wordfreq is not just concerned with formal printed words. It collected more conversational language usage from two sources in particular: Twitter and Reddit.
Now Twitter is gone anyway, its public APIs have shut down,
Reddit also stopped providing public data archives, and now they sell their archives at a price that only OpenAI will pay.
There’s still the Fediverse.
I mean, that doesn’t solve the LLM pollution problem, but…
I have not used it, but labwc is apparently an openbox-alike compositor for Wayland.
Firstly, we believe that there is a need for a simple Wayland window-stacking compositor which strikes a balance between minimalism and bloat approximately at the level where Window Managers like Openbox reside in the X11 domain. Most of the core developers are accustomed to low resource Desktop Environments such as Mate/XFCE or standalone Window Managers such as Openbox under X11. Labwc aims to make a similar setup possible under Wayland, with small and independent components rather than a large, integrated software eco-system.
YouTube desperately needs to fix the recommendations for music.
I mean, I guess if someone has a YouTube account, there’s nothing wrong with using YouTube as a music recommendations system, but it isn’t really the first thing I’d think of. I mean, music isn’t really what it was designed for.
And YouTube doesn’t know what a user would listen to offline, so unless all their music-listening is from YouTube tracks…I’m not sure how representative the listening data would be of what a user would listen to.
I don’t use them, because I don’t really want to hand them a profile of me, but if I wanted to get music recommendations, I’d probably use something like Audioscrobbler, which was designed for building a profile on someone’s music-listening habits and then handing them recommendations based on that.
This Popsie Funk channel is upfront, that the music is AI generated.
goes looking
Yeah, the description reads:
Popsie Funk is a fictitious creation. The tracks are A.I. generated from lyrics and musical compositions that I have created. The A.I. samples are then mixed and edited by me.
I am adding this disclaimer due to repeated questions about the genuine authenticity of Popsie Funk and his music.
I don’t think that the artist in question is faking this.
All that being said, while this particular case isn’t, I suppose one could imagine such a “trying to pretend to be human” artist existing. That is, if you think about all the websites out there with AI-generated questions and answers that do try to appear human-generated, you gotta figure that someone is thinking about doing the same with musicians…and at mass scale, not manually doing one or two.
I’d also add that I don’t know if this is necessarily the best move the Kremlin could be making from a propaganda standpoint, given that this is wartime and soldiers are being sent to the front. Back during WW2, there was a substantial bit of sex-oriented propaganda that took the form of mostly-pornographic material trying to get soldiers worried that wives would be sleeping with other men back home while they were away (or sometimes with other soldiers from other allied countries). I’d wonder whether the Kremlin putting out material like this is liable to help recreate a similar psychological warfare push, just…on themselves.
Obviously, NSFW images:
https://www.psywarrior.com/sexandprop.html
I won’t embed the images in this comment, but some extracts of text as an example.
A second set of six see-through cards depicts French soldiers dying of wounds, with one soldier holding a photo of a woman. The initial printing was about 400,000 of each card and they were dropped from early May to early June 1940. The see-through sexual scenes depict a soldier and a nude woman sitting on a bed; a soldier and nude woman lying on a bed; a smiling soldier and a crying woman sitting on a bed, both partially clothed; a soldier sitting on a couch with a woman on his lap; a soldier standing and nude woman sitting in a salon; and a soldier, nude girl, and angry mother standing in a room.
A third set of six German propaganda “see-through” cards for French troops were inscribed “Les mylords a l’etape” (“Gentlemen at rest ”), and depicted dead or dying French soldiers on the ground, with hidden pictures showing nude or partially nude women when held to the light. These cards were prepared but never disseminated.
A fourth set of five “Les mylords a l’etape” see-through cards depicted three French soldiers crushed under rubble and the usual scenes of French women with British soldiers when held to the light. These cards were prepared but never disseminated. A sixth card might exist but has not been found as yet.
Another “divide and conquer” leaflet depicts a British Army officer holding the breast of a semi-naked French woman while her husband is shown in a front-line trench peeping out from behind barbed wire. These leaflets were produced during the “Phony War” of 1940 in an attempt to convince the French that they were being sacrificed at the Front while the British vacationed with their women behind the lines.
The Germans produced another two sets of see-through leaflets in 1940. The first consisted of seven cards and the text “Les mylords a l’etape,” (“Gentlemen at rest.”). Once again, the cards show dying French troops and British soldiers with French women. A second set of five cards shows three French soldiers crushed under rubble while the British officers play with the French women.
The Germans used the same see-through propaganda once again in 1944 to divide the British from their American allies. The method was cruder. While in the earlier full-color cards they had cleverly placed one sheet on top of another to make a very clear picture when the light came through, this time they simply printed the front and the back so that when the light came through the two sides were combined. The cards were on a cheap paper sized about 4 x 6-inches. They printed four series of leaflets on a very thin paper with crude see-through images and text. They are AW33 through AW36, each we believe with additional leaflets with an added a-e. This would seem to indicate 24 leaflets in all, though we cannot be sure that the Germans used all the available codes. The leaflets of the first three series show a dead Tommy lying on his back, lying face down in barbed wire, or in the barbed wire staring wide-eyed at the viewer. The secret images show an American soldier raping a girl, fondling partially undressed women, or having sex with a nude woman on a bed. The messages are short. Examples are, “Your fight / his warfare,” “While you face death,” “Die! / to keep him living,” “Your allies are assisting you / on all fronts” and Where are your Yanks?” These leaflets were designed for Allied troops on the Western Front by the German Skorpion West propaganda organization. It is believed they were printed by the German propaganda company in Paris.
