* Posts by Voland's right hand

5759 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Aug 2011

Flamin' Nora! Brit firefighters tackle blazing fly-tipped boat

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Re: Sir Nelson??

referring to the Spanish Armada. That was a couple centuries

Pedantry alert :

The Fleet at Trafalgar was a joint French - Spanish one.

Blighty's super-duper F-35B fighter jets are due to arrive in a few weeks

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Re: But.. but..

Very dangerous if one engine failed, like most twin engined WW2 british aircraft. A Lanc pilot I knew commented that all pommie aircraft required _very_ careful throttle matching

That is one thing which modern flight management software would have absolutely no issues in dealing with.

At least they worked and built locally a few people might have jobs for a while. Oh jobs a plenty. For the right people transiting the revolving door.

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Re: But.. but..

Soo.. could you mount a couple of GAU-8's in/under the nose of a modernised Lancaster & make a far cheaper CAS aircraft?

Lanc - not really. Now a Mosquito... Add some modern ECM, avionics, replace the balsa in the airframe with carbon fiber and leave everything else as is. It is actually one of the pinnacles of propeller aircraft you do not need to try to "improve it".

That idea is not as insane as it seems.

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Re: Lancasters

I'd imagine that they aren't too popular in Hamburg, Dresden either.

Do not worry, the nation's fav war criminal Tony Bliar (with the assistance of his mate Gerhard) has taken care of it. Every trace that could be erased has been erased (and charged to an obscure tax-write-off line in the Deutche Bank London branch accounts). The memorial to the Dresden bombings has been eradicated and the round church now proudly stays in its pre-war glory. See - nothing happened. No war crimes. No civilian massacres. No bombings of cities with no industrial significance. No Slaughterhouse 5 - Vonnegut sucked it out of his finger.

It has been taken care of. So you can sell a Lanc as a souvenir there.

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Re: F35B is not an all-American design either.

Not Yak-142, 141.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakovlev_Yak-141

Need more coffee... It is a Yak anyway.

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F35B is not an all-American design either.

While F35A and C are indeed predominantly-American, the F35B is derived from both American work and Lockheed licensing Yak-142. So actually there is Russian tech in it and Russian patents (probably expired by now though).

Though let's face it, even mentioning it would probably cause our best beloved Ex-Fireplace Salesman to choke on his own bile.

It is also the complete and utter opposite of the Lanc. The Lanc was relatively cheap for a strategic bomber of that age, easy to manufacture and possible to build in quantity. I do not think any of that applies to F35B. In fact - just the opposite.

Great Scott! Bitcoin to consume half a per cent of the world's electricity by end of year

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Re: CFC's

Modern industrial cooling installations simply do not have the "escape rate" to explain the spike size. It would have to be a pretty crap aircon to leak that much.

It is more likely that this is construction and/or household chemicals - freon used for foam and propellant. Once again (and as usual) a Chinese manufacturer not giving a damn about environmental regs.

Git push origin undo-my-last-disaster

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There was a system do that using CVS for Cisco and other network gear as far back as 1999.

I remember setting it up in 2 jobs and swearing madly that I cannot use it in the third one where HP screwed up the set term length command and paging in a way which made getting full config via term impossible.

The approach works fine if the config is human readable so you can see what has changed on the diff. If you are diffing things like machine generated json or xml you have already lost the battle.

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Borat DevOps

https://twitter.com/devops_borat/status/41587168870797312?lang=en

To make error is human. To propagate error to all server in automatic way is #devops.

Zuck to meet Euro MPs for ‘please explain’ session

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Do not be so flippant

good luck with that, folks!

Do not cast all MEPs into Farage (and other British MEPs) image. I think we've already been there with the infamous facepalm at the earn an honest penny speech.

The difference between the MEPs and the Congresscritters is that there is a significant number of technically literate people there. A quick scan through that committee shows a number of people with dual CS (or other telecoms/tech) and Law degrees from proper universities like Berlin Humboldt Uni as well as some proper ex-techies. A lot of them are at positions on data collection and surveillance which will make Shrem loook like a pansy moderate.

