Fireworks rocket do not cost as much. But if you want high precision and high speed, that simply is expensive. Also the area is of course restricted making it more expensive as most states do not want DIY rockets everywhere.
"I started to believe that every vegetable can be delicious as long as you bake it!"
Baking is good, but I also came to another conclusion - vegetables that are disgusting if they are cooked to a slimy paste, can be delicious eaten raw in a salad!
"Realistically, I doubt there’s ANY system out there will be able to counter small weaponized drones that are flown manually "
Why would lasers not work?
Those cheap drones are made from plastic, if you have a laser powerful enough and a target guidance system (like a camera and a PI) - then you would just need enough of them.
At long distances the small cross section of the drone requires tight focusing (expensive optics) or a high power, preferably pulsed laser (expensive laser) or both.
Not impossible but many times more expensive than the drone
At some point it itself becomes a target. It has to be able to get almost 100% kills, otherwise the enemy can swarm it with cheap drones, destroy the expensive installation, then continue as before.
Many times more is about what it comes out to. There are some companies selling laser defense systems but they are many times more than cheap FPV drones with grenades attached.
At very short distances and with a lot of power, perhaps. Despite what we see in movies laser beams diverge. And then with distance it’s harder to track moving objects precisely to hit the same spot long enough to melt it.
At that point might as well spend the money to use a kinetic weapon with basic tracking and ballistic calculations.
Powerful enough laser and accurate enough targeting system is easy to say, but not easypeasy to do. Dumping thousands of Joules on a tiny moving target is much easier to do with explosives.
- are cheap to shoot
- do not fall on someones head if they miss (unlike firing bullets and rockets at a drone that will come down again)
- do hit the target immediately if aimed right
Problems with lasers are, cooling, power consumption limiting mobile use - and indeed targeting and fog and clouds.
Lasers won’t effectively work, it’s a two part equation, detection and targeting. To neutralize a target using a ground-based laser, you need an enormous power, and still it won’t penetrate a high distance/altitude in the sky, environment factors also to be considered. The detection part is even harder, these small 8in drones are almost impossible to detect unless you can hear it, aka it’s over, because they can fly at 250km/h, too small to be visually detected, acoustic sensors will fail to detect them, and radar will miss it as a false negative since it’s the size of a bird. I have seen some systems trying to combine all that to detect them plus AI for flying pattern detection, but they are far from being reliable in practical applications.
8 inches drone cannot carry much of explosive at all. In order to dump 10 kg load of explosives, you need an “agricultural drone” one that can carry 45kg, since the additional mechanisms and their batteries (and the drone’s backup batteries) are heavy.
Last week I was flying the argas! But I think you are misunderstanding, these are suicide drones not dropping the payload kind, and 8in can very well carry a deadly explosive, mostly against personnel, vehicles ones you get it bigger but not by much, from 12-18in max.
Unless you mean it just can't detect objects that small, my guess is we'll see things calibrate toward a lot more birds being cooked in active war zones vs drones with explosives being let through.
They can fly at 350kph, check this redbull drone that was used in Olympics, acceleration of 100-300kph in just two seconds faster than any F1 car. Now add a bit of payload and you get the 200-250 speed range, still crazy fast.
Several people in the comments are focusing too much on the 10 years and on if that’s an acceptable trade-off.
It’s worth pointing out no one knew it would be 10 years, not even the judge. The sentence wasn’t “10 years”, it was “indefinitely until we get an answer”. It just so happens that 10 years is when this judge decided “alright, we’re not going to get an answer, no point in the jail time”.
I think anyone would. But that’s not the scenario here. The question is: would you spend your last decade in a cell just to have the "satisfaction" of knowing where some gold is buried?
I don't think there exists an amount of money I'd take in exchange for 10 years in jail, at any point in my life. 10 years is a long time.
And sure, it depends on the jail... Can I like go for at least a short bike ride or go running? Can I have my computer and internet and Hacker News? Can I drink my oolongs and pu-erhs? Is the food delicious? But then it's not much of a jail anymore...
If you aren't free to leave, and you're kept apart from society it's a jail. No one is ever sentenced to "10 years of eating bad food". Our prison system may torture people, it may feed them maggot infested food, it may deny them healthcare or safety, but that's not justice and it's not the punishment they were given, it's just an abuse they're made to suffer because the cruel and the greedy have been able to get away with it.
