[-] tal@lemmy.today 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

While it sucks, people like me (and there’s a heavy majority of Californians like me) will get lower rates because we live in cities with low wildfire and low flood potential.

It doesn't sound to me like this is the situation.

Insurers can offer whatever they want, but if they want to be able to sell to non-high-risk people, they will also have to complete a sufficient number of sales to high-risk customers.

The rule will require home insurers to offer coverage in high-risk areas, something the state has never done, Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara's office said in a statement. Insurers will have to start increasing their coverage by 5% every two years until they hit the equivalent of 85% of their market share. That means if an insurer writes 20 out of every 100 state policies, they'd need to write 17 in a high-risk area, Lara's office said.

That will cause them to need to set lower rates in higher risk areas than they normally would to be able to complete sufficient high-risk-area sales. That will decrease competition to provide coverage in low risk areas, which will raise insurance rates there.

I'd expect this to be causing people who live in low-risk areas to be subsidizing people who live in high risk areas via higher insurance prices in low risk areas than would be the case in an unconstrained market.

That is, this is a good deal relative to an unconstrained market for people living in high-risk areas and a bad deal relative to an unconstrained market for people living in low risk areas.

[-] tal@lemmy.today 5 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Nowadays you comment on something, and there’s a 75% chance of you being shadowbanned without knowing why

I don't comment on YouTube, so commenting doesn't affect me. I have no idea whether it's a problem or not, but it's not one that I'll run into.

I rarely read comments on YouTube.

I don't have an account on YouTube.

forcing feuds to take place not in comments but in back and forth videos

I rarely watch videos of people talking about to each other, as I've no interest in the drama side of this (or on Twitter or similar). The very small handful of times where I've watched videos with disagreeing takes, it's been pretty respectful.

means anyone can use it as a platform to slander any person or topic completely unchallenged

Frankly, I don't think that this is a huge issue. The concept of "nobody can say false things or I will go to the government to have their statement examined by a court and potentially blocked", whether one agrees with it or not, becomes impractical in the Internet era, YouTube or no; publishing is no longer a local matter. Every individual has easy access to global reach. Laws on acceptable speech don't generally span jurisdictions (and it's probably a good thing too; I doubt that most people reading this would be happy about being subject to blasphemy law in some countries, for example). There is no entity with a monopoly over speech acting as an arbiter of truth Internet-wide. There is an absolutely immense amount of incorrect information accessible on the Internet. I think that the expectation is best placed on the consumer of information to take into account that some information out there is wrong, rather than taking it to some country's courts.

[-] tal@lemmy.today 3 points 6 days ago

That said, game studios are getting out of Russia as well.

Yeah, I've noticed that, but I do wonder how much of that is "we legally moved headquarters, but subcontract back into Russia".

Like, you listed DCS:

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

Following Tishin's death in 2018,[14] Eagle Dynamics moved its headquarters to Switzerland, with multinational employees and contractors in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, the United States, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain and elsewhere.

I remember reading some articles a bit back about Rolls-Royce subcontracting British nuclear submarine software back into Belarus and Russia.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/02/britains-nuclear-submarine-software-designed-russia-belarus/

Britain’s nuclear submarine engineers use software that was designed in Russia and Belarus, in contravention of Ministry of Defence rules, The Telegraph can reveal.

The software should have been created by UK-based staff with security clearance, but its design was partially outsourced to developers in Siberia and Minsk, the capital of Belarus.

I'd kind of think that scrutiny is probably less on video games than on defense contractors doing classified work on nuclear submarines, and if it can happen in the latter case...

[-] tal@lemmy.today 2 points 6 days ago

I think that it's kind of globally-applicable.

And I've wondered in the past whether the long-run for the Internet was always going to be people generally winding up with VPNs for similar reasons. I'm far from the first:

The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.

-- John Gilmore

[-] tal@lemmy.today 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I kind of wish that there was a bot that could auto-validate that at post time for communities that want it.

Doesn't even have to be a hard ban on any changes (like, I think that cleaning up garbled ISO entities in titles or stripping trailing website names from titles is entirely reasonable), but just compare title and submitted title, and if they differ, add a top-level comment with the original title.

On Reddit, I remember that /r/Europe eventually took a pretty strict line on that after people kept editorializing titles.