All “The Girl you Left Behind” leaflets are crude drawing in a monotone. These leaflets told the story of the mythical Sam Levy; a Jew who was growing rich and enjoying the favors of a Christian girl while her boyfriend was fighting on the front lines.
The final leaflet depicts seems to be the final one in the set. Vivian and Bill are in bed and Frank enters, cane in hand. Text on the front is:
In walked a man in a soldier’s uniform…
Text on the back is:
BILL THE CONQUEROR. “It is better to have a high-paving defense job than to be torn to piece by an enemy shell,” thought home front warrior Bill Turner when he jauntily pocketed his fat paycheck. He couldn’t help laughing at how he had fooled the Draft Board. Besides, he had another good reason to be in a happy mood. Lovely Vivian Hope, the girl he adored, had hinted that she might accept him, when the other day he had asked her out of a clear sky to marry him. Vivian was working in the same plant as stenographer. and she and Bill Turner had been much together for some time. But between her and Bill stood Frank Merritt to whom she had promised herself. Two years ago - it seemed ages to Vivian - Frank had been shipped overseas to face shells and bullets and perhaps die for the cause of ambitious politicians and war profiteers. For over eight months, Vivian had not heard from Frank. Could he be among the missing? So many young chaps would never return. Perhaps it was a bit reckless of her to ask Bill up to her furnished room on her twenty-fourth birthday to a dainty little dinner she prepared herself. Bill was in good form that night. He had been reading so much in the papers about reconnoitering patrols, shock action, assaulting parties and combined operations that he felt the urge to vie with the best soldier at the front. And “his war” in the seclusion of a scented bedroom was so easy to conduct compared with the hardships and constant danger of death hundreds of thousands of his countrymen were facing every day. However, even the greatest strategists sometimes overlook a trifling but decisive precautionary measure. Bill had forgotten to lock the door. Suddenly it burst open and in walked a man in a soldier’s uniform. It was Frank Merritt, who badly wounded had been taken prisoner-of-war. For months, he had been lying in a hospital between life and death before being finally exchanged when his condition had improved. Frank came rushing home to surprise Vivian on her birthday - only to find all his happiness shattered to pieces by a draft dodger. have you seen the other pictures of “HOME FRONT WARRIORS”? AI-159-11-44.
Another Propaganda-Abschnitts-Offizier leaflet depicts a smiling naked British girl rolling up her stocking while a U.S. Army Staff-sergeant fixes his tie nearby. Text on the front is:
While you are away.
The back depicts a disfigured British soldier dead on the battlefield. The text is:
The Yanks are ‘lend-leasing’ your women. Their pockets full of cash and no work to do, the boys from overseas are having the time of their lives in Merry Old England. And what young woman, single or married, could resist such “handsome brute from the wide open spaces” to have dinner with, a cocktail at some nightclub, and afterwards… Anyway, so numerous have become the scandals that all England is talking about them now. Most of you are convinced that the war will be over in four months. Too bad if it should hit you in the last minute.
This leaflet is actually rather clever. It mentions “Lend-lease,” a program where the United States sent weapons and materiel to Great Britain to be paid for after the war. It talks about pockets full of money, which would remind the British of their saying about the Yanks, “overpaid. oversexed, and over here.” Finally, the term “wide open spaces” reminds us that many Europeans believed that America was still the land where the “Cowboys and Indians” rode the open plains. The leaflet is coded AI-046-8-44.
The Government of Japan attempted many times to alienate the allied forces protecting Australia. The Japanese aimed their “Divide and conquer” tactics at the Aussie Troops fighting in New Guinea and Papua.
On one full-color anti-American leaflet, we find a slick American officer holding a young semi-exposed lady who is in the process of struggling for her freedom. We see some buttocks and cleavage. A ragged Australian soldier stands on a depiction of New Guinea. Text over him is, “Australia screams.” The Aussie: “What was that scream. Something up?” Meanwhile the American officer tries to quiet his victim and says, "The Yank: “Sh…Sh…Quiet Girlie, Calm yourself. He’ll be on the next casualty list. No worry.”
I’m kinda skeptical that the constraining factor on Russia’s fertility rate is frequency of sex.
deleted by creator
It sounds like both parties made derivative works.
The initial design was from Bungie, then someone else made a derivative work from it. Bungie didn’t go after them for it.
Then some artist at Bungie made a derivative work from that work, and the fan artist complained.
Technically, neither party can legally go out and make and distribute derivative works. Probably both were in the wrong there.
The fact that Bungie left the fan art alone, didn’t send lawyers after them initially, doesn’t mean that Bungie has rights to go make and distribute a work based on the fan art.
So, from a purely-legal standpoint, they’ve probably both got grounds for a copyright complaint against the other; Bungie could theoretically have the fan art distribution blocked and the fan artist could block distribution of Bungie’s derived pistol (though not the original, pure-Bungie pistol).
[continued from parent]
Max: Mike, closing thoughts?
