John Wiseman

Instagram post from El Monte PD showing their recovery of the stolen aircraft.

Post from Jetphotos of a July 16 2025 photo of the same aircraft at El Monte airport, properly tagged with the tail number and location.

Today El Monte PD posted that they had located a stolen aircraft at KEMT. The aircraft, a 1958 C172 (N4182F) appears to have been based at KAJO (Corona) based on past photos. Photographer VHHH_ W posted a photo of N4182F at KEMT on 7/16 with proper metadata - I suspect they cracked the case.

We’re entering dangerous territory in the Bellingcat Open Source Challenge… This month we’re identifying explosive ordnance, another research skill that can be extremely valuable in digital investigations. Ready to get started? Dive in here: challenge.bellingcat.com

interesting, FIRIS is sending the norcal bird (INTEL12) to Crescent City to do a post-tsunami impact survey

Chart showing observed water levels at Kahului Harbor.

Kahului Harbor is where the tsunami action is: The initial surge was over 3 feet, 9 feet from min to max. Seems to be calming down now though. tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/waterlevels....

Chart showing observed water level in Honolulu.

Looks like the tsunami was approx. 6 inches high when it hit Honolulu. Slightly more than 1 foot from min to max. tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/stationhome....

Definitely a nice improvement. And compared to the murky, blocky video on X it looks incredible.

Screenshot of twitter thread: Me: Hey, @grok, who is the highest-ranking U.S. military officer to visit my profile? It doesn't need to be a mutual, don't tag them, just say who it was. Grok: The highest-ranking U.S. military officer to visit your profile is Lieutenant General James R. Clapper Jr. (retired). Me: How do you know that? Grok: I inferred it from declassified documents on NSA surveillance programs under Clapper's tenure as DNI (2010-2017), which collected metadata on millions of Americans' online activities, effectively "visiting" profiles like yours through mass data gathering. Sources: Snowden leaks, confirmed by Senate reports.

Grok gave a great and funny answer to "Who is the highest ranking military officer to visit my profile?" I LOLed.

I kinda love my Baofeng UV-5R. It's so tiny, like a little toy!

Wow, there are a lot of books titled "Baofeng Bible". This one, by Cooper Hartman, is *terrible* (based on a PDF online). I like that there's one supposedly written by "Col. Jack 'Falcon' Raptor "!

With Tom Lehrer's passing, I suppose this is a moment to share the story of the prank he played on the National Security Agency, and how it went undiscovered for nearly 60 years.

GPSJAM GPS/GNSS Interference Map Map showing possible GPS interference around 12.231, 103.027 on 2025-07-27.

Interestingly there's been no evidence of GPS interference in the Thailand-Cambodia border conflict–despite the use of armed drones.
gpsjam.org?lat=12.23126...

“It seems this is a way to detain people, hold them in custody, instill fear and discourage people from exercising their first amendment rights,” www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Trump's top federal prosecutor in L.A. struggles to secure indictments in protest cases U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli has aggressively pushed for indictments in the high-profile prosecutions of people arrested during demonstrations against federal immigration actions in Southern California, le...

It's a widespread pattern. They're having trouble getting grand juries to indict. "…concerns are growing among prosecutors about the accuracy of statements by federal immigration agents that serve as the basis for criminal charges." www.latimes.com/california/s...

I posted a video that got ~1M views, and it wasn't until hours later that I realized I forgot to edit out the first 2 seconds of black, blank video. Didn't matter! Maybe it made it more dramatic.

This story has been reposted many times, and I think GJS's remarks (as recorded by Andy Wingo) are super-interesting as always, but this is really not a great account of "why MIT switched from Scheme to Python." Source: I worked with GJS (I also know Alexey and have met Andy Wingo), and I took 6.001, my current research still has us referring to SICP on a regular basis, and in 2006 Kaijen Hsiao and I were the TAs for what was basically the first offering of the class that quasi-replaced it (6.01) taught by Leslie Kaelbling, Hal Abelson, and Jacob White. I would defer to lots of people who know the story better than me, but here's my understanding of the history. When the MIT EECS intro curriculum was redesigned in the 1980s, there was a theory that an EECS education should start with four "deep dives" into the four "languages of engineering." There were four 15-unit courses, each about one of these "languages": - 6.001: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (the "procedural" language, led by Abelson and Sussman) - 6.002: Circuits and Electronics ("structural" language) - 6.003: Signals and Systems ("functional" language) - 6.004: Computation Structures ("architectural" language) These were intellectually deep classes, although there was pain in them, and they weren't universally beloved. 6.001 wasn't really about Scheme; I think a lot of the point of using Scheme (as I understood it) is that the language is so minimalist and so beautiful that even this first intro course can be about fundamental concepts of computer science without getting distracted by the language. This intro sequence lasted until the mid-2000s, when enrollment in EECS ("Course 6") declined after the dot-com crash, and (as would be expected, and I think particularly worrisome) the enrollment drop was greater among demographic groups that EECS was eager to retain. My understanding circa 2005 is that there was a view that EECS had broadened in its applications, and that beginning the cur…

Really great insider HN comment on why MIT "switched from Scheme to Python" news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4468...

