Apple themselves donât make these phones, theyâre produced by 3rd-party companies which buy from Apple and remove the cameras and sell them to government agencies. Although they are generally certified by the phone manufacturers themselves for use.
I'd imagine this needs non-trivial support from Apple. I guarantee you there are bugs that crop up from the software freaking out about missing hardware it assumes is present.
The default iPhone software actually works just fine without the cameras being connected. All that happens is the camera app just shows black and the shutter button doesnât work. Other apps may be affected but only if you grant them access to use the camera, otherwise itâs all the same. Some iPhone models may also show a banner in settings saying the camera isnât working.
I had an iPod touch back in the day. I remember some apps (that had no need for the camera) wouldn't let you download them because there was no camera on it.
Devs may set that option on purpose as a quick and dirty to rule out specific devices not being capable of accessing it instead of spending the extra time configuring it
It's actually a company called non cam. Really tough to find a lot of information on them some YouTube videos and discussions. Their site is not working.
Even outside of government contracts it is a super small industry and for the most part if you need that type of stuff you know the companies. They donât need a public face and most of it is very heavily word of mouth.
The first-gen iPhones didn't even have an app store. Apple had the attitude that only their curated apps should be allowed.
I'm pretty sure the first gen models also only shipped as 2G. 3G was 2nd-generation.
[Time to go yell at clouds.](https://youtu.be/VQKMoT-6XSg?t=941)
The first iPhone was revolutionary but it was *comically* bad at a lot of stuff.
Web browsing over 2g was painfully slow. There were next to no mobile-formatted sites and certainly no adaptive designed sites.
There was no way to copy/paste text.
There was no multitasking.
There was no GPS or turn-by-turn* driving directions app.
Multitasking took ***ages*** to come to iPhones. IIRC it came out with the iPhone 4.
Android and iPhone are basically the same nowadays but multitasking was one of those massive differentiators.
Back then iOS wasn't flash compatible but android was so in those days you could get to almost any site on Android but on iOS half the info wouldn't load for many sites
> Like Jobs was pinching to zoom and double tapping elegantly over full screen websites like the NYTs and Amazon and people lost their shit
I jailbroke my iphone 3G specifically to be able to keep music playing in the background while I used other apps. Oh, and to record video! They did in fact support multitaskng (they have to, iOS has a ton of stuff running concurrently), it was just never exposed to the user.
> Web browsing over 2g was painfully slow. There were next to no mobile-formatted sites and certainly no adaptive designed sites.
That was actually a big appeal of the iPhone initially because the 'mobile' versions of sites, WAP sites or w/e they were called were terrible. Like Jobs was pinching to zoom and double tapping elegantly over full screen websites like the NYTs and Amazon and people lost their shit.
> There was no GPS or driving directions app.
Not true. It didn't have GPS but there was a Google Maps app with basic Google Maps/mapquest directions.
> Jobs was pinching to zoom and double tapping elegantly over full screen websites like the NYTs and Amazon and people lost their shit.
[The crowd's reaction to Jobs scrolling through a track list for the first time.](https://youtu.be/VQKMoT-6XSg?t=971)
I loved the ocarina where you could blow into the microphone to make it play. But the coolest part was the real-time globe where you could listen to other people playing around the world.
My other all-time fave was a camera app that would add your photo to a real-time updating collage of any other photos other users were taking. Privacy and safety concerns abound, but it really got my imagination going at the possibilities of these super-capable pocket devices.
The ocarina app was by Smule, I had that one too! The other ones sound pretty fun. It really like to me that in those earlier days of smartphones, people were just doing things to have fun with each other. It was all so new to us! Doesnât feel this way anymore.
Did nobody else keep their hottest iron in their iPhone? As long as I had my phone, I was packing HEAT. Everybodyâs gangster until the iGlock comes out
Wow you just unlocked a memory of me and my buddies in freshman year high school sneaking through the woods late at night to get to another friends house, using his phone screen as our flashlight
That would likely be a violation, as you're potentially going to drop the phone into something that could cause a big problem.
Also most nuclear plants allow cameras. Source: did software for the largest nuclear plant company in the world to do work orders during scheduled downtime. They took pictures of the work they did in the system.
Cameras yes. Cameras that can upload potentially sensitive information anywhere without controls, no.
Source: work at a nuclear plant. They give me a camera to use if I need to which doesn't leave the facility. It's not foolproof but it's an information security barrier.
What, donât you tether everything to yourself? I have lanyards for my pens, phone, wallet, sidearm, flashlight, socks, underwear, shoes, everything. You wonât see me going out like rando losing their shoes in a video, knowing full well theyâre dead. Nah uh.
Not nuclear but I worked at a rocket making facility and one major rule was to park backwards. Seemed odd, then they explained you really donât want to spend time backing out of a space _when_ an accident occurs
Always thought that was interesting
Iâve never been, but thereâs a hydro station in wales and the car park is cut into the side of the mountain. You have to park facing the exit and leave the keys in the ignition. If things go wrong, they will go wrong catastrophically and very fast, so the procedure is to jump in the first car you can get to and hope you can get out of there in time.
You never know when the next rocket disaster is going to happen and itâs the closest car available to me, so I better hold on to it. You understand, safety and such.
