chris talpas

It isn’t code in the classical sense.  You have the mathematical construct of a neuron which you code for and then have a vast interconnected web of these.  You then train it where the strength of those interconnections is adjusted during training.  It is analogous to our own brain where as we learn certain neural pathways are strengthened while others are pared away. It is almost a black box.
The rate of improvement in AI both in narrow and broad applications is nothing short of astounding.  I just worry the we are racing to develop the tools of our own demise with autonomous kill drones coupled with LLM AI that are becoming increasingly capable and  closer to sentience.  
I would rather hope for Kurzweil symbiosis instead.

It isn’t code in the classical sense.  You have the mathematical construct of a neuron which you code for and then have a vast interconnected web of these.  You then train it where the strength of those interconnections is adjusted during training.  It is analogous to our own brain where as we learn certain neural pathways are strengthened while others are pared away. It is almost a black box.
The rate of improvement in AI both in narrow and broad applications is nothing short of astounding.  I just worry the we are racing to develop the tools of our own demise with autonomous kill drones coupled with LLM AI that are becoming increasingly capable and  closer to sentience.  
I would rather hope for Kurzweil symbiosis instead.

Emergent AI is already happening, the last generation or two of of big AI models have been able to do things which surprised the bleep out of the people that wrote them. They don't have a very good idea of what will happen when they turn up the processing power by another order of magnitude or two either. That is why people are running around with their hair on fire.

It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th
P

After reading this, I think Zelensky would be a fool to dismiss him.

After reading this, I think Zelensky would be a fool to dismiss him.

"It is well known by now that a central driver of this war is the development of unmanned weapons systems.
They are proliferating at a breathtaking pace and the scope of their applications grows ever wider.
Crucially, it is these unmanned systems – such as drones –  along with other types of advanced weapons, that provide the best way for Ukraine to avoid being drawn into a positional war, where we do not possess the advantage.
But while mastery of such technologies is key, it is not the only factor influencing current strategy."
 
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/01/opinions/ukraine-army-chief-war-strategy-russia-valerii-zaluzhnyi/index.html?fbclid=IwAR3B_d9MEggxMAQJ39LmoGZEa6Hrlij2c5bs62tLQhsWM1ccFb7psNDLmm8

UA proclaims that they sank Russian corvette "Ivanovets" with kamikaze USV.
 

Deal reached on 50 billion euros in EU aid for Ukraine (from the Guardian's live updates, which I don't know how to link directly, if it can be)
 

To be fair, it is objectively difficult to distinguish between a Russian airfield and a construction waste dump.

I've been thinking a lot about this. The physics of the battles in Ukraine feel like amphibious assaults everywhere all the time. In an amphibious assault you've got an illuminated battlefield (the attacker is a finite quantity of very visible ships and the defender is tied to a linearish boundary that the attacker can observe from offshore at leisure before the assault). The attacker can mass fires from behind the line of contact, but will have difficulty advancing those fires as their beachhead is in a pocket surrounded by defender's fires.
But the precursor to a successful amphibious assault is the isolation of the beachhead from its LOC, either by naval blockade for islands or by tactical and strategic air for larger assaults. Those are both unavailable in Ukraine, so even a high-tempo high-casualty assault doesn't produce meaningful operational effects (unless you chain them together over and over in a way anathema to modern western sensibility).
It'd be interesting to look at the ratio of troop density to weapon-denial-range. I think CM does a nice job of simulating that. Playing the CMBO beta Last Defense, I learned quickly that American bazooka armed infantry projected an armor denial zone about 75 meters in all directions. So if you want an impermeable defense, you need something like a squad every 150 meters of frontage in whatever depth you think you need. The first time I played CMBS Into the Breach I thought I was totally screwed because I was used to that sort of frontage. Then I discovered Javelins and had to reconsider. I'd say a modern infantry squad can project that denial zone hundreds of meters if not a kilometer or more. So has the troop density changed relative to the size of the denial zone it can project?
edit: Also, what the heck with all the videos of IFVs and tanks engaging trenches at ranges I'd describe as "pants on head"? Why does that work? Are there lots of videos I'm not seeing of IFV's getting destroyed by infantry light AT as they approach?

