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Ukraine Hits Russian Space Tracking Center

Wednesday, June 26th, 2024

Ukraine has apparently hit a Russian space radar and tracking system in occupied Crimea.

Ukraine has allegedly struck the NIP-16 space communications and tracking facility in Crimea. According to reports, the attack was conducted on Saturday (June 22), using U.S.-made MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) ballistic missiles.

This attack was one of two carried out by Ukraine over the weekend into the Crimean Peninsula. These come just over a month since the United States gave Ukraine the go-ahead to strike into Russian territory using U.S.-made weapons.

The first attack over the weekend targeted the space communications facility with approximately 20 radar dishes. Some of these were combined in large fixtures with eight dishes.

Low-resolution satellite images obtained by the War Zone (TWZ) appears to confirm that the NIP-16 facility was indeed attacked, as claimed. However, due to the image quality, it is difficult to determine the exact extent of the damage.

We’ll get to that in a minute. Snip.

After Russia seized it following the 2014 takeover of Crimea, the facility was handed over to its Aerospace Forces, which then began modernizing it, as reported by the Ukrainian Defense Express (UDE) news outlet.

“As of 2017, reports stated the center had received ten new systems, and the upgrading was still proceeding,” UDE explained. “The initial plan was to spend 1.8 billion rubles on the reconstruction of one radio telescope alone: at the exchange rate of that time, cost about $28 million,” it added.

The Kyiv Post reported that Russia is now using it for ballistic missile early warning, looking towards the Middle East, Africa, and Southwest Asia. Others have postulated that it may be used for GLObalnaya NAvigatsionnaya Sputnikovaya Sistema in Russian (GLONASS), Russia’s equivalent of the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS).

We’ve got a pretty good idea what was hit because the after satellite photos are already available:

Starting at the top right where the signs of burning are, there’s a pair of laser rangefinders. Moving down around them and in the central area of damage a six meter radom and a five meter radom. And in a bottom bit of damage some items I don’t understand: parabolics on a gimbal, one of them is called, who I’m sure appeared at Glastonbury last year [it’s a radar dish that came move around, like the ones in the Very Large Array]. An M 6 meter case grain [I suspect he means a 6 meter gain antenna], and a 15 meter retractable radar.

Plus “Three new structures which were built since October 2020 the bottom one built in March or April 2021 during Russia’s military buildup.”

OK, let’s talk about GLONASS. According to Wikipedia (the source of all vaguely accurate knowledge), GLONASS has an accuracy range of 4.46–7.38m, which is fine for nuclear weapons, or to track positions of planes and ships, or to hit most buildings, but falls woefully short of tactical battlefield accuracy. During the Desert Storm, U.S. generals would brag that military band GPS would let a cruise missile target an individual M&M in a bowl. Even if we’re limiting Ukrainian access to military band GPS, Civilian GPS + differential GPS (basically using fixed ground tower signals to provide higher accuracy) is probably at least an order of magnitude more accurate than GLONASS.

Differential GPS was something the Russians were going to try to bring online as part of a constellation upgrade, but the Ukraine war (and the sorry state of Roscosmos) might have sidelined that goal. On the other hand, the only scheduled Russian space launches for the rest of this year are all for upgraded GLONASS K1 sats, so maybe that’s the one thing they’re still doing.

Peter Zeihan thinks this move has the Russians way screwed.

  • “You use a deep space system to basically keep track of all your satellites in orbit and communicate among them and to the ground. And since satellites typically are [orbiting], you need several of these stations around the world in order to provide good coverage.”
  • “The Russians have never had that, because the Russians have never had a series of allies that they can trust on a global basis. So they have four of these networks within the Russian Federation and that’s it and apparently one of them was completely destroyed within the last 36 hours.”
  • “It pretty much is the end of the Russian civilian space program. It was already floundering and wasn’t economically viable, especially with the advent of SpaceX because the Russians used to use their old ICBMs as launch vehicles. Basically you use one of them and then it’s gone and then you use another one you keep doing that until they’re all gone and, well, they’re all gone now unless they actually want to go into their active reserve they were using the ones that were decommissioned after the end of the Cold War, so they’re no longer cost effective at all.” I’m not sure that this is true, as all recent Roscosmos space flights have used the Soyuz-2 rocket, whose development split off from ICBM development a long damn time ago.
  • “Second, military satellites. Most military satellites, like most civilian satellites, are whipping around the planet, and now the Russians have lost one quarter of what was left of their capacity to track and communicate with them. That’s going to provide a real problem for the Russians in terms of satellite communications. Not to mention anyone who was looking at getting the Russians to launch and maintain a military satellite for them now has to find someone who is not Russia to maintain it.”
  • “And if your goal was to get away from the United States, there just aren’t a lot of options here, because the Chinese don’t have a good network for this either. So basically you’re down to Europe with the Airbus Consortium or the United States.”
  • “Third and perhaps most significant moving forward is, with the loss of this the Russians are losing the ability to not just keep tabs on their satellites but but to get good telemetry for things like repairs. And if the Russians lose the capacity to do that, then their GLONASS, system which is their equivalent of GPS, starts to fall offline.”
  • “Now there are already parts of the world that don’t have very good coverage all that often, but if you remove meaningful launch capability and monitoring capability and maintenance capability from the Russian system (losing one more radar system would probably do that) then you’re talking about the Russians losing the capacity to use precision guided munitions using geographic tags, that would be an end to things like, say, glide bombs, which are the newest military innovation that the Russians have used, basically dropping one to two to three ton bombs from within Russian territory and then having them glide and hit targets. If you lose their ability for satellite communication that goes away.”