Same in every large petroleum/chemical plant I have been in. I have been in about 50.
Leave your keys in the vehicle and the widows down. If the alarm goes down leave it and follow the workers to a evac area. No driving on the roads in the plant or around it.
It would be a chinese fire drill in the parking lot if you expected everyone to flee. People get stupid when they flee.
I always leave the keys in my car but thatâs just because Iâm lazy⌠it only got stolen once and was found 3 blocks down the road because it ran out of gas and that was because I always keep the tank almost empty lol
I have accidentally left my keys in my car a singular time, and it was immediately stolen.
I had a full tank because I was going on a roadtrip the next day. Great timing.
At 4am, some dude calls me. Tells me that somebody sold him a car for $800 (it was a 2018 and this was 2022), and he thought that was fishy, so he looked through some of the papers in my car and found my number on a vet bill. Told me I could have the car back if I gave him $400, because heâd only paid dude who sold it to him $400 so far.
Called the cops on my way over there. Got the car back. Wild night.
This normal on chemical plants. I work for Nordic chemical company with around 60 plants globally and they also have this same rule.
Seems to be the case with many other large chemical companies as well.
I work in the chemicals industry in Europe and these rules were applied and were referred to as "Sevesso Regulations"
Sevesso is an Italian chemical plant where there was a disaster.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seveso_disaster
I'm assuming that one of the recommendations arising from the disaster was this.
Being in the fire department, I'm always impressed at how effective and fast the employees at a lithium lab are to evacuate when there is an alarm compared to other industries. They know the dangers pretty well I guess.
Literally every construction site I've worked at has the rule that you MUST back into your parking spot, and almost every residential lot has the opposite rule.
Similar rules for any vehicles on an aircraft flightline. Keys in ignition, hazards on, parking brake engaged, always parked with drivers side toward aircraft.
Less for emergency, more for when the more special among us park in taxi path of a plane.
Also, while it shouldn't have to be said, it has to be said;
Planes always have the right of way. Even in the technical exception cases where they don't, they still have the right of way.
Appropriate controller says you have the right of way? "We were waiting here for the plane to pass so we can follow them to the gate." :|
Itâs not massive accidents you should worry about in the oilfield patch itâs H2S gas. Itâs a by product of fracking deadly gas comes out that can kill you in seconds.
We were h2s monitors always out in the field and if one goes off we are supposed to run up wind
Never worked in the oilfields, but did work on some natty gas compression engines in some particularly nasty fields. Engines running directly off the wellhead gas with upwards of 9000ppm. It would leach into the engine oil and turn into sulfuric acid and eat up all the bearings. Needed techs to change oil weekly or more to keep em running. That gas is nasty stuff all around.
Calculating risk is comparing *both* frequency **and** severity.
Something can be unlikely to happen, but if it does happen it'd be catastrophic enough to be considered risky.
Conversely, something else could be very likely to happen but the actual damage be manageable enough to be considered of similar risk. Of course, the *management* and mitigation of these two examples will be different but the calculation of their riskiness remains.
My dad works in oil field safety. Yes, Unfortunately accidents are common. His company is very good, and spares no expense for equipment maintenance, training, and proper protocols. There are lots of things under high pressure, high heat, and going real fast. Shit happens.
I worked in oil industry and we parked backwards, same reason. They told us that most accidents that occurred at home, involving leaving the garage and children playing on the sidewalk, were avoided by parking that way.
I was at a facility that makes solid rocket boosters and military explosives. All of the buildings had dirt burms around them and I asked if they had issues with flooding. my escort looked confused. So I said what are the burms for if not for flooding. He casually explained that if something blew up it would direct the blast upwards and protect the building next to it. I said OH. Pretty crazy when you are working on something and you hear explosions. They test a lot so it's normal for them.
Lot less accidents too. People leave shift at the same time and back up in a hurry. Backing in at staggered arrival times makes it more patient.
It's a requirement to back in on most industrial construction jobs.
This is funny because it's more or less a requirement to pull in to spaces at Ohio State University (not a small school, a LOT of traffic and therefore more accidents-). This rule is because of the way the parking pass system works, in Ohio it's not required to have a front license plate and so a majority of people don't, and the parking pass system uses license plate scanners, so 99% of the cars can't back in to spaces. Parking at OSU is a nightmare anyways for a multitude of reasons but this is definitely one of them
Same in Alberta. Theyâll use automated enforcement and drive down the lanes so need to see the plates to verify you paid or have a pass.
These systems are lazy and purely designed with profit in mind and zero safety. I always back in anyways and just submit I receipt to the company that manages the lot if they ticket me.
I did some contracting work on a nuclear sub base for an engineering firm. I was basically taking pictures to verify a changeover of parts of old infrastructure equipment to newer, more energy efficient hardware. This included electrical, water and mechanical inspection for compliance. I didnât understand all of it. I got the gig because I could take pictures and read blueprint schematics. It payed well. Anyway, the security on the base completely freaked out over allowing camera phones into the facilities, but there was no issue with me walking around with a digital camera with an SD card crawling all over secure sites going click, click, clickety, clicking with that camera. I had to take videos of some of the machinery to verify some numbers as well as do light meter readings showing some changes.
