I have always had a ton of respect for the Dark Sky devs. I love the work that goes into designing interfaces that make sense of complex datasets intuitively, and I feel like Dark Sky was a textbook example. I’m genuinely really excited to try this out.
I agree, Dark Sky was really nicely done. That said, when I want to know the weather I just look out the window, so it's unlikely to be something I would buy.
I don’t think these ends justify the means. It sounds like the government failed early on in what seemed like a benign infraction, and now it is deciding to punish him for it. That’s like getting away with not returning a library book, and then being arrested and taken to prison for thousands in overdue fees when I try to return it later. That’s arbitrary and excessive, hopefully found to be a violation of due process, and should not be defended.
I came in here looking for this thread specifically (I can't imagine moving off of Ableton). Thanks for taking a sec to write this up! I might give it a try, just for the synth alone.
I hear you, and I think it's also fucked up (as someone who lives in the US) that our climate success is so easily reversed by the whims of whoever is in power today. If it makes you feel any less bad, new Zealand doing it acts as fantastic proof that a good chunk of New England could do it, or that the American South could do it. Plus, there isn't a lot of love for polluting policies; just tolerance from the government for polluters. Nobody here likes to see their kids have asthma, or to see their water contaminated. The size thing can make it feel hopeless, but what is the US if not a handful of New Zealand's?
Genuine question: I’m someone who hates the centralization of data with companies like Flock. I also want safer streets. I have liked things like speed cameras and bus-mounted bus lane cameras specifically because they target the problem without the need for police involvement. How do you get the latter without ALPRs? Or do ALPRs indicate cameras specifically collecting license plates independent of active enforcement?
ALPRs are generally just cameras that create searchable timestamped databases of identified vehicles, private or public. But they're only really useful for public entities, because they're the only ones who can in the general case do anything with a tagged car (look up who owns it, curb it, &c).
Right next to my apartment building is a crosswalk that crosses a fairly busy street. The crosswalk is well-marked, and it has a sign in the median specifically stating that stopping for pedestrians is required by law. In the time I've lived here I've nearly been hit by cars several times on this crosswalk, and I've witnessed countless people almost get hit here as well. Once I saw a pedestrian yell at the driver, and the driver yelled back that they didn't have to stop because "I don't have a stop sign".
I noticed recently that the city installed a flock camera pointed directly at this crosswalk, and while I'm generally opposed to this kind of surveillance, and I wish they would implement other measures to make this safer, I really would love nothing more than for drivers speeding through here and not stopping for pedestrians to get ticketed. It's unclear still whether that's actually happening (and not that it matters once you're dead), but I'm finding myself empathizing with the argument for more surveillance for the first time in my life.
I wish opponents would realize this more - that there are very legitimate use-cases for stuff like this, to be actually helpful and used to improve society.
What I wish proponents would accept is that it won't just be used for those use-cases.
It's not an easy situation, especially when you consider the myriad other issues that feed into this.
Unfortunately, as much as I empathize with your position, as long as there is so much potential for abuse, and so long as trust in public institutions continues to erode, I cannot support stuff like this.
In Shanghai there's lots of strobe lights on major intersections to presumably take clean license plate pictures of people driving against traffic after an illegal turn. Pretty plausible it significantly increases compliance.
I think you don’t have to look far to find warrantless arrests or illegal detentions under the guise of “immigration enforcement.” I also think you’d be hard pressed to point to a crime in those instances.
We should compensate those who are improperly arrested and quickly correct these violations, attempt to prevent them in the future, reprimand those involved if necessary, but absolutely keep pushing ahead at full steam on law enforcement efforts otherwise.
Hot take: some small number of unlawful arrests aren't the "neener neener neener, you can't stop illegal immigration" that folks seem to think they are.
Why? And separately, do you believe that people wrongly arrested in the US are being compensated accordingly? The justice system in the US isn’t known for being easy or cheap to navigate, and I don’t think getting a warrant before detaining people is that huge of an ask.
Because these are human systems involving humans: there will always be mistakes. Advocating for the elimination of 100% of mistakes is a typical "rules for radicals" method of backdoor legislation through increased bureaucracy.
I'm not advocating to "move fast and break things," but that it's very easy and cheap for illegal immigration maximalists to advocate that society should "move never so nothing breaks." This type of obstruction is actually a form of conservative policy, but "it's for the causes I like so it's okay."
> don’t think getting a warrant before detaining people is that huge of an ask
The law doesn't require a warrant before detaining people - and shouldn't. This doesn't even make sense: "Hold on Mr. Bank Robber - I'm not detaining you, but pretty please don't go anywhere, I gotta go get a warrant first!"
Hey, I'm all for accounting for human error. But I don't think what we've been seeing in the news is not "hold on Mr. Robber, I need a warrant" (also, you don't need a warrant for that), nor is it "oops I arrested you by accident." It's people being taken off the street because of vague determinations about their identity, the types of jobs they're working, etc. That's not probable cause, and that's certainly not human error. That's an extrajudicial decision made intentionally to have a chilling effect.
> I’ve heard this argument in the context of capital punishment, and I find it incredibly unconvincing.
This is more or less a false dichotomy.
Capital punishment is by definition irreversible, so mistakes aren't tolerable.
Being arrested is legally and reasonably far more correctable with few lasting consequences: we can absorb these mistakes in the rare events they occur.
Any law-enforcement also non-reversible. Do false positives get their years of life back? No. And there is far less scrutiny on that (see DA deal and all that).
Capital punishment just takes all of them instead of few-to-tens of percent of a life (often the most valuable years).
Absolutely agree. Mistakes should be corrected immediately, protocol revised, and those responsible punished, if malicious acts are found. Otherwise, enforcement should be full stream ahead. Illegal immigration has hurt the US enormously and it's time that we enforce our laws.
I just bought my first medium format camera recently. I know others have mentioned Lomography's beautiful new 35mm point-and-shoot, and I so wish for a 6x7 rangefinder that's cheap and attainable, easy to calibrate and repair, and portable. This sort of project is exciting to me, but man would I kill for a fully-featured medium-format camera with good support. The Mamiya 6 and 7 are both such incredible cameras, but they're so coveted and so boutique to repair that investing in one feels like not worth the commitment.
For context, the camera I got is a Mamiya RZ67. It's obviously also not straightforward to repair, and it's a beast in size, but I love that it's a fraction of the cost, modular, and readily available.
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