I first had a conversation with my wife at a pizza place hanging out with mutual friends. We bonded through in person face to face conversation like cave people. She never used dating apps so there was no other way we were going to meet.
Turns out if you leave your home and hang out with people a lot, you build better social skills, and potential partners can get to know you as a friend first, and are more inclined to give you a chance at something more than they are when you are just another awkward photo in a dating app.
Before the era of cell phone and always on comms, leaving the house was a way to NOT be found on purpose. If you weren't home, people just had to wait!
Before mobile phones, there were public phone booths. Along motorways there were often call boxes. There’s little to none of that anymore.
Also before mobile phones, if you had an accident in a remote area you were at the mercy of someone passing by and noticing you. Today, modern cars can call 911 on your behalf along with your location without you even being conscious. Or if you don’t have a car that does this, then your cell can be used. Let’s not also forget iPhones calling for help when they detect you had a fall at home.
Yes emergencies existed before mobile phones. I contend that the use of mobile phones has led to better outcomes when an emergency happens. I also admit mobile phones will have caused some of those emergencies (distracted driver etc).
I have many times used public telephones when I really need to when traveling. The main difference today is they are free. Every airport lobby, every hotel, and most business can call a taxi or call 911 in a pinch. There are also free public use phones (often hardcoded to emergency numbers or taxi companies) often in hotel and airport lobbies.
I never noticed them until I got rid of my phone but they are everywhere.
In NYC all the payphones were replaced with wifi stations that also allow you to make free phone calls for emergencies etc.
Also all cell phones can call 911 without a sim or subscription so someone really worried about having instant access to call 911 in an emergency could have one of those keychain sized dumb phones they leave charged and powered off until they need it.
You are highly conditioned by marketing and social pressure to think you need to have a cell phone tracking you and distracting you at all times to live a safe and productive life in the modern world, but this is just not true.
Lived without one for 5 years, and have experienced accidents and emergencies in that time like anyone else.
Right, typically in an emergency you’ll want to call the police or paramedics, and later family. Front desk of any business or bystander can do the first, hospital can do the latter.
These are from posts/follows/likes. According to their CTO, about that same number of accounts on top of that don't do any of that and just visit/read the site.
> Normal person would drive carefully around blind spots.
I can't tell if you are using sarcasm here or are serious. I guess it depends on your definition of normal person (obviously not average, but an idealized driver maybe?).
AFAIK they used GPS spoofing which confuses the Starlink terminals - they need to know where they are to properly connect to the satellites above.
This can be overriden to use "Starlink positioning" where the terminal ignores GPS signals and dtermines its position based on Starlink satellite signals. I think this is what is used in Ukraine where GPS is mostly jammed/spoofed to hell even far from the front.
The GPS positioning is the default as it is likely more user friendly/has quicker lock in normal circumstances.
Another venue of attack could be the Starlink WiFi AP included in the terminals- you could track that down.
So in general:
* switch the terminal to Starlink positioning
* disable the Starkink terminal WiFi AP and conect by ethernet or connect an AP via ethernet with a new SSID and different MAC address
Spoofing - ok, but how did they detect all the starlinks? Assuming that users were smart to not turn on WiFi on starlink. Do these antennas emit certain waves that a “scanner” can detect and with 99% certainty figure out that that point on a map is a starlink antenna ?
My wild guess is that jamming is local. Major cities may be fully jammed. To get an idea about GNSS jamming range (different signal of course, probably much easier to jam), there are maps online where you can see which parts of Europe are currently GNSS-jammed. But I have the same question as you.
Definitely much easier to jam. Much higher orbits for gnss satellites, much lower signal intensity.
Also, starlink uses phased arrays with beamforming, effectively creating an electronically steerable directional antenna. It is harder to jam two directional antennas talking to each other, as your jammers are on the sides, where the lobes of the antenna radiation pattern are smaller.
Still, we're talking about signals coming from space, so maybe it is just enough to sprinkle more jammers in an urban setting.. I'm curious as well.
The GPS jamming maps are based on commercial air traffic flying in the area.
