I think it's great that they're keeping their traditional garments. I wouldn't mock anyone with the cultural strength to do so. More cultures should have done it. (Edit: I know you're not trying to insult them in particular, I was making more of a "by the way" comment.)
I wanna poking fun at the breeze picking up at just the right moment to hint at what's really going on in this shot: Trump's back and broker than ever under a mountain of Putini pressure, but that sassy cowboy in an OG bigot dress (the KKK're so jealous) just can't quit him.
Australia's Queensland state government said on Friday it would run coal power plants at least into the 2040s, reversing a previous plan to pivot rapidly to renewables
Owners of diesel vehicles made by Mercedes-Benz, Ford, Nissan, Renault and the Stellantis-owned brands Peugeot and Citroen between 2012 and 2017 allege the companies cheated emissions tests.
The manufacturers are accused of using unlawful "defeat devices", which detected when vehicles were being tested and ensured nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions were kept within legal limits under test conditions.
Driven by economic and social pressures, tens of thousands of workers from China, mostly middle-aged men, are employed in eastern Indonesia’s nickel industry, which has sprung up in the last decade. Just as critical minerals crisscross the globe before they’re incorporated into cutting-edge products, so too do some of the people who make the world’s green dreams a reality.
[According] to more than a dozen of these Chinese workers and their family members, as well as Indonesian labor leaders who have negotiated factory conditions with top Chinese executives [it was found] that, even following fatal accidents at the smelters, efforts to improve working conditions have been slow, hindered by a lack of oversight from companies, governments, and international labor groups that were dependent on U.S. funding terminated by the Trump administration. We also obtained an internal company review of a nickel smelter expansion that shows facilities are likely spreading pollution and illness well beyond factory walls. Despite the challenges, new nickel processing plants continue to emerge in Indonesia and hire from China.
Before joining Indonesia’s nickel rush, most of these Chinese men had spent almost all their lives in their home country, working in declining steel factories. [...] they had never before owned a passport or boarded a flight. Their leap into the nickel refining industry has helped create entire towns on remote islands in Indonesia, and it’s made them an unlikely backbone of the world’s green energy transition.
[...]
Nickel is a crucial component of EV batteries and energy storage systems. More nickel in an EV battery pack means longer mileage and improved performance from a single charge.
[...]
Indonesian workers, the Chinese companies that run the nickel factories, and international labor and environmental organizations have been attempting to improve working and living conditions. But the few changes that have taken place have come slowly. And such efforts have been hamstrung by the Trump administration’s new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which terminated almost all international grants from the U.S. Department of Labor. Those grants funded various initiatives to improve labor rights, occupational safety, and health, including in Indonesia.
[...]
“Tsingshan [Holding Group, a Chinese metal and stainless steel giant Tsingshan that was among the first companies to set up production in Indonesia in the early 2010s] started to snatch up economically strained factory workers nonstop in droves,” said Jiahui Zeng, an anthropologist studying eastern Indonesia’s nickel belt at Tsinghua University in China. “For Chinese nickel workers, migration is pushed by family pressure, such as buying an apartment in a better school district for their children or preparing for a son’s marriage.” But these pressures make Chinese workers extremely vulnerable.
“Terrified of losing their income, they are reluctant to organize and wary of speaking out in Indonesia,” she added.
[...]
[Chinese migrant worker] Wong recalled the instructor telling them there were more than 40 accidents in the industrial parks [in Indonesia] each year that resulted in severe injuries and even deaths. [...] “I didn’t understand much at the time,” said Wong.
But before long, Wong had two close calls of his own. First, he burned the back of his right hand when metallic liquid from the furnace splashed at the exit of the waste tunnel as he was walking past. And one night after heavy rain, soon after he clocked out and left the furnace, Wong stepped on what he thought was a puddle, only to find out that it was a neck-deep pond. Not knowing how to swim, he was only able to save himself by grabbing a nearby pole and pulling himself out of the water.
[...]
Some workers he knew weren’t so lucky. An Indonesian colleague suffered severe injuries to his fingers after disregarding safety protocols to manually fix a glitch in the pouring chain. Another Chinese worker walked onto the top of an electric furnace in wet working boots and was instantly electrocuted into unconsciousness.
[...]
[A] review showed workers at the nickel-processing facilities, as well as residents nearby, were increasingly seeking care for respiratory diseases like tuberculosis, acute pharyngitis, and acute rhinitis. Despite the industrial park being operated by multibillion-dollar corporations, the villages surrounding it still lacked wastewater drainage systems and access to clean water. In six villages outside the complex, a quarter of the residents live less than 30 feet from polluted water sources, and 41% of the residents have symptoms of dry cough.
In 12 nearby villages, the number of children with signs of stunted growth due to malnutrition and gastrointestinal infections increased by 50% in two years. “Officials and agencies know about all this,” an environmental consultant and author of part of the report, who chose to remain anonymous for fear of retribution at work, told Grist. Hardly any of the health and environmental risks were present before the construction of the Morowali Industrial Park [in Indonesia] they said.
[...]
Yet as eastern Indonesia’s nickel industry grows, Chinese migrant workers still don’t have a seat at the table in discussions about their careers and safety.
Over 30,000 Chinese workers travel to Indonesia’s remote islands to work in nickel smelters, fueling the global EV transition while facing dangerous conditions.
Ah yes the oil supporting Uproot Project of the Environmental Justice Fellowship...
Just because nickel mining is verifiably awful doesn't mean oil rig work is any better. The point most serious environmental groups make is that we shouldn't just replace fossil fuel based exploitation and environmental destruction with metal and rare earth ones instead.
We should focus on an overall reduction of consumption not just taking the over 1 billion cars and turning them electric but instead rethinking our whole relationship with nature.
The oil industry spends hundreds of millions a year trying to stop EV through propoganda. Any article that starts with "Powering the deadly EV boom" is helping that campaign, even if they mean well.
Actually fair enough - having read the whole article it does seem much more preoccupied with the dangers of nickel mining than the proven negative effects of fossil fuels and stuff like this is quite obvious pro-ff propaganda
It’s almost impossible to transition away from fossil fuels without nickel from Indonesia,” said Johnny Linghui Ni, a United Kingdom-based research analyst for Project Blue, a data provider on critical minerals. “And it may stay this way until at least 2030, if not longer.”
Still useful to learn about but compared to the landscape of positive oil rig articles this definitely doesn't pass the smell test - thanks!
The article doesnt talk about fossil fuels because it has nothing to do with fossil fuels. Everyone knows fossil fuels are bad, that doesnt give a pass to labor violations and the environmental issues with nickel mining in Indonesia.
Arguing otherwise is like saying that someone writing an article on the health issues of vaping and environmental issues with their battery waste isnt spending enough time talking about how bad smoking cigarettes is, or how bad cigarette butts are for the environment. Its like… the article is talking about completely different shit. Advocating for reforms in the nickel production industry doesnt necessitate opining on how fossil fuels are worse.
People have no media literacy anymore, for fucks sake. Fossil fuels propaganda would spend a ton of time saying “look how bad nickel mining is in comparison to fossil fuel production” which this article doesnt do whatsoever. The only secondary aspect of this article is about the collapse of steel industry in rural northern china has supplied most of the workforce to the nickel plants in Indonesia, and how those areas are contracting due to their workers being exported
I feel it's complicated - on one hand yes they are supposedly anti-fossil fuels and are saying to replace them with electrified alternatives - on the other the website has so many pro-AI articles that do have some anti-ff messaging but also an underlying "well it does suck but it's unrealistic to power them with anything else so whacu gonna do"
Some data centers have invested in transmission and distribution networks, at times increasing their investment by over 35% to connect to the grid. Still, concerns about the energy deficit and the impacts of fossil fuels haven’t affected new investments, Rivera Cerecedo said.
“We aren’t seeing a slowdown in the industry,” she said. “The effort that companies developing data centers are making to stay in Mexico is big.”
Idk I'm just saying that this may not be pro-fossil fuels but its still definitely pro-capitlaism and industrial exploitation under the veneer of neo-liberal human rights concerns..
“My goal is to change hearts and minds.” Sophie Schmidt, the founder of Rest of World, an Award-winning nonprofit international journalism organization focused on the impact of technology beyond the Western bubble. Brunswick's Kirsty Cameron reports.
The amount of people downvoting this very insightful and well written article is particularly inordinate. People just want to pretend that things have no consequences? Rarely, if ever, do market forces create happy-go-lucky stories about global production chains
I guess if it looks like something commissioned by the oil industry, people assume it is. The headline looks like something a bot would link me to try to convince me how "an electric car is the same as an f150 in the end".
Mining nickel looks like it sucks and there's some real consequences to it, but I feel like I'm hearing about it for an other reason.
"We can’t simply wait and assume that a potential Russian attack won't come before 2029," German intelligence chief Martin Jaeger said. "We’re already under fire today."
I mean this was true 20 years ago, it wasn't as obvious before they invaded Georgia in 2008 (let alone now), but multi decade research (including research that accounts for preference falsification) has clearly shown a consistent level of support among a strong majority of russian society for genocidal imperialism.
Russian society's genuine love for genocidal imperialism has nothing to do with propaganda (if that's what you were referring to).
Mind you, they are fully capable of change, they just don't want to and have no incentive to do (Westerners enabling and promoting their victim-hood narratives only contributes to this).
Russian society’s genuine love for genocidal imperialism has nothing to do with propaganda (if that’s what you were referring to).
Oh, I'd venture that propaganda is one big contributor to that sentiment, even if the sentiment has been present for a very long time (certainly since WW2). Old horseshit is still horseshit.
Look at American exceptionalism as another example of long-standing unfounded belief that's exploited by many factions of that country's ruling elite.
As I said, I don't buy the propaganda excuse. Independent information sources (in russian) have always been easily available and accessible by all (literally in under 10 seconds). Just look at the creation dates of the DW Russian or BBC Russian YT channels (or even their own TV Dozdh). By mid 2010s YT was widely available not only on desktop, but even on smartphones. Not to mention russians full well know what the KGB is like and how dishonest they are.
Let me give you an illustrative example.
You have Vladimir Kara-murza, darling of the west, went to jail for public opposition to the full scale invasion, western educated and with UK citizenship. And yet here is a recent statement from Kara-Murza:
There is another reason why the Russian Defense Ministry recruits so many members of ethnic minorities [to fight in the war against Ukraine]: as it turns out, because it is psychologically really difficult for [ethnic] Russians to kill Ukrainians. Because we are one people. We are very close peoples, as everybody knows. We have nearly the same language, the same religion, and centuries of history in common. But if it’s someone from another culture, allegedly it’s easier [for them to kill Ukrainians]. I hadn’t really thought about it before. I thought the reasons were primarily economic. But after what [a colleague who spoke about the Buryats] said, I started thinking about it too.
He said this in a speech to the French senate, no less!
We are not on people and I want nothing to with any of them, be it putin or Vladimir Kara-Murza.
Putin’s anxiety is understandable. The Kremlin knows that public opposition to the Ukraine war is much greater than what its propaganda would admit.
Is Vladimir Kara-Murza under the influence of propaganda while living in the west?
Agreed regarding the negative elements of American exceptionalism. But people in the US have a spectrum of views and the US has had a measure of dynamism in terms of social attitudes. The same cannot be said about the overwhelming majority of russians.
Julia Khazagaeva takes issue with Vladimir Kara-Murza's claim that Russia's ethnic minorities find it easier to kill Ukrainians than ethnic Russians do.
they couldn't and still can't handle their neighbor, so what makes them think they're now all the sudden ready for a new multinational conflict? what is Russian for spread too thin? reliance on their asset djt is helping them but is it enough?
