Politics Thread: Edge of Seventeen

[Malcador]

London to introduce knife control policy: https://www.dailywire.com/news/29179/londons-mayor-declares-intense-new-knife-control-emily-zanotti

 

Mayor Khan wants to keep these "weapon of war" out of civilian hands. Remind me again, which war was fought with knives? Was it WWI?

 

Well, stabbing people is already illegal in most places. Not sure about London but it probably is. So I'm sure the stabbers will become fine upstanding citizens once the knives are illegal. After all, they wouldn't want to break the law would they?

 

I swear when I saw the headline I was sure the link would lead to the Onion. Truth is stranger than fiction it seems.

 

Ah, well, the "weapons of war" is your choice of publication trying to be funny or something, might be better to read the Mail.  Stop and search laws is a ridiculous approach, I've yet to be convinced giving cops that power really fixes anything but maybe UK cops aren't like the ones we have here (Toronto had a carding policy revoked after outcry)

 

https://www.london.gov.uk/city-hall-blog/heres-what-mayor-doing-tackle-violent-crime

 

 

 

Knife wands are now available for every school in London to help keep young people safe, with 150 schools so far taking up the offer

 

Sadiq Khan relying on the the use of ISLAMIC MAGIC to defend London kids!

Edited April 9, 2018 by Malcador

[smjjames]

and you cannot drop a barrel bomb from any aircraft that lacks a loading ramp.

 

 

I've heard of barrel bombs being dropped (probably pushed out from inside) from helicopters though. I suppose it depends on how big of a barrel bomb we're talking about here.

 

Edit: Attempting quote pyramid culling.

Edited April 9, 2018 by smjjames

[Drowsy Emperor]

Knife wands are now available for every school in London to help keep young people safe, with 150 schools so far taking up the offer

 

Sadiq Khan relying on the the use of ISLAMIC MAGIC to defend London kids!

 

 

You mean, muslamic ray guns?

[Malcador]

You mean, muslamic ray guns?

 

 

Once he converts London into a Caliphate, the cops will carry those.

[213374U]

Generally, Europe has taken a rather absurd position on weapons of any sort, in which regular citizens are denied possession, destimulated by paperwork and unjustifiable taxes - which had no effect on crime at all, but rather made sure that a large number of people have no means to defend themselves, or could not enjoy a hobby they like. I knew a few dubious characters in my time, that could be described as small time crooks at best - and they could procure more or less any weapon in short order, should they need it, regulations or no regulations.

 

Yeah, it's pretty stupid. Under our current "weapons ordinance", you could technically get in trouble for carrying a mother****ing screwdriver, let alone something intended as an actual "weapon" such as a pain compliance device. Firearms beyond hunting rifles/shotguns? Forget about it, you'd have to prove that terrorists or drug cartels are gunning for you, and even in that case, the license is handed discretionally... and can be revoked at any time, without explanation.

 

Of course, potential criminals aren't fazed. I've long realized that it's better to risk getting caught with something and face the music than get caught with your pants down by someone that isn't worried about the much worse penalties for assaulting another person with a weapon.

[Drowsy Emperor]

Yes, the prevailing opinion in Serbia is that the gun you legally own is 'rented' from the state, because of how easy it can be confiscated. A drunk guy swings at you in a bar, the cops pull in both of you, they see you're an owner in the system and take your gun away on grounds that you were a part of a public disturbance (guilt or no guilt) or the because there's 'potential for retaliation'.

 

There's no mechanism for getting it back other than asking for it and hoping they say yes, but they're not obliged to return it or even reply to your inquiry at all. 

 

Since each new license involves the same procedure, if you reapply for a new permit on a different gun, they will see your case-file and you're more likely to sprout wings than to have it approved.

Edited April 9, 2018 by Drowsy Emperor

[Agiel]

 

Did you not read the part in that link that said..

 

Yeah, they didn't show 44 hits though, they showed some hits at high resolution, and a low res set of circles on a zoomed out image covering 2-3 km that you can't tell anything about, because it's too low res. If they provided the high res images they (supposedly) had for all 44, then there would be no argument, but they provide proof for a number consistent with the Russian version, consistency with the US version is solely on their say so, not on the evidence they provide.

 

 

I suppose this is what Tom Nichols meant when he bemoaned "the death of expertise".

