Clone Wars category archive
Tilting at Windy Mills 0
At Above the Law, Joe Patrice explains why Florida’s new law forbidding private entities, particularly “social” media such as Google and Facebook, from banning political candidates and “journalistic enterprises” from their platforms in empty kabuki theater, and like pricey theater at that. Here’s a bit of his post (emphasis added):
Because while private entities like Twitter and Facebook banning users is entirely constitutional, forcing those private actors to broadcast particular users over their platforms is absolutely not constitutional. And yet here we are in up-is-now-down-land.
Follow the link for the rest.
“But It’s the Only Possible Explanation” 0
At the Hartford Courant, Edna Friedberg explores the attraction and power of conspiracy theories, pointing out that they can seduce persons desiring easy answers to hard questions. Here’s how she opens it:
The entire article is worth the four or five minutes of your time reading it will take.
Hacks at the NSA 0
No doubt you heard the December headlines about a massive cyberbreach of the U. S. government. An article in the Sunday New York Times (yeah, it takes me all week to work my way through it) explores the failure of the United States shore up its cyberdefenses, despite being a target rich environment. Here’s a tiny little bit; follow the link for the rest.
At the N.S.A., whose dual mission is gathering intelligence around the world and defending American secrets, offense eclipsed defense long ago. For every hundred cyberwarriors working offense — searching and stockpiling holes in technology to exploit for espionage or battlefield preparations — there was often only one lonely analyst playing defense to close them shut.
Droning On 0
Of course this happened in Florida.
Droning On 0
I noted these charges several months ago. Now comes the reckoning:
Cole Kelley pleaded guilty Tuesday to a gross misdemeanor charge of reckless endangerment, acknowledging he “flew a drone in a manner that caused a likelihood of harm to persons or property,” court records say.
The story goes on to report that he was given a suspended sentence, fined, and banned from future dronings on.
Droning On 0
Boys and their toys . . . .
The pilot landed the plane safely without needing to take evasive action, according to a newly released Federal Aviation Administration report. But the Jan. 23 incident, one of at least 27 pilot-reported drone sightings so far this year near Bay Area airports, highlights the growing problem drones pose to airports.
Follow the link for the full article; the problem is much greater than one would think. Over the past two years, there have been 3,000 such incidents in the U. S.
Droning On 0
Boys and their toys.
But that’s what he said happened one early evening in mid-March, when he spotted a drone hovering outside his window in the Skye condos on South Caldwell Street. He said he believes the drone spotted him watching it, took off then returned soon after, slowly going up the side of the building and peering at windows.
“It’s creepy that someone’s looking in your window,” Roth said. “You figure you’re 18 stories up no one’s going to be watching you, right?”
Much more at the link.
And, in more news of boys and their toys . . . .
Droning On 0
And the gavel came drone:
In July 2015, William Merideth, 47, was at home in Hillview, Kentucky, America, when his daughter came in from sunbathing in the garden to say there was a drone buzzing overhead. As a firm believer in his Second Amendment rights, Merideth loaded up his shotgun with bird shot, waited until the camera-fitted quadcopter came over his home, and then took it down with a single shot – which bought the drone’s operators running.
If some unknown dude were droning over my daughter when she was sunbathing, I might have been inclined to do the same thing. There is a time and a place . . . .
At the link, the story drones on for a few more paragraphs.
Droning On, Facebook Frolics Dept. 0
El Reg reports that Zuckerborg’s junior bird men don’t seem to be doing so well.
The United States’s National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) late last week published a report about the incident that says “On June 28, 2016, at 0743 mountain standard time, the Facebook Aquila unmanned aircraft, N565AQ, experienced an inflight structural failure on final approach near Yuma, Arizona. The aircraft was substantially damaged.”
Droning On 0
What’s in a name? A drone by any other name would reap the same.
Droning On 0
Only a matter of time . . . .
(snip)
In the second incident, which took place a fortnight after the first, an Airbus A320’s first officer saw “a white, twin rotor drone pass by the right wingtip” barely 100m away as the aircraft was descending through 7,000ft over New Malden, south London.
Droning On 0
Britain is high on drones:
One drone crashed while flying over the all-male jail on 14 August.
Another was intercepted in “mid-flight” heading towards the prison later that same day.
Police did not say exactly how they stopped the second drone.
