Tox is nice. My favourite flavour is qTox.

The typical pattern over here: if someone uses Signal, you guess they’re some military type (wants things to be secure, doesn’t care much about anonymity, wants things to work one way and simply).

If someone uses Tox, you guess they’re some hacker / anarchist type (wants things to be secure, but also anonymizable, wants things to be flexible, even if it can backfire).

This is wrong, or perhaps I misundertand.

Entropy is a different concept from economic viability.

The rule of non-decreasing entropy applies to closed systems.

A carbon capture system running on solar energy on Earth (note: wind energy is converted solar energy) is not a closed system from the Earth perspective - its energy arrives from outside. It can decrease entropy on Earth. Whether it’s economically viable - totally different issue.

…and I don’t think the Sun gets any worse from us capturing some rays.

A bit similar process in sea-dwelling salmons: migrating from salt water into fresh water (quite a big metabolic challenge in itself), traveling up rapids to suitable spawning places (often a long and arduous journey)… after they’ve accomplished that, their chances of returning alive are quite low. So they mostly die. But their close relatives, river-dwelling trouts spawn many times in life, because their migration isn’t as costly.

I would suspect that something in how octopuses reproduce has an element of “return being costly” - it could be a metabolic return to the feeding and growing state instead of a physical return.

Maybe I’m misreading because one poster above deleted their comment, but I can’t understand: how exactly has TSMC shown “disrespect”? Or was the poster showing disrespect?

Putting corporations aside and speaking of states: the US and Taiwan have respectful and friendly relations. They depend on each other.

Now, a tariff of 25-100% on a partner’s primary export and one’s own vitally important import is more like putting a shotgun to one’s leg out of spite. It would be hurting oneself and hurting the other side - and not a little bit.

The US is a store that Taiwan frequently shops in - a very big defense equipment store, I should say. Some of the toys cost money, but if you buy enough, you get kickbacks - the US gives Taiwan some security assistance for free. It also says it will assist Taiwan if anyone (we can imagine who that might be) attacks it.

Meanwhile, Taiwan is a store the world frequently shops in - a very big microprocessor, memory and microcontroller store. Frequent customers can tell TSMC “it would be nice if you brought some of your business here, we have a vacant spot suitable for your plans”. And it works: one factory will be built in the US, one factory in the EU. Maybe elsewhere too. Getting that to happen didn’t need Trump or insane levels of customs tariffs.

To achieve that, people just negotiated like normal people do. TMSC know they operate in a country prone to violent earthquakes and close to an agressive neighbour, they are quite OK with placing some of their business abroad.

Same here. Forums (about science fiction, aeromodelism, electric vehicles) have been important to me, and continue to be important in some fields.

For ease of reading, the investigation he refers to:

https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-machine-liz-pelly-spotify-musicians/

In short: fake artists with stock music (changing labels and other camouflage applied). Likely goal: to depreciate streaming counts for actual artists and increase profit margins.

What I uncovered was an elaborate internal program. Spotify, I discovered, not only has partnerships with a web of production companies, which, as one former employee put it, provide Spotify with “music we benefited from financially,” but also a team of employees working to seed these tracks on playlists across the platform. In doing so, they are effectively working to grow the percentage of total streams of music that is cheaper for the platform. The program’s name: Perfect Fit Content (PFC). The PFC program raises troubling prospects for working musicians. Some face the possibility of losing out on crucial income by having their tracks passed over for playlist placement or replaced in favor of PFC; others, who record PFC music themselves, must often give up control of certain royalty rights that, if a track becomes popular, could be highly lucrative. But it also raises worrying questions for all of us who listen to music. It puts forth an image of a future in which—as streaming services push music further into the background, and normalize anonymous, low-cost playlist filler—the relationship between listener and artist might be severed completely.

I would recommend Signal and maybe Tox (protocol, has several clients).

Signal is a nonprofit. They make it a point not to collect your data. Just the phone number. Military folks seem to like them.

