tal

tal , 3 months ago

The world could probably benefit from some sort of new convention establishing protocols for surrender to drone.

Right now, it's kinda ad-hoc, but if this is the way the war is gonna be in the future, you don't want to place soldiers in a position where they can't accomplish anything and it's just the protocols of war and lack of established surrender convention that causes them to be executed.

tal , 3 months ago

Thanks

I got confused by that too. For future reference, these have streamable.com links. Just click on the video (well, in Eternity, that's how it's presented) rather than the Telegram link beneath.

tal , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

Depending upon the drone, you're probably better off dismounted. If it can kill light armor, you probably don't want to be in it.

This is not an area that I've read much about -- modern land warfare mechanized infantry tactics aren't really an area of interest -- but from what I've seen of US military people doing realism plays in stuff like Arma -- which I will concede is not the most authoritative source -- I think that it's the norm to dismount when one comes under attack in light armor.

Yeah, you don't have the light armor around you, but:

• You can get other cover.

• Critically, you aren't packed together with the other soldiers. One hit can't kill all of you.

I'll grant that the drone is in the air, and getting overhead cover is probably hard relative to the historical situation, but on the other hand, the drone can probably also move faster than the light armor can.

EDIT: Yeah, this is what I recall seeing for a column of light armor on a road, a herringbone formation being adopted and infantry dismounting and finding cover outside of the vehicles.

https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/17-18/F1718_5.htm

Herringbone. The platoon uses this formation when it assumes a hasty defensive posture or temporary halt on a road where terrain does not allow adequate off-road dispersion. Vehicles move off the road if terrain permits (see Figure 4-11). Infantry should dismount and seek cover and concealment while providing additional security and observation.

tal , 3 months ago

On an entirely unrelated note, Bitcoin is apparently up 20% in the past two days.

tal , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

googles

https://garantex.org/?lang=en

Rubles, Bitcoin

Deposit and withdrawal of cash rubles without commission

Withdrawal by Sberbank, Tinkoff, Alfa-Bank cards

Someone appears to. You'd think that the US wouldn't like that much.

googles

Ah.

https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0701

Treasury Sanctions Russia-Based Hydra, World’s Largest Darknet Market, and Ransomware-Enabling Virtual Currency Exchange Garantex

Treasury is committed to taking action against actors that, like Hydra and Garantex, willfully disregard anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) obligations and allow their systems to be abused by illicit actors. Wanton disregard for regulations and compliance by persons that run virtual currency exchanges will be rigorously investigated, and where appropriate, perpetrators will be held accountable.

Garantex is being designated today pursuant to E.O. 14024 for operating or having operated in the financial services sector of the Russian Federation economy.

Today’s action also reinforces OFAC’s recent public guidance to further cut off avenues for potential sanctions evasion by Russia, in support of the G7 leaders’ commitment to maintain the effectiveness of economic measures.

Sounds like they've been in hot water since early 2022.

tal OP , 3 months ago

200km? They could do that in 2 hours or less, easily.

It's 200 km through Ukraine. They've been trying to get through that span to Odesa for over 2 years.

Their high water mark was the Battle of Mykolaiv in April 2022.

tal , 3 months ago

Sanctions do provide some leverage too.

tal , 3 months ago

In that sense, same as war. Putin's not going to be hit; there's no direct impact on him. But both cause economic and political pressures for him.

tal , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

I feel like this would work better if Russia had already conquered Ukraine up to and including Odesa.

Russia cannot move forces through Ukraine. That's a hot war, and Ukraine will shoot at them.

I don't think that Russia can fly through Romanian airspace, even with civilian flights, as the EU closed their airspace.

Maybe Russia could fly forces and military cargo into Transnistria in on another country's civilian aircraft. I don't know how much control Moldova has over Transnistria's airports.

EDIT: Apparently the transit issue already came up. Transnistria apparently has three airports:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airports_in_Transnistria

All three are listed as inactive.

For Tiraspol Airport:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiraspol_Airport

Until 1989, it was used as a military airfield of the Soviet Air Forces. In 1991, work began on converting the airfield into a commercial airport, which would be the largest in Transnistria. These works were suspended due to the lack of funding and the political unsettledness of the status of Transnistria, which did not allow the customs and border services of the Republic of Moldova to be located at the airport and, consequently, to fly outside the country.

On May 10, 2016, Transnistrian President Shevchuk confirmed the intention to transform the Tiraspol airfield into a civilian airport, but indicated that "neither Moldova nor Ukraine are ready to give the appropriate permissions to transit through their territory or turn around through their territory."[10]

So, basically, it sounds like Ukraine or Moldova need to be onboard for civilian flights to be flying through. They already said no, and even if they did, Moldovan customs officers would get to be at the airport and control (which apparently Transnistria refused).

tal , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

Also, for completeness, Moldova does apparently have one small port that ships can sail to:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_Giurgiule%C8%99ti

The Port of Giurgiulești (Romanian: Portul Giurgiulești), officially the Giurgiulești International Free Port (Romanian: Portul Internațional Liber Giurgiulești, PILG), is a port on the Danube River at its confluence with the Prut and the only port in Moldova.[1][2]

It is Moldova's only port accessible to seagoing vessels, situated at km 133 (nautical mile 72) of the River Danube in the south of Moldova.[3] It operates both a grain and an oil terminal as well as a passenger terminal.[4]

But that's got some issues that I think would prevent Russia from using it to put forces into Moldova:

• It's on the other side of Moldova from Transnistria. The port is not in the Transnistrian portion of Moldova. I.e. Moldova can say no to ships and can presumably search cargo and control passengers at customs.

