Tag: technology

Damn the Drones, Full Speed… RETREAT!

The French navy has been defeated by the Yemenis in the Battle of the Red Sea:

France’s Aquitaine-class FREMM frigate Alsace has turned tail from the Red Sea after running out of missiles and munitions repelling attacks from the Yemeni armed forces, according to its commander, Jerome Henry.

“We didn’t necessarily expect this level of threat. There was an uninhibited violence that was quite surprising and very significant. [The Yemenis] do not hesitate to use drones that fly at water level, to explode them on commercial ships, and to fire ballistic missiles,” Henry told French news outlet Le Figaro in an exclusive interview published on 11 April.

“We had to carry out at least half a dozen assistances following [Yemeni] strikes,” he added.

The commander of the Alsace also revealed that, after a 71-day deployment, all combat equipment was depleted.

“From the Aster missile to the 7.62 machine gun of the helicopter, including the 12.7mm, 20mm, or 76mm cannon, we dealt with three ballistic missiles and half a dozen drones,” Henry adds.

According to the French commander, the Franco–Italian Aster missile – each carrying a price tag of up to $2 million – “was pushed to its limits” by the Yemeni armed forces, as the Alsace had to use it “on targets that we did not necessarily imagine at the start.”

They cheated, they surprised us by shooting at us! The surprise on the part of the former colonial powers is almost comical, considering the way in which things that were obvious to every armchair history buff doesn’t seem to have quite penetrated the skulls of the various admirals and defense ministers of Clown World.

However, it does make what always appeared to be the strange behavior of Civil War and WWI generals a little more understandable, as apparently no military adapts easily to technological changes that necessitate new and different tactics and strategies.

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China is Not the Problem

It seems more than a little strange that we’re supposed to worry about China utilizing the intrusive automotive technologies that are increasingly being mandated, but not the very governments that forced those technologies upon drivers:

Tens of thousands of Chinese cars will be sold in Britain this year. This doesn’t just create an economic bonanza for Beijing, it gives it a geopolitical advantage too. For modern electric cars are computers on wheels. To function properly, they must be constantly connected to the internet, so that they can receive, gather and share data on their performance and surroundings.

This is a recipe for mayhem. Hackers demonstrated years ago how easy it was to remotely disable a single vehicle. With the full weight of a state cyber-warfare agency behind it, such attacks would be far more devastating and widespread.

If this is a recipe for mayhem, doesn’t it make considerably more sense to simply ban the connection of cars to the Internet rather than trying to ban the import of Chinese cars while assuming that the Chinese won’t be able to figure out how to hack the Internet-connected US- and Japanese-made cars?

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Ban the Panopticon

It’s always conveniently turned off whenever anyone in a position of authority is doing something sketchy or wants to retroactively hide something anyhow.

And there it is… The Dali ship’s black box has 2 minutes of missing data right before it crashed into the Francis Scott Key bridge

It’s not even remotely surprising anymore. All of those security cameras that are supposedly meant to provide the public with some level of security and information observably aren’t permitted to function well enough to fulfil their supposed purpose, so there is no reason to pretend that they ever will or to allow them to be utilized by government agencies.

Things like these are always justified on the basis of what they could, in theory, accomplish. But the observable reality is that they do not accomplish what is promised, therefore the justifications do not apply.

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The Poisoned Apple

The US Govt has created a hardware backdoor in the CPUs of Apple devices. This cannot be patched with a software update. Every owner of an Apple device is affected. You have no security. US spy agencies will have done the same with other CPUs.

I very much doubt it’s any better with Intel. But it’s now confirmed in the case of Apple.

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Cheese-19

Pfizer is now making up to 90 percent of all the cheese sold in the USA:

“90% of the cheese sold in the U.S. does not use animal rennet and instead uses a genetically modified organism (GMO) version made by Pfizer”

They use a loophole to get around having to label all our cheese as GMO, Here’s how:

“90% of US cheese has now been infiltrated by one of the world’s largest biopharmaceutical companies, Pfizer, and it has GMOs.”

