[HN Gopher] Please, delete all new places since the start of war...
___________________________________________________________________
Please, delete all new places since the start of war 23th of
February
Author : ukrwantpiece
Score : 229 points
Date : 2022-03-01 17:26 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (support.google.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (support.google.com)
| squarefoot wrote:
| True or not, it would be sane to send a heads up to other map
| services (OSM, Apple, etc) so they can be alerted before any
| misuse.
| Closi wrote:
| Eh, the Russians having sloppy opsec on US services is fine
| with me.
| treeshateorcs wrote:
| anyone can confirm that the request has been fulfilled? the link
| is 404d now
| hexo wrote:
| wtf, google? "The page you've requested isn't currently available
| in your language. You can instantly translate any webpage into a
| language of your choice, using Google Chrome's built-in
| translation feature." Like, lol? Just serve it in english or
| watever language it is in.
| wrboyce wrote:
| I have a feeling, based on the presentation of the errors, that
| it is no longer available in any languages.
|
| EDIT: mirror --
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220301173337/https://support.g...
| 3np wrote:
| > The page you've requested isn't currently available in your
| language. You can instantly translate any webpage into a language
| of your choice, using Google Chrome's built-in translation
| feature.
|
| > This page is no longer available
|
| > Try searching or browse recent questions.
| shantara wrote:
| Posted on the official channel of vice PM of Ukraine (the same
| person who talked with Musk about Starlink), likely related:
|
| >disabled certain Google Maps features in Ukraine to ensure
| safety of our citizens
|
| https://t.me/zedigital/1202
| tqi wrote:
| Post is gone now, but that sounds pretty far fetched. What was
| the evidence?
| [deleted]
| modeless wrote:
| That's why some countries have weird regulations about maps.
| South Korea does not allow exporting vector maps, so Google Maps
| rendering is vector based everywhere _except_ in a region
| surrounding South Korea [1]. China applies a (not so) secret
| pseudorandom offset to all geographic coordinates in online maps,
| frequently resulting in mismatches between systems that apply
| corrections and those that don 't. It seems silly during
| peacetime but when there's an actual war, you can see why people
| might want that kind of thing.
|
| And militaries all over the globe do use Google Maps extensively,
| if not by policy then just by soldiers doing their own thing.
| Wrong borders in Google Maps have nearly led to international
| incidents when soldiers ended up on the wrong side of a border.
| And then there are the disputed borders that Google is forced to
| display differently in different countries. There is no globally
| accepted map and as a result the map Google shows you changes
| depending on where you're located.
|
| [1] Actually I am out of date, it looks like the South Korea maps
| are vector based now. Maybe the law changed. It definitely used
| to be the case.
| perihelions wrote:
| - _" Wrong borders in Google Maps have nearly led to
| international incidents when soldiers ended up on the wrong
| side of a border"_
|
| Probably referring to this:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1873285 ( _" Nicaragua
| Raids Costa Rica, Blames Google Maps"_)
| paganel wrote:
| > And militaries all over the globe do use Google Maps
| extensively
|
| ISIS and the other Islamist factions in the Syrian Civil War
| were also using it extensively when fighting the Syrian
| Government forces and when planning their suicide attacks, but
| because Assad was the bad guy no Google action was taken (like
| restricting GMaps access in the area).
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| > Actually I am out of date, it looks like the South Korea maps
| are vector based now. Maybe the law changed. It definitely used
| to be the case.
|
| The South Korean mapping law allows for the domestic service
| (still subject to slight censorship), but Google didn't want to
| put any servers other than edge servers to South Korea so as a
| sort of protest it essentially froze the map for South Korea
| from November 2016 to December 2021, when Google finally gave
| up and established a new domestic data center.
| the-rc wrote:
| The law as I recall it a decade ago was a bit more specific:
| you could only store and process the data in South Korea. Thus,
| the whole planet's tiles were rendered in production on Borg,
| except for SK, whose tiles had to be rendered on a workstation
| under somebody's desk in the Seoul office. That meant no fancy
| mapreduces, let alone any rendering on the fly like the Maps
| API allows (selecting what details to show on the map, their
| look, etc.). Then, IIRC, the rendered bitmap tiles had to be
| pushed from the workstation to production. Vector maps, at the
| time, would have been heresy. Google asked for years to have
| the laws changed. Korean companies weren't affected, at least
| until they moved their own rendering to e.g. a cloud provider
| outside the country.
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| > Google asked for years to have the laws changed.
|
| The laws Google asked for changes were not limited to the
| mapping laws but any law to require domestic data centers,
| which might trigger the domestic tax issue at any moment.
| Your explanation that Borg couldn't handle domestic clusters
| doesn't clearly explain that Google eventually established SK
| data centers and started supporting vector maps anyway---and
| given that South Korea is not the only country with such
| requests (e.g. EU), not being able to cope with such laws is
| just a Google's fault.
| alasdair_ wrote:
| We ended up using Open Street Maps for SK data over Google. It
| worked very well.
| ukrwantpiece wrote:
| Some people might wonder why would Russia use public Google maps
| to tag places for air strikes. I agree that it is trashy but I
| have some arguments why it can be real: 1) Many talegram chats
| has sprang up recently asking the pro-Russian population to
| physically tag places/do some tasks for money 2) Yandex is not
| accessible from ukrainian Internet 3) It might be pro Russian
| volunteers hoping that it will help the Russian army 4) I believe
| that despite being one of the most powerful army on planet Earth
| they are quite dumb and inefficient(so does other countries'
| bureaucratic military, perhaps in a lesser extent). Due to their
| incompetency they may do strange stuff but it can still harm us
| and the world
| yurifury wrote:
| I have reports of new pins from (already-shellshocked) locals,
| and would like to get them removed ASAP.
|
| Is there a contact at google (twitter handles are great) that
| these suspected locations can be sent to? They cannot be posted
| publically for obvious reasons.
|
| I have sent a legal request to Google which may be read, but not
| in time, as Kharkiv is actively being bombarded.
|
| Email in profile, or give instructions below. Thank you.
| victor9000 wrote:
| Hmm... It could be someone warning citizens, but if it's actually
| used in targeting then maybe place a few on the large convoy?
| iso1631 wrote:
| Airstrikes as a service, it's a new billion dollar idea only
| from silicon valley. Throw in croudsourced real time satelite
| identification and I can see a collaberation between Spacex,
| Google and Facebook really disrupting the face of modern
| warfare /s
| laurent92 wrote:
| You're joking but if you send satellites, then ground
| stations are expensive, and you can rent AWS Ground Station
| as a service.
|
| And war knows no limit to the business...
| longway2go wrote:
| Given the number of different factions involved and the
| apparent use of mercenaries / undercover type operatives i
| dont think this so far from a possibility in some ways.