• Reaching it requires sailing up the Danube. One bank is Romania, and the other bank is Ukraine. I don't think that there are any rights that ships have to sail there; it's not international waters. I don't believe that innocent passage applies to reaching ports on a river. And I'm pretty sure that Romania and Ukraine both have a healthy disinterest in Russia moving forces into Transnistria.

Based on this (Table 1, Page 8), goods going to Moldova via sea apparently normally go through Odesa in Ukraine:

https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/766431468139805224/pdf/347710PAPER0Tr101OFFICIAL0USE0ONLY1.pdf

I am pretty confident that Ukraine is not going to be onboard with Russia moving military forces through Odesa to Transnistria.

tal , 3 months ago

Looks like Russia has issued a statement:

https://lemmy.today/post/7222390

Russia’s Foreign Ministry said that Moscow would "consider with attention" the appeal of authorities from the Moscow-controlled Moldovan region of Transnistria for "protection," the Russian state-controlled media RBC wrote on Feb. 28.

tal , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

In almost 2 years of full-scale war, Russia has spent half the money from the National Welfare Fund (NWF)...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_National_Wealth_Fund

One of the fund's main responsibilities is to support the Russian pension system, and since the closure of the Reserve Fund also funds budget deficits.

Russians might not be too happy if their pension gets slashed or stops showing up.

A few years back, Russia tried effectively reducing what the pension paid out via increasing the retirement age.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Russian_pension_protests

An intention to hike the national retirement age and the more so a final decision to launch the reform have drastically downed the rating of the president Vladimir Putin and prime minister Dmitry Medvedev in Russia. In July 2018, just 49% would vote for Putin if the presidential elections were held in that moment; during the elections in March, he got 76.7%.[6][7]

tal , 3 months ago

I'm not certain that Russia had more than two operational at the moment.

tal , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

I wouldn't say the US government is "gridlocked". Instead, very specifically, a single person deliberately and single-handedly blocks a vote in the House of Representatives. I find that unbelievably unconscionable, anti-democratic and all-around despicable, especially since it is quite clear that a Ukraine aid package would easily win a huge majority in the House.

It's not really specific to Ukraine.

The US system of government has separation of powers. In the Legislative and Executive Branches the House, Senate, and President. There is no guarantee that the same party controls all three -- that's pretty rare. Each has a lot of ability to block things that another pushes. So you get one party blocking another.

My understanding is this:

• The Republicans have a very narrow, unusually so, majority in the House. Any people not voting along party lines means that it kills their ability to do things, so it creates a lot of opportunity for a small number of people in the Republican Party to block action.

• The House Freedom Caucus -- about 40 people, significant but a minority of the Republican House contingent -- has been trying to play hardball on these grounds for a while. Basically, because the rest of the House Republicans need them, they can make a lot of demands. A lot of what they want is dramatic spending reductions, but they don't have broader support among Republicans achieve that.

• Their power is amplified because of some internal decisions that were made during this House -- which they demanded because of that narrow majority. In particular, the Speaker has informally agreed not to have a vote on a bill unless a majority of the majority party (so a majority of House Republicans) agrees.

• They earlier tried to force the US to either default on its federal debt unless some of their demands were met. This didn't work, because the last House Speaker, Kevin McCarthy relied on support of Democrats to pass the bill in question.

• That made a bunch of people who wanted to play hardball unhappy, as it undermined their position. So one of a small number of House Republicans filed a motion to vacate against him. It was expected that the Democrats would defend him, given that he was in hot water over having cut a deal with them. With support from more-mainstream Republicans, it would have been enough for him to retain his seat. Instead, the House Democrats decided not to support him, so he was ejected and Mike Johnson made the new Speaker.

• I would imagine that given the fate of the previous Speaker, that Johnson is going to be hesitant about cutting deals that rely on House Democrats defending him from any attack after-the-fact.

• Anything else going through the House is also a potential target for people -- like the Freedom Caucus -- who want to play hardball. That includes Ukraine spending as well, though first the next set of domestic spending needs to be addressed, which the same crowd is also playing hardball on. Johnson has said that he got some concessions for them, but that it will probably go through without the hardballers getting the really big concessions that they wanted.

My own expectation is that Ukraine aid (and Israel aid) will ultimately go through, but I understand that it will not be raised until after the fight over the spending bills, and I don't know how long they'll fight about it.

It'd have been a lot easier to have gone ahead with the Ukraine bill had there been either a majority of Democrats or a larger majority of Republicans in the House. The razor-thin majorities, though, make it hard. Or if the Democrats had protected Kevin McCarthy after he cut a deal with them. But as things stand, it permits very small numbers of Republican legislators to hold legislation hostage for their individual political concerns.

tal , 3 months ago

As an Artificial Intelligence proponent, I want to see the field succeed and go on to do great things. That is precisely why the current exaggerated publicity and investment around "AI" concerns me. I use quotation marks there because what is often referred to as AI today is not whatsoever what the term once described. The recent surge of interest in AI owing to Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT has put this vaguely defined term at the forefront of dialogue on technology. But LLMs are not meaningfully intelligent (we will get into that), yet it has become common parlance to refer to these chatbots as AI1 2.

