(Image by NEIVANMADE)
Housekeeping notes: 1) We’re set here. They have not called to evacuate anything but evacuation Zone A plus mobile homes. We’re not in Zone A. I’ve got everything prepped and now we just wait. So far we had one heavy squall line come through around 2:30 or so, beyond that its been light rain to drizzle with light to moderate wind. In fact if it stops raining for a bit I’ll probably walk the dogs after I finish the update. 2) I have an Anker PowerHouse, Compact 400Wh / 120000mAh Portable Outlet, but the AC adapter that you plug into the input to recharge it has gone missing since last year. It is 12V I emailed Anker customer service asking if I could order a new AC adapter directly from them, but all I got back was a large language model AI response that was not helpful at all. According to the product description it will fully recharge in 10.5 hours with a 16.8V=3A power supply. So if any of you all have a suggestion for a replacement AC adapter please let me know in the comments.
On August 29th 2014 the Russians violated the agreement that established a humanitarian corridor to evacuate Ukrainian military personnel from Ilovaisk. Rather than honor the agreement the Russians opened up on the retreating Ukrainians:
August 29, 2014. A tragedy in Ilovaisk. A day when russian forces, despite an agreement, fired upon Ukrainian columns in a humanitarian corridor.
A russian crime that marks the beginning of the Day of Remembrance of the Fallen Defenders of Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/zZacqM2OaF— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) August 29, 2023
The Russians have a history of violating these agreements and attacking humanitarian corridors. For instance, by attacking civilians evacuating through a humanitarian corridor in Chechnya in 1999. As well as several times in Ukraine over the past eighteen months, such as the attack on those evacuating Sumy.
There is not any agreement that the Ukrainians can make with the Russian government that can be relied upon.
As I was saying:
As for calls for negotiations with Putin, ask Mr. Prigozhin, not us. He had conflict with Putin, he successfully negotiated with Putin, ended that conflict. They agreed on security guarantees, and then Putin killed him – Kuleba. https://t.co/GfHHaqzsey
— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) August 29, 2023
Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump.
It is a duty to be worthy of the path Ukraine is on – address by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy
29 August 2023 – 22:07
Dear Ukrainians!
Today is a special day. The Day of Remembrance. The day of all our defenders who have perished in battles for Ukraine since 2014, since February 24. Sons, daughters. Fathers, mothers. Brothers, sisters. Friends. Colleagues. Acquaintances. Brothers-in-arms. Many Ukrainians today have someone to remember, someone to honor.
Today, many of us were thinking of our loved ones, relatives and friends who are now at war. Who are now risking their lives every day, every hour for the sake of Ukraine.
Every such day is a reminder for our entire nation. For everyone who works for the state. It is a reminder of what makes up our country. Ukrainian families whose sons and daughters perished in battles. For them, for the parents of Ukrainian heroes, the blue and yellow flag of Ukraine is now a reminder of their child, of his or her feat for the sake of the country. A child whose father died at the front defending Ukraine… Loved ones who will never meet again because the war took away a life that became the life of Ukraine… Everything that is our state and everyone who is our state – every institution, every official – must feel what kind of Ukraine is behind them. How much pain is in its heart. How much courage it has. What the memory of people who are no longer alive is. What is now in its symbols. And how differently people now perceive everything that humiliates Ukraine, its strength and hopes.
It is a duty to be worthy of the path Ukraine is on. To give Ukraine more strength. More opportunities. It is a duty. To care about everyone around you. To support them. To take care of people. And always bring the result closer. The main result for Ukraine. Ukraine must prevail. This is the main thing for everyone. So that we do not have to look away from the photos of the warriors on the Wall of Remembrance and other memorials.
I thank everyone who works for Ukraine, who fights for Ukraine in this way: with dignity, courage, and strength.
Glory to all our warriors! Glory to our people, the people of Ukraine!
May the memory of all those who gave their lives for the sake of Ukraine be eternal.
Glory to Ukraine!
Glory to the Heroes!
Today in Ukraine, it's the Day of Remembrance of the Fallen Defenders of Ukraine. On this day, we remember the soldiers who gave their lives in the war with russia. The war for freedom. The war for the survival of our people and our state.
They gave us time to build a new army… pic.twitter.com/fhCQwb2KjT— Oleksii Reznikov (@oleksiireznikov) August 29, 2023
Today in Ukraine, it’s the Day of Remembrance of the Fallen Defenders of Ukraine. On this day, we remember the soldiers who gave their lives in the war with russia. The war for freedom. The war for the survival of our people and our state.