So in theory, they can grill him properly. In any case it will be more productive than a show in Westminster. Let's wait and see.

Russian malware harvesting Telegram Desktop creds, chats

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Re: So what?

WHY the furore over a Russian doing the same?

Who told you it is government? In fact, most likely it is not. Telegram was (and still is despite the block) used quite extensively in business comms in Russia so you can get your hands on fairly interesting stuff by stealing messages.

Net neutrality is saved in Senate vote! No, not really, it was a giant waste of everyone's time

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Re: actual legislation, not regulatory gerrymandering

Obaka's FCC should NEVER have simply reclassified internet as a 1930's era telephone,

The primary power grab is with a Republican FCC under Bush when CALEA and other phone legislation was expanded to cover Internet communications in 2004 by an executive order without congress being involved. So, first of all - it is a Shrubbery case, not an Obama one.

From that point onwards the Internet is officially treated as a phone for law enforcement and related regulatory compliance purposes. In that case, it might as well be treated like that for everything. If anything, Obama FCC decisions cleaned up the Bush mess and made it a bit more sane.

A case of walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it is a duck.

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Re: Who's got

Yuck... I need mental bleach now...

Bowel down: Laxative brownies brought to colleague's leaving bash

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Re: A tip-off...

There is a well known joke (I have heard it about several countries):

Q:What is one person from country X?

A: A revolutionary

Q:What are two persons from country X?

A: An organized revolutionary movement.

Q:What are three persons from country X?

A: An organized revolutionary movement with a traitor mole.

Samsung ready to fling Exynos at anyone who wants a phone chip

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This is bound to get interesting

How fresh is this information?

I thought ZTE intended to seize operating which in turn forces its majority owner (the Chinese state) to step into the dispute.

Kaspersky Lab's move from Russia to Switzerland fails to save it from Dutch oven

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Re: How we are being played

It is beyond comprehension why they are digging the Russian enemy from its grave.

Which part of "the trade with China is too big to fail" you cannot comprehend? They CANNOT dig out the Chinese enemy. They try in particular industries (f.e. the current ZTE/Huawei push) where there is still "something" left in the west, but overall there is nothing which can be done.

Compared to that Russia is suitable bogeyman/punching bag including for pretend reasons to crank up military spending.

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I myself don't know if they are helping Russia with their cyber activities

If they were not, they will be. Everyone has kids to feed and mortgages to pay.

So, one thing is guaranteed out of the whole deal - Putin will not have LESS hacking resource. He will have MORE.

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Nothing to do with that

Kaspersky is moving a number of its core processes from Russia to Switzerland as part of its "Global Transparency Initiative" (aka "Please stop being horrid about our Russian connections").

Russian parliament just voted for the counter-sanctions in first reading. If the law is unchanged it will become effectively impossible to do any closed software business which involves Russia and USA (and probably Russia and NATO countries). The other items which will be on the prohibition list will be most agricultural goods (both raw and processed).

Moving to neutral countries is more about this than anything else.

Pointless US Congress net neutrality vote will take place tomorrow!

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Joke

Come on, leave the bot herders to earn a living. It is easy to ignore and even if the author of the Bombastic Bob bot renames his creation as Michael Habel and changes the style generator slightly, that is still run by the same herder. Easy to discern.

By the way, the bot herding thingie is very IT. At least so I have heard.

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By actually getting North Korea to talk to us,

The only reason Korea talked was that it achieved its aim to make the Kaddaffi scenario too expensive for everyone.

At which point it was offered candy by Mike Pompeo combined with a demonstration that we would still like the Kaddaffi scenario in the form of the currently ongoing military exercises. By the way - these exercises were cranked up by Bolton/Trump one level above last year. Stealth aircraft and nuclear bombers. Just in case you know... Defensive weapons you know...

At which point it cancelled the talks. Frankly, cannot blame them - they are for once consistent. It is pretty much a given they will cancel the Singapore summit too.

If anything Trump and Pompeo have destroyed whatever was achieved so far between the Koreans themselves.

