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
This sounds about right. My only quibble is about sick computers and web apps. Twenty years ago I felt good because all I needed was a text editor and a web browser. Nowadays, the hungriest apps on my desktop are Firefox and VS Code.
To be fair, 20 years ago your computer would have choked doing 1/10th the stuff either one of those apps do today. Hell, I still remember writing a prank program that would lock up my school computers because I made it beep too fast.
Best comment I’ve read for a long time
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”
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.
Finally, a local WEEE company gets to make a few hundred bucks selling off the glorified VOC sensors at the end.
At least there are some criticisms. Considering it’s LinkedIn, forever, it will get drowned by a sea of synergy pivoting lunatics.
Rare LinkedIn ✨positive vibes✨ theater going off-script
In my high school they managed to rip the alarm’s siren off the wall without triggering it; if these kids have even an 1/8 th of the ingenuity they had, these things aren’t gonna last
Its amazing the number of problems in life that csn be solved with a $2 harbor freight automatic punch. Speakers especially.
Do kids prefer to not have doors then? Because I’m reading a lot of messed up headlines where the school removes the stall and bathroom doors and kids lose their privacy.
I’d rather have the TV with an alert than have to do competitive pooping.
That just sounds like a seperate problem to me.
It’s a separate but adjacent problem.
No school should ever be allowed to take the doors off bathroom stalls.
That just seems to be the alternative that don’t places are doing to deal with kids congregating in the bathroom to vape.
That seems like a management issue.
They can see the time it went offline and then the time you walked out of the bathroom. It doesn’t take much to put it together.
Also I think these devices are designed to be resistant to tampering.
A piece of clear packing tape would take it out permanently as it would be almost impossible to see that the sensor was covered if the tape was applied cleanly.
You’ve seen packing tape in real life, right? It’s not “almost impossible to see”, it’s shiny and obvious. As much as I love skirting draconian measures, that ain’t it…
Nobody is going to inspect it that closely, especially if they mount it on the ceiling. It does blend into certain plastics that are smooth.
A very long time ago, and much less technologically advanced:
I went to boarding school. We had a little bit of a propensity for sneaking out of the dorm at night.
New dean comes in our senior year and installs alarms on all the exits.
Our senior year time capsule contains the controlling keypad to that alarm system that wasn’t even functional for twenty four hours.
I’ve no doubt that today’s teens possess the ingenuity to bypass if not completely disable this thing.
Plastic bag and a rubber band, my good sir!
I’m intrigued. How does that work?
It has to have the vape fumes get to the sensor. Cover the sensor with the bag, tie off with rubber band. No more ability to sense what can’t get there.
I, in no way, am endorsing vaping, especially with kids.
Oh haha yea. I thought that was for the alarm sirens.
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 device still needs a human to investigate. Also it can’t narrow it down to specific students. All it can say is that there was vaping related chemicals detected in the bathroom.
All it can say is that there was vaping related chemicals detected in the bathroom.
Bring in a fog machine (mostly same ingredients) and see if machines can have aneurisms.
A fog machine doesn’t have any of the same metals or nicotine.
Also why would it be ok for a student to bring in a fog machine. That also seems kinda problematic
Any good school should have a fog machine of its own IMO.
You don’t vape metals unless you’re running it unreasonably long and hot without juice. The studies that showed metals shedding from coils basically engineered it through nonrealistic methods that would never be repeated in the wild, you’d notice the worst taste you’ve ever had as the cotton singes long before the coil sheds any material. That said, vape juice is VG, PG, Flavors, and Nic; fog machine juice is VG, PG, distilled water, and essential oils if you want some smells. The bulk of both fluids is literally the exact same with the exception that vapes require USP food grade VG/PG where nobody cares with fog machines.
As to your second question: Because it’s funny. Of course they’d be mad about it, that’s part of why it’s funny. Not a class clown, were you?
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.
They can send people to investigate. Also you could just have someone outside. It should be fairly obvious.