|
| Related:I hate to think about it but i have lots of micro
| controllers, gps receivers, rc receivers and transmitter.
| Plenty of control system software adapable to many vehicle
| types. pressure, acceleration, ir, radar sensors..
|
| I think if there is serious prolonged war in modern countries
| it wont look anything like history.. its as much about what
| tech is on the go when war breaks out, its what evolves
| during it.
|
| Confusing, conflicting seemingly too obvious information is
| all just noise that floods the senses and overloads them..
| but doesnt mean to say there isnt a signal in the noise.
|
| i dont know whats going on here, but i think that we are at a
| stange time in history.
|
| Edit: i am not saying i have any plans or anything, full on
| pacifist here. i just like rc drones etc. But lots of people
| have this stuff and its in tons of kids toys too.
| googlr29783 wrote:
| FYI these reports are being escalated very quickly.
| throwaway99864 wrote:
| is it better to delete the tags and have them move off to
| alternative methods, or allow them to use the tags so people know
| where they will strike next?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Third option: quietly _adjust_ the tags.
| Thaxll wrote:
| Reminds me that "military grade x.y.z" is usually vastly inferior
| to what you get from tech company for the general public.
| colechristensen wrote:
| This is not always the case.
|
| Military grade means things like "works for outside air
| temperatures between -40 and 120 F" and "will still work being
| vibrated to hell for decades".
|
| On the other hand modern tech is like "my cat knocked my Apple
| Watch on the floor and shattered the screen" and things are
| generally extremely fragile.
|
| They're also old. You want things that work for decades, not
| UIs that change every few months.
| rurp wrote:
| God I would love to be able to buy consumer tech that has a
| stable UI and can survive the impact of a light breeze.
| Unfortunately I suspect military purchase prices are a wee
| bit outside of my price range.
| bombcar wrote:
| This is what people don't get - military grade is _not_ James
| Bond spy gear that can do a million things in a small package
| - military grade is something that still has a semblance of
| working after being beat to shit in storage for twenty years,
| manhandled by a bunch of gorillas who don 't give a damn
| about it, and blown up and shot at.
| f1refly wrote:
| I once read a comment chain on this website that went like
|
| > I generally feel like military equipment is of higher quality
| and will last longer
|
| > I've been involved in military contracts for a long time and
| the stuff they buy is generally consumer grade, but they have
| some standard and forced manufacturer for every tiny screw used
| on the vehicle, driving cost up tenfold without any gain. I
| don't see the appeal
|
| > so you're telling me _there is a standard_
|
| And that day I understood why overstock military stuff is so
| attractive to many buyers: It doesn't change. If you read good
| receptions about a military backpack or some kind of tooling,
| you can be dead sure that if you decide to get it, it will be
| just as nice as the thing in the reports. Because they make
| sure every pice will be exactly the same, no surprises.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Yup. Military ammo cans on many of the nearby peaks--they
| hold the logbooks and survive the conditions. One peak that
| doesn't have an ammo can--every time I've been up there I've
| found the logbook in a different container.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Military grade = beefy. It doesn't mean high tech.
| navbaker wrote:
| One of my favorite TV tropes is hearing "they're using military
| grade encryption!!!"
| f1refly wrote:
| I'm still waiting for the movie where the computer character
| exclaims "Oh no, they appear to have employed a crypto nerd
| and given him free reign for the last decade! Their systems
| are so hardened we couldn't get in even if they where to help
| us!"
| 3np wrote:
| Can someone translate "fermers'ke gospodarstvo"?
| quantum_mcts wrote:
| Farm household. Just Ukrainian official name for a "farm".
| sam1r wrote:
| Why not tag everything programmatically, to throw them off? Just
| curious..
| bigfudge wrote:
| Is there a chance this is actually Ukrainian volunteers adding
| these as part of defence setups?
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Meanwhile, Apple has already taken their steps..
| ukrwantpiece wrote:
| https://support.google.com/maps/thread/152809911/terrorists-...
|
| original post was deleted
| cloudedcordial wrote:
| Note that multiple border crossing points including the ones in
| Poland shows red or orange in the traffic data. I assume that
| many people are still trying to reach the neighbouring countries.
| aluminum96 wrote:
| Google has shown a lot of initiative already in disabling Maps
| features to prevent their abuse. [1] I have no doubt that the
| Maps team and its execs will respond to this quickly.
|
| [1] https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/28/22954426/google-
| disables-...
| waffleiron wrote:
| Anyone can edit/place google maps markers, is there any concrete
| evidence that this is actually being used by the Russian army
| instead of some trolls?
| gruez wrote:
| Yeah, after reading a guide on how places are added to
| google[1], I'm suspicious. Based on the screenshots there, it
| looks like it doesn't show up immediately. The guide says "You
| should receive an email regarding whether or not your
| submission was accepted within two weeks". Given that the delay
| could be hours to weeks, why would you bother with public POIs?
| Why not use my maps[2], which is private and shows up
| instantly?
|
| [1] https://www.wikihow.com/Add-Places-to-Google-Maps
|
| [2] https://www.google.ca/maps/about/mymaps/
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| In my experience that "within two weeks" is sort of
| optimistic anyway. Back before I sort of gave up on improving
| Google Maps quality, it was very common for changes to either
| never get approved or to get approved and then reverted
| immediately or within hours. No explanation was ever provided
| and it was very hard to tell whether or not a given change
| was accepted. Things sometimes seemed to take months to get
| approved. Often corrections to things that were very obvious
| errors (e.g. marking an empty lot as a medical clinic) were
| repeatedly accepted and then reverted, probably by some
| automation running and overwriting POIs again.
|
| Maybe things have radically changed over the last couple of
| years but I have a really hard time imagining relying on
| public Google Maps submissions for any purpose at all.
| jessaustin wrote:
| I have seen results in minutes, but I've only ever entered
| updates way out in the country. Perhaps the threshold is
| lower for lower-traffic areas?
| waffleiron wrote:
| Yeah, I have had very inconsistent approval times, anywhere
| between 30 minutes and months. Which I found especially
| annoying when I try to update holiday hours for a shop and
| got a approval message weeks after the holidays.
| kodah wrote:
| It's fairly standard practice in the military to use Google
| Earth for air/ground coordination. I would have no doubt that
| Russia's military uses these same procedures.
|
| If you need evidence that Google Earth is used by militaries
| then download Google Earth Pro and look in settings. There is a
| setting for, "Enable MGRS".
| waffleiron wrote:
| Sure, they could use private tags. But it's absolutely not
| standard practice to use public tags (that also need to be
| approved, and can be changed, by other google maps users).
| kodah wrote:
| Ah, I didn't realize _that 's_ what they're doing. That is
| incredibly stupid opsec.
| sulam wrote:
| They probably are not doing that. As others have pointed
| out, there are major hurdles to doing that.
