I was recently at a "town hall" meeting in my community and spoke with a older woman about Flock cameras. Initially she was not concerned about it and was generally in favor of the idea.
I agreed that there could be benefits but that the downside is that they know when and where you go to church, or the grocery, or where you get your hair done, or even when you go on vacation. Her eyes lit up and I she replied that she would have to think about that a bit.
I'm not saying that I changed her mind, but that bringing the consequences down to something she could understand was much better than yelling from the rooftops. Mentioning church is especially impactful with a lot of older folks.
In talking with many of the older people in my community about Flock, they initially defer to what our police department says it needs. A few things made them reconsider:
- This is not about our police. This is about all the outside organizations that can watch us.
- Focusing on Flock specifically. Once the cameras are given a name, people can start to form a better opinion fueled by the readily available bad press Flock is producing.
- With the focus on Flock, the YouTube videos elsewhere in this topic do a great job of explaining how crappy their security is and how they're lying to their customers about it. Which brings it back to, this isn't about our local police — it's about the company that's an unworthy partner.
Good job talking to your community. The first step is that people are aware of the cameras - for my neighbors, most did not know about them, and immediately found it creepy.
Actually, that won’t work. The flock cameras don’t only rely on license plate information. They use “AI” to determine the make model and color of your car as well as any outstanding features, such as bumper stickers or roof racks.
I just saw this article on BlueSky and thought it reflected my ideology quite well. My frustration is that everyone around me seems to be going bonkers for AI and I'm just staring, wide eyed into the abyss. I feel so out of place because while I see the value as a tool I do not want it to take over all of my coding activities. I write code because I really like writing code. I do not want to become a manager and instruct others all day long. Is that weird?
I recently augmented some software that I support using Claude and it was ... fine. I used plan mode just like the author and reviewed everything, and it worked. But I didn't feel accomplished. The work got done but I don't feel like I gained any knowledge that could be applied to future tasks. Well, beyond the ability to tell Claude what to do, that is.
The whole thing makes me feel like a manager, a role that I've steadfastly resisted my whole career. Maybe the people around me really want to be managers and tell others what to do. Maybe I'm the weird one for wanting to know how the computer works, what the CPU is actually doing, and learning new things.
Good software developers/engineers spend most of their time trying to replace themselves. This is because the amount of work they have to do is constantly expanding to fill the work day and they just want a dang weekend. It is my deepest hope that AI will do that for us, even just a little. But I suspect it will just make more work for us and damage the prospects of a younger generation of developers.
I like AI, it's a step in the right direction for humanity; ending our dependence on human labor for horrible jobs. But I shudder to imagine what the mouth breathing monsters at the top of our society are going to do with it.
I suspect that we're in for a rough few decades that will make the early 1900s look like a Sunday picnic.
I think this is a pretty insightful article on how AI is working inside AWS. And I feel like this same attitude is relevant for other AI "providers" as well. The facts seem pretty slim on how effective AI is at replacing engineers. In fact, it feels like the exact opposite is happening.
> If I could afford to live 15 minutes from the office I 100% would go to an office.
This is a really good point. At one point in my career I lived close enough to the office that I could ride my bike to work. It was actually pretty nice to work that close to home and I didn't really mind going into the office.
As a healthcare company, we are currently going through the process of how to allow on-device AI activity while reducing the associated risk. I really like the idea of giving the agent a specific identity instead of globbing onto the credentials of the person operating it. I think I would like to go further and splitting the agent out onto its own hardware complete separate from the developer. Sounds extreme but MacMini devices are pretty cheap and fairly capable.
I really wish that Keybase would have taken off. I think it was a great balance between verification and ease of use. Again, Keybase didn't prevent someone from impersonating another, it just raised the cost. And sometimes that's enough.
Thank you for reminding me of Y2K! It's the perfect example of what happens when you forget about the people keeping things together.
My team and I worked really hard for several years to make sure that Y2K didn't have any effect, or at least a dramatically downsized one. It worked but I did hear from several people that they were annoyed that we spent so much money, time, and resources on something that turned out to be "not that big of a deal". Arrrgggghh!!
Unfortunately, you cannot hide by obscuring your license plate. The ALPR system recognizes vehicles by type, color, and any outstanding features (bumper stickers, trailers, etc.) So, even if you removed your license plate completely they would still be able to track your car as a blue, 1999 Toyota Camry, with a "I love Peaches" sticker in the back window.
You are correct. Although I drive a very common car/color, it is naïve to think that these systems aren't monitoring me as the grey sedan without visible license plate. I did remove the bumper stickers [0]
My local newspaper retracted a story this month about how the police were able to locate a certain colored vehicle within minutes. Perhaps it was too revealing for general consumption?
My "obstruction" is more (legal) protest? Better to just move to a de-flocked city/state..?
[0] I consider this similar to how some property appraisal maps allow people to remove their names from searches (either through LLC or black-out), but you can still request beneficial owner information of specific parcels; just one/two additional layers of protection to throw off the scent (have to know what you're looking for, not just simple plate# lookup — although I'm sure there are aliases/forwarders in advanced CCTVai systems).
I agreed that there could be benefits but that the downside is that they know when and where you go to church, or the grocery, or where you get your hair done, or even when you go on vacation. Her eyes lit up and I she replied that she would have to think about that a bit.
I'm not saying that I changed her mind, but that bringing the consequences down to something she could understand was much better than yelling from the rooftops. Mentioning church is especially impactful with a lot of older folks.
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