I was reading Hyatt's Privacy Policy and they mention biometrics (and even genetic information for some reason). Does this mean they can analyze all of my behavior in the hotel room?
I'm not about to find out. I really liked Hyatt, too.
Probably, but my care would have suffered. They are required by law to treat people in emergencies but they aren’t required by law to do anything but keep them from immediately dying.
I have a condition that requires complex and ongoing care, and sometimes need to be admitted briefly for same. Refusing to sign consent forms prevents that and gets you on to the “this guy isn’t going to pay us, get him out of here asap” list.
Yeah, I get how that could be. I wondered if that was something you'd feel comfortable doing in that specific ER, and I could imagine feeling like you had to choose between skipping the form and getting care.
The rust binary is great, but the underlying zk technology itself desperately needs to be sold to those dealing with things like passports.
In fact, now that I think about it, zk-proof identity will be required in the near future since so many poorly run organizations are leaking ID documents.
First, in the US this type of thing violates the fourth amendment as the Institute for Justice will prove in court with ALPRs. It could be set up such that it does not, but for whatever reason these companies are greedy and make it broad rather than narrow in scope.
Second, I just won't patronize your establishment, shopping center, or municipality if you do. I'd like to go to the UK, but because of this policy I will not. Menlo Park pushed back against ALPRs: I'll go there. I went to a different ski shop because the one closest to me has an ALPR. And so on.
So, this may be different in the UK, but in the US a large majority of travel occurs in private cars, so omnipresence of ALPRs is close to collecting data on everybody and knowing what everybody is doing at all times.
One might assume from a game-theoretical perspective that this is no different from living in a village where essentially everyone knows everyone’s business, and the knowledge that that knowledge is mutual prevents people from acting badly with the information that they have. However, in the situation where a small minority of people have knowledge about everyone else, and not vice versa, this can give that minority unearned power over everyone else.
In practice, it doesn’t feel great. I hope this answered your question.
1. Data is retained by a handful of companies. If it is leaked, you'll have a lot of information on people that is suddenly fair game for anyone including insurance companies, PI, home invaders.
2. In the US, I'm not concerned about local government as much as federal when it comes to the fourth amendment. Suppose you have a rogue potus. He sends the national guard in to Atlanta, Chicago, and Downingtown to take over the systems of these companies. Now you say, "well I'll just remove my license plate!" But these companies are cataloguing make, model, color, bumper stickers, dents; so you can take off your plate in a situation like that but they are going to still be able to track you with a high degree of certainty. People were shocked by South Korea declaring martial law -- we've become so spoiled taking these essential laws for granted. (Sorry I don't know enough about British law.)
If they don't send all license plate data to the internet there isn't an issue. But they do.
I think it’s reasonable to refer to a query of a database as a “search” as in “searches and seizures”. In that context, the gathering of data should be okay if a given search of the data requires a warrant. Unfortunately, warrants are only required for ”seizing” the data, not “searching” what has already been seized. Given that, it is reasonable to refer to the collection of data as a privacy violation especially given the breadth and scale of such a collection.
The agreeable arguments I hear tend to make the case that the scale is the problem. There’s a huge qualitative difference between having a human officer tail a human suspect to track the latter’s movements in public because that person is suspected of having committed a crime versus tailing via automated machines everyone in the vicinity at all times for no reason other than “nobody said we can’t”.
> for no reason other than “nobody said we can’t”.
This is exactly the nature of law though. Everything is allowed unless prohibited. Do you believe you have an expectation of privacy in the public sphere? If not, how could you disagree with the legality of the collection and review of activities performed in public?
I don't want a total surveillance state either but I can't see a basis for disallowing recording in public standing on the 4th amendment for support.
So do you think it's okay to record someone else's kids in bathing suits at a lake for watching later?
Just trying to connect panoptic recording to something that tends to motivate visceral reactions from people.
Not everything needs to be recorded. In point of fact, I see more than enough room for a right to non-overt recall-ability being worth at least discussing if only because we have evolved our capabilities to pervasively monitor to such a scale that it is nigh-required we sit down and really discuss this. There'll be no more familiar a generation than ours for coming to terms with these technologies if only because we brought them this far. It's our responsibility to contain their excess.
> So do you think it's okay to record someone else's kids in bathing suits at a lake for watching later?
I may not like it, but it's their right. Just like I can't control their minds to not think about someone else's kids when they are alone with themselves. Same with speech I don't like.
You'd need to look at it from the lens of whether it constitutes a search.
IJ is the real deal. Check out their dossier of Supreme Court wins. It will be interesting to see what the eventual Supreme Court arguments and opinions are.
In that instance they had a one way entrance and exit, so I drove out the entrance. My policy now is to drive through an ALPR, mark it on OsmAnd, then go a different route.
