I don't need to hit downtown everyday. I'd rather invite friends over to grill/drink. While owning a car might be "more expensive" than using just public transit, the general lifestyle of not living urban is far cheaper. That and if we all pass out on the floor, it's not frowned upon when at someone's house. It is when you're at a bar. It's sort of like when people in some of the big Cali cities complain it's impossible to own a home or save enough money. No, where you live is terrible. There was an NPR story a year or so ago about a couple selling their home in san fran, then buying a bigger home in cash in Michigan (I think), paying off some debt and still had a savings left over, which they never could do before. They took "pay cuts" compared to their old jobs, but they were living far easier, with a savings in comparison to cost of living.

Personally, it took me way too long to realize salaries are not created equal depending on location. 60k in a place like San Fran or Seattle, does not equal 60k in let's say Tampa, FL. You can live far better in Tampa on 60k than you ever could in Seattle. That's something I think a lot of people aren't quite picking up on. There's a cost/benefit to location. You want to live urban? There are things you have to sacrifice (like a savings account unless you work finance or make a shit ton of cash). Don't want to sacrifice that? Then you can't live there. Simple as that. There are other places to live... with trees. I like trees.

Also, it's quiet away from the city. I get far better sleep these days.

Pulled right from the article. Studies in mice are simply a way to point in the, hopefully, "right" direction without having to shoot in the dark with human test subjects needlessly.

And, I agree, maybe too much reliance of cars in this country. I can totally agree we should focus on increasing the walk-ability of many communities. But, you can't deny having the ability to say at any moment, "I feel like going 30 miles somewhere, at my choosing and route" is a bad thing. I've been through 3 different public transit systems, (Portland, Seattle and Denver). Portland was the best out of the three. But knowing you are wasting 15 minutes waiting for public transit, then another 10-15 minutes of time to get there due to stops and general traffic (25-30 min) for essentially a 10 minute car ride... yea... It's great in plenty of situations, but is annoying as hell in just as many. The fact that my mobility is not dictated by someone else, yes, to me, is worth the extra monthly cost in comparison of daily use public transit tickets.

While I do understand (and personally do like) places being close together so I can walk around. Don't pretend that city life is the perfect solution. There's the Rat Park experiment that showed utopian cities are not the answer and it plays out in the human psyche as well. People who live in cities are not necessarily happier than those in rural communities. There's a few NGOs that do happiness surveys across the globe. While living in a city may make you richer and maybe even technically healthier in some aspects, very few are happier than their rural counterparts.

Just saying, it's definitely more complicated than just "car culture".

Yes, there's a lot of "over priced" cameras (and software) out there that are pretty much no better than a $20 usb webcam. That includes the "security" aspect. In my experience (did it for about 3 years), most of these are the white labeled cameras. A majority from China, but Germany and the USA have put out some absolutely dogshit cameras as well. Especially when you factor in the price tag. At least with the Chinese ones, you get a discount for bottom barrel.

At the same time, there's something most people don't really understand about security cameras, longevity. These are like servers (and technically are). They're meant to run 24/7, without stop. Quite a few (if not all newly manufactured one at this point... I hope) can have weekly scheduled reboots, which I always recommend customers set. Most don't and actively refuse to allow a 2 minute block of downtime at an obscure hour. Camera manufacturers know that, and have to deal with it by having a product that just runs constantly.

Next up comes physical protection. You start getting into the $300+ per camera, it's supposed to survive someone hitting it with a baseball bat a few times. Then comes protection from weather and generally being able to survive 120 deg f outdoor conditions or -40 deg f conditions. Your standard camera and embedded board can't do that.

Now, there's a lot of asshole integrators that oversell to governments a lot. My career was primarily based around fixing the last integrator's complete fuck ups. I've seen how government agencies can be bent over and taken for a ride in that industry. Sad part is, none of these folks were even paid off. Just flat out duped. At least the ones I dealt with, I'm sure there's plenty that took money under the table.

On the software side, this is tricky. Yes, the basics of LPR can be done in a few lines of code. But there's more to law enforcement and government accountability, even private sector when developing a case to hand over to the police after an incident. The software company (video management system, VMS), has to guarantee the information has not been tampered. A chain of custody of information has to exist. Video from the VMS cannot be altered in anyway when exported or a lawyer can just wipe his ass with it and throw it out of court. Then there's usability, cross-platform support, driver support for a plethora of devices (there are hundreds of camera manufacturers with hundreds to thousands of SKUs each of devices that one software has to manage). And that's just the tip of the iceberg. I haven't even gotten into general security so it can't be hacked... at least easily (I think Genetec is still top dog in this, it's been 2 years, may have changed. They use to run really good bounty programs, don't know if they still do).

