The obvious counter is that raiding a house is a very public and relatively expensive action. There's a natural disincentive to it. OTOH digital surveillance is more akin to being a ghost who can float through a door without anyone ever knowing you're there, and teleport there and back instantly with no physical time or effort
I think this is the big change people miss when it comes to police powers in the digital age. There's not been really been a culture shift from the police nor the citizens about police powers, just a increase in quantity of ability that has turned into a difference in quality. For decades agents of the state have had the theoretical ability to surveil people, and the people were generally OK with it because of the assumption that "well they won't bother doing it to a random guy like me", which was true, back when it required actual footwork, and even pulling up someone's file was a physical task
Assuming one does accept targeted surveillance in extreme cases, then I'm not sure how to solve this apart from the frustratingly "stupid" and probably unenforceable solution of requiring the police and intelligence agencies to be stuck on 90s tech. Theoretical legal sanctions against doing this appear to have no teeth, the only way to discourage surveillance abuse is to make each instance have a non-circumventable operational cost
So to use a concrete example: I actually like private CCTV in public spaces. I do feel safer knowing the police can use that footage if I'm a victim of crime. But I only accept it because most systems are just writing to a local device, meaning there's a cost to the police asking for it. Any scheme to automate access to these records over the internet, no matter how well-meaning and theoretically legally restricted they are, would inevitably be used to make those scenes from The Bourne Ultimatum seem quaint
- they needs a judge order and because the previous point you can counter sue if reasonable, at least theoretically
- they can't impersonate you all around the globe including in countries outside of the UK just by raiding you
- a raid is time wise also limited
- police being able to raid doesn't prevent you from guarding yourself against random criminals or agents of foreign hostile governments raiding you
- you know when you are raided
- you are still allowed to put steal doors in your home
- I probably missed a bunch of points
I.e. it's not the same, not at all.
A more correct comparison would to state police can raid you, so they should be able to hack your device but only to retrieve information and being required to leaf a message behind (and even that comparison has issues).
Dunno how I feel about that metaphor. To me the current situation isn't just saying "police have the power to kick in doors". It's more like "citizens are banned from building houses with doors that make it hard for police to enter".
Because real life isn't an action movie, and police would rather try to ram the door for a while and hope it budges, instead of instantly going for rappelling from the rooftop or for using a ladder. Especially given how relatively uncommon steel core doors in apartments are in practice.
One guy climbing through a shard-lined window is easy to mow down; the first cop that dies halfway through will block access to the rest. It also disarms the guy with the riot shield.
Opening the door lets a group of them quickly file in at once to swarm the occupants.
I have with Azure. They can be very generous depending on your company state, investment status, current spend, and your ability to switch to a competitor.
I'm suprised they're shutting down because of a lack of a buyer/investor rather than making it and keeping it as a successful business. Are the goals these days for a big buy out?
Once you take seed funding you're locked into a raise and re-raise treadmill until you grow sufficiently to find an exit. VCs/seed shops aren't there to help you build a lifestyle business. They're trying to either fail fast or get a 10x multiple and move on, which means either an IPO or (far more likely these days) an acquisition.
Maybe I'm a rarity in this, but I actually prefer paying for services that are not VC funded. That way I feel like I am less likely to have the rug pulled out from under me.
Geckoboard is an interesting opposite example of this. They took a seed round more than ten years ago and have been slowly and steadily maintaining the business, resisting further rounds. I don't know their finances but they seem to continue to be doing well.
And that does happen occasionally, but they're rare and it doesn't go on forever.
Bandcamp was similarly private for 15 years after taking a few rounds of funding, but they eventually got acquired, and I guarantee you that's because those investors pushed for an exit while the projected future revenues of the company justified a higher valuation.
I myself worked for a company that was private for 12 years after seed funding and five rounds of VC capital. But eventually we were pushed into a (poorly conceived) acquisition.
The merry-go-round always stops. It's just a matter of time.
The subtext is: it wasn't a successful business, so the only option for survival was to try to find a buyer/investor to fund it on the promise of future success
I understand the sentiment, and it's a nice looking bit of desk clutter, but if you're looking for a organising tool, just buy a cheap notebook for pete's sake. Keeping a notebook on your desk is invaluable if well used.
Fantasic idea and implementation. My timeline on here compared to twitter.com looks more sane and inteligent without those recommendations of 'X liked this tweet', and all the news topics. I assume that's because it's getting the raw feed.
I also love low-fi websites like this. I think websites shouldn't be a large drain on resources, and should embrace standard HTML as much as possible.
This has the opportunity to curve timewasting scrolling by making it more a periodical read. As such, I'd like the return of the timestamps and to implement hourly pagination, so that there's an 'end' point and a easy bookmark to start where you left off.
Thank you for the feedback. Glad you like this. Yes, I was spending way too much time because of the endless feed and scroll. I was seeing more things I didn't subscribe to (follow) than what I subscribed to. So I created this app.
The timestamp idea is great. I will look into implementing it next. It's always nice to have a start and an end. Maybe I will add a setting where the user can specify how frequently they want to fetch new items.
The house number locations in the UK irks me. I submitted corrections for my neighbourhood for all house numbers. A year later, they all get moved back to roughly where they were.
It took me a while to figure out it's detecting the house numbers from Street View pictures and overriding my corrections.
Ours used to be correct but when I looked today the number and road had changed. I was going to try and correct it but it sounds like that would be a waste of time.
To be fair in our case it has been a mess for a long time, even the Post Office database had an incorrect entry for it.
Can't fault it.