Traditionally, cheese is made with just 4 ingredients, milk, salt, starter culture, and animal rennet, which is a clotting agent that’s used to curdle milk into cheese.

Today, there are 4 different kinds of rennet used in the cheese industry, and reports are stating that the most commonly used kind is a genetically modified version called FPC, or a fermentation produced chymosin made by Pfizer.

These alternative rennets are both cheaper to use and speed up the aging process, which like always means greater profits. The crazy part is no one knows that they’re eating this or how it’s really affecting us.

Because this FBC rennet is labeled as GRAS or generally recognized as safe, it creates a loophole that exempt Pfizer or other companies from having to label these products as GMO. And due to Pfizer’s massive amount of wealth and power, it’s now made its way into about 90% of our cheese.

It’s definitely time to switch to organic European imported cheeses. Or, I suppose, Velveeta. That should be safe, since I don’t think it’s possible to genetically modify plastic. But regardless, I wouldn’t touch the Pfizerized FPC cheese.

And keep this in mind: 43% of food additives are designated ‘GRAS’ and don’t get FDA oversight. Essentially, we must trust that food companies will conduct unbiased safety determinations before adding these new GRAS substances to our food.

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Good News and Bad News

The good news: Princess Kate isn’t dead.

The bad news: She didn’t get the saline.

The Princess of Wales has announced tonight that she has been diagnosed with cancer aged 42 and is undergoing ‘preventative’ chemotherapy. In a deeply emotional video message, filmed at Windsor on Wednesday, Catherine revealed the news had come as a ‘huge shock’ and that she and William ‘have been doing everything we can to process and manage this privately for the sake of our young family’.

Catherine’s cancer was discovered only after she underwent major abdominal surgery at The London Clinic in January. Kensington Palace has said it will not be sharing details of what kind of cancer the princess has, or what stage of cancer it is and has asked people not to speculate.

It is understood that the King – who is also currently undergoing cancer treatment himself – and the Queen have both been informed of the news.

It’s really astonishing that even at this point, most people are still in denial over the obvious adverse effects of the vaxx. Then again, most Americans still genuinely believe that 81 million people voted for Joe Biden too.

MPAI has consequences.

The weaponized autists at /pol/ are not at all convinced that the video is legitimate.

  • Kate’s vid doesn’t look right. If you look at the two areas circled in red you can see strange movement in isolated areas in the background next to Kate.
  • Something about it looks totally AI. The bench doesn’t look right. In the background, from the start to the finish, apart from the anomalies, there is not movement. They look to be daffodils in the background, and yet they are fixed immobile. Perhaps there was not wind at all. Sometimes flies flit across the frame which looks real, and the light changes of the couple of minutes.
  • About 1.20 in, it’s especially noticeable to the right of Kate’s head. The background blurs around as she moves. It’s a lot like the effect in Zoom or whatever when you put up a fake background so you don’t have to show your untidy basement.
  • And the bird sounds in the back, loop over and over. Green screen, fake sound effects.
  • AI Voice at 1:40
  • Background doesn’t move. Turn up the volume and listen closely to the sounds in the background as well. Sounds like a fake countryside kind of soundtrack. Her left eyebrow is off.
  • It is a fake country soundtrack, it’s a green screen production. Even the flies are fake, notice that not one of them lands on her or the bench?
  • There’s weird aliasing going around all over her head, most visible on the edges of her chin and cheeks.
  • I think there is a high chance it’s a deep fake with her voice and face being faked onto another person sitting still on a bench in front of a greenscreen to get the optimal results, hence why her body movement is so stiff and you only have these minimal hand gestures while her entire upper body stays still. This will be confirmed if she doesnt make a public appearence soon or they announce her sudden demise to this so-called cancer. At 1:40 you can hear an audio distortion with what sounds like the original voice of the stand in coming through a bit while being distorted by the voice change “AI” program.
  • It was this 19 year old Kate lookalike.
  • Why does the shadow on the bench have stripes?
  • The shadow on the bench around 1:20 looks like the stripes are extended onto the the bench. This is really fucked up.
  • Two seconds of watching and I can see it’s at minimum greenscreen but more likely generated.

