News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Tesla stock falls again, toward longest losing streak in ... by barnacled on Tuesday December 27, 2022 @12:08PM (#34150730)
'To many observers'. I think only those who like to rationalise his behaviour.

At the very least making 'ambiguous' comments as he has done in the past AND WHICH HAS BEEN USED IN RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA is the absolute HEIGHT of irresponsibility. You surely must condemn that? You seem to be playing this down entirely.

He has repeatedly attacked the Ukrainian continuation of the war with his utterly ill-informed commentary on the subject which he has never rowed back, part of the 'twitter files' were about alleged bias in favour of the Ukrainians and he's literally had zoom calls with Russian leaders.

A lot of your post is, and I genuinely don't want to be mean, but a bizarre post-hoc rationalisation. Are toyota an anti-Russian force in the world by building EVs? I mean come on.

The only point you have there is star link, an action that was so clearly a PR move (effective one at that), which received a TON of govt funding, denied aggressively by Musk and his sycophants but very clearly played down (yes he did donate money but it's not nearly as much as he claims).

Also large swathes of the network were turned off and he complained deeply about having to fund it, before quoting a majorly increased price for the service. He only backed down on that after significant pushback (are you noticing a pattern here?)

Occam's razor applies. Look to the guy's actions, stop believing the myth.

Re:Tesla stock falls again, toward longest losing streak in ... by kylecordes on Tuesday December 27, 2022 @12:21PM (#34150951)
I'm not defending him - repeating an earlier comment: Musk's behaviour is harmful to his personal reputation, his businesses, his investors, and sometimes beyond. Also utterly unbecoming a CEO of companies which routinely have human life at risk, serve critical national security interests, etc.

But I stand by the analysis that Musk's ventures are (so far) opposed to Russian interests. Who knows though? He's pretty erratic over the last couple years. Maybe next year's Tesla model will switch to gas, with a preference for Russia-supplied gas? Am I joking? Mostly, but not 100%.

Re:Tesla stock falls again, toward longest losing streak in ... by newZWhoDis on Tuesday December 27, 2022 @12:46PM (#34151327)
You’re posting blatant misinformation and propaganda.

1) Cite an example of his statements used in “Russian propaganda (as if that’s even his fault anyways)

2) He said they should negotiate a peace and end the war, which is correct. This was in the context of preventing the escalation to nuclear weapons which would be a disaster unseen since WWII.

3) Twitter was extremely corrupt at pretty much every level, and his “Twitter files” only showed what we all knew was happening

4) He’s had “zoom calls” with Russian leaders long before the war, this information came out during the war and has been parroted incorrectly ever since

5) Starlink is a private service that SpaceX donated to Ukraine (a huge mistake IMO). Basically everything you’ve posted about starlink is wrong. Starlink was shut down over Russian territory, but what is/is not Russian changes rapidly and the system does not always update fast enough. While it is true the US gov paid for a small number of starlink terminals for Ukraine it is not paying for the service. SpaceX should not be responsible for bearing the cost of this alone (not that they ever should have gotten involved in the first place)

6) Garbage in garbage out, when you start with completely false information it’s no wonder your conclusions are flawed. You need to reevaluate your media diet as your sources of information are misleading you.

Re:Tesla stock falls again, toward longest losing streak in ... by slaw on Tuesday December 27, 2022 @12:56PM (#34151443)
Poland bought for Ukraine more than half Starlink terminals.

https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/ukraine-uses-over-11000...

Re:Tesla stock falls again, toward longest losing streak in ... by Gwypaas on Tuesday December 27, 2022 @02:21PM (#34152608)
The expensive part is not the terminals, it is providing continuous reliable service in a hostile environment with a determined adversary.
Re:Tesla stock falls again, toward longest losing streak in ... by jacquesm on Tuesday December 27, 2022 @02:28PM (#34152666)
These are satellite terminals, or are you suggesting that the Russians are threatening Starlink's satellites?
Re:Tesla stock falls again, toward longest losing streak in ... by Gwypaas on Tuesday December 27, 2022 @02:33PM (#34152729)
Of course, they are?

If Russia can hack SpaceX's systems and divert them to ensure they do not provide service over Ukraine, why wouldn't they? Or brick all terminals by sending a malicious update? Similarly, dealing with electromagnetic interference.

Thinking Russia is completely benign would be an incredibly naive take.

This experience has allowed them to launch "Starshield", but it definitely has not been cheap.

