I Visited Bucha Today

https://www.amazonredshiftresearchproject.org/slblog/index.html#butcha

by Max-Ganz-II • 4 years ago

140 107 4 years ago

aliqot2• 4 years ago

Page isn't loading, posted 18 mins ago by a green name, how did it already get 13 points? Anybody get a screenshot or archive link before it dropped?

Found more info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucha_massacre

Going to return when the site's back up.

zubi• 4 years ago

Off topic, but I was wondering what the green names signify since I started following HN. Can you please tell?

reducesuffering• 4 years ago

New account

mastazi• 4 years ago

At the moment there are 3 posts in HN home page by "green names". Nothing strange IMHO as I've never seen any indication that post ranking is affected by age of poster account.

ShivShankaran• 4 years ago

https://archive.ph/20160327060128/http://www.washingtonsblog...

This blog post was scrubbed from the internet shortly after.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/comments/4ylml3/reddit... "Reddit has removed their blog post identifying Eglin Air Force Base as the most reddit-addicted "city" - Eglin is often cited as the source of some government social-media propaganda/astroturfing programs"

Also note the same themed posts on reddit from accounts that are around 1-2 years old and have 4-5 random posts in last one year but are suddenly active posting about the war.

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free"

Max-Ganz-II7• 4 years ago

It's actually a new, second account. I posted for post of a year, then had the original account deleted. I strayed too much from being on-topic (that topic being Redshift).

andreyk• 4 years ago

It seems to me that lots of things get upvotes from people who just want to discuss it and don't click to actually read it. In particular, I wonder how many things in the 'new' page actually get read before being upvoted -- links are usually on the first page of 'new' for only 15 minutes or something like that. It would be interesting to see the composition of the front page if people instead had to click first before being able to upvote.

paragraft• 4 years ago

Site seems crushed under load.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220929224847/https://www.amazo...

unethical_ban• 4 years ago

For being named after an AWS product I thought it would have some better uptime!

Max-Ganz-II7• 4 years ago

I wouldn't want AWS to catch any flak because of me, well, not unless I'm writing about Redshift, in which case they get all flak that's appropriate :-)

AWS have nothing to do with this site, and certainly nothing to do with its hosting.

Max-Ganz-II7• 4 years ago

Thankyou for posting that link.

I was not expecting a strong response to the post; I took no steps to handle additional traffic.

Experience is the key to performance, and this is the first time I've posted a noticable thread.

I've upped the number of Apache servers to four and increased the thread count per server to 32. Too late now, of course; but I'll know better in the unlikely event I should come again to post something of interest.

Max-Ganz-II7• 4 years ago

I have rewritten the blog, moving to an index-based layout, rather than the original single-page layout.

I've also moved the CSS link inline. There is no javascript, there are no cookies.

This has broken the link for this story. I added a redirect, but it does nothing. No errors, no logging, just... doesn't do anything. That's an experience I have to say I have had before, with Apache =-)

I've added a couple of words of explanation to the top of the index, and a link there to the blog post.

Moldoteck• 4 years ago

try using cloudflare, it's free and looks like is suitable for your needs. Also, for static websites, you can try using github pages/cloudflare pages- free hosting for static websites

glogla• 4 years ago

I know this isn't the topic, since this blogpost is about something else, but the redshift reverse engineering section of the site is excellent.

Reading the whitepapers, you can see the author is really knowledgable about redshift and also hates it with a passion as only someone who spend years fixing it would have :)

asdfasdgll• 4 years ago

Max was (maybe still is, I haven’t been there in a while) quite active in the dbt slack in the redshift channel. He helped me immensely. He really, really, really knows his stuff.

Max-Ganz-II7• 4 years ago

Thankyou!

You're very kind to say so :-)

I have to say, I think for all of us if we devote all our time to one particular and extra-ordinarily narrow field we may well come know more than others in that field, it always remains the case that the difference between what we know and what there is to know, remains enourmous.

Max-Ganz-II7• 4 years ago

Ah, a fellow sufferer! :-)

jmillikin• 4 years ago

  > I took the metro as far as I could go, which is about half-way,
  > and a bus from there. The center of Bucha all told is about 30km
  > from the center of Kyiv.

An aspect of the Ukraine war I'm still having trouble wrapping my mind around is how close (geographically) everything is. I thought of Kyiv along the lines of London during the Blitz -- in danger, but not necessarily on the front lines -- and of Bucha as perhaps a town along the road from Russian territory.

