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24/7 surveillance of individuals is just becoming culturally accepted. A terrible example, but a real one, is my grandma: she lives alone back in Colombia, and due to the fact most of her family is abroad, her grandchildren decided to pay a company to install cameras in every room of the house (except the bathroom) as to make sure we can all monitor her, "just in case". My attempts at convincing them a simple fall detection bracelet was sufficient were in vain, and my whole family doesn't see the issue, for it is "only for her own safety".
You are very correct. The slippery bathroom is also the place you want an alarm system ...
24/7 surveillance except where/when you need it to the most sums up so much of our world today.
I always thought that the compromise, vis a vis CCTV surveillance of public places, was to have the camera record to an encrypted storage that is only unlocked with a judicial warrant, just like a regular physical search needs a warrant.

You get the security of knowing criminals have their actions recorded, but you avoid the privacy catastrophe of being recorded 24/7 no matter where you go.

Almost every solution I've seen in this space can be decrypted fairly easily because of a similar issue found years ago with SSL compression.

I think it was the CRIME attack on SSL iirc. Same issue is found across most consumer-based systems (including drones), pretty much anything that uses compression can run into this issue if care is not taken to pad. At least from what I recall about it.

I hope she is aware of this surveillance and agreed to it?
> I hope she is aware of this surveillance and agreed to it?

Or how easy this footage could be sold or leaked?

This is only really a problem if she was patronized and/or coerced into this. The line is sometimes hard to draw, but this is where the problem begins.
> My attempts at convincing them a simple fall detection bracelet was sufficient were in vain,

Not making a pro-surveillance point, but fall detection bracelets are not sufficient monitoring for elders living alone. The fun starts when dementia rears its ugly head.

Choking, kitchen fires, gas leaks (no getting out of bed, so no falling), dementia compelling them to disassemble the house, dementia-induced hallucinations of intruders, dementia-induced claims of theft by neighbors and other helpers, and quick ability to verify/dismiss false positive alerts are huge selling points for cameras you'll wish you had if/when these shenanigans start.

Someone in such a state doesn't need cameras, they need a care taker. That kind of state you're worried about them hurting themselves or even properly eating. Cameras don't fix that.
> The convergence of parental anxiety and tech access can extend surveillant care into a total system, reaching past the baby and any employee in the home or daycare center to the street beyond. Increasingly, technophilic and/or anxious families are turning to websites like Nextdoor and smart home systems like Alexa, Google Home, Nest Cams, and Ring, not only to help with domestic management but to reinforce the barrier between the outside and the inside, keeping the outside out. These technologies slip from self-surveillance (when should I reorder my groceries?) to familial surveillance (what is my child watching?) to surveilling anyone who might come into contact with one’s children.

The battle for the hearts of parents is already concluded. Now Amazon and such just need to unveil consumer tech which is good enough. The idea that you can have a camera on your front door to see everyone is appealing to way too many people.

Is there a way to walk it all back? It’s an issue that worries me to almost no end. Idealistically, I might say education could solve it, except that I see this huge lapse of empathy on the subject of surveillance that makes the education impractical past a point.
No, I don't see a way without legislation, and I don't see that happening without a significant event.

Having said that, ring doorbells are useful in finding people who try to break into homes and commit other crimes. Aiden Fucci was convicted with help of a Ring camera. I'm sure his victim's parents are grateful.

https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/crime/2023/03/23/aid...

> The idea that you can have a camera on your front door to see everyone is appealing to way too many people.

That kind of thinking was easy for me back when I was living in a safe area. Now I've had to move to a sketchy neighborhood, and if "surveillance" helps to keep my girlfriend from being r----, that's an acceptable tradeoff for me at this time.

I totally accept this, I think I would (re)act the same.

But not without being still conflicted: this is kind of a privatisation of security.

What should be available and enforced for everyone (security of people and things) is abdicated by the society authorities, and instead of resorting to pressure them to do their job (educate, prevent, accompany, protect), people take the fast/"easier" solution of a private, paid-for solution which promise is still dubious (as it does not completely remove the anxiety but can well fuel it).

Private security companies, insurances and tech equipment sellers all have an interest in this. And again, state/communal responsibility is abdicated.

Overall, it cost more to the same population to go towards the private solutions, rather than pushing, either for the same equipment/guarantees, but through a common public requirement (because costs would be bundled), either for a voluntary policy in urbanisation, education and prevention (because of the side effects).

How are cameras going to stop that from happening?

They could possibly help with attribution after-the-fact but wouldn't stop it from happening.