Pretty sure that this has been happening for as long as AI and similar things like machine learning have been a thing. Overstated promises, people consistently presenting research or products or investments using the sexiest terms they can manage. New term comes out (e.g. "Artificial General Intelligence") to differentiate more-sophisticated AI, and they get latched onto and dragged down into the muck too.

I think that the fix is to come up with terms attached to concrete technical capabilities, where there's no fuzziness to exploit by people trying to promote their not-as-sophisticated-as-they'd-like-them-to-appear things.

tal , 3 months ago

From 2022:

https://archive.is/BKcA0

Steel Is the Other Big Commodity Shock from the War in Ukraine

The European Union has already imposed sanctions on some Russian steel sales and has targeted most of the country’s oligarchs who own large chunks of the Russian steel industry. And the war has all but stopped Ukrainian steel production.

The cost of rebar steel in Europe last week surged to a record of 1,140 euros per tonne, up 150% from late 2019. And the price of hot-rolled coil, a popular form of steel, has reached a record high of about 1,400 euros per tonne, up nearly 250% from just before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.

One reason for the price spike is the sheer size of the Russian and Ukrainian steel industries. Russia is the world’s third biggest steel exporter, behind only China and Japan, while Ukraine is the eighth largest. 

Colin Richardson, head of steel at Argus, a price reporting agency, reckons that Russia and Ukraine together account for about a third of the EU’s steel imports, or nearly 10% of the region’s domestic demand. And Russia, Belarus and Ukraine together account for about 60% of total EU imports of rebar. They also have a huge share of the market for slab — the chunky pieces of semi-finished steel.

Probably happy times if you're a steel manufacturer in the EU.

tal , 3 months ago

Funding for the NRFC is provided through the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which authorized the use of funds for “the development, promotion, and distribution of a media campaign to encourage the appropriate involvement of parents in the life of any child and specifically the issue of responsible fatherhood, and the development of a national clearinghouse to assist States and communities in efforts to promote and support marriage and responsible fatherhood.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deficit_Reduction_Act_of_2005

Evidently it's reducing deficits!

tal , 3 months ago

Or refusing to impregnate your dead brother's widow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onan

Onan was a figure detailed in the Book of Genesis chapter 38, as the second son of Judah who married the daughter of Shuah the Canaanite. Onan had an older brother Er and a younger brother, Shelah as well. After being commanded by his father, Judah, to perform his duty as a husband's brother according to the custom of levirate marriage with the late Er's wife Tamar, Onan instead refused to perform his duty as a levirate and "spilled his seed on the ground whenever he went in" because "the offspring would not be his", and was thus put to death by Yahweh. This act is detailed as retribution for being "displeasing in the sight of Lord". Onan's crime is often misinterpreted to be masturbation but it is universally agreed among biblical scholars that Onan's death is attributed to his refusal to fulfill his obligation of levirate marriage with Tamar by committing coitus interruptus.

tal , 3 months ago

they only had 6 or 8 of these things in total

They also aren't all simultaneously operational.

tal , 3 months ago

This was one of the most-significant pieces of hardware Ukraine hit, and if this is correct, Russia stuck another one in range.

After last time:

https://breakingdefense.com/2024/01/after-historic-shoot-down-why-russia-will-struggle-to-replace-its-a-50-aewc-plane/

As for when another A-50 could find itself a target of Ukrainian aggression, it could be a while. In its mid-January release, British intelligence noted that another an A-50 had apparently replaced the one taken out on Jan. 14, “but this time over land within Russian territory … .”

“This activity is highly likely indicative of a reduced risk appetite for the airframes and an attempt to preserve remaining A-50 MAINSTAY at a loss to its overall effectiveness over Ukraine,” the Brits said.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/02/23/incredibly-the-russian-air-force-has-lost-another-one-of-its-rare-a-50-radar-planes/?ss=aerospace-defense&sh=314266be2ac4

Incredibly, the Russian air force has lost another one of its rare Beriev A-50U/M Mainstay radar early-warning planes. Video that circulated online on Friday reportedly depicts the A-50’s burning wreckage in Krasnodar Krai, in Russia just east of the Sea of Azov.

The location of the crash, 200 miles from the front line in southern Ukraine, could indicate the four-engine, 15-person radar plane either suffered a mechanical failure—or took a hit while operating closer to the front and tried to make it back to its base in Krasnodar before exploding.

For what it’s worth, the Ukrainian air force claimed it shot down the A-50 with assistance from the intelligence directorate in Kyiv.

Prior to that earlier shoot-down, the Russian air force had just nine modernized A-50U/Ms. Now it’s down to seven, just a few of which are active at any given time.

tal , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

One other point. It hasn't been clear what the earlier hit was with, but the articles were speculating that it was a Patriot. This one was 200 miles from the front line. I don't think that the Patriot can reach 200 miles, though (though the A-50 was presumably flying away from whatever hit it, and that might move the crash a bit further away from the impact point). It's just outside the rated range for an S-200, and that's if the launcher were right on the front lines.

Also, from some of the footage here, assuming that it is indeed of the incident:

https://sopuli.xyz/post/9517353

...it looks like the A-50 was dropping flares before it was hit (if that's what those falling points of light were). So I assume that the A-50 crew knew that something was heading their way for some time in advance, and was presumably trying to fly away from it.

I don't know why they'd be dropping flares for what is presumably a radar seeker -- that would be a counter to a missile with an infrared seeker, probably a short-range missile -- but maybe it's standard operating procedure for the Russian Air Force to drop flares or something if an A-50 is targeted by anything.

