It probably won’t come as much of a surprise to find that most of the Hackaday staff aren’t exactly what you’d call sports fanatics, so we won’t judge if you didn’t tune in for the Super Bowl last week. But if you did, perhaps you noticed Ring’s Orwellian “Search Party” spot — the company was hoping to get customers excited about a new feature that allows them to upload a picture of their missing pet and have Ring cameras all over the neighborhood search for a visual match. Unfortunately for Ring, the response on social media wasn’t quite what they expected.
One commenter on YouTube summed it up nicely: “This is like the commercial they show at the beginning of a dystopian sci-fi film to quickly show people how bad things have gotten.” You don’t have to be some privacy expert to see how this sort of mass surveillance is a slippery slope. Many were left wondering just who or what the new system would be searching for when it wasn’t busy sniffing out lost pups.
The folks at Wyze were quick to capitalize on the misstep, releasing their own parody ad a few days later that showed various three-letter agencies leaving rave reviews for the new feature. By Thursday, Ring announced they would be canceling a planned expansion that would have given the divisive Flock Safety access to their network of cameras. We’re sure it was just a coincidence.
Speaking of three-letter agencies, the Environmental Protection Agency has announced this week that they will no longer incentivize the inclusion of stop-start systems on new automobiles. The feature, which shuts off the engine when the vehicle comes to a stop, was never actually required by federal law; rather, the EPA previously awarded credits to automakers that added the feature, which would help them meet overall emission standards. Manufacturers are free to continue offering stop-start systems on their cars if they wish, but without the EPA credits, there’s little benefit in doing so. Especially since, as Car and Driver notes, it seems like most manufacturers are happy to be rid of it. The feature has long been controversial with drivers as well, to the point that we’ve seen DIY methods to shut it off.
An incredible story ran in The Washington Post yesterday (free to read archive) that’s so wild that it’s almost hard to believe. In fact, if it wasn’t from The Washington Post, we’d be sure it was some kind of conspiracy theory fanfic. The short version goes like this: a Norwegian researcher who was so confident the “Havana syndrome” wasn’t the result of a directed energy weapon decided to prove it by not only building some sort of pulsed RF device based on leaked classified documents, but fired the thing at himself as a test. We’re not sure what the Norwegian equivalent to the “Shocked Pikachu Face” meme is, but we’ll give you one guess as to what happened.
If that wasn’t crazy enough, the article goes on to casually mention that the US Department of Homeland Security secretly purchased a similar pulsed-energy weapon for several million dollars on the black market during the Biden administration, and is currently studying it. Despite it apparently containing Russian components, the Feds have yet to determine who actually built the thing. You’ll have a hard time finding a bigger proponent for the free exchange of information than Hackaday, but even we have to admit…maybe there are some things it’s better we don’t know about.
Of course, if you’re looking to really maximize the effects of your black market pulsed-energy weapon, you’ll need to get it up high (maybe, what the hell do we know). Or perhaps you’re just a radio enthusiast. In either event, if you’re within driving distance of Tennessee, you’ll want to keep an eye on this government auction for an 80-foot-tall mobile communications tower. According to the listing posted by the Madisonville Police Department, the towable rig was built in 2016, weighs in at a little over 10,000 pounds, and has been kept in storage. It just needs some air in the tires to get it moving again.
As of this writing, the high bid is just $565, but with 18 days left to go on the auction, we suspect that number will be considerably higher when the gavel drops. We’ll check back next month to see what it sold for, and on the off-chance that any of you actually buy it, please let us know.
If all this talk of mass surveillance and shady government dealings has you down, perhaps a quick game of web-based Descent will lighten the mood. It’s the product of a port to Three.js by [mrdoob], completed with the aid of Claude. We know many of you are critical of AI-produced code, and not without good reason, but the results in this case are pretty slick.