But in truth it's more like a suburb. The distance from Bucha's rail station to the Office of the President of Ukraine is about the same as San Francisco to Millbrae.

It puts into perspective how fraught the early days of the invasion were, and the true weight of Zelensky holding his ground in Kyiv.

qaq7• 4 years ago

Not everything it's just that Bucha is actual Kyiv suburb

nextos• 4 years ago

Yes, it's like Arlington and DC almost.

arcticfox• 4 years ago

Exactly, and of course Kyiv/Bucha was close to the early fighting - Russia made a thunder run directly to it from the nearby border. Russia started their invasion a 2 hr drive from Kyiv, with no resistance they could have occupied it in hours. Instead they managed to create a military traffic jam the entire length of the highway trying to force the issue.

Nowadays, Kyiv is a 8 or 9 hr drive from the major fights, like going from New York City past Philadelphia past Baltimore past DC past Richmond and all the way to Raleigh, NC.

walrus01• 4 years ago

Hostomel/Antonov airport is really quite close to the center of Kiev. The russians made a real effort to capture it in the beginning days of the war as an airlift beachhead, (resulting in a huge fatality rate for their paratroopers), and their relief convoy getting nearly obliterated.

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

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyiv_offensive_(2022)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzK1gl6UoM0

bnralt• 4 years ago

The Russians were also attacking from other directions, resulting in Kyiv being partly surrounded for quite some time.

And as close the Russians got, the fog of war made it seem like they were even closer. One the night of February 25th - one day into the war - the New York Times had the headline: "RUSSIAN TROOPS ENTER KYIV"[1].

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20220225122446/https://www.nytim...

mcv8• 4 years ago

I clearly remember several reports of fighting in the outskirts of Kyiv itself. It's scary how close they got.

cmurf2• 4 years ago

Putin is expected to formally annex four Ukrainian regions, following sham elections.

From the outset Russia's war of aggression sets it outside its obligations under the UN Charter, the Budapest memorandum, and Geneva Convention. But once annexation is announced by Russia, the rest of the world has to decide what to do about a violation of the most central proscription in all of international law.

I'm skeptical the UN system avoids defacto collapse if it refuses to strangle the Russian regime at this point. And if the UN system ends, whether 5 months or 50 years, I uave serious doubts about WW3 being avoidable. The UN system stinks. But it's all we have, born from the ashes of WW1 and 2, to avoid it. Since we haven't done the hard work of getting rid of nukes, I'm also skeptical humanity avoids using at least one.

China and India need to show up and defend the Charter. They agreed to be bound by this obligation.

hutzlibu3• 4 years ago

"I'm skeptical the UN system avoids defacto collapse if it refuses to strangle the Russian regime at this point"

Maybe it simply lacks power? What can they do, except declare the referendum illegal?

actionfromafar4• 4 years ago

I think the highest value of the UN is in the security council. It's a forum for the nuclear powers to talk to each other. Everything else is secondary. If it's enough to avoid WW3, I don't know, but it's all we have.

XorNot• 4 years ago

This has always been my opinion: by definition the UN can't really have enforcement power...but a huge problem in international politics is that you have to actually have protocols and procedures by which the various world powers can communicate with each other at the correct levels of government.

It's the physical action problem: when a government makes policy, how does that go from words to actions? In the international relations business it's the same issue: the prime minister or president or whoever wants to communicate a message reliably to other nations - but who exactly do they talk to do it? (this problem was why the hotline system between the US and Russia was setup after the Cuban missile crisis - a major issue driving the decision making was 6 to 12 hour communication delays trying to go through embassies and hoping messages were being accurately sent).

throwawaymaths2• 4 years ago

What? North Korea, india, Pakistan are not on the security council, and most mitigation of nuclear war probably happens via things that are less public (red phones). Hell. The US and Russia even collaborate - to this day - on a space station, that's independent of and does more for preventing nuclear war than the UN security council

wrp3• 4 years ago

Even the Security Council has limited usefulness in a confrontation like this, because decisions are so politicized. The case of Bucha is a great example. When reports of atrocities first came out, it was Russia who requested the UN to launch a commission of inquiry into Bucha, and it was the UK, who held the presidency of the Security Council at the time, that blocked it. This was reported in Ukrainian news. (https://frontnews.eu/en/news/details/25750)

cmurf2• 4 years ago

Russia is a permanent member of the Security Council and will veto anything holding it accountable. The Security Council is already lost.