Android devs prepare to hit pause on ads amid Google GDPR chaos

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Re: Consent

might not be wanting to have ads displayed in an untargeted fashion.

It is targeted. By context. The best targeting there is and the best targeting there can be.

The scumbags should get on with the program and comply with legal reqs.

Google will need to do more work though. The apps should now start supplying as much context as it can extract from a webpage. If it was Google from 15 years ago this would not be an issue. Google in 2018 - it quite likely will be. It has acquired some of the worst large company characteristics.

Airbus windscreen fell out at 32,000 feet

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Re: Hero ?

the next time you fly on one of your low cost carrier Pay to Fly piloted aircraft.

It's the other way around I am afraid. A lot of low cost carriers hire ex-Eastern Europe or ex-Third World fighter pilots. That is not just experience, but experience in flying aircraft that would not pass the pre-flight checklist in a Western European or USA air force. I know personally some of the people who fly for the like of WizzAir and I know what they flew in Eastern Europe once upon a time.

It is the flag carriers which have flight schools of their own and are re-filling their pilot's ranks from those. This is especially valid for "low cost versions" of flag airlines. So do not slag the proper "low cost carriers" for something they do not need to be slagged. There is plenty of other stuff to slag them for.

Navy names new attack sub HMS Agincourt

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Re: You do not need neutrino detector.

Some kills require usually unacceptable processes - as in "Can I nuke him now Sir?"

My exact thought. If it is in under 500m (which it can do) nothing can kill it short of SUBROC/RPK2 or whichever one of the two the Chinese clone and copy.

OK - that's not necessary. 100 knots is bloody noisy.

That is its maximum design speed. Nobody said it is operating at it if it is hunting. Once again - "press release weapon case use vs real use case". If it is crawling at a couple of knots same as its target and keeping track of it passively it should be quieter than a sub. Anything else aside it is much smaller and has no life support equipment to operate. They tested it for the first time 2 years ago (according US Navy report) so in reality we do not have a clue if they are using it now or not.

In any case, if they are successful (or if the Chinese copy it), electric torps as a replacement/complement to the Spearfish and the Mark 48 are back on the menu. By the way, IMHO it is only a matter of time until they are successful - the tech is there and this is cheaper than a normal sub.

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You do not need neutrino detector.

There is no need for exotic tech. You just need to pay attention to the "enemy" presentations in their native language and filter out the rubbish interpretation the press is feeding you.

https://www.defensenews.com/space/2018/01/12/russias-nuclear-underwater-drone-is-real-and-in-the-nuclear-posture-review/ - a lot of this is from pictures of a preso taken when one of the (i do not envy the poor thing) assistants of the Russian general staff forgot to cover it.

The press (being the press) on both sides of the fence presented us this as some scary doomsday cobalt supernuke. One off super duper weapon. Doomsday device.

It ain't. Read carefully. Slide on the right top (translating for those not proficient in великий и могучий):

Left: Primary applications of this system are: engagement with torpedoes of capital ships, mixed rocket-torpedo load missions, setting of minefields (including clandestine), hunting of opponent atomic submarines.

Right: Out of the multitude of possible applications the publicly disclosed one is carrying a warhead of up to 100Mt with a possible "cobalt bomb" (emphasis on multitude - mine).

And suddenly the whole idiotic superweapon malarkey makes sense.

It is not. It is a cut down, cheap, semi-automated and semi-autonomous (possibly going autonomous in the future) unmanned hunter-killer submarine. No frigging 100Mt cobalt bombs - basic torpedoes and missiles. That also explains the gigantic sonar array in the bow. All tech is available - this is just the old Alpha/Lira class (the one which necessitated the development of the Spearfish torpedo) with the meatware removed and a further improved reactor. It is cheap too. Way cheaper than a manned hunter killer. It also fits the way they are building stuff - as a design philosophy it is the navy equivalent of a Uran-9. Cheap, unmanned, designed for manufacture in quantity.