If we've determined that somebody is too dangerous to live with the rest of our society there's no reason at all that they should have to be miserable or suffer needlessly. It's enough that they are kept away from us so that we're safe from them. Their actions would have required us to take their freedom, but they should be able to make the best of their situation and not be subjected to inhumane treatment or abuse.
If we feel we need to jail people temporarily as a punitive measure it's enough to keep them locked up, separated from their loved ones, and unable to do what they want or go where they want. The only people who'd think losing your freedom isn't a punishment are those who don't value freedom. Most people really do know it's a punishment, but they just want to see people suffer far beyond what their sentence calls for or the law should ever allow.
The nice thing about not being in jail is that you have the freedom to choose where and how you live. Feel free to move into a shack in the middle of the woods away from everyone. Plenty of people make the choice to live as hermits or shutins because they don't want to deal with other people or the demands being a part of a community places on them.
Well, it’s more that there will be a specific society that you’ll be forced to be a part of. You can try to keep to yourself but you’ll still be living, eating, showering, and so on in rather cramped conditions with many others.
You can get decent food, good education, internet access, bike rides and running in Norwegian prisons - you're still there for {X} years (depending on behaviour).
Well, stationary bike riding at least - not all of them have large yards that take a good while to cycle about.
> But then it's not much of a (US) jail anymore...
exactly - these are Norwegian gaols. They started out much like US gaols but once it came clear how poorly they performed (wrt good of community rather than pockets of BigBarsCo.) they were overhauled:
I think many people who have children would gladly do 10 year in prison at age 60 if it meant they could leave $400m in their estate. If we pretend for the sake of the argument (unrealistically) that there's no major ethical concern, and that the money can actually be kept afterwards, then I would definitely make that sacrifice for my children. They are more important to me than my own personal comfort.
Maybe, maybe not. At age 60 my kids will be grown up and living their own independent lives. They might even live a long distance from me. There are a lot of variables which might mean I don't see them very frequently anyway. Of course there will still be something lost if they can only visit me in jail for 10 years. But at age 60, I'll statistically only be around for another 20 years anyway and if I'm unlucky, maybe far less than that.
On the other hand, $400m can ensure that for the rest of their lives they and their children and their grandchildren don't have to worry about being able to afford a home, good schools, good healthcare, etc. With future issues such as the rise of AI, global warming, and the erosion of international law, there are many dangers ahead including potential mass disruption to job markets and ability to earn a living. I'd rest easier knowing that I've given my descendants a solid chance of surviving all that, even if it means affecting my relationship with them for 10 years. It's a balance between pros and cons.
I would not assume that giving my kids $400 million would be a net benefit to them.
Now to be fair I might be wrong, since I’ve neither researched this nor given it much thought. Maybe there is research on deca- and centimillionaire heirs that shows positive effects of money on life satisfaction, happiness, health and other life outcomes. However I suspect it works similarly to sheltering kids from adversity, failure and hardship in general: disadvantages them psychologically and leads to more problems down the line.
Can I use the 1 trillion dollars to make my jail stay more comfortable? If not, then I'm not interested. What would I do with 1 trillion dollars to offset the missing 10 years?
Perhaps if there was a good chance I could prolong my "still healthy" years by 20 years or more, I should take it. But it seems like disappearing for 10 years would break a lot of things. People will die, friends will move on... sounds like a rather bad deal still.
> What would I do with 1 trillion dollars to offset the missing 10 years?
Buy every politician and the media to become the effective ruler of your country, then use your influence to improve the lives of your compatriots, overhaul the entire political system and media to add safeguards to prevent anyone from ever again doing what you did, create a just society and become a beacon of hope to the world.
I would not want a quadrillion dollars in the first place, I would first try to reduce it to an amount that I can maintain relatively hassle-free and under-the-radar. But even for that perfect amount, I can't think of an age where I'd want to spent 10 years in prison, no matter how comfortable it is.
Yes. Their brilliant 5D chess moves I can see at the gas station every day. Their long term plan is clearly to drive everyone away from the fossil industry and towards renewables.
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