I think 86mil is still retarded as hell because there are plenty of off the shelf solutions that accomplish exactly what they want already, from 2+ years ago. Would only cost them a less than... maybe 8-10 mil in license fees. I don't know how big the city is or needs spec, so it'd take me a while to properly quote... eh, I also never did an international project. I don't know if some of the vendors I dealt with have a different pricing structure for Australia (I know some countries get charged more, for various reasons). So, there's that too.

So just saying, it's a much more complicated issue than most people imagine. The VMS companies do have a large workforce of programmers that have a job I'd never take and do need to be paid. I also over simplified quite a bit and left out other "fun" aspects of selling and deploying physical security... the reasons why I don't do it anymore. Hell, I didn't realize how much of a bitch of a problem it all was until I actually had to do it. I can't blame people for not knowing. Just... be aware, it's not a clear cut situation like this guy makes it out to be.

Though, RT being put out to pasture.... I had to develop an app for that arbitrary lockout piece of trash. Whoever thought of RT and whoever approved it, deserves a life-long raging case of crabs and... like... a monthly visit of dysentery.

Every quote by a dev/coder/cs quote amounted to, "The light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train."

I do agree it would be interesting for a computer science version of this and in practice would be online similar to a Slack Exchange or Reddit format... but reality is, it's going to be a dumpster fire without a nuclear-powered-iron-fist of keeping the peace.

Quick look, they did change the rules since I quit in 2012. Looks like a 60/70 hour limit in a 7/8 day span.

Though, you're restart is a wonderful 34 hours time-off in... a loud truck stop in the middle of nowhere. Always.

Oh, but you are protected (and I believe the insurance companies help with this too) that if a driver says road conditions are too dangerous, the company can't force them to drive anymore. Doesn't stop them from punishing you afterwards with too little loads.

The job pays like shit. You have to pay $2-5k for classes to get a CDL or get locked in with a company that trains you and you pay back at their variable rates of interest... oh and they "lose payments" often along with charging you high late fees.

They take anyone with a heartbeat. It's the ultimate form of equality. If you're dumb enough or desperate enough, they'll take you no matter your gender, race or self identifying whatever.

The job pays like crap, you're treated like crap and your body goes to shit real fast.

There are regulations, and most of them are pro-trucker, aimed to protect them from abuse by the company. Problem is, a majority of voters have this weird and incredibly stupid fantasy that trucker life equals a cowboy life. Thus, company lobbyists are able to easily manipulate the narrative to the media, public and Congress. Making sure truckers don't get a voice or have a leg to stand on. Most truckers aren't the brightest bulbs in the shed. I had to do it out of desperation from a spat of unemployment. I had a plan and a way out, unlike most of them. What really sucks, most truckers are really good people. They do the job in hopes of putting their families in a better situation. But because the companies run them down and they only get 3-5 days a month of home time, nothing works out as expected. A lot get divorced in their first year or so. Argue? Oh, what's that, there's no loads coming out of butt fuck nowhere Wyoming. Looks like you're stuck there for the week. Btw, you are paid based on miles driven when you have a load. Thus, in that situation, I didn't get a paycheck for the week.

And it's one of those jobs that people need to stay in their lane about. If you were never one, you actually don't know the shit they go through.

So no, it needs more regulation. The kind of regulations that puts a noose around the company's necks.

How does Google/Fb treat their grunts (developers I assume) and how does a burger restaurant treat their cashiers/cooks? It's sad if a cashier/linecook feels like they get more respect from their managers than a developer from their own managers.

There's almost no detail or focus on a concrete idea in any of these VC tweets. Everything is so damn vague and abstract in the original tweets, they can apply to anything or anyone. Thus, chopping and mixing them is meaningless, because they are void of meaning to begin with... Sort of the same way horoscopes work. They're pretty broad and the reader fills in the gaps and details. VCs talk like old gypsy fortune tellers... they're vague, tell you roughly what you'd like to hear and are generally useless sacks of breathing meat...

Damn, that was a wild ride...

But seriously wanted to say it's pretty stellar and so far none of these seem "bot" like. They read pretty genuine... which says a lot of how idiotic a lot of these VCs are.

Actually... now that I think about it... I think I do respond better to podcast ads. There's 5 or 6 instances, this past year, that I checked out companies because of them. I've only done that once for a tv commercial in my lifetime and... I don't think I ever clicked on a banner ad before... on purpose. Never on purpose. Accident, yes.

I think it's because they're not, "OH MY SHIT LOOK AT ME! PAY ATTENTION TO ME!" types of ads.