Mike: Think Rob pretty much nailed it. We have had similar experiences. Need to see how next few weeks play out. One of my big questions I have right now is that Russia and Ukraine face a dilemma. Ukraine can try to expand Kursk salient with more troops, see if it can try to cause Russia to divert more forces, try to set something else up, some other operation. However, that risks overextension and more risk in Donetsk. More territory they hold, more risk and tradeoffs. Russia also faces dilemma, which is can continue focusing on current offensives, but if they don’t counterattack, then they take risk that Ukraine will expand salient and will become worse and more embarrassing and that Ukraine will have time to further dig in and entrench. If they don’t mount a counterattack, it will be harder to displace Ukraine out of Kursk, and Ukraine could be holding this Kursk salient well into next year, which is basically what they intend to do. End of the day, military strategy is about tradeoffs. Seeing degree of decision points for both Ukraine and Russia as to how to move forward. Both Rob and I somewhat skeptical that Kursk can really change things, on the other hand, worth a shot, interesting to see what it can do for Ukraine. Also interesting to see how it affects Ukraine’s ability to defend at Pokrovsk and how that plays out. If there is an operationally-significant breakthrough by Russia, if Pokrovsk isn’t stabilized in coming months, may be linked to Kursk. Depends on how those things play out. Don’t know details of front, haven’t been there in two months. Ukrainian planning is emergent. Can’t predict what they will do next, just as we didn’t predict Kursk. Looking at Kursk, hard for us to say even what will happen next month.
Max: War is contingent [this is a favorite Kofman catchphrase], and there is a podcast for that. Thanks so much.
[continued from parent]
Mike: Amazing oversight that they suddenly rectified. Not all magical numbers, but Pentagon accounting for things that don’t have an actual market value can get pretty creative. One factor is that I think that some services are looking hard for ways that they can give away older equipment while getting reimbursement for this equipment well above the value of the equipment. I see that as bureaucratic politics. The Defense Department, as with defense department in any country, doesn’t want to give away high-end, low-availability weapons. One reason is that US gives security guarantees to countries, those countries come with operational requirements. Pinned down by operational requirements for plans for other people who you promised to defend. You can say that demands are too high, but as you know in the world of COCOMS – that’s combatant commands – that’s where the real fight is. Those folks are going to argue for their requirements and things allocated to their operational plans and so anything you want to take, high-end systems like Patriots, you are taking them from someone. People think that there’s some kind of base with Patriots. Not what’s happening. They’re taking Patriots that are actually deployed or allocated to COCOM in event that they have a contingency and are assigned to that plan and people are depending upon that system to be there. Even though the US may have 60, I can assure you that for all 60 or however many they are spoken for by somebody. So when you pull them from someone…political knifefighting. For many of these capabilities, big production backlog. The production backlog for Patriot missiles is something like seven years. That’s why this year they suspended exports to divert supplies to Ukraine until they are able to fulfill Ukrainian needs, because there’s no other way. That’s going to come at the expense of war orders for other countries. Somebody’s in that seven-year order pipeline and is going to get theirs later. When we turn to NATO…our European allies are good at many things, but buying ammunition is not one of them and having large capacities in defense capabilities is not one either. Having given away a lot of their equipment to Ukraine in the past two and a half years to Ukraine, they’re also focusing on rearmament. Now they’re concerned about how much they have left relative to how much they’ve given, that’s issue one, and issue two, looking at the US election, and they’re also unsure about US future commitments, what they can count on. That has a suppressing effect. If you don’t know what the future of the US role in Europe is going to be, you might be a bit hesitant about how much more you’re going to give until you have a sense of what your security environment looks like moving forward. People won’t say that, but I get the sense that that is out there as a background context. I observe a pretty large rhetoric-to-investment gap, especially in the third year of the war.
Maria: Thank you. Follow-up question. Wouldn’t war be beneficial in some ways for US military industrial production the same way that is has been for Russia? More people get employed, why so much resistance domestically to providing aid to Ukraine when good for US economy?
Mike: Without going down standard trope of “war is defense industrial policy”, the war has led the US to issue multi-year contracts for ammunition production and such, which we should have done anyway. One thing it has also done is shown a number of people that we are not prepared for a great power war. We are not prepared for a long, conventional war of attrition against a principal competitor like China. We’ve been talking about it, but you look at our production, it’s not there. Why? We reaped the peace dividend and the benefit of being a dominant superpower for many decades, so we’re short on mobilization capacity. The production capacity matches the need, which is efficient. Not a lot of slack in the system. Not to be glib about it, but modern weapon are complex. You can’t ramp them up that fast. We struggled to ramp up production of artillery shells. Can you imagine what it takes to ramp up production of Patriot missiles? Can’t ramp up rapidly the way you could 50, 70 years ago. Politically, should be easy; most aid is money that never leaves the United States. Corruption concerns are grossly overblown. We aren’t giving that much money to Ukraine at all. People have unfortunate misconception after seeing years or decades of the US giving suitcases of money in Iraq or Afghanistan. I don’t blame public or people in Congress for asking questions given how these wars were run and how then those people just left with those suitcases of cash in the end. That’s still fresh in the memory of some people, but this isn’t that war.
Max: I think that Congress has been surprised by how unprepared defense industry is to ramp up for great power war and how our stocks aren’t as deep as we expected. Maybe final question. Looking forward, given state of Kursk offensive, Russia also ramping up production but also having problems, how do you see balance of war playing out over next year, assuming steady state of US support, maybe another supplemental. Is tide running against Ukraine?
