>The license plate, combined with cross border surveillance data providers, is enabling dragnet surveillance and enforcement of unconscionable law. [snip] Stop trying to play down how tech is enabling authoritarianism.
Yes, that's the whole point of tech used by law enforcement: to enable the enforcement of law. If we don't like the law (and I don't), we should change it!
But focusing on the ALPR here is just silly, as a quick glance of this partial list of other technologies used by law enforcement officers in the course of enforcing the law will show:
* cars
* guns
* phones
* handcuffs
* computers
* the internet
* notebook and pen
All of these can be used to "enable authoritarianism", and indeed, any authoritarian regime would be hard pressed to run without them. Some of them are more important than others, and ALPRs are definitely a major improvement in the "who is going where" part of law enforcement -- but the problem is the bad law, not the enforcement thereof.
Your argument reduces to "some laws are bad, so we should have weak enforcement mechanisms, because otherwise people will be unable to evade prosecution for breaking bad laws, and that is bad, because the laws are bad and therefore those who break them should not be subject to prosecution." This is not as helpful a move as it might seem, since it just sends us back to the original question, which is "ok, what laws should we have?"
For better or worse, we have a setup in which we have one branch charged with answering that question, and another charged with enforcing whatever laws we happen to have. Trying to undermine one branch in order to compensate for the stupidity of another is unlikely to help.
Many HN readers with an interest in HFT will find the Sniper in Mahwah blog excellent reading. No longer publishing since 2019 as far as I can tell, but it was great while it lasted:
I don't begin to understand why the bank should have to "justify" its decision to replace workers with AI in the first place. Maybe it works better? Maybe it's worse? Who cares? Shareholders bear the risk of getting it wrong, and can fire management if they think they aren't doing a good job of getting it right.
If the humans are in fact more expensive than the chatbots, it's not like the shareholders just say "oh, ok, I guess we'll just take lower compensation for slightly more risk". Instead, they'll pressure management to pass the higher cost on to the customer.
If you want to "protect workers" by making sure they get paid x amount regardless of whether they're the most efficient way to achieve y goal, why not just do that through taxes? You're basically taxing bank shareholders and subsidizing employees, but with a lot of extra steps. Plus, the employees have to actually show up to work every day, which I understand can be kind of a drag.
> A union carpenter with one year of on the job training will run circles around a veteran carpenter from the south with 15-20 years of experience who never had access to such training.
Can you elaborate on this point? What is it about the union that makes their on the job training so effective? Veteran carpenters with 15-20 yrs of exp have, in general, a very strong skill set -- what is the union doing that makes people catch up so fast? And if that's true, why do more people not defect from the union?
Let’s assume good faith all round. One poster rightly highlights the overwhelmingly positive track record. Another points out the negatives went a little beyond an “oopsie”.
Yeah just being respectful to those 14 astronauts who died. They are worth mentioning. Nasa had major setbacks - not an "oopsie". Didn't mean to hijack the thread. Well done Voyager team.
I think this is an unfair characterization of the comment. Nobody is dismissing the shuttle crews. The “oopsie” was in reference to the Mars Climate Orbiter mishap that did not involve loss of human life.
Spinnaker might be great - I don't know them - but if you're in the market for sailing lessons in SF Bay I can highly, highly recommend Club Nautique out of Alameda[1].
The quality of instruction is very high, with a focus on safety and building a strong foundation of knowledge. Especially if you ever might want to charter in remote locations or sail across oceans, it's really an excellent foundation.
That letter from his wife, Naomi, contains a link to her website[1], which is itself fascinating. Its About page contains the following, which made me think her particular brand of value-add in the world is of the kind that will survive:
> I fill-in the details of the couple in each Ketubah by hand, with ink and pen, as Jewish scribes have done for thousands of years. Nowadays, most Ketubah artists use fonts and fill-in the texts by computer rather than by hand, because many have not studied calligraphy, an art which takes much time and practice to master. I, personally, like writing the details by hand, though it is not easy work, because it is traditional, and because it connects me in a personal way with my clients and my prints.
Not in principle, but it's by no means a small feat.
Raptor 3 is supposed to be way more heat-stressed than the RS-25 and hasn't reached the design pressure yet. Promising rapid reuse at this stage of development is very ambitious.
They haven't reached anywhere near the turnaround with the much less stressed Falcon's Merlin engines.
Rapid reuse of the Starship itself is even more ambitious.
Yes, that's the whole point of tech used by law enforcement: to enable the enforcement of law. If we don't like the law (and I don't), we should change it!
But focusing on the ALPR here is just silly, as a quick glance of this partial list of other technologies used by law enforcement officers in the course of enforcing the law will show: * cars * guns * phones * handcuffs * computers * the internet * notebook and pen
All of these can be used to "enable authoritarianism", and indeed, any authoritarian regime would be hard pressed to run without them. Some of them are more important than others, and ALPRs are definitely a major improvement in the "who is going where" part of law enforcement -- but the problem is the bad law, not the enforcement thereof.
Your argument reduces to "some laws are bad, so we should have weak enforcement mechanisms, because otherwise people will be unable to evade prosecution for breaking bad laws, and that is bad, because the laws are bad and therefore those who break them should not be subject to prosecution." This is not as helpful a move as it might seem, since it just sends us back to the original question, which is "ok, what laws should we have?"
For better or worse, we have a setup in which we have one branch charged with answering that question, and another charged with enforcing whatever laws we happen to have. Trying to undermine one branch in order to compensate for the stupidity of another is unlikely to help.
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