Their state of being unable to handle their neighbour is that they are winning incredibly slowly.
They don't have the ability to conquer anyone else, but that's not the only hot conflict that there can be. Drone attacks? Border skirmishes? Missiles "getting lost"?
Europe has also not successfully increased its military production to cope with the increased threat, so much of Europe's ability to fight back is tied up in Ukraine
All casualties that Putin doesn't give a shit about, so why is that important, really? There may come a point where Russia's high casualty rate has significant domestic impact, but it is not yet. With control of the media, Putin is able to paint a much rosier picture at home, and when his military's ranks are swollen with convicts and North Koreans, the actual losses are of lower impact to begin with.
To put it another way: if Russia is currently losing, what would you call a state in which Russia stops advancing? What would you call a state in which Ukraine were able to take back - and then hold - territory?
People who talk shit about how Russia is losing, is idiotic and so on, I think still have the mentality most people did in the first months of the invasion, when Russia had just been shown to be a complete paper tiger relative to prior expectations. A war they were supposed to win in a few days is still going, and they haven't won it yet - a terrible humiliation for Russia. But the fact that they suffered a terrible humiliation, were ridiculously less powerful than most people believed, doesn't mean they're losing. "Slowly gaining territory at great cost" is not losing. Achieving a victory for Ukraine means a change from the current state of affairs; they need more weapons and support than they are currently receiving.
You haven't actually disagreed with any of the potential things I pointed at Russia being able to do, or at Europe's slow rearmament. Those were the substantive things.
All casualties that Putin doesn't give a shit about, so why is that important, really?
The Russians should put you in charge of signing up new recruits. LMAO
There may come a point where Russia's high casualty rate has significant domestic impact, but it is not yet.
Definitely put you in charge of the enlistment PR team. LMAO
With control of the media, Putin is able to paint a much rosier picture at home, and when his military's ranks are swollen with convicts and North Koreans, the actual losses are of lower impact to begin with.
That explains all the state controlled media encouraging all Russians to take lots of road trips. LMAO
To put it another way: if Russia is currently losing, what would you call a state in which Russia stops advancing? What would you call a state in which Ukraine were able to take back - and then hold - territory?People who talk shit about how Russia is losing, is idiotic and so on, I think still have the mentality most people did in the first months of the invasion, when Russia had just been shown to be a complete paper tiger relative to prior expectations. A war they were supposed to win in a few days is still going, and they haven't won it yet - a terrible humiliation for Russia.
At least you've correctly identified Russia's terrible humiliation. Special Military Operation. LMAO
But the fact that they suffered a terrible humiliation, were ridiculously less powerful than most people believed, doesn't mean they're losing.
Make that your first recruiting slogan. LMAO
"Slowly gaining territory at great cost" is not losing.
To learn more, contact your local Recriting Officer. LMAO
Achieving a victory for Ukraine means a change from the current state of affairs; they need more weapons and support than they are currently receiving.
Yeah, they've only been able to kill a smidgen over a million Russians with their meager resources. Thankfully, the Russians haven't sustained any serious equipment losses. LMAO
You haven't actually disagreed with any of the potential things I pointed at Russia being able to do, or at Europe's slow rearmament.
Sorry, I wasn't able to see any of your points through the field of one point one million sunflowers. LMAO
Most of your reply is just continuing down this nonsensical fantasy. Are you ok?
You still haven't replied to the points about European preparedness potential future russian aggression, and have now to top it all conflated casualties and deaths.
Lmao indeed. But I'm guessing you won't be laughing the next time a cargo ship registered conveniently in the Caribbean "accidentally" causes damage to Western interests. Will you then connect your complacency to what's happening?
You still haven't replied to the points about European preparedness potential future russian aggression, and have now to top it all conflated casualties and deaths.Lmao indeed.
Russians have treachery going for them, and that's about it. As far as military might is concerned, you can watch Russian soldiers, pilots, operators, drivers, vehicles explode in Ukraine. Up close and personal footage.
But I'm guessing you won't be laughing the next time a cargo ship registered conveniently in the Caribbean "accidentally" causes damage to Western interests. Will you then connect your complacency to what's happening?
Sabotage and treachery. This is what you do when you don't have the Might. Whatever master plan you're trying to spell out is an increasingly lame Hail Mary. If you want an accurate assessment of what they're capable of militarily, land, air, or sea, watch them bleed during the Special Military Operation.
Cool! And since "sabotage and treachery" are perfectly capable of dealing great damage to Ukraine and other European nations alike, we should not be gung ho about Russia.
Cool! And since "sabotage and treachery" are perfectly capable of dealing great damage to Ukraine and other European nations alike, we should not be gung ho about Russia.
Conversely, we can watch them hemorrhage abroad, while all their domestic refineries burn.
They are slowly gaining ground. If the war stopped today with the front line frozen they would have failed to achieve key objectives but would have succeeded in stealing vast amounts of territory with natural resources, people and industry (whatevers not destroyed), securing a corridor to Crimea, intimidating many small countries, and creating a bigger buffer between Russia proper and unfriendly countries.
Russia is using WWII equipment, Ukraine recently retook a big piece of land, Russia's economy is on the brink of collapse, opposition of the regime grows bolder day by day.
Yeah it's pretty ridiculous. The outcome is what matters, though.
Ukraine recently retook a big piece of land
I don't think this is true, and in any case, Russia is still advancing consistently. Go on DeepStateMAP and check the past few months (not every day - just once per month) and you will get the picture: no major breakthroughs, but grinding advancement.
Russia’s economy is on the brink of collapse
It's been massively weakened by sanctions but a quick google for russian economy "brink of collapse" reveals as many articles predicting this as dispelling the predictions going back at least two years.
Gaining ground isn't the same thing as winning, a lesson that the Russians should be all too familiar with, as it's how they beat the Germans in WW2 (though a more accurate point of comparison would be Germany's failure against the West in WW1; they held significant ground in France at the time of their surrender. It wasn't that their lines collapsed or that they were outmanoeuvred on the battlefield; it was their economy that could no longer bear the weight of the war). It is, in fact, an extremely effective strategy to slowly cede ground at a cost that is too high for your aggressor to bear, and that's exactly what Ukraine is doing to Russia. This doesn't mean Ukraine is guaranteed to win, but their success largely depends on the continued support of their allies in Europe and North America. Whereas Russia has no real clear path to success at this point.
Russian doctrine relies on punching a hole, moving and exploiting that gap to create a salient and outmanoeuvre your enemy. Ukraine has gotten too good at entrenching, and is creating deeply layered defences that the Russians have no way to break through in a decisive fashion, and Ukraine is being extremely careful with it's manpower, whereas Russian continues to waste theirs on pointless attacks and dispersed operations. We're seeing constant footage and reports of Russian sections consisting of only 2-4 men attacking over open ground with no vehicle support, and getting picked off as they come in by Ukrainian machine gun positions and FPVs. The Russian economy is grinding to a halt under the weight of the war; they held out a lot longer in the face of sanctions than anyone in the West predicted, but the choices they made early on to keep the economy flowing are now turning into major pain points (massive interest rate hikes to control inflation now turning into a serious lack of investment and consumer spending, dumped foreign currency reserves used to float the rouble now leaving them with no fallback for the hard times ahead, etc). Ukraine has developed new long range attack drones that can strike deep into Russia, opening up all of their industry, and particularly their oil refining capabilities, to attack. Russia is so big that they simply cannot defend all of it from aerial attack, and Ukraine's intel is good enough that they can continually shift their focus to wherever Russia isn't defending.
This is why Putin is eager to talk peace now. He would love to, as you describe, stop with their current gains. That would actually constitute a win. The longer this goes on for, the worse it gets for Russia, while Ukraine can continue to hold out for as long as we continue to stand with them and keep them supplied. Their manpower losses are serious, but manageable if they continue with their current strategies, and while Russia continues to hammer their infrastructure, Ukraine has superior - and more efficient - air defence and most of their manufacturing happens outside of the country where Russia can't hit it.
Russian doctrine relies on punching a hole, moving and exploiting that gap to create a salient and outmanoeuvre your enemy.
According to whom?
According to the actual battlefield, Russian doctrine relies on throwing wave after wave of poorly trained criminals and shanghaied DPR/LPR citizens into the machine guns, artillery and drones of the Ukrainians.
Don't get me wrong, there are massive weaknesses, and we may see Ukraine exploit them. But we aren't seeing that translate to battlefield success. Putin hasn't shown any eagerness to talk peace; only the same old "peace" meaning capitulation. He's been keen on that since the beginning.
Funnily enough, experts on Russian battlefield doctrine. The ones I talked to all work in the CAF, but you're welcome to search up your own sources on the subject. This guy was the commander of the US armed forces in Europe from 2014 to 2017, so I'd say he probably knows his stuff, and his analysis aligns with that of the experts I've spoken with;
If you're trying to understand the disconnect between their doctrine and what's actually playing out on the battlefield, it's surprisingly simple really. This is what happens when you have an inflexible command structure that relies exclusively on doctrine and rigid adherence to chain of command (eg, individual soldiers are basically just machines to operated by their superiors), mixed with a huge amount of institutional corruption and an unwillingness to report the basic facts of the situation on the ground because it's politically unfavourable to admit that things aren't going to plan. The doctrine says "Smash a hole" so they try, and fail, repeatedly to smash that hole. That leads to waves of men being thrown at targets to no effect because if you haven't smashed the hole you can't move on to step two, so you just keep on repeating step one.
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The Russian thirst for poorly trained conscripts cannot be adequately explained by corruption and poor reporting obscuring what's actually happening. At some point you have to accept the possibility that Putin knows what's happening and is ok with it.
Sure, it's possible that Russia hasn't changed its doctrine in 3 years, but it seems unlikely. Old doctrine is obsolete on a battlefield where all movements are immediately observed and armoured vehicles are more vulnerable due to a proliferation of anti tank weapons.
But throwing cannon fodder at the guns to reveal where they are, then shooting them with something else - that never stops working as long as you have cannon fodder.
I wonder if we're just arguing over whether this strategy is something deserving of praise, with you thinking that, since I characterise the balance favouring Russia, I think this is strategic genius? In case of that, I don't; it's stupid and wasteful. But it's also working in the sense that it's gradually pushing Ukraine back.
The Russian thirst for poorly trained conscripts cannot be adequately explained by corruption and poor reporting obscuring what's actually happening.
I'm really not sure why you feel this needs any further explanation. I've already covered how their doctrine is failing them, and it's resulting in troops being pushed into the meat grinder instead. If you're confused on some particular point, maybe try asking questions instead.
But throwing cannon fodder at the guns to reveal where they are, then shooting them with something else - that never stops working as long as you have cannon fodder.
75% of battlefield kills in Ukraine are made by explosive equipped FPV suicide drones. These can attack from any position and angle, and can loiter in an area for a long time, so the notion that they're revealing the position of enemy guns with these attacks does not hold up to the reality on the battlefield. It may be the belief of some of the commanders that that's what they're doing, but if so, they're wrong.
But it's also working in the sense that it's gradually pushing Ukraine back.
I covered this in my first reply in this conversation. If you're going to repeat arguments that I've already countered, without offering any additional counterargument or support for your claim, then I might as well try to have a debate about quantum physics with a toddler.
I covered this in my first reply in this conversation.
What you specifically said was "It is, in fact, an extremely effective strategy to slowly cede ground at a cost that is too high for your aggressor to bear" but then ignored the fact that Russia seems extremely willing to bear the cost it is paying.
75% of battlefield kills in Ukraine are made by explosive equipped FPV suicide drones.
