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If you can’t beat them – join them. There’s no question that the entire world’s military strategists are looking at the rampant use of drone warfare in the Ukraine to see how modern battles will be fought.

While casual observers see the switch to low cost drones as a eyebrow raising development – military experts realize it’s a radical re-thinking of a modern battlefield. One in which the large, powerful fighting tools of the past are quickly becoming nothing more than expensive, defenseless targets.

Just like we’re seeing in the Ukraine, instead of wanting a force of slow-moving tanks or a fleet of big fighting and support vessels, you can do a lot more with a ton of unmanned attack drones. It’s the difference between 3 big guys in a bar against 1000 little guys. The tactics of a small, expendable swarm can often overwhelm even the best defended capital ship by sheer numbers. We’re already seeing swarm technology being used to blanket an area. Ukrainian forces have driven a truck full of 117 drones, let them loose, and took out a up to 40 high-end Russian bombers before anyone could react.

Experts have pointed out it would be very easy to develop a system of 100’s of drones that would swarm a building or event with facial detection systems and assassinate key targets – completely autonomously and impervious to even radio jammers. All with off-the shelf parts for a fraction of the cost of normal military equipment. With hundreds of kill bots incoming all at once, it would be hard for any defensive service to protect their key assets from every single one.

The navy is taking note too – with smaller, modular fighting units.

The wish list is now simple: Rear Adm. William Daly, head of the Navy’s surface warfare division, wants to amass a large number of small, modular unmanned boats that can be quickly equip with payloads that fit in common containers and are designed to confuse and swarm the enemy.

The admiral rightly says the new hybrid fleet does not need to include large and/or exquisite un-crewed platforms. He is very clearly saying the old multi-million/billion dollar efforts are a thing of the past. The focus instead is on building lots of these craft very quickly and cheaply.

This isn’t academic, we saw the launch of a Mobile Ship Target (MST) here in Portland this year. It’s designed to mimic the electronic, shape, and other properties/signatures of just about any ship so the Navy can practice using various experimental munitions against it.

It’s a fascinating development – and a somewhat frightening new reality of the kind of drone warfare world we’re entering.

Links:

• https://www.twz.com/air/navy-to-simplify-drone-ship-plans-focus-on-containerized-payloads-that-look-alike
• https://www.twz.com/sea/navy-unmasks-its-vision-for-fleet-of-uncrewed-modular-surface-attack-craft

Balatro will never be sold to any gambling companies or casinos. Ever. Even after its creator dies. Why? Because LocalThunk is so against that idea he’s written it into his will.

In this video from the Portland City Council, local Portland business owners describe the daily nightmares they deal with when running a business in 2025.

This is not hyperbole. It’s not ‘fake news’. It’s the real life stories told by local shop owners and workers getting guns and knives pulled on them, being assaulted, calling in people having serious mental health crises (screaming, stripping, masterbating, assaulting passerbys/employees, or standing nude in front of their shops) and the city police and services do nothing. Their shops experience regular break-ins they must pay for out of pocket, rampant shoplifting and violent confrontations, homeless campers right in front of their businesses that scare customers and employees, spending thousands out of pocket for emergency repairs, being dropped for insurance, cleaning up drug paraphernalia, vomit, human feces, and urine on a daily basis.

They report customer foot traffic dropping more than 50%. Workers are regularly threatened to the point the owners decide to close their downtown shops because they no longer could keep putting their workers in harms way. It’s probably why Portland now has one of the highest commercial vacancy rates in the country.

As someone that volunteers at a local public entity downtown in NW, I can confirm all of this is true. We had to deal with this on a DAILY basis. We often had to do twice daily sweeps around the building to clean up multiple piles of human feces, drug paraphrenia such as needles, foil, bloody bandages, etc. All of which are serious biohazards. Local “harm reduction” groups gave out free drug paraphernalia and open-air drug dealing was a daily morning ocurance – all within 100 feet of an elementary school. Even when filming drug dealers and submitting daily reports – police and harm reduction groups would not come by or do anything.

Children there would see open air drug use right outside the windows of their school – and it was all legalized by Measure 110. Calling cops or city services did nothing. Police response for dangerous individuals was upwards of an hour – if they came at all. Other city services would pander, victim blame, and ultimately never do anything. The problems have been going on for months to years now – with little end in sight.

