dr_analog
razorboy
No bio...
User ID: 583
dr_analog
razorboy
6hr ago
Okay so suppose a US citizen is wrongfully held in a foreign prison. What could a US court do to fix that? The executive has a lot of tools to fix that, but courts don't? If the executive is not interested in fixing it, aren't they just screwed?
dr_analog
razorboy
17hr ago
Something like 100 US citizens have been wrongfully deported the last two decades. I can't find any case law about it though. It seems the error is discovered (or a complaint is made) and they are eventually awarded damages. The government has apparently never argued that our courts have no jurisdiction over these deportees, but I'm not clear why the arguments being posed by Trump's lawyers would be any different?
dr_analog
razorboy
19hr ago
I had to read several articles about this to really understand
- he illegally entered the US
- he applied for asylum, citing danger if he returned to El Salvador
- a judge denied his asylum request
- but a judge did sympathize and say he can't be deported back to El Salvador
- he's still an illegal alien!
- presumably the US tried to find another place to send him, but couldn't
- so he remained in the US
- until they accidentally deported him to El Salvador for thinking he was part of a gang
dr_analog
razorboy
21hr ago
Given that the US very much wanted Russia to join the capitalist democratic world order and get rich and fat and bent over backwards to try to make it happen I don't see that as a huge credit to him. There was an oil boom, forgiveness of debts, invitation to the WTO, and even talks of having them join NATO and he squandered all of it. It was like a once in a civilization offer.
dr_analog
razorboy
1d ago
I would just like to underscore what a huge bitch I still think Putin is.
I've heard commodities traders say Gazprom would be the world's most valuable company if it wasn't inside of Putin's oligarchy, for example.
He has made the world strictly worse, especially for Russians.
NATO does not, currently, have any nukes 'forward positioned'. If they wanted to do so, then placing nukes in the Baltic states would be the obvious first port of call, as they are just as close to Russian cities as Ukrainian nukes would be. But why bother moving the nukes when you can already achieve the same with subs? Boomer subs have been capable of operating within the Baltic and Barents sea for a very long time, with flight times to Moscow in the five minute range.
Curious. How much payload could subs deliver versus other approaches? I assume if you want the first strike advantage you want to launch as much as possible and I'm guessing without much knowledge myself that the subs are more limited.
Additionally, this is a problem that Russia - or at least the USSR - was keenly aware of and had already solved. They knew that Moscow could be annihilated with, worst case, only five minutes warning and built their strategic deterrence accordingly. Their ICBM fields are located deep in the interior, each silo spaced far from the others and hardened against anything but a nuclear direct hit.
Do they still launch if all of the leadership are vaporized in the first 5-10 minutes though? Who gives that order? Does the order come in the 20 subsequent minutes it takes to vaporize the rest of their stuff?
Funny how these TIL posts always seem to update in favor of Russia, isn’t it? No one ever comments “I revisited my strategic assumptions, and it turns out Putin is a huge bitch. Like, tinpot-dictator paranoia. Now I’m more sympathetic to the Ukrainians.” There’s no alpha in agreeing with the mainstream narrative.
Does it help to say I still think Putin is a huge bitch, like tinpot-dictator paranoid, and I'm very sympathetic to Ukraine and if I had my choice we'd hit Putin with a nuke while he's hiding in his giant palace and only kill his most devoted sycophants? On a moral level, why the fuck can't Ukraine join NATO? Like they have every reason to distrust Russia and should be allowed to side with NATO.
Like somewhere in the above I wonder if we could actually be cold and logical enough to just first strike nuke Russia and totally wipe out their ability to retaliate and rid ourselves of this problem. Sure it's ghoulish, but think of it: a world without any threat from Russia ever again. The best time to have nuked Russia was in 1945. The second best time is now. Sorry we ever doubted you, John von Neumann (PBUH!)
How's that for finding alpha?
Pushing Finland into NATO?
