Techtopia Gym Surveillance Technology is Here. Plus Inclusivity!

Did you turn off location tracking? What apps did you allow access to location data?

I allow location tracking for about 3 of 4 apps and only when I am using those apps. I do not download loyalty apps at all. I know google tracks me because I use their maps, so eyes sort of open on that one. This said, techtopia has nothing to do with climbing and so has nothing to do with me. But I am no longer surprised by youth's willingness to surrender their privacy for some tiny, minor perceived convenience.

Marc801 Cwrote:

That tech isn't remotely AI based by any stretch of the imagination.

For the folks clutching their pearls over "surveillance" - how many of you always have your phone pocket computer with you, always powered up? Did you turn off location tracking? What apps did you allow access to location data? Are you checking which cookies you allow on every web site you visit? Are you maintaining an up to date tick list on MP? And you're not going to go to a gym that has this tech? Give me an effing break.

Yes i recognize the irony of my posting “fuck big data” from my smart phone.

Cherokee Nuneswrote:

I allow location tracking for about 3 of 4 apps and only when I am using those apps. I do not download loyalty apps at all. I know google tracks me because I use their maps, so eyes sort of open on that one.

As but one example, this very site uses 6 tracking cookies: 5 from Google and 1 from Doubleclick.

Edit to add: actually more than 6 - I missed how to use a specific feature in a tracker visualizer I have. Here's the full list:

Again, I don't think many people think this particular application (climbing gym metrics) is a big deal BY ITSELF.  However the mindset behind it is spreading everywhere, and IMO that is a big deal.  Since most of us are familiar with gym climbing, it's easy for us to see how little thought went into how this tracking software is supposed to benefit the customer - the climbing gyms.  Which makes it easy to understand that the priorities of the people pushing this lie elsewhere.  Now apply it to every business you interact, your job, your PC and phone (duh), your goddam refrigerator, etc etc.

People who earnestly develop products worth buying start with a problem that needs solving, and come up with a solution.  Which is the complete opposite of what is happening here and many other places.

are they going to be able to see if I dab another route at the top of the proj? 

Cocoapuffs 1000wrote:

People who earnestly develop products worth buying start with a problem that needs solving, and come up with a solution.  Which is the complete opposite of what is happening here and many other places.

Humor me here. To further discourage thread drift lets limit the scope to what the system is supposed to accomplish right now, per article, and manufacturer's website.

Climbing wall designer/manufacturer/operator  noticed that people not clipping into autobelays is a problem despite warnings signs, staff, etc.
They created AI assisted video system that they claim monitors to prevent autobelay mishaps.

How is this not a solution for a problem. 

Will C wrote:

It is technically a solution, but not being a fuckin moron would also do a great deal for these gym climbers in such terrifying danger. Reminds me of this

Wonder what your take on seat belts is? Should we assume everyone knows how to drive and therefore its dumb to wear them? With all things you have to assume some level of incompetence. In this situation there is a simpler solution that doesn't require cameras. 

Aaron Cliftonwrote:

No matter how brightly colored the gates are, or how bold the messages on the triangles are, there are always people who forget to attach themselves to the auto belay. We are happy that nowadays climbing is more accessible and popular than ever, rather than being an exclusive club for only the most experienced and enlightened. -quote from article

Wait, what? 

So, we put cameras everywhere to make sure people who don’t stop and attach themselves to an auto belay are satisfied in their inclusion to an “exclusive” club of those who choose to use their brains? How experienced do you have to be to not know how an auto belay works? How enlightened do you have to be? Gandhi, Budda, Jerry Garcia? I mean come on. 

The irony is it's usually expert complacency that leads to these accidents, not someone being a newb.

As but one example, this very site uses 6 tracking cookies: 5 from Google and 1 from Doubleclick.

Not surprising, in the least. I do not browse this site from mobile. I do not use this site's phone app. I do not share my laptop's location unless I specifically allow it, for example, for travel booking software, and then I opt for 1-time share whenever possible.

It's mainly a pet peeve of mine - I don't like sharing my location with anyone unless they need to know, and even then I grit my teeth.

Will C wrote:

No seats belts. No air bags. None of that fancy crumple zone bullshit, either! Heck, while we're at it, let's get rid of sideview mirrors and ABS (it's aid anyway).

I chipped away the firewall in my car, too. I'll be damned if I dont die like a Real Man™.

But please, continue your thoughts. I wish to know how the climbing equivalent of simply turning the vehicle on is a level of competence that is too high for some people to attain.