Both the S-200 and Patriot use radar seekers.

There are drones that are capable of launching infrared missiles -- like, the Reaper can launch an infrared Stinger or infrared Sidewinder. I don't know if Ukrainian special forces have access to some kind of small drone that they could smuggle into Russian territory that could fire an infrared missile.

tal , 3 months ago

Last summer, a 16-year-old migrant was killed at a Mississippi slaughterhouse when he was sucked into a machine that he was cleaning.

Setting aside his age, why was he cleaning it while it was operating in the first place? Like, I'd assume that that isn't okay and that seems more concerning than whether the guy is 16 or 18.

googles

According to the company, he said that he wasn't a minor when applying. I've got no idea what their ability or responsibility is by way of validating that:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/07/20/mississippi-mar-jac-poultry-plant-worker-death/70438611007/

In the company's release, provided Thursday to USA TODAY, Mar-Jac said "this individual's age and identity were misrepresented on the paperwork." The name of the staffing company was not identified.

"Although the investigation is still ongoing, it appears now that this worker is less than 18 years of age and should not have been hired," the company said. "Mar-Jac MS would never knowingly put any employee, and certainly not a minor, in harm's way."

...but age aside, they should be able to tell whether anyone is cleaning a machine while it's operating.

And it looks like some other people (not minors) also died shortly before that:

In 2020, a 33-year-old was killed after he and another person were "horse-playing with machinery" in the battery-charging room of the facility, Hattiesburg police said at the time. In June 2021, a 48-year-old died after he was injured in an incident involving heavy machinery.

I assume that the company isn't encouraging horseplay, and I've no idea what drove the machinery accident, but that still seems like it'd be getting into the frequency where I'd want to know why people of any age are getting killed.

tal , 3 months ago

I think that the article is kind of blowing the statement a bit out of proportion.

Nobody has ever said that Ukraine -- which is at war -- does not have the legal right to hit targets inside Russia.

The issues are just diplomatic, not legal. Some countries don't want the weapons they supply being used to hit targets in Russia. Ukraine has been hitting targets in Russia for some time with her own weapons.

I don't think that this will change what Ukraine is doing, nor that it represents a change in the diplomatic positions of those countries.

tal , 3 months ago

I don't think that that's a line that Putin drew. For him to do that, he would have had to distinguish between occupied Ukrainian territory and Russian territory.

tal , 3 months ago

Supporting Navalny and disagreeing with the invasion of Ukraine, especially to the point of armed rebellion, aren't really the same thing.

tal , 3 months ago

I'm kind of curious why this shift towards having the Russian Air Force being so heavily involved, when it was held back on for a long time earlier.

This isn't even counting this loss:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/02/19/sukhoi-massacre-ukraine-has-shot-down-six-of-russias-best-jets-in-just-three-days/?sh=16027dba655f

But the recent rate of loss—six jets in three days—is unsustainable if it continues. The Russian air force has lost 95 jets since February 2022. That’s four per month. In the last week, however, the air force has written off warplanes at a rate of 60 per month.

For an air force that has just a thousand fast jets, losing 60 in a month would be catastrophic.

Maybe they're thinking that Ukraine's Patriot stores -- which I understand are what's being used to do the recent shootdowns of the RuAF's planes -- are low? Hoping to face-tank enough missiles until they can start leveraging the aircraft? I'd think that they'd do better to use ballistic missiles for that.

Is there particular urgency to act now such that the loss of the aircraft is acceptable?

Are they trying to exploit the present aid delay from the US?

tal , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

Some might not make it, and some I suppose they can find a way or another. Have someone who is going back to Russia drive it back or something.

Here's an American soldier who looted Hitler's phone book, one of Hitler's tapestries, a stainless steel serving tray of Hitler's, a sheet and blanket from Hitler's bed, some awards presented to Hitler by the mayors of some German towns, and some of Hitler's wine glasses, plus a sword from Goering's house:

https://donmooreswartales.com/2010/09/27/fred-butts-2/

I pulled a sheet off Hitler’s bed, wrapped my loot in it, and threw it over my shoulder. As we started to head down the mountain a couple of newspaper reporters and several more American soldiers arrived at The Eagle’s Nest.

By the time I got my loot down the mountain most of the wine glasses with Hitler’s initials on them were broken. People have asked how we got all the stuff home. Two of the lieutenants in our battalion were being reassigned directly to the war in the Pacific. We used their foot lockers to get the stolen stuff back to the USA.

tal , 3 months ago

I'm not saying that it's morally equivalent, just that that's quite a collection to haul across Europe -- in an era when most transport was still by horse -- and across the Atlantic Ocean.

The Russian soldiers looting in OP's video are in a world with motor vehicles, probably some kind of working international postal system, and live in a neighboring country.

tal , 3 months ago

I generally agree with your broader message, but not this sentence:

You don’t get to violate a law and then claim protections of that law itself.

Someone violating a law does not remove them from protection provided by that law. Someone who commits rape, for example, does not have legal protection against themselves being raped removed.

EDIT: As trivia, though, there are mostly-historical cases where people can have the protection of the law removed from them:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlaw

An outlaw, in its original and legal meaning, is a person declared as outside the protection of the law. In pre-modern societies, all legal protection was withdrawn from the criminal, so anyone was legally empowered to persecute or kill them. Outlawry was thus one of the harshest penalties in the legal system. In early Germanic law, the death penalty is conspicuously absent, and outlawing is the most extreme punishment, presumably amounting to a death sentence in practice. The concept is known from Roman law, as the status of homo sacer, and persisted throughout the Middle Ages.

