Although Western media may occasionally show some glimpses of the Russian viewpoint, either intentionally or sometimes apparently accidentally, you need to search about more to get that perspective too. For a long while I used the Opera browser which has a built in VPN that can be easily enabled with a couple of clicks in the settings to access the Russia Today website. I also switched to using a Yandex DNS server instead of the default one from my UK ISP which is otherwise automatically configured by DHCP. Recently I found that I no longer needed a VPN, only the Yandex DNS nameserver change is required. This works as well as my usual one for other online use. A DNS nameserver is kind of an address book for the internet that connects you to the right destination, the Western censorship has apparently simply deleted the entries to some websites on the DNS servers it controls. But whatever further blocking that was in place before has lifted now. Checking this out by switching back to my regular DNS, I then discovered that Southfront can now only be accessed via Yandex DNS while in the past it wasn't censored at all. Changing back again to Yandex and rebooting, I was still blocked from Southfront! Don't know how it works exactly, perhaps something gets cached in the router or online, but the next day it was back working again as normal. So if you do swap to Yandex DNS then probably it's best to give it a while to take effect fully and stick with it.
Russia Today website, the comments section can be informative too, if you have the time and patience to sift through the troll talk: https://www.rt.com/ Russia Today TV channel, watch online live, I had been occasionally watching RT via satellite for years long before I had the internet and was very unhappy to see it taken off air: http://www.freeintertv.com/view/id-1511 https://spbtv.online/channels/rt.html Russia Today videos: https://tv.gab.com/channel/rt https://odysee.com/@RT:fd Sputnik news - I first heard of this when it was banned along with RT, then the site didn't display well in Opera via the VPN, now there's no need for a VPN like RT: https://sputniknews.com/ Avia-Pro, this has a lot of interesting content, occasionally some of it is social media rumours, but also there can be some good "scoops" here too: https://avia-pro.net/ Southfront - beware if you are "thin skinned", many of the commenters seem to have a 4chan / reddit kind of outlook! Intriguing facts are mixed in with the general chat, and apparently there is double level censorship, first by Google recapture blocking some things and then the site owners later deleting comments. There's a trick to see the comments deleted by the site owners if you are lucky enough to stumble upon it. It doesn't ever seem to be mentioned so I guess either it's a deliberate secret or a bug in the website code, so don't point it out or it might get fixed! Wikipedia claims this is a Russian based site - perhaps, but there are some oddities, ie the Russian version of the site at the top right doesn't work and the German one is mostly outdated (there do seem to be a few articles in German appearing again recently though), so why would there only be an English version of a Russian website? And why the google recapture in the comments and frequent links to Youtube (generating revenue for a US company) rather than Russian video websites? https://southfront.org/ If you like movies, here's a great subtitled Russian language film about 2014 and the start of the Ukrainian disputes, this is a fictionalised story but is mostly based on real well documented historical events, although they didn't all happen to the same group of characters: https://southfront.org/scorching-sunlight-russian-war-drama-brings-light-on-events-in-donbass-in-2014/ Newsfront - a Crimea based website, some good info here, I found this reading about Southfront on Wikipedia: https://en.news-front.info/ Tass - of course, the definitive voice of the Kremlin, and unlike Reuters, free for everyone to access! The side bar on the right has an "X" to close it, if you "lose" it by accident click the squiggle in the top right corner to bring it back (perhaps it's just me does things like that...): https://tass.com/ Defense Politics Asia YouTube channel, this is a very reliable and balanced source as the info is taken online from reports by both sides: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgGHiivhFq7M_1MLemh-cjg Military Summary YouTube channel, can get a bit more carried away with pro-Russian enthusiasm than Defence Politics Asia sometimes, entering the territory of wishful thinking, but mostly very good: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUnc496-PPmFZVKlYxUnToA Ramzan Kadyrov's VK page, VK doesn't seem to translate well as a page so when I occasionally visit to see the latest from Chechnya I just scroll down and copy the interesting looking posts then drop them into an online translator. Unlike Meta sites it lets you look at the posts without signing in at present, just click the x on the pop up and continue. A lot of people including RK have Telegram pages too, as this requires a login and possibly a special app it's all too much effort for me and I have more than enough to read already, you can explore Telegram if you like! He's quite unlike his portrayal in the Western media as a "tyrant", rather a genial pleasant and popular fellow who helped bring peace and prosperity to his homeland: https://vk.com/ramzan?ysclid=l8jndyuagq212828015 Online Russian radio stations, plenty more about to suit your taste if it differs, these consistently play Russian language music, unlike some others: https://top-radio.ru/web/russkoe https://top-radio.ru/web/record-russian-mix Some Ukrainians in 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VRli1Ybah4 Novosibirsk, Siberia, Dronelapse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8zk_evi-W8 What kind of ignorant luddites would seek to destroy a civilisation that creates such amazing works and reaches up beyond the Earth into space even amidst the challenges of harsh winters? Critics point at