mistercheph

I found this 3b1b guest video on diffusion helpful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv-5mZ_9CPY

You seem a bit distracted by the links instead of the content that can be accessed by clicking on them, they show that in tens of instances, your personal anecdote about how flock removal went don't hold. Flock drags their feet, makes legal threats to cities that cancel, forgets to turn cameras off, turns cameras back on, claims cameras are shut off when they are on, installs new cameras after cancellation, leaves cameras up after promising to take them down, etc. etc.

And you are representing the situation in Evanston disingenuously here's the timeline AFAICT:

- Aug 26, 2025 Evanston issues a termination notice to Flock, effective Sep. 26 2025 after it learns that Federal law enforcement and immigration enforcement are able to access license plate data from the Flock cameras in Evanston, something the city claims Flock lied about. (https://evanstonroundtable.com/2025/08/26/evanston-shuts-dow...)

   - Notably at this point EPD believes the cameras are off: An EPD officer: "The last read on an Evanston Flock camera was logged shortly before 1:00 p.m. on August 26th, which is consistent with the City’s request for de-activation,",

- Sep. 8, 2025 Flock has removed 15 of 18 cameras.

- Sep. 18, 2025 Flock reinstalls the uninstalled cameras. Evanston sends Flock a letter asserting that they are in violation of the contract and Illinois law. (https://evanstonroundtable.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/25...)

   - Flock did not inform Evanston, a technician unintentionally informed the city: "[City spokesperson] Vargas said the city learned that Flock reinstalled new cameras after a Flock technician called the Evanston Police Department to ask questions on where to find a camera’s power source." (this is from the tribune article I linked above)

- Sep. 24, 2025 The city issues a cease-and-desist to flock. (https://evanstonroundtable.com/2025/09/24/flock-safety-reins...)

    - Despite the city's belief that the cameras have been off since the termination letter on Aug. 26th, RoundTable journalists show that the cameras are still on and logging locations.

- Mar 3, 2026 Journalists notice that two of flock's cameras are still up in Evanston and contact Flock asking for comment, Flock does not reply but removes the cameras.

Flock's value proposition is having a national surveillance network, local PD are not their only customers, here is yet another instance where oops, a camera that they promised was off, turned out to be on in Eugene:

https://www.klcc.org/crime-law-justice/2025-12-09/eugene-pol...

And here is flock getting caught installing cameras in Cambridge after contract termination:

https://www.cambridgema.gov/news/2025/12/statementontheflock...

Here is flock getting caught installing cameras in Evanston after contract termination:

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/09/29/after-evanston-fir...

And obviously these are only the cases where they were caught making convenient mistakes, there is very little incentive for the likeliest parties to know (Flock, law enforcement) to bring to light the fact that flock cameras are still on, being serviced, and the data is still accessible despite local ordinance.

There are dozens of ways for it to be done, but here's an example of how Austin PD worked around contract termination:

https://www.kut.org/crime-justice/2026-02-12/austin-tx-apd-f...

The network effect value far outweighs the lost revenue from a single local contract.

The police observing your car driving down a road is not threatening, and acting as if it is is hysteria.

Yeah, but a national license plate surveillance system that lets a single police officer observe all of the movements you and your family members make every day for the past few years is not a single police officer making a plainview observation of you driving down the road.

And it's clearly a power that threatens liberties, you cannot have a free society when a government has that power.

"Palantir, what are the names and home addresses of all of the people that were at the pro-Mamdani rally, show me places that many of them go to in common, I want to find where these criminals are having their secret meetings."

Probably not in voice-to-text form, but this power is already in the hands of some US agencies, in part thanks to the national ALPR system.

If your muni votes to shut the cameras off, they will shut the cameras off.

That's simply not true: there are numerous instances of municipalities having to fight flock to get cameras removed or shut off, and instances where local governments pass ordinances that local law enforcement refuses to enforce because the cameras, which have been banned, are not off, as you allege is what happens, and law enforcement continues to use the data the cameras provide despite the contract being terminated.