Rob: Podcast was supposed to be about Kursk and we didn’t really talk about Kursk. Got sidetracked. Overall situation, Mike and I were there in June. We’re optimistic. Russia had a number of advantages this year. When we go back to last year, Ukraine’s summer offensive failed, ended when they ran out of infantry. Suffered too much attrition, principal reason why it ended. Ever since, Ukraine has had deficit of manpower, been biggest issue. Also issue that US did not pass aid package, that became a problem too, but manpower’s really the more-significant issue. Ukraine has addressed these things. They also addressed the fortification things. When they passed the new mobilization bill, in April, went into effect in mid-May, and significantly increased number of soldiers. Since mid-May, numbers have increased dramatically. Russia has had manpower advantage over last year. Russia had been getting 25k, 30k people/month, now Ukraine is. If sustained, over time, brigades fill up. Our thesis is that Russia’s offensive potential start to degrade this fall and winter. Then Kursk created a lot of unpredictability. It’s a risky operation. It may pay off, but may not. If it doesn’t pay off, Russia may have made more gains than they otherwise would have. Our view before this was that this fall, this winter, Russian offensive potential would degrade, they’re running through armored vehicles at an unsustainable rate, that manpower issues will grow, and that if Ukraine just maintains a favorable attrition ratio of Russian forces, that things will continue to get better. We know that our ammunition capacity is increasing. We won’t achieve parity with Russian artillery production, but if we can reduce that rate, that can have a significant rate on the battlefield. If we catch up and Ukraine is able to maintain a higher rate of mobilization, then the situation should improve. Would give Ukraine options in 2025 to do offensives or other kinds of things. More unpredictability now with Kursk. Instead of new soldiers going to places like Pokrovsk, many went to Kursk instead, new brigades, question of resource allocation. Think Russia’s offensive will probably last longer now, into fall, since if Ukraine holds this area in Kursk then other areas are going to be exposed for longer. If they hold it until negotiations, then maybe it’s a good negotiation chip. Makes it more difficult to force negotiations on Ukraine, whether allies or anyone else. Gives Ukraine more leverage. We thought situation would improve in 2025, and I think it still will, but also depends on how Ukraine makes it through winter with energy infrastructure, that’s an open question, and how things go on both sides, how well they can mobilize and use resources. One thing that we’ve seen is that for both sides, sometimes military operations are dictated by political considerations, including short-term considerations, that are not always helpful militarily. Sometimes creates problems, influences how war goes. Have to wait and see. The Kursk operation was surprising, possible to see other surprising events moving forward that could significantly affect outcome of war. Think that resource situation looks better for Ukraine in 2025 than 2024, but how that plays out is an open question.
[continued in child]
[continued from parent]
Rob: Sure. I don’t think corruption is the concern. I don’t think that we’ve had any indication that there has been corruption with Western-provided weapons systems to Ukraine. We have examples of Ukraine using them quite successfully including the ones you mentioned; the Ukrainian air defense crews have performed very well with Patriots. They’ve shot down Kinzhals in very complex attacks; I think actually the reputation of Patriots has gone up quite a bit in this war. I think that that will be a long-lasting effect of the war. Bradleys have performed very well too. Every brigade I’ve talked to in Ukraine wants Bradleys. The guys with the 47th Mechanized Brigade, who got them first, have had nothing but good things to say about them; they’re survivable, effective, and they operate them very well. With some of these weapons systems…with HIMARS, the limiting factor is not the number of launchers. It’s the number of missiles. It’s the number of GMLRS we have to provide. Ukraine has lost some HIMARS, and I think that we’ve replaced them. I’m sure that we could provide more, but I think that it’s more a question of how many missiles that we can provide to them that they can fire each day. I think that that’s the greater limiting factor there. With Patriots…they need more Patriots. I think that they want several more than they have. One of the key issues is that their ballistic missile defenses are not that strong in many places. At Kyiv, obviously they have a strong Patriot capability there. In many other cities, they don’t have it; they have very little ability to shoot down Iskanders, to shoot down other ballistic missiles…if Iran provides ballistic missiles, that’d be another issue. They can shoot down cruise missiles more-effectively, they can shoot down Shahed drones more effectively, but ballistic missiles are more difficult. Providing Patriots is a key capability that they need. Patriots can also engage bombers at longer range, so if you have more of them, you can bring some up to try to engage Russian Su-34s at long range to stop these glide bombs. It’s a scarcity issue; Ukraine has pushed up some. One Patriot battery was damaged operating near Pokrovsk doing this kind of mission, and it’s a tradeoff between defending cities from these missiles and being able to knock glide bomber carriers. The more capability they have, the more they can pursue these things. With Patriots, it’s also in large part an issue of how many interceptors they have; it’s a missile issue. They are still constrained in that regard. More systems would be useful, can defend more cities, but also a question of whether they have enough missiles to defend against Russian missiles, and I think that it’s always going to be a negative balance. Ukraine needs more armored vehicles. That’s been a concern for a long time. They are forming new brigades, those do not have enough armored vehicles, and existing brigades do not have enough, and the types they have are kind of like armored cars, not always infantry fighting vehicles. Ukraine loves M113s, easy to operate, easy to maintain. I’m a big fan of providing as many as possible. They also use them as a casualty evacuation vehicle, which they often don’t have an armored vehicle for casualty evacuation, and without that sometimes have to wait to evacuate a wounded soldier, so important for a variety of things. M113s are great. Bradleys are great. My understanding is that we are providing a lot more of these, that that has gotten through. We’re ramping up our deliveries, I don’t know numbers but I think that we understand that they are important. One thing that Ukraine is doing with Bradleys is that instead of putting them all in one brigade, they’re sending them to separate battalions, couple assault battalions. Can send battalions around front lines to plug gaps, lets rotate battalion out. Also provide a number of 155 howitzers. We also have to maintain our own reserves for if we get into war of attrition that does not end quickly. Russia good example of this; they’ve lost a lot of tanks and equipment, but still fighting because they had large stockpiles. Think message has been heard. In some cases constraints that can’t just wish away. In some cases, if we’d known in 2022 that this was going to be a 2.5+year war, there were investments that should have been made. Mostly in ammunition production. Western aid still critical for Ukraine. Passed large aid package for Ukraine this year, looking at Russian production, have talked to people who are pessimistic as to whether we are going to keep doing one as large every year on ongoing basis. Concern that I have.