Tox is not a centralized entity at all, anarchists seem to like it. Multiple Tox clients exist and use a common protocol and network. Messaging happens via peer-to-peer, lookups make use of servers. For messaging to occur, both communicating parties have to be online, so don’t expect much convenience.

There are use cases for this router, but please don’t get the plastic clone sold by the same Chinese company that assembles the real thing. (The plastic clone costs a third, but doesn’t have detachable antennas and doesn’t accept mainstream OpenWRT because it uses an almost unknown CPU.)

Myself, when I need a high capability router (for me “capability” typically means “range”) I turn towards a Raspberry Pi and Alfa AWUS1900 wireless card. Yes, it lacks in throughput (USB is a severe bottleneck)… but with a bit of tweaking, you can talk out to 2 kilometers if terrain allows. :)

Series produced, not mass produced - I sincerely hope they won’t reach mass production, that would be harmful.

Also, they have no version with a cluster warhead. Shahed 136 drones (the most common version) have unitary warheads, some with high explosive (some with enhanced shrapnel production) and some with blast (thermobaric) effect.

A hypothetical version with cluster bomblets would of course damage solar arrays on a larger area (it helps get around the inverse square law), but the cost is: less explosive and more casing material - the bomblets would make holes in panels, but most panels would remain standing and keep producing something.

For information, this is what the result of a single cluster bomblet looks like.

There is a troubling aspect, though - most of solar inverters aren’t capable of operating as an island today. Cost-cutting and dumbing-down has occurred.

However, if a village has at least one household with a hybrid inverter capable of generating a frequency for others to follow - and some people who know what they’re doing - some level of disaster preparedness is possible even with today’s tech. (If the grid fails, one disconnects everyone behind the local substation from the big grid, brings online an inverter working in island mode, and syncs other inverters to it.)

Of the things you mention, transformer stations and baseload power stations are a real problem. One can build them inside a concrete shell, but nobody can rebuild them all.

Of course, it’s a fact of life that one cannot operate a grid without baseload generation. So baseload (thermal power stations) are the typical target. Solar parks are not. If you get a drone to a fuel tank or turbine hall, you have achieved 1000% more than landing in a solar park.

I’ve seen photos of a hole left by “Iskander” in a solar park (I cannot guess what kind of a “genius” fired it). Crater radius about 10 meters, various grades of destruction out to 50 meters. That’s a 500 kg warhead. With only 50 kilograms, would expect it to take out a circle with a radius of 25 meters. That’s some 2000 square meters, containing about 1000 square meters worth of panels. At today’s prices, panels cost about 25 € per square meter. So the damage in panels (excluding frameworks and cabling and work) is about 25 000 €. The cost of the Shahed / Geran drone is probably in the same class. But not every Shahed reaches its target - in fact, most of them don’t - so firing one at a solar park would not be economical.

Notes made after a storm: a panel with a 30 cm slash from flying plywood keeps producing, just somewhat less.

Nope, I think I must have written my reply while it hadn’t propagated here.

to be fair, those two USB-C ports can do everything the old, removed ports can do and more

To connect to a device that’s 100 meters away at an appreciable speed (and beyond that at lesser quality), one still kind of needs Ethernet. Can be accomplished with an adapter, though.

Level 3000 hack: compromise security with drone fleas that jump onto drone dogs.

Level 9000 hack: join the pack with a drone attack dog.

In this video you can see soldiers patrolling the borders with rifles and dogs and using drones to scan the area, what’s your definition of heavily armed?

The clue here is that soldiers typically don’t have dogs - their job is not tracking anyone. The folks you see are probably border guards. (Another clue is that soldiers would be expected to carry at least one proper machine gun per squad, items like grenades and grenade launchers, etc.)

The ukrainian military also have checkpoints in the west border to make sure any male between 18 and 60 doesn’t leave the country so that they can be forced into war.

In the west, you should expect to find the border guard. They are capable of checking databases and patrolling in nature, but aren’t heavily armed. And tens of thousands of guys have taken leave on their own, despite anything the border guard can do. If one doesn’t like the draft, one hikes out via the Carpathian mountains.

