Wouldn’t companies also be able to do it on any WiFi device, like a phone or a smart watch?

I remember daily driving Gentoo unstable in the early 2000’s on my rig in college. It was like trying to beat a Dark Souls boss every time I wanted to do an update.

Yeah. Both with external monitors and with just the laptop unplugged.

I don’t care about hibernate, sleep, or fast startup. The main issue I experience is that when I click shutdown the computer does not ever go into a sleep/off state. It looks like it’s trying to shutdown, but ends up staying at the lock screen and I have to hold the power button down to kill the power. It’s been a fairly consistent issue I’ve had across three machines over at least 6 years. I only have the issue on my work machine now because I addressed it on my machines by installing Linux.

The advantages are starting your car remotely in the hot or cold months to pre-cool/preheat the cabin, defrost the windows, etc. and let the engine warm up for a couple of minutes.

Flock cameras are not LPR cameras. They are regular security cameras, with server-based AI. They even show demos to potential customers showing how the their product can search for specific people based on clothes, animal types, children/babies, strollers, carts, etc. across the entire country from one web-based interface. It’s all very Orwellian and I don’t think this issue either starts nor stops with Flock as a company. This type of surveillance is going to be ubiquitous regardless of what company(s) show up for making money from it.