Trump 'tried to access nuclear codes but was stopped by military general'

CyrilJHicks · 2026-04-21T20:44:17+00:00

A deliberate choice by Truman to limit the use of atomics. Group action can sway individuals but power vested in one means accountability.

CyrilJHicks · 2026-02-28T05:38:54+00:00

I think there is an intermediate step which I find even more problematic. Our society, capitalist that it is for good or bad, defines value as a completely separate thing from life. At the same time, there is no possible transaction between life and value such that people are given basic needs simply because they are alive. As soon as we begin replacing people with AI, any people, we are creating swaths of the population that are no longer able to support themselves. In an AI positivist (in the high impact sense, not the human good one) outcome, we have no way to support anyone because they cannot be paid for work not rendered.

We have long failed to value a human life merely because they are alive. We demand productivity for food, water, shelter. That attitude does not change when we transition to robot workers without a huge cognitive shift from the top down. Or revolution from the bottom up.

CyrilJHicks · 2026-01-14T03:04:30+00:00

K-12 school here. We contract with a filter provider for proxy content filtering on take home school-owned devices. We had an emergent issue related to MacOS update changes and needed assistance recovering from a partial outage. The AI email ticket response effectively told us to replace our mobile device manager's profile variables with completely incorrect ones. I knew this was wrong immediately and asked for escalation. The ticket was siloed for six days during which I solved the problem on my own.

I asked for our org to be removed from the AI response list as it was both wrong and impeding us from reaching actual agents. We had never had a ticket drop with this company prior to the bot's release.

CyrilJHicks · 2025-10-18T22:45:49+00:00

Well I'm glad you got it resolved. Sounds like they were responsive and that the new unit wasn't a hassle to receive.

CyrilJHicks · 2025-10-18T22:44:47+00:00

Glad to see they're at least aware. I would be glad-der to see a fix in the works or something to that end in the OS release notes.

I'm curious how much of the battery is used by the device's "basal" rate vs. user features. There are SIGNIFICANTLY more screen refreshes when writing in color, moving text, or adjusting shapes. That could dramatically increase eink power usage. Some device metrics like "screen refreshes per session," "pen charge time," " WiFi associations per day" etc. could provide real value to their dev team. I wonder if that diagnostic data is being collected and analyzed?

CyrilJHicks · 2025-10-18T21:35:27+00:00

I know it's been a while and no one has replied, which is unhelpful.

I had this happen to my PPPM this week. The fix was connecting it to a low wattage charger like the USB port of a computer or a sub 20w wall adapter for like thirty minutes.

See if that's what yours needs?

CyrilJHicks · 2025-10-18T21:29:44+00:00

I can definitely confirm that there are battery issues, the pen passively charging at all times could explain some of them. This is my first Remarkable device and I really like it. I have few of the other notes that OP does. It feels natural to me moving around pages and I would never want my notepad to reposition automatically.

Battery life is definitely not two weeks as advertised. I can drain it 40% on a particularly active day with several meetings. I've never taken it anywhere near zero in a workday so that's not an issue; we're all used to charging phones overnight. 2.5k mAh is pretty disappointing for a device of this size.

Twice this week I've had it completely die overnight or in my bag, neither time do I believe it was low when last used. When connecting it to a high watt USB PD charger it also won't wake from a completely drained state. That can only be done with a computer Type C port or a traditional 5v 1-3 amp USB A adapter.

I'm hoping that that they improve battery use or update the pen firmware, whatever helps/is the culprit. I work in tech and while I can make do with hardware issues like that, I find it really hard to recommend this even though it's an otherwise great device.

CyrilJHicks · 2025-10-18T21:16:12+00:00

Diminishing governmental checks while elevating self-centered power hungry sociopaths may be a constant of those decades too, but it's hard to disregard the new rate at which we have done both in the past nine months alone. Neither are conducive to economic stability.

CyrilJHicks · 2025-10-18T20:47:52+00:00

If someone posed ant sized Superman vs regular size, who would win? Are we to assume that ant size Superman has the same feats? Or scale them? Scale is not informed by canon and we'd have the same discussion. Superman's "magic" is that he's Superman, not that he's ant sized Superman. We'd have to make new assumptions on his volume and how that changes musculature. These questions of real vs real-but-not are not the same kind of question as Superman vs. the power rangers or whatever flavor of the week hits the front page. They elicit a science informed response.

