Zoraptor

Not really. You can actively maintain most of that older stuff, can't really maintain something clandestine at the bottom of the sea. That's going to get silted over, lose its magnetism, leak, get hit by trawler nets etc etc. And you'd still need to get relatively close to trigger it. And I say that as someone who suggested timer or remote control was used to obfuscate the timing, it's just that obfuscating by years is... lol really. Not necessary, unreliable and that's without the other factors like it removing rather than increasing Russia's leverage. It is however incredibly funny watching people who spend most of their time saying all Russia's equipment is a joke that doesn't work suddenly deciding that they're highly competent and it worked fine in this particular instance. Doesn't really matter for the point being made. There's simply no shortage of reliable delivery vehicles as he claimed. If anything that makes him look even more stupid, since he said the (warheads and) missiles were probably maintained OK and more or less reliable. It's like he forgot the air force existed and thought the entire tactical nuclear arsenal was defunct tochkas. (If anyone is interested there's a list of delivery systems here, and for the non strategic ~tactical~ ones most are deployed by Russia in or around Ukraine)

Ah yes, the Russians. Their nuclear delivery vehicles have all fallen apart, but they can put limpet mines on underwater cables and have them detonate remotely years later. Truly they are exactly as competent or incompetent as needed for whatever story is being told. "Tactical nuclear weapons meanwhile are much smaller warheads with a yield, or explosive power, of up to 100 kilotons of dynamite" Excellent way to establish your credentials as ex head of CBRN for NATO and the UK, that. TNT, not dynamite. Doesn't get any better from there. "The warheads and missiles are probably in reasonable condition but the vehicles they are mounted on are, I believe and have on good authority, in poor condition." ... The Russians have been using tactical nuclear capable delivery systems from the outset, and not just one or two. A dozen, +/- a few depending on how you classify tactical. Not like they weld nuclear missiles/ bombs to an Iskander or Su-34 anyway, you can give them a nuclear or non nuclear load out. In particular a Khinzal could be fitted to a MiG31 and fired from Moscow to handily hit anywhere in Ukraine.

Arc A770 priced at 329USD, launch Oct 12. If it actually performed like a 3060Ti that would be at least a decent price. But it will probably perform a lot more like a 3060, and worse in dx11. Also some Intel benchmarking for their upcoming processors. Fairly clear the 5950x is not actually AMD's premier gaming chip but I guess 'performs ~the same as or worse than a 5800x3d in 5 out of 9 tests' is not the best marketing. Plus mark though for starting the y axis at 0 instead of 0.90 like nVidia would have.

(1) not even von der Leyen is that dumb and (2) Neither Nordstream is active energy infrastructure Maybe, but it's not like it's come from a vacuum. "There will no longer be a NS2. We'll bring an end to it."-- Joe Biden Feb 7 2022

For a Bob Ballard/ Titanic type situation, sure. But that was both ~40 years ago now and literally multiple km deep in the Atlantic instead of ~80m. The general rule is that if you can get a squishy meat sack to something you can get a mechanical object there more easily, at least physically, since you don't have to protect the squishy meatsack part. While the squishy meatsack is generally more flexible in what it can do if you just want to blow something up then mechanical is perfectly fine. In this situation you don't even need necessarily to rescue the drone afterwards, you could use the underwater equivalent of a 'suicide drone'* and chuck it off the back of any old ship, a yacht, a speedboat. You definitely have the problem of needing some sort of recovery vessel/ means if using frogmen too. Realistically though either way you can obfuscate timing by using a delayed or remote trigger, so presence or lack of ships at a specific time means little. *--> ~torpedo really, much as most aerial 'suicide drones' --> ~cruise missiles.

Divers others have mentioned, but the other main alternative to a sub is a Remote Operated Vehicle, ie underwater drone.

Even the 65W BIOS setting supposedly gives ~80% MT performance (and still 100% ST) compared to the unlocked/ ~240W one. Suppose you can't really blame them when the Intel equivalent looks to do the same but at +100W, and that performance is what people use for comparison.

7000/ Zen4 reviews are out*. Mostly positive (except Linus). Main caveats: expensive system costs and hot hot hot! (though you get 95% of the performance from 50% of the wattage, so solution is obvious) *Looks like everyone got 2 SKUs to test, so there isn't a single comprehensive review unfortunately.

I'm still not sure how quoting the relevant rules direct from the treaty('s list of definitions) is deflecting. It's like pointing out that an 'assault' isn't an assault by citing the legal definition; you can argue that it should be an assault morally, but legally... Fundamentally I think there's a pretty basic misunderstanding of how such treaties work at play. Treaties are written so as to get the maximum number of people to sign up, not to get maximum enforcement. Indeed, in order to get the maximum sign up enforcement is always weak, and there are always numerous loopholes. See any climate agreement, any agreement on military weapons, the UNSC etc. Though that is not what happened with Chernobyl: Russia wasn't uneffected, but other places were far more effected. Europe doesn't really have prevailing winds in the sense many places do. Look at the same data for Fukushima and it's a stereotypical plume heading out over the Pacific, for example.

