Some of the LinkedIn Responses are direct and on-point, and also hilariously/depressingly based depending on how you look at it:
EDIT: In hindsight, I think I should’ve looked into posting this in a different community… It’s closer to a silly “innovation”… soo… is this considered FUD? I also don’t support smoking or vaping, especially among kids. Original title had “privacy-violating” before the “solution”.
Big LED light outside bathroom
paper sign underneath light “vaping detected”
The amount of over enginnering that went into this is why we can’t have nice things.
If you want to record it, hook it up to a computer somewhere, detect whenever the sensor state changes and send an email to the admins…or just point a camera at it and the doorway.
Good God I hate linkedin types. Imagine thinking writing an app that literally just displays a single notification is worthy of making a whole post about. They basically wrote a Hello World app for Android TV. And I’m sure they got paid like 40k by some poor school district to do so.
… Do you think reading a sensor and then accurately determining when the sensor data meets a threshold is the same as displaying static text? Kind of an exaggeration
Vape “detectors” are the latest off-the-shelf scam product sold to well-meaning but technically clueless school administrators. They don’t work at all but they have a solid sales pitch. This tv app isn’t doing anything but forwarding a notification provided by the manufacturer of the “detection “ device.
That’s not what the post is about, it’s entirely about the android TV app. I assume they already built the functionally to generate the alarm signal (since it’s the entire raison d’etre for the company based on the name).
Right a lot of assumptions are being made here. The only thing I assume is this company built some app
I mean, I’m assuming that because that’s what he’s saying in the text.
In all likelihood calling manufacturer’s API to read the value then compare to a compile-time constant? It’s a notification hello-world merged with display-a-list hello world and manufacturer’s reading-sensor-values hello world. Yes I do think it’s borderline trivial
Congratulations you’re clearly an amazing developer if you have to talk about this so weirdly
I do not claim to be amazing, and it’s a simple fact that many basic examples/tutorials are named with hello world (and pretty easy to search for that way). A quick Google pulls up e.g. “Hello World!” of push notifications, Problems with simple “hello world” of ListView in Android
And of course I’m also explicitly using Hello World to reference the original comment
Yeah what I think is weird is that you make a bunch of assumptions about how the app is built. Experienced developers imo know that things are unexpectedly difficult all the time. Even when they are supposed to be as simple as you’re assuming here.
Absolutely I am making a bunch of assumptions. Following the tried and true Keep It Simple Stupid approach. Because there is no indication given that any more complexity is required, and keeping complexity to a minimum is key to efficient development. If there was anything actually technically impressive (or at least technically impressive sounding) about what they did, I trust they would have mentioned it.
I’m pretty sure this guy was just a project manager or similar. So yeah I am not surprised they’re not mentioning technical hurdles.
Ok but this is very simple. Everyone can set up something like this using home assistant and a few sensors connected up to it
Everyone can write software? I’m fucked then… Guess I’ll be homeless now
Satellite Hello World + Telescope Hello World ⇒ Hubble Space Telescope Hello World
I physically cannot read LinkedIn for more than 5 minutes at a time. I get seriously nauseated 🤢🤢🤢 from all the corporate talk
Deleting your Microsoft LinkedIn account is an option
It’s how recruiters find me, so unfortunately I can’t. I almost never open it, though.
Only luck I had that route was getting a free coffee & b1tcted about the industry. Networking is better than recruiters 95% of the time anyhow. Microsoft doesn’t deserve your data or attention.
I’m a senior software engineer with a pretty uncommon skill set. Recruiters are the primary way that companies hire in my industry outside of networking contacts and I get contacted frequently. The job before my current one was through a recruiter.
I very much dislike Microsoft and LinkedIn in general, but not using it all is a huge handicap that isn’t worth taking on.
i dont see how this is a violation of anyones privacy and trying to get kids to not get addicted to drugs is a pretty fucking good cause.
Assuming this is just a sensor for air quality tuned to this use case, I would probably have to agree. So long as it isn’t tracking specific students or taking photos, this is about as privacy invansize as the motion detector that opens automatic doors… or any old carbon monoxide or other detector which are used to legit protect public safety, just as preventing children from the claws of the tobacco industry.
