I’m surprised that opening the router and physically disabling the wifi antenna is not a solution. I would understand that running the router in a faraday cage is not viable as the ethernet cable has to get from the router to the dish.
A faraday cage with a hole only big enough for an ethernet cable would almost certainly still block enough wifi that the signal would only be detectable for a few meters. Probably not very much would leak through the cable.
It would be dwarfed by the emanations from the, you know, space transmitter co-located with it. Locating the dish isn’t the issue, the proposal was using fiber to make the dish (detectable) and the operator (vulnerable) separated by distance.
For example, do you trust SpaceX to not relay your location to your enemy? Do you want to broadcast your identity at all if there can be a man-in-the-middle-attack? A dozen other reasons....
If you don't, should you be using a highly directional (Starlink achieves the capacity it does through spatial reuse allowed by directional antennas on both ends, so the satellites do need to know where you are pretty precisely), proprietary-hardware-requiring, inherently authenticated (for billing purposes), and generally very civilian focused satellite service?
A military service would probably use wider beams coming from the satellite, as well as different encryption (making it impossible to distinguish which terminal is being transmitted to on which beam and not using correlatable identifiers on unencrypted protocol layers at all).
Using civilian communications technology like cell phones has been a bad idea, as evidenced in the same conflict.
The problem isn't the firmware, it's the protocol.
If the protocol requires you to reveal your precise location to the network (so that satellite beams can correctly target you), how would you get around that using your own open firmware/hardware?
The same goes for authentication using (potentially) long-term stable or even public identifiers, as is the case for e.g. the IMSI with GSM (not sure if later 3GPP generations finally fixed that): A GSM network won't let you attach without revealing your IMSI over the radio interface at least once. You can spoof it, but then you won't get any service.
> Use Starlink dishes as phased array point to point links across 500 km without the v2 Satellites?
That's a completely different scenario than the one we're talking about here ("why can't military users relatively easily put some distance between the Starlink terminal and its users in a warzone?"), and one which I'd assume the military to have existing solutions for.
The entire terminal is one big antenna, by definition!
Are Starlink terminals really directional enough for EMI from an Ethernet port to be a bigger omnidirectional concern than the many watts of power they transmit skywards as part of their normal operation?
Have you looked at the robots out of boston dynamics? They look more mobile than a lot of non-handicapped people. Maybe another avenue is smart physical assistants instead of just exoskeletons, "i, Robot (2004)" style.
What about an exoskeleton with retractable wheels, that had motion powered or rollerblade style? I remember seeing a video of a robot that switched from quadruped/hexapod walking motion to sway like a rollerblade / skater.
I’m french and most of the content i watch is also in english, made mostly by americans with an american point of views and ways of resolving problems. Sometime in british english with british point of view.
I think it’s sad that that you don’t seem to realize that it’s a problem that most of the content we are exposed comes from a single culture.
As for the move, it’s totally useless, and if they wanted to be strongest against english they should have said “we’ll only accept communication in french or german” but that would have meant most of the communications would have been in german.
Wouldn't you listen to more content (news, movies...) from European countries, if it was in a language you understand, that being English?
I'm in EU and would love for English to be the de facto language.
Why does it seem to be impossible for other cultures to compete with the Americans in the realm of movies, tv shows, music, etc.? Is it just a matter of money? Couldn’t the EU fund their own version of Hollywood?
It's actually not that hard to completely ban Hollywood from your watching for a while. Especially now with netflix and co. Honestly, from a German speaking pov, I don't see this being true anymore today.
I'm quite disillusioned about the future of the Union because of ridiculous stunts like this.
Using English exposes people to a certain way of thinking that is more linked to a set of cultures or traditions. It's an undeniable fact, both semantics and linguistics teach us that.
But if the aim is to help politicians think from a different perspective, French is a bad choice. If that was the purpose, a reasonable choice would be to opt for languages related to cultures of more practical rationality.. German or Scandinavian languages
Of course it's the French politicians who have the nerve to try impose their language. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that French culture is one of the most pedantic and nationalistic in Europe, to the detriment of the other members.
>a reasonable choice would be to opt for languages related to cultures of more practical rationality
That's essentialist nonsense. How are German or Scandinavian cultures more « practically rational » in an empirical sense ? Is there anything to it beyond short-sighted stereotypes ? That's not even getting to the fact that rationalism and positivism have French input stamped all over it, with German philosophy generally pulling in the exact opposite direction.
> The main contributions in rationalism and empiricism are not French.
Are you certain of this? I can think of many contributions to rationalism and empiricism made by French speakers that I feel are important. The metric system, for instance, was in large part a French project [01].
Here are a few French rationalists and empiricists that came to my mind when I read your comment:
Alain Aspect
Contemporary exerimentalist known for work in quantum optics [02]
Louis de Broglie
Quantum physicist known for pioneering wave-particle duality [03]
Nicolas de Condorcet
Mathematician and leading figure of the enlightenment [04]
Rene Descartes
Philosopher and mathematician known for the Cartesian co-ordinate system [05]
Pierre de Fermat
Mathematician known for his eponymous last theorem [06]
Joseph-Louis Lagrange
Mathematician and astronomer known for Lagrangian mechanics and Lagrange points in astronomy [07]
Pierre-Simon Laplace
Polymath known for Laplace's Demon, among much else [08]
Antoine Lavoisier
Experimental chemist who named hydrogen and oxygen [09]
Blaise Pascal
Mathematician and inventor of an early mechanical calculator [10]
Louis Pasteur
Chemist and microbiologist who developed the germ theory of disease and invented Pasteurisation [11]
Henri Poincare
Mathematician, theoretical physicist and engineer [12]
"The main contribution in rationalism and empiricism are not French" does not equal "French speakers did not contribute relevant knowledge in rationalism or empiricism"
Hindu and Greek philosophers, Islamic golden age, Italian renaissance, British empiricism, Scottish Enlightenment, Austrian/German empiricism, US Pragmatism, ...
