Athletes (both college and professional) frequently receive threats from sports betters. Since the betting apps let you make specific wagers such as whether a specific player will make more than 6 three pointers in a game the harassment can become quite targeted.
Not just an assumption, but a goal. If some semblance of democratic society returns they know they’ll be held accountable, so they’ll fight with every means available to prevent that from happening.
I don't see how the two correlate - commercial, closed source software usually have teams of professionals behind them with a vested and shared interest in not shipping crap that will blow up in their customers' face. I don't think the motivations of "guy who vibe coded a shitty app in an afternoon" are the same.
And to answer you more directly, generally, in my professional world, I don't use closed source software often for security reasons, and when I do, it's from major players with oodles of more resources and capital expenditure than "some guy with a credit card paid for a gemini subscription."
I've noticed this is leading to less high quality products being produced in general. If the only real axis people understand is price then products can't compete on quality/durability/maintability/etc, and so they're pushed aside to lower the cost.
A recent example: I've bought many articles of clothing from Eddie Bauer over the years because they have been generally high quality and durable, and even so are only a bit more expensive than other brands. However just last week they filed for bankruptcy. Sure, the company could have been mismanaged, but I'm sure competition from fast fashion brands with rock bottom prices didn't help.
Haven’t followed the recent history of Eddie Bauer, but seems they’ve sullied their brand for a while.
Sam’s Club has been selling Eddie Bauer stuff for years. I don’t think a $37 pair of Eddie Bauer hiking boots are going to be quality.
The more or less inevitable trend of "outdoor stores/brands" is to become increasingly sort of "outdoorsy casual" stores of some sort with--maybe--some camping/hiking gear at some level.
It's been a hugely popular PE play - any time a brand has a reputation for being very well made buy it for life level of stuff, that people pay a high price for, you can buy it and start reducing the quality for a few years, selling cheaper lower quality goods for the same price, hoping no one notices.
For the first few years, there aren't enough product issues for most of the hardcore enthusiasts to notice - maybe your tent ripping was just bad luck, or it may take two years for even a mediocre tent to weaken and fail for all but the people taking their tent to Denali or something.
Eventually the people who know move on and stop paying for the poorly made crap, but it's still seen as an exclusive brand by people who care about showing off they can afford something expensive vs. those for whom the quality was worth paying more for.
For boots, at least, there's an easy solution: buy the same stuff that the military gets (there are many options there). It might not be the best, but at least there are known standards other than minimum price that apply.
I have a pair of Belleville "hot weather mountain hybrid boots" (TR550) that I got back in 2014, heavily used, still in one piece.
There is an interesting counter balance to this consumer tendency: the business.
Businesses/organizations in a lot of ways act much more "rationally" than the individual consumer. So you'll see generally better car/truck maintenance in fleets than by consumers.
Then there is a cool feedback/blowoff valve where more expensive + higher quality "pro" tools get discovered by consumers, drive up demand, the price falls, and then the features become common.
Don't forget the second half of that feedback loop: other manufacturers come out with their poor approximations of those features at lower prices, consumption shifts to that because quality isn't clear from the labels, the quality manufacturers don't move enough volume to hit similar prices, so they end up either killing them or cutting corners.
So then it becomes a cycle. It's risky to make a high quality initial product that's expensive because it requires the buyer to understand and trust why they should pay more.
Eventually the market demands the higher quality and the pro series gains adoption, only for the the cheap stuff to come in again.
I've never heard of Eddie Bauer, and if I did see that in a store, there's no way to know the clothing is of higher quality, or how much higher. In a market for lemons, lemons win.
This is what the kids call “cope”, but it comes from a very real place of fear and insecurity.
Not the kind of insecurity you get from your parents mind you, but the kind where you’re not sure you’re going to be able to preserve your way of life.
Sorry but I think you have it the other way around.
The ones against it understand fully what the tech means for them and their loved ones. Even if the tech doesn't deliver on all of its original promises (which is looking more and more unlikely), it still has enough capabilities to severely affect the lives of a large portion of the population.
