This is a false equivalence. At some level, I agreed to the ToS for my phone, so the tracking on my phone is at least somewhat consensual (not enough, IMO, but there was SOMETHING).

I can use GrapheneOS or /e/OS or some other system that greatly-reduces the tracking, or I can leave my phone at home if I'm going to do something for which I don't want a third party to have a record. I can, to a certain extent, assess the amount of data that is acquired, either by using software to assess what my phone records, or looking through my account data (certainly Google and Apple don't show everything, but they show at least some things).

I didn't accept a EULA for Flock. I cannot query the data Flock has on me, or who made a query for that data, or the metadata that they have aggregated and for which they provide access.

If you can't see the difference between the two scenarios, I don't know what to tell you.

Yes, right now we're running into the problem where municipalities are turning "we don't have Flock" into a selling point because Flock became the Kleenex of ALPRs...but Axon is also getting at least some recognition in the space as well. It's not the cure, certainly, but I do think that the bipartisan, organized backlash against ALPRs is causing at least some tension as to whether the backlash will persist if the line item is still on the government ledgers.

Agreed; it is pretty nice to see those wearing MAGA hats and those wearing Planned Parenthood T-shirts sitting next to each other at city council meetings on the matter.

Given the fact that the most famous and most popular Blizzard games WERE CODED PRIMARILY BY BOOMERS (and some GenX; admittedly Mike Morhaime was early GenX)...the answer is "a good number of gamers, probably".

The oldest millennials were in college when World of Warcraft came out; it was boomers and GenX who made Diablo, Diablo II, Warcraft, and Starcraft.

I'm not saying that Blizzard isn't still making popular games, but I *am* saying that the last decade has consisted of remasters and sequels from the studio, with the sole exception of Overwatch.

I don't exactly have a Blizzard org chart in front of me, so I can't create the pie chart of boomers/genx/millenial/genz employees at the studio, but I do think it's overly reductive to assume that a studio who's most iconic titles were made by boomers and early genx would somehow suffer if their staffing roster retained them.

There should be some "friction" in accessing records more than a year or two old.

Whether that friction involves putting the older data in "nearline" storage requiring a robot to mount a disk or tape to access it, or whether it stays online but there's only a "skinny pipe" between it an the internet, an adversary shouldn't be able to transfer the entire database in less than a few weeks, more than long enough for tripwires to activate and a human to investigate.

Show your cards. Show the world the source code and related information needed so independent experts can tell the lay public what is really going on.

Yes, you may have to reveal trade secrets, but that is the price you have to pay when your product looks like it is up to no good.

I thought they were all independent contractors!!!

Assume there's a legitimate company out there that will verify driver's licenses. Do they really need to store everything "online"? No, they do not.

They can store it "offline" with a 1- or 2- minute delay to access the data, caching it in "online" systems for maybe 15 minutes.

This, plus alarms when large amounts of data is being moved from "offline" to "online" in a short period of time, would've either made this leak slower than it was or, more likely, led to this year-long leak being discovered and plugged long ago.

Is this inconvenient? Sure, but it's not a practical impediment for "batch jobs" like employment identity verification.

For "real time" things like renting a car, the vendors will have to begin the verification process, do things to "kill time" like review the auto-rental contract or go with the sales clerk to inspect the car, then tell the customer "you are good to go" or "we need more information to verify your identity."

For situations like a bank where you can't "fill the time," the bank can set up a highly-secure on-premises id-verification computer that can act as a long-term cache. Everyone whose ID isn't locally cached will need to "step aside" for a minute while their ID is verified. Or better yet, they can start the ID-verification process before getting to the front of the line.

"For years people have been seeing us as a speaker company,"

Yes Brandon, this is the thing that people generally like. When the speakers work, they sound very good.

"What we actually are is an audio operating system." ...And this is the part that has been somewhere between tolerable and the biggest liability. Yes, when it works, it's great, but it's been so focused on being "automagic" that when there's a problem, it's like a Bugatti hitting a speed bump.

If Sonos wanted to claw back some good will, all they had to do was to implement a "generic Bluetooth mode" and an aux jack. This way, it ensures people can still use the speaker (the most liked and most reliable part) irrespective of whether the software is good or bad. ...But, since they'd rather cram AI into it, they'll likely continue to bleed users and installers, who will implement Bluesound or WiiM instead and become the Oracle of multi-room audio - obscenely priced, running on an increasingly niche user base, and circling the drain for a while longer than most, but ultimately fail as more and more people consider the Sonos "operating system" radioactive.

I think AT&T (pre-1984) and the "Baby Bells" (1984 on) stopped putting lead shielding around copper cables in the 1970s or the early 1980s.

Legacy Lead-Sheathed Telecommunications Cables: Status and Issues for Congress is a report from 2023 that says

The report is light on details though. It's also not clear what part of the modern AT&T overlaps with the pre-1984-breakup version of AT&T.

Look at the xkcd comic. In most* cases, important thing - the thing that makes xkcd xkcd - is the dialog. The drawing is literally a bunch of stick figures.

Coding can be similar. Parts of your code can be boring simplistic things that are the code-equivalent of stick figures. But if you want anyone but your "proud family" to appreciate it, it better do something interesting.

* the xkcd fans reading this - and that will be most of you - know there fantastic exceptions where the artwork is, well, fantastic

Bring a laptop that displays a GOATSE or other "MY EYES, THEY BURN, MAKE IT STOP" image if you power it on without pressing "magic keys" that enable a normal boot.

If you are worried about people stealing things for the value of the parts, equip it with hardware-self-destruct that goes off when the cover is removed (but have some way to deactivate it in case you need to remove the cover).

I see a future where travelers going to high-risk areas use laptops with everything soldered onto the motherboard AND where the motherboard won't work unless a specific device is within radio range or plugged in. Think Apple-iPhone-style "parts paring" but for laptops, and one part can go in your pocket.

My guess is they knew of the name's history. There's a case to be made that it's an homage, but IMHO a stronger case to be made that the confusion outweighs any merits of this name. "Multikernel Linux" would've been better.

from SMALLNUM lines of C and pre-processor code.

When it works well, AI-generated code is almost* just raising things to a higher level of abstraction.

* if only it were just that. Unfortunately, "vibe coding" gives you unreproducible/non-deterministic output, merely raising to the next level of abstraction should give you consistent output. It would be like compiling C code where your headers and libraries change out from under you unpredictably and with every build.

I would prefer not having these cameras at all. If you need to read license plates, hire people to do the jobs. If it's that important, it's worth paying for.

But that's not going to happen.

So, I can live with destroying all images within seconds unless there was an actual need to keep them, then keeping them and the data gathered from them in an encrypted, non-network-accessible location only for as long as they are needed, with strong oversight to make sure images really are deleted when no longer needed. Any supposed "need" to keep these images beyond, say, the time it takes to send out a you-didn't-pay-your-toll-bill invoice and give the recipient an opportunity to pay or protest should require court oversight.

In rare cases where the police are "on the lookout" for car matching a general description ("driver in green station wagon kidnapped small child from Springfield Kwik-E-Mart, no license plate"), keeping all images within a small targeted search area for hours instead of seconds may be tolerable, with the police keeping only those images that are useful for the investigation after the several hours have expired. In any case, keep the images offline.

In any case, keep the images encrypted and offline. I don't want some overseas black-hat group collecting a dossier of my car's travels.

You are confusing the police department's FLOCK camera with my across-the-street-nosy-neighbor's doorbell camera that stores data unencrypted on a weak- or no-password-required web site that the cops happen to be watching and recording 24/7.