[-] tal@lemmy.today 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

The only thing that piques my interest there is, if that guy intended a larger explosion -- and maybe he didn't, maybe he just wanted to get the thing in the news than to do a lot of damage -- how he couldn't pull it off, if the guy was a Green Beret.

investigates

It sounds like his MOS was communications, not an 18C (engineering specialist). Maybe they just leave explosives to the guys with that MOS.

https://nationalguard.com/special-forces-qualification-course

The engineering specialist clearly deals with this:

18C Engineer Sergeant Course

This course trains and qualifies NCOs in the basic skills and knowledge required to perform duties as an engineer sergeant on an SFOD-A. Special Forces engineer sergeants are experts in employing offensive/defensive combat engineer capabilities to include demolitions, explosives and improvised munitions, construction, homemade explosives, target reconnaissance, and target analysis. Soldiers learn to read blueprints as well as design and construct theater-of-operations buildings, complete with plumbing, electrical and HVAC systems; field fortifications and Special Forces Tactical Facility construction; advanced demolition techniques utilizing U.S., allied, foreign and civilian demolition components; firing systems; calculation; and placement of charges, expedient charges and range operations. They can recruit, organize, train, and advise or command indigenous combat forces up to company size.

What a communications specialist would do:

18E Communications Sergeant Course

This course trains and qualifies NCOs in the basic skills and knowledge required to perform duties as a communications sergeant on an SFOD-A using some of the most sophisticated communications equipment in the Army. Special Forces communications sergeants learn U.S., allied and selected foreign communication systems found throughout the world and are capable of employing and accessing SF, joint and interagency communications. Communications sergeants have a thorough understanding of radio theory; basic electricity; radio telephone procedures; signal-operating instructions; communication security; power applications; information operations, electronic warfare and advanced communications procedures; satellite theory; the use of satellite radios such as the AN/PSC-5C/D, AN/PRC-117G and BGAN antenna and the radios' modes of operation; Demand Assigned Multiple Access (DAMA), High Performance Wave-Form (HPW) and point-to-point operations; satellite communications links, encryption and decryption; computer technology, including computer systems networking, troubleshooting, assembly and applications (computer applications A+ training and NET+ training); network computers in a LAN and WAN configuration; server/routers setup; and FM, AM, HF, VHF and UHF radio system maintenance. Communications sergeants prepare the communications portion of area studies, brief backs, and operation plans and orders. Other duties and responsibilities of the SF communications sergeant include communications planning such as transmission site selection, signal support in the Special Forces group, MDMP, mission planning, and preparing a signal annex. They can recruit, organize, train, and advise or command indigenous combat forces up to company size.

https://www.facebook.com/TimKennedyMMA/posts/anyone-know-matthew-livelsberger-aka-matt-berg-an-18z-former-18f-and-18e-alleged/1139468214210975/

This page -- I have no idea whether it's accurate -- has a screenshot of his bio, says that he was an 18E (communications), 18F (intelligence), and 18Z (senior leadership) at different points in time. It also has some comments that the explosives seem unexpected for a Green Beret, so it's not just me wondering about that:

I don't get an 18E using fireworks and fuel as an explosive. There are many different more powerful and easy to manufacture for someone who was an operator

I think after my first deployment I learned enough about HME to start a demolition business. No one with any knowledge of explosives would have used this.

[-] tal@lemmy.today 150 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

They didn't. They named it "Sarmat".

NATO also had reporting names for Soviet weapons. IIRC surface-to-surface missiles start with "S". A few are rather...less-than complimentary, "Satan" -- the name used for the weapon that this replaces -- probably being the most so.

This missile doesn't have the reporting name "Satan 2" for NATO, though. The only link it has with the original surface-to-surface missile with the NATO reporting name "Satan" is that it's supposed to replace it and so Western media, which very much enjoyed mentioning "Satan" wherever possible, dubbed the new missile "Satan 2". But it's not an official name with NATO or Russia, just something that the media uses for the clicks.

The original missile:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-36_%28missile%29#R-36M

The new one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-28_Sarmat

[-] tal@lemmy.today 173 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I mean, I think that he's got a valid broader point that egg prices haven't been great for a couple of years.

However...that's not really due to anything that Biden has done, much less Harris.

