My City of seven square miles as part of a general obligation bond they have issued is spending $2 million to put in 30 cameras throughout the City.
The police and local politicians feel that most visible way to fight crime is to pull people over for any and all violations flagged by ALPR this will happen more and more.
Did I mention that the City is a heavily visited tourist City?
Expect more armed stops by police on "stolen" cars as well.
Sadly there is zero thought given to privacy "protections" either for the data.
First one, not treated as a crime. But there is a record, so that sucks.
Second one, leaving your 9 year old at a park all day while you are not there. I can see why that is a problem.
The third one is maybe where the is controversy. It would be nice if a 6 year old could play on the street by themselves. I think there is some discretion here and it depends what your street and suburb is like to some extent.
The last one is tragic and totally unfair to the family. Looks like another nail in the coffin for people without a lot of money in the US (who can't call a babysitter on short notice) and who use common sense. Then they get a criminal record, lose their jobs etc, can't get a new one etc. F'd.
You're right, it's not illegal, but there's been a MASSIVE chilling effect on outside play. Of my daughter's friend group, she has by far the most freedom. She's got free reign over our neighborhood which has two parks, a school, a couple lakes, and even a small wooded area kids can venture off into. But none of her friends are allowed to play outside. One friend of hers, 12 years old, is not allowed to ride her bike in her own driveway without a parent outside with her. Another friend of hers, 13, has never been allowed to spend the night at a friend's house. All of these other parents think I'm the crazy one for letting my kid play outside. She usually chooses not to, because it's hardly any fun to play alone.
I know, anecdata and all that, but it's really crazy out there.
Because after 7pm the streets are swarming with velociraptors and hoardes of drooling pedophiles and her little friend's parents don't have the latest in automated turret technology yet.
I encourage you to google it. People get arrested all around the country for letting their kids play in the park across the street, ride their bike around the block, sit in the car alone at the bank, etc.
The fact that "a handful of people" in "several places" over "the last 20 years" becomes "People get arrested all around the country" like it's an epidemic or something is one of many negative, and one of the worst, things about the internet.
That and the fact that "oh and then the charges were dropped and in some cases local laws changed" is inevitably (I think purposefully) left out.
Reason.com went on a year-long bender of self-promotion and half-truthing about 3 years ago when three women were arrested in three states, claiming that "jack-booted big gubmint was comin to take yer kerdz" and plastered people's pictures and stories on fundraising materials and tried to get people to buy their "free range kids" books, as though three incidents in a country of 300 million was an epidemic.
Of course, the most confusing thing about all of this is that a Venn diagram of "people who think that the government is rounding up mothers all over the country" and "people who immediately, vocally, and vociferously criticize the government for NOT protecting the welfare of children" is a perfect circle.
This seems true, and also I think there's some nuance lost in the stats as well.
My personal experience as a parent is that my kids don't get nearly the amount of independence that I did at their age. A reasonable part of this is that I am afraid that my kids will get taken away. My preference is towards the free(r)-range style of parenting, so the ex-post stats don't convey the full effect that the small sample size of reported "big gubmint takeaways" has.
Probably depends on the area and other factors... in my area it was totally normal for kids to walk some half a mile to a mile home in middle school just over a decade ago and I don't think it's changed. I think even elementary school was normal with possibly a smaller distance (not sure how far kids went, but a couple blocks was fine).
Twenty five years ago in my area, a mile to half a mile was routine for elementary school students. By middle school, I would come home to an empty house and go pick up my brother who was in kindergarten. Nowadays, my daughter is in elementary school and I see parents drive their cars up to the bus stop and hover until the bus comes.
The majority of me thinks that parents today need to relax because the chance of your kid being kidnapped or whatever are about the lowest they've ever been. And then another part of me wonders if that's BECAUSE today's parents are paranoid.
Huge exaggeration. Also, free-range parenting is a thing, but even in relatively "helicopter-y" families, the ability to send kids off somewhere w/ a phone to reconnect makes it easy to let kids of a certain age explore and exercise some freedom.
> In December, the couple was accused of neglect for allowing the children to walk around their suburban Washington neighborhood together unaccompanied by an adult. In one instance, Rafi and Dvora were walking from a playground two blocks from home; in another, the park was about a mile away.
