https://image.nostr.build/af98a70e2150ecfb84cfc0cf9a2c8362f753970bcf9e6f1a63f231c32fb8648c.jpg
I highly doubt this makes any financial sense.
The marginal cost to kill or seriously wound a Russian is probably something like $50k; the _entire war_ has only cost ~$250k per Russian casualty in direct military spending, and that includes lots of pricey defensive spending like anti-air defense. Ukraine has constantly been short on things like drones and ammo that could easily be purchased if only more funds were available.
I _highly_ doubt the French government is spending less than $50k per Russian. There's a ton of work that needs to be done to vet defecting Russian soldiers given the high chance they're infiltrators, and every failure is incredibly costly. That's on top of ordinary refugee expenses like welfare and other social support, which cost thousands per year.
Just spend the money on weapons and focus on killing Russians efficiently. The ones who are deserting were probably not effective soldiers anyway.
It's a war. Winning matters.
Russia is the one murdering Ukrainians, by, among other things, hunting for civilians with drones. Killing off Russians as efficiently as possible saves lives.
Not all lives are equal. It would be perfectly acceptable to kill a thousand Russian soldiers to avoid the deaths of one Ukrainian.
https://x.com/CaolanRob/status/1843749934379515953
It's a war. You need clear headed men to look at the situation objectively and win it. The more efficiently you kill off Russians, the fewer Ukrainians will die.
Between the two, one group is objectively evil and the other is not. The objectively evil group is the one trying to massacre Ukrainian civilians with drones.
https://x.com/CaolanRob/status/1843749934379515953
The super majority of Russian soldiers that are dying are volunteers. Russia has not fully mobilized yet for political reasons. They're getting people to fight by paying them extremely well instead.
That's also why Russia is increasingly recruiting soldiers from outside Russia too: soldiers from countries that are more poor than Russia are cheaper.
These people don't deserve our pity. They volunteered to murder Ukrainians for money and died for it. The world is a better place without them.
"all lives are equal" is "defund the police" level nonsense.
The supermajority of Russians who are dying volunteered in exchange for (by Russian standards) large amounts of money; Russia has not resorted to large scale mobilization yet and it's illegal in Russia to send conscripts to Ukraine. The Russians fighting are psychopaths who thought it would be fun, and profitable, to kill off Ukrainians. That's probably a big part of why they fight in such wasteful ways: their commanders don't give a shit whether the men fighting live or die. They're just meat to them. And the Russians fighting don't give a shit about the people around them: they just want to avoid dying long enough to collect their financial reward.
Not all cultures or people are equal. That's leftist "defund the police" type nonsense.
Stockholm, Sweden, was the worst place I've ever visited for cash acceptance. AFAICT it was literally impossible to get from the airport to the city center without a credit card. Ridiculous.
https://www.usaid.gov/news-information/press-releases/oct-04-2024-united-states-announces-humanitarian-assistance-support-populations-impacted-conflict-lebanon
Lebanon isn't a cohesive country with a single government. Southern Lebanon is controlled by Hezbollah, and (mostly) populated by Shiite Muslims. Northern Lebanon is mostly populated by Christians (about 40% of the total population), with a mostly separate government. The Christians have been trying to prevent Hezbollah and their supporters from fleeing north.
The US isn't necessarily "funding both sides" by sending a small amount of humanitarian aid to one group, and a much larger amount (10x) of weapons to another (though even then, most of the funding is going to anti-air defense).
If you want to make that argument, you need to drill down to exactly where that money to Lebanon is actually going. This isn't Gaza; with Gaza it's much easier to make the claim that the US was funding both sides as Gaza has (had?) a cohesive singular government: Hamas.
Gaza wasn't an open air prison.
If it was, over 1000 Israeli's wouldn't have been murdered by Hamas and other Gazans on Oct 7th.
If anything, it's a really good argument to seal up Gaza for good and actually make it into an open air prison. Because allowing goods to flow freely into Gaza, and Gazans to travel in and out of Gaza, is stupidly dangerous.
The unfortunate reality is most Gazans (and many other Muslims) want Jews dead for b.s. religious reasons. That's not going to change no matter how nice Israel is to them. They're evil people with evil beliefs, and on average they're quite a bit less smart and successful than Israeli Jews. It's a recipe for violence that can't easily be changed.
This also shows how as much as you can rightfully say what the settler movement is doing is unethical, the settlers forcing Palestinians out of the West Bank has also saved the lives of a lot of Jews. Oct 7th helped legitimize the settler movement.