A lot of it was due to major avian flu outbreaks:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bird-flu-outbreak-egg-prices-2024/

April 24, 2024

A multi-state outbreak of avian influenza, also known as bird flu, is leading to a jump in the price of eggs around the U.S. — an unhappy reminder for consumers that a range of unforeseen developments can trigger inflation.

As of April 24, a dozen large grade A eggs cost an average of $2.99, up nearly 16% from $2.52 in January, according to federal labor data. The price increase comes as nearly 9 million chickens across Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico and Texas have been discovered to be infected with bird flu in recent weeks, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That is crimping egg supplies, leading to higher prices.

https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/egg-prices-rise-bird-flu-farm/

September 9, 2024

LONG LAKE, Minn. — Minnesota shoppers may be experiencing some sticker shock as eggs again emerges as a hot commodity.

According to the USDA, the average wholesale price for a dozen large Grade A eggs reached $4.26 in the Midwest region. That's up $0.09 since last week, but up roughly 20% compared to what was recorded in last summer's consumer price index.

"I'm not surprised by the volatility," Loree Kinney, store director at the Orono Market explained. "There's volatility in milk, there's volatility in dairy products, and in meat. There's not much you can do about the supply and demand."

Indeed, economists have for months pointed to a bird flu outbreak as a key reason for dwindling supplies of eggs across the U.S. coming from major producers.

You can't really lay that much at Harris's feet, though.

I do kind of wonder how practical it would be to have some company just store powdered eggs if the prices are going to be jerking around that much. Can't do a sunny-side-up egg or anything like that, but for baking, it should be fine.

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This week, Max and Maria were joined by military analysts Michael Kofman and Rob Lee to discuss the latest phase of the war in Ukraine. Max and Maria asked them for their thoughts on the ongoing Ukrainian offensive in Kursk, and whether or not this seizure of Russian territory by Kyiv exposes Russian threats of escalation as hollow. If they are hollow, does that mean Western "red lines" on certain kinds of aid to Ukraine should be reassessed?

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I am not very interested who Nate Silver will vote for; I am not very enthusiastic about Newsweek's choice of title. I think that's probably by far the least-worthwhile piece of information in the article.

But what I do think is interesting is that he's got an assessment of the impact of the presidential debate up:

He also discussed the candidates' win probabilities following their debate on Tuesday: "Before the debate, it had been like Trump 54, Harris 46. These are not vote shares. These are win probabilities. And after, it's 50-50," Silver said.

"She, right now, is at 49 percent of the vote in polls," Silver said on the podcast. "To win, she has to get to 51 percent—51 because she has a disadvantage in all likelihood in the Electoral College."

Despite having previously shown Trump as surging in the polls, Silver's model now has him neck and neck with Harris.

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I've got a high opinion of Michael Kofman's commentary on the Russo-Ukrainian War, consider him to be one of the better commentators talking about the matter to follow; for those not familiar, Kofman's a Ukrainian-American analyst specializing in the Russian military. A while back, he started doing a regular podcast with War on the Rocks called The Russia Contingency; they just came out with a new episode, the first I'm aware of where he's talking about the Kursk offensive. They don't do transcripts, but I thought I'd listen to it and type up a summary for anyone interested who may not like the podcast format.

This also has Dara Massicot, a coworker of his who he also sometimes does interviews or panel discussions with. Both are currently at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; when I started paying attention to him, Kofman was at the Center for Naval Analyses and Massicot was at Rand.

I personally particularly like Kofman's tendency to focus on highlighting what factors are likely to be or become significant, something that I don't see a lot of well-informed people putting online. I'd call his stuff generally well-informed and objective.

This is was released August 10, so it's about a day or so old, and the situation is obviously rapidly-evolving.

I've done these transcripts before, and have tried to get placenames and such correct, but I do not speak Ukrainian or Russian, so this is my best-effort attempt to try to provide references to placenames and people using maps and what resources I can find online (Google Maps, Deep State Maps, ISW's maps, etc). I may get things incorrect; that's on me and my own limitations. Kofman's stuff tends to be pretty information-dense, so usually my summaries of his stuff head closer to being transcripts.

Summary:

Kofman

  • Major caveat: Operation started August 6, so about 4 days of activity so far. Most material in this environment tends to show up about a day or two days after happening, so anything publicly-known is going to be dated by about a day or so.

