Post election prediction

[sapator]

Combine everything and we got Skynet! Finally! Death by Microsoft! Go raptors!

Edit: I saw a kid use Teams once. He has crying on the sidewalk having an injured knee screaming No More Teeeams!

[FunkyDexter]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth-generation_warfare

I've never agreed with that characterisation. Informational manipulation has been part of the warfare space since Genghis Khan put up a white tent. And Nation States have always tried to undermine each others societies, even during peace. I don't see it as representing a new generation of warfare. The tools are changing, certainly, but they've always changed with the times and this is true of conventional warfare tools too.

You can characterise it as a parallel to warfare (just as politics is) or an integral part of warfare but I don't see it as a generation of warfare.

I think your selling WWII short.

Yeah, I agree. WW2 massively pushed weapons and tactics forward. So did WW1, the American Civil War, the French Revolution and so forth. I don't think it undermines Shaggy's position, though, which I think was that the Ukraine conflict has jumped tech forward rather than that previous conflicts didn't.

Don't think he meant you,

Um, he did respond to Wes's post and quoted it so it feels like a fair assumption.

Personally I think Ukraine probably would struggle if abandoned by it's allies. Man for man it probably has the most capable army in the world right now and is enjoying a generational technological advantage but it's production capacity probably couldn't keep up with Russia's.

I honestly don't know why this is part of the conversation, though, because, with the possible exception of the USA, it's allies do not look like abandoning it, quite the opposite. USA has been a major contributor but Europe's contribution has been considerably higher. A US departure would be a blow, certainly, but hardly a terminal one. And it's far from certain that the USA is going to abandon it. There are certainly some voices around Trump that seem to want to, though they shift back and forward a lot, but that decision doesn't actually belong to Trump, it belongs to Congress which seems to be overwhelmingly supportive of Ukraine.

Discussion about whether Ukraine could stand without allies are fatuous because Ukraine has allies. My cup of tea would be horrible with milk and sugar in it but that doesn't matter because my cup of tea has milk and sugar in it. It's a brown cup of comfort.

And why are we talking about Ukraine allies without addressing Russia allies. Ukraine has received materials from it's allies, Russia has been reduced to begging for men. It is clear that Russia has become ALOT more dependent on it's allies than Ukraine has.

[sapator]

I don't think there really is a ground for conversation for people that believe that the war is conducted:
For the king for the land for the mountains For the green valleys where dragons fly For the glory the power to win the black lord I will search for the emerald sword.
(that is a general comment not addressed directly to Funky, just happened to have the post above)

So as soon as Russia get the critical ground he wants to, the war will be over with a treaty that will maintain the status quo, that is my prediction, it might don't go that way but it's certainly better than what written so far. OMHO of course.

Edit: Teams is so bad that MS decided to put bug in it to eat the bugs it has and maybe be better. F Microsoft. F of course means Futile and nothing more.

[dilettante]

Holy SH*T! Europe BRACES for a wave of violence as Ukrainian weapons flow across the EU

[Niya]

A small country like Ukraine can't outlast a large country like Russia, but they don't have to. They have to outlast the will of Russia to keep pushing forwards despite the costs. I wouldn't say for certain how that will end up. Too many different factors weigh into the calculation.

As to whether they can do it without help, I would say that the answer was absolutely not two years ago, probably not today, but perhaps they can in another year. The point people need to keep in mind with that war is that it is changing the face of warfare at such an astonishing pace that predicting the future is harder than normal. Technology has often leapt forwards during wartime, but I can't think of any leaping as bouncy as what is happening in that war. Smaller, lighter, and far more lethal, autonomous fighting vehicles (I use the term loosely to include air, ground and sea) are coming out at such a frenetic pace that what was cutting edge a month or two back may not be working today. Ukraine is also ramping up the home-grown industry along those lines to such an extent that other countries ought to be buying from them. Not only do they have some superior kit, but buying from them would fund their warfighting. If that were to happen, then...it's not so clear that they couldn't support themselves. It's way too fluid a situation to be certain about.

I think perhaps I'm still not making myself clear enough. Russia's goal isn't the complete destruction of Ukraine and it's people. If it were, they could have done that in a month or perhaps less, using conventional weapons. They could have done it in an instant using nukes. Ukraine couldn't do a thing a stop it. The fact is Russia can decide at anytime that they are tired of this and just go all in and they would win decisively.

The point I'm trying to drive home is that in terms of sheer military might, Russia is a bulldozer and Ukraine is a bicycle, yet people insist on pretending that it's close to an even match.

