5th Cir. vs 7th Cir., oral arguments

I admit the reason I bothered to do the transcription for this case is because I was playing with my tools. I’m to the point where I am either going to have to learn more, write my own, and learn enough about deep learning and AI training to be able to get the results I want.

Just to give you an idea of where all of these sit, three separate “AI”s worked to produce the video and transcript.

The first one is used to convert speech to sound. It is trained on around 680,000 hours of audio data. On my system, it runs at either 1:10 if I use the large data set and at about 8:1 if I use the small data set. The small data set runs on my GPU. The large does not.

The second AI is tasked with segmenting the audio. That is, it listens to the audio and finds where there is speech and where there is not speech. It can go further and detect that the speech is different. This has nothing to do with turning sounds into words nor in identifying the speakers, just labeling the audio for the next “AI”.

The third AI further segments the audio by speaker. It then clusters the different segments and assigns them a label. These labels correspond to individual speakers.

Finally, the NI (natural intelligence) uses inferences to determine the name of the person who is associated with each speaker.

The audio recording has some of the audio missing from the front.
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Hidden Cameras as security back up.

This is something I have been mulling for some time and now.  Criminals realize that everybody is using this new generation of inexpensive cameras, and some are targeting the most obvious one: The doorbell camera. If they cover or destroy the doorbell cam, you are blind to what is going on outside and information is something nice to have when it comes to the defense of home. If you get distracted/absent minded and have not realized that the camera was disabled but just think something happened, (Wifi down, momentary loss of power or adapter failure) you may step outside to check and either walk into an ambush or allow critters come in.

So, I have been trying to figure out where I am going to install a camera that covers the front and is out of the reach/sight of a bad guy while providing a “back-up” visual of the entrance. Something I learned in my time doing security surveillance is that people don’t look up and that should be part of your strategy.  Find a high angle that provides a clear field of vision while “using” the doorbell camera as “sacrificial” target of the bad guys.

Amazon prime days are here, I am getting a couple of the cameras for the price of one which is not a bad deal at all.

If your gut says not to break perimeter, you simply don’t and the gut will go DEFCON one if a normal-working camera suddenly goes dark. But it is also a good idea to know what’s going on, especially if somebody is about to break the perimeter so you can “welcome” him or them appropriately. Get a backup camera.

Two is one and one is none.

 

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Anti-cop Leftists go after your home security cameras

Security cameras are generally Miguel’s topic of interest (and I’d love his take), but this is more about the degree to which the anti-cop Left wants to facilitate crime.

Make no mistake, that is their goal.

You are a bigot for your white flight to the suburbs, so they are doing everything they can to ruin your community.

From Wired:

Why We Don’t Recommend Ring Cameras
They’re affordable and ubiquitous, but homeowners shouldn’t be able to act as vigilantes.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that they have no idea what a vigilante is.

MOST OF THE time, product testing is pretty simple. If a router is better and more feature-full than another with a similar price, then you give it a better score and move on with your day. However, we occasionally end up with products that can be dangerous to you, or to society in general, which we believe to be the case with Amazon-owned Ring and its relationship with law enforcement.

When you set up a Ring camera, you are automatically enrolled in the Neighbors service. (You can go into the Ring app’s settings and toggle off the Neighbors feed integration and notifications, but the onus is on you.) Neighbors, which is also a stand-alone app, shows you an activity feed from all nearby Ring camera owners, with posts about found dogs, stolen hoses, and a Safety Report that shows how many calls for service—violent or nonviolent—were made in the past week. It also provides an outlet for public safety agencies, like local police and fire departments, to broadcast information widely.

But it also allows Ring owners to send videos they’ve captured with their Ring video doorbell cameras and outdoor security cameras to law enforcement. This is a feature unique to Ring—even Nextdoor removed its Forward to Police feature in 2020, which allowed Nextdoor users to forward their own safety posts to local law enforcement agencies. If a crime has been committed, law enforcement should obtain a warrant to access civilian video footage.

See, if your Ring camera catches a crime on video, be it a break-in at your home or your neighbor’s home, Ring will send that video evidence to law enforcement.

That’s bad because the cops are bad.  The last thing society needs is for the cops to arrest the right people for committing crimes in middle-class neighborhoods.

Multiple members of WIRED’s Gear team have spoken to Ring over the years about this feature. The company has been clear it’s what customers want, even though there’s no evidence that more video surveillance footage keeps communities safer. Instead, Neighbors increases the possibility of racial profiling. It makes it easier for both private citizens and law enforcement agencies to target certain groups for suspicion of crime based on skin color, ethnicity, religion, or country of origin.

And there you have it, it’s racist.

This is literally the opposite of profiling.  The HD video captures the actual criminals on video.

But you might notice something about those criminals (wink, wink) and that’s double plus ungood.  You might have a wrong think about the evidence your Ring video doorbell captured.

What you need is a video camera system that can’t talk to the police.

If fact, what it needs to do is have facial recognition technology that automatically erases any recording of black people, and report you if there aren’t enough black people in your neighborhood.

Your security system really should be used against you, you bigot, to adjust your social credit score for living in a presumably white, middle-class neighborhood.

The Left doesn’t care about your safety or the safety of your community.  It cares about the safety of criminals.

You can’t have a gun to defend yourself and you can’t have a video security system that talks go the cops.  You just have to accept being the victim of a crime.  That’s social justice.

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“Why do you need more than 10 rounds?”

In one day alone, I had four different patients come in that were combative because they were on Meth. One of them required 4 nurses, 2 paramedics, and 8 security guards to hold down. We wrestled with him for almost 45 minutes and had to give him 6mg of Ativan, 50 mg of Benadryl, and 10mg of Haldol before he took a nap.

Drugs – Area Ocho

Now imagine you having to face this attacking critter alone in the street. If that is not the definition of a mag dump with reload, I don’t know what it. And that is if he is alone.

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Tuesday Tunes

My wife had her first true vacation in years last month. Her mother invited her to go to Greece with her and her husband. She had a wonderful time, but we were both ready for her to get home.

Preparing for her return, I told Miss Google, “Play love songs from the 50s and 60s.” This worked well on the drive to the airport. And I heard a song I had heard many times before and thought, “That’s the right one for Tuesday Tunes. She’ll readyreally like this and know I was thinking of her and telling her with all my heart how much I love her and missed here while she was gone.”

And of course, in the excitement of seeing her again, I lost the song. I can’t freaking remember the title. Just that it had something nice about saving kisses for her.

Instead, here’s Frank with a love song.

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The End of (Some) Inequality

“The Court’s decision most immediately affects institutions of higher education — and sends a clear message to the mostly Black and Hispanic students who have been shut out of elite schools.” – Forbes, Corrine Lestch.

The other day, the Supreme Court decided to effectively end the use of affirmative action for universities, an action which will trickle down into businesses and other areas. This is something that I’ve long felt was overdue. The ability for Blacks to force schools and businesses to accept and/or hire those who are not qualified for the job is racist to the Nth degree. It’s also not necessary, and harmful for PoC to be treated differently. That’s literally why we added the 13th Amendment.

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