Most FPV drone kills are not first strikes against moving troops. They are more often used to to prevent recovery of a disabled vehicle or to finish off someone who's wounded. There is a first-hand account of this here but if you're following the war and think back to videos you've seen of FPV kills you'll probably recognise this.
I’m really not sure why you feel this needs any further explanation.
Think of it this way then: if you can explain a phenomenon by a potential adversary as either a conscious choice or a blunder, attributing it to a blunder is risky, because you start to assume that party is incompetent.
Don't forget the context: I replied to a comment saying that Russia could never threaten another country because it was struggling so much in Ukraine. I don't mean that it's "slowly winning" to mean, "I am very confident that, without other changes, Russia will win, but it will just take many years." I mean that Russia is advancing, able to maintain an effective fighting force and remains a real threat.
There are very real reasons to think that Ukraine's war against Russia's oil economy will eventually provide the pressure away from the frontline that forces Russia to capitulate. But we can't be at all confident of this; economic collapse has, as I mentioned before, been repeatedly predicted and has not yet come to pass. That doesn't mean it won't, but it means that confidence about Russia's inability to threaten violence against other states is dangerously misplaced.
Ukraine's economy is only able to maintain its effort due to massive support from its allies. But Russia has powerful allies too: it would be a foreign policy loss for China if Russia fails; China wants the same "spheres of influence" thinking that Putin does (and Trump does) to prevail internationally.
If you want to say that Russia's slow battlefield progress is of little importance to the war in Ukraine I'd be inclined to agree with you, but if you want to stand by the original comment that Russia's struggles in Ukraine indicate its threats must be toothless I hope I've explained why I disagree.
In 2024 and 2025, I served for six months as an international volunteer on a first-person view attack drone team in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. My team
Thank you for clarifying. I think I have a better grasp of your argument now.
First, I'll try to offer a clarification of my own; when I talk about Russia's preference for rapid breakthrough operations, I've been using the term "doctrine" very specifically. What you're describing is not doctrine, but strategy. Doctrine is neither strategy, nor tactics, but it informs and guides both. I don't disagree that the current Russian strategy is one of disposable conscript assaults, but I suspect that strategy largely arises from the failures of their doctrine in the face of the realities of the conflict, and is not as deliberate a choice as you seem to think. I don't think there's really a way for either of us to be proven right here, as we'd need to be in the room with the Russian generals to say for sure.
Most FPV drone kills are not first strikes against moving troops. They are more often used to to prevent recovery of a disabled vehicle or to finish off someone who’s wounded.
I've read the linked account previously. It's an excellent and informative read, but it's value is deeply limited. Unfortunately, I can't provide many of the countervailing sources that I have access to, because I'm working from direct conversations with people with significant expertise and first hand knowledge, as opposed to documentary sources. I get that that's a claim anyone could make, and I'll freely acknowledge that I have no way to back it up. Trust me or don't, your call. But basically Jakub is speaking from a very limited, anecdotal view of the battlefield. His account may well be true for where he was stationed and what he was doing, but the broader statistics have shown that FPV drones have become the primary source of battlefield casualties, on both sides. This doesn't mean they're the primary mode of attack, per se, but they are the mode that is most consistent in creating casualties. This article from Kyiv Post covers it well, and while I don't consider them an unbiased source, the statistics cited actually come directly from the Russian MOD, and I can't see any value to them in lying about this; overstating the effectiveness of Ukraine's drones would, if anything, make Russia look worse here. According to Russian figures only 20% of battlefield casualties are caused by artillery, and only 4% by small arms. This pretty directly contradicts the claims Jakub makes in his account. I think it also largely speaks to how the war has more or less become a stalemate. Attacks from both sides are limited; even the Russian "human waves" aren't so much waves as very small groups of soldiers, as Gen. Ben Hodges describes in the video I linked earlier.
Don’t forget the context: I replied to a comment saying that Russia could never threaten another country because it was struggling so much in Ukraine. I don’t mean that it’s “slowly winning” to mean, “I am very confident that, without other changes, Russia will win, but it will just take many years.” I mean that Russia is advancing, able to maintain an effective fighting force and remains a real threat.
OK, so more broadly here, I think there's actually a lot we agree on. Yes, it would be deeply foolish to see Russia as a paper tiger, and yes, regardless of where we differ on Russia's state of play in Ukraine, the fact remains that they are certainly able to maintain an effective fighting force outside of that conflict, and would absolutely be able to prosecute additional limited conflicts (we'll get to that in a moment) while maintaining their position in Ukraine. But there are reasons for that that I think undermine some of your argument.
Basically, the problem for Russia is that they're not really able to fully commit to the war in Ukraine. This isn't a "total war" for them, and Putin lacks the ability to convince the Russian public that it should be treated as one. That's a key difference between Russia and Ukraine right now. The Ukrainian people will accept significant hardship if it means victory, because victory is the only path to survival. But for Russia, this war is Putin's nation building project, and maybe a chance to flex a bit and show off their prowess on the world stage. The average Russian isn't ideologically committed to the conflict, and isn't about to accept, say, food rationing in order to win this fight. Thus, while it's true that a significant portion of Russia's overall military capability remains at their disposal, that's because it is politically untenable for them to use it. Even their apparently endless manpower isn't truly endless; conscription waves come at a significant cost, both in terms of political capital (Russian elections may be a fraud, but dictators still only rule because people allow them to, as many kings and tyrants have learned throughout history; Putin is a keen student of history and painfully aware of this fact), and in terms of the economic impact of sending a generation of young men to die in a war instead of allowing them to contribute to your workforce. These costs are growing unsustainable for Russia, and as Ukraine's strikes on their gas refining capabilities continue to bite that will only grow worse.
While I agree that Russia could, in theory, commit significant resources to a wider conflict, there would need to be a reason for them to do so. This is why I say that Russia would have the ability to prosecute additional limited conflicts. That rules out almost every potential target they have at present; an invasion of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Poland, Turkey, or Japan would be a total war with all of NATO, and that's a fight that they would lose. Without the ability to conjure up some existential threat that would make such a war seem completely necessary to the Russian people, there's simply no way for Putin to move in that direction without facing down a full scale public revolt. Either in the short term or the long term it would guarantee the collapse of their government, either because NATO marches on Moscow or their own people do. I'm not saying this lightly; I have friends and loved ones who would likely be the very first in the line of fire if Putin did decide to open up a broader conflict. But I simply do not see a realistic version of events where a broader war with NATO is something that Putin can risk.
Yeah we're not actually that far apart, if at all 😀
The only way they're going to engage in violence anyone else is if they can be confident that it won't incur a response on the order of a NATO counterattack (or even much less). In the mainstream media this is often where the discussion stops, but it's worth considering how Russia and the West are already engaging in actions that could be seen as acts of war: cyber-attacks, airspace incursions from Russia; boarding ships (and presumably also cyber-attacks and airspace incursions our media just doesn't talk about) from the West. There are levels of aggression that will not be met with such a full-throated response, and Russia uses those acts to attempt to punish the West for its support of Ukraine already.
The scope exists there for more escalation, and that is where vigilance must be directed.
No argument on any of those points, I think you nailed it. My concern however is that we're seeing a lot of stuff in the media talking about Russia's readiness for another conventional war, and while that assessment is accurate, it needs much better framing than it's currently getting. When Zelensky is running around saying that Russia is gearing up for another invasion, that's just blatant bullshit. I get it, he needs to fearmonger to keep the weapons to Ukraine flowing, and I respect the hustle, but I worry that people are being worked up into this fear of Russian "escalation" that's going to actually lead to more people pushing for appeasement out of fear of what Russia can do.
Yes, they're not a paper tiger, and if pushed into a conflict with NATO, they could certainly make that conflict a brutal and bloody one (especially if the US sat it out), but that's not the same thing as "Putin will nuke the world if we so much as look at him funny", which is the message that people are getting from the current discussions around Russia's military capabilities. There needs to a better, more informed, more nuanced conversation about the realities of Russia's ability to prosecute a wider scale war.
And I think it is important to discuss the fact that Russia is currently losing this war, despite what their gradual battlefield progress would suggest. That matters because we need the average member of the public to understand that an end is in sight. Our continued support can see Ukraine through this, and there is a version of events where Russia is forced to capitulate and agree to at least somewhat neutral terms for an armistice. No, Ukraine is never going to be rolling tanks into Moscow, but that's not the only version of victory possible. We need people to understand that in order to justify the resources we're supplying to Ukraine (resources that are, it must be emphasised, currently allowing us to tie up and potentially defeat a major threat at a fraction of the cost of a conventional war).
Ukraine has developed new long range attack drones that can strike deep into Russia, opening up all of their industry, and particularly their oil refining capabilities, to attack. Russia is so big that they simply cannot defend all of it from aerial attack, and Ukraine’s intel is good enough that they can continually shift their focus to wherever Russia isn’t defending.
It is especially delicious how Russia's greatest advantage in this war - their size relative to Ukraine, hence significantly higher manpower and resources than Ukraine, as well as territorial depth that let them have important military facilities beyond the range of Ukraine, has been turned by Ukraine into one of Russia's worst strategical weaknesses.
Anywhere in Ukraine can be hit by Russia, even with shitty shit drones like Shaheed, so Ukranians adapted, plus comparativelly to Russia their's is a smaller country hence with fewer sites of strategical value, which means having enough AA to take down most of Russia's missiles and long-range drones is actually possible, which is why Russia's ever larger mass attacks of late have had so much less effect than smaller attacks did at the start of the Invasion.
Meanwhile Russia's strategically important infrastructure is all over a large country, so they would have to deploy AA to defend every individual site and they don't have enough of the kind of AA that can successfully deal with low-flying drones (it doesn't matter how good their coverage with longer range systems like the S-500 is when that weapon system is not suitable to deal with Cessna-152s converted into drones flying at low altitude plus each missile costs many times more than each of those drones).
One consequence of Russia invading Ukraine is that Finland and Sweden joined Nato. Finland has a 1,340 km border with Russia, so Putin has not created a "bigger buffer" - he has managed to double Russia's border with Nato. Also, the countries you label as unfriendly are peaceful countries who are only 'unfriendly' to Russia because they worry about Russian imperialist expansion, and Russia's aggression habit.
The whole border argument is silly anyway. Russia has the longest border of any country, and they expect that border to be surrounded with buffer states that they control. If they engulf them, then there's an even bigger border and more states to seize control over. It doesn't take much to see the self-serving imperialist logic of this position. They'll grab evrything they can until they're stopped. That's the real situation.
Answer me these questions: Is Russia INVADING Ukraine? If so, do they succesfully hold any Ukrainian land? Then they're winning. Even if they only hold and keep east+Crimea, that means they won and gained territory. How does this not compute to some of you?
Ok so what you are telling me is that a country which invades another is still winning even if their army is in full retreat, as long as they remain in the other without giving up?
I am taking your logic to the extreme trying to find the limits of it, you simply stated that as long Russia hols land in Ukraine then Russia is winning, which misses most data telling how well the parties are doing.
Their state of being unable to handle their neighbour is that they are winning incredibly slowly.
They're winning so slowly that they've advanced essentially nowhere after their intial gains three years ago.
Their foreign trade is down the shitter since their ability to export fossil fuels has been badly degraded, and if they run out of money before they win, they're fucked.
Threatening and posturing to destabilize Europe and NATO, while going heavily on grey zone warfare and divisive misinformation campaigns. At the top, should not want any kinetic warfare against NATO, but rhetoric, 'yes' men, and arrogance may make some think they can and should.
That's Putin, always claiming he's got a royal flush even when just holding a pair to try to intimidate the opponent into folding. It's the same every time.