While that gives some ideas of how widespread the jamming is, it won't give accurate information about the range (air traffic avoids areas with jamming) of the interference or any information from places where there is no commercial air traffic (war zones, etc).
Supposedly it's high packet loss but still available to at least some extent. Or at least it was initially? Really highlights the importance of low bandwidth P2P capable messaging systems that support caching messages for later delivery as well as multiple underlying transports.
RF and GPS jamming has been a solved problem for decades. As a SWE, we are all expected to take Physics E&M, Circuits, and CompArch in our CS undergrad - think back to those classes.
Yes in most population centers. Any country that has the ability to stand up a cellular network has the ability to deploy jamming at scale.
The components needed to build jammers and EW systems have been heavily commodified for a decade now (hell, your phone's power brick, car, and TV all have dual use components for these kinds of applications), and most regional powers have been working on compound semiconductors and offensive electronic warfare for almost a generation now.
I don't think it's as easy as you're suggesting. GPS L1 jamming has been done routinely enough but the satellite bands (X/Ku/Ka) appear to be much more difficult to pull off.
Iran was reported to have mobile units with a fairly short range that constantly roamed around, only hitting 2 of the 3 bands (Ku/Ka). They're also reported to have received mobile Russian military units capable of jamming all 3 (X/Ku/Ka) over a much wider area. (I'm not actually clear the extent to which X band is associated with either Starlink or Starshield. Starshield also reportedly operates to at least some extent in parts of the S band. [0])
So the technology clearly exists but it doesn't seem to be something you can trivially throw together in your basement. That's quite unlike (for example) a cell phone jammer which a hobbyist can cheaply and easily assemble at home. I assume the extreme directional specificity of the antennas plays a large part in that.
Couldn't they target each starlink satellite for jamming as it flies overhead? The sat would still send fine, but you could effectively kill the antenna?
I guess (non-expert understanding) that it depends on how tight the beamforming is (relative to the distance of the jammer from a given ground station) or alternatively if the jammer can prevent the satellite from successfully locating the ground station to begin with.
Ah, yes. Buy two $40k cars, one of which funds one of the people actively trying to destroy democracy.
There's. A lot to unpack there.
But I've still got 3 suitcases of my own stuff sitting waiting for me to get a real flat, so I think I'll pass on that and just let you assume that everyone who disagrees with you is stupid and can't do their own research. And, I guess, has $80k just lying around to spend on whatever.
Sorry but where in the US does electricity cost under 10c/kWh (assuming something like 80kWh for 500km)? And 100$ for 30-40l of petrol? That'd be over 10$ per gallon
is the last point correct?
"Get familiar with remote detonation with drones, these are what we use to set off the molotovs:"
seems off for this list, like way off and more on military/offence side of type of thing?
and why would you need a 300m+ ethernet cable in a disaster?
Totally valid use case for sure, and we discussed this because I do have a Starlink dish, but honestly, in a conflict with the US...I don't think a) I'd want to use starlink and b) i'd expect it to work.
Ethernet cable is a high quality cable usable for various other purposes. That includes low voltage power line, such as 12V from the car to phone charger in the house, solar panel wiring, basic tripwire alarms, command relays in the yard from the house, basic audio intercom with your neighbors when phone lines are down, etc.
Plus the obvious ethernet repairs: lines broken by fallen trees/branches in a storm, video camera cables cut by thieves, install new survillance cameras, move existing ones.
Self-supporting ethernet cable is also a decent clothesline when your dryer is not working.
In his case i didn't actually bother asking about the cat6 because i already had a huge reel in my garage, but I can think of cases such a remotely mounting satellite dish' and maybe connecting buildings to each other.
The molotov didn't seem out of range for me honestly. Firstly because I know he was one of the first people flying drones for defence, and now they've been mass producing their own for a few years. I have to admit, it seems pretty rational to want to fight back in any way possible.
Funny, not funny, this friend and I met up in early 2020 and had a beer down the road. He was telling me he'd rented his apartment in Liviv and was moving here next week. He had to go home to get some things, hand over the unit, and then he'd be back.
Next week was the pandemic, borders closed. He never left, and now he /still/ cant.
