TMZ is NOT getting in the DRONE business … we don’t have a drone … we don’t want a drone … we never applied for a drone … despite a bogus report to the contrary. There are several major websites citing a story first published in the San Francisco Chronicle … which says TMZ filed an application with the Federal Aviation Administration seeking to use a drone device. Truth is … while drones are, in fact, awesome … it just ain’t true. We could drone on and on … but you get the point.

Well that’s good news. Previously…

The Federal Aviation Administration has been flooded with applications from police departments, universities, private corporations and even the celebrity gossip site TMZ, all seeking to use drones that range from devices the size of a hummingbird to full-sized aircraft like those used by the U.S. military to target al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan and elsewhere.

If TMZ is going to get drones I will no longer aspire to be famous.

[h/t hayes]

Apple keeps rejecting Drones+ from its App Store. Why? 

How did we get to this point?! David Frum:

Step 1: A story begins in the real world. In this case, some Nebraska ranchers objected to the longstanding practice—approved by the Supreme Court in 1986—of the use of aerial photography to enforce clean water laws.

Step 2: Their elected representatives raise the issue.

Step 3: Somebody on Twitter mistakenly converts “aerial” surveillance into “drone surveillance.”

Step 4: The conservative website PJ Media puts the error into a headline: “EPA Using Spy Drones to Fly Over Midwestern Farms.”

Step 5: The mistake jumps to Fox News, first introduced by Bob Beckel, the token liberal on the afternoon program, “the Five.”

Step 6: Fox News’ Megyn Kelly reports the rumor as fact, unsourced.

Step 7: The Daily Show mocks Kelly’s report, but treats the use of drones as a genuine fact nonetheless.

Step 8: Republicans in Congress write furious letters of complaint.

Step 9: The story is by now a national controversy, without there ever having been a word of truth to it.

via David Frum, h/t Mediaite for the screengrab.

If I were Catholic, I’d have to go to confession.

Jeh C. Johnson, a top lawyer at the Pentagon, who is responsible for approving the targeted drone killings of suspected terrorists.

latimes:

New drone has no pilot anywhere, so who’s accountable? The Navy is testing an autonomous plane that will land on an aircraft carrier. The prospect of heavily armed aircraft screaming through the skies without direct human control is unnerving to many.

Photo: The X-47B drone. Credit: Chad Slattery, Northrop Grumman

Today in things Hollywood totally predicted but for whatever reason those with money and power have chosen to completely ignore.

(Source: Los Angeles Times, via denverpost)