    • I think Zeihan slightly overstates the problem for Russia, or more specifically immanentizes the crisis more than is warranted, especially in relation to the Russo-Ukrainian War. First, GLONASS precision wasn’t exacting to begin with, so its ability to hit tactical battlefield targets was questionable. Second, it takes time for sat global positioning errors to add up, even if you couldn’t use one of the three other stations for measurement and precision correction. Third, Russia hasn’t demonstrated much in the way of precision munitions in this war, the overwhelming majority of their weapons seem “dumb” anyway, and changing that has been made harder by sanctions. Finally, Russia could pull a sneaky end-around and relying on GPS as well as GLONASS for any precision weapons (as many civilian devices, including iPhones, have the capability to use) and the US has evidently retired “Selective Availability” for GPS.

    My suspicion is that the GLONASS damage will be secondary to the destruction of whatever military radar capabilities Russia added to NIP-16, and which were evidently taken out by the strike as more battlespace preparation for the arrival of Ukrainian F-16s in theater later this year.

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Military, video | 5 Comments »

    Adobe Update: Uncle Fed Sues

    Wednesday, June 19th, 2024

    Some interesting updates on Adobe. When last we checked, Adobe just wanted unlimited use of everything you create forever, and you have to agree to those terms before you can even access your existing work.

    Now Uncle Fed is suing Adobe…but not over that issue.

    The United States Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission today levied a lawsuit against Adobe [PDF] for imposing a hidden termination fee on subscribers who want to cancel their Adobe plans. Adobe is accused of forcing subscribers to “navigate a complex and challenging cancellation process designed to deter them from cancelling subscriptions they no longer wanted.”

    Adobe offers its Creative Cloud products on a subscription basis, with fees that are paid monthly. A monthly payment suggests that it’s possible to cancel anytime, but that’s not how Adobe works because most customers are actually locked into a hidden annual agreement.

    Customers who sign up for a free trial and are then charged and signed up to the default Creative Cloud plan, which is actually an annual contract. Canceling the annual contract requires customers to pay a lump sum of 50 percent of the “remaining contractual obligation” to cancel, despite the fact that service ends that month.

    Adobe does let customers sign up for a month-to-month subscription plan, but at a higher cost than the annual contract that’s paid monthly, and the difference is not always clear to new or existing customers. Adobe even has a whole help page because of the confusing nature of its subscription. If you look at the Adobe website, for example, Adobe lists a $60/month fee for accessing its full suite of apps, but that’s only if you agree to the annual contract. A true month-to-month plan that you can cancel anytime is $90/month, and if you pay for a year upfront, you get no money back when you cancel after a 14-day period.

    If memory serves, back in the dim mists of time, $75 was around what I paid to upgrade from PageMaker 3.0 to 4.0. And that wasn’t a month, that was “Pay this fee once and use this software forever.” None of this pay $60 a month BS. Of course, I was running it on a Mac Plus running System 6.0.8 (which some still insist was the last truly stable Mac operating system), so that was four CPU architectures and innumerable OS versions ago. Now get the hell off my lawn before I hit you with my cane.

    According to the DoJ, Adobe’s setup violates the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act (ROSCA) through the use of fine print and inconspicuous hyperlinks to hide information about the Early Termination Fee.

    According to Kneon and Geeky Sparkles at ClownfishTV, Adobe’s own staff is none too happy about the draconian terms of service.

