In one of the threads I ran across, he was accused of having several alt accounts. I would suspect at least a couple of them will remain open.

Because they’re getting pushback from towns, but can still use the air.

“We’ve got to tighten up the policy and make sure everyone is aligned and then turn [the Los Angeles camera system] back on,” [Flock co-founder and CEO Garrett] Langley said.

Sucks to be you, then, doesn’t it.

“The technology is really simple,” he told ABC7. “A car drives by, we take a picture. It’s a static picture of a car, and then we read the license plate. That’s what the technology is – it’s actually not that complicated, it’s pretty simple.”

Sure. Just the license plate. Which is why the ACLU says that you collect “make, model and color of a car, other identifiers like scratches and dents, and anything else they can see.” It can include items “such as trailers, toolboxes, bumper stickers, or bike racks.” That’s why your cameras have audio detection hardware. That’s why your cameras are on biking trails, where no cars will be found.

Then using data analysis like that in Finding Paul Revere reveals a bunch of information about your habits, your friendships, and your associations. But, sure, you have nothing to lose :/

There was a case a few weeks ago, where an illegal farm worker was critically injured in an accident on the farm and, rather than taking the man to the hospital or calling for help, the farmer bundled him into his car and dropped the worker off at the worker’s place, in front of his wife. The worker died, and the farmer is being charged with (what I think is Italy’s equivalent) of depraved murder.

I remember reading an article years ago, where a young couple had moved into a newly built community. As they settled in, they realized they had projects around the house that weren’t overly skilled but would benefit from additional hands. They got together with several of their neighbors who had similar issues.

Once a month, they descended on one house. The owner had a list of projects - empty the attic, clean out the shed, paint the living room, whatever they needed help with. Everyone would divvy up the work; the owner provided food and drink throughout the day, and at the end, everyone relaxed together. Then the next month, they’d descend on the next person’s house.

The group ended up really bonding together. As they grew older, they helped each other get through illnesses, celebrate graduations and weddings, cope with grief, and stay in their houses. I’m sure it helped that it was a new neighborhood with a bunch of people likely seeking connections, but I’d love to see that kind of bond elsewhere.

[Flock] run what it calls convoy analysis to flag vehicles that keep turning up near each other.

There’s an interesting article written back when it was revealed that the post office was recording the envelopes of every piece of mail it handles and what kind of data they could extrapolate from it. [If you’ve mailed a letter at the counter in the past few years, you’ll know that they bug you if you haven’t put a return address on the envelope.] Anyway, it’s called “Finding Paul Revere” and I found it an interesting read.

We can do better!

They’re going to “overpay” you, then ask you to send them the money back (or sometimes but something for them). But eventually their check bounces, while you’re out whatever money/items you sent them.

You also need to start being more careful, because the scammers sell and trade lists of people who have fallen victim, or almost fallen victim, to their scam. Because if you’ve (almost) fallen for one scam, you’re more likely to fall for a second one.

Back in the 80s, my uncle paid some company to convert the 8mm to VHS; they overlaid some music over the video, I didn’t remember what. I borrowed the tape sometime around 2002 and converted it to DVD.

Around the same time, my mom had a bunch of reel-to-reel and audio cassette recordings she asked me to convert to CD, which I did. One of the audio tapes was from a family reunion in the mid-70s, where they’d played the same home movies and everyone was discussing them. So I converted the tape and then synced the audio to the video; you can play either one the music or commentary track.

There’s one thing I meant to do back then that I didn’t have the energy to deal with, which was to provide a transcription of the audio, so people would know who’s voice was who’s. Voice-to-text should make that fairly easy now. I think there’s too much over-talking to do a decent set of labeled subtitles, but I might be able to swing something.

Re: your VHS results: if it’s not at the front of the tape when you start working on it, then fast-forward it to the end and then let it rewind; that’ll give you a better tension on the tape. Depending on the tape, it’s quality and it’s condition, how it was stored (temperature/humidity and whether it was on it’s end or on it’s side), and when they thought it had been played last, I might try fast-forwarding and rewinding it anyway, as doing that would reset the tension and make sure that the tape wasn’t sticking to itself when I was playing it and reducing the risk of the tape getting eaten. The trade-off was that doing that could pull some of the magnetized bits off the tape, increasing drop-outs. Whenever I started playing a tape, I was always recording the output, regardless of whether the video had started or the tracking was off, just in case the tape got eaten.

If your tape does get eaten, you can try to iron out some of the wrinkles to get it to play through that section; or just rotate the spindles past the wrinkled bit and resume converting. If a tape gets eaten, I’d clean the heads on your vcr, just in case any debris got in there, and I’d clean it after any particularly dirty tapes (stored poorly, or lots of drop-outs) as well. (If it’s a vcr from a thrift store or something, I’d clean it anyway, and make sure the that the first tapes I played were commercial tapes I didn’t care about in case there were issues with it.)

If the spindles on the tape get jammed, you can unshell the tape and spindles and re-shell them into a new case - I have some old VHS movies I keep on hand for just these situations.

