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A.o.D. posted:He openly supports Russia, he just doesn't want to face any consequences for doing so.
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Jul 30, 2023 16:30
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Musk still gets to keep his clearances while smoking weed and openly discussing using Ketamine at parties and stuff yeah?
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Jul 30, 2023 16:31
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Its more likely the DOD delivers a stern warning and works on changing the contract with SpaceX to make it clear that he cannot play games with DOD issued equipment.
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Jul 30, 2023 16:31
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Why can't the DOD show Elon an empty tile room with a drain in the middle and explain to him that it would be best to not be a loving idiot/Russian asset? Hollywood DOD/CIA/MIC is so much cooler.
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Jul 30, 2023 16:55
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CommieGIR posted:Its more likely the DOD delivers a stern warning and works on changing the contract with SpaceX to make it clear that he cannot play games with DOD issued equipment. I'd have assumed if elon was that big of a deall we'd have used our domestic and international spying abilities to blackmail/arrest elon on any of the myriad of things absurdly rich people do.
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Jul 30, 2023 17:00
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Seems to be against national interest. Oh well there’s nothing we can do.
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Jul 30, 2023 17:00
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CommieGIR posted:Its more likely the DOD delivers a stern warning and works on changing the contract with SpaceX to make it clear that he cannot play games with DOD issued equipment. I don't believe he ever has? There are tens of thousands of starlink receivers in Ukraine, from many different sources, including USAID purchases for Ukraine, direct gifts from SpaceX to Ukraine, receivers bought by DoD and given to Ukraine, purchases by other European states given to Ukraine, and the most numerous category, receivers bought by individuals to an European service address and then shipped to Ukraine. The DoD manages the limits on the receivers they purchase, SpaceX doesn't meddle with those. They have made various noises about most of the other categories, though.
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Jul 30, 2023 17:48
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One of the problems is that a lot of Ukraine's starlink terminals are not DOD-issued equipment. Many of them were private donations, of which the DOD has no real control mechanism or leverage. The US has always had a small starlink contract in Ukraine and expanded the contracts in June of 2023, but the DOD has chosen not to disclose the details of these contracts. The good news for Ukraine is that free comms access is very useful. The bad news is that when accepting donations from overseas billionaires, you might not get to choose exactly how long they give that gift and whether there are strings attached. from the NYT: quote:Mr. Musk nonetheless turned off access for some Starlink terminals in Ukraine. Late last year, about 1,300 Starlink terminals purchased through a British supplier stopped working in the country after the Ukrainian government could not pay the $2,500 monthly fee for each, two people with knowledge of the matter said. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/07/28/business/starlink.html
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Jul 30, 2023 18:17
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Recall similar news early war, with similar verbiage and messaging and was tied to the publicity of "Free Starlink". It was quickly followed by a bunch of Starlink users in theater responding with, "Bro, we pay for this. We bought it. We pay the bill every month."
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Jul 30, 2023 18:56
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Musk has shown he is capricious and will act without full understanding of legal issues, business commitments or moral concerns on whatever whim suits him at that moment which have sometimes had to be walked back immediately to widespread mirth. What I’m saying is that he’s a poor person to make a strategic or even tactical alliance with where you have any sort of dependency on him.
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Jul 30, 2023 19:05
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Tuna-Fish posted:The DoD manages the limits on the receivers they purchase, SpaceX doesn't meddle with those. Pretending Musk didn't exist for a moment, and SpaceX were a typical aerospace firm, having a foreign country integrating my consumer communications product into highly jam-resistant long-range unmanned aerial and naval strike weapons would probably make my lawyers poo poo a brick. No argument Musk is capricious, but once Ukraine started getting creative and kludging Starlink into unmanned weapon systems, that opened a big can of worms for SpaceX that was going to need to get resolved with the USG.
