Zoraptor

They could achieve the same ends by just turning it off though, if they wanted to be annoying. Indeed, if they wanted to just mess around in general they could have blown up the Ukrainian transit system instead and cut Ukraine off from the transit fees, killing two birds with one stone. As it is they'd have landed themselves with a big bill for repairs when turning a valve would have worked and would still be (and are) paying their enemy for gas transit.

Yeah, but they didn't think it would be moronic at the time, that's the difference. Basically the difference between dying when you set your house on fire because you're short on cash and want the house insurance money vs setting yourself on fire to get your life insurance money because you're short on cash. One is obviously stupid in all circumstances the other was only stupid when something went wrong, from the arsonist's perspective. I don't necessarily agree they did it, just that they'd be the obvious candidate in this case. They don't really need to achieve anything except annoying their enemies and giving them a chilly- or expensive- winter.

The last bit is incorrect. The situation is the same as for Russia/ Ukraine. Neither party there is a member of the ICC either, but one party has requested an investigation and the ICC has accepted jurisdiction. Palestine requested an investigation, the ICC accepted. (Relevant history/ ruling/ etc from the ICC is here for anyone interested)

Submarine, almost certainly, not special forces. Don't think anyone disputed that Russia could have hit Nordstream, just that it would have been completely moronic and counterproductive for them to have done so. This one makes far more sense for Russia to have done since (1) it benefits them (2) there was no response to the Nordstream attack so it's open slather on infrastructure and (3) the time of year means no gas over Winter. Better hope they're keeping a close eye on that pipeline from Norway. If that goes up Europe is in for Interesting Times.

All the important stuff at Dimona is underground. Same as all the important Iranian nuclear stuff is underground. I was thinking a bit more towards the legal end of things. ICC set itself a precedent and yardstick with Putin, now to see if they'll live up to the rhetoric. Declaring that everything is someone else's fault works (somewhat*) publicly/ politically but is specifically precluded from being a defence against war crimes. An indictment against Israels' Defence Minister or Bibi would be... interesting and not just to see how quickly Biden(/ Kirby et al) remembers he voted for the Hague Invasion Act once it's someone he likes in trouble with the ICC. Not going to be holding my breath for the ICC to do anything though, even with that explicit confirmation from the Israeli Defence Minister. Kind of surprised that waste of space Borrell actually said something similar, minus the sledge at Biden, I certainly expected the sort of mealy mouthed 'but Hamas is bad!' responses Kirby gave. *somewhat because the kind of person who'd actually accept that argument is fundamentally not going to accept anything other than Israel being in the right. It's not really about actual justification since they'd accept no justification at all, it's about allowing people to still feel morally superior. Meh, that depends on whether they're trying to justify atrocities by stealth or just explain one side's POV. You can understand both the Palestinian and Israel view and explain them without agreeing with or advocating for either.

Golan Heights --> occupied Syria, not Israel. Bit odd for Al-J not to make the distinction, since they did for Hezbollah shelling the GH and (also occupied) Shebaa Farms previously, and just regurgitating an Israeli press release. In any case, so far it's the military equivalent of #StopBibi2023 for both Syria and Hezbollah; a meaningless expression of solidarity without actually doing anything more than firing at empty fields. Which happens a few times a year, usually without much reporting. Going to be very interesting seeing how the Rules Based Order copes with a state party to their Order literally declaring they're going to commit war crimes- and you don't get much more war crimey than Israel's declaration.

Really guys, lay off on the special pleading. Pick Russia stronk! so everyone frightened of them or Russia weak! so no threat and stick to one or the other. Swapping between the two post to post is pretty silly. Yeah, nah. If it would have been a close run thing in the 70s or 80s when it was USSR/ WP vs NATO it wouldn't have been close at all once the WP and part of the USSR had swapped sides- and the start point had shifted back, what, 2500+km in places? End of the day it's, what, 750mn people vs 150mn now, and the 150mn don't really have any advantages at all. Not even nukes, since both sides have them. In any case, it's clear 'the west' would use nukes in exactly the same circumstances Russia would, ie if an invasion looks like it would be successful.

Or for a quotier response: Lord Farquaad "Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make". We're well past the stage where it's all willing volunteers fighting because dulce et decorum est pro Ucrainsca mori. Easy to say Zelensky is doing it all for the freedoms, you might not get the same response saying it to someone dragged off the street in Odessa or Poltava by conscription officers and being ordered to bum rush Russian lines in a 70s M113.

Tokmak was always the sensible option on the principle of 'under promise, over deliver'. Though in this case it looks like it'd still have been 'under promise, under deliver' it was still more sensible than talking about Melitopol, let alone Mariupol or Crimea. All that talk has resulted in is making the offensive look like a worse failure. Of course, talking too much about the offensive and its aims publicly was also a big part of the problem, albeit probably inevitable given media interest.

The issue is probably with using 'sympathy' instead of a more neutral term. There's a bunch of things at work that is keeping them from calling it off and guilt tripping- as implied by using sympathy- Scholtz, Macron etc would be pretty low on the list. The manpower and equipment losses far outstrip gains and that is unlikely to change for sure, but the reason for keeping going is very likely to be the general political/ morale damage admitting to failure would cause. Which is a very real concern and could be lessened by taking [somewhere significant] after which they could declare victory and stop (and is also likely the reason for the number of attempted 'spectaculars' of dubious military utility). Personally, I find that approach stupid when the only targets available are Tokmak and Bakhmut which would take over a year to capture at current rates and when your manpower is bad enough you're using near Germany 1945 levels of conscription already. The 'funny' thing is how statements have ended up just about perfectly mirroring what was said about Bakhmut 6 months ago just with the people saying them reversed. That was a political decision from Russia, a Pyrrhic victory with ludicrous losses for territory gained and the last gasp of an exhausted army from one side; necessary and would make progress easier and actually losses were fine from the other. Neither of which exactly played out as stated. End of the day though at least Bakhmut and Soledar were decently large towns and you didn't have media describing Sakko/ Vansetti as a 'city' to big up the gains.

Fun (?) fact: the highest point in Australia is ~2200m, the highest point in Haiti is... ~2700m.

Eh... I wouldn't quite give it that label since he doesn't say that the holocaust didn't happen. He didn't actually say that the SS didn't contribute to it either, just that it wasn't their primary role. Which is... arguably true, though it's splitting hairs and a specious argument that relies on the SS'- the armed wing of the Nazi Party- primary role being combat, in the service of a genocidal entity, rather than genocide itself. Not an argument I'd care to defend as anything other than an example of sophistry though. Strangest thing about that article is not that Mr Giles decided to write it- people write stupid crap all the time thinking they're pearls of wisdom- but that Politico decided to publish it.

Extremely obvious case of Russia Derangement Syndrome there from Mr Giles. To say that 1st/ 14th was not specifically accused of war crimes at Nuremberg is extremely misleading at best and can probably best be described as utter sophistry- ie overt misinformation. All SS units were collectively found guilty of war crimes, there was no need to find them specifically guilty. The author obviously knows that due to the wording, and further because of the mention that foreigners got drafted into SS units. Draftees were specifically excluded from the 'intrinsic' nature of the SS war crimes, hence he can argue that Hunka, as a draftee, was innocent whereas if he volunteered for the SS he was not. He was by his own admission a volunteer, not a draftee. Of course, one suspects Mr Giles would not extend the same... generous interpretation on a draftees immunity from collective war crimes to even genuine Russian draftees, in the current conflict. Indeed, I'd put every cent I have in the bank against a bent penny that he wouldn't. The most stupid thing about it was not giving Russia ammunition for misinformation because unfortunately they don't need misinformation for this, the truth is more than enough. No, the most stupid thing was it happening while Ukraine and Poland were already having a very public spat. Because, of course, the two countries that have found 1st/ 14th to have committed war crimes are Poland and Ukraine (funnily enough, not mentioned by the author) and this was always going to be an extremely obvious wedge issue. Writing a "I'm not trying to justify the Nazis but..." type article just prolongs things too.

Given how poor both sides have been with 'x is dead' type predictions about high profile targets default has to be he's alive and Russia just doesn't really care about debunking it. (None of the debunkings of the conference call video are compelling. The 'hospital bed propped up with pillows' one for example is clearly incorrect (and even if true: not dead) since he's provably used the same chair multiple times before. The only one that works is asserting it's an old/ faked video; which is the same assertion made about Kadyrov's stroll in Grozny a week or so ago... The only high profile claim that may- may- have been accurate was Zaluzhny as I don't think anyone official on the Russian side claimed him as dead, just injured. Even then the evidence is scant- disappeared for a month with multiple provably faked pictures released in that time yes, and never regained the level or style of appearances prior, yes; but that's entirely circumstantial and there are multiple other explanations beyond him being injured)

You can't tell without the specs of the drive itself, but a USB drive isn't going to be NVMe/ PCIe gen3/4 fast even on paper and will have worse latency too. About 1 Gpbs in/out seems to be standard for portables so not really close to saturating the theoretical throughput on a USB 3- but I'd suspect fairly close to practical saturation. Games wise, so far as I'm aware none of them specify the type of SSD required when they're required as a min spec, so far, and I'd say it's likely that an external SSD nowadays will be faster than or at least equivalent to the old internal SATA SSDs. Mileage May Vary, practically. Probably won't be sufficient for DirectStorage stuff in the future though (iirc that requires PCIe/ NVMe by spec).

