Some decent comics pop up on Kill Tony on occasion, but, every time I’ve watched it, Tony himself has been deeply unfunny.
I didn’t know much about him beyond that other than the association with Rogan, but this… does not surprise me in the least.
Hardware like that has been and is still being donated through third parties daily.
It’s more in Ukraine’s interest to limit the use of Starlink to only those terminals that have been vetted through official channels than to allow blanket use and try to filter out things through other means due to… the exact kinds of situations this article is talking about.
but that would require the CEO of the company to actually want to help honestly.
Sure. And part of the reason we know Starlink is entirely capable of geofencing is because Elon’s done it explicitly to stop Ukraine from being able to operate near Crimea. That whole kerfuffle lead to military usage being pushed over to Starshield and a contract with the US government that gives them explicit say on when and where Starlink works in Ukraine.
Elon is dumber than a bag of hammers but it’d be next level stupid even for him to willingly break a DOD contract, especially when people were already floating the idea of invoking the Defense Production Act last time around.
The old FourSevens Quarks used to rotate the tailcap the switch between modes. I’ve got one of the older QT2L-Xs that’s probably my favorite light ever for that reason. That and it’s the perfect size for pocket carry while still being decently bright. The newer models since they got bought out ditched it which sucks because it was such a simple interface.
I got a couple of Fenix lights recently that I don’t hate. They still do the “cycle through modes with a button” thing, but it’s at least a dedicated button separate from the tailcap switch.
There are definitely solutions but they all involve giving a Russian agent direct knowledge of troop movements.
Starlink terminals are activated using a unique identifier. It’s how billing works.
SpaceX knows which terminals have been provided to Ukraine. We know they can geofence service. Geofencing the Ukrainian theater to terminals that were provided to Ukraine shouldn’t be a massive technical leap and doesn’t provide any information they don’t already have.
As long as you don’t need particularly tight tolerances or fine details, it works perfectly fine. The setup really isn’t anymore complicated than I described. I have done it just because I wanted to see how difficult the process is. It’s around $100 in startup costs assuming you have access to a printer. After that it’s mostly just waiting and occasionally measuring cut progress.
Check out the Rack Robotics Powercore as well. It’s a low cost wire EDM system that uses cheap 3D printers as a motion platform. It uses a very similar principle to cut metal using wire as the cutting tool. May or may not be more suitable depending on your exact use case. Still pretty rough around the edges though; SendCutSend makes more sense for most people that need things cut from flat stock for the most part.
The majority of components in these things typically are printed. It’s just the pressure bearing components like the barrel where ECM is being used.
The FGC-9 discussed in the article is notable because it was explicitly designed to be manufactured using components that are not regulated as firearms parts under European law. So there are non-printed parts in it, but everything is dual-purpose and can be acquired through unregulated channels, e.g., the hydraulic pipe that gets used as a barrel.
The reality is this is one of a handful of emerging technologies that are going to reshape a lot of things about the world in the future in ways I don’t think society, as a whole, is cogniscent of, let alone prepared for.
This is one of them. The battlefield use of small drones is another.
I tend to say that the world we’re living in now is one where gun control is increasingly obsolete. That’s not a moral judgment. It’s not a statement on whether that’s a good or bad thing. It’s just what I think we’re going to increasingly find to be the new reality: the rise of small scale, low cost, divertible manufacturing technologies is going to make traditional supply-side approaches to regulation untenable. That genie is out.
(Drones are in a similar, if distinct space: low cost, commodity, and divertible from low/no regulation supply chains in a way that makes it nearly impossible to cut off supply without shutting down other legitimate economic activity).
I don’t know what the right answer is. I do think it’s going to take a pretty fundamental rethink of how we approach these problems. I don’t think the full ramifications of these types of technology have really reached the wider zeitgeist, and, frankly, I kind of worry about how people will react. There are a lot of pretty scary paths this could take, both in terms of how the technology gets used and in terms of what attempts to curb them could look like if they’re not carefully thought through.