So what can a submarine coming out of port do against an opponent which is doggedly following it constantly shining on it with active sonar? What can it do if it is doing it from deeper than its maximum torpedo engagement depth (up to 500m)? What can it do if the "target" is 40% faster than its fastest torpedo ~ up to 100 knots (not difficult if you do not need to carry meatsacks)? How do you think it will perform if the crew knows that they have a gun pointed at their temple 24x7x365?

If (there is an if, but an a big one here) they start building these, the Agincourt in 5-10 years or so it will be near-obsolete. Still better than the Dreadnought class which may end up being obsolete before even leaving for sea trials.

Wah, encryption makes policing hard, cries UK's National Crime Agency

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How did that "apparent" get in there?

Somebody erroneously thought that apparent is a synonym for complete.

You've got pr0n: Yes, smut by email is latest workaround for UK's looming cock block

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Re: Probably mentioned already but

Parents in trouble again for letting kids walk alone - USA TODAY

That is not just Maryland. You are pretty much guaranteed the same in the UK.

There was a similar idiocy at my daughter's school.

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What's next?

So what's next? Newsgroups?

Ubuntu sends crypto-mining apps out of its store and into a tomb

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Re: Making Installations Easier

he historical reasons for separating out -dev files are long gone;

Nope, they are not. See openssl 1.0 vs openssl 1.1 as a fine example. Ditto for any and every other case where you need version coexistence. Getting the libs to coexist is usually trivial - the dynamic loader loads the right ones if present. Getting the full devel environment, headers, etc to coexist requires patching everything which is just not worth it for 99% of the cases.

Sort your spending habits out, UK Ministry of Defence told over £20bn black hole

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Re: Another wee problem

Preventing admirals and politicians from playing with "their" train set is, in this instance, a good thing.

Oh, definitely - with you on that.

My point was different - the overall "specialized white elephant" building across all of the Navy and to a lesser extent other forces.

If you look at USA, Russia, French, Chinese subs even the nuclear deterrent ones carry torpedoes and can launch cruise missiles out of their torpedo tubes. While that is not their normal function they can be in extreme circumstances pressed to give a hand in need as a normal attack sub.

The official spec for the Drednaught when I looked it up did not list any torpedo tubes so it looked like yet another typical Navy dedicated white elephant. Just like the destroyers and frigates which can do only AA or only ASW and have no anti-ship or land attack capability. Just like the two ultra-bespoke special carrier white elephants which have no aircraft for them and can launch only one ultra bespoke model of aircraft. Just like...

In this day and age even a Tier 1 fleet, army or air force cannot afford dedicated white elephants. At the same time - this is the only thing UK is building and buying. No wonder the budget does not add up.

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Re: Another wee problem

The Borei's also only carry Torpedoes. And torpedo tube launched cruise missiles including nuclear armed. Read the spec on RPK-2 before commenting.

The Dreadnought Class will have 6 Torpedo Tubes and will be armed with Spearfish Torpedo's....

Not in the official spec. Official spec lists Trident only. If 6 torpedo tubes have made it as a late addition, that has not made it to all sources yet.

All US Ohio Class carry Torpedo's. And they can launch cruise missile from the torpedo tube. Same as US attack submarines.

It's clear you do not know the first thing about the use and deployment of SSBN's, with comments like "give the fleet a hand in need."

Count the number of subs UK has - attack and SSBNs. Count the number of times it was down to zero on South Atlantic watch (where there always should be one for "obvious" reasons). So the case where there may be a need to torpedo a second-third hand 50 year old light cruiser in neutral waters may still arise you know and with the current active sub fleet numbers beggars cannot be choosers. Ditto for whacking it with a cruise missile.

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Re: I love the smell of Austerity in the morning.

nothing magical about 100% debt to gdp:

In the days before rating agencies - yes. As you can see in the days when there was an assumption that no matter what the government will pay its debt it happily borrowed 200%+.

The 20th century brought some differences here. Rating agencies, central banks tweaking policies and interest rates, etc. That changed the game and as a result all raises significantly above 100% coincided with major recessions. That is exactly what happened in the Eastern block in the 1980-es and effectively finished it off.