the superyachts and so forth as an example of corruption, yet the fact that was not spent on the military proves peaceful intentions, if conquest is planned then first weapons are amassed. Being attacked by deranged Nazis will eventually gain a response from even the most goodnatured though. It could be an unconventional leap of logic to some, yet I would consider that if your country starts supporting extreme fascist ideology then it is in fact your patriotic duty to oppose this and point out the error, and those who go along with it are the ones who are truly betraying their nation and the legacy left by their ancestors. Perhaps you may have come across such things yourself, but over the years I have read several reputedly factual accounts of undercover work by the police and intelligence services. A common theme is to infiltrate extremist / activist groups or organisations that may take part in criminal behaviour, examples I've seen include drug dealers and gangsters, the Hell's Angels and eco activists, including actively and enthusiastically participating in crimes and encouraging others to do so as well, thus incriminating them and passing that information on to be acted on later. So be cautious with any kind of apparently anti-establishment movement, you may not be dealing with who you expect, and possibly it's only a kind of trap and doesn't really exist at all! Even the agents themselves can encounter other agents and only much later discover that was someone from a different branch, so deep is the cover. People talk about truth and perspective, imagine looking at a 3 dimensional object, say a group of people were standing around a statue and each took a picture. None of the pictures would be the same, yet each would be a true representation of what they see. Only by walking about the statue or perhaps comparing the different pictures taken by the others could you get a full view of what you were looking at. Many things are like this, if not literally then figuratively, and sometimes there are multiple truths, or perhaps none at all, and it requires a flexible multithreaded kind of thinking to even begin to understand them. Translating things back and forth and the language barrier leads to some amusing discoveries, following the events on numerous outlets. You might find online references to Ukrainian "theroboronists" - was this some strange cult, like Banderites? "Banderites" refers to the Ukrainian national hero Stepan Bandera, also known for assisting the WW2 Nazis in exterminating various ethnic groups. No, just a failure in auto translation software, which seems to have improved recently. Yandex Translate provided a hint by splitting it into two parts and offering Ter Defense Men eventually, while at the time Google Translate was clueless, although now it does come up with Ter Defense. тероборонщиков refers to a Ukrainian military term meaning Ter (ritorial) Defense Men and is a volunteer force of local residents. One mystery solved.
You might also have heard Russians talk about the "Ukrops" but what is that about? Well it seems to be a play on (similar sounding) words, because that translates as the herb Dill or Fennel, which is an ingredient for Borsch, the popular Ukrainian soup recipe. So translated, this is calling the Ukrainians the Dill, I suppose like the French are dubbed "Frogs" - the British get called "Rosbif" by the French in return, incidentally. Укроп - Dill vs Украина - Ukraine. Another thing which seems to be a coincidence, currently in the Russian music charts you can find the Gayazov Brothers: https://www.cevirce.com/en/translate/gayazov-brother-%D0%BC%D0%B0%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%8F-%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%B0-russian-lyrics-english-translations.html You might have heard about the Azov regiment, and Russian jokes about decadent Western gay Nazis in Ukraine. In fact there are some US states which seem to have less gay friendly laws than Russia, there are some very religious and traditional areas where the vast majority of people attend church every Sunday. But you only tend to hear about ones like California in the UK and the media here keeps quiet about the others, which is most likely the case in other countries too. But anyway in this case it seems to have nothing to do with this, they aren't gay, the name is a Tatar one and many Tatar's lived in Crimea historically.In fact it's pronounced "Guy-azov" so it would be more accurate to say they are just some guys whose ancestors lived near the Azov sea. So you can enjoy the song without needing to worry about any political connotations - unless you're in Ukraine which has recently banned all Russian music among other things! If you aren't reading this in the original English, who knows if it will make any sense at all! History holds those who spoke out against the Nazi's in a positive regard, not those who went along with the regime, except in Nazi societies! Before WW2 there were policies of appeasement on most sides for many years, only a few saw the danger. Focussing purely on the Jewish aspect is a distortion, saved in the collective memory while other details are forgotten. The core Nazi belief was they were the master race, others were inferior, hence they pursued their goals in a ruthless manner. The Jews were more affected because they were present in large numbers, others were also persecuted. The anti-semitic aspect developed as things went on, at the start of WW2 there were many high ranking Nazis who were Jews. And why should Nazi ideology remain frozen in it's form from 1945, neo-Nazis develop slight variations on the theme. So clearly it must be our duty not to fall into line with the Nazi supporting Western viewpoint that prevails at present, rather try to assist the oppressed people of Eastern Ukraine, in a pleasant manner respectful of the laws we are required to observe of course. In Western Ukraine that doesn't leave much if you disagree with the regime there, given the military law, suppression of all dissent and conscription in place. They even demand