It's a very cool story and Bill Swearingen and I live in the same town, so if anyone's interested, I opted to make my weekly YT video on this story: https: The NoRecognition Project - Fooling Flock with Adversarial Design.
this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2026
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Seems like a great way to get rear ended by a Tesla autopilot driver.
Seems like a great way to get an insurance payout from a Tesla autopilot driver.
Except insurance has basically decided it doesn't need to actually pay for the most part.
At some point people are just going to roll the dice on this bullshit. If they aren't gonna pay out when they should why are we even paying them? This seems incredibly criminal to deny payment while accepting increasing payments.
If they aren't gonna pay out when they should why are we even paying them?
Because you can end up losing your car, being fined thousands of dollars, or in jail for driving without insurance. The fact the peasants get no value from it isn't important, you better keep paying!
The figures don’t mean insurers rejected nearly half of otherwise valid claims. Claims can close without payment because another insurer covered the loss, a customer withdrew the claim, damages fell below the deductible or the loss wasn’t covered by the policy.
You can't just say this shit and then just dismiss it:
Still, the increase suggests motorists face greater scrutiny when seeking compensation for some of the most complicated and costly types of auto claims.
You don't need dazzle paint to get hit by a Tesla.
I live in an area where Tesla and Waymo both operate taxis. Waymo is actually pretty solid. Those cars are some of the best, most-predictable drivers on the road. Tesla cabs are meth-addicted clankers.
The car reflect the owner?
autopilot driver
Dude's probably on his way to the ATM machine
I think the correct xkcd for this arms race is: https://xkcd.com/3167/
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This approach only works in daylight with cameras that rely on colour only. Infrared spectrum cameras such as what Australia uses on mobile phone traffic cameras are much harder to deal with. Patterns don't cut it and it's a huge part of military research into hiding vehicles from infrared spotters.
Disabling the cameras entirely is much more effective.
DO BOTH
(defense in depth)
Can’t you make patterns in infrared reflective paint?
Here comes the sun, do do do do
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For IR you can feasibly run IR dazzle lights all over whatever you want to mask, including your face.
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Have they tried painting a fire hydrant a truck and and a bicycle on the back? Let's test if these cameras are a robot or not.
To me, this looks a lot like taking one dose of a prescribed antibiotic. All it really succeeds in doing is training dazzle resistant strains of cameras.
Trying to trick the cameras is playing into an expensive game of cat and mouse. And sure, fine, that may work for a little while, but it's not a solution.
A fun experiment, but the real solution is preventing all the shit in the first place by government regulation.
I saw a post yesterday with practical suggestions about how to move that process along.
The same governments that are pocketing the sweet Flock dollars to ignore public opinion?
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I'm not a big fan of adapting to fascism, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.
My solution so far is a bike rack that blocks my plate from view. Easy enough to feign ignorance and “correct it” in the moment. Flocks database no doubt has an entry for [color][make][model], but at least it’s not associated with me directly through motor vehicle bureau records.
I’m pretty sure based on previous reporting that they will just track you as “blue car with this specific model of bike rack”.
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Fighting fire with fire.
Spend a large sum (for some) of money to make my vehicle look stupid vs. they can fuck off with their privacy-invading cameras.
I prefer "they can fuck off"
I mean at least they're trying..? Your alternative isn't really a solution
Spend a large sum of money on a suit of armor vs. they can fuckin stab me
I prefer "they can fuckin stab me"
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Should have done random license plates
From this bit in the article:
The pattern does not stop a camera from recording. Instead, it is designed to prevent the software connected to the camera from recognizing what it sees. A person or car wearing the pattern would still appear in the footage, but the detection system may not flag it as a person or vehicle.
I wonder if these systems won't "notice" and record the license plate on its own if they don't think there's a vehicle present.
More likely is that these companies will just update their models to identify these vehicles once again. Furthermore, patterns like this make the car really stand out from the crowd which is a terrible way to disguise yourself.
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Benn Jordan did a video on that, he was able to add patterns of stuff to make plates unreadable by ALPR systems. He didn't share the pattern for people to use as it may be illegal, but you can see it in the video
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Looks like Donut Media. A YT car channel I once live that sucks because they sold off to an investment group. And the investment group is really really bad at the content.
now find something that stops it from reading Bluetooth and other RF signals. I wonder if anyone has acquired one for security research
It would be simpler to just overlay Bluetooth or RF signals it can read with signals so numerous and strong that it is overwhelmed. The main problem with that is the size of the hardware you'd need.
You could pull the 20 phones in a trench coat thing that one guy did to create "traffic jams" where there were no cars.
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Give 'em the ol' Razzle Dazzle
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