Reporting from the CBC mentioned that the school was located within an area surrounded by other military buildings. The building housing the school was used for military purposes in the past.
I think it's more likely that the US was going off of outdated intelligence.
"It can be said with a degree of confidence that, in 2013, the site was used exclusively as a military barracks with a strict security character, as there was no indication of an independent civilian use of any part of the complex.
But this changed radically in 2016. Satellite images dated September 6, 2016 capture the main turning point, when new internal walls were created and built, fully and tightly separating the school building area from the rest of the military block."
If they work with intelligence data older than 10 years, then this would still account to gross negligence, possibly counting as a war crime. But misstakes happen and they did used AI for target tracking.
But the other interpretation is more dark. Because it was not just some school, but a school where the children of the IRGC go, the elite of the system. And Trump said he does not want a regime change, but rather someone from the current system who just bows to US demands. So the threat of killing all the leadership, anyone could be next - but also the threat to kill also their children and familiy until they surrender.
To quote Hegseth:
"no stupid rules of engagement,” “no politically correct wars,” and “no nation-building quagmire.”
Threatening to kill also their families makes sense with this kind of language and logic. At some point you will find someone who values the life of his family higher than that of the nation and religion.
"The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don’t kid yourself. When they say they don’t care about their lives, you have to take out their families,” Trump said.
During the past week, in a series of interviews and events, Trump has articulated a loose, but expansive set of principles that, if enacted, would mark a fundamental shift in U.S. foreign policy from the limits put in place by Democratic President Barack Obama and the Republican-led Congress. In addition to arguing in favor of reinstating waterboarding, a technique that mimics the sensation of drowning, and "much more than that," Trump has advocated the killing of suspected terrorists' wives and children, which appears in violation of international law.
Agreed with others here...and updating intel for primary targets is customary. Which obviously didn't happen here. The targeting cycle and the F2T2 cycle, dynamic targeting loops (probably) should have brought the latest intel about the school to light.
As for whether it was AI - the US DOD Ethic's first tenent is Responsible - personnel remain responsible...
Many similar incidents occurred in Ukraine, where Russia targeted apartment blocks that were built on the former site of some sort of military building that was demolished decades ago.
The ultimate hubris is launching a multi million dollar missile to kill civilians because you couldn’t be bothered to check Google street view (or whatever).
What people don’t seem to understand is the word “targeted”.
They see some obviously civilian target in ruins with screaming parents outside and they have an instant visceral emotional reaction: “What kind of monster would do something like this on purpose!?”
Practically nobody targets civilian building with expensive precision munitions! They’re expensive! There’s limited supply! Targets are chosen to maximise the military effect.
The problem is that the victims and journalists have “boots on the ground”. They’re right there and can clearly see the civilian nature of the target with their own eyes.
The person doing the targeting from som bunker thousands of miles away can see only blurry rectangles on an outdated map, has sparse intelligence reports, and targets coordinates. They’re not walking up to the missile like it’s some sort of intelligent war animal and whispering “kill civilians!” in its ear.
Similarly, they’re not on the ground standing outside the civilian target waving the missile in with light sticks like some airport tarmac staff.
I repeat: they’re thousands of miles away and have to target hundreds of buildings that all look the same-ish from space and aren’t magically labelled by God as “no longer valid under the Geneva conventions” or whatever.
I’m not saying that this makes war good or in any way ethical, but you can see how a mistake is made that doesn’t require cartoonish evil people to explain.
>Practically nobody targets civilian building with expensive precision munitions! They’re expensive! There’s limited supply! Targets are chosen to maximise the military effect.
We're not dealing with a rational or competent military chain of command. We're dealing with people who believe they're bringing about the Biblical Second Coming and that rules of engagement are "woke." These are literally cartoonishly evil people. They probably chose targets by asking Grok.
I'm going to confidently state that nobody in the US military chain of command gave the order to "mix some schools into the target list" for any reason, religious or not.
That's absurd on its face, and if you honestly believe that, then your mental model of how the world (and people in general) function is fundamentally broken.
>That's absurd on its face, and if you honestly believe that, then your mental model of how the world (and people in general) function is fundamentally broken.
I'm not talking about the world or people in general, I'm talking about about the Commander in Chief Donald Trump and "Secretary of War" Pete Hegseth, the people who set the tone and make the decisions. And if you listen to either one of them, especially Hegseth, you'll realize it isn't absurd on its face at all.
Even if no one gave a specific order to "mix some schools into the target list" this administration clearly and explicitly - as in, has literally stated on the record - does not care about morality, ethics, rules of engagement or anything of the sort. It's not out of the question that they would intentionally target civilian infrastructure just as a show of force and aggression, or simply not care because their goal is and I'm quoting here "killing people and breaking things."
Oh sure, and the US did it against both Japan and Germany in WW2, but those were not even remotely the same scenario as precision strikes against the IRGC and Iranian leadership in general.
This was clearly a horrific mistake, especially obvious since the girls school used to be a military building.
They target civilian infrastructure like power plants and the like, but again, that's "not the same" as purposefully targeting a school or an apartment block. The latter they do fairly clearly by accident, because I've seen at least four video clips of Ukranians interviewed outside of a bombed civilian building saying something to the effect of "Oh yeah, back in 1990 there was a military training facility here but it was demolished in `91."
Note that 1991 was the year Ukraine and Russia split and Russia stopped getting a "direct feed" of things like urban planning information from Kiev.
Yes, well... the Russians seem especially unconcerned with checking targets for validity before mashing the fire button.
The logic they're presenting is largely the same as Israel's excuse for bombing hospitals in Gaza.
