What about to Israel?
crickets as truckload after truckload of weapon drives by headed for a genocide
I need the rest of the world to realize the US has quietly COMPLETELY given up on mitigating climate change since AI. I mean WORSE than given up.
Centrists and liberals NEVER talk about it politically anymore, climate change is just accepted as a random form of punishment from God/The Rich.
The US is a rogue state.
Thank goodness for all the "both sides!" handwringing we did to get here.
Don't bother, play the free (free as in free, not "lootbox") moddable team based vehicle shooter Operation Harsh Doorstop or the WW2 team based vehicle shooter Easy Red 2.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/736590/Operation_Harsh_Doorstop/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1324780/Easy_Red_2/
Both are indie games and are fantastic!
Here is some gameplay of OHD recorded on my Steam Deck, focused on flying helicopter support and demonstrating how perfect the Steam Deck is for flying (Note Easy Red 2 also has fighter planes as well as tanks and the planes are a dream to fly on the Steam Deck).
https://lostpod.space/w/qUyc9YLX69RK4xokm98qCW
https://lostpod.space/w/fYo9DBAxwWSace7X7X486t
https://lostpod.space/w/id9wMqsEmHSD9xQCTchQ9r
Edit Just jumped into Easy Red 2 again after having not played for two weeks or so and damn the performance just keeps getting better on the Steam Deck! Controls and general game feel are getting a lot more polished, it still feels like an indie game but it feels like a very polished one.
This is about wealth inequality too.
Can't have that, it makes the AI look bad!
In other words: J. Larry Jameson and the university is now actively taking part in the systemic harassment and invalidation of trans people.
Moreover, it has also sacrificed its academic reputation and independence by agreeing to follow the anti-trans “gender is biological sex” narrative, which no serious specialist in the field of gender and gender incongruence believes in.
Yes, but no... well drones confirm the trends identified here they don't subvert them. I would say this book anticipates why UAV/drones are so vital to integrate with and defend from for artillery in Ukraine, but while it discusses drones and loitering munitions it was written before the Ukraine invasion.
The bottom line with any new technology and artillery is the classic Upright Citizens Brigade improv mantra "yes and".
Ukraine from what I can gather has thoroughly answered that question.
Modern mechanized warfare against a near peer foe is a rock paper scissors game, armor is the rock, infantry paper, ok so drones are in some cases scissors/rocksaws... but artillery is the anvil you drop on the rock paper scissors game the same as it ever was.
The need for a large number of shells is primarily related to the number of enemy troops confronting our troops on a wide front. This is also due to the inability to fully utilize the aviation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which is due to the presence of a modern and multi-echeloned enemy air defence system and the outdated fleet of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
This is also due to the periodic impossibility of conducting precision fire due to the operation of enemy electronic warfare systems, which suppresses the operation of our command post.
Analysing the course of hostilities, we can say that it is possible to reduce the number of conventional shells by increasing the proportion of high-precision ammunition, as well as long-range firepower, such as tactical missiles, and increasing the effectiveness of other means of destruction. Also, the availability of high-precision weapons, kamikaze drones, and unmanned aerial vehicles that will be resistant to enemy electronic warfare may reduce the consumption of conventional ammunition.
The main factor that will affect the need for conventional ammunition will be the technological and numerical component of the means of destruction, which is objectively proportional to the number of enemy forces.
Also consider that autonomous vehicles supercharge "last mile" logistics of artillery resupply, you know what job no one should have? Driving a vehicle loaded with artillery shells through a plausibly dangerous area.
The Field Artillery (FA) has demonstrated itself as the primary casualty producing weapon of the last century, earning the moniker “King of Battle” during the World Wars. As the technology of conflict has advanced in the post-war era, the FA branch has evolved along with it, becoming more accurate and lethal. The focus of the last two decades has been on accuracy, precision and range; enhancing the effectiveness of fires while reducing the total amount of munitions needed to service targets. This growth in capability has come at a cost: the increased lethality of the system has forced adversaries to focus on targeting FA units, while the logistical trains necessary to “feed” the guns has only increased in step with increases in range of systems.
