From Pine View Farm

Clone Wars category archive

Maskless Marauders 0

Uber marauders.

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“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:

Our nation is getting a crash course in conspiracy theories. QAnon has been in the spotlight as the latest iteration. With the rise of social media, the messenger may be new, but the message is not. Conspiracy theories have been around for centuries, well before mass communications amplified their potency. The human desire to explain complicated events in simplistic ways often leads to blaming minorities for them . . . .

The entire article is worth the four or five minutes of your time reading it will take.

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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.

The hubris of American exceptionalism — a myth of global superiority laid bare in America’s pandemic death toll — is what got us here. We thought we could outsmart our enemies. More hacking, more offense, not better defense, was our answer to an increasingly virtual world order, even as we made ourselves more vulnerable, hooking up water treatment facilities, railways, thermostats and insulin pumps to the web, at a rate of 127 new devices per second.

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.

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Republican Family Values 0

Little girl to Georgia GOP, who is holding a copy of the

Image via Juanita Jean.

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Droning On 0

Of course this happened in Florida.

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Droning On 0

I noted these charges several months ago. Now comes the reckoning:

A 20-year-old Pasco man won’t serve any jail time for crashing a drone onto the roof of the Space Needle on New Year’s Eve 2016, but he’s been ordered by a Seattle Municipal judge to forfeit the aircraft, according to court records.

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.

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Tales of the Trumpling: Snapshots of Trickle-Down Trumpery 0

Rekha Basu tells a tale of Trumpling.

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Droning On, Men Are Pigs Dept. 0

Woman speaking to Quadcopter:  Steve, you are the one that dropped gaspacho down my blouse. We are through!  So stop stalking me with your drone, maniac!

Click for the original image.

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Droning On 0

Boys and their toys . . . .

The passenger jet began descending below the 500-foot level toward San Francisco International Airport’s runway 28R when the pilot saw an alarming sight: An apparent drone passing just 20 feet directly below the plane’s nose.

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.

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A Picture Is Worth 0

Drawing of three flag-drapped coffins.  Caption:  Dear Trump Supporters . . . Which one is trans?

Via PoliticalProf.

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Droning On 0

Boys and their toys.

Elliot Roth enjoys an expansive view of the city from the 18th floor of his condo in uptown Charlotte. He just didn’t expect someone to be peeping into his home from that height.

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 . . . .

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Droning On 0

And the gavel came drone:

An appeals court has snubbed a drone owner’s demand for $1,500 compensation from a furious dad who blew the flying gizmo out of the sky when it hovered over his family.

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.

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Twits on Twitter 0

King of the twits.

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Droning On, Facebook Frolics Dept. 0

El Reg reports that Zuckerborg’s junior bird men don’t seem to be doing so well.

Facebook’s plans to beam internet access from drones has crashed, literally, after the company revealed the first flight of its “Aquila” craft ended with a bang.

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.”

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Droning On 0

What’s in a name? A drone by any other name would reap the same.

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Conservative Dissonance 0

Foreground:  Man says to woman,

Via Job’s Anger.

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Droning On 0

Only a matter of time . . . .

The first near miss took place in mid-May when an Airbus A319 pilot flying to Heathrow saw a one metre-long drone, painted green and purple, “extremely close” to his aircraft.

(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.

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Droning On 0

Britain is high on drones:

Cops have seized drones being used to fly drugs into London’s Pentonville prison – and are now on the hunt for the people operating them.

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.

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Droning On 0

It won’t be long before some boy kills someone with his toy.

An emergency helicopter carrying an car crash victim to hospital in Austria narrowly avoided a mid-air collision with a drone that flew within metres of the craft.

The drone was spotted by the helicopter pilot at the last second and he was able to steer the aircraft out of the way and prevent a collision.

Toy boy is as yet unidentified.

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Droning On 2

Boys and their toys . . . .

A Foresthill man has been arrested on suspicion of interfering with firefighting operations during the recent Trailhead Fire by flying a drone over the fire, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

The presence of the drone forced Cal Fire to ground firefighting aircraft due to the risk of a collision.

Information posted on social media helped lead Cal Fire law enforcement officers to 57-year-old Eric Wamser. He was arrested Friday afternoon and booked into the Placer County Jail.

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