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San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

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Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#271

Post by zaroth »

jdavis703 wrote: post #269
zaroth wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that is kinda funny. Probably effective too! Maybe add in a dub from Robocop.

It’s not funny when you consider that BART police have shot and killed at least three unarmed people in the last few years, not to mention they’ve even engaged in fatal “friendly fire” of their own... This is easily one of the most violent transit police departments.

So then replacing their guns with toy turrets seems pretty smart. And still funny.

I tried to search for some actual national statistics it couldn’t readily find anything. My suspicion is that some of those BART stations are extremely dangerous environments that put police in very tricky situations.

There have also admittedly been a few very high profile accidental shootings.

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#273

Post by JohnFen »

zzzcpan wrote: post #138
_bxg1 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. The narrative is frequently, "Tech company X's CEO was running secret, morally-questionable project. Rest of the company's engineers upset to find out about it." So far that dissatisfaction has been mostly inert, unfortunately. But I like to think that the typical engineer's morals haven't been as corroded by money as the typical CEO, and that we'll eventually reach a breaking point where things will get so b…

Engineers, like almost all employees, have to work for a living and will build whatever they have to build. Jobs are not easily replaceable for them to be able to take a stand. This means that even highly skilled and highly specialized engineers can't afford to have a problem working on censorship and surveillance tech, they probably find it exciting given all that cutting edge high performance packet processing or m…

> Jobs are not easily replaceable for them to be able to take a stand.

I don't think this is true. Jobs are plentiful and easy to get in most of the nation for skilled software engineers.

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#274

Post by dontbenebby »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #199
dontbenebby wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think that Google's available talent pool is shrinking. Many very talented engineers have left, and many new potential engineers would not want to work there. Sure, there are still plenty who do, but I would say their options are narrowing over time. I think you overestimate how skilled you need to be to work at Google. Google has famously put people through enormous hoops to work there, regardless of the complexi…

Sure, any employer can always choose to lower their standards, but wouldn't you argue then, that the quality of their output is also likely to suffer? The goal here is to ensure their ethical competitors have access to resources they don't.

>Sure, any employer can always choose to lower their standards, but wouldn't you argue then, that the quality of their output is also likely to suffer?

No. As I previously stated Google puts people through enormous hoops to work there. That has no bearing on the quality of the worker.

For example, it's been noted that past a certain IQ, there is diminishing returns - eg, past ~130 IQ you're no more likely to win a Nobel Prize.

I think the real threat is that Google "lowers" it's standards and output remains the same. This would threaten the business models of "elite" schools who pretend to have a monopoly on talent.

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#275

Post by dontbenebby »

sgift wrote: post #247
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, any employer can always choose to lower their standards, but wouldn't you argue then, that the quality of their output is also likely to suffer? The goal here is to ensure their ethical competitors have access to resources they don't.

You seem to think that technical ability and ethics are somehow related. That's a sad misconception which leads to all kinds of bad results. There are many people with very high ability that have an ethical framework which would make them feel right at home in dictatorial regimes. They probably wouldn't even notice it. "I'm just doing my job" is alive and popular.

>You seem to think that technical ability and ethics are somehow related. That's a sad misconception which leads to all kinds of bad results.

Sure, but I also think if you have enough money to retire early, you're less likely to do something you don't agree with. Many people don't have that luxury.

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#276

Post by JohnFen »

convivialdingo wrote: post #197
zzzcpan wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engineers, like almost all employees, have to work for a living and will build whatever they have to build. Jobs are not easily replaceable for them to be able to take a stand. This means that even highly skilled and highly specialized engineers can't afford to have a problem working on censorship and surveillance tech, they probably find it exciting given all that cutting edge high performance packet processing or m…

>> work for a living and will build whatever we have to build. No, not all of us do this. I’ve quite jobs over questionable morals/ethics a couple of times. It wasn’t a hard choice - I applied for a new job and was gone in two weeks.

Yes, me too. Interestingly enough, I have solid reasons to believe that sticking to my principles as made me more employable, not less.

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#277

Post by lostlogin »

rak00n wrote: post #183
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many Googlers have already left Google on ethical grounds, and many more likely will in the near future. There are multiple organized groups of employees trying to enact change internally, but some who previously did that have already recognized that as futile and left, so presumably more will eventually. Google is already an extremely large company, and I think that many are only just now realizing the problems that…

I doubt that Google's options are shrinking. There aren't that many companies with similar pay scale or culture.

Isn’t the culture the problem, and that’s why they are leaving?

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#278

Post by usrusr »

zaroth wrote: post #213
usrusr wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does not change the fact that the light source is very close to the observer, and to make it worse higher than the observer. Both are quite bad for detecting the structure of the ground.

Where would you want the light to fix this? Somewhere else you could wear it on your body? Torso, thigh, ankle?

Torso would probably be good, any deeper and you get too much shadow in depressions or behind bumps, dosage matters.

But you lose head aiming into curves, so maybe somewhere in the jaw region might be interesting. You'd need an entirely new approach to fixing for sports that don't already have full face headgear, but the usual forehead position isn't exactly fashionable either (historically this position comes from mining I think, where the shadow/structure effect isn't wasted when it works on the ceiling instead of on the floor).

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#279

Post by yellowapple »

imtringued wrote: post #253
stevejb wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes exactly this. The "trust us, we are very careful with this ability to spy on you" should be taken with a grain of salt.

"Benevolent dictatorships" only last until the term of the politician is over. The successors didn't make any promises to not use the surveillance system to the fullest extent possible and therefore at least one of them will.

This is, mind you, the exact reason why I tend to be averse to the notion that we should habitually make exceptions to things like freedom of speech/expression, freedom of religion, "states' rights", etc.; they always sound great when your party is the one in power, but when (not if) that changes, you've now handed your opposition the means to more heavily oppress you.

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#280

Post by asdff »

rsync wrote: post #270
jnty wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds exactly like an urban myth along the same lines as 'seatbelts kill more people than they save'. Has it ever been proved? Worth also noting that rear-end crashes are generally less dangerous than t-bones. For similar reasons, roundabouts can be preferable to standard crossroads even if they result in a higher number of collisions.

"That sounds exactly like an urban myth along the same lines as 'seatbelts kill more people than they save'. Has it ever been proved?" I hope you will look further into this - you may be interested to learn (I was) that a nearly perfect intervention for red lights being "run" is to lengthen the yellow signal. It costs nothing and works as well, or better, than red light cameras - and with none of the artificial, unex…

Yellows have been shortened on purpose to raise revenues from tickets. If cities cared about accidents and congestion, we'd have less lights and more traffic circles, but that means less tickets and more thought and effort than lowering the yellow light time.
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