Sapere Aude
Tag: russia
wow:
operatives use their phones to record 25 spins on a game they aim to cheat. They upload that footage to a technical staff in St. Petersburg, who analyze the video and calculate the machine’s pattern based on what they know about the model’s pseudorandom number generator. Finally, it transmits a list of timing markers to a custom app on the operative’s phone; those markers cause the handset to vibrate 0.25 seconds before the operative should press the spin button.
In the eyes of Russian military strategists and political technologists, they’re just catching up to the West and using its own strategies against it. More importantly, gibridnaya voina is really a combination of 2 different but related strategies. The first is a simple softening of a country before a ground invasion. It involves propaganda and political destabilization to undermine a country’s defenses. This is what the world saw in both Crimea and the Donbass region of Ukraine. The second strategy uses the same tactics and techniques, but it isn’t designed to soften a country for a ground invasion. When Russia opens up another RT affiliate in Western Europe, it’s using this strategy. The goal is simple — expand Russian soft power to make the world more agreeable to the Kremlin’s point of view.
Ukrainian Android app for speeding artillery calculations for a particular field gun seems to have contained Russian malware that may have assisted in targeting those artillery units
the whole dnc email mess is a very clever move by putin, almost makes you wonder if this is the new season of the americans. the us keeps getting caught with its pants down and has no plausible way to react. very embarrassing.
a european spin-off of the americans
The industrious life of a busy, frequent-flying Spanish consultant was a front. “Henry Frith” was an alias for a Russian spy, a so-called “illegal” who lived for 20 years under a carefully constructed “legend” — a false identity, complete with a fake history and background. He is the first “illegal” to have been uncovered and publicly named in Europe since the end of the Cold War.
While Davies and Kent found information that could only have come from spies on the ground—a bridge in Miami, for example, has information that only an eyewitness could have provided—there were fewer of these instances than shows like The Americans might suggest. “There were probably not a lot of people going around with notebooks. There was, after all, plenty in the public domain—maps, but also street directories, tourist guides, railway timetables, and the like.”
tl;dr: no known cause
Radiation. Government conspiracy. Mass hysteria. There are plenty of theories as to why the residents of a tiny Kazakh mining region keep falling asleep for days at a time, but no answers. Deputy Prime Minister Berdibek Saparbaev announced that the mystery of the sleeping sickness had been solved: It was the specific combination of reduced levels of oxygen and heightened levels of carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons. But as usual, rumors overshadowed reality. “The real moment is that we came to the conclusion that there are natural processes that lead to the combination of these kinds of factors and that specifically this combination of factors could give this effect. I can’t say for certain now. Our assumption is that all 3 components must coincide. When all 3 exist, that’s when people will start falling and sleeping again.” He had searched for similar cases in scientific literature, but so far had found nothing. He suggested the illness would return in September when people started to heat their homes.
The platonic ideal of russian yt videos. It has every element necessary: A bear; someone engaging in reckless behavior around a large animal; people speaking calmly in russian while faced with certain death; bleakness; raw meat.
the good news here is that this might put an abrupt end to putin’s misadventures.
Moscow gets more than 50% its budget revenue from oil and gas; for every $10 drop in the per-barrel price of oil, Russia loses up to $14.6B a year in revenues. Another $40 per barrel drop would cost Russia almost $60B per year.
Russia is demanding that Bulgaria try harder to prevent vandalism of Soviet monuments, after yet another monument to Soviet troops in Sofia was spray-painted
what a great way to troll russia (who is pretty much asking to be trolled hard these days)
Gregor J. Rothfuss 