Hmm yes. I wonder what Olaf Scholtz has been doing this week. It would be slightly ironic if he was off in Saudi Arabia begging Saudi/ MbS for energy...

That's not directly Ukraine related, the proximal reason is tax cuts funded by £72bn more borrowing. I guess, technically, if they get ~4% GDP growth out of it they'll be ahead on the debt to GDP ratio balance, but it doesn't seem like anyone except Kwarteng and Truss expect it to work out like that. (for anyone who doesn't check the article zerohedge blames the mini budget as well. The £150bn in already announced and Ukraine related energy cap costs will definitely not be helping though)

Lower estimate --> 30k Higher estimate --> 1.2mn Not really worth even speculating with a forty fold difference. You can say some things for sure though, like the timing is rubbish. Quick mobilisation --> just in time for Rasputitsa. Slower mobilisation --> just in time for winter. Only thing that is for absolute sure is that each side will say that the other's draftees are angry and don't want to fight.

The compromise option is obviously an anime about the Iraq War. I have, at various times, been tempted to watch Sailor Moon. But no so much that I've actually done it.

Watched the Cyberpunk anime on Netflix. First anime I've actually completed watching (only other one I can recall watching at all was Attack on Titan? with the giant zombie type things attacking cities? and I haven't seen the final season) and otherwise my entire knowledge of it comes from memes and Barenaked Ladies lyrics. Also, haven't played CDPR's game yet. One of those series that was almost certainly better than it 'felt', since I got through it pretty quickly. OTOH, 10x27 minute episodes, with pretty much the entirety of 'This Fire' for start credits and ~ 2 minutes of end credits makes for not much more than 20 minutes running time per ep. I can see why its release has got a lot of people back into the game, certainly.

ctrl+f Euro currency R(o)uble no results. Hmm. (Seriously, who thought that the EU was sanctioning Ukraine? Never seen that so much as suggested, except for Donbass/ Crimea etc. The issue with importing into the EU from Ukraine was always that sea trade was shut, and rail capacity was ~1% of sea capacity- plus ran on a different gauge so you'd have to transfer everything without the equipment to do so easily.)

Dunno, I saw a lot of people who thought Lovelace would definitely have DP2.0 if only to beat AMD to it*. Suppose they would have had to redesign the I/O to do it, so they didn't. And while I don't imagine too many people will be running 4k/240hz any time soon capability does make for a nice marketing claim. *eg "If AMD is adding DP 2.0 then indeed, Nvidia’s Ada Lovelace will have this feature too."

Displayport 1.4 rather than 2? Guess it's kind of a PCIe 4 vs 5 situation with the new spec being kind of pointless, now, but... They've actually made a lot of noise about being a 'software company' now and targeting $40bn of new revenue from that*. They make huge margins per card and a lot of money in absolute terms in the server/ AI/ pro etc sector already and have for a long time, albeit those cards are also somewhat more expensive to make. Annualised licensing is not really the sort of thing they can apply to gamers though, since many don't even like the relatively mild gatekeeping on the drivers; corporations and the like pretty much expect it though. The reactions if they tried charging gamers for driver updates would certainly be, uh, interesting to say the least. *Probably wishful thinking with the crypto boom ending.

Have to admit, I got a bit of a laugh being plonked (good to see the tradition of announcing it publicly continues 30 years on from usenet too) for posting the definitions of the International Law/ Treaty in question, from the UN's own commentary. On a strictly military basis there isn't much use for tactical nukes either. It's not WW2 or a Fulda Gap type scenario, the troop densities are maybe a tenth of either of those. You can nuke strongpoint towns, but if you want to hold them at the end you also have to clean them up- might as well use a FOAB really. Might be different if they had neutron bombs, but I don't think they do. On a hybrid basis you could probably take out every Dniepr crossing with them, wipe out marshaling yards or power plants etc. +/- 100m matters a lot when you've got a 1t warhead, it matters a lot less when it's 1kt.

Nope, still not whataboutism since it's directly relevant to war crimes claims. At this point I'd just about prefer the gulag to another post relying on a 10 second google though. ie ultimately your whole post is irrelevant since: Thermite in that form is actually pretty poor at causing burns to people except incidentally. It's pretty good at burning holes through light armoured vehicles though. Which, I would note, I did specifically mention. The defence is and will always be that they're targeting the military, incendiary effect is incidental. Which you may not like, but it applies to an absolute shedload of other munitions too, not least M31/ HiMARS/ M270 which contain highly flammable and hot burning powdered aluminium. Now, I just wait to see if someone labels a munition being used in this actual war as 'whataboutism' too. Ancillary: (3,4) obviously not relevant, not a forest, is air delivered (1) Also not relevant, perhaps surprisingly. ie a town is not in and of itself exempt from targeting by incendiaries, if you define it as a military objective. Unsurprisingly, everyone does. (2) You'd need some evidence that a near frontline town that is a recent recapture has a 'concentration of civilians'. If it were... Lvov or Kiev, sure. It isn't though Additional quotes are sourced from UNODA.

