"They" and "people" includes a surprising fraction of software engineers themselves. So many engineers design their systems assuming every customer has internet 24/7.

And what are the odds that they’ve never experienced an outage while on the job? Shit happens, I stopped freaking out about outages after I started my software career because every time one happens, my first thought is “I’m just glad it’s not me dealing with it”

If this was the 90s and a telephone pole crash took down an alarm system monitoring center nobody would bat an eyelash. It’s inconvenient, but it happens.

The digital equivalent—dropping the prod DB or something—draws the ire of millions. Consumer expectations changed when we put a computer in their pocket screaming OUTAGE.

They wouldn't expect any redundancy in an alarm system monitoring centre? Also there's a very brief instance in time where such a system would not be basically digital.

I think a lot of systems have lost a lot of reliability and resilience as they are replaced by (centralized, virtual) digital equivalents.

Having a doorbell that fails because someone made a typo in a DNS entry (or whatever it is this time) is silly and people have every right to be angry. Though it would help if they direct some of that anger towards themselves for subjecting themselves to a doorbell that they don't control and sends surveillance on its immediate surrounding to some third party (who may send it back, for a price).

That's an interesting observation, but I don't think it's because of the instant-outage-notification thing.

It might be worthwhile to look at how peoples' expectations of service availability have changed in the last fifty years as compared to peoples' perceived importance of non-essential services.

I mean I run my own security system at home.

Part of the struggle is… what happens during a break in and they just swipe the damn dvr.

I’m torn.

Mine is also one that to enable RTSP means it running a insecure firmware. So I can’t use both services. It’s rtsp or cloud only.

rsync to a NAS locked inside a fireproof safe and keep the combination in a safe deposit box

forget the combination to be invulnerable to rubberhose crypto

Having a replica is an easy part - just host another DVR elsewhere (in a location you own or trust, preferably far away) and stream a copy there at the same time you're streaming a copy to your local DVR. Repeat with more replicas (or a distributed filesystem with relevant properties) for higher resiliency. There are a bunch of distributed filesystem solutions out there to pick from. If you have a hacked but original firmware, most likely it uses a variant of S3 protocol for their cloud recordings, so simple binary patching (replacing hostnames and any hardcoded TLS certificates or fingerprints) may do the trick.

Having a backup power and network is tricky. You need a reliable battery backup that would automatically kick in in case of power outage, notify you about the failure and power all systems that must stay online for a reasonable amount of time. And an one or more alternate network links that would still work if the primary one is severed - e.g. a fiber line and a 5G modem, but the more the merrier.

Insecure firmware is probably not a problem if all devices are strictly isolated away to their own VLAN, which is carefully firewalled away from all your other systems (so even if you get a compromised laptop on your home LAN, it can't reach those cameras without going through a tightly locked down jumphost). Then it is more likely someone's throwing a wrench to a camera than someone hacking into it (even if all it takes is passwordless telnet that gives root access).

Because they don't get the fundamentals

> good luck with that

This can be done relatively pain-free with Ubiquiti with the added benefit of getting the full framerate recorded all the time instead of only during a detection.

It’s more expensive, but all recordings are local.

The best side effect of only-record-with-motion is that I have multiple cameras running on full solar. Running power would have been quite inconvenient.

However, any time I try to view a feed and it lags or doesn’t connect, I swear I’m just gonna hard wire everything. Sometimes it’s nice to have one system I can’t tinker with.