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chaps

5,452 karma · joined November 14, 2019

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chaps··on Flock-Powered Police Chiefs Stalking Women Shows Why Warrants Are Needed
With a search warrant, I can submit FOIA requests or go to the courthouse.

With flock searches, I (usually) can't because Illinois law exempts ALPR records. Here's the most egregious example I've seen: https://www.muckrock.com/foi/waukegan-11153/flock-safety-alp...

chaps··on TIL: You can make HTTP requests without curl using Bash /dev/TCP
Eh, looking around, I think you're thinking of Debian. They re-enabled it by-default back in 2009. So, sure, I guess. But if you're dealing with an OS that's from 2009 these days, whether /dev/tcp is enabled in bash or not isn't exactly relevant anymore. And I've seen enough broken python installs (even with stdlib) to put my faith in /dev/tcp working in bash :)
chaps··on TIL: You can make HTTP requests without curl using Bash /dev/TCP
Once had a coworker tell me to never to use this because "you never know when the customer doesn't have bash installed; use python instead" even though our contract required that the customer had bash. I'm still laughing at that.
chaps··on Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases
An important thing you should recognize: the judicial system is painfully nontransparent in such a way that even figuring this sort of thing takes an extensive amount of time and is often even impossible. I've personally gone down a similar route (did some journalism for a bit) by trying to understand how shotspotter is used in prosecution, many of which resulted in false arrests and many, many years of life lost across all the people arrested falsely from it.

If you would like to begin trying to answer these, I recommend starting with submitting some FOIAs. Considering your stance seems to be that you won't believe what others are telling you -- I promise you that you'll be surprised.

chaps··on Doing something that’s never been done before (2025)
Throwing yourself at something that's never been done is fun.

But know what's really fun? Taking something that's been done before, has been forgotten about, and can be iterated on with your own spirit. There's so much exploration to be done.

chaps··on Massachusetts bans sale of precise location data in new privacy rights bill
Are you asking for articles that show how connected car data is being sold left and right?
chaps··on Making peace with your unlived dreams (2023)
Never let your memes be dreams nor your dreams be memes.
chaps··on SQLite is all you need for durable workflows
The moment my JSON has any sort of depth and I need to write a parser for it and potentially account for unspecified behavior. JSON's nice when it's nice, but it's terrible when it's terrible. It's 100x easier to write SQL than writing jq and... dear god if I have to use grep -A or -B, I'm doing something wrong. Constraints are actually a good thing!

The underlying database isn't the most important thing. Just use SQL. Its namespacing (eg, through CTEs) is good and you're more likely to have colleagues who know SQL compared to jq.

chaps··on Legislation Killed Would Have Effectively Blocked Police LPR, Including Flock
For folks wanting to answer this question, please ask yourself:

Which laws?

Where were the cameras installed?

Are the fines disproportionate?

Are subpoenas necessary to access footage/data? If so/not, who's accessed it?

Are there ways to FOIA the data to answer these questions?

