Sparked by @muerte33 's comment here:
I thought it might be fun and interesting for folks to specify what they’re trying to protect and from what or whom.
eg
| OF what? | FROM what? |
|---|---|
| Home interior | Burglars |
| Strangers | |
| Flower beds | Dogs |
| Cats | |
| Deer | |
| Foxes | |
| Armadillos | |
| Possums | |
| Skinks | |
| Horses | |
| Alligators | |
| Snakes | |
| Cars | |
| 4wheelers | |
| Cats | |
| sideBysides | |
| People |
Maybe your primary five or less… 
Place held for future developments. 
Yeti, Sasquatch, Bigfoot, balls of light.
=5
My primary use isn’t really “protection.”
Probably a ton of other things I forgot off the top of my head. But “security” is one of the smallest reasons I have cameras at this current house/location.
I just installed my latest v3 camera aimed at my porch. Lately, I have getting solicitors ignoring my “No Soliciting” sign.
Do you want to be secure from them interact with them or both? Actually, you may be trying to secure them from… prying eyes and otherwise. 
They can sense you have a big soft feline heart notwithstanding your big bad barks! So they persist, aloof buddhas on your nightly footage. 
Steven, you may be the one in 100 persons who might enjoy this old documentary film Salesman, long black and white and feeling like real-time, a bunch of genuine old timey Bible salesmen plying their trade, talking shop and smoking. No music that I can remember you have to provide your own. Cams would not have deterred them. 
We are so different you and I, you meld with the technology and make it seem appealing while I will never hold it closer than arms length. 
(Barring a big reversal) my kind are destined for the dust bin and it’s not yet determined what your kind are destined for.
I sincerely wish you success beyond what I’m currently able to imagine! 
This is a good description of how I use and embrace technology.
There was a point in time where nearly all human energy was spent in gathering food. That consumed basically the entirety of the majority of human existence.
The mechanization of Agriculture, and technological automating of food production and distribution, etc allowed us to scale specialized labor drastically toward some interesting progress.
It is fairly well accepted that the average person (in the USA) today in many ways lives better and in more luxury than John D Rockefeller (The richest man alive back in 1916+…worth the equivalent of >410Billion in today’s money) did back in his day. We have air conditioning and central heating, we can fly across the country in hours, let alone the world. Global Communication is phenomenal. Rockefeller’s entertainment was limited, he couldn’t even listen to radio or watch Television, let alone on demand. While healthcare is a volatile controversial issue I’d rather we mostly limit discussion on, it’s nearly indisputable that even the poorest among us have better healthcare than a billionaire could obtain in 1916. Medicine, sanitation, nutrition, have all improved our health and longevity with way longer life expectancy than even Rockefeller’s wealth could buy. Our lives, are more convenient, safer, and technologically enriched. We have access to information, education, opportunities and luxuries that were unimaginable and unobtainable even to the richest man in the world back then.
I don’t want to minimize the challenges and suffering people deal with today, they can be all too real and heartbreaking, but it is VERY accurate to say that the majority of people currently live better than the richest billionaires in the world in just the early to mid 1900s. I expect things to continue in this direction. In the decades to come, people will scoff at how absurd it was to live without things that we can’t even imagine right now, and how these things make humankind so much better off. Even the richest among us right now will look like peasants compared to the improved quality of life of the decades to come. Even the poorest among them will be better off than the richest among us with the most luxruries today just as it is today compared to Mr. Rockefeller.
At least that is what I believe. I love and embrace technology and the improvement and progress it leads toward. There will always be Fear Uncertainty and Doubt from some people related to technological progress as there always has been, but it will always ultimately triumph and overcome social obstacles as it always has.
Too many people take a pessimistic view on how things have progressed, but most of the catastrophization is not completely warranted. I highly recommend to change people’s perspective on why the world is better than we fear with a couple of my all-time favorite books:
I think things are a lot better than people think, especially in the context of the past. But it is ingrained in our nature to be obsessed with negativity, complaining, fear, uncertainty, doubt, catastrophizing, etc. I think that factually speaking, things are way better than they’ve ever been. I know that’s a tall order considering some of the chaos in the world at the moment, but overall I embrace technology with optimism, maybe cautiously and intelligently, but I still embrace it and love it. People can delay progress, but I don’t think they can stop it.
Peepeep:
Wyze cams are GREAT for finding out which animal left what scat and where.
Every item on the list I submitted has been in my yard except the alligator, but it was spotted in the lake two houses south of me.
My favorite video years ago was when a dog was sprayed by a skunk, I wish I still had it!
One day I came home for lunch from work and two horses were in my yard munching on my centipede grass.
They did have the common decency to defecate in my neighbor’s yard though!
Deer love to eat rose bushes, the thorns do NOT bother them.
I had a trench dug in one of my main beds one morning when I went out on patrol.
The video revealed it was a great Pyrenees dog digging for something.
I have alarms, sensors, and plants that are supposed to deter these pests, but none of them are working.
Fencing is all but outlawed now by the HOA, so that is out.
This is an earthy story. I like it. 
The range of people and purposes engaged with this 
stuff is truly broad, eh? It’s a big dam country and world.
What I object to most about the latest march of technology is that it seems to seek and ultimately require a totality. That all of us and everything align with it. No alternatives. No opt-outs. And no time to think.
