deathmtn

The new orders, sometimes called “geofence” warrants, specify an area and a time period, and Google gathers information from Sensorvault about the devices that were there. It labels them with anonymous ID numbers, and detectives look at locations and movement patterns to see if any appear relevant to the crime. Once they narrow the field to a few devices they think belong to suspects or witnesses, Google reveals the users’ names and other information.

‘‘There are privacy concerns that we all have with our phones being tracked — and when those kinds of issues are relevant in a criminal case, that should give everybody serious pause,” said Catherine Turner, a Minnesota defense lawyer who is handling a caseinvolving the technique. Investigators who spoke with The New York Times said they had not sent geofence warrants to companies other than Google, and Apple said it did not have the ability to perform those searches.

…
Mr. Molina, 24, said he was shocked when the police told him they suspected him of murder, and he was surprised at their ability to arrest him based largely on data.

“I just kept thinking, You’re innocent, so you’re going to get out,” he said, but he added that he worried that it could take months or years to be exonerated. “I was scared,” he said.

…

But despite the drawbacks, detectives noted how precise the data was and how it was collected even when people weren’t making calls or using apps — both improvements over tracking that relies on cell towers.

“It shows the whole pattern of life,” said Mark Bruley, the deputy police chief in Brooklyn Park, Minn., where investigators have been using the technique since this fall. “That’s the game changer for law enforcement.”

What more is there to say about Google?

Still, I think it's important to keep paying attention to the harm they do, even if it has become predictable.

I've been working on this app that uses browser speech synthesis, which is primitive but better than it was. On Linux, the app sounds off, but in the ballpark. I just tried it on my wife's Mac, and it sounds freaky.

Part of the problem was that it pronounces ALL CAPS words as individual letters. I was able to fix that. But a lot of it is that the voice is blatantly strange. That last "dooooo" is so weird!

10-4-4-4-4-4. Glad I got 'em in, even if late because I have a weird week, and I might not be able to get any more in.

I love that Java is coded as brown on GitHub. It's just right.

This should now log when RSS is updated to syslog.

We took a long walk to get a haircut. On the way back, we got a donut and tap water in a coffee cup. The guy was quite taken with it and carried it almost all the way back at great inconvenience. (It was also inconvenient to me because I had to carry his bike.)

At one of the last intersections before reaching home, he dropped it while we crossed. Then, a car ran it over.

He took it pretty well. It may have helped that his haircut balloon didn't pop on the way home, as it has the last several times.

I've seen lot of balloons pop at a touch in the last few years. I don't remember that happening a kid. I theorize that manufacturers have of late figured out how to make balloons extra thin to save material.

It was Friday, so I just did one of 10 and left it at that.

Nothing like pouring your heart out into a Surveymonkey text field.

Looking again at the Remarkable Tablet. Most of the reviews complain about things I don't care about like not having color or not running apps, but there is one thing missing that's important to me: No handwriting recognition. I was really hoping to able to write things by hand on a non-eye-fatiguing device, then just use that writing elsewhere.

Oh, wait, it looks like they added rudimentary support for that.

Actually considering getting a SoundCloud subscription, but mostly, all I need is sound storage. Maybe I should just hack up a thing to put stuff on S3 or Digital Ocean Spaces.

The thing is, hacking things up takes real time.

2-10-4-6-4-4. It's a nice day! I think I saw a hawk.

Dag, it is really hard to dispose of broken iPads in this town!

Just chill down, everyone.

("Chill down" is a thing my son says.)

#2 🤔

I had to get up a couple in the middle of the night a few times because of (now thankfully rare) some kid wakeups. I am keenly aware that I'm not at my sharpest, so I think I'm going to actually listen to my better judgment and give up on doing things that require a lot of mental power and do some things that are less likely to fail.