Naah, as long as one Titan cube chugs away.....

What? Who in their right mind would part with a TITAN!

:-)

Wow, didn't think p2pool was still going. Where's the latest software, I'll at least fire up a node or two.

Yes. However it will be a lot easier for them to watch for blockchain/facebook/yummy porn traffic on a few outbound channels and VPNs than to watch everything. That's what the Chinese "Great Wall" was all about.

As far as blocking them, yes they will be able to get around it with VPNs and the like. But those cost money and have a similar issue in that you can watch for attackers from VPNs/TOR/etc.

Disclaimer: It annoys the fuck out of me when sites sinkhole based on people using TOR. Yes I have a moral inconsistency there.

Interesting. Can you cite some of the sources for your post here? I think this is a very important post....


Oh COViD is still rocking along, US is running at about 1500 dead a day/10k a week dead. However since death is easy to prevent it's not a big deal.

But yeah, when I hear "7,000 Russian troops died last week" it's like "yawn, pikers."

Well, this is why you depopulate the borders, with a nice no man's land with barbed wire, guns, towers. You know, like old times.

Hm. I just realized.... maybe they took Chernobyl not for the reactor trashpile, but for Duga. Steel yard and that woodpecker sound, that's something I have not thought about for 40+ years now... Wow.

However this sounds more like a DNS trick than actually chainsawing their AS. The former just allows them to block DNS queries that aren't in their .ru domain (which won't do shit of course), the latter really removes them from the net.

BTW if you want to chainsaw these fuckers from your network their IP addresses are here.

https://lite.ip2location.com/russian-federation-ip-address-ranges

They even have downloads in iptables or cisco ACL formats. Or just route their traffic to 127.0.0.1

Yep. And oiled the bolts, and oiled the washers, and used an OEM gasket set, and did the 3 step torque-down and put on the right gasket sealant and got the whole thing on in 5 minutes and....

It's a royal pain in the teeth. At least it's a timing chain so setting TDC+TDC head allows you to mark the chain in 3 places for quick and easy assembly/alignment. And the new torque wrench is the bomb, it even can tell you when you're hitting the 90 degree point when doing the final turns based not on where you start but when the slack is taken up on the socket. THAT is way better than the old beam wrench.

(Also now that I think about it, if you had debris in the bottom of the hole then you would never be able to turn the bolt the last 90 degrees as it would jam up or strip. I don't know if any modern cars do the "torque to 80nm on the bolts in sequence" anymore, they seem to do a torque to 20, then 40, then a 90 degree turn in sequence. Hm...)

Yeah, to be honest this whole situation is just plain baffling. It really doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense.

Well, I just replaced the head gasket on my super efficient car. From 15mpg to 50mpg, I rule the fuel pumps...

(Note: Replacing head gaskets sucks. But spending good $$$ on a top notch torque wrench is nice)

(note: This is going to be a long one. And politically charged, and all that. This is why I said that Bob and I needed a beer, but if it's going to be brought up again and again here on the forum then why not: Post the whole thing even though it's totally OT)

First, there is no question that Nuclear war is Bad. And that simulation is probably fairly accurate assuming everything works. It represents a full scale exchange of everything you got. In other words, life as usual in the 80's.

Based on the Russian performance in the Ukraine so far, the breakdowns and issues caused by poor maintenance and what appears to be pretty rampant corruption I'm not too sure that the Russian nuclear arsenal is in very good shape at this time. Maintaining that stuff has cost the US a lot of money over the past 30 years, and I don't see indications that the Russians have taken very good care of their stuff. Their rocket tech still works, but they have had massive infusions of US capital to keep that stuff going (ISS launches, etc).

So here is the dilemma: Now that official Russian policy is to use nukes as threats do you wait for them to fix all this stuff? Do you continue to support a regime that is literally saying "We have nukes and we will use them?" Do you send them money, technology, and assistance so they can focus on fixing their threat and making it more lethal?

I believe That is not a good idea. Thus the sanctions, etc. And in an extreme case that is why you destroy those weapons and ideas NOW instead of waiting till later.