  • Geeky Sparkles: So Adobe will get punished, but Google can do all kinds of crap and take down all kinds of websites, and the Department of Justice doesn’t do anything about that.
  • Kneon: Yes.
  • GS: I’m just pointing that out.
  • K: A lot of companies are doing this, I’ve noticed this. They make it very, very hard to cancel, which is illegal.
  • K: Every time we’ve tried to cancel like Direct TV or something, you have to call them. You can’t just like do it on the website, and they always do that, and then they want to get you on the phone. They want to actually try to upsell you.
  • K: Comcast does that especially with their Internet. Oh yeah, it’s only going to be like you know 100 bucks a month or whatever, $200 a month. And then then after your trial is over whatever…they’re like. “Oh now it’s like $350 a month. You wanted usable Internet? Wow, that’s an up charge.”
  • K: The Justice Department alleges that Adobe hid early cancellation fees and trapped consumers in pricey subscriptions, so you have to pay a fee if you cancel. A lot of times they’re like “Oh yeah, it’s whatever a month,” but then you read the fine prints, you have to commit to two years.
  • K: The Department of Justice claims Adobe has harmed consumers by enrolling them in its default, most lucrative subscription plan without clearly disclosing important plan terms and this is on top of them being allowed to snoop in your files.
  • K: The lawsuit alleges Adobe hides the terms of its annual paid monthly plan in the fine print and behind optional text boxes and hyperlinks, and, in doing so, the company fails to properly disclose the early termination fees incurred upon cancellation that can amount to hundreds of dollars.
  • K: When the customers do attempt to cancel, the Department of Justice alleges Adobe requires them to go through an onerous and complicated cancellation process that involves navigating through multiple web pages and popups. It then allegedly ambushes customers with an early termination fee which may discourage them from canceling.
  • Try to cancel via livechat or over the phone? Expect your call to be mysteriously dropped.
  • K: They want you to get frustrated and just give up.
  • K: These practices break federal laws designed to protect consumers.
  • The lawsuit also targets “two Adobe executives, Maninder Sawhney and David Wadhwani, for alleged violations of the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act (ROSCA).”
  • K: Up until 2012, Adobe, you bought the software, you got it on a disc, you put it on your computer.
  • K: Though Adobe is doing some scummy stuff, it almost feels like somebody’s gunning for Adobe. Like this lawsuit drops a week or two after they get backlashed.
  • GS: It is weird, especially when you have Google out there doing all the weird stuff that’s been going on, with their websites and things. And a lot of sites are losing all their ad revenue because they’re not being found, or they’re shutting down because they they they just completely sunk in both traffic and revenue. And they’re allowed to tank thousands and thousands and thousands and tens of thousands of sites and that’s OK, and put up when they put up AI information that comes above everything else a lot of times it’s wrong.
  • One possible reason for the difference in treatment is that Adobe is screwing actual paying customers, while Google, in screwing random websites, may only be screwing people and companies with whom they have no actual contractual obligation to. Which is a big difference between software you pay for and software you use for free.
  • K: It does seem weird that it’s like “boom boom,” like this is a kill shot to take Adobe out of play.
  • GS: Two things can be correct at the same time. It does feel like they’re being targeted, but I also think that they kind of have it coming.
  • K: Apparently the community dissatisfaction with the company grew so intense that even Adobe’s own staff started expressing unhappiness about the whole ordeal.
  • To the point that someone in Adobe is evidently leaking internal slack threads to Business Insider.
  • K: The company’s workers appear to be siding with regular users voicing complaints about the terms of service updates and the resulting backlash, as well as Adobe’s poor communication and apparent mishandling of the situation.
  • K: “The general perception is Adobe is is an evil company that will do whatever it takes to fuck its users. Let’s avoid becoming IBM, which seems to be surviving primarily due to its entrenched market position and legacy systems.”
  • K: This is not the right time to be pushing your your AI stuff when creatives are worried about losing their jobs as it is.
  • Aside: I sort of hate that the word “Creatives” has become a thing, since it aggregates too many diverse sets of people (writers, artists, movie makers, graphic designers, etc.) into an amorphous class. It’s a fairly recent coinage, but I wonder if it’s already too late to stamp out that particular linguistic “innovation.”
  • K: They’re trying to say they never trained their AI on customer data, we never trained generative AI on customer content, taken ownership of a customer’s work or allowed access to customer content beyond legal requirements. People aren’t going to believe you.
  • GS: Then why word it the way you did? That doesn’t make any sense.

    • Indeed.

    Adobe does indeed a lot of splainin to do, and those heinous terms should be revised before anyone gives Adobe another dime, since there are cheaper alternatives to just about everything they offer. But that’s not to say that there aren’t other tech giants out there with even more heinous policies (Google and Microsoft are two that immediately come to mind), with or without AI, and it is curious that Adobe, a relatively new and smaller player in the AI space, has suddenly been subjected to so much official heat.

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    Posted in Crime, video | 4 Comments »

    California Jewelry Store Looted In Broad Daylight

    Tuesday, June 18th, 2024

    At what point do California voters finally realize that their Democratic Party leaders have abandoned trying to enforce the rule of law and shout “Enough!”?

    The latest example of California’s decline into a lawless state is a bold daylight robbery where 20 masked intruders looted a Sunnyvale jewelry store in broad daylight.

    Video of a shocking smash and grab robbery shows the moment a Sunnyvale jewelry store is overwhelmed by suspects armed with tools and hammers.

