Posts by I ain't Spartacus

Re: Good Old Apple Will Have My Back

In case you need help with this (as it appears you really do), this is sarcasm.

I don't require assistance understanding sarcasm. Apparently however, you're not so blessed when it came to comprehending my post.

My complaints, that you chose to lightly mock, rather than actually engage with, were that Apple had put an important privacy and location based option, in a separate section of their menu. Which to be fair has become an absolute mess over the life of iOS - so this need not be conspiracy - it could just be random incompetence. But nonetheless they already have location and privacy menus available to add it to.

My next complaint was that they had deliberately mislabelled the option. Which you ignored. Presumably because you'd no answer to that, and even sarcasm couldn't get you out of it.

And my third complaint was that they'd tied something you want switched on (the ability to track a lost iPhone/iPad) to a permission to enable a global network involving the billion or more devices they've sold which Apple have created without bothering to go to the trouble of asking the permission of the owners of the hardware (and data) they've decided to use to create said network.

Is your sarcasm looking so clever now? Perhaps you'd like to actually engage with the discussion in your next post?

Re: Good Old Apple Will Have My Back

Ah yes, the usual fucking weaselly options given you by scummy tech companies!

An option buried several layers into an obscure menu. And not say in the privacy or location bits where you'd expect it.

An option not labelled or explained about what the "find my" network does. Or the implications of being turned on.

And most of all the clever use of a fucking creepy permission with something useful. If you want the function to find your iPhone, you have to have the "find my" network turned on - which is of course the thing the permission is labelled as. Cunningly not mentioning the other use of it.

Re: I'm still trying to understand how Apple failed even to consider this use case

I guess the difference is that Tile don't control the iOS operating system. So aren't able to leverage a billion devices to operate their global spy network, without the device owners' knowledge or permission.

Re: Fun ways to kill one.

I think you're all wrong.

As are Apple themselves:

For those who discover an unexpected AirTag in a coat pocket, purse, or taped to a car, Apple advises removing the battery to stop it from transmitting.

You don't want to stop it from transmitting, you need it to transmit. Say for example it's on your nice, stealable car. Then the tag needs to be taken to a nice lonely carpark, the sort of place that the thieves might think a good opportunity. Then the next step is up to you and your ingenuity. Landmines, attack dogs, high voltage electricity... The possibilities are endless.

The last article I read was the BOfH, can you tell?

Re: China should encourage academic exchanges?

I guess the idea is to send people abroad for one or two years of a four year course. Which means you've then got to have universities attractive enough inside China that you can get the other universities to send their students to you for a the reverse side of that transaction. That way at the end of their studies, those Chinese students are still at home having finished their course, but have spend significant time learning abroad.

Then again, if they've got those attractive skills they may still want to leave your country and be able to get a visa to go back.

Ah yes, but they're not stupid

How do you know they're not stupid? Or at least so unwilling to accept data that doesn't agree with the Party line that their beliefs begin to appear stupid to any rational outsider?

For example say, read about NATO excercise Able Archer in the early 80s. An excercise that was hastily scaled down because the KGB seemed to genuinely believe that it was a precursor to a surprise nuclear attack on the Soviet Union - and nobody wanted to provoke World War III.

How can the KGB have genuinely believed this? Given that spying on the West was a hell of a lot easier than spying on the Soviet Union given that even with official secrecy our governments were massively more open than theirs. One option is of course that they didn't trust it - because they were so used to a conpsiratorial and secretive system - they couldn't believe that the West were any different. Just maybe better at hiding it within a mask of openness. Another is that they knew it wasn't true, but you don't get power and a bigger budget by saying your organisation isn't needed, as there's no threat. Another is that the leadership weren't in the West doing the spying and didn't believe the guys on the ground who knew what was actually going on but believed the ones who parotted the Party line about the big scary threats. Which might explain why they were acting on their fears of a NATO first strike?

