I suspect that if you had a time machine and could gather data from every era of human history, you'd find that this '85%' they speak of is probably fairly consistent.
Free and open societies (which must by necessity be relatively non-corrupt to become and remain free & open societies) are not and have not been the norm throughout history. That 85% is on the low side historically speaking.
Actually, in the vast majority of cases where a vaping rig explodes/catches fire, it's entirely the fault of idiots doing idiotic things with the gear. Things like using sub-Ohm range heating coil(s) on a battery/control unit not designed or rated for sub-Ohm use, attempting to wind their own coils and creating a short-circuit and then trying to use that shorted-out unit on a 'pro' box-mod without current/wattage limiting, and other types of user-error scenarios in direct opposition to all the warnings included in boxes and on the hardware itself. Some people are just determined to win a Darwin Award and if it doesn't happen when these geniuses screw around with vaping gear, they'll find something else to endanger themselves and others with. You should be thankful it's vaping gear they're abusing and being idiots with and not something like firearms.
You cannot idiot-proof the world.
There was a Slashdot item just the other day about researchers discovering a way to include fire retardants in lithium batteries, so hopefully this will mitigate the dangers of lithium battery fires/explosions for vaping gear as well as other hardware that uses lithium battery tech (like Samsung phones).
Yeah, couldn't possibly be people like single working mothers trying to raise a kid (or multiple kids) and make it back and forth to her job(s), school(s), doctors, pay for food, rent, utilities, rent, auto/health insurance premiums, etc etc, ad nauseam, and so must carefully budget every penny.
You're right, their lives mean far less than your lofty goals.
That's why we need the government to set limits...
Why, exactly? Look around you, battery tech as just one example is advancing at amazing speed. We have Tesla making "PowerWalls" that will soon be even smaller and with a higher energy density. Electric cars are also expanding into popular usage, which the accelerating tech will only further push ahead as they become more practical as the sole vehicle for more and more households as well as powering more households, and that too is accelerating rapidly.
Fossil fuel is *already* on the way out, thanks to advances in alternate energy source/generation and storage technology. There is *already* overwhelming motivation to continue advancing these technologies as any significant invention/discovery means metric crap-tons of wealth for those who succeed.
Having the government handing out grants/subsidies/etc at the amounts feasible can really only serve to keep the crony-capitalists in business while government bureaucrats create fresh reams of regulations. This applies equally to fossil fuels and alternates. This is not like playing 'Civilization'. Scientific/technological advancements don't have a linear relationship with the amount of money you throw at it, there are far more factors at play, including human factors. "Eureka!" moments can't be bought like it was simply stuffing enough coins into a vending machine. If that were true, Trump could simply buy himself brilliance. The government also has a terribad record regarding correctly picking winners and losers when it attempts to meddle in these sorts of things.
So, what you and many others advocate in real terms by asking the government take action by raising taxes, etc, and creating rafts of new laws/regulations (all of which won't appreciably affect how quickly tech advances) in order to try to force what is *already* rapidly occurring, is that the current rapid advancement is not quick enough in your estimations so all this self-inflicted suffering is justified?
Oh, and FYI: carbon taxes and cap-and-trade is a regressive tax in the extreme and will drastically raise energy prices (and food prices and everything else) and that affects the poorest the most. How many Grandma-cicles every winter and/or roasted Grandpas every summer is it worth? How many malnourished/starved kids/adults? Those are some of those 'externalities' so many talk about...except when it comes to the externalities and consequences of their 'solutions' to what they declare is a 'problem'.
The CBS All Access show features the franchise's Enterprise, now known as the U.S.S. Discovery
How can you call yourself the "Hollywood reporter" and get something so trivial wrong?
Better check, the reportage itself might be accurate. I don't care enough to check, but it may well be that they are "breaking lore", so to speak, and making major storyline changes regarding early ST 'history' regarding early ST-universe starships bearing the "Enterprise" moniker. Because they can. And because they're great. Just ask them. Just look at the DC/Marvel franchise adherence to established lore and storylines, etc.
