this is a good alternate article https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-advances-bring-the-era-of-quantum-computers-closer-than-ever-20260403/

Air quality can’t be separated from judging a stove that sits smack dab in the center in of your home.

I did not know that lol, I believe the KRIPS system is based on or heavily inspired by the digital fire control system developed originally for the Paladin.

Gas is not better than electric resistance stoves for one very serious, insurmountable issue, gas stoves give off a non-trivial amount of gas into the living area they are being used in, even when kitchen hoods are used. This is not something the gas stove industry wants to have a conversation about so we don’t here in the US.

Because of distrust and paranoia that is applied selectively to electric cars because they are associated with foreign made.

Which is why Tesla is collapsing as a car brand in the US, most of the people who like Musk do not really want to buy an electric car, it just seemed like the cool thing to do while getting a “self driving” “smart” car.

Everybody who doesn’t like Musk won’t buy a Tesla because they suck anyways.

People who think War isn’t a Woman’s Business utterly confound me. Have you not met a woman? Have you not looked into the history of Feminism in the diversity of forms it has taken all over the world?

It is not for me to demand people go to war, rather my point is that the idea that Women aren’t fit for War is borderline delusional to me. Almost all of the hardest fighting, most practical, resilient human beings I have met in my life are women, I would be terrified to try to fight them on a battlefield and I am thankful most of them were good people.

The point really in the end though is nobody should have to go to war so russia should stop its illegal war and occupation of Ukraine.

In this absurd moment I am reminded of my favorite novel Ulysses and how Ezra Pound once declared the problem with publishing in english at the time was it wasn’t masculine enough… and then proceeded to be unable to find anyone but anarchist women who were brave and militant enough to publish James Joyce with their printing presses because they could not be beaten and intimidated out of doing so in the US like the men were. You point at these people and say “they are unfit for war!”. What are you crazy?

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/women-behind-james-joyce-ulysses-180980398/

https://www.wttw.com/playlist/2026/02/12/margaret-anderson-biography-little-review-ulysses

https://www.guggenheim-venice.it/en/art/in-depth/peggys-friends/emma-goldman/

^ do you want to tell me Emma Goldman wasn’t a soldier…???

I didn’t mean budget, I meant “barebones” I guess.

Yeah because by and large most people in France would be pissed as hell about that.

What I am saying is there are shitty corrupt business execs in France same as anywhere else. There are also shady networks of resellers who don’t ask uncomfortable questions like anywhere else.

Either approach surprises me because Eutelsat is a French company.

This isn’t a dig at France it is a dig at large defense companies but are we really surprised?

This is why investigative journalism and real accountability are so important.

sigh

Yes, there are definitely bohdanas being made this way but my point is more like this is an optional budget option on a factory model that is designed to also be equipped with advanced electronics.

In an entrenched towed howitizer battery the idea of what a “digital fire control system” becomes abstract. Firing always comes down to humans pulling the gun out and maneuvering it into a firing position calculated beforehand and translated into a simple set of instructions that can be rapidly accomplished by the crew. The person sitting nearby with a computer acquiring targets, finding firing solutions and assigning them is using digital equipment though so… yeah I guess the cannons are totally analog but that kind of misses the point to me is all I am saying. Does only calling it a digital system if the computer is physically bolted to the gun really make sense if you think about how it is being used?

I agree with you that it is badass these can be used in a totally analog way, I guess it is a well established precedent with howitzers but also a lot of countries have foolishly convinced themselves towed howitzers are obsolete which I believe deeply misunderstands how towed howitzers are actually utilized in a critical fashion in modern wars.

I hope I never have to be on the receiving end to find out for sure.

All I know of artillery barrages is thankfully how artists and writers have attempted to portray them in the best way they can… and the only real thing I have taken away from those attempts to explain it come back to the same basic aspect that you can’t and really don’t want to know what experiencing sustained artillery is like until you experience it.

What is worse is after you have just been subjected to the physical experience of artillery as an annihilating force that has reoriented how you perceive your whole experience of reality everything sometimes doesn’t just oddly fall silent because the sound of heavy armor rumbling and squeaking, already far closer than you thought could happen, has filled the air. Barely holding down complete panic you creep towards the entrance of the basement you are hiding in and peak out noticing in your last moment the recon drone overhead and an Abrams barrel pointing right back at you below.