As another example, when you read what Putin and the ex-KGB lot say about Ukraine it's always hard to know what's batshit insane and they know it - but are just saying to look scary and uncompromising. Where they're saying mad stuff because they're literally trolling - which is partly a black sense of humour and partly trying to look even more scary and uncompromising. And the scariest thought of all is that some of the batshit insane stuff they say - they might actually genuinely believe.

The downside of running your whole country through a one party state for decades is that some of the people who get promoted are just good at the political game, but useless at anything else. They don't believe in whatever the Party was originally about, they just know the Party is the only way to get ahead. But I'm sure you still get those who join with some sort of genuine desire to do a good job - again the Party almost is the only way to get any kind of serious power. But to get to that power they've got to spend decades mouthing the Party slogans and appearing to believe them. And eventually they might start believing them. Even if they keep a little space in their heads where they know what's actually true - so maybe that means you know the party is talking bollocks in your area of expertise, but how do you learn the truth in any other area, when all the public statements follow the Party line?

Once you start serious censorship, even insiders can't always know what's really true. Because at first you hide the truth from outsiders and keep the truth secret, but then the next lot of people to get promoted to the top have learned the "official truth" - and so have to look in the records to find the real truth that's been supressed. But what if someone has also censored that? And how can you know? So it's then dangerously easy for policy to become completely divorced from reality.

Re: Insured?

I would be absolutely amazed if SpaceX are insured for Starlink. For the same reason that governments don't insure their buildings.

If you own several thousand buildings, you'd actually pay out more in insurance premiums in a year than the cost of rebuilding one of them. You are basically big enough to be your own insurer. Given the number of Starlink satellites, and launches, the premiums just wouldn't be worth it.

At that point you might look at a different kind of insurance. You stop insuring individual components and launches, because the chance of a loss approaches certainty - but you might consider insurance for some sort of very unlikely but very damaging event - say more than 3 launches failing in a single year. Which given SpaceX's track record would probably be an affordable premium. Although even then, I doubt they've bothered. The thing they'll have insurance on is their factories, and maybe their launch facilities (though that's probably stupidly expensive too).

Re: Not Google

And it will be those logins that the bad actors have managed to compromise.

I thought China were supposed to be responsible for this hacking?

Now you're telling us it was Steven Seagal and Jared Leto...

Re: FFS

The UK spent £40bn on a fairly useless test n' trace system

No it didn't. The UK budgeted to spend £37bn over 2 years if needed. What we actually did was spend considerably less than that on tests.

However figures look to be a bit hard to easily come by - partly because this has become a political football.

A quick Google has found me lots of misleading bollocks. I have a UK Treasury document that says they spent £10bn on test and trace in fiscal year 2020-21. I've seen other reports that the contract tracing was about £1.5bn of that - so basically the rest of it was buying tests - and by the end of the year handing those out to anyone that wanted them for free.

We also spent a bit over £3bn on creating new laboratory capacity that year, which I'm not sure if it's included in that or goes in general government spending.

I'd imagine that will have gone up this fiscal year. I doubt the contact tracing system is getting much bigger. But there have been way more lateral flow tests sent out to everyone - since the end of the last lockdown - given they weren't available to everyone after the first one.

But it looks like government is currently spending about £10bn a year on allowing everyone free lateral flow tests a couple of times a week, plus PCR tests when they think they might have been infected, plus lots of genetic sequencing to pick up on variants - with a bit of contract tracing on top. As opposed to saving government money by getting people to pay for their own tests, which they won't always do.

Re: There goes the business case

Binraider,

Online gaming is generally, shit. Some games positively revell in it in fact.

That's where EVE comes in. Sure the universe is a hive of scum and villainy, but that's why you have a corportation of like-minded souls to help defend you against it. Then you're basically using the rest of humanity (or at least those bits of it that choose to play EVE) to simulate the horror of existence.

But I guess that's what lots of MMO's are, "us against the world".

Re: penultimate hurrah?

My horror of Windows ME is I'm sure partly down to the fact that it was on my Dad's PC. Mine had Win 98. But given the trouble I'd had keeping his Win 95 PC working, I was looking forward to it being at least as good as 98. And was sorely disappointed. Of course my Dad being the usual operator didn't help.