If you’re using a standalone DVD recorder, given the option, use the RCA connections instead of coax for a better picture. If you’re getting unstable brightness or color, try hooking up your cables to the front input instead of the rear inputs; sometimes those recorders pick up DRM-style signals on old tapes and interferes with the recording, except they assumed the front inputs would be used for camcorders and often put less DRM detection on those ports. If you still get unstable brightness or color and think that’s wrong, see if you can find something called a video stabilizer or signal enhancer - that’s what the copyright busters used to be called, and they also helped sharpen the image a bit too.

If you’re having issues with tracking, there are vcrs that let you do manual tracking adjustments, and you might want to see if you can find one. Many of my old Sony vcrs had that ability, and I really liked that. My old Sony vcrs also had the ability to move back and forward frame by frame, which was also nice: I could start the tape, get the tracking nice and settled, then back up to the first frame of the recording and start converting from there, thus avoiding the whole “tracking” notice on the screen without missing any of the recording.

I dunno, I’m kinda babbling, sorry. Are there specific issues you were having with your tapes, or just “this was a cheap tape recorded over multiple times, the recording I want to save was made at EP, it was stored on its side on a hot and humid environment and I’m lucky I managed to get anything off it”?

I’ve inherited a lot of photos, and also a bunch of negatives. I’ve gone and thrown out many vacation photos that weren’t relevant or unique: if I need a photo of the pyramids, I’m fairly confident I can find one, lol. But I kept the one of my mom in front of the pyramids.

I’m in the process of scanning and organizing everything. Once I’m done, I’m planning on putting together five photo albums, all nicely labeled and organized. The first one’s for me, of the people I loved or events I found special. Then one of each of the other albums for my nieces and nephews. There may be a handful of photos I copy and put in each album, but most of the pictures will be unique.

Also enclosed in the albums will be a family tree, and whatever biographical bits of information I can put together of our various relatives. And a DVD with digital copies of all the photos and negatives I scanned in, so everyone will have access to a full set of photos, as well as a subset of the originals. I also have some digitized 8mm home movies from the 1940s and 50s, with my grandparents in the 1970s narrating who the various people are, so I’ll probably include a copy of that.

Honestly, I’m not sure how my nieces and nephews will feel about the albums, but it’s the best connection I can give them to some of their roots and where their people came from. What they do with their albums afterward is up to them; I’ll have honored the people in my past and provided what I can to the people in my future.

Iirc, most classes were prohibited from selling for two years after it debuted, giving the protected classes plenty of time to fleece the sheep.

If the only penalty is a fine …

Congress funded the councils at normal levels for fiscal 2026, but the administration has disbursed less than half and told them not to expect the rest. The Federation of State Humanities Councils has asked a federal judge in Oregon to rule that Trump is violating separation-of-powers rules.

He does shit and it takes time to get the court ruling, by which time the damage is done.

What is someone doing with expired plates?

Decorate the inside of their barn with them!

Rehires them to better train their AI. They’ll be back out again shortly. :/

I’ve had a farm share for a number of years, and have eaten a number of different types of potatoes, including two different blue ones.

See, what I see is that Ford intends to keep using AI, they’re just temporarily using experienced humans to train the AI to be better at it’s job before getting rid of the humans again.

Sigh. That under Swedish law, it’s entirely probable that Julian Assange did rape that woman (reddit fanbois are a special kind of special).

That Elon Musk is not a real-life Tony Stark, but is in fact a slightly autistic narcissist who insists on inserting himself into the public eye and has an excellent PR team (reddit fanbois are a special kind of special).

That covid is real, and is bad, and is in fact deadly; and that vaccines are good, not a government conspiracy, and may save not just your life, but the lives of your families and friends.

Probably one of those three.

This is less “Today I Learned”, and more “News”.

The trades have somewhat more risk of injury than, say, sitting at a computer all day, particularly if you’re working as hard as your schedule implies. Does your job, union or state have disability insurance, or the option for it? If not, can you purchase it from an instance broker ? If so, get disability coverage; and if there are multiple levels, get the one with the highest coverage.

Now, double-check all of the following with an independent insurance broker, as the rules may have changed since I did this, or your local area may be different than mine.

In my area, this is key: pay for your disability benefits POST-TAX. You’ll generally have the option to pay pre-tax (your income is reduced by the account of the insurance payment, then you pay tax on what you take home) or post-tax (your income including the insurance payment is taxed, then they deduct the insurance payment).

The reason this matters: if you haven’t paid tax on the premiums and you end up getting disabled, then those benefits will be taxed; but if you’ve paid tax on the premiums, then your benefits are tax-free. If you pay pre-tax, then you’ll have a little extra money each paycheck; but if you become disabled, then you’ll lose a bunch of your disability payments to taxes during a stressful period with extra expenses. If you pay post-tax, then you take home a little less money each week (not a concern in your situation); but if you become disabled, then you don’t lose any of your disability pay to taxes.

I’ll also add: for your car insurance, it’s entirely up to you what coverage you get for collision and comprehensive, but always opt for the maximum amount of personal injury protection you can get. And if you’re going to be stacking up your assets like you hope to do, please consider an umbrella policy to help protect those assets.

Good luck!