Piracy would have something similar apply:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostis_humani_generis

Hostis humani generis (Latin for 'an enemy of mankind') is a legal term of art that originates in admiralty law. Before the adoption of public international law,[when?] pirates and slavers were already held to be beyond legal protection and so could be dealt with by any nation, even one that had not been directly attacked.

A comparison can be made between this concept and the common law "writ of outlawry", which declared a person outside the king's law, a literal out-law, subject to violence and execution by anyone. The ancient Roman civil law concept of proscription, and the status of homo sacer conveyed by proscription may also be similar.

Perhaps the oldest of the laws of the sea is the prohibition of piracy, as the peril of being set upon by pirates, who are not motivated by national allegiance, is shared by the vessels and mariners of all nations, and thus represents a crime upon all nations. Since classical antiquity, pirates have been held to be individuals waging private warfare, a private campaign of sack and pillage, against not only their victims, but against all nations, and thus, those engaging in piracy hold the particular status of being regarded as hostis humani generis, the enemy of humanity. Since piracy anywhere is a peril to every mariner and ship everywhere, it is held to be the universal right and the universal duty of all nations, regardless of whether their ships have been beset by the particular band of pirates in question, to capture, try by a regularly constituted court-martial or admiralty court (in extreme circumstances, by means of a drumhead court-martial convened by the officers of the capturing ship), and, if found guilty, to execute the pirate via means of hanging from the yard-arm of the capturing ship, an authoritative custom of the sea.

tal , 3 months ago

A pretty likely outcome here is that he goes to the US, gets sentenced, and it turns out that he would have long-since been out of prison had he not spent all the time on the lam more-or-less cooped up; that a lot of the effective sentence will have been one he created himself by going on the run.

Maybe he can get some of that counted as time served -- I dunno if the time spent in the UK in prison doing appeals against extradition counts -- but the time hanging out in the Ecuadorian embassy definitely doesn't.

EDIT: This is talking about Florida state law, but it sounds like it's not entirely-guaranteed either way; if federal law works as Florida law does, he might get credit for some of the time served in British prison:

https://criminaldefenseattorneytampa.com/extradition/international-extradition/

Credit for Time Served While Awaiting Extradition to the U.S.

In Calafell v. State, 263 So. 3d 216 (Fla. 3d DCA 2019), the court considered whether a person should receive additional credit for time spent in custody in an Argentine jail awaiting extradition to Florida to face charges.

Section § 921.161(1), Fla. Stat., provides:

“A sentence of imprisonment shall not begin to run before the date it is imposed, but the court imposing a sentence shall allow a defendant credit for all of the time she or he spent in the county jail before sentence. The credit must be for a specified period of time and shall be provided for in the sentence.”

In Kronz v. State, 462 So.2d 450, 451 (Fla. 1985), the court held that although section 921.161(1) requires a trial judge to give credit for time served in Florida county jails pending disposition of criminal charges, it does not require awarding such credit for time spent in jails in other jurisdictions.

The court noted that “[t]he trial judge does, however, have the inherent discretionary authority to award credit for time served in other jurisdictions while awaiting transfer to Florida. In this latter circumstance, the trial judge should consider the appropriateness of an award of credit for time served when the defendant was incarcerated in another state solely because of the Florida offense for which he or she is being sentenced.” Id.

EDIT 2: Here's a ruling on California law on intrastate extradition. According to this, California apparently does grant credit for time served while fighting extradition under specific conditions, but also says that this is probably not something that most states would permit:

https://research.ceb.com/secondary-sources/area/criminal-law/15clpp0000/c350.44

50 Extradition

III. UNIFORM CRIMINAL EXTRADITION ACT (UCEA)

§50.44 J. Credit for Time in Custody Awaiting Extradition

A defendant who has been in custody in another jurisdiction because of an untried charge in California, when finally tried and sentenced in California, is entitled to credit for presentence time served even though he or she resisted extradition, if the presentence time served in the other jurisdiction was for the same offense for which the defendant was convicted in California. In re Watson (1977) 19 C3d 646 (defendant granted credit for 285 days under Pen C §2900.5 for presentence time spent in Texas jail fighting extradition to California). If the defendant was in custody in the other jurisdiction for related and unrelated offenses, California must grant credit only for time served if the defendant was arrested first on the California warrant. In re Joyner (1989) 48 C3d 487 (no credit for time served because California hold put on defendant after he was arrested in Florida for crime allegedly committed there).

Defense counsel should be cautioned, however, that Watson is not binding on other states and probably represents a minority view. This should be considered in deciding whether to resist extradition, because the fugitive may be doing "dead time" in California while he or she is fighting extradition to another state. When the fugitive faces very serious charges in the demanding state, defense counsel in California should contact the attorney or agency who will represent the defendant in the demanding state and find out what the law is in that state on credit for time served, and factor that into the decision of whether and how to resist extradition.

tal , 3 months ago

There are a few laws -- such as child sex tourism performed by US citizens abroad -- where the US asserts extraterritorial jurisdiction (in that case, because wealthy US citizens discovered that they could just go to countries with corrupt law enforcement/judiciary and buy them off; even if they can beat the local justice system, the American one will go after them using American anti-child-sex-tourism law). Same thing for some anti-terrorism laws. My bet is that this is probably one of those.

googles

Yeah, sounds like it.