Re:Tesla stock falls again, toward longest losing streak in ... by jacquesm on Tuesday December 27, 2022 @02:47PM (#34152893)
> If Russia can hack SpaceX's systems and divert them to ensure they do not provide service over Ukraine, why wouldn't they?

That didn't happen as far as I know.

> Or brick all terminals by sending a malicious update?

That didn't happen either.

> Similarly, dealing with electromagnetic interference.

For which there is no evidence at all, in fact the only reason Starlink ever suffered an outage was for reasons which had nothing to do with the Russians.

> Thinking Russia is completely benign would be an incredibly naive take. Or simply blinded by Musk hate.

No, I'm totally not thinking that Russia is 'completely benign', and I'm sure they'd love to do all of those things and more. But without any evidence that it is actually happening it is as far as I'm concerned fantasy.

> This experience has allowed them to launch "Starshield", but it definitely has not been cheap.

So what?

Really, I can't make heads or tails of your comment, that's probably on me though.

Re:Tesla stock falls again, toward longest losing streak in ... by kortilla on Tuesday December 27, 2022 @03:29PM (#34153346)
> For which there is no evidence at all

https://www.pcmag.com/news/pentagon-impressed-by-starlinks-f...

Are you in the denial phase or the ignorance one? If the former, why would the government take part in a conspiracy to pretend that Starlink didn’t require special support to work in that environment? If the latter, why would you even boldly claim “there is no evidence at all” without even doing a cursory search?

Re:Tesla stock falls again, toward longest losing streak in ... by jacquesm on Tuesday December 27, 2022 @03:35PM (#34153442)
Operating a receiver in a warzone is always going to be tricky, and operating a transmitter even more so because it might give your opponent targeting information.

The fact is: the Russians have to date been unsuccessful in suppressing Starlink signals, for a variety of reasons including some countermeasures.

But let's not pretend that the main cost is in that aspect of operating the service. The main cost is in making and launching the satellites and once those costs have been sunk further use of the system assuming the terminals are bought and paid for.

As time goes on and parties are getting more inventive likely there will be some more defenses against countermeasures. But a LEO based satellite system has a number of advantages over a GEO based one and those operate in war zones all the time.

Re:Tesla stock falls again, toward longest losing streak in ... by kortilla on Friday December 30, 2022 @12:01AM (#34181984)
> see no evidence for that. It is a cost, but not the cost.

Because you are not looking. The fact that spacex is having to spend engineering time at all making improvements to operate in an actively jammed environment means software and possibly hardware engineering resources not being spent on scaling the network, working on their next gen constellation, etc. For a company that runs as lean as SpaceX on engineering headcount (based on reading Blind and Glassdoor reviews), that opportunity cost is easily tens of millions of dollars.

You’re also drastically misunderstanding the lifetime and duty cycles of LEO sats. Those things have to have time to dump heat and charge their batteries. Serving in Ukraine means worse coverage in America 90 mins later. It’s not just a magic mirror in the sky that costs nothing to cover the ground.

Re:Tesla stock falls again, toward longest losing streak in ... by Gwypaas on Tuesday December 27, 2022 @02:57PM (#34153027)
Ehhhh..... Naive? My point was hypotheticals that Russia would like to achieve disconnected from the physical terminals.

This is the first result when searching for it.

> But Musk says it's been a difficult environment. "Starlink has resisted Russian cyberwar jamming & hacking attempts so far, but they're ramping up their efforts," he wrote(opens in new tab) on Twitter Tuesday (May 10).

> According to a Reuters report(opens in new tab), which Musk also shared, a coalition of countries have said that Russia backed a cyberattack against satellite internet systems that ultimately pulled tens of thousands of modems offline shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine Feb. 24.

> British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said the attack against Viasat's KA-SAT network was "deliberate and malicious," Reuters stated(opens in new tab), and the Council of the European Union said the hack caused "indiscriminate communication outages" in Ukraine and several member states. The attacks were confirmed by the United States, Canada and Estonia, Reuters added.

https://www.space.com/starlink-russian-cyberattacks-ramp-up-...

Of course, there is an ongoing effort. Simply because it seems like they have not breached Starlink does not mean it has been cheap to ensure that.

Russia has, like all nations with power ambitions, a history of cyberwarfare.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberwarfare_by_Russia

Re:Tesla stock falls again, toward longest losing streak in ... by jacquesm on Tuesday December 27, 2022 @03:00PM (#34153056)
None of that is news. What would be news would be a success but afaik they haven't managed to do so to date. All satellite operators face these challenges and none of them see that as an extra burden but basically the kind of thing that you should expect if and when you start operating this kind of service. Inmarsat terminals have a ton of tricks up their sleeve to deal with signal jamming and other attempts to interfere with the downlink/uplink.