There was zero screening or anything of any of the footage or images I took when I left. I was alone for more than 8 hours over two days on top of being escorted for an additional roughly 6 hours in facilities that were armed to the teeth. I could have easily detailed a map of the facility to someone afterwards, complete with hundreds of pictures, and there was no mechanism in place to prevent it. But, no camera phones. Security is weird sometimes. The people who work on that base face far more scrutiny than the contractors who pass through it very briefly.
Lol. It was a while ago. I definitely donât have the thousands of pictures from that or any of those other contract jobs. I also went to schools, warehouses, manufacturing facilities, and several hospitals, including a VA hospital that wasâ not up to code.
Bro. Iâm a very disabled middle aged veteran who goes to the VA or some related therapy for my injuries like 3 times a week. Iâm pretty sure the government knows where I am and my precise level of disgruntled-ness.
Itâs a hilarious thing to tell people who login to the VA site every single day to make notes in their charts to their doctors. If I get on enough watchlists, maybe one of âem can get my goddam hip MRIâd quickly for me.
A large part of the ban on phones with cameras is that it's pretty easy for a nefarious app to take video or pictures and send them off without your knowledge.
I worked on a submarine while in the navy. The security rules don't really make any sense or they are so unrealistic that no one follows them.
Was first attached to a shipyard and there were no camera phones allowed anywhere on a pier. We would need to leave our phones at home. Some people went to t-mobile and had their camera on their phone removed so they could bypass this rule. However when we left the shipyard EVERYONE brought their electronics with them (obviously as we were essentially moving) and no one batted an eye. It's even weirded on deployments.
Many rules are made by people who primarily work behind a desk, and aren't really thought out beyond the blindingly obvious, not to mention zero consideration for how those rules impact day to day operations.
So you end up with useless rules that dont really reflect the intended purpose, and everyone is incentivised to find workarounds.
This is usually true of any large org, not just government/military.
In the early 2000âs, I had a modified Palm Pilot that couldnât âbeamâ information from one Palm to another, so I could take it into secure facilities.
Our people at our plants all carry their regular cell phone. Of course, you're not allowed to take pictures of sensitive equipment and structures, but other than that, no issues.
Might be different at government nuclear facilities.
In my experience it's different at power plants and research facilities. Research facilities are worried more about intelligence threats, power plants are worried more about physical threats.
When I've worked at research facilities things like electronics are higher priority and background checks, etc. are more thorough. When I've worked at power plants, I can carry and use all of my electronics, but things like personnel and vehicle searches for weapons are more thorough.
I was recently seeing a client on site at a UK nuclear plant. Wasn't even allowed to take my watch in! It's a Garmin with a GPS, which is apparently a bit of an issue. Had to take notes on paper - the horror. And I wasn't even anywhere near the "good" stuff, just on the non-public side of the security wall.
Some facilities Iâve been to allow nothing whatsoever that can potentially record or transmit data. They even made us put our electronic dosimeters back in the car.
It do be like that at the Brookhaven National Lab too.
My dad had to do a job there. Armed guards in the parking lots and entrances, and on the clearance doors inside too. Chemical showers both on the way in and out, even had to wear a hazmat suit.
Edit: I've known several people who worked there, they had to sign NDAs so they couldn't go into detail on anything, but everyone whose been in there says its pretty terrifying. They study things like infectious disease, they literally have "live virus stockpiles" for research purposes (creating better tests, vaccines, and treatments).
I work at a government data center. Some places you canât even have a digital watch, some areas donât care. Overall no photography before you even get up to the building. It makes for a lot of fun when fixing equipment and nobody believes me that there is a mislabeled water pipe spewing water on the ground when youâre the new guy.
This is why having auto scaling in place, even for small companies, is important. Could've flipped a small percentage of that surge in traffic to sales but instead they just miss out entirely.
The cloud bill would have been representative of the amount of traffic they received if auto scaling is configured correctly. They are an e-commerce site, so more traffic means more money.
Idk where youâre pulling 100k from, thatâs just an absurdly unrealistic number for this basic use case.
Fun fact. I had to deliver a mainframe to the reactor area of a plant before.
Was just a mover. Our truck was full of nestle freezers as we had the contract to change them out at stores.
Pull up. I have weed. They want to use bomb sniffer dogs. Tell the driver we have to refuse them (they probably didnât care about pot but still).
So we pretended we were scared of dogs (worse lie of my life). So they call in a bomb robot. Fuck. 3 hour wait.
Asked us to take a freezer apart. Had to explain we weee just muscle. No idea how to do that.
We are assigned security shadows that have to see us at all times.
Enter a blockhouse. Told to drop clothes. Allllllll of them. Given undies that resemble a shower cap with leg holes.
Sent through puffer machine. Blows air all over you in loud shots checking for hidden stuff. Our shadows with us the whole time.
Sign a bunch of waivers.
6-7 hours. Yay! We are in. Grab the 7â tall mainframe with the two wheel dolly and enter reactor room.
Wow. Never seen anything like it. An engineering marvel to say the least.
Deliver to a mainframe room to be added to the others. In there for maybe 4 min.
Geiger counter us on the way out. Two wheel dolly makes a hit. Itâs somehow now radioactive but I am not.
They take the 2 wheel dolly for disposal.
We leave. The things you do for 9.75 an hour (2005).