This is the most terrifying way to die even in an era of drones because there is no defense, you are like a bit of scum being steam cleaned off the side of a house by a process so much larger and more kinetic than you that any choice you make feels meaningless in a existentially lovecraftian horror way.

Drones are terrifying but this is what full scale war looks like, drones are part of an iron fist that makes the idea of wasting time shooting at the drones as terrifying as not shooting and hoping they don’t see you because of what the consequences are that do come to you when you reveal yourself to a nearby cannon.

Another way to say this is that as far as armies are concerned one of the primary roles of helicopters are for artillery spotting since the helicopter just needs a radio and a really good pair of binoculars to become a decisive tool for sustained artillery barrage. You can’t make an action movie scene about artillery spotting in a helicopter but as far as the people on the ground being spotted by the helicopter are concerned, that is an irrelevant point. A helicopter runs out of ammo quick, an artillery battery by definition does not. The same logic applies to drones.

I am actually not sure about the towed howitzer version but while the self propelled Bohdanas do have a set of entirely mechanical/old school equipment to use the howitzer they also have a very advanced digital fire control system.

This cannon is lethal to ANYTHING from point blank range to ~35km away and it can keep firing all day and night if needed, the Bohdana expresses the technologically advanced industrial might of Ukraine in the most unarguable fashion possible.

You can see the computer terminal to control the digital aspects of the bohdana on the right.

The big flat box on top of the rear end of the barrel on the Bohdana that gives it its distinctive look is meant as an enclosure for digital fire control systems that can utilize digital sharing of targets and firing solutions. So… very NOT oldschool too!

I imagine in a trench you do end up using things in the simplest way possible that you can, but this capability does make the Bohdana a very advanced technological weapon if that is what is needed.

It is intimidating as hell that Ukraine can integrate fiddly advanced digital systems for quickly sharing coordinates and entering in firing solutions elegantly into a mass production of completely analog cannons that can flatten russian armored columns from sheer physical force. That marriage of the complex and brutally practical with such a large production capacity (~40 a month!??) makes the prospects for russia’s longterm success in the Ukraine War comical.

russia is fucked

Transonic speeds, I think I have heard you might have a seconds warning or so, but also I think sometimes you don’t because the shell is travelling at nearly the speed of sound, it depends on charges, firing arc and other things of course.

edit this is a good discussion on this

https://www.arrse.co.uk/community/threads/how-come-you-can-hear-incoming.217026/

Forgive my ignorance. Are 155mm artillery shells arriving on target at supersonic speeds? As in, if you’re the target yourself, the sound will arrive to your location after the shell has already hit you?

You have hit on one of the most beautiful lines from Gravity’s Rainbow about V2 rockets, this article explains it well…

“A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now.” Beautiful opening lines. As classic as any, I bet. They establish here is the relationship between cause and effect, which Gravity’s Rainbow upends. Causality. Teleology. The basic rudiments of enlightenment rationality. These are meaningless now. The key: “it has happened before.” Not only the bomb dropping. But this bomb dropping. You do not hear a V-2 bomb drop. Or rather, you hear it only after it has dropped. By the time of the screaming, it is too late.

https://www.gravitysrainbowguide.com/

And a tankie is someone who projects xenophobia into a discussion about cars when it wasn’t even mentioned. And also capitalizes it randomly.

What?

Maybe somebody thought “I don’t want my partner to have to explain to my kids one day when they are old enough that I died for worse than nothing for something no one wanted”.

I think it would be a patriotic thing to do to light your pants on fire harmlessly when your president and all his henchmens’ pants are catastrophically and violently on fire but who am I to be conspiratorial.

Ok what does it have to do with?

Also please define “tankie” for me in your own words thanks :)

The answer is simple and stupid, Fossil Fuel Propaganda.

https://climateandcommunity.org/research/deconstructing-gas-propaganda/

Yeah but the “snowpocalypse” energy crisis was in large part a serious problem for people because Texas hates Texans and privatized the electricity grid leaving it brittle and unable to adapt to emergencies or changes.

You are living in a functionally collapsed society in Texas, and if that is a reason to cook around a campfire, sure! I just think you have to contextualize that. I’ll keep using my electric stove and go find social support services in an emergency if needed because my state actually gives a shit about human beings unlike the removed that is Texas.

If you need a gas stove to survive in Texas because the state government is constantly trying to kill you in pursuit of the deranged and cruel interests of the rich, I can’t really disagree with that in good conscience, but it is a pretty awful reason to have to buy a gas stove.

You should leave Texas if you can.