Or, equally as likely these days I suppose, is that both sides are wrong, none of it happened, and it was Russian hackers planting fake news. Because hackers! And Russia! Hacking! Russia! Fake news!
Blockchains solve the double-spend problem. Great, but banks don't typically have that problem in the first place because the currency is not the record.
It could be another strategy for getting to a cashless economy. If the money is digital it can be cut off, confiscated, or pretty much anything the controlling authority decides. The only way it would be allowed to go forward is if there's a way for government to control and track it.
I am certain nobody could had trouble for looking up a web site at that time, since the web did not exist,.
You attempt to deflect. It was then, and remains now, a dictatorship run by Fidel and now his brother Raul who operate domestically as most dictatorships of those type always have. Any changes have been mostly a matter of degree for now but could change at their whim. Just because, for now, they are not engaging in extreme and overt oppression/pacification tactics does not mean anything has changed in principle.
it is easy to find people that went to Cuba recently for tourism and could speak freely with cuban people.
The same is true in China. You can tour the Great Wall and other sights. One can vacation in Russia as well. The people you meet are invariably great. They also aren't about to start talking to some random foreign tourist about overthrowing the government or smuggling in weapons/contraband etc etc. That has nothing to do with whether authoritarian tyrannies are OK any more than whether authoritarian theocracies are OK or how free or oppressed the people may or may not be.
Sorry, but I believe that individual freedom and natural rights take precedence over collectivist/socialist/communist/theocratic governments or dictatorships/tyrannies which put the state's desires and goals over that of the individual's interests and natural rights as a human being. I will always stand in opposition to such.
How about "monitored, with a high probability of being 'disappeared', murdered, or simply arrested & imprisoned for visiting the 'wrong' kind of sites
A bit better, but who told you that kind of things happen in Cuba?
Besides history books, there were also the stories I was told directly from Cubans in Florida who had escaped the Castro regime. I lived in FL in the '70s.
PS: I'm SO disappointed that United Nuclear took down their.GIF that was on their main page for years.
Sorry, correction.
Ack! They still have the.gif on the main page, but it's tiny since they changed the page payout, and one must scroll down to see it. It used to be large and took up most of the main page!
Still need to work out a few problems with the Plutonium-Lithium battery I'm developing. Those pesky laws about who can buy the raw materials is making development difficult.
Providing internet connection without government's permission would be illegal and doing that one would certainly risk getting jailed.
I'd bet many would take the risk.
but any unlicenced satellite dishes are quickly dealth with.
Well then do it in a way that doesn't require big, easily-spotted satellite dishes. Super-powerful WiFi hardware on ships in international waters, maybe? Micro-drone swarms with WiFi mesh network capabilities and satellite internet linkage?
There is not much one can do until the Cuban government stops ETECSA monopoly and allows competition.
That's only true if one accepts defeat before one even begins to try to create solutions. Just look at Voice of America radio stations during the Cold War. This problem is not unsolvable, it just requires sufficient motivation and the will to move forward.
Abolishment of US embargo would probably do more than anything else at this moment.
I'm torn on this, as it also works to keep the Cuban dictatorship in place by giving it more international legitimacy and weakening Cuban domestic resistance by 'softening' the impact of Cuban tyranny on Cubans. I suppose it would make sense if one is basically OK with the idea of dictatorships and oppression being legitimate forms and behaviors of national governments, but I am not OK with dictatorships and oppression.
provide uncensored and free wireless internet access to Cubans
Who told you it was censored?
It may have been a poor choice of words. How about "monitored, with a high probability of being 'disappeared', murdered, or simply arrested & imprisoned for visiting the 'wrong' kind of sites or making the 'wrong' kind of comments or transmitting or receiving the 'wrong' kind of information/data."
Yes, the public access points make it easier to connect, but there is only a single ISP: the Cuban national telecommunications monopoly, ETECSA. To use the Internet, you must buy their scratch-off cards at their offices, which involves waiting in line. You can then use them on your own devices or at the aging Windows machines at ETECSA's centers. The cost of access has dropped to $1.50/hour, but that's a lot of money in a country where the average monthly income is $25. If you are associated with one of the universities, particularly the Universidad de Ciencias Informaticas west of Havana, Internet access is reasonably good (and free), but outside of that, only about 4% of Cubans connect to the Internet. Others get information from "The Packet", whose managers download and assemble materials, including books, movies, news, etc., onto electronic media and make it available to all.
