Notices by Kevin Rothrock (kevinrothrock@infosec.exchange)

Europe does love a good two-front war.

Imagine spending decades of your life learning about the rich nuances of Russian culture and politics and exerting yourself countless times to explain that the cartoonish stereotypes are wrong, and then this happens.

https://meduza.io/en/news/2025/02/06/russian-singer-songwriter-dies-after-falling-from-window-during-police-raid

Five passengers set sail that day
For a three-hour tour,
A three-hour tour.

An Azerbaijani passenger plane that crashed in December (killing 38 people) after being diverted from Russia to Kazakhstan was hit by a Russian Pantsir-S air defense system, an Azerbaijani government source told Reuters on Tuesday. https://www.reuters.com/world/azerbaijani-plane-that-crashed-december-was-hit-by-russian-pantsir-s-missile-2025-02-04/

I imagine Trump’s cabinet deliberations on recommitting to Ukraine military aid in exchange for rare earth metals access along these lines.

wow

“The president will be implementing tomorrow 25% tariffs on Mexico, 25% tariffs on Canada, and 10% tariffs on China.” https://www.semafor.com/article/01/31/2025/us-allies-threaten-retaliation-as-tariffs-loom

should be neutron mail

Does anyone know of a browser extension that would allow me to draw on a webpage (arrows, underlinings, highlights) and save those annotations while preserving the editable text? I typically use a Chrome extension that allows only highlighting, but I would love to be able to draw arrows and circle things. The only way I know how to do this, however, is to PDF it and mark it up on my iPad. There are some extensions that JPG a webpage with drawings, but this is unworkable with longer articles. Please let me know!

jesus, Google Maps is going to change the names of the Gulf of Mexico and Denali. https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/27/24353450/google-maps-rename-gulf-of-mexico-america-mt-mckinley

Ooooh the Pebble is coming back. Was such a good smartwatch. Really looking forward to this. https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/27/smartwatch-pioneer-and-kickstarter-darling-pebble-is-returning-in-a-new-form/

Alexander Lukashenko has proposed sending virtually the entire Belarusian army to act as peacekeepers in Ukraine to "ensure normal relations between [Belarus's] middle and older brothers." Can't imagine that's a very tempting offer for Kyiv. https://t.me/agentstvonews/8924

Ukrainian press publishes Trump's alleged secret 100-day peace plan for Ukraine, supposedly transmitted to Euro diplomats. (Zelensky's office says it's a Russian lie.) Supposed plan revolves around Ze rescinding his no-talks decree before an Easter ceasefire deal.

https://strana.today/news/478985-peremirie-k-paskhe-mir-k-9-maja-v-politkruhakh-obsuzhdaetsja-100-dnevnyj-plan-trampa.html#google_vignette

Next steps would be meetings and conferences. Ukraine would hold presidential elections in Aug. and then parliamentary elections in Oct. Kyiv would abandon NATO aspirations but get EU membership by 2030. Ukraine would keep large army but abandon claims on occupied lands (w/o recognizing Russia’s).

Issues of foreign peacekeepers & protections for Russian speakers & the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine would be punted down the road. Sanctions would be lifted in stages, w/ a special duty on Russian energy to pay for Ukrainian reconstruction. Again: Ze's office denies all this. But who knows...

Been playing around with DeepSeek a bit today (while sick in bed, using my OnePlus phone, listening on my Huawei earbuds, wearing my TicWatch), and it occurs to me that Chinese tech beats American stuff in so many categories now. RIP, Silicon Valley.

😐

Putin has grown "increasingly concerned about distortions in Russia's wartime economy" and "believes key war goals have already been met, including control of land that connects mainland Russia to Crimea, and weakening Ukraine's military," sources tell Reuters. 🤔

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-growing-concerned-by-russias-economy-trump-mulls-more-sanctions-2025-01-23/

U.S. officials will actually be forced to use maps that say "Gulf of America" on them. I wonder if this comes also to public schools? (lol, jk, that would require special funding for public schools)

Jesus, he even canceled the half-staff flag order honoring Carter.

Before the invasion of Ukraine, a lot of my monitoring focused on Russian Internet censorship. Today in the USA, where Big Tech publicly boosts the presidential personality cult and appstores block a wildly popular social media platform, would have been a nightmare scenario for the RuNet, back then.

“Russia will demand Ukraine drastically cut back military ties with the NATO alliance and become a neutral state with a limited army in any talks with incoming President Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.” (No shit.) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-15/putin-trump-talks-would-see-russia-demand-ukraine-cut-back-nato-ties