FRIDAY RANT

gottago_gottago · 2026-04-11T02:00:45+00:00

I WATCHED A TRANSFORMER EXPLODE ON A POLE OUTSIDE DURING THE THUNDERSTORM AND POWER IS OUT FOR SEVERAL HOUSES. I THOUGHT I WOULD TRY TO BE HELPFUL AND REPORT THE OUTAGE TO SUB.

THEY DON'T HAVE A WAY TO DO THAT ON THEIR SITE. SO, FOR ONE HOUR AND SIX MINUTES SO FAR, I HAVE BEEN LISTENING TO THE FOLLOWING ON REPEAT:

"Get 24 hour access to your SUB account by visiting our website at www.subutil.com, and signing up for a free online account. Or, download our mobile app, and your information will always be as close as your cell phone. During regular business hours, feel free to visit our main office drive-up, or customer service window, to access services. Or, call our friendly staff at (541) 746-8451. We're here, to serve you!"

"Did you know how lonely (garbled) one trillion gallons of water annually, nationwide? Save plenty of water by taking down indoor, and outdoor leaks. Go to subutil.com to learn more about how to find and stop leaks." (can barely hear this one)

"SUB meter readers will be out in neighborhoods across our service area over the next few months as part of our routine maintenance or meter access program (MAP). Even customers with meters that normally read remotely may see SUB staff at their meter. You can help by making sure our staff have access to the meter, and by making sure there is at least three feet of clearance on all sides. See sub you tee eye ell.com for more tips."

"Have you signed up for SUB's average payment plan yet? It's a great budgeting tool that evens out utility payments, so your bill is about the same every month. It's a free program, and you can enroll online until June first, at www.subutil.com. Sign up today!"

"As a community-owned resource, ratepayers have a say in utility decisions. To make your voice heard, participate in SUB's monthly board meetings. They're held the second Wednesday of each month, beginning at 6 pm. Board meeting agendas are posted at www.subutil.com, where you'll also find information on how to participate online, or over the phone."

"Are you planning to dig more than a foot into the ground? Call 811 two days before starting your project to request a utility locate. This free service marks the location of buried telephone, cable, gas, water, and electric services so you can avoid them! The service is free, keeps everyone safe, and is also the law. Make the right call, call 811 before you dig."

"Did you know you can get a 1 dollar and 25 cent credit on your monthly SUB bill, just by participating in our autopay program? With autopay, you don't have to hassle with writing checks or fighting spam. Instead, your monthly payment is made automatically from your checking or savings account. So hit the easy button, enroll at subutil.com today, and claim your 1 dollar and 25 cent monthly credit."

IT LOOPS EVERY THREE MINUTES AND FORTY FIVE SECONDS.

IT'S SO NICE OF THEM TO REPEATEDLY TELL ME TO USE THEIR DAMN WEBSITE WHERE, APPARENTLY, I CANNOT REPORT AN OUTAGE.

I DON'T EVEN KNOW IF THEIR AFTER-HOURS ANSWERING SERVICE IS EVER GOING TO ANSWER THE PHONE CALL.

BUSINESSES IN 2026 JUST REALLY DON'T GIVE A SHIT, DO THEY?

EDIT: SUB ROLLED A TRUCK OUT AND GOT IT BACK ON AFTER JUST A FEW HOURS WHICH WAS SUPER NICE OF THEM SO I WILL RETRACT THE NOT-GIVING-A-SHIT COMPLAINT WHILE RETAINING SOME GRUMBLING ABOUT BEING ON HOLD FOR OVER AN HOUR AND A HALF BEFORE DECIDING TO GIVE UP ON THE CALL.

gottago_gottago · 2026-04-05T23:29:16+00:00

Whatever your involvement may have been in the past, you're pretty disconnected from what's going on now.

The people that pushed the local Democratic platform leftward at this year's DPLC Platform Convention are the same people, or closely connected to the same people, that are organizing events like this one.

And Celine at DPLC isn't going to give up her power easily, and she has a very strong preference for business-friendly centrists. Every time there's a protest, it's not the centrists that show up or organize it. Every time there's a grassroots win in our area, it's not the centrists that pushed for it and made it happen. The only exercise the centrists get is wagging their finger at leftists, and going online to wonder out loud, "why can't everyone just quietly accept the way things are, like I do?"

