Was soll an diesen rotlackierten Faschisten links sein?
Interest in hobbies related to commercial brands (following sports, movie franchises, etc.)
When you even mention that you'd like to follow brand accounts, people start shouting at you how commercial scum needs to be banned/defederated.
Of course people move to platforms where their interests are represented.
[YouTube version not yet up, will be available later at https://www.youtube.com/@telegraph/videos]
Day 997.
Today, we assess the state of the Russian army, hear new revelations from inside the Biden administration, and look deeper at the impact of this war in other theatres, such as Korea and Africa.
Contributors:
Francis Dearnley (Assistant Comment Editor). @FrancisDearnley on X.
Roland Oliphant (Senior Foreign Correspondent). @RolandOliphant on X.
With thanks to Dr Samual Ramani of the Royal United Services Institute and Oxford University. @SamRamani2 on X. Dr Samuel Ramani's latest book is Putin's War on Ukraine:
https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/putins-war-on-ukraine/
Articles Referenced:
The best books on Ukraine in 2024, from Chernobyl to Zelensky (Ada Wordsworth in The Telegraph):
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/non-fiction/best-ukraine-books-2024-zelenskyy/
Record Death Toll: What We Know About Russia's Losses in Ukraine by November (BBC):
https://www.bbc.com/russian/articles/cjr4zy2nye5o
The ‘Deathonomics’ Powering Russia’s War Machine (Wall Street Journal):
https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/russia-ukraine-war-military-death-pay-6cfe936e?mod=Searchresults_pos6&page=1
Biden’s escalation paralysis has devastated Ukraine (The Hill):
https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/4988504-biden-administration-ukraine-war/
Former Governor Confirms Russian Military Engaged in Looting in Kursk Region Villages (Meduza):
https://meduza.io/news/2024/11/14/byvshiy-gubernator-podtverdil-chto-rossiyskie-voennye-zanimalis-maroderstvom-v-selah-kurskoy-oblasti
Putin cuts payments for wounded in war against Ukraine (Kyiv Independent)
https://kyivindependent.com/putin-approves-reduction-of-payments-for-injured-in-war-against-ukraine/?mc_cid=f0af270ac7&mc_eid=08d0680a95
In echo of Soviet era, Russians are informing on each other over Ukraine (Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/more-russians-denounce-each-other-over-ukraine-echo-soviet-era-2024-11-15/
In Ukraine, donated Challenger 2s are holding up far better than anything Moscow has managed to build
> For me the article loads and then collapses behind a paywall. So it's free and no free at the same time? 🤷 No idea, so here it is:
Ignore the Russian propaganda: Britain’s Challenger 2 tanks are still supreme
Grainy footage is circulating of a British-built Challenger 2 tank, donated to Ukraine 18 months ago, allegedly meeting its end in Kursk under fire from a Russian attack drone.
If this is true, this would likely be the second British tank destroyed over a period when Moscow is thought to have lost around 2,000 of its own. Perhaps this disparity in performance is why the Russians are so vexed by the handful of Challengers offered to Kyiv. The release of the footage is clutching at some very slippery straws to try and suggest the Russians are in the ascendency in Kursk.
That is, if it’s accurate. To me, the footage smells “off”. First, the tank is in what we call a ‘hull up” position showing the whole vehicle to any attacker. Anybody who has any experience of armoured warfare will know you show as little of your tank as possible to the enemy, in what we call a “hull down” position. Very inexperienced tank crews could make this mistake, but the Ukrainians have been manning these Challengers for 18 months and only two have been badly damaged as far as we understand, suggesting that they know what they’re doing.
Second, while the footage is low quality there doesn’t seem to be any additional armour on the tank. Again, the other Challenger 2’s we’ve seen in active duty in Ukraine have been kitted out with “explosive-reactive” armour or drone cages.
Third, the drone is attacking the strongest part of the tank, the frontal 60 degrees of the turret. None of the drones we’ve seen in Ukraine so far should really be able to damage armour of this thickness; usually attacks are characterised by the drone attempting to manoeuvre around the tank and hit it in the rear, or through an open turret.
Finally, there’s no surveillance drone supporting the attack variant, capturing the moment of explosion and conducting battle-damage assessment. This is pretty suspect; usually we get footage from the support unit showing the devastating impact on the unfortunate vehicle in question. The lack of any such footage suggests that perhaps the drone might have been a “dud”, scratching the paintwork but doing little more harm.
Frankly, without further evidence coming to light, my suspicions are that this footage is not quite what it’s purported to be; either less successful than claimed, or a propaganda con with the low quality of the footage helping to pass it off as genuine. On a personal level, I find it quite heartening that the Russians are so fixated with attempting to do down the Challenger 2: it shows that it’s holding up well in performance, quite likely better than anything they’ve managed to build.
