Some of the LinkedIn Responses are direct and on-point, and also hilariously/depressingly based depending on how you look at it:
EDIT: In hindsight, I think I should’ve looked into posting this in a different community… It’s closer to a silly “innovation”… soo… is this considered FUD? I also don’t support smoking or vaping, especially among kids. Original title had “privacy-violating” before the “solution”.
A school district spends $180,000 (hyperbole, I don’t know actual numbers) of taxpayer money deploying this system between the actual hardware costs, maintenance costs to install the hardware, it costs to implement it into their network, and probably an ongoing contact with this dummy’s company. Maybe only for support but with the way things are now I’m sure they built this app to phone home to their servers (introducing a huge potential security risk over simply running it locally on the schools existing network infrastructure in a docker or something), calling it “cloud based”, and charging the district 1k/month to run the devices the district now owns and should be able to operate without the company. The company then talks about how they’ll back up records and safeguard data so you don’t have to worry about that (that it dept you pay is pointless!)
Three months after deployment it turns out the sensors can be tripped by many things not related to vaping, maybe increases in heat, mouthwash breath, etc. the false positives are due to a hardware flaw and cannot be fixed with a patch. Feel free to upgrade to sensor version 2.0, now with improved accuracy! (read: the problem still exists but isn’t as bad). Only another 40k to buy the new hardware, rip out the old hardware (which is now worthless), install the new stuff, and configure the software for everything (again, maintenance and IT costs)
9 months after deployment the company is doing poorly because their product is stupid and only a few idiots actually bought it (way to go idiot). There’s concerns because they sent a new Eula that outlines data sharing policies. They are potentially finding ways to harvest the data they agreed to safely store to try and create a new revenue stream to right their sinking ship. District counsel says fighting the Eula change will be expensive and there’s not much precedent for it, plus they state they will anonymize data before sharing so it’s not a ferpa violation, technically. It feels scummy but you can’t do anything about it. You also don’t really trust them to only sell anonymized data but you can’t prove they aren’t crossing that line so whatever, I guess
15 months after deployment they get hacked because they’ve run out of vc cash, never could get an actual profit stream going (turns out they’re spending 750,000/yr on salaries for 5 people and they’re all kitted out with sick work computers for what is basically coding a web app, but I digress). security of their servers was one of the budgetary constraints they chose to make to right the ship (but had to keep the $1800 office chairs and the 15-20k/mo rent loft they use as an office in a hcol area). The contract says this may happen and they’re not responsible unless there’s gross negligence on their part, which you can’t prove, and that they do some bare minimum reactionary shit after the fact to mitigate damage. So they’re legally blameless and now you get to notify your community their children’s data was leaked to god knows who, whoops
22 months after the fact they go out of business officially. You get a form email about the company’s journey and the difficult decision they had to make to stop fucking around on a dumb project that sucks because no dumbass vc will give them fun bucks anymore to keep playing tech bro billionaire. All the sensors stop working because they require a connection to the servers, which they shut off immediately without a sunset period. You’re reminded every day when you log in to the schools admin panel and get 350 “sensor not connected” error messages and your students bitch about the “sensor not connected: server not available” error pop up showing up on their classroom console. It takes IT a few days to remove their shit from the network and that costs you even more money in wasting your IT staff time when they should be fixing the broken computers in the computer lab or whatever.
Now your school has a bunch of weird boxes on the wall. Sometimes people ask you about them and you go “oh those don’t do anything” and remember that they cost taxpayers in your community tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars and wasted hundreds of hours of your supports staffs time that they could’ve been using to improve the school
But then you scroll on instagram and see there’s this new thing that will detect when kids are bullying each other. You just have to put a camera in each classroom. It’s okay, it won’t record. It will just use the power of AI and machine learning. You’re sold right there and the cycle starts again
Best comment I’ve read for a long time
My work had something like this to detect drug usage on premises for a while (it was and is a problem still) and it costed like 30k capital and 2-3 opex a year. We had it for like a year and only took it out because there were too many false flags and security didn’t and doesn’t have the staff to be chasing down every alert anyway.
It was neat that on paper it was able to detect different drugs, heroin, weed, meth all flagged different alerts with 2 of those contacting police when detected. Unfortunately it was only like 70% accurate and we didn’t/don’t have enough security staff to use it properly so it’s gone now.
a docker
Something tells me you don’t really know Docker
I mean like running their hypothetical control software/framework within a docker on a local server. Is that illogical? I do the same for the software that runs my ip cameras with my home server, instead of them needing to connect to some external server.