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/LSB/LSB10291

The United States’ indictment alleges that Assange committed one count of conspiracy (18 U.S.C. § 371)
to commit computer intrusion in violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) (18 U.S.C. §
1030).

https://www.natlawreview.com/article/extraterritorial-application-computer-fraud-and-abuse-act

A brazen and sophisticated computer intrusion into the records of over 145 million Americans launched from computer hackers based in China led to recent criminal prosecutions under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. [1] Courts are willing to extend American law beyond U.S. boundaries often when criminal misconduct takes place overseas that injures Americans. The Constitution grants Congress broad powers to enact laws with extraterritorial scope.[2] The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1030 (“CFAA”), is one such statute that provides criminal and civil remedies resulting from unauthorized access to computers used in interstate commerce or communications.[3] And, it further provides for extraterritorial jurisdiction for criminal or civil violations of the CFAA.

The CFAA’s potential reach goes beyond U.S. borders and packs a jurisdictional punch that will likely be able to bring a foreign party into an American court. Thus, a computer hacker outside the U.S. who causes injury[26] here is likely not immune from a civil or criminal action.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/the-charges-against-julian-assange-explained

The indictment includes one count of conspiracy to hack a computer to disclose classified information that “could be used to injure” the U.S. According to the indictment, Assange “conspired” with Manning by helping her crack a Defense Department computer password in March 2010 that provided access to a U.S. government network that stored classified information and communications.

Hmm. That does raise some interesting questions, though. Assange was charged with conspiracy to violate the CFAA. The justification for the CFAA being extraterritorial would be that you can access computers across international lines. In theory, Assange might have conspired with people in the US to commit murder, and I don't think that that would have applied. I wonder if there's some sort of doctrine where conspiracy to commit a crime has extraterritorial jurisdiction apply if it would apply to the original crime.

googles

Ah, sounds like it.

https://globalinvestigationsreview.com/guide/the-practitioners-guide-global-investigations/2022/article/extraterritoriality-the-us-perspective

Extraterritoriality: The US Perspective

In addition, courts have reasoned that ‘the extraterritorial reach of an ancillary offense such as conspiracy is coterminous with that of the underlying statute’.

tal , 3 months ago

The country where he is located Ecuador. That’s how embassies work. He is on Ecuadorian soil

That is not true, though it's a common misconception. Embassies are not extraterritorial. They are granted specific legal protections by treaty by the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations that prevents the host country's law enforcement from entering and arresting people, but the territory on which they are located does not belong to the guest country.

The ability to provide asylum in an embassy is based on this text:

https://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventions/9_1_1961.pdf

Article 22

1. The premises of the mission shall be inviolable. The agents of the receiving State may not enter
   them, except with the consent of the head of the mission.

2. The receiving State is under a special duty to take all appropriate steps to protect the premises
   of the mission against any intrusion or damage and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of the
   mission or impairment of its dignity.

3. The premises of the mission, their furnishings and other property thereon and the means of
   transport of the mission shall be immune from search, requisition, attachment or execution.

The only case I can think of off-the-cuff where territory was explicitly made extraterritorial was during World War II. The Dutch royal family had fled abroad due to the Netherlands being occupied by the Nazis, and Princess Margriet was born there. I vaguely recall that there is some restriction in Dutch law that requires a member of the royal family to be born on native Dutch soil to remain in the line of royal succession or something like that.

The Canadian parliament passed a law to, for a brief period of time, render the maternity ward of the hospital in which Princess Margriet was to be born, Dutch territory.

googles

Actually, looks like I misremembered that. According to Wikipedia, even in that case, they didn't declare it to be Dutch territory, just to not be part of Canada:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Margriet_of_the_Netherlands

The Dutch royal family went into exile when the Netherlands was occupied by Nazi Germany in 1940, and went to live in Canada. Margriet was born in Ottawa Civic Hospital, Ottawa. The maternity ward of the hospital was temporarily declared to be extraterritorial by the Canadian government.[3][4] This ensured that the newborn would not be born in Canada, and not be a British subject under the rule of jus soli. Instead, the child would only inherit Dutch citizenship from her mother under the principle of jus sanguinis, which is followed in Dutch nationality law. Thus, the child would be eligible to succeed to the throne of the Netherlands. This would have applied if the child had been male, and therefore heir apparent to Juliana, or if her two older sisters died without eligible children.

It is a common misconception that the Canadian government declared the maternity ward to be Dutch territory. That was not necessary, as Canada follows jus soli, while the Netherlands follows jus sanguinis. It was sufficient for Canada to disclaim the territory temporarily.

tal , 3 months ago

https://www.marketplace.org/2024/01/29/why-credit-card-debt-rising-again/

Another reason credit card debt has been rising is because of the strong job market.

That’s because people with jobs feel comfortable spending money on their credit cards, said Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab — a Marketplace underwriter.

Hmm. I would have guessed the opposite -- that you borrow if forced to in an emergency like a job loss, but if you have income, then you don't need to take out debt. Apparently that's not what humans actually do.

tal , 3 months ago

calculus

I'd say that about the first half of Calculus I was useful to me, taught concepts.

However, a lot of the rest of it, as well as most of the next two calculus classes I took, involved memorizing tricks to do symbolic integration by hand. That is, frankly, of limited use to even people who need to do symbolic integration.