| CapricornNoble wrote:
| >>>It's fairly standard practice in the military to use
| Google Earth for air/ground coordination.
|
| The US doesn't use Google Earth for fire support
| coordination, especially with combined arms assets
| (artillery, air, naval fires). We have dedicated software for
| that.
|
| https://asc.army.mil/web/portfolio-item/advanced-field-
| artil...
|
| https://dzone.com/articles/war-fighter-netbeans-platform
|
| https://www.raytheon.com/capabilities/products/joint-
| automat...
| sevenf0ur wrote:
| I know everyone wants to paint the Russians as buffoons so hard
| right now, but do you really think they would organize and
| target air strikes with public Google Maps markers?
| ajuc wrote:
| Some of them are using civilian analog radios with no
| encryption cause they lack equipment and have problems with
| long-range communication.
|
| So - yeah.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Before the war? No.
|
| Given the other indicators of disorganization we've had in
| the last week? It's pretty plausible, especially given
| reports of them broadcasting in the clear and using text
| messages for comms.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Are you aware of the concept of fog of war? We don't have
| any reasonable visibility into their operations. We have a
| scattered mix of social media reports that are just as
| reliable as the reports of Chinese people falling flat on
| their face on the street after Covid broke out in Wuhan.
|
| You have a bag of misinformation. That's all.
| namlem wrote:
| Russian troops have resorted to using unencrypted comms
| because the encrypted ones were too unreliable, so we
| actually do have some visibility now.
| ajuc wrote:
| https://twitter.com/sbreakintl/status/1498619309618503680
|
| There's a lot of recorded communication.
| throwawayay02 wrote:
| How is that a reliable source at all, it's just a piece
| of text backed by a company that wants to sell military
| communication equipment.
| megous wrote:
| Maybe you missed the actual recordings...
| [deleted]
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > just as reliable as the reports of Chinese people
| falling flat on their face on the street after Covid
| broke out in Wuhan
|
| "Reliable enough for me to stock up successfully weeks
| before lockdown", you mean?
| oneplane wrote:
| We have SDR and the ability to actively tap into their
| communication, while at the same time not seeing digital
| communication.
|
| This leads to two options:
|
| 1. They don't have any communications at all and the
| analog we capture is 'fake'
|
| 2. They are using the analog unencrypted channels we can
| all listen to
|
| In fantasyland there is a third option: they have
| wireless communication that isn't detectable at all and
| doesn't use devices we can take photos of.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| The reports of disarray from Russia have absolutely
| nothing to do with SDR comms or top secret military
| interceptions from the Pentagon. They're all based on
| social media videos that are mixing old events with
| current events, and some outright fabrications such as
| the Ghost of Kiev that a sitting U.S. congressperson fell
| for.
|
| Instead we have a clown show media that has already spent
| the last decade or two, disgracing itself repeatedly,
| from Iraq to Afghanistan to Syria to Libya to China to
| Russia unable to make any trustworthy context of current
| events.
|
| Even if our own military was making this claim, that is
| not automatically trustworthy either. It's likely
| propaganda, just as the WMDs were. You really do not
| know.
|
| So when you hear reports of a feckless Russian military
| completely unable to tell which way is North or unable to
| drop bombs without Google Maps access, and your first
| response is not skepticism, you aren't paying attention.
|
| Meanwhile, even if you had direct feeds of their comms,
| do you know which comms are headfakes and which ones are
| real? Don't be foolish. Russia is one of the most
| successful nations in military history. We probably would
| not have won World War 2 without them. You probably do
| not have them figured out from your Twitter or TikTok
| feed.
| gpderetta wrote:
| I know nothing of this stuff but potentially:
|
| - Extreme wide spectrum frequency hopping. Hard to
| distinguish from the noise floor.
|
| - Steganographic encrypted channel over fake unencrypted
| channel.
|
| If course when in doubt, assuming stupidity is the safe
| bet.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| >Given the other indicators of disorganization we've had in
| the last week
|
| What indicators are you referring to?
| KaiserPro wrote:
| 1) _constantly_ letting armour columns run ahead of the
| logistical support, so they run out of fuel/food.
|
| 2) Some evidence of using clear radio communications
| because officers are too far away to be contacted
|
| 3) no coordination between air and ground
|
| 4) Allowing the column advancing to kiev to bunch up like
| that.
| rtsil wrote:
| Presumably these?
|
| > reports of them broadcasting in the clear and using
| text messages for comms.
|
| More details, including recordings, in this thread (I
| don't speak Russian, so I can't confirm...)
|
| https://twitter.com/sbreakintl/status/1498619309618503680
| wongarsu wrote:
| Wait, they are using Google Maps not just as an alternative to
| state-maintaned maps, they use it for communication?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| It's cheap, convenient, secure, and (if you have working
| Internet) Google spends billions on making it reliable.
|
| It's also a major opsec error, if your threat model suggests
| Google is compromisable by the enemy. What we're observing here
| suggests either the Russian army doesn't think that's the case
| or the Russian boots-on-the-ground don't care what the brass
| thinks about opsec (remember, the Enigma machine was nearly
| uncrackable state-of-the-art cryptographic hardware in World
| War II... unless you set the encryption cylinders to HIT and
| the decryption to LER, of course...)
| toxik wrote:
| Re Enigma, I thought the problem was that they ended every
| message with "Heil Hitler", not anything about the cylinders.
| progre wrote:
| Not quite, but apparently the first thing they did after
| switching to new rotor settings each morning was to send a
| neatly structured weather report.
| mulmen wrote:
| > unless you set the encryption cylinders to HIT and the
| decryption to LER, of course...
|
| That doesn't align with my understanding of Enigma's
| operation or how it was broken.
|
| Enigma is a substitution cipher. There are no "encryption"
| and "decryption" cylinders. There are just rotors. The rotors
| start in a known configuration according to a calendar
| distributed out-of-band. Decrypting a message is the same as
| encrypting it, but both the encrypting and decrypting machine
| have to start in the _same_ state.
|
| Enigma was broken in part using frequency analysis (captured
| machines and codebooks helped). Weather reports had a similar
| structure and (some?) messages ended with "HH". I don't
| believe operators in the field got lazy with rotor settings,
| since that would require coordinated laziness.
|
| Enigma was state-of-the-art but still flawed. Substitution
| ciphers are fundamentally susceptible to frequency analysis.
| It would have been broken even without capturing machines and
| codebooks and even if the Germans had minimized structure in
| their messages.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I did that from memory, and you're right; I got a lot of
| the details wrong.
|
| The story I was trying to relate was that hypothetically,
| the army should have been using a protocol for setting up
| the cylinders to minimize the breakability of sent
| messages. In practice in the field, they got sloppy; where
| radio operators had liberty to choose settings "at random,"
| the randomness started to break down. If the Allied
| decoders determined, for example, that a message had been
| sent with initial cylinder config HIT, the _next_ message
| was almost certainly sent with LER. Same for LON (DON), MAD
| (RID), BER (LIN), and TOM (MIX).
