Morality aside this might be a death sentence to both the ongoing F-35 deployment and European efforts to deliver F-16s to Ukraine.
Both the Netherlands and Israel supplies critical components to the F-35 and Israel will most likely stop delivering its share until the Netherlands starts delivering their share.
The only reason so many European countries have been able to allocate F-16s for Ukraine is because F-35 series production was finally kicking off but this puts a stop to it.
It is a common thing here in Europe to think that the Germans are overly apologetic towards Israel. It's surprising to find out that East Germany was actually the primary supporter of Arab countries and Palestinian groups in their wars against Israel.
>. It's surprising to find out that East Germany was actually the primary supporter of Arab countries and Palestinian groups in their wars against Israel.
given that east germany was in ussr sphere of influence and ussr were supporting arab countries and palestinian groups, well
TL;DR: It is illegal for European citizens and companies to boycott Iran (and Cuba).
Important to post this because many European citizens and companies are unknowingly admitting to breaking the law when they post about boycotting Iran for supplying drones/missiles to Russia.
It only applies if the boycotting company terminates contract with a party in Iran in order to comply with US sanctions. If the company doesn't want to have business with Iran voluntary for other reasons, and can prove it, it's not illegal.
This doesn't make any sense. PowerShell and WSL serve entirely different purposes. PowerShell is bash-but-better for Windows. WSL is a developer-oriented way of running Linux/Unix software on Windows.
Disassembly of crashed Russian missiles in Ukraine show that they use multiple consumer-grade microcontrollers and DSPs. Western systems engineers would typically have opted for a single aerospace/defense-grade FPGA instead of having so many different chips and interconnects complicating the system.
Using Russia's approach you can easily stay many semiconductor manufacturing generations back. Using the Western approach you will prefer staying up to date so you can continue using the latest the latest proprietary manufacturer-supported FPGA tooling.
Russia's approach has historically always been zerg rushing - they view both people and military tech as disposable, so it has to be extremely cheap, but it doesn't matter if the accuracy loses out.
The US, NATO in general, and especially Israel, are the other end of the spectrum: they prefer expensive, but powerful and very accurate weapons (and in the case of vehicles, prioritize survivability). For Western countries, wars are unpopular so they want to keep the fatality rate low, and Israel doesn't have that many people in the first place so their Merkava tank designs focus survivability even more.
Public sector IT in Denmark has been in a weird tug of war between those eager to sell out our data to American companies and those who naively think Ubuntu and LibreOffice can realistically replace the public sector's dependency on Microsoft.
We need to keep our data in Denmark and become less dependent on American companies (and especially Microsoft/Google). But the change needs to be led by IT professionals who care about usability and know better than forcing Linux and LibreOffice down the throat of elderly office workers.
One approach is to identify the business processes they are using Microsoft/Google apps for and then offer the entire process through well-designed web apps hosted in Denmark.
> better than forcing Linux and LibreOffice [...] well-designed web apps hosted in Denmark
Sure, instead of replacing Windows/M$-Office with Linux/LibreOffice, replace them with a web app which requires the elderly office workers to change their habits even more?
Why not sponsor developers to contribute to LibreOffice and fix the parts that aren't working or are causing problems instead? If all the public sector entities interested in replacing M$-Office in Europe contributed, they could really make a difference...
I'm far from a Linux zealot, in fact I'm writing this from Windows as it's the OS I prefer for my personal computing needs, but I don't see much of a problem with elderly office workers using Linux.
The main problem with Linux usability is installing and updating it. If all you do is browse, fill web forms and write documents, and you have the software to do so installed and maintained by someone else, I don't see how it can be much harder to use than Windows. It could even be easier in the sense that they could safely open "catvideo.exe" while slacking at work without causing a disaster.
If someone else is doing the maintenance then moving from Windows to Linux is no different than from Windows to Chromebook (arguably easier) for the average senior.
I moved my mum to Linux over Windows about a decade ago and her only requirement for a computer is that it has to run that "minty thing" - bless her, she has no idea what an OS is or why she should care.
> But the change needs to be led by IT professionals who care about
usability and know better than forcing Linux and LibreOffice down
the throat of elderly office workers.
I say there's a fair bit wrong in that sentence that needs unpacking:
Sadly, most schools do not have "IT professionals". They get the
person who knew a bit about computers and rose into the role - often
by attending a few week-long Microsoft training sessions pushed at the
school.
We need to get more real IT professionals in to schools, those who
have professional chartered status and observe codes of ethical
practice such as those the BCS advocate.
Secondly, IT professionals do not necessarily care or know anything
about usability. That suitability is for the teacher to
discern. Administrators care about budgets and ease of administration.
It's their convenience and usability that comes first. Usability is
context dependent. Which leads us to....