Oh my, that is good.  I am totally stealing it.

Latest drop from Perun and certainly relevant to this discussion:
 

I think it goes beyond political correctness, which was really an exercise in re-labeling and taking into account multidimensional sensitivities.  This is something else.  My working theory is that it is following patterns seen after every major pandemic - a re-evaluation on a broad and deep social scale.  During the pandemic social value paradoxes were laid bare and felt just about everywhere.  Grocery store clerks became front line critical staff while CEOs were stuffed into Zoom boxes with the rest of us - is an example. 
That exposure laid bare all sorts of "hey wait a minutes" that coalesced together incredibly fast.  After the Black Death there was a massive social renegotiation as labour realized that is value had fundamentally changed.  1918 (plus WW1) gender and class value shifted dramatically.
So here we are again as what determines "value" is shifting under our feet.  History shows it can be a pretty bumpy ride but then things settle down and we adapt to new social frameworks.

Could someone please explain to me how recruiting in the UK and US relates to the current conflict in Ukraine?  
I think we have spent enough time on this.  Now if someone did a study on how hamster behavior was affecting recruiting in Russia and Ukraine, I would be all for it, but this discussion is simply a distraction bordering on ideological/political sniping.

We should be clear about what's happening here...and note I am politically an opponent of and no fan personally of Mitch McConnell: 
 McConnell has been trying very hard to get a deal through that addresses the border 'crisis' and funds Ukraine. Trump has become the nominee in all but name and Trump is threatening Senators who make any deals with Biden that might hurt his chances in November. So, McConnell has realized his own caucus is weak at the knees and a linked deal might not get through. 
His solution is the delink the deals so that Senators can bow to Trump on the border but maybe get Ukraine money through...and he's done it in a way that makes it clear that the fault for all of it lies with Trump. In short, he's maneuvering to keep aid alive while making sure Trump pays a political price for his obstruction. 

To follow up.  I also do not think most people realize just how weird this moment in history has become from a military power standpoint.  The Cold War came off the back of WW2 and was actually an exercise in downsizing to fit the requirements of the intense strategic competition between the two global power poles.  Defence and Security architectures were largely scaled down from their WW2 architectures to fit the Cold War environment.  The competition then became sustaining competitive advantage in that context, along with negotiations with an evolving social calculus that occurred rather slowly (eg civil and gender equity).
We then won the Cold War and re-scaled again.  We first created military power to intervene in sustaining the global order. And then after 9/11 built the architectures aimed narrowly at a problematic niche.  Social evolution continued but began to accelerate as the Information Age emerged and began to deepen.
And then in just a few short years - let’s take 2010 for arguments sake and say 14 years - we saw the re-emergence of a Cold War-looking strategic competition, a hyper acceleration of the Information to whatever the hell this thing is now and, the largest pandemic in over a century.  This has driven social change pressures to crazy levels - like “let’s storm capital hill/defund cops/cancel-mob rule” levels.
And suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, we are seriously talking about military requirements we have not seen in over 35 years. NATO has just run the largest exercise since the Cold War and we likely had to build things we forgot entirely how to do.  HQs and staffs, force generation, and military capability have all changed dramatically but we are still looking at a massive upscaling requirement to align with strategic realities.  Don’t even get me started on intelligence and security architectures, which have been entirely focused on hunting terrorists and now are being asked to consider under the threshold strategic disruption against other states - those are enterprises that take decades to get right.
We may look “ok” but we are not “ok”.  We have a very significant expansion in front of us in order to 1) create deterrence,  2) contain expansion of influence, and 3) create new strategic options…on top of an already stressed out social situation - f#cking “woke” is the least of our problems.  Rebuilding entire defence and security strategic power structures to be able to do what we found challenging over 30 years ago while the fabric of warfare appears to be rippling under our feet; while our domestic populations appear really intent on losing their f#cking minds in about 30 different directions at once…is our new Tuesday.
At this point senior military staff don’t care if someone is gender-fluid, multi-racial and bestiality adjacent - if they can fill a chair better than the forest of traffic cones that we currently have…welcome aboard!
(did that video get all that?)

