DdCno1

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 minutes ago

I think you should look into what Hezbollah actually says instead of naively (or deliberately) creating a false equivalency. Here's what they teach schoolchildren:

https://iranwire.com/en/features/67189/

[–] [email protected] 1 points 39 minutes ago

You are using terms you don't understand. These are passive devices. They don't provide any signals intelligence, which is why Hezbollah chose them in the first place.

Using SigInt to target is, by definition, going to lead to war crimes.

You are still making up definitions. It's getting tiring.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago (2 children)

Overwhelmingly, it was military-aged men based on reports, photos and videos. This was a targeted attack on terrorists. Murder requires intent. Do you really think the intent was to murder kids by blowing up pagers purchased by and for internal Hezbollah use? You cannot seriously believe that. If kids died due to this it was 1) wholly unintentional and 2) while tragic, still a byproduct of legal warfare, not terrorism.

Words have clearly defined meanings. You can't just make up your own to suit your agenda.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

There’s no world where

Why are you trusting numbers supplied by Hamas?

It’s Us or Them

Netanyahu is a bastard, but how's that untrue?

law4palestine.org

Seriously?

Francesca Albanese

She's not an expert, she's under investigation for corruption by the very terrorist groups she is supporting.

while the UN won’t officially label it as such, they have officially told Israel that they are required to 1) “prevent a genocide”, and 2) get out of Gaza immediately

Based on what exactly? If this whole genocide claim was as waterproof as frequently claimed, then why has South Africa failed to provide the necessary evidence and why has the court rejected an extension to the recently expired deadline to submit said evidence?

Meanwhile, the right wing media

Well done carefully picking the Fox News article on this, even though there are other articles on this as well: https://www.npr.org/2024/05/15/1251265727/un-gaza-death-toll-women-children

they are in the process of eradicating a rival religion from the face of the earth

At most, going by Hamas numbers, 1% of the population of Gaza has been killed. At this rate, it'll take them over 80 years (assuming no new births, which is of course not realistic - Palestinians still have higher birth rates than Israelis, always had) to kill just the people in Gaza. Even the claim that they are trying to kill all Gazans is preposterous, but claiming that they want to eradicate a religion of 1 billion people can only be described as the most vile, the most unhinged antisemitic hate speech. It's also nothing but gaslighting, given that both Hamas and Hezbollah's open goal is to not just kill all Israelis, but every Jew and other "unbeliever" on Earth.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (2 children)

That's not what I said. Israel has to fight back and since they are small, much smaller than their enemies, they need to be smart about it. This is an example of that, not only ingenious in concept and execution, but also significantly more humane than any alternative. Again, an attack this targeted against military or terrorist personnel is the very opposite of terrorism.

If you think you can negotiate anything even remotely resembling peace with an organization that has vowed to not just eradicate Israel, but every Jew in the world, then you're hopelessly misguided.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 hours ago

I don't recall the Nazis ever warning civilians before dropping bombs so that they could get to safety. That's the opposite of murder, since murder requires intent.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 hours ago

Because Reuters usually doesn't write misleading opinion pieces.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 hours ago (4 children)

This batch of pagers was exclusively ordered and used by Hezbollah after their leader demanded they stop using Smartphones for security reasons. This isn't is sigint, it was a supply-chain attack. It wasn't random pagers that exploded, but only those that were distributed by the terrorist org to its officers.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (10 children)

That is a silly take if I've ever seen one. How more targeted can you get than to make pagers that are exclusively used by a terrorist organization explode with such little force that even bystanders who are one meter away are unharmed, that even fruit at a vegetable stand right next to the targeted terrorist remains unspoiled? This is the very opposite of terrorism, literally the most precise strike on a terrorist organization or military as a whole in history, infinitely superior to a land invasion or air strikes. In the real world, it doesn't get any more perfect than this. It would be preposterous for a strike on thousands of targets to result in zero collateral damage, but I would bet good money that once (or if) the actual numbers ever come out, it'll be the most favorable combatant to civilian casualty rate for an operation of this size in recorded history.

How naive does one have to be to trust official accounts on the number and age of the victims from a failed state that is effectively under full control of a terrorist organization? I can assure you that the estimated five grams of explosive have resulted in far more terrorist deaths than just 10, even during just the first strike - but Hezbollah won't be willing to admit as much and instead present, through their intermediaries in the Lebanese government, a convenient fake figure and two maybe real, maybe invented civilian casualties that you'll happily regurgitate just as much as you happily regurgitate figures from the Hamas-controlled health ministry in Gaza.