Although for all Dad's faults, he was never a random clicker or dialog box auto-ticker. Which made life eaier. His reports on what had got wrong always included what he'd done which might have caused it.

My favourite from my Mum was, I had a message about a mesage on my PC sometime in the last couple of days - saying something about a virus. I just clicked OK and carried on what I was doing. Do I need to do something about it?

Thanks Mum. Could you be a little less specific about what happened, you're bombarding me with details here!

Why would Ireland want to join NATO? Particularly as NATO has the Partnership for Peace where you can train to interoperate with NATO forces - which Ireland is already in. This gives Ireland the benefit of working with NATO without the obligation of having to defend Eastern Europe. So if Ireland feels it needs more air and sea assets (which I'd argue it does) then it's a natural to work with the UK, France the Netherlands and the US - and could always sign bilateral defence treaties with them and be a sort of semi-detached NATO member as it suits it.

Which is sort of what Sweden (and to a lesser extent Finland) already do. Nobody knows if NATO would defend them, Russia can't know they wouldn't. Particularly as Sweden is pretty vital to the defence of Norway.

Re: re. the EU wouldn't be able to agree on how or even whether to use it

I don't really see a reason why Russia would want to take the Baltics either.

Well I don't. But then I'm not Vladimir Putin. He's used large Russian minorities as an excuse to get Russain troops into Georgia, Crimea, Transistria and Eastern Ukraine. Why not the Baltic States too?

He's clearly not a happy bunny. Called the collapse of the Soviet Union a tragedy. Though I'm sure he doesn't want to resurrect it. But then he put out a 5,000 word essay last year saying essentially that Ukrainians are actually Russians. And I think their nostalgia is geniuine. The Russian Foreign Office put out a statememt in January about the Eastern European states orphaned by the collapse of the Soviet Union. As if they hadn't been conquered by the Soveit Union and only remained in the Warsaw Pact under threat of military force. The question is of course, do they believe this bullshit, or are they just trolling? Because Putin's government also love trolling, it makes it really hard to know when they're lying to scare people, lying to justify their own actions and when they genuinely believe stuff that's batshit crazy.

Re: re. the EU wouldn't be able to agree on how or even whether to use it

Speaking of which - does Ukraine still have stockpiles of old Soviet-era nukes?

CrazyOldCatMan,

Nope. Ukraine gave up its post-Soviet nuclear arsenal in the mid 1990s. In exchange for security guarantees from the Russian government - that they wouldn't threaten Ukraine's territorial integrity or political independence.

This was the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus were the ex-Soviet states that didn't keep nuclear weapons. Coincidentally there were Russian troops in all three last month. Ukraine because they invaded it in 2014. Kazakhstan in-and-out quickly in order to prop up the government after some public protests that look to have been at least partially orchestrated by other parts of the ruling elite - and Belarus in some combination of threatening to invade Ukraine again or having blocking forces in place to menace/defend the Polish border. Not that Poland were going to attempt to send forces to Ukraine via Belarus - but maybe the Russians are genuinely paranoid enough to think so?

Re: re. the EU wouldn't be able to agree on how or even whether to use it

imanidiot

Your idea of leaving the Russians alone might work in the short term. But what if they do end up conquering and occupying the Baltic States and Ukraine? What if they're still not satisfied then? What if they also want all NATO forces out of Poland, Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria? Should we give them up too? Eject them from the EU - or let Russia conquer bits of the EU? Oh! I can answer this. Using the threat of a massive troop build-up on the Ukranian border, that is exactly what the Russian government demanded this January.

If you remember, during the Cold War, Berlin was also totally indefensible. Britain, the US and France had token forces there, but if the Soviets so decided, then they were going to be very dead, in very short order. However, those forces were there as a tripwire. Sure you can kill 'em, but you're then invoking the joys of nuclear uncertainty. Those three powers all have nuclear weapons, and you've just killed a few thousand of their troops. Are you sure you want to? And that's why NATO have tripwire forces in the Baltic States. Not enough to be a threat to Russia, but enough to create doubt - as we've given them treaty guarantees that we'll come to their defence and re-conquer them if the Russians invade.

