1. Inadequate security & outdated software
- “The kernel is ancient! Linux version 3.18.71-perf-gaf770dc” – fullstop
- “The oldest supported kernel is 5.10 and that loses support in December. That's wild they are using a 3.X kernel” – datakan
- “3.18.71-perf-gaf770dc is a Qualcomm Android vendor kernel from roughly late 2017. The 3.18 branch went fully EOL in 2019…” – incee
- “Security through obsolescence!” – samudrijan
- “There are levels to defending against physical attacks, and Flock half-assed theirs by leaving the encryption key right on the file system…” – overfeed
- “Even the cheapest, oldest least powerful SoC from 15 years ago can manage AES‑CBC via crypto accelerator at 50 MiB/s. There's no excuse.” – megous
2. Privacy & mass‑surveillance concerns
- “We constantly hear that the magic of tech funding lies in the people… setting up a tyrannical surveillance matrix all around you … to protect the children, of course.” – tyrabound
- “Flock is a scourge on democracy.” – cucumber3732842
- “Flock cameras capture the make, model, color, and body style of vehicles. They capture bumper stickers and other decals…” – antonvs
- “Getting persistent access to Flock's internal network is a high‑priority item for every US adversary…” – overfeed
- “Axon is Flock but worse… will be the next big fight as police departments are pulling a fast one…” – jordanb
3. Criticism of Y Combinator’s funding & ethics vetting
- “Interesting that they are a YC Company. Does yC do any ethics vetting of saying 'No, let's stop fascism before it spreads?'” – darksim905
- “YC does no meaningful vetting at all. You can steal another YC entrant’s product and still get funded.” – bigfatkitten
- “Flock is a scourge on democracy. Flock is YC. But looks like they did YC nearly ten years ago… I don’t see any evidence that YC is still actively supporting them.” – ohyoutravel
- “It’s not like this stuff wasn’t known to be a problem 10 years ago… It was WAY after that.” – MBCook
- “They won’t have that sort of moment of self reflection until someone does something like use Flock infrastructure to stalk and assassinate the CEO of another YC company…” – Teever
4. Light‑hearted / watchdog‑timer commentary
- “While highly unprofessional, the 'Who's a good boy?!' status message makes me like them a tiny bit more.” – coopaTroopa
- “For those unaware, embedded devices usually have a 'watchdog' timer that needs to be periodically reset… This log message probably indicates when they're resetting the watchdog timer.” – wl
- “I work in a different embedded space but our keepalive heartbeat messages have a payload of <3” – cucumber3732842
- “Man, ours is just '\0'.” – fullspot (referring to the keepalive signal)
- “But will it run Doom?” – stackghost
- “Someone should sell branded black trashbags with a spraypainted penis on them. We'll call it Cock Safety…” – kotaKat