Travis Emery

There’s always money in the banana stand

[Travis Emery @teemery]

@CLT_Suburbia I’m surprised this fiasco hasn’t received more attention, all the teachers I’ve spoken to said this testing season has been a bust.

[regular guy @regularguyguns]

Maybe you wonder why I, a mere gun blog, makes a big deal about Flock and similar tech?

OK here’s a real world situation that can easily happen and has likely happened.

Unfortunately to drive on public roads without getting hassled by the cops, your car needs a license plate. That’s tied to you, the owner of the vehicle.

Flock isn’t just a traffic camera, it’s an AI/ML enabled (wait for it) flock of cameras that transmit all their video and audio to the mothership. Not a government server somewhere but, to keep it simple, a big giant cloud computer instance owned and run by Flock, the company.

Government users, as well as Flock employees here in the US and overseas, can log in and query the system based on license plate number or even vehicle description and get a full history of that vehicle’s movements throughout the Flock network over multiple jurisdictions. Someone in New York can track a car from Armonk all the way to Homestead FL if they feel like it from the comfort of their desk.

On a daily level, someone can get a pretty accurate picture of someone’s life just by monitoring their movements via Flock. And I’m using this example to rattle the cage of the “back the blue unconditionally” crowd in 2A.

OK - your car has license plate ABC 123 - and Flock knows this. Someone can enter your tag in Flock and see what you are doing on a daily basis. You leave your home where the neighborhood is under the Flock panopticon. Flock sees you drive to Dunkin’ on Main Street, then you drop your kid off at XYZ Daycare. Then you go to work at the local IT consulting firm in ZZZ industrial park. You go pick up a quick deli sandwich for lunch at Food Lion. You go back to work. On the way home you stop off at Bob’s Guns, and stay for 20 minutes while buying some ammo. Then you go home. Everywhere there’s a Flock camera.

Now Flock knows the following about you:

- You live at 123 Wisteria Lane
- Your kid is in daycare (means he’s likely under 5)
- You work at ZZZ
- You go cheap on lunch
- You own at least one gun

Your license plate is tied to you so they now have your name and assumed-to-be-private details of your life, like that you are armed.

On the reverse of that, the Flock camera outside of Bob’s Guns has been recording the plates of everyone going into the parking lot. No need for a firearms registry when Flock is doing the work.

All of this is done without a warrant and the data is available to anyone with a certain level of access to the system, whether it’s a cop, or a Flock technician in the Philippines. FYI Flock uses overseas contractors for support and AI annotation.

The 2018 Carpenter decision at SCOTUS ruled that pervasive surveillance where one can divine private details of someone’s life is a 4th Amendment violation in absence of a specific warrant.

Flock is illegal, unconstitutional and immoral.

And a danger to everyone, not just gun owners.

[Travis Emery @teemery]

@JobsNowPR @JoeBrunoWSOC9 @Hunt_Saenz

[doomer @uncledoomer]

be the kind of dad who breaks out the microscope and oscilloscope to prove to your kid that it wasnt their fault they fucked something up, it was actually some retard in a chinese factory

[Tony Fadell @tfadell]

The #iPod is back!
It never really left…
Not because Apple relaunched it. But because people are digging them out of drawers and sharing their iPod with their kids, younger siblings, or nieces/nephews. 

Why the resurgence of the #iPod
No notifications.
No feeds.
No algo deciding what you should hear.
iPod = 1,000 songs in your pocket (THEN and NOW!)
One job. Done well.

Whether or not Apple ever revives the iPod as a new product, the lesson isn’t about a device, it’s about why focus matters.

We need to remember why the iPod worked and was so loved and is still loved. @KalleyHuang @nytimes 🙏

https://t.co/WWVuOYpw6q

[owen cyclops @owenbroadcast]

i did not expect to identify so deeply with the method of taking damage in sonic games: i accumulate bits of gold, then suddenly, i am struck by an unexpected force. the capital explodes out of me in all directions, i see and feel it recede from me. can i gather it again? unknown

[Patrick Casey @restoreorderusa]

Strapping down zoomers Clockwork Orange style and making them watch Frasier until they no longer speak in ebonics

[jackofallgames @jackofallgames7]

People will say “there’s nothing stopping you having this now” but that’s not true.

Nearly everything in this room was offline. Everyone had to make arrangements to come over and play. You’d make an evening out of a video game.

Successfully doing this today is near impossible. Culturally, we’ve left this behind.

[Travis Emery @teemery]

@MargoinWNC No name, or age of the prep.

[Travis Emery @teemery]

@JoeBrunoWSOC9 Maybe he was tired of looking at it?

[Travis Emery @teemery]

@owroot Proverbs 14:4
Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean,
but abundant crops come by the strength of the ox.

[Travis Emery @teemery]

@churrascooooo

[Travis Emery @teemery]

@JoeBrunoWSOC9 Closed

[The Babylon Bee @TheBabylonBee]

Black Mesa Research Facility Fails Another OSHA Inspection https://t.co/gH31Hw2OwL

[FPGAX Electronics @FPGAX_]

Teardown of the Fiber Optic Gyroscope from the Russian Soyuz Spacecraft

[Elite Obsolete Electronics @eliteobsolete]

who wants to help me decorate

[Callie Cox @callieabost]

I can't stand the rhetoric around rate cuts and stock prices.

The Fed does NOT care about stock prices. Maybe a teeny tiny bit, but not as much as prices and employment.

Since 1970, about 20% of the S&P 500’s record highs have occurred within a month of a rate cut

[@levelsio @levelsio]

Elections don't work if half the country is dependent on getting free money from the government

They'll just vote in whoever maintains the free money or increases it!

[Travis Emery @teemery]

@JoeBrunoWSOC9 Not a contributing member of society, put him in stocks outside suffolk punch

[Travis Emery @teemery]

@OrwellNGoode What if they have shipped it and we didn’t know it? 🤔