They gave us time to build a new army with modern weapons, to weaken an enemy much larger and stronger, and ultimately to defeat it.
We will remember your sacrifice. We will not squander the chance you’ve given us.
We pay tribute to the memory of Ukrainian soldiers who have fallen in the war with russia since 2014. Thousands have given their lives so that millions could live and continue their struggle. Never forget them. pic.twitter.com/NlodeW7FUu
— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) August 29, 2023
Honoring the fallen heroes of Ukraine in Mykolaiv. A touching tribute to those who sacrificed their lives to defend our nation. The installation of military boots on Soborna Square stands as a reminder of the true price of freedom.
📷 Mykolaiv Regional Military Administration pic.twitter.com/yqmY7DWrWg
— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) August 29, 2023
The cost:
Today, on the Day of Remembrance of the Fallen Defenders of Ukraine, the bodies of 84 fallen soldiers have been returned to Ukraine.
📷 Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters pic.twitter.com/mH9PBN4uyF
— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) August 29, 2023
Today, loved ones, combat brothers and sisters, and Kyivans bid farewell to a legendary pilot of the 40th Tactical Aviation Brigade, Major (posthumously) Andrii Pilshchykov. He was among those who helped Ukraine survive the first terrible days of the invasion. He made significant… pic.twitter.com/9YkcQqIZAY
— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) August 29, 2023
Today, loved ones, combat brothers and sisters, and Kyivans bid farewell to a legendary pilot of the 40th Tactical Aviation Brigade, Major (posthumously) Andrii Pilshchykov. He was among those who helped Ukraine survive the first terrible days of the invasion. He made significant strides in ensuring that F-16s join the defense of Ukraine’s skies. Unfortunately, he didn’t live to see the fulfillment of his dream.
Rest in peace, Juice. You started this journey; your brothers and sisters will finish it. Ukraine will be free. Ukraine will join NATO. Ukraine’s skies will be safeguarded by the most modern jets.
📸 Efrem Lukatsky
– Just a bit longer, and this plane will arrive.
– Promise me that I'll take a loop in the first plane. I'll rise instead of him.Juice's mother speaks at the farewell ceremony to Air Force Commander Mykola Oleshchuk. This is what F-16 means. pic.twitter.com/YXRFsPRA6F
— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) August 29, 2023
Rest in Peace pilot pic.twitter.com/VMh9V0tbvH
— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) August 29, 2023
Lord, guard and guide the men fly
Through the great spaces in the sky.
Be with them always in the air,
In darkening storms or sunlight fair;
Oh, hear us when we lift our prayer,
For those in peril in the air!
Mary C. D. Hamilton (1915)
Robotyne:
Tatarigami has a detailed thread replying to the Blackbird Group’s detailed thread about the Russian defenses in the south of Ukraine. I’m not using the Thread Reader App because it only unrolled through the 9th tweet.
Impressive thread was done by the @Black_BirdGroup about defenses in the south. In relation to this subject, I'd like to add additional insights and context. My intention is not to critique their presented report, but to emphasize crucial details that need to be added. 🧵Thread pic.twitter.com/ZkYrRjO9Ab
— Tatarigami_UA (@Tatarigami_UA) August 29, 2023
3/ In my perspective, this tendency can be attributed to the Streetlight effect – an observational bias wherein people exclusively search where it's easiest to look. In the context of satellite imagery, this translates to focusing on only visible defense structures. pic.twitter.com/bBJCE0E1dF
— Tatarigami_UA (@Tatarigami_UA) August 29, 2023
5/ In this short timelapse video spanning from May to August, I've highlighted fortified zones that mappers often chart. However, by looking at damages it's evident that the true theater of combat was across all tree lines visible in the area. pic.twitter.com/25EsI49HAo
— Tatarigami_UA (@Tatarigami_UA) August 29, 2023
7/ This distinction holds significant weight, as statements such as "Ukrainian forces haven't reached the first line of defense" could be misleading. In reality, our forces have gained control over numerous tree lines that constitute major defensive formations. pic.twitter.com/G3FdGqeBta
— Tatarigami_UA (@Tatarigami_UA) August 29, 2023
9/ In this final clip north of Robotyne, most tree lines have been heavily shelled due to intense battles fought over each one, making this hidden defensive formation more important than the widely discussed mapped lines. pic.twitter.com/FkiM1TVFuE
— Tatarigami_UA (@Tatarigami_UA) August 29, 2023
11/ I'd like to retract my comment about 20 minutes. Using "20 minutes" might come across as dismissive considering the complexity of the battle. My intention was to highlight that unmanned or undermanned positions aren’t the biggest issue, but "20 mins" is incorrect statement.
