed request, your confidence that an | assistant really is intelligent and can understand you, | diminishes more and more. Every time a user hits a dead | end with a virtual assistant, it doesn't encourage them | to try more things that _do_ work, it instead gives the | user less confident that _anything_ will. | | I can't count the number of times my wife has been | surprised I can get Siri to do things. Her typical | response is "I can never get her to understand me so I | just stick with timers." It's a real problem, and I'm not | being dismissive of anything. | | In contrast, reread your comment in this context. You're | taking my comment, reading in the _least charitable way_ | , condescending to me about the meaning of finite when | the rest of my comment clarifies what I mean, and being | completely dismissive of the point I'm trying to make. | How can you say _I 'm_ the one issuing middlebrow | dismissals? | sebzim4500 wrote: | By that logic the calculator app has an (effectively) | infinite amount of functionality since there is an | infinite number of integers which you can add together. | | Somehow though they still list all the features. | sofetch wrote: | > By that logic | | This doesn't follow at all. It's not what I said and I | find it difficult to believe that you even think it's | what I said. | yellow_postit wrote: | Not having lists means they can collect more training data. | | Build a database of all the attempted interactions. Cluster | them by task. Sort by most used (or most monetizable) that | the system can't support today. Bam! You've got a rough | futures capabilities roadmap. | | It's more complicated of course but here you literally have a | large customer base telling you what it wants, but your | product can't yet do, regularly. | technofiend wrote: | Unfortunately there's also drift in behavior that comes | from retraining. "OK Google, play NPR news headlines" get | different results some days than others. Sometimes I get | the latest hourly news, sometimes I get a robot voice | reading headlines to me. Sometimes asking to dial someone | calls them, sometimes it returns search results. Yadda. | counttheforks wrote: | I'm not sure if that's what Google is doing. More than half | of my queries result in a "Let me google that for you" | response where it pulls up a search page. | capableweb wrote: | Apple's "assistant" is similarly useless. The best use case | I have for it is when I'm driving and pondering about | something silly so I ask it: "How does X do Y?" or similar, | and the response in 99% of the cases is "I can't show this | to you right now". | PebblesRox wrote: | Alexa takes "the customer is always right" a little too | far: Me: Alexa, when do babies double | their birth weight? Alexa: According to an Amazon | customer, some time within the first month. Does that | answer your question? Me: No! | | (The true answer is more like 5 months: | https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/infant-and- | todd....) | cool-RR wrote: | There isn't even an enumerated list of all the features of the | Google search engine (i.e. quotes for full expression, minus to | rule out words etc.) And this might be the most popular web | service in the world! | kevincox wrote: | There is actually a fairly good list here: | https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?hl=en | | I know for a fact that it isn't complete. But most of the | "secret" ones that I am aware of were very obscure and | usually buggy, so maybe this is all of the officially | supported ones. | actualwitch wrote: | I've been thinking about wiring up whisper[0], mozilla's tts[1] | and gpt-3 together to make a voice assistant of sorts. Wouldn't | have the access to device hardware and no guarantees of correct | answers, but should blow siri etc out of the water in terms of | understanding the context. | | [0] https://github.com/openai/whisper [1] | https://github.com/mozilla/TTS | MikePlacid wrote: | It should also talk to spammers and provide them fake credit | card numbers. | hatware wrote: | > Why is it so hard for me to find a single, precise location | on my phone with an enumerated list of every command Siri or | Google can work with? | | Because engineers (and managers) contrive problems like this to | the point they are useless solutions. | electroly wrote: | The original Siri had such a list. I found it demonstrated | here: https://youtu.be/agzItTz35QQ?t=716 | | Did that ever make it to release? I can't remember seeing it on | my actual phone. | [deleted] | [deleted] | Forge36 wrote: | Third party integrations? | | It's both a static list (available to everyone) and a dynamic | list (available only to you). | | Having seen all the dead products at Google. Who would get | rewarded for this/compensated? Would the complexity in building | the list increase ongoing costs with an unclear return on | investment? | selfhoster11 wrote: | Presumably, there is a list somewhere in Google's internal | documentation. All we're asking for, is for them to copy and | paste it from that documentation, clean it up a bit, and post | it online. | ceejayoz wrote: | There probably isn't. There'll be some hard coded "if this, | say that", but there are a lot of _trained_ responses in | the models that won't be as simple as that. | davidy123 wrote: | It would change constantly over time, and would eventually | become very large. It's an interesting idea, though, a school | subject on how to interact with your AI. Lots of grammer, | machine learning theory, culture, a bit of security, etc, to | second guess it. | Telemakhos wrote: | Students in most public schools don't even learn English | grammar now in most states. That went away at some point in | the Bush or Obama administrations, probably due to the NCLB | and Common Core initiatives. It is not uncommon now to | encounter college students who simply have never heard of a | "direct object." They need classes on the grammar of their | own language more than they need a school subject on | interacting with an overhyped and underperforming Siri. | zrail wrote: | Common Core has English grammar as a foundational skill. | Your specific example is taught in grade 5. | | That said, English is a difficult language and I'm not at | all surprised that people get through school without fully | grasping the names for grammar concepts, even if they use | them every day. | Waterluvian wrote: | I learned this when I was about 20, met a foreign friend | online who was formally learning English, and I couldn't | answer most of her questions. | | It was a bizarre but very educational moment: I use | English like I write code: I have no formal education on | it but I seem to do fine. | nshm wrote: | You can use open source assistant instead like Dicio | https://github.com/Stypox/dicio-android and configure it the | way you like. | thom wrote: | It also annoys me that there's no (obvious) meta-interactions | with most smart assistants to explore what's possible. I can't | easily ask "can you do X?" or "what can you do with Y?" | revolvingocelot wrote: | This, plus the already-discussed lack of a list of working | commands, further cements my belief that "voice assistants" | are not there for the benefit of those who keep them in their | homes. | wincy wrote: | I stopped using Alexa after it almost burned my house down on | thanksgiving. Apparently "bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for | thirty minutes" somehow became "microwave for thirty minutes" | even though it got all the words except bake! Who sets a | temperature with their microwave? | | Anyway we meant to bake something but instead absolutely | roasted a metal pan and wire rack that merged into the glass | somehow. | | My wife thinks it's kind of funny because the Disneyworld | "Carousel of Progress" shows a very similar event happening due | to voice controls, which they predicted in the 1960s! | habibur wrote: | Excellent idea. You can later search through your logs in the | future for reference. As it's all in text. | | Prior solutions posted on the net, had this take photo / record | audio 24/7 features, but then those were stuck there. What next? | What would anyone do with these data? | | But this Hi Jarvis styled recording of text on the go is a very | useful feature. | | Another step ahead. | roberdam wrote: | I think the "total recall" search can be a killer feature | lijogdfljk wrote: | I've wanted to do the same thing with my online activity as | well. Chat logs especially. They tend to go into a void and | finding an older log is weirdly difficult. I've wanted to log | everything and then be able to apply better search algos | (semantic search perhaps) to try and make my chat logs useful. | giobox wrote: | Cellphones are placed amazingly well to provide this sort of | search. Seeing the post about BeOS and its amazing metadata- | driven BFS filesystem yesterday really makes you think what | might have been had iOS and Android been more ambitious about | filesystems instead of just re-applying the same old | conventions from our desktop computers. | | You should be able to just text search every phone call you | have made on iOS/Android, today, similar to the automated | voicemail transcription features already present etc etc. | miguelrochefort wrote: | Here's a 24/7 background audio recorder app I made for Android. | The impact on battery and storage is surprisingly reasonable. | | https://github.com/miguelrochefort/eardrum | tomerbd wrote: | What a nice pair of feet! | Lapsa wrote: | yeah but there's 3 toasts | justinlloyd wrote: | Interesting work, glad to see I am not the only crazy one left in | the life logging scene after all these years. Have been | lifelogging since 2004-ish, and built a few custom bits of | software and hardware to support it. I don't record 24x7 anymore, | but I used to. Now my recordings are limited mostly to my office | environment, and when I am out and about using a