chaps··on The worst job interview I ever had
Sure, but there are some jobs that are so bad that this advice readily applies to. The sort of job that takes you away from your life, family and friends in a way not entirely unlike poverty does. It's good to recognize whether working somewhere will turn into this because it's... hell... working at those places.
chaps··on Shunning AI is the human choice
Bows and arrows are still widely used for hunting all over the world. I was able do freelance work on a relatively low income because of access to ~150lbs of deer meat that came from multiple bow-hunted deer.
chaps··on The FBI Wants to Buy Nationwide Access to License Plate Readers
Presumably it's a system that can be viewed from a phone or from dispatch remotely right? All they'd have to do is share the credentials and that's that.
chaps··on Arch Linux Now Has a Bit-for-Bit Reproducible Docker Image
A weird tradeoff but an increasingly important tradeoff to keep in mind nonetheless. Like I said, updating immediately isn't a perfect answer. But neither is waiting. I hope you're having this discussion, at least.
chaps··on SDL Now Supports DOS
Worked at an exchange in 2007/2008 and... we had systems still running from the 80s. Mostly tape audit stuff.
chaps··on SDL Now Supports DOS
That honestly sounds amazing. Imagine booting into something like a grub menu that's just a list of classic games.
chaps··on Arch Linux Now Has a Bit-for-Bit Reproducible Docker Image
No, this is not always the case. Regulated industries pin their package versions and store those versions for pulling.
chaps··on Arch Linux Now Has a Bit-for-Bit Reproducible Docker Image
Friend, considering the supply chain attacks going on these days, automatically updating everything, immediately, probably isn't the perfect move either.
chaps··on Arch Linux Now Has a Bit-for-Bit Reproducible Docker Image
Your question feels insane to me for production environments. Why aren't you doing a version cutoff of your packages and either pulling them from some network/local cache or baking them into your images?
chaps··on Windows Server 2025 Runs Better on ARM
Sure, but you're just shifting that cost elsewhere. Not defending the no-code services (they're extremely predatory), just that it's not as simple as cost-vs-no-cost.
chaps··on Windows Server 2025 Runs Better on ARM
These days I think airtable and other "no code" systems fit this bill well.
chaps··on Windows Server 2025 Runs Better on ARM
On the flip side, every single MSSQL instance that I've encountered has been legacy. For at least five years.
chaps··on US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology
Honestly I'm not sure. I think I include them under the same umbrella because how often they work together, plus all the systems integration that they have together.
chaps··on I wrote to Flock's privacy contact to opt out of their domestic spying program
Someone once dropped some fireworks not too far from me at 3am a few years back. They were loud and, yeah, cops were called. A few minutes later about five cars drive past me about 30mph over the limit. Not sure how they didn't see me or try to see me. But I know they didn't catch the BRIGHT orange and lifted care.

Me being me, I submitted a FOIA request for the dashcam footage of the five cop cars and the dispatch logs.

Instead of pulling over the easily identifiable car, they pulled over some random guy. They were behind him the whole time but five cop cars pulled behind him thinking that he fired a gun a few minutes back.

He was let go without a citation, but the official reason, despite being paired with the dispatch for the firecracker, was a broken headlamp.

chaps··on The future of everything is lies, I guess: Work
Yikes. Have a good one.
chaps··on The future of everything is lies, I guess: Work
Sigh.

Look friend, I really hope you can realize how you sound in your post. You're extraordinarily confidently saying that you refactored some ambiguous endpoints in 30 minutes. Whenever I see someone act that confidently towards refactoring, thousands alarms go off in my head. I hope you see how it sounds to others. Like, at least spend longer than a lunch break on it with just a tad more diligence. Or hell, maybe even consider LIEing about how much time you spent on it. But my point is that your shortcuts will burn you. If you want to go down that path, I'm happy to be a witness to eventual schadenfreude.

My issue isn't with the fact that you used AI. My issue is with how confident you are that it worked well and exactly to spec. I'm very well aware of what these systems can do. Hell, I've been able to get postgres to boot inside linux inside postgres inside linux inside postgres recently with these tools. But I'm also acutely aware of the aggressive modes that these systems can break in.

So again, which company should we all avoid so that we can avoid your, specifically your, refactoring?

chaps··on The future of everything is lies, I guess: Work
It's because you're deflecting. :)
chaps··on The future of everything is lies, I guess: Work
I mean, I'm always down for learning something new. But I hope what I learn includes the name of the company I'd like to avoid.
chaps··on The future of everything is lies, I guess: Work
Which company do you work at so we can avoid your migrated endpoints?
chaps··on The Case Against Gameplay Loops (2024)
I play roguelikes tons and agree with the article's analysis.

A lot of these games feel like the "game loop" only exists as a project management tool to refine the game's release rather than to refine enjoyment. It's made so much worse with games that are in early development where EA feels like just a refinement of the loop rather than refinement of enjoyment .

It's hard to explain, but it feels like a symptom of loop focus over gameplay is that the game peaks suddenly and hard but expects you to keep going.

A game that illustrates how to break past that point is noita -- there's definitely a gameplay loop.. but it's made in a way where the loop is eventually recognizable as not actually the full game. It then goes from being a gameplay loop to a stream of play that doesn't need to loop on itself.

Really, I wish game devs, both indie and otherwise, would try to break out of these loops more readily.

chaps··on US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology
How exactly does this provide more surveillance of the police themselves? I've done about ten FOIA lawsuits against police departments and it's laughable to think that they won't just lock footage away and exempt it from the public's eyes. Probably through a trade secret exemption because private companies are involved.
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