|
| https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2615decoding.html
|
| In contrast, the German navy (particularly the U-boats)
| worked from a code-book and were nearly unbreakable
| consistently because the code-book had been generated with
| pure physical random methods. The books were water-soluble
| and kept in the captain's quarters; in the event of
| capture, the captain was to destroy the book. The big break
| for the naval codes was that the Allies managed to
| successfully force a U-boat to the surface and during the
| fighting, the captain was injured and couldn't execute on
| the destruction protocol; the Allies retrieved the book.
| The navy was so impressed with itself regarding its code-
| book solution that when they discovered their codes were
| consistently broken, they were utterly incredulous that a
| book could have been acquired and began an internal
| espionage inquisition.
| mulmen wrote:
| TIL. My understanding is based on the Navy procedures. I
| didn't realize the Army's procedures were so different. I
| thought the only difference between Navy and Army Enigma
| was the plugboard and number of available rotors but that
| procedures were the same.
|
| Thanks for the great resource.
|
| E: Reading this transcript I see:
|
| > Since they knew the Enigma would never duplicate a
| letter in the original, if any pairs of letters did
| match, the phrase must be in the wrong position. They
| slid the crib along the message until they found a point
| where none of the letters were the same. This could be
| where the phrase was located. If successful, they could
| then work out the Enigma settings for the next 24 hours.
|
| I wonder if Enigma _could_ have been cracked based on
| this frequency analysis alone. Presumably the Navy
| replaced the codebooks after they were compromised, but
| AFAIK Bletchley Park was able to decipher messages
| through the end of the war.
| VictorPath wrote:
| Well, Kiev in the Ukraine will have Russian tanks rolling through
| any day now, but at least they got OpenStreetMap to throw out its
| on-the-ground rules and say the Crimea was still part of the
| Ukraine. The honorary tae-kwon-do black belt Putin got was
| stripped too.
|
| The Ukrainians were really played as a bunch of saps for the
| US/UK, and its encouragement of belligerence in the Donbass and
| in the Ukraine's application to NATO. And the Ukrainians are and
| will be paying the price for their belligerence and gullibility.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| It turns out that virtue signaling only has value in the west.
| In places with actual fighting going on, the laws if physics
| win out over wishful thoughts and empty platitudes.
| neonate wrote:
| http://web.archive.org/web/20220301173337/https://support.go...
| sharikous wrote:
| I almost can't believe the Russian army is so... trashy.
|
| For the army of a state willing to be completely independent of
| the West to use an American web based service for military
| purposes, and to do it in a way other people can see it is sloppy
| to the point of tragedy.
|
| Or maybe that's an elaborate attempt to do psychological warfare?
| napalmall wrote:
| They even register domains with Soviet Union extension ".su"
| and actively and openly publish their propaganda on these
| websites.
| https://www.idyllum.com/explore/?query=tld%3A%22.su%22
|
| These people actually think they are freedom fighters and want
| to restore "good" empire.
| thriftwy wrote:
| The first web site from that link is some beauty salon.
| napalmall wrote:
| Could be but this is even worse
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union
|
| Why would anyone register a domain with such extension is
| beyond me unless they are completely brainwashed by the
| regime.
|
| Here is example of a typical "news" site from that list:
| sevastopol.su
|
| You can use Google Translate to understand the skewed
| picture that is being tried to shown to the local people.
| samesamebutsame wrote:
| > Why would anyone register a domain with such extension
| is beyond me
|
| Plenty of anti-Russian Ukrainians use .su
| throwawayay02 wrote:
| The Soviet Union lasted for some 70 years, not everything
| was bad. For instance I quite like their cinema and
| science fiction children shows. My point being, someone
| raised under the Soviet Union would still be able to find
| a few things to look back with nostalgia.
| f1refly wrote:
| > Why would anyone register a domain with such extension
| is beyond me
|
| Because it's fun? Most sites where probably registered
| before the war and aren't necessary serious. You can have
| a good time with a soviet styled website or even
| community, all with matching url and flags and stuff.
| aivisol wrote:
| Seeing the videos of destroyed Russian equipment I am a bit
| surprised how familiar it looks to what it was when I was
| forcefully drafted into soviet military some 30+ years ago.
| There are maybe few new types of personnel carrier vehicles
| which I do not recognize but everything else is decades old,
| and even back then in 80s it was not any high tech (except for
| T-80 maybe). As an example, to coordinate artillery fire we
| used paper maps and mechanical rulers to convert target
| coordinates into azimuth and elevation angles. Officers would
| carry secret reference table books with them which were used to
| apply a ton of corrections: ambient temperature, wind
| direction, mass of the charge and the projectile and drift due
| to rotation of the projectile etc. All that was manual,
| calculated on paper, slow and error prone. I remember myself
| back then wondering why we couldn't use simple calculators to
| do this math quickly. The dead reckoning equipment (which was
| based on mechanical gyroscope) had such high error that after
| few tries we decided to never turn it on again - after few
| kilometers of drive it would place us some 500m off the actual
| position. Sure, maybe some electronics are upgraded nowadays,
| it is hard to tell from those videos. But the stories of
| Russians being lost on their way, it rather looks that nothing
| much has changed.
| Krasnol wrote:
| Maybe they're prepared for post-EMP warfare? ;)
| giantrobot wrote:
| It seems more like field officers and quartermasters have had
| every incentive to lie about readiness and equipment. Audits of
| the same have the same incentive to lie. So on paper a unit has
| tons of equipment in working order. In reality maintenance
| hasn't been performed, spares have been sold off under the
| table, and in general most of the paperwork is faked.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| I was calling russian army a paper tiger for a long time,
| citing immense corruption and deterioration of all public
| institutions in Russia under Putin. Military isn't public, but
| that's just more opportunities for corruption and theft.
|
| My opponents usually disagreed, pointing to a big military
| budget and some modern-ish new weapons shown here and there.
| No, they do look cool at a show or a parade, but does the
| personnel know how to use it? Are they built en masse? Is the
| quality good enough? (With all that corruption!)
|
| Turns out, things are even worse then I imagined, but in the
| hindsight it shouldn't be surprising: this is far from the
| first time in history when decaying russian institutions and
| imperial hubris had led Russia to a disastrous war, which was
| planned as a 'small victorious' one: Crimean War (1853), Japan
| war (1905), Winter war with Finland (1940), Afghanistan war
| (1980), Chechena war (1994).
|
| Now Putin has one of his own. I hope his regime will crumble in
| the fallout from a resounding defeat.