Do you a deal. You stop claiming things are warcrimes when they aren't. I'll stop pointing it out. Sounds fair to me. Showering a civilian village with flames is not a warcrime in and of itself. If it were pretty much everyone would be guilty- kind of the point. The excuse is always: military targets present. Which is a legitimate excuse. It's a legitimate excuse when it's made by Saudi Arabia, or the US or Russia or anyone else. Don't like it? Well then, rewrite International Law to remove that excuse. Make sure to appoint someone unbiased and omnipotent as War Crimes arbiter though, because if you rewrite that you're going to have a lot of cases if applied even handedly. Indeed, applied even handedly and without fear or favour it'd probably stop every single war in its tracks, full stop. Still not whataboutism either. If you're making warcrimes accusations showing that similar events weren't is directly relevant. Solution is as above.

I suspect a certain amount of the 'oddness' of this launch is precisely from trying to get people to buy 3000 series as being 'better value' for a couple of months. The overstocks aren't rumour any more, since they're in nVidia's quarterlies. And it really is a bit of a weird launch. Lot of signs there of Lovelace being a stopgap due to MCM not being ready and the whole thing being prepped during the crypto boom. Outside of DLSS 3 performance claims seem to be pretty mediocre for what is, effectively, a double generation fab improvement. Perhaps the oddest is performance per Watt where the improvement really is... poor, considering how bad Samsung 8nm was meant to be. 850W PSU is probably wishful thinking for anyone pairing a 4090 with a 13900k, too. Door very much left open for AMD- though I would say I fully expect nVidia to drop prices immediately before RDNA3 launches.

RDNA3/ 7000 series launch on November 3. Gotta get an announcement in a few hours before nVidia, I guess.

Or the Cypriots. Or the Greeks. Or the Armenians. Or the Syrians. Not many neighbours the Turks haven't invaded. The Cypriots are particularly egregious, since it's just about exactly the same playbook Russia has used in Ukraine. And included pretty blatant attacks on actual allies too, like the Brits (who bravely ran away). Erdogan's view on Ukraine- as with most things international- is predicated pretty much entirely on neo Ottomanism. Crimean Tartarate/ Khanate was an Ottoman protectorate for most of its existence and much like Aleppo, Mosul, Cyprus, Yerevan and Rhodes he and a lot of Turks believe it's 'really' Turkish. Just wait for the suggestion that it not go back to Ukraine, but be held in trust pending final status by a neutral 3rd party (ie Turkey). Wesley Clark is a bona fide cretin who still packs a sad about James Blunt not starting WW3 when ordered to/ the Russians ruining his Imperial Triumph by grabbing Pristina airport. His invasion of Yugoslavia was inept, and he was responsible as commander of occupying powers for massive ethnic cleansing. Ego inversely proportional to talent, and as prior he has a stupendous ego. (The US should never pick a Clark to lead an army, they're inveterate glory hounds. 1944 Mark Clark let the Germans retreat more or less unmolested from the Gustav Line because he wanted to go get on the talkies liberating Rome instead and be remembered for the ages. History had the last laugh though, since he liberated Rome on June 5th...) Use of thermite is not a warcrime. I guess at least they've called it thermite, it's usually labelled as white phosphorus, stupidly, since Russia has no WP munitions of that type, maybe someone has finally got around to circulating the memo. Reports have however consistently given thermite all the properties of WP, eg the constant and quite obviously orchestrated use of 'flesh eating' as a descriptor dating back at least as far as May. The reason WP is proscribed* (but thermite isn't; WP is legal for smoke though) is that WP will stick to you and eat right the way through to the bone. Try washing it off and it just gets worse. It'll also completely ruin your lungs if you breathe in the vapour. You wouldn't want to be hit by thermite either but its effects are because... it's hot- and you wouldn't really want to be hit by anything coming out of a grad warhead. Thermite is incendiary, but it's also anti materiel. It's not as hot as a penetrator from an ATGM or similar, but it'll do the job on most light vehicles and is inherently top down. *Main users of WP on civilians are, of course, Israel and the US. Which is probably part of the reason they've decided to talk about thermite nowadays instead of calling everything WP. If you want a 'fun' five minutes try an image search for phosphorus burns. Pretty much all of them are Palestinians, and rather a lot of them are children. Sorry, I forgot this thread is only for talking about how bad Russia is...

Oh yeah, it's Anevia (?) she's married to isn't it? Need to pay more attention.

Ah yes, his name was Robert Paulsen. I would have staked pretty much anything that Anomen's VA was Raphael Sbarge same as Carth/ Skye*/ Kaiden. Oh well, Mandela Effect strikes again I guess. Or maybe Nelson Effect if it was just me. I rather like Ashley. Somewhere between KOTOR and JE I got really tired of Bioware's archetypes and she doesn't really fit any of their tired tropes or attempts at Whedon style quirkiness. She's also, for want of a better term, one of the more realistic companions in Bioware's games full stop both in terms of motivations and dialogue. *not played by Raphael Sbarge either, naturally.