Saddest part is his grand strategy is literally open source, i.e. "Foundations of Geopolitics", written by a Russian ultra nationalist, taught in Russian military academy's. Main points are weakening NATO and US by supporting internal strife and divisions, allowing Russia to take back its "land" and sphere of influence.
Top many willing useful idiots for them to use. . .
I read that book, boy it's a steaming crock of shit. They are following the worst book second to mein kampf that has soo many misconceptions that you really get a sense on why Russia is such a shithole.
Also and as somebody else pointed out, if makes sense for him to try and scare European nations so that they refrain from sending as many weapons and ammo to Ukraine because of thinking they might need those to defend themselves from Russia.
So a sabble-rattling discourse and even the recent air-space intrusions by Russian military planes are cheap ways of trying to get the strategical gain of Ukraine receiving fewer weapons from the rest of Europe and even if those things fail he loses nothing from doing them (at this point, he's hardly going to get in a worst situation than he already put himself in).
It makes absolute sense to pursue a strategy where at best you gain something and at worst you lose nothing.
Now, if the response to the Russian intrusion in European airspace had been for European nations to set up and enforce a no fly for Russia inside Ukraine, that would've definitelly been a loss for him (at the very least the rest of Europe would protect Western Ukraine from Russian drones and air assets, freeing Ukranian assets to be used elsewhere), but the leaderships of European nations have yet to show a willingness or capability to act decisivelly like that as a group: even the help with weapons and ammo took ages to get going properly, was riddled with "red lines" (like "no tanks", then "no jets", then "no long range cruise missiles" and who could forget the whole "can't be used against Russian territory" artificial limitation) and there was a lot of feet-dragging, especially from Germany) so actual direct intervention even if only with air assets doesn't seem likely as response to "mere" Russian air space intrusions and unconventional warfare that can be denied (cyber attacks, election interference, support for extreme political forces, cutting of undersea cables and so on).
It's time for you guys to decide whether you want direct war with Russia or not. Imagining that they aren't ready for it, and this is just a diversion, is seriously risky. I'm nervous with how Europeans are getting bolder the more Ukraine fails to fulfil its military objectives. Nobody is doing more than doubling down on political narratives that were dry in 2022.
I can tell you don't read Ukrainian newspapers by your blind dismissal of any military shortcomings. They bicker about it constantly. Why do you think Zaluzhny as exiled?
You clearly don't understand how organizational hierarchies work. In his position as ambassador he has zero leverage on military strategy, as he did in his military position. Why do you think he was removed from decisionmaking and the country itself?
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
When they are under the Phutatorius Law, I will demand tributes of charcuterie, stinky cheese and Belgian monk beer. Also some good doctors and personal trainers to keep me from becoming too much of a lard-ass while enjoying the spoils.
Japan had an aircraft carrier fleet rivaling the US, better carrier fighter planes than the US, and were occupying a lot of China, who was a peer opponent. It also took a US-USSR alliance to take them down.
Russia on the other hand is able to wreak a lot of havoc, and is also good on some technological fronts, like drone warfare, espionage and ballistic missiles, but it has recently lost a lot of its fleet against an opponent with no navy, and is stuck in trench warfare with equipment that in WWII would be the equivalent of muskets.
This whole posturing is because Russia ran out of easily recruitable people, and needs internal justification to start throwing in conscripts as well.
Oh, BTW it's "Wunderwaffe", if you want a "Wunderwaffle", go to Brussels, they put strawberries and cream on it so high it won't fit in your mouth.
I don't think they work anymore. I would have thought he would have used a small one by now especially after Ukraine made advances into Russian territory.
But what the fuck do I know, I'm just a guy front of a monitor speculating on things I'm not qualified to speculate on.
Robotics has catapulted Beijing into a dominant position in many industries
“It’s the most humbling thing I’ve ever seen,” said Ford’s chief executive about his recent trip to China.
“Their cost and the quality of their vehicles is far superior to what I see in the West,” Farley warned in July.
Andrew Forrest, the Australian billionaire behind mining giant Fortescue – which is investing massively in green energy – says his trips to China convinced him to abandon his company’s attempts to manufacture electric vehicle powertrains in-house.
Other executives describe vast, “dark factories” where robots do so much of the work alone that there is no need to even leave the lights on for humans.
“We visited a dark factory producing some astronomical number of mobile phones,” recalls Greg Jackson, the boss of British energy supplier Octopus.
In Britain, Shenzhen-based BYD multiplied its September sales by a factor of 10 this year – overtaking far more established brands such as Mini, Renault and Land Rover.
A few weeks ago there was a report on some US VC investors who made a similar trip to China and were then 'terrified' ... Now this. Is it somewhat similar to the influencer trips to Xinjiang that then tell the world that the genocide of Uyghurs is not true?
How much do you see in such PR trips? Go a bit upstream the value chain to get the full picture ...
Over 30,000 Chinese workers travel to Indonesia’s remote islands to work in nickel smelters, fueling the global EV transition while facing dangerous conditions.
Ah see now you’re just being straight up dishonest now. It’s trivial for anyone to check your post history and see that this isn’t true.
Up til now I’d given you the benefit of the doubt in assuming you were just a slight oddball with an axe to grind for personal reasons, but now it’s clear this is a troll farm account. On the block list you go.
Is it somewhat similar to the influencer trips to Xinjiang that then tell the world that the genocide of Uyghurs is not true?
Am not an influencer, have been to Urumqi, should be going back in like a month or so.
Maybe it's the people who have never been there and whose job requires them to create/amplify hostile evidence whom are lying, and not every person who travels to Xinjiang.
I did notice that the one posted today is not one of my favorites. The ones I'm used to seeing are hosted by Eric, and are really just car reviews like you'd see anywhere ... just for Chinese cars in China.
Mostly new, some prototypes even. But I also know that the build quality and safety of Chinese automobiles has increased dramatically in the last decade-ish.
I'm suspicious of an article about advanced robotics without any description or depiction of said robots. Humanoid robots are for advertising brochures. They're impractical for almost everything.
This is some anecdote from executives jotted down by journalists who never got near these factories.
Not saying its fake, just lazy and incurious journalism.
The telegraph is a low-quality right-wing rag in the UK that frames everything with a hint of xenophobia. I'd say it's a pretty poor source for "world news". Definitely take it with a large dose of salt.
The whole "dark factory" thing was invented by the Japanese, decades ago, ttbomk.
Huge factory, no lights on in it, simply because there weren't any humans in it.
Patrols for surprise-errors/mistakes/malfunctions were done by flashlight.
Japanese-management got things down to a few cosmetic-blemishes per million units back in the VCR days.
Their quality-control was 2nd to none.
That other Asian industries can learn from the Japanese, in ways that our culture prohibits us from doing, shouldn't be surprising.
All the people who insist that the only thing that China produces is shit-quality "Chinesium", iPhones were produced in China for years ( no idea if they still are, & don't care ) and those things were far tighter quality than anything I've ever built, or than anything ANY of the North Americans I've worked-with have ever built.
China produces a spectrum, ranging from shit-quality to stunning-quality.
Same as we do.
Ideological "glasses" blind us, they don't "help" us see what's actually going-on.
& as another already-identified, "robotics" in no way implies humanoid.
Car-manufactories have been using giant robotic-arms for series-spot-welding for .. decades, now?
I'd do all the fuselage-riveting of old-style sheet-aluminum aircraft by robot, if I was a manufacturer of those things:
once you get the programming right, then you don't have "human error" sabotaging your product-integrity.
It's the same at all scales: what we are good-at, isn't what robots are good-at, & either we segregate the work so that we are doing the adaptive/innovative/human-process-centered stuff, & leave all the mechanical-repitition to robots, XOR we're sabotaging our own competitive-ability.
Exactly as the "strategy" of letting the short-term bottom-line now proves, when Asian industries invest strategically, in future-competitive-capability.
Decades-ago there was an example of the US steel-industry: they coasted on their establishment, while Japan invested in more-precision-chemistry & better foundries, then .. after some years, those investments came on-line, & the US steel industry, which couldn't compete with that, just got the US gov't to establish protectionism, to tarriff the Japanese steel industry, to protect the anti-strategic US companies.
( this is from one of the strategic-management textbooks of Blackwell: it's literally a reference-text case )
Accountability won't ever be tolerated by opportunistic-authority, including industry-incumbents, therefore "protectionism" damages the market to protect the anti-strategy of the incumbent players at the cost of our world's finite-opportunity.
That is normal: S. O. P.
Different cultures value different things.
Some people value making things right, whereas other people value corrupting everything that they can, as much as they can, for sake of how much the "get away with" ( the word "shoddy" is actually the real name of a guy who established that paradigm in the US )
We wouldn't invest in what Asia's invested-in: why should we have any ability to compete?
That is our "strategy".
And when we are economically-butchered by our "strategy", then .. then the oligarchs will simply protect themselves, & exploit the then-current situation, same as now.
Because they have run our country into the ground for their own personal profit, nepotism and corruption while destroying our education system, opportunities and infrastructure. Check mate idiots
Yeah, but WE pay, the oligarchs, in their privilege-bubbles, don't.
That's why they're into en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelera… , aka torch-us-so-they-get-golden-rulership .. style of driving our lobbied/bribed "governments".
WHEN one ideologically-rejects that souls have any future-Eternity, any "reaping of what they have sown", as the root-guru of the Christians rendered the concept "karma",
THEN torching-our-entire-future-for-narcissistic-momentary-pleasure is logical , rightttt?
Political-systems invariably divorce authority from accountability, and that itself proves political-systems unfit for ruling our world.
Responsibilityarchy's the only survivable alternative.
Human-habit opposes responsibilityarchy, with its automatic-accountability mechanisms, more-fundamentally than it opposes ideology-rule, by far.
American car industry literally got bailout after bailout. If GM and Ford had just been allowed to succumb to their shit management Tesla may never had been in a position to be bought by a nazi.
Wealth inequality is worse in the US than in China.
Could be, that data for wealth isn't easily available for both countries.
Income inequality is about the same in USA and China though, Gini coefficient around 0.41 in both countries. Most figures put China slightly more inequal than USA for income.
That is the China that can say "no", despite horrible conditions, burnout from long work hours, counterfeits, and widening wealth gap. If they have become very good, the blame for failure is deserved on Western corporations and industries for complacency and their search for the bottom line.
The US as a whole has been stripped bare by private equity and these conservative fat fuck neck beards are so scared of brown people that they are willingly giving the country away.
That and they can't understand that the world is leaving the US behind.
you mean the same executives that are currently trying their best to circumvent democracy in their countries of origin?
the same ones that are actively demonstrating their disdain for the economies that helped them grow to the massive sizes they are today?
the very same people who have been warning their employees of the bad Chinese companies that manufacture shitty products but secretly began moving operations overseas decades ago?
I think I'd rather just make fewer, more durable things. One computer per year per person is way way too many. And cars barely need to exist at all, compared to the number of cars actually in existence. Vans, trucks, trains, and buses are of course a different story.
They are watering at the mouth to see how easily China is replacing humans with robots and AI. Combined with a censorship and surveillance state, this is the dream of most oligarchs in the Western world at this moment in history.
Worked for a chinese company and here to tell you- that is their approach, always has been.
Wouldn't be surprised if everything the "western execs" saw was a charade put on especially for them that falls apart as easily as Elon's cybertrucks on closer inspection. Don't believe everything you see at an expo or read in The Telegraph.
Relations hit rock bottom in 2023 when Canada's then PM Justin Trudeau accused India of being linked to the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, claims Delhi denied. Both countries suspended visa services and expelled each other's top diplomats.
After the meeting of their foreign ministers in Delhi, the two sides announced a series of measures, including starting ministerial-level discussions on bilateral trade and investment.
