The Starlink Snowflake got pissed off at the account that tweeted publicly available, publicly sourced information about when his jet was in flight along with the flight route and banned that specific account. Then he banned the account of the guy who runs all of the Twitter accounts that tweet out real time tracking of Russian oligarchs’ jets, Jeff Bezos’s jets, etc, as well as those specific accounts. Even the one that tracked US governmental planes. Then Twitter announced a rule change that banned all accounts that do the following:
When someone shares an individual’s live location on Twitter, there is an increased risk of physical harm. Moving forward, we’ll remove Tweets that share this information, and accounts dedicated to sharing someone else’s live location will be suspended.
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) December 14, 2022
Content that shares location information related to a public engagement or event, such as a concert or political event, is also permitted.
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) December 14, 2022
More on this after President Zelenskyy’s address. The video of that is below, the English transcript is after the jump:
Good health to you, fellow Ukrainians!
First of all, I want to thank our anti-aircraft gunners and the Air Force for repelling another attack by Iranian drones this morning.
The skies of the Kyiv region are defended by the 96th anti-aircraft missile brigade of the Air Force. Thank you guys!
A total of 13 Shaheds were shot down. These are 13 saved infrastructure objects, these are saved lives. In one morning.I held a meeting of the Staff today. We talked, in particular, about the protection of the sky. We are constantly strengthening our air defense and anti-drone defense. And we are doing everything to get more modern and more powerful systems for Ukraine.
This week we have made important progress on the air defense issue.
Of course, the situation in Donbas and other active areas on the frontline was discussed in great detail at the Staff meeting. There is no calm on the frontline. There is nothing easy and simple. Every day and every meter is given extremely hard. Especially where the entire tactic of the occupiers boils down to the destruction of everything in front of them with artillery, so that only bare ruins and craters in the ground remain.
Today, by the way, I spoke about it in an address to the European Parliament. Russia is destroying city after city in Donbas, like Mariupol, like Volnovakha, like Bakhmut. Defense in such conditions is not just heroism, it is something more. And I thank all our warriors who withstand the pressure of the occupiers.
I would like to note the warriors of the 46th separate airmobile brigade, who very skillfully and bravely defeated the enemy during another attack and forced him to retreat. Well done!
I would also like to note the warriors of the 80th and 95th separate airborne assault brigades who are fighting in the Kreminna direction – and very effectively. Thank you, warriors!
We are preparing agreements that will strengthen our defense capabilities and give Ukraine more operational capabilities.
We also do not slow down our activity for the sake of creating a special tribunal for Russian aggression and holding all those responsible for it to account. Today I called on our friends in Europe and members of the European Parliament to step up their efforts to make the tribunal finally operational. The terrorist state must bear responsibility for every burned Ukrainian city, for every destroyed life of our people. And it will bear it.
I spoke today with International Olympic Committee President Bach.
In particular, about the fact that the principles of the Olympic movement definitely do not envisage conniving with terrorist states. Any ideas on how to get Russian representatives back to international competitions are ideas on how to allow those guilty of terror to tell their society that the world supposedly condones terror. This is a sports indulgence. This is how it will be presented by Russian propaganda if the International Olympic Committee fails and allows those who represent war and nothing else to participate in sporting events on an equal footing with others.
I do not want to clarify whether there are any motives behind such ideas about the return of Russia. But no one will turn a blind eye to any attempt to reduce international pressure on the source of the war.
When we receive reports like today from Kherson, where a child, a boy, was killed by yet another Russian shelling… He was eight years old… We can only say one thing: a white or any neutral flag is impossible for Russian athletes, all their flags are bloodstained.
Today, I held very important negotiations with UN Secretary-General Guterres. I thanked him for his constant support of Ukraine and international law, for effective assistance in the implementation of our initiatives, such as “Grain from Ukraine”. We are currently working on organizing missions with an international mandate to the objects of the critical energy infrastructure of our state. I believe that this can also be successful.
And one more thing.