That’s a great example! You never have mis started your car ever? Your entire life you have never tried to start it without your foot entirely on the brake? You never accidentally realized you couldn’t move because your parking brake was on? There are even features in a car to prevent you from starting it in gear!

While 99.9% of the time I start my car fine, every few years I think I started my car but my foot wasn’t all the way on the brake. Or I forgot to take the parking brake off for about 1 second. The difference is I just try again then drive off. In this climbing situation you die.

amariuswrote:

I would like to clarify something - you would cancel membership if your gym installed AI-assisted video system to monitor that people climbing on autobelays do not forget to clip in.

Just to be clear: "to monitor that people climbing on autobelays do not forget to clip in" is absolutely not the only thing this is going to be used for.

Surveillance technology is always sold with some purpose that we can all agree is good, but rarely ends up there. It starts with "we need to monitor everyone's text messages to catch child pornographers and terrorists!" but what it actually is used for is arresting people selling weed and cops stalking their exes.

Marc801 Cwrote:

For the folks clutching their pearls over "surveillance" - how many of you always have your phone pocket computer with you, always powered up?

Okay, but if I had any choice in that, I wouldn't. My clients need me to be accessible by email a lot of the time, and if I don't have clients, I don't get to eat. I could work another job, but any job you can find is going to involve compromising on something I value. The fact is, modern capitalism has made it literally impossible to survive while staying true to my values.

A choice between being surveilled, and not having a phone is not a free choice, and it's not a choice we should be forced to make.

Capitalism's version of "freedom" is "you can do whatever you want, as long as you don't mind that you don't get to eat or sleep in shelter" and then calling people hypocrites because they do things they don't believe in, in order to eat and stay housed. Just because someone's a hypocrite, doesn't mean they're wrong.

Did you turn off location tracking?

Yes.

What apps did you allow access to location data?

OSM and Gunks App, and they only have access when I'm using them.

Are you checking which cookies you allow on every web site you visit?

No, because cookies and Javascript are disabled on my browser.

Are you maintaining an up to date tick list on MP?

No.

And you're not going to go to a gym that has this tech? Give me an effing break.

Yes, I'm absolutely not going to a gym that won't respect my privacy. I can't do my job without a phone. Not going to a gym is a sacrifice, but it's not a sacrifice I can't make.

They sure are getting creative in the ways they shoehorn "inclusivity" into stuff.  

Mike D wrote:

I'm not so sure about that, considering you can train a model to recognize pictures as "A" or "not A" using a small dataset by just rotating/scaling the pictures, feeding them in again and repeating this a bunch of times. Same with deepfakes of long-dead, non-famous people that were trained on just a handful of photographs by transforming them over and over. I'm sure Walltopia can just hire some people to free solo above the auto belays for a few hours and train the software until it's "good enough." I'm sorry if you knew this already. I'm not an expert on this subject, but not completely ignorant either. I hope you're right that this takes a long time to materialize and ends up being a watered-down version of the thing described in the article.

Can't resist:

Will C wrote:

Well then, that's your fault. Render unto Caesar that which ia Caesars. If you drive drunk, get pulled over and arrested, you deserve it. If you cheat on your oartner and your marriage then dissolves, you deserve it. If you cliff dive, belly flop and break ribs, you deserve it. If you free solo and the rock breaks and you fall to your death, you deserve it. If you fail to clip into an auto belay and fall and shatter your femur, you deserve it.

You are responsible for your actions or lack thereof and the consequences are rightly delivered to their owner.

I was gonna let this one lie but I really can't get past this logic. If you are climbing with gear and a rock breaks is that your fault? What if you are bouldering and a rock breaks and you crush your leg like that one guy did. Should you not check your partners knot, since that is their responsibility? Seems like there is a spectrum of behaviors that the total responsibility on the individual varies. 

But going back to the car example because that is the example you gave. Should the neutral safety switch be removed from all cars? Should your car remove all user error safety features?

If someone is too incompetent to perform an activity, then they should not, and if they do, that's 100% on them. We have aptitude tests for driving, among many other things. But some do not. For instance, I could go buy a kayak and try some class V rapids. I don't, because I'm not a fucking idiot. The consequences of my actions are clear, as they are with climbing. If you are not up to the requirements of an activity (in this case it is maintaining your personal safety), then you are undeserving of doing that activity. 

So kids and new climbers, should never go climbing? What did you think about the multipitch trad thread where the follower didn't unclip? Is that the followers fault since they went climbing? 