Finally, we’ll go out on a limb and guess that more than a few in the audience are fans of the film Short Circuit, which turns 40 years old this year. In celebration, an event is being planned for June in Astoria, Oregon, where parts of the movie were filmed. As if you needed any other reason to meet Steve Guttenberg, you’ll also get the chance to pose for pictures with Johnny 5 and sit in on Q&A discussions with the cast and crew. There’s even going to be licensed merch for sale, which we can only hope means you’ll be able to buy one of those miniature J5’s from Short Circuit 2. It’s not the sort of event Hackaday generally covers, but we’re certainly tempted.
See something interesting that you think would be a good fit for our weekly Links column? Drop us a line, we’d love to hear about it.
Hallelujah on killing the stop-start nonsense. That was a factor in my decision to get a manual transmission in my last vehicle. (admittedly a small factor: the alternative was a godforsaken CVT).
The only stop-start hybrid that made sense was Koenigsegg’s Regera drivetrain.
So, what you’re saying is that it doesn’t affect you at all, but that no-one else should have it.
Yes. Imposing your will upon the world is good, actually.
Manual transmissions are becoming pretty rare in new cars, so it’s a question of whether you can buy your next car without stop-start being forced on you.
My manual transmission car has an auto off feature. But fortunately made during the weird intermediate period where there is a physical off button that stays off.
My father’s previous car was a Peugeot. I think it was a 2017 or 2018 model. It came with a start stop system you couldn’t turn off and a manual automatic gearbox. So it’s a manual gearbox that’s automated, not a normal automatic gearbox. It’s cheaper to build but it’s slower. The start stop system was also very slow.
You drive towards a T junction and you have to stop. You see that you can go, so you let go of the brake and hit the gas pedal. The engine takes 2-3 seconds to turn on, then you have to wait another 1-2 seconds for the car to go into gear. By then there are other cars coming and you have lost the time window to cross, but the tires are spinning and the car is moving forward so you have to slam the brakes. That car was incredibly unsafe because of it.
I already don’t like automatic gearboxes but that thing was the worst.
The Regera has 700 horses with the engine turned off (700hp electric, 800 from the engine, 1500 total) , so start stop isn’t really impacted. It’s sadly “slightly” out of my price range. I’m saving money for a Steam Machine, so I don’t think I can afford the brochure of that car.
I hadn’t even heard of these until my car was in the shop and I had a loaner with it. I couldn’t figure out why the car was so slow to get moving after I stopped at an intersection. I only had the loaner for about a week, but I figured out what was going on and turned the silly thing off.
I added an after market pigtail to my Subaru Forester, that made the default ‘off’. You can still turn it on (press the button) if one would every want too. The start/stop function is stupid in my mind. The ‘default’ should be off anyway. Now if I could just turn the eye-sight tech off.
oh look people doing stuff with descent again. really need to see how the various d3 projects are coming along as soon as i get around to ripping my old discs.
“If all this talk of mass surveillance and shady government dealings has you down, perhaps a quick game of web-based Descent will lighten the mood.”
Oh joy, I can get my vertigo on.
The Ring fiasco description doesn’t mention their planned venture with Flock, whose license recognition cameras have infested cities for some time (though they have been increasingly “run out of town” in some places). Their data is already shared with law enforcement.
Given the public lapses, foul-ups, corporate shenanigans, and general hamfistedness of it all it could never be promoted as the nice clean venture that their marketers likes to promote.
Lol pffffff. Ring already did it. And is still doing it. And won’t stop doing it they will just stop telling people they are doing it. Because money.
Oh joy now the general public can expect to have havanna syndrome devices tested on them.
Here’s a list of reported symptoms of Havana syndrome:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_hysteria#Signs_and_symptoms
Nice one hahaha. Interestingly the list is somewhat similar to those of Havana syndrome. Unfortunately though, my original comment has a documented history of occurring in certain world locations
To anyone who owns an internet camera like Ring, what did you expect? Who installs a doorbell camera and thinks, it’s secure and no one is doing anything shady or creepy. Who installs an Alexa/Siri or walks around with a cellphone and thinks, no one is listening or tracking me or doing anything creepy. Surely people aren’t so gullible.