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Jul 30, 2023 19:33
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At some point the fact that 'Ol Musky is yanking comms access as soon as he learns of major operations he doesn't agree with makes him an active participant in the conflict. Maybe not legally, but holy poo poo. If Marconi had beaten Bell and had the ability to turn off allied radios / field telephones during the invasion of italy, he'd be an enemy combatant, no? Morally, he could maybe defend an all OR nothing response. "Nobody can use my internet in a warzone" is at least acceptable. Picking and choosing like this makes him culpable.
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Jul 30, 2023 19:53
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His go-to defense that's worked thus far is he's just that rich and literally the only thing that can push back against that level of rich is maybe the MIC. See also sassing the MIC being the only thing that got Trump's  field to flicker for even a second.
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Jul 30, 2023 19:57
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Tiny posted:At some point the fact that 'Ol Musky is yanking comms access as soon as he learns of major operations he doesn't agree with makes him an active participant in the conflict. I agree with this sentiment, and your friendly reminder that the CIA killed for less.
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Jul 30, 2023 20:03
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I dunno, unless the CIA uses a bespoke tourist submarine I feel capital has captured things to such an extent that spies just get reminded who they work for. The question is does that still hold when said turbo rich are idiot manbabies who cannot maintain kayfaybe. I feel the Floyd uprising of 2020 might have not happened without Trump using twitter to insult and annoy everyone, everywhere, everyday, all the time, and now that Musk is using twitter to insult and annoy everyone, everywhere, everyday, all the time, who knows what's possible. Also, much like Trump, Elon is immune to having his loved one's threatened by spooky state security because I'm not sure either of them have loved ones. Ronwayne fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Jul 30, 2023 |
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Jul 30, 2023 20:08
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Terrifying Effigies posted:The challenge there is more that for the moment Starlink is the only game in town, and if you want to build your own LEO constellation you have to find a viable launch alternative to SpaceX as well. Amazon's Kuiper constellation was supposed to have it's first launch last year, but they signed on with ULA's Vulcan Centaur which has been repeatedly delayed with first launch no earlier than 2024 or beyond at this point. That sucks. Though I understand that the Centaur is delayed because they ordered engines from Blue Origin that are also delayed so Amazon only have Bezos's other company to blame.
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Jul 30, 2023 20:58
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The X-man cometh posted:That sucks. Though I understand that the Centaur is delayed because they ordered engines from Blue Origin that are also delayed so Amazon only have Bezos's other company to blame. The Centaur part (the upper stage) isn't using blue origin engines (it's using the Aerojet Rocketdyne RL-10, which has been around for 60 years), and is somewhat delayed because it blew up. The Vulcan part (the lower stage) is indeed delayed due to blue origin engines, though.
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Jul 30, 2023 21:46
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bulletsponge13 posted:Recall similar news early war, with similar verbiage and messaging and was tied to the publicity of "Free Starlink". It was quickly followed by a bunch of Starlink users in theater responding with, "Bro, we pay for this. We bought it. We pay the bill every month." The enemy has been probing your lines with small groups of poo poo-scared zeks for the past day and a half. Their artillery hasn't opened up yet, but you know it's coming. Battalion knows it, too, and has promised as many tubes as you need when it kicks off. You're sitting in your cozy little log-topped bunker, trying to coordinate the distribution of a crate of Javelins you aquired recently, when an exhausted soldier kicks in the door, gasping out, "Molodshyi Lietenant! There are dust clouds travelling towards us from the East! We saw-", but is interrupted by the deadened thump of mortar rounds impacting (you estimate) 25 meters outside the door. It starts getting even busier outside before you can formulate your next action. Lunging over to the Starlink terminal, you stab in your username and password, only to be met with a screen stating, "Please access the Starlink Customer Portal to resume service." Slinging a beat-to-poo poo AK across your chest and a Javelin over your back, you take a moment before scrambling out the door to send a quick text to your BN S-6, "Did you forget something?! ти, мамолюк." madeintaipei fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Jul 30, 2023 |
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Jul 30, 2023 22:24
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Replace "you motherfucker" with "ти, мамолюк" and it would be 
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Jul 30, 2023 22:36
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Ginsu hellfire Musk, already
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Jul 30, 2023 22:44
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The X-man cometh posted:That sucks. Though I understand that the Centaur is delayed because they ordered engines from Blue Origin that are also delayed so Amazon only have Bezos's other company to blame. Yeah it's kind of an ouroboros situation which most of the non-Musk solutions are facing. Really shows what a commanding position SpaceX and Starlink managed to set up, as well as how much Musk is royally messing it up by actively incentivizing their biggest customer to go out with dump trucks of money to try and build up competitors so they're not dependent on one man-baby's opinions-of-the-day. Kuiper's current FCC approval to operate requires them to have 50% of their planned 3,236 satellites on-orbit by July 30, 2026 so Bezos is going to have to make some interesting decisions soon. I assume they can renegotiate with the FCC but don't know what the $$ associated with that sort of thing looks like.