As I said somewhere in a related descendant of this thread, I think Putin was expecting Ukraine to cave immediately and demonstrate why you should not gesture in the direction of NATO. This isn't going how they planned and all of their actions afterwards have been bad.
dr_analog
razorboy
2d ago
Do they? Despite this being a plot device in Dr. Strangelove, I've only heard what functor said above.
dr_analog
razorboy
2d ago
Neither the American or Russian deep states are going to gamble the fate of the country on the President getting hustled out of bed in time.
Asuming we know where all of their nuclear weapon infrastructure is, ~5 minutes isn't enough time to confirm and launch before they're obliterated though, no?
dr_analog
razorboy
2d ago
Clod speculates that the letters could also say things like "In the event that the UK is vaporized, please put yourself under the command of an ally" or "there's no point in retaliation, simply ends more lives. Just live your life in peace the best you can". They're rewritten by each incoming PM, and the letters are ripped up when they leave. Imagine what Keir Starmer might have put in his!
dr_analog
razorboy
2d ago
I understand it's somewhat an open secret that Russia's subs are confined to near-Russia and the US actively tracks them and can pre-emptively obliterate them the moment things get hot.
I understand it's somewhat an open secret that Russia's subs are confined to near-Russia and the US actively tracks them and can pre-emptively obliterate them the moment things get hot.
Isn't Ukraine the best positioning to nuke every major city in Russia and tons of military infrastructure in <5 minutes though?
(and now Finland!)
I expect they thought Ukraine would fold like a wet napkin and send a powerful signal to the remaining states not to align with NATO.
This also doesn't explain why Russia is specifically focusing on Donetsk and the east.
Those are probably the only places they can reasonably capture after realizing Ukraine would not be easy?
On MAD, some is more MA than others
One detail about the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) that I was not really aware of until now is the relative asymmetry of it.
In a nuclear exchange, MAD deterrence depends on both sides being able and wiling to destroy the other if they detect a first strike.
In the case of NATO vs Russia, MAD is not even! If Russia decides to first strike NATO, it's possible they could wipe out Europe before it has time to respond, in perhaps 10 minutes. But the US part of NATO is another story, and could take up to 30 minutes to wipe out. That's considerably more time for the US to order and launch a counterstrike that wipes out Russia.
The inverse does not hold, however. NATO can launch a first strike on Russia that ends them entirely in 10 minutes, cutting off options to respond. To be clear here some response would happen, like a few cities within the NATO bloc get nuked, but it's quite probable Russia could be wiped out entirely with only a minor amount of apocalyptic damage done to NATO.
What further alarms Russia is that this 10 minute window drops considerably if Ukraine is added to NATO. A decapitation strike against major cities in Russia launched from Ukraine could take as little as 5 minutes. That's not even enough time to notice, get positive confirmation and wake people up: Russian leadership would just sleep through Armageddon.
If you take Russia at face value, and that they invaded Ukraine because it would not commit to neutrality, it would seem to be a strategic blunder on the side of the US to not consider this more seriously. The logic of launching a first strike against Russia seems crazy to us, but that's almost certainly playing half-court basketball. If you think like a Russian, people who have endured centuries of extremely cruel militaristic and fuck-you-got-mine rule, a cold blooded NATO first strike that sacrificed a mere tens of millions in deaths in Europe might be a real fear. Especially if Russia senses its own competence wrt nuclear war is weakening. Also it's not like the US is not capable of unspeakable hypocrisy and cruelty when it comes to geopolitics. Regime change is a thing we've gleefully engaged in.
Anyway, learning about this asymmetry in nuclear MAD makes me more sympathetic to Russia's POV. The war with Ukraine was not inevitable and the possibility of allying Ukraine with NATO has, in hindsight, high cost with relatively little upside?
Am I misreading anything with the MAD situation? I understand there exist planes and subs that can deliver nuclear warheads but I don't see Russia's force projection capabilities being able to fulfill the retaliatory threat. For example, I understand it's somewhat an open secret that Russia's subs are confined to near-Russia and the US actively tracks them and can pre-emptively obliterate them the moment things get hot.
