Hackaday Links: October 5, 2025
What the Flock? It’s probably just some quirk of The Almighty Algorithm, but ever since we featured a story on Flock’s crime-fighting drones last week, we’ve been flooded with other stories about the company, some of which aren’t very flattering. The first thing that we were pushed was this handy interactive map of the company’s network of automatic license plate readers. We had no idea how extensive the network was, and while our location is relatively free from these devices, at least ones operated on behalf of state, county, or local law enforcement, we did learn to our dismay that our local Lowe’s saw fit to install three of these cameras on the entrances to their parking lot. Not wishing to have our coming and goings documented, we’ll be taking our home improvement dollars elsewhere for now.
But it’s a new feature being rolled out by Flock that really got our attention: the addition of “human distress” detection to their Raven acoustic gunshot detection system. From what we understand, gunshot detection systems use the sudden acoustic impulse generated by the supersonic passage of a bullet, the shock wave from the rapidly expanding powder charge of a fired round, or both to detect a gunshot, and then use the time-of-arrival difference between multiple sensors to estimate the shot’s point of origin. Those impulses carry a fair amount of information, but little of it is personally identifiable, at least directly. On the other hand, human voices carry a lot of personal information, and detecting the sounds of distress, such as screaming, would require very different monitoring techniques. We’d imagine it would be akin to what digital assistants use to monitor for wake words, which would mean turning the world — or at least pockets of it — into a gigantic Alex. We don’t much like the idea of having our every public utterance recorded and analyzed, even with the inevitable assurances from the company that the “non-distress” parts of the audio stream will never be listened to. Yeah, right.
Botnets are bad enough when it’s just routers or smart TVs that are exploited to mine crypto or spam comments on social media. But what if a botnet were made of, you know, actual robots? That might be something to watch out for with the announcement of a vulnerability in certain Unitree robots, including several of their humanoid robots. The vulnerability, still unpatched at the time of the Spectrum story, lies in the Bluetooth system used to set up the robots’ WiFi configuration. It sounds like an attacker can easily craft a BLE packet to become an authenticated user, after which the WiFi SSID and password fields can be used to inject arbitrary code. The fun doesn’t end there, though, since a compromised robot could then go on to infect any other nearby Unitree bots via BLE. And since Unitree seems to be staking out a market position as the leader in affordable humanoid robots, who’s to say what could happen? If you want a zombie robot apocalypse, this seems like a great way to get it.
Also from the “Bad Optics for Robots” files comes this story about a Waymo car that went just a little off course. Or rather, on course — a golf course, to be precise. Viral video shows a Waymo self-driving Jaguar creeping slowly across a golf course fairway as bemused golfers look on. But you can relax, because the robotaxi company says that this isn’t a case of their AI driving system going awry, but rather a human-driven robotaxi preparing for an event at the golf course. The company seems to think this absolves them, and perhaps it does officially and legally. But a very distinctive car that’s well-known for getting into self-driving mischief, appearing in a place one doesn’t typically associate with vehicles larger than golf carts, seems like a bad look for the company.
And finally, back in December of 2023, we dropped a link to My Mechanics’ restoration of a 1973 Datsun 240Z. He’s been making slow but steady progress on the car since then, with the most recent video covering his painstaking restoration of the rear axle and suspension. Where most car rebuild projects use as many replacement parts as possible, My Mechanics prefers to restore the original parts wherever possible. So, where a normal person might look at the chipped cooling fins on the original Z-car’s brake drums and order new ones, My Mechanics instead pulls out the TIG welder and lays up some beads to patch the broken fins. He used a similar technique to restore the severely chowdered compression fittings on the brake lines, something we’ve never seen down before. Over the top? You bet it is, but it still makes for great watching. Enjoy!
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