Let politicians fight and die in their own wars. If russia "visited" my country, I'd follow it with a drink in my hand from the bahamas. No piece of dirt or earth is worth dying for, ever.
> No piece of dirt or earth is worth dying for, ever.
If no one ever defends the dirt, the pieces of earth where you can enjoy a drink in peace and freedom will shrink over time as the aggressors will continue to gobble up land because of the lack of defending.
They keep moving forward, you keep moving back, until you have no where to retreat to.
Come back to this comment in a few years and think about whether something significant has changed for those people who did not sacrifice their lives for a meaningless battle.
People are more important than the state. If they are not ready to defend him, why should they be forced? You can offer money or other valuables in return, such as fame, a pension, or a position, but if a person doesn't want to, why should they do it?
> Come back to this comment in a few years and think about whether something significant has changed for those people who did not sacrifice their lives for a meaningless battle.
My family is from Eastern Europe: if people had not fought "meaningless" battles then the land would have been ruled by genocidal maniacs. As it stand my grandmother almost ended up in an oven.
My very existence is the result of the battles having meaning, that people fighting matters.
At that time, the Genplan OST implied the almost complete extermination and the enslavement of a small number of the remaining people.
And also going back to the second part of the top commentary. At that time, people had a great motivation to defend their homeland and their loved ones. The survival of the country and the survival of the people in it were inextricably linked.
The current conflict has no such connection. The existence or cessation of the existence of the state is not related to the existence of people in it. Many of whom found life in a completely different country.
There were already volunteers, mercenaries, those who fell for a good salary. Why force those who actively avoid it?
Russia doesn't just "visit" your country. Lookup what Ruskiy Mir (Russian world) really means, basically your country gets subjugated by the Russians and I'm not talking about civilized or professional Russian forces - I'm talking about drunk and poor 20yo boys from a remote Russian villages that are now seeing the spoils of western civilization for the first time (do lookup what happened in Bucha, Kyiv suburbs in 2022 at the onset of invasion). Then of course the refusal of the Russians to recognize any other culture or language...the list goes on and on. So - yes, you could escape with a drink but then "If Not Me, Then Who"?
This is a lie, please stop spreading those. There are no "all barbed wire" borders, no anti-personnel mines, "guards with automatic weapons" sounds like some meme from 80s video games (which border guards anywhere in the world don't have some rifle with automatic fire mode?). Young people from Ukraine can currently travel free as far as I know.
You were thinking about russia, weren't you. Its not true even for that shithole, but much closer.
Very unlikely. Men of ages 18-60 are forbidden to leave Ukraine since February 27 or 28 of 2022. Women cannot cross the border since 2023.
Of course, there should be some exceptions. For example, some people need to go abroad to bring Western supplied munitions, officials can leave to visit other countries, etc.
But almost 100% of the population cannot leave Ukraine under any circumstances.
I have spoken with several Ukrainian women who have crossed the border several times since 2023. They live and work in Poland or Czechia, but go visit Ukraine once or twice a year. Note they're Ukrainian citizens, and do not have Czech nor Polish citizenship.
I don't follow Ukrainian laws closely. I remember they allowed young men of ages 18-22 to cross the border in August 2025 (!). That caused enormous lines on the borders as the first day after this law 11,000 young men fled the country.
But that only about men of age 18-22. Men of age 22-60 still cannot leave the country. And 18-22 couldn't leave the country for three years.
Honest question: why do you comment when you clearly have no idea what you are talking about? You make all kinds of false claims, and then people who actually know have to correct you.
You skipped the part where I said I work with Ukrainians? I work with them on a weekly basis for 13 years.
> Can you show an Ukrainian law that allows men to freely cross the border?
Did I say he crossed it legally? He crossed it illegally of course, which according to you was impossible due to guards with automatic rifles, drones and anti-personnel mines.
> half of my family lives in Ukraine.
My bet: You haven't spoken with them in years, because they cut connections due to your political views. Just as I will now.
The world we're headed for there is no "other place" to escape to. Many people's view of survival during collapse ultimately assumes the existence of a fairly large "safe haven" space for which they just need to survive until they get there.