You’re ultimately right though, when it comes to docker I am at the proficiency level of “can deploy other people’s images” and not so much on the “have bothered to make my own”
Good God I hate linkedin types. Imagine thinking writing an app that literally just displays a single notification is worthy of making a whole post about. They basically wrote a Hello World app for Android TV. And I’m sure they got paid like 40k by some poor school district to do so.
I physically cannot read LinkedIn for more than 5 minutes at a time. I get seriously nauseated 🤢🤢🤢 from all the corporate talk
Deleting your Microsoft LinkedIn account is an option
It’s how recruiters find me, so unfortunately I can’t. I almost never open it, though.
Only luck I had that route was getting a free coffee & b1tcted about the industry. Networking is better than recruiters 95% of the time anyhow. Microsoft doesn’t deserve your data or attention.
I’m a senior software engineer with a pretty uncommon skill set. Recruiters are the primary way that companies hire in my industry outside of networking contacts and I get contacted frequently. The job before my current one was through a recruiter.
I very much dislike Microsoft and LinkedIn in general, but not using it all is a huge handicap that isn’t worth taking on.
… Do you think reading a sensor and then accurately determining when the sensor data meets a threshold is the same as displaying static text? Kind of an exaggeration
In all likelihood calling manufacturer’s API to read the value then compare to a compile-time constant? It’s a notification hello-world merged with display-a-list hello world and manufacturer’s reading-sensor-values hello world. Yes I do think it’s borderline trivial
Congratulations you’re clearly an amazing developer if you have to talk about this so weirdly
I do not claim to be amazing, and it’s a simple fact that many basic examples/tutorials are named with hello world (and pretty easy to search for that way). A quick Google pulls up e.g. “Hello World!” of push notifications, Problems with simple “hello world” of ListView in Android
And of course I’m also explicitly using Hello World to reference the original comment
Yeah what I think is weird is that you make a bunch of assumptions about how the app is built. Experienced developers imo know that things are unexpectedly difficult all the time. Even when they are supposed to be as simple as you’re assuming here.
Absolutely I am making a bunch of assumptions. Following the tried and true Keep It Simple Stupid approach. Because there is no indication given that any more complexity is required, and keeping complexity to a minimum is key to efficient development. If there was anything actually technically impressive (or at least technically impressive sounding) about what they did, I trust they would have mentioned it.
I’m pretty sure this guy was just a project manager or similar. So yeah I am not surprised they’re not mentioning technical hurdles.
Ok but this is very simple. Everyone can set up something like this using home assistant and a few sensors connected up to it
Everyone can write software? I’m fucked then… Guess I’ll be homeless now
Vape “detectors” are the latest off-the-shelf scam product sold to well-meaning but technically clueless school administrators. They don’t work at all but they have a solid sales pitch. This tv app isn’t doing anything but forwarding a notification provided by the manufacturer of the “detection “ device.
That’s not what the post is about, it’s entirely about the android TV app. I assume they already built the functionally to generate the alarm signal (since it’s the entire raison d’etre for the company based on the name).
Right a lot of assumptions are being made here. The only thing I assume is this company built some app
I mean, I’m assuming that because that’s what he’s saying in the text.
How long before the students gamify it to see who can generate the most alerts?
Or use it to elicit a response somewhere as a distraction for a prank or fight.
Blow a fat cloud on someone else’s desk so their name pops up, bonus points if your teachers suck and blindly punish anyone whose name gets triggered.
dude fr, classmates next/behind you picking on you? blow a hit at them as a threat, show em what’ll happen if they don’t stop haha
The dildo of an unintended consequences is approaching.
Bullies will start blowing vape smoke on other kid’s desks to get them in trouble. And someone will eventual create a smoke-box class room to get the screen to light up with alerts.
Then what? You need to cross reference the alerts with a video feed or snapshots.
Then some genius will figure that using AI to analyze all of the data is easier than manually doing so.
the sensors aren’t placed on desks, you can see that the displays are placed outside of bathrooms because that’s where kids generally vape. my high school has sensors inside the bathrooms on the ceiling and they don’t work. you’re thinking of a scenario that’s incredibly difficult and costly to implement, I assure you no district would be willing to hook this bullshit up to EVERY DESK. the term “Simon’s desk” here is likely just a name for one of the sensors they used to test this concept, with the sensor being located at the desk of a developer named simon
Blowing vape smoke directly into the sensor to try to get the high score
Blowing smoke directly into your friend’s sensor to ge them in trouble.
