Something else to consider... Donald Trump Jr has millions of dollars in Unusual Machines stock and also has a position on the board. UM is one of the companies that stands to benefit hugely from this ban, as commercial drone users are forced to find alternative sources for their equipment.

Parents like to take care of their children when they can, or so I'm told.

Also, this isn't a ban on imports from potentially enemy states such as China, it's a ban on imports from *all* countries -- including the USA's closest allies. This is pretty clear proof that the reasons behind this ban are purely financial and that Trump's son reaps a significant amount of that benefit through is stock-holding and position on the board of Unusual Machines.

The USA has the best government money can buy I guess.

It's not just drones that are on the covered list -- its crucial parts of drones that also have other uses.

For example -- lithium polymer batteries, brushless DC motors, flight controllers, cameras and sensors as well as other stuff.

For the hobbyist who wants to fly RC planes and go drone-racing this is a disaster. I'm unaware of any (affordable) US-made lithium polymer batteries suitable for these applications and the vast majority of motors, flight controllers and cameras are imported.

This effectively shuts down the hobby because even if US companies eventually start making this stuff it will almost certainly prohibitively expensive -- beyond the reach of most hobbyists.

The reality is that this has far less to do with "national security" than it does ensuring that certain people's pockets get lined with cash. For instance -- how does a brushless motor made in the USA pose less of a security risk than one made in China, Germany or Australia? Likewise a plain, simple lithium-polymer battery without any electronics -- what's the security risk that such a product poses?

The hobby of RC model aircraft and drones was on a count-down to oblivion from the moment the Commerical Drone Alliance convinced politicians to revoke S336, a piece of law that protected the hobby from regulation. The CDA made it very clear that they wanted the skies cleared of pesky hobbyists so they could exploit it for financial gain and now those in power are using the "national security" card to disguise their true agenda. Nobody can complain about a restriction or ban if its saving the lives of American's... right?

It seems so elegant, wonder why it didn't arrive earlier. Google says Energy Dome (Italian co.) actually invented it in 2019 with a test in 2022 so I guess it is pretty new but still it seems so simple compared to stacks of lithium or whatever. Though gravity batteries are even simpler it seems.

In related news:

Glock have announced that their new Glock 726-plus-AI model comes already loaded with one in the chamber and cocked with the safety off right out of the box.

Purchasers/survivors can, after purchase and unpacking, activate the safety, remove the magazine and rack the slide so as to eject the chambered round if they wish to opt-out of this fantastic new feature.

Safety first!

so we can unfuck all the things he's fucked.

But the reality is, Trump is a symptom, not a disease. He was elected by the people. Those who voted Trump once were either Nazi sympathizers or fools. Those who voted Trump the second time around were definitely Nazi sympathizers, or definitely fools.

Impeaching Trump won't do anything. The next Nazi in line is JD Vance and he's ten times worse because, unlike Trump, he's not an idiot with a case of fronto-temporal dementia.

And even if Vance and the rest of the Nazi goons are out, the people will vote another fascist in the next time around because the people has proven twice now that they're fucking fascists or fucking morons.

In short, America is fucked because Americans are hopeless.

Maybe YouTube's AI decided to flex?

Fed up customers fleeing in droves.

Nobody likes Microsoft. Nobody has ever really liked Microsoft. But everybody puts up with Microsoft's low quality products and abuse because Microsoft is a monopoly that's hard to escape - particularly in corporate settings, and for gaming.

But they've really cranked up the abuse to 11 recently, with Windows becoming a terrible advertisement platform, requiring new hardware when people's old machines were still serviceable, the constant privacy invasion, relentless push for online accounts, for their cloud offerings, and now their godforsaken AI shit that literally nobody likes nor want. Not to mention upcoming price hikes for the privilege of getting all that enshittification thrown at your face...

Microsoft has gone too far for a lot of people, and people react by going to Apple or Linux. And quite frankly, personally, I desperately want Microsoft to continue shooting themselves in both feet like they're doing so they make themselves irrelevant as quickly and as thoroughly as possible, and we're finally, at long last, rid of them at last. 50 years we've been waiting! That's like half a century dude...

It is totally byzantine if you need an app that is only on one App Store or happen to travel. Actual case that happened to me. United app for boarding pass, mobile roaming app from another country's phone company. Media subscriptions from U.S. App Store which was my default. Apple had me cancel my media subscriptions, create another id with an iCloud email address I don't otherwise use, and every time I need to spend time to make sure something I need will work in advance. Apple PLEASE let us use multiple app stores at the same time without forcing such destabilizing kludges. Even now I never know if what I need to work will work, or if my subscription or billing will work.. The billing screen also has issues like that.

What if you forked it and it is an exact copy of what they used, would that change your standing? Just theoretical for me.

about as much as having a former WWF executive with a single-digit IQ serving as Education Secy.

I'm sure glad I have a real education in the 80's.

Why just pick on Meta? YouTube is also a haven for scam advertising. That robot AI puppy ad has been running for *weeks*, despite thousands of people reporting it and tweets to @teamyoutube on X who simply say "leave it with us, we'll look into it" -- yeah, on what timescale?

The reality is that big-tech is not interested in protecting users of their services, they're only interested in the bottom line and a scammer's money is as good as anyone's.

How is it that YouTube can take down *millions* of videos and masses of channels for "scams and deceptive practices" yet can't act in a timely fashion when blatant scam ads infest the platform?

It's not because they can't, it's because they choose not to -- and that ought to make them every bit as culpable as Meta.

In fact, I think there's an argument that if, after being made aware that an ad is a scam, the platform continues to run that ad then they should be charged with conspiracy to defraud and face criminal charges. That might smarten-up their responses a little.

Apparently they did nightly runs and then reviewed them.The baseboard took 27 hours of compute time, the SOM took 15 hours of compute to get to 98.7%. The human effort of 38.5 hours replaced 428 quoted human-only hours. It's apparently a cloud service, so I guess you can't rent your own machine and speed it up.. though if it is a physics heavy simulation maybe they were running an A100 or something? At any rate, it took a *lot* of compute but saved a *lot* of time. Based on Claude finding and digesting this blog article for me: https://www.quilter.ai/blog/co...

Damn, I was a happy Firefox user for years... now I'll have to try and avoid AI using some other browser.

Don't you think a smart company would have surveyed their market before making such an announcement?

It's much easier to keep customers happy and attract new ones if you give them what THEY want, rather than what you think they want.

I've used ChatGPT to write code and Gemini to debug it. If you pass the feedback back and forth, it takes a couple iterations but they'll eventually agree that it's all good and I find that's about 90-95% of the way to where I need it to be. Earlier today I took a 6kb script that had been used as something fast and dirty for years - written by someone long gone from the company - and completely revamped it into something much more powerful, robust, and polished in both its code and its output. Script grew to about 20kb, but it's 10x better and I only had to make minor tweaks. Between the two, they found all sorts of hidden bugs and problems with it.

I like them too, family even is an antique book dealer. But.. I am allergic to a lot of old books. And now I need bigger print and more interested in new books with option to find old ones. So even though it has drawbacks, my kindle PaperWhite has some killer features: big text, instant purchase, and kindle unlimited. Big e-ink tablet (Daylight Computer DC-1) is also useful. The AI feature? Haven't seen it yet but people who buy cliff notes or my family member who had to give a talk about a difficult book to a book club recently could make use of the feature.