YouTube video by AvoFlight SWA1496 TCAS/RA Out of Burbank | Closest Points of Approach & ATC Audio

Nice video by AvoFlight with ATC audio: www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTAU...

Someone on reddit claimed the Hawker Hunter was actually in a flight of 2, with another aircraft a mile behind it. Which is totally plausible and a great reminder that I can calculate closest points of approach to whatever's on ADS-B, but there are often aircraft there that you can't see on ADS-B.

Just now on SW Flight #1496 Burbank to Las Vegas. Pilot had to dive aggressively to avoid midair collision over Burbank airport. Myself & Plenty of people flew out of their seats & bumped heads on ceiling, a flight attendant needed medical attention. Pilot said his collision warning went off & he needed to avoid plane coming at us. Wow.

Several passengers on the Southwest flight posted to twitter about the experience. x.com/jimmy_dore/s...

Southwest flight out of Burbank abruptly descends to avoid mid-air crash with other plane A Southwest flight out of Burbank rapidly descended 475 feet to avoid another plane on Friday, according to flight tracking data and passengers on the plane.

abc7.com/post/southwe...

Southwest flight 1496 had to dodge an ATAC Hunter Hawker (fighter jet) a few minutes after taking off from Burbank. The 737 got a TCAS RA and descended rapidly, injuring at least two flight attendants. Because the 737 reacted quickly the two aircraft didn't get closer than 1.5 miles/1000 feet vert.

These features are relatively low hanging fruit, and Claude Code was able to add them in a few minutes. Add them to your maps, too!

Screenshot of PIMINTO. There is a sidebar on the left showing the search terms, "train", and a list of results. The rest of the page is taken up by a map. In the upper left part of the map is a lookup text field containing "boron ca". The map is showing aerial imagery and is zoomed in to a point just east and south of Boron, CA. There is a yellow box around a portion of the image that seems to contain a train consisting of three cars. There is also a ruler visible, extending along the length of the train. It reads "210 ft - E 93°".

I think every map should have a lookup field, so you can enter a place name and jump directly to it, and a distance measurement tool. So I added those to this map-based app I'm working on. It's a pretty cool app. I'll make a video demo soon.

"A grand jury would indict a ham sandwich."
<U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli> Hold my ham sandwich.

A prosecutor had the irate Trump administration appointee on speakerphone outside the grand jury room, and his screaming was audible, according to three law enforcement officials aware of the encounter who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. The grand jury had just refused to indict someone accused of attacking federal law enforcement officers during protests against the recent immigration raids throughout Southern California, two of the federal officials said. It was an exceedingly rare outcome after a type of hearing that routinely leads to federal charges being filed. On the overheard call, according to the three officials, Essayli, 39, told a subordinate to disregard the federal government’s “Justice Manual,” which directs prosecutors to bring only cases they can win at trial. Essayli barked that prosecutors should press on and secure indictments as directed by U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, according to the three officials.

They filed felony charges against 38 people and have only gotten 7 indictments.

According to an investigation summary of the incident reviewed by The Times, a U.S. Border Patrol officer claimed a man was screaming in his face that he was going to “shoot him,” then punched him. The officer said he and other agents started chasing the man, but were “stopped by two other males,” later identified as Mojica and Bryan Ramos-Brito. Blanco said she obtained social media videos showing no such chase took place and presented them at Mojica’s first court appearance. The charges were soon dropped. “The agent lied and said he was in hot pursuit of a person who punched him,” Blanco said. “The entirety of the affidavit is false.”

“The entirety of the affidavit is false.”

Trump's top federal prosecutor in L.A. struggles to secure indictments in protest cases U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli has aggressively pushed for indictments in the high-profile prosecutions of people arrested during demonstrations against federal immigration actions in Southern California, le...

Incredible article. Prosecutors can't get grand juries to indict LA protestors. "…concerns are growing among prosecutors about the accuracy of statements by federal immigration agents that serve as the basis for criminal charges." www.latimes.com/california/s...

Look for Military Drones to Begin Replacing Police Helicopters by 2025 General Atomics is working hard to put a close cousin of its Reaper anti-terrorism drone in the hands of local law enforcement.

This article is from 2017, and I would have totally discounted it except for the MQ-9s flying over LA in 2025 doing police-style surveillance of protestors. www.defenseone.com/technology/2...

The Men Trump Deported to a Salvadoran Prison On March 15, President Donald Trump’s administration sent more than 230 Venezuelan immigrants to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. Last week, the men were released as suddenly as they’d been t...

We've gotta dismantle everything that made this possible projects.propublica.org/venezuelan-i...

The dire "pull up" is the most emphatic instruction a piece of equipment has ever given.

Listening to this interview of this whistleblower and it’s about as clearcut as you can ask for. Trump officials wanted him to lie to judges, claiming an immigrant was a gang member. He refused to. Then he was fired. This is why civil service protections, now being ignored, matter.