 

 

 

Inverse square law (esp from 20000 km away), and satellite size means that nearly any terrestrial spoof will override GPS; average GPS signal strength is 0.1 femtowatts, ie 1*10^-16 W. Inertial systems are inaccurate backups. You can readily jam GPS, or potentially spoof missiles to gradually fly themselves into the sea, and an inertial system will not register that as a significant deviation because it's gradual.

 

Or you can spoof GPS to land drones at Iranian airbases, whatever your jam is.

 

Perhaps with that thing in your car, but whether or not they can jam a hardened signal is up for debate. It's telling that for the purposes of defending their own airspace Russia is resorting to planting jammers on 250,000 cell-phone towers just for the hope of making potential cruise missile strikes less accurate, which suggests that such measures are likely limited by LOS against cruise missile targets and are perhaps wanting in overall technical sophistication (the sheer number seems to indicate that in its current form an individual jammer does not account for frequency hopping). I find it doubtful that:

 

a.) They've installed such devices for what is supposed to be a fairly limited involvement in such short a time.

 

b.) They had any more than a vague idea of the flight paths (because it's fairly standard practice to plan approaches from multiple axis).

 

c.) They could re-position their own jammers quickly enough to make a significant dent in a potential attack, particularly when it was out of their neck of the woods.

Edited April 9, 2018 by Agiel

[Elerond]

 

Generally, Europe has taken a rather absurd position on weapons of any sort, in which regular citizens are denied possession, destimulated by paperwork and unjustifiable taxes - which had no effect on crime at all, but rather made sure that a large number of people have no means to defend themselves, or could not enjoy a hobby they like. I knew a few dubious characters in my time, that could be described as small time crooks at best - and they could procure more or less any weapon in short order, should they need it, regulations or no regulations.

 

I don't know about that, as in Finland you (a civilian) can buy anything from small caliber pistols and rifles to rpgs, large caliber cannons and howitzers if you have reasonable reason to own such weapon (like filming war movie, weapon collecting voluntary reserve schooling in case of big guns). There are 1.6 million legal owned fire arms in Finland (about 30% of adult population owns a firearm). Between 2003-2011, 17% (185) of all homicides (1091), were committed with firearm (41% of the cases knife or some other edged weapon was used, in 23% of cases no weapon of any sort was used), from which half are legally bought and owned. Big sunk of illegally owned firearms were originally legally bought but have changed hands without doing proper paper work, but also lot of firearms used in homicides have been either stolen or borrowed from their legal owners. In robberies using of firearm is less frequent phenomenon than in homicides, as firearm is used only in 6.3% of robberies. 

 

Meaning that it is difficult to say if gun regulations prevent law binding citizens from owning a firearm and how much said regulations effect on crime rates.

[Guard Dog]

And just like that, California took away free speech: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB1424
 

THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA DO ENACT AS FOLLOWS:
    SECTION 1.
    Title 14.5 (commencing with Section 3085) is added to Part 4 of Division 3 of the Civil Code, to read:
    TITLE 14.5. False Information Strategic Plans
    3085.
    (a) Any person who operates a social media Internet Web site with physical presence in California shall develop a strategic plan to verify news stories shared on its Internet Web site.
    (b) The strategic plan shall include, but is not limited to, all of the following:
    (1) A plan to mitigate the spread of false information through news stories.
    (2) The utilization of fact-checkers to verify news stories.
    (3) Providing outreach to social media users regarding news stories containing false information.
    (4) Placing a warning on a news story containing false information.
    © As used in this section, “social media” means an electronic service or account, or electronic content, including, but not limited to, videos, still photographs, blogs, video blogs, podcasts, instant and text messages, email, online services or accounts, or Internet Web site profiles or locations.

 
So, who are these "fact checkers" going to be? It will be up to them whether or not a news story gets shared. If "they" say it isn't true then it isn't. Even if it is. Now, Obsidian is a California based company. Will this be the end of sharing news stories on WoT? Especially if the political powers that be decide they don't like what the news story says, um, I mean the news story isn't verified? Yeah, that's it. Verified?  I keep coming back to a quote from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri game "Beware he who would deny you access to information. For in his heart he dreams himself your master".

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UY2uw3yoIA

[Drowsy Emperor]

 

 

Generally, Europe has taken a rather absurd position on weapons of any sort, in which regular citizens are denied possession, destimulated by paperwork and unjustifiable taxes - which had no effect on crime at all, but rather made sure that a large number of people have no means to defend themselves, or could not enjoy a hobby they like. I knew a few dubious characters in my time, that could be described as small time crooks at best - and they could procure more or less any weapon in short order, should they need it, regulations or no regulations.