The good news is that the Cuban government isn't blocking access to websites, and that smartphones are becoming more widely available, but the absence of alternatives to ETECSA means that costs are likely to remain prohibitive for the vast majority of Cubans for the foreseeable future.
Sounds like figuring out a way to provide uncensored and free wireless internet access to Cubans by bypassing ETECSA would be a great project. I'm not really knowledgeable enough in this area to offer more than random ideas. Maybe crowd-sourcing the money for satellite internet? Relay ships in international waters off the Cuban coast? I know both of those are rather impractical and expensive, so does anyone have some actually good/practical ideas that might work?
Damage done by guns can be tremendous, it's the manufacturers that really do deserve severe penalties.
Since in the US guns are used far more often by law abiding citizens to protect themselves and others than they are used by criminals, do we then give gun makers rewards? Fair is fair, right?
And those were just the examples that hit the news (most never do) in the last couple weeks that popped up at the top of Google results. There were many more.
We need a national program to treat the mass-hoplophobia that seems to be spreading at an alarming rate. You appear to be exhibiting some of the symptoms. Perhaps you should get yourself checked.
I think you're right, but I think it's a similar situation across the globe - realistically spy agencies in Russia, China and so forth shouldn't be doing those things to innocent citizens either so I don't think it's entirely a Western problem.
Well, it's the same problem in Western nations and Russia, China, etc. Government gaining too much power and control. The only difference being that Russia, China, etc are just further down the same road. We here in Western nations can realistically only affect change in our own nations.
Because our nations are already heading down the total-surveillance road, we can only offer minimal support to those in Russia, China, etc attempting to change things in those nations. We in the West, in order to be able to offer real assistance to the people of those nations, must first get a handle on our own governments, as our governments are our people's main instrument in dealing in foreign affairs. The clock is ticking, as history shows us that once freedom is lost it is highly unlikely to be regained until multiple generations have passed, that is if it is regained at all, which is not assured and becomes less and less likely as time passes.
I'm actually rather concerned that contrary to the implication in the summary that this is no longer simply citizen hacking but in fact escalation of state sponsored hacking.
As true as the things you bring up may be re: State-sponsored hacking, none of that really matters and nor will anyone in the US/Five-Eyes nations be able to appreciably change things until spying on domestic populations by their respective domestic governments in those nations is halted/brought under control. That, by far, is the most immediate and proximate threat, and the most likely to directly and negatively affect the average person in those nations as they try to change the status quo. It is domestic spying that supports companies like Cellebrite, after all, as there logically must be orders of magnitude more cases of the US and other Five-Eyes nations wanting/requesting tools for their domestic use than there are opportunities for use against foreign targets of interest.
Regaining control over Western domestic governments and their intelligence agencies will go far towards being able to control such State sponsored hacking operations as those you refer to and, I would argue, a necessary prerequisite for any meaningful change to occur.
...US agencies have failed to identify terrorists because big data obstructed a proper investigation.
Sorry, wrong.
US intel agencies both intentionally and knowingly ignore terrorist intel they have and intentionally and knowingly have not and are not truly trying to utilize or effectively collect and analyze data/intel for use against foreign terror threats. Terrorist attacks give them the perfect scare tactic to convince people to allow them more power and control. The entire manner, types, technologies, architectures, and methods used are only truly suited best for only one thing: domestic data collection, surveillance, and monitoring of the US population and assisting allies to do the same with theirs while helping with US surveillance. The entire system as a whole is poorly suited for anything else other than domestic surveillance and data mining/advanced analysis.
If the hacker(s) is/are smart the first thing he/they did was set up multiple deadman caches of the data that would automatically splash the data all over the web and physically send multiple copies of the data by multiple means/routes to multiple news/press/media outlets across the world if anything happened to them, as insurance against any possible reprisals/arrests/etc. I would, and I'm no uber-1337 h4x0r. Just in no hurry to find out if there's an afterlife or if my cellmate's name would actually be 'Bubba'.:)
But it shows how urban planning has been co-opted by merchants who push no car urban villages.
