What the hell are they smoking?

Numerous very experienced people have correlated a great number of the so called "drone" sightings with the ADSB tracks of legitimate aircraft and not one shred of evidence has been presented that these "sightings" are actually drones operated by Russia or other bad actors.

Remember New York and New Jersey last year when the skies were filled with "mystery drones" that turned out to be simply scheduled night flights of passenger jets and helicopters?

Then there was a spate of "drone" sightings over US Military airbases in the UK. These turned out to (once again) be misidentified manned aircraft, including F15s from the base itself!

So now exactly the same hysteria is sweeping across Eastern Europe with unskilled observers claiming to be seeing "drones" when in fact they're simply seeing lights in the sky that are navigation lights from aircraft and even balloons smuggling cigarettes.

If the Germans open fire on these "mystery lights" then there is a huge potential for tragedy here because they really won't listen to people much smarter than them who on two previous occasions (NY/NJ and Lakenheath) provided all the information needed to debunk the allegations of "drones".

Yes, as someone who's used Linux for almost two decades I sit here and smile at how the masochistic Windows users are squirming :-)

Dear Customer,

Thank you for purchasing a device powered by Android(TM). Please note that in order to use the device you have BOUGHT AND PAID FOR to run the apps YOU HAVE WRITTEN you will have to supply a government-issued ID, proof of address and a payment of US$25.

Note, the permissions then granted may be revoked at any time for any reason and those reasons may not be disclosed.

Any appeals to such revocation will be handled by our AI chatbot but, in order to save time, we have predetermined the outcome: Appeal DENIED.

Welcome to the Google ecosystem where you are the product and our sole purpose is to collect your money and your personal information.

Regards
Google (a division of Alphabet)
On behalf of our army of advertisers.

The FAA has not yet finished working on part 108 (flight beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS)) of its regulations for drones. This means that right now all drone operations must be done within visual line of sight of the operator or by a special waiver. One of the conditions of part 108 is that drones must have a "detect and avoid" capability that would prevent this sort of incident from happening -- so how did it happen?

If the drone was being flown by visual line of sight then the operator should have seen something as big as a crane.

If it was being flown under a waiver and the FAA has already mandated "detect and avoid" as a requirement for BVLOS then someone wasn't complying with the terms of the waiver.

And all for what -- so your tube-socks will arrive 15 minutes faster?

I have been a part of the drone community and industry for more than 15 years and I can tell you that B2C drone deliveries, outside of a few specific cases, will never become practical. The likes of Amazon and Google are far more interested in the data they can scoop up by flying drones over urban/residential areas than they are in actually delivering stuff. They also both realize that the *real* money will be made from creating a UTM (unmanned traffic management) system which is like ATC for drones. Both these companies are very much into infrastructure provision and the UTM that will be needed for large-scale drone operations is the perfect target for their expansion.

Don't be fooled, "drone delivery" is just a diversion while they prepare their UTM plans and claim that "we have more experience than anyone in drone traffic management". Despite that experience, Amazon has a record of setting stuff on fire and crashing into cranes while Google's Wing craft have been known to black out wide areas after performing "precautionary landings" on high-voltage power lines.

If a kid can't fly their 250g drone in a park without all sorts of tests and a digital angle-bracelet in the form of "Remote ID" then clearly this tech is way to dangerous to have giant delivery drones laden with god-knows-what falling from the skies across our cityscape.

Even good audiophool speaker cables cost more than this -- but you can't really put a price on silver-plated cryogenically treated 101% pure copper wires that have been braided by the hands of virgins under a blue moon whist facing directly East into a 5 knot wind at 37.5 percent humidity precisely located over a suitable warp in the magnetic field of the earth.

And yes, you can definitely hear the difference, especially when using 128kbps MP3 files!

Here comes a data-point of one, which makes this simply an anecdote...

When I work out hard (resistance training to beyond failure) I find that consuming protein at around 1.6-1.8g per kilo of body weight significantly improves my recovery time -- perhaps because of the effect on muscle-protein synthesis which seems to be optimal at this level.

Working out hard with lower levels of protein intake adds at least a day to my recovery so it's easy to see why, given the fixation on strength and fitness that abounds right now, many people are consuming more protein than they might actually need if their goal is simply to remain healthy.

One consideration for many is that when you bias towards a high-protein low fat/carb diet it becomes easier to lose weight or prevent weight gain. Protein is generally more satiating than carbs and leaves you feeling fuller for longer, reducing hunger pangs. A diet higher in protein is also less likely to produce insulin resistance (type 2 diabetes) than one higher in carbs. However, protein is usually also far more expensive (per calorie) than protein which can be a factor in many people's decision-making.

Increasing protein intake (as a percentage of total calories) is also important as you age because it plays a role in reducing the effects of sarcopenia, a condition that affects most over-50s and predisposes people to becoming frail and increasing their likelihood of death from many causes.

I wish they'd fix the issue that under Linux Mint, my mory use grows to over 50% and VM use gradually climbs to 95% over several weeks when doing nothing but web-browsing and this is only released when I exit FF and re-enter. Memory leaks anyone?

Please fix the bugs before you start adding more "fluff".

Wait a few months and you'll hear:

"Has anyone seen my shirt? I'm an investor in this eVTOL air-taxi thing and I seem to have lost mine. What is 'due diligence' anyway?"

Don't be so generous.

I would not be surprised if this move was designed to deliberately blur the line and visual difference between creator-generated and AI-generated content.

"Why?" you might ask?

Well right now Youtube has to hand over more than 50% of its ad revenues to the pesky creators that make the videos people watch on the platform. If they can replace those creators with AI then they get to keep *all* the money -- and that is a very, very large chunk of change -- more than enough to incentivize such a move.

YouTube (and its parent Google) long ago lost any interest in not being evil and now *everything* they do is all about hiking revenues and boosting that bottom line. If you think otherwise then you're sadly deluded.

Calling all hackers, calling all hackers....

Since you already own the car, hacking it to unleash its full potential can't be a crime.

Mind you... I've been using electronic test equipment for decades with similar stupidity. You buy an oscilloscope and it has a specified bandwidth and/or feature set. Pay more money, enter a code and voila -- it suddenly has a higher bandwidth and/or more features. Everything was in their when you bought it, you're just paying to activate it. Once again though, many bits of kit have been hacked to sidestep these artificial limitations.

Well I don't pirate -- although I'm pretty sure that what I do will likely be declared illegal soon because the movie and music studios will claim I'm depriving them of revenues.

When DVD rental businesses started shutting down a few years back I bought as many disks as I could find. That's given me probably over 1,000 movies on physical media. I'm slowly ripping all these to a NAS and when that's done I'll be set for life. At my age I can't remember much about a movie within a year or two of watching it so I'll just cycle through these titles.

Nobody's going to put up my prices, reshuffle my library of titles or delete what I *OWN*.

Take that Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+ and the rest of you!

One word: Vindaloo

I have a simple seven second hack that would solve Woz's problems if performed each night just before bed.

Yeah, YouTube should not be allowed to hide behind that S230 defense because I've been reporting scammy ads on the platform for years and almost without exception, those ads never disappear until the advertiser's budget is fully spent. Then they re-appear a few months later.

YouTube doesn't care -- the only things that matter to them are revenue and profit -- all else is simply incidental.

Well that's going to give me nightmares!

How would such a door even work... I mean you've got a huge heatsink on one side of the die and the PCB on the other. Such a door would have no room to open and even if you could open it -- the inside of the die isn't hollow -- there'd be nowhere to go even once the door was open.

This all sounds like scifi to me.

[/sarc]