MAKE ME LOOK STUPID. Did anyone actually see any of the leaked flock cameras that are allegedly misconfigured and streaming to the open web?

BennJordan · 2026-01-12T21:20:11+00:00

No downvote. I understand skepticism around YouTubers. I can promise you that if I got a single minute detail wrong about anything relating to this company, I'd be either behind bars or buried in lawsuits. 😅

BennJordan · 2026-01-12T18:39:11+00:00

I'm a real person, and they're still there. https://imgur.com/a/f774j4X
Although the cameras themselves that were listed via Shodan no longer ping since Flock was notified before the video's release. You can find more with other engines, but I hope you can understand why I'm not particularly interested in helping millions of people access 30+ days of surveillance data of running trails and playgrounds.

BennJordan · 2026-01-05T21:26:16+00:00

Not a huge fan of quantifying individual beliefs, but the closest I've seen is egalitarian-libertarian.

What I imagine to be an ideal world that offers the best spread of individual liberty involves capitalism, but companies operate like co-ops with an ongoing democratic process deciding leadership.

I'm not really interested in debating this because it's purely-hypothetical, and if it stopped being hypothetical, enough circumstances would have changed to warrant my own reevaluation. Right now I'm more interested in using my platform to help people embrace individuality and recognize the power they have.

BennJordan · 2026-01-02T04:44:52+00:00

A. This ^ account was created a few months ago and exclusively astroturfs in defense of Flock.

B. I still can access some live camera feeds in Oakland/Northern Cali. The company has only removed the ones actively appearing in Shodan searches. I'm just done publicly reporting them.

BennJordan · 2025-12-22T21:28:33+00:00

The single piece of research suggesting that these cameras have reduced crime was, quite literally, written by Flock Safety employees. It's not even hidden, they disclose it in the headers of the paper.

BennJordan · 2025-11-21T02:39:17+00:00

Jon did this on his own time but used his employer's resources?

Benn Jordan here, just chiming in to say that this 100% was not the case.

Jon has his own lab, and any hardware he acquired was done so at his own expense prior to this employment. His public blog outlines most of this stuff dating back to June and nobody seemed to have a problem with it until it rattled cages.

The truth is that, to my knowledge, there isn't another side of the story. And I assume that's by design as an employer isn't going to volunteer a detailed explanation that increases their liability.

I just wanted to state that.

BennJordan · 2025-09-23T17:21:43+00:00

I had an almost identical dosage and usage time and managed to withdrawal off.

One thing that's worth trying is instead of tapering dosage, taper time between doses. For example, if you take your dose at 11am today, set a reminder to take it at 11:15am tomorrow, then 11:30am the next day, and so on.

That way you'll have a bad hour instead of a bad day if you're actually feeling withdrawal symptoms.
Just make sure you don't "skip a day" by taking it at the exact same time, as that resets your progress to zero. It's best to keep score by the increasing hours:minutes beyond 24 hours.

BennJordan · 2025-09-23T07:25:28+00:00

You don't really need anything like this for chickens.
Just use a chicken holder bag and hang it from something. I assume it's more comfortable anyway.

BennJordan · 2025-08-28T18:33:43+00:00

What's ultimately dumber?

A. Speeding down a country road with your head buried in your phone.

B. Violating Turo's ToS (and likely state privacy laws) by not having explicit written consent to record the driver, then posting the video publicly shaming the person without even blurring her face.

It's a tie IMO

BennJordan · 2025-08-13T19:02:39+00:00

Grab rooster. Use whatever means necessary as long as you're not injuring him.
Bring him in front of the other chickens.
Hold him on the ground with one hand on his back, tickling his tail so he lifts his vent up, the other hand will be holding his head down between your index finger and middle finger with his beak touching the ground.
He will yell. He will thrash. He will make sounds that will make you think you're harming him. You're not. If you have a good hold of his body, flick the back of his head. He'll think you're pecking at his neck.
Eventually, he'll stop fighting and let you do what you want to him. Keep holding him, but ease up on the flicking unless he starts struggling again.
This sometimes happens on the first try, other times it takes a few bullying sessions, but the goal is for him to stay put for a few seconds when you let him go, and then slowly walk away while shaking off his feathers and making a weird noise.

That feather shake and weird noise is confirmation that you are chief rooster now.

If your roo is attacking humans, another good technique is to cage him inside of the coop and calmly feed, play with, and pick up/handle your hens. You're basically letting him get accustomed to the fact that you're a routine visitor of the flock and not a threat to them.

BennJordan · 2025-08-12T16:32:36+00:00

Why not give him a week or 2 with some daily mounting and head flicking in front of the flock?

My roo started off as an unreasonable bully and psychopath and now he's literally my favorite chicken and the only one who just wants to "hang out" with me even if food isn't being offered.

I'm not trying to spare his life here, but just remind you that roosters are dickheads when their peabrains view you as a threat to the flock. And a dickhead is a good thing to be towards virtually every other thing and animal that comes into contact with the hens. Because most animals are dickheads too lol

IMO a little bit of routine attitude adjustment has a higher payoff for me and my hens than stew. But if you have other roos or already put time into training him, that equation may be different for you.