And under the UN Charter, Russia can't be removed. The Soviet Union were expelled from the League of Nations after invading Finland in 1939.

The General Assembly can and should do more. Or the UN system will defacto collapse into irrelevance.

qqtt• 4 years ago

the rest of the world has to decide what to do about a violation of the most central proscription in all of international law.

Morocco annexed Western Sahara, and while most of the world still considers that illegal, the United States has been pretty open about supporting Morocco's control over the area, and Morocco enjoys good international relations otherwise.

https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/news/us-open-...

Annexation has happened a few times over the past few decades.

qaq7• 4 years ago

This is mostly for internal consumption. All legal question aside in say Zaporizhzhia region the russian occupied area has less than 200K people while the whole region has 1.7 mil. There are no optics you can put on this to make it look even remotely meaningful.

maxdo• 4 years ago

Bucha is only one of the suburbs of Kyiv suffered. Kharkiv region, Izuym, Mariupol, is much much worse. God knows what else will be found after liberation of other parts.

It's really shocking to see how people are easily manipulated. Half of the russia thinks that they are at full fledge war with US, EU and rest of west. Simple logic check like ok... their army is here, but have you heard of Western Rockets, F-35's , Tanks. Nope. Still we are under atack

hutzlibu3• 4 years ago

"Half of the russia thinks that they are at full fledge war with US, EU and rest of west."

Are you sure about those numbers? It sounds a bit like a strawman argument to me.

NicoJuicy2• 4 years ago

Don't underestimate propaganda in Africa, where Russia ( and China) have much more influence.

PedroBatista• 4 years ago

As much as it looks, it isn't.

Younger more educated people are more immune ( although equally passive and "stoic" ) but the vast majority believes what Kremlin says ( with varying degrees ).

But it's not "magic", with 20+ years of constant propaganda in pretty much every TV channel every population would believe the same. Do not underestimate the sophistication and the level they can shape the minds of their people. The Internet was a new "challenge" but it's mostly under their control although not at the level they control TV and every newspaper.

Also, the "story/reality" they spread in Africa, most Asia and South America is completely is completely different to the one they spread on the West. China does something similar.

To my knowledge in the West their low effort blatant lies doesn't get much traction, but the way they feed the disenfranchised, contrarians and "influencers" fostering discontent has been effective. Don't know about TikTok.

kofejnik• 4 years ago

yes, sounds about right

mcv8• 4 years ago

It used to be that Russian media, as well as most Russians interviewed by foreign media, gave the impression that most Russians supported the war. Since the mobilisation, the hundreds of thousands of Russians trying to flee the country tell a very different and probably much more accurate story of how many people in Russia really support the war.

aredox• 4 years ago

Ask any Ukrainians who have family in Russia...

https://mobile.twitter.com/nastasiaKlimash/status/1575649514...

(This is just one example across many I've seen since February)

downvoteme1• 4 years ago

Well if Ukraine did not have the American made weapons, they would have folded in less than a month. The United States has spent close to 100B in aid for Ukraine in the last 6 months and other amounts of money by the EU as aid. All told it is about 5-10x Russia’s yearly military budget.

All in all, Russia is a very weak country with less than 1.5T GDP. As a result, any infusion of huge sum on money by external actors will tilt the balance in the favor of the party that gets the money .

riku_iki• 4 years ago

I think you are heavily making things up. US heavy weapons started arriving like 3 months from when invasion started, US aid is very far from 100B.

wahern• 4 years ago

As a result, any infusion of huge sum on money by external actors will tilt the balance in the favor of the party that gets the money.

Counterpoint: Afghanistan. Money and matériel are surprisingly ineffective without the people and institutions capable of leveraging them.

blevin• 4 years ago

They say truth is the first casualty in war. How do you get a man to attack their fellow man? You don’t, except from a throne of lies.

tim333• 4 years ago

This Russian guy on RT doesn't seem very manipulated, more:

on RT's show "Beautiful Russia," propagandist argues that Russia shouldn't worry about the way events like Bucha are being perceived or covered in the West. Instead, he says, Russia should lay into that: "Yes, that's how we are... We'll show you even more. Fear us!"

https://mobile.twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/15712662228...