Integrating autonomous and semi-autonomous systems to reduce the manpower necessary to execute sustained operations is imperative for the future of the branch. Utilizing semi-autonomous vehicles to support casualty evacuation, ammunition and fuel resupply, reconnaissance and security will increase the survivability and lethality of artillery units while also reducing their manpower costs. Although seemingly divergent, these three Lines of Effort (LOEs) require a significant number of personnel to execute. Autonomous systems assisting in these operations would allow more personnel to focus on the execution of accurate and effective fires. Utilizing commercial off the shelf (COTs) products and retrofitting existing systems with readily available systems would be a fast, efficient way of reducing manpower requirements and increasing capability.
...
The promise that fewer, smarter munitions would be the way of the future has been negated by the realization that massed, effective fires are just as critical now as they were in the past and will be in the future. It is evident that the logistical requirements for ammunition alone are already staggering without considering the fuel, food and water needed for vehicles and personnel in the firing unit. To account for the natural attrition of the battlefield, notwithstanding potential mass casualty events to both personnel and equipment, it is imperative that the focus of the artillery be on reducing manpower requirements for anything other than the firing of artillery. As mentioned, the FA has several critical friction points that must be addressed soon.
I think the answer is both
I think Putin desperately needed it as Russia is starting to lose badly in Ukraine, not in terms of total available numbers of troops or ability to economically fight but just in terms of plain getting their ass kicked tactically and strategically in higher and higher percentages of engagements. Independent of the strategic situation, war is like tennis, no matter how far you are ahead in a game, you have to close the game out to win, which means winning points all the way to the end of the game. You can't just declare you have won because you have an obviously superior situation, and if the enemy knows every engagement you have with them costs you more than it costs them... well that quickly spirals into a massive problem no matter how far you are ahead because not even time will save you.
Whatever the reason, the big draw down in expensive anti-missile/drone stocks at least gives Russia a fighting chance (not that I am in favor of giving them a fighting chance here) but even still it doesn't matter as much any more if the US stops supporting Ukraine defense directly, it sucks but the effect seems to be Europe stepping up and investing in Ukraine and defense in general and I am not sure long term that is worse for Ukraine though short term it is obviously not good.
Particularly in the political realm of war, the new way to do a high profile military response that doesn't accomplish a military objective are drone attacks on cities that make big headlines but do little actual damage to the war machine of a country at level that matters enough to turn the tide of a war. This isn't to say the violence and destruction they cause isn't real, but rather it is aimed at almost more of a pyschological violence against a population of civilians rather than a material attack on a vulnerable part of the military industrial complex of Ukraine that facilitates it's ability to fight. If Ukraine has decisive missile defenses however and can embarassingly shoot down all of Russia's drones, that actually becomes a serious political threat to the legitimacy of their military in terms of the global world's assumed mantra that Russia must be overwhelmingly more powerful than Ukraine in sophistication and number because the saber rattling just looks weak.
I am not super confident in this, but it may be an indicator of how desperate Putin is getting, to push wildly for a drawn down of antimissile systems available to Ukraine so that Putin can manipulate a PR path to save face and lose the war in Ukraine while claiming to win because even as the logistics and infantry (armor? no more of that for Russia in any strategic number) mostly withdraw the world news can keep covering shocking massive drone attacks on Ukranian cities and retain an air of inveitability to Russia's dominance.
This isn't to say Russia isn't dangerous to Ukraine anymore, but rather to underscore that they are getting desperate.
Because of Netanyahu starting a war with Iran to stay in power.
link to video demonstration on Peertube instance
Steam Deck controller config available by renaming Cataclysm DDA in your steam library (added as a non-steam game) to Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead and then searching under community layouts for "Cataclysm DDA full keyboard mapping".
edit: I recommend increasing the transparency of the popup steam menus by a large amount in practice, I kept them fairly opaque to make the video demonstration easier to follow
Here is my setup!
The Vim hjkl keys (along with the diagonals y u n b because this is CDDA and we need those diagonals) provide us with a clear idea we can ground the Steam Deck mapping in, and unlike a Vimmer with a qwerty keyboard, we can unfold the keys into the navigational ring (up down left right) Vimmer's imagine in their head to understand Vim qwerty controls.