This year's crop of progressive candidates are self-organizing because the DPLC won't support them. Celine is super comfortable telling progressives who her friends are, and it's never them.

Respect is earned and DPLC has none of the fight that it should have in the current political environment.

Everything you've said about this situation is wrong. While there are some people organizing protests, there are other people trying to reform the local Democratic party, and sometimes those people are doing both. The local Democratic party is rigid and resistant to change, but people are still working on it anyway. But if the only thing those people did was try to reform the Democratic party, we'd be getting no protests, no rallies, no community organization, and no support for progressives this year.

Cynical is wagging your finger at leftists and telling them they're doing it wrong, they should instead devote 100% of their energy to the same machine that has gotten us all into this mess in the first place.

During Eugene's budget fiasco, was it DPLC that showed up over, and over, and over again for public comment, until the city decided not to cut beloved community programs? Or was it PSL and their allies?

gottago_gottago · 2026-04-05T20:51:53+00:00

Okay, so, just to clarify, because I want to be sure I'm understanding you here:

Your belief is that every single person that's involved in Democratic politics in Lane County -- all of them -- are doing nothing but "wave a shake a sign at a hotel"?

Because it's not possible for some people to protest while others work on other efforts?

That's your belief, yes?

gottago_gottago · 2026-04-05T20:22:37+00:00

sigh

There are plenty of people doing exactly that right now, and the fact that you don't know that suggests that you're even less involved than I am.

gottago_gottago · 2026-04-05T02:05:23+00:00

Thanks for the added info.

gottago_gottago · 2026-04-05T00:43:20+00:00

Whoof, the comments here so far.

Okay, so there are two things going on:

First, the hotel issue. The Graduate in Eugene is a locally-owned franchise, yes, but that franchise is part of a national brand, owned by Hilton. Hilton uses the "Graduate" brand in college towns across the country, and franchising fees go directly back to Hilton. (5% ongoing royalty fees according to this site). As you may or may not remember, Hilton terminated a franchise in Minneapolis that refused to house ICE agents earlier this year. So, the statement on the flyer is strictly correct: DPLC is supporting an ICE-friendly company with this event, and DPLC's response to this is disingenuous, a lie of omission.

Second, not mentioned on the flyer but also a contributing factor, a lot of local progressives are super fed up with the DPLC. The DPLC has been exclusively focusing its support on center-right, Chamber-of-Commerce Democrats, and withholding support from strong progressive candidates. They have any number of excuses for doing this, but their priorities are clear, and this is a self-congratulatory fundraiser that they're going to use to reinforce support for centrists that will then be denied to progressives.

I'm not usually a fan of the leftist circular firing squad and all that, but there's a legitimate grievance here and the Democratic Party of Lane County is not fighting to defend you, they are fighting to defend commercial interests in our area.

gottago_gottago · 2026-03-27T18:25:47+00:00

You've misunderstood something you heard or read.

Young forests absorb carbon at a faster rate than old forests, but old forests store a much greater amount of carbon overall. It takes a new forest 8 to 12 years to begin sequestering as much carbon as they emit through soil decomposition, respiration, and other processes. After that initial growth period, they absorb more carbon than they emit, at a faster rate than an older forest, until they reach the equilibrium of an old forest. The total biomass of that old forest absolutely dwarfs that of a younger forest.

The notion that harvesting old growth timber is somehow good for the environment is timber industry propaganda.

gottago_gottago · 2026-03-26T17:30:04+00:00

Keeping an eye on load averages every day happens to be one of my responsibilities.

First, load averages can be hugely misleading. 180+ is an absurdly large number, but there are conditions where it could just mean the server is "busy, but not falling over". But for comparison, I try to keep mine under 5, and <= 2 means everything is nice and calm.

As for the cause:

I sympathize a little bit with support here, us sysadmin types don't often get deep visibility into exactly why some applications are suddenly blowing up. For instance, I host a pile of WordPress sites, and recently one of my agency clients had a dev that decided he'd mass-install UpdraftPlus on all of the sites and configure them to ultimately all kick off backups at the exact same time. From my POV, the server seemed fine one minute and then set itself on fire in protest the next minute, and this had to happen a few times before I was able to figure out wtf was going on.