"Reviving this partnership will not only create opportunities for enhanced economic cooperation but also help mitigate vulnerabilities arising from shifting global alliances," a joint statement said.
Trump’s speech at Israel’s Knesset, its parliament, was briefly interrupted by lawmakers who were expelled from the plenum after shouting slogans during Trump’s remarks.
The Jerusalem Post identified those protesting as Aymen Odeh, an Arab Israeli and member of the Hadash alliance and Ofer Cassif, a far-left politician who is also a member of the Hadash coalition.
Odeh held up a sign that said “Recognize Palestine,” when he was ejected from the room. He later said in a social media post on X that he is calling for recognition of a Palestinian state as “the simplest demand, a demand that the entire international community agrees on… There are two peoples here, and neither is going anywhere.,” the post read in Hebrew, and that was translated by Grok on X.
Cassif also posted on X that their protest was “to demand justice,” accusing the Israeli government of occupation and apartheid against Palestinians.
President Trump’s speech at Israel’s Knesset, its parliament, was briefly interrupted by lawmakers who were expelled from the plenum after shouting slogans during Trump’s remarks.
Apparently being anti-genocidal and want to recognize the shit ~~ tgg he stay ~~ that is still going on… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Edit: my far scarred fingers cannot type and autocorrect saves a bunch of my fuck ups haha thanks @yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de! For catching that friend 🫡
Imagine the US House kicking MTG or Boebert out on their ass. Or better yet, we need to get back to fist fights and dueling. Sick of the decorum. Especially, ahem, from one side.
Krone says ‘alarming’ levies on about 400 goods including hair dryers and combine harvesters have forced pause
One of Europe’s biggest farm machinery companies, Krone, has been forced to pause exports of large equipment to the US because of “alarming” and little-known new tariffs that are hitting hundreds of products from knitting needles and hair dryers to combine harvesters.
Among the products on the steel derivatives list drawn up in consultation with US manufacturers, Donald Trump is taxing 407 specific products ranging from tiny embroidery stilettos to cooker hoods, barbecues, fridges, freezers, dishwashers, hair curling tongs, grills, elevators, bridge and railway structures, agriculture equipment and wind turbines.
It has meant that since 18 August, companies such as Krone and the construction company Liebherr in Germany have to provide an unprecedented level of detail to customs border authorities certifying the origin, weight and value of any steel in their products right down to nuts and bolts.
Asked what his US customers were saying, he said: “Many of them are surprised. When they saw Mr Trump talk about tariffs, they got the impression that the foreign companies are paying these tariffs, but what they now figure out is that it is the customer who pays.
BRUSSELS — The Dutch government has granted itself the power to intervene in company decisions at Dutch-based Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia.
The highly unusual step, announced late Sunday, grants the country the power to “halt and reverse” company decisions — meaning Nexperia cannot transfer assets or hire executives without Dutch government approval, according to national media.
The move is a significant escalation in relations between the Netherlands and China and could inflame wider trade tensions between Beijing and the European Union, with Europe caught in the middle of a tit-for-tat chips war between the U.S. and China.
I follow a few sites but can’t filter Lemmy by domain or follow domains, so I want to create a community where a bot reposts my RSS feed to surface the most interesting items from those sources. Which Lemmy instances or communities are bot-friendly, have signups enabled, and permit this kind of mass automated posting?
I think that the guys at lemmy.dbzer0.com might not be against it
Although, I think one community containing all the feeds you are interested of might be a little bit too personal for a general population instance. It might be better to set up your own instance, with just one community and join it from the account you use
There is also ibbit.at !meta@ibbit.at but with that one, I guess you will have to ask for separate communities per feed and the admin does care about the type of content it would be pulling
There is also ibbit.at !meta@ibbit.at but with that one, I guess you will have to ask for separate communities per feed and the admin does care about the type of content it would be pulling
This is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for, and I see the sources I wanted are already there, so there's no need to post my own.
Most instances will let u create Jr own community to do that but u won't get any human sorting ap lied that way without building a community around it. Most people would be upset if u did it in existing public comms. I run !news_summary@hilariouschaos.com where I do a similar thing but with AI summaries. The bot is foss and takes RSS feeds as the input.
If you are familiar with Azure there is the project PandaCap by @lizard_socks@lemmy.world which is a self-hosted reader for activity-pub, ATProtocol, RSS/Atom and integrated with DeviantArt and other art sites.
ASP.NET Core Identity is backed by an in-memory database (since 11.1.0); the only allowed login method is via Microsoft account, but DeviantArt and Reddit accounts can be added in user management (which will connect these accounts to Pandacap's main database).
Does this literally mean I need a Microsoft account to run this on my own machine, or is that only for deploying on Azure?
You'd need to change the code so it uses some other OAuth provider to log in - and presumably to check the username that comes back from the OAuth provider to make sure it's yours. It would probably be pretty simple, I just haven't written it myself. Since I deploy it to Azure, it was already dependent on me having a Microsoft account, and I didn't want it to depend on a second account too.
I've been working on a frontend/browser client for "exploring" activitypub instances in my spare time, and CORS basically requires me to have some sort of separate server process that can fetch and auth using my account(s). I'm unsure of how much sense it would make to try to bolt my client on top of your software, but at least now I know I can try without needing to involve a Microsoft account.
The Dutch government has taken control of Nexperia, a Chinese-owned semiconductor maker based in the Netherlands, in an extraordinary move to ensure a sufficient supply of its chips remains available in Europe amid rising global trade tensions.
Nexperia, a subsidiary of China's Wingtech Technology, specializes in the high-volume production of chips used in automotive, consumer electronics and other industries, making it vital for maintaining Europe's technological supply chains.
On Sunday evening, the Dutch Minister of Economic Affairs revealed that it had invoked the "Goods Availability Act" on the company in September in order "to prevent a situation in which the goods produced by Nexperia (finished and semi-finished products) would become unavailable in an emergency."
What exactly does take control mean? Does Wingtech still formally own Nexperia but has to give up control temporarily? Or is this now straight-up property of the Dutch state? I would have loved more details on what the possibilities are within this act.
It's a bit vague as the government didn't publish all details.
AFAICT the principle of this law is that the minister/department involved can override company decisions and issue instructions to those who work for the company in order to ensure customer orders are fulfilled. No actual ownership has changed as such, though this could be a precursor to that, but even though Wingtech still owns Nexperia, it has to obey the government edicts over those of Wingtech.
De Minister van Economische Zaken heeft op dinsdag 30 september 2025 vanwege ernstige bestuurlijke tekortkomingen bij de halfgeleiderfabrikant Nexperia de Wet beschikbaarheid goederen (Wbg) ingezet.
maybe have the IMF stop forcing us to cut and privatize everything? or stop being predatory with these loans? no wonder countries are trying to get rid of these western institutions.
Afghan Taliban forces have attacked Pakistani border posts in what it called "retaliation" for an air strike on Kabul.
Pakistani officials said their forces were responding "with full force" to what they called unprovoked firing from Afghanistan.
Pakistan's government did not confirm it was behind Thursday's air strike, but called on Afghanistan to stop harbouring the Pakistani Taliban, which has targeted Pakistani security forces.
Let go of any fear of others expectations for you as soon as you can. Explore what interests you and don’t let others stop you. People come and go, but they’ll come to you faster than they leave if you’re a confident and passionate person. You can only be that if you work on figuring out how you want to live and chase that life.
My guess is that because hardware support, you can install PC Linux on pretty much any system, but I am unaware of mobile Linux os that officially supports my phone.
This week is KDE’s 29th anniversary. It may not be a nice round number like 25 or 30, but whenever another birthday rolls around for an independent project the size and scope of KDE — powered by the goodwill of its contributors and users — that’s really quite something!
This year KDE are celebrating by kicking off their yearly fundraiser. Let’s raise at least €50,000 before the end of the year!
This week is KDE’s 29th anniversary. It may not be a nice round number like 25 or 30, but whenever another birthday rolls around for an independent project the size and scope of KDE — powered by the goodwill of its contributors and users — that’s rea…
A group of Chinese citizens attempted to cross the border between Serbia and Croatia illegally; one of them died
Two such cases of illegal border crossings have been recorded in the last two months
Some European countries are warning of an increased influx of Chinese citizens arriving via human smuggling routes in the Western Balkans
Serbia and China have had a visa-free regime since 2017
Serbia: Chinese citizen died as overloaded boat capsized on Danube river while attempting to cross the border illegally and flee to EU
A Chinese citizen died when a boat capsized on the Danube between Serbia and Croatia while attempting to cross the border illegally.
In the last two months, there have been two recorded cases of groups of Chinese citizens attempting to cross the border between Serbia and Croatia illegally.
Miroslava Jelačić Kojić from the non-governmental organization Group 484 [said] that there are trends indicating that Chinese citizens are increasingly becoming victims of human trafficking in the Western Balkans.
[...]
“Italian authorities have warned that there has been an increase in the number of Chinese citizens who have been smuggled and that they have also been moving along the Western Balkan route,” she said.
[...]
Serbia and China have had a visa-free regime since 2017, which means that citizens of both countries can reside or transit through the territory of China and Serbia for up to 30 days from the date of entry.
As a candidate for European Union membership, Serbia maintains close ties with China and is strengthening political, economic, and military cooperation.
[...]
Serbian rescue services found four injured Chinese citizens, while Croatian rescue services pulled five more Chinese citizens from the Danube.
Dragoslav Živković, acting deputy chief of the Vukovar-Srijem police administration, told the media [...] that, according to initial information, the individuals had attempted to cross the state border from Serbia to Croatia illegally.
[..]
The boat reportedly capsized due to overloading, with ten Chinese and one Serbian citizen on board.
[...]
The Western Balkan corridor is also mentioned in a January statement by Europol, the EU police agency, when it announced the dismantling of a sophisticated Chinese criminal network.
The network was involved in illegal immigration and human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation.
Raids in Barcelona, Madrid, and Toledo in Spain, and in Zagreb in Croatia, led to the arrest of 30 people, including the leaders of the criminal network.
The war in Gaza has ended and the Middle East is going to “normalize”, Donald Trump said on Sunday as he flew to Israel which was waiting for Hamas to release Israeli hostages as world leaders were gathering to discuss the next steps toward peace.
“The war is over, you understand that,” Trump told reporters onboard Air Force One as he began a flight from Washington DC to Israel.
Asked about prospects for the region, Trump said: “I think it’s going to normalize.“
The reason your movement doesn't get credibility is because you can't recognize that massacring people because of their ethnicity (what Hamas did) is genocide. If you're claiming that Hamas didn't commit genocide while also claiming Israel has, that requires some serious mental gymnastics to reconcile. But you're not even trying to reconcile the discrepancy in how you consider the the actions of Hamas vs. how you consider the actions of Israel. You feel like if you just shout loud enough, engage in harassment campaigns to intimidate people from discussing the topic, you can control the narrative.
And you can control the narrative in small corners of the internet like this. But then what? You support a violent movement that tortures people to silence dissent. Do you ever ask "are we the baddies?" or do you continue down the dark path without questioning anything?
Isn't Israel a compulsory-service country where all citizens spend a year training as a soldier? Its funny that they're called hostages when captured, not prisoners. Hostages are when you kidnap non-combatants like poor people living without secure food or water ... so exactly the opposite of what they're labeling captives by the invader or the impoverished civilian defenders.
I'll add that from what I've seen, about half of the Israelis get an exemption for various reasons. (Physical or mental issues, religion - Muslims are exempted by default and almost all ultra-orthodox Jews, pacifists, etc)
We're talking about a ceasefire here, not peace. Trump is being dumb as usual.