I'm not trying to neglect French rationalists and empiricists. Of course they exist, ... together with the many other scientists, philosophers, mathematicians, ... from many other cultures. Each single culture contributed less than the sum of the others simply because rationalism and empiricism are the fruits of global knowledge.
When detailing reasons for pushing the adoption of French in Europe, Macron acknowledged the work of Victor Hugo, who "believed that French would be the language of Europe, would today perhaps be a little disappointed" and promoted the re-examination of past colonialism in Africa, seeking to use the language as a tool to "reset a complex history in the continent".
The reasons for pretending the use of French in Europe are nationalistic. In an incident, European diplomats defined "overly dramatic, a statement of anger that clearly need no translation" when a French diplomat left his chair empty after the Council decided to use only-English in a working group.
This development was foreseen in 2017 (pre-Brexit) when Mario Monti said "The EU, when the UK leaves, should take the decision of upgrading the use of the English language in EU affairs. I think we should upgrade the ways we use English and it should become the language of the EU. I exaggerate a bit - there should be a bit of French. It will be a very appropriate gesture to the UK. It would help us Europeans to become more competitive by using fewer languages."
The statements of Mario Monti was pragmatic, it defines an issue and propose a solution. The behaviour of French diplomats is stubborn and nationalistic.
I wouldn't dispute much of what you wrote above, but I do think the French contribution to empiricism and rationalism qualifies as major (difficult as these things are to measure), and that that contribution is at least similar to the other large European nations.
I understand there is a common perception that French academic culture has literary preoccupations, but I don't think the idea that those preoccupations have disadvantaged French science holds up to much scrutiny, much as one might want it to after listening to a fruitless monologue about Derrida.
It's heartening to me that there are people in the EU arguing in favour of pragmatic gestures of friendship to the UK as you point out; I'm all for it and hope it is continued and mutual, regardless of whether the UK is legally part of the organisation.
I think embracing english as the main language of the EU is the worst idea since Brexit. It’s anything but neutral. It’s a concession made to the brits and a trojan for the Americans. They left, they can f right off and take their piss poor excuse of a language with them. It works for programming, insults and not much else. If they hadn’t joined the EU to sabotage it, maybe english wouldn’t be as popular in the EU.
Let’s force the 3 letter agencies to improve their deep learning NLP models for other languages.
Nobody speaks it in the EU, but if we’re going with popular languages i also don’t think mandarin would be an appropriate language.
I’m french and I think there should be a common EU language, and for political purpose it should a truly neutral language, like Esperanto or another novlang.
(Or maybe french should become the lingua franca of the EU if French official communications to the EU could only be in German)
Latin is rooted in catholicism, which is anything but neutral in terms of history and human rights.
Let’s level the playing field a bit, there is enough english in the world.
[this post made in english, and I write most often in english because nobody reads french compared to english]
English is one of the two official languages of Ireland.
Either way, I think everything you've said is basically beside the point because English is the primary international language of the business and science worlds. That's why virtually all airports everywhere in the world have English signage and announcements, that's why many international university lectures are in English. It's very practical.
For better or for worse, that's how it is, and choosing another language based on some principle of neutrality (which certainly won't really be neutral, because anyone's definition of neutrality will be biased) is going against the flow. Something like Esperanto would actually be an especially terrible choice given that there's almost no one who speaks it and virtually no entertainment media that uses it, which makes it far more difficult to learn.
Learning languages is hard enough as it is. As someone who lived in Tokyo and studied Japanese full time, it's something you really need to be motivated for to make it work.
What a depressingly resentful and scornful take against op’s well reasoned comment. Taking a position is fine, shouting through your keyboard is discouraged.
English is a great choice because it is a second language for every country, which puts them on equal footing and helps them communicate (with the world as well). Native speakers are the hardest to understand because they suffer from the curse of knowledge.
(Latin is oppressive? I’ve heard it all. Better tell the scientists.)
What Pidgin user(s) could possibly be worth that much?
Are there some activist or terrorist monitored by a 3 letter agency that is computer literate enough to use Linux + pidgin to try and keep away from prying eyes (or just plain ethical reasons)? Or would the exploit end up being targeted at some foreign government that has standardized on Pidgin?
Pidgin is the IM client provided in Tails Linux. In practice that makes it the OTR over XMPP client provided in Tails Linux.
I suspect that this use also causes those that are not doing Tails to use Pidgin on Windows to communicate with those that are. After all, Pidgin is in Tails. It must be secure.
There are many government organizations which are still using XMPP and the Clients they usw are most likely based on libpurle the vasic library for pidgin and similar clients (Adamantium on MacOS).
Maybe. But if you're holding a LOT of crypto, it's very unwise to store the private keys on an internet-connected computer you also use for instant messaging and other things.
(I'm sure plenty of people do actually do that; just lamenting the fact rather than expressing skepticism at the plausibility.)
I left like $80 worth of crypto on a computer that my nephew was using for gaming online, and only remembered when I realized that it had grown to be worth over $1000
Fortunately I recovered it before any of the virus-riddled crapware he downloaded noticed it was there, haha
You can offload it to someone else. Say you shorted 100 shares at $50, but the price later goes to $100. One way to exit the short is to buy 100 shares on the open market, taking a loss of $5000. You can also find someone who wants to short, pay them $10,000, and transfer the position to them. Now the short position is off your hands, and the other person effectively entered into a short position at $100. It's kind of like taking over a lease.