Don't get me wrong: I totally agree: A nuke war would be a mess, and a full scale one would be the end of the world as we know it. That's why it baffles me as to why this dingbat (Putin) would be threatening nukes. You don't cooperate with people like this, you don't appease them, and you certainly don't give them support so they can later cut your throat.


I think so. Promoting fake nationalism, racism, etc has seriously weakened the world. Electing "populists" seems to have problems when faced with complex problems.


Showing weakness in the face of aggression is not a good strategy. There have been many well documented cases of Trump showing weakness and caving in to Russian interests, As a quick example, here's some examples from 2018-2020:

• Trump congratulated Putin on his sham election
• Trump balked at sanctions for Skripal poisoning
• Trump praised pro-Russian leaders in Europe
• Trump defended Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
• Trump asked allies to let Russia back in the G7
• Trump’s Syria withdrawal gave Putin a boost
• Trump spread Russian myths about Ukraine
• Trump personally froze $391 million in US military and security assistance for Ukraine in mid-2019.
• Trump slow-walked sales of anti-tank missiles to Ukraine because of concerns it would upset Russia
• Trump smeared US ambassador to Ukraine (Marie Yovanovitch)
• Trump considered visiting Putin on Russian soil
• Trump invited Russia to 2020 G7 summit
• Trump directed CIA to share intel with Russia
• Trump ignored warnings of Russian bounties
• Trump ordered US troops out of Germany

(cite: https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/17/politics/trump-soft-on-russia/index.html)

Even Bombing Bolton is coming out and saying that Trump's plan after 2020 was to withdraw from NATO. And I'd say that Bolton is *not* a left wing stooge based on his record. Have to say it, the right wing in the US seems to have been compromised and that's not good...

The previous strategy of praising, supporting, and appeasing Russia results in the situation we have now. They did not work. Thus the sanctions.

Note: This is not "cancel culture", it's refusing to sell the knife to the person who has said they will cut your throat.

Ok, rant off.  :-)

No, pretty sober on this one. What is unclear about my thoughts here?

Putin should be extremely grateful that NATO isn't nuking his ass. Not for Ukraine, but for threatening to use nukes. In the Great Game that is considered to be "not acceptable". Even if we go back to RealPolitik, it's a balance of power, not a terrorist game.

On a more 1980's note: If this is a nuclear terrorist scenario then now would be the time to strike. Russia's nukes are probably in worse shape than their tanks, why wait till they fix the stuff?

Yeah, the above is very bad. But we're back to 1982 thinking here, and that's probably the best response in that type of game. Putin lighting his stuff off first is not going to work well: ABM systems are a lot better than the late 1980's tech and I'd guess that a lot of the stuff wouldn't launch anyway. The response to such a move would be could best be termed an "out of court settlement" turning the leadership into glowing glass, trashing what's left of their launch capability, and sparing most of the people.

Where you go from there is complicated. Nation building is not the forte of the US and there will be 140 million very unhappy people with broken Iphones......

Well, I guess the Russians will have to use Soviet Express: "Don't leave home"

Wonder what Amex is up to.

Does Elon understand how the world works?

If the price of Gas/Oil/Canolis goes up due to increased demand or decreased supply then it will rise until someone says "Yeah, I'll sell gas at that price". At a certain price point shale oil comes online. At another tar sands. At another synthetic gasoline.

At the same time as prices go up or down I as a consumer change my habits. Instead of driving my 15mpg big Porsche around I start driving the 24mpg littler Porsche. And if the price keeps going up I park the Porsches and drive the hybrid.

There's no "extraordinary measures" needed. Just good old supply and demand. Like bitcoin mining....

It is extremely irresponsible to order the shelling of a nuclear power plant.

This is the same China that banned bitcoin, right?

They can have the Russkies and have fun staying poor.

While that makes a good story, I don't think Russians buying is moving the price of crypto.

If you look at it, we're pretty much back to where we were before the invasion. The freaking out is over and it's back to the rather normal grind. So Bitcoin should come back to about the same place it was before.

Now if it skyrockets to 60k then maybe it's Russian buying. But who in their right mind would sell a bitpenny for any amount of worthless Russian currency?

People consolidating old P2P wallets?