If the footage is of a real vehicle, however, then it would appear that the Russians do have access to a genuine Challenger 2. This could be cause for concern as its successor – the imaginatively named Challenger 3 – is based on the same model, and there can be little doubt that Russian engineers will have stripped the captured unit down to its basics to learn whatever secrets they can.
Recent MoD briefs on the Challenger 3 suggest that it will be very different on a technical level, with new fire control systems and defensive aid suites. But this should surely be a wakeup call to the designers and engineers to take stock and re-evaluate their plans on the assumption that the Russians know more than we’d like them to. I have faith that this can be overcome; what Rheinmetall – the German manufacturer involved in the new build – doesn’t know about making tanks isn’t worth knowing!
As I continue to work on my new book – tracing the development of tank warfare from Cambrai, the first tank battle, to Kursk today – it’s striking how fundamentally very little has changed. Just as the Germans were fixated by the MK4 tank in November 1917, so are the Russians with the Challenger 2 tank in 2024. I wouldn’t bet against the Challenger 3 continuing this noble lineage.
Ukraine: The Latest receives Podcast of the Year accolade at Society of Editors’ Media Freedom Awards
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_q9MzB1_3g
Day 996.
Today, as Russia's state TV propagandists and government officials express delight at the Donald Trump's cabinet selections, we ask how feasible it would be for Ukraine to develop its own nuclear weapon.
Contributors:
Dominic Nicholls (Associate Editor of Defence). @DomNicholls on X.
Francis Dearnley (Assistant Comment Editor). @FrancisDearnley on X.
Hamish de Bretton-Gordon (Chemical Weapons Expert and Former Tank Commander). @HamishDBG on X.
Kamal Ahmed (Director of Audio and presenter of The Daily T Podcast). @kamalahmednews on X.
Content referenced:
Lord Hague's Comments on The Daily T (The Telegraph):
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/11/13/russia-ukraine-war-zelensky-putin-trump-latest-news/
You can subscribe to The Daily T here:
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-daily-t/id1489612924
Could Zelensky use nuclear bombs? Ukraine’s options explained (The Times):
https://www.thetimes.com/article/2343d101-1c8e-4ca4-a4c1-913ce31e9e42?shareToken=549ff0795172888afdb2ac9c73300c74
British Challenger 2 tank ‘destroyed in Kursk’ (The Telegraph):
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/11/14/russia-ukraine-zelensky-putin-war-latest-uk-challenger2-new/
Let’s go with your idea of what the topic is for a second
Considering that I've replied to another person with my explanation and got very positive feedback, I certainly know better than you. You're not the person I've replied to. You interjected and then tried to educate to me what my comments are about.
have you considered how advertisement posts could appear in search results, hashtags, or the explore section?
Any brand account on a regular Mastodon instance would be the very same.
Or what if they decide to screw with the normal process and artificially inflate the number of boosts and favorites for advertisement posts?
Mastodon doesn't have an algorithmic timeline, so that would lead to absolutely nothing.
Also, Lemmy cannot interact with Threads anyway, so Lemmy servers defederating from Threads is completely pointless. Irrelevant to what I’m saying.
Relevant to the comment I've initially replied to.
What copyright? Threads users gave it away when they signed up.
Nope.
Your whole argument is predicated on the idea that a (personal) account on Threads is either owned by its creator, or is associated with a trademark.
No, I made several good arguments, you just moved goalposts and declared they don't matter.
YouTube version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhoCVMB40n4
Today, we discuss the new wave of bombardments on Kyiv, the latest appointments to the Trump administration and what it means for the wider West, and learn more about Radio Liberty’s impact during the Cold War. Then, later, we do a deep dive into the cosmopolitan history of the city of Odesa and what its people have endured over the course of the war.
Contributors:
Francis Dearnley (Assistant Comment Editor). @FrancisDearnley on X.
Dominic Nicholls (Associate Editor of Defence). @DomNicholls on X.
Julian Evans (author of Undefeatable: Odesa in Love & War). @thejulianevans on X.
Julian Evans' book, Undefeatable: Odesa in Love & War
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Undefeatable-Odesa-Love-Julian-Evans/dp/1910895989
Russia's oil and gas industry an easy target for Europe after Trump's election victory (Business Insider):
https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-oil-gas-energy-industry-europe-target-trump-election-win-2024-11
The topic is
No, that's not the topic. The topic is ads being placed in the fediverse in a way only defederation could block. Even if Meta silently making posts in the name of my favorite organic orange juice advertising Coca-Cola was legal (it's not), it would be easily solved by simply not following any Threads accounts. Also, Lemmy cannot interact with Threads anyway, so Lemmy servers defederating from Threads is completely pointless.
about them impersonating their own users and using that to push ads through federation.