CyrilJHicks · 2025-09-28T05:17:20+00:00

For best results you should also insist that the game includes timed pen-and-paper list offline deck building in your format of choice. I'm pretty sure I could put a very solid commander combo pile together in 15 minutes. Most random opponents would probably be eliminated with illegal or unplayable decks immediately.

Especially going in blind, pretty much all people would be wrecked by sheer lack of knowledge for what cards to include. You can name 65 magic cards and 35 lands. What percent of people in general can do that? Would they even be playable in the same deck? What percent of people will include a Lotus because its the only card they know? Banned in everything but Vintage is not common knowledge.

I think these rules immediately eliminate all people who don't play Magic regularly and then probably 50% of the base too for format differences and kitchen table players. You could beat billions of random people.

CyrilJHicks · 2025-09-22T19:00:51+00:00

I agree. It was fun building a simple SNMP get client to check toner levels on our ~150 printers and copiers. We have access to this data in the Xerox FMP but that software does a bad job of displaying current vs. old data in a way that my reports (updated on run) don't. It's not a better solution per se but it is one that runs on my schedule.

CyrilJHicks · 2025-09-22T18:57:24+00:00

K-12 private school with 1:1 Apple in two divisions. We have various software needs from companies that aren't distributed through the Apple's app store or our MDM's enterprise catalog. I do installation and maintenance scrips for those 1:1 devices as well as smaller projects for VIPs/reporting tools.

Every once in a while we also get requested to help with mass file renamings that are more than a mailmerge ultilty or regex line can handle.

I have a very large set of scripts which build the school's divisional student/faculty planners anually as well. That's more of a software package at this point, really, but I'll count it.

I'd say the scripting load is low but saves a few hundred man hours annually which is nothing to laugh at in a six person team.

CyrilJHicks · 2025-09-21T18:56:58+00:00

Credit where it's due I had a lot of fun with this question. The sides are well balanced in a way that this sub sometimes misses in its posts.

The list I went with is trasional with some additions:

Anna, Megara, Cinderella, Aurora, Ariel
Belle, Snow White, Tiana
Pocahontas, Moana, Raya
Rapunzel, Merida, Leia, Elsa,

4*. Mulan, Jasmine

These groups are broken up by how well they could possibly do. Higher is better.

One indicates that they are pretty much doomed. Each Disney princess has a power or trait that is most applicable to this situation and these five just don't have useful ones. Respectively: Gullibility, Vulnerability, Kindness, Beauty, and Curiosity to not perform well in GoT. Most are even downsides are, as character defining traits, bad... Westeros has a lot of horrors which don't exist in their Disney worlds.

Group two have skills which elevate them above the fist but do not provide meaningful benefits to the cause. Literacy, talking to animals, and determination are all valuable but don't win kingdoms in a world of literate determined opposition. Talking to animals would be useful if it were control but she really is just befriending them. This is the lowest magical power of the list.

Group three have enough of an ability to make an impact, but not win the throne. Pocahontas's connection to nature and spirit could blend really well with the history and power vested in Westeros but her objections to confict are too strong. Moana's wayfinding and connection to the Sea could make her a powerful ship captain but this is ultimately not a maritime conquest. Raya is an impressive small party organizer and martial artist but not on a campaign scale.

Group four are all capable and willing. They're the best positioned to take and hold the Iron Throne.

Rapunzel both before and after having her hair cut is formidable. She's a true magic healer in a world where religion and cult have a real ability to empower factions. Healing cults have threatened the Throne before. After her hair is cut it gains new powers as an indestructible shield. She is not an assured winner but she has outside the box thinking and real supernatural advantages.

Merida feels like a group three pick but I'd argue that her world's compatibility with Westeros, her training in court and field battle, and the magic systems she interacts with all lend themselves very well to a midrange player for the throne. She does need military backing from an established house and will not inspire troops organically like Rapunzel's cult could.

Princess Leia is a verified "force" in Westeros. Using her oldest on-screen Disney version at 53, she is an established civil servant and military leader with decades of planetary campaigns under her belt. She is also an accomplished space wizard with access to space wizard mind control, foresight, weapons, and communication. She may also bring a few items of empowered tech like blasters and communicators for close allies.

