Central Park is "publicly available," but that doesn't mean you have the right to cut down the trees in it and sell them for lumber. The AI companies are selling lumber and when you ask them where they got it, they shrug and say "publicly available sources."

It's confusing because of non-unique names, but I haven't been able to find a CV, bio, or publication list... nothing to confirm that he is at NASA, was at NASA, or that he's the top electrostatics expert at NASA.

The conservation laws are statistical, at least to a degree. Local apparent violations can be OK, provided the system as a whole absolutely complies.

There's no question that if the claim was as appears that the conservation laws would be violated system-wide, which is a big no-no.

So we need to look for alternative explanations.

The most obvious one is that the results aren't being honestly presented, that there's so much wishful thinking that the researchers are forcing the facts to fit their theory. (A tendency so well known, that it's even been used as the basis for fictional detectives.)

Never trust results that are issued in a PR statement before a paper. But these days, it's increasingly concerning that you can't trust the journals.

The next possibility is an unconsidered source of propulsion. At the top of the atmosphere, there are a few candidates, but whether they'd impart enough energy is unclear to me.

The third possibility is that the rocket imparted more energy than considered, so the initial velocity was incorrectly given.

The fourth possibility is that Earth's gravity (which is non-uniform) is lower than given in the calculations, so the acceleration calculations are off.

When dealing with tiny quantities that can be swamped by experimental error, then you need to determine if it has been. At least, after you've determined there's a quantity to examine.

Fingerprints specifically are a password you can never change that you leave copies of everywhere you go. It's the worst possible "security" imaginable. It's just convenient.

Clearly this is a great step forward for humanity.

Well, I'm living it. Perhaps I'm lucky, or perhaps it's because I'm late in my career and I have enough experience to have that luxury, but I definitely choose who I work for.

In fact, I have for a long time:

Back around 2000, I had an opportunity to work at Citrix. I didn't really know who Citrix was back then. but they were already big and definitely an attractive employer to land a job at.

They came to the offices of the company I was working for back then to hunt for potential recruits, because my company was closing and they were nice enough to organize job interviews in their facilities before throwing everybody out.

So I got interviewed by the Citrix head hunters. When they explained what Citrix did, how they had a tight partnership with Microsoft, and would I like to join the team, I told them "Thanks but no. If you're in cahoots with Microsoft, I'll decline if you don't mind." Then I walked out of the room. Them guys couldn't believe that this 30-something junior programmer just blew them off, because they expected everybody to want a job at Citrix really bad :)

So yeah, if you don't feel like working for certain companies, unless you're desperate for the money, just don't.

It's only a problem if you seek employment with companies that have no ethics.

Getting fired for protesting unethical things your employer engages in is something to be proud of, especially when you're willing to endanger a cushy or prestigious position at Google. If I ran a company, I'd hire someone like that in a heartbeat.

Here's the lyrics to a fairly typical, average kinda tune:

We used to swim the same moonlight waters
Oceans away from the wakeful day

My fall will be for you - My fall will be for you My love will be in you If you be the one to cut me I will bleed forever
Scent of the sea before the waking of the world
Brings me to thee
Into the blue memory

My fall will be for you - My fall will be for you My love will be in you If you be the one to cut me I will bleed forever
Into the blue memory

A siren from the deep came to me
Sang my name my longing
Still I write my songs about that dream of mine
Worth everything I may ever be

The Child will be born again
That siren carried him to me
First of them true loves
Singing on the shoulders of an angel
Without care for love ‘n loss

Bring me home or leave me be
My love in the dark heart of the night
I have lost the path before me
The one behind will lead me

Take me
Cure me
Kill me
Bring me home
Every way
Every day
Just another loop in the hangman’s noose

Take me, cure me, kill me, bring me home
Every way, every day
I keep on watching us sleep

Relive the old sin of Adam and Eve
Of you and me
Forgive the adoring beast

Redeem me into childhood
Show me myself without the shell
Like the advent of May
I’ll be there when you say
Time to never hold our love
-------

But there's next to no repetition in it.

Also, it's Türkiye. Because Türkiye saw how well the rebranding worked out for Myanmar and decided it wanted nothing to do with dumb flightless birds from now on.

In the case of Ukraine, the success rate is very high because anybody in range is likely an enemy soldier.

Israel's success rate may be as low as 0.1%. That tells us that robots can't tell civilians from military. A large enough stockpile of human shields would be a serious problem.

And we know drones et al are vulnerable to GPS spoof attacks, making such an attack risky against a technologically advanced enemy with intellectuals and engineers forming a scientific take on special forces.

Why bother with a missile? You're here, so a geek. You know GPS jamming is effective, as is GPS spoofing. All you need is a parabolic dish and a high power transmitter. There's simply no possibility of a wide-angle transmitter on a satellite matching a narrow beam that's broadcast from a hundredth of the distance. Sure, there'll be authentication keys. And social engineers have compromised most of the world's governments, which means the keys will be for sale somewhere.

The only way I can the robot army being effective is if they flatten everything at long range, indiscriminately. And that is going to cause its own problems. Especially if the software gets hacked prior to install. Which will happen, because hiring and training an army of hackers in Mitnick-style social engineering tactics costs a tiny, tiny fraction of the expense of maintaining a wall of tactical nukes that can EMP the robot forces.

The robots work OK, but the AI doesn't. Israel is using AI extensively to target Hamas at the moment, with the very best AI that exists and the very best military minds the world can produce. The success rate is somewhere between 1% and 0.1%.