— Tatarigami_UA (@Tatarigami_UA) August 29, 2023
Orikhiv-Robotyne Axis:
SCALE UPDATE: pic.twitter.com/oy2rbilKx5
— Chuck Pfarrer | Indications & Warnings | (@ChuckPfarrer) August 29, 2023
Bakhmut:
BAKHMUT AXIS /1800 UTC 29 AUG/ UKR reports RU is using chemical agents (likely a CS variant) in the vicinity of Andrivka. Russian air & artillery strikes reported throughout Bakhmut AO. pic.twitter.com/tYY8GqyWrL
— Chuck Pfarrer | Indications & Warnings | (@ChuckPfarrer) August 29, 2023
Velyka Novosilka:
VELYKA NOVOSILKA /2000 UTC 29 AUG/ UKR forces accept the surrender of a group of Russian troops at Zavitne Bazhanya. Heavy fighting continues along
T-05-18 HWY / Mokri Valley axis. pic.twitter.com/f4pMjmYoGl— Chuck Pfarrer | Indications & Warnings | (@ChuckPfarrer) August 29, 2023
Pskov, Russia:
DEVELOPING: First reports indicate that the attack was conducted by UAVs on the Russian air base base at Kresty. The base is home to the VDV's 76th Air Assault Division and the 334th military transport regiment of the Russian airspace forces.
— Chuck Pfarrer | Indications & Warnings | (@ChuckPfarrer) August 29, 2023
Reports of explosions near the airport in Pskov in Russia coming in. pic.twitter.com/DLyaFAlt4A
— NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 (@NOELreports) August 29, 2023
It is reported two Russian planes are damaged although we have no visual confirmation yet. Explosions are still happening. pic.twitter.com/QJtCw3EFh5
— NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 (@NOELreports) August 29, 2023
It is reported that 4 Il-76 aircraft were damaged in Pskov after a drone attack, local emergency services allegedly said.
Secondary detonations are still heard. Russian media write that a total of 15 drones attacked the airport. pic.twitter.com/D7FPqeiQWz
— NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 (@NOELreports) August 29, 2023
It is reported new explosions occured near Pskov airport. pic.twitter.com/79Y1mw2PgJ
— NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 (@NOELreports) August 29, 2023
For Omnes:
The M109 self-propelled howitzer is effectively serving in the 14th Mechanized Brigade named after Prince Roman the Great. It destroys enemy manpower, armored vehicles, and — this is a unique case — even somehow shot down a helicopter. pic.twitter.com/DJ116ATlZe
— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) August 29, 2023
And for you enthusiasts of Russian military equipment going boom:
Watch what mushrooms Ukrainian soldiers have learned to grow from russian howitzers 2S19 Msta-S. Occupiers. Bon appétit! pic.twitter.com/DKd3635Bcm
— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) August 29, 2023
Touch not the cat bot a glove!
Nearly 3 months of the most intense and brutal Russian propaganda, thousands of photos from hundreds of angles, and just 5 of 71 Leopards provided to Ukraine were destroyed, with no crew losses.
— Dmitri (@wartranslated) August 29, 2023
The Biden administration has announced another tranche of military aide for Ukraine:
RELEASE
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Biden Administration Announces Additional Security Assistance for Ukraine
Aug. 29, 2023Today, the Department of Defense (DoD) announced additional security assistance to meet Ukraine’s critical security and defense needs. This announcement is the Biden Administration’s forty-fifth tranche of equipment to be provided from DoD inventories for Ukraine since August 2021. It includes additional air defense and artillery munitions, mine clearing equipment, medical vehicles, and other equipment to help Ukraine counter Russia’s ongoing war of aggression on the battlefield and protect its people.
The capabilities in this package, valued at up to $250 million, include:
- AIM-9M missiles for air defense;
- Additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS);
- 155mm and 105mm artillery rounds;
- Mine clearing equipment;
- Tube-Launched, Optically-Tracked, Wire-Guided (TOW) missiles;
- Javelin and other anti-armor systems and rockets;
- Hydra-70 Rockets;
- Over 3 million rounds of small arms ammunition;
- Armored medical treatment vehicles and High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV) ambulances;
- Demolitions munitions for obstacle clearing; and
- Spare parts, maintenance, and other field equipment.
