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LongLeftFlank

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Everything posted by LongLeftFlank

  1. Ha ha, no. They might possibly be, if China wasn't sitting on the Spratlys.
  2. https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/latest-news/oil/022224-feature-russia-defiant-two-years-into-war-reshaping-global-energy Nice infographic, for those interested: Interesting that in spite of its stated intent to remain neutral in the conflict (partly in gratitude to Russia for its past support), energy-hungry Vietnam is not a significant importer of Russian oil.
  3. https://www.scribblemaps.com/maps/view/The-War-in-Ukraine/091194 Some very approximate frontages, based on the current situation: Kharkiv-Belgorod frontier (E-W, disregard frontier north to Sumy): 230km Oskil-Zherebets rivers (N-S Kupiansk-Kreminna): 180km Sieversk salient: 70km Bakhmut-Avdiivka: 90km Avdiivka-Vuhledar: 50km Zaporizhzhne front (Vuhledar-Dnpr E-W): 180km Dnpr-Kherson river (E-W, less Kinburn spit): 300km Total active front: c.1100km
  4. Yeah, I was enjoying a beautiful clear night last summer on the Mediterranean coast of Spain, only to see a line of 5 satellites ascending, all in perfect line.
  5. Thanks as always for the digest and the threadreader link, for those of us who don't X. ...The Threadreader ads are just nuts though, supermarket tabloid 'Elvis alien clone' stuff. Or maybe that's just my part of the world.
  6. I agree. There's zero likelihood that NATO splashed an AWACS in Russian airspace, cuz WW3. You and I are much of the same mind, it seems as I composed this before I read your post.... The Russians don't necessarily *know* that their manifest destiny and grand strategy is built on a tissue of lies and self-delusion. 1. The Russians (and their overseas amen corner) have always preached that all the major Western weapons systems in AFU use (Patriot, HIMARS, etc.) are crewed by NATO mercenaries and technicians. 2. Same 'reasoning' at root: hohol pig farmers and Eurof**gy cosmopolitans can't possibly be cleverer or tougher than Great Russians. Like most bullies, whose behaviour is rooted in a need to prove their superiority (to suppress insecure feelings that they actually aren't), they deeply need to believe that. 3. By corollary, they also 'know' that once T shuts off the tap and recalls the mercs, 'so-called Ukraine' will collapse like a rotten log, the NATO-backed civil war will end and restore the Greater Russian Union State from Zhitomir to the Dnistr, with only Polish- and Hungarian-controlled rump provinces remaining as a buffer. ...So in short, all the US wingnut mouthing is putting the 'comfort' in 'aid and comfort to the enemy'.
  7. Thanks for the clarification, but you might consider thumbing down the ad hominem attacks a bit.
  8. @Grigb is one of the best contributors to this thread. Just sayin'. **** VERIFICATION REQUEST. Is it true Russia only has one more A50 AWACS? Or is this yet another Sushko disinfo special?
  9. What we're all REALLY waiting for of course, are the 'spinners'.
  10. Many thanks, those of us who decline to be e-stalked by Xwitter are unfortunately out in the cold at the moment.
  11. I have some firsthand experience with umm, incoming mat. New Yorker also did a piece on it in 2003, reprinted below for those interested. https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=russian-teaching;aa8fa082.03 "In the Soviet period," he says, "the status of the high lexicon was devalued-words such as 'fatherland,' 'motherland,' 'truth.' In the context of Soviet ideology, these words acquired a negative resonance, not only for the general population but also for Party propagandists. In this situation, obscene words began to function as markers of authenticity."... [Zhirinovsky] responded to my questions about mat with an impassioned speech: "This is our living language! Who has decided that mat is just bad words and deviant vocabulary? They're rejecting the language of the people. Obviously, part of the vocabulary of mat was created in the prisons, but then haven't we driven the entire population through the prisons? This language has become the norm!"
  12. lnteresting attempt, even if likely ineffectual.