Max: I want to turn to Mike on that. I think that part of the issue is that Pentagon is focused on US warfighting above all else, focused on Indo-Pacific and China, ROK, Middle East, hitting thresholds that not happy about going below. But other issue is funding one, curious for your take on this. We passed aid package. It’s huge, $60 billion in post-World War aid to country that we’re not at war with but still not blank check, still constraints given how much funding there is. Am I overstating that? Do you think that aid we’re providing being used well? Colin Powell said, if we’re going to provide F-16s, what aren’t we going to provide? Using money on that will eat into things like ammo or Bradleys. How do you see US aid? Is it foundational? Are we doing all we can? Can get more? Any comments on what Rob said?
Mike: Great question. Have to say right up front that I am not a Pentagon person, so this is very much an outsider’s perspective. Someone at the DoD might shudder at about what I’m about to say next. First of all, aid package is large, but mostly aid that won’t leave the US. Second, lot of bureaucratic politics involved. DoD quite adept at getting reimbursed at value of what being provided at far above value of equipment. Probably some military services that have equipment from War on Terror, have hardware that was ridden hard, put away wet, sliding it into presidential drawdown authority and giving it to Ukraine. See Ukraine running offensives in MaxPros, various MRAPs, uparmored Humvees, M113s, latest and greatest of what US had during late Cold War and War on Terror. What do you think Kelley Blue Book value of these items is? If wondering why Pentagon keeps coming up with accounting errors where they keep discovering that they have an extra $2 billion…
Max: One branch of [indistinguishable] wasn’t depreciating the value of the stuff that they were providing so they squeeze more juice out of that supplemental. Works both ways when they’re buying stuff.
[continued in child]
[continued from parent]
Rob: Sure. Main conversation right now is on ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles. Reporting say that even though Storm Shadow/SCALP made by Britain and France, contain US components so US has a say in how they’re used. JASSM’s been introduced more-recently; also question about whether they’ll be allowed to be used in Russian territory. More-important factor with JASSM is that quantities may be greater. Ukraine fired a lot of Storm Shadow/SCALPs last summer; not sure what the replenishment rate is. Also concern with ATACMS, because Ukraine fired not-insignificant number of ATACMS. At some point, US could give more but may also look at other constraints and might not want to give more. First-off, conversations sometimes focus on all-or-nothing, either weapon will have huge benefits or no benefits. If US permits ATACMS and Storm Shadow strikes in Russian territory, there will be military benefits. Important not to downplay that. Steve wrote an article for Foreign Affairs saying that it’s not going to be decisive, and I agree with that. If we allow ATACMS and Storm Shadow strikes, it’s not going to win the war for Ukraine…but it can support it. In supporting Ukraine, there’s never just one silver bullet; it’s wholistic. If Ukraine has a capability, it can make plans using it; if not, have to adjust plans. Some things that it cannot achieve: a lot of the Russian missile attacks on Ukraine would not be affected by Storm Shadow or ATACMS. They’re ALCMs launched by strategic bombers that operate more than 300 km from the border from Ukraine. Most glide bombs dropped by Russian Su-34 bombers that no longer operate within 300 km of the border either. They used to be closer, but now they’re pushed back. Releasing Storm Shadow or ATACMS would not be a full solution to either of those problems. What could it help with? Russia has a number of logistics facilities across the border. Right now, Ukraine mostly uses the mid-range ATACMS that uses cluster munitions to go after air defense systems in occupied territories. S-300, S-400. That’s been the priority for quite a long time, and they do this with dynamic targeting, which ATACMS are useful for. That would be quite useful in Kursk to degrade Russian air defense capabilities in that region, which can also allow other operations. Also useful because a lot of Ukraine’s long-range strike campaign conducted via Ukranian-produced weapons, drones, we know they have cruise missile programs, we know they have ballistic missile programs, so if you knock out a bunch of the Russian air defense systems on the border, that could potentially make it easier for Ukraine to perform long-range strikes into Russia. Now, the US may not want to be part of that, but it would help. Another factor is that when the US made the policy change in May to allow the strikes into Russia with HIMARS, the initial effect was that Russia launched a lot of S-300/S-400 missiles as ground defense missiles, consistently struck Kharkiv with that. After HIMARS were allowed, they knocked out a couple of S-300s the first day, and after that there were no S-300/S-400 attacks on Kharkiv for at least a month after that point. A few days ago, there were a few strikes on Kharkiv with S-300s/S-400s. ATACMS would be more-effective; they have a longer range than GMLRS. That would be one justification, saying that we’re trying to help the civilians at Kharkiv; ATACMS could be part of that. It could be the way that happens; we’ve seen before that initially the Biden administration provided shorter-range ATACMS, then later the longer-range ones. The same thing could happen with strikes on Russia. In the Kursk operation, it looks like Ukraine is there to stay for some time. Zelenskyy has mentioned it as a bargaining chip; in order for it to be useful for that, you have to hold it. Allowing ATACMS strikes into Russia will make it easier for Ukraine to hold that area in Kursk. Won’t solve everything, but can