| chmod600 wrote:
| To be clear, are you saying the 65km convoy is going to fail
| to take Kyiv?
|
| I just don't understand how that could happen unless they
| literally run out of fuel on the way, or if some serious
| airforce intervenes.
| yks wrote:
| Length of this convoy is different every hour and it's been
| out there "ready to take Kyiv" for days now. If the
| soldiers are already out of food, it's as good as a heap of
| scrap. If you fancy thinking about "3D-chess mastermind
| military tactics", then how about the fact that Ukraine
| seemingly does not even bother to deal with the convoy, and
| they have working ballistic rockets, think about that.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Indeed, this convoy has made a variety of seemingly
| contradictory impressions on those reporting. The
| strongest possibility may be that the reports we're
| receiving aren't very accurate.
| 0ld wrote:
| > they literally run out of fuel on the way
|
| surprise (not), but they literally ran out of fuel on the
| way [0]
|
| that 65km convoy is just a 65km sitting duck of a traffic
| jam at the moment. without fuel and food
|
| all of this war is a festival of glorious russian
| corruption and incompetency at its best. i, as a ukrainian,
| must thank them for that
|
| [0]: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-move-
| kyiv-stall...
| blibble wrote:
| > unless they literally run out of fuel on the way
|
| this seems to be happening quite a bit
| ddalex wrote:
| 65km convoy means, what, 6000 vehicles and 30k people ? How
| do you control with 30k soldiers a city of 3Mil that freely
| distributed guns to residents ?
|
| It's going to be a slaughter, on both sides :(
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| They're on roads. The ground is muddy.
|
| Pop the leader with a Javelin. Pop a couple more vehicles
| that try to get around it. Presto, instant traffic jam and
| the Russians have repeatedly shown they clump up in traffic
| jams. Now you hit the vehicles in the rear, you're not
| likely to need sophisticated weapons to do that.
|
| Now you have a huge mess that you can rain mortar fire on.
|
| Finland did a lower-tech version of it to them long ago
| with trees rather than mud as the barrier.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| This convoy might defeat itself in a few days because
| they'll run out of fuel, or food, or drinking water.
|
| If anything, it is unthinkable for an advanced army to move
| in such disposition. They what, cosplay the Freedom Convoy?
| lbsnake7 wrote:
| I would agree that Russia and China bluff their strength but
| there are entire countries that run their militaries off of
| purely Russian/Chinese equipment. To trust your national
| security to something that is subpar seems like a recipe for
| having a bad time.
|
| My theory is that Russia threw their D league to go fight so
| that no one could accuse them of them actually trying to take
| over.
| f1refly wrote:
| > To trust your national security to something that is
| subpar seems like a recipe for having a bad time.
|
| I'd rather trust my national security on equipment that's
| subpar but reliable and predictable, instead of trying to
| make my own and failing. Kind of like home security: I'd
| rather buy a lock for my front door that may be not perfect
| rather than trying to machine my own better version, even
| if I technically know how it works and could maybe make a
| working prototype. Military development is really, really
| expensive and extremely hard to do right when your state is
| still developing and running low on qualified engineers,
| physicists and mathematicians.
|
| In any case, having recent russian weapons is more than
| enough when your neighbours are equipped with leftovers
| from the fifties.
| namlem wrote:
| Their enemies have the same equipment, so it balances out.
| koonsolo wrote:
| Right now Ukrainians seem to have the javlins and
| stingers. Plus, I'm pretty sure they know everything US
| intelligence knows.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| > there are entire countries that run their militaries off
| of purely Russian/Chinese equipment.
|
| I don't know about China, but Russian exports are mostly
| soviet-era models, and they are known to have huge
| maintenance issues. Also note this: in the USSR they knew
| how to build things, but modern Russia can't. We have no
| electronics industry, no machine industry, we can't really
| make commercial airplanes, and we can't build a decent car.
| How would country with such capabilities make state of the
| art military equipment?!
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| I have long figured their nuclear forces would prove to be
| barely function if called upon, but I didn't realize how deep
| the rot was on the conventional side. Those get used in
| exercises.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| This isn't a videogame or binging the latest show on NetFlix.
| Not sure why so many are convinced a war should take a couple
| of hours in time to turn over to the sports highlights of the
| day. I'm seeing lots of "Putin thought this..." and "Putin
| thought that..." with absolutely no evidence of what Putin
| thought. It seems like wishful thinking on the part of people
| who have given themselves ADHD and get upset when a story
| doesn't wrap up quickly like on tv.
| koonsolo wrote:
| Yeah, but let's face it. Their "elite" spetsnaz got
| captured during an operation. The fearsome Chechenians were
| on the way to capture the leaders, and then turned out the
| Ukrainians already drone striked them including the
| general.
|
| And what did Putin lose in that country anyway? The entire
| population hates Russians and are willing to die for their
| freedom. Let's say he can capture it. They have no natural
| resources of interest or anything like that. Meanwhile his
| own economy, that was already as tiny as the Benelux, goes
| completely to the shitterhole.
|
| He has nukes, yes, he has nukes.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Most of USA war media, especially in the first several
| weeks of a new TV war, is best described as "wishful
| thinking".
| vbezhenar wrote:
| rurp wrote:
| You are comparing an invasion to an invasion plus an
| occupation, which makes no sense.
|
| Saddam had a very powerful army at the time, and the US
| military walked through it like it was nothing. Occupying
| Iraq and building a new regime went terribly, as almost all
| such projects do. Even if Russia manages to conquer Ukraine
| entirely, which is a _massive_ if, I 've seen absolutely
| nothing in the past 6 days to make me think that an
| occupation by them would be anything other than a horrid
| disaster.
|
| Aside from pure propaganda, I have no idea what information
| you could be looking at to come to the conclusion that
| Russia is executing the invasion well at this point.
| koonsolo wrote:
| > Russian army is amazing.
|
| Which part exactly?
|
| The elite spetsnaz that got captured?
|
| The Chechenian army that got drone striked including the
| general?
|
| The failure of securing the airspace?
|
| The total cluelessness of the soldiers?
|
| The inability to defend the airfield once captured?
|
| The failed logistics?
|
| Yeah, great army, never seen anything like it!
| dereg wrote:
| This is a bizarre perspective, especially because our
| lessons in Afghanistan and Iraq have taught us that the
| invasion itself occurs simply and uneventfully. Remolding
| the conquered land to become invader friendly is, on the
| other hand, an endeavor that both the US and Russia know is
| infeasible and a losing proposition.
| Loughla wrote:
| Honestly, it seems like taking a lot longer on the
| invasion, and therefore killing a lot more of your enemy
| combatants might be a better strategy than dealing with
| them as insurgents after a swift take over.
