This is one of two 'Study Sessions' on the schedule before October 18, 2021 where the Tentative Agenda with 35 Items has been posted in a feature earlier on this blog.
Any reasonable and informed person would have SEVERAL - IF NOT MANY MULTIPLE - QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS TO MAKE.
Get ready to see tomorrow in a streaming broadcast from The Lower Chambers who will appear in the cast of city officials called on ahead of time by the City Manager, who is the stage manager for these public meetings.
Chris Brady arranges everything according to scripts for meeting plans. Remember these are all OPEN MEETINGS
that are supposed to conform to applicable laws at all times.
Redistricting Commission meetings held on May 19, May 20, June 16, June 23, August 12, August 14, August 17, August 18, August 25, August 26, and August 28, 2021.
Don't know about you, dear readers, but your MesaZona keeps his eyes open walking around our shared public spaces and sidewalks downtown. There were some obstacles in the way the other day in what was otherwise a wonderful day: 2 e-scooters. Where did they come from and why are they here? They didn't look like personal property with corporate logos, attached gizmos and "Start for Only $1". Some money-making scheme under the guise of furthering personal freedom, mobility and protecting the environment? _________________________________________________________________________ That's exactly what it is, once again - 'a foil' disguised as a good thing.The first question any reasonable person might ask is if the city government had knowledge in advance of these plans (not just one but two companies) and approved their dockless distribution and dumping on downtown sidewalks without any evaluation or any kind of public information or public notice ahead of time. Each and every one of them are endangering the health, safety and welfare of riders, pedestrians and the general public
It's nothing that Mayor John Giles or the Mesa City Council doesn't know about by now after a citizen Robert Allen spoke up at Monday's public meeting about his concerns over the dumping of E-Scooters on the sidewalks all around downtown. It's now Friday mid-morning when the opening image clearly shows these hazards to public safety on Main Street public sidewalks. No doubt about it. Back on October 20th this post was published to make both the public and city officials aware of the problem: Threats To Public Safety Here in Downtown Mesa: Dumping E-Scooters On Public Sidewalks 3 weeks later, we still have a problem
To make it ever more clear here's another image taken right across from City Hall at the NWC of Center/Main Streets >
To repeat: Each and every one of them are endangering the health, safety and welfare of riders, pedestrians and the general public here in downtown Mesa.
WHAT'S THE CITY'S ACTION?
Apparently nothing
The first question any reasonable person might ask is if the city government had knowledge in advance of these plans (not just one but two companies) and approved their dockless distribution and dumping on downtown sidewalks without any evaluation or any kind of public information or public notice ahead of time. _________________________________________________________________________ 20 October 2018
Threats To Public Safety Here in Downtown Mesa: Dumping E-Scooters On Public Sidewalks
Don't know about you, dear readers, but your MesaZona keeps his eyes open walking around our shared public spaces and sidewalks downtown. There were some obstacles in the way the other day in what was otherwise a wonderful day: 2 e-scooters. Where did they come from and why are they here? They didn't look like personal property with corporate logos, attached gizmos and "Start for Only $1". Some money-making scheme under the guise of furthering personal freedom, mobility and protecting the environment? _________________________________________________________________________ That's exactly what it is, once again - 'a foil' disguised as a good thing. The first question any reasonable person might ask is if the city government had knowledge in advance of these plans (not just one but two companies) and approved their dockless distribution and dumping on downtown sidewalks without any evaluation or any kind of public information or public notice ahead of time. Each and every one of them are endangering the health, safety and welfare of riders, pedestrians and the general public. _________________________________________________________________________ Typical of way too many things here in Mesa where the public is not engaged. Worse than that is when city officials apparently don't do anything about hazards to public safety. People in other cities are taking action: INNOVATIONS Class-action lawsuit accuses e-scooter companies of ‘gross negligence’ October 20 at 6:55 PM "The nation’s electronic-scooter companies are facing more blowback as concerns rise about the safety of these devices — this time in the form of a class-action lawsuit filed Friday in California. The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, accuses two of the largest e-scooter companies, Lime and Bird, as well as other e-scooter firms, of “gross negligence” and “aiding and abetting assault.”
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of eight initial plaintiffs, says the companies' practices have contributed to injuries in multiple ways. By “dumping” scooters on public streets without an appropriate warning, the suit alleges e-scooter companies acted negligently and should have known that their devices would become a dangerous “public nuisance.”
Using technology provided by a company called u-blox, Bird is rolling out an end-to-end GPS system “designed to deliver centimeter-level accuracy specifically for the micromobility industry.” Riders who stray onto the sidewalk will be bombarded with audio alerts from the scooter, as well as notifications on their smartphones, warning them to get back on the street. Failure to follow directions results in a de-powered scooter: the vehicle will slow down and eventually come to a stop. The problem Bird is trying to solve is a seemingly intractable one. Riders have a difficult time tracking down available scooters when they want one. And scooters sometimes block sidewalks, obstructing the path for people in wheelchairs and other pedestrians with mobility concerns. They all end up cluttered in a handful of places rather than spread evenly around a city. And cities have complained about the companies failing to place enough scooters in low-income and minority communities to ensure equal distribution across economic lines.