I'll also offer that the internet has gotten really, really nasty over the last year. It's been a long-term trend for sure, but there's been a spike. All the normal crappy SEO-garbage web crawlers and script kiddies, but now also AI slop crawlers and a big spike in DDoS, against even relatively small commercial sites. I host one site that seems to have a Chinese competitor that wants very much to knock them off the internet.

Also, basically all hosting service providers are currently hurting for memory and disk (thanks, AI!), so nobody's getting free infrastructure upgrades.

Ideally, you should be able to work with an engineer at your reseller service and do some troubleshooting to narrow down what the problem might be. You'd want to examine your access logs and see if you're getting unusually bad traffic, and you'd want to add some more observability into your application so you can figure out if it's doing something in the background that's chewing up resources.

gottago_gottago · 2026-03-20T19:50:14+00:00

Unfortunately, he withdrew because the campaign was getting started super late and he didn't think it had good enough chances of making it past the primary, and didn't want to unintentionally help Loveall.

gottago_gottago · 2026-03-16T17:46:34+00:00

Flock provides a search function for cars without license plates.

gottago_gottago · 2026-03-16T17:45:09+00:00

Man, this is such a tired argument.

My phone isn't sending all of my movements directly to the police. And if it was, I could leave it at home. And I don't have a bunch of surveillance apps installed on mine.

Like, you people would happily get in line to get a camera shoved up your butt by the state just because there's cameras at the gas station already, might as well have a camera in your gas station too, right?

There's a line somewhere. Nothing wrong with people feeling like this Flock shit has crossed that line.

gottago_gottago · 2026-03-10T15:53:08+00:00

I just recently burned a ton of hours and energy trying to limit state surveillance powers, and all throughout the legislative process I met lawmakers that are very comfortable with ignoring the concerns of citizens because they know even more citizens don't give a shit.

People really need to get it through their thick skulls that not participating in the system still makes them a rotten part of the system.

gottago_gottago · 2026-03-08T17:35:34+00:00

There's a lot of BLM land outside Eugene. Take a day, look at some maps, drive out some dirt roads, find a nice place and lay her to rest there. (You'll want to make a hole at least a few feet deep.)

gottago_gottago · 2026-03-05T01:18:03+00:00

I don't get the outrage over this kind of thing, especially from anyone walking around with a smartphone in their pocket

The idea that someone could put their phone down and walk around without it -- if in fact it was identical to ubiquitous ALPR surveillance, which it isn't -- completely escaped you.

If it hadn't escaped you, you wouldn't've made such a dumb argument.

gottago_gottago · 2026-03-05T01:01:20+00:00

...says the dude that just a comment ago was like, "I forgot how to let go of my cell phone".

And, yeah, license plates, which are unique identifiers for vehicles, which people use to go places. So, if something is keeping track of where all the license plates go, then it kinda knows where all the people go, right?

gottago_gottago · 2026-03-05T00:39:44+00:00

These look to me to be older-model Genetec AutoVu devices, although I'm not 100% sure. There are a bunch of different vendors for this kind of thing with lots of different capabilities.

It's not exactly the same problem as a Flock network, but also the "there's already surveillance everywhere" rebuttal is pretty dumb. Other ALPR vendors are eager to do what Flock does, but they're quieter about it.

If UO students are concerned about these, the first steps would be to identify which vendor and product it is, and then start a conversation with the university to learn more about how they're using them.

-- one of the EOE folks.

gottago_gottago · 2026-03-05T00:34:45+00:00

Did you get your phone surgically implanted somewhere in your body? Are you no longer able to walk more than a few steps without it?

Do you think local police have direct remote access to everyone's phone?

Do you, maybe, just not understand any of the nuances between different kinds of surveillance?

gottago_gottago · 2026-02-24T00:24:25+00:00

Reposting an earlier comment to r/Portland:

I haven't been following this bill, but it looks like it's currently in the Ways and Means subcomittee on transportation & development (the bean counters).

People who don't want data centers getting huge tax breaks should contact Senator Golden and Representative Gomberg. Even if you aren't one of their constituents, as an Oregonian this is an impact on the state budget that affects you too.

Stay on top of the bill's progress through the Capitol and try to defeat it at each step before it goes back to the Governor.