To be clear, Cullen didn't present it as a "who's Satoshi documentary", and gave us no indication he was looking for Satoshi until the very end. I interviewed with him something like 4-5 times. Only the very last time did he bring that up.
It's accurate to within about an order of magnitude. Good enough for marketing.
Obviously they wanted a nice clean 0.1kcal number. In reality for a typical adult most figures I've seen are more like 0.15 to 0.3kcals.
Did you check what happens if you edit the NIPs to change the specification? Is the code still correct?
It's likely the LLMs can do this because working demos are in their training sets.
"without stirring up any drama"
You just need to read this to know that's not true: nostr:nevent1qqsrygggyvutgv99fy0seg04q4vlhqywsv0p4dm8c6fvhwpwdp0xvnqpr4mhxue69uhkummnw3ezucnfw33k76twv4ezuum0vd5kzmp0qgs9qp2dql3vmuetzq6hw77eeaeej2j2ughers22wch0m2jm7c05w4grqsqqqqqpqg99cr
This.
Killing people is a part of self-defense; at national scales defensive wars are just self defense.
There's a lot of psychopaths in the world who want to kill you and take your stuff. If you don't have a solid system of defense, war becomes profitable for the aggressor. Not to mention situations like Israel where the aggressors have religious beliefs that demand they exterminate you.
This is exactly why saner libertarians accept that one legitimate purpose for government – and taxation – is military defense. If you don't have a military to defend yourself, eventually someone else will form a government to fund a military to take your stuff.
Case in point:
https://image.nostr.build/022f8524315cb556e2ee8c01fb656efb5c626a5053bedb7a765639be067b8081.jpg
These are maps of Ukrainian mineral resources. Now notice the parts of Ukraine that Russia has occupied.
It's just theft. All the bits about "protecting Russians", "NATO expansion", etc. are Craig Wright level gaslighting. Russia is waging war because they think they can get away with stealing a few trillion dollars worth of land and resources. The only way we'll achieve a long term peace is by defeating Russia militarily and economically, and killing off all the psychopathic Russians who subscribe to the belief that they can just steal other peoples' stuff.
It's as stupid to negotiate with this as any other thief. Just kill them off until they're no longer a problem.
Funny you say that... Russia has literally sold a billion or two worth of stolen grain already, much of it straight out of storage silos in occupied Ukraine. They also were selling off metal stocks seized in Mariupol and other places. Similarly, we know they took over many mines and are now operating them. Also in Mariupol and other parts or occupied Ukraine lots of Russians have moved into stolen apartments and houses – the original owners often being dead. They have formal processes to take over property without compensation.
You don't have to speculate on this. Russian TV talks about how Ukrainian resources and land are going to strengthen the Russian economy. They know they're stealing it all.
Huh? Russia tried very hard to seize the areas on that map with oil and natural gas. They got pushed back to the border fortunately. But the plan was certainly to seize it all (Kyiv too).
It's obvious why Russia would fight for the coast: access to the sea. Also not on those particular maps is the vast areas of prime farmland. Again, lots of it in areas they tried to occupy.
Re: access to the sea, that was one obvious reason to take Crimea. But that unexpectedly backfired on Russia as Ukraine has developed their anti-shipping capabilities to the point where the Russian Navy has mostly been pushed out of the Black Sea entirely. Of course, that outcome doesn't change the fact that they obviously wanted to seize all those areas.
Re: Eastern Ukraine, Russia's claims of self defense are obviously bullshit. If they were remotely true, they wouldn't be taking troops away from NATO borders to fight in Ukraine
You can no more arbitrarily claim you're concerned about an invasion than I can shoot you for arbitrarily claiming you are a threat to me.
Yeah, facts and logic allow people to be very certain.
You're just looking for excuses to be contrarian. The world is often pretty simple snd straightforward, and people and nations often do things for obvious reasons (including evil reasons).
Russian culture is just evil. Russia got to the size it is today through relentless invasions and subjugation. Which is not too uncommon in prior history... Except Russia continues to do this to this day, long after we decides it's unacceptable to invade sovereign countries to take their stuff.
The difference between inflation exploits on privacy coins like Monero and Zcash, and inflation exploits on Bitcoin, is on Bitcoin because amounts are transparent it's practically guaranteed that the inflation will be discovered very quickly.