 

I don't know about that, as in Finland you (a civilian) can buy anything from small caliber pistols and rifles to rpgs, large caliber cannons and howitzers if you have reasonable reason to own such weapon (like filming war movie, weapon collecting voluntary reserve schooling in case of big guns). There are 1.6 million legal owned fire arms in Finland (about 30% of adult population owns a firearm). Between 2003-2011, 17% (185) of all homicides (1091), were committed with firearm (41% of the cases knife or some other edged weapon was used, in 23% of cases no weapon of any sort was used), from which half are legally bought and owned. Big sunk of illegally owned firearms were originally legally bought but have changed hands without doing proper paper work, but also lot of firearms used in homicides have been either stolen or borrowed from their legal owners. In robberies using of firearm is less frequent phenomenon than in homicides, as firearm is used only in 6.3% of robberies. 

 

Meaning that it is difficult to say if gun regulations prevent law binding citizens from owning a firearm and how much said regulations effect on crime rates.

 

 

You can buy anything on paper but how they usually screw you over is by forcing you to demonstrate 'participation in a hobby' (since claiming self-defense use is grounds for immediate refusal of license, barring extreme cases) - being a member of a shooting club, regularly visiting etc. I don't know how stringent it is in practice in Finland, but this is how you're taxed, both directly and indirectly, just for owning a gun. IIRC, I read that the resulting costs in Germany are quite significant.

'Forced' membership also does double duty as 'silent' surveillance, since most of the places are tight with the police, or indeed full of police officers doing target practice for fun.

 

A second way they screw you over is the discretionary right to refuse a permit. In Serbia the standard practice is to send a policeman to your neighbourhood to ask about your character - if you're violent, troublesome etc. In principle this is not a bad thing, but if someone badmouths you, the officer doing the inquiry will more than likely recommend against your permit. 

 

I'm not a champion of the fantasy that guns necessarily make people safer. In fact, much of the time, in the 10 seconds of your life that you never hope you need it, it's probably out of reach and unavailable. 

 

But I am fully with the Americans that it should be a basic right, and suspicious of the need for authority to tightly control and tax it, particularly hunting rifles and handguns. This seems to be a product of total paranoia, since no citizen group, no matter how ambitious, has even the slightest chance of standing up to a modern instruments of force of a state (police, army) with them. 'Bad dudes' will have them anyway. Therefore, what's the justification for making it obnoxious for citizens to have weapons?

 

Also wikipedia says 12% of Finns own a firearm, not 30%. Serbia is third in the world by number of firearms per capita, behind U.S. and Yemen. Fact is, nobody knows how many guns are around in the country, including military grade hardware. Homicide rate is about the same as Finland, so the volume of weapons on its own does not demonstrate a proportional increase in rates of violent crime. 

Edited April 9, 2018 by Drowsy Emperor

[Gfted1]

I agree with your post about "silent surveillance". Here in IL you need a FOID card to purchase and own a firearm. So obviously, the state (and federal?) governments know exactly what people own and where they live and no, I don't believe its for "our safety".

[Malcador]

 

Generally, Europe has taken a rather absurd position on weapons of any sort, in which regular citizens are denied possession, destimulated by paperwork and unjustifiable taxes - which had no effect on crime at all, but rather made sure that a large number of people have no means to defend themselves, or could not enjoy a hobby they like. I knew a few dubious characters in my time, that could be described as small time crooks at best - and they could procure more or less any weapon in short order, should they need it, regulations or no regulations.

 

I don't know about that, as in Finland you (a civilian) can buy anything from small caliber pistols and rifles to rpgs, large caliber cannons and howitzers if you have reasonable reason to own such weapon (like filming war movie, weapon collecting voluntary reserve schooling in case of big guns). There are 1.6 million legal owned fire arms in Finland (about 30% of adult population owns a firearm). Between 2003-2011, 17% (185) of all homicides (1091), were committed with firearm (41% of the cases knife or some other edged weapon was used, in 23% of cases no weapon of any sort was used), from which half are legally bought and owned. Big sunk of illegally owned firearms were originally legally bought but have changed hands without doing proper paper work, but also lot of firearms used in homicides have been either stolen or borrowed from their legal owners. In robberies using of firearm is less frequent phenomenon than in homicides, as firearm is used only in 6.3% of robberies. 