When there's a war in a civilian area, injured soldiers from the front line will be mostly treated at the nearest available hospital, which then overflows into regional hospitals further back, etc... A country under siege at the scales seen in Ukraine and Gaza don't get to pick and choose specific hospitals, they're all overflowing, so they use every available medical facility, including children's hospitals.
Worse, the convoys taking the wounded to these hospitals are more than likely military trucks and are driven by and/or escorted by military personnel in uniform.
On a blurry satellite picture or drone video the enemy will see a building frequently visited by the military.
That's a lot of contortions to go through to avoid the clear Occam's Razor conclusion that these people are simply evil scumbags doing evil scumbag things. Bombing hospitals because they thought they contained wounded troops isn't a defense, that's a whole war crime of its own!
They have an extremely long track record of committing atrocities. You don't need to go out of your way to give them the benefit of the doubt, unless you're literally in Russia where they'll imprison you for telling the truth about what they're doing.
I remember the time when Israel shot a missile under a hospital in Gaza and immediately after the head of Hamas, brother of Yehia Sinwar was confirmed dead.
Maybe our intelligence isn't that bad after all.
Meanwhile doctors without borders denied seeing any militant activity in hospital, despite e.g one of their doctors turning out to be an Islamic Jihad rocket troops commander, or half the electricty of an hospital being diverted to a bunker right beneath it, or people firing from hospital windows at Al-Shabab anti-hamas militia.
And now they are unwilling to give a list of names of their members to be vetted for operating in the strip.
> I think it's more likely that the US was going off of outdated intelligence.
While Israel has enough intelligence to track where the Ayatollah is hidden away after the initial strikes on Iran. Does that sound believable to you? Either Israel and USA are pisspoor at coordinating intelligence, or Israel wilfully let the US attack the place and take the flak for it.
Police body cams are typically only used while on-duty and in public, where there is no expectation of privacy. They also don't automatically send video into the cloud to be analyzed by a human for AI training, as mentioned in this article. Video is usually only retrieved if needed on a case-by-case basis.
Doorbell cameras are also typically pointed toward public streets, where again, there is no expectation of privacy. Even then, many people have been removing Ring cameras after they were shown to automatically upload video without user's knowledge.
They almost certainly already do. If you just look into Axon you'll see they have tons of cloud-based and AI products. Axon is the major player in police body cameras in the US.
No experience w/ Axon, but I work adjacent their major competitor. I don't know about the whole "training AI" angle, but Motorola Watchguard body and in-car cameras absolutely upload to a hosted service.
Uploading to a hosted service is not even remotely the same thing. In one of the jurisdictions I'm familiar with the Axon cams don't record until manually activated and the footage is treated as secured evidence. Other than being subject to FOIA or analyzed for a case it isn't generally accessible.
That said I'm not sure how much of that is merely department policy versus local law.
In Spain the typical doorbell camera is illegal. In an apartment building it is illegal to have a camera on the door that points into "common" areas even though these are still private areas vis-a-vis the general public.
Not a mistake. Making an app that fits this niche might be how you differentiate yourself in the market and succeed as a solo developer. It'll let you grow at a slower pace, making it easier to iterate the app over time as you see fit. You could always offer an add-on service in the form of a subscription in the future.
I run a productivity desktop app by myself and have been doing it full time since 2017. The app is a one time payment, free support, no gimmicks, no marketing. Support is becoming time consuming, but profit is high enough that I may hire a few people to help soon.
Good luck! High growth rates with investors is one way to do things, but not the only way.
Both directions of the bike lanes on St-Denis take up about one car lane. The street has 2 lanes for car traffic and 2 more lanes for street parking on most sections of the road. I think that's a fair trade-off for the very high traffic the bike lanes receive on non-snow months. Not all public infrastructure needs to be used at capacity all the time (like public swimming pools, playgrounds, tennis/basketball courts, un-plowed walking paths, etc).
Although Montreal is leading the way to sustainable transportation, I don't think Montreal is copying European cities enough. Most of the biking infrastructure around the city is paint on roads making it a patch work system that kids and elderly people can't use safely.
I don't think it's fair to say that crucial roads should be underutilized, especially for crucial main streets! I agree with you that saint Denis is very very heavily used by cyclists in the warmer months, and I agree that the "paint a line" types of bike lanes are a cop out. But I think that Montreal should've explored convertible, semi permanent infrastructure. Not simple painted lines, but not inflexible set in concrete paths either.
We could've even set a new "standard" for cities that face the same challenges! That way, there's no trade off. We could use it in the winter for bus/priority lanes, and have the very useful and safe bike lanes in the summer. Sure, I don't know of anywhere else that implemented something similar, but that's the point :)
Since Firefox auto-filled my credit card number, I had to delete and re-type the last digit for it to work. Presumably, they have some JS looking for key up/down events to do some validation.
> We will probably need to highlight that we pay a higher wage for baristas & cooks to account for the lack of tips, and give customers an option to donate to a charity if they still wish to part with additional money.
Yes, after the total confirmation (including tax if you can), where you'd normally be asked to tip, you should see if it's possible to display the no tip policy and higher wage explanation.
You could also tell customers that your business is donating to certain cause at this point. Just don't pass on the burden of deciding whether or not to donate to your customers. Another option is to dedicate certain profits from a specific product to a cause and note that on your menu.
For anyone interested, I made a desktop app called Cold Turkey Writer that blocks everything on the computer until a certain number of words are typed (or a timer is reached). The free version has pretty much everything you need:
https://getcoldturkey.com/writer/
I think it's more likely that the US was going off of outdated intelligence.