[Shaggy Hiker]

I think perhaps I'm still not making myself clear enough. Russia's goal isn't the complete destruction of Ukraine and it's people. If it were, they could have done that in a month or perhaps less, using conventional weapons. They could have done it in an instant using nukes. Ukraine couldn't do a thing a stop it. The fact is Russia can decide at anytime that they are tired of this and just go all in and they would win decisively.

The point I'm trying to drive home is that in terms of sheer military might, Russia is a bulldozer and Ukraine is a bicycle, yet people insist on pretending that it's close to an even match.

Yeah, I get it, I just think it's laughably wrong. I do agree that if Russia used nukes, that would make short work of all kinds of things. Everybody has stopped short of that since Nagasaki because it would mean going off into a future nobody can quite predict. However, when it comes to conventional weapons, they aren't a bulldozer, they've shown themselves to be a paper tiger. They're producing a whole lot of armor each month, but it's not new armor, it's refurbished Soviet armor...which gets smoked in short order if it ever gets in range of the drone swarms both sides are operating around the front lines. They produce almost no new armor, and it is also getting smoked. They're producing vast amounts of ammunition each month, and using it to little effect.

Back when they first attacked, lots of people thought the way you did, and predicted a swift Russian victory because of their overwhelming might. Then they attacked and promptly lost so much armor that Ukrainian farmers had, at one point, one of the largest concentrations of armor in Europe. Currently, while estimates vary, Russia has lost an estimated three quarters of a million troops. Yes, they are trying to increase the size of their military to twice that, but unless you are advocating they use human wave attacks, it won't make that much difference.

[wes4dbt]

Yeah, I agree. WW2 massively pushed weapons and tactics forward. So did WW1, the American Civil War, the French Revolution and so forth. I don't think it undermines Shaggy's position, though, which I think was that the Ukraine conflict has jumped tech forward rather than that previous conflicts didn't

I wasn't trying to say SH position was wrong. My comment was, it's a hard comparison. WWII certainly "jumped tech forward" in multiple fields. Radar, Rocketry and the bomb. It sort of depends on how you want to measure the advancements. By speed, volume.

Now I'm probably going to dig myself a deeper hole. lol

How has the Ukraine war "jumped tech forward" by any large amount? It seems to me the technology their using isn't new. It seems they have expanded the uses to that technology and added functionality. They have found more and more ways to use that technology. What technology is revolutionary about their drones?

SH seems to know far more than me about the current situation, maybe I just haven't heard or read about it.

[Shaggy Hiker]

It may be that they are revolutionary because they are NOT revolutionary. They are using cheap drones repurposed in amazing ways. For one thing, the battlefield is becoming transparent in that you basically can't move anywhere near the front lines without being spotted. There's nothing revolutionary about any of that tech. Different sensors, different types of cameras, and so forth. What has been a real technological battlefield has been signal transmission. First it was radio transmissions, then those got jammed, so you went to multi-spectrum transmissions, then the jamming was able to chase the signal, and so forth. At one point, I read that the most cutting edge US transmission and jamming systems were being rejected by Ukraine since they were too hopelessly obsolete to be of any value. That's also what has driven the move into fiber optics, and something far more scary.

For a long time, fully autonomous killer drones were a line that people only speculated on, but largely rejected. Everybody in an armchair was stating that there always had to be a human in the loop making the final kill decision. Jamming meant that the human might not be able to communicate with the drone, and the tech to allow a sufficient image recognition wasn't out of reach. I don't know how far it has progressed, but I got the impression they (both sides, most likely) were already deploying drones that had to be controlled into an area, but could then go on and attack without input.

This may not last very long, anyways, as I've read a couple articles talking about tech that is being pursued (though which does not yet exist) to fry the electronics of a drone using some kind of beam weapon. The idea would be a laser, though which frequency I have no idea. Of course, there would then be shielding developed against that, and the race would go on.

The drones are simple and known. The explosives are pretty well known. It's how communication with the drone is performed, and how much is needed, that seems to be the area of greatest evolution, at the moment. Anti-drone countermeasures and anti-anti-drone countermeasures look to be the next area.

Still, instead of multi-million dollar, high-tech, weapon systems that require a huge industrial base and great amounts of time to produce, we're seeing cheaper systems becoming increasingly lethal. It's one thing to have to worry about a 100 million dollar helicopter. Yeah, it's dangerous, but there won't be very many of them, so killing one may make you safe. It's a different matter to be dealing with dozens of tiny, fast, bomb-carrying drones waiting overhead. Killing one solves nothing, as they are so cheap that a new one will be along shortly, and all the rest are still there.