Addicted to drugs!? We’re talking about vaping here. Don’t strain your hand clutching those pearls.
dude never heard about nicotine thats crazy.
Nicotine is a drug.
Alcohol too, btw.
Power is the best drug.
Nicotine is no better of a drug than many others you probably wouldn’t want kids taking. Just because it’s a vape doesn’t mean it’s not incredibly addictive.
Doesn’t make anyone sound like less of a square calling it a drug.
Is nicotine not a drug?
I’m not going to argue that nicotine is not technically a drug. But I still think you sound like a square in calling it one.
So, it is a drug, but it’s not right to call it one?
And? Why does that matter?
I don’t know what’s with the downvotes, you’re pretty spot on. Some people are too privacy-oriented on this sub
Lemmy generally has a pro-drugs sentiment, which is certainly unsettling.
Also, can I visit bathrooms and not get into clouds of vape smoke, pretty please?
i mean im all for letting people approach drugs as they please but, someone smoking weed once in a while with some frinds is not the same as massive corporations flooding media as specifically media for children with propaganda to get them addicted to nicotine. Being pro that isnt so much being pro drug as its being a corporate bootlicker and downright irresponsible.
Also true
Unless there will be disciplinary follow-up ( -> no reason for this design), I only see this going the way of de-facto scoreboards among kids.
Considering it only detects if someone in the bathroom is vaping and not who, disciplinary action just isn’t really possible with your typical school restroom.
The main picture says “Vape Sensor in Simon’s Desk”, so it sounds like each pupil’s desk is going to have a sensor.
That’s what I thought at first, but the person who wrote the article is named Simon, and based on the context given in the article I’m assuming that was a test unit he had on his desk, but the planned implementation is in bathrooms.
They can send people to investigate. Also you could just have someone outside. It should be fairly obvious.
It doesn’t replace humans but it can compliment them. I’m not sure why people see this as a privacy issue. We aren’t talking about some scary mass surveillance system here
This is taking the route of individual monitoring and public shaming to prevent vaping. That doesn’t work, especially with teens.
It isn’t individual monitoring. It is an alarm in the bathroom. It can also detect smoke from a fire.
Then how is the social pressure thing meant to work?
And if there’s one kid in the bathroom or a person posted by the bathroom watching the monitor? This feels very police state, monitor and enforce not educate and encourage.
Then why publish detection events like this? If they do start following up, all it does is warn perpetrators, and allow for fast iteration of anti-detection, to say nothing of other concerns people have mentioned (tripping other people’s detectors etc.)
They can just send in security to investigate. Maybe not every time the alarm is tripped but if they start seeing often they can start making connections. They can basically plan a bust once in a while.
Wait till this crowd hears about smoke detectors.
How is this invading someone’s privacy? All it’s doing is detecting if children are smoking in a room or space at school and then putting an alert up about the detection on a screen.
They have zero right to privately smoke at school, or anywhere for that matter, smoking is illegal for children and not something to be taken lightly.
Similarly, adults have no right to privately smoke whilst in the workplace in the bathroom or other non-smoking designated areas. This is also illegal and not to be taken lightly.
I agree. These are anonymous messages. I don’t see any privacy violations.
They could set up camera’s that record who’s entering and leaving the restroom and thus violate privacy but this seems fair play to me. They’ll just vape somewhere else.
They’re not anonymous tho, the image very clearly labels who’s desk the vaping was detected at
Simon’s desk probably refers to a location, not actually the desk of Simon.
It says “Simon’s desk” which is the name of the guy making the post, which to me says he was testing the software from his desk.
When it is deployed, it would say “vaping detected in north stairwell” or whatever. They are not installing sensors on every desk.
Hm, maybe
Most likely
Those things are generally not illegal.
It’s illegal to buy/sell tobacco as/to a minor. It’s not illegal to use tobacco.
Most of the restrictions on smoking are not by law, but policy. 12 states don’t have any sort of ban on tobacco use.