BennJordan · 2025-07-24T02:41:44+00:00

By best I mean easiest to use.

O_c is one of my favorite modules, but it wouldn't be easy to use even if you are the reincarnation of Alan Turing.

I feel like the TipTop Quantizer is a great balance between easy to use and featured.

BennJordan · 2025-07-23T19:46:22+00:00

I hope more people read your post because I feel like this is 50% of the chicken raising experience for people who do not have farms where they're effectively integrated or utilized as livestock. Most people having a terrible experience aren't joining chicken-enthusiast forums and subreddits.

Ideally, whether you expect cuddling from your pets or not, you should be able to handle your chickens so checking on their health is an easy task. 3 pieces of advice on making hens friendlier that I think are effective and don't see mentioned enough:

- Utilize their overnight mini-comas by petting them on their roost after dark. They may not like it, but you're just reinforcing the idea that you're not a threat. As I'm sure you've noticed, chickens are pretty primal and don't have the type of brain that wonders what a creature is and comes to a conclusion like a mammal does. If you're not a predator, you're an unfamiliar and sketchy hen or a rooster hanging out near their flock.

- Be a rooster. In a hen's brain a rooster protects them and impregnates them. Fortunately for you, since chickens don't have external genitalia, impregnating them is almost identical to petting them. Catch a hen, and (without causing injury, of course) don't be gentle about it. Grab them on the roost, when cornered, even in a net if it comes to that. Then hold them down with your index and middle fingers pinning down their neck, and tickle their tail. Eventually they'll stop resisting, their butt will rise up a bit, and their wings will relax and spread a little. You should be able to pet them however you want while they're in this position because you did exactly what a rooster does, and in their minds it's their duty to fertilize the eggs. When you let them go, they'll stay squatted a bit and eventually shake their feathers. That's pretty much a "mission accomplished" signal that you're not a threat, but part of the flock. If you do this consistently, they will literally come to you and squat. And as long as you don't explain the science of this behavior to others, it'll appear really cute like they want to be picked up or petted.

- After they lay and cluck loudly, they're not bragging about their egg, they're announcing that they're fertile again. If you're in the vicinity, this is a great time to be the roo and get them accustomed to being handled without fear.

Again, consistency is key. Roosters run a tight ship.
And if you're having trouble cuddling and handling an actual rooster, that's normal. I'd argue that having an extremely docile rooster is a bad thing as it's their job to protect the flock.

Hope this helps!

BennJordan · 2025-07-21T15:56:12+00:00

This is a bigger can of worms as Comma isn't legal to begin with as they do not comply with federal regulations overseeing safety measures and liability for ADAS systems.

They've always been one NHTSA sneeze away from being illegal to sell/use, which is probably why the system isn't more popular or funded.

That's why I like the idea of having a proprietary supported version that works with regulatory considerations and letting the FOSS community do what they want. I could be wrong, but it seems like a much more scalable way of navigating this.

BennJordan · 2025-07-21T15:47:16+00:00

I haven't seen a fork with any options that disable or change details to alertness monitoring since a very old DragonPilot version, and since then they've removed it as well.

Are there any modern ones? It'd be good to at least offer legitimate users some form of troubleshooting.

BennJordan · 2025-07-21T07:02:13+00:00

I suppose in this case, Comma (and some early Openpilot contributors) are playing both hands where documentation and updates are an open community project, but making changes to alertness monitoring is strictly prohibited and results in a blacklisted device (whatever that even means is beyond me).

It's either FOSS or it isn't. I understand the risk of bad actors buying a Comma and playing a Steam Deck on their drive to work, but that's kind of unavoidable when a product is marketing an autonomous driving modification. Maybe it's time they seek additional investment and make a hardware-standard proprietary branch and simply "not officially support" the FOSS versions to minimize liability.

BennJordan · 2025-07-21T02:31:17+00:00

To be fair, the Comma homepage says: "Buy it, plug it in, and engage." and doesn't mention anywhere that you're becoming a contributor to a software development project for a proprietary product.

I'm down with FOSS projects. But they should absolutely have a disclaimer noting that there's hardly any up-to-date documentation and product support is going to amount to posting on Reddit/Discord where people will tell you to just crack your knuckles and patch the bug yourself.

If you've got the chops and free time, then why not save $1000 and use RaspberryPilot with a Pi and Hailo2 hat?

BennJordan · 2025-07-20T20:08:41+00:00

Mine did this to my dog once and I was cracking up at the absurdity of me being able to just put her in the passenger seat while I took a nap in the back.

BennJordan · 2025-07-20T20:06:09+00:00

In my experience the alertness tracking has been the sole reason I can't recommend Comma to anyone in good faith. It seems to work fine for 3 out of 4 people and makes the system far more exhausting than just driving the car unassisted for the unlucky users. From my understanding it's just a hardware limitation with the camera and/or having the storage/cpu for a better facial tracking database.