The semi-repeal of Measure 110 helped – but Portland is still a deeply troubled city that I cannot recommend to anyone. This is especially true for anybody looking to start a local business.

Wild. Besides reading my favorite Compute! magazine and typing in programs in the 80’s and 90’s, Byte magazine was the source of computer information in that era. I was pretty young, so a good bit of it went over my head, but a lot of it was fascinating.

This website provides a visual, zoomable map that shows every page of every issue of BYTE starting from the front cover of the first issue to the last page of the last issue at the bottom.

Winning the lottery doesn’t seem like it would be up there in the ‘worst things’ category, but it turns out to be one of the worst thing that ever happened to most folks that win big lotteries. Even already wealthy people who ran multi-million dollar companies find their lives completely destroyed. Murder, constant lawsuits, and bankruptcy.

What are some of those statistics?

Large jackpot winners face double digit risk increases versus the general population to be a victim of:

1. Homicide (something like 20x more likely)
2. Drug overdose
3. Bankruptcy (how’s that for irony?)
4. Kidnapping

And triple digit increases versus the general population in:

1. Convicted of drunk driving
2. Being the victim of homicate. That rate goes up by a startling 120x at be killed at the hands of a family member
3. A defendant in a civil lawsuit
4. A defendant in felony criminal proceedings

In a surprising discovery, the worst enemy is usually yourself. Winners often suffer from drug overdoes, tax issues, dissolute and dangerous living that leads to death, or simply frittering it all away. Family, friends, and acquaintances will become an ever-present risk as well. If you win the lottery, you are 120 times more likely to be killed by a family member than before you won.

Even people that don’t know you will come out of the woodwork to sue you. In one case, a man settled multiple claims because husbands in his town had their wives leave them. Even though the lottery winner didn’t even know them. The ex-husbands sued the lottery winner simply because they claimed ‘jealousy’ of the lottery winner made their wives leave them for better prospects. Instead of fighting the frivolous cases, it was simply cheaper to just settle out of court for a few $10,000’s.

Articles:

• Luck of the Draw: True-Life Tales of Lottery Winners
• https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/24vzgl/comment/chba4bf/

Low Level does a very brief but decent introduction to reverse engineering binaries (on linux).

He doesn’t discuss it, but when reverse engineering it’s always good to start with what your goal is. There’s a variety of reason to reverse engineering at the binary level:

1. Learning how an algorithm or binary works
2. See what assembly code your compiler is generating (for optimization, performance analysis, etc).
3. Trying to debug or fix an issue without source
4. Trying to discover vulnerabilities in enemy systems
5. Trying to hack in/out behavior (copy-protection removal, remove checks that cause crashes, etc)

This is important, because each goal often focuses on a different set of reverse-engineering skills.

Real world reverse engineering also carries many possible legal dangers. In the past, companies reverse engineered mechanisms to compete against companies that had monopolies and ended up in massive lawsuits. Atari vs Nintendo lawsuit and Sega v. Accolade are good examples. The methods of doing legal reverse engineering is a complex legal topic that requires very carefully monitored and documented clean-room procedures.
It’s a fascinating world in which big companies to nefarious hackers engage in.

If there’s one thing James Bond has been known for – it’s his style. From cars, to clothes, to watches. Want to live like a modern day James Bond? Now you can at JamesBondLifesytle.com!

In Oct 2021, Turkish TikToker @dr.frex posted a screen recording of messages with a friend where they vocalized a song in the style of the game at different speeds. the ‘oiia oiia’ sound was born. Add a spinning cat, and you’ve created an massive internet meme.

As I have written about before, Bitcoin and similar digital currencies days are numbered with the increasing stability of quantum computers.

A renewed debate has started on exactly when quantum computers will be able to undermine the elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) and SHA-256 hashing algorithms that secure Bitcoin wallets and transactions. Some suggest may be just a few years while others believe we have several decades – but one thing is certain – the clock is ticking.

Scientists, financial analysts, and economists are watching quantum computing developments very closely as a quantum computing breakthrough would make crypto-currencies, NFTs, and other digital assets worthless overnight.

A nefarious organization/country with a quantum computer functional enough to crack even partial amounts of crypto currency might be able to steal billions in assets in hours or days – before anyone knows what is going on nor have any way to stop them. The effect would be nearly instantaneous drop to 0 for the value of any assets secured in this way.