Wow, you’re lame as hell
Is that what we call people who are obviously right now?
You do get that smoking and vaping are the different things right?
pretty wild you can still type with that boot in your mouth. how do you see around it? do you just touch type?
I see critical thinking is not your cup of tea. Might want to take that boot out of your ass.
How is this invading someone’s privacy?
So you think they will not use this to try to identify the vaping student?
They ought to use it that way if they aren’t. Privacy does not mean “flagrant ability to flout rules or laws”
… good?
Everyone (even kids) have a reasonable expectation of privacy, but children using drugs in school isn’t something that falls under that reasonable expectation of privacy.
Considering they are only harming themselves, no I do not care much
As others mentioned, I think schools should dedicate resources to address this situation through education, instead of paying some start up for some surveillance gadgets
Ding ding ding
They are not just harming themselves. Everyone knows how harmful secondhand smoke is.
From vaping? I think you have vaping and smoking confused
Nope, not smoke per se, but still damaging to breathe.
I think people severely underestimate how harmful it is.
Happy to read about it of you have any source to share
I know vaping is not without dangers but it is a step forward from smoking. I honestly never read anything about second hand vaping fumes
In any case, I am not in favour of vaping in schools. I just think schools should not spend money in these detector crap. They should address it with their best tool, education
Considering they are only harming themselves
Again, we’re talking about actual children. You know: people that have yet to mentally develop to the point where they can make fully informed decisions on everything and sometimes have to be “coerced” by reasonable adults into doing so.
So you didn’t read my second paragraph?
I didn’t disagree with that part. Doing what you suggested and using the “vape detectors” aren’t mutually exclusive.
Doing what you suggested and using the “vape detectors” aren’t mutually exclusive.
Well, kind of since I suggested NOT using vape detectors
How would you like this installed in your workplace? How about ankle monitors that detect if you’re jaywalking? What about if your car had a sensor that automatically informed law enforcement if you were speeding. What if your ISP would shut off anytime you watched a video with copyright without permission.
See how bullshit “if you’re doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide” is?
There’s this wild, outlandish idea that kids don’t have the maturity, experience, or impulse control to make informed and rational decisions all the time. Thus we don’t give kids the exact same rights and responsibilities we give to adults – they gradually gain them as they mature and demonstrate they can handle them.
How would you like this installed in your workplace?
Yes, because my workplace staffed entirely by people 21+ is the same thing as a school filled with literal children. Also, for some unknowable reason we don’t have issues with people vaping in the building despite having people that smoke and vape. Couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the fact none of us are teenagers.
What if [slippery slope]?
You do know that’s a fallacy, right?
So you think we should all be allowed to smoke in non-smoking places? The school already has all info on all it’s kids, what else “private” is being revealed here? If you break the rules of the establishment where you are, they’ll try to identify and ban you, because that’s how private property and bylaws work. School is no different. If you break the rules you face the consequences.
Is this logical and useful? No. Does it help kids become better and learn? No. Will it actually reduce vaping? No, it’s a leaderboard now.
But is it invading privacy? Also no. It is enforcing nonsensical draconic rules, but not revealing any information that wouldn’t be already known or demanded by the institution in that situation.
Privacy isn’t restricted to just your data on file. You’d expect some sort of privacy in bathrooms (I assume that’s where these would be installed). It can also set a precedent. Maybe they start tracking cellphone use “ensure students are paying attention”. Maybe they start tracking how often students are using the restroom, especially female students to gather data on their cycles (incredibly plausible depending on the state). Maybe they track their exact movements via school wifi. Maybe they give them laptops to spy on them at home. None of these obviously equate to one another but where does the school draw the line? Rather not have this shit in the first place.
You’d expect some sort of privacy in bathrooms
That is the whole point of this mess. The alternative is a person or camera INSIDE the bathroom at all times. The camera would be so much cheaper to deploy…but privavcy laws, rightfully, say no.
With the sensor all it does is say “smoke/vape detected”, from there an adult can check the hall cam to see who went in or just go right in to catch the kid.
