What I notice in the comments of the county officials: some of them claimed “it could not have been prevented, even with radar”.

Here in Eastern Europe, a weather radar makes a full turn in 5 minutes and I think that faster ones exist in fancier places. An SMS takes at most 15 minutes to deliver, with some arriving in seconds and some trailing behind if the network is under load.

Also, I’m sure some US states get even tornados, and are damn quick at sending out alerts about those things… so the diagnosis is “as usual, people ignored a considerable risk”. They had not set up automation. People could have been alerted, tech for that exists already for a decade or more.

Sadly, I’m not surprised.

Both sides have been clearly working on enhanced autonomy for a while now.

At first, it seemed that autonomous targeting would soon remain the only option in face of electronic warfare taking down a majority of drones. (The spectacular footage we’ve seen so far has mostly originated from a small minority of drones that got through. This is changing with fiber optics, of course.)

Then, tactical tricks (flying repeaters) and new guidance methods (fiber optic wire) gave direct guidance a fighting chance again, and somewhat postponed the need for high autonomy…

…but soon enough, an average drone will be capable of much more processing than a super expensive cruise missile from the 1990-ties, and this kind of weapons can be highly autonomous. You can give them the approximate location of a target and tell them to look for something - a ship, a train, an aircraft, a bridge, and of course vehicles with protruding pipes.

It will get nasty and complicated when they get cheap enough to target individual humans, because both common sense and international law insist that humans may be non-combatants and even combatants can surrender. A drone with enough mind to understand will be required to understand this, but there will be a motivation to cut corners. :(

Fortunately “lost” in this case doesn’t mean “killed or wounded”, but “residing in other countries and capable of returning home”.

Of course, if a considerable number of these people remain abroad after war has ended, then it’s a loss indeed.

But already until then, it’s big burden on the state budget (state has the same obligations to the old, but less working age taxpayers to gather income). However, there is also the effect of younger people working abroad sending money to their older relatives who remain home. To some degree, this might counterbalance the loss.

The image caption does say “could double”, but the PNAS article doesn’t mention that. As far as I understand, the role of the Southern Ocean as a whole as a carbon sink is big (two-digit percentage of human-caused emissions). But the effect subdivides into biological (phytoplankton) and physical (currents downwelling CO2-rich water and upwelling CO2-poor water). And I’m not aware or capable of pointing out a balance sheet of how much each component does.

Yes. It seems to have turned a part of the ocean which acted as a carbon sink into a carbon source. They don’t mention gigatonnes, but I would guess: a few (that’s a lot).

That’s some quite chilling reading.

People never got information about what mistake or malfunction took their relatives’ lives, but the leaked files draw a pattern of Teslas making erratic maneuvers when self-driving.

Also, there’s a pattern that crashed Tesla drivers tend to burn to death without passers-by being able to help them - because passers-by depend on opening doors using their handle, not pulling people out through windows or cutting through structures with hydraulic scizzors. By the time firefighters arrive, the person is dead and the fire too hot to apprach.

I would never buy a Tesla anyway, since I like utmost simplicity in vehicles.

But the Tesla battery seems like a special invitation for trouble to me - a ridiculously high number of small lithium ion cells. Unless your production is 100% reliable, that’s not a manageable configuration. A low number of large cells in manageable. Also, it seems that their battery is very likely to short in a crash. A low number of large cells have more limited options for shorting and more chances of the single series connection breaking. As soon as you have parallel cells, you’re asking for trouble.

As a person who develops drones, and who has already read the article about a week ago, and given a review of it in another place:

The author’s unit was quite obviously supplied with crappy drones, his description hints of many recognizable issues. Their takeoff failure rate would be considered unacceptable in some circles. Their detonation failure rate hints of sappers erring on the side of caution (sappers want to go home alive). These problems can be solved with factory made munitions and decent quality assurance.

Some of his complaints are organizational. Lacking bomber drones, they wasted FPV drones to destroy stationary / abandoned / disabled vehicles. This is not a tech issue, but an organizational issue.

He’s correct to point out that heavily loaded quadcopters won’t safely take off in adverse weather. I must remind that a catapult launched UAV plane will reliably take off in adverse weather, exceed quadcopters in range and payload capacity, so we can guess that planes taking off from launch tubes will gradually replace quadcopters taking off from grass.

He’s correct to point out that once you go below direct visibility, your 5.8 GHz video link will break. There’s at least 3 solutions around this: an airborne repeater, fiber optic cable and bombing the target from altitude. All 3 solutions are already widespread.

He mentions lack of GPS, compass, inertial navigation and pilots getting lost. This is true, GPS is suppressed on the front and will likely stay suppressed, some drones are cheap and don’t provide the pilot with obvious and simple navigational aids (they should) and some pilots do get lost when navigating (this is unavoidable, but can be reduced).

He mentions need for long training. This is the current reality, but not the reality of a tailor-made combat drone system. Today, people are fighting a war with civilian sports supplies. That’s why pilot training is important to overcome difficulties. In a few years, you can give a ready-made drone system (in a sealed container, with a factory-made warhead) to a random guy or girl from a street in the middle of a storm, and he or she can shoot down a combat helicopter from 10 kilometers distance with it. Just liking firing an NLAW can be learned in 5 minutes (but not mastered, of course), firing a drone will be possible with 5 minutes of instruction in the near future.

Yes, let’s meme a lot, that will help everyone understand what is going on.

Not “back to Syria” but “how to get him back from Syria, where he has presumably fled”, if you read the article.

Going by this article…

https://nltimes.nl/2025/06/30/brothers-still-deny-involvement-18-year-old-sisters-honor-killing

…I would speculate that by sending the letter, Khaled al-Najjar attempts to free his sons of complicity in the crime. Whether they are or aren’t complicit, is for the court to determine. Getting the man back from Syria would be a priority for the court, but given the situation in Syria, this might be difficult to arrange.