So while it is was not magical historically in this day and age it has become a magic number.

In any case, the actual number is not important. Comparing their economic metrics and our economic metrics as well as the cost of "new toys race" the numbers do not look anywhere as good as the 1980-es campaign. In fact just the opposite.

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Re: I love the smell of Austerity in the morning.

One day this budget will tank

It should. What we are observing is a misguided attempt to repeat the success of the Empire of Evil campaign by Maggie and Ronnie the Raygun by two feeble imitators without having the full understanding of the reasons for the success.

When Ronnie and Maggie initiated the 1980-es weapons race which made USSR try to build superweapons and go bankrupt USA and UK had serviceable debts while the Warsaw pact was at 100% debt to GDP ratio. That was a direct result of the Suslov and Co 1970 insistence that borrowing is on "what the 5 year plan says as it will happen" instead of the actual economic metrics. As a result it took very little for USSR to go bankrupt - less than 4 years.

At the moment it is not Russia which has 100% debt to GDP.

Further to this, if you look at what we are fielding and what they are fielding it is us being irrational. Their recent weaponry is impressively rational, well engineered and CHEAPER than the previous generation. T90 is cheaper than T80. BMPT1 and 2 cost peanuts as they are reusing old T72 chassis out of the scrapyard. BMPT, Armata, Uran-9 all share so much that you can literally run a Ford style conveyor printing them for a fraction of what it costs us to build a lousy personnel carrier. Same for the drones. Same for the upgrades to all aircraft with new avionics, etc.

Russians are not alone - if you take a careful look Germans, French, etc are all trying to make their weapons cheaper too. A German frigate has the same firepower as a USA destroyer and so little crew that it originally failed the reqs to be called a capital ship.

So if US/UK are trying to bankrupt the Russians by trying to recreate the success of Ronny the Raygun it is the wrong strategy. We are not in the 1980es, the Russians have not forgotten those years and they are not taking this hook line and sinker the way Brezhnev and Andropov took it US/UK credit line will run out first.

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Re: Another wee problem

Err... Why do you think the Dreadnought class sub is not a white elephant?

It is the only nuclear missile submarine in the world which does not have any other armament besides ICBMs. Yanks have torpedoes and cruise missiles on Ohio class, Russians have torpedoes and cruise missiles on the Borei class, so have the french on the Trioumphant and the Chinese are building the same spec.

The only ones which, once again, are building a single use white elephant is UK. A sub which cannot even fend for itself or give the fleet a hand in need.

So that is not 2 white elephants. Six. At least. If we add here the destroyers which have absolutely no anti-ship armament that will make it double digits.

This is just on the white elephant front. On the "idiot in charge" front we can add the lack of landing ship(s), lack of helicopter carrier(s), lack of... While there is a long tradition of idiots in the Admiralty in peace time, the current lot probably beats the record especially as far as "we have infinite amount of money so nothing will be multi-purpose" is concerned.

Cisco cancels all YouTube ads, then conceals cancellation

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Re: priorities

Its just more of the "Politicial Correctness" mob going wild.

No. Just serving ads to already indoctrinated is of little benefits. You are better off serving them to people who are actively researching new stuff in an attempt to indoctrinate.

Or in Google internal ad selection engine terms: "Smart Ass" is an idiocy, the old "Dumb Ass" relevance based engine provides significantly higher ROI to most ad placers and websites.

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Re: priorities

Personally I think it's a bit odd to associate an advertisement with its context considering they're everywhere.

That is how AdSense started until DoubleClick acquired Google. That is the correct way to describe the change of mentality at that point - the original ideas were gone and Google went back to standard adscum tactics.

There is the key issue with "creepware advertising" - the user gets the stuff presented to them regardless of the context. Regardless of are they watching beheadings, kittens or Boris Johnson the ad stays the same.

Being in this situation shows that every single marketing manager in a major brand has been asleep on their watch. They have absolutely none of the original AdSense relevance and context now and their brands (and as a proxy the advertisers) are starting to pay for it. They hated AdSense exactly because it was relevant, but if you ask them what they prefer now 95% of them will vote for an AdSense like system with both hands.

