You just missed my point about the 1.6MP elephant in the room.

For your information, a global shutter sensor is not required in that scenario.

A global shutter is advisable if you want to get detailed video of a fast moving object that fills a large percentage of the frame, without distorting the shape of the moving object. With rolling shutter, you still see, but get a distorted (elongated, stepped) moving object.

• Does a bullet missing Trump fill a large percentage of the frame? No.
• Do you need to see details of the bullet? No.
• Is Trump moving too fast to photograph without distortion? No.
• Do you need to autofocus on the bullet? No, and you can’t. It’s fine, you already focused on Trump.

It follows that you don’t need global shutter, and you don’t care about autofocus. Merely using fast exposure and having a sensitive sensor + big lens (enabling you to use fast exposure) it will be sufficient.

You also need luck, of course. I think the photographer who snapped that shot had a considerable amount of luck. They weren’t fumbling on their bag for a better X or Y. They were already taking a photo, most likely. Things just happened at the right time for them.

As for practicality of modular and DIY equipment, yes, it may not be everyone’s preference.

What makes you think OP is willing to deal with these?

I’m not interested in whether the OP is even interested in open architecture or DIY. I’m pointing out that alternatives exist, and they are decent alternatives.

Yeah, that absolutely can replace the gear that captured the photo of the bullet whizzing by Trump and won the Pulitzer prize.

Capturing a photo of a bullet that’s been slowing down for 300 meters is not a great technical feat. Try to buy a ballistics camera from Canon, see how much you end up paying (if they agree to sell).

P.S. To my recollection, one inch and 3/4 inch sensors are available for Pi. Note: this is experimental, but: https://github.com/will127534/OneInchEye

Autofocusing external lenses is a real problem. Fuck the lens makers indeed, as a result of which I’ve only used Raspberry Pi based systems with manual focus.

Depth of field is a property of the lens, not the sensor.

Sensors: if you want to take pictures in starlight, you can get IMX585 (hard due to market problems). If you want lots of pixels, 64 M is not a problem. If you want to photograph a bullet, you can get the low-pixel global shutter sensor, there is code around to take video at 500 fps (disclaimer: tiny video, extreme light level required).

Cameras can be homebrewed, big integrators like Canon charge too much.

A tip: you can build your own camera using a Raspberry Pi. There are kits. There are lenses and sensors which impress.

They should. Some minimal physical protection may be needed to meet, consider, decide and publish a decision (nothing more) if things get really bad.

If they can modify the US Marshals service get independence from the DoJ, that seems reasonable.

Depends.

If an overwhelming crowd can come together fast - arrest can be blocked and persons de-arrested. But it has to be overwhelming, so that no cop would think of aiming a gun.

Throughout the history of resisting repression - this arrangement is hard to spontaneously produce.

As a minimum, people would have to organize with the clear goal of interrupting ICE raids. They’d likely establish a means of communcation (most likely a phone app backed up by mesh networking) and dedicate resources to offering each other legal assistance later. Possibly, everyone who goes to jail for the hypothetical anti-ICE movement should be celebrated like a rock star (with their permission) and their families should be helped through hardship, to encourage people to undertake risky actions.

The other option - working underground - would be exhausting either ICE or a local police force by persistent sabotage against them. Neutralizing the ICE would have the aim of them organizing less raids, neutralizing police might have the aim of them not backing ICE raids. While more straightforward to accomplish, this approach would bring about high risk (e.g. accusations of terrorism) to people carrying out sabotage. To avoid this, sabotage would have to be carefully considered and low-key. Perhaps, for example, it would aim to upset the agency’s ability to process data - to know whom it actually wants to deport.

Of course, with local police, one should consider the potential outcomes of successfully neutralizing police: both their negative and positive functions would be neutralized, and people might start complaining about crime.

A curious tactical perspective becomes evident when thinking about this: police resources could be diverted in peaceful ways, with false reports.

When I think of how one might decrease police responsiveness to an ICE backup request, I can’t avoid thinking of nice movie scenarios: e.g. while some people are busy obstructing an ICE raid, some other reliably anonymous people divert police resources by calling 911 and reporting various violent situations elsewhere. Others create a traffic jam, effectively isolating the street involved from motor vehicle traffic. Backup will have to arrive on foot, after they’re done chasing the hostage-taking bank robbers who did not exist. :)

Realizing that they reproduce via parthenogenesis, and this involves laying eggs, I think the appropriate title would be “she big, she attac”. :)

It’s a strange species. Common ancestor around 1988.

It’s widely known. Attained education correlates with preference for left-wing policies, and in the US case, with opposition to Trump.

a sample from Newsweek’s “Trump approval tracker”

Many of the people responding to the poll may not have ever encountered the claims they were asked about.

However, they do offer a “not sure” option, which can be taken if a person knows they’re not informed.

Gullibility appears to cut across party lines, with respondents identifying as Democrats just as likely as Republicans to believe at least one of the 10 false claims.

Republicans were, though, more likely to believe Russian disinformation claims than their Democratic counterparts, with 57.6% falling for at least one Russian disinformation claim, compared with just 17.9% of Democrats and 29.5% of people who didn’t identify with one particular party.