Not only does this provide an easy way to remember our first choice in dividing the qwerty keyboard into Steam Deck mappings, it also means that the control scheme has plug and play compatibility with a dizzying array of software and games that all are part of Vim's ~40 year tradition and evolution of keyboard controls. Once you memorize the Vim Ring on your Steam Deck you will be able to use it for the rest of your life on joysticks and touchpads, and you can rest assured that other people will be developing vim hjkl based controls for software and games for the rest of your life.
WASD is probably one of the most well known "conceptual projections" onto the qwerty keyboard right?
It might seem a bittt confusing at first that z and x are the diagonals, but if you remember that this navigational ring is based on WASD, than s has to be down, and thus it becomes intuitive that z and x would be the downward diagonals. The letters q and e are almost without fail where left-lean, right-lean controls are for tactical shooters (for leaning out of cover to shoot) but even to someone unfamiliar with these control schemes, q and e are pretty intuitive.
Notice here, that between the Vim and WASD rings is 2x3 column of unbound letters on the keyboard, those being c v, f g, and r t. The natural place for these letters which are frequently used by games and software is the four Steam Deck back buttons L5, R5, L4, R4 and the bumpers R1 and L1. True, vim prioritizes the horizontal home row, but given the accessibility of the other homerow keys in the VIM and WASD rings I don't think this is a serious flaw especially because it is easy to visualize how this column maps to your Steam Deck.
Now for our last navigational ring. This ring was inspired by reading about players admitting to making the extremely chaotic-neutral choice of using the number row rather than the numberpad for navigation lol. We could just recreate the numberpad in a menu, but we already have two rings, and if anything nudging the numberpad into a ring shape makes activation from a touchpad or a joystick much more intuitive, it also expresses directly the meaning of the numberpad in terms of navigation while allowing quick access to each number for rapid input. Importantly, the number row keys not the numberpad keys are used here so that in conjunction with shift this ring can be used to activate the alt number row commands !@#$%^&*().
The Caboose Board is where the rest of the letters and punctuation keys go. I call this a "board" not a "ring" because more keys can be fit onto steam's menu system by making two rows then making a ring, which provides a natural place for extensibility for additional critical keys needed only for a specific game or program that won't mess up carefully arranged rings.
At this point all the letters from the qwerty keyboard are mapped onto the onboard Steam Deck controls. We just need to tidy up and map a few remaining keys outside of the main 3 rows of the keyboard and make some quality of life mappings for important controls in Cataclysm DDA.
Up until this step, other than starting from the assumption that mouse control is unneeded for this mapping, I haven't made any keyboard mappings that are only memorable or salient in the context of Cataclysm DDA. Only after this point am I actually assigning keys to the facebuttons of the Steam Deck based on the specific requirements of Cataclysm DDA. Think about how much easier this makes it to create and memorize the muscle memory of mappings for the next complicated game you want to tackle creating Steam Deck bindings for, if it is a roguelike or other game/software that can be played without a mouse than at least 85% of these mappings don't need to be changed. If mouse control is needed, it is easy to imagine slotting the number ring into a toggleable alternate menu that shares the same control binding. Or the caboose.
These final mappings are intended to be intuitive to someone who has used a gamepad a lot (especially xbox controller). Escape is mapped to the menu face button, tab to the view face button, backspace maps to the x facebutton, spacebar to the b facebutton, enter to the right trigger and shift to the left trigger allowing the shift key to easily be held like it is intended to be on a qwerty keyboard.
Some final quality of life tweaks for CDDA, a single press of the y facebutton activates the / key to bring up the advanced inventory management screen (absolutely amazingly powerful utility in CDDA) and a double press of the y facebutton activates they ? key to bring up list of commands with plain english search. A single press of the a facebutton is mapped to " which brings up the movement toggle (run, walk, crouch, prone). A double press brings up the mutations menu with [ (a somewhat tenous mapping to remember I concede, this is a draft tho). For now I have the thumbstick buttons mapped to + and -.
It is important to adjust the in menu sensitivity especially for navigational rings like the Vim Ring, WASD Ring and Number Ring. Typically for a ring assigned to a joystick one might want to set menu button activation to continous (with these repeat turbo settings) and tweak sensitivity so it is easy to reach the menu buttons on the far edges of the menu without it being uncomfortable or resulting in accidental activations of other keys.
If Canada can survive a couple more years there is going to be a booming disaster tourism industry of taking tours along Canada's southern border with the Zone tho.
The Next Generation Of Canadians?