  • Ukrainian regular forces have pushed in from Sumy into Russia's Kursk Oblast. They seem to have seized the town of Sudzha. They pushed northwest towards the town of Snagost and are outside Kremyanoye further northwest. They've advanced north; it's unclear how far, but maybe several settlements down the road towards Liubimovka and Kursk itself. Also made several salients advancing branching down roads coming from it. At this point, from open source material, statements that Ukraine has captured maybe 350 square km, probably more by now, but Kofman does not expect that all of this territory is yet controlled, or that it's early to make that determination. [I expect that this is due to it including areas between roads where Ukrainian forces have no physical presence.] It is also not clear yet what they intend to hold. There is definitely a salient that they have made; they overran the border guards and the initial conscript units that were there. They took quite a few POWs; we do not know how many, but most likely in the hundreds. Ukrainian forces advanced quickly, but also important to remember that advance forces entering territory is not the same as controlling territory. A lot of speculative maps floating around out there from various people trying to put together a picture of what's happening.

Massicot

  • Agreed. Not yet clear whether municipal buildings are controlled, what is the status of the local police force, is it only roads that are being moved up, how are they holding behind those. Believe that who are prisoners may have political significance for the Kremlin; this has been a sensitive political topic for Putin for some time, that conscripts not be involved. I'm also watching who Russia is looking to blame for this, and has been shifting around but looks to be the Chechen Akhmat group [Kadyrovites], that they were supposed to defend but ran away or couldn't close. In general, a lot of movement right now. When I see advancing maneuvers like this, have to ask what is the logistical plan; how are the forces going to be resupplied and refueled. That information is not visible to us right now. Lots of footage online of things exploding, but important things, things that Kofman and I follow, like where are the reinforcements, what are the logistics plan...that's the key part to watch for right now.

Kofman

  • Very clearly not like the previous raids organized by HUR [Ukrainian military intelligence]. This is an operation clearly planned by the Ukrainian general staff. Operation composed of regular forces, probably supporting elements from Ukrainian national guard, maybe territorial defense, and Ukrainian border service. From what people have been able to identify, there are elements of at least five different brigades. I want to be clear about this: elements. Sometimes when people see brigade numbers, they assume that all of the brigade is present. That's not always the case. As best as Kofman can tell, this operation maybe involves something like a divisional-sized element, maybe best guess ten to fifteen thousand men. It doesn't look that large. Kofman doubts that what we're seeing is just the tip of a spear, for a couple of reasons. First, a number of these brigades were moved off the line in Donetsk and other areas. A couple of them are brigades that had been recently-created and were going to serve as a reserve. Based on what Kofman's seen while doing fieldwork in Ukraine, there isn't a great deal of excess manpower or additional brigades available for this sort of operation, so not likely that Ukraine has a lot of free forces to throw into this without having to pull them off the line. A number of these units were pulled off the line; elements of 80th Air Assault Brigade, 82nd Air Assault Brigade, 22nd Separate Mechanized Brigade, probably have some elements of 95th Air Assault Brigade, maybe 5th Separate Assault Brigade as well, along with all sorts of supporting elements, maybe one of the newer 150-series brigades like 150th. Bottom line, in terms of operation size, it's probably closest to the Ukrainian offensive in Kharkiv in 2022. It looks like it's following a similar template. That's not surprising, given that Syrskyi's in charge. I believe that initially they were quite successful and had a significant breakout. My first reaction is that this looks deeply-embarrassing for Russia. I don't know what you have to do to get fired if you're Gerasimov, your favorite general, not sure what it takes, but...laughs

Massicot

  • I'll say this. If Surovikin was still involved in this, he would have built defenses and minefields on the other side of the border.

[From my past listening to Kofman's material, he has generally been critical of Gerasimov's performance relative to Surovikin's; he considered Surovikin's more-defensive-minded approach to be more dangerous for Ukraine, as it would force Ukranian forces to deal with Russian defenses in an attritional conflict, that Gerasimov's attempts to conduct offensives into strong Ukrainian defenses unwise and likely done for political reasons, at Putin's behest, due to Putin wanting to gain ground.]