 

Meaning that it is difficult to say if gun regulations prevent law binding citizens from owning a firearm and how much said regulations effect on crime rates.

 

Wonder what kind of reasons they get for someone wanting an RPG.

Edited April 9, 2018 by Malcador

[Gfted1]

Wonder what kind of reasons they get for someone wanting an RPG.

 

Between 1998 and 2015, 245 people died by beast. Its all fun and games until you need to chunk a moose and don't have your MBT LAW.

[Amentep]

"Field Vole"?  I'm guessing they're linking them to...deadly outbreaks of...disease transmission...maybe?

 

Or are their bear-sized field voles haunting the Finnish landscape which, coincidentally, you never hear about and then you're visiting Finland thinking its a great destination point for your vacation and *bam* your leg is gnawed off by an overly large rodent you'd never suspected?

[Gfted1]

Heh, I had to look it up. Basically the deadly Finnish Field Vole is our equivalent of a hamster. How can one possibly kill you (or 29 others)? I do not know. Maybe they like to lodge in your windpipe while you are sleeping?

[Elerond]

 

 

Generally, Europe has taken a rather absurd position on weapons of any sort, in which regular citizens are denied possession, destimulated by paperwork and unjustifiable taxes - which had no effect on crime at all, but rather made sure that a large number of people have no means to defend themselves, or could not enjoy a hobby they like. I knew a few dubious characters in my time, that could be described as small time crooks at best - and they could procure more or less any weapon in short order, should they need it, regulations or no regulations.

 

I don't know about that, as in Finland you (a civilian) can buy anything from small caliber pistols and rifles to rpgs, large caliber cannons and howitzers if you have reasonable reason to own such weapon (like filming war movie, weapon collecting voluntary reserve schooling in case of big guns). There are 1.6 million legal owned fire arms in Finland (about 30% of adult population owns a firearm). Between 2003-2011, 17% (185) of all homicides (1091), were committed with firearm (41% of the cases knife or some other edged weapon was used, in 23% of cases no weapon of any sort was used), from which half are legally bought and owned. Big sunk of illegally owned firearms were originally legally bought but have changed hands without doing proper paper work, but also lot of firearms used in homicides have been either stolen or borrowed from their legal owners. In robberies using of firearm is less frequent phenomenon than in homicides, as firearm is used only in 6.3% of robberies. 

 

Meaning that it is difficult to say if gun regulations prevent law binding citizens from owning a firearm and how much said regulations effect on crime rates.

 

Wonder what kind of reasons they get for someone wanting an RPG.

 

 

I know only two people who have got permit to by RPG, one is military officer who run voluntary reserve schooling camps on his free time and he got permission to buy aging rpg's from military to teach people in reserve how to shoot with one. Second one is prob manager on who acquires military probs for move productions, he got permission to buy a rpg for documentary film that wanted to show what kind destruction it does.

 

Also wikipedia says 12% of Finns own a firearm, not 30%. Serbia is third in the world by number of firearms per capita, behind U.S. and Yemen. Fact is, nobody knows how many guns are around in the country, including military grade hardware. Homicide rate is about the same as Finland, so the volume of weapons on its own does not demonstrate a proportional increase in rates of violent crime.

 

I think that it depends how you count it. If you count only people who are primary owners of firearms you get 12%, if you count people who have permission to use those weapons then you get that 30%. Because it is often easier to register family's hunting rifle's for example under one person and register other family members co-users of those rifles. As it lets you buy hunting rifles for your kids and they don't need to worry about notify police about their holding location when they move out from their home to go university for example and they can still go to hunt hunting seasons if they want.

 

Also shooting clubs sometimes are registered owners of their members guns because those members don't want to have gun safe in their homes, which means that on paper gun range owner is marked owner of their guns, even though they are really just provide storage for those guns. Such arrangement is done because registered gun owner needs to be able to let police see the gun if any time they ask, which means that if registered owner would like to store their gun on gun range they would need to have access both gun range and gun safe there 24/7.

 

Heh, I had to look it up. Basically the deadly Finnish Field Vole is our equivalent of a hamster. How can one possibly kill you (or 29 others)? I do not know. Maybe they like to lodge in your windpipe while you are sleeping?

 

They carry Nephropathia epidemica aka vole fever as it is called here. Which is not very deadly disease as only 0.08% of people who get die, but as about 1700 people get it every year, death toll eventually rises.