Today, 64 Ukrainians were returned from Russian captivity. 64 warriors. Four officers and 60 privates and sergeants. Among them are seriously wounded. We provide adequate assistance to everyone.
We continue to work to free and return home every Ukrainian man and woman still held captive in Russia. I would like to thank our team that ensures the exchanges.
I thank everyone who works for Ukrainians and Ukraine!
Glory to all who fight for our country!
Glory to all who fill with their courage and effectiveness the word that is now heard all over the world – the word “Ukraine”.
And I want to separately thank “Plast” today, our Ukrainian scouts, guides for the Peace Light of Bethlehem, which they brought to Ukraine. Let this light support all of us, all Ukrainians.
Glory to Ukraine!
Back to the Starlink Snowflake’s hurt feelings. These changes are about one thing and one thing only: making it harder to track the Starlink Snowflake’s public movements. The information will still be collected and posted at ADS-B Exchange, however, it won’t be automatically pulled and tweeted in real time. Twitter can dress this up however they want, but this is about one person’s desire to operate in complete obscurity while publicly screaming transparency over and over and over again.
It will also have some other knock on effects for those trying to get information out in a crisis. Activists, as well as non-activists that find themselves in the middle of crises, conflicts, and/or man made or natural disasters will likely run afoul of these new rules. As will the people trying to pull that information, aggregate it, and retransmit it. And actual government officials trying to get out accurate, timely information to help people safely navigate a variety of crises.
This broad policy appears to affect OSINT in general on Twitter, the language is a bit to vague, but gives the platform a lot of leeway to remove OSINT content.
— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) December 14, 2022
Additionally, within the Twitter rule changes there appears to be significant new rules on OSINT. Geolocating footage, under this rule, appears to be banned. pic.twitter.com/njSyEMgcM2
— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) December 14, 2022
There appears to be a broad carve out for media, though it is completely unclear who is considered media. pic.twitter.com/EkBB6WngM5
— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) December 14, 2022
I expect the media will be whomever Twitter says the media is. And Twitter will say that the media is whomever the Starlink Snowflake says the media is.
When we combine today’s changes with what we’ve been seeing and including in the updates for the past several days – locking Ukrainian phone numbers out of Twitter for sign ups or two factor authentification, ghost bans for Ukrainian accounts or for accounts posting material critical of Russia, even taking down access from some of the largest mobile phone providers in the world in parts of the world experiencing ongoing protests and/or conflict – we begin to get a very disturbing picture. Yes, that’s right, the Starlink Snowflake’s war on bots took down entire mobile phone providers worth of users. Casey Newton and Zoe Schiffler have the details:
On Sunday, Elon Musk tweeted a vague warning: “the bots are in for a surprise tomorrow.” He didn’t say what the surprise was. But in the hours that followed, Twitter blocked traffic from roughly 30 mobile carriers around the world, effectively cutting off access to hundreds of thousands of accounts, primarily in the Asia-Pacific region, including vast swaths of Russia, Indonesia, India, and Malaysia.
The project was part of Elon Musk’s attempt to rid Twitter of spam. But rather than work to remove individual offenders, the company identified mobile networks associated with large spam networks in specific countries, and blocked users who relied on those networks from receiving SMS messages from Twitter, impacting people with two-factor authentication. Then it blocked traffic from those carriers completely.
From 5:35 AM to 6:45 AM PT on Sunday, Twitter shut down access to the primary telecom providers in India and Russia, as well as the second biggest telecom company in Indonesia, Platformer has learned.
Almost immediately, complaints started to roll in, as legitimate users found they were unable to access Twitter.
In Slack, a Twitter engineer shared an email from one telecom provider who said users were complaining that Twitter had stopped working. “I expect more emails like this to hit our peering queue tomorrow,” an employee said. “We blocked a fair few [sic] huge carriers, so I would expect so,” another responded.
The company quickly unblocked the carriers, and told them the service issues were due to “routing configuration changes.”
