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Comment Re:Tough (Score 1) 159

It wouldn't be that bad.

Have a 360Â servo with a 80Â-90Â servo mounted on it. Directional mic on top of all that.

Arduino/Pi rotates the first servo 1Â then sweeps the second servo. Or vice versa.

Feed that into an algorithm looking for prop noise. Most drone motors will be IC or electric. An IC will be running between 9K~18K RPM. Electric would be running from 7K on the low end to 30K on the high end. Realistically, an electric for drone use would be on the low end of that spectrum; the higher-RPM motors are usually for fast airplane.

Take the RPM and figure a 2-bladed or possibly a 3-bladed prop. Filter bandpass for 15K~55K. Run that through a doppler-shift algorithm and filter out anything moving slower than 20MPH or faster than 200MPH.

Using that, you should get pretty close.

Once you have the location, feed that to another mount with a spotter-scope and webcam. If the image-detection stuff sees something other than sky or clouds, have it snap a few images and SMS/email them to you.

I'm not entirely sure you will get good enough images to identify the specific UAV using servos programmed for Â. The servos usually range from 900-2100ms of pulse width with 1500 being "centered" on the servo. So, you can get it down to 3-steps per  on a 360 servo and 13-steps on a 90 servo if you use straight PWM and good digital servos.

Submission + - The Planning Fairy Tale (mendix.com)

Esther Schindler writes: Software project management is full of “Let’s pretend.” Let’s pretend we can write a full schedule before we know the requirements; let’s pretend we can estimate how long it will take to solve this unsolved problem; let’s pretend we can predict schedules to the hour or half day, two years in advance

...In any case, people come out of the planning meeting with their initial enthusiasm quenched in the certainty that what was just a stake in the ground on Friday afternoon will be The Plan of Record on Monday morning. And they foresee a significant part of their future will include heroics to meet a schedule date, and endless negotiations to change The Plan as reality impinges upon it. The Plan of Record, the development team is sure, will run into the Two Ineluctable Facts of Project Planning:

1. If you don’t know what you’re going to build, you can’t know how long it will take to build it.

2. You only really know what you’re going to build when you finish it.

Here’s how to spot a “Let’s pretend” schedule and what to do when you find one.

Comment Re:Safe guns (Score 1) 1013

Very few Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines will handle a weapon on a daily basis. In a home-station environment, you will have the base security people (maybe 200 people at any one time) actually carrying a loaded weapon. You may have another 100 or so training with dummy/unloaded/blank-modified weapons each week.

The thing that no one ever wants to talk about is that the US Military is just a sample of lower-income Americans. We have thieves, rapists, alcoholics (oh god at the alcoholics), drug addicts, murderers, etc. We keep things locked up because we know we are crazy. Or at least we suspect the next guy is...

Oh, WRT psych evals, there are some, but not nearly enough. Recruiters and basic trainers want to meet quotas. It's in their best interest to pass as many through as possible. Once a (possibly crazy) troop arrives at their post, they are usually kept in-line or hidden by their front-line supervisors. It sometimes seems like the quickest way to get rid of a bad seed is just to wait for their enlistment to end...

Comment Re:Bullshit. (Score 1) 164

A123 had other problems as well. The batteries they produced were worse than other Lithium batteries in almost every way. Heavier, lower energy density, fewer cycles, etc... Their only advantages was that they could be charged quickly and they kinda resembled (but weren't interchangable) batteries people were used to seeing at the supermarket.

As LiPo batteries evolved, they were able to charge more quickly and their energy density has gone through the roof.

Comment Re:encryption (Score 2) 402

Sure, not feasible on a glued-together Macbook, but most business-class laptops have easily removed keyboards attached by a ribbon cable. On something like a Dell Latitude, it's easily a 1 minute job. The keylogger hardware isn't isn't exactly off the shelf, but not out of the question for a state-sponsored attack. Still, you have a point. Any target that's worth attacking with such sophisticated equipment is probably paranoid enough not to be traveling around a foreign country with the digital crown jewels, encrypted HDD or not.

Comment Re:Drones? (Score 5, Informative) 219

Combined Air Operations Center. They'll know. One agency monitoring everything including, but not limited to, commercial airliners, military flights, private planes, U(C)AVs, and even (in some cases) model airplanes and rockets.

Now, as to if the CAOC would tell Reuters anything other than the time of day, that's anyone's guess.

Comment Re:Why not fix it immediately? (Score 2) 73

>>the developer releases a general security update that applies to everyone, you'd be fine with your host disabling essentially your entire site until you fixed it?

It all depends on the TOS from the host. Maybe the host declares that they disable clients that are contributing to (or may contribute to) network abuse. Unpatched machines will get compromised and become launchpads for attacks on others.

>>And if you're on vacation for a week or two when it happens? What then?

Would you rather come back from vacation to a disabled but uncompromised site, or to a enabled but compromised site? For the first case, you'd need to apply the updates and then restart the server. For the second case, you'd need to scrub the machine, re-install all your software and customizations, then restore your databases and content directories from backup.

>>I rather like the fact that the stuff I run can essentially sustain itself in my absence.

The point is, it can't. You can't secure a box and walk away for days/weeks/months. You need to be actively maintaining your servers.

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