If you think this is bad, have you noticed fast food? It's engineered to be addictive, the cause of obesity and diabetes epidemics, and they're allowed to advertise everywhere.
What is it about gambling that people find bad while other advertising for harmful stuff gets a free pass?
the outsize harms of gambling, financial ruin that is highly individualized, highly destructive, and particularly devastating. there are obviously significant public health costs from fast food, but its destruction does not present the same way.
>And if you’re dead set against Apple devices, you should check out the web version of Hacktivate – it’s not as powerful or as fun, but it’s entirely web-based and free!)
Here in the Netherlands, the government gave them away for free
They're also illegal because you're not allowed to film public spaces without a good reason (it's up to the judge and case law to decide, e.g. if there has been arson in the area recently then it's reasonable to monitor your car that's parked at the kerb, for example). Nobody has yet gotten in trouble to my knowledge
That the government gave them out has me wondering, do they make any kind of distinction between “government does it” versus “you doing it,” i.e. is the government claiming to be monitoring and not you?
In America we have this concept that a police must have a real reason to pull over your car. Except they can just setup an arbitrary checkpoint and pull every driver over and this is magically different and acceptable to do, no violations of rights at all.
I think cops here can pull anyone over any time for a check of driver's license and car papers, also outside of a checkpoint. To look in your trunk or do other actions, they need suspicion though, but that's extremely easily obtained ("I smelled weed" is unfalsifiable as a subjective opinion). They also have discretion: they can see your license expired last week and send you on your merry way with a warning afaik (bad crimes is where they have to act, like conspiracy to murder as an obvious example). Of course, this is most likely with a good excuse (if you have your route navigation device already set to the office where you can renew your licence, say). It goes too far to say that we like cops here (especially people with any amount of pigment are always (among) the chosen ones in random checks afaik), but police are portrayed a positive force that's there to make things better in general and that's I guess why we trust them to be reasonable and use their best judgment to find a solution when each situation is different. Some parties (that usually also happen to be racist) would love to tear this down with more shows of force by police, and harsher and minimum punishments that judges (the third "independent" govt branch) then can't override anymore per case. This is scientifically proven to be not just ineffective but actually countereffective, but who needs science when you can have rhetoric? With them being the biggest two parties now, with the next one the polar opposite, it's looking bleak for justice in the Netherlands' near future. Forget climate, I'm not even sure how to fight for the good things we already had :( Idk to what extent you found this interesting but I thought it could be an interesting window into how things are handled and going in our tiny corner of the world :)
As for the actual question (finally replying to your first paragraph now): sorta. GDPR has exceptions for law enforcement. Pretty broad ones for actual enforcement, iirc much less so for e.g. a statistics bureau or random other government services. If the municipality wants to put up a camera in the busiest places, I think they can use the same argumentation as a private person about their need being greater than people's privacy there, and I'd imagine a judge or privacy agency are more likely to accept it because it's less likely to be abused (the people monitoring the cameras are bound by rules that the organisation makes, and not personally involved) and that changes the up-/downsides analysis. You, the govt, and businesses always need to hang a sign, also on private property (to avoid someone spies on housemates or guests), afaik a judge needs to stamp when a camera needs to be placed secretly somewhere for a defined duration and purpose
So like it just came with the houses as they were built? If that's the case I wonder what kind of deal Ring make with the builders of new neighborhoods.
Yes, they were new build. They used it as part of the marketing too, calling them “smart homes”. There’s various other ring bits like motion detector and window/door sensors, alarm, etc. and some non-Amazon stuff like smart water meter, garage door opener.
They had some kind of deal with Amazon surely because it came with some amount of time free.
Agreed. Ring has a proven track record of giving up whatever video law enforcement wants, regardless of your choice or privacy laws.
If it was free, I could almost understand. Nothing is free, and if it cost the customer nothing, then the customer is the product. However, people paid for Ring gear and as a thanks have their privacy violated with no notice, no info and no choice.
It always was, but the reason it was successful is because it was good at it. The last two years have been a hot mess of them cramming shit in, an attempt to be "sticky". The thoughtful approach they used to take is gone.
> One can hardly control one coding agent for correctness
Why not? I'm assuming we're not talking about "vibe coding" as it's not a serious workflow, it was suggested as a joke basically, and we're talking about working together with LLMs. Why would correctness be any harder to achieve than programming without them?
Using a coding agent can make your entire work day turn into doing nothing but code reviews. I.e. the least fun part: constant review of a junior dev that's on the brink of failing their probation period with random strokes of genius.
Well...
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