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).

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.

/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.

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

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

There’s a quote that’s probably not from Churchill, 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.”

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.

The same that stops them from taking over a democracy. Sometimes.

If a society became anarchist enough to abolish state structures, there obviously had to exist a reason - there had to exist popular support.

Thus, someone attempting to recreate a state would face questions and opposition. People would try to persuade them of their error. If they declared a state, anarchists would not recognize it. If it claimed sovereignity above a territory, anarchists might not recognize that either.

The new state might encounter problems - unwilling residents would leave and be accepted in anarchy, annoyed anarchists would organize trade boycotts and sanctions, ultimately it could go badly and armed confrontation could follow. In some scenarios, the state might remain and attract people who want to live there. In some scenarios, war would follow - and if the majority really was anarchist, the state would lose and disappear.

Also notably, the Kronstadt anarchists held a general assembly to dicsuss the question of “shall we accept Lenin’s ultimatum, or fight a battle against the Red Army?” and decided democratically to fight.

(The battle was extremely bloody, anarchists lost and the Red Army won, at the cost of losing at least 5 times more people. Considerable numbers of anarchists escaped to Finland.)

In short: anarchists can use heavy artillery when needed, even if they know that war is not healthy - neither for them or the society they want.

YPG, the militia formed during the seperation of Rojava from the Syrian government, have been accused by Human Rights groups of using Child Soldiers.

Correct… and notably, unlike the other forces around them (Syrian dictatorship, Turkish-sponsored islamists, ISIS, etc) they responded to the accusation within a month:

In June 2020, United Nations reported the YPG/YPJ as the largest faction in the Syrian civil war by the number of recruited child soldiers with 283 child soldiers followed by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham with 245 child soldiers.[141]

On 15 July 2020, SDF issued a new military order prohibiting child recruitment. The NGO Fight For Humanity conducted multiple training sessions with hundreds of SDF commanders about the UN-SDF Action Plan To Prevent Child Recruitment, and distributed informational posters and flyers about it written in both Arabic and Kurdish, as part of an ongoing educational process. Syria-based researcher Thomas McClure observed that “SDF are less likely to engage in such practices than any of the other forces in Syria, but seek to hold themselves to a higher standard of accountability and human rights.”[142]

On 29 August 2020, SDF announced the creation of a new system that anyone can use to confidentially report to specialized Child Protection offices any suspected case of child recruitment, in accordance with the action plan that the SDF signed with the United Nations in the summer of 2019.[143][144]

Jälle mingid natsid välja ujunud, oligi liiga kaua vaikne pärast Odini tolguseid. :(

Kahjuks võin kinnitada rühmituse olemasolu ning kanda nende saldole ka ühe kakluse (kus üks tuttav osalema pidi) ning tõenäoliselt ka kuskil toimunud sümboolika sodimise. Tänavu jõudsid nad ka kapo aastaraamatusse.

Siin on pmst paar asja, mida inimene tänavalt teha saab.

• Kui näed, et keegi natsleb, kritiseeri ja selgita, et nii pole normaalne.
• Kui isik on tuttav, võib proovida küsida küsimusi. Jutluse pidamine enamasti inimest normaalseks ei päästa, aga küsimus selle kohta, millel tema arvates ta arvamus põhineb, ja kas see on ikka tõene - võib helgemal hetkel talle meelde tulla.
• Kui paistab, et asi on ohtlik, siis sellega tegelemiseks on politsei.

Mõnel maal, kus probleemid on suuremad, on muide eksperimenteeritud deradikaliseerumise tugirühmadega, pakkumaks abi gängist ära tulemisega.

Mina loodan, et liikumine sureb välja. See on 95% tõenäoline - hästi palju poliitilisi liikumisi surevad iseenesest välja süstemaatiliste siseprobleemide tõttu. Natsid ei hiilga toreda organisatsioonikultuuriga, mistõttu natsiliikumisi sureb tavalisest rohkemgi välja. Lähevad omavahel raksu, tihti on seltskond ka piisavalt vägivaldne, et natsi suurim vaenlane on teine nats löögiriistaga.

Kui ei sure välja, eks siis millalgi hakkavad avalikult pead tõstma ja piire kompama. Anarhistina tean et minusugused on kahjuks siis eesliinitöötajad, kellele üritatakse kallale kippuda ja kes vastu tegutsevad, kui politsei tihtipeale veel õndsa und magab. Õnneks on nii, et kus leidub natsi, seal leidub ka rohtu natsi vastu. Soome kolleegid on pidanud asjaga tegelema ja mõnevõrra abi on leitud süva-ajakirjandusest - põhjalikult tausta uurimisest, et iga nats nägupidi tuntud oleks. Jah, seaduse piirimail ja natsile kindlasti veidi hirmutav. Potentsiaalsele natsile - hoiatav, sõnumiga “ära nende sekka mine, nende üle peetakse ühekaupa arvet”.