This is the exact opposite. People are expected to own a car or use (the often totally absent or severely limited) public transportation. Sidewalks are typically only found on the residential blocks and apartment complexes themselves, and even then are often absent or only partial in coverage. And due to 'no-fault' insurance laws and the inability to legally purchase auto insurance across State lines, just keeping insurance coverage current can rival housing costs as a percentage of personal expenses even with a relatively clean driving record.
One pretty much has to be employed full-time at above-minimum-wage or otherwise have significant money available to own and legally drive (liability/collision insurance is mandatory) in Michigan, even if the vehicle is owned free and clear. It causes many to drive without coverage or go without transportation, especially the less economically secure portion of the population. It's not much better elsewhere in the US, in some places it's even worse.
What do you think republican tax cuts are all about? Giving tax payer money to businesses.
This is so hilariously bass-ackwards I have to wonder if this was satire.
The government not confiscating under threat of deadly force wealth it did not earn, in the form of taxes, from those who created said wealth is *not* giving that wealth away to anyone as it was never government's wealth in the first place. A tax cut is not a 'subsidy' as so many seem to want to (deliberately) misconstrue it. A mugger that lets you keep some of your money is not subsidizing you by the amount he left you.
Feet are flexible and walking two miles each way is not an unreasonable burden.
Found the young person!
Wait until you get old and have arthritis and other physically-limiting health issues and are stuck surviving on Social Security Disability (~$900USD/month) plus $60/month in food benefits and have to walk to, and carry home groceries from, the closest grocery you can find ('residential zoning' so sorry, no grocery stores allowed nearby and the city had to cut bus routes for budget reasons) in snowstorms and 15F/-17C temps in the middle of January in Michigan and much of the walk having to be out on poorly-plowed main roads dodging traffic as there's no sidewalks because everyone owns a car, right?
Every year there's stories in the local news about seniors having died and discovering they had been surviving on canned dog food.
"Mediterranean diet", yeah, sure! Hell, fatty hamburger, heavily-processed anything, and bleached noodles are absolute *luxury* for many!
Actually, the damage pattern looks almost exactly consistent with a ground impact. It is reasonably clear from the images that the impact came from the front right, not straight on, and any drone moving fast enough to create that impact vector at approach speed would have punched straight through, not made the distributed damage we see - this was quite clearly a low speed impact.
The pilots 'reporting a loud bang' on approach makes it sound like a good dose of arse-covering, something endemic in Africa when costly damage happens.
You will note there is no evidence given of drone remains, etc. Something that would most certainly have been chased down immediately if this was actually a drone strike. A bird strike (which would do less damage that a drone of the size they are claiming) looks like this: http://www.birdstrike.it/birds...
Very VERY different.
Retired senior avionics tech here that's seen plenty of damaged radomes over the decades on a wide variety of aircraft at various FBOs, resulting from a wide variety of causes. You're pretty much spot-on. This was almost certainly a very low speed impact IMHO.
Perhaps it was a ground service vehicle (cargo or passenger conveyor/stair vehicle, service/maintenance stairs, etc). I've seen damage quite similar occur in crowded maintenance hangars resulting from moving aircraft around carelessly, recklessly-driven ground service/maintenance vehicles, and from accidents on crowded & busy taxiways under poor visibility conditions.
I'd put $50 on this "story" being just that; a story to cover asses with.
Maybe they were attempting to reenact the "stair-truck and passenger-jet chase scene" from the Jim Cary movie "Liar Liar" and had an [Jim Cary] "oopsie!" {/Jim Cary].
Whatever it was, chances are extremely tiny it was from a drone impact in flight.
Slashdot Mirror
I suspect that if you had a time machine and could gather data from every era of human history, you'd find that this '85%' they speak of is probably fairly consistent.
Free and open societies (which must by necessity be relatively non-corrupt to become and remain free & open societies) are not and have not been the norm throughout history. That 85% is on the low side historically speaking.
Strat
Technically, this is a hardware problem...
