interesting video, but many of his same examples were in this 2012 NASA video: https://youtu.be/Q3YYwIsMHzw

Also, not to detract it's usefulness (and cool factor), but many people seeing this photo think that's how the Earth actually looks at night - it isn't. That composite uses satellite data from Suomi NPP's VIIRS sensor, which can detect much dimmer light than the human eye, and part of the compositing process was to normalize brightness of individual pixels (so dim lights get brighter, and bright lights don't washout adjacent pixels). More details here:
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/NPP/news/earth-at-night.html

Even some cool night-time videos from ISS (example: https://youtu.be/FG0fTKAqZ5g ) are made using still photos with long exposure time (1+ seconds) See FAQ.

This did lead me to a live webcam from ISS that I didn't know existed: https://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/ESRS/HDEV/

Small fucking world. I live in Mountain View now, just a block off Latham. I don't have a backyard transformer to point a webcam at, sadly...

Looks staged to me but I have ICS (Internet Cynicism Syndrome). Maybe she actually did fill half her webcam frame with the room behind her and he just sauntered in to fill that empty space. And maybe his slapstick staggering after running into the wall was real.

Slashdot had a post about an upcoming (about 1 year out) phone that can run pretty standard Linux distros. I took interest because I'm very annoyed about how UNconfigurable android is.

I have a Samsung Galaxy S2, very old by now, but hardware wise it still works fine. Software wise, it is shit. Android apps are massively bloated compared to when the phone was new, so the "system" partition of the phone is too small to install anything other than like 1-2 apps. From what I can tell, rooting might not help because there are still standard partitioning requirements? I dunno. Anyway, it is a big mess compared to a desktop, where I can partition things any way I want (which works great if you know what you are doing).

Anyway, I don't want to shill for Purism, the company that will be making the phone in the Slashdot article (for one thing, the phone is still a year or so away from final production), but they seem to be doing things right. They DO have some laptops on the market now, which apparently include a relevant feature mentioned in the write-up about their upcoming phone: hardware kill switches for the microphone, camera, and WiFi/Bluetooth.

If you read the ToS (hah! as if) for things like Facebook's app or the phones / OS themselves, you might see that you are "agreeing" to this kind of data collectionspying. If that sets the bar for "good" behavior, imagine what the bad guys (NSA, other agencies, state actors, unscrupulous advertisers, malware producers, etc.) can and will do. That's why any software solution is dubious. That's why electrical tape over your webcam is better than assuming that the record light is trustworthy. That's why a hardware kill switch is a good feature if you're concerned about this (like me).

Here's links to:
an article about the hardware kill switches in Purism's laptops, and
an article about their upcoming phone the Librem 5

I don't own any of their hardware. I don't like paid shills. That being said, I'm interested in what they are doing.

I always felt that my progressive ideology was a natural result of my atheism and 'skepticism', so it was really weird to find all these angry conservatives online shouting at women, muslims and black people while calling themselves atheists and rational skeptics.

I think the 'problem' with SJWs online is that a lot of concepts that 20 years ago would have been discussed mainly by well-educated academics, such as privilege, appropriation, etc., are now becoming mainstream and are being wielded by teenagers, lunatics, and people who are no smarter than you or I. This is technically a good thing - we need to get those concepts into the open if we are ever going to address the real problems they describe - but it means that there will be some people who fuck up or overreach while trying out these concepts. If somebody badly wants an excuse to dismiss all of feminism, or all of racial equality, there will thus inevitable be some teenager online with a webcam who is all too happy to give them that excuse - but why look for that excuse in the first place?

Yeah!! I remember setting up the wii remote head tracking and smartboard and playing around with them, amazing what he could do with a couple IR LEDs and the wii webcam. It's a shame he no longer publishes DIY home projects, but I suppose he's got bigger things to work on.

No, I'm comfortable railing against it, thanks. I’m from another time because it’s an infantile word (ducky, horsy, potty, selfie) for an infantile practice. I am so sick of seeing everyone’s smug pasty bloated shit-eating grins at arms-length and closer. You can almost smell the bad breath coming off the picture. Or the bathroom mirror pictures, with people looking intently at the iphone, as if it took 20 complex steps to take a freakin picture of yourself. Or the avatars taken with a webcam, where they have that stupid blank look people have when they are looking at their computer screen.

I see former colleagues who look ridiculous on those business connection sites, what makes you think I want to see your pockmarked aging face that close up? What do people do with this stuff, sit back and run a slideshow on their computer while they gaze at themselves? Someone at a previous company had her cubicle walls filled with head shots of a woman, who I assumed was her partner. Nope, on closer inspection they all turned out to be pictures of her. Again, I’m from another time.

She has a channel of practicing singing, she's just an amateur. Recently her video went viral as it was posted to Facebook only, it got 4 million views and featured on TV. They told her to post it on YouTube as well.

This time she normally practices around midnight. Her baby was sleepless and crying so she sang to her while doing her normal routine of practicing. But she noticed baby seeming to love it, she turned on webcam for a cute memory and posted to Facebook only.

She wasn't looking for fane as she never uploaded to YouTube just her family. But her family shared on Facebook and those shares were shared and on and on until 4 million views later and a news interview...the video finally got added to YouTube.

I thought it was cute, sweet, and great voice and even though the Facebook vid got 4 million views it hadn't been added here. So I added it

A perfect webcam scenario!

The odds that a cyclist, a mattress and a webcam would be at the same space and time are inconceivable.

No webcam on home PC and have a piece of elec tape over my macbook pro's isight.... /noproblems....

Your video, TYT: Massive Webcam Spying Program Exposed, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Since it's bad for productivity if their personnel keeps "analysing" pornographic pictures, GHCQ gives preferential treatment to pictures with faces in 'em.

So to increase your chances of remaining undetected, your webcam should be pointed at your genitals -- and you should be nude. Just like Chatroulette.

Well, it has been confirmed: GHCQ is indiscriminatly vacuuming webcam footage as well.

Remember when folks said that meta data doesn't bother them, it's not as if they were being spied upon when they're at home, naked? It's not as if they'll mind this time...

Ironically, being naked in front of your webcam might be the way to avoid ending up in their database.

"The documents also chronicle GCHQ's sustained struggle to keep the large store of sexually explicit imagery collected by Optic Nerve away from the eyes of its staff"

Peeping toms and wankers, the lot of 'em. So in order to have a private video chat, just use the chatroulette method and focus the camera on your genitals.

Jesus! Accuse me of unrighteous inclination and "react" rather than respond to my sentiments. I offered my thoughts to the situation from the POV of the litterbug, not Johnny (death by road rage) Webcam (although in the litterbug's place, IF it was a dick like you described, I'd most-likely be fucking up his grill with my rear bumper in reverse, because I don't leave a car when peeps are obviously unstable).

SO, what you're saying is that yourself as the litterbug, would have done something similar in response to the situation as I would have?

If you take me for someone who would illicit a reaction from an unknown motorist then end-up somehow mysteriously out of my vehicle between mine and theirs while they are still inside their vehicle well, maybe you'd do this, but I ain't goin' out like that.

Who the FUCK, is as passionately insane about dying to get out of their car to teach a stranger a lesson about littering? The litter-police guys' a dick, plain and simple and the litterbugs' a cunt for throwing his trash out so brazenly.

...oh and yes, my name is chingalera that, "little fucking thing over there."