Machine is borderline overselling it.
The ECM process works by pumping water containing an electrolyte through a metal part. When a current is applied to the water, exposed metal gets slowly etched away.
What these groups are doing is starting with high pressure hydraulic pipe and inserting 3D printed jigs that are basically a negative mask to bore out the pipe to their desired diameter, cut the chamber, machine in rifling, etc, with the end product being a functional barrel. As far as I’m aware, so far this has been limited to pistol caliber cartridges; rifle calibers are a step up in pressure and come with a whole host of different engineering challenges.
The “machine” is really nothing more than a bucket, an aquarium/pond pump, and a desktop power supply. It’s honestly a really clever approach to the problem from an engineering standpoint.
The ECM process isn’t suitable for manufacturing ammunition.
In general, you’d still be generally reliant on the traditional manufacturing supply chain there. There is development happening in that space, but nothing anywhere near as complete as the FGC-9.
Jake Hanhrahan of Popular Front has done really extensive reporting on the general topic of 3D printed firearms. He’s interviewed both people in the design community and people involved in the fighting and manufacture in Myanmar.
I don’t like him at all, but he was articulate and not at all unhinged.
I get what you mean here, but it’s also what makes Vance and whatever else comes after Trump so dangerous: the bar has been lowered so far that people now view “able to form coherent sentences” as “not at all unhinged.”
The man stood there and repeated the bald faced lie about Haitian migrants’ legal status and then had a temper tantrum that the rules said he wasn’t supposed to be fact-checked.
The substance of what he was saying was absolutely unhinged. But the Overton window has shifted so far that, because his delivery was neatly packaged, it doesn’t look that bad compared to what we’ve gotten used to.
I’ve honestly ran out of ways to keep saying the two very basic points here
Repeating yourself does seem to be your priority here.
If you had actually read through the piece I linked instead of looking for something to immediately disagree with in the snippet I quoted, you’d see she linked to this story. The entire reason we’re hearing about this now is because Trump was briefed on the threat by US intelligence and Trump is literally incapable of not immediately repeating what he’s been told.
And if you took 20 seconds to Google after that, you’d find that the DNI has publicly confirmed that the briefing with Trump happened. Additionally, the same story has Anthony Blinken confirming that the US has been tracking Iranian threats against Trump as well as other past and current officials. It even links to multiple previous reports discussing an increased threat profile dating back months just like I said was the case.
My point is that Trump is not the only source and that there’s been corroboration from parties who really don’t care about making Trump look good. I’m not inclined to believe the story because Trump said it and, yes, Trump is absolutely a liar; I’m inclined to believe it because it’s been fairly widely reported well before Trump said anything at all.
My “misunderstanding” is having followed this story for more than a single headline.
Marcy Wheeler has written extensively about it for months now. She’s been at the center of the story to the extent that she was one of the journalists that (presumably Iran) attempted to leak hacked Trump campaign documents through. She’s very adamantly of the stance that there is a real threat because it’s been corroborated by multiple sources who don’t have any interest in propping up Trump.
I fear that, because of the polarization Trump has deliberately stoked, many lefties are doing the same thing that Trump’s MAGAts did with Russia: treat credible allegations that Iran is targeting him, both for hacking and assassination, as a hoax.
Regarding the hacking, as happened in 2016, it is not just the Intelligence Community (one, two) attributing the hack in real time. Both Microsoft and Google have described the operation. As I explained repeatedly regarding the 2016 Russian attack, big American tech companies have a similar kind of global reach as the NSA, and when someone uses their infrastructure to target someone, they have both the tools and an independent incentive to get the attribution right. There’s really no reason to doubt the attribution, from three of the entities with the best global reach in the world, that Iran targeted Trump’s campaign.
