Hacker News Reader

Comment by dangrossman | Hacker News Reader

Did you read the article?

"In our particular case, this means that this orange dot appears on the stage output, which is totally unacceptable for anyone using macOS as a professional video tool that sends video output to a video projector."

Imagine an orange dot appearing on top of every video billboard in Times Square.

View on HN

> Imagine an orange dot appearing on top of every video billboard in Times Square.

Seems unlikely that whatever's driving the billboards in time square needs to have the mic on...and that a tiny bit of postproduction is a burden on the people making said videos.

> Seems unlikely that whatever's driving the billboards in time square needs to have the mic on

There have been many interactive billboards in Times Square. Some of them are at ground level. The article even mentions this use case: "Those applications don’t even need to be obviously using audio; live visuals often use mic or line input to produce sound-reactive animation and the like"

> tiny bit of postproduction is a burden on the people making said videos.

What postproduction are you referring to? The dot is added to the video output by the Mac, not added to the video file. You can't edit it out.

> "Those applications don’t even need to be obviously using audio; live visuals often use mic or line input to produce sound-reactive animation and the like"

Why would anyone want to suppress a warning to the user that they are being surveilled?

They could simply set up surveillance cameras to watch all the people who can see any billboards with orange dots. Problem solved!

I can't make myself take this question seriously.

I think I'd love it if every billboard scooping up audio announced it was doing that.

If your billboard is recording me, I want you to add the orange light. Please please please please.

> What postproduction are you referring to?

Crop a 20 pixel column? Surely we have hardware that can do that in real time today...

I still don't get it.

1) Who uses macOS to run a billboard?!?

2) As far as I can tell the orange dot displays in the menu bar? Does it show in the full screen app???

Yes, apparently it does show in full screen too.

https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/693969

Removing it in full screen ought to be the easy fix for Apple. By the time you've started the app and are done fiddlign with it while setting it up for production use, it should no longer be a surprise that it's using the mic.

Also, AFAIK apps don't use to autostart in full screen (might even be against design guidelines) so there should always be an opportunity to notice any spying in time.

Wow I can't believe it displays on full screen content. :|

1. Have you never seen a billboard or tv screen advertisement break before? 90% of the time it's running windows, and you'll see a very zoomed in top left corner of the desktop.

It's absolutely not a stretch someone has a mac mini to run these.

That said, only a fool would upgrade to bleeding edge software in this usecase.

I’ve never seen any billboard or electronic advertising running on anything running MacOS. The only time I can think macs were used for anything other than the creation of the content was when we used to put Mac minis into broadcasters to deliver the content to. But we put windows on them.

About 10 years ago, I had a job with one of the largest outdoor advertising companies in Times Square, running several huge LED displays, including one that used a camera feed for interactive experiences with the audience. I don’t know too much about the specifics, but at the time I worked there, all of their screens, including the one that used a camera for AR stuff, were driven by Mac Pro towers running OS X.

So while I can’t say if this is still the case or not, in 2012 many of the times sq billboards were being driven by macs.

Gosh, everyone who was about to be convinced to go buy a Big Mac will lose their appetite! /s

I'm sure Parent read the article, but the question is why is this a big deal? For someone not in the live visual space, it's not immediately clear that an orange dot in the corner is "totally unacceptable".

> Imagine an orange dot appearing on top of every video billboard in Times Square.

I don't think I would notice or care?

> I don't think I would notice or care?

Do you think none of the advertisers, or billboard owners, would notice or care?

Those are the clients paying the people that read this site to create and run their live visuals.

A 5 foot diameter orange dot on top of their ad is not what they signed off on. There is money at stake.

Whether you care or not isn't relevant.

As a New Yorker, I’d love to have that sort of visual feedback on the surveillance of Times Square, a public space. And whether I care is quite relevant.

Live visuals aren't making a recording, they're reacting to sound inputs in realtime. That's not surveillance.

Times Square is already blanketed in actual surveillance unrelated to live visuals on billboards.

https://www.earthcam.com/usa/newyork/timessquare/

https://worldcams.tv/united-states/new-york/times-square

https://www.mylivestreams.com/webcam/times-square-live-strea...

> Live visuals aren't making a recording, they're reacting to sound inputs in realtime. That's not surveillance.

Potato, potato. If a billboard has a microphone attached, it's not unreasonable to put a visual tax on it. (Or the economic tax of using dedicated equipment. Nobody is running Times Square billboards off a Mac.)

It's their laptop, they are aware that something is capturing their audio input, and they don't want to be reminded of that in this particular instance.

Frankly, it doesn't matter if you would notice or care.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com