The incident highlights growing confusion within Twitter as the company struggles to carry out Musk’s erratic commands with his ever-shrinking pool of engineers. In some cases, as with the telecom issue, the company has been charged with making huge changes without doing due diligence on their potential consequences.
In others, employees are being asked to scramble to answer questions about individual tweets.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal published today, Irwin tried to spin Twitter’s increasing reliance on automated systems as “biasing towards moving quickly and figuring out the details in some of these areas after.”
But the truth is that Twitter has little choice but to rely on automated tools: it continues to fire employees seen as insufficiently loyal to Musk, even if they do crucial work for the company.
The company also on Monday disbanded its trust and safety council, which once advised Twitter on content moderation issues, according to an email shared with Platformer.
“Our work to make Twitter a safe, informative place will be moving faster and more aggressively than ever before and we will continue to welcome your ideas going forward about how to achieve this goal,” the unsigned email to council members read. “We will also continue to explore opportunities to provide focussed and timely input into our work, whether through bilateral or small group meetings.”
It continued: “Your regional points of contact will remain the best people to contact to escalate concerns, please let us know if you need reconnecting.”
Three members of the council quit last week in response to Twitter no longer engaging with their requests.
The email was sent to members less than an hour before they were scheduled to have their first meeting since May.
Much more at the link!
I know the Starlink Snowflake has a megalomaniacal delusion of grandeur that borders on the messianic in regard to how he sees his relationship to the rest of us, but what he’s really done is turn himself into a menace to society. And not just American society, but every society and global society as well. These changes aren’t just going to effect the ability of Ukrainians to get information out or for supporters of Ukraine to amplify it, but also those rebelling in Iran, protesting in China, people pushing out info about what is going on in Peru in the wake of the recent abortive autogolpe by the now former Peruvian president, followed by impeachment of said president, etc. It will also impact the ability to get out information of natural disasters and other important and newsworthy events.
Enough time spent on that schmuck.
Here is former NAVDEVGRU Squadron Leader Chuck Pfarrer’s most recent assessment of the situation in Bakhmut:
BAKHMUT AXIS/2145 UTC 14 DEC/ RU continues to launch piecemeal company and platoon-sized assaults against Ukrainian positions. South of the urban area, RU forces have crossed the rail line at Myika pond in the vicinity Klischiivka. pic.twitter.com/3t0pLC2dUe
— Chuck Pfarrer | Indications & Warnings | (@ChuckPfarrer) December 14, 2022
Ukrainian air defense did an amazing job this morning taking down 13 of 13 Iranian sourced Russian drones targeting Kyiv, but the Russians were still able to hit Kherson:
Russian missile hit the Kherson Regional Administration. This is the same building where a month ago Ukrainians so happily raised our flag. It has no military value. Pure act of terror and vengeance. Which only shows how weak Russia is. pic.twitter.com/4FFRhA3rQ2
— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) December 14, 2022
This follows strikes from two days ago that killed an 8 year old boy:
Video from December 12, when Russia also massively shelled residential area in Kherson. Civilians are advised to evacuate to safer regions.
— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) December 14, 2022
Reuters, in conjunction with the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) brings us a very deep dive long form report regarding how Russia is evading sanctions on tech: they have a supply chain in and through Turkey and Hong Kong and some other places too:
n March this year, a new firm appeared in Turkey’s corporate registry. Azu International Ltd Sti described itself as a wholesale trader of IT products, and a week later began shipping U.S. computer parts to Russia.
Business was brisk, Russian customs records show. The United States and the EU had recently restricted sales of sensitive technology to Russia because of its Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, and many Western tech companies had suspended all dealings with Moscow.
Co-founded by Gokturk Agvaz, a Turkish businessman, Azu International stepped in to help fill the supply gap. Over the next seven months, the company exported at least $20 million worth of components to Russia, including chips made by U.S. manufacturers, according to Russian customs records.