I'd suggest taking other more effective measures if you're worried about that happening.

I intentionally picked a DECT audio-only monitor on a shelf of high-tech gizmos. Secure, local, doesn't reward the monkey-brain need to "just check in" like video would, and works without configuration in a different building. Would do it again for sure.
I just don't get why you'd even want to sleep separately from your young child. They cry because they crave physical closeness, physical contact, the rhythm of their parents breathing, just like we've done for millions of years. All you do in denying that is create a lasting distance, nightmares, and worry for these monitoring companies to feed upon.
How many children do you have?

From people I know it’s only single-child parents who co-sleep. Reason being, when the next child enters the picture, it’s pretty harsh on the toddler when there’s constant waking up, so having them sleep separately becomes the obviously right thing to do to not mess with their sleep too much. Later on it becomes a question of fairness. ‘Why does X get to sleep with you, but not me?’ One solution would be for everyone to sleep together, but beds have their limits, and I don’t actually know anyone who’d co-sleep with more than one child.

3. Definitely did co-sleeping with 2 at a time early on.
Okay, I'll bite. Your just-so statements shouldn't convince anybody of anything, but I'll provide a few points to think about anyway.

> I just don't get why you'd even want to sleep separately from your young child.

People have different life experiences. It really shouldn't be the first time you hear about people doing things differently than you and still getting similar results.

> They cry because they crave physical closeness, physical contact,

Yes. They also cry because they're hungry, because their diaper is full and when they are tired.

When our kids were babies there were even times they cried because they needed to be left alone. They were overstimulated and we needed to stop trying to help them.

> the rhythm of their parents breathing,

Can't say I've noticed that one. Seems hard to isolate though. By the time they hear you breathing, they'll feel body heat, see your face and are usually also in your arms and getting some interaction. Not sure how you have determined that it was the breathing that was doing the trick...

> just like we've done for millions of years.

I can't tell if this is the fallacy of appeal to tradition, the fallacy of appeal to nature, or an equally silly "appeal to evolution".

Evolution didn't stop at some magical point in the past. There's no reason why what held back then must still hold now. Nor is longevity of a trait proof of an evolutionary advantage. It just has to not be a disadvantage to stick around.

> All you do in denying that is create a lasting distance, nightmares,

Funny how neither that "lasting distance" nor the nightmares panned out for our kids, who have slept their entire lives in their own room. Can't say I've noticed those things in many other kids either, which is strange since private rooms are very much the norm around here.

This seems to be a pretty hot debate these days: https://theconversation.com/is-there-such-a-thing-as-too-old...
You're being very uncharitable. It's wildly different to cosleep with a new born than a near teen that the article mentions. And the rest of the article mostly reviews the benefits of cosleeping, so I don't see your point.
And you feel justified in espousing this harsh judgement of others parenting choices based on what evidence?

What seems obvious to you isn’t for others, and parenting threads are typically just trading anecdotes and judgement without data.

I do, actually.

First, forcing children to solo-sleep was invented by the aristocracy. It doesn't come naturally (as evidenced by archaeological record, anthropological studies of primitive societies, and primate studies).

Second, none of the so-called benefits of child solo-sleep are supported by solid evidence.

Just because it became the "norm" in modern society is not sufficient reason to give it credence. We also used to push formula on infants because it was supposed to be better for them (my immigrant grandmother had a fit when she discovered that the hospital was feeding her drugs as a matter of course to stop her lactating). This policy was pushed by doctors and hospitals and public health officials for decades, with no evidence to support it (this is not a rant against medical personnel, but rather against procedural inertia without evidence - the very reason why we have the scientific method).

It's right up there with the bizarre America-wide policy of washing the protective film off eggs so that they now need to be refrigerated to prevent spoilage (and of course, every American "knows" that you must refrigerate eggs).

If you wish to push for something artificially induced only recently, the onus is upon you to provide extraordinary evidence to support it.

Here's a decent article summarising the state of th evidence evidence. (I'm not making any claims about what the evidence says, I just found it interesting) https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220322-how-sleep-traini...
I know how we approached it and it was a compromise as me and my spouse come from different worlds culturally. I personally think a lot has to do with 'my cousin/friend/fb friend did x and recommended it'. For a very new parent, it is not unreasonable to seek advice of their peers.

In our case compromise was: infant slept with us for a good half of their first year, but we slowly transitioned to a separate room with audio only radio ( no internet connection app craziness ).