I remember going by my calculus professor's husband's (another math professor) office once to deal with some project I was doing and some integration came up and he promptly threw it into Mathematica on his computer to do it. I commented on it and he said "yeah, I don't have time to spend doing these by hand".

My smartphone and computers have Maxima installed, a free and open-source computer algebra system capable of doing symbolic integration. I have that with me all the time. It's very rare that I need to do symbolic integration in the first place.

"But what if you don't have a calculator with you?"

Today, that's usually a smartphone, but same idea.

In my parent's generation, they taught people to manually compute square roots. It was some numerical approximation, don't know what they did exactly, probably something like "pick a number, divide, average result and divisor, repeat with average". They didn't bother to teach that by the time I was going to school. It was just expected that you'd use a calculator.

I remember reading Richard Feynman's book, about how he used to show off some mental math shortcuts (much more useful in an era before calculators).

I agree that memorizing certain mental math processes can be useful, but the time wasted on doing symbolic integration in calculus is still one of my major annoyances, looking back. There is no shortage of material in mathematics that is useful and could be in the curriculum, and instead we did symbolic integration.

Maybe curriculum has improved since then.

tal , 3 months ago

I don't know if this is in fact the case for you, but often codecs can provide better compression if they can spend more CPU time trying to find an optimal encoding.

Cameras have to do real-time encoding on a limited-power device. YouTube doesn't have those constraints and may spend more computation time on encoding.

tal , 3 months ago

https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/05/31/central-asia-russia-china-kazakhstan-kyrgyzstan-sco-play-both-sides/

Central Asian countries have always made a strong play for being the master of their own destinies. Policymakers in the region tout their ability to sit in the driver’s seat and navigate international relations through balancing everyone against each other. Yet last month’s high-level engagements with China and Russia have instead served to highlight Central Asia countries’ growing bonds with both powers and the shrinking room for maneuver they have in international relations.

The invasion of Ukraine has thrown Beijing’s role in Central Asia newly into question, both in terms of Moscow’s bandwidth to play a security provider role in the region while Ukraine consumes its military, and fears about how Moscow’s revanchist eye might turn toward the region.

In Kazakhstan, this fear is acute given the ease with which one can look at the country through Moscow’s eyes and see a very similar history that could justify an incursion as Putin did in Ukraine. The nation shares a long border with Russia and has a large ethnically Russian population that often feels targeted by national policies seeking to advance the Kazakh language. Senior Russian figures (including Putin) have questioned the nation’s statehood. Back in September 2014, after he first pushed an incursion into Ukraine, Putin seemed to deny Kazakh statehood in a speech, saying that then-President Nursultan Nazarbayev had “created a state on a territory that never had a state.”

Consequently, when Xi visited Kazakhstan in September 2022, a lot of public noise was made about his declaration that China would support “Kazakhstan in safeguarding national independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.” Among more optimistic public commentators, this was seen as a clear message to defend Kazakhstan against potential Russian aggression.

In contrast, speaking to officials in Kazakhstan and the wider region, we found a far more sanguine picture. Most of them noted the similarity in what Xi said in Kazakhstan to what China had said about Ukraine before the Russian invasion (and even in the peace plan proposed by China), and China’s lack of action in stopping the conflict there. “We are on our own” was one particularly stark assessment we heard in Kazakhstan.

This highlights both the fact that China and Russia are eager to coordinate in Central Asia and that their basic aims in the region are the same. This complicates diplomacy for the Central Asian governments that have long sought to play the two countries off each other. And it is a perfect articulation of the shrinking geopolitical space that Central Asia increasingly finds itself within.

Entirely surrounded by powers in some level of conflict with the West, Central Asia finds its options are increasingly limited. This is not to say other options are not available—simultaneous to the Xian summit, Kazakhstan hosted a high-level economic forum with the European Union; the United States is a constant presence; and Turkey has made a great deal of noise about Turkic influence in the region over the past year via the Organization of Turkic States. But as the ties that bind China and Russia thicken, Central Asia will struggle to really balance against them.

tal , 3 months ago

Even if they want to demo it, I'm sure that there's a training version.

googles

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPG-7

An RPG-7 launcher (top) with a Bulgarian PG-7G inert training warhead and booster (bottom)

Yeah.

tal , 3 months ago

Why are they waiting for more than two years now to order any shells while European producers are begging and begging?

This won't be new production, not if they can deliver within weeks. I expect that Czechia is going to be saying that they're willing to give up some level of their existing military stockpiles that they previously hadn't if someone will foot the bill (which means that they'd have funds to replace them).

All countries will have some level of emergency reserves left for their own military; they won't leave themselves completely without munitions.

EDIT: Sorry, not Czechia's stockpile, as the article says "abroad" -- probably in someone else's stockpiles. Might be some set of countries outside the EU.

tal , 3 months ago

That's about 100 km from the front, so unless this is Russian air defense shooting at Russian planes again or some kind of catastrophic in-flight failure, I assume that that was an S-300 or Patriot.

tal , 3 months ago

Could be, yeah.

Hmm. Though looking at the article again, it says that Ukraine claimed several kills.

I'd guess that if Ukraine reported taking it down, it probably was because they knew that their missile impacted the plane and it went down.

Like, more likely than a failure or greatly-delayed destruction.

tal , 3 months ago

I still feel like we haven't had really strong candidates for some elections now.

