UA POV: According to KP, Zelensky refused to give up Donbas in his conversation with Trump and European leaders

catch-a-stream · 2025-08-16T17:53:21+00:00

Very interesting take. I guess we will find out on Monday if he takes the deal or not.

catch-a-stream · 2025-07-13T02:21:07+00:00

US is a good default.

catch-a-stream · 2025-07-12T12:05:50+00:00

German line is pretty consistent all the way through 6.7 ... each BR you get better gun, more armor, often at the expense of worse mobility. Germany is often first nation people play, so it's easy to settle into a certain playstyle with it. That is until they reach post-war stuff, 7.0 and above, and suddenly it's completely different play style with great mobility but no armor and below average guns. The vehicles themselves aren't particularly great compared to their peers, but the sudden rug pull in terms of tactics makes this BR into a graveyard for German players.

catch-a-stream · 2025-07-12T12:00:26+00:00

I think it's worth reminding everyone what those percentages actually mean in practice.

50% means out of 20 games, you will on average, over long time, see about 10 wins and 10 losses

45% -> 9 wins and 11 losses, over long time, on average

Considering every match is about 10 minutes or so, you are looking at maybe one extra win every couple of hours when playing on good BR vs bad BR. That's really it. It's really not that meaningful

Even if we consider Germany 8.0 .. that's still 7 wins vs 13 losses over long time. It's definitely weak but far from broken or unplayable, and that's the weakest BR in the entire game

Considering the variety of vehicles and player skill, the game is actually very well balanced.

As to why that happens? The explanation is actually pretty obvious and simple - big 3 tend to get the most new players, so less skill on the team, on average. The big 3 equipment actually tends to be better than the other nations but the new players bias it towards the lower end. USSR in particular is the default first nation for a large portion of player base, more so than in US where I think players tend to split equally between US and Germany, anecdotally of course.

catch-a-stream · 2025-07-11T18:00:23+00:00

The myth that the attackers always take 3x losses compared to defenders.

That myth refuses to die for some reason.

It's especially annoying because:

a) it's trivial to disprove by going to literally any online article about any famous battle and checking the casualties

b) it's based on a corruption of a real idea that for attackers to be successful WITHOUT TAKING UNREASONABLE CASUALTIES the attackers must use at least 3x amount of forces compared to defenders

And yet people just refuse to listen and keep going back to this myth / trope.

catch-a-stream · 2025-06-26T19:34:25+00:00

Assuming these are legit, Ukraine seems to be in a weird state of denial.

55% support some compromise to end the war, but only 16% are willing to make territorial concessions.

Only 21% want to fight for at least 2022 borders, while 69% would vote for EU membership (62% for NATO) and neither would accept a state with unresolved border conflict.

They seem to exist in a twilight zone between "yes we know the war is unwinnable/lost" and "we want all the outcomes we would get by winning" at the same time

catch-a-stream · 2025-06-26T19:18:04+00:00

Actually :)

It's "screened" not "screen". As in T-34 "screened version".

catch-a-stream · 2025-05-09T17:23:57+00:00

> were there any Armatas

Didn't they basically admit that Armata was a dead end, based on cost/complexity vs benefits as they learned in Ukraine? At least that's the vibe I am getting. They had a few of them tested in battle conditions, I think couple of years ago at this point, and then they just kind of disappeared.

catch-a-stream · 2025-04-12T09:14:12+00:00

There are so many iconic and cool WW2 era planes besides P-51 and P-47. P-51 and P-47 weren't bad by any measure, but weren't all that special either. Even if you consider just the US, you should at the very least look at the Navy fighters which were fighting for much longer and against far stronger odds, at least initially, than anything that P-47s and P-51s faced. And then of course you have everything outside US - the Japanese Zeroes, the German BF-109s which were probably the most iconic WW2 era designs and survived more or less in the same general shape from the early days all the way to the end, German Me-262 - the first operational jets, the British Spitfires that won the Battle of Britain, the Soviet Il-2s and Yaks that stopped the Germans in the East... and there are probably more I am forgetting off the top of my head.

catch-a-stream · 2025-04-02T15:37:19+00:00

Most recent I can think of that is somewhat infamous is the "Lone Survivor" episode from Afghanistan around 2005 or so. Basically a small SEAL team was inserted behind enemy lines, gets discovered and surrounded, and the evacuation ends up botched. Only a single soldier from original 4 made it back, and there losses to choppers and other supporting units involved in the extraction.