| rurp wrote:
| Bombing cities and killing civilians is a great way to
| create insurgents. Every time a country blows up a
| person's home or kills their family members there is a
| chance that person picks up a gun and starts fighting
| back.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| Of course it's trashy. Everything is. Many readers of HN are
| well aware that most of software is shit. It's not surprising
| that this extends to military equipment too.
|
| As an example from _the other side_ , the British BOWMAN comms
| system used to be understood as Better Off With Maps And Nokia.
|
| https://immortaltoday.com/battlefield-digitisation/
| ddalex wrote:
| This is a pattern I've been seeing again and again ... from
| the outside everything looks neat and nice, but under closer
| inspection, it's trash and wired together with duct tape and
| hopes... from software to military to medical to... you name
| it
|
| I believe the name for this thing is "the devil in the
| details" - reality has a surprising level of detail, and the
| more you go into detail, more murky and shitty things appear
| to be.
|
| In fact I am amazed that complex things, like, say, the
| internet, work at all !
| alliao wrote:
| you have no idea how much my job have scarred me, I'm in
| love with all things mechanical.
| mcguire wrote:
| The internet itself is really, stupidly simple. There is a
| fair amount of complexity in managing it, and that bites
| back fairly frequently, but the vast majority of the
| complexity and crazy stuff is above the level of basic
| connectivity.
| fragmede wrote:
| As we saw with the Facebook outage on October 4th,
| there's an insane amount of hidden complexity at the
| lower levels that end users never ever see. For home
| consumer uses its simple enough, but those methods aren't
| good enough for industry usage? AWS isn't buying off the
| shelf gear and plugging in cat-5 ( or 6) cables like a
| consumer-level user would.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Don't forget the internet explorer app that you need to field
| F35s.
| Animats wrote:
| "Quantity has a quality all its own" - Stalin.
|
| Russian armies historically do very badly at first, then
| improve markedly after being banged around a bit. That's normal
| for armies of conscripts who don't undergo expensive, realistic
| training.
|
| The USSR lost 20 million people in WWII, about half soldiers.
| 13% of the population. The US lost only about 400,000, about
| 0.13% of the population. France and UK, about 1%. The USSR
| still won.
| kergonath wrote:
| Both Ukraine and Russia were part of the USSR. Ukraine also
| lost millions. I am not sure which point you are trying to
| make. Russia losing millions of people over Ukraine really
| would be something.
| bobthechef wrote:
| jklinger410 wrote:
| Russia has roughly the same GDP as Texas.
|
| I feel like the US military would have to be completely
| incompetent to not be able to easily dismantle them at this
| point considering the size of their budget.
|
| I can't help but think they are planned opposition at this
| point, whether willing or unwilling.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| In conventional warfare, likely yes.
|
| Russia also has enough nuclear weapons, in unknown places
| (likely off the US coast), to do a lot of damage to the US.
| They will almost certainly use them in the face of an
| existential threat (like being at war with NATO directly), so
| NATO will do everything possible to avoid that contingency.
| drran wrote:
| It's FUD. Russians don't wand to die with their families.
| They know that USA already used nuclear bombs in war and
| will use them again when necessary.
| jessaustin wrote:
| War promoters need to decide whether Putin is crazy or
| super-rational. He probably isn't both of those things.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > I feel like the US military would have to be completely
| incompetent to not be able to easily dismantle them at this
| point considering the size of their budget.
|
| Or, you know, unwilling to start a nuclear war.
|
| Which dismantling the 50%+ of Russia's conventional military
| committed to Ukraine would very possibly lead to.
| mandelken wrote:
| Russia has 6000 nuclear warheads and enough capabilities to
| deliver them wherever they want in the world.
|
| That will keep the US military far away from their
| battlefield.
| risyachka wrote:
| They also had like 12 000 tanks but 50% of them can't even
| move. Same with warheads.
|
| Oh yeah and they can't deliver them anywhere. Then can
| deliver only a few. Others are short range or should be
| dropped from old planes that can't even fly.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Even if 95% of their ~1,100 ICBMs are non-functional,
| they can hit every EU capital and quite a few major US
| cities.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| And they can probably convince North Korea to start
| shelling Seoul for good measure.
| gruez wrote:
| >50% of them can't even move. Same with warheads.
|
| Wikipedia says as part of START[1], russia has 1457
| warheads. Suppose 50% are broken. That's 728 warheads.
| Even one warhead landing in each of the top 50 cities in
| the US[2] would be devastating.
|
| >Oh yeah and they can't deliver them anywhere. Then can
| deliver only a few. Others are short range or should be
| dropped from old planes that can't even fly.
|
| Source? As of 2009 they have 383 ICBMs. Keep in mind each
| ICBM can hold multiple warheads because of MIRV.
| Presumably there's less now because of START, but the
| ones they decommissioned are the old/unreliable ones, so
| it's fairly reasonable to assume most of their warheads
| can be delivered.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_START
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_c
| ities_b...
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > Oh yeah and they can't deliver them anywhere. Then can
| deliver only a few.
|
| Are you willing to bet the future of human civilization
| on this?
| drran wrote:
| These 6000 nuclear warheads are expired. They need
| maintenance, which only Ukraine can do.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| As a person living in Europe, I sure don't want to find
| out whether they work or not.
| Thaxll wrote:
| It's unlikely that they will engage nuclear weapon if the
| west intervene in Ukraine.
| gruez wrote:
| You really want to test that out?
| drran wrote:
| When Russians will take Ukrainian nuclear reactor, this
| war will be nuclear regardless of what you want.
| namlem wrote:
| You're right, it is unlikely. But it's not unlikely
| enough. Even a 1% chance of nuclear war is too high.
| ddalex wrote:
| It is very, very likely. Russian leadership see Ukraine
| as a Russian province, and the heart of the russian
| motherland, and they will treat western armies there as
| invaders - they are prepared to risk everything to keep
| that from happening.
| drran wrote:
| It's FUD. Russians don't want to see as their families
| dies in flames.
| ddalex wrote:
| It doesn't matter what Russians think, it matters what
| Dughin's fanboys holed up under Altai Mountains think.
|
| Go back to 1986, and imagine what the Soviet response
| would be if NATO would have breached the Iron Courtain
| and would have fighter planes and tanks in Kiev. This is
| what we're dealing with here.
| stickfigure wrote:
| NATO doesn't need to field armies, just aircraft. The
| Ukranians seem to do pretty well on the ground.
|
| "A shame your tanks exploded. Perhaps their car warranty
| expired?"
|
| For all we know, this is already happening.
| kergonath wrote:
| "Which aircraft? Oh, this one? It's not a military
| operation, just our pilots doing some sightseeing. Just
| like your lads did in Crimea in 2014, you remember?"