That depends on a lot of personal things. I remember a Ukrainian I personally know, leaving after the 2014 invasion.
When Russia was doing "exercises" at their border in 2022, I asked them in a meeting what they felt (guys living in Lviv). Most of them thought Russia would have done it in 2014 already, and now it didn't make much sense. Only 1 person responded he filled up his gas tank. But in the end, nobody left Lviv right after the invasion.
Is there a real practical solution to this? It seems like all proposed solutions in last 40 years are a drop in the ocean, or just a money grab scams. Only thing that really worked for such global scale is the ozone layer repair. Global warming/climate change I guess we should just accept it and adapt?
Plenty of solutions, but politicians will never make it happen.
We calculated that capping personal emissions (mostly doable via peer pressure should we get this moving as normal people) to some top 1 percent 25 metric carbon ton and going plant based would get us net-zero while additionally getting rid of the zillionaire problem and adding extra 50-100 gigaton rewilding effect to the table.
With no bigger than marginal effect on anyone's QOL.
But we're SOL as the propaganda machines of the zillionaires keep dividing normal people to fake dichotomies.
No, there's really just a few select politicians standing in the way. Governments around the world have implemented tons of policies to attempt to address the crisis, but unless every country participates, it's economically suicidal. Carbon-intensive industries can simply move to the US, strengthening them, while those countries attempting to carry the burden of preventing climate change will be equally affected by looming disasters.
Because the US is the only country that defected from the Paris agreement. The US is the only country led by climate change deniers. Tons of countries are led by malevolent and selfish leaders, but none are as incompetent and unpredictable as the US.
Climate change mitigation is a collective action problem in the form of a prisoner's dilemma or a tragedy of the commons. If every agent (i.e. country) refuses to cooperate, every agent will suffer major damage from environmental disasters. If all agents cooperate, they only suffer minor damage from economic policies designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
At first sight, this doesn't seem like much of a problem. The solution seems self-evident, before one considers countries adopting different strategies:
If one country defects, they benefit massively from hosting the world's carbon intensive processes, yet all countries will equally share in environmental catastrophe. Thus, the optimal strategy for any single self-interested agent is always to defect, no matter what the others do. Paradoxically, the optimal strategy for each agent in isolation leads to a catastrophically bad outcome for all agents if they all choose that strategy. Everyone wants to be the parasite, but if no one is the host, we all die.
It wouldn't matter if the US were a tiny island nation, but the US has the largest carbon footprint, the largest economy, and the most capable military. The US led the democratic world. They could have solved the prisoner's dilemma by enforcing global cooperation. If the US and its allies would threaten to sanction those countries who don't cooperate, the payout matrix would shift towards cooperation being a stable Nash-equilibrium. It would no longer be in a country's interest to screw everyone else over, so they'd stop. The US and the entire world would be better off.
* has been the largest cummulative emmitter of CO2,
* has "outsourced" much of the emissions due to its current consumption levels to offshore manufacturers such as China,
* was an early recognizer of the serious implications of CO2 emmissions causing AGW, going back to the 1970s,
* was and still is home to some of the largest fossil fuel companies that have been activly gaslighting the world about the realities of AGW since the 1970,
* is, or at least was, a global leader that was admired with an aspiration lifestyle that has set the tone for lifestyle globally - a lifestyle with consumption and emission attributes that have disasterous side effects if attained globally.
There are some 190+ countries about the globe, it's very much the case that not all countries are equal actors in this issue.
The real solution is pricing the true cost of the externalities fairly and globally.
Everything which isn't sustainable must he taxed to the degree to offset the damage. We know well that economic incentives work best and that markets are efficient to achieve optimal solutions.
The core issue is just game theory to coordinate globally all players to prevent free riding.
I heard about this[1] recently, essentially spurring a massive plankton bloom to capture carbon where it ends up on the sea floor and becomes future oil deposits in a few millenia.
The nice thing about it is that it doesn't require global cooperation.
I was under the impression that there have been multiple large extinction events in the past caused by excessive anaerobic decomposition underwater that led to the oceans becoming swamps and giving off nasty toxic gasses.