Sensecam-like | device with custom firmware. When in my office I capture video, | audio and depth data from multiple view points, along with images | of the desktop of whatever computer I am on, and process most of | it on a Jetson. | | How's the audio quality on those devices you link to in other | comments? I find I pick up a lot of ambient noise when outside of | the office, and always struggled to come up with a viable | algorithm and model to differentiate "background chatter" from | the main conversation, and it is a problem I've never really | managed to solve so I am interested in your experiences on the | subject. | roberdam wrote: | > Have been lifelogging since 2004-ish | | Hopefully new advances in AI will let you try new things with | your old recordings | | > How's the audio quality on those devices you link to in other | comments? | | Decent, quality is directly proportional to the distance | between the microphone and the mouth, but can't expect too much | from 30$ devices. | | >and always struggled to come up with a viable algorithm and | model to differentiate "background chatter" from the main | conversation | | Yes, that's a big problem to solve, you can try Pyannote's | Diarization https://lablab.ai/t/whisper-transcription-and- | speaker-identi... | | that will be a next step for the experience | [deleted] | L0in wrote: | Do you mind sharing your experience, why you started, what you | want to get out of this etc? I'm interested to read your | experience. | justinlloyd wrote: | Not interested. | askafriend wrote: | Have you seen the show "My Strange Addiction"? | radu_floricica wrote: | Anybody made some progress with using google assistant with | arbitrary commands? I know there are a few integrators online | that could, in theory, get commands and send them to a | spreadsheet, but I couldn't get them to work. | colordrops wrote: | Did I miss something or is a description and/or link to the | software used not in the article? | Tepix wrote: | You can download whisper at https://github.com/openai/whisper | roberdam wrote: | You can use you smartphone for the recording and transcribe it | here: https://replicate.com/openai/whisper | | regex to extract commands from the transcripted text | wartijn_ wrote: | Are you planning to combine it with other info? Your smartwatch | already knows how long you've slept, getting that info directly | to your database seems more efficient and less error prone. The | same goes for the amount of money you've spend, if your bank | allows you to export that info it'll save you a step. Your bank | doesn't know what you've bought, only the total cost, time and | shop, but if you scan and upload your receipts and use ocr you'll | have a detailed record of that too. | | And you could also keep track of your location, so you know where | you had a conversation or at what gas station you spend 250,000 | roberdam wrote: | Diarization might be my next step,(recognizing the speaker on | the recording). | | Combining the information from multiple sources as you say will | get you a complete view (location history and time of the | recording will let you know if you where speaking with a | college or your spouse for example) | skydoctor wrote: | Anyone familiar with rewind.ai which seems to be building a | product on similar lines? | rmac wrote: | Looks like a slick wrapper around Apple's ImageAnalyzer and | ScreenCaptureKit | PaulHoule wrote: | If you are going through that much trouble you might as well get | a WiFi scale, wear a tracker that has an API, etc. I've | definitely thought about taking speech-to-text notes at work, | nice to see somebody did it. | commitpizza wrote: | Well yes, but this is a much cheaper option. Instead of having | many smart gadgets you only need one. The mobile phone or some | other microphone but that is the most obvious option. | | Instead of paying hundreds of dollars for all these gadgets | that have to be charged and kept safe you can buy cheap | variants and still have basically the same benefits. | PaulHoule wrote: | But your time is exchangable for money. (Something almost | never reflected in hobby behavior: that's why the crafts | store has 130 kinds of acrylic yarn and 1 kind of wool yarn.) | | A $150 scale is expensive but buys a very small amount of | software development. | fellerts wrote: | The problem is all those gadgets have their own APIs and | quirks. For example, my WiFi scale often decides to silently | not sync to my phone. Or decides to update my partner's weight | instead of mine. OP is building on arguably the most natural | API - speech, which is what all those smart assistants have | been promising us for a decade. I think there is a lot of | convenience as well as unexplored ground to be found in such a | system. | jes5199 wrote: | for a while I had my laptop set up to take a photograph and and | screenshot every ten minutes. The information was completely | useless, but I got some great candid photos of myself | c1sc0 wrote: | Are there any good (discrete) wireless throat mic patches out | there that are sensitive enough to pick up subvocalization / | whispering? | philote wrote: | I was curious about this as well. It seems there are bone | conducting microphones, but the ones I've found so far go in | your ear (so it's visible). I'm going to just hide a mic in my | beard. | roberdam wrote: | Since everyone is interested in the hardware: | | https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256803349510543.html | | https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256803085687061.html | | the particular choice was for the battery and the other for the | size, both are generic and come with the same software and bios, | several vendors, if I could buy something better I would look for | one that can have a lavalier microphone | uncletammy wrote: | Yeah but I want the software! Will you open source it? I'd | contribute! | roberdam wrote: | I'm doing it simple for now, transcribe it by uploading the | files to colab or replicate.com, then using regex to extract | the commands, the panel is in rails but nothing fancy so far. | | As I clarify in the article: This is a "proof of concept" and | not yet ready for production, everything described here works | but probably "glued with tape", several of the processes are | probably not automated or polished. | [deleted] | narag wrote: | Thank you for the links and for the article. How long can | record the smaller one? Actually if it can record for a day, | it'd be enough for me. | | I used to record all phone calls, until EU made Xiaomi remove | the feature. It was very useful because I always could take | notes later if they sent me a number, contact name or | appointment hour. | roberdam wrote: | At 128kbps the MP3 takes about 56mb per hour, I got the 16gb, | so you have a lot of time, the battery of the smaller one I | read is 800 mAh , according to the docs should last around | 2hrs, but I try to recharge it as soon as I can | philote wrote: | The Ali Express link says "Continuous recording:20hours". But | since they offer sizes from 4GB to 32GB it's unclear which | storage size that's for. That 20 hours could also be how long | the battery will last while recording. But 20 hours is still | enough to last the day and then some. | gruez wrote: | It's probably the battery life. 128 kb/s AAC is effectively | transparent even for music, and only translates to 1.1GB. | Even if it's uncompressed (1 channel 16 bit 44100hz PCM), | 20 hours only translates to 6.35 GB. | cbsks wrote: | Super cool project! How do you carry the microphones on your | person? The big one looks like it wouldn't clip to a shirt very | easily. Does it pick up your voice from your pocket? | roberdam wrote: | thanks!, I try it on my shirt pocket but now I have it | hanging from my neck with a badge rope as close to the mouth | as I can | [deleted] | nelsonenzo wrote: | I wanted to do this exact project - record audio all day and | then have AI process it - to identify behavior outburst of my | autistic toddler. | | It's critical information for early diagnosis and treatment, | but it's really hard to capture the data while also dealing | with the actual situation. Being able to send the sounds he | makes to his therapist could also be usefull when then are | trying to get him to mimic sounds and talk. | | With that said, is the audio AI open sourced? The part that | analyzes the audio stream? | | Thanks for the links to the hardware, also a really important | part! | rockemsockem wrote: | I would guess that they're using OpenAI's Whisper, which is | open source: https://github.com/openai/whisper | | It does speech-to-text, then you can use the full force of | all the text analysis tools that are out there. | roberdam wrote: | that's a fantastic use case!, the easiest way (and the one | i'm currently using) is by upload the audio manually on : | | https://replicate.com/openai/whisper | macrolime wrote: | Are you planning to make it an open source project? | roberdam wrote: | for now it's "glued with tape", but I'm going to try to make it | presentable to post something on Github | luwatobil wrote: | Please do, this is a very cool project and I would like to | give it a try. | fire wrote: | I'm looking forward to it! | unsupp0rted wrote: | I remember an Asimov short story in which scientists developed a | machine that could see backward in time. | | If I recall correctly, the upshot was the government became | terrified because any machine that can see 1000 years into the | past can also see 1000 milliseconds into the past and therefore | functionally be used to spy on anyone in real time. | SimonPStevens wrote: | Different author, but sounds somewhat similar to 'The Light of | Other Days' by Arthur C Clarke and Stephen Baxter. | | Although iirc correctly it starts with being able to see other | locations in space but at the same time, and the historical | viewing is a second development. | | Fantastic