Source: Animal shelter faces backlash after using robot to scare off homeless people:
The San Francisco branch of the SPCA (the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) hired a K5 robot built by Knightscope to patrol the sidewalks outside its facilities. According to a report from the San Francisco Business Times, the robot was deployed as a “way to try dealing with the growing number of needles, car break-ins and crime that seemed to emanate from nearby tent encampments of homeless people.”
[...] The robot in question is equipped with four cameras, moves at a pace of three miles per hour, and is cheaper than a human security guard — costing around $6 an hour to rent. Knightscope’s bots are some of the most popular robot guards around and have popped up in the news in the past. The same model of robot previously knocked over a toddler in a mall and fell into a fountain in DC. Knightscope says its robots are intended as deterrents, and for providing mobile surveillance.
[...] According to the SPCA, attacks have already taken place, with Scarlett telling the Business Times that within a week of the robot starting its duties, some people “put a tarp over it, knocked it over and put barbecue sauce on all the sensors.” One Twitter user reported seeing the robot with feces smeared on it.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 16 2017, @08:28AM (6 children)
This is what happens when a communist convinces the open source community to write free software for thirty years. Greedy capitalists pay nothing in software expenses to build tech companies like Facebook and Twitter on the slave labor of unpaid volunteers. Silicon Valley is a communist utopia where nobody pays for software, and just like every communist regime in history, the result is inequality. Economic inequality between the rich and the poors is only growing worse. Tech bros make bank by employing the software of unpaid unwashed homeless coders living on the streets. Billionaires employ the software but not the people who wrote it because RICHARD MATTHEW STALLMAN SOLD YOUR FUTURE TO THE BILLIONAIRES.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday December 16 2017, @08:41AM (5 children)
During my homelessness I wrote a tool called "debotify" that Real Soon Now I'm going to release as Free Software, most likely under the GPLv3.
It removes bots from your web server logs so analyzing with such tools as Analog only tracks visits by live humans.
This because there are so many different bots that fully half my website's hits are non-human in origin.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 16 2017, @08:57AM (4 children)
How amusing. You just reminded me, I've written some web bots over the years, and I've run afoul of moronic webmasters who complain to my hosting providers when they see botlike useragent strings in their logs. Useragent string fraud is a tempting workaround for the problem of pinheaded webmasters, yet what I've found most effective is just using an empty useragent string. Stupid webmasters are dumb enough not to notice an empty string. I sure hope your "debotify" tool doesn't choke on an empty string useragent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 16 2017, @09:19AM (1 child)
""
Choke on it!
Bots rule the web.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 16 2017, @03:09PM
AC, you are overstepping your bounds!
Comments such as "Bots rule the web" are reserved for user Bot (3902).
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday December 16 2017, @10:04PM (1 child)
Actually I don't know what it would do. I'll add a blank string to my test data
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 17 2017, @01:33AM
I've been running with a null user agent string for a while, and mostly things work well. Some few sites say "fuck off you're suspicious", and sometimes you get thrown a null pointer exception to the screen with code context, doing stupid stuff like "if (useragent.tolower().contains("ipad") || useragent.tolower().contains("windozephone") || useragent.tolower().contains("mobile") ... ) { mobile = true; }"
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday December 16 2017, @08:38AM (5 children)
Engineers who moved to San Francisco to work in the software industry are able to pay for housing that is too expensive for locals whose families have been in San Francisco for generations.
While SF has rent control, the landlords are creative in finding ways around it.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday December 16 2017, @10:21AM (1 child)
San Francisco is full of Prius-driving faggot hypocrites.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday December 16 2017, @11:10AM
You're amazing Eth. How do you get so much redundancy into one sentence? San Francisco . . . prius . . . faggot . . . hypocrite - it's just amazing!
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Saturday December 16 2017, @12:41PM (2 children)
Same in NYC only the work is different. Go on the NYC reddit and it's all transplant wank jobs talking about Manhattan, Brooklyn and Astoria forgetting that the city is bigger than it's overpriced hip neighborhoods.
(Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Sunday December 17 2017, @06:25PM (1 child)
Brooklyn: https://youtu.be/WuUE7bj1SMQ [youtu.be]
Sorry I will never work nor live in a place where people unceremoniously shit on the street.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Sunday December 17 2017, @11:29PM
You're worried about human shit when how many millions of selfish, brain dead dog owners who allow their animals to unceremoniously shit on lawns, side walks and streets. That's equally disgusting and filthy. Feces are feces.
Besides, that's crackhead level activity right there. And extremely rare outside of areas around homeless shelters and rehab clinics. And the best part is the twat lives in Brooklyn and is somehow surprised by this and went through the effort to make a video. Like no one has ever seen shit on the street of a big city.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 16 2017, @10:28AM (1 child)
K5 needs to build a model that captures and renders homeless bums into pet food. The SFSPCA could then realize savings on operating expenses.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday December 16 2017, @11:05AM
I was thinking something along those lines. K5 is a candy ass. He needs to carry a shark with frikking lasers on it's head or something. Then people would be bitching about cruelty to sharks?
On the other hand, those homeless people are also candy asses. Can't they get a shark with a frikking laser on it's head to take care of the bot? Maybe they need a super hero - https://comicvine.gamespot.com/articles/off-my-mind-when-superheroes-become-homeless/1100-142948/ [gamespot.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 16 2017, @02:46PM (1 child)
So what happens when the robot falls over and hurts a puppy?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 16 2017, @03:11PM
another puppy sniffs at it and then pisses on it?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by urza9814 on Monday December 18 2017, @03:35PM (1 child)
Is it just me, or is it rather ironic that a shelter for homeless dogs is complaining about all the homeless humans living nearby...?
Intersectionality level: Fucking negative.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday December 19 2017, @08:31PM
These are the kind of people that would smear feces all over the robot, while California is experiencing a hepatitis outbreak. I think they rank somewhere below homeless dogs on the totem pole.
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