Two locked threads related to that topic attest to that.
This thread needs to stay open, as it is the damn source for following this war on the internet.

Hence why drone flying in Washington DC is quite illegal within a 15 mile radius of the center.

I was some busy, so here is statistic of last missile strike:
41 missiles were launched, 21 were intercepted. Part of rest 20 missiles didn't reach own targets, due to manufacturing defects and EW work. Kyiv was attacked with 20 missiles (not clarified by types)
Missile types:
- 15 Kh-101 (15 shot down)
- 4 S-300 (0)
- 12 Iskander-M (5 - probably all five were destroyed over Kyiv)
- 8 Kh-22 missiles (0)
- 2 Kh-59 (1)
 
Again we can see:
41 % were cruise/AS misisles and here we have 94 % of interceptions 
39 % are ballistic missiles and SAM misiles for ballistic fire and here we have 31 % of total interceptions and 90-100 % of interceptions over places, defended with modern SAM systems like PAC-3 or SAMP-T
19 % of supersonic (close to hypersonic) cruise missiles - no interceptions, but they were launched on the areas didn't protected by Patriots/SAMP-T
What about probable targets. Look at Kharkiv. Total 15 missiles hit the city - 2 S-300, at least 6-7 Kh-22, not less 5 Iskanders. 10 citizenens were killed, about 70 wounded. Two more S-200 hit Balakliya city of Kharkiv oblast. 
On the video likely Kh-22 impact in Kharkiv in residental area.
 
One more missile ruined a part of residental building
 
A school was hit (Russians seriuosly think in the city close to the border any public building contains dozens of deployed UKR soldiers)
 
Close impact of missile seriously damaged other residental building

Citizens also wrote about impacts in industrial areas. Gas pipe was damaged, causing a big fire and power facility, which temporary cut off from electricity abou half of the city
And Russian media: cadres of missile strike aftermath on Kharkiv. The AFU objects masked as residental buildings are destroyed

On more Russian Kh-22 missiles probably struck Pavlohrad in Dnipropetrovsk oblast and Shostka in Sumy oblast, these cities have military factories. Results is unknown, but in Pavlohrad seriously damaged two schools and eight multistorey buildings, at least 2 citizens were killed 
What in Kyiv? Likely only one missile reach own target. Russians victoriously defeated sport hall "Locomotive", belonging to "Ukrainain railroads" state company. 

One warhead of shot down missile hit residental building and... didn't explode. Sappers later took warhead out of the flat
One missile obviosly tarheted buildng of MoD, but was shot down in 1 km, fragments fell down on avenue, so the traffic was closed for some time.
Total in this strike 18 civilains were killed and 130 wounded.

An Interview with the brave Ukrainian knights behind the Bradley IFV armor.
Obviously happy about slaying that dragon... I mean T-90M. 🙂

It is Friday, wanted to post something a little fun.
Always enjoyed Pilsner Urquell due to its taste and place in beer history. Now i have another reason to buy it this year.
Hey this is a wargaming forum, and everyone knows wargamers love their beer and pretzels sometimes. 😎

I could not agree more with Admiral Bauer. I also firmly believe that the outcome of this war is incredibility important for not only Ukraine but for the whole world.
 

