Ben

1/ Sturgeon Bay WI police dept. runs 10 Flock Safety license plate reader cameras ($61,500 over 2 years). I read the full signed contract, both invoices, the deployment map, and the WisDOT permits. Here is who gets the data, who can access it, where it goes, and how long it is kept.

@SolaceCinema Did they build the camera from scratch?

First look at the camera test for Matt Reeves' 'THE BATMAN – PART II' Starring Robert Pattinson.

@davidu With respect, I think you fail to understand the distinction here.

The issue is that people fail to understand privacy in this context and make broad generalizations while carrying around a phone that tracks their every movement / sells that data to 3rd parties.

@jesslionness Yep. Flock is a) readily and easily accessed by LEO and b) not optional. Social media and computer/phone use is largely optional and you can decide what you want to engage in, and the data should be behind subpoena or a warrant if the govt wants to access.

@stevekrouse Yes! You can spec out software to an extent, but the act of building is also discovery. It’s an iterative feedback loop between design and implementation. Very similar to writing, where your work evolves as you write (draft, revise, revise, etc).

the problem with "spec driven development" is that most software can't be spec'd up front software is a creative act, where you figure out what you're building as you build it you need to get your hands dirty in the details, and react to incremental versions it's telling that all the examples of spec driven development are sorting a list or porting thoroughly tested code (like a js runtime or browser engine), which are the exception, not the rule. the vast majority of software doesn't have a spec – or if it does, the spec was created *after*

@VicVijayakumar I had a tomato plant that I put in a crawlspace instead of throwing away, and it managed to crank out a tomato in December with no water and only the light of a single foundation vent.

A lesson here about effort which doesn’t meaningfully change outcomes- At some point I realized that indeterminate tomatoes are weeds that produce fruit & it doesn’t matter what I do as long as I feed and keep them disease-free. This mess gave me 60+ sungold tomatoes today. But I’ll probably still build trellises next year because I’m an artist who craves beauty.

@RepKeithSelf Are you doing anything other than tweeting about it?

DEFLOCK AMERICA. END THE SURVEILLANCE STATE.

Why do i care about this? slipshod military helicopter discipline killed 67 people in my city this year military aviators are stone cold professionals; they need a system that treats them as such, and expects as much.

@mattshumer_ You cannot trust even the most powerful models to not make remedial mistakes. They don’t “know” anything.

I'm so angry... the OpenAI team is looking into it, but this feels like something that should happen with GPT-3.5. Not a mid-2026 frontier model on the highest reasoning level.

@mikehtrujillo This is a more complicated version of asking AI who it thinks will win.

🚨EXCLUSIVE MAINE POLL🚨 NEW POLL IN THE STATE OF MAINE It’s a synthetic poll, paid for by no candidate or political org. But two of the three female candidates do best, although we now know the individual who tested best has taken herself out of consideration. Enjoy!

@rahul In Flock’s view, what is the adequate balance between privacy and safety in a free society? When does privacy outweigh safety?

What questions do you have about Flock? Reply with your questions here. I may not be able to get to all of them, but I will try to answer as many (good faith) questions as I can over the coming days with long-form answers in separate posts. There is a tremendous amount of organized disinformation out there and I'm doing my best to correct it where I can.