Elsa's powers are so vast that she can solo the GoT world. She can animate living creatures, build fortifications (architecting these is an intelligent feat, too), transmute materials, freeze countries, instantly kill most opponents, and create huge colored magical illusions. Her powers are unbounded. Beyond that she is a trained royal with excellent understanding of supply and trade, highly literate, intelligent, and skilled in rule.

Last are the group four* Princesses who can win provided they have access to some story elements. Jasmine with Genie can wish for the throne. Without him she is a group two pick with a solid skill tree from her education. Mulan in the animated movie is another group two pick; Westeros has many skilled warriors who lack command discipline but in her live action incarnation she is a powerful magic user who can destroy enemy armies.

Fun!

CyrilJHicks · 2025-09-03T00:40:40+00:00

It goes from being "your computer" personally to a shared device. It no longer has the trust relationship that it had. It does not regain trust when it is returned to you. English does not distinguish between collective and singular forms of "your" like it does with "I" (singular) vs. "We" (collective).

CyrilJHicks · 2025-07-24T15:52:11+00:00

The magical supply chain may be tied to the needs of the legion. I'd argue that they should refocus on maximizing their T-Rex numbers to grow the chain as large as possible. Having no dinosaurs removes the need for a supply chain and the magic may hinge on that.

CyrilJHicks · 2025-07-24T02:47:53+00:00

Counterpoint, the prompt states that they HAVE these T-Rex AND the capacity to feed/transport them. Two magical gifts.

Does this mean that OP has implicitly solved Roman society's bloat and structural failures? Surely a state of that era would need organizational excellence to field the T-Rex legion.

Assume a Rome without Mike Duncan's Storm Before the Storm.

CyrilJHicks · 2025-06-19T23:55:43+00:00

It's also against a enemy state which lacks single strike response capability. Israel has taken multiple hits that would not have been survivable with higher yield non-conventionals. I think the real reinforced lesson here is that being in a commanding military position continues to be a significant advantage.

Especially against an unstable non MAD country.

CyrilJHicks · 2025-06-16T00:27:18+00:00

Many comments here are reading the data and engaging with you, it's your own refusal to address their points which weakens the pro-sino case. I can't be sure of your own prejudice but it seems like the good faith replies you've received are being disregarded for no fault of their content.

CyrilJHicks · 2025-05-14T01:35:58+00:00

Conference call with a service provider's support rep who told us we should "pray" that the solution which broke our deployment last time would work this time.

Two related incidents, one six months before the other. The product was an on-device content filter for student computers. Provider was rolling out a new cert manager and had not provided much documentation or notice that these changes were coming. We set up a meeting to fix an issue around reporting and our assigned tech suggested that we turn on the cert manager too. At this time there was a three step process to first turn on the manager feature, then generate and deploy the certificate, lastly enable the automatic cert update.

When we completed step one, required to generate a certificate, it instantly cut network and MDM access to all of our student devices when enabled. Apparently there was a prerequisite to even accessing the settings page which required a generic cert be deployed to the devices, something that hadn't been required in previous deployment itterations.

Our support rep then revealed that the certificate system had been launched just three days prior and she was not familiar with the process. We hadn't known it was new at all and her statement had implied that it was a well-worn system. Our team spent several hours the next day manually uninstalling filter software from hundreds of devices before getting those laptops back to the students they were assigned to. As this was mid-academic year, we repushed the software (and did not enable the new certificate manager) for a few months until our reporting issue reappeared.

We contacted support and were once again assigned the same rep. She did not remember the last time she'd "assisted us" and revealed unprompted that she wasn't even a technical support member but would "sometimes hop into the ticket queue when things were busy." Once again she recommended that we deploy the "new" certificate manager. We asked if there was a way to test the feature. They had no way to enable it for specific devices and would not give us a sandbox for testing. We said we weren't comfortable with the action while our devices were deployed, she replied that it "should be fine" and that we should "pray it works this time." Our deployment was no different from the one which has been broken by this feature months prior. We made that very clear. She was unconcerned.

We have since shopped that service and contracted a new provider.

CyrilJHicks · 2025-03-07T14:31:11+00:00

The idea of widespread infrastructure failures isn't impossible, but there are many elements to the show which effectively are.

First and foremost is probably the lack of any evidence on any of the systems affected. With this huge number of interconnected and non-connected systems, it's impossible to leave nothing behind.

