dralley (u/dralley) - Readit News

dralley commented on "Remove mentions of XSLT from the html spec" github.com/whatwg/html/pu... · Posted by u/troupo

93po · 6 days ago

When I see "reps from every browser agree" my bullshit alarm immediately goes off. Does it include unanimous support from browser projects that are either:

1. not trillion dollar tech companies

or

2. not 99% funded from a trillion dollar tech company.

I have long suspected that Google gives so much money to Mozilla both for the default search option, but also for massive indirect control to deliberately cripple Mozilla in insidious ways to massively reduce Firefox's marketshare. And I have long predicted that Google is going to make the rate of change needed in web standards so high that orgs like Mozilla can't keep up and then implode/become unusable.

dralley · 6 days ago

>I have long suspected that Google gives so much money to Mozilla both for the default search option, but also for massive indirect control to deliberately cripple Mozilla in insidious ways to massively reduce Firefox's marketshare.

This has never ever made sense because Mozilla is not at all afraid to piss in Google's cheerios at the standards meetings. How many different variations of Flock and similar adtech oriented features did they shoot down? It's gotta be at least 3. Not to mention the anti-fingerprinting tech that's available in Firefox (not by default because it breaks several websites) and opposition to several Google-proposed APIs on grounds of fingerprinting. And keeping Manifest V2 around indefinitely for the adblockers.

People just want a conspiracy, even when no observed evidence actually supports it.

>And I have long predicted that Google is going to make the rate of change needed in web standards so high that orgs like Mozilla can't keep up and then implode/become unusable.

That's basically true whether incidentally or on purpose.

dralley commented on SystemD Service Hardening roguesecurity.dev/blog/sy... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

DyslexicAtheist · 7 days ago

these Hardening variables have been discussed some years back[1].

this will not take off I'm afraid, because locking these unitfiles down is offloaded to the end-user (I've yet to see maintainers embrace shipping locked down files). Maybe they will? But this same approach hasn't worked with apparmor so why should it work with systemd? Who will do the job?

If you consider apparmor maintainers provide skeleton-templates in many cases that will make the parser stop complaining. ("look I have a profile so apparmor shuts up, but don't take too close a look OK")

Then there is firejail, which some argue[2] is snake-oil considering the high level of administrative glue compared to its massive attack-surface (also it's a setuid binary).

I didn't mention SElinux since I don't know a single person who had the joy (or pain depending on perspective) of working with it. But again, seems the expectation to implement security with it is shifted to the user.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22993304

[2] https://github.com/netblue30/firejail/issues/3046

dralley · 7 days ago

> this will not take off I'm afraid, because locking these unitfiles down is offloaded to the end-user (I've yet to see maintainers embrace shipping locked down files).

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/SystemdSecurityHarden...

dralley commented on Thai Air Force seals deal for Swedish Gripen jets scmp.com/news/asia/southe... · Posted by u/belter

culi · 9 days ago

Today, Thailand decided to go with Swedish Gripen jets over F-16s. A week ago, Spain chose the Eurofighter over the F-35[0] and Switzerland seems to be considering a similar move.[1] Before that the Pentagon halved its funding for the F-35 program.[2] Criticism of the F-35's status as a "hangar queen" have been around a long time[3] and seem to be increasingly prominent.

California—the world's 4th largest economy—'s biggest export is airplane parts.[4] Is California in for a reckoning as the world seems to be increasingly rejecting US weapons technology?

[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/spain-rejects-f-35-for-europ...

[1] https://breakingdefense.com/2025/08/switzerland-weighs-cuts-...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/us-slashe...

[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20210317192541/https://www.washi...

[4] https://www.worldstopexports.com/californias-top-10-exports/

dralley · 9 days ago

>Before that the Pentagon halved its funding for the F-35 program.[2]

This is so misleading. They cut this year's orders of the F-35 in half. That's not even close to the same thing as cutting funding for the program in half. Part of that funding was even reallocated towards streamlining the supply chains and improving maintainence practices.

dralley commented on Thai Air Force seals deal for Swedish Gripen jets scmp.com/news/asia/southe... · Posted by u/belter

impossiblefork · 9 days ago

The advantage of the Gripen isn't that it's cheap. The F-16 is cheaper.

But Gripen has Meteor and can fly really well. Now, I'm a Swede, but there are claims of practical experiments in Norway trying out old some Gripen planes vs F-15C and F-16 have shown that the Gripen is simply better at air-to-air stuff.

The F-16 is obviously bigger though, so if you want to bomb somebody a lot and whoever that is doesn't have anything to put up against it then maybe it's reasonable to get one of those instead, but I don't think that's a problem Thailand has. I think they want an air force that can challenge another air force if required.

