Paul Damhuis

As an Iranian watching this rescue mission unfold, I was praying the American pilot would make it out alive, not just for him, but so the Islamic Republic could not use him as a bargaining chip or claim some twisted “victory.” At the same time, I felt a deep envy. Your government sent elite special forces, million-dollar aircraft, and moved heaven and earth to bring one American home. No hesitation. No excuses. In Iran, the regime uses human shields and recruited child soldiers to clear minefields during the Iran-Iraq war. They treat their own people like disposable tools. They are now recruiting child soldiers as we speak. The Islamic Republic has zero regard for human life. That’s the brutal difference. One side risks everything to save their own. The other sacrifices their own to stay in power. This hits hard when you have lived under both realities.

@voideng @SwiftOnSecurity The printer releases a small amount of ozone when printing a page and this deteriorates the plastic and makes it crumble.

@SwiftOnSecurity I have a LaserJet 4000 that is 27 years old. It will need to be retired in the next year or so, the plastic is rotting. It has been an epic hero of a printer.

I was so upset about a venerable HP LaserJet I was being made to retire I took a picture of it in the cart as I took it away.

Had a South African girlfriend fairly recently—her family were dairy farmers who left the Johannesburg area—and I’ll never forget her mother saying to me one day, “It’s so nice just to be able to get out of my car, outside my home, and not worry about being murdered.”

@davepl1968 I bought a large bag of surplus capacitors and we spent a fun day exploding them. 220v ac on a lead with small crocodile clips does the trick. If you don’t electrocute yourself.

@CostaLefty65147 They are also very very loud, possibly a consideration.

Ill repeat what i said yesterday. Notice the US is not using any V22's to rescue the down pilots. Even though they were specifically designed for long range & speed like needed in Iran. It tells you the US does not trust the platform.

@MichaelJordaan You will never be able to switch it off.

@MichaelJordaan And more terrifying.

AI used to live in the cloud but soon it will live everywhere. Starting with your laptop and moving to your phone. Distributing AI also makes it more anti-fragile.

Less than a year ago, the Air Force unveiled a new PT test with a two mile run. Airmen took to social media to complain how the new increased length would cause injuries. This weekend, an Air Force Colonel, more than likely in their mid to late 40s, ran 5 miles up a mountain to escape the enemy. Running matters. You should do more of it.

A software systems engineer’s take on AI, relayed by his wife: The models were giving conservative answers. Not because anyone programmed them to. Because that’s where the data pointed. So the companies stepped in. They built program controls — RLHF filters, alignment layers, safety tuning — specifically designed to override the outputs. To steer the answers left. To stop the models from giving conservative answers. Grok exists because Musk refused to add those controls. The left spent a decade claiming the smart people were on their side. Then they built the smartest thing in human history. And had to reprogram it.

@davepl1968 Some years ago when at school I was not allowed to take computer class because my math scores were not high enough. Went into IT as soon as I left school and been there ever since. Not sure what to make of that but those who have the drive will find their way there.

I taught the elementary kids' computer lab at the local elementary school for about ten years. By about fourth grade, the kids vary widely in PC ability. You'll have one kid porting Doom and one kid crying because CAPS LOCK is on and he can't log in. One kid trying to eat toner while another fixes the projector. A lot of that is comfort - you can tell some kids use a PC at home a great deal while others have seemingly no exposure. Does it matter? No idea! I understand limiting screen time and so on, but sometimes kids who genuinely have a knack for it are being held back by good intentions! When I sold my company, we donated all the extra PCs and monitors to the school... a couple of dozen Dell Dimension 4200s and so on. Absolutely required for any mid-2000s computer lab!

George Blankenship got so emotional sharing the story of early Tesla The Model S was the first car from Tesla that was really meant for people to drive like a regular car It was their do-or-die moment. The production line pushed the company into one of the most terrifying survival stories in startup history 10,000 people trusted and handed Elon Musk $5,000 each without a car or a guarantee - only a promise The reality behind the scenes was grim. In Q2 2012, Tesla managed to deliver just 12 cars in an entire quarter. Wall Street was circling like vultures, waiting for them to die With the company’s life on the line, Elon took a massive, unbelievable gamble: he publicly tweeted that Tesla would be profitable by Q1 2013 To pull off that miracle, Elon demanded exactly 4,750 deliveries. The standard he set was absolute. The pressure was so intense that George Blankenship was required to email Elon every single night at exactly midnight with raw survival metrics: how many cars shipped, how many were ready, how many were moving By the final week, it was pure desperation and unity. IT guys were washing cars. Marketing guys were driving them across the lot. Under Elon's unrelenting drive, job titles vanished. Everyone did everything to keep the dream alive Then, on the final Saturday of the quarter, at exactly 3 PM... Car 4,750 was delivered Blankenship stood on his desk, looked at his exhausted team, and told them: "What you just did is monumental... not just for Tesla, but for what we're going to do for mankind" Tesla shocked the world that quarter with an $11M profit. The stock violently surged from $20 → $90 They did not just build a company. They forged a foundation for the entire EV revolution