Before areas become completely uninhabitable, we will see areas become increasingly stressed: heat waves, more extreme weather events, poorer crop yields, depleting aquifers.
Stress increases conflict risk. Fights for essential resources (land, water, food, shelter) will break out long before those essential resources are completely gone.
If we skip past the immense suffering and death part, we will probably end up on a planet where national borders have been redrawn by war and desperation, and a smaller population that lives in more northerly climes.
Our politicians are already thinking about them, which is why they are cracking down on immigration and generating relentless propaganda demonizing refugees and asylum seekers.
Which was, stop using CFCs, and stop venting them into the atmosphere to "dispose" of them. We also stopped lighting rivers on fire for mostly the same reasons, stop dumping industrial waste in them.
> I guess we should just accept it and adapt?
Ocean shipping produces more pollution than most countries. There are only like 5 countries that produce more carbon than the worldwide shipping fleet. If they cared then "cheap crap from China" wouldn't exist.
It's a scam. They want to monopolize the economy and they're using your environmental consciousness as the wedge to push you against your own best interests.
Ocean freight accounts for 2-3% of global emissions. It is orders of magnitude more efficient and clean than air or road freight per ton-kilometer. It's twice as efficient as rail. The ability to efficiently transport goods enables your current standard of living. A world economy without ocean freight would be minuscule and of course far more polluting, without even considering land use.
Yes, we got to adapt, we won't cool it down and "repair" what is broken.
However we can slow down the effects and try to stop the effects. So it's "only" 1.5° or whatever, not 3°, 5° or 10°. And if we raise average by 10° at least not by the years 2100, but 2200 to give time to adapt.
"Adapting" means resettling people, restructuring agriculture and food production, etc.
(All numbers are quite arbitrary picks, just as any goal one tried to set before)
CO2 output per person in the US (all sources including industry, etc): ~13-14,000kg
Average distance driven per year per capita in the US: ~20,000km
Average CO2 output of current private vehicle fleet: ~250g/km
Therefore, over one third of total CO2 output per person is personal vehicle use. Considering only CO2 output due to personal choices driving has to be well over half.
Most people don't - or refuse - to consider the obvious choice to take personal responsibility. Drive less.
Driving isn't realistically a personal choice. Roadways designed for cars extend from every single point in the country to every other. The support for alternative methods of transportation varies greatly by area, but is generally poor.
Riding a bike or taking the bus is objectively the worse option for most people. That's not personal choice, that's policy.
Reversing course for a car-culture country like the US would take 50+ years. If it's even possible, which I personally don't think it is — the US is too far gone.
To an extent I agree with you. Some places and lifestyles (e.g. means of earning a living) don't make cutting back on driving a viable choice.
However, these things can and do change (introduction of public transport and saner planning allowing local shops and the possibility for children get to and from school autonomously for example).
One problem as I see it is that many people that don't have a viable choice other than driving everywhere are politically opposed to structural change. Adopting this political point of view is also a personal choice.
love how a completely valid point gets downvoted becuase the average person refuses to believe they are part of the problem "no! its those big corporations and airline industry! my daily commute has no input at all!"
I guess returning to the office isn't so great. Pointy hair bosses rage everywhere.
But beyond driving less, surely eating further down the foodchain helps as well. Plants and shellfish are efficient. Cows are not. Eat fewer burgers and a few more lentils and mussels. Unless you are RFK Jr then of course please eat lots and lots of fatty cow, tallow, butter. Go full on Atkins please and follow right behind him.
This also means two thirds of emissions are not due to vehicular emissions. Let’s tackle that first, more bang for the buck?
Also - does that per capita figure include cargo? If so, how much? Does it matter if random individual takes personal
Responsibility and stops driving when all those long haul trucks will still be on the road?
My point is that in terms of personal responsibility nothing comes remotely close to driving but a vanishingly small proportion of people are willing to consider this.
I would say it's often because people see individual examples in action. Some people follow those examples. Then more do. You are more influential than you think.
There are a lot of money scams out there to be sure.
It's unlikely that something like carbon capture will ever significantly reduce the CO2 in the atmosphere. It's just too energy intensive.