knock out tube artillery concentrations, can knock out logistics, all that kind of thing. Variety of ways that that could be useful. I don’t think that it will be decisive. It comes back to the risk/reward and escalation. It would be useful, it would pose more problems for Russia, and that’s one of the considerations here, is that Russia’s strike campaign against Ukrainian infrastructure is a really significant problem. In Mike and my article, we talk about the fighting in Kursk and Donetsk. Most of that is at a tactical/operational level. The strikes against Ukrainian infrastructure have strategic significance, could lead to a situation where winning the war is much much more difficult for Ukraine. I think that the implications are greater. So it’s very important for Ukraine’s supporters to come up with a plan to compel Russia to stop these strikes. Allowing Storm Shadow/ATACMS is not enough, because the range is not enough. Right now, Ukraine is going after Russian energy infrastructure, we’ve seen with the power plants and refineries, UAVs, and I assume that that’s going to continue into winter. Maybe that’s going to get to a point where Russia decides to make a deal, says “You know what? Let’s make a deal, maybe not go after each other’s energy infrastructure because it’s becoming painful for us.” But ultimately, Western countries need to come up with a plan here, because it’s a really significant issue for Ukraine. Ukraine’s long-range strikes against Russian energy infrastructure will not defeat Russia. But if it makes Russia stop striking Ukrainian infrastructure, then it could be strategically-critical. It will help Ukraine sustain the war, which could have strategic benefits on its own. If there’s a concern about ATACMS or similar, maybe there’s a role for subsidizing Ukrainian-produced missiles or similar. Maybe that’s the workaround, I don’t know. Russia’s a bigger country; Ukraine has to find ways to compel Russia. If Western countries don’t come up with some kind of plan, then Ukraine’s going to go come up with their own internal capabilities, so I think that that’s the kind of discussion that we would have.
Max: Mike, anything to add? Thanks, Rob.
Mike: Lot of good points, Rob. I think that the main challenge in our provision of capabilities has been that in boiling the frog, we’ve transferred capabilities out of sequence with combat operations, because could not realize advantages when initially deployed to operationally-significant effect. Ukraine would want a capability at scale then, but often we have provided in fairly small numbers, often after operation, so come up a day late and dollar short, probably fairest criticism overall of our approach. As to Rob’s argument on Steve’s point about the best being the enemy of the useful. Aside from aircraft which are out of range, Russia does have a lot of things within range that could be targeted and it would force upon them a significant adjustment period. That could sap momentum, cause a degree of disorganization, could give Ukraine an advantage for a period of, say, a few months. Rob touched on ability of our capabilities to degrade Russian air defense and thus enable Ukrainian strikes, and I think that that’s a better way to look at it. And compelling Russia to end the campaign against Ukrainian critical infrastructure. Why? We are not going to find enough air defense in terms of both systems and munitions to cover Ukrainian airspace. We’re not going to be able to do it such that Ukraine can defend critical infrastructure like energy, its cities; people, and its front line. Not with expanded Russian missile production. My view is that an expanded strike campaign which Ukraine would be running in Russia would be a much better campaign than expanded strike campaign in Crimea, which they have been running this year with Western support, which in practice has not been setting the conditions for anything. It’s a year after the campaign that was meant to get to Crimea, no follow-up campaign to strike campaign likely to occur. Already led to significant adaptation by Russian forces in terms of intercept rates on ATACMS; not marginal by a long shot. Ukraine has used fairly large number of ALCMs and – won’t say how many – fairly large number of ATACMS as well. If one is to use munitions at this rate, would want to use them in way that would achieve real effects for you. I think it would be much better to have actual strike campaign against Russian critical infrastructure or Russian air defense in Russia enabling Ukrainian drone strikes in Russia, or try to achieve limited aims such as cession of Russian strike campaign itself. I have understood Crimean operation is end in-and-of-itself in that it degrades Russian air defense, will do as an operation until a better one gets here, but also clear that Ukrainians are not making much of it. Kursk offensive is good example that Ukraine wants to achieve leverage over Russia in different way than campaign we have been supporting.
Maria: On numbers, Michael, you mentioned number of weapons systems offered to Ukraine. US has roughly 370 HIMARS systems, and as of May 2024, had sent roughly 40+ to Ukraine, about 4,000 Bradley Fighting Vehicles, but as of May has sent only 300 to Ukraine. For March 5, Abrams tanks about 4,600 in stocks, only 30 to Ukraine. More than 60 Patriot air defense batteries, only one sent to Ukraine. How explain that? Understand that military planners may have different vision, but why so little offered? Is it different priorities? Is it concerns about how Ukraine is going to use it? Corruption in Ukraine? But I think that Ukraine has proved itself quite capable of using those. Would be interesting to get a perspective; Rob, maybe start with you.
[continued in child]
Here’s my semi-transcript, semi-summary typed when listening through for folks who don’t want to listen to the podcast. Note that Google also has an auto-generated transcript on YouTube, which I hadn’t checked until typing this up.