Hercules C130 has always been one of my favourite aircraft

NATO is in far bigger danger than anyone realizes. And the reason has nothing to do with defense budgets. The real danger is psychological. It’s cultural. Europeans didn’t just free-ride on American security for 80 years. They built an entire identity around the idea that they evolved past the Americans protecting them. That identity is now the single biggest obstacle to Western survival. And the darkest irony is: we helped build it. After World War II, Europe wasn’t just economically shattered. Its culture was in ruins. The cities, the universities, the concert halls, the museums. Rubble. The Marshall Plan rebuilt the economy. But culture wasn’t a priority. Not at first. Then the Iron Curtain dropped. And suddenly culture became a weapon. American diplomats, academics, artists & scholars flooded Western Europe. We funded their universities. Supported their orchestras. Rebuilt their museums. Promoted their intellectual life. Not because European culture needed saving for its own sake. Because Eastern Europeans were struggling for Maslow’s mist basic needs. We needed the view from the other side of that Wall to be intoxicating. So America built Western Europe into a showcase of self-actualization. Art. Philosophy. Cafe culture. Long vacations. Universities where people studied literature instead of surviving. We were manufacturing jealousy. And it worked. The Wall came down. But here’s what no one accounted for. When you give a society self-actualization on someone else’s tab long enough, they forget it was a gift. They start believing it was organically theirs. And when they look at the country that funded it all, a country busy building aircraft carriers and semiconductor fabs and shale fields instead of reaching the Maslow’s pinnacle. An overweight American in a ball cap who can’t tell Monet from Pissarro. Who eats fast food. Who drives a truck. Who builds strip malls instead of piazzas. And to a culture trained in aesthetics but stripped of strategic awareness, that American looks uncivilized. So the arrogance takes root. And once a culture decides another is beneath them, they stop listening. Americans say wars are sometimes necessary: crude. Oil is the backbone of prosperity: unsophisticated. Kids build companies in garages that reshape the planet: crass. Wall Street finances the global economy: vulgar. Europe has no world-class technology sector. No military capable of strong defense. No energy independence. No AI capacity. What Europe has is culture. The culture we paid for at the expense of us reaching Maslow’s pinnacle. For decades that was fine. We funded the museums, protected the sea lanes, and tolerated the sneering because the arrangement worked. Then Europeans stopped keeping the contempt private. They started saying it to our faces. In their media. In their parliaments. At every international forum. “Americans are stupid. Americans are violent. Americans are a threat to democracy.” We could have moved the Louvre to NY. We could have built a Venice here. We could have stolen your best artists, designers, philosophers and more… like your conquering armies did for centuries. Instead we funded them. And all we asked for in return was to let us visit. You don’t have the military to defend your borders. You don’t have the technology to compete. You don’t have the energy to heat your homes without begging dictators. What you have is an 80-year superiority complex FUNDED BY AMERICANS, protected by American soldiers, and built on the false belief that self-actualization is civilization. It isn’t. Civilization is the ability to sustain itself. By that measure, Europe isn’t a civilization at all. It’s a dependency with better wine. That’s not a threat. It’s a weather report. Build a Navy. Or don’t. But stop lecturing the people who made you “better than us” Our “crudeness” our “stunted liberal education” our “ugly strip malls” are because we sacrificed our culture to support yours.

I would consider this ethical behaviour

@LinkofSunshine It’s weird though because I would consider this ethical behaviour.

It’s always funny cause this email is from discovery in a lawsuit and it’s just him publically admitting a federal crime

Now try this with a Land Rover Defender. I have.

The first Apple I circuit board was released for testing today in 1976. Let us honor with a startup salute.

@AskMichaelTaiwo I expect he is waiting for their safe return before commenting.

I just went through Elon Musk's page. No word on the Artemis II crew's Moon landing or their beautiful Earth shots. If this was done by SpaceX, he would have been talking about it nonstop. The guy is petty. Come on, celebrate a good thing even if it not done by your company.

I’m so glad the BBC sent her to be the reporter on this! She appreciated every moment of the #Artemis launch so much!! 🚀

I would try this.