Now what I'd argue is that Russia doesn't want the threat of large NATO forces on its border. So what we should say to Russia is, the more your neighbours are scared of you, the more forces we're going to have to use to reassure them. So if you don't want a couple of NATO armoured divisions stationed in Poland, ready to leap to the Baltic State's defence, then don't threaten them. Don't invade your neighbours. But if you do invade then we'll station major missile defences on your border, major air assets and ground forces - and it'll be your fault we're doing it.

By the way, the terminology for what you're suggesting in the study of international relations is "appeasement". Before you invoke Godwin's Law, I'm not saying this is 1938 all over again. That argument was used as an excuse for the Suez invasion in 1956 for example. But appeasement works when you don't mind letting another state do stuff that you broadly don't approve of, but don't think will affect your national interests. However the problem with appeasement is when you're dealing with a power where you don't know what they want, or the limits of their desires. And we still don't really know what Putin wants or would try and grab if he thought he could get away with it. Worse of course, if you're dealing with an expansionist power - they may take the fact that they're not being opposed as a sign that they can take more, until suddenly your vital interests are threatened. And then you may find yourself forced into war, because that expansionist power has become so used to getting away with it, that they don't believe they'll be opposed this time. Which is a pretty shorthand way of describing how WWII began, despite the fact that neither side wanted a war. The Allies not at all, and Hitler not until the early 1940s and he was really only interested in going East.

I can't imagine Putin wants to invade Poland. Or any other part of Eastern Europe, except for maybe Transnistria, and obviously some or all of Ukraine. But he does have ambitions in the Balkans that could seriously destabilise that area and cause all sorts of problems. And he's getting old, and we don't know if the one that replaces him might be worse.

As I understand it, RAF fighters on QRA (quick reaction alert) have tanker support assigned. This is so if they have to they can take off and just whack on reheat (afterburners) and zoom towards the tartget using up fuel like it's going out of fashion - but still have options.

If you're dealing with planes coming in from the North East near to Irish airspace, then Scotland is actually a better place to intercept from than Ireland is. And seeing as the Russians often fly through civilian air corridors with their transponders off, it's an important safety measure, as well as being part of deterrence. To let the other side know that you could deal with them if it came to it.

When the Russians send their long range naval aviation down this way, they're usually picked up by the Norwegian air force and then handed-over to RAF escort once they're going out of Norwegian range, then the French or Spanish might take over from us, if they're heading further South.

Re: This is not good - welcome to World War 3

NATO has way more forces than Russia. But not all of them are deployable. And Russia is semi-mobilised on the Ukraine border, and with significant forces moved inside Belorus as well.

Also NATO does not have the logistics to move major forces into Eastern Europe - and certainly not the logistics to deal with Russia trying to stop us doing so.

What we do have the ability to do quite quickly is massive air dominance. But then Russia is well equipped with anti-air missiles as well as a large air force. Similarly NATO's navies are far superior in all areas apart from submarines - where things are a lot closer.

But while a lot of countries have ground forces on paper, do they have the logistical ability to deploy them far from home? Are those people fully trained? Is the equipment in full repair with plenty of spare parts on hand? That's a much tougher question. Most NATO members have a smaller number of units that could deploy with a couple of days to a month's notice, and then a lot of others that would take months to actually be in good shape to use.

Re: ... the area is rarely visited by boats with location-transmitting AIS equipment switched on ...

The Russians have gone to a fairly empty bit of ocean?

All of the ocean is pretty empty. You could argue the Thames estuary is pretty empty.