Carrying a big stick sounds important for global stability, but probably also avoiding scaring the shit out of failing and desperate nuclear armed powers is key.
dr_analog
razorboy
2d ago
A genre I really enjoy is "competence porn," in which a character or characters overcome challenges and trials via being really good at what they do, either against the uncaring Universe or against an opponent who is also really good at what they do
This is the opposite of competence porn, but you may enjoy this movie called Blue Ruin.
This totally normal average guy discovers that the guy who killed his parents is being released from jail early. Totally normal average guy decides he's going to kill him, but... he's not a skilled assassin or anything. He's got average skills. He struggles to do basic action movie things a hero does effortlessly. He misses a shot at point blank range. He tries to slash tires and hurts himself. Stuff, if you really think about it, most normal people would screw up too.
It makes the movie extremely tense and gripping, IMO.
dr_analog
razorboy
2d ago
The $variable syntax originates from Unix shell scripting, which Perl, PHP and others have taken after.
dr_analog
razorboy
3d ago
Wait what. If you don't think due process was already dispensed with in the first batch of people who were deported directly to a foreign prison without judicial review I'm not sure what continuing to exchange information here will accomplish.
dr_analog
razorboy
3d ago
Something like
Authority: Clinton, you must turn your private email server contents over immediately
Clinton: I will have my lawyer do this
Lawyer: here ya go! sorry it took a bit
Authority: it looks like tons of emails are missing
Lawyer: oh, yes. Clinton has a bunch of personal email intermixed with official email, so I looked through it and only turned over her official stuff
Authority: no, give us everything
Lawyer: lol can't do that. I deleted everything that wasn't official business based on my criteria for what was official and what wasn't
dr_analog
razorboy
6d ago
Smoking sucks. The first drag is like ten seconds of enjoyment followed by what feels like several minutes of work and wishing it would be over already. I can't imagine getting addicted to it, but also I can't imagine anything more upsetting to be casually addicted to.
Vaping is a little nicer and I would definitely never buy my own nicotine vape pen because I could imagine using it whenever I feel even slightly tired and pulling on it all day long.
dr_analog
razorboy
6d ago
I suggest getting a vape pen with weed oil cartridge and just pulling a small amount and seeing how you feel. Much much easier to control than a gummie. You have to get reasonably high to have trouble waking up the next morning.
I wouldn't do it every night for the rest of your life, but rather with an eye on seeing the sharp contrast between not calm and calm and learning what helps you move that way.
What gets me is that none of this even matters anymore, so I don't get the big deal made over it.
Because in the popular culture narrative the Republicans and Trump specifically went full retard over Hillary's private email server, and it was all a nothingburger. So now the shoe is on the other foot and liberals are having an orgasm.
Yes in actuality, Hillary's thing was not a complete nothingburger. The events are not really comparable and Hillary did some actual corrupt things around turning her emails over but that's why this is a big deal if you're trying to score points against red tribe.
dr_analog
razorboy
7d ago
Right. From a box checking perspective I'm sure it has all of the security features they want. From a practical perspective I'm sure every foreign intelligence agency knows multiple backdoors for it.
When it comes to fuckups - i would say this is run of the mill one. As a person that has dealt with security and opsec - at some point you just accept that C level people will do stupid stuff and move on. That secrets will be sent in plaintext. That passwords will be written on post it stamps or spell to the secretary in the cafeteria where everyone can overhear.
I work in cybersecurity and this is my reaction as well. Overall, I'm honestly very impressed that they used Signal. Nature is healing!
It was dumb of them to add a journalist to "Houthi PC small group" chat but shit happens.
Yes yes ideally they would not be discussing this on their extremely difficult to secure smartphones and instead followed official guidance to use MS Teams with whatever dumb compliance features Microsoft added but we all know C level execs aren't going to listen. I don't even blame them.
Imagine how awful the federal government's approved classified information messaging things are.
This is the same reason I didn't hold it against HRC for having her own email server. Imagine how shitty the State Dept's approved mail service would have been in 2009.
(Though that's obviously a lot less secure than Signal)
more than ever, reading the news is anti-informative
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