My immediate reaction was that it isn’t real. I haven’t analyzed it in any detail myself, since I don’t really care in the slightest about a German monarchy that hasn’t lifted a finger to defend England from invasion since 1948, but I do have a moderately-trained eye from my experience as a game developer overseeing a team of artists, and it looked like a well-done deep fake to me. The face, in particular, looks off. And the computer image analysis tends to confirm this conclusion:

UPDATE: The Daily Mail wants to know: Will Kate conspiracy theorists now eat their words?

In the immortal words of Bugs Bunny, nyoooooo.

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Always. Use. Cash.

If you’re not using cash every chance you get, you’re literally part of the problem:

Sainsbury’s is battling a major IT meltdown on one of the busiest shopping days of the week and has left customers fuming after suffering an ‘error with an overnight software update’ that has prevented the supermarket from being able to fulfil online orders or accept contactless payments at the tills.

Stores across the UK are battling a major ‘technical issue’ that has left customers ‘disappointed’ and forced to turn to rival Tesco to complete their Saturday shop.

Frustrated customers say they cannot pay at the tills, while company bosses admit the firm is ‘experiencing issues with contactless payments’ and also ‘will not be able to fulfil the vast majority of today’s Groceries Online deliveries’.

Look, there are many situations that one simply has to use electronic payments, such as when one is not in a face-to-face transaction. But this recent payment failure at Sainsbury’s illustrates the absolute need for cash, which is why it is incumbent upon everyone to insist on cash transactions for all of your face-to-face transactions.

I don’t even have a debit card, much less one of those smartphone app payment methods. And this isn’t because I’m a Boomer who hates and fears newfangled technology, but because I understand exactly where all this “contactless” electronic payment tech is ultimately heading.

Don’t help pave the way for the Mark of the Beast. Don’t participate in it. Don’t make it easier for them.

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Against Free Speech

Andrew Torba appears to have belatedly come around on the problematic nature of free speech, even if he has not yet accepted the historical fact of its essentially evil nature:

The Previous Policy: Focus on Individual Content Removal

For a long time Gab relied on a policy that focused on removing individual pieces of content that violated our community guidelines. This approach often involved issuing warnings to users before taking action on specific posts or comments. However, this strategy has shown limitations, as some users continued to engage in threatening, spammy, and harassing behavior even after multiple warnings. This led to the ongoing presence of toxic elements within the community, which often drove good and decent users away.

The New Policy: Removal of Entire Accounts

In response to these challenges, Gab has decided to take a more proactive approach by removing entire accounts that engage in threatening, harassing, or spamming behavior. This shift in policy is a direct response to the shortcomings of the previous approach, which failed to effectively deter users from engaging in problematic activities. By removing entire accounts instead of just individual pieces of content, Gab aims to send a clear message that such behavior will not be tolerated and will ultimately lead to account termination.

We are giving no quarter to subversive accounts that exist for one reason and one reason only: to destroy Gab and our amazing community.

In order to strike the right balance between protecting free speech and ensuring the safety of our community, we must continually assess and refine our approach to content moderation. This involves ongoing discussions with users, legal experts, and other stakeholders to ensure that our policies remain both effective and fair.

Ultimately, our goal is to create a platform where individuals can freely express themselves while also feeling safe and protected from subversive freaks who want to scare them off the platform with violent threats and make Gab look bad.

As we continue to evolve and grow as a platform, we remain committed to the principles of free speech and community protection. By working together with our users and partners, we believe that we can create a space where individuals can engage in healthy and productive dialogue while also not facing a barrage of threats and harassment from subversive people who want to destroy Gab.

We’re cleaning up Gab and it’s long overdue.

This is a wise step forward, but an incoherent policy. Because “the principles of free speech” are inherently and always opposed to “community protection”. The very purpose of free speech is subversive and blasphemous; as we have learned, the primary advocates of free speech are the very first to criminalize and penalize it as soon as they attain sufficient power.