No, that's not legal. That would violate copyright, consumer protection, competition laws, and whatnot, at least in the USA and the EU. Mastodon users (!!) must be explicitly aware that a post is an ad, not the brands ticking off an EULA on Threads. Therefore Mastodon users could decide to follow a brand account were products are promoted (just as they can right now if that brand has a regular Mastodon page) but Threads cannot legally impersonate one account on Threads to advertise another account. That's not a grey area.
I didn't set a timer but it took me at most a single-digit number of minutes to find documents and announcements about the FTC tightening the rules about deceptive advertising several times throughout the years.
Threads has no influence on the terms of service on Mastodon. So no, Threads can't allow to misrepresent profiles on Mastodon.
Why don’t you just cancel it now and use ad blockers?
Joel explains this in the second sentence: "I’m OK with it, especially considering that it supports creators more than ad viewers"
Xbox is locked down and barely has any security issues on user hardware.
Not a single Microsoft game runs natively an Windows ARM.
Threads had more users than the entire non-Threads fediverse within a day or two. Mastodon is not the competition.
That would be A) identity fraud because it would be my favorite fair trade drink endorsing Coca-Cola without the ads being clearly separated as required by many jurisdictions and B) not targeted advertising in any way.
Even if Threads posts illegally embedded extra ads: Users could just opt not to follow Threads accounts. Threads cannot just magically place ads in the feed. That's impossible.
Ads already are posts, as I wrote but the main feed algorithm is not in their hand, it's the local feed of mastodon.
If users aren't permitted to follow brand accounts, they're just being driven into the hands of BlueSky. Your attitude isn't helping at all.
Modern NATO weapons and which ammunition? Which NATO tactics without air superiority? Ukraine doesn't even get enough bullets to fire, let alone rotate troops to relieve physical exhaustion.
And sadly a successful one. Works all over the front line.
Still a bit worried about hashtags being used for ads
Coca-Cola could have an official profile on mastodon.social and use hashtags there as well. Whether corporations use hashtags or not in their "regular" Mastodon posts has nothing to do with Threads.
Also Mastodon has user-level features to restrict unwanted content to show up in your feed ranging from hiding boosts up to blocking the entire instance:
And since Lemmy cannot interact with Threads content at all, defederating Lemmy instances from Threads makes even less sense. One of the big Lemmy instances blocks Threads but doesn't block CSAM instances. Insane priorities their admins have.
That's what basically happened in Germany like 10, 15 years ago when the first publisher had that idea. Its news stories would still show up in search results but only the headline, not that text snippet and no thumbnail image. These results were less attractive to users, so traffic from Google to those web sites crashed down by like 80, 90 percent.
In the end the publishers gave Google a free license to reproduce text snippets and thumbnails. The tightened copyright law provision wasn't repealed. Small search engines without leverage still (AFAIK to this day) have to pay.
So Google pays nothing, publishers earn nothing, upstart search engines can't afford the fees, and so Google leaves even more in power because of a law not even they wanted.
How do you know that Threads won’t inject ads as posts?
Ads in Instagram are posts from accounts you don't follow. Threads can't make you follow promotion accounts you don't want to follow.
Might be a stupid question, but can’t threads just post ads as “posts” via activityPub? On mastodon they would appear as toots?
Ads in Instagram are posts in the timeline from accounts you haven't followed. Ads don't show when you visit a profile and browse its images. So for example a post by Coca-Cola might appear in the main feed even though I never followed it but it has a little "sponsored" marker in a corner to indicate that it's there because Coke paid for it and the ad placement algorithm thinks that I might be interested in that product. As Threads is a spin-off from Instagram, ads there will surely follow the very same model. Sure, you might be able to follow Coca-Cola's Threads account from Mastodon and see the post promoting their drink that way but Threads just cannot place targeted ads on Mastodon because they don't control that feed.
Still no reason to defederate, huh?
No, it's not. Ads can't federate. Threads has no control over my Mastodon feed and Lemmy can't interact with Threads at all. Following Threads accounts from Mastodon is effectively an ad blocker.
Also it’ll be running windows
Xbox's Windows is not the same as PC Windows.
There are more indications Taipei sent Kyiv a huge consignment of HAWK missiles.
‘We are very lucky that they do a lot of banzai attacks,’ a Ukrainian drone operator noted.
YouTube version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJPd29Sop-k
Day 994.