I assume with the monitor, it makes it easy for a teacher sitting outside the bathroom and can see the popup (in some schools they already have them to check passes and listen for screeming)
So you think we should all be allowed to smoke in non-smoking places?
No, but I see you need to make up a point I didn’t make so you could attack that.
Lazy strawman, you must be from reddit
Oh the irony. Lol.
Yeah, we have similar sensors at my job. I work in a highly secured facility and smoke/vape detectors are installed in all the bathrooms. It makes the fire alarm go off if detected.
Vaping is not the same as smoking and can be done perfectly safely with no drugs involved at all (i.e. flavor only vapes). It’s barely different than inhaling steam.
Edit: I’m willing to admit when I’m wrong, and now think “relatively safely” is a better way of putting this. There’s a few concerns that I’m perfectly happy to live with as an adult, but I get that kids won’t have spent as much time trying to understand the risks.
Imagine defending child vaping 🤮
Lotta Juul fanboys in these comments…
It technically is a kind of steam in fact, actually. Even with drugs involved.
I think it’s literally almost the same shit that’s in fog machines, juice is PG, VG, Flavoring, and Nic, fog machines are (iirc) PG, VG, water, maybe essential oils for smell. You don’t have to use USP food grade VG/PG for the fog though.
Steam is the hot gas that is produced when water is boiled. It’s also completely see through, ie, invisible.
That is not what the vapes produce. It’s a water vapor. That’s why they’re called “vaporisers” and not “steamers”.
I don’t think there’s a need to so pedantic here. Water vapor is the visible part of steam, and for the purposes of this discussion, we’re talking about boiling liquids, so I don’t think there was any miscommunication by using the word “steam”
Ah, so you don’t understand the misunderstanding, or you’re purposefully using an illfitting word.
Vaporisers produce vapour.
VAPOUR:
Dictionary
Definitions from Oxford Languages · Learn more
noun
a substance diffused or suspended in the air, especially one normally liquid or solid.
"dense clouds of smoke and toxic vapour
Water vapor is the visible part of steam, and for the purposes of this discussion, we’re talking about boiling liquids
There’s no visible part of steam, despite colloquially people sometimes using language in a way that might make you think there is.
So why would you insist on using the wrong word after being corrected? (That’s a rhetoric question, because I already know the answer.)
I understand what you mean. Water vapour (i.e. clouds, fog, the visible part of what comes from boiling water which any normal person would call steam) vs Gaseous water (i.e. most of the atmosphere, and the non-visible part of boiling water also called steam).
Vapes work by boiling PG/VG which starts as a liquid (i.e. the juice), and generates both vapourized and gaseous PG/VG. If it was water, any normal person would consider this steam. This isn’t a chemistry or physics class.
any normal person would consider this steam. This isn’t a chemistry or physics class.
Just because you didn’t pay attention in physics in basic education doesn’t mean no-one did.
When is the last time you heard someone refer to someone’s vape productions as “steam” in real life? “Goddamn vapers steaming all over”?
Vapour and steam are different, because you don’t need 100c for water vapour. Ever heard of clouds? Mist? Fog? None of those are steam, none of those are 100 degrees Celsius, but they are all water vapour.
That’s what vaporisers produce.
I’m getting a lot of downvotes, and maybe I’m wrong about what kinds of vapes kids are using? Obviously if they’re using nicotine vapes, that’s bad and chemically addictive.
But I don’t have a problem with kids vaping the drug-free, flavored juice. It can be habit forming, but so can fidget spinners. As long as it’s not actually dangerous then I don’t see the problem.Regardless of whether there is nicotine or THC, or whatever drug of choice in the vape, studies have shown that vaping is dangerous.
Ah, finally, there’s actual studies showing actual dangers, and not just manufactured bullshit from the cases where bad regulation lead to people vaping acetate E? Can you please link me those studies so I can use link them forwards?
Ugh, that’s no good! It doesn’t say what you think it does. It shows that they are safe, not that they are harmful.
For this study the team included 30 youths aged between 21 and 30 years between 2015 and 2017. They did not have a history of traditional smoking or e-cigarettes.