Azu International’s rapidly growing business didn’t come from a standing start, Reuters reporting shows: Agvaz manages a wholesaler of IT products in Germany called Smart Impex GmbH. Before the invasion, Russian custom records show that the German company shipped American and other products to a Moscow customer that recently has imported goods from Azu International.
Reached at his office near Cologne in October, Agvaz told Reuters that Smart Impex stopped exporting to Russia to comply with EU trade restrictions but sells to Turkey, a non-EU country that doesn’t enforce most of the West’s sanctions against Moscow. “We cannot export to Russia, we cannot sell to Russia, and that’s why we just sell to Turkey,” he said. Asked about Azu International’s sales to Russia, he replied, “This is a business secret of ours.”
Contacted again shortly before publication, Agvaz said Smart Impex “observes all export restrictions and manufacturer bans” and “has not circumvented Western sanctions against Russia.” He said he couldn’t answer questions about Azu International. Turkish corporate records show he sold his 50% interest in the Istanbul company on Nov. 30 to his co-founder, Huma Gulum Ulucan. She couldn’t be reached for comment.
Azu International is an example of how supply channels to Russia have remained open despite Western export restrictions and manufacturer bans. At least $2.6 billion of computer and other electronic components flowed into Russia in the seven months to Oct. 31, Russian customs records show. At least $777 million of these products were made by Western firms whose chips have been found in Russian weapons systems: America’s Intel Corp, Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD), Texas Instruments Inc and Analog Devices Inc., and Germany’s Infineon AG.
A joint investigation by Reuters and the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a London-based defense think tank, details for the first time the global supply chain that continues to feed Russia with Western computer components and other electronics. The investigation into this trade identified a galaxy of obscure importers and exporters, like Azu International, and found that shipments of semiconductors and other technology continue to arrive in Russia from Hong Kong, Turkey and other trading hubs.
One Russian importer, OOO Fortap, based in St. Petersburg, was set up by a Russian businessman in April and has since imported at least $138 million worth of electronics, including U.S. computer parts, according to Russian customs records. They show that one of Fortap’s biggest suppliers is a Turkish company, Bion Group Ltd Sti, a former textile trader that recently expanded into wholesale electronics. Bion’s general manager declined to comment.
Another Russian importer, OOO Titan-Micro, registered an address that’s a house in a forest on the northern edge of Moscow. It, too, has imported Western computer components since the invasion, according to the customs records.
Some of the suppliers – including firms in Hong Kong and Turkey – have ties to Russian nationals, according to a review of company filings.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Commerce said, “Since the start of the invasion, Russia’s access to semiconductors from all sources has been slashed by nearly 70 percent thanks to the actions of the unprecedented 38 nation coalition that has come together to respond to (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s aggression. It is no surprise that Russia is working hard to circumvent controls.”
But the Reuters review of Russian customs data found that since the invasion, the declared value of semiconductor imports by Russia has, in fact, risen sharply. The spokesperson said the Commerce Department had analyzed different data and therefore couldn’t comment on Reuters findings.
Putin’s office and Russia’s Ministry of Industry and Trade didn’t respond to requests seeking comment for this article.
Much, much, much more, including graphics, at the link!
That’s enough for tonight.
Your daily Patron!
There’s no new tweets from Patron today, but here’s a new video from his official TikTok!
@patron__dsns Дві сторони одного Патрона😁 #песпатрон #патрондснс
The caption machine translates as:
Two sides of one Patron 😁 #PatrontheDog #PatronDSNS
Open thread!
Alison Rose
I hate that guy. He’s close to rivaling Trump for the Biggest Manbaby on Earth award. How absurd that someone could have that much money and still not be happy unless he’s destroying the world.
I appreciated Zelenskyy’s remarks regarding the IOC and I sure hope they listen to him. I’m sure he’s correct that russia would use such a decision as propaganda and too many gullible dodos around the world would drink it up like a hamster with cottonmouth going after their water bottle.
He also posted a very sweet video with the children who brought the Peace Light of Bethlehem. There are no subtitles on it, but it was still nice to watch.
