perestroika

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Ideally, people should try to get them Jas-39 Gripen with MBDA Meteor missiles to back up the F-16 fleet.

Currently, the situation seems to be: F-16 pilots are still inexperienced and their missiles are outranged by some missiles that a Su-35 could be carrying (e.g. R-77M with 190 km range). When a Su-34 (fighter-bomber) conducts glide bombing runs from a distance of 40 km, a Su-35 (air superiority fighter) typically provides it air cover. Under such conditions, it's a difficult task for an F-16 pilot to fire an AMRAAM at the bomber (at best 180 km range) and evade counter-fire from the fighter. Fortunately they've got shiny new ECM pods and hopefully Russian planes haven't got decent radars.

However, a plane with longer range weapons (Meteor can fly for 200 km) would deter even a fighter escort of the Su-34, and likely end glide bombing as a tactic.

Alternatively, one can hope that the actual range of AMRAAM exceeds the advertised range or the actual range of R-77M falls short of advertised range - or that they have better radars, or can somehow backport Meteor to F-16, or that their ECM can beat the electronics of R-77. However, as far as I'm aware, firing an AMRAAM from maximum range needs a really big target (actual bomber, not a fighter-bomber).

Either way, good to hear it happened. :) If it happens more, it might finally deter glide bombing. So far, air defense ambushes have also temporarily deterred it and drones have struck airfields where the Su-34 planes get equipped, but nothing has stopped it for long.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

the experiences around Helene and Milton are just an extreme continuation of a trend where the public is increasingly getting its information from extremist figures online rather than experts

Sadly, all true.

I've had to remind people several times that "if you go reading Twitter, please put on your intelligence analyst glasses". To find a grain of truth in that truckload of dust.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

If conservative means "cautious and wary of unexpected results", "disillusioned with methods that we tried and failed with" or maybe even "equipped with experience of successful and failed cooperation with various sorts of people", then yes. Already before age 50, I'm spoiled with various good and bad experiences. I cannot exclude that as my tendency to explore decreases (psychology tends to affirm this trend), I may get prejudiced too. I may have to figure out something to counter it.

But if conservative means that I suddenly don't want a society with equality and without hierarchy, then - nope.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

it’s probably talking about YOU

Seems very unlikely. Suppose that global population is 7 billion. One percent is 70 million then. Neither "you and me" or "EU and me" are good analogies. The population of the EU is ~450 million, the population of the US is 330 million - with a bunch of additional "western" countries lumped in, let's say - one billion. That is 14% of the global population, far above 1%.

The examined 1% includes people who are better not characterized as "being able to afford browsing Lemmy", but rather being able to afford multiple households in a developed country (or more in an under-developed country). More or less: "people who can come up with one megabuck if they badly want".

Some informative graphics, which by the way contradict the title claim of the post. I don't know which one is right, the title says 1% = 95%, but Wikipedia says 1% = 46%. And it looks bad the other way too, since 55% = 1%...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_of_wealth

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Speculation has it that either "Palyantsia" (small turbojet drone) or "Neptun" (sizable cruise missile, antiship with ground strike capability) were used. Since part of the Russian facility was hardened and underground, I would ordinarily favour the hypothesis of "Neptun", but it's supposed to be out of their range and the videos recorded over Russia featured a turbojet sound and the video you linked has a small explosion (this would fit "Palyantsia", since it's small).

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

Alternatively, and perhaps more plausibly - people who are new to politics fall for a populist.

I'm a bit scared of where the world is going, but it doesn't make me vote a local populist. One of the things that helps me recognize a scammer from distance - 3 decades of experience with garden variety politics.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (4 children)

As a happy user of Signal (no bugs or incidents from my viewpoint), I regardless chime in to say a word for decentralization. :)

Signal is centralized:

  • there is a single Signal implementation, with a single developing entity
  • you have to install its mobile version before you may run the desktop version

There exist protocols like Tox which go a step beyond Signal and offer more freedom -> have multiple clients from diverse makers (some of them unstable), don't have centralized registration, and don't rely on servers to distribute messages - only to distribute contact information.

In the grand comparison table of protocols (not clients), Tox is among the few lines that's all green (Signal has one red square).

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I attempted to find the source of this image and its spread seems to originate from 4chan (or at least, 4chan was one of the earliest vectors).

Chances of this being a disinformation / prank seem pretty high currently.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

/me listening to the sound of a WinXP virtual machine booting under Debian Linux

They can shoot their foot with a grenade launcher next. I'm already out of range.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Alternatively or additionally, I think oxygen plasma glows blue or green, because northern lights (near the poles, at least) are greenish.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Came here to post this and say "finally", but someone had already noticed. :)

There's a quote that's probably not from Churcill, but is frequently mis-attributed to him (the actual source is probably Abba Evan, an Israeli diplomat visiting Japan). The distorted quote says something that's appropriate today:

"You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all other possibilities."

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

To resist an organized group, you communicate the problem (in an anarchist society, communicating the problem of a nascent state seems like the easy part), present evidence of the nature and severity of the problem, and ask people and existing organizations to mobilize.

Whether the next step is obstructing the state peacefully or mass production of munitions, would already depend on how bad the state has got.

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