I looked at the 10 false claims used for the test. Most of them were ridiculously easy to dismiss as false. The only one I had difficulty with was identifying whether social security cuts were part of “Project 2025” agenda, due to the agenda being very extensive (the source says 922 pages) and me not living in a country that it’s about. Thus I’d have answered “not sure”. I’d have also answered “not sure” about the birth place of some terrorist.

If people stumble on these, people are really poorly informed or unable / unwilling to inform themselves.

Some guesses.

• the US media environment is very entertainment-focused?

• the US education system leaves things to be desired?

• the US population spends a high amount of time in social media echo chambers?

• do Republicans spend more of online time in bot-infested places?

• do they have lower bot recognition and fact checking skills?

• are they drinking the kool-aid because their great leader drank it, so it seems legit?

In general, propaganda works. That’s why people pay for it. When you have a delicate equilibrium and you can push it past the tipping point with little effort, that’s the most economical way of disabling an opponent. :( Using force would require a spending a trillion, but using disinformation, you can get outcomes with a tiny amount.

Russia is spending significant amounts on promulgating misinformation in the U.S. Last year, for example, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted two people for funneling nearly $10 million through a Tennessee-based content creation company to publish misinformation about Ukraine.

Is that an accurate representation of what his tattoos mean? I have no idea, I’m not an expert on gang symbology.

I’m not an expert either, but I’m from another country. Does the gang speak English? If it’s an Ecuadorian gang, why would they use English abbreviations in their symbol language? It seems natural for them to use Spanish. :)

Anyone’s hand, presented by the man whose first column in the “customs tariff table” was a ridiculous lie made up of cooked numbers (trade deficit instead of tariff rate).

There’s no reason to put a grain of trust in him.

The three companies met with top officials in the Trump administration and the Pentagon in recent weeks to pitch their plan, which would build and launch 400 to more than 1,000 satellites circling the globe to sense missiles and track their movement, sources said.

A separate fleet of 200 attack satellites armed with missiles or lasers would then bring enemy missiles down, three of the sources said.

People in one forum speculated about Trump’s “Golden dome” fantasy a few months ago. I did a calculation on the back of a napkin. My result: not 1000 or 200, but about 9000 interceptor vehicles are required for good coverage. Very lucrative contract, very impractical system - they’ll drive the US bankrupt doing this.

And what will a nuclear-armed adversary do? At first, they might do an atmospheric nuclear detonation high over their own country - to get a little privacy. After that, a small number of missiles will launch on flight paths not leading to the target - to create gaps in the sensor and interceptor network by detonating near them in space. Maybe a few minutes later, the main attack will follow. When approaching the target area, the vanguard of the main attack will detonate in atmosphere to ionize air (turn it opaque to radar). Nuclear weapons do not need sensors to navigate or communicate, they use inertial navigation and remain silent. Interceptors need to see and communicate, which can be denied with nuclear weapons.

End result: an advanced attacker will have to spend about 10 minutes to penetrate this defense. It only buys more time to launch a nuclear counter-attack (which could be launched anyway, based on mere observation and early warning).

Satellites are bound by their orbits to spend a lot of time in useless places from the viewpoint of defending a location. This kind of a system makes the defending side over-invest in infrastructure, which is not economical.

Short answer: if they got it bad, they’re dead or in a nursing home. That’s why they aren’t walking in a mall. They ran out of health.

Long answer: in recent times, there seems to be lower threshold of diagnosis.

But if he truly thinks he can pinpoint exposures that increase autism - things like the exposure to tetraethyl lead which probably increased criminality and decreased mental health - good luck for combing scientific studies. There may be some. But if he’s gonna rewind the age old “vaccines cause” record and replay it, nah, I won’t be listening.

If you mean Trump, then they have ruled against him on occasions.

Notes: presidential pardon is available for all offenses against the United States. All offenses against the US are tried by a jury. Contempt of court is not tried by a jury. Thus, is pardon available for contempt of court?

I don’t know. When it’s time, the SC will tell.

Shipping it with Linux is the easiest way to convince a consumer that it does run Linux. :)

Listing living people as dead in an official database is 99% likely a crime.

What I’m about to describe is my drone’s parachute release system. :)

To release something soft, you would typically have a concave surface or channel on the underside of the drone. Like a bowl upside down, or a pipe cut in half into U-shape and placed upside down. Obviously, for a water balloon - no sharp bits allowed. A parachute requires a wide strap to hold it, tensioned with rubber or made of rubber. Since a balloon is elastic, I think a balloon could do with an inelastic strap.

Anyway, the strap would end at some distance with a solid endpiece, the purpose of which is to distribute load. It might be triangular, circular, anything. The endpiece would end with a loop of string. The loop of string would go though a hole in a holding surface (don’t pull knots through a hole, they can get stuck). On the other side of the holding surface, a pin bent of wire would lock the loop of string. Tension and a slight bend in the pin would ensure it won’t come loose with vibration. Once a servo pulls the pin out of the loop, the weight of the object being released (or the elastic force of rubber) would pull the loop of string out through the surface. The strap would come loose and the object would drop out of its upside down bowl or channel, releasing the parachute (or balloon).

However, this is just one out of dozens of possibilities. It’s relatively beginner-friendly however, hard to get wrong.

Then you can learn to fly drones. You might stand a chance against a combat helicopter with a good drone. :) And if things don’t hit the fan, you just have a nice and peaceful hobby. :)