Per the United Nations Outer Space Treaty, anything launched from a nation, or by a party under its authority, is the property and responsibility of that nation. If the companies launching or operating the satellites are American, then the USA is supposed to regulate them.

Under the current interpretation of jurisdiction, this request would be out-of-scope for the FCC. Even if they wanted to grant it, they cannot.

This is the death of Unions being played out in real-time. Low wages, no benefits, no promises of tomorrow, everyone for themself.

Anyway. Spies gonna spy. Counterintelligence gonna spy on the spies. (Yo dawg...) If you don't like it get out of the game.

These companies are constantly one-upping each other. Tight competition means they are trying anything for an edge.

Let 'em play, ref!

You are assuming he is traumatized, he did not state that he is. So... yeah.

Unprecedented... as in no defendant has ever been driven bankrupt by a legal penalty? Oh wait... yeah... that happens to us peasants all the time.

The incident paid out rather well for him, in that he got to write an article that made headlines. (good for his career as a journalist)

to your point: the quoted statement was from one of the cops.

The cops themselves believe that cops in many jurisdictions are trigger happy incompetents.

The cops kept losing track of him because he parked the car in his garage at night. Every time they ID'd it on the road, it would disappear before they could respond. They only knew it kept appearing in certain areas. Then they spotted it pulling in to the Kohls parking lot and closed in before he left.

(yes, I RTFA)

This is a big deal. SpaceX makes it seem routine these days... but it is actually hard to do.

The military implications are obvious. Think Ukraine. If you suspect the enemy is trying to infiltrate on a dark night along several kilometers of frontline, you light up the scene while launching a bunch of low-cost FPV drones, and those infiltrators are about to have a bad day.

You *can* spot infiltrators in the dark with IR cameras, but it requires much more expensive drones and isn't usually as effective, hence the preference for night operations. Plus, there's IR camouflage, with varying degrees of success. But it usually makes you stand out like a sore thumb under illumination (you're basically wearing a tent).

/breathless FUD

That is not what they do. They can remote control operate a stuck vehicle. That is not mission critical life or death... That is "The car does not know how to navigate around [problem]." The Waymo's also have voice control mode to follow simple directions from emergency responders (move left, move back, etc.) and functional manual controls (actual steering wheels & pedals) for responders to drive them if needed.

You jest, but... at least in the Waymo's there is an emergency voice control mode. Emergency responders can give the car simple voice directions (move back, move left, etc.) This has been documented recently in use with the problems in SF of Waymo's blocking firetrucks -the firemen directed the cars how to move out of the way. It moves very slowly under voice control, and will not violate the safety rules (too close to something, etc.) which has made it unable to comply with all directions given.. that is not good enough, yet -but they are making progress and attempting to solve the problems.

This is a small prototype, not a full-scale mirror.

Also, ignoring that, pretending light brighter than the full moon is useless is... silly? For generating power, sure, but for illumination, it absolutely is not.

The AV companies were issued licenses by the state motor vehicle agencies -the same ones that issue licenses to you and me.