In an economic battle, I continue wondering why Ukraine has interceptors which detonate instead of being armed with projectiles. High speed cameras and low latency bridgewire ignition, coupled with AI targeting should enable single shot targeting with high probability of success. Multiple reusable interceptors seems like a better solution than expendable. At the same build rate, the number of interceptors per incoming drone will grow over time, instead of maintaining equivalence.
I've wondered the same thing. After watching the footage of some of these drone intercepts I realized the camera view interceptors are very erratic. My guess is that shooting a drone down from another cheap interceptor drone is just too difficult to do reliably. I understand that the cost of the interceptors are preferable than the cost of letting them hit their targets, and I understand that they are still an order of magnitude cheaper than the long-range Geran drones they are shooting down.
Given that they show footage of men shooting down similar drones from airplanes, perhaps they can eventually build a larger more stable platform with a more reliable aim using projectiles.
I also wondered the same until I saw that Rheinmetall produced that type of defense system you describe (I think in 2024 or so). And I think that except for Rheinmetall, nobody gives them this type of weapon (seems other countries have something similar), but it's probably a handful of them deployed in maybe very few locations.
I don't think it's that simple to build it, otherwise they would have all done it.
The problem with that is that behind the Rheinmetall brand name it's actually made by Switzerland's former Oerlikon before the Rheinmetall acquisition, and Switzerland doesn't sell military gear to countries currently at war due to its neutrality status. So for Ukraine it might as well be vaporware as they aint getting it (officially).
I assume the Skyrangers delivered to Ukraine are gonna be laundered Swiss-made AA guns, imported into Germany, assembled in Germany and exported as a "German Made" weapon system, to get around Swiss export restrictions
I think the current interceptors are optimized for one way attack - just enough flight time to catch the target and detonate. Any extra systems (such as guns or recovery hardware) make the interceptor more expensive.
Also these kamikaze drones are not flying in huge flocks like WW2 bomber that tried to cover each other with machine guns - even if a gun armed interceptor shoots one down, it might not be able to intercept another during the raid.
Some bigger, L-39 sized jet drones on the other hand could be quite capable, possibly launching separate one-way interceptors on top of guns.
More moving parts would mean a much more complex system which would heighten maintenance cost and likely lower successful interceptions per working system significantly.
I'm sure the Ukrainians can draw two curves and see where they intercept
Was this "tent city"? I recall "tent city" was a Joe Arpaio creation that was ultimately closed down in 2017 after he lost reelection as sheriff. My closest experience with "tent city" was when a relative got busted for DUI and ended up spending a weekend there. Was quite the deterrent, as it should be, and his drunk driving was dramatically curtailed. Ultimately that's good for society.
Why didn't they select a site closer to the natural gas instead of 17 miles away? Ellison is wealthy enough, he could have bought his own gas field, and plumbed directly from there to the blooms.
I've had a friend pass from an OD, when consuming what he thought was cocaine, which was actually laced with fentanyl. I wonder if the Italian mafia has a more profitable cocaine market, and don't want it contaminated, as is likely to happen with fentanyl, as the cocaine market, which I assume is recreational, would contract.
Thanks for the pointers. My goal - I really didn't like the Erik Satie Gymnopedie #1 version I'd just bought, and wanted to generate a new version. With the recent Astra release, I wanted to see how it and Fable did on creating their own versions based upon a standard MIDI. The encoding was actually just to make the PianoDisc player work better. Their iPad app will actually play MIDI directly without encoding, but they feel like second class citizens in the app, and there's some weird Bluetooth audio and a second Bluetooth MIDI interface on the app. I was having problems with the MIDI one, but the mp3 encoded connection seemed to work reliably.
When Fable came back with the decoder, I knew something was off. The decoy notes... even more evidence of wonkiness. Mostly posted it to HN out of disbelief that Fable just hacked my piano and had I blindly pushed it to a public repo, I would likely have broken some law.
Btw, the version I like is performed by Pascal Roge back in the 1970s. The AIs don't quite match his performance, and I keep trying to figure out how to guide them. I don't think his version has a delay between the melody and the chords, while the AIs were both convinced that was desirable. They seem to be lacking some taste in that area, but overall I prefer their version to the one I bought.
I haven't tried that, but when doing some quick discussion on the topic, Fable pointed me to some other models which do it better.
My task to fable was to take the MIDI and encode it into some proprietary mp3 format. It's still "binary" MIDI encoded in the mp3, it's not simulating the piano and generating waveforms... yet.
The encoder wouldn't be a concern if it didn't have details on the decoy notes - and I can easily ask fable to remove them. But, I'm not looking for lawsuits for what is really my wife's hobby.
That's a great data set. The main problem with it is the file labeling. All the details are in the external metadata file. I had Fable convert those MIDI into the PianoDisc mp3 format, and embed the metadata into the id3 tags. Should import into their application natively, with albums etc.
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