[HN Gopher] Remove your ring camera with a claw hammer
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Remove your ring camera with a claw hammer
Author : gpvos
Score : 55 points
Date : 2026-03-18 20:12 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.hamiltonnolan.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.hamiltonnolan.com)
| stackedinserter wrote:
| Ring or any corpo-cloud-controlled cameras are shit, but I want
| to know what happens around my house when I'm not watching.
| charlie-83 wrote:
| What types of things do you want to be able to see?
| kennywinker wrote:
| It mostly just sits there.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| If it's that important, you should watch then.
| ge96 wrote:
| This is just curiosity, no sides, the refund bit
|
| If Amazon did their part, put the package on your door, it was
| stolen, is that their fault?
| mgash wrote:
| If you have video evidence showing that Amazon just left your
| package out in the open then someone came up and nabbed it I'm
| sure Amazon would just send you a replacement if only to keep
| you happy as a customer.
| kennywinker wrote:
| Does amazon ask for evidence? Serious question. I've never
| had a package lifted off my doorstep, but every other issue
| i've had has been auto approved with no need for photo/video
| evidence.
| Macha wrote:
| It feels like given that Amazon give you no agency in when the
| package arrives, and also no guarantee of forewarning, then
| they've given you no option to prevent the package remaining on
| your doorstep, the liability should morally lie with them.
|
| (Legally, could be more cloudy depending on jurisdiction, but
| I'm sure their tendency to say packages will require a
| signature on delivery but then to leave them on the doorstep
| with the driver's signature alone probably does them no
| favours)
| clcaev wrote:
| Amazon gives you the choice to deliver on a specific delivery
| day. Sadly, they often deliver earlier... and proclaim it as
| a good deed.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Amazon leaves the package on your doorstep because it's
| slightly more convenient for you and WAY more cost effective
| for them than the old-style "we missed you; come pick it up at
| our location in a day or so" note. No physical location in
| expensive areas, no repeat deliveries, no hauling & managing
| packages coming back on trucks. When you buy something from
| Amazon they have not delivered it by throwing it on your
| doorstep. Ironically we never would have taken delivery of
| expensive purchases like this back in the day when the world
| was so much "safer"...
| cromulent wrote:
| I have a Unifi doorbell and it takes great photos of the local
| badgers, foxes, and other wildlife. They are stored locally. Love
| it.
| watersb wrote:
| Do you store them all in the same pen, or do you have to keep
| them separated?
| cromulent wrote:
| Still trying to catch them. They keep drinking my cider and
| eating my chickens.
| alexfoo wrote:
| A lid is a must.
| sparkler123 wrote:
| There's plenty of good arguments for not using cloud-connected
| video cameras, how they can share data with the government
| unethically or illegally, etc. I got rid of all of mine. But I
| still have cameras, that I own, that are only accessible to me. I
| didn't get them until my house was burgled. I found that
| experience to be traumatic. I find the cameras to be somewhat
| soothing.
|
| I do think it's funny he focuses solely on the homeowner, the
| individual, for whom their entire life is in their home, but
| ignores all the cameras used by businesses, government, etc. Ask
| the police station take down their cameras! Ask the grocery store
| take down theirs! They can certainly afford to be robbed more
| than the guy just trying to make an honest living, and wanting to
| keep an eye on his stuff. But no, he focuses on the person who's
| likely been the victim of crime (a concept he tells you to
| pretend doesn't exist, because "capitalism" or whatever), to just
| ignore it, to just go with the flow, man. No, I don't think I
| will.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > But what if someone steals your Amazon package off your front
| steps? Well, what if they do? I guess you would have to get a
| refund. I guess you might suffer an extremely minor
| inconvenience. I guess it could be an opportunity to reflect on
| the painful predations of poverty under capitalism, which creates
| economic desires, renders people unable to satisfy them, and then
| taunts them with constant visions of abundance in which they
| cannot share. True, it is a tragedy of unimaginably small
| proportions that someone has stolen your box of paper towels.
| Would you let them steal your optimism, as well?
|
| This kind of rhetoric is counterproductive. Telling people that
| package thieves are just misunderstood, is going to get people to
| do the opposite of what you suggest.
| kennywinker wrote:
| Those people were going to do the opposite already. They are
| already doing the opposite. If you have some better rhetoric
| that will convince them otherwise then in all honesty I look
| forward to reading your blog post.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| I believe the rhetoric is intentional; that the author had no
| plan to convert that audience from whom you will pry their ring
| doorbell out of their cold, dead hands.
| branon wrote:
| I understand where the author is coming from but this bends a
| little too far towards "recording outside your door is bad and
| you should feel bad because you are a horrible paranoid person"
| for my taste.
|
| The reality is that a lot of societies or locales are not high-
| trust and it makes sense to take steps to insure
| oneself/family/possessions.