I think Patton may have had the right idea.

justsomehnguy4• 4 years ago

Simple logic check:

How many satellites, AWACS does UA have?

eevilspock• 4 years ago

https://archive.ph/m3FuF

wrp3• 4 years ago

There is actually a technical component to the Bucha story, as there seems to be controversy over the satellite imagery. On April 4, the NYT published a satellite photo of Bucha dated March 11.[1] However, a Russian OSINT group claims the photo dates April 1.[2]

Machine translation:

Thanks to the help of our team of OSINT and GEOINT specialists, it was possible to determine the time of the image for certain.

- A picture from the NYT allegedly from March 19 shows sand alluviums after a downpour that went from the 31st to the first.

- The attached comparison from the NYT is based on two images that have identical shadow positions. They allegedly compared March 19 and February 28. In fact, they compared February 28 and April 1 - the time and position of the shadows coincide. The original dates of the pictures are American time.

- The Maxar website provides information on which satellites have been surveying the Bucha region over the past period. A total of three satellites were involved.

- By checking the angle of inclination of the Sun above the horizon, the SunCalc program was able to find out by searching the exact time of the image and the direction of the shadows.

- The picture was taken on April 1 at 11:57 GMT (14:57 local summer time).

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/04/briefing/russia-ukraine-w...

[2] https://t.me/rybar/30599

raphlinus2• 4 years ago

If by "controversy" you mean disinformation techniques designed to cast doubt on credible reports of war crimes, you are correct. See [1] for an analysis of this claim, including tracing it back to WarOnFakes and denials by Peskov. One of the great things about that report (making it I think particularly suitable for a Hacker News audience) is that it invites skeptical or critical readers to check the evidence themselves. Likely there is a reader of this thread who is competent at analyzing satellite imagery metadata and figuring out shadow angles.

[1] https://www.info-res.org/post/disinformation-denial-russia-s...

wrp3• 4 years ago

Dispassionate technical analysis is where I'm trying to turn the focus, getting away from the reliance on emotional and ad hominem rhetoric in these threads.

avodonosov2• 4 years ago

That's interesting, I hope to study it deeper one day.

Do you have similar info about the Kramatorsk train station attack by Tochka-U? I saw explanations that, relatively convincingly imho, attribute the launch to Urkainian forces.

Namely, if one draws a line through the the place where the rocket part fallen and where the warhead exploded, that line points to Ukrainan positions (to Dobropillia).

In addition, Conflict Intelligence Team (an anti-Putin open source investigation group), analyzed the situation based on the orientation of the rocket part itself, as it layed on the ground. Their report: https://t.me/CITeam/2463. According to them, the rocket part can at most change orientation by 45 degrees. So they draw a sector +-45° from the rocket part direction as it lays on the ground, and only on a far side of this sector they find Russian positions (see the map in the report). Given the probabilistic nature of this process, I think the further away from the actual direction of the rocker part (which points almost directly to Dobropillia on the map), the less likely this is the source of the launch. In other words, the Russian positions are in an "unlikely" part of the sector.

Anyways, using two points - the rocker part location and the explosion point - seems to be the strongest argument. (I haven't geolocated the photos myself yet, but those reports claim the line points towards Dobropillia).

Do you know good counter arguments to this?

ellis0n• 4 years ago

My engineer friend, with whom we develop the first phones on the 8051 processor in the 90s, left Bucha a few hours before the Russian invasion. In fact, russian governmet destroyed the Ukrainians at the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet Union. More than 50 programmers suffered. We asked for help for many years, but the russian government made Ukraine an outsider and this buried a lot of projects that could have been successful like WhatsApp the founder is from Ukraine. Unfortunately, russian government look at Ukrainians as slaves for all 30 years of Ukrainian independence. Thank you for your visit and support

UncleEntity• 4 years ago

IDK, I’ve seen enough war damage in Panama and Iraq that I know I don’t want to take a tourist trip into a post-combat zone.

Seems somewhat disrespectful to me.

Max-Ganz-II7• 4 years ago

I may be wrong, but I think it depends why you go.

I felt I had to go, and it is specifically a feeling, inside me. I've been trying to pin down exactly what it is, and I'm not sure I've succeeded.

It's something like where something so awful happened here, to ordinary people, the horror, the terror, the violence and death, it feels encumbent to - and grimly - witness what happened.

I Visited Bucha Today

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