    The incident took place at PNG Jewelers on Wednesday afternoon. The store is located at 791 E. El Camino Real. Police said at least five people have been arrested, but they are looking for more suspects.

    The surveillance video’s timestamp shows the robbery happened just before 12:30 p.m. Well over a dozen suspects, clad in black clothing, barge into the store and begin smashing the glass counters as they ransack the place.

    Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety said their officers responded to a report of a robbery in progress and that approximately 20 suspects were involved.

    “The suspects fled the store in multiple vehicles before officers arrived on scene. Officers located two suspect vehicles as they were attempting to flee the area,” Sunnyvale DPS said in a news release.

    For those unfamiliar with it, Sunnyvale is smack dab in the heart of Silicon Valley, between Mountain View, Cupertino and Santa Clara, and was home to numerous influential companies including Fairchild Semiconductor, Atari and LinkedIn. Homes there list for $2 million and up. El Camino Real is the central “strip” of Silicon Valley, running all the way in to San Francisco where it turns into Mission Street.

    Daylight jewelry store robberies were hardly unknown before, but these large mobs of smash-and-grab looting are a direct result of Democrats decriminalizing shoplifting. Even though the haul here is clearly above the $950 limit of Proposition 47, California criminals that have honed their looting skills on smaller value targets are clearly seeking fatter scores, and show no hesitation in branching out to hit targets in affluent cities.

    The continued slide of one-party blue California into abject lawlessness is no longer shocking, but it should be. In the name of social justice, Democrats are systemically destroying the underpinnings of ordered, law-abiding society. How long before insurance companies simply refuse to insure retail stores in California, and how soon until high end stores in Silicon Valley go the the way of those in San Francisco and simply close entirely?

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    Posted in Crime, Democrats, Social Justice Warriors, video | 12 Comments »

    Israel Gets Medieval On Hezbollah’s Ass

    Sunday, June 16th, 2024

    Israel is among the most technologically sophisticated nations in the world, with a highly developed military technology sector, so it was a surprise to read that they’re using a medieval siege engine to fight Hezbollah.

    A short six-second video showing soldiers using what appeared to be a type of medieval trebuchet in northern Israel went viral online today, prompting questions about what the centuries-old contraption was meant to be doing while Israel is embroiled in large-scale combat operations in Gaza and trading strikes with Hezbollah at the Lebanese border.

    Here’s a Livemap snap of the Israeli-Lebanese border:

    That’s all Israeli activity, so there doesn’t seem to be a lot of “trading” going on today…

    In the video at least six soldiers can be seen standing around what appears to be a trebuchet, a type of catapult…

    No, a trebuchet is a completely different types of medieval siege engine than a catapult, using a counterweight system rather cranked tension.

    …as it launches a flaming ball over a concrete wall. The trebuchet appears to be about 12 feet tall and is on a small wheeled trailer. In the video Hebrew is heard from one of the soldiers, who seems to be in command. After one flaming ball is launched over the concrete barrier, he tells the soldiers to run and add another. One soldier holds a fire extinguisher, apparently in case of a misfire.

    As odd as it looks, Israeli media confirmed that the video was real, reporting that the IDF had said that it was a local initiative of a unit and not a tool that has come into widespread use, according to Israel’s Kan public broadcaster. It was purportedly the work of reservists stationed near the border with Lebanon, and the Jerusalem Post reported it was filmed weeks ago. The IDF did not respond to Breaking Defense’s request for comment about the video.

    A trebuchet is a relatively simple type of catapult that uses a long arm with a heavy weight on one end attached to an axle closer to the heavy weight. It was a popular siege weapon during the 12th to 16th centuries. The arm is pulled down and a projectile is put in a sling, such that when the arm is released the heavy weight rapidly pulls it up and it slings the projectile far into the distance. The one in the video appears to have been constructed from commercially available wood. It’s not clear what was used as a counterweight or how the flaming ball of fire was constructed.

    As for its objective, Israeli media reported the IDF unit is most likely attempting to set fire to underbrush in southern Lebanon, which the IDF says Hezbollah uses as cover to get into position to launch attacks on northern Israel.

    And here’s the video, which also shows IDF forces using flaming arrows from a bow to set fire to the undergrowth as well:

    The old cyberpunk adage “the street finds its own use for things” comes to mind.

    Lebanon could, of course, keep Israel from hurling flaming trebuchet balls into its country by preventing Hezbollah from launching terrorist attacks against Israel from insider its borders. This it seems both unwilling and unable to do, not least of which because Hezbollah is actually a member of the ruling minority “March 8 Alliance” caretaker government. The government of Lebanon is so dysfunctional that the office of president (traditionally a Maronite Christian) has been vacant since Michel Aoun stepped down in 2022, as parliament has been unable to agree on a successor.

