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Friday Fragments

| January 17, 2025 | 18 Comments
Friday Fragments

Well, first up is the formerly useful American Civil Liberties Union. I guess I am REALLY old – I remember when they used to be impartial defendants of the Bill of Rights, in its entirety. Heck, I remember when the National Rifle Association mentioned that the ACLU had actually supported the NRA’s side of lawsuits […]

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Six shooters? Pah?

| January 7, 2025 | 8 Comments
Six shooters? Pah?

Gotta love a sexy six (or seven) shooter – I know revolvers in .22LR are even made as 10-shooters – so kudos to Ed for giving us one Monday. Gotta say, though, that today’s offerings are a tad more sophisticated. Let’s start with Metal Storm – a Chinese made system. How do you intercept a […]

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The H-1B skilled-worker program, bringing in talent or displacing Americans?

| December 27, 2024 | 52 Comments
The H-1B skilled-worker program, bringing in talent or displacing Americans?

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are championing the use of the H-1B skilled-worker visa programs to bring in talent. One argument they advanced is that we are competing against other countries in artificial intelligence development and in other technology arenas. To be able to compete with these other countries, one of the things we need […]

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More drones, over UK bases

| November 27, 2024 | 22 Comments
More drones, over UK bases

Somehow his doesn’t seem like a TikTok challenge stealing Hyundais. Between Wednesday and Saturday last week, multiple drones were spotted flying over and presumably surveilling US air bases in the UK. The objects were seen between Wednesday and Saturday flying over the Royal Air Force’s Lakenheath, Mildenhall and Feltwell bases, all used by the US […]

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More new toys, and one olde one

| November 13, 2024 | 36 Comments
More new toys, and one olde one

China has unveiled a largish drone…ten TONs’ worth.  The drone is expected to be a “mothership” for smaller drone swarms. While initially it can look like a normal attack aircraft, its central payload section is labeled as ‘Isomerism Hive Module’. This reveals that the mothership could have the capability to launch drones mid-air and then […]

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AI helps, they say. Software makes life easier, they say

| October 28, 2024 | 39 Comments
AI helps, they say. Software makes life easier, they say

First off, tip o’ the hat to Mason for spotting this too. We are all hearing how Artificial Intelligence, aka AI,  is the wave of the future, and that machine learning/intelligence will lead to breakthroughs, stunning leaps, and making everything better, right? (We all know that in actuality, almost all technology advances are used to […]

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New toys for the troops

| October 16, 2024 | 15 Comments
New toys for the troops

Well, I whined about our readiness – actually, the lack of which – to defend against things like relatively low-altitude drones. Did we magically find something viable? No, but it turns out that some new toys are in the works which can address some of our lacks. First up – everyone knows one of the […]

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SpaceX Launches Spacewalk Mission

| September 10, 2024 | 16 Comments
SpaceX Launches Spacewalk Mission

SpaceX launches Polaris Dawn mission from Florida after multiple weather delays Initially planned to launch on Aug. 27, the Polaris Dawn mission faced weather and technical delays. The company skipped any launch attempts last week as days of storms would have prevented a safe splashdown for the Dragon on either Florida coast in the event […]

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