  13. https://about.opnxng.com/blog/#nitter https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/02/twitter-front-end-nitter-dies-as-musk-wins-war-against-third-party-services/ Der Nitter ist verloren. The ongoing march of en****tificaton
  14. Sure, and I come to praise the Brainjar not to bury him! While I am not, and never have, coded anything more complex than an Excel VBA macro, I am in general agreement with what I think OP @markshot was asserting, to wit: ...that the new generation of AI tools are already making it easier and cheaper for small devs like BFC to layer highly pleasing and 'up to date' looking gaming graphics atop their core proprietary physics and tactical decision engines. So they can stay focused on refining that engine and the player interfaces ('Follow Me' commands, etc.) while 'outsourcing' most of the crowd-pleasing visual effects. Again, all easier said than done, but our dear sponsors have also got to move with the times, elsewise get bought out and folded into a larger shop that won't allow them full creative control.
  15. Like the C̶a̶d̶i̶l̶l̶a̶c̶ Thread overturning in slow motion, down a cliff, on television.
  16. Oh, oh I'm sorry, this is Abuse.... Ah, don't let these grumpy old cranks put you off! Exploring possibility space is just fine IMHO, so long as the substantial gaps to meaningful implementation are also appreciated. **** https://openai.com/sora (LinkedIn commentary): If you think OpenAI Sora is a creative toy like DALLE, ... think again. Sora is a data-driven physics engine. It is a simulation of many worlds, real or fantastical. The simulator learns intricate rendering, "intuitive" physics, and long-horizon consistency, all by some denoising and gradient maths. I won't be surprised if Sora is trained on lots of synthetic data using Unreal Engine 5. It has to be! Let's breakdown the following video. Prompt: "Photorealistic closeup video of two pirate ships battling each other as they sail inside a cup of coffee." https://cdn.openai.com/sora/videos/ships-in-coffee.mp4 - The simulator instantiates two exquisite 3D assets: pirate ships with different decorations. Sora has to solve text-to-3D implicitly in its latent space. - The 3D objects are consistently animated as they sail and avoid each other's paths. - Fluid dynamics of the coffee, even the foams that form around the ships. Fluid simulation is an entire sub-field of computer graphics, which traditionally requires very complex algorithms and equations. - Photorealism, almost like rendering with raytracing. - The simulator takes into account the small size of the cup compared to oceans, and applies tilt-shift photography to give a "minuscule" vibe. - The semantics of the scene does not exist in the real world, but the engine still implements the correct physical rules that we expect. Next up: add more modalities and conditioning, then we have a full data-driven UE that will replace all the hand-engineered graphics pipelines.
  17. Yes, there's a fundamental category error here in the utter failure to distinguish Ukrainians, who are overwhelmingly fighting for their nation and elected government, from Iraqis or Afghans who overwhelmingly defer to their local tribal or religious leaders, who in turn decide which flag to salute, or not.
  18. Yes, the smell of hair on fire is getting a little thick in here, innit? I mean, if the thread regulars want to agonise over the fall of the Republic in the context of Ukraine, maybe look at something more directly relevant than microplaning DJT's latest excretion? https://www.construction-physics.com/p/what-happened-to-the-us-machine-tool
  19. An' I said, “Litterin'.” An' they all moved away from me on the bench there, an' the hairy eyeball an' all kinds of mean nasty things. ...Til I said, “*And* creating a nuisance.” An' they all came back, shook my hand, an' we had a great time on the bench, talkin' about crime, mother stabbin', father rapin', all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the bench, an' everything was fine.
  20. Good comment on the actual war, many thanks, a rarity over the last 10 thread pages. ...I guess only time will tell, but if Shanahan can reinvent football with dense formations, perhaps Syrsky can reinvent tactical warfare using some species of the opposite? The 49ers Defy Modern Football. It’s Why They’re in the S̶u̶p̶e̶r̶ Taylor Bowl.
  21. Maybe BoJo should /sarc embrace the whole Global Criminal Mastermind shtick to fuel his political comeback. Comedians seem to be playing well in politix these days, after all One day leading black hooded SAS speedboat commandos to hit the nuke plant, the next 'sploding the Nordstream pipeline from the deck of his luxury yacht. ...Maybe post some TikToks while stroking a Persian cat.
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