2016:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-distaste-for-both-trump-and-clinton-is-record-breaking/

Americans’ Distaste For Both Trump And Clinton Is Record-Breaking

The Democratic primary will technically march on, but Hillary Clinton is almost certainly going to be her party’s nominee. Same with Donald Trump. And voters don’t appear thrilled at the prospect: Clinton and Trump are both more strongly disliked than any nominee at this point in the past 10 presidential cycles.

2020:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/us/politics/polls-trump-biden.html

Both Candidates Are Widely Disliked (Again). This Time, Biden Could Benefit.

This could be the second straight presidential contest in which both candidates are viewed negatively by a majority of voters.

2024:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/25/politics/biden-trump-unpopular-president-election-2024/index.html

Biden vs. Trump: The 2024 race a historic number of Americans don’t want

tal , 3 months ago

The article says that it's a stock photo, but I doubt it. Nobody's using WW2 tanks, and this is probably also Ukrainian, based on the caption.

EDIT: Doesn't look like the KV-1 has a side skirt, as the tank in the photo does.

tal , 3 months ago

Realistically, the thing was always living on borrowed time.

I could have believed that Twitter and Reddit might have been okay with alternate third-party platform-native clients, but not third-party Web frontends.

tal , 3 months ago

You also can't kill surrendered enemies, but that's not what the situation was here. Though for drones (and airpower in general, or even things like artillery) surrendering is obviously more-problematic than it was in an era when infantry did a larger chunk of the killing.

I do recall reading about one point where a Russian soldier did surrender to a Ukrainian drone, and they led him to captivity with the drone, but obviously that's an unusual case; both the drone operator and the surrendering soldier have to go out of their way to make that work.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/15/europe/russian-soldier-surrenders-drone-bakhmut-ukraine-intl-hnk/index.html

There are no accepted conventions today to facilitate that sort of thing, and the technology isn't terribly well-suited to it.

tal , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

I don't think that there is much by way of passive defenses againet FPVs.

• Very heavily armored vehicles, when buttoned up, like main battle tanks. If a drone is dropping a specialized weapon on the roof, it still may not provide protection. I'm sure that Ukraine (and Russia) have dedicated weapons for this, and I remember, months back, that Ukraine asked that even if we weren't going to send them cluster munitions that we let them disassemble weapons containing DPICM
  submunitions and convert those for drone drops; those will take out a tank if they hit the top.

• Underground bunkers if netting is sufficient to keep drones from getting near an entrance. Multiple drones may still be able to hit the same spot and get in (e.g. drone #1 destroys the netting, drone #2 flies in). It might be possible to create some form of loose, strong netting that is blast-resistant. I don't know if an explosion the size of a grenade would do much to chain-link fencing. Might also be possible to use multiple layers to increase resistance.

• My guess is that being far enough underground works, if the FPV's signal can't reach that far back. Like, being in a mine or a sub-basement, or a cave. Maybe a sufficiently smart autonomous drone or a mesh-networked set of drones could still deal with that, but it can't just be a human operator flying a lone drone by camera then. Obviously, this is not going to be quick or easy to construct, and generally isn't readily-available. But if you're sufficient-desperate, over a long-enough period of time, it might be viable. In the Vietnam War, we had air superiority; the Viet Cong dug ever-larger tunnel complexes to help mitigate this. There is a field of robotics that deals with tunnel/mine traversal, but it's more then just flying an FPV through one.

Maybe decoys. Humans are harder to create convincing decoys of then vehicles, though. We have made some reasonably-convincing robots for testing uniforms under stress, but I doubt that they are terribly inexpensive and aren't intended for this; it's probably technically possible to create a decoy soldier, but the technology isn't really there yet. And at the point that they are practical, you're maybe just talking about replacing human infantry anyway, rather than limiting damage to it.

Maybe just try to reduce the degree to which infantry is used. If you can place (or maybe air-deploy) cameras or other sensors in an area that can do the monitoring that an infantry patrol would, then maybe you can avoid using the infantry patrol. Drones themselves can take some of that role.

There are bomb suits that bomb-disposal specialists use, but they're very heavy and awkward and are going to be a problem for infantry to use in combat.

I haven't been reading material on the subject, but I'd guess that the best bet for infantry today is to spread out. An FPV can still kill one soldier cost-effectively, but it'd reduce the damage. In a number of videos I've seen, the squads being hit are really bunched up. To some degree, that can probably be countered by using more or larger drones that can carry more munitions; a grenade or FPV drone is still a good trade for even just one soldier.

Maybe jamming, but I think that the odds are pretty weighted against the jammer here. Even if you have some kind of really fancy electronic warfare system that can identify the location of the drone and do directional transmissions at it to boost energy in that direction, the same is applicable to the drone operator's transmitter, and an easier task. Frequency-hopping spread-spectrum systems mean that the jammer has to broadcast on many frequencies simultaneously to be ensured of colliding with the frequency the drone is using at any point, whereas the drone only needs to get through on a narrow frequency at any one time. That being said, unlike the drone operator, the drone can only pump out so much energy; jamming the response coming back to the drone operator, might work...but the drone operator doesn't need to have the transmitter and the receiver co-located, and finding the receiver may not be easy. Can even have multiple receivers. You can maybe use mesh networking or something with other drones, too. On the whole, while jamming might help counter drones, I'm skeptical that it's going to be sufficient in on its own.

Other then that, the best bet is to probably develop active defenses -- to detect the drone and kill it with a counter-drone weapon. Obviously, we're not there today technologically, though I can believe that developing a counter of that form is possible.

tal , 3 months ago

It definitely isn't anything like $1T