Bryter

Do you ever suspect that everyone else on the internet is acting strange? It's becoming more difficult to distinguish between a person and a bot. The spaces that used to feel alive often feel a bit … dead. “Dead internet theory” first hit the web almost three years ago and suggests that the internet has been almost entirely taken over by artificial intelligence. Like lots of other online conspiracy theories, the audience for this one is growing because of discussion led by a mix of true believers, sarcastic trolls and idly curious lovers of chitchat … But unlike lots of other online conspiracy theories, this one has a morsel of truth to it. In 2021, the internet felt dead because aggressive algorithmic curation was driving people to act like robots. In 2024, the opposite has happened: the robots are posting like people. #tech #internet #Deadinternettheory https://lnkd.in/dkKVU5Q7

Are the chronically online taking over Halloween? As early as 2013, publications were noting memes’ slow creep into the Halloween-costume canon. Many of this year’s most popular Halloween costumes make sense. One trend tracker’s list includes characters from Beetlejuice and Inside Out, thanks to the respective sequels that recently hit theaters. But at No. 2 sits a costume that’s not like the others: Raygun, the Australian dancer who went viral for her erratic moves during the Olympics earlier this year. Her costume—a green-and-yellow tracksuit—beat out pop-culture stalwarts such as Sabrina Carpenter, Minions, and Wolverine. Raygun is not a monster, or a book character, or any other traditional entertainment figure. She is, for all intents and purposes, a meme. #memes #tech #halloween https://lnkd.in/e2VnuPKu

Bryter recently released a report showing 52% of parents are connecting with their kids through gaming! With the hobby offering time for bonding, nostalgia and skill building - we'd love to hear if this is something you implement in your own home? 👇🏼 https://lnkd.in/gYSQsyxi

Disputes between neighbours across China about the potential use of footage captured on home security devices have ignited a debate on privacy protection. When Wang Hao installed a smart door lock with a camera at his Beijing apartment, he’d imagined it would make his home more secure. Instead, it landed him with a lawsuit. In May, Jiang Yi, a neighbour down the corridor, took Wang to court, claiming the technology infringed on his right to privacy, even though the camera was not pointing at his property. The capital’s Fengtai District People’s Court ultimately ruled in the plaintiff’s favour, with the decision later upheld on appeal by Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court. Wang was ordered to disable the smart lock’s camera, as it “disrupted Jiang’s peace of mind and threatened their privacy”. The case is far from an isolated one. Similar lawsuits have been filed nationwide, including in Hangzhou, Xiamen, Qingdao, and Shanghai, where one plaintiff demanded not only the removal of his neighbour’s peephole camera but also 5,000 yuan ($690) in compensation for mental distress. #smarthome #smartlocks #smarttech https://lnkd.in/epAVHQkP

Do you wish your front door could see you coming? This smart lock uses infrared sensors to see you coming, recognise your face, and unlock the front door. Now, you don't even need my phone or a free hand. The Lockly Visage, announced at CES 2024 as part of Lockly's new Zeno line, can unlock your door as you walk up. It also has other common entry options—fingerprint reading, access codes, and brand-new physical keys—if not every member of your house wants their face scanned. #smarthome #smartlocks #smarttech https://lnkd.in/ew-Z-8Us

When we talk about the smart home, we often talk about grand visions of perfectly automated everything. You know the ones: you wake up well-rested thanks to some bedside light thing, and as you stretch luxuriously toward the ceiling, a sensor notices and turns on the coffee pot, starts steaming the sauna, and plays a curated playlist of all your favourite songs. It sounds nice! It is... mostly not how the smart home actually works. But you know what does work and is pretty smart? Swapping out the lock on your front door for something that lets you enter with a code or a fingerprint or even just knows when you’re nearby and opens right up. In recent months, we’ve seen a slew of smart locks, along with some new video doorbells, that make a smart front door seem like a pretty good idea. #smarthome #smartlocks #smarttech https://lnkd.in/eThKvKur

Is posting on Instagram cringe? Photo dumps launched into popularity as a middle ground between those who posted constantly and those, particularly younger users, who had decided that posting on Instagram at all was no longer cool. This was, in part, a response to the unreachable Instagram aesthetic and perfection perpetuated by the app; photo dumps were a sort of messy alternative. Recently, the photo dump has become less common. People are only posting on their Stories, if they post at all. Instagram Stories have a short lifespan that serves as an ameliorative salve to the anxiety of posting on the grid. But even posting on Stories has lost some of its luster. The signs are clear: Posting at all is for suckers, especially on an app like Instagram which has become less relevant to young people. If you post, no matter how exciting your life looks, it's not cool to share it on Instagram. People now feel the need to start making moves in silence. #instagram #photodump #tech https://lnkd.in/eQFK-xgK

In early August, Instagram doubled the maximum number of photos allowed in users’ carousels, from ten to twenty per post, enabling the sort of sprawling so-called photo dumps that would once have felt anathema to the platform’s aura of careful curation. Today’s Instagrammer no longer chooses one representative photo at a time, creating a grid of images just so; instead, users, especially those belonging to Gen Z, are putting up faux-messy but actually carefully selected compendia showcasing the detritus of their lives. Like trends in fashion, the dominant style of social media oscillates between aestheticised perfection and aestheticised mess, between minimalism and maximalism. One precedent for the Instagram dump was the Facebook album of the late two-thousands, a time when online content was less carefully curated because it was still meant for a small audience of real-life friends. If you posted, say, thirty very similar photos from a party the night before, after uploading them with difficulty from a D.S.L.R. camera, you could bet that everyone who saw them would sift through the pile to hunt for themselves, their friends, and evidence of drama. Later, with the popularization of Instagram and the proliferation of various content flowing through our feeds, social media became more of a broadcast system, reaching strangers as well as friends, and we became more self-aware, and thus more surgical, about what we posted. #instagram #photodump #tech https://lnkd.in/exT294KS

An Instagram dump is a set of ostensibly unedited, low-stakes, impressionistic photos posted in a seemingly random order and finished with a dispassionate caption. The word "dump" word implies that we are merely unloading clutter from camera rolls on a whim, when what we’re really doing is much more involved: spending an entire afternoon whittling down thousands of photos to eight, trying to create an authentic “vibe” from pictures of friends, buildings and martini glasses; a couple lo-res memes; and one shot solely of our face (for the algorithm, of course). #instagram #photodump #tech https://lnkd.in/exEZHEBA

In a future conflict, American troops will direct the newest war machines not with sprawling control panels or sci-fi-inspired touchscreens, but controls familiar to anyone who grew up with an Xbox or PlayStation in their home. Produced since 2008 by Measurement Systems Inc. (MSI), a subsidiary of British defense contractor Ultra that specializes in human-machine interfaces, the FMCU offers a similar form factor to the standard Xbox or PlayStation controller but with a ruggedised design intended to safeguard its sensitive electronics against whatever hostile environs American service members may find themselves in. How far the FMCU and its commercial off-the-shelf variants will spread throughout the ranks of the US military remains to be seen. But controls that effectively translate human inputs into machine movement tend to persist for decades after their introduction: After all, the joystick (or “control column,” in military parlance) has been a fixture of military aviation since its inception. Here’s just hoping that the Pentagon hasn’t moved on to the Power Glove by the time the next big war rolls around. #videogames #controllers #military https://lnkd.in/gZJGE9Kk