the removal of satellite dishes in Odessa in case people watch Russian TV channels. There is something disturbing about the outrageous propaganda coming from Western media coupled with censorship and various dubious coercive methods being employed, and the borg like one voice from so many outlets that had purported to be free and independent, so many nations unable to speak for themselves and provide the varyng points of view that would be expected in the normal course of events. We saw a little of this in the Covid times, the suppression of individuals who wished to present their point of view, or criticise the official one, although it was sometimes laughably inaccurate and factually wrong. The rule of stupidity, no arguments permitted. I've never taken conspiracy theories too seriously, the world is surely too big and disorderly for that much cooperation to take place in a meaningful way in secret, yet is there some dark force that has taken hold of the West? The liberal power structures might also be more vulnerable to corruption and manipulation from whatever power hungry cartel that seeks to gain control, so now it is the more authoritarian states like Russia which remain unaffected and thus in a strange twist of fate have become the new guardians of truth and honour. Or has the West simply lost it's moral compass since 911, increasingly pursuing selfish interests so now it reaches new depths, siding with Nazis and various terrorist groups to attack a formerly peaceful Russia? At least people retain the good sense not to nuke each other into oblivion so that is something.
In the UK some ISP's including BT block the Russia Today website, an easy workaround is to use the Opera browser and activate the built in free VPN feature. There may be a slight delay in page loading and it's best to scroll down to the comments first if you want to read them afterwards so they load, they might not later, if the page does not appear properly then reload it. So the Chinese preserve freedom of speech and protect us from censorship! Another method is to use Yandex as the DNS server but in my case when I tried that I can only look at a page or two before the connection is lost or blocked. If you don't exactly agree with my views, don't worry, most people I know don't seem to agree with them either but we get along OK regardless! Luckily for me I have no Google advertising revenue, and I haven't been able to log in to my Google account since they started demanding a mobile phone number, but they still send me random stuff, here's the latest!
Important Notice: Update regarding Ukraine Dear Publisher, Due to the war in Ukraine, we will pause monetization of content that exploits, dismisses, or condones the war. Please note, we have already been enforcing on claims related to the war in Ukraine when they violated existing policies (for instance, the Dangerous or Derogatory content policy prohibits monetizing content that incites violence or denies tragic events). This update is meant to clarify, and in some cases expand, our publisher guidance as it relates to this conflict. This pause includes, but is not limited to, claims that imply victims are responsible for their own tragedy or similar instances of victim blaming, such as claims that Ukraine is committing genocide or deliberately attacking its own citizens. Sincerely, The Google AdSense Team So they don't want anyone to point out the lack of broken windows at the train station hit by the rocket whose make and serial number points to it being Ukrainian anyway? Or the fact that the bodies at Bucha were lying outside in temperatures which reached up to 17C without apparent decomposition, or that some had white arm bands to identify them as friendly to the Russian troops and were surrounded by Russian food rations? Determining truth from staring at the illuminated pixels on a plastic screen is always going to be a tough ask but there is plenty of suspicious stuff if you look closely. Known example of previous propaganda: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony It's amazing people seem to believe the narrative presented. Take this for example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rRxcPdsPgk OK, so here we supposedly have civilians being shelled. But didn't the Ukrainian government draft all males between 18 and 60 a while ago? So all those guys are Ukrainian combatants in a war zone. You can equally blame the Ukrainian government for making them targets, not to mention provoking the war and being unable to find a peaceful solution after many years of conflict. Surely plenty of other people must be noticing this outrageous anti-Russian bias too. On the shorter video I first saw on the Sky News website it had been cropped to the ridiculous looking (for TV use) 9:16 smartphone aspect ratio too. I wondered why professional journalists would film on a smartphone and not even turn it sideways, well they didn't, it was intentionally cropped. This seems to be increasingly common in news reports, presumably in some feeble-minded attempt to be trendy. I wonder if journalists could even be rebelling against state control by being so unconvincing. Do people actually believe the obvious lies and bias? Do they simply hate Russians? Or are they secretly Nazis? With a Ukrainian flag flying on the local church and town hall I guess there must be plenty of them. Creepy. I don't have anything against Ukrainian's personally myself either, I should add, but in terms of this conflict and who is to blame, I think the Russian government and military are simply doing their job in protecting the pro-Russian elements in Ukraine, who have been oppressed and mistreated by other elements in Ukraine who should have been restrained from this but weren't. Take a deep breath, count to 10 - people here in the UK often seem to get angry at me when I tell them this. Did you know Ukraine really does have a Nazi problem? It goes back to WW2 when the Nazi's occupied Ukraine, even before that a lot of Ukrainians fought on that side, then later assisted with dealing with the "untermensch."