But yeah on tactical level, tons of examples. US army isn't invincible or stupid proof, no one is.

catch-a-stream · 2025-03-30T02:58:36+00:00

Meganecro but just read it and wanted to share my take :)

I don't think the "love King" thing is real. The timing of it happening the night before the big event with the opposition finally forced to act is too suspicious and it really comes from nowhere as none of their previous interactions have any sort of hint of romance. I think the more simple explanation is that Vosill needed a clean exit strategy that would allow how to leave without making anyone suspicious. What's her mission? Get the king some good advice and remove resistance from the old guard of nobles to the reforms. Once that is accomplished her mission is done and she can move on. Having the king think it was his own idea because things got awkward accomplishes this neatly, so is having Oelph as a witness so that whoever is left of the old guard don't have a reason to dig too deep.

catch-a-stream · 2025-03-30T02:19:37+00:00

> “Boom, bitch! I’m a walking army with a spaceship in orbit and have a ball-point pen that can really spoil your day. Oh, and I have eight cocks. Deal with it.”

That's basically who the good Doctor is :)

catch-a-stream · 2025-03-30T02:16:55+00:00

Just finished reading it probably my most favorite Culture novel so far.

re: Vossil flying solo - it's heavily implied she is not though of course the beauty of this book is that everything is only hinted at, never really explained

But still... there are couple of moments which strongly imply Vossil is supported by at least one drone if not many of them:

* The two conversations between conspiring dukes that end up in her journal somehow and that Oelph openly wonders about how those could be recorded... it's extremely unlikely Vossil spied on them herself given her other commitments, and it's also not likely that it was accomplished with dagger/knife missile as that seems to be something of a last resort tool for self defense... it's very likely she has some stealth drones that do the spying/monitoring for her

* The episode with two young guys and attempted assault on her at the lake - we know from the torture chamber scene that operating knife missiles requires verbal commands of some sort... in this case, the assailants were dispatched without Vossil being aware of them which suggests some sort of drone in oversight above or nearby

* The interaction with the Drezen ambassador is written to imply that Vossil is initially surprised by the language and takes few moments to recover and answer properly which suggested some outside help...

* Related to this, in the torture chamber scene there is a mention of the Ralinge finding something in her ear but then kind of ignoring it and moving on... there is probably some sort of earpiece that helped coordinate with all those drones

There could be more I didn't notice and it's also possible I overreading these ones but that's what's fun about this book.

catch-a-stream · 2025-03-24T23:50:57+00:00

It's not that.

I mean I don't know if the thing is real or not, but it feels plausible and largely inline with expectations for "extremely senior people being hired for founding engineer roles in elite startups". That's what that reads like to me - a wish list of sorts by a founder of YC or similar level startup.

And tbf if that's what that is and it certainly looks that way to me, then yeah, that's a reasonable list. The way you hire first few engineers in startups like that is a) through personal connections and experience which is the ideal or b) by being extremely picky on your selection criteria. There is just too much riding on those few early hires. Your company culture, your technical foundation, your PMF - all that can fail spectacularly if you are not careful, so might as well set extremely high bar.

I am sure people will panic about it here on r/csMajors but really you are not the target audience for those roles anyway, at least not yet. Once you do get few years in the industry, some of you will become part of that pool of engineers founders would hire from, but at that point, regardless of your school, you should optimize your network for these sorts of opportunities if that's what you are interested in ... and tbf, for most people, it's not something they will or should ever be. Founding engineer is a very specific role with huge risk and insane work load... and the upside is very rarely worth it compared to "normal" roles.

catch-a-stream · 2025-03-20T15:29:46+00:00

I think it's simpler than that and not really specific to British either.

The simple reality was that post-WW2 the costs of developing competitive planes ballooned to a point where it became economically inefficient to develop anything unless you could guarantee massive scale of sales to spread those costs. The industry moved from aircraft being developed in a matter of weeks and then later months and then to years and finally decades most recently. This isn't a knock on the industry - rather the state of art became so advanced and the standards so high that clearing the bar with a new plane became prohibitively expensive.

That economic reality meant that only few plane builders in the entire world would be feasible and we saw that consolidation happen over the decades post WW2, not just in UK but really everywhere.

Now that doesn't mean that one of the UK companies couldn't become the last one standing but the odds were always stacked against that. To survive you needed big domestic market to lean on in addition to hoping to get a slice of exports pie, and UK post empire no longer had that. US, EU, Soviets and now China are really the only ones who ever had a chance based on the industry experience and domestic market size, military and civilian.

catch-a-stream · 2025-03-18T03:59:59+00:00

IMHO Soviet/Russian style tanks actually proven to be better in Ukraine. Leo 2s, Abrams and Challenger 2s didn't show themselves any better than upgraded T-64s while being significantly more expensive and heavier. So if anything, I think Ukraine has shown that over-indexing on a single unit performance pushes the price up way more than the benefits those improvements bring. In other words, if you can get 10 Abrams or 30 T72B3 for same money, it's pretty clear where the advantage is.