    As I’ve noted before, for all the talk of Hezbollah opening up a “second front” while Israel whales on Hamas like Boom Boom Mancini TKOing Bobby Chacon, but they seem to have done very little but the usual pinprick terror attacks. Hezbollah’s paymasters in Damascus and Tehran seem too busy with their own troubles to offer their Lebanese catspaw much help right now.

    (Previous “fun with trebuchets” coverage can be found here.)

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad, Military, video | 9 Comments »

    Wimpy Woke WaPo Workers Walloped With Weality

    Saturday, June 15th, 2024

    OK, my alliterative synonym abilities failed me with the last one. But you get the idea. It seems even leftwing billionaires get tired of losing $100 million a year. The Washington Post is hemorrhaging readers, and a new CEO has come in to read woke employees the riot act.

    Megyn Kelly: The Washington Post is in a slippery downfall, probably to its end. It’s hemorrhaging.
    Dave Rubin: Well deserved.
    MK: It’s disgusting, isn’t it! It’s worse than The New York Times!
    DR: Well, we’d have to really think that one through. I mean, The New York Times is unbelievably horrible.
    MK: But still readable yeah. You read it, and you see it’s biased, and you know you’re getting misled. The Washington Post has turned into Slate.
    MK: I mean it’s disgusting now, and it has been this way for a couple of years. So you”ll be shocked, shocked to learn they’re hemorrhaging readers. They’re leaving in droves. And it’s not like they had a huge Republican base to begin with. But you know, even the moderate readers seem have said you’re too much for me.
    MK: The New York Times reported in July of 2023 that The Washington Post was on pace to lose about $100 million last year.
    MK: Then in October of this past fall, Washington Post offered buyouts to cut staff by almost 250, 240 employees.
    MK: They cannot increase their number of paying customers, since the 2020 election they peaked at three million subscribers back then. They’re now down by half a million and counting. It’s just going down and down and down.
    MK: There was a meeting on [last] Monday where the publisher Will Lewis and the new interim executive editor Matt Murray met with staff. And they they got rid of Sally Busby, who had led the paper for the past couple years, and made a shocking announcement.
    MK: Guess who’s coming in to lead the paper? Count them, not one, not two, not three, four white men!
    DR: Oh God! During Pride Month?
    MK: They’re white, and they’re men! And one of them, jeez, was the leader of the Wall Street Journal prior to this.
    DR: I think my analogy of a dinosaur in the tarpits is pretty on point. These things they have grown so large, they’ve been so negligent, to what their job is: Of doing the news and doing it honestly.
    DR: You and I are not wizards. How is it that we’ve largely gotten the big things right over the years, or didn’t fall for all of the hoaxes?
    DR: How is it that I didn’t fall for all of the covid stuff? How is it that I didn’t fall for Donald Trump very fine people on both sides? How is it that I didn’t think Brett Kavanagh was a serial rapist, or that the Covington kids were racist or that Jussie Smollett was lynched? Why is it that you and I didn’t fall for all those?
    DR: The media lies about everything, and then once you see it, you’ve peered behind the curtain, then just know it. And what’s happening is more and more people are seeing it, so their own readers are finally, like, “My God, this is not a newspaper.”
    MK: White men! My God, that’s how desperate they are! And of course they’re having a revolt right at the The Washington Post. Staffers are outraged.
    MK: The reaction by one reporter at the meeting to finding out four white guys we going to be leading the Post now was everyone was shocked.
    MK: Later in the meeting, another reporter asked Lewis whether any women or people of color were interviewed and seriously considered for these positions, a question that prompted applause! “Yeah, there’s got to be a more qualified female or person of color. Look at these guys! So pale and so penisy!”
    MK: “Look, we are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore. So I’ve had to take decisive, urgent action to set us on a different path, sourcing talent that I have worked with that are the best of the best.”

    Imagine picking people based on ability and not the color of their skin. The outrage!

    As online commentators noted, we’ll know the Washington Post is really serious about cleaning house when it fires Taylor Lorentz…

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    Posted in Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors, video | 9 Comments »

    Adobe Just Wants Unlimited Use Of Everything You Create

    Monday, June 10th, 2024

    Adobe has just changed the terms for subscription applications like Photoshop. Nothing big, just a demand of unlimited use of everything you ever create, forever. Oh, and you’re locked out of your existing work until you agree.

    A change to Adobe terms & conditions for apps like Photoshop has outraged many professional users, concerned that the company is claiming the right to access their content, use it freely, and even sub-licence it to others.

    The company is requiring users to agree to the new terms in order to continue using their Adobe apps, locking them out until they do so …

    Adobe says that its new terms “clarify that we may access your content through both automated and manual methods, such as for content review.”