book, even if it's not the same one you were thinking | of. | nonrandomstring wrote: | Pretty sure both those authors wrote similar concepts, with | the same creepy conclusions of taking the technology to a | limit. | | It came up in an acoustics class once. I said that sound | never really dies. It just bounces around until it becomes | thermal energy, thus warming the room a little as a prelude | to joking about professors talking hot air. | | A student asked whether, one could recover sound from | reverberations that had fallen below RT60? Could you listen | back in time to conversations that had happened hours ago? | | Obviously entropy can't be put back in the box with the | technology we have now, but it makes you wonder. | | Two things have since made me revise the question. One is | recovery of sound from video images. The other was an | archaeological recovery of sounds from a ceramic vase spun on | potters wheel many centuries ago. Sorry but the references | for both escape me atm. | progman32 wrote: | The pottery record thing was tested on mythbusters and | hailed from an episode of csi. | nonrandomstring wrote: | Fake? Got a link so I can dig in a bit. Thanks. | | EDIT: found this thread | | https://groups.google.com/g/sci.archaeology.moderated/c/5 | Jec... | | Damnit, seemed so plausible. | abruzzi wrote: | Clark also used it as a throwaway line in Childhood's End. | IIRC, humans were given a device that would allow them to see | the past--most religions didn't survive seeing the true | origins of their faith. | andrewla wrote: | It was The Dead Past [1] | | The idea of it was that it was known that the technology | existed, but the government went to great lengths to imply that | it could only see into the far distant past. The reality was it | could only see 20 years back or so, and the government was | covering it up because of the 1000 milllisecond issue. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dead_Past | unsupp0rted wrote: | Yes, that was it! Nice find :) | creativeembassy wrote: | I wonder if this was an inspiration to the "Devs" miniseries. | Won't say more about it for fear of ruining it. Amazing show. | lbayes wrote: | There was an article some years ago (2 or 3?), that described a | drone (or drones?) that flew 24/7 over Mexico city taking high | resolution video of the entire city at all times. | | Whenever there was a crime, the police could zoom into that | location at the time of the crime and then run backwards to see | where the vehicles came from. They then knocked on that door. | | I'm disappointed that I can't seem to find it using Google | anymore, maybe it was from a movie or TV show?! That would be | weird though, because it seems technically quite reasonable to | achieve and hard to believe governments wouldn't jump on it. | netsharc wrote: | I've read about that happening in Cleveland, using tech | developed to find insurgents leaving IEDs in Afghanistan. | Yeah, citation needed... | lbayes wrote: | So glad someone else saw this, I'm not finding _anything_ | on it and I 'm starting to question my own memory, as I'm | quite sure I saw the original article about the Mexico | program on this site. | | FWIW, I also recall the tech being originally used to find | people who planted IEDs in Afghanistan. | | I'm kind of shocked about how all the articles I am finding | seem to emphasize real-time police chases. | | Now I'm feeling super suspicious. | _tom_ wrote: | There have been a few products that record everything you | see on the web, so you don't have this problem. Obviously | analogous to recording everything you hear. | | https://www.searchenginejournal.com/all-about-seruku- | search-... | netsharc wrote: | Well, a bit more googling ( https://www.google.com/search | ?q=police+drone+afghanistan+rew... ) got me just 2 | relevant hits. | | https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/04/sher | iff... | | https://scholarship.law.uc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl | e=1... (search for "rewind") | | I'd rather think it's because Google sucks now, and those | keywords just bring up too many similar articles, but my | metaphorical tinfoil hat is my hands. | lbayes wrote: | Nice job! | | Your tips got me to this one, where it more clearly | spells out the "rewind" capability. I think the problem | was that the tech was attached to a low-flying, piloted | plane, not drones. | | https://www.csoonline.com/article/2226742/record-and- | rewind-... | | Whew! It feels better to set my tinfoil hat down on the | table next to me... | filoeleven wrote: | There was a website shown on HN a few years ago that used | AI and plane transponder data to find circling planes | which were presumably doing this kind of surveillance | over American cities. It might have used further | parameters to narrow it down, e.g. "over a city, circling | for >3 hours" to rule out planes waiting to land. I | thought it was named something simple like "plane- | circles.com" but I'm not having any luck finding it | again. | | See also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGUS-IS | | Edit: found it. Should have limited the search to HN from | the start. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24188661 | dorkwood wrote: | I first heard about this on Radiolab. Maybe you heard it | there too? | | >> In 2004, when casualties in Iraq were rising due to | roadside bombs, Ross McNutt and his team came up with an | idea. With a small plane and a 44 mega-pixel camera, they | figured out how to watch an entire city all at once, all | day long. Whenever a bomb detonated, they could zoom onto | that spot and then, because this eye in the sky had been | there all along, they could scroll back in time and see - | literally see - who planted it. | | https://radiolab.org/episodes/eye-sky | garblegarble wrote: | The term for this is 'WAMI' - Wide Area Motion Imagery[1]. | Here's a Bloomberg article about an instance of it in | Baltimore[2] (although this wasn't where I learned about it | first, like you I can't find my original source either) | | 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide-area_motion_imagery | | 2: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-baltimore-secret- | sur... | iwillbenice wrote: | Not sure about the Mexico City drone, but a similar thing was | developed by the US military: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_Stare | | I know some folks who deployed during OEF/OIF and used these | types of systems. Many a night raids were conducted simply by | watching where attackers originated from. | [deleted] | bitcurious wrote: | In some jurisdictions it's illegal to record a conversation | without all-party consent. Example: | | https://www.rcfp.org/reporters-recording-guide/massachusetts... | texasbigdata wrote: | Pretty well known in the states, luckily he seems to be talking | to himself :) | alach11 wrote: | These states are: California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, | Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, | Pennsylvania, and Washington. | | Edit: I should add that in some of those states, it would still | be permitted to record others in public without consent, where | there's no reasonable expectation of privacy (e.g. a coffee | shop or gas station). | [deleted] | MikePlacid wrote: | > The law only applies to secret recordings, however, so | affirmative consent is not necessary when all parties are aware | of the recording. | | Hm. Will a T-shirt with "my phone is recording everything" be | enough? | | Interesting- secret recording is punished more severely than | _use_ of such recording. Logic? | | Also, the difference between image and sound recording. Secret | image recording in public space is basically ok, while sound | recording is not. That probably is caused by a wide | availability of photo cameras, with known "fair uses". | light_hue_1 wrote: | No. It's not enough to vaguely inform people. | | You must get their consent. T-shirts say lots of things that | are hyperbole or bluster. Like "official boob inspector" is | not generally understood to mean that you're announcing you | literally are a licensed doctor. | krzyk wrote: | A related question, is there a ready solution to do constant | recording using some Linux box (e.g. Raspberry PI)? | | AFAIR I've seen someone recommended such software on HN but I | can't find it right now, it was something for recording radio | stations or similar. | | I would like to get some kind of sound monitoring of my house | when I'm away or sleeping and besides using arecord I couldn't | find anything useful. | reisub0 wrote: | Even better is something like the Guardian Project's | Haven(https://github.com/guardianproject/haven) which IIRC | Snowden contributed to. | | It's incredibly cost-effective to just buy an old Android phone | (which comes integrated with multiple microphones, with good | signal processing and noise cancellation), instead of building | it with components. | | Haven is specifically designed for intrusion detection, and for | preventing people from tampering with your laptop for instance | by detecting activity on the Android phone's sensors. | habibur wrote: | An old laptop will work better. | | Raspberry pis don't have Audio in. You need USB microphone and | drivers, which are hit or miss. | krzyk wrote: | Well yeah, but I wonder what software to use for constant | recording that could be worked on outside of the recording | process. | jxy wrote: | I was playing with this idea of recording everything using a | 1st gen AIY voice kit. The driver is a linux kernel builtin | module. The recording quality is good if I'm in the same | room. But I didn't find the recording that useful, so I | stopped doing that. | fnordpiglet wrote: | I thought this would be recording everything to generate an AI | model that could sit in zoom meetings for you. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-11-15 23:00 UTC)