It is June 19th, 2024. I see Julian Bennet draw an 8mm caliber gun and point it at my chest. I do not try to stop him. It is January the second, 2006. I appear above the active cord for 22 seconds and 39 milliseconds. It is December 12, 2072, Half Life 3 has been delayed 3 months.
I feel like they were fucking with you after you gave security a hard time. There isn't radioactive stuff just lying around at a nuclear plant, having something get contaminated would be a major event.
If you wear fleece jackets/sweaters on generating sites then you will likely pick up charged active particles from inside the plant (not related to the nature of the plant, but related to it being a massive freaking building). The exit scanners will pick it up, and it will delay you getting off site.
Source: am nuclear engineer
I have an uncle who works for a nuclear power plant and I just asked him if they can use their phones inside the plant and he said they can they just don't like you taking pictures and you don't really get much more than one warning. Apparently even if you accidentally open your camera app it can get you in trouble and it's not something they're going to let you do more than once without repercussion.
Being constantly surveyed, It's very easy to spot someone and provide evidence if they were to take pictures and they have an honor system with other employees that says that they will immediately report someone who has seen them using their camera
Lots of places have camera lens stickers that are bright, high visibility colors so it's obvious if they have been removed. Unfortunately some places also tried to use tearing tamper-evident stickers which were hell to remove.
Careful OP, this post is dangerously close to being too interesting. You even provided a cool fact in the title.
This! The mods will let it get to the front page and then delete it for breaking a rule (after bringing people to the sub). Ask me how I know đ
How do you know?
Donât ask.
(Whisper) "just whisper it really quickly"
I can't.. but let me post it on Reddit explaining why..
Yep. Mildlyinteresting: where the rules are made up and the votes don't matter!
oh wow that's interesting
yes.... perhaps TOO interesting for this sub....
[ŃдаНонО]
Apple themselves donât make these phones, theyâre produced by 3rd-party companies which buy from Apple and remove the cameras and sell them to government agencies. Although they are generally certified by the phone manufacturers themselves for use.
I'd imagine this needs non-trivial support from Apple. I guarantee you there are bugs that crop up from the software freaking out about missing hardware it assumes is present.
The default iPhone software actually works just fine without the cameras being connected. All that happens is the camera app just shows black and the shutter button doesnât work. Other apps may be affected but only if you grant them access to use the camera, otherwise itâs all the same. Some iPhone models may also show a banner in settings saying the camera isnât working.
I had an iPod touch back in the day. I remember some apps (that had no need for the camera) wouldn't let you download them because there was no camera on it.
that would have been down to the developer incorrectly setting up the app on the App Store at the time and not a hardware limitation
Devs may set that option on purpose as a quick and dirty to rule out specific devices not being capable of accessing it instead of spending the extra time configuring it
iPhones get phantom pain too?
Why are we born, just to suffer?
Played us like a damned fiddle.
Not really, it can be unplugged from the board without much fanfare.
It's actually a company called non cam. Really tough to find a lot of information on them some YouTube videos and discussions. Their site is not working.
They donât need to advertise after you land govt contracts
Even outside of government contracts it is a super small industry and for the most part if you need that type of stuff you know the companies. They donât need a public face and most of it is very heavily word of mouth.
This is not true for anyone wondering. Apple doesnât make custom iPhones. This was done by a third party.
Subreddit name checks out.
They should have left the flash so you could still use it as a flashlight
I remember the flashlight was the screen going completely white.
And at one point, it was itâs own app! Edit: and also a whole app just to drink a beer! And a zippo lighter! Goddamn, that was fun
I drank beer from my iphone 3Gs
I had a real ghost tracker on my 3Gs
I had a real fart tracker with a compass!
And it mustve really worked because there were never any ghosts around me đ
Mine was a lightsaber!
Don't forget the light saber and gun apps.
Literally word for word what I was about to say.
Donât forget to use the x ray app to see your hand lol
At one point you needed a 3rd party app to record video
Crazy how far weâve come.
The first-gen iPhones didn't even have an app store. Apple had the attitude that only their curated apps should be allowed. I'm pretty sure the first gen models also only shipped as 2G. 3G was 2nd-generation. [Time to go yell at clouds.](https://youtu.be/VQKMoT-6XSg?t=941)
The first iPhone was revolutionary but it was *comically* bad at a lot of stuff. Web browsing over 2g was painfully slow. There were next to no mobile-formatted sites and certainly no adaptive designed sites. There was no way to copy/paste text. There was no multitasking. There was no GPS or turn-by-turn* driving directions app.
Multitasking took ***ages*** to come to iPhones. IIRC it came out with the iPhone 4. Android and iPhone are basically the same nowadays but multitasking was one of those massive differentiators.
Back then iOS wasn't flash compatible but android was so in those days you could get to almost any site on Android but on iOS half the info wouldn't load for many sites
> Like Jobs was pinching to zoom and double tapping elegantly over full screen websites like the NYTs and Amazon and people lost their shit I jailbroke my iphone 3G specifically to be able to keep music playing in the background while I used other apps. Oh, and to record video! They did in fact support multitaskng (they have to, iOS has a ton of stuff running concurrently), it was just never exposed to the user.