Today, we look at renewed Russian efforts to retake Kursk before Trump returns to the White House, consider the evidence Europe is responding to the threat of an American withdrawal, and assess potential new appointments in for the new government Washington. Then, later, we hear the euphoric memories of a Ukrainian officer who served in the historic Kharkiv counteroffensive.
Contributors:
Francis Dearnley (Assistant Comment Editor). @FrancisDearnley on X.
Dominic Nicholls (Associate Editor of Defence). @DomNicholls on X.
With special thanks to our guest, a Ukrainian officer we shall not name who served in the historic Kharkiv counteroffensive.
Content referenced:
Putin rushes to recapture Kursk from Ukrainians before Trump takes office (The Telegraph):
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/11/11/putin-kursk-assault-ukraine-trump-north-korea/
Donald Trump expected to nominate China hawk Marco Rubio for secretary of state (FT):
https://www.ft.com/content/5ec67430-7c68-4783-bf88-92c82e9d7f6f
Brussels to free up billions of euros for defence and security from EU budget (FT):
https://www.ft.com/content/eb0de7f4-5ba1-460a-a83d-1a7302fc1536
Russian forces damage Kurakhove Reservoir dam in Donetsk Oblast (Kyiv Independent)
https://kyivindependent.com/russian-forces-damage-dam-of-kurakhove-reservoir-in-donetsk-oblast-ukraine-says/?mc_cid=0e0eef55ad&mc_eid=08d0680a95
Starmer to demand Biden hands Ukraine missing $20bn before Trump takes over (The Telegraph):
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/11/11/keir-starmer-demand-biden-ukraine-20bn-before-trump-talks/
Steam Deck OLED: Limited Edition White will be available worldwide on November 18th, 2024 at 3PM PST. This model will cost $679 USD, and will be available in all Steam Deck shipping regions, including Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong via Komodo. Our new customers in Australia are included a...
Prime Minister and Emmanuel Macron to hold talks on boosting weaponry ahead of new administration
> The debate over whether Ukraine should be allowed to fire Storm Shadow missiles, made by the UK and France, deep into Russian territory played out for months behind the scenes. The missiles require US technology to be fully effective. > > Ukraine is understood to currently only be allowed to use the missiles in limited circumstances on Russian land, such as to hit troops just by the border - though the specifics of any agreements have never been made public. > > Mr Zelensky has been calling for permission to fire the missiles further into Russia for months as it could help stop Russian planes taking off before bombing Ukraine. > > Well-placed UK government sources said Sir Keir and Mr Macron had become supportive earlier this year. > > Previous hopes Mr Biden would approve further use of the missiles were dashed in September over fears of retaliatory attacks on Western military bases. > > Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, was supportive but Mr Sullivan was against the move, fearing it would escalate the stand-off with Russia and further entangle America, according to the Foreign Office’s analysis of internal debates. > > Should Kyiv be given permission to fire Storm Shadows deep into Russian territory before Mr Trump took office it would be more difficult for the approval to be reversed.
YouTube version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcPOttZTtUQ
Day 993.
Today, after a weekend in which Ukrainian forces launched their largest ever drone attack on Moscow, and Russian losses in Ukraine reached a record daily high, we reflect on the Prague Defence Conference, with discussions centred heavily on President-elect Donald Trump.
Contributors:
Dominic Nicholls (Associate Editor of Defence). @DomNicholls on X.
Venetia Rainey (Co-host Battle Lines podcast). @venetiarainey on X.
With thanks to Admiral Rob Bauer (Chair of the Military Committee NATO), Hanno Pevkur (Defence Minister of Estonia), and Lawrynas Kasčiunas (Defence Minister of Lithuania).
> During the call, which Trump took from his resort in Florida, he advised the Russian president not to escalate the war in Ukraine and reminded him of Washington’s sizable military presence in Europe, said a person familiar with the call, who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. > > Peskov did not immediately respond to a request for comment. After this report was published, the Kremlin on Monday denied the call took place, with Peskov saying it was “completely untrue.”
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/1gndkl5/world_destructors_championship_after_brazil_20/
A massive drone strike rattled Moscow and its suburbs overnight, injuring several people and temporarily closing some airports, officials said.
Sorry, lovers of hats on pets; Stardew Valley creator Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone has warned players to stop adorning th…
Military bloggers report Russian troops entering village in drive towards Kurakhove as Zelenskyy says Kyiv’s forces trying to strengthen positions. What we know on day 990
The Biden administration has lifted a de facto ban on American military contractors deploying to Ukraine to help the country’s military maintain and repair US-provided weapons systems, particularly F16 fighter jets and Patriot air defense systems, an official with direct knowledge of the plan told C...
