Public safety rules should be dull in the best possible way. Clear. Predictable. Written by people who understand what actually causes harm in a crowd of thousands. New York City usually gets this right. It has decades of muscle memory for doing hard things in public, under pressure, without panicking. Which is why the prohibited items list for the January 1, 2026 NYC mayoral inauguration block party seemed… off

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[–] 15 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I wanted to make a snarky comment about smartphones, but the writer pretty much nailed it

Today it’s Raspberry Pi and Flipper Zero. Tomorrow it’s BeagleBone Blacks, Arduino Qs, ESP32 dev boards, Teensy boards, Pine64s, Orange Pis, Jetson Nanos, USB logic analyzers, SDR dongles, Bus Pirates, Defcon badges, hotel keycards, garage door openers, Tamagotchis, graphing calculators, old Nokias, Game Boys with link cables, a TI-83 held sideways, a Pocket Operator making beeps too abrasively, a Furby with unresolved father issues, and some guy’s wristwatch that definitely has a microcontroller in it. Meanwhile, everyone walks through holding a smartphone that can film, scan, transmit, triangulate, and livestream the entire event in 4K.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago* (2 children)

    Wish I got some of those last ones - like what does holding a TI-83 sideways accomplish? What's with a Firby's unresolved father issues? etc. Guess I'll be spending some time researching later.

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