But this area that the Russians chose to operate is in Irealand's Exclusive Economic Zone The Atlantic is huge. Most of it isn't in anyone's EEZ - which are 250m from the coast at most. There is definitely something to see here. And this is something that Russia would never have put up with if done in their waters! During the Cold War they claimed way more than their legal 12m limit as part of territorial waters, and threatened to shoot ships that entered them. That's why NATO started doing Freedom of Navigation patrols, that countries now do in the Pacific to stop China pulling the same trick.

Re: ... the area is rarely visited by boats with location-transmitting AIS equipment switched on ...

Is it really illegal for a warship to fire on someone trying to ram it? Serious question.

I'm sure you could argue that this is a reasonable use of force. But how do you prove the ship was trying to ram you? I'm sure the Icelandic fishermen said they were just fishing, and just "accidentally" hit those RN ships in the 70s. But that was in waters where there was a dispute about whos fishing grounds they were - it was a long time ago, I don't remember the details.

In the case of a Russian excercise, where the Russians have chosen to be in Ireland's EEZ, in their internationally recognised fishing waters (though not territorial waters of course) - as long as the fishing boats can argue they were just doing their thing, the Russians are going to be the obvious aggressors. And it's going to be hard to convince anyone otherwise. Plus the Irish may have only been planning to get in their way. Ramming people is pretty hard-core.

Re: re. the EU wouldn't be able to agree on how or even whether to use it

Dave(with all the numbers),

but as soon as NATO starts fighting, then it is unquestionable that NATO is at war, and Germany comes in at that point.

I used to think that. But now I'm less sure. Particularly in the case of the Baltic States say, NATO only has a small battlegroup in each. That could be swept aside very quickly. And then reconquering the place is going to take a significant military escalation. Amphibious invasion would be incredibly dangerous, so it would have to be done through Poland with a big armoured force, and suddenly that's looking very much like World War III.

There's regular polling about this. I saw one from last week where in Germany and Italy less than 40% of people say that they think their country should fight in defence of a NATO ally. Despite being treaty-bound to do so.

But the one that stood out to me was during Trump's presidency. Similar numbers thought Germany should go to war in defence of NATO. But 60% that even with Trump at the helm, the USA would still do so. Sort of meaning that "Phew! We don't have to."

Oddly the Greens always used to be the party that was most anti-war and anti-NATO - and has been since at least the 70s. But now they're a more formidable politcal force, they're a bit more worried about Russia, and their duty to Eastern Europe, and so a bit more pro-NATO - even though young people in Germany are more sceptical about it than ever - not helped by the shock to public opinion in Europe that was the Trump presidency.

Re: re. the EU wouldn't be able to agree on how or even whether to use it

Correction: NATO won't be be able to agree, or rather, won't agree, as soon as it matters.

NATO total agreement isn't as important. Article 5 is automatic if a country is attacked in any serious way, because NATO is activated by Article 5 of its treaty if any of a country's armed forces are attacked in it's territory.

However some countries may refuse to help. But NATO is also a sort of standards organisation and one dedicated to cross-training and interoperability. So if a NATO member calls for help, and not everyone is willing - then everyone else can still send support. And the point is that those troops have trained together and are used to joint command.

There will also be huge reputational damage to those countries that refuse. Afghanistan was declared a NATO mission, because the Setpember 11th attack was deemed an attack on NATO. I'm sure it countries could have ducked out of that. But if the Russians send forces into the Baltic States and Germany say refuses to cooperate or help (as some German anaylsts have suggested) there will be huge repercussions of that decision. But in the meanwhile other NATO nations and NATO's standing forces could respond as planned.

imanidiot,

The NATO spending committment is 2% of GDP, not 3%. Although not many NATO countries even achieve that.

I think you're also descending into paranoid fantasies about the EU. The problem with an EU army isn't that the EU would use it, it's that the EU wouldn't be able to agree on how or even whether to use it. Foreign policy is done by unanimity - and there isn't any. Some of the more pro EU types were hoping that this could be an area for EU expansion after Brexit, with no more nasty Brits vetoing it. But the problem is that it wasn't just us nasty Brits. Eastern Europe doesn't particularly trust Germany on defence, seeing as Germany wants to be somehow equidistant between the US and Russia. And was happy to sign up to Nordstream II, while merrily telling everyone it was nothing to do with foreign policy and Russia fucking over Ukraine, but just a normal business transaction. Which is either spectacular stupidity or wilfully ignoring the vital national interests of its Eastern European allies and Ukraine which both the EU and NATO were supposed to be supporting, but not actually allying with.