Thank you as always, Adam. In the same vein as hoping that someday soon you won’t have to keep doing these posts because Ukraine will have booted all of the invaders back to their miserable homeland and putin will either be in jail or holed up in a cave in Venezuela, I also hope one day you won’t have to post about Muskrat because he finally got so high on his own supply that he floated off into the exosphere.
Gin & Tonic
So about bombing the Kherson administration building: officially, russia still believes that Kherson is russian territory – they denounced a UN official visiting Kherson for “illegally entering russian territory.” So are they bombing their own building?
But in other news from that area, Dmytro Lubinets, the Human Rights Commissioner of the Verkhovna Rada reported today that in de-occupying Kherson, Ukrainians found a facility that was devoted to torturing children. This is already being denied, of course, by the russians and their fellow travelers in the West.
HinTN
Every single one of those owners/operators of the pass through companies ought to have everything they do sanctioned.
Thanks for this reporting, Adam.
Gin & Tonic
Incidentally, reports today are that the Ukraine country code has been returned to Twitter’s database, so you can once again register with a UA-based phone number. Probably just a clerical error, amirite?
Alison Rose
@Gin & Tonic: Just a lil’ oopsie-daisy!! Nothing to see here, no sir.
David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch
The plot to “A View to a Kill” coming to life:
cain
@Gin & Tonic: They are sick monsters.
Qrop Non Sequitur
Free speech utopia is a marvel to behold.
Suzanne
@Alison Rose:
I wonder if Grimes feels badly about reproducing with that dude….twice.
Jay
Alison Rose
@Suzanne: I try to imagine it and my nethers slam shut like a bank vault in a heist movie.
bbleh
Enough time spent on that schmuck.
I wish. But like the Orange Menace, he has a knack for grabbing media attention, and perhaps more importantly for the OP topic, he has control of a communication resource that’s very important to Ukraine (and others).
It does raise again the issue of whether how to regulate such resources when they become as politically important as Twitter has. We have the FCC, and legal concepts such as common carriers, and we used to have things like the Fairness Doctrine, so such regulation is well within historical and legal (not to mention common-sense) bounds.
Perhaps it’s time for some gummint lawyers to start making some phone calls. Or maybe it’s better addressed publicly and politically. Why is Elon Musk opposed to freedom for Ukraine? Is he taking money from Russia? What ARE his contacts with Russia? Why won’t he release his phone records? What is he hiding?
Chetan Murthy
I saw a report that we’re going to start providing UA with JDAM kits[1]. Maybe that’s good news? I thought you needed effective bomber forces to use JDAM kits, but maybe I’m mistaken.
[1] Don’t quote me on this, but IIUC, they’re kits you can attach to unguided bombs, that turn them into GPS-guided bombs, using powered GPS-guided fins.
Jay
Bill Arnold
For reference
Ground Control and Jack’s Info includes Jack’s alt links for (Elon) plane tracking.
Jay
@Chetan Murthy:
all you need is a data link and GPS.
hervevillechaizelounge
Adam, if you’re still awake: thanks for all the work you do on these updates. You deserve a much bigger platform.
Chetan Murthy
@Jay: True. What I wonder is: how useful is it, when RU fighters have air superiority over RU-occupied territory? I fully understand that UA AF have effective control over their own airspace, but not RU-occupied territory. So how are you gonna drop your bomb close enough that GPS-guided fins can do the rest ? Without getting shot down? Per Justin Bronk, Russia really does have better fighters on CAP over their ground.
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: I was saving that for tomorrow night’s post so I can do that reporting proper justice in the update.
Ruckus
@Gin & Tonic:
Logic? You are trying to use logic concerning anything about Russian leadership or the over entitled asswipe? Why? Neither of them have any connection to logic, their worlds revolve around ME-ME-ME-ME-ME-ME, which is the least logical construct in the entire universe.
Adam L Silverman
@hervevillechaizelounge: I’m afraid of widths…
Thank you for the kind words and you are most welcome.
Amir Khalid
@Gin & Tonic:
Ye gods.