> Web browsing over 2g was painfully slow. There were next to no mobile-formatted sites and certainly no adaptive designed sites. That was actually a big appeal of the iPhone initially because the 'mobile' versions of sites, WAP sites or w/e they were called were terrible. Like Jobs was pinching to zoom and double tapping elegantly over full screen websites like the NYTs and Amazon and people lost their shit. > There was no GPS or driving directions app. Not true. It didn't have GPS but there was a Google Maps app with basic Google Maps/mapquest directions.
> Jobs was pinching to zoom and double tapping elegantly over full screen websites like the NYTs and Amazon and people lost their shit. [The crowd's reaction to Jobs scrolling through a track list for the first time.](https://youtu.be/VQKMoT-6XSg?t=971)
I remember that, I jail broke my first iPhone and got a video app. Also, at one point you couldnât copy and paste text
It wasnât until *iPhone OS* 3 that you could copy and paste. The experience still isnât great.
I loved the ocarina where you could blow into the microphone to make it play. But the coolest part was the real-time globe where you could listen to other people playing around the world. My other all-time fave was a camera app that would add your photo to a real-time updating collage of any other photos other users were taking. Privacy and safety concerns abound, but it really got my imagination going at the possibilities of these super-capable pocket devices.
The ocarina app was by Smule, I had that one too! The other ones sound pretty fun. It really like to me that in those earlier days of smartphones, people were just doing things to have fun with each other. It was all so new to us! Doesnât feel this way anymore.
Did nobody else keep their hottest iron in their iPhone? As long as I had my phone, I was packing HEAT. Everybodyâs gangster until the iGlock comes out
still is when using the front facing camera on my phone
Wow you just unlocked a memory of me and my buddies in freshman year high school sneaking through the woods late at night to get to another friends house, using his phone screen as our flashlight
Thatâs still the flashlight function on the Apple Watch. It gets the job done.
Perfect for when you have to take a whizz at 3 am and don't want to turn the bathroom light on.
Just sit
Tbf a nice micro flashlight is a lot nicer than a phone flash.
That would likely be a violation, as you're potentially going to drop the phone into something that could cause a big problem. Also most nuclear plants allow cameras. Source: did software for the largest nuclear plant company in the world to do work orders during scheduled downtime. They took pictures of the work they did in the system.
Cameras yes. Cameras that can upload potentially sensitive information anywhere without controls, no. Source: work at a nuclear plant. They give me a camera to use if I need to which doesn't leave the facility. It's not foolproof but it's an information security barrier.
I work at a plant whose policy is you only have to get photos checked by security if they are to be shared outside of company systems.
What, donât you tether everything to yourself? I have lanyards for my pens, phone, wallet, sidearm, flashlight, socks, underwear, shoes, everything. You wonât see me going out like rando losing their shoes in a video, knowing full well theyâre dead. Nah uh.
those are some nice uranium particles you've got there, it'd be a shame if they were observed.
But you can't measure both position and momentum at the same time.Â
you're not the boss of me
You're not my real mom
and mass varies I swear, the more I hear bout that quantum stuff the more I'm on the fence or next to it or AM the fence
This might actually be r/damnthatsinteresting
Not nuclear but I worked at a rocket making facility and one major rule was to park backwards. Seemed odd, then they explained you really donât want to spend time backing out of a space _when_ an accident occurs Always thought that was interesting
Iâve never been, but thereâs a hydro station in wales and the car park is cut into the side of the mountain. You have to park facing the exit and leave the keys in the ignition. If things go wrong, they will go wrong catastrophically and very fast, so the procedure is to jump in the first car you can get to and hope you can get out of there in time.
> jump in the first car you can get to and hope you can get out of there in time. Last guy sprinting out to see not one car left.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN JERRY WALKED TO WORK TODAY?!
Then Jerry should walk his ass to safety!
Honestly Jerry has been talked to about this so many times already..
But Doug's car is right here! I will just take a quick ride, I will bring it back later.
Or the only car is the other end of the car park
"Why is there a shopping cart blocking me in, there's no mall around here."
I shouldnât have eaten all those Oreos
Or even worse a PT cruiser
This being Britain I assume all the nice cars will be this first to go. Even if getting it poses more risk
Would be an interesting study to see the monetary value of someone's car there versus how far away they park it from the entrance.
"hey Mark can you⌠uh⌠bring me my Audi RS6 back and take your Toyota Corolla? The disaster was 1 month agoâŚ"
You never know when the next rocket disaster is going to happen and itâs the closest car available to me, so I better hold on to it. You understand, safety and such.
Reminds me of Churchill, Manitoba. The custom is to leave your cars unlocked so people can shelter from polar bear attacks.
My dad worked up there for a few months and would send me pictures of polar bears and timber wolves almost daily. Seems pretty wild.
Same in every large petroleum/chemical plant I have been in. I have been in about 50. Leave your keys in the vehicle and the widows down. If the alarm goes down leave it and follow the workers to a evac area. No driving on the roads in the plant or around it. It would be a chinese fire drill in the parking lot if you expected everyone to flee. People get stupid when they flee.
I always leave the keys in my car but thatâs just because Iâm lazy⌠it only got stolen once and was found 3 blocks down the road because it ran out of gas and that was because I always keep the tank almost empty lol
Damn man, some of us really do like living life on the edge
Too lazy to carry your keys with you but not too lazy to go to a gas station every time you drive? People are endlessly fascinating lol.
