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Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

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Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#371

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #338
mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very familiar with that argument, it's almost a trope at this point; however it is completely logically unrelated to the OP's take. Unless you think hayst4ck was lamenting the plight of the dictators who have it too easy these days and won't learn to properly internalize the fine essence of clearing peaceful protests the old-fashioned way, when it needed riot shields and teargas?

> it is completely logically unrelated to the OP's take The point is people have been arguing that their era is the last for freedom because after the invention of writing or phalanxes or cannons or blue-water navies or industrial warfare or nuclear weapons or AI and drones the powerful will have all the chips. It's not true, and you'll almost always find a balancing meme around how those same technologies are going…

Plato's argument wasn't that his era was the last for freedom, it was that writing would spoil people's ability to memorize their oral traditions when they have the comfort of reaching for their notes. And in fact he was probably right about that, and we experience the continuation in the extreme today with the convenience of Wikipedia, and I can hardly find my way downtown when my phone battery dies and I can't check Google Maps.

New technologies do change the world, and society, usually in irreversible ways. In many aspects for the better, but in some aspects for the worse. To argue that because Plato was wrong about writing, therefore the things you value about society will continue as always, is to bury your head in the sand. Freedom, anonymity, and the vulnerability of the few and powerful to the disgruntled many are all things that can disappear with the shifting sands of time and technology. An argument that they will or won't must be grounded on the merits of the particulars.

Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#372

Post by wickedwiesel »

archagon wrote: post #369
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was expressing this fear to my wife and kids the other day. Ubiquitous cameras everywhere (like in the UK for many years) and other surveillance technology has always been a concern but had scaling limits -- but when you combine it now with the cheap ease of machine learning technologies we have a serious problem. And then consider drones, mobile devices. And then mass disinformation and/or disruption via LLMs. As a…

AI also has the potential to detect your every unique tic in a way that humans would be incapable of doing. You could be masked but your gait and other body movements will give you away, or at least place you in a statistically likely pool of suspects. "Walk without rhythm and it won't attract the worm."

Anti Walking recognition techniques have been under development for decades though..

https://youtu.be/iV2ViNJFZC8?feature=shared

Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#373

Post by gloosx »

ein0p wrote: post #360
ashoeafoot wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The opposition protesting here is 1/5 of the population of the country . Its basically all people. Like 1 million protesting in a country of 5 million , is all voters between 18- 59. Russia is loosing , the rot of oligarchy is dissolving.

It is impossible for Russia to "lose" in Serbia. The vast majority of Serbs support Russia, and are pissed at their government for not supporting it enough.

It is very possible to juggle around with the opinions of "vast majority" like apples. Vast majority will always support the thing which a delicate minority will push into their throats via media.

Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#374

Post by perching_aix »

CaffeineLD50 wrote: post #351
perching_aix wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This dilemma continues to exist in your own mind only.

This article is designed to improve awareness of oppressiveness of the Serbian government: basic PR/insurgency propaganda 101. We're supposed to decry some sonic weapons while having no understanding of what is going on. So what's going on?

What's going on is that you just refuse to accept that going back to the Serbian government not having a sound cannon, and simultaneously that not resulting in a Tienanmen scenario, would plain be a possibility.

I tried my earnest to extract it out of you why exactly you're stuck in this state, but short of you being maximally insufferable and equally sure of yourself, I was not able to get anything out.

All the while you tried every trick in the book to strong arm me into saying things I do not actually believe to derail the conversation, as well as ridiculed me every way you knew to, with a particular emphasis on anyone not sharing your opinion meaning they're childish and are fantasizing.

The usual political thread special.

Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#376

Post by gloosx »

wuschel wrote: post #357

Is anyone knowledgeable what would be the best way to block the sound waves? a) Earplugs? b) destructive interference?

Everyone here got so political and it's a shame nobody is discussing counter-measures available. Sound is one of the easiest forms of energy to manipulate, it is easily absorbed, reflected and reverberated.

Because these systems exploit resonance in the skull and inner ear, in theory a thick motorcycle helmet should do the heavy work already for blocking some of these from reaching your skull, as well as blocking any random projectiles flying around. Additionally wool blankets or other thick, soft materials can be wrapped around the neck+head part to further reduce waves from entering your skull and resonating there.

Also if you can identify the dominant frequencies used by the device, you could design surfaces with materials that reflect or diffuse those waves effectively. Something like an array of concave acoustic reflectors or even a shield coated with a material tuned to reflect those frequencies might work. Redirecting the sound back at riot police would be ironic — wonder if they’d be as comfortable with it as they are deploying it against crowds. :D

Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#377

Post by hayst4ck »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #339
hayst4ck wrote: post #250

It's the most important time in human history to protest/fight unchecked power because it's likely the last era of humanity that we are going to be able to. We are getting to the point where the technology that fuels oppression, including extremely pervasive surveillance, privatized intelligence services with no oversight, scalable AI agents that do as they are told, and crowd "maiming" or other forceful dispersal te…

> we now have 3 countries with the ability to erase entire cities or make the world functionally uninhabitable by humans Nuclear war is horrible enough without requiring hyperbole. Each of the U.S., Russia and China have the ability to functionally end industrial civlisation as we know it. None has the power to make the Earth uninhabitable by humans (outside hypothetical asteroid redirect capabilities).

Admiral Rickover, the father of the American nuclear navy, testified to congress that he thought we would probably destroy ourselves and hardly anyone is more expert than he was.

  Senator PROXMIRE. What do you think is the prospect, 
  then, of nuclear war?

  Admiral RICKOVER. I think we will probably destroy 
  ourselves. So what difference will it make? Some new
  species will arise eventually; it might be wiser 
  than we are.
https://www.jec.senate.gov/reports/97th%20Congress/Economics...

Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#378

Post by numpad0 »

int_19h wrote: post #270
kortilla wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LRADs are not designed to cause permanent damage. They are explicitly designed under the intention of being a way to disperse a crowd without long term harm. There hasn’t been much research on long term health impacts, but it’s not a tool to maim people. https://phr.org/our-work/resources/health-impacts-of-crowd-c...

160 dB way over hearing safe. Most rifle rounds are in >140 dB territory, and that is quite sufficient to give you permanent hearing damage.

The point is that LRADs are supposed to be an ethical alternative to guns and gases, as far as the original design intent is considered...

Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#379

Post by tim1994 »

tptacek wrote: post #19

LRADs have been used against protesters in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, France, and Germany.

In Germany LRAD systems have been used to deliver Covid 19 information, not against protesters. Used by the fire brigade. I haven't checked uses in other countries.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-range_acoustic_device#G...

Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#380

Post by ruszki »

grujicd wrote: post #68
casenmgreen wrote: post #20

Serbia is one of the Russian-controlled Governments, along with Hungary and Georgia; these are the countries where we expect to see such attacks made to suppress protest. (USA is not controlled, any more than say China is controlled, but is an authoritarian regime (so no real elections), so there's a shared world view, and here also I would expect to see much the same.)

It's incorrect that Serbia has Russian-controlled government. Why would you say that? We're quite capable of having our own independent dictator, thank you. If anything, Vučić was widely supported by EU. One of our problems is that there's almost no pressure on government from any external side - not from US, not from EU, not from Russia, not from China. Opposition is entirely internal.

Can you share some details about this EU support?
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