My prediction: they are going to change their name and move a lot of their business to multiple subsidiary with different names. Until nobody notices anymore it's all one company formerly known as Flock.
There was a period when automated red-light cameras were really popular with municipalities, followed by significant backlash. Since then, the companies selling them have not recovered financially and the cameras never regained popularity. It could happen with Flock, too.
Shortening the yellow light duration killed people. So far, misuse of flock data has only resulted in people having undertrained cops draw down on them. But somebody's going to pull a trigger soon enough.
Maybe they'll rename to something which has only ever had negative connotations for decades. Maybe something like Palantir. Or maybe Nazgul, Leviathan, Beelzebub, Cyberdyne, or Moloch?
"Moloch" only means "Lord" in its essential consonants. It's the same Semitic triple-root for "Malik" and "Melkite" and "Melchizedek". Cognates: certainly still in widespread use today as forenames and surnames, et. al.
"Leviathan": The full name certainly strikes fear. One of my ancestors brought his family over from Scotland on the Leviathan which was a captured-and-repurposed German passenger vessel. We can imagine: it was ginormous. has an interesting derivation if we take it apart into component parts: they would be recognizable as good guys, or denim jeans I guess. Since Semitic roots standardized on the triple-consonant, we may see ancient tongues incorporated for this one.
"Be-el-ze-bub": "Lord of the Flies", of course; the implication of the English name of the novel about those good children on a desert island, who lived in interesting times. A theophoric name. Shares a root with "Ba'al" of the Tanakh. Glottal stops FTW.
The widespread opposition to flock is unfortunately an aberration. The average person is largely indifferent to mass surveillance, and I think a rebrand has a good chance of working. They'll give it a try either way.
In a poll of "do you want to be surveilled", "do you think mass surveillance is good", sure. But in terms of revealed preferences, people will happily give up privacy for mild convenience.
What's really true is that people are, 99% of the time, not actually given that choice. For "revealed preferences theory" to work, the people involved would need to consistently have a free choice between two options. And for people who have had their finances gradually stretched and stretched over the past 40 years of growing inequality, "cheaper but worse" is not a free choice.
People can choose Facebook or to get in contact with people individually via phone, email or visits, but they prefer Facebook because it's more convenient to put a message there and count as maintenance of a group of relationships. People can choose between accepting the cameras or participating in the democracy they belong in and protest and pressure their representatives, but it's more convenient to accept.
It's true there are people without choice, but most people aren't without choice, and they choose convenience.
This is a specious argument because it neglects to take into account information asymmetries and change over time. When Facebook was first launched, there wasn't any widespread understanding of the breadth/intensity of their data collection and its downstream implications.
People initially chose Facebook because it truly offered a novel and improved service, and the true cost users would pay for it wasn't obvious to anyone yet. The "wall", chronological friends-only feeds, etc. provided genuine value, and at that point the public at large were almost completely oblivious to how much personal data was being collected from them (and even less as to how it might be used in ways counter to their own interests). Once they'd fully captured the vast majority of user share, Facebook clawed back value by deprecating the chronological feed, serving ads and "high-engagement" posts in place of friend submissions, and generally ramped up their data harvesting significantly further since.
Most people would agree that the service is far worse than what they initially signed up for, but feel like there's no longer a viable alternative that would allow them to maintain the same level of communication with the people they care about.
Facebook users are not "choosing convenience" by staying on the only platform that all of their friends and family use exclusively. They're effectively held hostage by network effects that were intentionally planned and designed around producing that lock-in effect and guaranteeing that all potential alternatives either withered on the vine or were absorbed (e.g. Instagram). To the extent there's a "choice," it's a coerced choice on purpose.
> When Facebook was first launched, there wasn't any widespread understanding of the breadth/intensity of their data collection
Come on, you're trying to tell me that people didn't understand that when they give someone a thing, that someone has the thing they gave them?
> provided genuine value
Yes, the convenience.
> how much personal data was being collected from them
"They collected it; I didn't give it to them."
> but feel like there's no longer a viable alternative that would allow them to maintain the same level of communication with the people they care about.
Yes, "the pesky convenience is forcing me."
> Facebook users are not "choosing convenience" by staying on the only platform that all of their friends and family use exclusively.
"My friends and family are forcing me."
Despite my comments, I'm not totally against the use of Facebook, but I am against the surrender of personal agency and blame-shifting these comments are demonstrating.
It's true they collect more, but I wouldn't say "far, far more". They get the most from what you provide yourself. That's unless you have relationships that share too much about you.