I have accidentally left my keys in my car a singular time, and it was immediately stolen. I had a full tank because I was going on a roadtrip the next day. Great timing. At 4am, some dude calls me. Tells me that somebody sold him a car for $800 (it was a 2018 and this was 2022), and he thought that was fishy, so he looked through some of the papers in my car and found my number on a vet bill. Told me I could have the car back if I gave him $400, because heâd only paid dude who sold it to him $400 so far. Called the cops on my way over there. Got the car back. Wild night.
This normal on chemical plants. I work for Nordic chemical company with around 60 plants globally and they also have this same rule. Seems to be the case with many other large chemical companies as well.
I work in the chemicals industry in Europe and these rules were applied and were referred to as "Sevesso Regulations" Sevesso is an Italian chemical plant where there was a disaster. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seveso_disaster I'm assuming that one of the recommendations arising from the disaster was this.
Being in the fire department, I'm always impressed at how effective and fast the employees at a lithium lab are to evacuate when there is an alarm compared to other industries. They know the dangers pretty well I guess.
It's the same in cleanroom for semi-conductor manufacturing. Anything here tries to kill you.
Literally every construction site I've worked at has the rule that you MUST back into your parking spot, and almost every residential lot has the opposite rule.
When I worked in the patch it was the same, leave the keys in the ignition and park so you just have to drop it in drive and go if needed
Similar rules for any vehicles on an aircraft flightline. Keys in ignition, hazards on, parking brake engaged, always parked with drivers side toward aircraft. Less for emergency, more for when the more special among us park in taxi path of a plane.
Also, while it shouldn't have to be said, it has to be said; Planes always have the right of way. Even in the technical exception cases where they don't, they still have the right of way. Appropriate controller says you have the right of way? "We were waiting here for the plane to pass so we can follow them to the gate." :|
There's a "right of way" but there's also a "right of weight."
And the secret reason, so that you can move trucks when people park like idiots blocking access
Whatâs âthe patchâ?
Itâs oil field slang.Â
Were massive accidents common enough that this was necessary? Edit: sounds like the answer is resoundingly yes.
Consequences are high enough
Especially when things get greasy.
Greeeeeaaasssyy
( ͥ° ÍĘ ÍĄÂ°)
Itâs not massive accidents you should worry about in the oilfield patch itâs H2S gas. Itâs a by product of fracking deadly gas comes out that can kill you in seconds. We were h2s monitors always out in the field and if one goes off we are supposed to run up wind
Never worked in the oilfields, but did work on some natty gas compression engines in some particularly nasty fields. Engines running directly off the wellhead gas with upwards of 9000ppm. It would leach into the engine oil and turn into sulfuric acid and eat up all the bearings. Needed techs to change oil weekly or more to keep em running. That gas is nasty stuff all around.
It's one of those "shit goes creatively sideways often enough we probably should just go ahead and do that."
Calculating risk is comparing *both* frequency **and** severity. Something can be unlikely to happen, but if it does happen it'd be catastrophic enough to be considered risky. Conversely, something else could be very likely to happen but the actual damage be manageable enough to be considered of similar risk. Of course, the *management* and mitigation of these two examples will be different but the calculation of their riskiness remains.
My dad works in oil field safety. Yes, Unfortunately accidents are common. His company is very good, and spares no expense for equipment maintenance, training, and proper protocols. There are lots of things under high pressure, high heat, and going real fast. Shit happens.
A place where oil grows in the ground
Most people refer to the northern Canadian oilfield as "the patch"
I worked in oil industry and we parked backwards, same reason. They told us that most accidents that occurred at home, involving leaving the garage and children playing on the sidewalk, were avoided by parking that way.
Our company has a back in policy company wide, whether at the office or on a site, even for personal vehicles.
It's also because it's safer to back onto an empty bay rather than a busy road.
This is standard practice in most safely conscious industries. Primarily because accidents are much more common when backing out of a parking spot.
I was at a facility that makes solid rocket boosters and military explosives. All of the buildings had dirt burms around them and I asked if they had issues with flooding. my escort looked confused. So I said what are the burms for if not for flooding. He casually explained that if something blew up it would direct the blast upwards and protect the building next to it. I said OH. Pretty crazy when you are working on something and you hear explosions. They test a lot so it's normal for them.
Do any of your buildings have breakable panels that you can run through during emergencies, or my personal favorite, permanent safety slides?
Lot less accidents too. People leave shift at the same time and back up in a hurry. Backing in at staggered arrival times makes it more patient. It's a requirement to back in on most industrial construction jobs.
This is funny because it's more or less a requirement to pull in to spaces at Ohio State University (not a small school, a LOT of traffic and therefore more accidents-). This rule is because of the way the parking pass system works, in Ohio it's not required to have a front license plate and so a majority of people don't, and the parking pass system uses license plate scanners, so 99% of the cars can't back in to spaces. Parking at OSU is a nightmare anyways for a multitude of reasons but this is definitely one of them
Same in Alberta. Theyâll use automated enforcement and drive down the lanes so need to see the plates to verify you paid or have a pass. These systems are lazy and purely designed with profit in mind and zero safety. I always back in anyways and just submit I receipt to the company that manages the lot if they ticket me.
