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.
Wow you unlocked a memory in me. I recall doing something similar but using some send command to do the same with any computer logged in and on the network.
Week after that I met a dude from municipal school IT support and that’s when I first learned about Linux. He had Red Hat on his laptop and he was happy to talk about it. Very cool dude.
Best comment I’ve read for a long time
Finally, a local WEEE company gets to make a few hundred bucks selling off the glorified VOC sensors at the end.
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
Satellite Hello World + Telescope Hello World ⇒ Hubble Space Telescope Hello World
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.
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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
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
They ought to use it that way if they aren’t. Privacy does not mean “flagrant ability to flout rules or laws”
Wow, you’re lame as hell
Is that what we call people who are obviously right now?
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.
You do get that smoking and vaping are the different things right?
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.
Vaping is not the same as smoking and can be done perfectly safely with no drugs involved at all (i.e. flavor only vapes). It’s barely different than inhaling steam.
Edit: I’m willing to admit when I’m wrong, and now think “relatively safely” is a better way of putting this. There’s a few concerns that I’m perfectly happy to live with as an adult, but I get that kids won’t have spent as much time trying to understand the risks.
Imagine defending child vaping 🤮
Lotta Juul fanboys in these comments…
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 can be solved with a $2 harbor freight automatic punch. Speakers especially.
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.
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.
Plastic bag and a rubber band, my good sir!
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.
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“Dang I could really use a hit right now”
“Well at least they can’t detect these tobacco pouches“
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.
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.
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.
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If you dont check out in the app you are written up.
And what’s next?
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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.
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Right, America. They even make people pay to become productive members of society.
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Nah. Poor public schools spend waaaay to much money on shit like this. Source: Have worked as a teacher in a poor public school.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Then why publish detection events like this? If they do start following up, all it does is warn perpetrators, and allow for fast iteration of anti-detection, to say nothing of other concerns people have mentioned (tripping other people’s detectors etc.)
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.
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
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.
Banning fruity flavors sounds like it would inadvertently ban all of the drug-free vapes… Flavor-only vapes get you all the big clouds and cool-factor that’s a big drive for kids, with none of the Nicotine or weed. Just inhaling the vapor on its own can be fairly safe.
Would anyone really start vaping just to blow clouds of flavoured smoke?
I’m not being facetious here, genuinely curious.
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.
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