Fly-by-Wire Sikorsky MATRIX™ ALIAS Equipped Black Hawk Helicopter Completes 1st Uninhabited Flight

ALIAS Equipped Black Hawk Helicopter Completes 1st Uninhabited Flight

• Achievement made possible by development of flexible, extensible automation architecture

The DARPA Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System (ALIAS) program completed a first ever flight of a UH-60A Black Hawk helicopter without anyone onboard. Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin company, completed 30-minutes of uninhabited flight with the optionally piloted vehicle (OPV) over the U.S. Army installation at Fort Campbell, Kentucky on February 5th. An additional uninhabited flight was also conducted on February 7th.

[Note: DARPA will hold a virtual press briefing at 11:00AM EST on Tuesday, February 8. DARPA’s ALIAS program manager and the director of Sikorsky Innovations will be available to answer questions. Media may receive an access link by contacting: Outreach@darpa.mil]

The Black Hawk was retrofitted with Sikorsky MATRIX™ autonomy technologies that form the core of ALIAS and can change the way aviators and air crews execute their missions by providing assistance when flying with limited visibility or without communications.

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ALIAS is a flexible, extensible automation architecture for existing manned aircraft that enables safe reduced crew operations, which facilitates the addition of high levels of automation into existing aircraft. It also provides a platform for integrating additional automation or autonomy capabilities tailored for specific missions.

“With reduced workloads pilots can focus on mission management instead of the mechanics,” said Stuart Young, program manager in DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office. “This unique combination of autonomy software and hardware will make flying both smarter and safer.”

The ALIAS program has leveraged the considerable advances in aircraft automation systems over the past 50 years, as well as similar advances in remotely piloted aircraft. Even in today’s most automated aircraft, pilots must still manage complex interfaces and respond to unexpected situations.

ALIAS aims to support execution of an entire mission from takeoff to landing, including autonomously handling contingency events such as aircraft system failures. Easy-to-use interfaces facilitate supervisor-ALIAS interaction.

“With ALIAS, the Army will have much more operational flexibility,” said Young. “This includes the ability to operate aircraft at all times of the day or night, with and without pilots, and in a variety of difficult conditions, such as contested, congested, and degraded visual environments.”

The Army is currently exploring potential use cases for technologies such as ALIAS, including those outlined in the U.S. Army’s Future Vertical Lift (FVL) program.

Within the next month, the ALIAS program plans to conduct the first flight of a fly-by-wire M-model Black Hawk at Fort Eustis, Virginia.

Source: DARPA
Date: Feb 9, 2022
View original News release

Daily Cover|Feb 8, 2022: POLYCHAIN + DeFi | Forbes

How Crypto’s Original Bubble Boy Rode Ethereum And Is Now Pulling The Strings Of The DeFi Boom

Forbes | 2022-02-08

OLAF CARLSON-WEE rode 2017’s “initial coin offering” craze to become one of crypto’s top venture investors. Now he’s raking in hundreds of millions, from a blockchain rage called DeFi, which promotes the fantasy of democratized financial services.

"On a frigid, windy day in January, Olaf Carlson-Wee is settling in for a long Zoom call from his $10 million Soho loft in Manhattan, reflecting on how far he has come in the four and a half years since Forbes featured him on its cover, labeling him the poster child for the cryptocurrency bubble of 2017. 

Back then, a speculative frenzy of hundreds of initial coin offerings (ICOs) pushed the cryptocurrency market to well over $100 billion in value as greedy fools bid up junk tokens backed by little more than a white paper and some quirky computer code. Then 27, with three years of Coinbase work experience under his belt, Carlson-Wee was considered a sage. He had started a San Francisco–based hedge fund called Polychain Capital that was backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures and Sequoia Capital, and his fund’s assets had swollen from $4 million in September 2016 to $200 million. 

