This outrageous level of paranoia over "alleged" drone sightings will cost human lives soon.

Here we have the US military mis-identifying a party balloon as a drone and firing a powerful laser at it -- while members of the public get prosecuted every year for flicking their laser-pointers at helicopters and airliners.

In Germany, police will be allowed to shoot at "alleged" drones even though it has been clearly proven that most (if not all) of the recent drone sightings were simply mis-identified aircraft lights.

Can anyone see the potential for disaster here?

The mis-identification of aircraft flying at night as "drones" has become rife, dating back beyond the NY/NJ "drone" incidents that caused such concern in the USA a year or two ago. Almost without exception, these "drones" are real aircraft (often passenger flights) carrying people through the skies. How long before one of them is shot down by paranoid trigger-happy idiots?

Paranoia is a mental health issue and it's infecting governments and authorities around the world.

Before someone says "but... Ukraine..." I ask you: how many people have died as the result of actions by bad actors using drones in the USA or outside the war zones in Europe?

That's a big fat ZERO!

Yes, it "could" happen but right now it's far more likely that innocent people will die from friendly fire produced by paranoid idiots on the ground with guns and lasers.

One thing the science does tell us is that we all have a very hard time separating the world that existed when we were children from our perception of that world through the eyes of a child.

Ask nearly any population in the United States when this country was best and you'll get a majority who'll swear to you it was when they were teenagers. The age of the group doesn't matter. You get the same result from 20 year olds as 40 year olds as 60 year olds as 80 year olds. And what you're seeing is people looking back to a time when they had lots of free time, lots of freedom, and most of their income was disposable and thinking "that was pretty great." And it was.... except they were living under a roof someone else paid for and still experiencing the risks and complexities of the world through the filter and safety net provided by their parents.

And since we're being scientific about this: yes, obviously not everyone. I'm sure someone reading this right now is thinking "I had a tough childhood." And I'm sure they did but anecdotes are not data.

The 1980s were -- and I say this as both a historian and someone who lived through them -- fucked. Reagan torched the New Deal consensus. The AIDS crisis was literally laughed out of the White House press room. Our government perpetuated a long string of dirty intelligence/foreign-policy interventions. The wealthy and powerful were juiced to the gills on cocaine.

There was a sense of decorum which has sense evaporated from American politics but that's about it.

According to this inflation calculator, 2015's $158k would now have be 2025's $214.61. So the actual change is 6%, not 44%.

https://livingwage.mit.edu/met...

Typical annual salary, according to MIT's Living Wage Calculator for the NYC Metro, is $84,860.

Poverty wage is $7.52/hr (no kids) and minimum wage is $15.50 which, according to the calculator, should cover 1 adult with 3 kids.

The Brearley School, regarded as the best private school for girls in the nation and charging around $70K, is a non-profit.

What shareholders?

Also, every year someone pops up to say correlation is not causation. It isn't, but it's a damned good place to start. Like if I'm thirsty, standing at a t-junction and all the people walking from the left are carrying fresh new bottles of water and all the people walking from the right look like the last thing they tried to 'drink' is sawdust...it's not 100% proven that there's a place to get water from in one particular direction, but on the other hand...it's pretty damned well correlated and guess which direction I'm going to head in.

From the study: " The most pronounced associated differences were observed with intake of approximately 2 to 3 cups per day of caffeinated coffee or 1 to 2 cups per day of tea.".

You heard it - ditch the coffee, drink some tea.

(although, in a small voice, I should probably note that while I am British, I don't drink tea. I drink coffee. Damn.)

Don't worry... the internet will route around this damage. Discord will become dust.

It's really worth reading the 450 comments on this video Why this crash matters to everyone that flies a drone for a sense of how the recreational drone community is feeling about this crash.

Imagine being highly educated in a field that could help people, (neuroscientists, psychologists) but choosing to sell your soul to these parasitic companies. Back when I was looking for a job change, I avoided those types of outfits, and was glad I was able to find something else. How do they live with themselves?

The license payers. The idea would be instead of paying for Teams, pay for a joint venture open source Teams alternative.

It's an attractive idea but in practice fraught with issues. First, I don't want to wait until its ready so I'll end up with a Team license anyway. Second, this means I'm going to have to agree a feature set with my fellow contributors - many of these companies will be rivals, and some will have some dumb workflow that means it's absolutely vitalthat a message turns purple 33 1/3rd seconds after being read otherwise how on earth can their compliance dept....blah blah, you get the idea.

Then you've got classic Tragedy of the Commons. You mean if I don't pay/stop paying, I can just get it anyway? Well then, guess what I'm going to do. And them. And them. And...yeah. And god help them when it's 'finished' and suddenly they realise they have to pay for ongoing maintenance not in license fees but in ensuring there are always coders who are interested and knowledgeable about it.

It's all do'able, but it's quite the model shift. I wish it well.

Mostly harmless.

Apologies - commenting to undo a misclick mod, please ignore.

Because it would be unusable. Lockdown mode is pretty severe, it's not something you want to deal with day to day.

Everything you just mentioned is physical. They're made of computers and wire, and all of those computers have a physical location and wthe wire goes through holes in the ground. Remember the internet was created to link multiple geographical sites to allow things to continue if one were hit by a nuclear strike.

Just because we're used to dealing with the abstractions doesn't mean the underlying isn't real. It's a long time since this terminology was in use, but even 'the internet' used to be 'an internet', and it was possible to have multiple and that the global one was spelled with a capital I.

Less efficient, more expensive? Yes, I'd think so. Whether that's worth it or not depends on the goal you're looking for.