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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: October 4th, 2023

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  • There’s an already-extant ground-based vessel navigation system, Loran-C, though I’m sure that it’s possible to improve on it and I have no idea how much of the receiver hardware is still out there.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loran-C

    The introduction of civilian satellite navigation in the 1990s led to a rapid drop-off in Loran-C use. Discussions about the future of Loran-C began in the 1990s; several turn-off dates were announced and then cancelled. In 2010, the US and Canadian systems were shut down, along with Loran-C/CHAYKA stations that were shared with Russia.[2][3] Several other chains remained active; some were upgraded for continued use. At the end of 2015, navigation chains in most of Europe were turned off.[4] In December 2015 in the United States, there was also renewed discussion of funding an eLoran system,[5] and NIST offered to fund development of a microchip-sized eLoran receiver for distribution of timing signals.[6]

    The National Timing Resilience and Security Act of 2017, proposed resurrecting Loran as a backup for the United States in case of a GPS outage caused by space weather or attack.[7][8]



  • I’m sure not, but even without looking at any technical details, it will have at least a couple benefits:

    • First, it’s short range. GPS satellites are in geosynchronous orbit, which is a pretty high orbit. Wikipedia says about 22,000 miles away. For GPS, the jammer is going to be far closer than the legitimate signal.

    • Second, I’m guessing — though we’ll see — that this is going to be a civilian system, and I suppose that they could even try to mandate that militaries not use it. GPS was, from the beginning, a military system, and there are weapons being used in Ukraine that use it for guidance. Unless you’re solely out to be a dick — which isn’t impossible — probably not a lot of benefit to stomping on civilian-only frequencies.



  • “How did a Trump-hating editor of The Atlantic end up on your Signal chat?” Laura Ingraham asked.

    “You know, Laura, I’m not a conspiracy theorist,” Waltz replied. “But of all the people out there, somehow this guy who has lied about the president, who has lied to Gold Star families, lied to their attorneys, and gone to Russia hoax, gone to all kinds of lengths to lie and smear the president of the United States and he’s the one that somehow gets on somebody’s contact and then gets sucked into this group.”

    Honestly, I really hope that the next administration, regardless of which party it is, dispenses with the constant and unending stream of bullshit. I really don’t want this sort of thing to become established as the new normal.

    It’s not even over a significant issue here; it seems like an insane thing to use credibility on. Like, Waltz could say “I clicked on the wrong person”, and I don’t think that anyone is going to wig out about it. The fact that they were on Signal in the first place, not to mention using poor operational security while on it is the much more concerning issue, but he’s not denying that.



  • I think that it might be a larger factor if levels were specifically designed around exploiting its strengths.

    I remember that Fallout 4, which introduced godrays, had a mission, Call To Arms, that had the main character walking down a series of walkways made of gratings that really made the effect very noticeable.



  • That probably works for some people. But, look at the departments that were cut:

    Firings at U.S. centers deemed the pinnacle of science have been announced week after week including at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Geological Survey and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    Like, okay. I can believe that the CDC people may very well have a skillset in demand in the medical industry, say. Depending upon what they specialize in, there are probably places in private industry that could use knowledge from some of the people at the USGS, like oil or gas extraction.

    But how many non-governmental places want the NOAA people? Weather forecasting companies, maybe? Not that many of those.

    I mean, the problem is that if you’re doing work on climate change, you’re banging on a public good. And generally-speaking, private industry doesn’t address public goods, because they can’t make a return doing it. You’d have to have government hire them, and at that point, might as well just make them part of government.

    EDIT: Honestly, realistically the best way to fund climate change work would be through a global fund, with everyone pitching something in, because it’s pretty much everyone being impacted.




  • My understanding is that buying Greenland has been a long-standing Trump goal. I watched an interview with John Bolton where he was talking about how Trump kept bringing it up during Trump’s first term. And it’s something that a few past US administrations have made efforts toward as well.

    Problem is, as Bolton also pointed out, Trump is doing a really effective job of undermining any effort to do so by being abrasive as all hell. Greenland’s a democracy. Denmark’s a democracy. You can’t go piss everyone off and then have any chance of making such a purchase. Not how things work.




  • In 2018 a Quebec man named Alexis Vlachos pleaded guilty in a Vermont court to charges relating to a plot to use the library to smuggle backpacks full of handguns into Canada on at least two occasions. He was later sentenced to 51 months in a US prison.

    That seems like an unnecessarily-complicated plot to smuggle a small quantity of handguns into Canada.

    I mean, yeah, in theory a vehicle could be randomly searched by Canadian customs, but, then hypothetically, they could have looked into the odd guy at the library (which, apparently, they did).

    searches YouTube

    Here’s a Canadian driving across the border into Canada:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjXIVYfwoXc

    Guy drives up, answers a couple questions from Canadian customs, drives on.