This security assistance package will utilize assistance previously authorized under Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA) for Ukraine that remained after the PDA revaluation process concluded in June.
The United States will continue to work with its Allies and partners to provide Ukraine with capabilities to meet its immediate battlefield needs and longer-term security assistance requirements.
Long-term and steady supplies are the basis of any military operation. America’s support of the #UAarmy, which continues to defend its country from russian aggression in the largest war of our century, has not waned.
Thank you to my friend @SecDef Lloyd J. Austin III for another… pic.twitter.com/MxPmge0w9K— Oleksii Reznikov (@oleksiireznikov) August 29, 2023
Long-term and steady supplies are the basis of any military operation. America’s support of the #UAarmy, which continues to defend its country from russian aggression in the largest war of our century, has not waned.
Thank you to my friend @SecDef Lloyd J. Austin III for another package of security assistance!
That’s enough for tonight.
Your daily Patron!
I’ve sent a small present to a close friend of Ukraine @MelSimmonsFCDO . Thank you for everything you do and will do for our country 🇺🇦👅 https://t.co/xW1fzxTYHb
— Patron (@PatronDsns) August 29, 2023
And a new video from Patron’s official TikTok!
@patron__dsns Та й таке :))
Here’s the machine translation of the caption:
And that :))
Open thread!
twbrandt
Good luck, Adam.
Adam L Silverman
@twbrandt: Thanks.
Omnes Omnibus
Let’s see HIMARS shoot down a helicopter.
Stay safe, Adam.
Yarrow
Stay safe, Adam.
Have you checked eBay for a replacement adapter? A bit too late for this storm, though.
zhena gogolia
@Adam L Silverman: I hope you and the dogs will be fine.
Alison Rose
Glad to hear you are thus far doing okay, Adam. You and all the Florida jackals are in my thoughts every moment.
This:
is so obviously true, and yet so many people wanna play dumb and act like it’s not. It’s aggravating. And what Kuleba said too is blunt but 100% accurate.
I appreciate seeing all of these remembrance posts, especially since the FTFNYT keeps wanting to shove photos of mourners at prigozhin’s grave at us. Like I give a shit about those maniacs and their psycho-worship.
Also…someone hook me up with a Patron keychain.
Thank you as always, Adam.
hotshoe
I do remember my anger at the Russian capture of Crimea in 2014. I thought at the time that, surely, European forces could not stand idle while their historic enemy took a chunk out of a European nation. Even if Ukraine was not EU or NATO or any kind of formal ally, how could the rest of the continent — who had armed themselves at great expense and had also given territory to US Army bases to defend them from the Soviet empire — not see that they needed to slap Putin back? I was terrified they would go to war against Putin and then it would lead to nuclear exchange. In that fear, thank god, I was mistaken. But I was not mistaken then in thinking that Putin needed to be stopped. Stopped hard.
We can’t go back in time machine, don’t get any do-overs in world history, but damn. If only. If only we could. If the world political leaders had not let Putin get away with terrorism for a decade, we would not have to be grateful today when Ukrainian soldiers manage to recapture Robotyne. Yes, of course I’m grateful. Ukrainian folks unknown to me may have saved my kids’ lives in the sense that WWIII did not begin in 2014 because Ukraine absorbed all those losses alone. But damn. We should have been standing with them against Putin all along. We owe them.
Another Scott
From a Q&A at Amazon for the Anker box, “E” says the charger specs are – 110-240V AC to 16.8V @ 3A DC. Presumably the “barrel” plug into the Anker box is a standard size.
This seems to be the charger.
HTH!
Good luck, and stay safe.
Cheers,
Scott.
Alison Rose
Also: Yesterday I was reading a NYT article about Zelenskyy discussing holding elections next year and saying that he is open to it but it would be incredibly difficult to carry off, and they would need assistance to make it happen. In the article, they linked back to their piece on his election win from April 2019, and boy howdy, it is INTERESTING to read it now. (Also notable that in the older piece, they spell it Kiev. I wonder when they changed it…I assume maybe right around the beginning of the full-scale war.)
He turned out to be a leader nine zillion times better than Reagan.
Anonymous At Work
@Another Scott: You should use the evilest words in the English language: “On advice from my attorney…”
Jay
@Adam L Silverman:
Is the charger connection a standard pin and socket plug, (like a headphone jack) or is it a formed plug like a PC, Laptop?
If it a pin plug, and 12v transformer/charger will trickle charge it, up to the max rating of the transformer/charger.
If it is a formed plug, then you need a specific charger or and adapter.