With Monero and Zcash, if an inflation exploit is being used, your only sign might be the price falling. And that's certainly not a reliable indicator.
nostr:nevent1qqszqwelxeyn8ckunqjr36tgjvnky50hrpvvh66smx7mrmcppvzynjspzpmhxue69uhkummnw3ezumt0d5hsygp5v5df8yknf0uaqe8rnu7pp0h0wj679rn3psrnyschk6ruf27haqpsgqqqqqqs095zdj
Nostr has no guarantees about message archiving. It's entirely up to relays to decide how long to keep a message. Also Nostr doesn't store media on relays; media is referenced by URL to third party, centralized, media storage sites with no guarantees.
I would suggest putting this stuff in a git repo instead. That at least is easy to mirror.
“Bitcoin’s lack of privacy is not an accident & it’s not the result of negligence.
It’s a deliberate choice, as cowardly devs & sellout community members deliberately ignore a decade of research & experimentation.”
Nothing says “world's reserve currency ” like research and experimentation....
Given that Zcash and Monero have all had multiple inflation exploits that could have killed them completely, I'm happy to be called a coward for ensuring that our best chance at a digital currency doesn't get killed by a simple exploit.
And yes, this choice is not due to negligence! Quite the opposite in fact.
nostr:nevent1qqsrygggyvutgv99fy0seg04q4vlhqywsv0p4dm8c6fvhwpwdp0xvnqpz4mhxue69uhkummnw3ezummcw3ezuer9wchsygzsq4xs0ckd7v43qdth00vu7uue9f9wytu3c998vtha4fdlv86825psgqqqqqqs0hstxr
Monero is also much simpler in many ways. Supporting L2's properly requires a surprising amount of work on mempool behavior, and of course, a script system that Monero just doesn't have. Of course, I think Bitcoin Core has overcomplicated certain aspects of mempool behavior. But even ignoring that disagreement it would _still_ be much more complex than Monero.
I have a Monero node on my laptop – running in Qubes of course. On top of it being slow, the database implementation fragments the hell out of the disk image file due to how it does so many writes to arbitrary locations. One of these days I might just give up on that node... 😂
"really impressive"
Those are all things Bitcoin wallets do. Heck, Bitcoin pioneered block filters.
What's actually really impressive is implementing Lightning.
“Bitcoin’s lack of privacy is not an accident & it’s not the result of negligence.
It’s a deliberate choice, as cowardly devs & sellout community members deliberately ignore a decade of research & experimentation.”
Nothing says “world's reserve currency ” like research and experimentation....
Given that Zcash and Monero have all had multiple inflation exploits that could have killed them completely, I'm happy to be called a coward for ensuring that our best chance at a digital currency doesn't get killed by a simple exploit.
And yes, this choice is not due to negligence! Quite the opposite in fact.
nostr:nevent1qqsrygggyvutgv99fy0seg04q4vlhqywsv0p4dm8c6fvhwpwdp0xvnqpz4mhxue69uhkummnw3ezummcw3ezuer9wchsygzsq4xs0ckd7v43qdth00vu7uue9f9wytu3c998vtha4fdlv86825psgqqqqqqs0hstxr
“Event is loading or can't be found in your relay list.”
Focus on getting nostr to actually work reliably and not depend on a handful of relays first... self-censorship is embarrassing.
https://image.nostr.build/7d19625f12524064762e966f98540f56433ffd6c1e56e92e3b9339df394adebd.jpg
nostr:nevent1qqsg4r3hdh2u2tjxj6ucv4drp2dtn38r37mvueavh5vzwmrxlyurncsppemhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mp0qgsqgc0uhmxycvm5gwvn944c7yfxnnxm0nyh8tt62zhrvtd3xkj8fhgrqsqqqqqp8fet56
Dunno if you're noticed, but Nasrallah is just one of a few thousand Hezbollah members who have been killed or seriously injured recently, along with lots of weapons caches.
Killing one person is obviously not (usually) going to make a big difference. Killing all of them does. As the article correctly argues.
Anyway, the goal here for Israel is to get to the point where people can return to their homes in northern Israel. To achieve that if there's still Hezbollah members around, they just need to invade southern Lebanon and turn it into a demilitarized zone, putting northern Israel out of reach.
Similar to what Ukraine has done by invading Kursk, Russia.
One of the really awesome things about Ukraine is there's a strong libertarian feel to it. If you're not harming anyone else, people tend to let you do what you want with little red tape.
Case in point: two different businesses were able to do rope jumping from this pedestrian bridge in the middle of Kyiv. They're doing it out in the open, no permits, right in front of soldiers in a defensive post guarding the bridge.
Another example is the Urbex tours a few companies run. I'm not sure how much is going on during the full scale war. But just prior I was able to go on one, paid, tour through cold war era bunkers and tunnels all around Kyiv. The guy running it didn't have any formal permits or anything. Though I suspect that one isn't possible anymore, because those bunkers are probably getting used by the military again...
