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Comment by atonse | Hacker News Reader

Yes definitely both (I'm feeling the same).

However, these immediate policy violations are strange to me. As someone who writes software for a lot of field crews, these kinds of exceptions happen _all the time_ and very often they're for explainable reasons. (the guy's hands were busy, he asked his buddy to move the heavy tool).

I'm sure they're aware of this but you have to work in some kind of tolerance to these kinds of compliance violations, because the ultimate goal is increased safety, not finger-wagging.

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Sadly, I bet this goes into employee documentation.

Eg. If an employee has a workplace accident, company distances itself / minimizes cost by citing all your workplace safety violations that were conveniently recorded.

More optimistic use would be for re-training, identifying superstar employees. But saving on lawsuit costs is the big dollar win and probably the motivating factor (In my cynical opinion)

And I bet any real system would accommodate for the exceptions you mention. However, it makes for a very poor presentation. The presentation here is a marketing device, not a product spec.

I don't think that whoever is using this kind of app is expecting to act on every single "violation". It is just nice and convenient that all of the "violations" are recorded, so that if something goes down, there is a documentation in form of pictures/timestamps to back it all up.

Seems to be a pretty useful technology. As a MSFT stock owner it'll be nice to be able to go back to the video and figure out exactly when Nadella made the bad decision. This sort of monitoring and recording will be utilized with CEOs and executives and such, right?

This is about safety, not about making "bad decisions". Do executives risk their lives and health daily? What about someone working with heavy machinery?

I'm guessing that the buyers will decide for themselves what it will be "about", lacking any privisos about allowed usage in the fine print.

you move in to selective enforcement. there will be recorded violations of something for pretty much everyone, and only a handful of people will have access to it, and they'll selective enforce as they see fit. but maybe if you do this one little favor for them, they'll look the other way (for a spell).

I mean, that kind of selective enforcement is possible right now as well, cameras have been available for quite a while. I don't think that the technology shown today has added anything important for those who want to powertrip in the way you described.

At first? Maybe not. But once you have that kind of power, it's hard to give up.

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