Recent content by Chefren

Staging is a term used in some areas as a preparation for implementing or releasing something. In the military, staging areas are used to gather troops and materiel before starting an operation. In IT, before changes are released to production, they are often released in a staging environment...

Not sure about Tusk, but Poland's answer to the questions "What do you want?" and "How many do you need?" have been more or less just "Yes.". The amount of spending is probably quite stupendous by now.

Sure, if we harm can be reduced without prohibition. "Limiting the use" is not the same as prohibition, this is done in many cases by age restrictions, taxations, prescription or license requirements etc. It's just that in general there are some people who want complete freedom to do whatever...

Mandatory helmets for cyclists, motor or otherwise, comes to mind. Mandatory use of seat belts in cars. etc. Not sure mountaneering or horse riding cause enough injuries to matter, and excercise also brings health benefits which reduce health care costs. But there are countries with health...

As freedom of choice increases, freedom from consequences needs to decrease. You can't reasonably have one and not the other. I for one am quite happy with the government limiting the use of drugs for which they have to pay the consequences for (e.g. health care costs for lung cancer due to...

All true, but in this case there was an opt-out (by e-mail!) which strongly points to that it's not actually mandatory for them to have the data.

It does not sound compliant with GDPR. If they absolutely need to share this data with third parties to carry out mandatory tasks, then it would not be possible to block this via a separate opt-out request either. GDPR requires all non-mandatory uses of your personal data to be opt-in only, and...

She would clearly be a good thing only compared to the alternative of Trump becoming president. Peter Zeihan, a guy who even while asserting his predictions as near fact, at least bothers to also tell us why he thinks what he thinks, thinks Trump has basically no chance. Biden's winning...

I have the Lejonklou Entity which is rather good. I also have a Microgroove+ X mk2.5 which is also rather good, and which I might like a bit more than the Entity, but alas, ever since our apartment building got a set of three mobile network antennas on the roof, the Microgroove picks up a lot of...

If we read the article you linked, it's pretty clear. first we have the 2014 events that started off the war between Russia and Ukraine, after Russia captured Crimea and then did their usual "breakaway state" invasion-in-all-but-name attack in the Donbass. Then Ukraine, looking for support from...

The article also makes it clear, that once again, just like in the NATO expansion story, it's actually eastern Europeran countries pulling in the U.S for their protection, rather than the pro-Russian narrative that it's actuallty the US pushing.

Good question. The answer used to be that a few countries, France being the biggest, resisted purchasing any ammunition for Ukraine from outside the EU, saying the all the funds allocated needs to be spent on building up the capacity for ammunition production in the EU. Sensible .. during...

The war is already significantly affecting civilian life in Russia, especially that of the poor. Food prices are up, so people switch to cheaper foods; for example there is an egg shortage because people switched from meat to cheaper eggs and as a result, egg prices went up by 40% last November...

Maybe the ICJ can order Russia to pay compensations and order the EU to release the seized assets for this purpose or some other similar legal solution can be found.

The assets themselves will hopefully at the end be used for post-war rebuilding in Ukraine.