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Countries across the continent are experimenting with this 21st century technology as a way to leapfrog decades of neglect of 20th century infrastructure.
Over the last two years, San Francisco-based startup Zipline launched a national UAV delivery program in East Africa; South Africa passed commercial drone legislation to train and license pilots; and Malawi even opened a Drone Test Corridor to African and its global partners.
In Rwanda, the country's government became one of the first adopters of performance-based regulations for all drones earlier this year. The country's progressive UAV programs drew special attention from the White House and two U.S. Secretaries of Transportation.
[...] After several test rounds, Zipline went live with the program in October, becoming the world's first national drone delivery program at scale.
"We've since completed over 6000 deliveries and logged 500,000 flight kilometers," Zipline co-founder Keenan Wyrobek told TechCrunch. "We're planning to go live in Tanzania soon and talking to some other African countries."
[...] In a non-delivery commercial use case, South Africa's Rocketmine has built out a UAV survey business in 5 countries. The company looks to book $2 million in revenue in 2018 for its "aerial data solutions" services in mining, agriculture, forestry, and civil engineering.
[...] The continent's test programs — and Rwanda's performance-based drone regulations in particular — could advance beyond visual line of sight UAV technology at a quicker pace. This could set the stage for faster development of automated drone fleets for remote internet access, commercial and medical delivery, and even give Africa a lead in testing flying autonomous taxis.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by khallow on Wednesday September 26 2018, @12:03AM (2 children)
That struck me as indicating that you didn't understand how bad Communism was. Fidel and the Shah were far from the worst either had to offer and I was able to bring more worthy contenders to the table. Moving on:
That's fine as far as it goes. But it's a double standard to pay attention to the moral flaws of the US and not other countries with similar capabilities (EU, Russia, and China at present), particularly while using the pretense of a comparison which is not a comparison. And as I noted, while the US frequently and routinely acted evil, it wasn't in the same class as its foes.
We still have similar dilemmas today such as what to do about radical Islam. I don't buy, for example, that Russia's choice of supporting Assad over ISIS was a good idea, particularly since Assad's incompetence and the subsequent civil war was instrumental to the formation of ISIS in the first place. That strikes me as just another Operation Ajax moment (or rather the continuation of a previous Ajax moment by the Soviets). But then I don't buy that Islamic cooties are as dangerous as claimed. Communism had proven it was a danger by oppressing a third of humanity starting from little (as well as a remarkable history of dishonesty and violence unmatched in the corporate world). OTOH, Islam has been kicking around for almost 1400 years and hasn't really changed or grown much in recent centuries. My view is that the Moslem world is just a couple of centuries behind in social progress. Not great, but not an insolvable problem either.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday September 26 2018, @12:40AM (1 child)
Double standard? No, not at all. Let's say you're a cop. No matter how dirty the suspects you arrest, then testify against, you are still responsible for your own actions, morals, and ethics. You might be a clean cop, never taking any bribe money, always honest, just as clean as clean can be. Or, you might be a dirty cop, justifying lying in court with getting a really bad guy off the street. Or, you might accept bribes, drugs, women, wine, and song, to look the other way. But, no matter how dirty you might be, you can't justify it with the trash that flows through your jail.
I expect cops to be clean.
And, I expect my country to do what is morally and ethically right.
Unfortunately, neither the cops nor my country always measure up to my expectations.
And, no, you can't justify any of it. The best you can offer is "might makes right". Yeah, we've got the guns to enforce our will, but that only makes us dirty. Please don't dirty us any further with a bunch of hypocritical justifications, based on whataboutisms.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday September 26 2018, @04:23AM
Ultimately, either something is done about that trash or they become the new police with a different take on what they can justify. A world where the good guys are required to commit suicide for the sake of ethics is not a viable one.
That's where we're heading with this argument. If your "police", crooked or not, isn't willing to do the job of defending the weak, it's might makes right.
As to what I can justify, you're looking at two basic choices with something like Communism (and any similar domination ideology like some flavors of Islam), submission or fighting back. The US choose to fight back. That we're still alive (large scale nuclear war being one of many possible bad outcomes) and mostly free (1984 being another) means they did a lot of things right.