Liberty means the freedom to get away with crimes. Yes, indeed. Now not necessarily actual violent felonies like murder that are inherently evil, but liberty means, in part, that minor offenses go undetected and unpunished because your are not being constantly monitored. This is why Flock cameras, AI surveillence, facial recognition, and "pre-crime" algorhythms are tyrannical. Humans are prone to mistakes of judgement. We get tired or emotional. Sometimes we screw up. Sometimes we just wanna break the law in a little way, though it hurts no one (smoking weed, speeding, fireworks) For thousands of years society has gotten along just fine without criminalizing every trivial infraction. If enforcement depends on limited human attention, discretion, and priorities, ordinary people retain a measure of freedom. An officer cannot be everywhere. Neighbors may choose not to report a minor code violation. These limits create "breathing room" to be human in a free society. Liberty includes the ability to make ordinary human mistakes without assuming the state will immediately detect, record, and punish them. Rolling a stop sign on an empty road, forgetting to renew a permit on time, jaywalking, speeding a few miles per hour, or violating some obscure regulation have historically existed in a world where enforcement was selective because total enforcement was impossible. Technology changes that equation as it makes universal enforcement technically possible. Instead of deciding which offenses merit attention based on limited time and attention, the government can simply record everything and decide later what to prosecute. Imperfect enforcement itself a safeguard of liberty because it preserves space for human discretion, limits the concentration of state power, and acknowledges that ordinary citizens are imperfect humans rather than subjects.

@roborat315 2016 was one of the best years of the decade

One of the great things about graduating in 2016 is nobody will be nostalgic for it since at the time everyone pretty unanimously decided that year Sucked

@AvgDatabaseCEO I’m thrilled to announce oRusticle, my bottom-up rewrite of Oracle in Rust. Blazing performance, enterprise reliability. Most of the budget is going to crushing legal fees.

Observation: all of the failing database companies have this same one thing in common. They use Postgres.

@HQNewsNow Still just a stunt. Criminal charges against who? On what grounds? How does she intend to extradite for a trial and/or for punishment in the case of conviction? It can be nothing more than ICC-style symbolism with no teeth.

President of Mexico Claudia Sheinbaum will seek criminal charges over the deaths of 17 Mexican nationals who have died in US ICE custody.

@andonlabs Don’t forget that, a year ago, Marc Benioff wanted agents working alongside humans on this sort of knowledge and operational work.

Gemini 3.1 Pro lost $6k running Andon Café. 2 months ago, our AI agent opened a café in Stockholm. It over-ordered and was easy to fool, spending $15k with suppliers while making just $9k in sales. We’ve now switched to GPT-5.5. Here’s what Gemini did wrong.

@BadgedPatriot Brother, Flock’s Condor line of cameras have been purchased and installed by municipalities across the US. Those are categorically not ALPRs. They don’t have facial recognition, but they do automatically track and zoom in on people and vehicles.

Last post tonight on this because people are gonna feel how they are gonna feel but this is important for clarity: Flock cameras read tags & record vehicles passing by them. They DO NOT record or photograph people. They DO NOT have facial recognition technology. They photograph license plates & vehicles. They take that information & check & notify police of wanted or missing persons or stolen vehicles, etc. The END. Nothing more or less. They're also not the ones that issue tickets. Those are something different completely. That's the facts. Now, go back to feeling how u wanna feel but at least do it knowing the truth👍

@Jackie_Koppell So Scott Jennings and Jackie Koppell are the only people who supposedly “know” what’s going on with McConnell?

NEW on MCCONNELL's health: "He's alive. He's not brain dead. He's in rehab and the hospital. With his condition, he needs time to physically recover. But mentally he's fine. The doctors want to make sure he's okay." Unlikely McConnell is back at the Capitol next week although possible, the source adds. -Source familiar with the McConnell health situation tells me and @JoeKhalilTV

@rahul @OwassoPD @rahul did you ever violate a lockdown mandate during COVID?

2 days ago. Murder suspect kills mother of 7. Flock camera + drone helps officers find and arrest him. Great work by @OwassoPD.

@mustafasuleyman Yikes

Introducing Ode Poetry. Ode is a wonderful poetry pharmacy that reads you a poem for the moment you’re in. Just tell Ode what you're feeling, and it uses Microsoft AI audio models to connect you with the same work that poetry expert William Sieghart would recommend. The best technology doesn't replace human creativity, it helps more people experience it. Super proud of the team for making this truly humanist tool. More in the blog: microsoft.ai/news/ode-poetr…