  • Would guess that there are also units subordinate to HUR and SBU [Ukrainian intelligence agencies] involved in scouting things out in advance parties at start of offensive last week.

  • Share concerns with Kofman about Ukraine's ability to reinforce, and Ukraine pulling people off the line may make situation elsewhere more-difficult.

  • In terms of logistics, access is probably okay, but not sure what happens to logistics tail after it crosses the border to try to catch up with the guys who are all the way forward.

[Note that the border crossing being used is apparently the R200 -- Google Street View. This is a single two-lane road, and there does not appear to be a rail route through.]

  • Is embarrassing for Russia. Still in initial stages; don't know how this is going to end, but for the first week, this reveals a lot of problems that shouldn't be present on the Russian side two years into a war. Right when the war started, Russia declared a state of emergency, modified martial law in all of the regions that bordered on Ukraine; this was one of them. What that does is gives local law enforcement and military enhanced power to set up curfews, set up roadblocks, to put in minefields, to do territorial defense things specifically to make it easier to defend when you're at war with your neighbor. The fact that we're two-and-a-half years into this and either Russian intelligence did not pick this up, which is a failing, or it went up to General Lapin, who commands this area, and then went sideways, or it went above him up the chain to Gerasimov. [Note: I have seen later news coverage that they did detect Ukrainian concentrations, that it reached Gerasimov, but that Gerasimov did not consider it significant and did not inform Putin about it.] Not clear to me yet who will bear ultimate responsibility. I think it falls on Lapin, who is in charge of border defense in this region, and seems to be some effort to blame Akhmat Group. You start to see appeals from Russian citizens, and expect them to become politically-damaging to the Kremlin. You start to see them...if you haven't seen them, they look like "we have supported the war for two-and-a-half years, we are a border town, our men are off fighting, and you haven't evacuated us, you're not providing for us, there's no help, this is dangerous and unfair". This is a dangerous message for the Kremlin to let bounce around in the information space.

Kofman

  • We need to look at how this began. It is clear that Ukraine managed to achieve operational surprise. To be clear, folks like me didn't know that this offensive was coming. I don't think anybody did. I don't think that they told the United States or others. I have my own clear-cut theory as to why: my view is that tactically, Russia has actually had ISR coverage. There are videos posted of Russian drone feeds of them watching Ukranian forces before they crossed the border and as they were crossing the border. But as these types of operations continually show, war is a human endeavor, and technology may make the battlefield a lot more transparent at the tactical level, but people make mistakes, they don't prepare for things like this, they don't react in time. In some ways, it's not unlike what happened during the Kharkiv offensive, which people tried to portray as a surprise. In actuality, Russians were talking about it for two weeks during the buildup before Ukraine conducted it, and the Russian general staff just didn't respond or appropriately prepare or whatnot. I'm glad that you mentioned this; we continue to see Russian forces continue to make some of the same types of mistakes. And there are reasons for that. First, Russia seems to do quite poorly when it has to respond dynamically in a situation like this. So to some extent, you see Ukrainian units having the run of the place in these initial four days. Russian forces do far better when they're operating with a prepared defense, fixed lines, more in positional warfare. Much harder, as best I can tell, for them to coordinate action between different types of units. That still remains fairly weak, and it's interesting to observe. The other big issue is "what do you have to respond with"? Russia clearly has reserves, it has second-echelon units, it can pull units off from, say, the Kharkiv axis if it needs to. The issue you get, typically, is that newly-generated units are inexperienced. They also often aren't led by people who are that experienced. They will typically perform poorly against experienced units. This has been the case on both sides. Ukraine has had the same experience. Whenever it's thrown a battalion from a brand-new brigade to try to hold a part of the line...it's been fairly-consistent in this war. So when you have to send a reinforcement, and all your experienced units are on the front, your options are going to be newly-contracted personnel, or, worse, a battalion that's primarily conscript-staffed. And they're going to be very unprepared, and you're going to see things like we saw yesterday, which is an entire Russian column of trucks filled with infantry parked somewhere on a road essentially getting wiped out by a HIMARS strike. They probably lost a company's worth of men. That's the kind of mistake that the Russian forces along the line of control typically don't make. But it's definitely the kind of mistake that new units do make and will consistently be making when they're sent to reinforce and try to respond to this type of situation.