You might be able to get some charge in if it’s a pin plug.
Take care Adam, and thanks for your continued coverage of this war and Ukraine.
Jay
@Another Scott:
thanks for the link
@Jay:
It’s a laptop style charge plug and charger.
Gin & Tonic
One of those killed in Ilovaisk was a Ukrainian-American US Army vet (West Point grad) from New Jersey. He renounced his American citizenship to take Ukrainian citizenship so he could join the UAF, even though he was already in his 50’s.
The UAF now accepts foreigners in a variety of ways, and many are serving, but he was unique in 2014. He received a hero’s burial in Ukraine.
ETA : Thanks for leading with that story, Adam, and good luck with the hurricane.
Miss Bianca
Keeping my fingers crossed that you and yours stay safe, Adam! Thanks again for all the Ukraine updates. I don’t usually comment on these threads because I am way, way out of my depth here, but I do appreciate getting to read them!
Adam L Silverman
@hotshoe: We dealt with this one night over the weekend in comments.
Adam L Silverman
@Another Scott: Thanks. I looked at that and couldn’t be sure.
Adam L Silverman
The dog lanterns have finished their patrol!
Andrya
Following up on yesterday’s exchange, I’m sure that you’ll all be pleased to hear that Pope Francis is getting major pushback on his ill-advised remarks.
For clarification, Greek Catholics (aka Eastern Rite Catholics) are Catholics, not Eastern Orthodox, although they follow Eastern Orthodox customs, including languages, long services, and the ordination of married men. Sviatoslav is officially Francis’ subordinate, although I don’t see much sign of that here (chortle, chortle)…
Here is a link from Ukrainian Pravda:
oldster
Love love love the fireworks in Pskov airport right now. Reports of 4 IL-76 military cargo planes being damaged. From the secondary explosions, looks like some of them were carrying ammunition. If that includes missiles, then the value of the cargo could be even greater than the value of the plane itself. We’ll find out more in the days to come, but it looks like another amazingly successful raid.
That Patron video — seeing him home on the carpet makes me think, “he may be a war-hero, but at the end of the day, he’s a JRT.”
Prescott Cactus
Adam,
Be the safest you and the family can be. Your posts make us smart and much thanks for it.
Peace out.
Dan B
As a member in dubious standing of the Great Gay Weather Machine I am doing the incantation of successfull dog walk weather and of only entertainingly dramatic weather for Adam.
Gin & Tonic
@Andrya: At the risk of bringing out the howler monkeys, I will say that Sviatoslav is a remarkably decent human being (and spiritual leader.) Like many clergymen of his age, born during the USSR, he studied and was ordained in secret.
oldster
@Gin & Tonic:
In Ukraine, head of church hide from former KGB.
In ruzzia, head of church * is * former KGB.
(apologies for the bad Yakov Smirnov imitation).
Chetan Murthy
@oldster: Yakov Smirnov is Ukrainian. Born in Odesa. *grin
oldster
@Chetan Murthy:
I’ll be darned — I had not known that.
hotshoe
@Adam L Silverman: Ahh, one of the only two nights I have missed out of these threads in a year …
here, these lines deserve to be repeated:
“no one was going to risk a war with another nuclear power (Russia) over Crimea. And while that was the technically correct answer, as well as the textbook one, it was both strategically and morally wrong. ”
Sorry — I hear you say that it doesn’t lessen your moral culpability — and I guess that you do feel it more intensely than someone like me, just an ordinary stupid civilian with no particular voice in the corridors of power — nothing I could say can add or subtract from the weight.
BUT
BUT
BUT
It is true:
NO ONE was going to risk war with nuclear power Russia/Putin, because no one knew then what they were risking by NOT going to war.
Neither you nor I knew both things: Putin needed to be stopped before he would commit more atrocities, and Putin would turn out to be bluffing about nuclear revenge.
I hope you can forgive yourself for not knowing the future, for what you intuited at the time but couldn’t use.
May I say, thank you for sharing your very personal experience as well as for rounding up the news night after night here.
central texas
Adam,
I have the smaller Anker Power Bank. It came with both and A/C adapter and a 12VDC that could be plugged in to charge from an automobile. I know that may not be an attractive choice, but you may find that adapter handy in an emergency. Although not practical once the winds pick up, I also find a 100W solar panel very handy when I am out remote and using digital cameras.
Chetan Murthy
@oldster: The number of famous and/or pivotal people whom we know as “Soviet” (== (let’s admit it) “Russian”) who were actually Ukrainian, is pretty shockingly large. Once you remove the pervasive “Russian framing”, they just start popping out all over.