I'd love for the ceasefire to actually succeed this time - hopefully perpetually, leading to actual peace.
But that wouldn't mean Palestine's plight is over - that would only be the beginning for seriously working on a two state solution. And not a master and a vassal state either.
Looking back almost a century, somehow I'm not too optimistic.
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Hamas released seven hostages into the custody of the Red Cross on Monday, the first to be released as part of a breakthrough ceasefire after two years of war between Israel and Hamas in the devastated Gaza Strip.
There was no immediate information on their condition. Hamas has said 20 living hostages will be exchanged for over 1,900 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
So the deal is that Palestinian hostages will be released but with no press, no fanfare, nothing but Israeli ones are the opposite and guess what the complicit western media will be filling their pages with?
Senior members of the government are urging Prime Minister Keir Starmer to reassess his policy toward China and take a tougher stance on the risks it poses to UK national security.
At least two cabinet members want Starmer to decline permission for China to build a new mega-embassy near the City of London on security grounds.
The call for a tougher stance comes after a collapsed espionage case, which has led to intense scrutiny of Starmer's approach to China and allegations that his administration did not provide sufficient support to secure convictions.
I wouldn't get my hopes up, this is still an isolated local case. Though it should be mentioned that they also lost a couple percent in the communal elections in the west two weeks ago.
Meanwhile the ruling coalition is doing everything in their power to be as incompetent and corrupt as possible to ensure more votes for the AfD in the next federal election.
This is great news! No AfD! We don't need corporate lapdogs willing to sell their neighbors out in power in this country. I know we have the CDU issue still, but AfD would be worse.
Billionaires? Sure. Millionaires though... Someone getting their company successful through a good idea, hard work and a great ton of luck can become a millionaire. People with a million € or $ are not the main problem really. There will always be richer and poorer people. The problem is that we have people with 1000+ million, and that these people are yet getting even richer by simply just having that wealth. The difference between a million and a billion is enourmous.
TL,DR: Millionaires over something like 20 million dollars are unhealthy people, either by nature/nurture or by the inevitable corruption that isolating wealth causes. A good society would prevent that from happening, as that's bad for its citizens and dangerous for its stability. Individuals with nearly no accountability shouldn't have the power that comes with having 20+ million. Until everyone has 6 million dollars, no one should have 20+.
Full response: I think there's an amount of money that removes you from the experience of your neighbors, that isolates you from your community, and that gives you more power than should be allowable in a democracy. I think people lose their humanity after a certain dollar amount (and of course they have to - can you imagine having everything you could ever need or want taken care of for the rest of your life and your families life and then NOT giving away the excess to friends and family and your city and charity) and I also think some people who lost their humanity because of systemic issues pursue money and power infinitely. In both cases I think an ideal society, a good society, would prevent that accumulation from ever happening - it would limit the amount of wealth a person or entity can have relative to its peers.
Where is that line? My initial comment said hundred millionaires, but you asked about millionaires so let me perform my thought process for you.
I know billion dollars is too much. You shouldn't be able to count your wealth in the same units as small countries, that is wrong. If you can afford to rent a city or buy a government election or personally fund a NASA equivalent you have too much money and power.
I believe something like 6 million is fine. If you can make enough money to never have to work again, to provide for your family and pursue your dreams, I think that's probably healthy for society. In fact I think that's the goal for human society, to get to the point where everyone has everything they need and want satisfied so they can pursue whatever they're feeling.
So between 6 million or so and 1 billion I know there's a point where a person has too much money and every dollar of wealth should be taxed away. So let's double one and half the other.
12 million is enough to earn 600k a year on 5% interest. 360 on 3%. Both conservative values. I'd say that's at or approaching too much of a salary every year from doing nothing. Maybe that's fine but I've clearly become uncomfortable with it. At 600k a year I could kickstart any project I have ever wanted to do and just see which one's hit or miss. That's on the cusp of okay with me. So maybe my value is somewhere between 10 and 20 million.
500 million is enough to earn 25 million on 5%. That's definitively too much. If I could, by doing nothing, produce another person each year that I already think should be capped on wealth - I think that's too much power for an individual with little accountability. That money must be redistributed.
I think if I continued this I'd find that 250, 125, 62.5, 31.25 million are all way too much by my standard. So I want to tax every millionaire above 10-20 million out of existence for their safety and the safety of society and, because like housing or holiday potlucks, no one should get 2 houses/rounds/permanent-livable-wages before everyone gets 1.
But knowing that the education systems in the western world have systemically produced people who believe millionaires are cool and okay, and especially people who haven't thought about it long enough to form their own opinions on the matter, I tend to default to 100 million in online discourse because it is a number I think everyone can get behind.
Elect me your whatever and I guarantee to make everyone's lives better proportional to the power I'm given 😁 - starting with the just and healthy redistribution of wealth.
Yes, but that is one battle out of many more to come in a war. The AfD has to be decisively defeated and must stamped out for good, and destroy the source of sustenance for its hydra body to prevent another rise of fascism.
The source? Well I've always suspected some of that is Russia. MAGA too, but they get a load Russian support too. I think it's online bot farms as much as just out right corruption/donations/lobbying. When Ukraine defeats Russia, I wonder what knockons it will have.
I think it doesn't matter. There are so many far right parties all over the world, all of them normalizing the narrative, that it will take ages to revert. This envi can be easily exploited. It's an absolutely illogical clusterfuck.
It very much does matter. Without the troll farms and the social media that amplify them, the current far right parties would never have been as successful. Just ask any of their voters where they get their information from.
!Without the troll farms and the social media that amplify them, the current far right parties would never have been as successful.!< Fully agree, but now social media and troll farms and the necessary infrastructure is there. I sure hope it reverts without Russia, but I suspect, that other players will take over.
Just ask any of their voters where they get their information from.
OK, have you? Because it just seems like you're huffing your own farts while decrying the other guy huffing his own farts. What credible evidence do you have for 1) who the voters are, 2) where they're getting their information from?
And what information would you consider credible to see what these mythical voters that you claim to know personally think?
The rise of populist right stems from genuine frustrations on ruling elites and politicians. Russia isn't the cause, they only stoked the fire. And even if Russia collapses, the Pandora's box is already opened. The only way for the far right movements to be tempered is for politicians to actually do their jobs as sworn public servants.
To assuage you a bit. The AfD is a paper tiger inflated by the media. I'm not saying there is no chance for them to ever reach power, but right now it's not very likely. They lack something important: competent people in local politics. They don't care about local politics, they often lack the shoes to fill posts, or have people nobody likes, or have people whose only competence is to wail on immigrants.
That is the result of the media propping them up as a real threat and people taking them too serious. Like I said, they have the voters but not the manpower to back it up at leat not yet. (And polls tend to be higher for protest vote parties, as many decide to not follow through).
More concerning is the influence all the misinformation that is bombarding the next generation will have. The next far right party might have more fertile ground.
"Shitty candidate who only gets taken seriously because of the media coverage" is a trap many of my fellow Americans fell into in 2016. Don't make the same mistake we did and stomp them out while you have the chance.
You're correct, but current Germany's democracy is way more robust than US was. A party can't just rise to power with the power of bullshit, not quickly anyway. A party has to play with others, it is almost impossible to have all the power, so crazy people can't just usurp the country. AfD tries to appear less crazy than they are, but the evil shines through, so nobody wants to play ball with them
We're lucky that the allies did such a wonderful job of correting their own mistakes and making our system more robust after WW2 (not /s, seriously good job).
Yeah, it's a shame that they did such a good job in Germany but weren't able to import it back to their own countries. Imagine if it was as hard for right wing populists to get the power in the US, Russia, UK...
Media control over time is exactly how you build a base though. It's very fair to be concerned about the monster they could grow into in the future, especially with all the different news sources getting picked up by billionaires. By the time they're running the school boards and town halls it'll be too late.
The mouthpieces are replaceable. Considering how fast the AfD is radicalising it is likely they'll sabotage themselves before ever gaining real relevance. It's much more important to look at what put them there in the first place.
The way I see right wing misinformation pop up more and more as "sponsored" content here in Germany is worrying. The next far right party that eventually pops up will likely have a much bigger politically active base. And I don't want to think about the influence global warming will have...
Right wing is all about property protections, corporate interests and bank lobbies + upper class protection. Cultural stuff is just a distraction. Even average left wing nationalism (like the pan-arabist ones) protects local cultures better than profit driven right wing that only cares about "muh property and hierarchy" things.
The Chinese government will certainly understand the Dutch move as they eliminate all Western technology firms such as Nokia and Ericsson from its domestic networks. So what's the issue?
Also China require local representatives in subsidiaries management in China, possibly even Chinese leadership. The Dutch are only playing from the same rulebook.
China requires not only Chinese leadership, you can't even found a subsidiary in China that you would own. You always need a Chinese partner company that would then control the majority stake of the Joint Venture (btw, the only non-Chinese company that is exempted from this rule is Tesla).
Chairman Zhang Xuezheng was suspended from Nexperia's boards by an Amsterdam court order on October 6, and an independent non-Chinese person with a "deciding vote" would be appointed in his place, Wingtech said
Ja, we nationalised the company and installed a white guy as king
fascinating, will dutch people receive free housing, or do Chinese citizens have to purchase the housing before it can be acquired by the government?
Not surprised a user from a tankie instance is angry about a western country imposing rules on a domestic company for reasons of national security, but is completely fine with China allowing barely any western countries in their market at all and, when they are, enforcing that they must be run by Chinese and have a close relationship with the government.
It's bad when the west takes an inch, but it's good when China takes a mile.
For any other country, buying a company to gain the patents and knowledge of that company is completely normal and business as usual. But for some reason China isn't even allowed to buy knowledge, and when they do they are still accused of stealing it!?!?
Even as key Arab states condemned the war in the Gaza Strip, they quietly expanded security cooperation with the Israeli military, leaked U.S. documents reveal. Those military ties were thrown into crisis after Israel’s September airstrike in Qatar, but could now play a key role in overseeing the nascent ceasefire in Gaza.
Over the past three years, facilitated by the United States, senior military officials from Israel and six Arab countries came together for planning meetings in Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan and Qatar.
Qatar, whose capital was struck on Sept. 9 by Israeli missiles targeting Hamas leaders, was one of the countries that had quietly strengthened ties with the Israeli military. In May 2024. A planning document for the event, written two days before it was set to begin, shows that the Israeli delegation was scheduled to fly directly to the air base, circumventing Qatar’s civilian points of entry that could have risked public exposure.
All those leaders saw what happened when Palestinian refugees entered their countries previously. They are also slowly becoming less theistic and more secular -- less immediate about getting their Reward in the Afterlife, and a little more concerned with the real world
Sissi should remember the war crimes israel commited during the 6 days war against his countries, the egyptian soldiers killed by Israel in the last few years and the the great israel plan where egypt will be reoccupied
The Six-Day War of 1967 began when, in response to Arab neighbors' mobilization for war, Israel attacked and destroyed Egypt's and Syria's air forces. Israel also defeated Jordanian attacks. The war ended with Israel in control of the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, and Jerusalem.
So even when Israel goes on the counter offensive so as to not be obliterated by its neighbors, it's the one being accused of war crimes. The fuck?
Israel is the occupier , palestine is the occupied it . Occupation amd settler colonialism is alwayd white and black. Indigenous tribes during war used to do terrible things to each other like canibalism and they also attacked non armed settlers are you going to tell me that it is was not black and white just the most evil and thr lesser evil
Somehow every time they have to “defend” themselves, Israel claims more land that wasn’t theirs. That and all of the blatantly obvious war crimes, many of which they boast about, is why they’re accused of war crimes.
Some people are defending the new Nazis and think they should be able to murder neighbors with impunity. The fuck?
