I’ve read about this too. There was a French AWACS plane with its fighter escort taking a look at Crimea from distance. And later, there was a visit by an US Navy plane that can drop sonar buoys and assorted stuff. I missed the Italian electronic warfare plane, reading about it now.

Russian sources have been speculating that an Ukrainian strike usually comes within days of such a visit.

I think the military are doing their stuff regardless of politicians, as long as politicians (read: Trump) won’t forbid them.

I watched this train wreck. Didn’t try to transcribe, so I might have small errors. Essence first, emotions later.

Trump:

• claims (falsely) that previous presidents didn’t help Ukraine
• contradicts oneself, claiming that Biden was too hardline on Russia
• claims that Obama didn’t give any military assistance to Ukraine (but Obama did)
• claims that he gave Javelin ATGMs to Ukraine (could be true, as Trump did try to blackmail Zelensky with 0.4 billions worth of military aid, while Biden didn’t try to blackmail with 60 billions - it’s almost certain that Biden gave a thousand times more Javelins and other useful systems)
• claims that the words of a US president aren’t worth so much as to deter Russia
• again mis-states the volume of US economic and military assistance to Ukraine as 380 billion or something
• says that Zelensky needs to be thankful and is being disrespectful
• behaves disrespectfully, claiming Zelensky is not allowed to speak, continues ranting
• claims that Ukraine “hasn’t got the cards” and is going to lose
• claims that Zelensky is “gambling with World War 3” (note: Ukraine is defending itself)

Zelensky:

• doesn’t get to speak as Trump rants
• manages to say that he is thankful to the US
• says that he already had a ceasefire with Putin, which he personally signed in 2019 with Merkel and Macron also present, and Putin broke the ceasefire
• says he wants a ceasefire with guarantees
• says that Ukraine isn’t going to lose

Vance:

• says Zelensky isn’t thankful enough in this room here and now

Opinion:

A carefully orchestrated verbal agression by Trump and Vance. Zelensky was not given opportunity to present his point of view, which is very rare in diplomacy (this probably isn’t diplomacy). He’s in the damn White House, he’s not going to shout.

Result:

Zelensky walked away without signing the mineral resources treaty. Fully understandable for bystanders. Foreseeable by Trump - perhaps the goal of this tirade.

In my experience, the API has iteratively made it ever harder for applications to automatically perform previously easy jobs, and jobs which are trivial under ordinary Linux (e.g. become an access point, set the SSID, set the IP address, set the PSK, start a VPN connection, go into monitor / inject mode, access an USB device, write files to a directory of your choice, install an APK). Now there’s a literal thicket of API calls and declarations to make, before you can do some of these things (and some are forever gone).

The obvious reason is that Google tries to protect a billion inexperienced people from scammers and malware.

But it kills the ability to do non-standard things, and the concept of your device being your own.

And a big problem is that so many apps rely on advertising for its income stream. Spying a little has been legitimized and turned into a business under Android. To maintain control, the operating system then has to be restrictive of apps. Which pisses off developers who have a trusting relationship with their customer and want their apps to have freedom to operate.

The countdown to Android’s slow and painful death is already ticking for a while.

It has become over-engineered and no longer appealing from a developer’s viewpoint.

I still write code for Android because my customers need it - will be needing for a while - but I’ve stopped writng code for Apple’s i-things and I research alternatives for Android. Rolling my own environment with FOSS components on top of Raspbian looks feasible already. On robots and automation, I already use it.

Apparently, there is confirmation from the opposing side that Ukrainian jamming has started to have effect on Russian glide bombs. Confirmation came from a milblogger named “FighterBomber” associated with the Russian air force, and was picked up by Dmitry from “War Translated”, who has a habit of combing Russian-language sources for information.

Glide bombs have been a difficult weapon for Ukraine to adapt against, since they’re launched from over 40 kilometers of distance (air defense typically cannot reach so far), and are cheaper than the means of intercepting them.

Note: the milblogger speaks of “problems in the Laotian air force”, as is customary when speaking of the local air force would be punishable.

It should also be noted that some Western types of glide bombs (like GBU-39 SDB) have also failed in Ukraine, but other members of the GBU family continue to function, likely due to better inertial navigation systems.

“Hide him quickly, she’s from Eastern Europe and wants to talk about Ukraine.” – someone from the Trump administration, likely

The ordinary response:

• find the defendant in contempt
• send US marshals to carry out the court order
• alternatively, send them to jail the person who held the court in contempt

you have to get a new one issued

This is the part that’s mistaken: you don’t need a passport if you don’t travel to foreign lands. As far as I know, Americans usually prove their identity using a driver’s license, rarely using a passport.

Scanning the article, the practical threat (besides crazy ideological stunts) seems to be stealth disenfranchisement of this type:

House Republicans passed a bill (which stalled in the Senate) this session to require citizens to have a passport or birth certificate matching their name to vote. This would be a back-door ban on voting for any woman who took her husband’s last name and doesn’t have a passport, an estimated 69 million women. It would also disproportionately affect Republican women, who are more likely to be married, more likely to have changed their name and less likely to have a passport.

Short summary:

• Russia is operating with a budget deficit
• borrowing from foreign lands is blocked
• local banks are unable / unwilling to buy more state bonds, as they’d risk insolvency
• the most liquid part (estimate: about 60%) of the national wealth fund has been used up

Pressing financial issues might be impossible to postpone for longer.