Notices by Eleanor Saitta (dymaxion@infosec.exchange), page 3

@isaackuo
I think with r&d time and volume to get the quirks out, tricopters might win — slightly more complex, but less battery (and thus more payload) for the same weight and perf envelope. I don't see much going further afield than that winning soon, though.
@graydon @wonka @dr2chase @cstross

@isaackuo
See up thread — an absolute minimum hardware cost terminal guidance package that e.g. might not even be able to handle a bounding box in a gps-denied environment, because good inertials are expensive and video terrain guidance is expensive at the resolution needed.
@graydon @wonka @dr2chase @cstross

@quinn
❤️❤️❤️

@Leah96xxx
No.
@Xavier @krypt3ia

@isaackuo
Definitely, with sufficient limitations. It feels like a lot of the lethality is down to the precision of fully-intelligent terminal guidance. As a jamming backup it's an on obvious win, but as a primary, it's less clear.
@wonka @graydon @dr2chase @cstross

@isaackuo
Yeah. I feel like the ground environment is a lot more complex, though — like, yes, if you're using this in the context of an initial push on a trench line or defense against the same, sure, but once you're in the middle of breaking through or reacting to contact in a disordered environment, or in basically any urban context at all, it's going to be a lot messier, especially if you're taking advantage of them as light standoff weapons and running them a couple km out
@wonka @graydon @dr2chase @cstross

@whvholst
They also don't want to make it trivial for the conscripts they're pouring into the meat grinder to defect.
@cstross @graydon @dr2chase @isaackuo

@wonka
Not having effective iff or visual human confirmation means you turn your semi-autonomous munitions into fratecide machines.

Shockingly, there are reasons for many of these laws and reasons why states signed them that don't have anything to do with human rights, too.
@graydon @dr2chase @cstross @isaackuo

@cstross
That's a war crime.
@graydon @dr2chase @isaackuo

@graydon
The Geneva convention is pretty damn firm on the requirement to positively identify a target as a combatant, notwithstanding the massive criminal negligence we've seen from the US and Israel there, and even the Israelis are still meticulously faking a paper trail. I think there will be a lot of hesitancy to implement something that dumb, and even if you did, you'd need to implement serious IFF systems in them, which adds cost and attack surface. IFF hardware is usually pretty heavily protected with self-destroy-on-tamper devices etc, which is hard to do when you need it on munitions you're buying by the 100k, not to mention key distribution, etc. It's not that this is impossible, but it's neither cheap nor easy. Yes, folks outside of conventional militaries may do this stuff anyway, but it's not a straightforward set of choices even there — human in the loop solves a ton.
@dr2chase @cstross @isaackuo

@beebalm
Monotonically weirding vibes

@jcalpickard
It is.
@hugo

@skry
It wasn't, actually, but should have been. Also, lol, the far right texts that come up when you look to buy a copy...

@li5a
"As a matter of personal policy, messages that were not written will not be read and are not considered as either a question or request that requires a response nor as a meaningful reply. Repetition will result in all messages from the sender being dropped unread."

@djcapelis
Woah, that's a huge difference! Cool!

@matthew_d_green
Only when dealing with stuff made by Americans, and occasionally for e.g. 1/4-20 in photo gear

@hacks4pancakes
One of my best clubbing lifehacks, right after the pre-dancing ibuprofen, was starting to bring a few of the fizzy electrolyte tablets with me to add to water while I'm dancing

@eldang
Handled by a different department, I expect

@eldang
Seeing like a sufficiently large state

@beebalm
*listens intently*