The Stiftung reckons that the Wikileaks dump of ISAF’s sigacts log is more significant than we give it credit for. Well, perhaps. I’ve not yet dug into the data pile, but I’ve not been very impressed by the news version of it. Especially, I’m not very impressed by the news coverage; I was reading the…
Read More leakcheeseZac Goldsmith! I wonder if they could perhaps have a look at this?
Read More cheers!This is hilarious, from a blog I thought had gone on hiatus for good. This is pretty good too, though I say so myself.
Read More Building a modern army is not simply a matter of buying the first armoured mortar system in sightDid you know that each successive generation of German high-speed trains has had air-conditioning plant built for higher temperatures? The trains from the early 90s handle a temperature range from -20 to +32 degrees Celsius. Those from the mid-90s, -20 to +32, but if necessary they can exceed that. The ICE Type 3 handles temperatures…
Read More evolvingVia Bruce Schneier’s, an interesting paper in PNAS on false positives and looking for terrorists. Even if the assumptions of profiling are valid, and the target-group really is more likely to be terrorists, it still isn’t a good policy. Because the inter-group difference in the proportion of terrorists is small relative to the absolute scarcity…
Read More three links about false positivesI think everyone’s linked to this excellent piece on building a campaign against the cuts already, but I’d like to seize on this bit: The more we can build up a modern ‘doomsday book’ of the effect of the cuts, the more we can help people to make the second stage of that journey when…
Read More cuts near meSo, if you needed a band for a 30th birthday party…come on, or I’ll put it on craigslist….
Read More repeating the 2002-style bleg…Adam Greenfield is reading about the notion of “military urbanism”. I think this is oversold, and also that like a lot of concepts relating to the social aspects of architecture, it’s overbroad – people chuck in bits and pieces of anything that seems to fit. CCTV? Surveillance, whack it in. Temporary buildings? Logistics and containerisation,…
Read More stuff I disagree withHow did the British Army decide to fight the Helmand campaign as it did? Chatham House has a fascinating paper by Anthony King on the development of the campaign, the abandonment of the original plan, and the processes of decision-making that led the British to fight as they did. The original plan, it turns out,…
Read More read the whole thingChris Dillow has a good go at the Government’s “Thatcherism – Choose Your Own Adventure” Web site and the Have Your Say-style idiots who frequent it. But the fate of another, related Government Web project is interesting. The number10.gov.uk e-petitions site will be remembered mostly for its role in kiboshing the horrible “road-pricing” (aka total…
Read More the right to be ignored