The Egyptian Army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him. - Former prime minister Menachem Begin
What next you will tell me that illegal settlements are also part of israel defending itself?
Not sure which planet you are living on but in the real world there’s over a couple million Palestinian refugees living in Arab countries and with the exception of Lebanon have not caused significant problems in the last 50 years.
Also the Arab world and it’s leaders was much more supportive of Palestinians and anti-Israeli in the heyday of Arab secularism, not that I think that religion, theism and/or secularism had much to do with it.
As desperate Palestinians in sealed-off Gaza try to find refuge under Israel's relentless bombardment in retaliation for Hamas' brutal Oct. 7 attack, many ask why neighboring Egypt or other Arab countries don't take them in.
How do you get Palestinians are the issue when they don't want to help Israel do ethnic cleansing?
Their refusal is rooted in fear that Israel wants to force a permanent expulsion of Palestinians into their countries and nullify Palestinian demands for statehood. El-Sissi also said a mass exodus would risk bringing militants into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, from where they might launch attacks on Israel, endangering the two countries’ 40-year-old peace treaty.
Even if blaming them for attacks, still on Israels genocide
Enligt uppgifter på sociala medier från en anställd på Flamman går det bra för Flamman. Under det senaste året har de redan nu haft fler besökare på sin webbsajt än totalt under något tidigare år.
Explore the American Airlines Dublin Terminal at Dublin Airport for smooth arrivals and departures. Find terminal location, check-in counters, baggage services, and helpful tips to enhance your travel experience. Whether you're flying in or out, this guide covers everything you need to know about the American Airlines terminal at DUB.
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I had some week off work and spent some time fiddling with that side-project.
I enjoy it a lot, since I find it actually useful for discovering accounts worth following and threads worth engaging.
I hope you won't find this post spammy, here's the list of changes:
Complete redesign
Previous design was stolen from kukei.eu (web dev search index) and it didn't really fit the stuff I've been adding recently.
The re-design is fresh out of oven, probably with some bugs and mistakes but well, just YOLOed it to 'main'.
It's an effect of all-weekend work, third actual iteration and I think it's much better now.
Summaries
For certain browse categories (news, programming, technology) I take newest 1000 (or 2000) posts, throw it into an LLM model and ask for a summary in a form of "topics people are talking about".
While it's not super useful, it's nice to get there once a day and see what's up in the world. It's better than most news magazine headlines "Google made huge changes in Google Home App. We know who's affected!"
Banned
Previous update made categorization of each indexed post, with a possibility that some posts land in "banned" category (fraudulent, porn, phishing).
Today I decided to exclude those posts from search results as well (I still see creepy search queries in logs, I don't want to deal with this).
That's all folks. I hope you enjoy this piece of web as much as I do. If not, downvote the hell of this post and I won't bother you again.
Seems to be affecting a number of individuals. Usually OTAs go through deployment waves, and I’d expect that only certain combos of trims to be affected but it could also be a shit show deployment. Will be interesting to see what happens.
All I want is a car with modern engineering and simple technology. I'm fine with crank windows and a radio I can easily swap out. But I would like an engine that gets more than 7MPG and has crumple-zones that aren't my face. I don't need touchscreens and sensors for everything. And I sure as fuck don't want the manufacturer pushing out "updates" that can brick my car.
My 2014 Kia Rio has crank windows, no cruise control, 6-spd manual trans. No touchscreens--only buttons. Car is very slow (1.6L non-turbo) but gets ~36mpg average. I've gotten as much as 40 when actually driving for mpg.
Yes, slow by modern (and my) standards but compared to older cars it's quite good. And while peak power is low it makes decent torque in the midrange and is tuned well for daily driving.
I think they were doing the Nissan Versa like that for a while too. But it's definitely not common and should be for cars that aren't economy-boxes. And just to lay my shit out, I guess, my progression was: 1991 Plymouth Acclaim, 1990 Chevy Caprice Classic (loved that car), 2000 Chevy Monte Carlo (it blew up!), 2007 Hyundai Tucson, 2012 Hyundai Tucson.
I AM in the market for a new car...eventually. Have replace the engine on this one already and know it's on its last legs. But I don't see anything out there that I actually like. I kinda liked the Challenger, I guess...but I honestly am thinking about going back to cars from the 90s/80s again. I legit miss my Caprice.
A friend of mine had a Caprice Classic. Such a good car. It was soft and smooth and the economical 305 V8 made good torque while still getting good mpg!
It was a boat on wheels. But mine only got 7MPG. And that "twilight sentinel" nonsense never worked right. It did have some decent pickup for its size though.
20mpg doesn't really sound that far fetched for a 305 if you're mostly doing highway. Mine was a '78 and got around 14 in the city when just commuting. That thing could drink a lot more with a heavier foot though, lol
For a 350 to get 7mpg it would have to be a race built engine or simply run like garbage. I don't even know how you could get a 305 to get that poor mileage but 🤷♂️
A V8 has a lot of low RPM torque so if you drive with a light foot it can do very well. Most of the energy from an engine is used moving the car, not engine losses. A smaller engine is always going to do better at the same load, but the difference isn't going to be large if everything else is equal (which it often isn't)
Fuck dude, I drove 94 Acclaim across the country, and it was a pos then, but I miss that car. My current is a 05 Sierra, barebones, not even a radio anymore, I really like that it doesn't have much to break, and it's decently cheap to fix still
My 2016 versa is crank windows, no power locks, no cruise control, 5-speed manual transmission, no touch screen/complicated electronics in the dash. It’s been really nice minus I do miss cruise control.
I'm curious to see if there will be simpler electric cars in the future. Like the bare minimum electric circuit to make the car go forward. I could see a DIY kit for something like that. But the security standards these days ask for way more sensors and cameras to reduce risks of accidents wich is fair tbh.
Same here but also I don’t want a truck nor something with that low range. Aside from being not what I’m interested in , the “blank slate” concept is compelling enough to be very interesting. I’m definitely going to follow this.
For everyone reflexively hating on this “Bezos Mobile”, I’m well aware of the reputation Amazon built for itself. However they are promising something people could own. For a reasonable price. And even customize. Instead of jumping right to negativity, this warrants some optimism
A user here emailed slate asking if there would be any tracking, and they responded that it would not, as it wouldn't have the hardware to make that possible.
We'll see if they actually follow through on that.
Ownership has been flipped upside down for modern EV owners (and actually a lot more). You don't own the machine, nor the keys, you license the experience- software, data, and even the ability to start/ move the vehicle. 30k+ for remote access, EULAs, feature subscriptions to a connectivity mesh? Also the monthly connectivity costs and software updates for.. how long?
I'm not sure EV's are the brilliant solution to modern transport, entertainment perhaps but little to nothing to do with modern or futuristic transport.
That's a corpo problem, not an EV problem. They could very easily make a perfectly fine EV that isn't a shitty motorized "smart device", if they chose to. But they aren't. The EV push just happened to coincide with the global ramping up of automotive enshittification that had already begun for all cars regardless of their energy source.
Yes of course, electric motors are by and far more reliable, stronger, faster, cleaner, quieter, less polluting, simpler, easier to repair, cheaper.. should I continue..
I'm keeping a skeptical eye on them. I really like the concept obviously but remaining cautious for a number of reasons.
Obviously as the other replies mention, Jeff Bezos is one of the initial investors, but that's also true of Rivian. The important distinction is you don't have to get the massive tablet computer/nav/infotainment system that would be susceptible to these OTA updates.
Another reason is I was looking through available jobs that they were hiring for and a lot were AI-centric. It was unclear as to why, but obviously that just doesn't sit right. Regardless of whether they use it for customer support, automotive design, or infotainment embedding, I can't imagine a good reason and it was more than one type of position.
I picture an electric car with almost no dashboard at all. Just one dial for speed and another for remaining charge along with your odometer if you feel you must have that info. Maybe estimated mileage, but even that’s just spare info to someone who’s used to a classic fuel gauge.
In a car, the interior should fall away and the car should become an extension of the driver. Only by feeling the need to preserve the car do you drive with the necessary attention to protect yourself.
People seem to treat cars like roaming living rooms instead of the farm equipment they really are.
An American worker spending 1hr each way commuting to an 8hr+1hr lunch job is spending 2 out of 7 of their free hours in this machine. It's understandable that the demand for their vehicle to not be an oppressive environment would arise.
But I do agree that not all cars should be packed with these superfluous amenities
Most people who are cheap enough to do without the amenities still want them and so will buy a used car with all the amenities over a new car at the same price without.
Back camera, cruise control, no radio (data, fm, or am), no stupid fucking touchscreen interface, a dedicated phone holder, and I’m happy. My phone has plenty of sounds to play while I drive and I’ve literally never needed anything a car touchscreen has offered.
While I tend to agree with most people here, simpler is better and fuck touchscreens in cars, but I do prefer to have a functioning AM/FM radio. It doesn't have to be anything fancy, hell it doesn't even need USB/MP3/CD player or anything else, but living in a hurricane prone area, I like to be able to get emergency news reports even in the event the cell towers go out.
Katrina was no fun yo, especially when we found out the hard way that a chunk of the eastbound Interstate 10 bridge had collapsed. We sure could have used a working radio to find stuff like that out...
My manual transmission Subaru Impreza has Android Auto and a Reverse Camera. That's the most advanced part of the car. It's a dinosaur otherwise, with a transmission and drivetrain that debuted in 1999 and an engine that's rough but reliable. The instrument cluster has two gauges - speed and RPM. The rest are on a calculator LCD that displays numbers for fuel and miles travelled, and a billion different danger lights that tell you if there's a problem somewhere. It also has electric windows and door locks. And cruise.
The problems the car has as it gets older are none of the electrical bits - they all work fine. It's the rear wheel bearings, suspension bushings, and center differential that wear out over time. Ironically, the most basic, mechanical parts.
2018, so it's a 5th gen. They moved it to the Global Platform, so it's bigger and fatter. Ever since the WRC changed their rules (2016) to force a transverse drivetrain (like front wheel drive cars) for rally cars, that rule basically wrote Subaru out of the WRC.
They exist, but hard to find. Most people doing this are hobbyists doing the conversion for their own fun. They might help you with your project but for liability reasons they are just helping.
I almost did something like this for my 1995 Exploder. Y'know how you can buy a crate engine and then *simply drop in a new engine? There are some companies that make electric motors that interface with your transmission and now you have an old vehicle with a new motor!
Before I could make any major decisions like that, though, one of my neighbor's told me that his friend had been looking for that exact same year and color Explorer after she lost her car in a flood, so I gave it to her. I never really got too far in my research, so I don't know much about the real cost and extent of work involved in these electric crate engines.
You can't just throw a crate engine in. My current car (2012 Hyundai Tucson) is a "California engine". My family is in auto, and we went to a guy who replaced the engines on my uncle's fleet. $6500 because the engine itself was so hard to source and replace with all the bullshit sensors, and an extra $1k for the rental I needed for 2 weeks while they tracked an engine down.
Oh, hahaha, sorry. The asterisk in front of the "simply" was meant to reference some fake fine print. I totally forgot to add that, so congratulations! You've unlocked the hidden fine print!
^*Process description does not include all necessary steps to make motor or car functional. Commenter assumes no responsibility and should not be considered as a reliable source of information.^
Also, I totally feel you on the engine replacement woes. I had an engine rebuilt by Jasper on a mid-90s 4-Runner. I was told that this would ultimately be easier, cheaper, and have better warranty than a new engine. It took over 2 years before I could go more than a week before visiting my mechanic with another issue caused by the incredibly invasive procedure. 4 years later, the block cracked and I just took what I could get at auction.