As for the draft, yes, it’s a real thing. Of course it’s unjust, people should be able to live in peace - hence no agressor should invade any land. Having to take up weapons sucks. But when a war on this scale gets started, states will draft soldiers into their armies. Many will dodge it. Since hundreds of thousands of soldiers are needed, lots of mistakes will be made, and will be sorted out later (units don’t actually want soldiers who aren’t capable of fighting).

Ultimately, who was called up but absolutely doesn’t want to fight, must choose among these roles:

• emigree
• medical personnel
• defense industry
• logistics
• dodger
• jailed dodger

Obviously, everyone is not competent to become a medic. The remaining positions are attainable. So, in the end, it’s mostly people willing to fight at least somewhat, who end up fighting. Some of them get disillusioned and desert, however. That’s normal too, in a large war that lasts long. I don’t hold it against them.

I’m not from Ukraine, and not a military person, but I cooperate with military people, supplying drones and stuff that helps bring hostile drones down (profit is not involved). So inevitably I do know the approximate situation.

I’ve read some things by Malatesta before (not much from Goldman), so thanks for the reading tips. There is a nuance, though. Once some country has started a conquest attempt, any disarmament will only give them victory. Disarmament is only possible when it’s mutual, and then I fully support it. The article by Goldman that you suggested seems to originate from 1915, when World War I was being fought in Europe. I remind that World War I had no clear agressor, and indeed, anarchists of all countries tried to overthrow the ruling regimes (which were mostly undemocratic, frequently dictatorial and imperial).

The current situation somewhat differs. There is a clear agressor, which happens to be a dictatorship and an empire, supported by other dictatorships and a messed up theocracy. There happens to be a clearly defined victim of agression, which happens to be mostly democratic, supported by places that are reasonably democratic. I believe that if Malatesta lived today, I could convince him to start a charity that supplies Ukrainians. :)

I hope for revolutionary conditions to arise in Russia, but that will be a long wait. My comrades there tried and lost, they’ve mostly emigrated by now. Some are imprisoned, some still keep trying (I can’t estimate what the percentages are, people don’t talk openly of such things), but there are approximately 4 times as much cops per capita in Russia compared to a normal country, so their chances are miserable.

If you are sure about something, then bring evidence of considerable off-label activities.

In response to your response about “Nordic Response”:

Surveillance, patrols, road control posts, vehicle inspection, control of air space, minesweeping, evacuation of civilians, and riot control were important part of the exercise.”

Those are realistic military duties in war time. Every military practises them. Where do you find a fault?

An example from real life: the Ukrainian military has checkpoints on roads near the frontline. Moving with a vehicle, you’d expect to show papers, say a few words and maybe even show transported goods. The purpose? Finding reconnaisance / sabotage groups, which every competent enemy is expected to send. If an opponent doesn’t send recon or saboteurs, they are fools. If a military doesn’t learn how to deter those, they’re fools.

How does one learn? After dry reading in a classroom: one holds an excercise. There’s a home team and an opposing team. The home team checks, the opposing team infiltrates. Both teams report what they achieved, results get compared. If the blue team found the “saboteurs”, good. If the red team “blew up” all bridges and pipelines in the area, people think hard about what they did wrong. If they don’t practise, they don’t get to think hard.

Based on this, I conclude: the NATO of today is a mostly defensive alliance with some taints in its history.

It is currently very busy doing a real job - opposing a conquering dictator named Vladimir Putin.

I wish it luck, as long as it sticks to its declared purpose. If it oversteps, I will revise my opinion.

The EU has by now significantly outpaid the US, and out-supported the US in Ukraine. However, for historical reasons, it lacks certain items which Ukrainians badly need (tactical ballistic missiles and anti-missile defense, to bring good examples).

On the matter of aircraft, I should especially emphasize that EU countries have given fighter aircraft, but the US has not. The US is currently attempting to get through the bureaucracy of approving a Swedish AWACS aircraft (with some US components) going to Ukraine.

Educate thyself here, military people use this resource and approve of it:

https://protectukrainenow.org/en/report