Did they stop tracking people through their like buttons by now? If not, there's no argument - they're literally tracking non-users on every site they can! Besides Google, what company is doing as much tracking as much as Facebook?
Wasn't it just last year that it became known how Facebook and Instagram apps track your browsing through WebRTC? That alone is far far more than people knowingly give them.
Learning about their tracking web browsing through WebRTC ports from the apps, you have a point on users not knowingly providing that. Still, if you dissociate from Facebook (not having their apps, not being logged on, etc.) then that tracking would've been ineffective. The rest of my comment stands on their being able to leave it.
The world when Facebook was introduced: "Oh well, I guess I have no choice. There's nothing like Facebook, so I'm forced to upload my family photos to these people. I'm not responsible for doing that. Let me just find somebody to blame, maybe the family that's already using it? Nevermind that there are alternatives for keeping in touch. We don't talk about that. They're just not as convenient, so they're obsolete."
You do know that there were over a dozen social media networks that facebook bought over and effectively extinguished or merged into their behemoth right ? They deliberately ensured that choices were extremely limited. Any "alternative" that got popular and not under control of another behemoth was effectively taken over or killed. So your "use an alternative" logic just does not compute.
Eh I think it depends on the country a lot too. The average UK citizen? Probably. Even as someone from abroad, I know the British are widely stereotyped as having cameras everywhere.
But Americans are raised from birth with the idea of “freedom” and a camera pointed at you recording your every move is antithetical to that. They somewhat tolerate it in private establishments like malls and restaurants but not in public spaces.
Axon, formerly known as TASER did a reputational name change. Worth mentioning that they are also a flock competitor, but they are not in the headlines anymore.
They did such an amazingly bad job on their PR. Their best known products literally exist to keep police from killing people or violating their rights undetected, and instead of meeting the moment and explaining why their products should become mandatory, always-on, permanent replacements for firearms or ADVOKATE-style sworn statements they just kind of... pretended that misuse of their products was WAI and ate the consequences of that.
Those departments buy their products. If they took that angle publicly I bet many departments would suddenly been much less interested in buying/renewing. Accountability seems to be super unpopular (which says A LOT) with their customers.
I get it, but I also just don't understand why they couldn't effectively explain to the police that they were a for-profit company. The police definitely understand that!
Like, when the police were saying "we can't turn on body cameras all the time because it might violate victims rights" the correct response from axon was "we also happen to sell a very expensive victim redaction software on a separate SKU, until you buy that probably just want to let your officers use discretion wink-nod."
(I am maybe unfairly assuming here that their actual intent was to make money rather than protect the public from police abuses. I'd love to hear from folks at Axon if that isn't true!)
They could have just talked out of both sides of their mouths. Tell the public it’s to curb abuse, tell the police in private “we all know what it’s really for” wink-wink-nudge-nudge.
Maybe offer up a few token cases where they caught abuse and the cop got in trouble or something changed as proof.
Nope. You’re right, they ran right into that wall.
I think that's why they are going to create many subsidiaries with a lot of different brand names. Until those names can't "spread" anymore, because it's too many different names and they often change.
Anyone still crossing US borders with electronic devices that aren't fully wiped? This is company policy for some European companies for a long time. Even during the Biden administration.
Most employees just receive a wiped phone/laptop for the duration of the trip. Depending on the country its either a device that only has access to the bare minimum of Services, or for countries like Russia they issue a dumb phone that can only call and text.
Half of the commenters here seem to believe that nobody has ever done this successfully because it must be “suspicious”. Despite it being a common practice for many organizations.
It might be suspicious, but they don't get any incriminating evidence that way. It's also much easier for people visiting. Most of the time entry is denied and you can take the next plane back home. I'm fine with that, don't care. I only care if I would get taken into ICE detention. This risk grew significantly, so I simply won't go.
You make it sound so "meh, whatever", but there's a few realities attached to this:
The airline in question will likely not serve you again, but probably more importantly, when you apply for a tourist visa to just about any country on earth, you'll now have to answer that question "Have you ever been denied or refused a visa or entry into a country?" and while some might take sympathy on "Oh, yeah, we get it", you can be sure you'll be getting extra attention and some countries will threaten to deny entry too.
> Have you ever been expelled or deported from the Federal Republic of Germany, had an application for a residence permit rejected, or been refused entry into the Federal Republic of Germany?
Almost like you're just making shit up based on some anti-US sentiment.
LOL at your hypocrisy. I am a UK citizen, and I am an Australian citizen, and I am -not- a US citizen, lived and worked in both and in Europe though I am, currently, in the US. But sure, make the same assumptions that you want to think I'm guilty of making.