Massicot

  • Agreed. When we think about that region, who might that be? Russia has several regeneration and training sites that are north of that area. They've probably pulled whoever was closest and was reasonably-available to do this, which is why you see that clumping. When I saw the drone feed of the POWs surrendering, that is really inconsistent with a lot of what we've seen inside occupied Ukraine from units who have been fighting for years. They typically don't surrender. Ukrainians will say this, we've seen it on drone feed, they'll shoot themselves in the chest or head with a rifle...they don't really surrender like that in an organized way. My first thought when I saw this was "are these conscripts?" But then I think, no, they were too big...I mean, men with muscles, 18-year-old Russian conscripts just have a different bearing and size. To me, this didn't seem like these were 18-year-old boys from a base. They were probably pulled from whatever training range was available, not experienced guys, and that's why you saw that. If these were hardened guys rotating out of the zone, what we've seen might have looked very different. The Russians are...presumably...it's not clear on how they're planning on responding to this, but they will, so I'd caution everyone that Week Two is going to look different from what we're sitting and looking at today.

Kofman

  • Yeah, it could go a number of directions. The Russian offensive on Kharkiv looked quite good in the first couple of days, but actually culminated by around Day 5 or 6. This is a very different operation and situation, but these things tend to be quite dynamic early-on, but the offensive action can very quickly reach a culminating point. Depends on what you have to exploit it with, have you thought through the logistics, do you have additional reserves to throw in to sustain momentum. Ukraine has air defense there for example, but this is clearly a fairly-narrow incursion; we've already seen them lose some of their air-defense systems, FrankenSAMs and what-have-you, we've seen Russian Lancet attacks and attack helicopter missions. So it's clear that Russian forces are suffering losses and getting personnel captured. My best guess that the forces that you saw were probably territorial troops of some kind, reservists...conscripts tend to be very young, I think you're right there, but we don't know who that was. It might have been border guards. It might have been the formations they created -- and they created a whole bunch of them -- to help guard the borders against raids, but these are...I'm not sure that it'd even be fair to describe them as second-echelon troops in terms of who they likely staff that with. They clearly were unprepared to deal with an actual mechanized assault and a planned operation by regular forces.

  • Let's talk about objectives. Here, we are sadly in the realm of speculation, but we should try to at least make some educated guesses. My first impression is that Ukraine likely would wish to trade any territory that they end up holding for Russian withdrawal from Kharkiv if they could. Alternatively, I think that the minimum objective here is to create a Krynky-type situation. For those who recall, Krynky was the lodgement that Ukrainian marines held for a very long time on the left side of the Dneiper River bank. Russian forces, particularly the Russian airborne, spent a long time trying to attack it. It cost them quite a bit in terms of losses. Ultimately, Ukrainian forces withdrew from it and abandoned that position. The purpose of a Krynky-type salient is that, of course, Russia would then have to throw a lot of forces at it since this is on Russian territory. The challenge is that for that to be successful...invariably Russia will be throwing in reserves. That's not even a guess; we've already seen that they've been moving reserves into the area to counter. The issue is that Ukraine pulled units off the line to do this and deployed units that were also what Ukraine had available in its reserve. The question now is whether Russia will deploy a substantially-larger force to counter this; will it be worth it? What the balance of attrition will be. And most-importantly, is it going to force Russia to pull forces from active operations that will materially-affect its current advances in Donetsk around Pokrovsk or the current positions that they are holding in that narrow buffer north of Kharkiv? So far, the Russian advance towards Pokrovsk has not stalled; if anything, it has accelerated over the last couple of days. I don't know if that's going to hold; I'm just saying that that is one of the litmus tests in terms of what the operation can achieve. If it does, it'll be very successful. I've heard -- I've read in papers -- folks advancing the idea that it could be leverage for some future negotiations. I am very skeptical of that; I think that the operation probably has some kind of concrete, Day 1, 2, 3 objectives. Maybe there is a clear objective that they are trying to get to there. I don't think that it can be especially grand given the forces arrayed there and how difficult it's probably going to be to hold that terrain. I do think that any operation probably has minimal and maximal objectives, and that they can change depending on how it unfolds and that's why you can be both right and wrong in trying to guess what they are. Something can have been a planning objective for the operation, and then the operation becomes much more successful than anyone expected, like Kharkiv did in 2022, and then you get much-more ambitious and then you try to advance much more than you initially-intended, or alternatively, the operation is less-successful, and you pare down your objectives. Political leaders will invariably say that their initial objective is whatever the thing looks to have achieved.