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Jul 30, 2023 23:01
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Hyperlynx posted:Ginsu hellfire Musk, already 
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Jul 30, 2023 23:03
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Wibla posted:Replace "you motherfucker" with "ти, мамолюк" and it would be Did I get the code-switching right? In the S-6's defense, it involves going to the Ukrainian equivalent of Family Dollar, loading up a gift card from cash, and sitting through 20min. of wait time with a call-center in Behat, Uttar Pradesh, India, only to realize you've gotten scammed. Sometimes the world turns with you, sometimes agin you.
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Jul 30, 2023 23:24
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madeintaipei posted:Did I get the code-switching right? Do all the grocery stores now have signs on gift card displays warning people the IRS doesn’t demand Best Buy cards as payment? Been noticing that recently, guess their returns clerks didn’t like being yelled at by someone who got scammed.
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Jul 31, 2023 16:24
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Ronwayne posted:I feel the Floyd uprising of 2020 might have not happened without Trump using twitter to insult and annoy everyone, everywhere, everyday, all the time I'm sorry, what?
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Jul 31, 2023 18:15
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McNally posted:I'm sorry, what? Clearly people were mad that trump was tweeting, and not the brutal murder of a man selling a cigarette in the streets while on video
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Jul 31, 2023 18:17
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McNally posted:I'm sorry, what? I think he's saying that four years of Trump resulted in the demonstrations after Floyd's murder being much more widespread and vigorous than if the same situation had happened during a sane presidential administration.
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Jul 31, 2023 18:20
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E: nvm, dumb derail
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Jul 31, 2023 18:38
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I think it's pretty uncontroversial that Trump did not have the will or ability to gloss over structural issues and placate the general populace in the same way different presidents already did.
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Jul 31, 2023 19:13
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those protests blew up nearly overnight. trump being a giant idiot only aggravated things further, like with his border patrol agents protecting the second sacred fence of portland with massive clouds of teargas and beatings
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Jul 31, 2023 19:42
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Hyrax Attack! posted:Do all the grocery stores now have signs on gift card displays warning people the IRS doesn’t demand Best Buy cards as payment? Been noticing that recently, guess their returns clerks didn’t like being yelled at by someone who got scammed. We (a dollar store) don't. We have guidelines to follow regarding gift cards and are generally aware of potential scams though. The last two months has seen two older people at our location stopped from getting scammed. No gift cards or cash cards are to be processed while either we or the customer are holding or talking into a phone (handsfree). Both times the assistant manager broke out that rule and asked to speak to whoever was on the other end of the line. It was pretty easy for the manager to explain to the customer what was happening. We also had someone call the store and try to scam us on a cash card. In that case, we have to call the district manager, loss prevention, and the local police.
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Jul 31, 2023 19:55
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madeintaipei posted:We (a dollar store) don't. We have guidelines to follow regarding gift cards and are generally aware of potential scams though. That is a surprisingly good policy, assuming it is followed. Especially since most of the scammers insist on them being on the line throughout the whole transaction. What keeps getting me is the amount of people falling for these scams, what is it about various gift cards that make it sound legit?