"Just lie on your visa applications, no countries on earth share data with each other and no-one cares except the US and who cares about them, nothing will ever happen to you."
Cool.
Actually, the idiocy of this response is even more notable when you learn that many countries will notate it IN YOUR PASSPORT that you were refused entry.
"Lie on your visa application and hope no immigration officer thumbs through your passport." Stunning advice.
I do that several times a year, and never wipe my phone. I looked at statistics of such phone examinations over the last few years, and I didn't see any difference between the current and last administrations, when nobody was wiping their phones.
Not in my organization, or in any that I know of. I don't even understand why it would be in an organization's interest to do that. Why should they care if I'm harrassed for data of a political nature? They generally tell me not to even have any such data on their property.
They do, however, require that I take a burner device or wipe it completely, if I travel to China.
I’m Canadian and work in healthcare. I have a dedicated travel phone that I move my SIM card to whenever I travel to the US.
I carry a letter from my work explaining that I’m not allowed to travel with electronic devices potentially containing confidential patient information in case a recently wiped phone raises any flags
I will be wiping my before I pass through US Customs next, no matter who the president is. I have no idea what some guard might randomly take issue with, best not to risk it.
Is there any difference between US citizens and visitors? It just seems like US citizens think those charades are normal and don't question them. In my home country I can just deny getting my devices searched. They might be allowed to seize and seal them, awaiting a court order for searching the device. Which I could appeal. Basically the same process as anywhere else in the country, international borders are not some special place that gives the police superpowers.
Ps: we also don't have some special paramilitary border police. Just regular police stationed at the border.
Yes, there's a difference: US citizens have the right to enter the USA; visitors do not. US officials can deny a visitor entry arbitrarily, and the visitor has limited recourse to appeal such a decision. A visitor who does not cooperate with officials who want to search something is likely to be denied entry.
A citizen may only be denied entry if they're entering the country for the purpose of committing a crime, and if the government can prove that, they'll probably admit the citizen and immediately arrest them instead.
A US citizen cannot be denied entry into the country for ANY reason. A valid US passport is prima facie evidence of citizenship so once you show it the worst that can happen is you getting arrested.
all of our police are essentially paramilitary now. There's nothing special about ICE or CBP other than they're federal rather than local. Even local cops have become hyper-militarized and think they're patrolling the streets of Fallujah
> It just seems like US citizens think those charades are normal and don't question them. In my home country I can just deny getting my devices searched
What home country is that? Some places (UK I think is one) have less protection at the border for citizens than the US does. The risk of being searched for Average Joe is so small that most people don't even think about it. HN is disproportionately worried.
It's the same thing for US citizens entering the US. They can try to search your device, and they can seize it temporarily (although that may end up being a long temporarily), but they can't deny you entry.
For a non-citizen, it's basically comply or go home, possibly with a fun stay in a detention center first.
So it's even better for a non-citizen, because you can just turn around and go home?
I don't get why some people end up in a detention center. Why not send them back home on the next flight? Even if people can't pay the ticket a lot of embassies will immediately pay for their citizen's ticket. Especially if they have a job and will be able to pay it back in a reasonable time. If it's an EU citizen they can be sent back on any flight going to Europe. So there is usually a possibility to leave within the hour.
Most people probably won't like having their plans ruined and a bunch of money wasted being forced to abandon their travel. And the US may be home to a noncitizen.
As for why they end up in a detention center, maybe immigration thinks they might want to ask them some more question, or maybe they're just exacting some punishment on the uncooperative foreigner.
It's not routine. Most tourist visitors don't have any trouble. I'm a US citizen, but I've never had my phone searched at an airport or border crossing, not that I cross the border all that often.
I know it isn't routine. But it does happen. I know two people that had to go into secondary inspection and I think they had to unlock their phones. Both of them were completely normal business travelers without anything dubious in their life or their business. One was a medical doctor another one a government employee going to an international conference hosted by a US federal institution (which required some extensive clearance and background checks to even attend). Both Western European citizens with a completely spotless CV.
>Is there any difference between US citizens and visitors?
Yes. US citizens have an absolute right of return to the US (at a land border anyway, they can be stopped from boarding a flight to the US while physically in another country). If there's an active warrant for arrest or they commit a crime right there or the like they can be arrested, but the process at that point plays out the same as an arrest anywhere in the country with the same standards. Property can be screened and denied, or potentially seized, but the person can than challenge that and it must be returned unless there is reason. This significantly changes the math as far as practical inconvenience to refusal to cooperate, though I don't want to downplay how much it could suck for most people to have expensive stuff taken for even a short period of time. But they can't keep someone from getting home and, in turn, back to financial, legal, political, and social support networks which can back them from there.