Jay
Gin & Tonic
@Adam L Silverman: I apologize for (now repeatedly) jumping the gun on your contributions.
oldster
Another thing that Skum and tfg have in common:
The question is not, whether they are on putin’s payroll, but whether they would do anything differently if they were.
And the answer in each case is that if they were on putin’s payroll they would do exactly what they do.
It would be very good to have a congressional hearing ask Skum some questions under oath, soon.
Martin
The Soyuz docked to ISS has sprung a leak of some kind. Cosmonauts are about to EVA to investigate it.
Should be interesting to see how they handle this. There’s nothing on the craft that isn’t important, so do they return crew on a ship with some duct tape on it, do they deorbit it unmanned, do they need Dragon to deorbit it?
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: No worries. Something like this deserves to be the major focus of an update. So I didn’t just want to cram it in between Mush and the sanction evasions.
Amir Khalid
@Adam L Silverman:
I don’t want to believe that there are people depraved enough to torture children, but I fear it will turn out to be true
pacem appellant
Relying on propriety and private networks for activism was not going to be sustainable. All these accounts have moved/will move to the Fediverse (Mastodon is the popular Fediverse interface). Neither Musk nor any of his fascist allies will be happy when they lose Twitter’s reach (and Twitter itself) to a bunch of hippies with networking and Linux skills.
Twitter is dead. Anyway, what’s good on TV?
Chetan Murthy
@Amir Khalid: I’ve read enough news stories about horrific child abuse, and lived not-very-horrific-abuse-but-still-fucked-me-up-but-good, so I 100% believe it. You take someone with a propensity to abuse children, and put them in a position where they’re supposed to exact compliance from kids; when they don’t get it, they’ll go to their toolkit.
It is what it is.
cmorenc
Actually, I kind of agree with the principle that publishing identifiable people’s dynamically updated location, including aboard planes, is not just an invasion of privacy, but could subject them to danger. THAT SAID, Musk’s actual motivation for suddenly embracing this principle, to benefit abusive oligarchs such as himself and Russian oligarchs from scrutiny over their unsavory dealings facilitated by their travel, is repulsive.
Sister Inspired Revolver of Freedom
Everything Alison said about Elmo & more. My own thoughts are {redacted}. Thank you Adam, as always. I usually come to these posts too late to comment, but, hopefully, you’re still around.
For lovers of #Patron there are several clips/mini documentaries on the goodest boy on #YouTube 😁
Chetan Murthy
@cmorenc: If he doesn’t want his location to be published, he has options:
Nobody is publishing his location: they’re publishing the location(s) of his plane(s). All he has to do, to avoid this form of doxxing, is not own any private jets.
It seems to me this is entirely fair. Certainly I would be happy to give up all private jets I own[1], in exchange for not having my location be public knowledge.
[1] AAaaaaahahahahahaha, as if I could ever be rich enough to own a private jet.
Bill Arnold
@pacem appellant:
One problem is that it is not hard to deliberately stir up trouble in federated systems, e.g. cause them to break up into disconnected segments.
Martin
So, misunderstood. They were supposed to have a scheduled EVA which was cancelled when they observed the leak. Cooling system in Soyuz is leaking. The good news is Soyuz no longer uses the flammable cooling fluid that it used to use. This one is apparently similar to standard anitfreeze and shouldn’t be a danger to anyone.
Loss of coolant could still be a critical problem for the craft. Shouldn’t be a risk to ISS, though.
Gin & Tonic
@Adam L Silverman: I understand and appreciate your attention to this.
Bill Arnold
@cmorenc:
Musk doxxed (former?) Twitter employees, and pointed his tens of millions of fanatical followers at them. But as you say, protection of billionaires is important to him. One could wonder whether some of those other billionaires or their proxies had some words with him. (Increased fears of MANPADS on the loose might be one driver.)