True there is no organized opposition, but that is to be expected with how quickly the regime cracks down.  There have been protests including some decent sized demonstrations, but the Russian state shut that down quickly.  There were also a number of firebombing of police stations etc.  There is not and likely won't be any organized opposition that we will see.  That doesn't mean there isn't any opposition.
Never assume because you don't see something, that it doesn't exist.
Not related to the war, but a good example of how the regime responds to protests.
Hundreds protest and clash with police in a Russian region after an activist is sentenced to prison (msn.com)
The person in question has also been targeted for opposition to the mobilization.
Putin Deploys Rosgvardia Reinforcements as Protesters Clash With Police (newsweek.com)
 

"Breaking" would be, in terms of this war, a condition whereby prosecution of the war is no longer possible.  A secondary meaning could be regime change.  The third possible definition is one we actually want to avoid which is the uncontrolled break up of the state of Russia.
I don't think people really understand the objectives nor the mechanism of sanctions.  To most it is simply "stop buying stuff and Putin go broke."   That is not really how large economies work.  They are more like weather or climate systems and sanctions are attempts at changing their overall energies over time.
So, as a min, I think the sanctions on Russia have three major strategic goals:
- Isolate Russia as much as possible through collective action and lateral pressures.
- Constrain Russia's ability to wage war.
- Put pressure on the regime and Russian people in order to induce change.
So before one can make a judgement on whether sanctions are working or not, one has to look at those three objectives and really measure progress - not simply "what we want".
Russia is more isolated now than it has been since the Cold War.  The trend appears to increasing as the US continues to exert its own power.  Is Russia completely isolate, no, not yet.  But one cannot say that is had been business as usual either.
Russia is definitely constrained in its ability to wage war.  We do not know the full effects of these sanctions on the economy but we do know that Russia is pulling from far afield to sustain itself.  I think there is an argument to be made on Putin wanting to avoid full mobilization because it may create a tipping point amongst the population - a restrained economy has to be part of that calculus.  Can Russia still fight?  Sure.  But can it field a modern competitive military right now...no freakin way.
Are the Russian people actually doing anything about all this?  Who knows.  There have been signs of strain and resistance.  I am sure we are helping that along in the back field.  But these things can take years to fully come to bear.  One could argue that the sanctions regime is as much about the next war with Russia as the current one.
So before anyone throws up their hands and goes "Sanctions are not working!!"  Really look at what they are doing.  And more importantly how much worse the situation would be if we had never undertaken them.  We won't know about Russia breaking until it does.
Ok, that is one way to look at it.  How about what we did not see?  Russian mothers were not standing arm in arm on the highways leading into Moscow to protect Putin either.  Apathy cuts both ways frankly.  Massive inaction, does not mean massive action in another direction.
On this.  Did you ever consider that Europeans, particularly Eastern Europeans are too close to the problem?  Too much history, too much bias and just...too much?  I hear this "westerners just don't get it" a lot.  But maybe our perspective is a bit more unshadowed by Russia.  In the West we know all about "grudging, cursing and complaining", we have built entire industries around those concepts.  Our system looks entirely dysfunctional from the outside based on how much we disagree. 
But that vs armed troops off the freakin leash marching on the capital...is something else entirely.  Stuff exploding all over the place.  Rich people continually trying to fly out windows.  The amount of effort and expense Russia is spending on "internal security".  Evidence of extremely poor discipline and conditions within its military.  All this stuff starts to stack up well beyond "I want a better cellphone plan."
We project so much onto Russia - hope and fears.  When we should spend more time just watching the damn duck.  Is it walking and talking like a duck?  Is it making weird sounds that in any other nation we would see as signs of strain?  Russia is not in a good place.  There is no doubt of that. 
Finally, what does that mean to the war?  Well the big one is that Russia's ability to field a modern military able to conduct operational level offensive operations is in serious doubt.  They had the goods two years ago but that old lady filmed on that first week was right all along - The RA of 2021 is in Ukrainian fields pushing up sunflowers.  What is on the ground now is largely conscripts and essentially holding on while being wasted on small tactical suicide missions. We were all surprised that they could even hold the lines they have, but there you go.  War, or at least this war, has shifted towards defensive advantage, that much is pretty much settled.  That had nothing to do with Russian prowess or resources, and everything to do with shifts over the last 40 years. 
So here we are.  Watching and waiting to see what happens next.