Today, despite recent turbulence that saw bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies fall 30% to 50% in a matter of weeks, the market for them is still close to $2 trillion, and Polychain’s assets are $5 billion—up 125,000% since inception. Carlson-Wee just closed a $750 million raise for his third venture fund, led by Tiger Global Management and Singapore’s Temasek Holdings, two of the smartest and most successful investment firms on the planet. 

“We had a lot of interest. Many, many hundreds of millions in demand more than we raised,” boasts Carlson-Wee, now 32, clad in a lime-green tie-dyed T-shirt, running his fingers through his spiky, bleached blond hair. 

"Whatever the ideal, in practice, DeFi is a speculator’s paradise...even after crypto’s recent correction, the amount at risk stands at nearly $80 billion."

Carlson-Wee’s net worth has grown to an estimated $600 million because among crypto investors, he has an uncanny knack for deftly navigating a market chronically infected by hyperbole and assets without any discernible intrinsic value. . .

[...] One of the keys to Carlson-Wees success has simply been being early. He met Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, for example, when the then-19-year-old briefly worked at Coinbase in 2013. That was just before Buterin wrote his revolutionary blockchain white paper, which one-upped bitcoin by creating a multipurpose computing platform based on so-called “smart contracts.” These agreements have no conventional legal standing, but because the terms are blindly enforced by computers, they are more immutable. Without smart contracts there could be no ICOs or NFTs. 

In 2018, at the Web 3.0 conference in Berlin, Carlson-Wee met MIT research scientist Harry Halpin—the co-creator of a super-privacy protocol called Nym. Halpin was frustrated by traditional VCs’ reluctance to back him. Says Halpin, “This smartly dressed young fella came up to me and said, ‘We at Polychain are interested in funding subversive technology.’ ” Polychain led a $6.5 million round for Nym last July, just before the startup hired Chelsea Manning. . .

Polychain’s most ambitious investment foray to date has been its backing of a phenomenon known as decentralized finance, or DeFi, which uses blockchain technology in peer-to-peer applications. . .

The total market now amounts to $78 billion, up from $10 billion in January 2020. . ."

Polychain is among a handful of big hedge funds and VCs including Paradigm, Bain Capital Ventures and Pantera, which, behind the scenes, centrally control many of the biggest decentralized platforms

READ MORE: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenehrlich/2022/02/08/how-cryptos-original-bubble-boy-rode-ethereum-and-is-now-pulling-the-strings-of-the-defi-boom/

 

MITT ROMNEY'S CONTENTIOUS RETICENCE: Expressing His "Point-of-View" Excludes Public Criticism of His Niece

Intro: How nice is that in the face of widespread condemnation of incorrect remarks by Ronna (Romney) McDaniel, the Chair of the Republican National Committee, who mis-characterized The January 6 Insurrection to stop certification of the 2020 electoral count.

Romney himself had to be evacuated by a security guard from the halls of Congress

Romney won’t criticise niece for calling Trump lies and Capitol riot ‘legitimate political discourse’

Martin Pengelly

the Guardian

 

"(Utah Republican) Senator says he has texted with ‘terrific’ Ronna McDaniel, RNC chair who oversaw censure of Cheney and Kinzinger.

Mitt Romney and his niece, Ronna McDaniel, exchanged texts after the Republican National Committee she chairs called Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn his election defeat and the Capitol riot “legitimate political discourse”.

=======================================================================

BLOGGER INSERTS

Impeachment managers unveil new video of officer pointing Romney to safety, Pence evacuating

 

Live Updates: Trump Impeachment Trial

Impeachment managers unveil new video of officer pointing Romney to safety, Pence evacuating

The new video underscores just how close rioters got to lawmakers during the deadly insurrection.

By BEN LEONARD

02/10/2021 05:16 PM EST

POLITICO |

House impeachment managers unveiled new footage of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, including film of Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman pointing Sen. Mitt Romney to safety and former Vice President Mike Pence being evacuated.

Newly Released Capitol Riot Footage Shows Officer Goodman Telling Romney To Run, Pence Evacuating

Andrew SolenderForbes StaffBusinessI cover Congress and the Biden Administration.