Jay
@Chetan Murthy:
Russia has the advantage in Air Combat. They have integrated ground based radar nets, AWAC’s and UFRS AF fighters have a long range AA missile that outranges the Ukraine Air Forces by 50km, and is “fire and forget” while the Ukrainian pilots have to keep a radar lock on their target right up to the missile impact, making them “illuminated” to every combat radar and ELINT system in the neighborhood, plus AARM’s.
Still, Russia has mostly ceded Ukrainian Airspace to the Ukrainian Airforce for it’s fighter jets as Ukrainian Area Denial weapons have come to dominate much of the airspace and Ukrainian Pilots, flying daring “nape of the earth” missions have managed to evade Russian detection, close in with Russian fighters and really ruin their day. Now that the Russian’s are familiar with Ukrainian air combat tactics, at the first hint of Ukrainian aircraft, the Russian’s “dump” and “run for the border” as fast as they can.
A common Ukrainian Airforce tactic, for all strike aircraft, is a “nape of the earth” run in, a max G climb, an Immelman turn at altitude, bomb release at the mid point of the turn, max G dive back to “nape of the earth”.
This maneuver was created during the early Cold War, to allow strike aircraft to deliver a nuke tens of kilometers away from the launch point and thus, in theory, be far enough away from the blast to survive.
With nukes however, hitting the right area code is “close enough for Government work”. Not so with conventional bombs. As computers got smaller, cheaper and faster, it became possible for the computer to calculate backwards from the target area, (grid points), so that a pilot could lob the bomb into the same zip code. The advent of GPS and the removal of the 90 foot “barrier”, allowed the computer and pilot to hit the “right” city block.
The addition of JDAM’s to this tactic will allow Ukrainian pilots to strike within 15 feet of their target within the CEP, up to 30km from the “release” point. It can really ruin a HQ’s day, make a bridge weep, and with the addition that the US will be supplying Ukraine with anti-tank smart mine cluster bombs, make a Russian armored column look like a Lower Rainland highway bridge on a snow day except for all the flames and turret tossing.
Chetan Murthy
@Jay: o.i.c. thank you for this.
Sister Golden Bear
I’m sure LibsOfTiktok will be the exempted from live tweeting the locations of performers at drag shows, narrators at drag queen story hours, doctors at gender clinics, etc. Because reasons.
Albatrossity
Just found this long and interesting perspective on the future of Russia. I would be interested in hearing Adam’s take on these scenarios, which seem pretty plausible to me, as a non-expert in the field.
Sister Golden Bear
@Chetan Murthy: @Amir Khalid: Sadly having been a courts reporter I’m not surprised they found people to torture children. Between sadist sex predators and parents who abused their children to death, there’s definitely people out there who’d not only do it, they’d enjoy doing it. Saw some real nightmare fuel cases that I try not to think about.
pacem appellant
@Bill Arnold: As opposed to Twitter?
pacem appellant
That took all of two hours. Elon’s Jet is on Mastodon now: https://mastodon.social/@elonjet
YY_Sima Qian
China has banned export of its domestic Loongson CPUs, including to Russia.
China Bans Exports of Loongson CPUs to Russia, Other Countries: Report
Dan B
@Albatrossity: The observation that the majority of the Russian military forces are not ethnic Russians and the military is brutal and corrupt does not sound like a recipe for peaceful change. Will this change be limited to Russia and its associated “republics”? I don’t see how.
Bill Arnold
@pacem appellant:
Different sets of vulnerabilities. Twitter, like most (all?) single-purpose corporations, is a dictatorship. Vulnerable to suddenly-incompetent leadership at the top (including private ownership), e.g. a coup, or insanity. (Or both , in the current case :-) But it isn’t really vulnerable to a social attack that tries to break it up, with wedges and etc. (Key(stone) employees are vulnerabilities, though.)
Both are vulnerable to technical threats. Mastodon is open source so perhaps easier to find a zero-day than twitter, but to fully exploit it to take out most of, or a selected (e.g. ideological) multi-site subset of, the network would require a very well executed and timed simultaneous attack.