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Curious as to what people think has the most replay potential.

Rules:

  1. The "desert island" aspect here is just to create an isolated environment. You don't have to worry about survival or anything along those lines, where playing the game would be problematic. This isn't about min-maxing your situation on the island outside of the game, or the time after leaving.

  2. No live service games unless the live service aspect is complete and it can be played offline -- that is, you can't just rely on the developer churning out new material during your time on the island. The game you get has to be in its complete form when you go to the island.

  3. No multiplayer games -- can't rely on the outside world in the form of people out there being a source of new material. The island is isolated from the rest of the world.

  4. You get existing DLC/mods/etc for a game. You don't get multiple games in a series, though.

  5. Cost isn't a factor. If you want The Sims 4 and all its DLC (currently looks like it's $1,300 on Steam, and I would guess that there's probably a lot more stuff on EA's store or whatever), DCS World and all DLC ($3,900), or something like that, you can have it as readily as a free game.

  6. No platform restrictions (within reason; you're limited to something that would be fairly mainstream). PC, console, phone, etc games are all fine. No "I want a game that can only run on a 10,000 node parallel compute cluster", though, even if you can find something like that.

  7. Accessories that would be reasonably within the mainstream are provided. If you're playing a light gun game, you can have a light gun. You can have a game controller, a VR headset and controllers, something like that. No "I want a $20 million 4DOF suspended flight sim cockpit to play my flight sim properly".

  8. You have available to you the tools to extend the game that an ordinary member of the public would have access to. If there are modding tools that exist, you have access to those, can spend time learning them. If it's an open-source game and you want to learn how to modify the game at a source level, you can do that. You don't have access to a video game studio's internal-only tools, though.

  9. You have available to you existing documentation and material related to the game that is generally publicly-available. Fandom wikis, howtos and guides, etc.

  10. You get the game in its present-day form. No updates to the game or new DLC being made available to you while you're on the island.

What three games do you choose to take with you?

158
submitted 5 months ago by tal@lemmy.today to c/ukraine@sopuli.xyz
[-] tal@lemmy.today 176 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

It looks like Bing is down, and all Bing-backed search engines are too.

https://downdetector.com/status/duckduckgo/

https://downdetector.com/status/bing/

I'm kind of surprised that the Bing guys don't seem to have a system status page (that I could find) and haven't managed to have any kind of status message put on their main page.

EDIT: This appears to be their official Twitter account, which is also silent on the matter as of this writing. If they're unable to update their website, they might put something there as a way to get information out.

https://x.com/bing/

EDIT2: This is apparently their blog. Nothing there either as of this writing, but again, might try checking there, as it's another route they might use to get information out if they cannot do so via their main page.

https://blogs.bing.com/

EDIT3: Yahoo Search appears to be working just fine, though my understanding is that they are backed by Bing.

https://search.yahoo.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Search

On July 29, 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced a deal in which Bing would henceforth power Yahoo! Search, putting an end to Yahoo!'s in-house crawler.[2] For four years between 2015 until the end of 2018, it was powered by Google,[3] before returning to Microsoft Bing again.

[-] tal@lemmy.today 163 points 8 months ago

My brief forays into both TikTok and YouTube Shorts have left me profoundly unimpressed with the short-form video.

[-] tal@lemmy.today 275 points 9 months ago

No flying machine will ever reach New York from Paris.

googles

Interestingly, when he wrote that, it was part of a larger quote saying virtually the same thing that you are, just over a century ago:

Wilbur in the Cairo, Illinois, Bulletin, March 25, 1909

No airship will ever fly from New York to Paris. That seems to me to be impossible. What limits the flight is the motor. No known motor can run at the requisite speed for four days without stopping, and you can’t be sure of finding the proper winds for soaring. The airship will always be a special messenger, never a load-carrier. But the history of civilization has usually shown that every new invention has brought in its train new needs it can satisfy, and so what the airship will eventually be used for is probably what we can least predict at the present.

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tal

joined 1 year ago