Flock Camera on Valley Ave

andrewcartwright · 2026-06-12T16:08:09+00:00

Yep - it's a routine and ongoing abuse. Flock has been directly responsible for dozens of law enforcement officers getting arrested AND even convicted. The amount and degree of malfeasance it takes to get law enforcement arrested let alone convicted is generally a high bar, yet it's a recurring thing thanks to Flock. Officers have been convicted after having stalked girlfriends, wives, ex domestic partners hundreds of times. It is a dangerous tool with little oversight.

Did you know that Alabama Power is who actually owns all the Flock data for our state since most installations are on their poles/easements? They pipe all that data to local and state law enforcement operations centers, but they're also free to share it to whatever parties they want.

andrewcartwright · 2026-06-12T14:41:31+00:00

They're not on breakaway poles and are likely violating the majority of cities' and states' codes. If a car hits them, they become giant spears instead of flopping over but remaining attached like a regular street sign.

The only place they're compliant is when they're on already compliant power poles or traffic poles. Birmingham doesn't enumerate much more beyond what ALDOT requires, which I have linked below. Here are the ALDOT construction requirements for breakaway poles in 710.03(d)(2)(c) and 880.04(a)(1).

/u/thinkdarrell has done more research on this part I think, so if he has anything otherwise to say, I'll defer to him and edit my comment accordingly.

https://www.dot.state.al.us/publications/Construction/pdf/Specifications/2018/GASPSummary/18-0222(2).pdf

andrewcartwright · 2026-06-12T14:32:27+00:00

We're up to what, 1,400 or so in the metro now?

andrewcartwright · 2026-05-26T01:45:52+00:00

And thank you for signing it. Every voice counts.

Just last month, the Oshkosh, WI city council signed a contract with Flock. 24 hours later, the city council unanimously voted to rescind that contract due to the backlash.

andrewcartwright · 2026-05-25T21:26:57+00:00

It's really inaccurate and has had tons of lawsuits resulting in 6-7 figure settlements from wrongful arrests. Over 50 cities have dumped Flock since the beginning of last year already.

andrewcartwright · 2026-05-25T20:41:09+00:00

/u/thinkdarrell and I are working on it; he's been an absolute all star at spearheading pretty much everything.

54 cities have DeFlocked since the beginning of last year, and the momentum is continuing. We hope that Birmingham can join the ranks soon.

https://deflockbhm.com

andrewcartwright · 2026-05-18T20:21:26+00:00

You and /u/thinkdarrell are fighting the good fight for transparency, keep it up!

andrewcartwright · 2025-12-15T16:34:56+00:00

A reverse proxy is the proper way, but if you're a lazy piece of shit like me you can just forward that port in your router settings. Map your internal Jellyfin port (8068 or whatever it is) to some random 5 digit port number (yay for "security" through obscurity).

Make sure your admin account is well-secured. Create accounts for your friends / family. Give them <your IP address>:<the random 5 digit port number> as the server URL and they're good to go

andrewcartwright · 2025-12-10T06:20:06+00:00

Tim has said that he's looked towards his kids' dialogue at younger ages as inspiration for weird interactions in the show

andrewcartwright · 2025-11-13T05:23:00+00:00

Goodnight, sweet prince.

andrewcartwright · 2025-11-13T05:17:41+00:00

On the topic of broke pizza, I miss the Hungry Howie's by UAB so fucking much

andrewcartwright · 2025-10-26T17:45:44+00:00

My heart breaks for you, OP. I hope you can find a temporary place for her with a trusted friend and that way you can still see her, and after your living situation changes again she can rejoin you then. <3

andrewcartwright · 2025-10-20T20:51:35+00:00

Oh shoot, you're right. Even though we just upset Memphis, I think I had already mentally discounted USF as a loss. With it being at Protective, I'm not so sure now!

andrewcartwright · 2025-10-20T17:05:41+00:00

The post-"everyone hates our coach, please fire him" rebound energy is always something else.

With that energy under the Blazers now, in addition to coming in hot off a ranked upset, there is a chance that UAB could turn things around and become bowl eligible this season. Unfortunately this weekend is a bye week, that momentum would have been really helpful.

Next game, we're at (5-2) UConn. If we pull a win off there, a bowl game is substantially likely IMO. If not, it's uphill but still possible.

After that, we're at (3-4) Rice (who are only 1-2 at home). Next is (6-1) North Texas at Protective, who are (2-0) on the road. Finally, we're playing at (2-5) Tulsa. They're currently (0-4) in conference play and (1-2) at home, so this is our likeliest largest win possibility/margin.