A lesson that applies to Black people and women in America.
Gin & Tonic
@oldster: No need to apologize, that’s pretty clever (and basically true.)
Adam L Silverman
@hotshoe: Thank you for the kind words.
Gin & Tonic
@Chetan Murthy: Removing that russian framing will be the work of decades, unfortunately. Even the victories are partial – see, e.g. this work. Formerly known as “russian Dancers,” the Met just couldn’t change it to “Ukrainian Dancers,” they had to give us half a loaf and call it “Dancers in Ukrainian Dress.”
Adam L Silverman
@central texas: Thanks. I appreciate the info.
Chetan Murthy
@Gin & Tonic: When Russia falls apart and all that’s left for Putin’s heir is Muscovy, with all the other regions becoming their own countries, hopefully this will change. Prison of nations, Russia is. Prison of nations.
Anoniminous
The Future of Warfare
Ukraine Update: The future is disposable as Ukraine showcases a world of cheap and plentiful drones
On the other end of the scale the in-development Chengdu Wing Loong-3 will be Raptor equivalent mission capable: air-to-ground, air-to-air, anti-tank, anti-sub sonobuoy, at an estimated cost of $5 million, possibly cheaper, per airframe.
Adam L Silverman
Still not much going on. Yet…
devore
https://www.amazon.com/Wefomey-120W-Adjustable-24V-5A/dp/B09NN4WTXK/ref=sr_1_3?crid=1B6M07MRL0RWE&keywords=adjustable%2B24v%2Bdc%2Bpower%2Bsupply%2B7.5&qid=1693358901&s=electronics&sprefix=%2Celectronics%2C193&sr=1-3&th=1
If the substitute noted above doesn’t work, another option is an adjustable charger. Set the output voltage to 16.8v and hopefully one of the tips/adapters work. If not, possibly you could splice in the tip on your existing adapter. Ideally you have a multimeter to check it out – before plugging in to charge
Elizabelle
@Adam L Silverman: Wishing you and the pups a smooth bout with Idalia.
What does “large language” (as with the Anker AI response) mean?
Adam L Silverman
@devore: Thanks!
Carlo Graziani
@Adam L Silverman: FWIW, the DC voltage output needs to match the expected input to the device. The current (amperage) is a current limit, and the charger needs to have a limit that exceeds (preferably not by much) the limit printed on the device, lest the power demand cause the power brick to trip off.
This would be more relevant if Scott had not already IDed the power brick designed for this device, of course.
Adam L Silverman
@Elizabelle: What is commonly referred to as Artificial Intelligence (AI) while artificial isn’t actually intelligent. The different programs and platforms are large language models. Basically tons of text from books, articles, blog posts, anything the programmers could feed the program are fed into it and when queried they regurgitate something that sounds remotely human like.
Adam L Silverman
@Carlo Graziani: It’s the thought that counts.
Prescott Cactus
@Elizabelle:
Hi Elizabelle
Large language models and generative AI are two separate but related areas of AI. While large language models excel at text processing and production, generative AI places emphasis on creativity and content generation.
A large language model is a language model characterized by its large size. Their size is enabled by AI accelerators, which are able to process vast amounts of text data, mostly scraped from the Internet.
Thanks, as I learned something new !
Elizabelle
@Adam L Silverman: Thank you.
I guess we begin collecting Howlers from AI content.
Bill Arnold
@devore:
If it can be charged from a solar panel, it may not be finicky about supply voltage. The solar panels I’ve played with (with a cigarette lighter output (option) for trickle charging), measured like 20V no load.
Carlo Graziani
@Elizabelle: “Large” modifies “model,” not “language.” The model is “large” in the sense that it has billions (now verging on a trillion) tunable parameters, that are set by “training” the model on large data corpuses.
Gin & Tonic
@Carlo Graziani: Every time I see “large language” I think of Carol Karp.
NB – May be too obscure.
Chetan Murthy
@Elizabelle:
I fear you’ll exhaust your budget for storage of these howlers. Basically anything that requires painstaking attention to detail, and working-thru of reasonably complex reasoning to solve a problem, and that hasn’t already been solved someplace on the Internet …. well, I think you’ll find that AI can’t solve it. Or erm, at least, ChatGPT can’t solve it.