Lime says it uses “a sophisticated statistical model” with 95 percent accuracy to determine when a scooter has gone up onto a sidewalk. Other scooter companies have invested in remote-operation technology, including cameras and other sensors, to improve fleet management. These front- and rear-facing built-in cameras enable remote operators to move the scooters when they happen to be blocking sidewalks or street traffic. They can also make it possible for an e-scooter to travel several blocks to riders.
But Bird claims that its GPS-based solution is easier and cheaper to roll out than expensive camera-based systems. It also says that u-blox’s ZED-F9R module (great name) will make it easier for customers to find nearby scooters, even in cities with tall buildings that typically obstruct satellite signals. This is how it works:
The ZED-F9R is a dual-band multi-constellation GNSS receiver that supports up to 8 times more satellite signal types and 4 times more constellations (GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, and BeiDou) than standard solutions. The module processes real-time vehicle data including wheel speed, IMU sensor data including acceleration and spatial orientation, and real-time kinematic data that corrects for ionospheric interference. The technology is also optimized for e-scooters by applying dynamic models matching the movements of the vehicle.
Bird is also using what it calls “centimeter-level sidewalk mapping” to determine when a scooter has left the road and onto a sidewalk. This allows the company to create a geofence that deactivates the scooter’s throttle when it enters a prohibited zone. Centimeter level, you say? How?
Step 1: It starts with a geofence outline constructed from satellite imagery or city GIS data.
Step 2: From here, we use surveying equipment to measure the location of three city landmarks. Only a few measurements are needed for each city.
Step 3: Once the landmarks have been identified, we compare their location to the satellite imagery to determine offsets and rotations.
Step 4: We then use these offsets and rotation values to shift and transform each of our original geofence outlines.
Step 5: Finally, after our geofence outlines have been updated, they are pre-loaded onto our vehicles to eliminate latency.
Bird says it will be testing the new system in scooters deployed in Milwaukee and San Diego, with Madrid to soon follow. If all goes well, the company plans to roll it out to the rest of the global fleet “soon.”
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Unfortunately, many consumers are flocking to VPNs under the mistaken impression that such tools are a near-mystical panacea, acting as a sort of bulletproof shield that protects them from any potential privacy violations on the internet.
Not only is that not true (ISPs, for example, have a universe of ways to track you anyway), many VPN providers are even less ethical than privacy-scandal-plagued companies or ISPs.
Karl Bode: "Given the seemingly endless privacy scandals that now engulf the tech and telecom sectors on a near-daily basis, many consumers have flocked to virtual private networks (VPN) to protect and encrypt their data. One study found that VPN use quadrupled between 2016 and 2018 as consumers rushed to protect data in the wake of scandals, breaches, and hacks. . .
After a repeated few years where VPN providers were found to be dodgy or tracked user data when they claimed they didn't, professionals have shifted their thinking on recommending even using one.
When you connect to a NordVPN server, your internet service provider (ISP) can see that you’re connected to an IP owned by a VPN service — in this case, NordVPN. It might also know the time of your connection and the port your VPN protocol is using. Plus, the provider will see the amount of traffic traveling to and from your device.
Apart from these, the only other important thing your service provider can detect is the fact that your actual online traffic is hidden from them. That means it loses access to the following information:
The websites you visit
The specific web pages you browse and the time you spend there
Your browsing and search history
The files you download from or upload to unencrypted websites
The info you type on unencrypted websites
Why does the ISP still see some information?
That’s because your service provider connects you to the websites you want to visit. You send it a data package, which works as a request, and the ISP sends it to the correct destination. When you connect to a VPN, you tell it to send that request to the VPN server.
But from that point on, the VPN server takes over the package, and the ISP will never know its final destination.
To sum up, the ISP sees this information when you use a VPN:
The IP address of the VPN server
The timestamp of when you connected
The port your VPN protocol is using
The amount of data you’re sending or receiving
Encrypted and unreadable data traveling between you and the VPN server
> While folks requiring strict security over wireless may still benefit from using a reputable VPN provider, experts say the landscape has changed.
Improvements in the overall security of ordinary browsing (bank logins, etc.), plus the risk of choosing the wrong VPN provider, means that many people may just be better off without one:
Granted there are plenty of journalists, government officials, or folks researching dangerous or volatile people who probably still benefit from using a quality VPN.
There are also instances where using a VPN can help thwart invasive advertising data tracking:
"There is at least one thing that some VPNs could help with: blocking malicious ads.The online advertising ecosystem is so dangerous that the U.S. Intelligence Community has blocked advertisements on a network-level, Motherboard reported recently. But online ads are not just a threat to intelligence agencies; Motherboard has repeatedly shown how data brokers harvest 'bidstream' data by participating in the online advertising process. This sort of information can include location data."
> But as the VPN field has become crowded by dodgy players, just injecting an entirely new dodgy player into your traffic flow isn't really helping anybody. Especially if you lack the capacity to ferret out which VPN provider is keeping its word, and which is just another shady business collecting, storing, and monetizing your data (while breathlessly insisting they don't do that).