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > It's unlikely that they will engage nuclear weapon if
| the west intervene in Ukraine.
|
| 2 weeks ago it was "unlikely" Russia launches a full
| scale war on Ukraine. Putin is crazy and will use nukes
| if he deems it necessary.
| xdennis wrote:
| Ukraine isn't their battlefield though.
| ccvannorman wrote:
| > It's unlikely that they will engage nuclear weapon if the
| west intervene in Ukraine.
|
| My understanding is that Putin has repeatedly made it
| painfully clear that that is _exactly_ what he would do if
| anyone interferes.
| chmod600 wrote:
| People say stuff. I agree it would be risky to call his
| bluff, but I'd say it's more like a 10% risk than a 50%
| risk.
|
| Of course, a 10% chance of destroying the world is beyond
| my tolerance.
| deltree7 wrote:
| Except, you completely made up that probability
| chmod600 wrote:
| Yeah, I mean even Putin doesn't know the real odds.
|
| It probably depends a lot on the exact
| circumstances/timing. And in the war, circumstances
| change all the time.
|
| Putin wants us to believe it's a Dr. Strangelove
| situation, where no humans make a choice and therefore
| nuclear annihalation is a guarantee if we cross a line.
| But that's false.
|
| Any line Putin draws can be tested and shifted along
| various axes: who crosses it, how bad it is for Russia,
| how egregious the violation is, how well it can be argued
| that it's not a violation, how long it takes to confirm
| that a violation has taken place, how certain he is that
| a violation has taken place, who authorized it, how long
| it takes to confirm who authorized it, etc.
|
| And we don't know for sure that Putin can unilaterally
| initiate a world-ending strike without anyone in the
| chain second-guessing him.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| They were pretty clear it was their personal estimate.
|
| What probability of global thermonuclear war would you
| accept? 10%? 1%? 0.1%?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| We've seen how the US military faired in Afghanistan one of
| the poorer country on the planet... Attacking Russia would
| result in a nuclear war that would wipe mankind out earth.
| dole wrote:
| "...never attribute to malice..."
| svnt wrote:
| Maybe you're joking? Your quote is generally intended for
| biasing in favor of preserving relationships, but is less
| relevant when someone is sending missiles and armor columns
| to blow up your country. You can assume malice here -- no
| problem if you're wrong.
| spenczar5 wrote:
| Maybe this sort of thing will convince people that "military
| grade" probably shouldn't be considered a selling point :)
| dathinab wrote:
| It's more like: "Why not?"
|
| From their POV. I mean if the "sloppy" approach works (in this
| specific case) roughly as good as whatever military specific
| alternate approach they have(1), then it makes sense to use
| that, to not disclose the capabilities of alternate approaches
| to their enemy (the US).
|
| (1): That is assuming they have one, if not ... I would be both
| quite surprised and somehow not really surprised like both at
| once.
| chitowneats wrote:
| The point is that they should have one. The fact that they
| are using services like these indicate that they do not, or
| that it is poorly implemented and not accessible to the right
| people on the ground invading Ukraine.
|
| After seeing the relatively poor performance of the Russian
| military this past week I'm not surprised but I would have
| been surprised two weeks ago.
| ignoramous wrote:
| The Russian political apparatus really is digging a hole
| they won't be able to get out of, isn't it?
|
| Such an expensive mess, especially for the Ukrainians, who
| are paying it with their lives, for reasons outside their
| control.
| ignoramous wrote:
| Sloppy approach is, well, callously sloppy, because the
| stakes are that high.
| namlem wrote:
| Not to Putin. He doesn't care if his troops live or die.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| He likely cares about getting Mussolini'd if _too many_
| die.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| Some units have also been communicating in the clear on
| civilian bands. There seems to be a severe shortage of military
| electronics on the Russian side.
|
| Or, just purely from a UX standpoint, you can use a military
| receiver with an interface like this
| https://media.sciencephoto.com/image/c0083836/800wm and then
| look up the coordinates by hand on a twenty year old paper map.
| Or you can drop a pin on gmaps and text it to Sergey at the
| artillery battery. If you don't care about opsec, which is
| easier?
| mzs wrote:
| The raw audio is beginning to be released:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30513438
| boredumb wrote:
| It could also be they are attempting to force google to remove
| the service entirely for Ukraine.
| laurent92 wrote:
| Shouldn't it be down already? It's a US asset, it's expected
| to be down in war zones. Was it available all along in Iraq?
|
| Locals know the directions, not having maps is a handicap for
| everybody but mostly the attacker.
|
| Besides, GMaps could require login for Ukraine, and only be
| allowed for people with a track record of being in Ukraine.
| Since Google follows you everywhere.
| gruez wrote:
| >Locals know the directions, not having maps is a handicap
| for everybody but mostly the attacker.
|
| I suspect the locals only know the directions for routes
| they commonly travel (eg. for work/groceries/school). If
| you're fleeing, you'll need it just as much the invaders
| does.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| This would be trivial to bypass with a VPN?
| melling wrote:
| All is fair in love and war"
|
| People need to be a little less naive and skip conversations
| like this. There's a 40 mile (65km) convoy heading for the
| capital of Ukraine. A lot of Ukrainians are about to die.
| Rather than complaining about how Russia is using 21st century
| technology from the West, perhaps discussing real solutions
| would be more beneficial?
| [deleted]
| xxxtentachyon wrote:
| What do you suggest people do? Get on the phone with their
| congressperson and have them send in a bomber squadron? As
| far as immediate impact, reporting this in the hopes that it
| gets taken down seems about as good as anything feasible at
| the moment.
| melling wrote:
| i already made my suggestion and it wasn't "throw up your
| hands and say there's nothing more we can do"
|
| "...perhaps discussing real solutions would be more
| beneficial?"
|
| Maybe we come up with nothing but tens of thousands of
| lives could be saved if we think of something.
|
| A week from now the world is going to wish it had done
| more.
| verve_rat wrote:
| Fine, you start. What is your first idea for discussion?
| rimunroe wrote:
| "Discussing real solutions" sounds about as substantial a
| suggestion as "throw your hands up and say there's
| nothing more we can do". People are already talking. It's
| not suggesting anything more concrete than what's already
| being done _in this conversation_.
| melling wrote:
| we turned this into a childish discussion on the
| internet.
|
| Tens of thousands of Ukrainians will be dead within a
| week.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Who, exactly, do you think the "we" is in this scenario?
|
| You're the one that came in complaining about how nothing
| is being done and offering a suggestion of... talking,
| which is what is already happening.
|
| When people rightfully pointed this out to you, you
| suddenly involved "we". You're the one that has
| instigated this meta-discussion, and you just don't like
| that people called you out on it.
| melling wrote:
| Nah, i've got a thick skin. I've been on the Internet for
| over three decades. I've been doing this since the Usenet
| days.
|
| I'll let you guys get back to saying how bad the Russians
| are for using Google maps. Forget I even brought up the
| brainstorming idea.