^ Small sampling.
The participants were divided into two groups – one of the groups was a control group while the other was asked to use e-cigarettes at least twice a day taking 20 puffs during an hour at one time. To measure the puff count, the refills given to the users had LED screens with a puff counter. The e-cigarette refills used contained 50% propylene glycol (PG) and 50% vegetable glycerine (VG) and no nicotine or flavours. The study duration was for one month.
For all the participants, a bronchoscopy was performed at the start of the study and again five weeks after. The lung tissues, bronchi and the lung health were recorded at these sessions. The team wrote, “Inflammatory cell counts and cytokines were determined in bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluids. Genome-wide expression, microRNA, and mRNA were determined from bronchial epithelial cells.”
Results revealed that there was no significant difference in levels of inflammatory cells among the e-cigarette users and the control group.
No difference in between the control group and the vapers?
So I don’t know if you’ve mistakenly been sharing that, but it supports the opposite of what I gather is your view on the matter. I know it might not seem like that if you only read the headline, but I tend to actually read the articles and studies I link myself. You know, to avoid awkward things like this.
Not readable from EU unless I decide my privacy and data don’t matter at all, which I won’t be doing.
If you’d like to point me at some studies go ahead. The only dangerous cases I’ve heard about were black market vapes that had other contaminants in them. It’s been very hard to find reliable studies because most I’ve seen are self-reported using the entirely generic term “vaping” without any qualifiers on the kind.
The other risk is that black market cartridges have absolutely flooded the market, even getting mixed in with legitimate stock.
That’s certainly a problem. It’s one of the big reasons I think THC vapes should be both legal and regulated. In the states were it is legal, there’s strict inventory tracking every step of the way.
Admittedly it’s a lot harder to get people on board with regulating drug-free vapes, but I think it would be a good idea to have guarantees about what you’re consuming just like food.
The black market carts in question were specifically weed vapes, not nicotine vapes, which are actually more different than you may think. Not only was that not a problem with nic vapes ever, it hasn’t been a problem with homemade weed carts since that one incident (which IIRC was caused by one singular dumbass in WI or MN) either.
There still are “black market carts” for both weed and nic, but they’ve learned not to use vitamin a and are now mostly just regular ol’ knockoffs.
That said however, that’s why it’s always better to use a refillable vape with a bottle of juice over a disposable, they usually don’t counterfeit bottles opting instead for dispos, and even if they did it’s easy to make your own juice so you know what you put inside.
twice a day for just a month
It’s empirical, but I’ve been vaping steadily all day every day since I switched from my 2 pack a day newport habit around 2013ish, give or take a year. Last time I went to the doctor he said I had the healthiest lungs he’d seen in a while.
I was as surprised as you are, frankly. Mostly because of the ports in the past but I guess it’s been long enough since then to heal up my surfboard lung. I mean I did notice marked improvement in my ability to breathe about a month or two into the switch, and my ability to smell things came back shortly thereafter, and then the doc visit was years after that, so maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised but I digress. In any case 2x daily for a month is pussy numbers, gotta bump those up, try 200 times a day for 10yr and your doc will say your lungs look great if they’re anything like mine.
Well, I’m impressed they actually did test JUST the vape liquid, even though they’re still calling them e-cigs.
Quoting from the journal itself:
There were no significant differences in changes of BAL inflammatory cell counts or cytokines between baseline and follow-up, comparing the control and e-cig groups. However, in the intervention but not the control group, change in urinary PG as a marker of e-cig use and inhalation was significantly correlated with change in cell counts (cell concentrations, macrophages, and lymphocytes) and cytokines (IL8, IL13, and TNFα), although the absolute magnitude of changes was small. There were no significant changes in mRNA or miRNA gene expression. Although limited by study size and duration, this is the first experimental demonstration of an impact of e-cig use on inflammation in the human lung among never-smokers.