I would argue that the ones who are inhaling "copium" are the ones who are hyping the tech. They are coping/hoping that if the tech partially delivers what it promises, they get to continue to live their lives the same way, or even an improved version. Unless they already have underground private bunkers with a self-sustained ecosystem, they are in for a rude awakening. Because at some point they are going to need to go out and go grocery shopping.
My hot take is that portions of both the pro- and anti- factions are indulging in the copium. That LLMs can regurgitate a functioning compiler means that it has exceeded the abilities of many developers and whether they wholeheartedly embrace LLMs or reject LLMs isn't going to save those that have been exceeded from being devalued.
The only safety lies in staying ahead of LLMs or migrating to a field that's out of reach of them.
Over, and over, and over again, until ICE is disbanded and those involved are held accountable. When that happens (and how high the casualty number gets) is up to the American people.
It’s trivial for law enforcement to track your movement with ALPR cameras. Information feeds into a single database, paid for by law enforcement agencies, and they just connect the dots.
Ring camera footage requires law enforcement to get a warrant or for individuals to give consent to supply the footage.
Now tell me which system makes it easier for a cop to stalk their ex.
Not yet. Facical recognition in 2025 is where LPR was in 2010.
As the cost of compute and wireless communications continues to drop, facial recognition will be prolific. There are more limitations with cameras, but AI will make it easy to backtrack movement to a place where they get a clean shot that can identify you.
As an example, the transit authority in NYC Metro was able to plug existing security feeds from trains into Amazon Rekognition to count heads, which feeds their ticketing app — you can see which carriages are full. As time goes on, they’ll become able to track the breadcrumbs individuals from seat to platform. (If not already)
Detectives do this manually today. I was on a jury where the purse snatcher was followed by various cameras until he got on a bus. They pulled the bus passes and tracked his pass back to his girlfriend.
It does. But more like “the black male with the red hoodie is here”
They don’t say “hibf just walked into the 7-11” yet. The Feds probably have a system that can do that for car passengers traveling on “drug corridors” (ie. I95) today.
Less popular because it’s not feasible for many. I live in MN. Biking 20mi to work when it’s -10F and in 6” of fresh snow on top of the 12” received so far this season just isn’t something that’s safe to do.
Please don’t make it seem like it’s a “popularity” thing; it’s a necessity thing.
Finland is a cold country with similar population count and larger area. For national domestic trips, 55% of people there use cars[1]. For MN i only found stats for MN metro area, but I’d expect public transport to be more developed there. The car usage is still 83%[2].
I bet the local community plows the roads but not the bike infrastructure, though? I get why, people probably drive more than bike.
But, in Canada, there are local communities that plow bike infrastructure and locals bike in their deep winter.
It's a chicken or egg problem of building infrastructure for users and users demanding infrastructure. It's not some fact of nature that it's impossible. Different communities have different priorities. So, necessity is a bit strong of a word.
Hardly anyone lives in MN - half the poulation of New York City alone.
The vast majority of Americans live in cities. Half live in just 8 metro-areas, just as the vast majority of Europeans live in cities. Europe is far more dispersed though.
First paragraph: reasonable, if ignoring that access it not likely to be unrestricted willy-nilly.
Second paragraph: not as reasonable given that Amazon likely comply without issue with us intelligence, and sell the data to third parties, which the police could just buy (similar has been done) to avoid consent or legal obstacles.
Third paragraph: out of nowhere, focus on police. No mention of intelligence agency staff or say Amazon staff doing the same thing.
Out of nowhere? The entire comment is talking about law enforcement (police) and law enforcement agencies (police departments) purchasing access to commercially owned surveillance databases. No warrant is required to use them, and in some cases that access is indeed "unrestricted willy-nilly."
Ah, you mean like if we had some sort of knowledgeable, impartial third-party to grant the police permissions. They could, get this, "judge" whether the absolute bare minimum of evidence is likely to exist. So long as Flock didn't provide a way to circumvent an approval process like that, you could maybe reduce the instances of abusers stalking their victims to "acceptable" levels.
What do you think the chances are that we could invent a system like that? You don't think Flock and the police would find a way to circumvent it do you?
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