[sapator]

Yeah, I get it, I just think it's laughably wrong. I do agree that if Russia used nukes, that would make short work of all kinds of things. Everybody has stopped short of that since Nagasaki because it would mean going off into a future nobody can quite predict. However, when it comes to conventional weapons, they aren't a bulldozer, they've shown themselves to be a paper tiger. They're producing a whole lot of armor each month, but it's not new armor, it's refurbished Soviet armor...which gets smoked in short order if it ever gets in range of the drone swarms both sides are operating around the front lines. They produce almost no new armor, and it is also getting smoked. They're producing vast amounts of ammunition each month, and using it to little effect.

Back when they first attacked, lots of people thought the way you did, and predicted a swift Russian victory because of their overwhelming might. Then they attacked and promptly lost so much armor that Ukrainian farmers had, at one point, one of the largest concentrations of armor in Europe. Currently, while estimates vary, Russia has lost an estimated three quarters of a million troops. Yes, they are trying to increase the size of their military to twice that, but unless you are advocating they use human wave attacks, it won't make that much difference.

OH good the indisputable numbers make this easier to step aside from the conversation. Thanks for that.

Edit. Father Teams Mother Teams and Kid Teams walk on the road, kid Teams is slowing down so the father turns and yell at him, F Microsoft! And of course by F we mean Fester. (Fester Teams Microsoft, the kids name) .

[Shaggy Hiker]

Edit. Father Teams Mother Teams and Kid Teams walk on the road, kid Teams is slowing down so the father turns and yell at him, F Microsoft! And of course by F we mean Fester. (Fester Teams Microsoft, the kids name) .

That, right there, has to be the most convoluted, obfuscated, complaint I have ever seen. Howling in rage at Microsoft is one thing, coming up with that....well, that's a different thing.

[sapator]

And they will keep coming until someone admits that he deleted my Teams complain post last week.

[wes4dbt]

And they will keep coming until someone admits that he deleted my Teams complain post last week.

I hope so. Watching a grownup throwing a tantrum is very entertaining.

[Shaggy Hiker]

I hope so. Watching a grownup throwing a tantrum is very entertaining.

Watching Sapator throwing a tantrum is both entertaining AND educational.

However, I wasn't deleting anything last week, as I was off in Yellowstone...though I think there were some Microsoft bots sniffing around...

[sapator]

Who's is a grownup?... Ah, OK.. Actually now I'm going in a battle with VS2022 bs. Every now and then exceptions. I'm going Moti on it's afrs!!

[FunkyDexter]

Russia's goal isn't the complete destruction of Ukraine and it's people

It's the complete subjugation of Ukraine. Putin has been very clear about this on multiple occasions. He doesn't think Ukraine is a valid separate country.

they could have done that in a month or perhaps less, using conventional weapons.

They tried. They failed.

The fact is Russia can decide at anytime that they are tired of this and just go all in and they would win decisively.

The factual evidence says you're wrong.

I wasn't trying to say SH position was wrong.

Just to be clear, I didn't think you were. Though my post may have come across that way.

[FunkyDexter]

And they will keep coming until someone admits that he deleted my Teams complain post last week.

I'm not sure which post you're talking about but I'm guessing that it was the one that started "I really got to share this. It was marvelous!" in the Skype/Teams thread. Looking at it's history it appears that you wrote it, then edited it, then deleted it leaving a reason about lickboots.

Are you sure you didn't delete it yourself by accident when trying to edit it? If not then something strange is happening and you should probably post in Forum Feedback.

[sapator]

The deletion was intentional yesterday as someone undeleted the post after I complained.
Anyhow if it was a glitch it was a glitch , let's move on.

[wes4dbt]

In general a persons beliefs don't matter much to me. But when people responsible for educating children inject conspiracy theories into the curriculum that annoys me.

https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news...090608911.html

I had seen this story a while back, for some reason it resurfaced today.

Seems such an injustice to the children.

[Niya]

In general a persons beliefs don't matter much to me. But when people responsible for educating children inject conspiracy theories into the curriculum that annoys me.

https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news...090608911.html

I had seen this story a while back, for some reason it resurfaced today.

Seems such an injustice to the children.

Wow. Of all the utterly insane things they tried to push in American schools and universities in the last 4+ years, this is the one that finally gets you.

[wes4dbt]

Of all the utterly insane things they tried to push in American schools and universities in the last 4+ years,

Like what??

[Niya]

Like what??

Nah. I'm not looking to start another argument. If you know, you know, if not, that's fine too.

[wes4dbt]

Nah. I'm not looking to start another argument. If you know, you know, if not, that's fine too.

Well, I hope your able to get over the shock and confusion my post caused you.

[Niya]

Well, I hope your able to get over the shock and confusion my post caused you.

I've booked a session with a therapist about it.