It doesn’t replace humans but it can compliment them. I’m not sure why people see this as a privacy issue. We aren’t talking about some scary mass surveillance system here
This is taking the route of individual monitoring and public shaming to prevent vaping. That doesn’t work, especially with teens.
It isn’t individual monitoring. It is an alarm in the bathroom. It can also detect smoke from a fire.
And if there’s one kid in the bathroom or a person posted by the bathroom watching the monitor? This feels very police state, monitor and enforce not educate and encourage.
Then how is the social pressure thing meant to work?
They can just send in security to investigate. Maybe not every time the alarm is tripped but if they start seeing often they can start making connections. They can basically plan a bust once in a while.
Tech Bros make a panopticon and call it a novel approach
A panopticon where it’s assumed that the inmates will repeatedly smash the doors, and the prison guards will repeatedly have to order new ones.
*sips beer* ah, the cycle of business
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.
Don’t do it in a place used by others. This makes the bathroom usable
Also vaping is very bad for your brain. It is highly addictive and the younger the start the higher chance you will never be able to stop. Also I would also be concerned that they end up getting vapes with drugs in them. It has happened with weed.
Imagine paying taxes for education and they spend it on shit like this.
I strongly suspect stuff like this happens at rich people’s private schools.
Ain’t no public school in the US got money for this.
My old HS recently implemented an app to go to the bathroom. If you dont check out in the app you are written up. Source: my younger brother
If you dont check out in the app you are written up.
And what’s next?
I would assume ISS, then regular suspension, then expulsion
ISS, as in: you get shot into space?
We have to get those astronauts boeing stranded up there back somehow…
boeing
No-no-no. They have worse quality control than even roscosmos, which is huge anti-achivement. I’d rather trust Rogozin personally, than boeing managers. At least we know on which dacha he stores stolen money.
I wish. no in school suspension
Right, America. They even make people pay to become productive members of society.
pay to become products* FTFY
Nah. Poor public schools spend waaaay to much money on shit like this. Source: Have worked as a teacher in a poor public school.
Rich kids at private schools aren’t wasting time vaping. They have cocaine they bought off someone on the faculty or brought in from mommy and daddy’s stash at home.
One upside from not having enough budget, ghouls don’t have enough money to develop stuff like this in public schools.
One would hope, but no, so long as the Super-Intendent gets his kick-backs, this is the shit that takes priority over all-else.
Of all problems US schools are dealing with, surely vaping is the one that requires the most urgent action.
Maybe they can modify it to display a gunshot scoreboard.
It is very bad for young brains
Not as bad as being shot.
Look honestly I don’t think this is that dystopian.
Smoke detectors existed in bathrooms forever. The main use in high school seems to be catching particularly dumb teenagers smoking cigarettes in the bathroom. When I was in high school they were tuned to be super sensitive to the point where water vapor could set one off. I remember one time where the entire school had to stand out in the rain after a fire alarm went off, in what was later determined to be just two teenagers smoking in the bathroom.
Teachers also have been trying to catch students smoking for like 50 years. Back in the 20th, there were assistant principals that basically roamed the halls looking for whiffs of cigarette smoke. Part of the reason memes about hanging out under the bleachers started is because it was the best place to smoke on account of being outside, out of the way, and old school gym teachers just not giving a fuck.
This dudes app just seems like a modern update on very old concepts. Instead of teenagers smoking cigarettes, they are vaping. Instead of a smoke detector, you have something designed specifically for vapes. Instead of some super anal assistant principal on patrol, you have some super anal assistant principal sprinting across the school. Who knows, maybe this is the thing that forces teenagers to touch grass because I’m willing to there aren’t vape detectors under the bleachers and gym teachers still don’t give a fuck.
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
Satellite Hello World + Telescope Hello World ⇒ Hubble Space Telescope Hello World
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.
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
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).
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.
Its easy enough to make a tube to blow through that should remove enough particulates to bypass the sensor. The kids would never figure this out though. /s
THAT is a fucking masterpiece.
Bubble gum stuck into the sensor coming in 5 seconds…
