Radar & camera can be degraded by snow/ice buildup. A grate that lets wet snow in is also going to be big enough to let rocks and other debris in.

Like snow or ice buildup causing issues with the camera, radar, etc.

huge heavy and slow steel boxes with a gun feel bad on a modern battlefield.

The M1 can achieve speeds of 60 MPH. Its stabilization system lets it fire accurately at targets 2 kilometers away while at those speeds. It has a 120mm cannon that can fire a range of anti-armor and anti-personnel munitions.

It’s far from slow, and is extremely capable.

Especially the police unions in Massachusetts, where they have a stranglehold on public works. Need to dig up a sidewalk to repair a water main? That’ll require a 2 person police detail for a minimum of 6 hours, and it’s all overtime pay.

Bet you can’t find civilian flagged anywhere in the state.

CDN & security companies like Akamai actually have data centers designed to intercept and “scrub” DDoS traffic. Akamai has a few dozen of them around the world. From their website:

Prolexic is the industry pioneer in cloud-based DDoS protection. Network traffic is directed in one of two ways via a border gateway protocol route advertisement change or DNS redirection (A record or CNAME record). Available as an always-on or on demand service, Prolexic offers flexible integration models based on the needs of a customer’s desired security posture across hybrid origins. With global high-capacity scrubbing centers in 32 metro locations, Prolexic can stop attacks closer to the source to maximize performance for users and maintain network resiliency through cloud distribution. Traffic is routed via anycast through the closest scrubbing center, at which the Akamai SOCC deploys proactive and/or custom mitigation controls designed to stop attacks instantly — ensuring fast and accurate DDoS defenses. Clean traffic is then returned to the customer origin via Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) tunnels, Layer 2 VLAN connections, and/or VIP-to-origin back-end mapping.

20 years of Black Friday traffic because some anonymous person put up realistic looking advertisements all over the city offering 90% off from 9:00 to noon.

I use an older version of Calibre that has a fairly robust plug-in to remove DRM. I use it to remove DRM from all my ebook purchases. That plug-in isn’t supported in newer versions of Calibre so I don’t upgrade.

BD is far from bullshit. I used to work across the street from them and saw them testing robots countless times in the parking lot and surrounding area. They were also nice enough to give me & a bunch of coworkers a tour of their labs. It’s pretty darned impressive what they’ve achieved in 3 decades of research. This recent news story shows a lot of the capabilities of their current generation Atlas robot.

You should check out this news story. It gives a lot more detail about their Atlas robot.

You should see just how far Boston Dynamics has progressed. They’ve been working on it for literally decades, and it shows. They may have humanoid AI robots working in automotive assembly lines within a year or two:

Can we put him in a jail cell next to Ye?

If it is remotely controllable then it can be exploited by adversaries.

That’s absurd. All it would take is one disgruntled worker to post proof about it. And foreign powers would pay handsomely for a spy or hacking group to provide details. It’s well known that countries like Russia, North Korea, Israel, etc. all have highly talented hacking groups on their payrolls. If they had the slightest feeling that the US implemented such kill switch technology then they’d all be doing everything they could to exploit it. It’s not worth the risk.

My wife got hers at 14 1/2. That was the legal age in Maine until the late 1980s.

This is the oath you take when joining the US Army:

I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.

The important part there is the mention of the UCMJ, which states that orders cannot be illegal, violate the Constitution, violate international law, etc.

A few months ago I went to a talk by Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian opposition leader. One thing that really struck me was when he pointed out that something like the last 6 regime changes in Russia (except maybe one) happened in periods lasting only 3 days. So you woke up on a Monday to the current regime, and by Thursday that regime was history and a new one was in power. I keep hoping to see this hold true again sometime soon.

This is exactly the first thing that popped into my mind when I heard what happened. I still clearly recall the WPRI news video of the fire mentioned in the Wikipedia article. That news crew had just shown up to report on the band that was playing, and they got clear footage of the nightmare. You could see bodies stacked up at the door as hundreds of people pushed to get out of the inferno… You can probably still find the video on smaller video sharing sites if you dare to go looking for it.

Roxy’s Arcade in Cambridge, MA uses tokens and I don’t see that changing any time soon. I also know a few places in MA with pinball machines that take quarters and I’d be surprised if they changed.

We’re in northeast MA. Here’s the theater we just found.

When my wife and I break down and go to an AMC theater we always plan to arrive 30 minutes after the “start time”. We still catch a trailer or two before the movie actually starts.

We just found an “art house” theater about 30 minutes away and saw Marty Supreme there last night. The theater probably seats about 80 people, the screen is maybe 15 feet wide. The sole guy working there (the owner maybe) was very welcoming, and concessions were reasonably priced. Two tickets & some snacks were still under $30. The guy also went up front to welcome everybody and point out the restrooms that were off to one side of the screen for those of us who had never been there before. Then he ran up to the booth to start the movie. Two trailers, no commercials, and the movie started. We’ll definitely be going back there.