I live in Amsterdam and can confirm this is a real problem. Lots of assholes with small dicks who pimp their cars or motorcycles to be loud as fuck. I applaud this measure
A couple hundred meters away from me, there’s a piece of a two-lane two-lane road that has no traffic lights for a little over 1 km and has the priority of way, too - meaning that at night, you can get a somewhat high speed over there for a little while without leaving the city limits.
There’s only a few bikers in my city, but holy shit do they make “good” use of the opportunity in summer. I really wish we also had this kind of cameras out there, because the noise from just one is insane, especially at dead of night, and sometimes they do this in packs.
The best part is that it never lasts once - they just speed between the two traffic lights for a while, making a shit ton of that noise.
There are also buildings with windows overlooking that same road from a much closer distance than mine. Can’t really imagine what it’s like for people living there, even though we’re basically meters away from each other.
It is unfortunate that some countries are using cameras, microphones and others to control the behaviour of people. I agree that it is a required measure - as some people do not change their behaviours out of good will - but it is definitely not ideal.
Hopefully, in some years it will no longer be necessary, as people will have those good behaviours deeply rooted.
I agree that it is sad that we have to come to that, but if good procedures are in place to make sure that the cameras and microphones are used for only this purpose, this can really help to have a better living environment.
Good to hear the idiocy of an alert system being under the control of the current owner is being pointed out. The sooner twitter stops being used like this by governments etc the better off we will be.
Not trying to be argumentative or anything, but is there something else (that currently exists) they can use that would get as many eyeballs on the alert? No one watches TV anymore. If they were to use Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for alerts, they’d hit 90% of the population.
If they were to use Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for alerts, they’d hit 90% of the population.
Twitter used to be very reliable, that is no longer the case.
In this case they blocked access and that is the problem. Twitter decided, with no warning, to block all access without an account and logging in.
There is no guarantee this or worse will not happen again.
This broke the system in place. That is my point. Social media in private hands cannot be relied on to provide a time critical alerts like this.
The governments around the world screwed up by seeding this system to a private company that can be trusted to maintain a service. But they did it for the usual reason, it was cheap to implement.
Maybe they can integrate a system into the cell phone networks so cell phones can get emergency text alerts without the need for a third party service... oh wait we already have that.
Not trying to be argumentative or anything, but is there something else (that currently exists) they can use that would get as many eyeballs on the alert?
What advantage does social media have over a basic website, other than the ability to spread through engagement? In a situation like this, I see no practical reason why they're not directing people to a government site along with social media.
I think the answer is just basic laziness, because it's easier to have some intern send a tweet than update a website, so we're offloading necessary functions to mercurial and unreliable capitalists. And that always ends well.....
The main advantage is that people would get the alerts as notifications from the app. It's not much different than sending alerts by email or SMS which are also privately controlled. But, those systems have maintained a reliable amount of freedom where as Twitter has gone off the deep end.
Its not much different than sending alerts by email or SMS which are also privately controlled.
See, this is where you're right, but very wrong. You are correct in that text and email are privately controlled, but they arent comparable to Twitter - in scale, composition and ownership.
Email and SMS are open protocols that are not controlled by any one group, and the systems are all interoperable and open standards control how they work. Twitter is a privately controlled platform with no visibility into how it works, no interoperability with other services. The better comparison would be email and SMS to the fediverse.
But, those systems have maintained a reliable amount of freedom where as Twitter has gone off the deep end.
That goes back to openness, standardization, and interoperability of email/SMS. Because of all those items, no one person can disrupt communication because there's no central control.
The alert was already sent directly to everyone's phone. The issue is that it directed people to Twitter for updates, when it could have just as easily pointed to a national weather service site.
When adults talk about education, they always think back to when they were in school. Often years ago. Often you'll get someone who brings up that Socrates quote where he complains about the kids being lazy.
But it really is different. Covid, lockdowns and omnipresent social media have changed things. Childhood mental health issues and suicides have spiked in many countries. Sure, that's partly down to increased diagnosis, but you'd expect suicides to go down if we were diagnosing more of them.
When I was a teacher until quite recently, I had kids recording tiktoks in the middle of lessons. When you called them out on it, there'd be physical altercations. They'd have panic attacks. They'd listen to music during classes, then get upset when you told them to switch it off. Throwing literal tantrums, crying because you asked them to switch off their phone. Complaining about not being able to listen to music during a test, that kind of thing.
A teenager who knows the rules, and knows to hide their phone? Normal behaviour. Healthy even.
A teenager who doesn't hide their phone, and cries when you take away their phone? Not normal behaviour. Immature. Maladjusted.
In the heart of Silicon Valley is a nine-classroom school where employees of tech giants Google, Apple and Yahoo send their children. But despite its location in America’s digital centre, there is not an iPad, smartphone or screen in sight.
I went to a school with a relatively strict no-phone-in-class rule and it was the most nonsensical rule of that school. Students simply carried second phones or said they forgot it at home that day. Despite almost all teachers enforcing that rule, there were still at least 5 people in every class who had (and used) their phone. Afaik it’s still enforced nowadays, but there was and still is no apparent effect on grades or quality of the classes.
When I was an apprentice, my vocational school also had a strict no-phone-use-on-school-grounds rule. Even in recess. Phones had to be off or on silent and zipped up | packed away in our rucksacks/bags. Absolute bs. One of my fellow students played The Sims mobile for hours every day; almost everybody wrote texts and used their calc apps all day. But, they concealed it; it wasn't distracting or looking too busy at times. Not a bad rule per se. (¡Story time!)
I never used my phone in class, nor the building. I had a technical calculator, and I was eager.
There came the day when my fiancée was in the hospital and I didn't think about anything else but how her operation went: I had to call her first chance. When I went on break, a good 20 minutes after she'd woken up from anesthesia, I exited the school complex through the entrance building's main back doorway, phone in hand. I immediately realized that I was technically still on school grounds right after the dial tone. Had I exited through the other door, the front entrance 20 meters behind me, I would've been peachy.
But no, the fucking super-catholic, failed preacher, creepy religious studies teacher who was supervising saw me, and approached me with a smug-ass dweeby grin on his bitch-ass dumb fucking mug. Mind you, I was 24 at the time; most students were 16. I could've left the school for a smoke or even a beer or two in a free period at any fucking time. And I was so dumb to actually surrender and put my phone in a shoebox in the admin office. Didn't even take out my SIM card, 'cause I was shaking and slightly dissociated, derealizing, after this stupid mistake, the reli teach's sheer delight for having caught me in flagranti, and the unfairness of it all. I was told I could collect the phone after school.
(The guy didn't even go with me all the way to the office, so I could've just pretended to go to there and do something. Everybody used tricks when they were caught, but I was toooo honest, and naïve af.)
I wasn't attending the last 3 periods, so I asked if my mate who was standing next to me could pick the phone up instead, after the last period, because I just wanted to rush to the hospital, go see and bring home my girl.
The thing was, the religion teacher and the ladies in the secretariat immediatly forgot about the whole fuckin' thing. My colleague wasn't handed out my bloody phone. And then it was the weekend, and I wouldn't be as near as 100 km to the school for the next 4 weeks.
I made it through the weekend (took care of my SO, cozy recuperating time), then I bought a new phone & card.
They had to look in a lot of drawers and cabinets when I finally went to get my trusty old brick back. I was glad I didn't have to attend religion classes.
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