Actually, in the vast majority of cases where a vaping rig explodes/catches fire, it's entirely the fault of idiots doing idiotic things with the gear. Things like using sub-Ohm range heating coil(s) on a battery/control unit not designed or rated for sub-Ohm use, attempting to wind their own coils and creating a short-circuit and then trying to use that shorted-out unit on a 'pro' box-mod without current/wattage limiting, and other types of user-error scenarios in direct opposition to all the warnings included in boxes and on the hardware itself. Some people are just determined to win a Darwin Award and if it doesn't happen when these geniuses screw around with vaping gear, they'll find something else to endanger themselves and others with. You should be thankful it's vaping gear they're abusing and being idiots with and not something like firearms.
You cannot idiot-proof the world.
There was a Slashdot item just the other day about researchers discovering a way to include fire retardants in lithium batteries, so hopefully this will mitigate the dangers of lithium battery fires/explosions for vaping gear as well as other hardware that uses lithium battery tech (like Samsung phones).
Strat
...habits of selfish people...
Yeah, couldn't possibly be people like single working mothers trying to raise a kid (or multiple kids) and make it back and forth to her job(s), school(s), doctors, pay for food, rent, utilities, rent, auto/health insurance premiums, etc etc, ad nauseam, and so must carefully budget every penny.
You're right, their lives mean far less than your lofty goals.
That's why we need the government to set limits...
Why, exactly? Look around you, battery tech as just one example is advancing at amazing speed. We have Tesla making "PowerWalls" that will soon be even smaller and with a higher energy density. Electric cars are also expanding into popular usage, which the accelerating tech will only further push ahead as they become more practical as the sole vehicle for more and more households as well as powering more households, and that too is accelerating rapidly.
Fossil fuel is *already* on the way out, thanks to advances in alternate energy source/generation and storage technology. There is *already* overwhelming motivation to continue advancing these technologies as any significant invention/discovery means metric crap-tons of wealth for those who succeed.
Having the government handing out grants/subsidies/etc at the amounts feasible can really only serve to keep the crony-capitalists in business while government bureaucrats create fresh reams of regulations. This applies equally to fossil fuels and alternates. This is not like playing 'Civilization'. Scientific/technological advancements don't have a linear relationship with the amount of money you throw at it, there are far more factors at play, including human factors. "Eureka!" moments can't be bought like it was simply stuffing enough coins into a vending machine. If that were true, Trump could simply buy himself brilliance. The government also has a terribad record regarding correctly picking winners and losers when it attempts to meddle in these sorts of things.
So, what you and many others advocate in real terms by asking the government take action by raising taxes, etc, and creating rafts of new laws/regulations (all of which won't appreciably affect how quickly tech advances) in order to try to force what is *already* rapidly occurring, is that the current rapid advancement is not quick enough in your estimations so all this self-inflicted suffering is justified?
Oh, and FYI: carbon taxes and cap-and-trade is a regressive tax in the extreme and will drastically raise energy prices (and food prices and everything else) and that affects the poorest the most. How many Grandma-cicles every winter and/or roasted Grandpas every summer is it worth? How many malnourished/starved kids/adults? Those are some of those 'externalities' so many talk about...except when it comes to the externalities and consequences of their 'solutions' to what they declare is a 'problem'.
Strat
Squirrels cause more damage to infrastructure than humans and natural disasters. No joke. NSA even acknowledged it. http://cybersquirrel1.com/
Nyet!
Moose and Squirrel sold out and are now double-agents working for Dear Leader!
Strat
Better check, the reportage itself might be accurate. I don't care enough to check, but it may well be that they are "breaking lore", so to speak, and making major storyline changes regarding early ST 'history' regarding early ST-universe starships bearing the "Enterprise" moniker. Because they can. And because they're great. Just ask them. Just look at the DC/Marvel franchise adherence to established lore and storylines, etc.
Or, equally as likely these days I suppose, is that both sides are wrong, none of it happened, and it was Russian hackers planting fake news. Because hackers! And Russia! Hacking! Russia! Fake news!
Strat
Blockchains solve the double-spend problem. Great, but banks don't typically have that problem in the first place because the currency is not the record.
