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Submission + - California Legislation May Allow FIrst Responders to Shoot Down Drones

Required Snark writes: During the recent North Fire that burned vehicles on I-15 in California, firefighters had to suspend aerial operations because of the presence of drone aircraft according to CNN

Five such "unmanned aircraft systems" prevented California firefighters from dispatching helicopters with water buckets for up to 20 minutes over a wildfire that roared Friday onto a Los Angeles area freeway that leads to Las Vegas.

Helicopters couldn't drop water because five drones hovered over the blaze, creating hazards in smoky winds for a deadly midair disaster, officials said.

In response, legislation has been introduced that would allow first responders to disable drones in emergency situations. A second bill would allow jail time and fines for drone users that interfere with firefighting efforts.

Senate Bill 168, introduced by Gatto and Sen. Ted Gaines, R-El Dorado, would grant “immunity to any emergency responder who damages an unmanned aircraft in the course of firefighting, air ambulance, or search-and-rescue operations.”

Los Angeles County fire Inspector David Dantic declined to comment on the specific legislation, but said his agency’s aircraft cannot operate safely if a drone is in the same airspace.

Gatto and Gaines also teamed up on companion legislation: SB 167, which would increase fines and introduce the possibility of jail time for drone use that interferes with firefighting efforts.

Comment Re:I update my OS every time MSFT kills it (Score 1) 319

I've given up on remote tech support for Windows myself for my relatives.

Hopefully my last Win 7 Professional will work for a while on my 8 core home PC. I'll install a dual boot Linux on a spare 2 TB drive just in case.

They lost me on this last Win 10 thing. I had hope Win 8 was just an Ooops rollout that they quietly kill, but if they're going to SaaS models, they aren't getting my cash.

Comment It all comes down to Actions not Words (Score 1) 398

There are a lot of intelligent women they could hire, but they tend to hire men who they know, who belong to their frats or went to Stanford.

Many of my colleagues teach at Stanford.

The problem for Silicon Valley is that the world has changed, but they haven't. Kind of like the Deep South.

Just Do It. Hire women as interns at a 50 percent rate. Hire Hispanics and African Americans at least at the level they exist in the general population.

There are many highly able hires out there.

I know, I've been taking classes with them, as I go for my own PhD.

Comment Re:You think Harper gives a rat's ass? (Score 1) 64

Sadly, I think you're right. He's even trying to remove the right of Canadian citizens worldwide from voting in Canadian Federal Elections, making Canada one of the few countries to deny their own citizens the right to vote.

That said, the Courts in Canada have tended to respect the Constitution there, so this too shall pass.

Submission + - Data Store and Spying Laws Found Illegal by EU Court (theguardian.com)

WillAffleckUW writes: The EU High Court found the United Kingdom's data retention (and subsequent storage and analysis) and surveillance laws to be illegal throughout the EU, which subsequently would be an argument in courts in Australia and Canada against their own Spy laws. This effectively brings back the Rule of Law that all EU citizens have a Right to Privacy that is at the Bill of Rights level, not an easily short-circuited legal basis.

It is uncertain that this would apply to US spy laws, as a Right of Privacy is only inferred by US high courts and is not written into constitutions as it is in the EU, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

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