What it’s like to be a drone operator

Heather Linebaugh is someone who operated killer drones in Afghanistan and she writes about what it was like.

Whenever I read comments by politicians defending the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Predator and Reaper program – aka drones – I wish I could ask them a few questions. I’d start with: “How many women and children have you seen incinerated by a Hellfire missile?” And: “How many men have you seen crawl across a field, trying to make it to the nearest compound for help while bleeding out from severed legs?” Or even more pointedly: “How many soldiers have you seen die on the side of a road in Afghanistan because our ever-so-accurate UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] were unable to detect an IED [improvised explosive device] that awaited their convoy?” [Read more…]

Pope Francis now needs to actually do something

By every tangible measure, Pope Francis is no different from his predecessors. He opposes abortion, contraception, same-sex marriage, adoptions by gay couples, and has not called off the inquiry into the social activism of American nuns. And yet simply by saying a few things about gays and atheists that were not outright hateful and that many other Christians had long ago said, and by expressing some gentle criticisms of the current scandalous state of wealth inequality, he has driven the right and the Republican party in in this country into a tizzy. It just shows how much they have assumed that successive popes were Tea Party members in all but name. [Read more…]

Why we prefer portrait-oriented videos

When people create videos using their cell phones, they usually do it in portrait mode. Not being someone who whips out a camera and records things, I am not sure why the portrait mode is the one that people prefer. Is it something to do with the ease of holding the phone? But whatever the reason, the net result is curiously dissatisfying to watch, apart from the black bands that appear on each side when you play it back on YouTube or a video player. [Read more…]

NSA trying to crack encryption using quantum computers

NSA insideWhile the US and British governments undoubtedly have the resources to obtain the best computers and cryptographers that money can buy, they cannot (at far as I know) break really good encryption systems. This is why they have achieved much of their success the old-fashioned way and resorted to cheating, such as getting computer and chip makers and communication companies to collaborate with them to install back doors. News reports based on leaked documents by (who else?) Edward Snowden show that the NSA may have bribed RSA, one of the most important companies in the security industry, to get them to provide a loophole that the NSA could exploit. [Read more…]

When ice attacks

I have not seen anything like this or even heard about it but it appears that weather conditions can be such that a thick carpet of ice can inexorably march from lakes onto land. It looks like a creeping monster, pushing aside even buildings in its path. It is called an ‘ice shove’ and scientists are familiar with the phenomenon and say it happens on occasion in places like Alaska. [Read more…]

And now, for something a little bit different

A lot of attention has been focused on the Republican race to be the party’s nominee for the 2016 presidential election. Less attention has been paid to the events on the Democratic side because of what seems to be a media consensus that that nomination is Hillary Clinton’s for the taking and until such time as she announces that she is not interested in running, there is no point talking about it. [Read more…]

“Sponsored From Around the Web”

I have little idea of the business end of this blog, leaving it in the highly capable hands of Ed Brayton, the host of Dispatches From the Culture Wars. All I know is that ads appear at various places based on arrangements with vendors and on algorithms that are based on the content that I provide and the browsing habits of the readers, so two readers reading the same page at the same time may see some ads that are the same and others that are different. [Read more…]

Pew News IQ Quiz

I am bit of a sucker for these little quizzes that pop up on the internet from time to time, as long as they do not take more than a couple of minutes to complete and are not totally idiotic. Since I am a news junkie, I was tempted to do this short 13-question Pew News IQ quiz to assess whether you know more about the news than the average American. This is an admittedly low bar so this is one of those quizzes where doing well does not bring any credit at all. [Read more…]

Blacklists then and now

In his keynote talk at the 30th Chaos Communications Congress (30C3) conference last month to an audience that consisted to a large extent of computer professionals and systems administrators, Glenn Greenwald talked about one encouraging sign that he has observed, and that is the increased resistance he has observed among ordinary people, especially those in the tech industry. [Read more…]