Just google e.g. "flock trash bag" to see how cities are having to deal with Flock.

There are links elsewhere in this thread to a few of the many instances where this happens but I'll link to something that hasn't been mentioned yet, where flock cameras are turned back on and used by law enforcement in Springfield after contracts are cancelled, and cameras are left up that flock pinky swears are off that turn out to be on and accessible by law enforcement:

https://www.kezi.com/news/local/stolen-car-found-in-springfi...

And again, that is just talking about the instances where the municipality actually wants the flock cameras turned off or removed, there are many instances, like TFA, where the local government wants them on or doesn't care, and they remain on and used by other agencies, despite the termination of the contract with one of the client agencies.

You made the same claim based on a personal anecdote in multiple places in this thread, giving it the same reply seems reasonable, but I'll grant there's probably a better way than a wall of links.

reproducing the same links as above:

https://www.lakeexpo.com/news/politics/felony-charges-droppe...

https://www.wmtv15news.com/2026/06/05/dane-county-covers-flo...

https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/cities-covering-flock-surv...

https://dailynorthwestern.com/2025/09/28/top-stories/flock-c...

https://www.newsfromthestates.com/article/verona-has-waited-...

And these are just the cases where the municipality wants the cameras taken down, GP also talks about the cases where they just want to sate the public while keeping law enforcement and lobbyists happy. LA is a great example, the inaction of letting the contract expire in no way means that the cameras will be taken down, if no further action is taken, those cameras stay up, and law enforcement will continue to have access to all flock's alpr data.

And further it's unclear if the "data" governed in these contracts applies to the CCTV footage or the data produced for the customer by transforming the footage with models into identifying information. Given that flock has a profit incentive, it's reasonable to assume these contracts are written adversarially to maximize Flock's ability to persuade jurisdictions to sign the contracts and Flock's ability to use all of the data they harvest to maximize profit, we have enough examples of this in the 21st century to know this isn't paranoid, this is the basic playbook of all surveillancetech/adtech companies and they have all used language in contracts that is confusing to nonexperts that affords them maximum leverage to store all the data they harvest permanently and use it however they want.

Reading the definition of personal information from CCPA (https://cppa.ca.gov/regulations/pdf/ccpa_statute.pdf), I'll produce the relevant parts:

1798.140 (v)

“Personal information” means information that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer or household. Personal information includes, but is not limited to, the following if it identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could be reasonably linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer or household."

The phrase "reasonably capable of being associated with" seems like it would apply against this transformation argument, but later:

(2) (A) “Personal information” does not include publicly available information or lawfully obtained, truthful information that is a matter of public concern.

(B) (i) For purposes of this paragraph, “publicly available” means any of the following:

(II) Information that a business has a reasonable basis to believe is lawfully made available to the general public by the consumer or from widely distributed media.

So I think the above comment was wrong, this might be the actual way around it, AIUI courts have long established that individuals don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy from being photographed or recorded when in public, so it seems like public surveillance footage is actually exempt from CCPA even if it can be reasonably linked with personally identifying information.

re: the commisioner:

In January of 2024, the Camden County Commission passed a county ordinance banning the use of all automated license plate readers in the county (a 2023 ordinance had banned all static license plate readers, but the 2024 ordinance expanded that to include all automated license plate readers). In that ordinance, commissioners cited "numerous complaints" about the cameras "and the potential of unwarranted/inappropriate monitoring of its citizens [sic] freedom of movement and travel in violation of their right of privacy, unreasonable search and seizure and other constitutionally protected rights[.]"

The ordinance also stated, "Any Automated License Plate Readers currently in violation of this Ordinance shall be immediately removed. If identification of ownership is listed on any such device, the listed owner shall be notified to remove said device. Any device not removed within 30 days of notification to remove said device may be removed by Order of the Camden County Commission."

