Was anyone else disturbed when they zoomed in to be able to see into people's houses from vantage points miles and miles away? To me, this means if you can see anything out your window, someone can be looking in, no matter how far away the mountain/building might be.
Thanks a lot PhaseOne, for ending privacy in our own homes. This will definitely be abused....to me it already has been here. I doubt they have releases from those people they zoomed in on.
Nice pictures though!

zoom zoom! *quality adrenalin rush

I hate this style of editing.

1. Halfway through the final word or a sentence, zoom in.
2. Halfway through the final word of the next sentence, zoom out.
3. Goto 1.

I agree with your general point.

I personally would never consider 'replacing' the A10 with the F35.

But I still think you don't design weapons for what you need now, but to be ready for what you could need in the future.

Su-35 / Mig35, pak-fa, J-10, J-20, fighter tech is moving along in the world. The goal of systems like the F35/22 is to remain superior in any theoretical/potential future conflict. The only thing the F22/35 have to do with today's conflicts is the possibility to be shoehorned into dropping bombs on some scare crows in the middle of nowhere.

Sure, people pick on the F35 for being fat and happy - but fighters are more than turn turn turn turn shoot. They are systems to sense/detect, share info, build a battle field picture, jam opponents, strike the opponent's sensors, build situational awareness while denying the opponent his own SA. They build an environment where your forces can maneuver around enemy forces, strike key locations, and leave (without an actual fight), so that the enemy eventually finds himself with nothing left to defend, and they just quit without ever fighting. Modern fighters are an information system as much as a weapons platform.

Even in WW2 the powers learned the lesson that a good fighter is not necessarily a good pure dog fighter. The zero was the best turning fighter of the war - and it sucked. US planes would just not bother dogfighting with it. US planes would fly high above, dive down onto a zero, shoot at it, fly right by, and zoom back up. They didn't have to dogfight, because they had more speed and altitude, and the zero was helpless, it was a fighter stuck playing defense in air to air combat.

Times changed, today's tactics are not speed and altitude, they are situational awareness and detectability. It's the kind of fighting the F35 is tailored for, and it's not worth being too hard on it for not being ideal for more classical combat applications.

-scheherazade

"Burning behind me is eight and a half tonnes of heroin, opium, hashish and other narcotics which have been stolen from their rightful owners and destroyed in an act of vandalism so tremendous it amounts to a crime against humanity.

In this much larger pyre lie the smouldering corpses of those responsible. After witnessing the execution of their spouses and children, their skin was carefully flayed from their bodies, their eyes and genitals were removed and their bones were slowly ground into powder."

(Cut to footage of thousands of terrified people being herded toward a gigantic concrete pit. Bulldozers force them over the edge as the narration continues:)

"Those who enter first die quickly. Eventually their bodies cushion the fall of those behind, who are suffocated and crushed in their turn by the weight of ever more flesh."

(Cut to the pit being capped and sealed, the cries of those still alive inside are abruptly silenced. Zoom out to reveal dozens more exactly alike beside it; further to show the vast complex of huts and barbed wire fences, train lines and guard towers built to accommodate the multitude who pour in every day.)

"Each pit has a capacity of one million. There are sixty here and this is the correction centre of just one minor country. Thousands more are under construction worldwide."

Maybe he got so high he saw a better world. Of course he couldn't stop giggling.

My buddy Mike Garfield, over at globalish says about this video:

"t’s that time of the year again: since 2008 (a million years ago!), DJ Earworm’s mashup mania crescendos once a year to form an epic audio collage that features Billboard’s favorite 25, all woven into one symphonic DJ mix. It’s like a Google Earth view of the musical identity of young Americans – by zooming out until a year of singles happens in four minutes, culture seems like nature, and the spirit of the times shines through the often-mediocre music Earworm brings together. Seeing Earth from space, we found a new identity beyond the nation states; a similar escape into low orbit around Pop reveals the flavor of the age with more appeal and sentiment than year-end news reviews.
It isn’t merely that “United States of Pop” resamples factory-assembled dross to offer tunes more interesting than their gathered parts. “Do What You Wanna Do” sings volumes about how and who we are right now, the character of mainstream culture we can’t see until it’s past, the air that we’ve been breathing without paying much attention. The cynical might say it demonstrates how all this music sounds the same, how easily it’s recombined – and while that’s definitely true, it’s also and more deeply true that we’re in this together, and will be remembered sharing space on stage as actors in a common play of history. Here is a window into how this moment will be seen, in digest form, the way we now look back on 1969. But go back and look at the mixes from 2008 – 2013, and a trend is obvious: even lousy music’s getting better. It’s an optimistic sign that we are getting deeper as a culture. Let’s hope.
Earworm’s genius lies not only in up-cycling tracks I’d rather never hear again as standalone recordings, but also in transforming the familiar and mundane into a damn-near magical homage to each year’s zeitgeist. This must be what an end-of-life review feels like: everything remembered and forgotten rushes back for one last joyous and nostalgic celebration.
Here’s to the change we all seek in 2015."

This guy's editing style drives me bananas. He speaks one sentence, cuts to a zoom to interrupt himself with the next sentence, then he interrupts that sentence, and again cuts to a zoom out to speak the next sentence. Repeat.

No man, that body armour, those boots...I'd harvest the bones of a thousand murdered infants to build our bed if that's what it took. Do you think that's what she wants?

I had to go rewatch this. It's practically perfect. Not an origin story, no romance subplot, no compromise. Just a day in the life of Judge Dredd. Love it, but my favourite Dredd story was told in rhyme:

They'd been waiting there since nightfall for the Sharks to come along,
They knew they'd have to pass this stretch of street.
So they'd sharpened up their stickers and they'd brought along their bars,
And they were wearing steel-tipped stompers on their feet.

There was Big Frank Zit and Faceache, Crazy Joseph with his spear,
The Dixon Boys were there and Billy Rat.
Ike the Spike had brought his sister with her homemade ghetto blaster,
And the Ghoul had put new rivets in his bat.

Now it wasn't nothin' personal that they had against the Sharks,
Any bunch of dead-end spugs would do.
'Cos there was nothing they liked better than to mash and bash and stomp,
Same as any normal Mega-City juves.

"A-rumbling! A-rumbling! We love to go A-rumbling!
("AAAH!")
We love to lay in ambush in the night!
("AAAA!")
A-rumbling! A-rumbling! The Zits were born for rumbling!
(SMAK!)
There's nothing we like better than a fight!"
(KRAK!)

Then a headlight pierced the darkness - a rider gaunt and grim,
Daystick drawn and ready in his hand.
     The chin belonged to Dredd,
     And the voice as well, which said:
"You creeps can do your rumbling in the can!"

"It's just one judge!" cried Cindy Spike and opened with her blaster -
"I'll send him back to Central in a sack!"
(SPOING! "AAAAAAA!")
But Dredd's bike absorbed the blast and laid her on the street,
With tyre marks running right across her back.

Then the judge got down to business and his daystick rose and fell,
Striking out at every head he saw.
For though the Zits launched the attack, the Sharks were fighting back -
And self defence is no defence in law!

As the heap of bodies mounted, Big Zit could see his Waterloo,
Waiting just one station down the line.
Oh, sure, he loved to rumble - but he preferred to be on top...
"Let's scram and live to fight another time!"

("Dredd to Control! We got forty-plus juve rumblers fleeing east through Bernstein. Zits and Sharks, back-up required."
"Wilco, Dredd!"
"Med squads and meat wagons to Moreng Alley. Estimate twenty casualties, more to follow."
"Control to all units area Bernstein. YPs on the run."
VRMMMM!
"Pick 'em up!")

In the space of sixty seconds there was a judge on every street.
From watching bays others scanned the slab -
"We got two Zits runnin' fast though the Tamblin Underpass!"
"Krupke here! I got 'em in the bag!"
(THUNK! THUNK!)

They cut them off at Sondheim and they mopped them up on Wood,
On Pedway 12 they corned Crazy Joseph.
He tried to make a stand - but a spear's not worth a damn,
When it's up against a judge's high explosive.

The Ghoul surrendered quietly, he didn't have much choice -
Ike the Spike tried to scale the sector wall -
("Save your bullet, he'll never make it." "Oh no! AAAAAAAAAAAAH!" SPLATT!)
The Dixon Boys all copped it when they tried to hitch a ride,
On the 2020 Zoom to Bernstein Halt.