The way I read this, it seems like there’s a small correlation with inflammation, but there’s no measurable risk of developing lung cancer from it (they were doing cancer research after all). Personally for an adult, I feel like “inflammation” is kind of a nothingburger, just stop vaping for a while and you’ll be fine. But for kids developing habits, I can understand the concern.
Our data suggest that the flavorings used in e-juices can trigger an inflammatory response in monocytes, mediated by ROS production, providing insights into potential pulmonary toxicity and tissue damage in e-cigarette users.
Well, I guess that’s a point against flavored vapes. I really wish there were more studies, because presumably not all flavorings would have the same effect. A comparison with unflavored e-juice would have been great.
Honestly, I don’t have much of a problem with them even vaping nicotine, especially once we’re talking high school (ages 14-18.) They’re already not allowed to buy it, that’s enough. Sure, sometimes they’ll evade the law and get it, they’ll do it with white claws too, should we ban those? No, and you’d be hard pressed to find some teetotaler to say “yes” to that, but for some reason that goes right out the window when it’s not “the thing they did as kids” but “the new thing they don’t understand.”
I’d be willing to bet flavored alcohol is more damaging to a young brain, more addictive (or at least on par) with nicotine, and what’s more you can actually die from alcohol (and benzo, which the kids are getting too btw, very illegally) withdrawals, but are we banning Ciroc and Xanax and applying the flavor ban logic unilaterally or are we just singling out the vapes because the big pharma and tobacco lobbies successfully propagandized people into doing their bidding in a war against the most effective smoking cessation method on record to date?
Nicotine-free vapes still develop the oral habit in children and has been shown to be an easy entry into other vapes. Also propalene glycol really isn’t great for your lungs, and constantly sucking on a vape that uses it does negatively effect your breathing.
Oh God the gateway drug argument can fuck right off.
I dont remember them trying this hard to get me to stop smoking cigarettes in the bathroom.
I mean that’s just rude use the damn smoking section outside. (My high school had a smoking section, we’d smoke with the teachers.)
My school’s official smoking section was across the street. The unofficial ones were right underneath the outdoor cameras that couldn’t look down
Quite an expensive toy for the children. Because the boys will play around with it.
In my experience, a bazinga device like this, if it’s anywhere that’s not directly guarded at all times, will be broken in, oh, a month or less.
And girls and non binary folk.
Just make it look uncool! Cigarettes’ image went from “cool” to “I’m 12 and I want to be taken seriously by mom/oh my god why did I even tried it”. From “hip” vaping, where should it’s image go? (Besides down the drain)
How long before the students gamify it to see who can generate the most alerts?
Or use it to elicit a response somewhere as a distraction for a prank or fight.
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dude fr, classmates next/behind you picking on you? blow a hit at them as a threat, show em what’ll happen if they don’t stop haha
Schools are more like prisons nowadays
Start them early
Reeeeeeee! Fucking badges and metal detectors.
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perc alert!!!
THAT is a fucking masterpiece.
Well, seems they already had the vaping sensors implemented and they’re just announcing the notifications implementation… How hard is to just build am android app that displays a list and a popup?
Home Assistant, school gestapo edition?
A school district spends $180,000 (hyperbole, I don’t know actual numbers) of taxpayer money deploying this system between the actual hardware costs, maintenance costs to install the hardware, it costs to implement it into their network, and probably an ongoing contact with this dummy’s company. Maybe only for support but with the way things are now I’m sure they built this app to phone home to their servers (introducing a huge potential security risk over simply running it locally on the schools existing network infrastructure in a docker or something), calling it “cloud based”, and charging the district 1k/month to run the devices the district now owns and should be able to operate without the company. The company then talks about how they’ll back up records and safeguard data so you don’t have to worry about that (that it dept you pay is pointless!)
