They go into detail on their technical decision making, very cool:
Choosing Clojure6 and Datalog7 was a calculated risk–but one which paid off. The Datalog model offered the simplest and most ergonomic queries, had strengths in graphs and relationships, and the entity model could easily transform to more standard formats. In–memory Datomic was chosen on the server, allowing complicated relational rule–based queries to map over tens of thousands of claims, linking sources to the attributes of entities. Using Clojure allowed for rapid prototyping and fast feedback cycles. Together, this allowed constructing arbitrary graph traversal queries, without having to round–trip from the database to execute recursive code, allowing the nature of traversing the domain model to be separated from the specifics of the relationship. How entities relate, and how relations work through time, could be developed as separate concepts. Using Datalog queries, it was possible to get every subordinate, as well as the time ranges they held true for, with a simple query like (subordinate-of ?a ?b ?start-date ?end-date)
Very interesting and I think important. Something that should be done for any Armee even.
I found the writing style … interesting. The author assumed we the reader would have a specific understanding how to model this data. And that they cracked the code. Well that military posts, commands and in some cases government loyalty can change is known. Maybe I read too much into it this morning :). I dislike being treated as ignorant that’s all.
There is a reason Russian forces are wearing face-covers in Ukraine. That anonymity even became integral part of the official propaganda with the country plastered with images with covered faces like this https://ok.ru/group/53906516017252/album/922573735012/931001...
Or Chechnya, or Afghanistan, or Russian-Polish war (with WW2 and Ukraine it covers most of the post-WWI period, especially if one adds things like the China-Soviet conflict in 1929 when USSR was defending its colonial holdings). It isn't "exceptions". Russia, be it Grand Duchy of Moscow, Russian Empire, USSR or the current Russia has always been an aggressive state. You don't become such a large empire like Russian Empire or USSR without military aggression :)
There was a (not really propaganda) photo op shot of a US naval captain of a big ass ship shooting a rifle with a backwards scope earlier this year.
I think the reason tends to be that the people involved in prop and photo ops actually have no clue about the particulars and just want it to look cool. It's equivalent to "why is X in movies always so unrealistic?" for various values of X (e.g. hacking, law & courts, guns, etc)
(By people involved I mean the people taking the pictures, editing, publishing, etc. Though in the US captain one, I guess also the guy in the picture too)
or another https://stihi.ru/pics/2024/06/14/4714.jpg (and if it reminds you something with 4-limbed symbol from 80+ years ago - it isn't an accident, it is the nature of the current regime in Russia)
While it sounds like a pun, there is no "trigger discipline" in Russia (I myself an ROTC officer). In USSR/Russia the "never point your barrel at anybody or anything" discipline has been taught instead.
There is a little more to Russian rules. They don't allow carry with a round chambered. They find it very dangerous that so many american guns are carried at the ready. With no round chambered, the trigger is far less of a worry.
> making it easier for journalists, courts, and researchers to connect commanders to their subordinates’ actions.
We all know that G.W. Bush and Tony Blair were at the top of their countries' chains of command during the illegal invasion of Iraq and yet, here we are, they're free of any International Penal Court meddling. Which is to say that maybe these guys and ladies here should focus their "desire for war-justice" a little bit closer to home.
Of course, an organization (the Security Force Monitor mentioned in the article) that literally receives money from George Soros through his Open Society Foundations [1] would never go after its own Western leaders, but it's good to at least have that written down on the internet, like in this comment.
When we found out that soldiers in Iraq were mistreating prisoners we put them all on trial and gave the guy who said this wasn't right a medal. What the Burmese military does to maintain its sixty year old dictatorship is wanton murder of civilians.
> When we found out that soldiers in Iraq were mistreating prisoners
We didn't "find out", some media and/or Wikileaks got evidence. And the consequences were not even close to harsh enough - each and every instance of war crimes should have led to a thorough cleanup and massive sentences for everyone involved, especially for everyone who tried to cover it up.
valuable. a variation should be applied to public services by privacy offices, as gov often uses virtual entities under the guise of projects or working groups, where the legally accountable entity almost never receives documents or decisions, but pushes them down onto technology teams to implement.
A standard open organization specification that shows people, authorities, budget flows and beneficial parties, and then only funding anything expressed in that spec would go a long way to improving institutions.
Choosing Clojure6 and Datalog7 was a calculated risk–but one which paid off. The Datalog model offered the simplest and most ergonomic queries, had strengths in graphs and relationships, and the entity model could easily transform to more standard formats. In–memory Datomic was chosen on the server, allowing complicated relational rule–based queries to map over tens of thousands of claims, linking sources to the attributes of entities. Using Clojure allowed for rapid prototyping and fast feedback cycles. Together, this allowed constructing arbitrary graph traversal queries, without having to round–trip from the database to execute recursive code, allowing the nature of traversing the domain model to be separated from the specifics of the relationship. How entities relate, and how relations work through time, could be developed as separate concepts. Using Datalog queries, it was possible to get every subordinate, as well as the time ranges they held true for, with a simple query like (subordinate-of ?a ?b ?start-date ?end-date)
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