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kotaKat commented on Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City   cnbc.com/2025/08/22/waymo... · Posted by u/achristmascarl
ilamont · a day ago
Traffic enforcement, which used to correct some bad driving, has basically evaporated in many parts of the U.S. This has been a long-term trend.

A friend who's a cop told me that only when their department got specific state grants would they set up stings of drivers driving in a pedestrian walkway while someone was crossing the street. Here's an example of one such grant program, which is actually funded by the federal government: https://www.mass.gov/doc/ffy26-municipal-road-safety-grant-a...

Crosswalk Decoy Operations: These operations may involve a plainclothes officer acting as a civilian pedestrian and a uniformed officer making stops OR involve a uniformed officer serving as a spotter to observe and relay violations to an officer making stops. ... All Pedestrian and Bicyclist enforcement must be conducted during overtime shifts, meaning grant-funded activity occurs during hours over and above any regular full-time/part-time schedule.

At other times, he said he would only pull someone over if they were doing something batshit crazy and they happened to be behind the vehicle where it was easy to pull them over. Minor stuff and speeding they would rarely ticket.

The U.S. and other countries need to use automated methods of detecting and applying penalties. Some busy intersections have cameras for this, but it seems to be very limited, maybe because of cost.

Years ago New York used to calculate if you were speeding the NY State Thruway based on the time between toll booths. They cancelled this program for some reason.

Although more recently, the New York State Police have speed cameras set up in a few highway work zones, which is effective (double fines applicable, see https://wnyt.com/top-stories/where-are-automated-speed-camer...) but it still requires a person driving a car to set up the gear.

kotaKat · a day ago
> Years ago New York used to calculate if you were speeding the NY State Thruway based on the time between toll booths. They cancelled this program for some reason.

Did they? The only thing I knew they nailed people for was speeding through the EZPass lanes too fast.

kotaKat commented on US to review all 55M visas to check if holders broke rules   bbc.com/news/articles/cvg... · Posted by u/vinni2
paxys · 2 days ago
Every single person on the planet has broken some rule or another. If they want to kick all visa holders out they might as well do it without all the pretense (and save a bunch of money in the process).
kotaKat · 2 days ago
Three felonies a day. — Harvey A. Silverglate
kotaKat commented on To Download Adult Mods on Nexus, You Need to Show ID   thegamer.com/nexus-mods-u... · Posted by u/throw7
kotaKat · 3 days ago
I don’t want to even have to sign up for an account to download mods at NexusMods. Why add even more goddamn hoops?
kotaKat commented on Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts   petapixel.com/2025/08/20/... · Posted by u/mikece
legitster · 4 days ago
My understanding of these systems is that the green box just detects a face to a) make it easier to scan hours of footage later looking for faces b) add a subtle intimidation factor against crime.

Is a picture of a face count as "biometric" information? I strongly doubt it and suspect this case will be thrown out.

kotaKat · 3 days ago
It’s “face detection blocking” built into the camera/display. Otherwise, the video footage is just straight sent as ONVIF to the main DVR for whatever processing is done there (which could be a lot more nefarious).

Wren Solutions / Costar seem to be the main vendors of these “public view monitors” — such as the PVM10-B-2086.

https://6473609.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6473609...

“Face Detection Boxes (Neon Green, Front and Side Detection)”

kotaKat commented on Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts   petapixel.com/2025/08/20/... · Posted by u/mikece
seany · 3 days ago
When they were first rolled out you had to weigh everything or get a person to come over _per item_ ... It was total Insanity.
kotaKat · 3 days ago
That was the old NCR Fastlane implementation, done wrong. They left the item security feature enabled and left the bag scales turned on. This also happened at IKEA US (which lead to them being pulled out for a long while).

A lot of retailers have dumped NCR and gone in-house for their self checkout software packages now and made it so much better. Home Depot took their custom point-of-sale and built their own self checkout frontend on top of it to allow all checkout lanes to “convert” to self checkout.

Target also did the same, dumping NCR’s software and rolling in-house software on top of the hardware to make it Not Suck.

kotaKat commented on Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts   petapixel.com/2025/08/20/... · Posted by u/mikece
pilingual · 3 days ago
Don't people dodge these cameras?

When I used a credit card at home depot self checkout I was asked if I wanted to have the receipt sent to a specific email address I entered previously online. Creepy. So I started using cash only.