Sadly, until the IDF starts investigating and prosecuting their members for war crimes (and stops assigning people without the required education, skills and psychological traits to essentially do police duties) - some parts of the IDF will continue to perform the role of recruiting Palestinians into extremist and militant organizations. :(

I would not be surprised if one of the dead man’s relatives decides at some point to take up weapons.

Having once worked on an open source project that dealt with providing anonymity - it was considered the duty of the release engineer to have an overview of all code committed (and to ask questions, publicly if needed, if they had any doubts) - before compiling and signing the code.

On some months, that was a big load of work and it seemed possible that one person might miss something. So others were encouraged to read and report about irregularities too. I don’t think anyone ever skipped it, because the implications were clear: “if one of us fails, someone somewhere can get imprisoned or killed, not to speak of milder results”.

However, in case of an utility not directly involved with functions that are critical for security - it might be easier to pass through the sieve.

Can confirm, it did happen and was on the front page a few years ago. :)

To make the story even more interesting, the wolf (released into nature with a GPS tracker collar) traveled over a hundred kilometers northward (they don’t typically roam so much) and was poached a few months later. Authorities tried finding the person involved in illegal hunting, but were unable to figure it out.

Smash anything but a windshield. I’ve needed to violently remove a windshield when replacing it (time was running out and tool shops were closed). Wearing protective glasses and pushing with both legs is what it took to somewhat loosen it, but not immediately remove it. Windshields are a multilayer structure of plastic and glass. Side windows are just glass.

True, but there’s some more.

Over here, ice roads are opened on typical winters on several smaller bays. The instruction to drivers is:

• don’t wear a seatbelt
• if ice breaks, open your door swiftly (get out first, then think about calling people)
• if you can’t open the door, lower your window swiftly
• if you can’t lower the window, break it (the side window, not the windshield - a windshield is multilayer laminate, too strong to break quickly)

Typically, if a car sinks on an ice road, people are likely to get out. A crank-operated window is handy in such a case. But regardless of instruction, sometimes folks do die. :(

In general, I would not like to experience any sort of extreme incident in an over-engineered car. I’d prefer something from the 1970-ties, but with airbags.

Say you’re trying to defend against something like a Shahed-136. It can hit pretty much anywhere in Ukraine. You can’t stick an AA gun on everything that Russia might consider trading a Shahed-136 for.

As far as I know, the routine in the current war is - the AA gun is on a truck that moves 80 km/h, the drone comes in slower than 300 km/h, one or multiple truck crews position themselves on likely vantage points for intercepting, and the rest is luck.

Both of you are right.

It’s difficult, but how difficult depends on the task you set. If the task is “maintain manually initiated target lock on a clearly defined object on an empty field, despite the communications link breaking for 10 seconds” -> it is “give a team of coders half a year” difficult. It’s been solved before, the solution just needs re-inventing and porting to a different platform.

If it’s “identify whether an object is military, whether it is frienly or hostile, consider if it’s worth attacking, and attack a camouflaged target in a dense forest”, then it’s currently not worth trying.

No conclusive proof. It didn’t have a passthrough for one electrode of the two. It did have remains of acid inside and corrosion on the electrodes. One can speculate whether it was an experimental device, a faulty device or something else entirely (one alchemist trying to replicate another’s secrets and doing it wrong?).

To add insult to the injury, it was lost or stolen during the war in 2003, so more analysis can’t be done until it gets re-discovered. :o

I haven’t heard an alternative hypothesis, though… I try to imagine what else besides electrochemistry would one do with two dissimilar metals in an acid. It ruins the metals, it doesn’t make any known medicine or effective poison, it likely fouls the jug too… for a person to put copper and iron into a jug full of acid, there has to be a reason for doing it…

No problem, just tell them to ask from Baghdad, they should know where it is. :) A jug of wine or vinegar, one electrode of iron, another made of copper, voila… the Baghdad battery.

Tuleb lihtsalt jälgida tänavasilte. Kui oled Tuukri tänaval - hingamisaparaat. Kui oled Uus-Sadama tänaval: siia tuleb vihmaga sadam. Kui oled Reidi teel - valmistu ankrut heitma. Jõe tänaval: siitkaudu läheb vesi merre. :)