Or ya know, vaping in the hall where you don’t have your own personal sensor and you’ll be back in class by the time any sensor goes off.
we hope this will reduce vaping through social pressure
The social pressure of all of your friends knowing that you’re cool and break the rules?
“Dang I could really use a hit right now”
“Well at least they can’t detect these tobacco pouches“
How is this invading someone’s privacy? All it’s doing is detecting if children are smoking in a room or space at school and then putting an alert up about the detection on a screen.
They have zero right to privately smoke at school, or anywhere for that matter, smoking is illegal for children and not something to be taken lightly.
Similarly, adults have no right to privately smoke whilst in the workplace in the bathroom or other non-smoking designated areas. This is also illegal and not to be taken lightly.
I agree. These are anonymous messages. I don’t see any privacy violations.
They could set up camera’s that record who’s entering and leaving the restroom and thus violate privacy but this seems fair play to me. They’ll just vape somewhere else.
They’re not anonymous tho, the image very clearly labels who’s desk the vaping was detected at
It says “Simon’s desk” which is the name of the guy making the post, which to me says he was testing the software from his desk.
When it is deployed, it would say “vaping detected in north stairwell” or whatever. They are not installing sensors on every desk.
Hm, maybe
Most likely
Simon’s desk probably refers to a location, not actually the desk of Simon.
Yeah, we have similar sensors at my job. I work in a highly secured facility and smoke/vape detectors are installed in all the bathrooms. It makes the fire alarm go off if detected.
How is this invading someone’s privacy?
So you think they will not use this to try to identify the vaping student?
So you think we should all be allowed to smoke in non-smoking places? The school already has all info on all it’s kids, what else “private” is being revealed here? If you break the rules of the establishment where you are, they’ll try to identify and ban you, because that’s how private property and bylaws work. School is no different. If you break the rules you face the consequences.
Is this logical and useful? No. Does it help kids become better and learn? No. Will it actually reduce vaping? No, it’s a leaderboard now.
But is it invading privacy? Also no. It is enforcing nonsensical draconic rules, but not revealing any information that wouldn’t be already known or demanded by the institution in that situation.
Privacy isn’t restricted to just your data on file. You’d expect some sort of privacy in bathrooms (I assume that’s where these would be installed). It can also set a precedent. Maybe they start tracking cellphone use “ensure students are paying attention”. Maybe they start tracking how often students are using the restroom, especially female students to gather data on their cycles (incredibly plausible depending on the state). Maybe they track their exact movements via school wifi. Maybe they give them laptops to spy on them at home. None of these obviously equate to one another but where does the school draw the line? Rather not have this shit in the first place.
You’d expect some sort of privacy in bathrooms
That is the whole point of this mess. The alternative is a person or camera INSIDE the bathroom at all times. The camera would be so much cheaper to deploy…but privavcy laws, rightfully, say no.
With the sensor all it does is say “smoke/vape detected”, from there an adult can check the hall cam to see who went in or just go right in to catch the kid.
I assume with the monitor, it makes it easy for a teacher sitting outside the bathroom and can see the popup (in some schools they already have them to check passes and listen for screeming)
So you think we should all be allowed to smoke in non-smoking places?
No, but I see you need to make up a point I didn’t make so you could attack that.
Lazy strawman, you must be from reddit
Oh the irony. Lol.
… good?
Everyone (even kids) have a reasonable expectation of privacy, but children using drugs in school isn’t something that falls under that reasonable expectation of privacy.
Considering they are only harming themselves, no I do not care much
As others mentioned, I think schools should dedicate resources to address this situation through education, instead of paying some start up for some surveillance gadgets
They are not just harming themselves. Everyone knows how harmful secondhand smoke is.
From vaping? I think you have vaping and smoking confused
Nope, not smoke per se, but still damaging to breathe.
I think people severely underestimate how harmful it is.
Happy to read about it of you have any source to share
I know vaping is not without dangers but it is a step forward from smoking. I honestly never read anything about second hand vaping fumes
In any case, I am not in favour of vaping in schools. I just think schools should not spend money in these detector crap. They should address it with their best tool, education
Considering they are only harming themselves
Again, we’re talking about actual children. You know: people that have yet to mentally develop to the point where they can make fully informed decisions on everything and sometimes have to be “coerced” by reasonable adults into doing so.
So you didn’t read my second paragraph?
I didn’t disagree with that part. Doing what you suggested and using the “vape detectors” aren’t mutually exclusive.
Doing what you suggested and using the “vape detectors” aren’t mutually exclusive.