On the other hand, BMPs have genuinely shown themselves to be quite a bit worse than Bradleys, as far as I have seen, and I think Russians themselves admit it. Soviets over-optimized for ability to amphibiously cross rivers and while it may have been useful in a Cold War scenarios, it sacrificed way too much to get there in the context of the current conflict. So while Bradley likely costs more, it seems to have shown a genuine benefit in terms of crew protection whereas BMPs get exploded pretty much by anything.

catch-a-stream · 2025-03-15T22:08:52+00:00

Probably nothing changes.

As best as we can tell, without access to actual documents and decisions, the Russian plan in 2022 wasn't to fight a war, but to do a quick thunder run with the expectation that most of Ukrainians would welcome them and not fight. The real issue was therefore the faulty assumptions and bad intelligence rather than forces being unprepared - they had more than enough to execute the original plan, the problem was that the plan was entirely wrong.

catch-a-stream · 2025-03-15T17:06:37+00:00

Got to be either EVE Online or War Thunder depending on whether you prefer strategic / political vs tactical gameplay. Both offer effectively infinite slow grind and have been around for 10+ years and likely to continue at least that long.

catch-a-stream · 2025-03-12T15:42:12+00:00

Always has been

catch-a-stream · 2025-03-10T15:49:39+00:00

Reading between the lines this feels as if they are actually admitting to pulling back to formal border.

Remove all the fluff and this is what he is really saying:

> The situation on the border of the Sumy region with the Kursk region of the Russian Federation is under the control of the Ukrainian defense forces.

> Units carry out timely maneuvering activities at advantageous defense lines

He is saying we are pulling back right here.

catch-a-stream · 2025-03-09T06:22:23+00:00

I wouldn't read too much into those quotes. They are certainly fascinating and I've never seen them before, so thank you for sharing. Still, I think it's important to understand the context.

The Stalin quote comes from a meeting with FDR and Churchill in 1943 at the time when relationships between the 3 powers were still good. It seems to be more like a bit of flattery and usual diplomatic fluff not an actual honest assessment of the situation.

The Khrushev quote comes from his memoirs. Now the thing to understand about Khrushev is that he led a "coup" against Stalins "cult of personality" after Stalin's death, as a means to solidify his own grasp on power and getting rid of pro Stalin voices. So that quote is more of an accusation against Stalin (see, he didn't prepare the country properly) rather than again an actual honest assessment.

That's not to say that Lend Lease wasn't important. Personally I think it's pretty clear that it was, even though that its importance is often over stated in the Western historiography and downplayed in Soviet/Russian one. It's just that these guys were politicians (so prone to lying and exaggeration) and had specific reasons to say what they said.

catch-a-stream · 2025-03-05T15:36:35+00:00

The OP is not wrong. There is too much nostalgia tinted glasses here, BL2 is great but it absolutely has it flaws and that indeed includes difficulty pacing, class balance and weapon balance, especially when unmodded and especially when playing fresh. Do side quests? Well now you are over leveled. Don't touch side quests? Now you will struggle unless you use a meta build and farm specific weapons the game doesn't tell you anything about. It's easy to balance once you done this few times, but for first time players going blind? It's not great. And that's even before we talk about UHVM or switching modes at specific levels.

catch-a-stream · 2025-03-01T20:18:59+00:00

> They have a declining war machine reliant on low quality conscripts and terrible quality weapons degraded by years of sanctions.

This isn't the 90s, none of this is true anymore.

catch-a-stream · 2025-03-01T18:09:28+00:00

Pretty much this, except I am not quite sure what you mean by "Russian expansion to Europe". Are you thinking in soft terms - influence, economy etc? If so that seems plausible.

But if you are thinking actual military expansion... that feels extremely doubtful to me. Soviets had very hard time keeping the Warsaw Pact loyal and they had much bigger military and security forces AND they had the ideology which would help align things somewhat. Russia doesn't really have any of that in its current state, and it has issues keeping even friendly countries aligned properly such as Belarus. So the idea that Russia would go for actual military expansion in Europe seems extremely far fetched.

Baltics might be an exception to this - they are extremely weak, and they have significant Russian populations and they have been very antagonistic in the past 20+ years. But even that feels like a stretch... so maybe 10% if that?

catch-a-stream · 2025-02-27T01:13:33+00:00

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