Live data from Hacker News

Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras

techcrunch.com

401–410 of 534 posts

Re: Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras

#401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s be clear though - it’s not that Americans are clinging to some deep stability that brings them comfort or relaxation, it’s that they’re on the edge already. The vast vast majority of people are barely able to afford the basics of life, while we’re bombarded with an ever more shameless wealthy elite’s privileges. Politics is like water boiling - it’s just going to be little bubbles at first but all of a sudden i…

Is that really the case? It seems to me that the vast majority in the US can fairly easily afford a fair bit of material luxury, mostly because material luxuries have become incredibly cheap (by historical standards). The trouble is at least in the high population areas (AFAICT) a huge swath of "average" people seem to be stuck living life on a paycheck-to-paycheck basis, renting, no prospect of property ownership, m…

Stuff is cheap, but basic security is expensive. Everyone pints to the stuff, but income vs rent and asset prices has only gone up and up!

Buying housing is utterly unaffordable for a very, very large percentage of young people even educated professionals in in-demand fields. Covering expenses is awful. That famous Emirati quote of “my father had a camel, I have a Land Rover, my son will have a Lamborghini, his son will have a Land Rover, his son will have a camel” - our parents had the Lamborghinis. The majority of my generation (milllenials) are worse off than their parents. Very few have kids because they can’t afford to have them. There are exceptions everywhere but if you just listen or see the culture it is a given that our future is fucked unless something radical changes - income inequality is the highest it’s EVER BEEN. Higher than the time of the French Revolution. Higher than the “Gilded age”.

It’s foolish to think that people are okay or that nothing will come politically of this. Go look out the window in any major city, the stark differences are there for anyone’s eyes to see.

Re: Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras

#402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have believed that before 2020, but after COVID, I fully believe that if the food ran out, half the country would say it's a fake hoax. People would be on their death beds actually starving, and deny it was happening with their last breath.

People largely weren't on their deathbeds with covid claiming it was a hoax either so I'm not sure how that's a relevant analogy. The response to Covid was far more disruptive to my life than the disease itself, which would obviously not be the case with starvation.

many people i know personally who, to this day deny covid was real, they personally knew people who died or were hospitalized and ventilated. yet they still deny it was real.

one of my family members who was in a coma for over a month and in the hospital for months still denies it was covid despite multiple doctors telling him otherwise. some people live in a very real state of denial entirely separated from reality.

sadly i’m not sure the person you replied to is too far off.

Re: Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras

#403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So one one hand we have Nazi ideas[1] being platformed by the ruling political party which has barely disguised its support for ethnically cleansing the country of all non-white people[2]. And on the other hand we have radical democratic socialist candidates proposing stabilized rent[3]. What am I missing here? 1. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/04/republican-part... 2. https://www.esiweb.org/newsletter/100…

The main cases I've seen against people on the left (non-exclusive) are: - Lots of them in Epstein files - Mass importations of unchecked non-citizens - Trying harder to look cool to Europe vs helping Americans - Overregulation (things like California Coastal Commission) - Massive fraud (LA -> SF bullet train, tens of billions for "homelessness" that don't go towards homeless at all, building permits, etc) - Antifa b…

> - Attempts to squash 1st amendment, particularly on gender

explain yourself

Re: Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras

#404
post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At ~all times for a long period of time during Gitmos operation, there was at least one (revolving) prisoner that no nation on earth would take. I think that was the biggest challenge for someone who actually wanted to close gitmo, to close it. Not clear where you would put them that wouldn't be yet another prison. I guess now that the US has normalized relations with the Taliban, maybe they'll end up sending them to…

If we didn’t want them then why did we capture them?

A lot of them were captured for things like simply having an F91W watch and also being proximal or familial to a terrorist. They were initially wanted but then once 'cleared' the problem became once accused as a terrorist no country on earth wanted to take them even if they were cleared as likely innocent.

Obviously it was also politically infeasible to admit them into the general US.

Re: Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras

#406
post #25
post #20

> While some communities are calling on their cities to end their contracts with Flock, others are taking matters into their own hands. This is absolutely the right thing to do. Remove and smash the cellular modem in your car while you are at it.

The cellular modem is usually on a dedicated fuse. No need for violence unless smashing it would be satisfying.

In my experience it usually isn't. I would say a dedicated fuse is a rare feature on only some models of some makes.

Re: Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras

#407
post #263

The easier fix seems like doxxing politicians and embarrassing them until they protect all of their constituents against things like this. We got a small modicum of privacy with the Video Privacy Protection Act [0] after Bork's video rental history was going to be released. [0] https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=video+r...

I imagine there is a process in place to allow cities / states / communities to place the cameras on polls. If Vegas somehow got around public comment process to put these on poles, then what would stop any random company from requesting to put their own camera there? Like lets say a motivated individual went through some process to put a camera on a pole someplace near somebody that would definitely make the govt of…

The cities pay Flock to put cameras on city-owned poles because the city administrators want Flock and cops and ICE to have this data.

> Why can't any random company request to put up a camera on a random power pole?

Not owning the pole is usually the show stopper

Re: Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras

#408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a personal preference and not some universal axiom. Living under a tyrant at least tends to provide predictability and stability of a sort. The kind of violence that exists in a lawless society tends not to exist. State sanctioned violence, sure, but that's more often than not targeted. Basically, given the choice of Somalia or North Korea, there will be a diversity of opinions as to which someone prefers. I'…

As a note on Somalia: Somalia outside the state-like entities (Somaliland, Puntland, Al-Shaabab caliphate, and FGS / federally controlled somalia) is governed by xeer law. It's actually not lawless, it just uses a decentralized (polycentric) legal system that is poorly understood by westerners. They've had better outcomes under this system than under democratic government of FGS, which led to all or nothing tribalism…

This is sort of a distinction without a difference.

Any long-running human society will over time crystallize into some structure that resembles having a legal system. When people say a place is "lawless" it doesn't mean someone can just murder their neighbor in broad daylight for no reason, and all the other neighbors just shrug and say "well, gee, darn, I guess there was no law against that".

The real meaning behind the original comment I replied to is that in both the lawless and tyrannical governments, it really comes down to "might makes right". In the "lawless" society, anyone can gain might and use violence against others if they have accumulated enough power. In the tyrannical society, the State has gained this power and uses is capriciously and unpredictably.

The question is really "would you rather the main source of potential violence against you be the armies and police of a dictator, or would you rather have to deal with your local warlord, while having the potential to become your local warlord?".

Re: Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras

#410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> weren't on their deathbeds with covid claiming it was a hoax Have you treated many patients with COVID? I’ve heard the opposite of your claim from those who have.

People with first hand experience offering counterpoints like Dr Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi did but unfortunately their videos explaining their side of the story were conveniently removed from places your YouTube -- while conveniently leaving the videos remaining to hear the kind of stories you heard.

Step back a moment and ask yourself,

“How exactly would Dr Dan Erickson know if someone else’s patient said this?”

There was massive regional differences in how different parts of the country and even different parts of the same state responded to COVID.

Post reply on HN