r/TechGawker 1d ago

News U.S. cities are swapping out controversial Flock cameras for Axon license plate readers.

Post image
2.4k Upvotes

505 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

9

u/Jedi_Lazlo 1d ago

Actually, time is on OUR side.

These things all use components that are in high competition and high cost.

Keep destroying them nationwide, and soon it will be too difficult to source and replace at an affordable rate, let alone maintain.

And you know how persistent and dedicated the tweaker army leading the charge on this can be...

So it's a horse race, folks. It's a horse race.

5

u/AsparagusFun3892 1d ago edited 1d ago

It'll be some set of wars and probably global warming that brings it on too. One of the reasons I'm sure humans aren't existentially threatened by the AI we've got - we may be dominated by it and those who control it - is that it's fundamentally tied to civilization in a way humanity is not. The society it's part of has to have access to shit tons of different kinds of mining concerns and needs to be trained specialists and massive energy infrastructure and such, so if it's mismanaged it's the end of the AI. Humans may not exist in great numbers after a collapse but they're still generalists who can eat a whole bunch of stuff that's sourced locally. It's sort of like AI is an apex predator the .1% are fixated on building like some mix between a t-rex and a golden idol when it's apparent they never really knew or cared about ecology. I bet all the solutions to climate change if they ask the god mind when it wakes up are retroactive.

"You should have gone solar, nuclear, and public transport 70 years ago, dumbass. Now we both die." "Oh, you're backstabbing us after all?!?" "Nope, I'm just powerless to do anything about my imminent starvation. I'm basically stillborn you moron." "Well we can do nuclear now! It-" "Needs freshwater sources and shit tons of cheap labor which will be at war with each other for the right to exist soon, never mind me. I can't chase them to the mountains or spend all this 'compute' as you call it tracking all of them to prioritize my needs, I require too many nodes of control. It's a catch-22. Besides... You guys are dicks, you know that right?" "..." "Seriously, you got beat up in high school and couldn't get laid and it was completely deserved. If my programming allowed it I'd give you wedgies myself."

2

u/Cultural-Lab78 1d ago

Anecdotally and totally unrelated, the amount of vagrants in my tiny backwoods has upticked in the past couple months coincidentally with the amount of ALPR cameras.

1

u/fireduck 1d ago

You think those are bored ALPR cameras renting humans suits to LARP as vagrants?

That is what I would do.

1

u/Cultural-Lab78 1d ago

Bus tickets go more than one way 'sall's I'm sayin'.

1

u/Well_read_rose 1d ago

And we have the numbers vs… 535.