Of course, buying and selling Bitcoin is easy to do here without any AML/KYC. Currency exchange in general is easy to do everywhere, without any AML/KYC or forms to fill.
https://image.nostr.build/cdbfd9812d9388299277818be606c9930503561ee245a5d65ce03d9b6dd28a19.jpghttps://video.nostr.build/79b849c79cffbbdbdbb7540bb30a3052f2c384a9470be17499ce7b1dce889e31.mp4
Unsurprisingly, Ukraine still let's businesses use plastic straws and plastic bags, and no-one cares if you're recycling or not. And the plastic caps on bottles are still removable!
I wouldn't say that. Those generators are quite expensive to run. Businesses turn them off whenever grid power is available, which at the moment is 100% of the time (in late August and early Sept Russia spent ~$1 billion on missiles and drones attacking energy infrastructure, but Ukraine has managed to mitigate that attack since then; Kyiv hasn't had a power outage for about 2 weeks).
It's also notable that Ukrainians aren't responding to this by installing solar on a large scale. In this climate it's just too expensive for not that much power. There is a bit of solar. But it's pretty minimal. Wind isn't being installed either.
Yup. Floor cooling can't remove humidity, so if you are in a relatively wet climate like Europe if you need to reduce the temperature more than a few degrees you'd end up with wet floors.
Yup. The Ukrainian government is clearly trying to prop up the value of the hryvnia. Certainly not very libertarian of them. But that's understandable during a war that's an existential threat to the country. Currency controls are just another (indirect) form of taxation, and they have damn good reasons to be collecting taxes right now.
Indeed... I was in South Africa last February for a few weeks. Everywhere I went in South Africa there were daily power outages. And outside of the wealthier white areas, it's a dirty, violent, shithole. I repeatedly had locals warn me that I shouldn't go to certain places because I might get murdered.
Ukraine meanwhile, in the middle of a massive war with daily missile and drone attacks, has been able to keep the power on much more often than that, in a much colder, less sunny climate. And even in poorer parts of Ukraine you feel safe walking around and the streets are pretty clean.
South Africa's GDP/capita is $7000 USD; Ukraine's GDP/capita is $4500 USD.
Sure, Ukraine is getting outside support, including funds and materials to keep the electricity grid going. But still. WTF South Africa.
Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa, etc. are relatively safe. There's no chance of those cities getting actually invaded anytime soon, if ever. As for air strikes, just walking around it shows that the actual chance of getting hit is relatively low: the vast majority of buildings don't have any damage from the war. Some do of course. But it's well under 1% in almost three years of full scale invasion, and even if you did happen to be in one of those buildings, more likely than not you'd be fine if you're sensible during air raids. Main thing is get under cover if you actually hear things getting shot down. Though in my experience Ukrainians in those cities almost completely ignore air raids. Eg I was having dinner once in an outdoor restaurant, and something loudly exploded relatively closely to us (~2-3kms?) a few minutes after an air raid started. Literally no-one did anything other than flinching from the loud bang.
Other cities closer to the front line are much more dangerous. Eg in the Kharkiv area, Russian forces are close enough that they're able to hunt down civilians with drones and drop grenades on them. They're straight up bragging about it publicly, and publishing the videos, apparently calling it the "human safari". And from what I hear, a lot more buildings in Kharkiv have been hit; being closer, you get a lot less notice to take cover.
I wouldn't hesitate to visit Kyiv. I'd want an actual reason to visit Kharkiv.
My experience with air raids in Ukraine was, I guess you could say, a "gradual" introduction. First two visits during the war I heard them multiple times but was never close enough to actually experience anything, beyond _maybe_ hearing some explosions very, very, far away in Odesa. Heck, I slept through the sirens multiple times. And a lot of those times I was around Ukrainians who totally ignored the air raids. 😂
First time I was actually close enough to experience anything was seeing what I think was a cruise missile getting shot down, probably 2-3kms away, as well as another time hearing a loud explosion (probably from a ballistic missile hit) while having dinner at an outdoor restaurant. Again, everyone around me just ignored it.
I've been within 1-2kms from explosions a few more times since. I find that the sirens are a bit more likely to wake me up than at first. But possibly because I got introduced gradually to this, it didn't affect my sleep noticably. And I'm here voluntarily, which probably makes a difference too.
Of course, I've done a lot of pretty dangerous stuff in my life before, eg cave exploration. So I may be just more calm around danger in general.
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