Forbes | 2021-02-10

=======================================================================

Romney, the Utah senator, 2012 presidential nominee and only Republican to twice vote to convict Trump at his impeachment trials, told reporters on Monday he “expressed his point of view”.

The RNC used the controversial language in censuring Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the only Republicans on the House committee investigating January 6.

Romney was one of few Republicans to scorn the move, saying: “Shame falls on a party that would censure persons of conscience, who seek truth in the face of vitriol. Honor attaches to Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for seeking truth even when doing so comes at great personal cost.”

But he did not mention his personal connection to McDaniel, who stopped using “Romney” in her name after Trump took over her party – according to the Washington Post, at Trump’s request.

Romney also said the censure “could not have been a more inappropriate message … so far from accurate as to shock and to make people wonder what we’re thinking”.

New book released today, Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media by Jacob Mchangama

Techdirt Podcast Episode 310: A Global History Of Free Speech

Free Speech

from the oral-history dept

Tue, Feb 8th 2022 1:30pm — Leigh Beadon

We talk a lot about free speech in different countries, and about the history of free speech in the US — but what about the global history of this fundamental concept? A new book released today, Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media by Jacob Mchangama, tackles exactly this subject in great and insightful detail. This week, Jacob joins us on the podcast to discuss the sweeping story of free speech throughout the ages and around the world.

Follow the Techdirt Podcast on Soundcloud, subscribe via Apple Podcasts, or grab the RSS feed. You can also keep up with all the latest episodes right here on Techdirt.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: free speech, history, jacob mchangama, podcast

CORRECTION: Western Media Gets A Chance For A Lengthy Interview with Chinese Tennis Star Peng Shuai

Interesting that this story went viral for so long ending up with clear statements and double-talk from the reporter who first reported sexual attack

Journalist Who Interviewed Peng Shuai Acknowledges It Was 'Propaganda'

Marc Ventouillac, from French sports daily L’Equipe, says he is still unsure if the Chinese tennis star is free to say and do what she wants.

On Tuesday, Peng watched American-born Chinese freestyle skier Eileen Gu win gold at the women’s big air event.

JOHN LEICESTER

HuffPost |

BEIJING (AP) — It was the interview many sports journalists wanted: A sit-down with Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai, prepped and ready to talk for the first time with Western media about allegations she made of forced sex with a former top-ranked Communist Party official that triggered a global outpouring of fears for her safety.

Marc Ventouillac, one of two journalists for French sports daily L’Equipe who spoke to Peng this week in a restrictive interview arranged with Chinese Olympic officials, says he is still unsure if she is free to say and do what she wants.

“It’s impossible to say,” he said in English. “This interview don’t give proof that there is no problem with Peng Shuai.”

China’s intent, however, was clear to him: By granting the interview as Beijing is hosting the Winter Olympics, it appeared that Chinese officials hope to put the controversy to rest, so it doesn’t pollute the event.

“It’s a part of communication, propaganda, from the Chinese Olympic Committee,” Ventouillac told The Associated Press on Tuesday, the day after L’Equipe published its exclusive.

With “an interview to a big European newspaper, they can show: ‘OK, there is no problem with Peng Shuai. See? Journalists (came), they can ask all the questions they wanted.’”

The interview, as well as a dinner Peng had with International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach and appearances she made at Olympic venues have shone a deliberate and controlled spotlight on the three-time Olympian and former top-ranked doubles player. . .

[...] “Sexual assault? I never said that anyone made me submit to a sexual assault,” the newspaper quoted her as saying.

“This post resulted in an enormous misunderstanding from the outside world,” she also said. “My wish is that the meaning of this post no longer be skewed.”

MAVERICK McCAIN: He Gambled on Sarah Palin and Lost Out ...and the rest is history!

He sometimes tried to deny it, for example in 2010 telling the reporter David Margolick: “I never considered myself a maverick. I consider myself a person who serves the people of Arizona to the best of his abilities.”