The Russians know about it though - after being attacked by these Nazis for the last few years they finally took action: https://www.rt.com/russia/551975-nazi-influence-ukrainian-politics/ Cue more foaming at the mouth about propaganda, but you can cross reference this easily to verify it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Battalion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan_Bandera Plenty more about if you want to read more. It isn't the case that all Ukrainians are Nazis, of course, but the ideology has been allowed to flourish to a much greater degree than I would have expected, this is much more than some harmless eccentrics espousing entertaining conspiracy theories. Having studied this a bit I'm now more worried about the motives of the blue and yellow flag waving Ukrainian supporters round here than the threat of nuclear missiles! Are they all Nazi's too? :) While the Western media seemingly tries to hide or downplay this at present, in comparison right wing activists are jailed in the UK for merely expressing ideas less extreme than these. This conflict could have been avoided if the Ukrainians had been kinder to their Russian neighbors and countrymen, which is partly down to everyone else not taking any notice, and could be resolved more quickly if they can agree to do better in future. And I think we can have some faith in the Russian's good intentions, if there were Nazi's in Mexico shelling California it wouldn't take years before the tanks went across the border! So far as resolving this goes - what would Nelson Mandela suggest if he was still about? The end of apartheid in South Africa might be a useful example of how opposing groups in a single country can shake hands and put aside their differences. Covid - what a lot of fuss about nothing! Having got it and recovered a while back I can speak from personal experience. I've had many ordinary colds or flu that were much worse. Of course, being vaccinated three times beforehand probably helped, along with it most likely being the new milder Omicron variant.
But anyway, all this coronavirus palaver is a total bust for me now, I don't see the point in caring about any it. Everybody who wants to be vaccinated has been, and those who haven't, that's their problem. (Obvious exceptions being made for those with medical reasons or who live in Africa or somewhere similarly remote and haven't had the opportunity.) How can compelling people to be vaccinated be justified though? Pork - scientifically proven to be safe for human consumption - but are you going to get many Jews or vegetarians etc. to try some? No chance, and if anybody tried to make them it would probably be considered a crime in most places! If people aren't convinced by the idea that they might die or become seriously ill and suffer lung damage which could affect them for the rest of their lives, then they aren't going to easily be persuaded by anything else short of physical restraint. Nor is it going to "stop the spread" even if 100% of people were vaccinated, despite early optimism about herd immunity, the vaccines only reduce the chance of getting it and reduce the effects if you do, plus new variants keep emerging. But as it evolves it will surely only evolve further from the unusual original form that triggered the immune system over-reaction which caused the problem in a small minority of people. It's only Darwinism in action - in the unlikely event the majority view is wrong there's a minority who did something different! If the anti-vaxxers suffer a higher death rate as expected the human race gets a little bit smarter as a result. Looking at the 7 day average figure for the UK right now, there are 89148 confirmed infections, and 258 deaths within 28 days of a positive test. But the average life expectancy in the UK is 81.2 years, which gives a one in 1059.21421 chance of dying in a 28 day period. This means out of 89148 randomly selected people, 84.16427269 should die in a 28 day period! Plus there must be many more cases which were not reported, and if all those people had any type of cold or flu then more than average would die because of the stress it places on those who are already old or unwell in other respects. So I often read that to save the planet we should eat less meat. I'm not convinced, it sounds like veggie propaganda. But how come nobody is extolling the virtues of salads, sandwiches and cold drinks? This ought to be pretty obvious. The highest current consuming devices are those that heat things, your kettle, toaster microwave and cooker. So food that requires less cooking is better. A quick google seems to show nobody has thought of this. Not surprising really, here's another - in my household the oil fired central heating burns more gallons of fuel per year than I've used in a lifetime of motorcycling. So why the promotion of electric vehicles? Wouldn't electric heating be the first thing to look at? I like motorcycling and don't care what heats the house. There's a problem though - if you burn fossil fuel, turn it into steam, power a turbine to run a generator, transmit it through wires, transform it to a lower voltage then turn it back to heat it loses so much power you are better off just burning the oil in the boiler at the house. Kind of the same problem with vehicles though. The electricity source has to be renewable first. There's also a big problem with electric vehicles that again nobody seems to have considered. What if you don't do many miles? Chemical aging ensures the battery will still go bad after 10 years or so. It usually won't just fail suddenly either, it's capacity will fall, so before it's truly failed that already limited range is going to get less, it could need replacing sooner. And they're expensive to replace, money which represents energy and environmental costs, very wasteful. Plus vehicles are going to get scrapped at this point because they are uneconomical to repair. Not going to help the environment again. This can be seen when checking costs and maintenance of existing older used electric vehicles. Of course if some people's sensible solution for THEIR (high mileage, new car buying) lifestyle is forced upon everyone else regardless then there will be no choice in the matter. But government targets are there to be missed so probably no need to worry just yet, especially given how few electric vehicles I see on the road.