It could be another strategy for getting to a cashless economy. If the money is digital it can be cut off, confiscated, or pretty much anything the controlling authority decides. The only way it would be allowed to go forward is if there's a way for government to control and track it.
Strat
I am certain nobody could had trouble for looking up a web site at that time, since the web did not exist,.
You attempt to deflect. It was then, and remains now, a dictatorship run by Fidel and now his brother Raul who operate domestically as most dictatorships of those type always have. Any changes have been mostly a matter of degree for now but could change at their whim. Just because, for now, they are not engaging in extreme and overt oppression/pacification tactics does not mean anything has changed in principle.
it is easy to find people that went to Cuba recently for tourism and could speak freely with cuban people.
The same is true in China. You can tour the Great Wall and other sights. One can vacation in Russia as well. The people you meet are invariably great. They also aren't about to start talking to some random foreign tourist about overthrowing the government or smuggling in weapons/contraband etc etc. That has nothing to do with whether authoritarian tyrannies are OK any more than whether authoritarian theocracies are OK or how free or oppressed the people may or may not be.
Sorry, but I believe that individual freedom and natural rights take precedence over collectivist/socialist/communist/theocratic governments or dictatorships/tyrannies which put the state's desires and goals over that of the individual's interests and natural rights as a human being. I will always stand in opposition to such.
Strat
Besides history books, there were also the stories I was told directly from Cubans in Florida who had escaped the Castro regime. I lived in FL in the '70s.
Strat
PS: I'm SO disappointed that United Nuclear took down their .GIF that was on their main page for years.
Sorry, correction.
Ack! They still have the .gif on the main page, but it's tiny since they changed the page payout, and one must scroll down to see it. It used to be large and took up most of the main page!
Strat
Still need to work out a few problems with the Plutonium-Lithium battery I'm developing. Those pesky laws about who can buy the raw materials is making development difficult.
Psst! Wanna buy some uranium?
https://unitednuclear.com/
Radioactive isotopes also, at bargain prices!
PS: I'm SO disappointed that United Nuclear took down their .GIF that was on their main page for years.
https://media.giphy.com/media/...
Strat
Providing internet connection without government's permission would be illegal and doing that one would certainly risk getting jailed.
I'd bet many would take the risk.
but any unlicenced satellite dishes are quickly dealth with.
Well then do it in a way that doesn't require big, easily-spotted satellite dishes. Super-powerful WiFi hardware on ships in international waters, maybe? Micro-drone swarms with WiFi mesh network capabilities and satellite internet linkage?
There is not much one can do until the Cuban government stops ETECSA monopoly and allows competition.
That's only true if one accepts defeat before one even begins to try to create solutions. Just look at Voice of America radio stations during the Cold War. This problem is not unsolvable, it just requires sufficient motivation and the will to move forward.
Abolishment of US embargo would probably do more than anything else at this moment.
I'm torn on this, as it also works to keep the Cuban dictatorship in place by giving it more international legitimacy and weakening Cuban domestic resistance by 'softening' the impact of Cuban tyranny on Cubans. I suppose it would make sense if one is basically OK with the idea of dictatorships and oppression being legitimate forms and behaviors of national governments, but I am not OK with dictatorships and oppression.
Strat
It may have been a poor choice of words. How about "monitored, with a high probability of being 'disappeared', murdered, or simply arrested & imprisoned for visiting the 'wrong' kind of sites or making the 'wrong' kind of comments or transmitting or receiving the 'wrong' kind of information/data."
Better?
Strat
Yes, the public access points make it easier to connect, but there is only a single ISP: the Cuban national telecommunications monopoly, ETECSA. To use the Internet, you must buy their scratch-off cards at their offices, which involves waiting in line. You can then use them on your own devices or at the aging Windows machines at ETECSA's centers. The cost of access has dropped to $1.50/hour, but that's a lot of money in a country where the average monthly income is $25. If you are associated with one of the universities, particularly the Universidad de Ciencias Informaticas west of Havana, Internet access is reasonably good (and free), but outside of that, only about 4% of Cubans connect to the Internet. Others get information from "The Packet", whose managers download and assemble materials, including books, movies, news, etc., onto electronic media and make it available to all.