Same here. I used to love that I could browse a large selection of top quality choices in one place, from my home, rather than whatever the store happen to have in stock. Now it's mostly just the same item with different fake-seeming brands that mostly seem to compete on review count/quality.
Countries have emerged out of poverty even with strong democracies. I'm not sure why the world thinks that a strongman regime like the CCP is needed for economic growth.
In that sense, China is (IMHO) actually an outlier, an exception where a Communist regime used fully capitalistic economic policies and foreign investment to bring people out of poverty. This could have happened even if there was a different form of government there.
> "house fan" for 15 minutes or so every hour at night just to circulate the air in the house,
Depending on your climate, this could significantly raise the humidity in your house. Reason is that moisture from the AC coil are wet after the AC turns off. Typically drips off into the pan until next time AC cycles.
If you run the fan you will then evaporate into the air circulating some of the moisture just removed.
I live in florida, so I'm well accustomed to the humidity! But thanks for the tip, I actually hadn't thought about that.
Part of my home automation system is humidity sensors as well, and while they do spike over 65% sometimes (probably when we have the windows open), they stay around 55% to 60% for the past 30 days. Since I'm only running that fan cycle at night, when the AC tends not to run or not run as much, I'm guessing that helps mitigate the effects of that.
Doesn't that heavily depend on the design of the AC system? I know nothing here, so this is heavily a question.
I ask because I have a heat pump for cooling/heating, but the furnace is the blower. I thought when the fan ran, it pulled from the outdoor intake which is in a very different location from the actual heat pump coils.
that moisture came from inside the house. When it drips, it usually drains outside the home. Perhaps it just pedantic, but it won't raise humidity, but it may lower less.
These super fast cars are a threat to life and safety in urban environments. EV or not, these fast vehicles should not be sold as these speeds do not serve any valid purpose.
I just came here to say something similar. It drives me nuts that this sort of power and performance is let loose on public streets.
At some point I would think we'd be able to have some sort of geofencing system were a car would be forced into "golf cart" mode once it's off the highway.
Where is this sentiment coming from? Let the driver (who is legally, ethically, and morally responsible for the operation of the vehicle they are controlling) judge the appropriate safety boundaries of the environment they're currently driving through. A 45mph zone would be more appropriately driven at anything from 15 to 70mph, depending on so many factors other than "it's off the highway".
At any rate, don't turn a fine piece of engineering that many people have an emotional connection with, not to mention pay a lot of hard-earned money for, into some vaguely-autonomous, ToS-bound appliance that does not what its owner sees fit, but what its maker deems appropriate from medium earth orbit.
> Let the driver (who is legally, ethically, and morally responsible for the operation of the vehicle they are controlling) judge the appropriate safety boundaries of the environment they're currently driving through.
Time and time again, it's been shown that people do not have the capacity to make correct judgements on simple things, let alone things that threaten other's lives.
What's better than geofencing is that the long needed depth sensing is coming to Tesla cars (watch the latest investor presentation about autonomous driving to see how it was trained). I believe emergency braking will save a lot of lives.
On the contrary, as an owner of a slow/heavy 2002 luxury vehicle, the improved acceleration and braking of newer cars offers the individual and machine a greater range of options to avoid danger and improve safety for the passenger.
They still have production in the US? they started moving out in the early 80s. My dad was involved in the re-assembly of the pipework for a specialized glass production facility (specialized lenses etc) physically disassembled & moved from the US to Xian china in '86. Even in the early 90's, most of their mech engineering was contracted out. Surprised they have 2000 employees to lay off tbh.
Yes of course they do. They just don't employ that many people to do it. With the kind of materials they handle there's not much for humans to do except run machines and more and more of that becomes automated at time goes on. Highly automated production like that is one of the few kinds of manufacturing it still makes sense to do in the first world because getting factory set up here is still cheaper than doing it half way around the world and if you're highly automated the downside (high labor costs) is not an issue. Of course they product stuff in China, India, etc. as well. They're a global company with a diverse portfolio so they have the ability to locate different things in different places in whichever way makes the most sense.
Whether they have their engineering in the US is a different story (though I'm sure some of it is).
The police and local politicians feel that most visible way to fight crime is to pull people over for any and all violations flagged by ALPR this will happen more and more.
Did I mention that the City is a heavily visited tourist City?
Expect more armed stops by police on "stolen" cars as well.
Sadly there is zero thought given to privacy "protections" either for the data.