Max Bergman and Maria Snegovaya, hosts. Mike Kofman and Rob Lee, guests on Russian Roulette on red lines:
Maria: Does incursion into Russia not producing large reaction from Russia indicate that Western hesitance to provide weapons was misguided?
Rob Lee: First, background. Not first incursion into Russian territory. However, this larger, regular military. Possible that Ukranian intelligence not even told about operation in runup due to compartmentalization of information. Possible that objectives have changed as Russia’s response became apparent. Ukraine’s leadership said that purpose was to draw as many Russian forces away as possible to slow down Russian offensive forces. Russia has pulled forces, though they have prioritized other areas to pull from, not from critical offensives. The fact that Russia didn’t do so may have affected where Ukraine decided to take this operation. To get back to red lines…not sure that there are specific red lines in war. Russia probably actually judging response on case-by-case basis. Russia may not respond in Ukraine, but to US interests elsewhere; may be providing weapons to people that we don’t want Russia to provide weapons to. For example, we know that Russia has established a much-closer relationship with Iran and North Korea than they did before. Hard from my perspective to say what impact is, because my area of expertise not all US interests around world. Question more one of, for providing given one on battlefield, how likely and how painful any response relative to interests. Hard to assess for us on outside, because Russia may signal that they are unhappy with something by taking actions that are only visible to US intelligence. I can’t analyze that. I do think that escalation risks are something that Biden administration has.
Host: Mike, what is your take on that? It seems like it’s not possible to win a war without pushing into Russian territory, but Western governments seem determined not to have war going into Russian territory, whereas Ukraine seems determined to push into Russian territory. To what extent do you think that this is true? To what degree has Ukraine exposed any bluff from Kremlin? If anything sets off Russia, would think that invasion of Russia would do it.
Mike Kofman: It’s an interesting argument. Not clear to me how much more Russia can escalate against Ukraine. But question really what degree West material party to war and how much Western countries supporting Ukraine be involved with attacks and incursions into Russian territory. To me, red lines conversation is a fairly low-information discussion. Over course of a war, often many parties set thresholds and end up testing them. These thresholds may fall away with new ones being established. Some are claimed by a party, some are just perceived by other parties. May be wrong about those thresholds; no 100% certain way to know. That’s not unusual; this should be thought of as escalation thresholds that are set by parties. Everyone has an incentive to communicate thresholds and to bluff. Over course of this war, US and other countries have fairly consistently gone through thresholds that they believe Russia had; from outset of war on material aid, intelligence, certain types of assistance. Important to note that sometimes policymakers don’t want to do things for their own reasons, and hide behind threat of escalation as a justification; they have a series of other factors that they are managing, like domestic politics or other reasons that they don’t want to. Thresholds not going to go away, because boundaries have to be set. Not knowing where those limits are, but somewhere between provision of basic missiles and B-2 stealth bombers, the US is going to say “no”. Could be because they don’t make sense, because don’t want to give them. Some are really about cost-benefit. US has constraints in number of capabilities it has. Sometimes people confuse not wanting to provide capability because not sure of benefits relative to readiness issues, and people say that administration is using to hide behind. Yes and no. The Pentagon, a place of Excel spreadsheets, does monitor stocks jealously. Sometimes the Pentagon may have ability to give something but does not want to. Not necessarily because Pentagon perceives red line, but because that’s how bureaucratic wrangling plays out. Another factor is that some weapons do require direct involvement from provider for use of weapons, would mean US or other country directly being involved in strike into Russia. Some people may not consider that a meaningful threshold, but other people who are responsible for escalation do. What are their main concerns? I want to be clear that I do not know this for a fact. I do not think that the concern is nuclear escalation. First concern, if any, is horizontal escalation. Russians countering that by transferring technology, weapons, and know-how to countries like Yemen, the Houthis, to enable targeting of major maritime shipping. That would be a problem, not just for the US, but for pretty much everyone who uses that commercial route. Another is the expanding Russian sabotage campaign in Europe and the trajectory that it might take, which has become rather notable over the past year. There are some other conventional ways that Russia can retaliate. Some people can say “that’s already happening already, not something to be worried about”. I’d say that that might be a perfectly-fair argument, but I am trying to convey how policymakers think about these issues into what is what I think is a fairly low-information discussion at this point. From a cost-benefit perspective, people who have to cross the threshold need to be convinced that the benefits are worth the cost. I and Rob are generally-supportive of expanding Ukraine’s strike campaign; we’ve been writing about that for a long time. Sometimes when you make that argument, the benefits that you are arguing don’t appear sufficient to policymakers in terms of costs. It’s not just a matter of “being deterred”, but that you’re not doing a good job of selling them on the benefits. Maybe you need to do a better job of conveying to them the benefits of a policy. Maybe it’s their fault that they don’t see the benefit. But sometimes it’s your job, that you aren’t doing a good job of speaking to the facts.
Max: Maybe we can unpack that a bit. What are the military benefits of unleashing Ukraine to do whatever it wanted, so to speak? My own take is that the US is aiming to “boil the frog”, to gradually add new capabilities without reaching a really dangerous escalation threshold, and we’re in a pretty good place, and a lot of demands for pushing the boundaries…I ask, what are the benefits?
[continued in child]
The secondary explosions on those things certainly have a lot going on.
I don’t think that this ship is as significant as the impact on other ships. If Russia is going to be attacking any ships they can moving Ukrainian grain, that’s gonna make it far harder to get shipping companies to take on the risk of moving said grain by sea.