If anything, SpaceX/Starlink has an easier time of it because their signal levels are much higher and the satellites can use phased arrays to pinpoint the receivers (in fact, they have to because they aren't geostationary and very low).

Re:Tesla stock falls again, toward longest losing streak in ... by barnacled on Tuesday December 27, 2022 @03:20PM (#34153263)
Each of these points are false in my opinion but I genuinely do not understand why you think I'd continue to engage with you after you condescend with that ludicrious 'garbage in garbage out' comment?

The fact this was upvoted despite that makes me feel like returning to commenting very infrequently is the right choice.

Hope you have a nice day.

Re:Tesla stock falls again, toward longest losing streak in ... by vgt on Tuesday December 27, 2022 @03:26PM (#34153323)
I just finished reading the Twitter files.. can you politely, if that's possible for you, show me specific examples of what you claimed violations of 1st and 4th amendments??

FBI warned Twitter about Russian adversarial actions, which is known and documented by anyone not blinded by their made in China maga hats

Re:Tesla stock falls again, toward longest losing streak in ... by ModernMech on Tuesday December 27, 2022 @04:57PM (#34154407)
> 1) Cite an example of his statements used in “Russian propaganda

This article discusses the interplay: https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/10/13/musk-carlson-trump-midt...

> (as if that’s even his fault anyways)

Maybe if this were 2016, but how Russian propaganda works and the role prominent/influential Westerners play in reinforcing Russia's narratives is (or should be) well known to highly connected and influential people like Musk.

When you say X and then X is used by a genocidal regime to support their war of choice, maybe it's time to stop saying X.

> 2) He said they should negotiate a peace and end the war, which is correct. This was in the context of preventing the escalation to nuclear weapons which would be a disaster unseen since WWII.

The geopolitical stalemate that has staved off nuclear war since the Cold War era has been MAD - mutually assured destruction. The idea that anyone should cede territory to an invading nuclear power at the mere threat of using nukes is to abandon MAD entirely. In this new framework, any country with nuclear capabilities will be emboldened to wage conventional war, and they can be comfortable knowing that if they disrupt western life enough and threaten the end of the planet with nuclear Armageddon, they don't risk any retaliation by the West whatsoever. In fact, quite the opposite, the West will be happy to capitulate under the guise of "peace". But really all that has happened is that bullies are empowered to bully.

If Putin gets what he wants in Ukraine by threatening nuclear war, what happens when Putin turns toward Moldova and starts threatening them? If Putin is appeased, what stops him from demanding more? Does Putin just get whatever he wants now, as long as he threatens to use his nukes?

Putin doesn't need to be placated to deter him from using nukes. It needs to be made clear to him (and all Russians) that Russia will be vaporized in the case Putin uses nukes against Ukraine. That is the deterrence.

> 3) Twitter was extremely corrupt at pretty much every level, and his “Twitter files” only showed what we all knew was happening

The Twitter Files show you what Musk wants you to see. Case in point: Musk released the tweets that Biden wanted taken down (Hunter Biden dick pics) but won't release the tweets the Trump admin wanted taken down. It's no wonder you conclude corruption, when you're being sold half the story. Selective disclosure and narrative building have been the hallmark of the Twitter Files. Ask yourself: if the point is transparency and exposure, why isn't all the data available for anyone to peruse?

Re:Tesla stock falls again, toward longest losing streak in ... by P5fRxh5kUvp2th on Tuesday December 27, 2022 @04:06PM (#34153802)
> At the very least making 'ambiguous' comments as he has done in the past AND WHICH HAS BEEN USED IN RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA is the absolute HEIGHT of irresponsibility.

He's a dude posting on twitter, he has no responsibility for anything.

Re:Tesla stock falls again, toward longest losing streak in ... by jacquesm on Tuesday December 27, 2022 @04:22PM (#34153999)
It's not that easy when (1) you're the richest man (or rather, were) in the world, (2) you operate a business that has the ability to deliver payloads anywhere in orbit or on earth, (3) you have a business that operates a fleet of satellites, some of which are involved in the war and (4) you have a security clearance.

With great power comes great responsibility. To judge Elon by the same standards as a 12 year old is a bit too simple.