Geez that sure sounds just like what almost every Arizona politico is saying these days

In 2008, McCain was the Republican nominee to succeed George W Bush. He faced Barack Obama, an inexperienced senator from Illinois but a political meteor. Peters reports that in August, with election day three months off, needing a boost, McCain spoke to advisers at his ranch in Arizona.

He had narrowed his choice of running mate to three. There was Palin, governor of Alaska, a hard-right populist and political neophyte. There were two experienced moderates, Tim Pawlenty, then governor of Minnesota, and Mitt Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts...

Romney was the Republican nominee in 2012, losing to Obama. Trump followed in 2016, blowing the party establishment out of the water with a campaign of anger, controversy and hatred then beating Hillary Clinton in the general election.

‘Let’s do it’: John McCain knew Palin VP pick was a huge gamble, new book says

Martin Pengelly

the Guardian |

Reporter says 2008 Republican nominee mimed rolling dice and said ‘Fuck it’ before picking hard-right Trump precursor.

READ MORE: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/feb/07/lets-do-it-john-mccain-palin-gamble-book-insurgency-republicans-trump

(John McCain with Sarah Palin. McCain died in 2018 but remains a figurehead of sorts for the few Republicans who defy Trump. Photograph: Joshua Lott/Reuters)

DESTROYING EVIDENCE: Donald Trump Routinely Tried To Destroy Records Subject To The Presidential Records Act

Hmmm The recovery of documents from Trump’s Florida estate is just the latest example of what records personnel described as chronic difficulties in preserving records in the Trump era — the most challenging since Richard Nixon sought to block disclosure of official records, including White House tapes.

Update: Donald Trump Routinely Tried To Destroy Records Subject To The Presidential Records Act

AZ BlueMeanie

Blog for Arizona |

By |February 7th, 2022|Courts & Law, National Politics

President Donald Trump improperly removed multiple boxes from the White House that were retrieved by the National Archives and Records Administration last month from his Mar-a-Lago residence because they contained documents and other items that should have been turned over to the agency, according to three people familiar with the visit.

The recovery of the boxes from Trump’s Florida resort raises new concerns about his adherence to the Presidential Records Act, which requires the preservation of memos, letters, notes, emails, faxes and other written communications related to a president’s official duties.

Trump advisers deny any nefarious intent and said the boxes contained mementos, gifts, letters from world leaders and other correspondence. The items included correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which Trump once described as “love letters,” as well as a letter left for his successor by President Barack Obama, according to two people familiar with the contents. . .

[...] “He didn’t want a record of anything,” a former senior Trump official said. “He never stopped ripping things up. Do you really think Trump is going to care about the records act? Come on.”

Problems with records preservation persisted throughout Trump’s term and became particularly acute at the time of the transition to the Biden administration.

[P]eople familiar with Trump’s conduct said it ran far deeper than occasionally skirting up against the boundaries of the law.

“The biggest takeaway I have from that behavior is it reflects a conviction that he was above the law,” said presidential historian Lindsay Chervinsky. “He did not see himself bound by those things.”

* * *

Trump’s troubling habit became the focus of internal concern early in his administration, one former Trump official said, when records personnel noticed that a range of official documents logged as going to the Oval Office or the White House residence were not being returned to be filed in accordance with White House record-keeping rules.

When staffers first started going to look for these missing records — which spanned a range of topics, including conversations with foreign leaders — they sometimes found them in a pile of ripped paper in the Oval Office or the White House residence.

Is this what happened to any notes of his meetings with his Russian handler, Vladimir Putin? Trump and Putin’s Cone of Seclusion:

The Washington Post’s Greg Miller reported Sunday that President Donald Trump’s confiscation of the translator’s notes from a one-on-one conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2017 was “unusual.” This is incorrect. It was unprecedented. There is nothing like it in the annals of presidential history.

Read MORE: