Zoraptor

There are some photos of captured gear. The problem with judging anything from the Russian side is that their actual army is... kind of a social media black hole. It's the LPR (and DPR, though not so relevant here) and Chechens who post everything, plus there's some tv footage. This is also one of those situations where both can be telling the truth. Ukraine almost certainly didn't lose much in Lisichansk proper as it doesn't seem to have been directly contested much at all on the ground. One of the advantages to defending in cities is how hard it is to hit tanks and like which are inside them as all the pesky buildings get in the way for both direct and indirect fire. OTOH, they almost certainly lost a fair bit on the Donetsk's east bank due to the bridges being down. Not too hard to get the men out, but you're probably not going to be able to get many vehicles back. The big question is how much they lost during the retreat from Lisichansk etc, and there's no answer to that beyond the weak evidence of there being a fair number of videos of Ukrainian troops walking themselves out; because it was Russian regulars taking that area so no pictures. They also had ~6 weeks of having to supply those 15k troops along a salient that was less than 20km wide at the start and only got narrower, along one decent road (two at the start) for most of the time that was within easy artillery range and was probably anything but decent at the end. It's likely that the Russian are now going past a lot of destroyed equipment hit while resupplying and dumped off the side of the road as unrepairable. Open question is how much was hit during the retreat itself, and how much Ukraine had in the first place. Unlikely that there were 700 tanks or a/ifvs and artillery (exc mortars, but most mortars aren't really 'heavy') there total, but if you include trucks etc 700 could be accurate; and Ukraine could have lost relatively few of them recently. That's extremely unlikely. If there was one consistent complaint from the Ukraine side apart from supply issues it was that Russia had a massive advantage in artillery, and artillery is what causes most casualties. It could be a 5:1 ratio in terms of direct small arms confrontation, but from Ukrainian sources the problem was always that they'd fight the Russian infantry off, then get hit with a massive artillery barrage which often made them wish they hadn't (I particularly remember the guy interviewed for the WP who disliked Ukrainian tanks being nearby for that reason; when normally you'd expect them to be very keen on having heavy weapons support). There are also signs that Ukraine is really starting to feel a manpower crunch with the ban on draft age men* leaving their home cities without permission. *about which there seems to be a fair amount of... variable interpretation, but we do have it being specifically addressed by Zelensky so the order itself must be real.

Stalker 2 is up for preorder at GOG. Apart from the obviously placeholder release date of Dec31 2023 it means it's gone from being a DRM infested NFT delivery system to not having DRM at all in... 6 months?

At least he still has Dorries and Truss.

And Orville ep5- one of the better [currentyear] [currentissue] episodes I've seen, certainly handled better than the previous one did its issue..

Strange New Worlds ep9. Get the feeling there were a few similarities to another scifi franchise here, though they're pretty subtle so I'm not sure which one or how many people will notice. Only one episode to go and there's only been one turkey so far. I never thought that would have been the case when I started.

Bit of an open question whether there's many defenders left in Lisichansk now anyway, though they had a lot of troops (allegedly 4 brigades plus independents, from a pro Ukraine source) in the area and not many options on retreat routes.

Bit over 300 tanks are meant to have been delivered (about 250 Polish, 80 Czech). Certainly nowhere near 600 though. Could be including AFVs, could be future plans... Biden also does have a bit of a tendency to misspeak, eg welcoming Switzerland to the NATO alliance yesterday. Saying the wrong number is a bit less likely to be corrected immediately than getting a nation's name wrong.

You can see the type of missile used from one of the security cams and it was an anti ship system they have a lot of in storage which uses inertial guidance- not a precision system. They hit an industrial building about 100m away from the mall at the same time which was presumably the intended target for both missiles.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a Russian media commentator who didn't appear angry. Demands made and granted (from a Turkish source, so mileage may vary, though the official NATO release does show it's accurate as to what has been granted at least, and they match up with the sort of demands Turkey made publicly, eg) 1) Sweden and Finland lift arms embargo. 2) They will support Turkey against the PKK* and FETO (-->'Gulenists'). 2a) No support for YPG/ PYD* 3) Both will amend their laws on terrorism. 4) Both will share intelligence with Turkey. 5) They will extradite terror suspects. The one that didn't get granted was extradition of a particular politician (Kakabaveh, iirc, and there's a fairly obvious reason for refusing that given she holds the balance of power in the Swedish Parliament. For a few months). And while that demand was made by a government official it was never clear how serious it was. Asterisk marks the biggest point of contention/ interpretation. Turkey has a... rather broad interpretation of what constitutes 'PKK'; any Kurd who opposes Turkey, basically, much as the internal opposition are all Gulenists. So while YPG/ PYD are explicitly mentioned as just not getting support Turkey also explicitly considers both to be PKK. Has to be said, everyone also knows what Turkey's position is, attempts to differentiate those groups reek of arse covering for when they inevitably get attacked. Further to that the tacit point (6) is NATO approving another operation into northern Syria from Turkey, which Erdogan hasn't exactly been shy about saying he wants to do over the last couple of months.

I was certainly wrong on the leverage part (though they still haven't joined/ been annexed by Russia, so right on that). And on balance of evidence didn't think the Russians would invade, which was also wrong. It was explicitly on balance of evidence though, not stated as an absolute (eg 'unlikely' 'probably' and 'at this time', not 'will not'). Plenty of examples of me saying explicitly that they would not invade earlier though when they only had 100k troops, the shift was due to them having roughly the number I thought they needed for an invasion. Closest I got to an explicit will not later was when they didn't on the 16th. Last clause is definitely a bit lol though- let's be honest, I'd probably done a better job of setting out why Russia did have reasons to invade than Russia herself in the lead up; even if I didn't think they'd do it.

The closest you'd get was me laughing at the prediction of a definite Feb 16th invasion date. Which was, well, incorrect.

Everyone does that to a certain extent. Frankly, the first part is a good thing too, if there's one thing the forum software downgrade did it's mitigate tiresome wall of text/ line by line posting (and I freely admit, I did a fair bit of it myself). Ideally we'd all acknowledge when the other person has made a good point, but meh, humans gonna human. Again, I'd do a fair bit of that myself too. I'd generally be happy with, say, simply not getting "the EU never made the association agreement an us or Russia proposition" or "the association agreement was never a first step to EU accession" said again after providing the relevant quotes showing they actually did exactly that, I don't need people to publicly accept they were wrong*. I don't think Russia cares that much about Finland joining for precisely that reason; they're also already in the EU. Most of the Finnish border is very low infrastructure forest/ swamp/ marsh, seasonally, with blasted winter wasteland. There's a border with Norway too, Murmansk is actually closer to Norway than Finland iirc (and Archangelsk about the same distance). Same most definitely cannot be said for Ukraine and the south of Russia though, it moves a load of cities far, far closer to NATO and gives a second easy attack vector on Moscow if there were a conventional war. 11 million immigrants in Russia, 3rd most in the world. I'll be frank: I'd probably come across as a lot less pro Russian if people didn't continually post stuff which they want to be true- and feel like it's true- but simply isn't*. *I have a fair bit of sympathy because I know perfectly well that things like 'no one immigrates to Russia' or 'the EU never made it us or them' is a Well Known Fact that you can find in rather a lot of opinion pieces and articles and the like, and most people just presume it's true. They just happen to be well known facts that aren't actual facts. Or to quote Blake's 7 Vila: It's a well known fact! Avon: Actually it's a well known opinion Tarrant: As are most well known facts

Narrative having to be that way at least makes sense when it's time travel. In the end (or the beginning? :philosoraptor:) once you've got time travel involved you have the principle that things have to happen a certain way. Well, with a few caveats. On the specific issue, IIRC there is an implied reason for why she was convincing though I don't think it was ever stated explicitly. I don't think it's anything you've missed though, I think it's revealed later. Very much IIRC though, since I watched Dark in 2020.

At least according to the Turks it's the whole AANES, so SDF in general and all the political parties. Of course, that is Turkey labeling everything they don't like as PKK- but it's not like they haven't been doing that for decades at this point. NATO knows exactly what their position is, there is no ignorance involved. Strangely enough I've yet to see a single media article mentioning Erdogan's threats to invade Syria and the AANES in context of this news. Going to be... interesting to see how the invasion is handled in the press- by memory holing inconveniences, if prior behaviour is any indication. Certainly can't see it being the epic perfidious betrayal and end of US diplomatic credibility for a generation it was in the press when Trump did it. Going to be fun times when the Turks attack Ain al Arab too.. FTR: if it's a choice between Turkey and the Kurds, let alone in this situation where the Turks have increased leverage, it will always be Turkey picked. Doesn't matter that Biden hates Erdogan, same as it doesn't matter he hates MbS. Gotta be expedient. Still, there's going to be a sort of grim amusement watching all those principles the west says they espouse evaporate like ether when the moderate Turkish backed head choppers steal, rape, murder and ethnically cleanse their way across northern Syria with the active support and sponsorship of one of their allies. Though, of course, they've already been doing that for years in areas like Afrin at this point...

Since you were wondering... Though they have been saying the same all the way through the horse trading. Well, not exactly horse trading since the Finns and Swedes have bent over for daddy Erdogan on everything (well ok, they're not going to hand over a politician the Turks want; everything apart from that though). Only part of the cycle needed to complete it is the, heh, purely defensive invasion of another country from a NATO member- for Turkey the small matter of Cyprus, Syria and Iraq as examples. Might include Artsakh and Greece too, if one were being snarky. Ah well, I guess on the positive side I get another example of how the only actual principles the west actually has are the managers of their educational facilities. Better get cracking on that reconciliation agreement with Assad guys, though in this case it's not likely to help. Erdogan needs something nationalistic to deflect from the 50% inflation and pump those polls even if it means a literal war.

I'm not sure holding this argument with a Serb is going to work out well. NATO has never attacked Russia because they will literally get nuked doing so and that hasn't changed. NATO would have won a conventional war at any time since the break up of the USSR, and quite possibly before that. Ultimately what keeps both sides from attacking the other is that their words are backed by nuclear weapons. OTOH, in 1919, when Russia didn't have nukes and was in a similar psoition... NATO also cheerily ignored international law to invade nuke less Yugoslavia- and Libya, after Gaddafi gave up his wmds. Indeed, NATO has an interesting record of attacking Russian allies that lack nukes. NATO also has consistently abrogated agreements, and their main member has sequentially withdrawn from just about every arms control treaty at this point. Given that eminently provable record of bad faith any claims that NATO, say, won't base nukes in Ukraine is not worth the paper it would be written on*. The really funny thing though is the first line given how absolutely desperate people are to get the North Atlantic treaty organisation purely defensively involved in... the Pacific, where China has aggressively placed their country. Oddly enough, the Solomon Islands deciding to sign a defence agreement with China is not entirely their decision to be made as to who they wish to associate with, in that case it's another sign of wanton Chinese aggression. You might have aggressive Chinese warships 1500km away from Brisbane. NATO forces otoh would be barely 100km away from Smolensk or Rostov, but purely defensively... *take it as read that Russia is hardly squeaky clean either; but they also aren't trying to aggressively purely defensively incorporate Canada or Mexico into their alliance either. And whether or not that is objective truth, it's certainly the truth, as Russia sees it.

No they don't. They ask aircraft to identify themselves, even demand it. Military aircraft regularly ignore those demands for identification when flying through ADIZ, and nothing happens except... ..which is also, of course, exactly what happens if a military jet approaches national airspace when there isn't an ADIZ present. Nope, that's rare. Almost all reports about intrusions on airspace are actually about intrusions in ADIZ- or just plain old civilian air traffic control areas. Almost all actual intrusions are also short term and incidental. Actual intrusions tend to occur where the airspace is complicated or where one side claims territory another doesn't recognise. Not in their airspace. At normal cruising speed a Su24 would have been in Turkish airspace for- literally- a handful of seconds because the tongue of Turkish territory that goes into Syria is- literally- 4 km wide. They physically could not have hit it in Turkish airspace except with cannons- and that would have involved violating Syrian airspace themselves. It was well inside Syrian airspace when hit, even more so in the Turkish version. Of course the Turkish version has rather a lot of flaws- as also below. Indeed, it's rather difficult to reconcile the actual crash site with a missile not being fired before the intrusion took place. There are a few examples of planes being shot down in other countries' airspace though, such as when Syria shot down a Turkish F4 in 2012. Normally I'd link wiki, but the story there has been... massaged somewhat, shall we say. Even the US backed Syria's version that it was hit by AAA* in Syria's airspace and crashed into international waters, yet somehow the fantasy Turkish version ended up as the one wiki uses. I guess if we want to get snarky we could also cite Air Iran flight 655 being shot down by the Vincennes too, though the circumstances obviously aren't directly equivalent. *which is essentially proof absolute it was actively intruding, since AAA is far too short range to reach international waters.

They don't enforce them though and never have, which is why it's a bad comparison. Other countries' jets fly through ADIZ persistently and ignore their demands precisely because they have no legal basis. You can at least legally shoot down foreign military planes in your actual airspace, that's not at issue, you just don't generally because generally the consequences massively outweigh the infraction. Deliberately shooting down someone's planes in international airspace because they're ignoring your arbitrary demands though... And yes, I think at this point we're all well aware that the main criterion for being a legitimate breakaway 'country' in international law so far as the west is concerned is being a- unique and non precedent setting case- which is useful to the west. Doesn't change the fact that PRC 100% claims the airspace and territory of RoC as its own. Of course, if the Taiwanese decided to enforce their ADIZ (or territorial space, on the odd occasion China actually intrudes there rather than the ADIZ which extends over a multimillion population city) you'd fairly rapidly get a change in attitude from mainland China.