Twitter, well, we’ve seen the lists of technical areas of concern, and the firing of staff. It’s running on good resiliency design and inertia and fumes and stimulants and stress hormones; probably would not be able to survive a technical attack.
And regulators and lawyers haven’t started their attacks on twitter yet. That’ll be fun to watch.
Would be nice to have something like twitter run by a reasonably stable Government. Perhaps the EU. (Russia would have one more reason to try to break up the EU.)
Sally
@Chetan Murthy: This is what I was going to say – just noting the publicly available whereabouts of his private jet, not him. What a little petal he is.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
More further proof that Musk is a totally idiot and was demanding bot bans based on IP addresses and didn’t understand how IP addresses are assigned outside the US. Ukraine wasn’t the only place hit.
RaflW
@Chetan Murthy: Well, this. It’s a complete vanity thing (and gross consumption) to ‘need’ to own a Gulfstream.
If he needs to go anywhere, NetJets — or even more discreet charters — can whisk him or anyone else rich, and that charter arrangement provides sufficient anonymity.
Jay
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Space Nancy is not the only idiot who is clueless about IP’s and Bot’s.
Kim DotCom and the other Vatniks were “crowing” about how Space Nancy’s “bot purge” was going to cleanse Twitter of NAFO,
and yet, as of this am, all the Fella’s are there plus 500 more.
sab
Bruce K in ATH-GR
I’ve become more and more convinced that people are using the wrong fictional analogue to Elon Musk. The space program, the racism, the megalomania, the pettiness? He’s not a failed attempt at Tony Stark; he’s Hugo Drax.
trnc
@Chetan Murthy:
Would you feel that way if Tucker and Hannity showed Soros’ real time flight info on every show? I wouldn’t. While it’s ridiculous of elon to do this because it affected him personally, it’s a reasonable policy.
dr. luba
Patron: Usually I look like a real angel, but sometimes………
Chetan Murthy
@trnc: Yes, I’d be fine with Soros’ planes being tracked the same way. This is public information, and the idea that somehow the rich get a pass on this that the poor do not is just wrong. BTW, I’m sure you’re aware of those sites that post mugshots of people who get arrested? I remember reading that there’s a bit of a scam around that: if you have some money, you can pay these companies and they’ll take your mugshot down. Again, public information, and somehow the rich get away with something the poor cannot.
Soros also has the option of *not* owning private planes. Nobody should own a private plane. Nobody.
HeartlandLiberal
I posted links twice to Twitter for this post, with quotes on the Starlink Snowflake, so Twitter users (those who are left) can read Adam’s cogent commentary on Elon Musk, who is proving himself to be like a caricature of villain in a James Bond film, played by Mike Myers. I keep posting stuff critical of @elonmusk in hope that he will put me out of my Twitter misery and ban my account. I will wear it as a badge of honor.
trnc
I don’t know anything about the mugshot sites, so I guess I’ll have to look it up. Yes, rich people can do things others can’t. That’s to be expected in a capitalist society, even liberal capitalist. I have no problem with that. My problem is them being under taxed and under regulated.
Anonymous At Work
@Jay: Excellent analysis and it points to a major reason for why each side’s CAP is effective: morale. Russian pilots probably aren’t called “missile sponges” in idiomatic Russian but know their superiors regard them as the most replaceable component of their aircraft.
J R in WV
@Sister Golden Bear:
Me neither. I was on juries for several murder cases, but that was nothing compared to the grand jury I sat on, we heard way too much about sex crimes and kids, in our quiet rural county.
Their own children, not stranger danger in the park… amazing to learn in the jury room from the investigators. Don’t know how the cops stand it…
GibberJack
@Sister Golden Bear: Trump found lots of people willing to take children from their parents and put them in cages. That is also child abuse, and done for the same reasons as this torture center. Cruelty to strike at their enemies. To hurt them and terrorize them. To send a message. They used children to do it.
And the MAGAts loved it. Supported it. Covered for it. Denied it.
They really do have an affinity for the Russians.