All that said, we are already an outlier in our social circle that includes parents and about the only ones that have any concern about normalizing surveillance at such a young age ( and even that is mostly based on my preferences -- my SO takes my concerns into account ).

I had a child in Japan, and so we did it the Japanese way: The child sleeps with the parents until the child eventually decides otherwise.
Just today we were being lectured by our pediatrician that our two year old needs to sleep in her own bed, in her own room. When we asked why, she went on a tangent that parents also need their own sleep and that she did it with her own kids when they were a few months old, and that she couldn't imagine getting much sleep with her kids etc etc. Basically, she didn't have any scientific arguments why it was better for her to sleep separately, other than "that's how things always have been done" and projecting her own preferences onto us.
> she went on a tangent that parents also need their own sleep

I know this seems like a tangent, but it's not. We all want to do the best we possibly can for our children, and yes, being a parent comes with a willingness to sacrifice yourself for them.

The problem is that those kids depend on you for more than just their need in the moment. You can sacrifice your night's sleep for theirs, but you still need to be able to take care of them the next day and the years after that.

At the end of the day, only parents can decide where the trade-off is, because only they are close enough to see what the baby needs and only they know how much they themselves can give.

There's no shortage of people that will tell you about The Right Way. It doesn't really seem correlated with any kind of medical degree either. Just remember that what worked for them, doesn't necessarily work for you. Take their ideas as ideas to think about, but not as rules to live by. You are different and your babies are different.

FWIW, doctors have opinions as well. We are all only humans after all.

Naturally, we have higher standards for well compensated professionals and we do expect more than platitudes from such professionals.

All that said, your experience does bring up an interesting point though. At the end of the day, you are the parent. As it relates to the care for your kid, you outrank them ( with some exceptions, but those usually apply for a very good reason ). They are there to help you make a good decision, but you are not bound by their words.

Unfortunately, like in every profession, they can be 'bad' doctors or ones that don't want to learn new things or both. Not to search very far, the sugar debate is now mainstream and doctors I talked to recently acknowledged that a lot of that word of mouth 'there is too much sugar in everything' has a point to it. In their defense, there is a lot of research that supports it now, but how long did it take to make it happen?

<< today we were being lectured by our pediatrician

I hear you. It is an aggravating experience and unless there is a good reason to keep that doctor, I would consider making a change. The relationship should not be an unpleasant one. In my neck of the woods, ours recommended covid shot for our kid on the basis that 'everyone does it'. Before I had a chance to go on a rant, my wife simply said no. There was some back and forth, but no remained a no.

I could offer more stories, but I don't really want anyone to extrapolate to some general wisdom. Each case is different and every one of us have to weigh those risks.

There is scientific literature confirming that around 12/18 months child indeed should start sleeping separately from their parents. Actually lots of literature point to much earlier.

Children need to develop their self soothing abilities as well as awareness that parents aren't always there already at this crucial age.

She wasn't projecting her preferences, it's dangerous to raise over protected children, separation anxiety in infants is normal but the response is to gradually increase the amount of separation week after week.

2 years old sleeping with child might actually be dangerous and I'm surprised hn would upvote a random netizen ignoring a professional's suggestion, only infants should sleep with parents.

[1] https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article-abstract/140...

[2]https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10870...

Unless you are an expert in child care please don't post factually wrong things.

If you are, post scientific articles.

You must have a tough time here on the internet.
I mean they cry for all sorts of reasons.
Even for no reason at all.

(disclaimer: I am a former child)

I feel sad hearing about parents who practice the "cry it out" method.
I feel sad hearing about parents who can't stand to hear their child cry for a few a few minutes, a few nights in a row, and instead have children who take years to learn to properly sleep, causing sleep deprivation for the entire family.
I'm already being fully parented by Apple, so what difference is more parenting tech going to make?
My parents give me more freedom.

Apple feels more like a sub-dom relationship - submitting to the nanny. iDevices are constantly correcting me, or preventing me from doing what I want, but I just can’t resist the secure feeling.

buy android and be free.

https://store.google.com/config/pixel_7_pro?selections=eyJkO...

why did you give up?
I think people deserve better than constantly fighting against their systems. It's belittling, invalidating, insulting. I found that it's healthier instead of this fighting, I come out better to try to accommodate ("When in Rome, do as the Romans do"), or ditch the system/relationship altogether. Fighting against things like Windows telemetry is just yelling at clouds, a losing, uphill battle against something that's out of our control anyways. Very similar to trying to change a toxic person in a relationship.
Because it's like beating a dead horse.