ADIZ are not airspace, they have as much basis in international law as me proclaiming myself Grand Duke of Finland and demanding a palace in Tampere, a herd of reindeer and a natty winter hat from the seaside market in Helsinki. And they're ignored the same as I would be if I made those demands too. China absolutely, 100%, believes in its territorial rights over Taiwan's airspace. So does everyone else bar a few countries, and they recognise Taiwan's airspace over China. They simply aren't willing to risk a war about it which is a completely different proposition. Same as Syria not trying to shoot down all those coalition jets toodling around its airspace looking for former moderate western backed rebels to bomb. No, it's an awful example for two reasons. (1) Israel does it because its neighbours have no reasonable ability to respond and (2) Israel does exactly the same thing, to them, far more frequently. The first doesn't hold for Russia, the second is something you don't really want to bring attention to considering how often it's the west ignoring the rules. If the only basis of being a good template for response is a hard response then, well, you can pick literally anyone who would give a harsh response and just ignore what an arse they were otherwise. The S-400 are just to defend Russia's bases. Russia gave Syria some S-300 which were used against Israel recently but hadn't been before. Though there is a massive difference between capabilities of systems designated S-300 (and even S-400 an an extent) so the names don't mean much. Ironically, there's a decent chance a F-35 was hit by an ancient S-200 a few years ago- a hit was claimed, the rebuttal was that while missiles were fired the F-35 hit a bird. In any case, it likely would have had radar reflectors fitted so it wouldn't have been materially different from when they shot down a F-16 a few years ago with one too.

Er lol. Israel is absolute worst example to bring up. Unless you mean its a shame Syria and Lebanon don't shoot down every Israeli jet flying illegally through their airspace, because especially for Lebanon that is pretty much constant and absolutely 100% deliberate. Not even mentioning the complete lack of western sanctions for the persistent mistreatment of Palestinians, nor for the illegal annexations. Indeed, the US blithely recognised those, while pontificating about the 'rules based order'. The only thing Israel illustrates is "Rules for thee, but not for me" and "Might makes Right". For that matter, do we really want the Chinese to decide to start enforcing their territorial rights- as recognised by pretty much everyone- around Taiwan? Maybe, say, prevent arms smuggling from enemy powers to rebels? Or maybe Syria to shoot down all those western jets flying through its airspace. And there is the small matter of the US drones that have spent the last 20 years wandering around countries' airspace blowing their citizens up randomly. I may on occasion harp on slightly about hypocrisy and no one knowing the extent of the west's suffering; that ain't even low hanging fruit- it's having a crate picked for you and left on your doorstep.

Wouldn't think it would need that much explaining. The guy who blew up the Death Star is going to be pretty famous, and Vader knows 'the force is strong in this one' in Star Wars itself. Not a huge leap to work out that the Tatooine native Luke Skywalker who lived with Shmi Skywalker's relatives and blew up the Death Star plus rescued Princess Leia (while accompanied by Obi Wan Kenobi) is the son of Anakin Skywalker. Legend of the Seeker Strange New Worlds S1Ep8

I'm not sure I'd expect Sony to proactively comment except now, after MS has. FSR is open source, so presumably it will ultimately be up to the devs whether it gets implemented or not as I couldn't see any circumstance in which Sony would block them using it. More interesting might be to ask Nintendo about it since they use nVidia hardware (sans Tensors, not that DLSS scales particularly with tensors anyway) and it works on nVidia PC systems. I'd suspect the archaic ARM part of Tegra would be the sticking point though. Also, Dear Tom's Hardware, the whole point of an upscaler is that it takes less GPU power to upscale than to just render at that resolution, that's true whatever the hardware is. xbox 1 support is only surprising because it's old and it needs to be enabled on a per game basis, not because hardware can't handle it. It'd probably work on an old 7000 series desktop/ laptop card too if AMD updated the drivers, they'd just scale up to their own limitations rather than a rx6900's. Bet CDPR wished it was around when C2077 launched, may have helped with some of the last gen issues they had.

Orville Ep4 I can't help but feel that they're trolling me with all the plot contrivances. 2/4 of the episodes would have been far better if they'd worked a bit more on making the set up not require acts of monumental stupidity.

WRC cars do have amazing safety engineering. It's pretty good marketing having a car you can go and buy (well, kind of) hurtling along a gravel road on a Cypriot cliff at 150kph and even if it does crash the drivers walk away unhurt.

The deal isn't finalised/ closed/ approved, yet. It will be the old board/ shareholders approving Kotick (and the investigation into sexual misconduct), not MS. Decent chance he goes when MS does close the deal, fairly sure it was stipulated at the time that him staying on was not a condition of the sale.