I had the same experience as many here. Great place to start out and if you don’t need or want more control then it’s perfect. I ended up on unraid and mostly use docker for apps.

Absolutely. There is a granularity of data and ability to process it today that did not exist when Houston was using it, but we were aware then of the serious questions of privacy regarding the ethics of reading devices without permission that all of us were grappling with. The conclusion was that it was ethical to use because tools didn’t exist to de-anonymize that data even if someone wanted to. There was no way to match a bluetooth MAC address to anything.

That was a different time though. Privacy got nuked from orbit.

Not the intersection itself exactly, but city gear along the way. Bluetooth was used for comms for the first field wireless meter reads because all field communication was shoddy back then. I know it sounds stupid now but it was amazing vs the old way of each meter having to be actually physically read. There were employees whose whole job was to drive a city truck around a specific route to collect data, which was seen as a huge productivity upgrade from getting out at each place and looking at the meter. As much gear as possible was deployed with bluetooth connectivity so they could do drive by “remote” reads. Houston standardized on it for awhile before more modern techniques for reads came out. Water meters, sensors for public works water main, well levels for drains under overpasses, stuff like that all over the city. City gear is absolutely everywhere, we’re all just conditioned to ignore it. You couldn’t write to the device from the field, but if you polled it it would answer with a reading for whatever it was measuring.

At some point they realized some people left their bluetooth on on their phones (which wasn’t the case when the initial deployment happened, bluetooth was seen by most as a battery sucking crap technology) and by comparing the bluetooth ping logs at two points they could approximate driving speeds to a decently accurate degree. You couldn’t use the data to pinpoint a specific user really and you couldn’t pinpoint speed exactly so it was no use to law enforcement, but it was fabulous data to model traffic on.

I worked for the city government in Houston, TX for a bunch of years. I shared an automation lab with the traffic division (just a really big room with public works gear on one side and traffic gear on the other). We would test programming changes on hardware in there before field deployment. I got to know them pretty well and got to mess with their stuff. It was interesting because of how differently they approached the question of automation than I did. Whereas my programs and gear were more focused on local control with manual override for local operators, their gear was hyperfocused on timing across controllers in a region, backup controller switching, and file verification. The process they had to go thru to change timing was exhausting and I’d read stories in media about citizens being pissed about traffic lights not being right while their engineers had been going thru the struggle to validate timings at that exact location for weeks and months. They were an unloved bunch but that’s what you gotta do when a single timing or programming error kills people.

Anyway.

Houston decided to try to save its taxpayers money by doing a public/private with a red light camera company. They’d share the revenue generated and they started with (I think it was 6?) intersections that were the worst for red light running results in serious injury and property damage. One was near my house and I was really happy about it because if you know Houston, 610 south loop feeder at Stella Link is terrifying.

The citizen response was ferocious. People (including city workers and cops) were just straight up spouting bullshit about the cameras and the traffic department, the most common being that traffic lowered the time of the yellow in order to trap people into more tickets because the real purpose of the cameras was revenue generation. Even my close family were convinced traffic fucked with the yellows.

So I roll over to their side of the lab to ask traffic and you could tell they were super pissed off about it. They brought out all programming change documentation to that signal going back a decade. Maintenance records for the gear. SCADA communication records. Everything. They had already put together their data to defend themselves and it was iron clad. They even dug out the bluetooth data showing the average speed had gone down approaching the red light proving that driver habits were responding to the camera, resulting in fewer accidents with less lethality when it did happen. The Stella Link “short yellow” became the most complained about light in the greater Houston metro. They told me they got more complaints on that yellow in a week than they had gotten on that light for any reason in any 12 month period.

After a big political fight, the cameras were turned off. In the seven day period after they were turned off, no complaints against the Stella Link yellow were made. It just magically stopped being a problem. And my father in law told me that I had been lied to by traffic and that no matter what I said or saw, he knows they changed the timing.

anyways, yes to red light cameras

Yea having to do paperwork and keep registration docs is way better than just slapping $20 on my property taxes. Great idea fellas.

I would feel much better about this if it was tied to a bigger housing zoning package, but it wasn’t and that makes it feel dirty.

Federal taxes are going to zero for the top end that have an accountant with any kind of a functioning brain. Now is the time for states to suck up that money and start building a durable, self sustaining system.

For fuck’s sake guys, think big.

I’m from the south. He would be center left there. You’re totally right.

I realize I have gotten more liberal over the years but gawd damn center left can you stop dropping to your knees in worship every chance you get around these tech losers?

I upvoted your comment but man I wouldn’t even take a freebie from Oracle. Just an absolutely rotten company and Larry Ellison is one of the worst humans on the planet.

I’m 3 time zones away from my server and it hasn’t crashed yet after being gone for 3 days. I’m very proud of it.

Anyone tried it?

Proxmox

Unraid

UniFi

Raspberry Pi

Docker

I don’t have time to respond, but exploring the capabilities of any of those things would be a great place to start.

I feel like the Chamber of Commerce is going to cut out the middleman and nominate itself for the position.

Well this is miserable news.

I just sent em $10. Thanks for posting the link.

I was a poll watcher in Texas. Electioneering was never a big deal before because you didn’t have people whose entire personality was being Donald Trump cult members. Electioneering violations were almost always small candidates trying to get name recognition at the last second. They’d have someone post up with a car with signs on it.

But the rules were good for reducing tension because the line to keep out was clear and it kept politicking out of the voting area.

Obviously the entire concept of reducing tension is foreign to the Trump nutters.

For sure. I know you’re not the author. I’m stating that again in case there’s confusion for anyone else.

Man it used to piss me off when people would throw stones from outside. Like be involved, sure. That’s great.

But we’re in here with budgets and stakeholders tryna find a path forward that works that isn’t kicking the can and instead makes real decisions about the future of the city and when the fuckin answer is the same old tired ass conservative shit, man it’ll drive you crazy. You start dismissing them out of hand but that sucks because they’re your citizens too.

At least the libs had interesting positions. It was questions of fairness and justice and stuff like that.

It was always either No from conservatives because of money or kicking the can cause they want to say no but can’t for some reason.

My brothers and sisters in Christ when we get fuckin consent decreed and the feds break their whole foot off in our ass I promise the cost will be worse

Sorry. Trauma dumping.

What is it with posting haters of the West Seattle rail project?

I would encourage readers, as I would for anyone reading anything, to do a quick background check on the author. He will show you who he is very quickly.

I worked in government and I think voices from across the spectrum is only a good thing when we sit down to figure out how to proceed. However, I don’t have to take that shit seriously once they retire and roll over to their think tank and shit all over process because they checked responsibility for outcomes at the door. I worked at public works and I rarely comment on the actual deliberations happening today cause it’s really hard to do when you’re there but really easy to shit on from the outside, like the author is.

But hey, conservative think tanks always paid the best for trashing the process. I wish I could have just sat my integrity aside to cash their checks. Libs don’t pay shit for it.

As for the author, my question is what in your piece went unexamined that would support a rail link and why did you choose to leave that part out? What is the strongest argument for the rail? What’s the second strongest? There have been many big rail projects that were called out for expense but ended up defining regions and positively transforming them. Would you have argued against those too?

Lived long enough to see themselves become the villain.