There is nothing wrong with the usability of LibreOffice or
Linux. They are both excellent products and in my subjective
experience far superior to those from Microsoft or Google.
We are talking about kids who have minimal needs and are working on
school projects, like a 1000 word essay, not important business deals,
safety critical systems or urgent reports with pristine scientific
typesetting that need to be published yesterday in Nature.
> We need to get more real IT professionals in to schools, those who
have professional chartered status and observe codes of ethical
practice such as those the BCS advocate.
Pay is too low compared to what they can get elsewhere.
>and those who naively think Ubuntu and LibreOffice can realistically replace the public sector's dependency on Microsoft
I was writing book reports on that exact stack over a decade ago. Its perfectly fine for students. Most people don't even explicitly chose Windows. They just use and adapt to whatever comes with their computer.
>forcing Linux and LibreOffice down the throat of elderly office workers.
Let office workers chose their needs on a case by case basis. But that shouldn't affect the stack you give to students.
I went from teaching in a Google environment to teaching in a Microsoft environment this year.
Though Google now feels familiar and relatively easy (though try moving documents from one folder to another online...), I'd almost forgotten that when it was first introduced, it was met with a lot of resistance, and teachers and students alike were confused for years.
Microsoft spaces (Teams, Edge) are far, far worse.
Since the schools I've worked at run their own servers locally, I think using Nextcloud as your main platform should be very doable. The apps you can install are mostly very slick and modern. (I use Talk for calls now, for example).
https://nextcloud.com/blog/keep-your-data-in-your-school-use...
I see the point about the clunkiness of LibreOffice. But as a teacher, I see great value in thinking carefully about what you introduce students to, because once a decision is in place, the effect multiplies with each new cohort of students.
Ubuntu? No way. Nothing on the DE works on Debian branch, basically avoid for consumer use.
Fedora? Yes please.
LibreOffice is downright terrible, please do not lump it into a problem of OS replacements. I'm 100% convinced there is some M$ plant that deliberately makes the GUI bad. I still use it, and I use Google's.
Unfortunately the US will never stop the hard courting of Denmark (the influence of which can be readily seen in Danish society, as American values are antithetical to Scandinavian values), because of Thule Air Base, the northernmost US military base, in Greenland.
You can see how much young Danes idolise the US. This could be said for more EU countries, but by my experience living in Denmark, it is much more pronounced there.
Even the free GPT-3.5 is better at smaller European languages than Mixtral/Mistral-Medium.
However I think it's a typo when the article says GPT-3.5. It doesn't make sense to "buy" GPT-3.5. They probably meant ChatGPT Plus which includes GPT-4 access (50 messages in a rolling 3 hour window).
>A bunch of BLE chips are also WiFi capable, so not ruling out that someone compromised the firmware to enable WiFi functionality
The ESP32 is now used as a general-purposed chip even in applications where an 8-bit MCU would have been enough. A remotely exploitable vulnerability in the ESP32/SDK could have large-scale consequences.
The only way to load firmware to consumer esp platforms is usually via mobile apps… so, someone with privileged access to consumer’s apps, or the supply chain, used that access to load bespoke firmware to toothbrushes.. highly doubtful.
Leaves open the question of how they joined the network - WiFi passwords and such. Maybe stolen from the phones/laptops and then sent to the device as part of the exploit?
I could imagine there’s a lot of toothbrushes near unsecured wifi hotspots. (Hotels, in backpacks of travellers in a cafe, a demo unit in a store) Could be as simple as polling continuously till one allows the device to phone home.
If China supported Russia the war would have been over by now. There is a reason Russia has to buy weapons from North Korea and Iran when China would have been able to provide much more.
China has actually supported Saudi Arabia's war on Yemen's Houthis more than they have supported Russia's war on Ukraine. When Saudi Arabia's F-15s started getting their wings blown off by by Iranian SAMs fired by Houthis it was Chinese drones that started hitting Houthi positions in Yemen.
For some reason there is little awareness about the close Saudi-China alliance here in the West.
China absolutely has supported Russia, now it hasn’t given weapons (as far as we know). But it has provided ample material support in terms of western chips, heavy vehicles and parts. Without which Russia wouldn’t have lasted as long as it has. Not to mention the diplomatic cover.
"China's newly appointed defense chief and Shoigu discussed boosting military cooperation and coordination as the Russia-Ukraine war drags on. Tensions surrounding the Ukraine crisis have tested the resilience of the China-Russia partnership, with Beijing supporting the Kremlin's plans economically rather than openly amid international pressure."
Both the Netherlands and Israel supplies critical components to the F-35 and Israel will most likely stop delivering its share until the Netherlands starts delivering their share.
The only reason so many European countries have been able to allocate F-16s for Ukraine is because F-35 series production was finally kicking off but this puts a stop to it.