Well, kind of since I suggested NOT using vape detectors
Ding ding ding
How would you like this installed in your workplace? How about ankle monitors that detect if you’re jaywalking? What about if your car had a sensor that automatically informed law enforcement if you were speeding. What if your ISP would shut off anytime you watched a video with copyright without permission.
See how bullshit “if you’re doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide” is?
There’s this wild, outlandish idea that kids don’t have the maturity, experience, or impulse control to make informed and rational decisions all the time. Thus we don’t give kids the exact same rights and responsibilities we give to adults – they gradually gain them as they mature and demonstrate they can handle them.
How would you like this installed in your workplace?
Yes, because my workplace staffed entirely by people 21+ is the same thing as a school filled with literal children. Also, for some unknowable reason we don’t have issues with people vaping in the building despite having people that smoke and vape. Couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the fact none of us are teenagers.
What if [slippery slope]?
You do know that’s a fallacy, right?
They ought to use it that way if they aren’t. Privacy does not mean “flagrant ability to flout rules or laws”
You do get that smoking and vaping are the different things right?
Those things are generally not illegal.
It’s illegal to buy/sell tobacco as/to a minor. It’s not illegal to use tobacco.
Most of the restrictions on smoking are not by law, but policy. 12 states don’t have any sort of ban on tobacco use.
Wow, you’re lame as hell
Is that what we call people who are obviously right now?
pretty wild you can still type with that boot in your mouth. how do you see around it? do you just touch type?
I see critical thinking is not your cup of tea. Might want to take that boot out of your ass.
Kids will vape at the sensors just to see them on the TV
new challenge, get your name on every bathroom vape moniter in 1 day
Unless there will be disciplinary follow-up ( -> no reason for this design), I only see this going the way of de-facto scoreboards among kids.
Considering it only detects if someone in the bathroom is vaping and not who, disciplinary action just isn’t really possible with your typical school restroom.
The main picture says “Vape Sensor in Simon’s Desk”, so it sounds like each pupil’s desk is going to have a sensor.
That’s what I thought at first, but the person who wrote the article is named Simon, and based on the context given in the article I’m assuming that was a test unit he had on his desk, but the planned implementation is in bathrooms.
Bubble gum stuck into the sensor coming in 5 seconds…
Removed by mod
Kids figure out how to provide false positives in 3… 2… 1…
Big LED light outside bathroom
paper sign underneath light “vaping detected”
The amount of over enginnering that went into this is why we can’t have nice things.
If you want to record it, hook it up to a computer somewhere, detect whenever the sensor state changes and send an email to the admins…or just point a camera at it and the doorway.
Of all problems US schools are dealing with, surely vaping is the one that requires the most urgent action.
deleted by creator
Kids are gonna find ways to vape. It’s just the way it is. Just like when I was a kid we all found ways to smoke. Making it more difficult just gives them more drive to “get away with it.” Sometimes I feel like all these preventative measures that people come up with were by people that were never even a kid. Like banning fruity flavors. I started smoking when I was 14 and it wasn’t because it tasted good.
Naah in all for the ban on fruity flavours. A lot of people, myself include, growing up didn’t smoke because it tasted like trash. Imagine if cigarettes tasted like hot chocolate!
It doesn’t remove all vapers, but it doesn’t increase the numbers either.
It’s preposterous. First of all, you aren’t my mother, you don’t get to decide what other adults do with their own goddamn body, this includes “inhale flavoring.”
Now with that out of the way: The flavor bans are not for kids, kids are also banned from the “tobacco” flavors as well, the bans are targeted at the customers and legally that is supposed to be only adults. And as me and the other guy you’re responding to are proof of, it isn’t the yummy flavor that originally attracted us to things like fucking Marlboro Reds as children, and the flavor that was present was not a deterrent. Frankly, if we’re banning good flavored ecigs because “kids who aren’t supposed to get them anyway want them more” then so too must we ban flavored vodkas like Ciroc, and hard ciders, white claws, most mixed cocktails, hell even sour beers and delicious trappist ales are too sweet, any alcoholic beverage that doesn’t taste like an oak barrel has to go, because adults can’t like good flavors so those must be to entice children to buy them even though just like the vape store the sign on the liquor store door says “must be 21 to enter.”
The point of the flavor ban is to make it so that adults who are legally able to buy it in the first place have a less enjoyable experience trying to quit or switch from analogue cigarettes, and as a result are more likely to go back to the cigarettes. It was lobbied for by the big tobacco and pharma corps, you’re spreading their propaganda unwittingly.