    The terms say:

    Solely for the purposes of operating or improving the Services and Software, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free sublicensable, license, to use, reproduce, publicly display, distribute, modify, create derivative works based on, publicly perform, and translate the Content. For example, we may sublicense our right to the Content to our service providers or to other users to allow the Services and Software to operate with others, such as enabling you to share photos

    If you’re using our tools, we get unlimited rights to anything you ever created on our tools for any purpose forever, plus we get to sublicense them. It’s as if Microsoft announced that it was publishing Joe Schmoo’s Misery II: Misery Harder because Stephen King agreed to the license agreement for Word 4.0.

    Designer Wetterschneider, who counts DC Comics and Nike among his clients, was one of the graphics pros to object to the terms.

    Here it is. If you are a professional, if you are under NDA with your clients, if you are a creative, a lawyer, a doctor or anyone who works with proprietary files – it is time to cancel Adobe, delete all the apps and programs. Adobe can not be trusted.

    But don’t worry! It gets worse! You can’t access your server-stored work or even uninstall the app until you agree to the term!

    Concept artist Sam Santala pointed out that you can’t raise a support request to discuss the terms without first agreeing to them. You can’t even uninstall the apps!

    I can’t even get ahold of your support chat to question this unless I agree to these terms beforehand.

    I can’t even uninstall Photoshop unless I agree to these terms?? Are you f**king kidding me??

    But don’t worry! Adobe has “clarified” that they’re really not going to steal your content, despite the terms and conditions clearly giving them the permissions to do precisely that. They also swear up and down that they’re never, ever, ever going to use your work to train AI on, despite the fact that we all know that’s exactly what they’re doing.

    All of this points out how stupid it is to rely on a subscription model for your software.

    Is there a Louis Rossmann rant on the subject? Yes. Yes there is.

  • “When you are at the mercy of connecting to somebody else’s computer to use your software, this means that your data can be held hostage and they can change the terms on you at any time.”
  • He states he feels anything he’s published on the Internet is fair game for training AI. But: “I do not want Adobe’s machine learning algorithms going through my personal private content. When I have something in my drawer, that belongs to me. That is not for anybody else to learn from.”
  • “If you have a halfway finished creative project, you are literally not able to access it unless you agree to terms and conditions that allow their machine learning algorithms to go through all of your private fucking library. You rapist pieces of shit!”
  • “The problem with having your data on somebody else’s computer is that they can roofy you anytime they want and get access to it.”
  • “Where on this page does it say that if you don’t want us to access your data, that you can grab all your data out of there and cancel? Does it say that? No, it says you either accept and continue you take the roofy or you don’t get access to any of your stuff ever again.”

    • Until Adobe actually changes the terms and conditions to provide the narrow permissions they claim they actually need (like the ability to create thumbnails), no one should agree to their terms. And not allowing someone to retrieve or delete their data without agreeing to draconian terms and conditions first is unconscionable extortion.

    Expect lawsuits.

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    Posted in Media Watch, video | 18 Comments »

    NYTimes Hacked, Source Code Stolen

    Sunday, June 9th, 2024

    This seems like a story that should be getting a lot more coverage: The New York Times was evidently hacked and hundred of gigabytes of their source code released.

    An anonymous hacker has claimed to have leaked 270 GB of internal data and source code from The New York Times (NYT) on the controversial image board 4chan.

    The leak, reportedly containing over 5,000 repositories and 3.6 million files, was published on June 6, 2024. It has since raised widespread concern and speculation about the potential implications for the historic news organization.

    The hacker, who has not been identified, posted a magnet link to the files on 4chan, encouraging users to download and share the data. According to the hacker, the leaked collection comprises uncompressed tar files with fewer than 30 encrypted repositories.

    The leaked data reportedly contains a variety of source code, including the blueprints of well-known games like Wordle, email marketing campaigns, and ad reports. The hacker’s message was signed “With love from /aicg/,” a nod to a 4chan community.

    While the leak’s legitimacy has not been independently verified, cybersecurity experts and media outlets have expressed serious concerns. The Register reported that it had seen a list of files in the purported leak but had not confirmed their authenticity.

    Bryan Lunduke of The Lunduke Journal (who’s covered leaked/hacked material like this before) downloaded the files. He says they’re 334GB worth of files (maybe the size discrepancy is zipped vs unzipped) and thinks they’re real.

