Public safety rules should be dull in the best possible way. Clear. Predictable. Written by people who understand what actually causes harm in a crowd of thousands. New York City usually gets this right. It has decades of muscle memory for doing hard things in public, under pressure, without panicking. Which is why the prohibited items list for the January 1, 2026 NYC mayoral inauguration block party seemed… off
I wanted to make a snarky comment about smartphones, but the writer pretty much nailed it
Today it’s Raspberry Pi and Flipper Zero. Tomorrow it’s BeagleBone Blacks, Arduino Qs, ESP32 dev boards, Teensy boards, Pine64s, Orange Pis, Jetson Nanos, USB logic analyzers, SDR dongles, Bus Pirates, Defcon badges, hotel keycards, garage door openers, Tamagotchis, graphing calculators, old Nokias, Game Boys with link cables, a TI-83 held sideways, a Pocket Operator making beeps too abrasively, a Furby with unresolved father issues, and some guy’s wristwatch that definitely has a microcontroller in it. Meanwhile, everyone walks through holding a smartphone that can film, scan, transmit, triangulate, and livestream the entire event in 4K.
Wish I got some of those last ones - like what does holding a TI-83 sideways accomplish? What’s with a Firby’s unresolved father issues? etc. Guess I’ll be spending some time researching later.
These are all ingredients to release the Kraken in my DnD game, and they’re probably trying to avoid that because NYC knows what happens when I release the Kraken. NYC would prefer I do not do that.
Probably because they have more than enough Kraken addicts already.
Smuggle the flipper zero in inside of a raspberry pie!
Smuggle a Raspberry Pi inside a dolphin.
(You may need to be of a certain age to get this joke.)
My body lies over the ocean 🎶
You’ll be pleased to know the Flipper Zero mascot is a dolphin.
We know. Who do you think Flipper is?
The Lassie of the sea
I’m aware, TY. I didn’t want to assume people knew why that was the case.
I’m almost certain someone asked a chatbot to list devices “Like a Flipper Zero” and now you’re asked not to bring a specific general purpose computer from an event. I don’t think it’s sinister. I think it’s just stupidity. Now enhanced with a machine that lets you think even less.