Absolutely. There is a granularity of data and ability to process it today that did not exist when Houston was using it, but we were aware then of the serious questions of privacy regarding the ethics of reading devices without permission that all of us were grappling with. The conclusion was that it was ethical to use because tools didn't exist to de-anonymize that data even if someone wanted to. There was no way to match a bluetooth MAC address to anything.

That was a different time though. Privacy got nuked from orbit.

Not the intersection itself exactly, but city gear along the way. Bluetooth was used for comms for the first field wireless meter reads because all field communication was shoddy back then. I know it sounds stupid now but it was amazing vs the old way of each meter having to be actually physically read. There were employees whose whole job was to drive a city truck around a specific route to collect data, which was seen as a huge productivity upgrade from getting out at each place and looking at the meter. As much gear as possible was deployed with bluetooth connectivity so they could do drive by "remote" reads. Houston standardized on it for awhile before more modern techniques for reads came out. Water meters, sensors for public works water main, well levels for drains under overpasses, stuff like that all over the city. City gear is absolutely everywhere, we're all just conditioned to ignore it. You couldn't write to the device from the field, but if you polled it it would answer with a reading for whatever it was measuring.

At some point they realized some people left their bluetooth on on their phones (which wasn't the case when the initial deployment happened, bluetooth was seen by most as a battery sucking crap technology) and by comparing the bluetooth ping logs at two points they could approximate driving speeds to a decently accurate degree. You couldn't use the data to pinpoint a specific user really and you couldn't pinpoint speed exactly so it was no use to law enforcement, but it was fabulous data to model traffic on.

I worked for the city government in Houston, TX for a bunch of years. I shared an automation lab with the traffic division (just a really big room with public works gear on one side and traffic gear on the other). We would test programming changes on hardware in there before field deployment. I got to know them pretty well and got to mess with their stuff. It was interesting because of how differently they approached the question of automation than I did. Whereas my programs and gear were more focused on local control with manual override for local operators, their gear was hyperfocused on timing across controllers in a region, backup controller switching, and file verification. The process they had to go thru to change timing was exhausting and I'd read stories in media about citizens being pissed about traffic lights not being right while their engineers had been going thru the struggle to validate timings at that exact location for weeks and months. They were an unloved bunch but that's what you gotta do when a single timing or programming error kills people.

Anyway.

Houston decided to try to save its taxpayers money by doing a public/private with a red light camera company. They'd share the revenue generated and they started with (I think it was 6?) intersections that were the worst for red light running results in serious injury and property damage. One was near my house and I was really happy about it because if you know Houston, 610 south loop feeder at Stella Link is terrifying.

The citizen response was ferocious. People (including city workers and cops) were just straight up spouting bullshit about the cameras and the traffic department, the most common being that traffic lowered the time of the yellow in order to trap people into more tickets because the real purpose of the cameras was revenue generation. Even my close family were convinced traffic fucked with the yellows.

So I roll over to their side of the lab to ask traffic and you could tell they were super pissed off about it. They brought out all programming change documentation to that signal going back a decade. Maintenance records for the gear. SCADA communication records. Everything. They had already put together their data to defend themselves and it was iron clad. They even dug out the bluetooth data showing the average speed had gone down approaching the red light proving that driver habits were responding to the camera, resulting in fewer accidents with less lethality when it did happen. The Stella Link "short yellow" became the most complained about light in the greater Houston metro. They told me they got more complaints on that yellow in a week than they had gotten on that light for any reason in any 12 month period.

After a big political fight, the cameras were turned off. In the seven day period after they were turned off, no complaints against the Stella Link yellow were made. It just magically stopped being a problem. And my father in law told me that I had been lied to by traffic and that no matter what I said or saw, he knows they changed the timing.

anyways, yes to red light cameras

How would you know it’s the green?

Just moved my Win10 machine to Pop OS. No issues at all. Haven’t tried Steam VR on it yet.

There’s no real art to it. It’s done the same way you grew up in a world where horrible shit had happened 20 years before you were born. You just sort of internalize it over time. Or not.

Yea having to do paperwork and keep registration docs is way better than just slapping $20 on my property taxes. Great idea fellas.

Hey siri what month is it

Jesus Christ fellas

I would feel much better about this if it was tied to a bigger housing zoning package, but it wasn’t and that makes it feel dirty.

All these kids are the exact same kids with the exact same problems as the ones I knew growing up, but the parents have more money and therefore more tools to help support their kids. The only real difference is the trauma of being broke as fuck isn't there but it's replaced with the pressure of expectations. When I was a kid if I had gotten a job as a mail delivery person, that would have been seen as a total success on my part. Life long stable job with a retirement at the end. I fucking won the game of life. For rich kids, that would be seen as an abject failure.

It's not that they don't have empathy. It's that their entire community is economically high performers. Everyone they meet in their lives fucking won the game of capitalism. The only "not wealthy' humans they run into wait on them or teach them. In their minds, how hard can it be? They know all these normal looking people and they're all rich as fuck so how hard can it be?

Because that's the mind fuck. Rich people aren't better than you. Some shit went their way and that's the difference. Elite earners don't work harder than janitors. And so rich kids grow up in that world and it's just normalized. It's not a lack of empathy, it's that they internalize it as "normal".

Then a middle class kid runs into them and sees them as lacking in empathy.

You're right though. It is more luxurious. They live in a world where they know the money ain't going away, but my trauma finds a way of breaking thru sometimes. My kids both know how to make beans and rice and can shop and cook for themselves for a week for under $20.

That album is killer.

Thanks for writing this. Amazing post.

Federal taxes are going to zero for the top end that have an accountant with any kind of a functioning brain. Now is the time for states to suck up that money and start building a durable, self sustaining system.

For fuck's sake guys, think big.

I’m from the south. He would be center left there. You’re totally right.

I realize I have gotten more liberal over the years but gawd damn center left can you stop dropping to your knees in worship every chance you get around these tech losers?

I upvoted your comment but man I wouldn’t even take a freebie from Oracle. Just an absolutely rotten company and Larry Ellison is one of the worst humans on the planet.

Rc Pro Am was pretty great.

This might sound better if I was stoned.

I’m 3 time zones away from my server and it hasn’t crashed yet after being gone for 3 days. I’m very proud of it.

An acquaintance helped close a deal for a stadium naming rights. It had been a multi year process, the negotiations were crazy, the company deliberated forever trying to decide if this was the best way to increase brand recognition and man that shits expensive.

So like a shit head that thinks he’s funny I started calling the stadium by its sponsor like 3 sponsors ago when I was around them. You could see the anxiety spike when I did it.

Your comment made me think of that. It’s hilarious. They would have had a fucking breakdown if they had heard someone say that out loud.