Edited April 9, 2018 by Elerond

[Drowsy Emperor]

That is another way of screwing people over - obligatory (expensive, sometimes prohibitively so) gun safes. They wanted to introduce it here as well and put out some absurd size regulations (which most people would have trouble meeting, because European apartments are not American houses), but, thankfully, gave up and nothing came of it.

 

Re: RPG's. Amusingly enough, quite a few people had them here (and probably still do), usually returnees from the Bosnian and Kosovo wars. They very rarely featured in the news (I recall one or two attempts at assassination between criminals), and seem to have ended up mostly stashed away somewhere, likely even forgotten. 

The 'M80 Zolja', which seems to be the most common one, is disposable and single use, so on the whole and in the long term, it's not much of a threat.

Edited April 9, 2018 by Drowsy Emperor

[injurai]

And just like that, California took away free speech: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB1424

 

THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA DO ENACT AS FOLLOWS:

    SECTION 1.

    Title 14.5 (commencing with Section 3085) is added to Part 4 of Division 3 of the Civil Code, to read:

    TITLE 14.5. False Information Strategic Plans

    3085.

    (a) Any person who operates a social media Internet Web site with physical presence in California shall develop a strategic plan to verify news stories shared on its Internet Web site.

    (b) The strategic plan shall include, but is not limited to, all of the following:

    (1) A plan to mitigate the spread of false information through news stories.

    (2) The utilization of fact-checkers to verify news stories.

    (3) Providing outreach to social media users regarding news stories containing false information.

    (4) Placing a warning on a news story containing false information.

    © As used in this section, “social media” means an electronic service or account, or electronic content, including, but not limited to, videos, still photographs, blogs, video blogs, podcasts, instant and text messages, email, online services or accounts, or Internet Web site profiles or locations.

 

So, who are these "fact checkers" going to be? It will be up to them whether or not a news story gets shared. If "they" say it isn't true then it isn't. Even if it is. Now, Obsidian is a California based company. Will this be the end of sharing news stories on WoT? Especially if the political powers that be decide they don't like what the news story says, um, I mean the news story isn't verified? Yeah, that's it. Verified?  I keep coming back to a quote from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri game "Beware he who would deny you access to information. For in his heart he dreams himself your master".

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UY2uw3yoIA

 

It's not really taking away free speech though. That is still constitutionally protected. We just need to prepare that common law will be having to handle some ugly implications of these laws as it concerns reporting the news. On one hand we need to get a handle on organizations of Sinclair. On the other hand issues with media bias is entirely orthogonal to truth. Just talk about what builds your narrative and you're golden.

 

The bit about fact-checkers is a bit nebulous and thus a bit nefarious. Fact-checkers can't be treated as Tzar's of truth. Instead there needs to be more empirical systems at play. Where empiricism fails to shed light is where the jurisdiction of fact-checkers should end, and where cases should be thrown out.

[Drowsy Emperor]

Those clauses are so vaguely defined, you could justify just about anything with them.

[213374U]

And just like that, California took away free speech: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB1424

 

THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA DO ENACT AS FOLLOWS:

    SECTION 1.

    Title 14.5 (commencing with Section 3085) is added to Part 4 of Division 3 of the Civil Code, to read:

    TITLE 14.5. False Information Strategic Plans

    3085.

    (a) Any person who operates a social media Internet Web site with physical presence in California shall develop a strategic plan to verify news stories shared on its Internet Web site.

    (b) The strategic plan shall include, but is not limited to, all of the following:

    (1) A plan to mitigate the spread of false information through news stories.

    (2) The utilization of fact-checkers to verify news stories.

    (3) Providing outreach to social media users regarding news stories containing false information.

    (4) Placing a warning on a news story containing false information.

    © As used in this section, “social media” means an electronic service or account, or electronic content, including, but not limited to, videos, still photographs, blogs, video blogs, podcasts, instant and text messages, email, online services or accounts, or Internet Web site profiles or locations.

 

So, who are these "fact checkers" going to be? It will be up to them whether or not a news story gets shared. If "they" say it isn't true then it isn't. Even if it is. Now, Obsidian is a California based company. Will this be the end of sharing news stories on WoT? Especially if the political powers that be decide they don't like what the news story says, um, I mean the news story isn't verified? Yeah, that's it. Verified?  I keep coming back to a quote from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri game "Beware he who would deny you access to information. For in his heart he dreams himself your master".