Mozilla’s latest edition of *Privacy Not Included reveals how 25 major car brands collect and share deeply personal data, including sexual activity, facial expressions, and genetic and health information.
Article is clickbait trash. This was something found in the privacy policy. Your Nissan doesn’t have a “sex sensor” that phones home if you whip it out in the passenger seat.
The very worst offender is Nissan. The Japanese car manufacturer admits in their privacy policy to collecting a wide range of information, including sexual activity, health diagnosis data, and genetic data — but doesn’t specify how. They say they can share and sell consumers’ “preferences, characteristics, psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abilities, and aptitudes” to data brokers, law enforcement, and other third parties.
My 2001 Tacoma get like 24 mpg I think, been awhile since I did the math. Anyways it does all you said, got a tape player crank windows, and a bench controlled by 2 springs and 2 levers.
I've been in a crash in a 1995 Toyota 4runner which used more or less the same body, head on into the back of a truck at about 50 due to break failure. I can assure you that old Toyotas are about as safe as you can get without it being modern and even then it's a relatively minimum difference. A lot of the increase in safety started to happen with cars around 2000-2005 which given the lag time for a lot of these feature to see it in statistics means that that era of car is pretty damned decent.
Also it wasn't my 4runner mine had its engine self destruct due to a shitty rebuild.
I have a 2008 and got rear ended by a drunk driver. It totalled my car but I went to work the same day and didn't need any serious medical care. Indeed I didn't take it to my face but the ass. Why do people pretend like cars made in the last 30 years are death traps? They are the all metal behemoths from the 70s
The Slate EV is supposed to come in mid-$20k range. Doesn't even come with a stereo, you get your own that fits in the space, or just zip tie a Bluetooth speaker somewhere. Refreshingly utilitarian, I think things should be modular.
I suspect it now costs more to engineer and produce a window crank handle that will last the life of the car, than it does to stick a motor, switch, and couple wires in there. It’s also much more expensive to offer electric windows later then, because it will require a different window regulator, and now you’re producing and stock more part numbers.
It would be amazing if there were a more open source option.
It's unfortunate that cars are so big and complex to manufacture. With a just as complex a set of regulatory systems around verifying their safety and roadworthiness. I really don't see something more open source being a realistic expectation at any foreseeable point going forward.
I was thinking the opposite it is amazing that we allow car manufacturers to have closed source vehicles at all when such huge amounts life and property are at stake. Every part of the designs should be inspectable by anyone.
I don't get it? Why can't car companies just release software updates that get deployed with the regular service interval, like once every year or two? That way the repair service or dealership will be close by if problems arise.
Better yet, why don't they just write the shit competently and correctly the first time?
And don't tell me it's too hard; that's the way real software engineering used to be done when stuff shipped on physical media and couldn't be patched, and still is done for stuff that actually matters (avionics, etc.). They just want to pretend PC-level half-assery is acceptable because it's cheaper.
The kind of quality assurance you're talking about is astronomically expensive. Software has gotten a lot more complex over the past couple decades. And just because it came on physical media and could not easily be patched doesn't mean that it didn't have bugs. Far from it.
The kind of quality assurance you’re talking about is astronomically expensive
That might be a valid argument when talking about accounting software with backups in case of fuck ups. We're talking about cars, on roads, with people sprinkled all around.
It is less valid for accounting software than cars on the road. If you mess up accounting software CEOs go to prison for tax fraud. If you mess up car software it is someone else who dies, but no prison time for the CEO.
They can, but the point of OTA setups is that you don’t have to anymore, and you save a lot that way because satiate testing is very very expensive. Old PC platforms had a standard of compatibility in how all the hardware worked. So you could test a few variations, and be reasonably assured, or you had a specific version for a particular price of hardware, like c&c machines.
So the new paradigm is about testing your most common setup, then slow rolling out and waiting for complaints. If you broke something, you get the details, fix it, and ship again. The problem here is their release cycle takes too long. This is only viable if you can patch things in a day, if it takes you a month to fix a patch that is turning cars into driveway statues, it more than a handful of cars are affected, you need a new strategy.
but they need to show the shareholders that they can also have the "move fast and break things" style of updates like tesla that pushes ota updates automatically without user consent
No, I would hate being forced to bring my car in somewhere for updates. Maybe a notification that there is going to be an update, and an option to snooze it until convenient.
They still could have made their own post with a proper article as the post URL rather than directing additional traffic to a right-wing social media platform.
Aside from the aforementioned Discord server not being directly mine (nor are most of the community's users on the Threadiverse, unfortunately), not only is there a difference between linking to a community Discord server on an associated Lemmy community versus doing so on a Lemmy news community, but the ownership structure and organizational goals of Discord (its gradual commercialization, walled garden, and degradation aside) are a far cry from Twitter being owned by a fascist, transphobic billionaire largely responsible for getting Trump elected.
Are you stalking them around Lemmy to complain about their discord? Or did you go searching through their posting history for a whataboutism after they disagreed with you?
Everyone knows the weekends are the best time to push important updates, right?
From Jeep Wrangler forum: Did anyone else have a loss of drive power after today's OTA Uconnect update?
On my drive home I abruptly had absolutely no acceleration, the gear indicator on the dash started flashing, the power mode indicator disappeared, an alert said shift into park and press the brake + start button, and the check engine light and red wrench lights came on. I was still able to steer and brake with power steering and brakes for maybe 30 seconds before those went out too. After putting it into park and pressing the brake and start button it started back up and I could drive it normally for a little bit, but it happened two more times on my 1.5 mi drive home.
First one to build the unconnected EV where the purchaser has admin rights (and no one else), wins the race.
Here in the United States a person can already build new or convert existing gasoline vehicles to be "unconnected" and in every way except possibly the battery management doing it with an EV would actually be easier.
It does cost money and take some time but probably less of both than you may think.
Yeah I saw a guy convert an old Toyota pickup into an EV and it cost about $18,000 IIRC. Biggest expense is obviously the batteries, followed by motor and charging system. Madman kept the original 5 speed which I absolutely respect.
I have a used 2017 Chevy Bolt that I absolutely adore. I bet I could pretty easily disable the OnStar if I was so inclined and paranoid about it somehow getting updates. But I doubt I need to do that.
Admin right on the automotive parts seems like asking for trouble by default. While I'm very much in favor of owning and controlling all my devices, cars feels like weapons we put in the hand of the general public because they're deemed safe under regulations, so… yeah.
However, an EV with a separate automotive computer that only do car stuff under strict control, connected to another one that do management, UI, entertainment, etc. that's more open, I could see that. As long as the proprietary one have decent changelogs (that you'd have to trust, sadly) and can be updated at will with a decent UX instead of "your car's dead this morning lol". That sound like a viable compromise.
Any bad thing the user wants to do with the car can already be done by the person with the keys. Allowing the user more control could prevent someone including a terrorist or enemy state from doing something bad to millions of people like virtually cutting everyone's brakes at once.
You'd be surprised how many stupid thing users are prevented from doing by a basic software check. Making it easy to load a custom firmware downloaded from wherever do sounds like trouble brewing. Of course, I can't foresee the future, but It's already an issue with electric scooters, so I'm not in a hurry of seeing that coming to bigger vehicles.
I have long said in regard to Microsoft Windows, "If anyone else can shutdown your computer without your permission, it is not your computer, it is theirs" - same goes for cars.
Right, I forget that as a working truck it’s got different priorities than a sedan or something. And we actually use it as a working truck. My wife’s coffee cart gets towed by it with the bed filled with coffee gear and supporting tools and stuff constantly.
Drives me crazy to see these fuckin micropenis sunglasses dudes in monster trucks that have clearly never done a single instance of hauling anything. It’s just a status symbol that also excels at murdering children.
Hating Communists has always been an acceptable form of bigotry. You don't have to listen to what they say, just dismiss them (and insult them!) for wanting a world that doesn't run on money.
You do realize that like 95% of the planet doesn't want something like that. They just want something they can get in go that works and that if it breaks down somebody else can fix. Most people don't care about connected or not connected. In fact most people actually want to be connected.
They might not want that up front, but an Internet-disconnected car that gives the owner full control doesn't imply that it would be unreliable or hard to fix.
I'd even be ok with a connected-by-default car, as long as I have the option to disconnect it and do what I want with it, like any other computer I own. I don't think that's too much to ask, and I feel like it makes both audiences happy.
The first gen 3.6 has enough issues, have u seen how the new gen 3.6 is gobbling up intake cams? Ugh they stopped making real jeeps when the 4.0 went the wayside ...
Probably in 2025, we at Meta, as well as the other companies that are basically working on this, are going to have an AI that can effectively be a sort of midlevel engineer that you have at your company that can write code.
If I had a car that had suddenly stopped working due to a careless update, I'd want it to be bricked so I could make the manufacturer pay for a different fucking car.
![< Post [ac]
[8 Stephen Gutowski @ of
“W° @stephenGutowski
Jeep just pushed a software update that bricked all the 2024 Wrangler
4xe models, including my Willys. The future is going great.
12:56 PM - Oct 1, 2025 - 154.4K Views
15 Was Q 14k Res 2
® Who can reply?
Accounts @StephenGutowski follows or mentioned can reply
[8 Stephen Gutowski & ©StephenGutowski - 21h [oJ
“MW Here's what the issue looks like for those wondering
=,
. 3 DON'T UPDATE Your U-Connect | Jeep Wrangler 4x...
~ As of October 10th 2025 the uconnect update is
| causing major issues for many 4xe owners. We lose.
X
5 Qn Qs 1h 22k na
[18 Stephen Gutowski & @StephenGutowski - 20h [oJ
“M" When mine bricked, | did the infotainment reset. You put the car in acc
mode then press the radio power and tune buttons for ten seconds until
the screen restarts. Then turn it on. | had to do that several times before the
Jeep would drive again.
4 j= Q 1o thi 11K na
[8 Stephen Gutowski & @StephenGutowski - 15h [oJ
“MW so, here's what Jeep says. It's the telematics box, which as far as |
understand it does diagnostics and ota communications, that's causing the
problem. This is the sort of thing | worried about buying a new car,
‘especially a Jeep 4xe. Oh well. dxeforums.com/threads/wrangl...](https://poliverso.org/photo/preview/640/61845176 "< Post [ac]
[8 Stephen Gutowski @ of
“W° @stephenGutowski
Jeep just pushed a software update that bricked all the 2024 Wrangler
4xe models, including my Willys. The future is going great.
12:56 PM - Oct 1, 2025 - 154.4K Views
15 Was Q 14k Res 2
® Who can reply?
Accounts @StephenGutowski follows or mentioned can reply
[8 Stephen Gutowski & ©StephenGutowski - 21h [oJ
“MW Here's what the issue looks like for those wondering
=,
. 3 DON'T UPDATE Your U-Connect | Jeep Wrangler 4x...
~ As of October 10th 2025 the uconnect update is
| causing major issues for many 4xe owners. We lose.
X
5 Qn Qs 1h 22k na
[18 Stephen Gutowski & @StephenGutowski - 20h [oJ
“M\" When mine bricked, | did the infotainment reset. You put the car in acc
mode then press the radio power and tune buttons for ten seconds until
the screen restarts. Then turn it on. | had to do that several times before the
Jeep would drive again.
4 j= Q 1o thi 11K na
[8 Stephen Gutowski & @StephenGutowski - 15h [oJ
“MW so, here's what Jeep says. It's the telematics box, which as far as |
understand it does diagnostics and ota communications, that's causing the
problem. This is the sort of thing | worried about buying a new car,
‘especially a Jeep 4xe. Oh well. dxeforums.com/threads/wrangl...")
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