But I understand. It’s very hard to not only abandon, but actively turn against the very rhetoric that once inspired you. Most people are never able to slaughter their formerly sacred cows. At least Torba and company have recognized the poison in the false promises and are now taking practical steps against it, even though they are still paying lip service to the conceptual problem.

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Column and Line

Another intriguing excerpt from Castalia History’s forthcoming Studies On Napoleonic Warfare by Sir Charles Oman addresses the truth behind the history of the tactical conflict between the French column and the British line.

Every student who takes a serious interest in military history is aware that, in a general way, the victories of Wellington over his French adversaries were due to a skilful use of the two-deep British line against the massive column, which had become the regular formation for a French army acting on the offensive, during the later years of the great war that raged from 1792 till 1814. But I am not sure that the methods and limitations of Wellington’s system are fully appreciated. For it is not sufficient to lay down the general thesis that he found himself opposed by troops who invariably worked in columns, and that he beat those troops by the simple expedient of meeting them, front to front, with other troops who as invariably fought in the two-deep battle-line. The statement is true in a rough way, but needs explanation and modification.

The use of infantry in line was no invention of Wellington’s, nor is it a universal panacea for all the crises of war. Troops who are armed with missile weapons, and who hope to prevail in combat by the rapidity and accuracy of their shooting, must necessarily array themselves in an order of battle which permits as many men as possible to use their arms freely. This was as clear to Edward III at Crecy, or to Henry V at Agincourt, as to Wellington at Bussaco and Salamanca. A shooting-line must be made as thin as is consistent with solidity, since every soldier who is placed so far to the rear that he cannot see the object at which he is aiming represents a lost weapon, whether he be armed with bow, or with musket, or with rifle. Unaimed fire was even more fruitless in the days of short ranges than it is in the XXth century. And the general principles which guided an English general who wished to win by his archery in the Hundred Years War were much the same as those which prevail today.

The reason this topic is relevant today, more than 200 years later, is that rather like the period in the 17th century when the dispersed shooting line disappeared in favor of dense columns and the post-Civil War period when artillery and machine guns made it necessary to eliminate both line and column entirely, the battlefield is undergoing another period of tactical reconsideration, this time brought about by new drone and facial recognition technology.

These developments may, in fact, render the battlefield itself obsolete. The Kalishnikov Zala Product 55 quadcopter not only carries an explosive charge, but as can be seen in the embedded image, spools out 6.7 miles of fiber-optic cable to render it immune to electronic jamming, making it all but unstoppable by anything except elite skeet shooters and anti-air laser defense systems.

Which is just another reason to stay safely inside at home reading the Castalia Library substack, which being entirely free, is not only educational, but an unbeatable value, in addition to keeping Library, Libraria, and History subscribers even more up to date than the monthly newsletter. And if you’re a parent, you might want to consider subscribing to the Junior Classics substack, which is presently wrapping up the final section of the pre-Devil Mouse version of The Beauty and the Beast.

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DEI vs Semiconductors

A longtime industry insider makes it clear that the recent Diversity law is not compatible with the expense and failure rate of semiconductor manufacture, which means the USA will be permanently knocked out of the computer technology arms rate, with all the obvious consequences for Clown World’s future industrial and military capabilities.

This is interesting. Don’t know the reality. Certainly DEI is not going to work in an advanced fab. Maybe the bill can be cleaned up. But it might be too late to clean up the bill. Was it all DEI pork or AI silicon? Must be shocking for the Taiwanese to read the bill and wonder if they can make chips with the subsidy and government requirements.

Intel’s Grove got rid of the union in 1979. If union won the fab 3 was closed – period! Intel Fab 3 was the 8080 cpu series start up for the first IBM PC and first memory chips at production scale.

Getting in bed with the government could be worse today. Intel’s CEO better read the fine print. Is it worth the regulations? Every wafer will have a built-in DEI tax and fab operational red tape.

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