Ex-Sheriff Alex Villanueva also weighed in on the matter Wednesday by posting a 2022 letter to the L.A. County Board of Supervisors on X. In the letter, department leaders requested funding for a new computer-aided dispatch system, saying the existing system was so old it couldn't comply with data collection requirements.

For its part, the department said it was in the process of trying to upgrade the dispatch system.

"The Department has long faced significant challenges with outdated technology, and since taking office, the Sheriff has emphasized the urgent need to improve and upgrade our internal systems," read a department statement. "In mid-2023, the Department issued a formal request for proposals to acquire a new modernized, centralized CAD system that will greatly enhance our capabilities."

We responded to an RFP many years ago to replace their aging scheduling and dispatch systems with COTS solutions. They're home grown on old hardware, in bad shape, and they refuse to change their processes and requirements to leverage modern off the shelf solutions that many cities and counties use. Home grown isn't sustainable in the long term because this happens eventually, and you spend a long time limping along hoping the catastrophe never comes while you put off investment in something new. To make things worse, LA County tries to do most of its work through integrators, who don't make any software and charge an arm and a leg as a premium for really no tangible benefit other than for the county to say it's working with Gartner or Northrop Grumman whatever "big" name they think they need to get new software implemented. Their most recent RFP was posted in 2023, and they've gotten nowhere with it. Unfortunately, this is how LA County works. They limp along because they have the income to waste extra personnel on tasks that more modernized cities don't worry about because they're accepting of actively support modern software that is designed to be capable of integration with other systems.

It actually doesn't even matter because the stores aren't doing any enforcement. All this does perhaps is better help them track shrinkage

Your linked article gets into the meat of it even has it kind of deflects the point. Theft is local, and it's risen measurably in some of the biggest cities even if overall numbers are down. Those biggest cities have the most eyeballs on local news, and they set the mood for much of the nation on a social level (that is what people talk about in person and on social media) and through what news trickles upwards to national news.

One of the richest tech companies in the world who markets their own IdP uses their own product? Wow. I'm so surprised.

Not just contained, but detected early before they do enough damage that containment includes reputational damage mitigation. Canaries are great for this

Uh, yea, that's how enterprise identity management/authentication kind of works

Sentences are a two way street. It's not just about the reasons behind the crime, it's also weighing the safety of the public against you. There's no reason to believe someone so callous as to kill their own mother despite her non-involvement in alleged abuse wouldn't be a danger to anyone else in society that they choose to kill over some perceived slight. I don't care what their reasoning is if they're dangerous to society.

Sure, it can generate a nice painting in the style of Monet, but it can't produce something that will make the average person say, "Wow, that's something new ... and interesting." The proper understanding of AI is not in reference to copyright, because it can't produce something creative or original. It can only shuffle what it has already seen. It is more akin to an automated Mad Lib generator than anything else.

How is this any different than Thomas Kinkade?

Which brings us to the second point: because AI output is only mechanically produced, never inspired, it is necessarily copyright infringement, even if it only infringes in the most infitesimal way from each of its training inputs.

Bob Ross taught mechanical painting. Paint by numbers without the numbers. Besides, there is a definition for actionable infringement, and that definition is substantial similarity. Infinitesimal is not substantial by definition.

I can't be sued for writing a book in the style of, say, Michael Crichton. I can be sued for creating output that is substantially similar enough to be considered a violation (I take Jurassic Park, rename it Jurassic Meadow and rename the characters, but keep the story). Regardless, that's suing someone based on the output they create, which isn't what's happening here. They're challenging the learning.

Which would mean you could sue for infringement. They aren't suing for infringement. They're challenging the learning.

What is the fundamental difference between asking JJ Abrams to rip off Spielberg's style and asking a computer to do it? Both were trained on the same source material. You don't need any special permission or license to use that material (legally obtained or not) as inspiration as long as your output isn't substantially the original work (which isn't the claim here). Outside of some "divine inspiration", the output of all artists is influenced/based in part on inputs they've previously digested regardless of whether those inputs were copyrighted or not. How is that any different?

Nobody wants to pay for cleanup, but the costs only grow. The only way to truly defer the costs is for the environment to die, and us with it.

To make things easier for families/groups and such, it would be helpful to be able to define some preset filters, so you can share "D&D contacts" and such with the apps that need those kind of things without having to hunt and peck per contact

No longer the spot rate in California, as power companies have been successfully lobbying the state to severely cut back on rates for purchasing power from consumers (whether it's solar or battery). Current rate is garbage and significantly lengthens the ROI for consumers

If you give people no other option, then they're forced to use it. That said, many vendors offer a variety of MFA options these days, so people choose based on what meets their cross-section of security and convenience.