I get the feeling that what many of Israel's critics are asking of the country is to just roll over and die, that no matter to how absolutely extreme lengths they go to minimize civilian casualties compared to literally everyone else on this planet, it's all categorically wrong, because those dastardly Jews had the audacity to not present their other cheek, even as hundreds of thousands of them had to flee their bombs due to near constant Hezbollah bombardments of civilian areas in the North of Israel. Were you even aware of this? Do you really think that this situation could go on indefinitely?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 12 hours ago (4 children)

What you would call "a bunch of propaganda" here: How is any of this even remotely similar to the Holocaust?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

The thing is, this pornography and cats will tell future historians a ton about what people were like in our times. Not all of it will be accurate, but that's an issue with any primary source. Hell, watch some grainy smut from the '70s or '80s and pay attention to things other than the "action", like the choice of music, the way the actors are talking, how they are dressed, what the sets look like, what kind of excuses for plots are being used, all of which are clearly products of their time. Amateur stuff is even more illuminating. Before anyone thinks I'm overthinking this: We learned a lot about Ancient Rome from the smut Romans carved into buildings in Pompeii.

It's the same with old cat pictures. You can reasonably date many of them by what the background looks like, e.g. what kind of electronics and furniture are present, how people who are also in the photos are dressed, image quality (provided it hasn't been compressed to hell and back since), etc. These kinds of seemingly inconsequential artifacts of our time will be highly illuminating to future historians (provided they are being preserved), just like the complaint letters ol' Ea Nasir received thousands of years ago.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 16 hours ago

Still is. Better than giving them smartphones and it's not like there's a comparable newer device, except for maybe some emulation systems.

 

The cat is out of the bag and despite many years of warning before this and similar technology became widely available, nobody was really prepared for it - and everyone is solely acting in their own best interests (or what they think their best interests to be). I think the biggest failure is that despite there being warnings signs long before, every single country failed to enact legislation that could actually meaningfully protect people, their identity and their work(s) while still leaving enough room for research and the beneficial use of generative AI (or at least finding beneficial use cases).

In a way, this is the flip side of the coin of providing such easy access to cutting edge tech like machine learning to everyone. I don't want technology itself to become the target of censorship, but where it's being used in a way that harms people, like the examples used in the article and many more, there should be mechanisms, legal and otherwise, for victims to effectively fight back.

 

I would normally not link to a tweet, but it's from the YouTuber who is behind the global campaign that aims to prevent games companies from killing games people paid for:

https://www.stopkillinggames.com/

It seems that Ubisoft is either doubling down on deleting this game in order to throw a wrench into preservation efforts and activism (even though it'll achieve the polar opposite) - or that this was the plan all along and it's just blindly being carried out, bad optics be damned.

 

I think these two deserve more love. The sidescrolling presentation and gameplay makes them stand out, but they also boast a competent combat system, interesting narratives, colorful and detailed visuals and soundtracks so memorable, I ended up whistling some of the tunes for years.

 

I can't be the only one who loves these in-depth analyses from Digital Foundry, can I?

 

Personally, I really don't like most of these games due to the tedium and frustration that comes with hunger/thirst mechanics. Most of the exceptions that I do actually like either make up for it through something else that elevates the experience enough - or they either don't have these mechanics or allow for players to disable them.

Subnautica is an example of the latter. There's already a lot to like here: A gorgeous, hand-crafted world that skillfully strides the balance between being alien and familiar, a cool sci-fi aesthetic for everything that isn't natural, purposeful progression, fantastic atmosphere, swimming that feels great. The fact that I can play this game having only to worry about my breath and health is the cherry on top.

The Long Dark still has hunger and thirst, but I'm willing to overlook this just so that I can soak in the atmosphere of this frozen post-apocalypse. With relatively simple tech and straightforward mechanics, this game effortlessly manages to engross the player. I will admit though that when I found a nice deserted cabin at one point, I decided to end the game there, deciding that this was a suitable end point. I'll definitely pick it up again in the future, but not during this time of the year.

NEO Scavenger: It's kind of ironic that one of the most "hardcore" examples of this genre is also one of my favorites. Like with the other two, it's the atmosphere and the world that drew me in, but it's also that all of the intricate, unforgiving survival mechanics this game has, down to getting sick due to exposure, feel realistic and purposeful, instead of merely existing to tick a standard survival game checkbox. It's hard, not unfair, it's punishing and random without feeling uncontrollable.

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