Visitors on the other hand have no right to entry at all and can be denied for any legal reason (which in practice amounts to near anything). They can be banned from future entry as well for a period of time or indefinitely. So they face different (and greater) pressure.
>In my home country I can just deny getting my devices searched. They might be allowed to seize and seal them, awaiting a court order for searching the device. Which I could appeal.
This sounds roughly the same as America then, depending on specifics. Here LEAs may not unfortunately need a court order to search the devices of an American "as best they can", but they can't compel cooperation either (and in fact generally cannot get a court order for that at all outside of a narrow exception due to the 5th Amendment). So if a device isn't encrypted, or if it is but they're able to break into it, or if (as in this case) the person in question simply goes ahead and unlocks it for them then that's at least for now allowed (hopefully SCOTUS overrules the 2C), but they can't legally force password entry.
>Basically the same process as anywhere else in the country, international borders are not some special place that gives the police superpowers.
You don't mention your country (and that's fine!) but I don't think there is a single nation anywhere that doesn't have "police superpowers" at international borders. It's sorta a core part and parcel with the basic idea of a "nation" at all, that it can if it wishes regulate its people/goods exchange with the rest of the world. When you travel within a typical free-ish country you can just stop at a store in town and buy stuff and then take it home and the police can't investigate it and demand receipts and that you pay additional taxes or just outright seize it or make you take it back. Right? That's just, normal, within a single polity everything is already under the same rules.
But a border between independent polities by definition means that there could be goods legal in one but illegal in the other, or that are subject to different standards, or different safety considerations, or where there is disagreement on whether/how externalities are accounted for, or just simply taxed differently for pure revenue purposes. In turn, what country doesn't give themselves the right to regulate import of physical stuff, even if internally there is total freedom of movement and goods? Genuinely curious?
The argument here though is that this isn't about regulation of imports, but a criminal investigation. And I agree with legal scholars like Orin Kerr that the Second Circuit got this one wrong. This was not an import power thing, trying to stop contraband or levy legal import taxes, this was a criminal case, and I think that should always be protected by the 4A.
I really like the idea. It's so easy to create small tools with AI now, but hard to install them as local apps or share them.
But I'm missing a few relevant features:
1. syncing data and apps (capsules) between my devices. not necessarily over a single SaaS, but maybe p2p or some existing service
2. I think data and apps should be separated, I might want to share an app with someone else without sharing the data
3. Apps should support updates, install the same app again and just replace the code for the existing app, but keep the data. Also share updates either as a file or publish apps to a repo (just a folder of files on a public http server or github repo)
Both keeping data in sync between devices and providing offline capabilities is hard, I know.
Businesses want to analyze internal company messages. Chat protocols / platforms need to make inroads with one of the core audiences for online chat. Those are largely taken right now, (slack/teams business, discord gaming/oss). If it is personal/small group messaging, several E2EE options already exist, though I understand Jabber/XMPP is trying to be in the chatroom genre
You can do E2E encryption for organizations, you just establish all conversations as at least 3-way conversations: the two members of the org, and the org itself. You let the server refuse to host any conversation it isn't privy to, and then apps that support organization mode automatically add the org listener, and users using third-party clients can add it manually.
There is literally nothing about enterprise inspecting proxies that requires the client operate without default and always on crypto. That makes no sense at all.
The way businesses handle this is by installing a certificate they manage and deploy to their proxies.
True, segmentation is already happening with users choosing apps based on geography, age, and sometimes by social group. It’s possible to target and win over a select group of people if you have a compelling feature or an experience that’s geared towards their needs. You just have to decide who you are focusing on.
I can easily imagine a future where people switch between three messengers, one for general communications with acquaintances and family, one for work, and one for their social circle. Many already do this with social networks.
I disagree. XMPP wasn't designed for it, and there are already others that have done E2EE better, while still having some downsides. The only way XMPP has an edge is by not doing E2EE.
Who are those people having lot of time to re-read their old message history? I assume most people only read last several messages in a chat. This matches the real life conversations which are not stored anywhere. However, police will definitely be happy to discover that your many years messaging history is intact.
I would rather want a feature, like Telegram has, where you can set auto-delete of all messages older than N days.
>Who are those people having lot of time to re-read their old message history?
Everyone who has to, say, prove that they kept paying their rent for a year without interruptions. You sent a photo of your money transfer from the bank app to your landlord, and he sends the "received" screenshot from his bank app.