 

That's hilarious. Let's assume I post a news story that machines are finally taking over and link to a rigorously researched CompSci paper as proof. Does Obsidz need to have a team of reviewers that can ascertain the veracity of the story... or be in violation of the statute?

 

And what happens if the "fact-checkers" make a bona fide mistake?

 

In short: LOL

[injurai]

My god... all it's saying is if you choose to operate a social media platform, you have a fiduciary duty to mitigate (not prevent) false news. That is going to tend towards blatantly false news. It recommends some sort of fact-checker, which is just a way of saying some sort program that acts as a classifier. It doesn't have to be a strong-arm approach, it's just saying you can't run a social media platform and allow it to be a vector by which disinformation can spread.

 

Further any vague aspect of it is going to be clarified by the surrounding literature.

[Drowsy Emperor]

It just sounds like they're setting up a 'legal' justification to ban RT, Sputnik and the like. Make no mistake of course, if Russian news outlets are banned the more controversial American ones won't be far behind.

[Zoraptor]

 

and you cannot drop a barrel bomb from any aircraft that lacks a loading ramp.

 

I've heard of barrel bombs being dropped (probably pushed out from inside) from helicopters though. I suppose it depends on how big of a barrel bomb we're talking about here.

 

 

Actual barrel bombs have to be dropped by helis (or a transport plane with a loading ramp, but that's even less accurate), standard fighters/ bombers literally cannot drop them, in the vast majority of recent cases 'barrel bomb' is used as a dog whistle and it's a conventional bomb- I've even seen parachute retarded bombs referred to as 'barrel bombs'. While use of barrel bombs made sense a few years ago and they were used extensively then there's a reason why you didn't have fleets of bombers dropping barrel bombs in WW2 or over Vietnam or whatever instead of conventional bombs- barrel bombs are militarily worse in every single respect than conventional bombs.

 

I suppose this is what Tom Nichols meant when he bemoaned "the death of expertise".

 

Experts who make claims not in evidence deserve to have their claims debunked and ignored. If they'd shown what they claimed there would be no argument, but they didn't. Otherwise, you get birth of credulity and death of skepticism. And Saddam's WMDs being over London in 45 minutes etc.

 

 

Inverse square law (esp from 20000 km away), and satellite size means that nearly any terrestrial spoof will override GPS; average GPS signal strength is 0.1 femtowatts, ie 1*10^-16 W. Inertial systems are inaccurate backups. You can readily jam GPS, or potentially spoof missiles to gradually fly themselves into the sea, and an inertial system will not register that as a significant deviation because it's gradual.

 

Or you can spoof GPS to land drones at Iranian airbases, whatever your jam is.

 

Perhaps with that thing in your car, but whether or not they can jam a hardened signal is up for debate.

 

It really isn't, jamming relies solely on the physical properties of EM radiation, and if the US military has a way to alter that then they can do anything. Spoofing is debatable in terms of its technical aspects and whether it would work, jamming isn't; if you have a stronger signal that overwhelms a weaker one. Cell phone towers are actually an ideal terrestrial placement for jammers since you already have the transmitter infrastructure in place, but it's really easy to make mobile ones- say, on a ship- because you don't need much power to jam weak signals. Even a cell phone signal is far stronger than GPS.

 

As for the rest, I'd bet everything I own against a bent 5c piece that the Russians knew where the 2 US destroyers which fired the CMs were, and everyone knows they were warned in advance. One Russian ship in a place able to jam one set, one set too far away. Easy.

[Bartimaeus]

Trump's personal lawyer had his offices raided by the FBI in a no-knock raid, with all sorts of documents seized. Yikes. What in the world did they have that a judge felt comfortable signing off on raiding the president's lawyer? Will have to wait and see, but that is...bold, to say the least.

​

​(e): According to Trump's lawyer's lawyer, it was at least party done on the basis of a referral made by Special Counsel Mueller.

Edited April 9, 2018 by Bartimaeus

[Malcador]

My god... all it's saying is if you choose to operate a social media platform, you have a fiduciary duty to mitigate (not prevent) false news. That is going to tend towards blatantly false news. It recommends some sort of fact-checker, which is just a way of saying some sort program that acts as a classifier. It doesn't have to be a strong-arm approach, it's just saying you can't run a social media platform and allow it to be a vector by which disinformation can spread.

 

Further any vague aspect of it is going to be clarified by the surrounding literature.

Always have to look at the way something can be abused