What these LLMs do tell us, is that a *whole* lot of human “reasoning” is basically pattern-matching and cut-and-paste. And a whole lot of humans aren’t much better than an LLM. An even more depressing lot of hummans are …. *worse*.
dimmsdale
Wishing you luck and safety during the storm, Adam, and am taking your Anker choice as an endorsement of sorts (still gunshy from the prolonged power loss during Sandy, looking for a decent emergency power supply). I stand in awe of fighters like Juice, and (as always) appreciate your informed dispatches. Also, I love watching rooshin stuff blow up, so don’t feel like you have to stint on such clips. best wishes!
dr. luba
@Gin & Tonic: Some of that was the work of Oksana Semenik, art historian and journalist from Ukraine. she is working on “decolonizing” American and European museums.
She is well worth following on X/Twitter/whatever.
Chetan Murthy
@Anoniminous: I remember reading an article a few months ago, about the difference between NATO and Soviet/Russia being that the latter practiced “mass” in long range fires, where NATO practiced “precision”. Today, reading that same article about drones, I was thinking about how maybe what this is showing, is that even NATO doesn’t really practice precision. So these drones are a way of taking the next few turns of the crank on precision, until you end up in the regime where a Moore’s Law-like rule starts to govern: the units for precision delivery get small enough and cheap enough that as you make more of them, they get cheaper. And because they’re cheap, you can distribute the innovation to thousands of actors all working independently to improve on them.
What’s happening with drones reminds me of what happened in the early days of the commercial Internet: before 1994-ish, computers and networks sufficient to be Internet-capable were expensive enough that they just weren’t plentiful. So only “researchers” were able to experiment with them. 1995-onwards, they got cheap “enough” (just cheap enough, *just* cheap enough) that basically anybody could experiment with them. And that means all sorts of innovation came from unexpected corners of the Internet. Like Linux for instance. I remember in the early 90s, European research labs just didn’t have the kind of computers that American labs had — they were just too expensive. And then suddenly, in the late 90s, that all changed, and you saw a real efflorescence of software research and innovation coming out of Europe, from all over, not just from research labs.
One thing I really, really, really hope, is that the Army and Navy both understand that this transition is happening, and that they appropriately fund both industry to build drones in the US from a US supply-chain, and fund universities to experiment with them. I worry a lot that when/if the PRC invades Taiwan, it’ll be with such massive numbers of drones, that there’ll be nothing Taiwan can do to shoot them down.
I think we’re seeing a “Doolittle Raid on Tokyo” moment around “mass precision” in Ukraine
ETA: part of why I think that what’s happening in Ukraine is *different* from the US’ efforts around drones, is that we make drones that are so expensive that they’re precious (this has been reported-on many times) where Ukrainians (and sure, Russians) regard drones are disposable, and this is what’s driving the Moore’s Law-like ride down the cost curve. When you can launch a constellation of 10 cheap-as-hell FPV drones all slaved onto a single operator, where the drones cooperate to have local random behaviour so they can attack a tank without the operator really being very involved, and that local random behaviour makes it difficult to shoot them down, and the fact that the operator doesn’t need to be involved in the final appproach makes it difficult to neutralize the drones with EM countermeasures, it’s gonna be bad, bad times for the target.
Gin & Tonic
@Andrya: Not sure how this slipped my mind earlier, but Sviatoslav and Francis know each other very well, since both worked in Buenos Aires some years back.
divF
@Carlo Graziani: I’ve been having to write a white paper / pre-proposal over the last few days, that compresses 20 years of context into 2+ pages. This sounds like something that an LLM should be able to do, but as I think about it some more, maybe not.
What do you think?
way2blue
Adam. I hope you & your dogs dodge the worst of Idalia. She sounds scary.
The past few weeks we’ve seen repeated complaints from unnamed Pentagon & intelligence officials—nitpicking the pace & focus of the Ukrainian counter offensive. My question to you is why? Could you offer insight into their motives? Seems counter-productive & perverse.
Are their military assessments not being taken seriously by the White House? So they leak to the public hoping for traction? Or the opposite? Is Russian framing hardwired within segments of the Biden administration? Are they left over from the Trump administration? Scapegoating? Something else?
Thanks as always for your professional insights into so many facets of war in Ukraine.
Chetan Murthy
@divF: Have you seen what Bret Devereaux wrote about ChatGPT? https://acoup.blog/2023/02/17/collections-on-chatgpt/
Might help answer your question.
Adam L Silverman
@way2blue: I’ll deal with this tomorrow night in the update if that’s okay.
I’ve also just put up a hurricane open thread.
divF
@Chetan Murthy: No, I haven’t seen it. I’m gonna read about it and think about it, and may buttonhole you the next time I see you around here.