Does that seem fair?
Thanks! I’ll try to inhabit that for a while…
What technology doesn’t have a conditional opt-out?
Impractical (soon nigh impossible) to exist without a smartphone. Digital currency to supplant all else. Etc.
Naw, you could be fine without either of those. Digital currency especially is particularly functional in a way that it can be used in a “wrapper” form that allows it the freedom of any context, including physical, to the point that it can and will basically be able to be used the same way we use cash right now. There are some really ingenious revolutionary methods to do this that already currently exist and are in the works but will make things like forgery and hacking and such difficult to impossible past times.
Though I do still fear the potential post apocalyptic-like nightmare that could be imposed by CBDC’s to a degree or rogue AI stuff. I am not 100% impervious to F.U.D. myself…but in general I am optimistic in the long term.
I see technology less in the context of being not optional as I do as being highly universally desirable to the point where it doesn’t make much sense to not want them, just as we see things like having a flushing toilet, running water, hot water, electricity, HVAC, lights, refrigerators, microwaves, washing machines (The quality of life improvement from this one thing alone is more incomprehensibly staggering than most people realize), toothbrushes, and so many other things. People don’t necessarily see all those things as being forced upon us as they do being things that are an obvious starting point for what they WANT. I think these “standard” technologies will just continue to increase as they always have, not because they are not optional (they are), but because people WANT them to be non-negotiable baseline luxuries.
Don’t get me wrong, many years ago I lived in the country of Haiti for years and at that time, in many places I lived (especially the remote areas) I didn’t have some or ANY of the above things, sometimes for as long as 2 years. So I do in fact know how optional many of those things are and how impactful they are. I have indeed lived in some of the poorest areas in the Western Hemisphere at a time where few people had access to many of the things we thought of, even then, as not optional.
Again, I think most of it is less being not optional as it is about being universally desirable and adopted as such.
But I have often been an early adopter of revolutionary technology and have a deep love for it. Of course I have seen first hand the difference it makes…both for those who have it and those who lack it. I think hyper technological adoption is highly beneficial.
I fell in love with a push broom I had for fifty years. It was manual. 
It’s quite possible that your personal wiring is perfectly suited to the future being projected for us. It’s very likely that mine isn’t.
I think it’s fine that your kind is extincting me. Every dog has its day.
See, I read something like…
…and my mind goes to something like this:
Meanwhile, @carverofchoice gets all philosophical an’ whatnot.
Then I read…
…and I think of Fred Astaire with the hat rack in Royal Wedding:
Morbid, but it is the necessary cycle of life. I think immortality would be one of the greatest impediments of human progress and civilization.
Humans have a tendency to get stuck in their old preferences and fear and oppose change, so it can really only happen if we are able to live relatively short lifespans and pass on decisions to the next generations.
That’s not to say that if it was possible for me to extend my life exponentially as the immortal jellyfish do (continually reverting back to a younger age) that I wouldn’t do that, but I think that for the sake of the species’ progress and civilization that it is generally a positive thing that it isn’t currently possible. Could you imagine certain world leaders remaining in power with their same prejudices and outdated beliefs and such for centuries instead of just years or decades? I generally think it’s good that things have to cycle to make way for new thoughts and progress.
Still aged experience and caution is also extremely valuable input. Don’t be afraid to express your hesitation and skepticism with all the technological advancements. “your kind” has an important place in the conversation too. Checks and balances and considerations from all sides are important things to consider. I believe many of the following quotes/statements:
If you don’t engage the counterargument, if you don’t know what all sides are saying, [if you can’t argue the other side convincingly], your own position is quite weak.
If you can’t explain something to someone else in a way that gets them to say “Yes that’s what I believe” then don’t bother arguing with them because you don’t even know what you’re talking about.
Most disagreements are like my example. Two people have different information, but they think the root of their disagreement is that the other person has bad judgment or bad manners or bad values. In fact, most people would share your opinions if they had the same information. If you spend your time arguing about the faultiness of other people’s opinions, you waste your time and theirs. The only thing than can be useful is examining the differences in your assumptions and adding to each other’s information. Sometimes that is enough to make viewpoints converge over time.”
Argumentation is a skill. being argumentative is a sign…
I guess those are less about arguing/disagreeing/debating than they are pointing out the IMPORTANCE of opposing views. Even if your preference or my preference is “wrong” or “right” (not suggesting this is a binary false dichotomy), I think it’s important to be able to have such differences expressed, but in a healthy way that doesn’t attack the other person. It is something I like about Wyze’s guidelines allowing for disagreement as long as there is no attacking each other. That is something hard to find on most social media. Everyone thinks you have to attack each other to “win” rather than having a discussion based on understanding or merit.
Haha, welcome to the REAL me…most of which I leave out of this forum because it is not relevant. But old froggy likes to bring up watercooler convos as bait, so I bite.
That video was a good imagery of what I imagine Peep doing with his broom (instead of the coat hanger) when the floor is already clean. 
Yeah. Take that, Wyze Robot Vacuum! 
What, me? Hey, thanks for asking.
| OF what | FROM what |
|---|---|
| Property perimeter | Midnight ramblers (aka Biking ninjas) |
| Immediate neighborhood | Car burglars and thieves |
| Recon boys and casers |
Awareness of patterns and methods
FROM column folk almost always 
masked because health conscious.