Big Zit thought he'd play it clever, the law was everywhere,
The safest thing for him to do was hide -
Dredd tracked him down on infrared - "Don't bother to come out!"
"The best place for trash like you is inside!"

In minutes flat they'd caught them, every Shark and every Zit.
To Dredd it fell to ladle out the years -
"Twenty years apiece for Cindy Spike, Billy Rat and Ghoul."
An extra ten left Big Frank Zit in tears.

For Faceache minus half his face, for the hapless Dixon Boys,
For Ike impaled so cruelly on his spike,
For Crazy Joe with his gaping hole, there'd be one final rumble,
Along the last conveyor belt at Resyk.

A-rumbling! A-rumbling! They loved to go A-rumbling!
But the Zits will go A-rumbling no more!
A-rumbling! A-rumbling! They loved to go A-rumbling!
But they should've known they couldn't buck the law!

Gruber is a type of statist identified in a cartoon. Obama too, and pretty much most of the liberal elite. The people are too stupid to rule themselves so the elite must trick or force them into submission. For their own good, of course. Gruber doesn't even care to hide it. If Republicans really wanted to, they could repeal Obamacare. But do they really want to? They would have to wait until next election and get 60 Senators. And maybe elect Rand Paul.

Yeah, but they are looking for funding, so someone is going to pony up. I watched the video. Most of what they show is a Hubsan FPV quad that you can get through places like Banggood it uses a spreadspectrum 5.4 system to broadcast the video and a 2.4 system for control, but it does not have any autonomous capabilities. Hubsan makes some of the best stuff out there and we work very closely with them. The wrist thing is cludgey, and while it conveys the idea (You can see the needed twist I was talking about), it wont get them anywhere near their presented final design. Wifi would be an option, but it would require a wifi hotspot be built into the quad. I know we aren't talking about components that require a bunch of power, but we are talking about small batteries, so every mV counts. Especially for something that is wearable.
Now the Hexo+ is very much like the Airdog. Both seem very viable and are using existing technologies. My only concern about either is what do they do about object avoidance and low battery response. In either situation you can wind up losing the vehicle or injuring someone. Most higher end quadcopters have the ability to Return To Home (RTH) which is great since the pilot is in a stationary position, but put a pilot on the move and things get weird. If you are out surfing and the quad gets a low battery warning due to either a battery failure or having been waiting for 30 minutes for you to catch a wave, where does it go? It could go back to the take-off position, but if you drifted from there then it will need to calculate that distance and make sure it can get back. Salt water and electronics don't play well together. If you take your quad with you for a ride on a skateboard down the boardwalk, how do you make sure it doesn't hit a light post or a tree while it is zipping after you? You could fly at a higher altitude, but the zoom lens on the camera may not be enough. Hexo+ has a video of the founder riding a skateboard while the quad films. Notice that he stops short of going into the wooded area. I wonder why?
There are issues, but at least in both cases I think they are starting from proven technologies and have footprints that are achievable.

No kidding. Shit like this hidden behind the "wall of blue" is such a betrayal of public trust. It takes egregious stories like this for them to ever do anything about it. (Which, fortunately, sometimes they actually do.)

edit: Jesus, I watched a second time and it's brutally clear that the camera is actively manned (pan/zoom), and that there are at least three officers physically present. Yeah, egregious is the word.

Increase breast size! Zoom away from the unsightly wrinkles! Enchance!

Zoom zoom.

Imagine the components that could be made though.

From Cameras to speakers. this style of device could be the next wave towards a true tri-corder device.
One device that transforms to the niche of every user. fully customizable hardware.

The best part is the consumer can upgrade the parts they care about the most. One person may remove the camera, the next will insert a 50megapixel zoom lens camera. It's up to the developing community to devise the components but the entire concept is sound!
Think of a musician, maybe they could snap in a mini keyboard, or an advanced Mic, or maybe some Bose speakers.
A doctor could snap in a mini scanner or blood testing device.
An engineer could have tools that he may need or there could be tools aimed at any job or hohby out there.

Fully customizable.....