Regarding Iran’s attempt to assassinate Trump, there’s also no reason to doubt that. While the case against Asif Merchant, whom DOJ accused of trying to solicit a variety of operations targeting Trump, does rely on undercover FBI employees posing as wannabe hitmen, the underlying tip — from the guy Merchant allegedly asked for help recruiting a hit team — appears to be organic, just someone calling the cops. Plus, the effort bears certain resemblance to the effort to solicit assassins for John Bolton, arising from the same motive of revenge for the Qassem Soleimani killing.
Trump’s a blowhard. He’s absolutely going to use the story as a wedge. Don’t do his work for him by dismissing the possibility of what appear to be real threats out of hand.
I’m not saying we know the exact nature of what’s going on or that any threat is particularly immediate; what I am saying is that there’s enough information available from sources that aren’t affiliated with Trump that the possibility should be taken seriously.
Court documents do not identify any of the potential targets. But U.S. officials acknowledged in July that a threat on Donald Trump’s life from Iran prompted additional security in the days before a Pennsylvania rally in which Trump was injured by a shooter’s bullet. That July 13 shooting, carried out by a 20-year-old Pennsylvania man, was unrelated to the Iran threat and Merchant’s arrest has no connection to the Trump assassination attempt, a law enforcement official said.
This is a story that has been building for a few months. While I’m not particularly convinced that this specific threat was particularly credible, there’s been plenty of reporting that the Biden DOJ is taking this seriously.
It’s not really surprising to me that Iran would want Trump dead. I don’t think they were anywhere close to actually accomplishing that, but I can certainly believe they’d try.
Yes, Trump and the rest of the rightwing are going to blow it up into something bigger than what actually happened, but it’s important to understand the truth in the lie because the story is potentially consequential in the wider relationship between the US and Iran.
The DOJ announced the arrest of a man working on behalf of Iran attempting to recruit assassins a couple of weeks ago:
The interesting thing is that it’s actually Gen X where Trump has disproportionately high support among women.
Oh, I don’t disagree at all.
Like I said, Nate’s definitely increasingly treaded into questionable territory in the past few years and I don’t have a sense for whether it’s impacted the model since I’ve honestly not been paying close attention to the horse race this cycle.
I was mostly pointing out that while the dude has almost always been a bad take generator, the 2016 model very arguably outperformed its contemporaries despite the popular view that they blew it. I wouldn’t be shocked if Nate’s sponsors and general ideological drift has impacted the model this cycle (*especially given Peter Thiel’s involvement), but I don’t have a strong sense for whether that’s the case either. I also wouldn’t be particularly surprised if he sufficiently separated the stats from the dumb ideas to produce a reasonable model either. I just don’t have enough info to have formed an opinion there.
That’s what makes this exceptionally stupid: ballots in Georgia are fully electronic.
You make your selections on a touchscreen voting machine. The machine records your selections. “Counting” is literally a matter of taking the output from the machine and telling a server to add up the totals.
The paper ballot is literally just a laser printer next to the machine that spits out a sheet of paper showing what the voter selected. The paper ballots are supposed to just be a backup in case there are problems with the machines.
A lot of other models were saying something ridiculous like Clinton had 95% chance to win or something. Nate Silver’s model seems better than others based on this, if anything.
The constant attacks on how 538’s model performed in 2016 says more about statistics literacy than it does about the model.
There is plenty to criticize Nate Silver for. Take your pick. Personally, the political nihilism that’s increasingly flirted with “anti-woke” sentiment is good enough for me. Some people might prefer taking issue with the degenerate gambling. The guy has pumped out plenty of really dumb hot takes over the years, so you have your options.
But his models, historically, have performed relatively well if you understand that they’re models and not absolute predictors.
This is yet another example of our system fundamentally being incapable of dealing with someone like Trump willing to deviate from all established norms.
Legally, POTUS is the classifying authority. They can give clearance to whomever they want.
That’s worked mostly fine since the classification system was established in the early 1950s because the assumption has always been that POTUS isn’t wildly compromised and completely surrounded by compromised individuals.
Oops.