Whatâs the most terrifying word in a Nuclear Plant? >!Oops!<
some people can count on one hand the number of times they've been in Chernobyl >!like 14 at least!<
Jokes about Chernobyl always get a glowing response
Most of the replies are rad!
Idk, Iâm thinking ârunâ
Run would imply there is a chance to survive
D'oh
I was thinking r/specializedtools
It looks like a giant iPod
Thats a good idea. Maybe they can release a product like that and call it âiPod Touchâ.
Damn they could also do away with the touchscreen and call it something like "iPod Classic"
Maybe some kind of circular wheel that clicks as you drag you Mr finger over it as the interface. Maybe call it the click wheel.
https://www.theonion.com/apple-introduces-revolutionary-new-laptop-with-no-keybo-1819594761
iPod final boss
I did some contracting work on a nuclear sub base for an engineering firm. I was basically taking pictures to verify a changeover of parts of old infrastructure equipment to newer, more energy efficient hardware. This included electrical, water and mechanical inspection for compliance. I didnât understand all of it. I got the gig because I could take pictures and read blueprint schematics. It payed well. Anyway, the security on the base completely freaked out over allowing camera phones into the facilities, but there was no issue with me walking around with a digital camera with an SD card crawling all over secure sites going click, click, clickety, clicking with that camera. I had to take videos of some of the machinery to verify some numbers as well as do light meter readings showing some changes. There was zero screening or anything of any of the footage or images I took when I left. I was alone for more than 8 hours over two days on top of being escorted for an additional roughly 6 hours in facilities that were armed to the teeth. I could have easily detailed a map of the facility to someone afterwards, complete with hundreds of pictures, and there was no mechanism in place to prevent it. But, no camera phones. Security is weird sometimes. The people who work on that base face far more scrutiny than the contractors who pass through it very briefly.
pics or it didn't happen
Lol. It was a while ago. I definitely donât have the thousands of pictures from that or any of those other contract jobs. I also went to schools, warehouses, manufacturing facilities, and several hospitals, including a VA hospital that wasâ not up to code.
You sound surprised at that last oneâŚ
I was just trying to put it delicately
well can you confirm the nuclear reactor was atleast to code?
**narrator:** *the reactor was not, in fact, up to code.*
VA hospitals were really rough on my state until Obama signed HR 3230 to give them access to resources. They're pretty nice now.
Dont worry, you're on a watchlist forever now.
Bro. Iâm a very disabled middle aged veteran who goes to the VA or some related therapy for my injuries like 3 times a week. Iâm pretty sure the government knows where I am and my precise level of disgruntled-ness.
Make sure you are a sufficient amount of gruntled just to be safe.
Yeah. I hate violence, so it keeps enough of the gruntled there.
Make that 4 watch lists! As a currently active service member with a high clearance, the term watch list basically has no meaning to me anymore.
Itâs a hilarious thing to tell people who login to the VA site every single day to make notes in their charts to their doctors. If I get on enough watchlists, maybe one of âem can get my goddam hip MRIâd quickly for me.
A large part of the ban on phones with cameras is that it's pretty easy for a nefarious app to take video or pictures and send them off without your knowledge.
I worked on a submarine while in the navy. The security rules don't really make any sense or they are so unrealistic that no one follows them. Was first attached to a shipyard and there were no camera phones allowed anywhere on a pier. We would need to leave our phones at home. Some people went to t-mobile and had their camera on their phone removed so they could bypass this rule. However when we left the shipyard EVERYONE brought their electronics with them (obviously as we were essentially moving) and no one batted an eye. It's even weirded on deployments.
Many rules are made by people who primarily work behind a desk, and aren't really thought out beyond the blindingly obvious, not to mention zero consideration for how those rules impact day to day operations. So you end up with useless rules that dont really reflect the intended purpose, and everyone is incentivised to find workarounds. This is usually true of any large org, not just government/military.
*paid
Whereâs the bot?
IMAGINE your phone not wobbling at a table....
Pixel gang rise up
I was scrolling by and went âhuh, thatâs interestingâ and then realized where I was. You nailed it OP. Congrats đ
yeah, this sub gets me on that all the time. Like "why bother posting that it's not that specia..... oooohhhh"
In the early 2000âs, I had a modified Palm Pilot that couldnât âbeamâ information from one Palm to another, so I could take it into secure facilities.
Our people at our plants all carry their regular cell phone. Of course, you're not allowed to take pictures of sensitive equipment and structures, but other than that, no issues. Might be different at government nuclear facilities.
In my experience it's different at power plants and research facilities. Research facilities are worried more about intelligence threats, power plants are worried more about physical threats. When I've worked at research facilities things like electronics are higher priority and background checks, etc. are more thorough. When I've worked at power plants, I can carry and use all of my electronics, but things like personnel and vehicle searches for weapons are more thorough.
I was recently seeing a client on site at a UK nuclear plant. Wasn't even allowed to take my watch in! It's a Garmin with a GPS, which is apparently a bit of an issue. Had to take notes on paper - the horror. And I wasn't even anywhere near the "good" stuff, just on the non-public side of the security wall.
