certainly entertaining and hopefully helpful we strive to cover the topics at the heart of the Linux gamer. From Proton to Vulkan, from Linux native to voiding the warranty. We discuss news and updates from the Linux community, our gaming habits and wanderings along with reviewing a game each week.
Episode 62: Flock Cameras Are Tracking Your Car Right Now
Bricks & Minifigs. Reckless Ben. And 130,000 license plate cameras that don't need a warrant to find out where you've been.
This week we go down a rabbit hole that starts with a viral Lego lawsuit and ends with Flock Safety — the AI-powered license plate camera network now watching roads in nearly every state. We cover how the cameras actually work, the documented abuse cases (including a Mauldin, SC officer fired for running 166 unauthorized searches on an ex's vehicle), the security researcher who hacked one in under 30 seconds, and what Flock just changed about their data retention policy after the backlash.
Also: a Unifi container migration that took down an entire Proxmox server, a home lab AI fishing app that met its match at a river with zero signal, and a decade-old Sonic Drive-In robbery story that turns out to be the perfect real-world case study for "would a camera have actually proven anything?"
0:00:00 – Cold open / why Bo doesn't have headphones
0:09:15 – Unifi's new podman container crashes an entire Proxmox host
0:16:30 – K3s, Rancher, and the trout-fishing app that needed cell service it didn't have
0:20:00 – The AI-generated support ticket that gave it away
0:21:00 – The Reckless Ben / Bricks & Minifigs Lego saga, explained
0:37:00 – How that story sets up the real topic: Flock Safety cameras
0:40:00 – How ALPR cameras actually work (it's not facial recognition)
0:44:30 – Documented abuse cases: officers tracking exes with zero oversight
0:47:56 – Benn Jordan's camera hack: Android, root access, and a USB port
0:53:32 – DeFlock.me and the 130,000-camera map
0:56:49 – Pushback, regulation, and "who watches the watchers"
1:01:37 – Flock's retention policy change: 30 days to 7
1:12:24 – The counter-proposal: put cameras on the cops too
1:14:04 – Bonus story: the Sonic robbery and why cameras wouldn't have helped
1:24:29 – Next week: expensive hard drives, and the next Home Lab episode
🔗 Sources & Further Reading
DeFlock — crowdsourced ALPR camera map: https://deflock.org/ (https://deflock.org/)
Benn Jordan, "We Hacked Flock Safety Cameras in under 30 Seconds": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB0gr7Fh6lY (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB0gr7Fh6lY)
Flock Safety's official response to the retention policy change: https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/flock-guardrails-address-lpr-privacy-concerns-and-police-transparency (https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/flock-guardrails-address-lpr-privacy-concerns-and-police-transparency)
AP News coverage of the retention policy change: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/aug/13/amid-public-backlash-surveillance-tech-company-flock-announces/ (https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/aug/13/amid-public-backlash-surveillance-tech-company-flock-announces/) (AP wire story)
Mauldin, SC officer terminated for 166 unauthorized FLOCK searches on an ex's vehicle: https://www.foxcarolina.com/2026/08/14/mauldin-officer-accused-using-flock-cameras-over-160-times-track-ex/ (https://www.foxcarolina.com/2026/08/14/mauldin-officer-accused-using-flock-cameras-over-160-times-track-ex/)
Bricks & Minifigs–Reckless Ben controversy overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bricks_%26_Minifigs%E2%80%93Reckless_Ben_controversy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bricks_%26_Minifigs%E2%80%93Reckless_Ben_controversy)
Reckless Ben's channel: https://www.youtube.com/@RecklessBen (https://www.youtube.com/@RecklessBen)
💬 Got a comment we should read on air? Drop it below — we read every one.
📧 crowbarkernelpanic@pm.me (mailto:crowbarkernelpanic@pm.me)
23 Aug 2026
Episode 61: GNOME 50, Wine 11, and Open Source Drama You Couldn't Script
We're back after way too long. This episode we cover GNOME 50 "Tokyo" and what's actually worth caring about in the release, Wine 11's massive kernel-level rewrite and what it means for Linux gaming, and then we get into the Drama Zone — systemd quietly added a date-of-birth field, age verification laws are getting weird, the BookLore self-hosted e-book app imploded in spectacular fashion, and I gave Claude my entire purchase history and it confidently made up a company. Also I tried fly fishing and was terrible at it.
00:00 — We're back + fly fishing disaster
05:20 — GNOME 50 "Tokyo" overview
11:15 — Wine 11 kernel-level gaming rewrite
14:10 — Drama Zone: systemd date-of-birth & age verification
27:50 — BookLore meltdown
41:55 — Claude hallucinated a company
49:45 — CachyOS mini-review + next episode plans
📩 Submit your homelab: crowbarkernelpanic@pm.me (mailto:crowbarkernelpanic@pm.me)
💬 Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/qbV6eqkA (https://discord.gg/qbV6eqkA)
🎥 Watch the vlog: https://youtu.be/E0297HU2zsk (https://youtu.be/E0297HU2zsk)
9 Oct 2025
Episode 60: Reviewing Your Homelab, Sick, and Sleep-Deprived
This week on Crowbar Kernel Panic, we’re reviewing your homelab… while sick, sleep-deprived, and running on cough drops.
Bo’s been fighting off a plague for two weeks, but we didn’t want to skip an episode — so we’re keeping it chill, catching up on community comments, and checking out an absolutely insane listener-submitted homelab from Levix that puts both of ours to shame.
We also talk about hitting 400 subscribers (!!!), home server efficiency, Proxmox and TrueNAS setups, and Josh’s continuing saga of cursed motherboards and mysterious reboots.
If you’ve got a homelab — big or small — send it in! We’d love to feature it on a future episode.
📩 Submit your homelab: crowbarkernelpanic@pm.me (mailto:crowbarkernelpanic@pm.me)
💬 Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/qbV6eqkA (https://discord.gg/qbV6eqkA)
🎥 Watch the vlog: https://youtu.be/E0297HU2zsk (https://youtu.be/E0297HU2zsk)
Thanks for 400 subs, and for letting us hang out and be ridiculous every week. See you next episode — hopefully less sick, but just as sleep-deprived.
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