  • This dropped June 6.
  • “We are talking about a 334 gigabyte archive containing supposedly 3.6 million and some change files, individual source code files. Massive. Off-the-charts massive.”
  • He though it might just be every New York Times story ever published, but it doesn’t appear to be. Nor does it look like an email server dump.
  • “This is massive. It almost is making my brain hurt simply going through all of this.”
  • “I went through it. I read a bunch of it in depth. When I say a bunch of it, I mean I spent a long time on it and barely made a dent.”
  • “It truly does look to be over 3 something million source code files.”
  • “The first things I looked through were tremendously boring. It was just stupid JavaScript files dealing with Markdown.” JavaScript is a front-end programming language used for performing a huge variety of tasks in your browser. Markdown is an HTML-like text markup language used as a basis for rendering documents in a variety of different formats (standard web page, phone webpage, PDF, online help, etc.).
  • A lot of it appears to be internal website documents.
  • “It’s from a wide variety of stuff. I mean it’s all over the map. We’re talking onboarding documents and technical documents, hiring documents, switchboard documents, user attribute documents, a huge amount of documentation.”
  • Plus actual source code for iOS and Android applications.
  • Lunduke explains legal doctrine on leaked materials and reporting, saying he didn’t commit any crime to obtain the material, which should legally put him in the clear for talking about material therein relevant to the public interest. Normally I’d point out “Hacking is wrong, mkay,” but New York Times has itself published hacked/leaked/stolen material itself at least as far back as The Pentagon Papers, so this is a case of biter bit.
  • “There a reasonable assumption that publishing some of this leaked material would be of the public interest…There are a number of policies and other interesting things in place documented within this material that could be of the public interest.”
  • “This does appear to be real. I cannot fathom how all of this could have been created if it wasn’t real.” I am inclined to agree. But! It’s important to note that a real archive can be salted with false information for a variety of nefarious purposes, so caveat lector.
  • “It is an absolutely monstrous amount. Simply searching through it and scanning it is insane. There are over 5,000 individual mini-archives within this link each one appears to represent an individual source code repository, or at least a folder or subfolder within source code repositories.” He says it appears to be just the latest snapshot, and not all the versions you would find in a source code repository like GitHub.

  • The time stamps on the files look recent.
  • “Man, there’s some funky things going on here.”

    • I am most interested in how internal policies codify/enforce woke social justice priorities, if there are any special instructions for covering Donald Trump (or other Republicans), racial preferences in hiring policies, etc.

    I’m hoping for some juicy revelations…

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    Posted in Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors, video | 7 Comments »

    Surviving D-Day Ships

    Saturday, June 8th, 2024

    Since I didn’t do a separate post on the 80th anniversary of D-Day, here’s a Mark Felton video that covers ships from Operatune Neptune, the naval portion of D-Day, that have survived.

  • Operation Neptune was “under British control, commanded by Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsey, the man who had been responsible for the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940.”
  • “Can you imagine the size of the force of ships required to land over 150,000 British, Canadian, American and French troops on five different beaches? It was almost 7,000, from huge battleships to tiny landing craft.”
  • “Britain supplied 892 warships out of the 1,213 involved, and 3,261 landing craft out of a total of 4,126.
  • Brits crewed many landing craft carrying American soldiers to the beach.
  • “112,113 Royal Navy personnel served on D-Day, plus 25,000 British members of the Merchant Navy, with the United States Navy providing the second biggest contingent: 52,889.”
  • The invasion fleet was split into the Western Naval Task Force under U.S. Admiral Alan G. Kirk, supporting Omaha and Utah beaches, and the Eastern Naval Task Force, under British Admiral Sir Philip Vian, covering Gold, Juno and Sword beaches.
  • Minesweeping operations began even earlier than the landings.
  • The landing was originally scheduled on June 5, but had to be delayed due to bad weather.
  • HMS Medusa arrived at the beach 12 hours before the US Landings began to “act as a marker to show the entrance to a narrow channel to be swept by mine sweepers.” “HMS Medusa still looks exactly the same as she did during World War II, having been extensively restored and carefully looked after, and she could be found today at Haslar Marina in Crossport in Hampshire.”
  • “Today only one D-Day veteran minesweeper still exists, USS Threat, and incredibly she is still serving in her original role, though no longer with the United States.” She was sold to Mexico, and currently serves as to Mexico where she currently serves as the ARM Francisco Zarco.
  • The destroyer USS Laffey screened for German ships on D-Day, and performed some shore bombardment on June 8-9. She’s preserved as a museum ship in South Carolina.
  • And yes, everyone’s favorite Gangsta Battleship is covered.

    The bombarding forces flagship of Omaha Beach still survives: The battleship USS Texas. An old ship in 1944, Texas dated from around 1912, a dreadnaught battleship of the old school. In World War II she had been pressed into convoy escort duties in the Atlantic, and shore bombardment during the Operation Torch landings in North Africa in 1942. She had been modified over the years, and her systems upgraded, and her ten 14 inch guns gave her a formidable hitting power, able to pulverize targets over 20 miles away. On D-Day, Texas was assigned to provide fire support to the Western half of Omaha Beach, where the US 29th Infantry Division was landing, and Pointe du Hoc, in support of the 2nd Ranger Battalion.

    The Texas recently underwent extensive restoration. Dwight has more details.