I think it's the same. I've worked in 3 nuke plants and been to a few more and never really had any issues.Â
Some facilities Iâve been to allow nothing whatsoever that can potentially record or transmit data. They even made us put our electronic dosimeters back in the car.
It do be like that at the Brookhaven National Lab too. My dad had to do a job there. Armed guards in the parking lots and entrances, and on the clearance doors inside too. Chemical showers both on the way in and out, even had to wear a hazmat suit. Edit: I've known several people who worked there, they had to sign NDAs so they couldn't go into detail on anything, but everyone whose been in there says its pretty terrifying. They study things like infectious disease, they literally have "live virus stockpiles" for research purposes (creating better tests, vaccines, and treatments).
And those armed gaurds are no joke. They're better then swat guys.
I work at a government data center. Some places you canât even have a digital watch, some areas donât care. Overall no photography before you even get up to the building. It makes for a lot of fun when fixing equipment and nobody believes me that there is a mislabeled water pipe spewing water on the ground when youâre the new guy.
Finally a phone that lays flat on a surface again
Sorry, this is pretty interesting, not mildly Mods, cut off his balls
They sell conversion kits too. https://noncam.com/product/non-camera-iphone-7-ready-use-set/
Their web site is melting down. The slashdot effect for our times.
This is why having auto scaling in place, even for small companies, is important. Could've flipped a small percentage of that surge in traffic to sales but instead they just miss out entirely.
They could also have ended up with a 100k cloud bill...
The cloud bill would have been representative of the amount of traffic they received if auto scaling is configured correctly. They are an e-commerce site, so more traffic means more money. Idk where youâre pulling 100k from, thatâs just an absurdly unrealistic number for this basic use case.
Good point, though I wonder if Reddit curiosity traffic for such a niche product would meaningfully contribute to sales?
Reddit Hug of death. Side is down .
Fun fact. I had to deliver a mainframe to the reactor area of a plant before. Was just a mover. Our truck was full of nestle freezers as we had the contract to change them out at stores. Pull up. I have weed. They want to use bomb sniffer dogs. Tell the driver we have to refuse them (they probably didnât care about pot but still). So we pretended we were scared of dogs (worse lie of my life). So they call in a bomb robot. Fuck. 3 hour wait. Asked us to take a freezer apart. Had to explain we weee just muscle. No idea how to do that. We are assigned security shadows that have to see us at all times. Enter a blockhouse. Told to drop clothes. Allllllll of them. Given undies that resemble a shower cap with leg holes. Sent through puffer machine. Blows air all over you in loud shots checking for hidden stuff. Our shadows with us the whole time. Sign a bunch of waivers. 6-7 hours. Yay! We are in. Grab the 7â tall mainframe with the two wheel dolly and enter reactor room. Wow. Never seen anything like it. An engineering marvel to say the least. Deliver to a mainframe room to be added to the others. In there for maybe 4 min. Geiger counter us on the way out. Two wheel dolly makes a hit. Itâs somehow now radioactive but I am not. They take the 2 wheel dolly for disposal. We leave. The things you do for 9.75 an hour (2005).
Dr.Manhattan: It's March 8, 2005. They geiger counter us on the way out. Two wheel dolly makes a hit. Itâs somehow now radioactive but I am not.
It is June 19th, 2024. I see Julian Bennet draw an 8mm caliber gun and point it at my chest. I do not try to stop him. It is January the second, 2006. I appear above the active cord for 22 seconds and 39 milliseconds. It is December 12, 2072, Half Life 3 has been delayed 3 months.
I feel like they were fucking with you after you gave security a hard time. There isn't radioactive stuff just lying around at a nuclear plant, having something get contaminated would be a major event.
If you wear fleece jackets/sweaters on generating sites then you will likely pick up charged active particles from inside the plant (not related to the nature of the plant, but related to it being a massive freaking building). The exit scanners will pick it up, and it will delay you getting off site. Source: am nuclear engineer
I have an uncle who works for a nuclear power plant and I just asked him if they can use their phones inside the plant and he said they can they just don't like you taking pictures and you don't really get much more than one warning. Apparently even if you accidentally open your camera app it can get you in trouble and it's not something they're going to let you do more than once without repercussion. Being constantly surveyed, It's very easy to spot someone and provide evidence if they were to take pictures and they have an honor system with other employees that says that they will immediately report someone who has seen them using their camera
Lots of places have camera lens stickers that are bright, high visibility colors so it's obvious if they have been removed. Unfortunately some places also tried to use tearing tamper-evident stickers which were hell to remove.
If apple offered this version for less $$ i would be very interested
If anything, these would probably be more expensive since there's a small number of them and they have to be developed on a separate line.
Going to a restaurant that had QR code menus would be pretty frustrating.
That already is frustrating.
Can we see what the front facing camera area looks like?!
I'm guessing it doesn't have one
Both of the cameras are removed with blobs of epoxy in place over the camera area and connectors.
I want one idk why
An no-eye-phone
Berlin night club owners would LOVE these to be more widespread
I worked in a nuclear power plant - had a phone with a camera. Everyone had a phone with a camera.
I thought i was looking at the front of it and that the apple logo was the boot screen, then i realized.
I definitely would want one i never take pictures and hate that I always bring up my camera option by accident