I'd suggest a small 5 or 10% levy on new ICE vehicle sales and channel the proceeds to subsidize electric vehicles, no need to wait till year X and it still respects market forces and personal choice which allows the right vehicles to go to the people who can best use them. Here are 2 very short BASH scripts, they can be placed in /usr/local/bin under a suitably unique name and made executable.
The first takes all files containing a pattern given as an argument and moves them one directory up. The second just rm's all files in the PWD containing the pattern in the argument. Use with caution, possibly making a copy of the directory to be operated on first, as it might be easy to rapidly delete a lot of things by accident. It's a quick way to sort lots of files, and no doubt the scripts can be adapted for other situations. /usr/local/bin/move-pattern-in-file : #!/bin/bash for file in $(grep -l -R --include="*" "$1"); do mv $file ../; done /usr/local/bin/pattern-in-file-rm : #!/bin/bash for file in $(grep -l -R --include="*" "$1"); do rm $file; done Usage: move-pattern-in-file "123 some textpattern" pattern-in-file-rm "some other text" Tab completion makes long names easy to use, the length makes them difficult to confuse! The only thing that has changed is the version number and a few lines in README to update the documentation to include the slightly modified installation procedure for Calculate Linux. So don't feel you must rush to install the latest new version! (Unless you were using Calculate Linux and couldn't figure out why it didn't work - the shebang path needs modifying in the init script.)
As you may see from the site address https is enabled, so downloads from this site are secure.
While trying out new ideas for fanxdell 2, I experimented with using the 30a3 / 31a3 codes in a modified fanxdell to enable and disable BIOS fan control when fanxdell started and exited, as described here:
http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/63220/ubuntu-12-10-fan-overspeeding However, this disabled more than the BIOS fan speed control on my Dell C840. Opening and closing several windows while the BIOS control was turned off with 30a3 saw the system running much slower than usual. I can only presume it turned off CPU speed control too, leaving the CPU in power saving idle mode. Issuing 31a3 returned normal operation, although the fan which was left running by the exiting fanxdell daemon was turned off, in line with BIOS temperature settings. Running sudo fanxdell -a with a regular fanxdell turned fan control back on again. So it looks like it does affect BIOS fan control, but unless you were going to programmatically deal with all the other items controlled automatically by the BIOS, these codes are of little practical use. So, although it looked an interesting concept to include in fanxdell 2, it has been given the boot! The layout of the site is now complete. Perhaps a few small details might get revised but the essential pages are all in place now. Listprice is now added to the software available.
As far as software goes that is all I have available for now. I have some promising ideas and am working on them, but how long it will take before they are ready for a wider audience I cannot tell. If you have a suitable Dell laptop then why not give fanxdell a try - it may be small in terms of download size, but it has no shortage of functionality and was written for efficiency and clarity, rather than in an attempt to impress anyone with the size and complexity of the source code package:). Later Dell laptops may support conventional ACPI fan control. The thermald Debian package is reputed to work with these, it is written in C++ by Srinivas.Pandruvada from Intel. They may also support the older interface as a legacy feature, which apparently can sometimes cause system conflicts. Looking in /sys/class/thermal may help you determine if ACPI is supported via the kernel interface, and examining the files in thermal_zone0 and cooling_device0. On my C840 the CPU temperature is correctly identified (multiplied by 1000), but not on my CPx, and neither show the correct fan status. There is no cooling_device1 on the C840 to represent the second fan either, so these factors indicate that fanxdell is the route to take. Welcome to C_Xperimental -
the website is still likely to get further development, but envlogtest, noprefix and fanxdell are uploaded so I'm going to publish the site now regardless. It will probably take a fair while before the search engines index it so if anyone gets this far in the near future then well done! |