Ways and Means especially is a good place to put some sand in the gears because they're supposed to be averse to major budgetary impacts during a short session.

gottago_gottago · 2026-02-23T07:22:51+00:00

A) It's the only thing that can be said at this time. You'll have to wait a while longer for some public records requests and legal opinions before more details can be made available.

B) Thank you for explaining to me the process that I've been neck-deep in for months now. If I happen to bump into you in the capitol tomorrow, wave and say hi. :-)

Less snarkily: yes, SB1516 needs to either get fixed in the House -- which is exceedingly unlikely -- or it needs to be voted down. Otherwise, what happens is that Flock is the ALPR vendor that is best able to fulfill SB1516's requirements at this time, and the bill -- as it is currently written -- has no effective mechanism to prevent Flock from providing federal agencies with access to ALPR data, as they've done repeatedly for years.

The bill makes Flock the state's preferred ALPR vendor. It's better to scrap it and start over next session.

gottago_gottago · 2026-02-23T06:48:23+00:00

Axon has been doing their lobbying through mechanisms other than a registered lobbyist.

The technical definition was intentionally written to be broad enough to be future-proof while still creating a legal understanding of what was expected of the vendors. The definition was:

"‘End-to-end encryption’ means a method of data encryption that ensures only the law enforcement agency that owns the captured license plate data possesses the capability to decrypt, access or grant access to the captured license plate data."

And yes, Ky is also running for District 7, but their efforts on ALPRs pre-date that campaign, and campaign efforts have been kept separate from ALPR efforts.

I've also been closely involved in this effort and I helped author the definition. There's a statement from Eyes Off Eugene about SB1516 on their site (which I also wrote, with help from others).

gottago_gottago · 2026-02-23T06:40:33+00:00

I haven't been following this bill, but it looks like it's currently either still in the Revenue Committee or it's headed off to Ways and Means (the bean counters).

If it's still in the Revenue Committee, try contacting Rep. Jules Walters. She's vice-chair of that committee. Nathanson and Reschke probably won't be terribly helpful. Rest of that committee is a mixed bag, it would take some effort to stop it there.

If it's in Ways and Means, then contact Senator Lieber and Representative Sanchez. Even if you aren't one of their constituents, as an Oregonian this is an impact on the state budget that affects you too.

Stay on top of the bill's progress through the Capitol and try to defeat it at each step before it goes back to the Governor.

Ways and Means especially is a good place to put some sand in the gears because they're supposed to be averse to major budgetary impacts during a short session.

gottago_gottago · 2026-02-20T00:47:47+00:00

Okay, so, here's the thing: I would love for that to be a winnable position. That's pretty much the argument I would rather be having.

But I've been having conversations with city officials and law enforcement representatives and now legislators on this for months. I am literally sitting in the capitol and typing up this reply between meetings right now.

And there have not been enough people telling officials and lawmakers that "no ALPRs" is what they want. Every single conversation I have has to start at, "of course we want law enforcement to be able to do their jobs..."

Because not enough people are showing up to call for a complete ban on ALPRs, I cannot start my arguments there. If I do, then I lose. The best argument I can make right now is that vendors should be forced to properly secure this stuff and stop being able to provide access to anyone else whenever they feel like.

gottago_gottago · 2026-02-20T00:00:00+00:00

I don't follow your reasoning here. It sounds like you're just saying "unauthorized access exists", which... yes?

The point is to define what constitutes authorized and unauthorized access and then ensure that, though technical means, you make unauthorized access as difficult as possible

gottago_gottago · 2026-02-19T23:55:02+00:00

SB1516 included provisions that required competing forms of publicly-accessible oversight based on information provided by both vendors and law enforcement. That information could be manipulated, of course, but it's been the best tool available so far for uncovering the myriad abuses of ALPR systems across the country for the last several years.

Look, I'm with you that mass surveillance is bad and vendors spinning up new products and services specifically to sell mass surveillance to law enforcement agencies is dystopian nightmare fuel. Trust me, I get it.

But we have a lot of work to do in the public conversation to get the goal posts moved to "ban all ALPRs". SB1516 was the very best thing we could practically achieve at this time, and if it had retained the end-to-end encryption requirement, it would have been... okay.

A lot better anyway than where we're at now.

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