|
| Quite honestly I should have know people would go with
| "you first". But when I go with "me first" people spend
| the entire time talking about how it's a bad idea,
| missing the point completely
|
| A lot of people here probably don't even remember the
| Cold War.
|
| It's all about to get pretty real.
|
| Considering all the people who are going to die, I had to
| try.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| "Trying" is actually brainstorming. Telling people that
| they're not helping and that _they_ should brainstorm
| instead is not "trying".
|
| At best, it's yelling from the sidelines that nothing is
| getting done and everyone should feel bad.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| So your suggestion is to just.... Talk about something
| else?
|
| Cool, can't wait to see the thread you start discussing
| these important things.
| darkerside wrote:
| Your answer is to talk about. So, talk about it.
|
| Or are you saying someone else should solve this for you?
| tenuousemphasis wrote:
| Literally all you're doing is meta-complaining, you're
| not offering any solutions either. Now you've forced me
| to meta-meta-complain.
| melling wrote:
| aszen wrote:
| The congress wants Ukranians to die fighting and weaken
| Russia by sending them lethal weapons. They don't want to
| involve themselves directly
| mcguire wrote:
| The "congress", or rather the military and civilian
| executives (Congress hasn't really weighed in yet) don't
| want to be in a position of having two large nuclear
| forces in direct conflict. For very good reasons.
| drran wrote:
| 2 large nuclear forces are in conflict already. Ukraine
| is nuclear country.
|
| Nothing nuclear happened during the war with soviets in
| Vietnam, Korea, etc., or with Russians in Syria. RF is
| much weaker than USSR.
| harpersealtako wrote:
| Can you explain what you mean by "Ukraine is nuclear
| country"?
| kergonath wrote:
| > Ukraine is nuclear country.
|
| It is not.
|
| > Nothing nuclear happened during the war with soviets in
| Vietnam, Korea, etc., or with Russians in Syria. RF is
| much weaker than USSR.
|
| You don't need much power to fuck up the planet. A single
| thermonuclear bomb would suffice and Russia, however
| weak, has thousands of those.
| esoterae wrote:
| No, this _is_ people doing something. This is people reaching
| out in a chaotic way to attempt to interrupt/disrupt an
| apparently in-use insecure method of designating artillery
| targets. This method of disruption does seem legitimate, and
| appears that if successful in reaching someone at Google in a
| position to make a decision, a real difference could be made.
|
| Meanwhile, you're suggesting "This does nothing" when in
| fact, it's a legitimate avenue because, to use your specific
| quote, "all is fair in love and war".
|
| On reflection, I'm completely flummoxed why you would suggest
| this has no potential. In fact, it seems to be the exact
| opposite, and quite interesting that these pages are being
| taken down nearly as quickly as they're posted here. These
| things taken together suggest that this idea is perceived as
| dangerous to _someone_
| trhway wrote:
| The roof/walls of some buildings in Ukraine have been getting
| marked with what looks like targeting/geobinding signs -
| haircross of 3-6ft. I wonder how it correlates with those new
| Google places.
| perihelions wrote:
| Somewhat related (note that Google did respond within 3 days):
|
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgd7dd/google-maps-live-traf... (
| _" Google Maps Live Traffic Showed the Russian Invasion of
| Ukraine"_) (2/24)
|
| https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-temporarily-disabl... (
| _" Google temporarily disables Google Maps live traffic data in
| Ukraine"_) (2/27)
| secondcoming wrote:
| In another forum I've seen pictures of so-called Russian
| 'saboteurs' and their belongings. Lots of SIM cards and ways to
| get connected. If Google record the IP address, or even the MAC
| address, of whomever adds to Maps then perhaps they can share
| that with ISPs so these devices can be monitored or blacklisted.
| zaik wrote:
| Google cannot see end device MAC addresses.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Google shouldn't be picking sides in international conflicts
| like that.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Why not?
|
| They used to _explicitly_ have a "do no evil" slogan. It'd
| be good if it survives somewhere in their culture for times
| like these.
| kaybe wrote:
| I fully expect them to be on the side of the US, always. Why
| would you think otherwise?
| natn wrote:
| I wonder if it's a violation of Google's ToS to use their
| services to commit war crimes?
| iso1631 wrote:
| Certainly isn't for facebook
| stereo wrote:
| It will be hard to delete all of these points if Google doesn't
| cooperate. Instead, Ukrainians should massively add thousands of
| fake and duplicate points. Got a cousin in the countryside who
| needs their field ploughed? Call in a Russian artillery strike by
| tagging it as a military camp on Google Maps.
| [deleted]
| aceazzameen wrote:
| Or tag the Russian convoys and bases as Ukrainian and see if
| the Russians shoot themselves.
| dijonman2 wrote:
| https://maphub.net/Cen4infoRes/russian-ukraine-monitor
| fudged71 wrote:
| Data poisoning like this won't help if russian forces are being
| sent to a specific map item.
|
| Best they can do for now is report these geo markers to google
| as soon as possible for deletion. (And hopefully Google bans
| the users who are adding these fake locations)
| can16358p wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong, but if they are going to coordinate
| attacks somehow anyway, isn't it actually better for them to use
| Google Maps tags so that the public knows where is being targeted
| next and evacuate?
| longway2go wrote:
| I would probably go back further than 23rd if this is in anyway
| real.
| [deleted]
| randy408 wrote:
| original post was deleted
|
| https://support.google.com/maps/thread/152809911/terrorists-...
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/t4copf/they_are_us...
|
| Someone with a line to the Maps team should contact them
| immediately
| mdaniel wrote:
| Heh, "deleted" from the Internet:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220301173337/https://support.g...
|
| but either way, I do hope the traditional "Google support via
| HN frontpage" actually helps in this circumstance, too
| hendiatris wrote:
| Done! I hope they can act fast.
| randy408 wrote:
| There has been a response in another ticket that they're
| harmless markers that have been around for a while, but it's
| hard to tell if they actually went through the data to
| confirm it.
|
| https://support.google.com/maps/thread/152846276?hl=en
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| That's not an official response and, honestly, I doubt they
| went through every single data point to check whether they
| existed before this week or not.
|
| If I were an idiot planning to use a public product for
| classified opsec activities, the least I would do is try
| and make them blend in with existing data to reduce the
| chances of it being removed for just this purpose.
| johndfsgdgdfg wrote:
| fatih-erikli wrote:
| There's an alternative for google maps:
| https://www.openstreetmap.org/
| _notathrowaway wrote:
| I am as skeptical of their corporate practices as the next guy,
| but I don't believe they planned their products would be used
| for such things.
| xdennis wrote:
| The way the invasion is going, it's more likely that the
| invasion was planned with Apple Maps.
| jdfx3 wrote:
| Here too:
| https://support.google.com/maps/thread/152809911/terrorists-...
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