EU defence cooperation would make massive financial and military sense. If those countries' foreign policy was alligned. But it's not, which makes it pointless. Though cooperating on buying stuff would make sense.

Re: This is not good - welcome to World War 3

WWIII won't start over Ukraine. We didn't let them into NATO, we're not obliged to defend them, and we've publicly said that we won't.

What we will do is put more sanctions on Russia if they do invade. And the Russian economy hasn't really recovered from the last lot. People say this isn't a deterrent to Putin, and maybe it's not. But the smaller their ecomony is, the less money they've got to spend on weapons, the less danger they'll be in future.

Depending on how much damage is inflicted on Ukraine, we may then supply them with weapons afterwards. This time, hopefully the right weapons so they can actually defend themselves properly. i.e. we should have supplied them with decent air defences. To do it now would escalate the situation, and as it takes time to set them up and train them, it would pretty much be an invitation for Russia to invade immediately. But it's something we can threaten to do in future - as well as basing far more forces in Eastern Europe (to protect NATO members) - which is supposedly the reason Putin is doing this in the first place.

I think it's basically time to go back to the old Cold War dynamics. Offer talks and benefits for cooperation. Offer disarmament and de-escalation in order to build trust on both sides. Beef up our own defences so we can offer credible deterrence, so Russian don't think they can get away with say invading the Baltic States and leaving us with a fait accompli before we can react. Plus beefing up our defences then gives something he'll want to trade in any disarmament talks. And try to have basic economic links, but try not to let Russia use our economies to boost its economy too much, as long as we're growing faster than them, then the relative power is always shifting in our favour.

Re: Its probably just an exercise

There is something to see here, since they decided to do their excercises in the Irish EEZ. There are plenty of other places closer to Russia they could have picked, and certainly many more middle-of-nowhere ones.

Also the Russian ambassador in Dublin could have refrained from telling the Irish government not to allow Irish fishermen to sail in that bit of Ireland's Exclusive Economic Zone lest some Russian warship accidentally blow them out of the water.

Even Russia accept it's a big deal, as otherwise they wouldn't have backed down and moved the live-fire excercise.

Commswonk,

Couple of sources for you. Couldn't remember where I'd read it, so had to do a quick Google, so took the opportunity to read an Irish source on it too.

Which confirmed the thing I remember from the UK article I'd seen. The deal was arranged between Ireland's Aviation Authority, plus their Foreign and Defence ministries. But the Irish specifically excluded their own airforce! The deal was done with the matching UK ministries, the CAA and RAF, and it was the RAF that specifically asked the Irish government to include their own Air Corps, which they refused to do! They found out when it leaked in a press story according to the Irish Independent.

The original story was from UK Defence Journal

Or a better overview in the Irish Times

Re: Meh

Channel 4 did a comedy show in the 90s with Mark Thomas - just looked it up, 'The Mark Thomas Comedy Product'.

Where they went to various stately homes that the owners had registered as museums for tax purposes, but didn't let the public actually visit. And they tried to visit.

I probably disagree with Mark Thomas on most political subjects. But he usually manages to be funny when having his go, rather than just smugly preaching at people. He's also capable of laughing at himself and 'his own side' - where far too many comedians get sanctimonious instead.

Plus I like his style of bloody-minded protesting. So for example opposing the last Labour government's laws on having to register protests in Central London. His first was to ice their slogan onto a cake - and argue that they weren't having a protest, they were having a tea party. He did an excellent comedy show for Radio 4 about the various barrack-room-lawyering shennanigans he pulled in finding loopholes in the rules and exploiting them for both comedy and political purposes.