I think in some situations responsibility varies, maybe give the climber 95% of the responsibility for the auto belay and give the gym 5%, in this situation it seems like a no brainer for the gym to try to protect you from yourself at least a little bit (auto belays have those tarps now). Gyms pad the floors, fix the ropes, some include belay devices, and many other user error features. However I think it is unreasonable for the gym to spend 10k to protect you from yourself. 

What about the nice ass algorithm? I mean, it can be taught "Nice Ass" and "Not Nice Ass" right?  It could even send a text to the gym staff, alerting of them of a Code 9 on the Pink Route?

David Kwrote:

OSM and Gunks App, and they only have access when I'm using them.

You realize that your phone always knows where you are thanks to both GPS and cell tower location triangulation? Do you ever use Google or Apple maps for navigation while driving?

No, because cookies and Javascript are disabled on my browser.

Frankly, I don't believe you. How do you manage to use the web? That would break most sites - at least some features. I can't think of an ecommerce site that would work without JS. Without JS it's impossible to view or order anything on Amazon. Even here, turning off JS prevents you from accessing Your Page, Account Settings, and Log out when you click on your image in the upper right corner. Doing so also stops the picture gallery on the home page, hides all the photos on a route page, and makes posting nearly impossible. On MP even the Cancel link is a line of Javascript.

Yes, I'm absolutely not going to a gym that won't respect my privacy.

It's mid 2022. Are there really any businesses that don't have cameras at this point?

Princess Puppy Lovrwrote:

That’s a great example! You never have mis started your car ever? Your entire life you have never tried to start it without your foot entirely on the brake? 

While 99.9% of the time I start my car fine, every few years I think I started my car but my foot wasn’t all the way on the brake.

Not all cars require the foot on the brake when starting. Jeep Wranglers are a prime example.

Will C wrote:

Well then, that's your fault. Render unto Caesar that which ia Caesars. If you drive drunk, get pulled over and arrested, you deserve it. If you cheat on your oartner and your marriage then dissolves, you deserve it. If you cliff dive, belly flop and break ribs, you deserve it. If you free solo and the rock breaks and you fall to your death, you deserve it. If you fail to clip into an auto belay and fall and shatter your femur, you deserve it.

You are responsible for your actions or lack thereof and the consequences are rightly delivered to their owner.

Does posting this make you feel superior?

Marc801 Cwrote:

You realize that your phone always knows where you are thanks to both GPS and cell tower location triangulation?

Yes. Did you even read my whole post, or did you just ignore the parts you don't have a glib response to?

Do you ever use Google or Apple maps for navigation while driving?

No. OSM handles that, and while I don't completely trust them to value my privacy, I trust them a whole lot more than Google or Apple.

Frankly, I don't believe you.

That's your prerogative, but I don't really know why you're skeptical that someone might have values and try to live by them. I'm certainly not the most hardcore person in this aspect, either.

How do you manage to use the web? That would break most sites - at least some features.

It does break a lot of sites--which is why I don't use a lot of sites. I selectively enable some features on my desktop browser, but that requires knowing how to read code. I pretty much don't use the internet on my phone.

I can't think of an ecommerce site that would work without JS. Without JS it's impossible to view or order anything on Amazon.

While I'd like to say I don't use Amazon because they are a sociopathic company, the reality is I don't use Amazon because they don't deliver to my van.

Even here, turning off JS prevents you from accessing Your Page, Account Settings, and Log out when you click on your image in the upper right corner. Doing so also stops the picture gallery on the home page, hides all the photos on a route page, and makes posting nearly impossible. On MP even the Cancel link is a line of Javascript.

I've enabled most of the features that make the forum work. I didn't know there was a picture gallery on the home page. The guidebook aspects of the site I usually use on my phone, in the app, which probably has all sorts of tracking, but if you read my previous post in its entirety instead of cherry picking, you'd understand why.

It's mid 2022. Are there really any businesses that don't have cameras at this point?

Yes, lots of local establishments don't have cameras--this is one of the nice things about shopping local. But even the ones that do have cameras, aren't as likely to be networked. I'm not too worried about being filmed in a public place, if it's just local people doing it--it's something entirely different if it's being uploaded to the cloud, pervasively, and then sold to Clearview and a bunch of 3-letter government agencies. Though, ff some company like Ring starts selling their stuff to businesses on a large scale, I'm not sure I can do anything reasonable about it.