|
| Installing cameras on your property does not necessarily mean you
| have a destructive attitude, or that you are storing and
| cataloging events and treating everything with suspicion and
| paranoia. It's a set-and-forget system that the majority of users
| probably don't think about on a daily basis. You install them in
| the hopes that you'll never have to use them.
|
| I would rather see "_Amazon Ring_ is bad and you should feel bad,
| get a better surveillance system"
| dd8601fn wrote:
| I don't think I'm overly paranoid. I do still have a HomeKit
| compatible encrypted video doorbell that cannot talk to any
| outside vendor.
|
| Once in a while it has turned out to have been good to have.
| Never critical, but good to have. And I don't have to give
| everything to [Amazon/Ring|Flock|local PD|whoever]... unless I
| choose to.
| grebc wrote:
| What does a surveillance system actually give you? Have you
| dealt with Police after break in & robberies?
|
| I was a building manager for 6 years and Police took the
| footage over 10 times during my tenure, nothing was ever
| recovered by the police and recognised offenders were never
| bought to any sort of justice.
| branon wrote:
| The surveillance system gives you the footage. If police
| can't do anything with it, that's unfortunate, but not the
| fault of the surveillance system.
|
| In this instance I'd say the surety and closure provided by
| the ability to simply review the footage is an important
| aspect for potential victims.
| clcaev wrote:
| We shouldn't have to surrender our privacy for simple
| conveniences. I'm sure there is a market here.
|
| Can someone make an open source, privacy-focused doorbell?
| Perhaps like the Software Conversancy's OpenWRT One wifi router.
| A simple iPhone/Android intercom app usable only on my LAN would
| be lovely. With an open specification addons like a flashing
| light or entry buzzer could be integrated. Yes, one can get a
| ReoLink and muck with VLan settings but that is not very
| accessible.
| gerdesj wrote:
| I have several Reolink cams around the place, including a
| doorbell. They are on a VLAN called SEWER. I also have a VLAN
| called THINGS, which is for general IoT and SEWER is for those
| devices that scare me the most!
|
| SEWER and THINGS don't get to see the internet at all, except via
| Squid. DNS A records with ntp in them resolve to the IPs of my
| equipment.
|
| It is a bit crap that you need to be a networking and IT
| consultant to make this stuff mostly safe. If you can't, then
| getting the claw hammer out seems to be indicated.
| dd8601fn wrote:
| HomeKit Secure Video devices. Block the device's internet
| access at your router. Apple can't see the video, it doesn't go
| to Amazon or Flock, nothing counts against your iCloud storage.
|
| Easy Button option for us lazy folks.
| arjie wrote:
| > _But what if someone steals your Amazon package off your front
| steps? Well, what if they do? I guess you would have to get a
| refund. I guess you might suffer an extremely minor
| inconvenience. I guess it could be an opportunity to reflect on
| the painful predations of poverty under capitalism, which creates
| economic desires, renders people unable to satisfy them, and then
| taunts them with constant visions of abundance in which they
| cannot share. True, it is a tragedy of unimaginably small
| proportions that someone has stolen your box of paper towels.
| Would you let them steal your optimism, as well?_
|
| One of the things I do actually like is not being constantly
| stolen from. It's a pretty nice improvement to my life to see
| that something has been delivered and know that it will be there
| when I'm home. I don't have a Ring camera or anything, but I can
| see why people would rather have the Christmas gifts they send
| each other (even if small in monetary value) than some insight
| about the "painful predations of poverty under capitalism". The
| latter might actually not be as valuable to others as it is to
| the author.
|
| When I lived in India many decades ago, it was quite routine to
| have anything not latched down taken from you. We'd lock our bags
| to our train seats and so on, and if you had an expensive thing
| delivered you'd have to make sure you were home or you'd have to
| go acquire the thing and escort it home yourself, and you
| wouldn't do that with an expensive item at a time when people
| weren't around. If I'm being honest, I think I would much rather
| have my present life where I am confronted with such "tragedies
| of unimaginably small proportions" rarely at the cost of the
| "opportunities to reflect on the painful predations of
| capitalism". I actually really like not being stolen from. Here,
| in my wife's Taiwan, I can even forget my phone on a table and
| it's probably still going to be there. That's somehow even nicer,
| though I do admittedly reflect less often on "the painful
| predations of capitalism" because of it.
|
| I don't specifically know for a fact that a Ring camera would
| help me achieve this goal of mine to be not stolen from at the
| cost of reflecting on capitalism, but it is presented in the
| article as if it would and that giving up reflections on
| capitalism for safety from theft is not useful. Given that I have
| found such a trade useful, I think this speaks more as an
| advertisement for Ring than anything else.
| quietsegfault wrote:
| I use my non-ring, local-only front door camera to track the
| local cats.
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(page generated 2026-03-18 23:01 UTC)