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Jul 31, 2023 20:00
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ASAPI posted:That is a surprisingly good policy, assuming it is followed. Especially since most of the scammers insist on them being on the line throughout the whole transaction. That’s a good question, I think most people don’t but I think it’s one of those things where if 9,999 people hang up and the 10,000th hands over $5,000k, it’s a fantastic value. Bizarrely a retired professor who is the dad of a friend & still with it mentally was on the phone with “Amazon” for three hours pretty much turning over every scrap of payment info they asked for, claiming expertise or authority are powerful things in getting people to not question demands.
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Jul 31, 2023 20:13
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How many people do you know with 5 mill sitting around ready to go tho
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Jul 31, 2023 20:20
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ASAPI posted:That is a surprisingly good policy, assuming it is followed. Especially since most of the scammers insist on them being on the line throughout the whole transaction. For IRS one, people who have knowingly cheated on their taxes previously is my guess.
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Jul 31, 2023 20:39
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ASAPI posted:That is a surprisingly good policy, assuming it is followed. Especially since most of the scammers insist on them being on the line throughout the whole transaction. Dementia is a hell of a thing, even in mild forms. In the same way that someone in the more advanced stages can get set off by minor changes in their daily routine, an apparent authority figure accusing them or a loved one of a serious crime and demanding an immediate remedy can cause someone in the early stages to throw all critical thinking out the window. So my dad falls for these all the time (he's most likely got early stage dementia). If it's not someone from "Tech Support," it's a variation on the IRS thing. I think he recently fell for one where he was supposed to pay some kind of parking fine. The cashier at the local grocery store stopped him from buying a $500 prepaid Visa card.
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Jul 31, 2023 21:12
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not caring here posted:For IRS one, people who have knowingly cheated on their taxes previously is my guess. I get how people may believe they owe the IRS, it is the gift card part that throws me. Wouldn't the IRS prefer a direct bank transfer or cashier's check? Something along those lines? If the IRS called and said, "guy, you done hosed up your taxes, expect a letter detailing what/how, but the bill will be $X" I would likely freak out. Until the payment options involve me buying apple gift cards or whatever. It isn't that fact that there might be issues with the taxes, it's the gift card part that confuses me.
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Jul 31, 2023 21:13
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Hyrax Attack! posted:That’s a good question, I think most people don’t but I think it’s one of those things where if 9,999 people hang up and the 10,000th hands over $5,000k, it’s a fantastic value. Bizarrely a retired professor who is the dad of a friend & still with it mentally was on the phone with “Amazon” for three hours pretty much turning over every scrap of payment info they asked for, claiming expertise or authority are powerful things in getting people to not question demands. It's three things, primarily. The first is exactly what you describe above. If you try 1000 times a week and get 1 win per month, that's $5k. In a lot of parts of the world, that is BIG BALLER money. Hire a maid and a cook money. Unsurprisingly, those are also the parts of the world where scamming Fat Rich Indulgent American Grandma From Iowa is a folk-hero thing, and unless you scale it up the FBI and local authorities aren't going to bother doing anything about it. The second is that as people get older, their gullibility increases massively. This is just a human thing. Young chimps are smarter than human children of equivalent age, because the human children are wired to be taught and learn from adults around them, and the chimps are wired to observe and figure poo poo out themselves. I'm massively oversimplifying and paraphrasing that, probably. Much like with diapers, having absolute blind faith and trust is normal for the very young and very old. The third reason is also human nature. Some humans are horrible people, and some humans are very dumb. When a horrible person gets a dumb person on the line in the golden-scam-target years of "coherent enough to still be in control of their money, but old enough to believe this nice man from the IRS trying to keep them out of jail just wants to help", this happens.
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Jul 31, 2023 21:16
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ASAPI posted:I get how people may believe they owe the IRS, it is the gift card part that throws me. Wouldn't the IRS prefer a direct bank transfer or cashier's check? Something along those lines? That’s true, wonder if they initially tried to do bank transfers but those were too easy to reverse or track, while gift card redemptions are far harder to figure out.
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Jul 31, 2023 21:27
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I was about to address the chimp thing for a variety of reasons until I looked at what thread this is 
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Jul 31, 2023 21:28
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