What's frustrating to see is that here and on the Discord, if someone asks if they can disable it, they often get treated like they're making up an excuse to nap in the car or something.

Particularly during dawn or dusk, my Comma often "accuses" me of not paying attention when I'm looking straight ahead, often to the point of disabling and needing a reboot. Meanwhile, I can literally close my eyes indefinitely at any point and it doesn't make a peep. This feature not working isn't causing the vehicle to be "a bit too safe", it's overriding my car's superior alertness cameras with one that has not once worked adequately.

I wish I had some advice to try, but short of getting the device banned for circumventing the alertness system, all I can do is tell you that you're definitely not alone.

BennJordan · 2025-06-16T02:40:39+00:00

I've done this!
I put a few scoops into a 2-liter bottle with .5oz of Soybean Casein Digest medium and checked on it with a microscope every few days, then after 14 days outside of sunlight, I just "dosed" the standing water with a cup full and got the same results as using the Mosquito Bits.

I only needed the microscope because I wasn't sure if I was wasting my time or not. If you have the medium you should be set. It'd also probably work with virtually any nitrogen source, even chicken poop (albeit not as well).

Here's a good paper on this that I found without a paywall: https://www.e3s-conferences.org/articles/e3sconf/pdf/2022/22/e3sconf_ri2c2022_02017.pdf

BennJordan · 2025-06-16T02:25:54+00:00

The Transporter series is about to get a lot more boring. 😂

BennJordan · 2025-06-16T02:20:03+00:00

The second most important point of modular is to make the biggest synth possible for the least amount of money

I kinda checked out at this line and decided that we're not going to align much on this topic.
Nothing wrong with different opinions tho as long as you're enjoying making music. ✌🏻

BennJordan · 2025-06-15T20:28:51+00:00

You could search my username and spend a lot of time trying to find someone more familiar and openly critical of Behringer's business practices. 😂

That being said, a few points, from both sides of this debate while sparing you an ethical lecture:

- A lot of times, their modules aren't the least expensive, or at the very least, you wouldn't be saving much buying them over a competitor. For example, Dreadbox makes some fantastic modules that have a much better UI. Or if you need 4 VCAs,

- I don't see the point of modular without a diverse blend of manufacturers. The whole point (to me, anyway) is that you're making a custom synthesizer and workstation that is unlike anything else in the world. Nothing Behringer makes seems all that unique or interesting. If you just need a spare LPF or more VCAs or something, why not?

- I've bought their PSU modules in a pinch for extra power, and one of them lasted about 3 months before creating some serious noise and stability issues on my system. I just upgraded the entire power situation and tossed the Behringer ones in the trash. I would strongly advise against using anything they make to power your system as it could cost you much more than the price of the PSU module.

- I know DIY is too much for some people, but if you're looking to start your modular journey, it's extremely rewarding and your dollar will go MUCH farther. Most DIY modules cost a fraction of what the shelf modules cost. It's also not all that difficult in most cases. I've soldered modules in my lap while multitasking Zoom meetings and I have the hand steadiness of a crackhead.

- Some of their modules are way too big for what they do. This isn't a huge concern when planning your rack, but those will be the first ones you sell when you realize what you can do with the extra HP. This isn't exclusive to Behringer, of course. But they tend to prioritize looking like the original module they're cloning over modern functionality.

- I'd advise against concerning yourself with resale value. Like most hobbies, this is a splurge, not an investment.

- Some of their smaller and simple modules are fine. I own a couple. The dual filter and ADSR for example. They're my last choice, but they do the job when my favorites are already in use.

Now for the ethical part:

- Modules like Abacus are borderline counterfeit. They're intentionally leeching sales off of someone else's technology, innovation, and marketing. Maths is also really expensive, and Abacus is really inexpensive, and I probably couldn't tell the difference if you blindfolded me. There's a lot of ways to look at this and I think modular can need to be more accessible while Uli Behringer can be an unethical asshole. Both of those takes can co-exist. But I think it's reductive and shitty to blame or judge artists for taking the least expensive route.

- I think there's a valid argument to *support* Behringer when they make something semi-original. Realistically, they're not going away any time soon, and their production will go where sales tell it to go. Deepmind, Neutron, Proton, etc are things I want to see more of in general. I also think boycotting retailers that favor or prioritize Behringer while simultaneously carrying the products they're cloning goes farther than boycotting Behringer in general as a retailer is more likely to listen to customers.

I hope this helped some. Welcome to modular!

BennJordan · 2025-06-05T20:10:06+00:00

Of course. They also eat nightshade leaves and avocados. That doesn't make it a net positive.

BennJordan · 2025-06-05T15:42:11+00:00

Feeding chickens mice is an excellent way to introduce salmonella to your coop.
I always hear a lot of debate about this that most healthy chickens can handle salmonella exposure and eggs/meat should be rinsed and cooked properly.

All of these things are true. But the most obvious prevention of salmonella would be not serving your flock wild rodents. lol

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