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Emitting a square wave as RF blithers all over the RF spectrum. At least put a bandpass filter on the thing so it stays in-band.


"Once stopped, the ADS-equipped vehicle contacted remote assistance with a prompt asking, “is this a school bus with active signals?” After another passenger vehicle passed the school bus in the right eastbound through-lane, a remote assistance agent located in Novi, Michigan, replied “No” to the prompt. The ADS-equipped vehicle then resumed travel and passed the school bus while its stop arms were still extended. A passenger vehicle following the ADS-equipped vehicle similarly passed the school bus. In total, six vehicles passed the school bus while it was stopped. A crash did not occur."

I was originally going to ask how often human drivers did this without getting such a headline, but I guess I should have asked how many other human drivers were passing that exact bus at that exact moment and still be ignored in the headline. The answer: five.

It begins to look like Citizens United [1] cost us democracy.

"That government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich shall not perish from the earth."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC


I know people hate Citizens United, but to me, if the debate on this is ever to progress: what's the alternative? Say I and a bunch of my friends donate money to promote some cause; let's say "Black Lives Matter", for the sake of argument. Is that also off the table? Is there to be no ability for people to associate & collectively argue for change (e.g., by buying an ad to raise awareness)?

Or, is it fine when I do it, but not when others do it? Where do I draw the line, between what association for the purposes of political advocacy is fine, and what association isn't fine?


Campaign finance laws were set up tell you where the line is. There needs to be a line because the amount of reach you have should not grow with your wealth. But Citizens United made the money as speech an unlimited right. Spending $250 is a completely different category than spending $250 million.

But where's the line between political contribution & opinionated news article about a political candidate?

Having unlimited funds to make sure everyone sees your opinion.

In the age of LLMs, separating money from speech on the internet (where the most desired sociodemographics live) is literally impossible.

You restrict ads, they just create more bots or even pay actual people to express certain opinions.


As an individual you can. Not as a corporation.

Again, I'm asking about generalized freedom of association. I get the hate for corporations, I do, but if you ban freedom of people to associate, and through that association, to pool money for a common cause: are you just straight up good with that?

The underlying law in Citizen's United didn't just target corporations: it targeted unions, it targeted non-profits. That's why I'm asking about those other cases that would be banned. I understand wanting to ban Evil Inc., but are you ready to ban World Peace Non-Profit, too? Not only that, but Citizens United itself wasn't a corporation.

If you have a defensible case, that, yes, that'd be fine, go ahead. But when only individuals can spend money on politics, are we not in the same situation, where Bezos or Musk can afford an ad, but I cannot?


Convince me that the solution is not to remove money from the process entirely.

I’m just spitballing here but why don’t we have a system where every candidate gets the same allocation of money for ads and it is outlawed to use your own fortune to bankroll your candidacy

In a world where social media companies are all run by billionaires, let them pollute the feeds with their candidate of choice. This only speedruns the complete collapse of SM in an era where we can no longer distinguish real discourse from AI

And good riddance.


Workaround: I'm rich and would just start up a newspaper that gave my candidates good coverage.

In my opinion, this isn't a easy problem if you value freedom of speech, freedom of association, and freedom of people to spend their own money.


> Workaround: I'm rich and would just start up a newspaper that gave my candidates good coverage.

Or buy Twitter.


And fix: a functioning government would make a law that outlaws such flagrant abuse of a media company.

What, if making murder illegal was hard would you just throw your hands and give up and make murder legal? Why is it that suddenly, when it's about corporations to do whatever they want - including destroy democracy itself - we're little babies who can't possibly lift a single finger to stop it?

But that guy who sold an eighth? Implement the full extent of mass surveillance and send a tactical SWAT team to the wrong house to arrest him for 40 years!


The alternative was what we had between McCain-Feingold and Citizens United, which was not a hellscape of limitations on collective action.

This isn't some hypothetical world. We had it.


Is this "Black Lives Matter" running for President?

Is this "Citizens United" running for President?

Obviously neither is running for president. But collective groups of people may wish to support certain causes, bills, or even candidates who support such things. Do I prevent all collectives of people — and since everyone's favorite punching bag is the evil corporation — including non-profits and unions (which is what the original case was about!) — from spending money?

And I'll distill this down to what I said to the other commenter: assume we do, and no political money from anyone except individuals. Is it not just Bezos and Musk who can afford the ad, whereas I'm left without a voice?


Citizens United has tax ID 91-1433368 and is a 501(c)(4) in Washington, D.C.

Where is "Black Lives Matter" headquartered?


It's in the same building as antifa headquarters, duh.

Strange ad for a VPN. Without the controversy, would people get it?

I saw the ads on the tube and was very confused. I knew about Mullvad, but it never crossed my mind they were trying to get me to search for "and then".

I'm in SF where they advertise a lot, and the ads are incredibly niche and nerdy.

But a general sense of paranoia comes through quite strongly.


I was a customer before they started advertising.

I saw the ads saying "and then?" and still didnt get it.

