We need to force these computers to join Psi Corps and obey their rules!

D'oh, but DarkOx, I actually do agree with you on something: the license plates are there and they're visible in public. We don't need Flock to have our privacy compromised; everyone can do it.

We haven't denied our adversaries the capability; we're just trying to regulate their good intentions. That strategy doesn't work.

Flock is the symptom not the disease. People either need to demand anonymity and insist we stop displaying things like plates at all, and actually limit public photography, or just accept we will be tracked everywhere. There is no middle ground to be had.

Indeed. We seem pretty conflicted about that, so we're getting the worst of both worlds.

A lot of people are intentionally commiting crimes of various severity and they don't actually want police to have a more effective enforcement tool

This set of people is dwarfed into insignificance be non-criminals who are also being caught on camera. And the problem with that isn't false positives, it's true positives: non-criminal John Doe's car was spotted at a certain place at a certain time, so let's make that fact available on the market. That way, we can target him with ads, increase his insurance premiums, let his wife's PI know what neighborhood he had lunch in, let assassins when he's home, and let burglars (or his wife's rapist) know when he's not home.

The sheer amount of not-quite-what-consumers-need RAM that is going to be auctioned after the AI companies' bankruptcies will be unprecedented. Remember we're literally talking about an amount equal to what the entire consumer market was using. It's going to be a few years worth of the entire RAM manufacturing industry!

The scale of not-quite-right RAM we're going to see, makes me imagine (warning: red flag for talking out my ass) consumer motherboards specifically made for the mountains of weirdly-packaged cheap-but-fast-as-fuck RAM at hyperscale data center auctions. We'd end up calling them "AI bankruptcy rigs" or something like that. Yes, they'll perform differently (more throughput than you need, more latency than you want), but it still ought to be usable. IGPs usually included, I suspect.

And they will just be a product of the times; ten years later no one would want one and bankruptcy rigs would be seen as odd late-2020s relics; the lemonade from Sam Altman's lemon industry. It would be a dead-end tech. But during those late 2020s? Could be a neat-o opportunity.

Actively jamming with radio signals is a violation of federal law, not physical "jamming". Also note, all radio devices also have to accept other radio interference at the same time.

A mistake was still made

Yep, it happens. And it was not even a mistake by Flock, apparently — not that it matters. Mistakes will continue to be made — they don't mean, Flock is doing anything wrong, or that police has to be "defunded", or Capitalism overthrown. But Slashdot is running multiple anti-Flock articles every day, it seems — like they did against Walmart some 15-20 years ago.

Can't shake off the feeling, this is a part of a propaganda campaign...

The argument against it was in the summary.

The argument, that participants can influence the outcome — if financially motivated by the betting — is but a tertiary afterthought. That may have some merits, but it is not new — regular financial markets have learned to deal with insider trading, and we have criminal laws against such activity. It is not a reason to ban the betting outright.

But the original journalist, the submitter, and BeauHD obviously emphasise the "ghastly" aspect... And this appeal to emotion is, what I find contemptible.

I'm 99% sure somebody has already been killed because of Flock

But you don't have evidence, do you? Just like those January 6th "insurrectionists". Only they don't get any "Insightful" moderation for some reason...

Flock does not pull any triggers — it only informs police, that a suspect (or, more likely, the suspect license plate) has been spotted in a certain location. That's all. The actual reaction is than up to the officers.

If anything, it is only more certain, multiple murders — and other crimes — have been prevented by the timely(ier) detention of the criminals. And, additionally, by successful prosecution of them thanks to the video-evidence. But Grok could not find any comprehensive stats for me, so I'm not including any evidence either.

Fuck Trump Musk AOC Sanders far right n' left tech bros ICE Islamophobes antisemites mullahs pedopriests nationalists

Some libido you've got there!!

still fine ?

Fine? No, I'd be devastated by the death. But why would somebody else's making money — not "out of it", but by predicting it — affect me at all? They didn't kill the child. They didn't contribute to his dying.

Yeah, going home from a funeral — of anyone close to you — and watching people carelessly enjoying their lives unaware of your tragedy is annoying. But you don't get mad at them. Or, maybe, you do — because you're a fool controlled by emotions, rather than rational thought.

Bettors should not be rooting for an experimental medicine to fail just to earn a buck

Why not? If that is one's way to pursue happiness and it does not hurt anyone, what argument is there against it?

"It's quite ghastly."

That's not a reason...

indeed. this is more akin to the more abusive ideas proposed for the PATRIOT act but not implemented. In what we got, they could ask the phone companies and 'cloud' (we didn't call it that at the time) companies for all the info on a specific person without a specific warrant on the person themself. And yeah that was bad enough to be sure, especially because the company that turned over the data didn't have to tell you they did it (all part of trying to catch them without them knowing they're being caught, of course).

This 'dump' is more a case of "we can ask for EVERYTHING on your servers"...without telling anybody that their data was included.

Even so, law enforcement would also have access to the cellular records of countless individuals, the vast majority of whom were merely passing by a location at the 'wrong' time

What if, instead of asking: "Give us the list of everybody using this tower during this period", police asked for something narrower, like: "Give us the list of everybody using this tower during this period, and this other tower at this other period" (which is, what police would've done themselves)? What would make the request palatable to the Court — and Slashdot?

Enough AND-clauses until the resulting list is shorter than a certain number? 500? 50? 5? What if it becomes so short, the phone company employee(s) themselves can identify the suspect(s)?

I can't place a Polymarket bet on there being a hurricane and then go out and cause a hurricane.

Admitting your weakness is the first step towards growing strong!

Seriously, though, I do acknowledge this as a (potentially) valid concern in my next paragraph. But there are lots of other cases, where the bettor either has insider knowledge prior to betting, or can affect the outcome afterwards — both legally and otherwise. Lawmakers betting on financial markets' moves in response to their own legislation is still legal, for example. Other methods exist for the rest of us.

Yet, this proposal is limited sorely to setting wildfires and for the most bullshit reasons of all: "all so the rich and powerful can profit". Hence my contempt...

A US Honda Ridgeline beeps incessantly. When the system detects road lines, when it loses road lines, when it detects a car in front, when it loses the car in front. There are times when it beeps and I have no idea why...