My understanding of this case was that the commissioner was charged with theft because even though the county had an ordinance requiring flock to take the cameras down, and they had failed to do so, it was not lawful for him to remove them himself and then take possession of them because they were the property of Flock.

https://www.lakeexpo.com/news/politics/felony-charges-droppe...

Re: zero drama taking down cameras, there has been quite a bit of drama:

https://www.wmtv15news.com/2026/06/05/dane-county-covers-flo...

https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/cities-covering-flock-surv...

https://dailynorthwestern.com/2025/09/28/top-stories/flock-c...

https://www.newsfromthestates.com/article/verona-has-waited-...

And final re: in many if not most of these cases the jurisdictions don't actually want to take the cameras down, they just want public pressure to let up a bit, and agencies are known to share flock data between each other, so law enforcement, the public, and lobbyists are all made happy by terminating the contract without removing the cameras, it is the smart thing to do politically.

IANAL, but making some assumptions to fill in gaps, it seems they are avoiding having to comply with CCPA and other privacy laws like this: they harvest camera data and retain the images probably forever, but only turn it into identifying data on demand for customers. So you really do have to go talk to the customer, because Flock never "has" any identifying data about anyone, they just have anonymous images that when mixed with a model happen to produce identifying data.

This allows them to promise that they don't keep any data and have strict retention policies etc. to jurisdictions that are on the fence or where the contract-purchasers are constrained by law in some way, but they can transfer identifying information at any point in the future to any customer, by mixing raw data and a model.

Exactly:

Elitist ivory tower as in free education for all that want it.

8th order effects like a well functioning society that isn't on the verge of collapse, where people live well, love each other, and think about interesting, important problems.

Distinct from the 1st order effects of a really high GDP thanks to all of the code monkeys we've trained to glue react components together: which has netted us a society on the verge of collapse, where poverty abounds, crime is universal, basic infrastructure like roads and water are crumbling, and we are plagued by mental illnesses, suicide, drug addiction, and mass shootings.

Hmm, if only there were any analogues in history that could show us the way forward, anyways, I've got to run, I've got a meeting in five with my agent who's going to show me how to 100x my SAAS revenue.

Briefly: education is concerned with thinking, vocational training is concerned with task performance. There are lots of synergies and gray areas between the two, e.g. certain kinds of task proficiency are really helpful tools while thinking (e.g. arithmetic), and thinking is a really helpful tool while task performing (e.g. an unseen permutation of a task)

That question probably deserves a much longer, more complete answer than this, but another poor imprecise framework is that education empowers people to tackle new problems poorly and taking lots of time, vocational training empowers people to tackle existing problems with known solutions excellently. In the language of the greeks, nous and techne.

Why should taxpayers pay for jobs training programs? since these vocational students expect to make lots of money with their certificate in hand, they can just take out a loan. this makes an actually rational system where the cost of job training is forced to be commensurate with the economic value of the output after the job program.

OTOH education should obviously be subsidized because it is a public good to have a society where everyone is educated, even though education will have close to zero measurable economic impact on any particular individual, every aspect of society benefits greatly from everyone having access to it.

It's crazy that education has been subverted into vocational training, and now that the transformation is nearly complete people are asking, wait why the hell is there any education going on in these places, aren't they supposed to be job training programs?

Those students should be separated from the students that want to learn, I know who I want to hire, or be sitting next to on the line and so does everyone else with a pulse: it's the person that is thrilled to learn how to take the derivative of a polynomial.

Not the loser sitting in a class they hate, living out their big plan to set their life on fire doing a job that makes them sad because they love money.

Most of higher ed in the US are not education, they are trade schools for white collar work.

Education is not something arcane, TBH it's really the vocational schools that should be forced to call themselves something different. 99% of university students are not there for an education, they are in welding school upper-middle-class edition. Vocational programs are essential infrastructure, but they are not education, and those programs should not receive funds allocated for education or be held to the same standards as education programs and vice versa.

E.g. most computer science departments where computer science is not taught, students just participate in a charade of memorizing arbitrary facts that they never even attempt to understand in order to get a certificate that entitles them to receive on-the-job training to glue javascript components together for 6 figures.