The court seems to consider the brothers either plausibly complicit or a flight risk and decided not to free them on bail.

The brothers’ lawyers requested that they be released from pre-trial custody. They have been detained for almost 13 months. Both insist that they “had nothing to do” with their sister’s murder. But the court ruled that they’ll stay in custody until the next hearing in September.

…and…

But the OM [prosecution] believes that the father enlisted his sons to pick Ryan up, drive her to a remote location, and throw her weighted body into the water. According to the OM, the three men killed Ryan because she behaved too Western and “shamed” her family.

This does not seem likely.

There has to exist a reason for Wang Yi opening some cards, but Kaja Kallas is not that reason. Wang Yi does not make uncoordinated statements and Kaja Kallas isn’t attempting to achieve that either.

Somewhere in the CCP political bureau, it was agreed that Wang Yi will send this public signal.

The reason could be something in China, something in Russia, something in Europe or in the US. What is the reason? I don’t know currently, but I’m not the only one solving this puzzle.

As a side note: there is speculation that China may be approaching a change of leader due to Xi experiencing health issues (not a change of leadership in the wider sense - the collegial system of the CCP is considered to be functioning).

Thus, it may be impossible for the Chinese foreign minister to be fully confident of what China’s policy will be in the future.

Obviously, China views it as unacceptable for Russia (its ally and soon enough, practically its vassal) to all-out lose. (The easiest way to not lose, of course, is not starting a war, but that train is long gone and behind the hills.)

Prolonging the war does not eliminate this risk well, however - exhaustion could spread in Russian society and morale could collapse despite the state spewing its propaganda, or the economy could collapse. So, simply propping up Russia by letting them buy the goods they shouldn’t be getting is not a very elegant solution. Direct interference on behalf of Russia would lead to open hostility with the EU, which is currently ambivalent about China.

What remains is nudging Russia to negotiate. But Putin is hard-headed and only willing to negotiate Ukraine’s surrender, on terms which Ukrainians will laugh out of the door.

As for the US being able to focus on China, well I guess they’re a bit concerned about it, but given the mental and organizational capability of the current US leadership, I don’t think Chinese analysts are particularly worried.

If implemented like moped battery swapping on Taiwan, things might work. If everyone designs their own unique solution, nope. :)

It’s like with earthquakes. At first, when nobody knows jack s**t, they tell you 10 people died.

When the statistics come home, often enough, an initial 10 turns into 10 000.

With a heat wave spanning half a continent and breaking records, the typical mortality to expect (basing on experience) is at least 1000 people (some of them old and about to go anyway, but pushed over the edge by heat).

Possibly, reverse motivation - the training goal of such an agent would not be nice and smooth output, but shooting down misinformation.

But I have serious doubts about whether all of that is feasible, given the computational cost of running large language models.

Speculation on my part:

Patriot stocks may have been really reduced - by defending Israel during Netanyahu’s adventure against Iran (it could have been smarter to tell Netanyahu not to start).

There is no reason to think that stocks of other weapons (e.g. air to ground missiles, glide bomb units for F-16) have suddenly gone really low. In fact, there is probably a f**kton of them.

Consequently, I suspect that Trump and Putin have made a deal they failed to disclose: Putin promised to refrain from helping Iran (it was an easy promise, he was really low on supplies). Trump promised in return to refrain from helping Ukraine, which he could have easily helped. At best, he got conned, at worst he got to do what he already wanted.

I would advise journalists to ask around: “has the US DoD been ordered to alter criteria for determining what is sufficient supply?” If yes, we’re looking at an excuse. If no, we’re looking at inability.

Both are bad, but inability can be corrected with honest admission and action, Ukraine has a bit of money from other allies to actually buy some US weapons, although they are rushing to make more domestically.

If it’s not inability but an undercarpet deal, then corrections are bit harder to achieve.

But the SBU had followed the pair and had special equipment on hand, the operative said, expecting another attack after the previous blast. “We had certain technical means to block the signals to the telephone,” said the source. When Alexander rang the phones strapped to the bombs to detonate them, the calls did not go through.

That was thoughtful of them. :)

At this temperature, emergency medical departments are guaranteed to be full. Weeks later, an uptick in mortality is registered on stats, without exception.

Something is wrong here. Likely the exact category in which things are compared. 1.17 kilograms, 200 W and world’s lightest… I’ve seen 2000 W drone motors that weigh less than 1 kilogram and aren’t called the world’s lightest, because one can go lighter.

It looks like a neat motor, though. For a very limited power level. But they didn’t even tell the efficiency…

I think the 38% number is definitely wrong, maybe even wrong by one order of magnitude.

I tried fact-checking and came up with this:

https://providencemag.com/2018/04/what-a-country-immigrants-serve-us-military-well

Few Americans realize that 65,000 immigrants serve in the US military today. That number includes some 18,700 troops who hold green cards (in other words, legal permanent residents who are not yet naturalized citizens). According to the Pentagon, about 5,000 such residents enlist each year.

Since the total number of the US armed forces is around 1.3 million, it follows that 38% is definitely wrong and the correct number of immigrants is likely around 5%.

I think the 38% number originates from service member naturalization stats or service member family stats and has been mis-interpreted. Can’t tell for sure, didn’t hire a spy to find out. :)

P.S. Edit: found a secondary source with similar data:

https://www.usafis.org/can-i-join-the-us-military-as-a-green-card-holder/

Approximately 8,000 Green Card holders join the US military each year and around 35,000 are currently serving on active duty.

Since green card holders aren’t the only variety of immigrant, the number 65 000 seems plausible.