Think it goes back a bit further than that, those were just the examples I could think of since they were recent. He and Zakharova (?) were never particularly verbose/ responsive to western media anyway so it's not that much of a change in absolute terms.

If you want it checked properly get the part/ model numbers/ specs- especially for the MB and PSU- and post them to Skeeters Junkyard. Dell, unfortunately, has had a bit of a habit of pairing top of the line seeming components like i9s and 4090s with less glamorous parts that are cheap and nasty and may cause massive bottlenecks. Specifically things like unlocked i9s with motherboards that can't overclock andor completely inadequate cooling or power supplies. But may be unnecessarily expensive, if Dell supplies you a MB with only two RAM slots. (one of my relatives is on their 3rd Dell PSU, inside a year, hence the skepticism. And being a Dell their custom case is designed so you can't just put in a reliable 3rd party ATX PSU, chalk it up to experience and skip the month of no PC while the PSU wends its way, by ship, from Singapore... though that delay is not one suspects so much of a problem in larger markets than kiwiland)

For a spokesman Peskov doesn't seem to be actually commenting much on anything these days. They also couldn't get him to deny Kadyrov or Sokolov's deaths, which you'd think they'd be eager for him to do.

Hmm. Bit of a Alpha Protocol re-release tease in one of GOG's 15 year interviews. Probably not quite as definitive as the autotranslate makes it sound, but you'd suspect they wouldn't use AP as an example unless they expected it as a release. (Then again, don't think Drakensang: RoT ever turned up and iirc it was in two GOG promo videos years apart)

Leverage works to force people into talks in the first place as well, not just to concede more when in them. At least part of the problem is that even talking would be a major concession for Ukraine, since it would be a tacit admission things aren't going well. It's unlikely they'll ever admit that the offensive failed publicly as that could hit morale in a similar manner. The public part of the admission doesn't matter too much, if they admit it privately. (October was never going to be a good time to get Russia negotiating, same as April was not going to be good to get Ukraine negotiating. Their expectation was that energy prices would sap European support, and a cold winter would sap internal Ukrainian support. Similarly, if Ukraine expected to be in Simferopol by July there was no point negotiating in April)

Ah. Yes for me the download is 2.0 already from the website as well, it's Galaxy that has the older version available. Guess they don't want another 26 segments for 1.63 there and to be fair a 100GB+ download via http will not be 100% reliable.

Since I tend to make a note of these things so know anyway, Kadyrov's last telegram (well, not like I've checked today) was a couple of days ago and was of him visiting his uncle who is in a Moscow hospital. Kind of ironic if the whole thing was a mistake from people not being able to tell two Kadyrov's apart, though to be fair they do look pretty similar. Not independently dated, but it adequately explains all the signs people were quoting, like Chechen cars at the hospital. Most of the major search engines will do a news search for 'Ramzan Kadyrov' absolutely fine.

Eh, it's obvious why the ANC takes that view though and we've been through it before. The US opposed them and labelled them terrorists- and in 2003 Nelson Mandela was still labelled one by the US- the Soviets (--> Russia) supported them. And from a non western perspective Iraq looked like blatant neocolonialism. You're never going to get much support for western imperial adventures from the prior victims of those adventures same as you aren't going to get Latvians cheerleading Putin any time soon but will get them cheerleading the US in Iraq. (It's equally obvious why for a westerner when it's their sides doing things everything that goes wrong is an honest but tragic mistake, their precise strikes accidentally kill civilians cause collateral damage, and they only invade when threatened beyond limits to protect themselves and others in what were really selfless acts of purest Love and Compassion. Because otherwise you voted for leaders who are murderers and are by extension murderers yourself. Indeed, it's extremely funny when it's the same person saying how superior democracy is but disavowing any responsibility for it doing bad things yet also saying Russia's a dictatorship but its people are somehow responsible for their unelected tyrant)

There's a full 1.63 offline installer, and a few patches there for me.

The only concrete fact around nukes is that the same number have been used in the Congo as in Ukraine, zero. (it's actually a pretty good example of the fundamental problem Euros have convincing the rest of the world though. Obviously there's concern about nuclear weapons potentially being used and it's genuine, but try convincing someone in New Delhi that a purely hypothetical threat to some rich white people 5000 miles away should be a concern and you won't make much headway as you- basically- have to convince them both that it will happen and happen in such a way that it will effect them. Otherwise... I guess they might go as far as tweeting #StopPutler2023, for all the good that'd do)