As someone who uses dark mode on everything and Dark Reader, using that looks like staring into a headlamp. I wonder if Bing actually has native dark mode support if the browser requests it with prefers-color-scheme?
goes to look
Nope. Need Dark Reader.
Do you have uBlock or some similar ad blocker installed?
EDIT: I went and looked myself. I do have an ad-blocker installed. I don’t see the ad. But I do see more noise than OP (desktop, Firefox):
There’s a set of steps at the top left telling me to download and install the software, which is what OP was complaining about.
At the top right, there’s a large, blue button with a link that guesses incorrectly that I want to know about Logitech Unifying Receiver Pairing, and just sends me to another Bing search.
Beneath that, there are a list of several questions that Microsoft incorrectly thinks I might be wanting to task and their answers.
Then there are two “Explore more” links linking me to pages describing how to pair with the software. One appears to link to “logi.com” with apparently is a Logitech business support page that links to the software, albeit only the Mac version, which I’d guess isn’t what OP wanted.
Back on the left, I have what appears to be an AI spam question-answer site at thewindowsclub.com and another page on “how to unify” at robots.net.
Beneath that, I have a link to the Logitech download section. So it’s in my top results and on my laptop, visible on the first screen of results, though beneath some not-really-desirable stuff.
Another problem with everyone doing a search engine is that they can have a widely-disparate featureset, and I’m very unlikely to spend enough time on any one site to familiarize myself with a given featureset. Maybe one or two sites, like github.com. But if I’m just looking for a download of software for a given product? Nah.
Maybe if everyone used local Search Engine X – like Harvest or something. Or if everyone agreed on a search syntax to support.
Google also used to, in their early days, sell a search appliance that companies could use locally to provide searching. I’d guess that that probably contains enough trade secrets and stuff now that they don’t want to hand it out any more.
Given the “unfortunately”, I assume that you’re talking about search engines becoming worse rather than product manufacturer sites getting better.
I use Kagi; they’re commercial and don’t do ads, so they don’t have the malware ad stuff. They do have some generative AI feature to try to answer questions directly, but I don’t think that generative AIs are nearly at the point where they’re better than looking at search results, and I can turn that off.
If I weren’t using Kagi…I don’t personally want to create an account with a search engine that doesn’t have a no-log policy. But some people don’t care, and sometimes with an account, you can turn off some features. So for some search engines, I bet that that gets the AI-generated answers out of the way. Google has a lot of hard-to-find parameters that you can insert into your search URL to toggle search functionality without needing an account – in Firefox, by editing your quick search bookmark, and while I don’t know if that includes stuff like AI-generated answers and “featured snippets”, which appears to be the latest thing, I’d guess that Google might have a way to toggle things.
There’s spam – maybe a year back, when I was using Google more, I remember Google really melting under a shit-ton of AI-generated spam sites. I mean, a significant proportion of my searches included not-very-useful-and-sometimes-wrong AI-generated text sites in the top results. Was the first time in a long time that Google was starting to lose to the spammer crowd. I haven’t been using Google much since, but the few times I’ve hit it, I haven’t seen that, so my impression is that they’ve managed to push the spammers back.
In some cases – and I realize that a lot of people just aren’t going to bother with this – the GreaseMonkey addon permits pages to be mutated, and people often write scripts to hide unwanted content.
On the company website side of things getting better, which I assume isn’t what you mean…
Well, the world does appear to have adopted some conventions for navigation. I don’t like all of them, but at least it makes various sites somewhat more predictable.
To find software associated with a product, it’s almost always possible to go to the support section, maybe select your region of the world. Then sometimes you choose a product category, sometimes just search the product catalog directly. For very small companies, sometimes there’s no search, just a list of products. Sometimes the search can be very obnoxious, like requiring one to look up a model number, but that’s in a minority of cases. That will take one to the product page, and then there’s usually some sort of links to firmware and manuals and such. It’s not common these days to require registration to get access to them.
Another downside is that it’s very common for companies to want to have large promotional images and sometimes video on their main page and sometimes product pages. That’s obnoxious if I’m on a slow cell link at the time.
So…it’s not terrible. But a search engine can generally get me to the relevant page in the top results, without needing to traverse the rest of the website.
Finally, while it’s not an issue with Logitech, it’s not always obvious where a company lives. For the US, yeah, it’s usually companyname.com. But that’s not always true. For the UK – and sometimes I buy products from abroad – it’s often in .co.uk. In the US, due to an infamous trademark fight, “nissan.com” is owned by a small auto company who the much-larger auto manufacturer tried to take the domain from. After an acrimonious fight, the small company is now determined that Nissan Motors is never getting the domain, so Nissan Motors is at nissanusa.com. Sometimes companies spin things off or sell divisions; Thinkpad used to be an IBM product line, until it was sold to the Chinese Lenovo. And one of the more-convenient ways to find a company’s domain name is, well…to hit a search engine. Yeah, I know some domains off the top of my head – kernel.org, microsoft.com, apple.com. But for most manufacturers of most products, I don’t. The domain name is still useful, helps me validate that this is an official site. But it’s not necessarily the ideal way to get there. So if you’re potentially already going to hit a search engine to find the company domain, you might as well just jump directly to the product support page.
The
~/.ssh/known_hostsfile only contains public keys. I mean, maybe someone doesn’t want to hand out the list of hosts that they talk to, but exposing it doesn’t expose the private keys, which are what you really need to keep secret.Those are in
~/.ssh/id_rsaor the like, depending upon key type.