War Is A Racket: Anduril Pulsar
May 8th, 2024Here’s a tiny curiosity to add to your long herniating War Is A Racket file folder.
The U.S. Government paid Anduril about a billion dollars for a system that seeks to counter a sub-$500 threat:
The company in 2022 mentioned the EW equipment after winning a nearly $1 billion counter-unmanned aerial systems contract from U.S. Special Operations Command. A memo obtained by Defense News that same year described it helping to “mitigate incoming threats.”
How effective would this Pulsar system be if the enemy programmed the target coordinates into ArduPilot (free/open source) and spent a few cents on EM shielding on their sub-$500 drone?
Hmm…
Silly me, worrying about the finer details—like whether the widgets will work or not.
As long as wealth is transferred from the base of the pyramid to the psychopath war priests at the top, it’s mission accomplished.
Now, let’s look at the bright side.
Compared to boondoggles like the F-35 ($1.5 trillion) and spending a couple of decades and $2.3 trillion to kill people wearing sandals and armed with $150 AK-47s in Afghanistan*, this Anduril contract seems like a bargain.
—
* Same Taliban, same sandals, now with U.S. weapons costing an order of magnitude more and provided to them by the U.S. taxpayer: As Taliban takes over, some swap iconic AK-47s for made-in-America rifles.
Via: Anduril:
Related:
Major General Smedley Butler: War Is A Racket (1935)
President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Farewell Address (1961)
Rifle-Armed Robot Dogs Now Being Tested By Marine Special Operators
May 8th, 2024Via: The Warzone:
The United States Marine Forces Special Operations Command (MARSOC) looks to be the first organization within the U.S. military to be using rifle-wielding “robot dogs.” Other armed robotic K-9s have been explored by the U.S. military and shown off by foreign countries, in the recent past.
Eric Shell, head of business development at Onyx Industries which supplied the gun system for the dogs, confirmed to TWZ on the floor of SOF Week that they are in use with MARSOC. Shell noted that MARSOC has two robot dogs fitted with gun systems based on Onyx’s SENTRY remote weapon system (RWS) — one in 7.62x39mm caliber, and another in 6.5mm Creedmoor caliber. It’s unclear precisely how many other robotic dogs MARSOC may have at present, however, it appears likely that the two equipped with SENTRY are being tested by the command.
Gaza Mass Graves: Victims’ Hands Were Tied
May 8th, 2024Via: United Nations:
The development follows the recovery of hundreds of bodies “buried deep in the ground and covered with waste” over the weekend at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, central Gaza, and at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City in the north. A total of 283 bodies were recovered at Nasser Hospital, of which 42 were identified.
“Among the deceased were allegedly older people, women and wounded, while others were found tied with their hands…tied and stripped of their clothes,” said Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
More:
Netanyahu’s Mass Atrocity Machinery
Evidence of Torture as Nearly 400 Bodies Found in Gaza Mass Graves
Oklahoma Storm Had 3 Extraordinary Features, Including a “Wrong-Way” Tornado
May 8th, 2024Via: AccuWeather:
Hours after a tornado was documented in Tillman County, Oklahoma, on April 30, meteorologists and weather enthusiasts were enthralled by a severe thunderstorm in the same county because several rare meteorological phenomena, including double tornadoes, a tornado track that looped back on itself and an “anti-cyclonic” tornado, were documented.
…
The second tornado spawned by the Tillman storm spun the wrong way, exhibiting clockwise or “anti-cyclonic” movement. This is because the Coriolis Effect, which dictates rotation at the size of a tornado, is never 100 percent effective. It is estimated that only 1 to 2 percent of tornadoes rotate clockwise.
Cost of “The American Dream”
May 8th, 2024Via: End Of The American Dream:
According to a brand new report that was just released, it now takes over $100,000 a year for the typical family to live “the American Dream” in all 50 states, and in 29 of those states it actually takes over $150,000 a year…
A household would have to spend more than $150,000 a year to live the dream in 29 of the 50 states, according to an analysis published in April by the personal finance site GOBankingRates.
According to the report, the optimal American lifestyle would cost $137,842 a year in Ohio, $147,535 in Texas, $159,932 in Florida, $194,067 in New York and $245,723 in California.
Google Lays Off Hundreds of ‘Core’ Employees, Moves Some Positions to India and Mexico
May 8th, 2024One for your, “Laid Off Factory Workers Should Learn to Code” file folder.
Via: CNBC:
Just ahead of its blowout first-quarter earnings report on April 25, Google laid off at least 200 employees from its “Core” teams, in a reorganization that will include moving some roles to India and Mexico, CNBC has learned.
Record Wave of Americans Fled Big Cities for Small Ones in 2023
May 8th, 2024Via: Bloomberg:
Score a victory for Mayberry. America’s small towns, like the iconic setting of television’s The Andy Griffith Show from the 1960s, saw more in-migration in 2023 than larger areas for the first time in decades.
The remote work boom that prompted Americans to flee urban areas for mountain hamlets and seaside towns during the pandemic continued at least through last year, according to University of Virginia demographer Hamilton Lombard. An estimated 291,400 people last year migrated from other areas into America’s small towns and rural areas, which Lombard defines as metropolitan areas with 250,000 people or fewer.
That number exceeded net migration into larger areas for the first time since at least the 1970s, estimated Lombard, who works with the university’s Demographics Research Group.
And Now… The Blade-Less Swiss Army Knife
May 7th, 2024Via: ZeroHedge:
Victorinox Chief Executive Officer Carl Eisner told Swiss paper Blick on Monday that its Swiss Army Knife will soon be available without a blade due to mounting regulations in European and Asian countries amid a surge in violence.
“We are concerned about the increasing regulation of knives due to the violence in the world,” Elsener said, citing new laws in the UK and Asian countries that only permit knife-carrying for work or outdoor activities.
Eisner said, “In some markets, the blade creates an image of a weapon.”
Victorinox told Bloomberg, “The increasing regulation of knives in various countries represents a major challenge for the company.”
Unsafe & Ineffective
May 7th, 2024Via: Aubrey Marcus:
Finally.. a film about COVID-19, vaccines and our societal response that isn’t one sided, conspiratorial or condescending. Let’s look back with 2020 vision at the largest medical intervention in human history. @benjosephstew #COVID19 #SafeAndEffective #ChakarunaMedia pic.twitter.com/B4R075SZqi
— Aubrey Marcus (@AubreyMarcus) April 30, 2024
How Attackers Can Decloak Routing-Based VPNs For a Total VPN Leak
May 6th, 2024I’ve been advising Cryptogon readers not to trust VPNs for a couple of decades, but not for this reason.
My guess is that a lot of VPN admins are checking their configurations right now.
Even if this DHCP exploit is mitigated, it doesn’t change the fact that the VPN provider can see every site you visit* and it’s an act of faith on your part that the provider is not storing your activity.
*Unless you’re running Tor over it as well.
Via: Leviathan Security Group:
…there are ways an attacker who is on the same network as a targeted user might be able to become their DHCP server…
