Saudi Arabia Shuts Down About Half Its Oil Output After Drone Strikes

Post by vhold » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 6:26 PM UTC

badfutureahead wrote: post #81

mrnobody_67 wrote: post #45

Playing out as Naval Ravikant predicted on the After-on podcast: https://after-on.com/episodes-31-60/044 Eventually cheap drones, anonymous assassination markets, etc. will make commercial flying a thing of the past. Written summary of podcast - https://podcastnotes.org/2019/03/20/after-on-naval-01/

Today it's basically a week-long project to train a neural network to fly towards a jet engine in a 3D simulation. Then you just need to hook that to the drone control software. No amount of jamming helps you here, this is radio control off, GPS off, entirely visual "guided missile" approach. And this approach scales, with 20 drones, 2 drones assigned to each engine, you can engage 5 taking off planes in a row off a…

Post by fmajid » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 6:29 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #34

lapnitnelav wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SA's economy is -AFAIK- mostly / completely dependent on natural ressources. Given that SPOF, one can't help but think of the IRA's threat to Margaret Thatcher : "[...] we only have to be lucky once – you will have to be lucky always."

It's been trying to both diversify and privatize, but progress is very very slow. Probably fear of instability, IMO. "The petroleum sector accounts for roughly 87% of budget revenues, 42% of GDP, and 90% of export earnings." https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/... Anecdotally, I met far more Saudis when I lived in Seattle than I did when I lived in Houston. I wonder if that was part of the div…

Post by joey_bob » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 6:33 PM UTC

badfutureahead wrote: post #81

mrnobody_67 wrote: post #45

Playing out as Naval Ravikant predicted on the After-on podcast: https://after-on.com/episodes-31-60/044 Eventually cheap drones, anonymous assassination markets, etc. will make commercial flying a thing of the past. Written summary of podcast - https://podcastnotes.org/2019/03/20/after-on-naval-01/

Today it's basically a week-long project to train a neural network to fly towards a jet engine in a 3D simulation. Then you just need to hook that to the drone control software. No amount of jamming helps you here, this is radio control off, GPS off, entirely visual "guided missile" approach. And this approach scales, with 20 drones, 2 drones assigned to each engine, you can engage 5 taking off planes in a row off a…

Post by mrtksn » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 6:44 PM UTC

_ptgt wrote: post #60

partialrecall wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be noted, engineers being well represented in these sort of rebel/revolutionary/terrorist organizations isn't a new phenomenon. Here is an article from a decade ago: https://slate.com/technology/2009/12/why-do-so-many-terroris... The notion of terrorists as uneducated goat farmers is more a manifestation of western biases than it is an accurate representation of the truth.

Without commenting on your larger point, it's doubtful that Yemeni engineers are building these drones. Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the world and presumably their engineering capital is presumably not huge. The Houthis are backed by Iran. Iran (which has far more engineering capital and was accidentally gifted a US military drone several years ago) has military drones. It sounds far more plausible to me…

Post by bidatzi » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 6:48 PM UTC

hos234 wrote: post #52

bidatzi wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a range over 1000km?

How do they know how far the drone flew? Could be just Lawrence of Arabia on a camel crossing the desert and launching from outside the compound wall for all anyone knows.