Google street view is helpful, though these things are going up at an alarming rate. There's also a website that has a list, though it isn't maintained (e.g. there are hundreds of these near me but none are on that website).
When OpenAI was rumored to acquire Windsurf last week I went to their site and switched languages. When I tried to switch back it got into a weird state and didn't display the original language. Not sure what to think of that other than vibe coding may need a little more oversight. (Who is working on AI QA? Winning pickaxe and shovel business right there.)
>> They should report it to the New York Attorney General's office, especially with damning evidence like the insurance company being refused contact.
Does this work outside high-profile cases? A condo I lived in faced dozens of serious offenses from the builder (e.g., live electrical wires left dangling open in living areas during a construction dispute.) The lawyers filed complaints with the NY AG but were told it mostly adds to some aggregate and real action is taken when the aggregate is huge. Also, we were told that most AG attention is focused on Manhattan and not the outer-boroughs.
If they have clear evidence with contract, email with company, email with insurance, then it may be worth it to try submitting the evidence to the AG. The AG may write a letter and the company may ignore it, but if other people are in the same situation and the AG's office hears about it they may take more serious action.
Was the builder in the middle of renovating and there was some contract dispute? Legal issues are always nuanced and construction can easily have misunderstandings. With builders I'd have either a good construction attorney draft a contract or just hire a reputable builder. (Matt Risinger, for example, won't deal with custom legal contracts, so you generally will have to choose one or the other. I'd go with a reputable builder and one that doesn't want to tarnish that reputation.)
In our case it was a builder who had done dozens of Brooklyn high-rise apartments. Seems they were facing similar complaints from multiple buildings on corners cut during initial construction (e.g., live wires dangling in apartments, loose tiles on balconies which could fall off the highrise, work which would not meet threshold for the city to issue a non-temporary Certificate of Occupancy.) The condo association had to retain a lawyer, spent high five figures on a lawsuit, settled, but got no help from the NY AG.
I still can't understand how YC funds competing companies. Where is the efficiency in that? You have your portfolio companies wasting time with (alleged) spies and lawsuits.
They say they just admit smart people. So 3 friends from MIT get in to YC, and at the first office hours said friends tell the YC partners they are working on a startup that starts startups. Awkward.
Rippling and Deel started by addressing different markets. They converged when they realized that there is a need for comprehensive payroll and people management software that's integrated with services like PEO and international staffing.
It’s rarely a case of winner takes all, and in this specific scenario both companies have grown into billion dollar valuations. Seems like it’s working for them, ignoring all the lawsuits
I've learned that no one at YC saw this coming. My bad.
Also I thought YC was supposed to sniff out jerks, what happened to that?
My point was merely that YC is about startups which are all about growth. There is no requirement for innovation. Maybe there should be more scrutiny on the idea of the founders. Don't let in people just because they are formidable and went to Berkeley. Reddit's original idea, ordering via cell phone, was arguably innovative for the pre-smartphone era.
No, but this is a huge oversight on character judgement.
There's a history of gloating here. So much so they named a podcast "The Social Radars."
Back to the point: they should consider re-evaluating their admission process. Heads down coding, talking with users, selling -- choose two. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt9dnFp1M0E
>I still can't understand how YC funds competing companies. Where is the efficiency in that?
I thought that's a core tenet of angel investing? Maybe not purposefully funding rivals, but funding many ventures with the knowledge many will fail while a few rise.
Yeah, I was thinking about this while trying to figure out author affiliations.
There was a Stanford paper a few years ago that dusted off some old intelligence concepts and the authors seemed excited about it.
But given the pace of AI, it's difficult to look in new directions. It will probably take an AI winter and some unbridled enthusiasm immune to burnout to make some real progress outside of feed forward neural networks.
Texas isn't a good suggestion for everyone, they don't have any of the structures in place to compete with Delaware or Nevada, but if you're the right person Paxton will do everything in his power or not in his power to accommodate you so it's a no brainer
> Can’t you have all people working in Texas and still incorporate at your company mailbox in Delaware?
This doesn’t give you a seat at the table. Living in Texas, having a large number of employees who pay taxes and vote, that gains you influence with the legislators and governor. Not relevant for most companies. Important for Musk and Mark.
> Why?
>
> Every business is going to be where its customers are not to some degree.
Every business should be prepared to deal with legal issues in whatever jurisdiction they're doing business in. Being incorporated somewhere else to avoid or prefer laws (such as taxes, or employment, or shareholders) is therefore reprehensible.
If you go to a different state and break the laws there, you can't magically claim that a different state has jurisdiction just because that's where you were born. Alas, that's exactly what businesses seem to have and abuse.
That’s the point. Musk and Mark are used to having influence. They don’t in Delaware because they don’t bring that much money to it and don’t control many votes. They have those things in Texas.
I'm not about to find out. I really liked Hyatt, too.
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