Three months after deployment it turns out the sensors can be tripped by many things not related to vaping, maybe increases in heat, mouthwash breath, etc. the false positives are due to a hardware flaw and cannot be fixed with a patch. Feel free to upgrade to sensor version 2.0, now with improved accuracy! (read: the problem still exists but isn’t as bad). Only another 40k to buy the new hardware, rip out the old hardware (which is now worthless), install the new stuff, and configure the software for everything (again, maintenance and IT costs)
9 months after deployment the company is doing poorly because their product is stupid and only a few idiots actually bought it (way to go idiot). There’s concerns because they sent a new Eula that outlines data sharing policies. They are potentially finding ways to harvest the data they agreed to safely store to try and create a new revenue stream to right their sinking ship. District counsel says fighting the Eula change will be expensive and there’s not much precedent for it, plus they state they will anonymize data before sharing so it’s not a ferpa violation, technically. It feels scummy but you can’t do anything about it. You also don’t really trust them to only sell anonymized data but you can’t prove they aren’t crossing that line so whatever, I guess
15 months after deployment they get hacked because they’ve run out of vc cash, never could get an actual profit stream going (turns out they’re spending 750,000/yr on salaries for 5 people and they’re all kitted out with sick work computers for what is basically coding a web app, but I digress). security of their servers was one of the budgetary constraints they chose to make to right the ship (but had to keep the $1800 office chairs and the 15-20k/mo rent loft they use as an office in a hcol area). The contract says this may happen and they’re not responsible unless there’s gross negligence on their part, which you can’t prove, and that they do some bare minimum reactionary shit after the fact to mitigate damage. So they’re legally blameless and now you get to notify your community their children’s data was leaked to god knows who, whoops
22 months after the fact they go out of business officially. You get a form email about the company’s journey and the difficult decision they had to make to stop fucking around on a dumb project that sucks because no dumbass vc will give them fun bucks anymore to keep playing tech bro billionaire. All the sensors stop working because they require a connection to the servers, which they shut off immediately without a sunset period. You’re reminded every day when you log in to the schools admin panel and get 350 “sensor not connected” error messages and your students bitch about the “sensor not connected: server not available” error pop up showing up on their classroom console. It takes IT a few days to remove their shit from the network and that costs you even more money in wasting your IT staff time when they should be fixing the broken computers in the computer lab or whatever.
Now your school has a bunch of weird boxes on the wall. Sometimes people ask you about them and you go “oh those don’t do anything” and remember that they cost taxpayers in your community tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars and wasted hundreds of hours of your supports staffs time that they could’ve been using to improve the school
But then you scroll on instagram and see there’s this new thing that will detect when kids are bullying each other. You just have to put a camera in each classroom. It’s okay, it won’t record. It will just use the power of AI and machine learning. You’re sold right there and the cycle starts again
My work had something like this to detect drug usage on premises for a while (it was and is a problem still) and it costed like 30k capital and 2-3 opex a year. We had it for like a year and only took it out because there were too many false flags and security didn’t and doesn’t have the staff to be chasing down every alert anyway.
It was neat that on paper it was able to detect different drugs, heroin, weed, meth all flagged different alerts with 2 of those contacting police when detected. Unfortunately it was only like 70% accurate and we didn’t/don’t have enough security staff to use it properly so it’s gone now.
a docker
Something tells me you don’t really know Docker
I mean like running their hypothetical control software/framework within a docker on a local server. Is that illogical? I do the same for the software that runs my ip cameras with my home server, instead of them needing to connect to some external server.
You’re ultimately right though, when it comes to docker I am at the proficiency level of “can deploy other people’s images” and not so much on the “have bothered to make my own”
This sounds about right. My only quibble is about sick computers and web apps. Twenty years ago I felt good because all I needed was a text editor and a web browser. Nowadays, the hungriest apps on my desktop are Firefox and VS Code.
To be fair, 20 years ago your computer would have choked doing 1/10th the stuff either one of those apps do today. Hell, I still remember writing a prank program that would lock up my school computers because I made it beep too fast.
Wow you unlocked a memory in me. I recall doing something similar but using some send command to do the same with any computer logged in and on the network.
Week after that I met a dude from municipal school IT support and that’s when I first learned about Linux. He had Red Hat on his laptop and he was happy to talk about it. Very cool dude.
Finally, a local WEEE company gets to make a few hundred bucks selling off the glorified VOC sensors at the end.
Best comment I’ve read for a long time