Last year I went to get some low voltage wire. I walked for several aisles in both directions to find someone to open the cage. Not a soul. So I reached behind the cage and pulled it out, went to self checkout, began paying with cash. The machine said it couldn't issue change and to see an associate. Seemed odd as it was early in the day. Associate casually went to another register and got me change. When I went to my car (parked far away of course) there was a police car hanging out right next to it. Nothing further happened, but all too coincidental.

I discovered a smaller local hardware store and go there. The employees constantly ask you if you need help which is the complete opposite of home depot.

Under no circumstance will I shop at Home Depot again.

(And, today I drove by that HD and noticed they installed multiple ALPR.)

kotaKat · 3 days ago
> When I used a credit card at home depot self checkout I was asked if I wanted to have the receipt sent to a specific email address I entered previously online. Creepy. So I started using cash only.

A lot of retailers do that now. They match first 6/last 4 in store against your online account to match receipts up. Walmart is a big one now with that implemented across their self-checkouts (and eventually pushed onto the registers with their new software/hardware upgrade push).

> The machine said it couldn't issue change and to see an associate. Seemed odd as it was early in the day.

Slightly makes sense if they haven’t loaded every machine up with a full cash load. Plus some lanes might “accidentally” be turned on without any cash in them and not put into a “cards only” state.

kotaKat commented on T-Mobile claimed selling location data without consent is legal–judges disagree   arstechnica.com/tech-poli... · Posted by u/Bender
echelon_musk · 5 days ago
For a long time I've wanted something like Remote Desktop for my phone.

With the idea being that I use a second phone to connect to my main phone over the internet.

This lets the phone number you actually have associated with you stay in the same fixed geographical location.

E.g. all calls are initiated by the primary phone and tunnelled over the internet to the disposable phone.

kotaKat · 5 days ago
Could just set up a phone farm like the Chinese run. They've got fun little adapters and boxes to get full "remote" control of a phone. Could rig one up for your own application, or maybe a pseudo-phone-RDP setup.

https://ebay.us/ynkSLq

kotaKat commented on T-Mobile claimed selling location data without consent is legal–judges disagree   arstechnica.com/tech-poli... · Posted by u/Bender
chii · 5 days ago
> during sensitive travel.

if your location data is continuous, but happens to "switch off" when you're doing something sensitive, then it's like a blaring alarm that this is the period of time that is "sus". It gives any sort of LEA/feds a time period to investigate, and might even be the evidence they need for a search warrant.

Therefore, you should not just hide your signal only when you are doing sensitive things. You should periodically hide it going to groceries, going to the shops etc. You might want to do it regularly, as part of your daily life. Camouflage only works if it cannot be used to tell apart your activities.

kotaKat · 5 days ago
Case in point... protest tracking, Brian Kohberger, hell, a local case used location data as an additional smoking gun on a murder, even getting past GPS "accuracy" barriers and claims to get a conviction.
kotaKat commented on Microsoft's latest Windows 11 24H2 update breaks SSDs/HDDs, may corrupt data   neowin.net/news/report-mi... · Posted by u/bundie
lazide · 7 days ago
Honestly, I’ve seen a concerning behavior where the failures seem to escalate and get worse over time.

Flakey WiFi at the start? Just flat out broken now.

Weird stuff like nearly impossible to find/configure network connections? Worse over time.

It’s like whatever criteria the MS PM’s are using is prioritizing ‘engagement’ (aka how frustrated and angry someone gets at the OS) over anything else.

kotaKat · 7 days ago
> Flakey WiFi at the start? Just flat out broken now.

I'm finding it super concerning that it seems like Microsoft isn't even pushing driver updates properly nowadays. Everything just sits as an 'optional update' hidden away buried under a couple more menus, and the latest drivers are jumbled in the list, and you can't tell which driver is for which device.

And that's how I discovered my WiFi was breaking out of the box because Microsoft had newer drivers they didn't push down...

kotaKat commented on Israeli gov. official arrested in Nevada internet crimes against children sting   theguardian.com/us-news/2... · Posted by u/NomDePlum
hunglee2 · 7 days ago
Main point missing from the title - said government official was then released for unspecified reasons and is now in Israel.
kotaKat · 7 days ago
Have to wonder why he was even allowed to flee the country in the first place. They didn’t gank his passport?

He ain’t coming back now.

u/kotaKat

KarmaCake day4573January 9, 2020
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