It is only a matter of time until Google goes back to the original AdSense "context only" for some ads and sells it as a product. If it does not, someone else will and will take the market from it the same way it took the market away from the advertisers in 15 years ago.

US Congress finally emits all 3,000 Russian 'troll' Facebook ads. Let's take a look at some

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she is the most corrupt politician

I do not recall her taking "consultancy payments for the insight into the new administration viewpoint" via her lawyer after being elected as a senator. I do not recall her doing that after being confirmed as a head of the State Department. I do not recall her taking that as a first lady either.

Sure, she will take money without batting an eye lid including mob money, but as a lawyer by education she knows the limits at which it stops being lobbying and becomes outright kleptocracy style corruption. Sure - she is corrupt. But it is strictly within "propriety limits" for which her family foundation keeps proper audited accounts (instead of laundering it via the family lawyer).

In any case, she is clearly superseded as the most corrupt USA politician by the current lot (which is exactly why you are getting Pence voicing an opinion that it is time for investigation to stop). By the way - that is clearly an impeachment matter for the whole lot. Taking a bung via your consigliery mob capo style and having him pay off "ladies with interesting professions" with it? If anything else was not an impeachment matter that clearly is.

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Re: Well, it's just about FEAR

Possibly not even in Moscow.

Correct - most documented sightings are St Petersburg.

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It isn't fake news, it is a real problem,

It is a drop in the ocean compared to an average "influencing a democracy the way we like it" operation performed by USA and/or NATO. I have observed these from the front row in Eastern Europe and was offered money or equivalent to participate in them at the time as well. It is a drop in the ocean compared to the psyops run by the like SCL/Camrbidge Analytica on contracts from "us" to influence elections and public opinion the way we would like it being influenced.

It is a drop in the ocean compared to an average Russian influencing operation such as them sponsoring the greens on anti-fraking legislation in half of Europe. Successfully too (and totally above board where required by law).

Based on the released data we have:

Hypothesis A: Someone in Russia was bored and was playing experimental runs on influencing public opinion this way. In that case, this is not the real thing. Yet. For that they have the data now and it is yet to come.

Hypothesis B: The goal was not to influence at all, but to cause a headless chicken reaction of jumping into censorship along the Chinese model in the west (thus justifying Russian own censorship efforts). If that was the goal they have succeeded with gusto.

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Re: Well, it's just about FEAR

And you know that based on your extensive, real-life experience of living under Stalin's regime.

He is correct actually. Stalin went as far as engineering fake attempts at illegal border crossing by agents to set-up the full chain of propaganda. I suggest visiting the museum of Border Guards in Moscow, the exhibits from the 30-es make for an interesting viewing.

It takes MUCH MORE to engineer similar campaigns in this day and age because we have much better means to check and cross-reference. At the same time there is an order from above for the campaigns to be engineered. What is happening at present is that a Ronnie Raygun wannabie (with even lesser mental faculties) and a Maggie wannabie are trying to repeat the success of the Empire of Evil campaign which bankrupt the Soviet Union.

That worked a treat then. Empire of Evil. Out to conquer all of us. We will build superweapons to defend resulting into a weapons race. USSR and Warsaw Pact entered into after the "planned loan" disaster(*) of the 70-es with debts up to 100% of the GDP. They also tried to compete in that discipline and the result is as we say is history. The interesting aspect is the propaganda. Only people with clearance on both sides had the full picture so when Andropov's education ministry published the rag "Where is the threat of world piece coming from" (printed in Finland funnily enough) and handed it to every schoolchild people believed. Same on the other side. The result was that we nearly bequeathed the earth to the roaches.

When they try it now and they try it hard we can only laugh (and so does Stalin's black ops propaganda dept from under the marble plates on their graves by the way).