I like the product but i think their ad campaigns suck. If they want exposure and controversy i think they should run adverts to kill new proposed laws, target privacy hating politicians, etc.


Me too, but I don't think one's supposed to 'get it', the hope is that people wonder what it's all about and search 'mullvad ad "and then"' or whatever. Which as pre-existing customers we're probably already less likely to do.

It does require really good maintenance-of-way work.

Having all trains inspect the track is feasible. The latest round of Shinkansen trains does that. They're moving away from running a Dr. Yellow track inspection train every 10 days.[1]

[1] https://www.railway.supply/n700s-trains-to-be-equipped-with-...


That's very nice. The nut dispenser is very effective. Small, and feeds well. The screw dispenser is starting to run into jamming problems. It will probably start to jam more as the acrylic gets scratched and friction becomes worse. But it's manual and low volume, so jamming isn't a big issue.

He's discovered that dispensing is easy, but order from chaos is harder.

There's a whole theory of feeder design.[1] There are clever tricks to orient strangely shaped parts using feeders made from passive components. A basic trick is to get parts aligned in one axis, then arrange it so that the ones that are backwards or upside down hit some obstacle or are not supported, so they fall back down for another try.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlyuHIxSC-A


The nut dispenser is awesome.

It occurs to me that the screw counter's main difficulty is in orientating the screws.

The machine does solve that (as a product of all the shaking and jostling and doubtless unjamming), but judging by the length of the feeder tube it's not a very fun step. And the end goal isn't to have screws that are each oriented in exactly the same way, but instead to have a specific quantity of screws placed in each of a series of containers.

All of that effort to orient them so precisely does make them easy to count using the nut dispenser mechanism, but that effort is otherwise ultimately discarded.

I'm lead to wonder if the process of dispensing 6 screws could be accomplished more simply (ie, with less fiddling and shaking) by reducing the amount of orientation necessary.

Perhaps by using a sorter that puts the screws in a line, axially, without a preference for heads-first or threads-first orientation?


> Perhaps by using a sorter that puts the screws in a line, axially, without a preference for heads-first or threads-first orientation?

Here's a vibratory bowl feeder doing exactly that.[1] This is the industry standard way to solve this problem. Look what happens once the screws are lined up without a preference for heads-first or threads-first. A very simple slotted rack gets them all from horizontal to heads-up. As is usual with such feeders, if something doesn't land where it's supposed to, it falls back into the bowl for another try. That's the anti-jam mechanism.

3D printing vibratory bowl feeders works.[2] Useful for when you need to handle thousands, but not millions.

This is more scale than the clockmaker needs, though. Unless his business scales up.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIPNdrbSYM4

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECx6L7z0T4Y


"Today, Motorola also introduced Moto Analytics, an enterprise‑grade analytics platform designed to give IT administrators real‑time visibility into device performance across their fleet."

So they put in a back door for business users?


I'm dreading having to buy a new rugged Android phone. I have one where all the stuff I don't want is turned off. F-Droid, Firefox, FairEmail, DuckDuckGo, no Google account. Getting a new phone into that configuration may not be possible. The major brands are more and more locked down, and the minor brands can't be trusted.

I have a Cat phone now. The actual manufacturer, Bullett, went bankrupt. Can't get the small rubber parts needed to maintain the waterproofing.

Suggestions?


You could get a pixel and flash grapheneos. Most stock roms will require google services.

Pixels are far from rugged

Can you still install F-Droid?

Can you still run without a Google account?


The article does not say anything about F-droid. However, there was discussion about this a few months ago; F-Droid and Google's developer registration decree https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45409794

F-Droid warns that Google's new "Developer Verification System" will require all Android app developers, even those outside the Play Store, to register personal data and pay a fee to Google to remain installable. The project argues this mandate threatens the existence of free and open-source ecosystems like F-Droid by ending anonymous development and stripping users of the right to choose their own software.

So that is one threat to what we have now. Right now you can install an APK that you trust and have been using for years.

What the article does say is that Samsung is removing several core options from the Android recovery menu, including the ability to sideload updates via ADB or SD cards and the "wipe cache partition" tool. While the reason for this change remains unconfirmed, it appears to be a permanent security policy shift tied to the One UI 8.5 update and the February 2026 security patch.

So why does this matter? Well some users like nocturn9x [0] have been able to take back control of their devices by installing: 1. An Unlocked Boot Loader. 2. An Unlocked OneUI/ROM 3. And then F-droid style installs are not problem.

Specifically, you can still install your trusted APK if you perform these steps, own a device where the hardware eFuses have not been blown and decline "Play Protect" nag screens and OneUI updates.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47205434


Read the article

The article doesn't address this issue.

Right now, you can install F-Droid from an APK file without rooting the phone or installing a new boot loader. Google is threatening to take that capability away, via another mod. This seems to be part of a comprehensive program to keep the Google boot on the customer's face.

Also, currently, with difficulty, you can initialize a new unlocked Android phone without a Google account. Is that capability going away?

All these are related. This seems to be part of a comprehensive program to keep the Google boot on the customer's face.


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