PierceTheBubble @ PierceTheBubble @lemmy.ml

Posts

13

Comments

255

Joined

7 mo. ago

I belief it's morally wrong to do that, both from the perspective of the donor and party: as people democratically voted to land the party the low number of seats it has. If a donor could just dictate party policy, you're disregarding the promise made to the voter. For such an insignificant party it's likely to give them additional budget for campaigning, so they might have a better chance at competing with the seated opposition. I would respect him if he didn't, but perhaps he's able to influence party policy over time; instead of having to fight the uphill battle to get into parliament with a party of his own.

I really had no desire to get invested into this, but since this gets in my feed so frequently, here we go. I've read relevant posts on Daniel Berntsson's blog, i.e. the individual which this should really concern; instead of Mullvad as a whole. I understand the donated money possibly came from Mullvad subscribers, and if that leads you to unsubscribe, by all means do so; but stop bugging the rest of us.

It seems he donated to ÖP because they criticize excessive taxation, that is believed to typically end up enriching an (upper-)middle class (the "transferiat"), that gain additional support for (self-serving) policies, from lower (working) classes that are dependent on (welfare) subsidies. And given that immigrants are typically of the latter class, it's believed to further reinforce the transferiat's position: by a growing dependent class voting in favor of pro-transferiat policy.

This isn't to say he agrees with (stricter) immigration policy, nor with the other positions taken by ÖP, or any other political party for that matter. Instead, he adheres to a "libertarian anarchist" ideal, where "people can ... organically and voluntarily federate together at any scale". Rather than states appropriating capital from citizens, to only partially redistribute effectively in the form of common goods, which involves protection thereof through immigration policies for example; often to the detriment of people, including him personally.

Spotlight, uh, moonlight, uh, eyesore get your fucking aim right 🎶

‘okay, this is David, remember this person.'

Well, that wouldn't be creepy for someone to say. And the “the cocktail party problem”, really? It's generally much more awkward if a person you hardly remember, greets you like you're their best friend. But I guess you should also start wearing these glasses, right? So we can all be pretentious douchebags, instead of just humbly asking if we've met before. And I can't wait for creeps to give slideshow presentations to these glasses, so they have an arsenal of women to hit on: pretending like they've met these women before...

Perhaps Cryptomator could be an option, where trust in the cloud provider isn't required

I've found a video that clearly demonstrates the concept I have in mind, just to make sure we're on the same page; because I'm not sure we are. If simple presence detections, even in the context of many vehicles in close proximity of another, and changing order through vehicles overtaking others, then I would agree; but that's something I find hard to believe. I can't really argue with the last point though, because it should be considered universal truth...

I understand your skepticism, but I find it difficult to believe a (team of) professional engineer(s), being unable to design a system with sufficient selectivity and resolution. And perhaps a blip is all it takes to recognize a particular vehicle, that is statistically expected to arrive at one of the further detectors within a given time frame; it really narrows down the number of possible matches when situated between two known points.

If too noisy and low resolution, it can probably not be used reliably enough, to identify vehicles purely on the basis of detected characteristics. But in the context of ALPRs at strategic locations nearby a detector, a trail of detections could be linked to a vehicle's license plate; which would be problematic enough. If of high enough quality, the increasing reliability of ALPRs detecting vehicle make and modell, could be utilized to store characteristics under an identifier for that detected; which could allow for pattern recognition and perhaps identification in effect.

The analysis wouldn't necessarily have to happen on-edge, but could also be offloaded to a data center; which would drive down the computation power required per unit. And yes, installing ALPRs everywhere would be more efficient, but would simultaneously be much more controversial. These coils are already in place, and the installation of the coils in the road surface doesn't appear to be that time consuming.

This is the best possible outcome for Google: providing alternative application stores through the Play Store. So any application, including alternative application stores, are subject to universal app verification rules: allowing it to fully kill "sideloading" (as in: installing an APK from the web); while technically providing alternatives, gatekept by Google. The latter will likely just result in Play Store mirrors, that hardly provide any real competitive advantage over upstream. A purely symbolic, absolute joke of a court case.

Each detector seems to have two coils (see picture), which appear to be an emission coil and a reception coil; similar to metal detectors with a DD coil. Typically these coils slightly overlap to increase detection sensitivity; but this doesn't really seem necessary when a massive block of metal hovers directly over the coils. Each coil likely consists of multiple turns of wire, that sit on top of another inside a groove cut into road surface; which should increase the inductive properties.

The magnetic field also induces Eddy currents in non-ferrous metals (meaning currents running through metal within the field), which by themselves generate opposing magnetic fields, depending primarily on the material's conductive properties (highly conductive materials yielding stronger magnetic fields). These fields change the phase of the received signal, which in metal detectors can be used as an indicator for material properties: primarily the type of metal and its mass.

If the same were possible on the traffic detectors, or even a signature of metal concentrations, I believe you'd have a pretty robust identifier for vehicles.

I wonder how financially constrained a nation state is, where such projects typically follow a public tender process; the scale of the project could by itself, or maybe in coordination with other nation states, benefit from economy of scale; and where prices for components have increased sharply over the years. Other than that, perhaps you could have dedicated sampling hardware, which is able to convert the stream, to one manageable to an off-the-shelf PLC; which might not do any complicated processing on-edge, but instead transfer the data to a data center for further processing. But I have no expertise in the field, so I could be completely and utterly wrong.

If you got some more information on techniques used in these vehicles, that would be useful, or even deserving of a dedicated post and discussion.

It would be easier, but might not be the full picture.

That is in a vacuum, but with ALPRs at strategic points, it's possible to connect the license plate to a series of readings along the way, and would similarly allow correlation to prior trips (be it with a slightly different characteristic that day). As there's many readings along the way, it should also be possible to filter out large inconsistencies; or with some clever machine learning algorithms, be possible to correlate such inconsistencies with reasonable certainty. Unless multiple cars, that consistently drive head-to-tail the entire trip, create a reading similar to a truck (also with regards to speed), I think it's quite easy to discern the two categories. On the highway itself each lane has its own coil, so even if a truck had space to drive over the edge of another coil, the primary coil would also be significantly affected. Even the simplest of metal detectors can modulate output based on induction (the beep changing in pitch), so why would recent (~2019) specialty equipment only be able to output a boolean value?

ALPRs are controversial, and governments know it. This concept would however be abstract enough for most (even around here it seems) , while effectively accomplishing the same.

It's undoubtedly used for that too, but similar to cameras supposedly limited to traffic analysis, this system could also double as surveillance infrastructure. The readings might vary per vehicle passing over the coils: different concentrations of metal at different positions, the duration of a vehicle within range (which could be an indicator for length, speed, or both), etc. Measure these characteristics at many points along the way, while reading vehicle license plates at strategic locations, and it seems you'd have a pretty robust surveillance concept.

There's a lot of older cars on the road (including mine), and I'm typically not carrying any devices on me. I've read some articles that discuss such technologies, but there's no clear indicators of them being around roads I'm utilizing; not to the extend of these induction coils for example. Cameras installed with the supposed intent of monitoring traffic, are also increasingly used in criminal investigations; so it's not unthinkable data from these sensors might be approached similarly.

Masses of metal that vary per vehicle, and could therefore result into different characteristics measured. I understand they are also used at traffic signals, but these are nowhere near any such infrastructure.

No, they are also at places where there isn't any traffic signals nearby.

I might or might not disagree with you, but I have nothing to go on.