The good news is that the Cuban government isn't blocking access to websites, and that smartphones are becoming more widely available, but the absence of alternatives to ETECSA means that costs are likely to remain prohibitive for the vast majority of Cubans for the foreseeable future.
Sounds like figuring out a way to provide uncensored and free wireless internet access to Cubans by bypassing ETECSA would be a great project. I'm not really knowledgeable enough in this area to offer more than random ideas. Maybe crowd-sourcing the money for satellite internet? Relay ships in international waters off the Cuban coast? I know both of those are rather impractical and expensive, so does anyone have some actually good/practical ideas that might work?
Strat
Damage done by guns can be tremendous, it's the manufacturers that really do deserve severe penalties.
Since in the US guns are used far more often by law abiding citizens to protect themselves and others than they are used by criminals, do we then give gun makers rewards? Fair is fair, right?
Example: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...
Example: http://www.khou.com/news/local...
And those were just the examples that hit the news (most never do) in the last couple weeks that popped up at the top of Google results. There were many more.
We need a national program to treat the mass-hoplophobia that seems to be spreading at an alarming rate. You appear to be exhibiting some of the symptoms. Perhaps you should get yourself checked.
Strat
Someone should try to bring justice back to the justice system.
Sorry, I think that's been made illegal. How's a third-rate alcoholic prosecutor to make a name for himself that way?
Strat
I think you're right, but I think it's a similar situation across the globe - realistically spy agencies in Russia, China and so forth shouldn't be doing those things to innocent citizens either so I don't think it's entirely a Western problem.
Well, it's the same problem in Western nations and Russia, China, etc. Government gaining too much power and control. The only difference being that Russia, China, etc are just further down the same road. We here in Western nations can realistically only affect change in our own nations.
Because our nations are already heading down the total-surveillance road, we can only offer minimal support to those in Russia, China, etc attempting to change things in those nations. We in the West, in order to be able to offer real assistance to the people of those nations, must first get a handle on our own governments, as our governments are our people's main instrument in dealing in foreign affairs. The clock is ticking, as history shows us that once freedom is lost it is highly unlikely to be regained until multiple generations have passed, that is if it is regained at all, which is not assured and becomes less and less likely as time passes.
Strat
I'm actually rather concerned that contrary to the implication in the summary that this is no longer simply citizen hacking but in fact escalation of state sponsored hacking.
As true as the things you bring up may be re: State-sponsored hacking, none of that really matters and nor will anyone in the US/Five-Eyes nations be able to appreciably change things until spying on domestic populations by their respective domestic governments in those nations is halted/brought under control. That, by far, is the most immediate and proximate threat, and the most likely to directly and negatively affect the average person in those nations as they try to change the status quo. It is domestic spying that supports companies like Cellebrite, after all, as there logically must be orders of magnitude more cases of the US and other Five-Eyes nations wanting/requesting tools for their domestic use than there are opportunities for use against foreign targets of interest.
Regaining control over Western domestic governments and their intelligence agencies will go far towards being able to control such State sponsored hacking operations as those you refer to and, I would argue, a necessary prerequisite for any meaningful change to occur.
Strat
...US agencies have failed to identify terrorists because big data obstructed a proper investigation.
Sorry, wrong.
US intel agencies both intentionally and knowingly ignore terrorist intel they have and intentionally and knowingly have not and are not truly trying to utilize or effectively collect and analyze data/intel for use against foreign terror threats. Terrorist attacks give them the perfect scare tactic to convince people to allow them more power and control. The entire manner, types, technologies, architectures, and methods used are only truly suited best for only one thing: domestic data collection, surveillance, and monitoring of the US population and assisting allies to do the same with theirs while helping with US surveillance. The entire system as a whole is poorly suited for anything else other than domestic surveillance and data mining/advanced analysis.