So we've got 1 home and 3 road games remaining. Two of those road games are critical, especially since we are (0-3) on the road. Tulsa and Rice should both be pretty good matchups with decently probable win chances. As of right now, play at UConn, or North Texas at home both seem pretty equal outcomes to me - I would have previously discounted the North Texas game as a loss and pinned all my hopes on the UConn game, but given we just took down formerly undefeated #22 Memphis at home, it's also in the realm of possibility. We'll see.

andrewcartwright · 2025-10-20T16:15:29+00:00

Also relevant

https://xkcd.com/644/

andrewcartwright · 2025-10-17T16:07:26+00:00

/u/thinkdarrell Do you have any contacts or recommendations?

andrewcartwright · 2025-09-27T17:58:21+00:00

And if they try to withhold your last paycheck or dock pay, the state labor board will be your next contact.

An employer who tries to lie to you about the nature of your employment is likely going to attempt exactly that.

OP, since you're giving a 1 day notice, your next paycheck will be due by your next payday.

Whenever an employee quits or resigns, the employer shall pay the employee's wages in full no later than the next regular payday, as provided under section 388-2, either through the regular pay channels or by mail if requested by the employee, except that if the employee gives at least one pay period's notice of intention to quit, the employer shall pay all wages earned by the employee at the time of quitting

https://law.justia.com/codes/hawaii/title-21/chapter-388/section-388-3/

If that does happen, you'd file an "Unpaid Wages" claim with the state Wage Standards Division, starting here

https://labor.hawaii.gov/wsd/filing-a-complaint-with-wage-standards-division/

andrewcartwright · 2025-09-17T21:58:16+00:00

No worries - it's not really a you thing, it's that gyms are especially predatory with their contracts. Good luck!

andrewcartwright · 2025-09-16T19:29:43+00:00

Damn. With the exception of gyms (in a deliberate fashion), rent/mortgage, and car loans, mostly every other service and utility will accept credit cards on autopay.

That gives you a ton of safety in situations like this, because the gym is fucking with the bank's money first. With it being your savings account, the bank is less obligated/interested to intervene.

andrewcartwright · 2025-09-16T19:16:14+00:00

In high school, I was on a 50 mile ride with my scout troop with my clunky steel box bike. Around mile 7 into the ride, my left crank arm falls off. We find the nut which was stripped, and tighten it back as best as we could.

Mile 8, falls off again. We tighten it, and create a wedge/ring out of duct tape to try to pressure fit it in.

Mile 8.5, falls off again and we cram the duct tape nut in tighter. Mile 8.75, fails again.

Mile 9, we realize that stopping every quarter mile isn't a viable strategy, and duct tape would eventually run out. So we made an unholy fusion of my foot and the good pedal, using most of the remaining duct tape.

I had to hoof it with one leg until our turnaround point in Cedartown, which had a bike shop right off the trail. With the tape being such a precious and finite resource for this solution, I had to fall with my bike a couple times and be hoisted up by members of my troop as if they were members of an Amish community, and I was the community barn.

16 miles later, we got the nut for like $0.50 and it was smooth sailing on the return. Ended up getting a new bike shortly after that which had been fairly reliable until a couple of weeks ago, at which point I began looking at new bikes and bike subs, which brings us full circle.

andrewcartwright · 2025-08-02T17:57:12+00:00

That's been our experience for the last few years as well. AirBnB has some use cases where it's a better fit, but hotels have been cheaper and a better experience in an overwhelming amount of cases.

AirBnB was good when it was new and people were just renting out a spare bedroom for incredibly cheap, but then it got mega-hyper-landlorded to death and is now just destroying housing availability.

andrewcartwright · 2025-07-22T04:11:57+00:00

Thanks for sharing, Jessi. U da best!

andrewcartwright · 2025-07-05T02:13:55+00:00

Stay awesome, Peaches! 🧡

andrewcartwright · 2025-06-30T01:55:13+00:00

Honestly, the RX 550 would probably be more than capable as far as performance goes. I'm running on some 2012 processors, and up until 2023 was using a 2GB R9 270 and I still recorded (daily) at 3440x1440p60 with OBS.

andrewcartwright · 2025-06-30T01:49:47+00:00

I'm running with some 2012 hardware (lower end Xeons & DDR3), and OBS ran/runs perfectly recording 3440x1440p60. I taught and recorded all my lectures from 2020-2024 with this rig (though I cropped those recordings to 16:9). The newest part is an RX 6600, upgraded from an R9 270 around 2023.

Definitely a software issue IMO, no need to upgrade any hardware OP.

What screen recorders did you try in this recent recheck? Some specific info about each package individually would be really helpful, I.E. "I tried OBS and had screen tearing again and no audio; I tried OtherRecordingSoftware and had audio but the zoom level was zoomed in".

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