  • The Royal Navy light Cruiser HMS Belfast also carried out shore bombardment, and survives as a museum ship on the Themes.
  • A surviving Liberty Ship, SS Jeremiah O’Brien, was not only preserved, it carried American veterans across the Atlantic to participate in the 50th Anniversary commemoration, and today she remains fully seaworthy.
  • Various other, smaller ships (tank landing craft, light ships, and a German patrol boat) have survived in various roles and in museums.

    • As the largest conflict in human history passes out of living memory, so much of what was common knowledge of that conflict fades into obscurity. People still know Omaha Beach from Saving Private Ryan, but if you were to ask today’s college students “What is the significance of the names Gold, Juno and Sword?”, I venture that most wouldn’t know the answer.

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    Posted in Military, Texas, video | 10 Comments »

    Russia’s S-300/S-400 Systems: The Great Failure

    Monday, June 3rd, 2024

    As big an advertisement as the Russo-Ukrainian has been for western technology such as HIMARS and ATACMS, it’s been an even bigger anti-advertisement for Russia’s S-300/S-400 air defense systems. It must be pretty embarrassing to see your SAM systems getting blown up time and time again by the very threat it was designed to intercept.

    Just today Suchomimus features yet another instance of HIMARS making an S-300 system blow up real good:

    This is not to be confused with his video of ATACMS taking out an S-400 system in Mospino, Donetsk 11 days ago:

    That’s the same battery that failed to intercept ATACMS before being hit by it. Six times.

    Or the successful ATACMS strike that took out several S-400 system components at Belbek Air Base in Crimea:

    Or his video of an S-300 system being taken out by ATACMS at Dzhankoi airfield in May:

    And that’s not all.

  • Ukraine claimed to have destroyed two S-400 batteries in Crimea in September 2022, out of five that were initially deployed there.
  • In April 2023, Ukraine said it destroyed or critically damaged four S-400 launchers in Crimea.
  • In October 2023, Ukraine launched ATACMS missiles that destroyed an S-400 system in Luhansk Oblast.
  • In November 2023, a UK intelligence update stated that Ukraine likely destroyed at least four Russian S-400 systems in a week.
  • On April 19, 2024, Ukraine launched ATACMS missiles at a Russian airfield in Crimea, destroying S-400 launchers, three radars, and a Fundament-M air surveillance system.
  • On April 23, 2024, Ukraine destroyed a 92N2 radar and a 96L6 high-altitude radar of an S-400 system.
  • On April 28, 2024, Ukraine launched multiple ATACMS missiles in Crimea, destroying more S-400 air defense systems.
  • On May 6, 2024, Ukrainian forces destroyed a tracked version of a Russian S-400 missile launcher in Zaporizhzhia region.

    • And, of course, the numerous drone strikes Ukraine has carried out against Russian territory over the course of the war also testify to S-300/S-400 failure.

    There’s speculation that Ukraine is taking out S-300/S-400 systems as battlespace prep for deploying F-16s in theater later this year.

    This is hardly the first failure of the S-300/S-400 system, as shown by Israel’s ability to hit targets in Syria with impunity and Syria’s inability to intercept 30-year old Tomahawk cruise missiles.

    The United States (Patriot) and Israel (Iron Dome/David’s Sling/Arrow) both field SAM systems that have been proven effective on the modern battlefield. Russia, by contrast, has fielded a system that’s a demonstrable failure.

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    Posted in Military, video | 20 Comments »

    The Price Of Ramen In China

    Sunday, June 2nd, 2024

    There’s an idiomatic express that seems to have fallen out of common usage: “What does that have to do with the price of Tea in China?” The phrase indicates that they speaker has no interest or use in the information you’re conveying. This video has me curious as to what the price of one packet of dried ramen noodles goes for in China.

    China seems to be having an unenviable bout of stagflation, with both unemployment and inflation rising at the same time. (So, for that matter, are we, though not as severe, and one which our elites controlling economic data seem determined to hide as much as possible.) In the video, people are complaining that packaged ramen noodles are going up from 2.8 to 3 yuan. (An online Chinese retail price tool puts it at a statistically indistinguishable 2.98 yuan.) At official exchange rates, 3 yuan is about 41¢.

    Back in the days of being a poor college student, I could generally eat on 20 dollars a week. Rice, spaghetti, luncheon meat sandwiches, hot dogs and ramen were regular staples. Good ramen (Maruchan or Top Ramen) could readily be found five for $1, and the generic brand (back then they had literal generic brands with plain white packaging) could even be had for 15¢ a pop.

    Those days, of course, are long gone. An individual pack of Maruchan Ramen is now 30¢ at Walmart, or 31¢ at HEB.

    I had always had the vague impression that China exported ramen to the U.S., but Maruchan is actually packaged just south of San Antonio in Von Ormy.

    It’s surprising to me that ramen, the college student survival staple, is actually more expensive in China than here, despite average Americans being much wealthier than average Chinese.

    It must really, really suck to be poor in China right now…

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    Posted in Economics, video | 13 Comments »

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