It's also nice since one can actually fly with it without breaking the bank.

dralley · 9 days ago

F-15C is ancient. Gripen E vs F-16V shouldn't be that far apart in terms of performance.

dralley commented on Thai Air Force seals deal for Swedish Gripen jets scmp.com/news/asia/southe... · Posted by u/belter

_DeadFred_ · 9 days ago

Forget parts. Mission's can't be flown. Look up Mission Data Files and F35 Partner Support Complexes.

dralley · 9 days ago

Lack of MDFs does not mean that you can't fly missions. It's an intelligence product that assists with mission planning. That's like saying your car is completely unusable if the builtin maps are a few years out of date.

dralley commented on Thai Air Force seals deal for Swedish Gripen jets scmp.com/news/asia/southe... · Posted by u/belter

dh2022 · 9 days ago

Re: Ukraine defending itself with the nukes it gave up as part of Budapest memorandum - the nuclear code required to activate the warheads never left Moscow.

Maybe the Ukrainians could have tinkered with these warheads and find out how to enable them.... but that is quite risky.

dralley · 9 days ago

>Maybe the Ukrainians could have tinkered with these warheads and find out how to enable them.... but that is quite risky.

Not really. What do you expect to happen, exactly? Do you think they're designed to detonate if some tamper sensor is triggered, like in a movie?

dralley commented on Thai Air Force seals deal for Swedish Gripen jets scmp.com/news/asia/southe... · Posted by u/belter

fakedang · 9 days ago

Pointing to consumer or raw material inflation in the context of defence is a bit of a strawman argument. Defence deals are made for products that are supposed to often last 30-40 years at minimum. All factors such as inflation and potential continuing maintenance are already priced in at the onset. Unless the product faces significant issues down the line, or faces unexpected and ungodly levels of demand, price per product remains largely constant. Early buyers are paying the premium for early access to the tech, while late buyers are paying the same for an older product with inflation priced in.

dralley · 9 days ago

Fighter jets are not immune to normal economics. If the material costs of production inputs go up, then so will the cost of the fighter, unless there was some pre-agreed binding contract which locks in the price, which in this case there was not. Switzerland should have negotiated a guaranteed price given how long the timelines on delivery were.

dralley commented on Thai Air Force seals deal for Swedish Gripen jets scmp.com/news/asia/southe... · Posted by u/belter

freeopinion · 9 days ago

I admit I didn't read the article. Is the Gripen 40% cheaper so that countries can own more of them?

Also smaller airbases can mean more airbases. So a single drone attack might take out one or two bases worth of Gripen. But it takes a lot more drones and a lot more sophisticated attack to take out all the Gripen spread across so many small bases.

dralley · 9 days ago

Gripen is more expensive to purchase than the F-35 and F-16. The operating costs are a bit cheaper than the F-16 and substantially cheaper than the F-35 however.

dralley commented on When the CIA got away with building a heart attack gun wisewolfmedia.substack.co... · Posted by u/douchecoded

imchillyb · 9 days ago

> There, researchers under Dr. Nathan Gordon, a CIA chemist, mixed shellfish toxin with water and froze the mixture into a small pellet or dart. The finished projectile would be fired from a modified Colt M1911 pistol equipped with an electrical firing mechanism. It had an effective range of 100 meters and was virtually noiseless when fired.

> When fired into a target, the frozen dart would immediately melt and release its poisonous payload into the victim’s bloodstream. Shellfish toxins, which are known to completely shut down the cardiovascular system in concentrated doses, would spread to the victim’s heart, mimicking a heart attack and causing death within minutes.

> All that would be left behind was a tiny red dot where the dart entered the body, undetectable to those who didn’t know to look for it. As the target lay dying, the assassin could escape without notice.

> https://allthatsinteresting.com/heart-attack-gun

dralley · 9 days ago

>undetectable to those who didn’t know to look for it

So is polonium. It's nonetheless not exactly that difficult to pinpoint if someone just drops dead.

dralley commented on Thai Air Force seals deal for Swedish Gripen jets scmp.com/news/asia/southe... · Posted by u/belter

gerdesj · 9 days ago

"It's able to operate from airstrips that are no more than roads, with modest mobile ground equipment for support."

Nothing is really new. I used to live in West Germany in the '70s and '80s. The UK had an aircraft called Harrier - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrier_jump_jet. At that time I think Sweden was deploying the Drakken (Dragon) and later the Vigen (Lightning). I made models of both as a child and I think both of them were superb in their own way.

Harrier was designed to work out of fields, let alone roads. Rather similar to an Apache. Minimal maint (ish) and so on.

I now live in Yeovil, Somerset and we have recently had several Italian rotary wing aircraft, such as The Seaking doing test flights around here. Presumably airframe testing and proving for VJ Day.

dralley · 9 days ago

I have to imagine that Gripen is an order of magnitude cheaper to operate than the Harrier though