Example: 'Great power competition': Nato announces Atlantic command to counter Russia . If that happened in the cold war we would have said "Woaaaaah. Empire... of Evil... Wave the [stars and stripes | union jack]". What we say now is clowns. Money wasting clowns. Counter what? There is a total of 3 capital ships active in the Russian Northern fleet. Kuznetsov is in for repairs, Ushakov is not ready, half of the ASW brigade is in for repairs or overhaul and so are the destroyers. Pacific fleet has a grand total of 2 capital ships in use and Black sea fleet a grand total of F*CKING ZERO - it is only corvettes and missile boats. Going back to Stalin (and the exhibits in the museum of the Border Guards) he would not have allowed it. He would have set-up a proper provocation. Something with gas, poisons or even a blown up (to be scrapped) ship of the line.

The worst part of the whole clown show at the moment is that it is not Russia (as USSR had in the 1980s) going into the new weapons race with 100% GDP debt. It is us. So trying to repeat the feat of Ronny the Raygun and Maggie does not bode well as an idea. Not at all - especially considering that Russians are showing the mythical superweapons now. It looks like a mirror image of the 80-es, not a repeat.

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Re: Magnitude of Effect

Yeah,,, If this is what it takes to pervert the course of American democracy, I am surprised the government of Swaziland does not try to select the next American president.

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Re: I fail to understand

By supporting an anti-establishment narrative.

May I remind you that Trump tried to present himself initially as anti-establishment and there were plenty of marks duped by that ploy.

Hillary was establishment through and through.

Make masses carry their mobes, suggests wig in not-at-all-creepy speech

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Re: Can't lawmakers be sacked for being too dim to be useful?

It is not a question of being too dim.

It is a question of having opinions and views which are incompatible with his profession. A person who even contemplates the idea cannot be a judge in a democratic society.

Zookeepers charged after Kodiak bear rides shotgun to Dairy Queen

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Re: Sense of humor

It was about as dangerous as the neighbor's German Shepherd.

Caucasian Shepherd - maybe. Big. Fluffy. Looks cute. And deadly - compared to it a pitbull is a child's toy.

German Shepherd - not anywhere near.

By the way, an incorrectly raised, spoilt German Shepherd can be quite dangerous too.

Collateral carnage as ZTE sanctions see Australia’s top telco dump mobe-maker

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Re: Last laugh

Last laugh will be ZTE.

Not necessarily. The "embargo game" works as long as:

1. Embargoed nations and entities do not unite - pure divide and conquer scenario.

2. The size of embargoed regions + dependencies does not grow to a point where they are a viable market in their own right.

3. The embargoed nations + entities do not possess access to sufficient amount of critical resource.

The way this game is played now violates these rules which means it can and probably will blow back. It will not be something from which ZTE will benefit by the way - unless it sets up itself as a dedicated supplier for embargoed nations.

NASA boss insists US returning to the Moon after Peanuts to show for past four decades

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Re: classic "schmuck bait"

the rocket makers would hire the people who WERE getting freebies from gummint,

No they will not. At least in the USA. It takes at least a technical college if not an engineering degree to work in a modern industry especially something high tech like rocketry. There is no way in hell someone who needs to scrape off the dole in USA to make the cut and the government will never ever sponsor education so that he does not need to be on the dole.

This is one of the reasons why all of Trump "initiatives" are bound to fail. You cannot re-create industry without an educated workforce in this day and age. USA is not Germany where you have to put some effort not to end up with a tech college degree and where the likes of BMW, VW, Bosch and Mercedes are in cahoots with the government to get an educated workforce. USA is a country where in order to get the equivalent education you need mom and dad to sponsor the sprog to the tune of around 80k at which point the sprog goes for liberal arts instead of a technical degree. Compared to that in Germany it is free for person (and an awesome payback for the industry which directly or indirectly sponsors that).

UK's Royal Navy buys £13m mine-blasting robot boat

Voland's right hand Silver badge

Indeed. Most technological advances were done by the Germans in WW2. Little has happened since.

New materials, new electronics, etc - sure. But nothing revolutionary new and all of them are still vulnerable to the good old torpedo boat minesweeping method as used by both Russians and Germans in WW2. I am surprised that it has not been automated - it is a prime candidate for that.