Job training != education

Show some respect and stab me in the back at least!

Remember web browsers? compilers? web servers? databases? windows embedded? server operating systems?

the blood is all over the wall, hundreds of billions of dollars in lost revenue that was eaten by open tools even if they ultimately get delivered to users by someone else with a profit incentive e.g. AWS selling deployment of OSS

1. their margins don't come from service guarantees (see github), they come from unlawful anti-competitive behavior which is likely to be prosecuted under future US administrations

2. there are already tens of millions of libreoffice users and de-globalization aka digital sovereignty initiatives in the next decade will drive the world towards Libreoffice, already at work in EU (https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-denmark-is-dumping-microso... https://cybernews.com/tech/germany-microsoft-word/

2a. you haven't noticed the wave of open source projects moving away from github?

3. Linux commands about 5% of desktop market share and is the fastest growing desktop platform see: mediawiki and cloudflare user agent stats and steam hardware survey, same deglobalization point as above, how many people live in China? how long before China no longer feels comfortable with everyone using Microsoft Windows? What OS will Chinese people/corps use instead? hint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepin

It will take time to build up to a point where it's competitive on paper, it's insane that you're comparing a first-gen product from a rag-tag crew to the hardware produced by behemoths that have thousands of engineers and billions of dollars to play with.

Where my use cases don't permit it I won't use this, but if it fits I would rather buy an open-hardware device at ~10x the price of an equivalent proprietary device not out of charity but because that is how much more value it provides to me at equivalent hardware performance.

Using CoMaps gave me the "Oh shit!" moment for the first time that the convergence of enough high quality open map data and a reasonably designed maps app to consume it was finally happening. It's crazy to think about how much thankless work it took to the point where we have something that is in many ways at parity and even exceeding in some dimensions the user-hating map software.

There is still a super long way to go until it suits everyone's needs, but the end + even further is starting to come into sight.

this is not an effective long term strategy in a collaborative environment that is advancing for the same reason that having a private secret fork of the linux kernel with a few proprietary improvements is not an effective strategy.

integrating your own work with the latest public advances takes resources. For one or two small changes this is manageable, but the further you diverge from the public, the cost of maintenance rises exponentially if you want to continue to integrate public advances. when you publish your meaningful advance, you offload the maintenance burden onto everyone else (and they only have to pay a linear cost rather than an exponential one) as it's integrated by default in new work.

In most cases, the (exponential) maintenance cost of integrating public advances with secret ones exceeds the value of the public advances, so most that undertake this strategy of advancing the open frontier in secret don't attempt to integrate continually, but instead try to make a breakaway sprint in isolation to grab a few sticky customers before the unstoppable wave of the public frontier catches up.

This is a pattern commonly seen in university research departments when researchers switch into product development mode, most of these projects are a sprint to advance away from the public frontier once a good idea is found and they do good work and find a few customers for a little while. But if you check back in a few years you won't find an advanced research department but a zombie IP company that brings in a steady income via IP enforcement and a small number of customers for whom switching is too expensive.

if so, then isn't a machine capable of producing those munitions also itself a munition?

You mean, for example, a computer?

and that encompasses functionality easily broader than "running Wikipedia" in scope and scale.

I highly doubt that the totality of your corporate employers output is even close to the scope and scale of wikipedia. I’m pretty sure you and I both know that if your employer was gone tomorrow, most would not notice, and only the most severely bookish scholasts (they are likely to be wikipedia editors) will be able to recall what exactly was done there 5 years after the books are closed.

Price of computer vs iPad keyboard edition

Mythos doesnt exist

Year of the Linux desktop!

While I believe that performance varies with respect to prompt, I have a seriously hard time believing that using the same prompt that was effective with the previous model would perform worse with the next generation of the same model from that lab and the same prompt.

Shut up and keep your head on straight, bender, you didn't see or hear anything.

Does the law state that? What if children find out about the exception and start installing Alpine Linux to circumvent the law?