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Comment Re:All the police have to do is (Score 1) 73

It's worse than that. They can carry the official force-issued cell phone and keep their own as well. And presumably if they're bad enough, there's no record of the personal phone because they bought it with and top it up with cash 'just in case'.

But police radio's been getting quiet and less interesting for years now anyway as they switch to mobile apps for the majority of dispatch uses.

Comment Re:I've been mocked for saying it for years (Score 4, Insightful) 245

Handguns were once 'the great equalizer', giving the power of a soldier to the common man, and not really requiring a great deal of skill or strength to use. You still need the nerve, and you're still going to be in a dangerous situation.

With a drone, I could have it fly to wait on somebody's roof for them to come home, use license plate and facial recognition for target confirmation, and then shoot them in the face as they walk to their front door.

It's horrifying. It's also equality in a way that handguns could never supply. Anybody with access to an electronics store and the Internet can do it with some effort.

Comment I've been mocked for saying it for years (Score 5, Insightful) 245

Everything you need has been out there for a long time. The reason we're not drowning in a sea of drone-based terror attacks is that most people just want to live and aren't actually interested in killing anyone until they get motivated to do so.

Ukraine's motivated. As impressed as I am by what they've achieved, I'm surprised we haven't seen more autonomous weaponry. The tools already exist to geofence a drone so you can be confident that as it goes on its killing spree, it's doing so in an area you have declared free of invalid targets. A drone dropping silently from altitude to 360 no-scope Russian soldiers as it randomly dances around to make it hard to hit is something I'd expected to happen by now.

Comment Re:"national self sufficiency" (Score 1) 115

Look at the US and the EU. Or the US and the ASEAN countries. Or the US and Canada. Or the US and Mexico.

Sure, the US was always mercenary, but did you ever expect to see it go full evil? Threatening invasion or economic destruction to any nation that isn't rendering tribute? Just a little over a decade or so I'd have said it would never happen, but here we are.

That's why every nation should be able to support its own population. Even with a really great mutually beneficial partnership, you're one generation away from a political swing that puts a knife to your throat.

Comment Re:Sigh (Score 1) 76

>And if I was at war with another country, their space based solar power would last about as long as it takes the missiles to reach it.

This applies to terrestrial power generation as well. Missiles to orbital targets are expensive and it's stupid to destroy infrastructure you don't need to destroy (especially in orbit, where you're creating a debris field that will affect a large region around the planet and likely include your own space-based assets).

You'd target your enemy's surface rectenna farms, not their space-based collector satellites.

Comment I was unaware (Score 2) 47

Since the dawn of Facebook I've been doing my best to keep out of databases, but I use Teams a lot for work, so presumably Microsoft has a lot of data on my face and voice now, all linked to a user ID that matches my real name and a geographical location that is significantly off by IP but very close to the billing address they have for my employer.

In other words, I have to assume I'm 'in the system' and no longer have the faintest hope of anonymity even against less than state-level actors.

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