Strat
If the hacker(s) is/are smart the first thing he/they did was set up multiple deadman caches of the data that would automatically splash the data all over the web and physically send multiple copies of the data by multiple means/routes to multiple news/press/media outlets across the world if anything happened to them, as insurance against any possible reprisals/arrests/etc. I would, and I'm no uber-1337 h4x0r. Just in no hurry to find out if there's an afterlife or if my cellmate's name would actually be 'Bubba'. :)
Strat
But it shows how urban planning has been co-opted by merchants who push no car urban villages.
This is the exact opposite. People are expected to own a car or use (the often totally absent or severely limited) public transportation. Sidewalks are typically only found on the residential blocks and apartment complexes themselves, and even then are often absent or only partial in coverage. And due to 'no-fault' insurance laws and the inability to legally purchase auto insurance across State lines, just keeping insurance coverage current can rival housing costs as a percentage of personal expenses even with a relatively clean driving record.
One pretty much has to be employed full-time at above-minimum-wage or otherwise have significant money available to own and legally drive (liability/collision insurance is mandatory) in Michigan, even if the vehicle is owned free and clear. It causes many to drive without coverage or go without transportation, especially the less economically secure portion of the population. It's not much better elsewhere in the US, in some places it's even worse.
Strat
About 30-40 EUR at the local hardware store?
Strat
A 3/8" drill, duh! :)
Strat
What do you think republican tax cuts are all about? Giving tax payer money to businesses.
This is so hilariously bass-ackwards I have to wonder if this was satire.
The government not confiscating under threat of deadly force wealth it did not earn, in the form of taxes, from those who created said wealth is *not* giving that wealth away to anyone as it was never government's wealth in the first place. A tax cut is not a 'subsidy' as so many seem to want to (deliberately) misconstrue it. A mugger that lets you keep some of your money is not subsidizing you by the amount he left you.
Strat
Feet are flexible and walking two miles each way is not an unreasonable burden.
Found the young person!
Wait until you get old and have arthritis and other physically-limiting health issues and are stuck surviving on Social Security Disability (~$900USD/month) plus $60/month in food benefits and have to walk to, and carry home groceries from, the closest grocery you can find ('residential zoning' so sorry, no grocery stores allowed nearby and the city had to cut bus routes for budget reasons) in snowstorms and 15F/-17C temps in the middle of January in Michigan and much of the walk having to be out on poorly-plowed main roads dodging traffic as there's no sidewalks because everyone owns a car, right?
Every year there's stories in the local news about seniors having died and discovering they had been surviving on canned dog food.
"Mediterranean diet", yeah, sure! Hell, fatty hamburger, heavily-processed anything, and bleached noodles are absolute *luxury* for many!
Strat
Actually, the damage pattern looks almost exactly consistent with a ground impact.
It is reasonably clear from the images that the impact came from the front right, not straight on, and any
drone moving fast enough to create that impact vector at approach speed would have punched straight through,
not made the distributed damage we see - this was quite clearly a low speed impact.
The pilots 'reporting a loud bang' on approach makes it sound like a good dose of arse-covering, something
endemic in Africa when costly damage happens.
You will note there is no evidence given of drone remains, etc. Something that would most certainly have been
chased down immediately if this was actually a drone strike.
A bird strike (which would do less damage that a drone of the size they are claiming) looks like this:
http://www.birdstrike.it/birds...
Very VERY different.
Retired senior avionics tech here that's seen plenty of damaged radomes over the decades on a wide variety of aircraft at various FBOs, resulting from a wide variety of causes. You're pretty much spot-on. This was almost certainly a very low speed impact IMHO.
Perhaps it was a ground service vehicle (cargo or passenger conveyor/stair vehicle, service/maintenance stairs, etc). I've seen damage quite similar occur in crowded maintenance hangars resulting from moving aircraft around carelessly, recklessly-driven ground service/maintenance vehicles, and from accidents on crowded & busy taxiways under poor visibility conditions.
I'd put $50 on this "story" being just that; a story to cover asses with.
Maybe they were attempting to reenact the "stair-truck and passenger-jet chase scene" from the Jim Cary movie "Liar Liar" and had an [Jim Cary] "oopsie!" {/Jim Cary].
Whatever it was, chances are extremely tiny it was from a drone impact in flight.
Strat