But there are a lot of practical solutions to significantly curb emissions that mostly just require regulations and taxes.
Things like building out rail transport. Heavily taxing air travel. Taxing all forms of carbon emission (fuel taxes would be pretty effective). Subsidizing non-co2 emissions, pushing for electrification when possible and power generation which uses non-CO2 emission. Stop wasteful pipedreams like "clean coal". Force data centers to be better citizens. For example, make them buy the battery/solar systems to offset their consumption. Make them participate in district heating schemes.
There's also some hope that even without intervention some of this will happen somewhat naturally. Solar and battery is already very cheap. Both are causing changes in the shipping and transit equations.
Technologically practical? Certainly. Kick renewables and electrification into high gear. Treat it like the emergency that it is.
Politically practical? Not a chance. It was already a major struggle a decade ago when the political climate was much more favorable to addressing the problem. Now, even the countries that want to do something about it are going to be more concerned about more immediate threats like being invaded.
Our best hope is that green technology quickly gets to the point where it so heavily outcompetes CO2-emitting technology that the latter disappears on its own. But this will take longer than it should.
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster has a pretty good summary of the challenges and solutions.
There is developing real practical solutions, and then there there is the willingness of governments, big corporations, and the general population, to implement real practical solutions. The latter is much much harder than the former.
As with most difficult problems, this is a messy political problem, not a technical one. There is zero chance we avoid 1.5C gain. The best you can do is make life decisions for yourself to make your lifetime as comfortable for you as you can, assuming it will happen. I started doing that 5 years ago.
I'm not sure what we should do, it's very hard to determine what minimizes harm and maximizes benefits at a global scale. It's certainly not as simple as extremists would like to believe. Certainly it would be much (MUCH) less risky to slow warming as much as possible and maintain constant or slowly reducing CO2 levels.
I think from the standpoint of predicting what will happen, my best guess is that people will use fossil fuels until it is economically not viable to do so. If you want hasten it at an individual level, buy solar panels and have your house disconnected from the grid until fees you pay no longer subsidize fossil fuels. Frown at people and refuse to give them positive social cues when they buy a car that isn't electric. Instead of "oh nice car" just say "it would be so cool if they had a plugin version!". Support electrification of things like heat and water heating so long as it can be powered by non-fossil sources.
In the long run I think solar power, effective battery technology, and the peaking of the global population combine to cause fossil fuel usage to reduce over the next 100 years or so until CO2 levels stabilize. Lots of large CO2 emitters are already leveling off - the output is too high to sustain but at least it's no longer increasing year over year - such as from cement production.
Honestly it's not much but that's what you can do, larger social movements and political action do not work when someone's decision is whether to spend $800 a month or $100 a month to heat their house. Anyone who says it does should buy a thermometer, but instead they will get a plane ticket to the next big city to run around in the street yelling at police (literally the only people paid to not care about your slogans) while nobody really notices.
Electric cars are the savior of the auto industry, not of the climate. It needs to become viable for most people to get around without cars at all. The intensity of their resource consumption, both for manufacture and for infrastructure, independent of their fuel source, cannot scale up for the world population.
If we are in overshoot scenario even reducing emissions may not be enough. There are warming gases currently trapped in permafrost, the natural carbon storage capacity is very dynamic, so global warming may target new (worse) equilibrium beyond what we think we can achieve in best case scenario.
And if my grandmother is dead it's too late to ask her to borrow money. It's easy to chain together low probability what-ifs and come up with everything on fire.
Were you aware that the last time the planet was estimated to have co2 levels over 420ppm the global temperature was 10 degrees Celsius warmer overall? This is the global equilvant of being locked in a car in a sunlit parking lot.
Nobody has to "like" them. The centralized command and control structure is mostly in place to just force them down everyone's throats. Once we have centralized digital currency it will be a foregone conclusion
If only. Given how power and influence works currently, I would guess that those that have real control over these currencies would most likely use that power as they do now - to further their exploitation and pillaging of the earth with environmental considerations coming a distant second (or third, fourth, whatever...)
How will a centralized digital currency affect whether I decide to burn carbon fuels? If it gets obnoxious enough I can just use a different currency instead.
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