Moreover, a lot (even most) people make personal notes by sending messages to themselves.
For me searching my old messages is really useful. I don't scroll back through history but I'll search for things like "plumber" to find the number of a plumber a friend texted me a while back.
the only people that really trust the police are ones that never actually had to deal with the police (which may be a whole lot of people). however, if you ever have an unfortunate situation to have a run in with the police, there is a good chance you will not be all that trusting any longer. people trust the idea of police more so than anything else
Well, true. But even so, having the history intact is also a way to remove suspicions from yourself.
"Where were you during the event X? I was very far from the place you are interested in, as can be proven by this photo, sent to my grandma, have a look at the history in her phone."
Transparent ziplock bags changed my cable organization significantly. I also put a lot of accessories into them. Preferably together with a small note about what it is for, or with the manual of the device it belongs to.
Storing stuff in individual boxes takes up too much space. The transparent bags can just go into a box and it's easy to just browse through. Nothing gets entangled.
I didn't see his video, but after many years I finally figured that out independently and felt like a fool for it taking so long to realize. That's a real game changer.
It's inline CSS, but with all the limitations of inline styles removed. There is a lot of stuff that can't be done with inline styles, like media queries.
I think tech founders need to think smaller. Build software for a few thousand people and make a profit from it. Something niche. Something that is sustainable with a small team.
VC eats up everything that's becoming bigger. And they will kill it. Their goal is not to run a healthy business that serves their customers. They try to take out as much money as possible and then trash it.
This is it. Sustainability. Not everything has to be about more money quickly. You don't even need VCs for that. More win to bootstrappers! I see a lot of folks bootstrapping in the LLM era, but that can be defeaned in the VC noise.
Exactly. And the dangerous mindset tends to be worse than just "more money quickly": it's far too commonly "if this can't become the next Facebook/iPhone/ChatGPT, it's not worth doing." The only options are "take over the world" or "fail"; there's no room (in many people's heads) for a product that makes a decent, steady profit and continues to do so over the course of many years.
There is, is just different capital for those companies (debt, growth equity, angels, grants) and less attention. There’s far more of these types of companies too.
Because you still need a good sales and product team. Speak with potential customers, understand their problems. Building the software was never the hard part.
They don't give a shit about making a good product, the literal only thing any of these ghouls care about is line going up in the short term, because if line goes up they can dump their investments and move on to the next entity that they can get their greedy claws on and devour.
This is becoming more and more of a problem. For a small software company it could become an asset. Tell customers they are privately owned and small, and therefore won't be acquired by VCs.
Traditionally big vendors were more trustworthy and stable, that's no longer the case.
Edit: I'm not talking about end users, most commercial software is licensed by companies.
In that environment the founder has no hope or reason to go public, making equity in the company worthless.
VC used to push to public exits in order to maximize the founders and VCs stake which turned employees equity to a liquid asset. Truly aligning everyones interests, nowadays not so much.
You're forgetting about dividend, and off-market trade.
If a company is worthless if it isn't public, then IKEA would be absolute garbage. Quite strange for a company making hundreds of millions in profit for its owners.
The insane valuations for selling a dream are what make VC worthwhile.
TSLA would be worth crap if it were a private company giving off dividends. It is really truly about the insane valuations driven by collective delusion.
Are there modern positioning systems that can automatically join all those data sources into one position? Traditionally navaids are treated as completely separate sources and are shown on different kind of instruments. But they could also be used as a replacement source for GNSS data on a modern map screen.
Depending on their kind they might not return a specific position, but in combination with other sources they often do via triangulation.
PS: INS (Inertial Navigation) also still exits. It often works for quite a long time really precisely. Also precision can be calculated. So it can start as a dot on a map which becomes a bigger circle as the precision decreases. It could be automatically recalibrated whenever high confidence positioning is available.
Yes, modern flight management computers in commercial airliners do exactly this. I can't speak to smaller aircraft.
Essentially a position is calculated from VOR/DME, GPS, and INS. When there is disagreement it is flagged and procedures are in place to fall back.
The issue is VOR/DME is slowly being decommissioned eliminating one of those sanity checks. It hasn't been degraded to the point of creating massive gaps in coverage over land but it will slowly happen if the rate of decommissioning continues.
Ultimately, INS is sufficient for enroute navigation but if you're degraded to just that state, the impacts to traffic separation, particularly in congested airspace, are significant. Required Navigation Performance (RNP) levels dictate all of this.
The "cut and die" part is happening rather quickly, and you're done with it. But you might be hungry for weeks and have to watch your crops grow. Probably really boring and uncomfortable.
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