Carlo Graziani
@divF: In the hands of a domain expert who is capable of validating the output, LLMs can be labor-saving devices, speeding up routine tasks. But left to generate unvalidated output, they are guaranteed to produce bullshit. This is for the technical reason (which I know you will get) that they are so overparametrized that they only give valid output inside the support of the training data. And unlike the case with regression and classification problems, when the data is tokenized language sequences, the boundary between inside and outside training data support is almost certainly fractal. Which is to say, one is always within a prompt perturbation of eliciting bullshit.
I have a colleague who is working on software development, and plans to use an LLM within the context of a software test suite, so that bad output is caught automatically. This, to me, is an example of the best possible use that one can make of such systems.
Carlo Graziani
@divF: Another colleague tried the experiment of asking ChatGPT3 to derive the wave equation starting from the Maxwell equations, then forwarded the results to us on our DL mailing list to see if it made sense. It was, in fact, highly didactically-polished gobbledegook, persuasive enough in tone that I wondered for almost 10 minutes why I could not follow the reasoning. Then I got suspicious, cut to the end, and found that the Chatbot had derived a 4th-order mixed-partial-derivative variable-coefficient equation, which it confidently pronounced to be “the wave equation.” And when I went back to check, after correctly introducing the four Maxwell equations, every reasoning step in the argument was flagrantly incorrect. But the professorial, didactic tone with which this bunk was presented was mesmerizingly persuasive.
Chetan Murthy
@Carlo Graziani: @divF: I tried something both more *elementary* and more …. tediously involved. There are two representations of 3-D orientation in common use: Euler angles (e.g. yaw/pitch/roll) and (normalized) quaternions. Converting from the former to the latter is almost trivial. But since there are many different Euler angle representations, to convert from quaternions to each Euler angle set is a different algorithm. They’re all pretty elementarily derivable from basic facts of trigonometry, and applying algebra.
And heck, it turns out, there’s a 1977 McDonnell-Douglas techreport written by a guy working on the Space Shuttle, that lays it all out, including FORTRAN code. Problem is, the online copy is a scanned version of a copy-of-a-copy-of-a-copy. Or something like that, b/c the FORTRAN is barely legible at best. And (it turns out) the formula in the techreport don’t deal with all the edge cases. But luckily, basic reasoning about trig identities suffices to deal with the edge cases.
Now, it *is* the case that for one particular set of Euler angles (roll/pitch/yaw, that is to say, the X-Y-Z Euler angle representation) there is code available to convert from quats to X–Y-Z in a number of places: books, wikipedia, etc. So if you ask ChatGPT “please give me code for converting quaternions to X-Y-Z Euler angles”, you’ll get what Wikipedia has.
But if you ask for (say) (conversion from quats to) Z-X-Z Euler angles, it will give you …. (drum roll) that same code. HAHAHA.
And why? B/c nowhere except in some quantum computing codebases will you find the quat->ZXZ conversion. [that’s what I wanted it for, which is what led to my finding out about all this, including the techreport]
ChatGPT firmly mansplains [h/t Sister Golden Bear] that yep, the code it gives you is correct. But it’s not at all so.
Basically, for any technical problem that is pretty close to one that is already solved by somebody in ChatGPT’s training data, it’ll probably give you a solution. But if it requires actually *thinking* ….. haha no.
But then, we shouldn’t be surprised by this.
Chetan Murthy
@Chetan Murthy: I gave it another problem from my own domain of expertise. I asked it to tell me the difference between Paxos and Fast Paxos. ChatGPT got it *exactly* backwards from what is the difference in real life.
Why? B/c hardly anybody except real experts understand Fast Paxos. So the writeups on it are …. impenetrable. It takes an enormous amount of bashing one’s forehead flat against the paper, to figure out what Lamport is saying. And (surprise surprise) ChatGPT doesn’t do that, so hey, it gets it wrong.
Fraud Guy
Didn’t that helicopter know they were in a no-parking/invading zone?
Carlo Graziani
@Chetan Murthy: On the other hand, I tried this ChatGPT prompt, and the response is a bit impressive:
Chetan Murthy
@Carlo Graziani:
Damn! Yes indeed, haha! I become more and more convinced that the quintessence of human intelligence is the ability to debug. That is, to observe a behaviour in a complex system that is not predicted by the documented theory of operation, and experimentally discover what’s causing that deviation, narrowing it down to the smallest possible cause, whether in the system, or in the documentation.