Jim: The fundamental question is not technical, it is moral: Do Americans have a right to step outside without being subjected to obscene sci-fi surveillance? Flock is not the only offender. There are also: * Traffic cameras * ALPRs (automated license plate readers) * Store surveillance cameras * Doorbell cameras * BWCs (police body cameras) * Innumerable data vendors that trade in your personal information * Etc. and so forth, virtually without end If Americans have no right to privacy, then there is no...
Isegoria: Flock highlights how many missing persons they help find (10,000 last year) and how many stolen vehicles, but news stories tend to mention the kinds of crimes most of us think of: vehicle theft (~389), shootings (~194), theft/larceny (~160), homicide (~149), robbery (~129), hit-and-run (~105), assault (~105), and burglary (~102).
Patrick Henry: “700K crimes each year” Which crimes? Where? Running red lights? Murder? Rape? Illegal border crossing? Fentanyl sales? How many accused by photo were found not guilty? What others uses of data captured by Flock cameras are there? What revenue was obtained? When the consent of Americans to be tracked by commercial entities while going about their lawful business given?
Jim: I take your corrections. Someone should solve food at some point. Who is working on this?
Isegoria: Apparently his Grimmer than Hell collection includes the Lacey stories.
Szopen: Reminds me of the story of Dr. Witaszek who during WW2 tried to use typhus on Nazis. He was captured, tortured and executed. Children were sent to German families in order to be Germanized (recovered by red cross fortunately) and wife was sent to Auschwitz.
Bruce: David Drake’s Lacey and His Friends assumes the output will go to oligarchs.
Felix: The Transparent Society by David Brin, if I recall, assumes there will always be Flockish cameras and the like. So, make their output public. Side note: Amazon’s “Customers also bought or read” for this book is quite the interesting reading list.
McChuck: Being seen in public is fine. But what Flock camera coverage does is effectively stalking.
Isegoria: I haven’t read In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man: A Memoir. Does the father come back to die under the son’s care?
Michael Lynch: Actually Junod did have that father and wrote a book about it.
Phileas Frogg: He combined gentle and meek kindness with implacable strength. A consummate Christian gentleman, and a better man than I.
Szopen: I was too young to ever read them, and in fact I only learned about them after the fall of Communism. I was only 13 when the first semi-free elections were held. I mostly remember hearing old jokes with my parents laughing and explaining why it was funny — and then slowly they stopped laughing.
Bruce: Szopen, is that what happened to Krokodil and Szpilki? Or were they too establishment?
Szopen: In Poland, a similar phenomenon appeared with respect to comedy: the quality of comedy shows fell in the first few years, because previously a lot of comedy was based on innuendos and clever allusions, hinting on something which people supposed not to know or were not supposed to think or say. Once those things could be said in the open, comedians kept depending on old tricks and it was just not fun anymore.
Gaikokumaniakku: When East Asians ask me whence come my antiquated notions of the USA, I read selections from the first Little House book to them. The dear, sweet, sympathetic little girl hopes that her father will bring back a dead bear, because she loves to eat bear meat.
Isegoria: No, xanthan gum isn’t anti-microbial. Natamycin is an anti-fungal commonly used in products such as cream cheeses, cottage cheese, sour cream, yogurt, shredded cheeses, cheese slices, and packaged salad mixes. Nisin is a polycyclic antibacterial peptide produced by the bacterium Lactococcus lactis that is used in processed cheese, meats, beverages, etc. during production to extend shelf life by suppressing Gram-positive spoilage and pathogenic bacteria.
Jim: Isn’t xanthan gum used as an antibiotic agent, especially in dairy products, or am I thinking of something else?
Jim: What actually mattered was not the profession of the user, but their expertise. The more domain experience someone had, the more successful they were in using Claude Code in that domain. And, even more interestingly, the more useful output they got from Claude from each prompt. This is because each session begins at the center of the manifold, and human expertise is required to push it further and further into distant regions. The more expertise you have, the more you can push the session in a...