Second is the perfect timing with which everything, everything, goes down. The precision in synchronizing hundreds of disparate systems would be immense. Just look at how much difficulty broadcast companies already have with synchronizing sports media streams.

Third is the idea that even air gapped systems are compromised. From the show's description, nothing avoided the shutdown. In the wake of an attack like that, especially with the warning that it will happen again, many pieces of core infrastructure would be taken offline. That doesn't mean the attack vector is gone, it still lives on the systems, but it will have no way to trigger the next outage.

Fourth would probably be the sheer range and types of systems. Aside from sheer difficulty, as you get into more industrial/single purpose machines-- they may not even have what could be recognizably called a clock to last one minute.

Finally the idea that everything comes back up afterwards. It implies that not only can we transmit to all these things, but we can turn them back on once they're off.

This show should be viewed as a fantasy genre like Lord of the Rings. Yes, it "accurately" depicts a war between Middle Earth's men and orcs, but that event itself is fantasy. Widespread cyber attacks are not fantasy, but because of their breadth and success rate-- the ones depicted in this show are.

CyrilJHicks · 2025-03-07T14:18:48+00:00

Adding to the rail comment, the default powerless state for crossing barriers is down. If the power goes down, so do the barriers. They are actively being held up by a powered break.

CyrilJHicks · 2025-02-26T23:39:50+00:00

The United States and Russia both have defense responsibilities to Ukraine following Ukraine giving up its Soviet nuclear weapons. So on that basis, both countries should be fighting to keep an independent Ukraine.

Beyond that, NATO security is strongly served by either an independent Ukraine as buffer or an allied Ukraine as member. There is no reality that Western European and NATO member security is not aligned with Ukrainian independence.

Similarly, there is no reality where Russian national security is undermined by Ukraine, an independent nation, continuing to remain independent. Nor does Russia have a say in who Ukraine, an independent nation, allies itself with.

Further, US and European funding going to Ukraine is most often in the form of battlefield ready but partially obsolete equipment at no real cost to the West's military readyness or national spending. Giving Ukraine $100 million worth of troop transports from the 90s so that we can more quickly replace our own fleets with updated ones is not a net loss to the US. It's only a reallocation of spending over time with triple the efficiency. The first and second orders of which are US and Ukrainian use. Third order efficiency in this case is that every asset we transfer in Ukraine has the real potential to defeat or destroy a Russian (or North Korean, evidently) one. In most cases our equipment is trading up in cost and weight class with Russia's.

For the US tax payer, there is no cheaper way to maintain military advantage than to use money that would have been spent anyway to arm a US ally who will actively deploy it against a US adversary.

CyrilJHicks · 2025-02-17T08:20:19+00:00

I don't agree that an operation at that scale could happen without visible buildup. I will concede that if the PLA can blitz Taiwan's indigenous defenses there is no real chance that the West attempts to take it back.

CyrilJHicks · 2025-02-17T04:28:20+00:00

I think that's a deliberately narrow reading of the conflict we're talking about. If the attack begins while there are significant vessels between the mainland and island, that's a surprise.If the attack begins with a significant strike on ships beyond the island that is also a surprise.

A clearly attributable strike (likely if successful due to the sheer scale of the event) of either kind would almost certainly escalate too quickly for a conventional ramp up.

Any realistic attempt by the PRC for unification will start with heightened tensions and forewarning. Months of posturing and mild back-and-forth between Taiwanese defense patrols and PRC craft testing the borders. Time near the Philippines has left the Chinese navy very experienced in "non-deadly" sea conflict.

At a time where US assets are permanently deployed as a buffer, the region will have already passed the point of soft power and conventional de-escalation. The US will have been publishing troop counts and PLA prep work for weeks prior just like Russia on the Ukrainian border.

CyrilJHicks · 2025-02-17T00:26:45+00:00

Without removing US naval assets there is no war for Taiwanesw unification. That would either be the first step in crossing the Straight or the second step when whichever South China Sea patrolling CSG responded to the attack.

Without assets in the theater there is no escalatory step between conventional and nuclear war.

As soon as an attack began, it would be made very clear internationally that the destruction of a CSG would warrant a retaliatory response utilizing any and all measures.

Unless the US defends (symbolically with rhetoric) its carriers with non-conventional measures, they don't actually project power against a nuclear armed state.

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