Regular full flavored vape juice is by far the most effective and successful smoking cessation or harm reduction tool available to us to date, better than patches, gums, pills, yadda yadda. The tobacco corps want you using their products, and big pharma wants you to take Chantix, they do not want you vaping because they want to take your money while they kill you, and they can’t do that if you have something that is 95% safer than their arsenic and fiberglass sticks and tastes like Pineapples.
I mean mothers don’t decide for adults either, hopefully. But I think you missed my point.
We know that: Tobacco and alcohol companies tried (and still do try) very hard to get kids to smoke & drink, because a child who smokes/drinks will likely become a significant customer for life.
Regulators also know this, so they began aiming at removing the marketing which was clearly influential to age groups not legally allowed to consume alcohol/cigarettes. I know for example Australia banned alcohol ads during kids tv shows, tobacco advertising has been banned since the 90’s.
Then along came vaping, which was neither a tobacco or alcohol product and could circumvent the regulations in place.
There is a significant young population size who will take up smoking/vaping for its social appeal - whatever that is. Let’s call them pot #1.
There is also a significant young population who will try smoking/vaping, realise it tastes like ass or is too much effort and decide to not continue with it. Let’s call them pot #2.
Pot #1, which it sounds like would include you for cigarettes, cannot be influenced and these regulations trying to reduce smoking/vaping would annoy them.
Pot #2 however can be influenced as long as those factors are address, e.g. ban the selling of the child friendly flavours, reducing exposure and limiting supply.
By reducing pot #2 for harmful activities like drinking, smoking and vaping, you reduce the burden on your public health system in the long term.
The big vape companies have been bought out by the big tobacco companies now, so they are one in the same.
You do know that the “tobacco” flavors are nothing like actual tobacco, and are instead still sweet just with a particular taste vape companies decide is “close enough to tobacco,” right? Some people do actually prefer them to fruity or desert flavors. You have to have some kind of flavor to cover up the taste of raw Nic suspended in VG, nothing is flavorless in reality, tobacco flavors just taste bad to me, some of those kids may end up preferring it. With that said, what is really stopping pot #2 from being like “well societal pressures are high enough I chose to do it, and it doesn’t taste that bad, I still wanna be cool.” Then they get addicted in the meantime like pot #1? Nothing really.
Furthermore, Ok fine, ban flavors for kids. I’m not a kid, I should still be able to buy it. Flavored vodka is banned for kids, but I can still buy that, do you think we should also ban Ciroc since that’s what many teens start with, or not?
Btw your link to phillip morris vapes that nobody has ever used in the history of the workd is funny as hell, I didn’t even know they made these, really controlling the market, huh? Who owns Smok, Geekvape, Elf Bar, Juul, or any of the popular ones? I’ll give you a hint, it isn’t Phillip Morris nor is it R. J. Reynolds. And are those on PM’s site disposable ones or are they supposed to be refillable? PM doesn’t want you to use the good stuff that people like, they want you to have to use whatever drivel they put out.
Btw Juul is the only company who was sued for marketing to kids, do you really think it’s pertinent to go after flavors adults enjoy to spite the customers of an entire industry not just that company, instead of just attacking the advertisements and companies themselves like we do for alcohol? Again then why not ban the flavored drinks for adults as well?
Also were those ads targeted ads? Why wasn’t google’s adsense involved in the lawsuit if so? You’d think the platform that targets ads would be involved in the suit about targeting 21+ ads to kids (which google/apple do know they’re doing since they do have that sort of data on all their customers). I propose this is because it isn’t about the ads for kids, and is instead about hurting the vaping industry for adults (who again, also like flavors, liking pineapples isn’t exclusive to children), and pushing the big vape companies out of the way to make room for your never before seen phillip morris brand things with flavors designed to push people right back to analogue.
It’s clear you don’t understand grouping from this conversation.
IQOS may not be big in all markets, but their share is not negligible.
The juul lawsuit triggered a lot of regulation changes and created legal precedent.
That is all I have time for.
I notice you’re avoiding answering if you think this ban should also be applied to alcohol. Is it perhaps because you agree that the literal exact same logic used against vape flavors is stupid when it’s used on the thing you may like?
I have a life to attend to.
In theory, similar bans should apply to all harmful substances e.g. fizzy drinks, alcohol, fast food etc. This is obviously an extreme take and difficult, if not impossible, to do in practice.
I also drink, have consumed illegal substances and consume fast-food on a rare basis.
My reasoning is that I do not want extensive costs being lumped into the general public to pay for the needed health care, due to the availability of harmful, non-beneficial products in our society. I do not believe extra tax on these products is appropriate or sufficient as these products tend to be used by those with lower education or lower income groups - and it is not fair to further burden these groups in life.
