Ukrainian drone strikes have knocked out two of five data centers belonging to the Russian tech giant Yandex. The damage has left Yandex, known as “Russia’s Google” because it operates the country’s most popular search engine, struggling to maintain its AI chatbot and other online services.It's also been reported anecdotally that the attacks over recent days have resulted in a sharp drop in malicious Russian bot activity. The success of these attacks also sends a message to the sub-moron traitor Malignant Fascist that all his efforts to save his political skin and that of his handler Putin are coming a cropper. Rather than Zelenskyy, it's the MF and his manipulator in the Kremlin who need to be replaced.
The Ukrainian drones struck Yandex data centers in the Sasovo and Kaluga regions of Russia on October 8 and October 9, according to Reuters. Those actions came as a direct response to a Russian drone strike campaign targeting Ukraine’s data centers, which has disrupted mobile phone and Internet services for thousands of Ukrainians since late September.
“We continue to respond to Russia’s attacks on Ukraine, and we’re doing so with high precision,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a post on X. “Another data center was hit as well—our symmetrical response.”
The Ukrainian company Firepoint said its FP-1 one-way attack drones were involved in the latest strike on the Kaluga data center that is Yandex’s largest such facility, Reuters reported. The first Ukrainian attack targeted Yandex’s Sasovo data center that houses two of the company’s three supercomputers used for training the company’s YandexGPT AI model.
Yandex said no employees were hurt but acknowledged disruptions to some services. Russian users reported problems accessing media websites and popular apps for the Ivi video streaming platform, the digital banking service T-Bank and the state-owned Russian Railways, according to the independent Russian news publication Meduza.
Other impacted Russian services included a dating app, a real estate aggregator, a self-publishing book platform and the website of the most successful professional soccer club in the Russian Premier League, according to Reuters... (our emphasis)
Isaias peeled off hotel and condominium rooftops and facades along the Florida Panhandle before charging north Saturday, dishing out torrential rains and the threat of flash floods and tornadoes across the Southeast.
At least four deaths were linked to the storm, including two people killed when trees fell onto homes in Florida and Alabama. Forecasters warned that flooding could stretch into the Appalachians.
Isaias came ashore as a Category 2 hurricane Friday near Destin, Florida, a Gulf Coast vacation spot filled with high-rises and tourist shops. The storm weakened overnight but remained dangerous.
Despite warnings of storm surges ahead of the storm, several major routes along the coast were open by daybreak Saturday and free of downed trees and power lines typically seen after major hurricanes...
Within the first hours after landfall, nearly 900,000 customers were without power, mostly in Florida and Alabama.
Hurricane-force winds in the Florida Panhandle blew the roof off a Pensacola hotel, and the city’s mayor said the airport “took some damage.” The storm flattened a boathouse in Destin and ripped away part of the facade of a high-rise in Panama City Beach. [snip]
In Florida’s Escambia County, Sheriff Chip Simmons said a woman was killed when a tree fell on her home and a man died of carbon monoxide fumes from a generator running in his garage. Four of the man’s family members, ranging in age from 4 to 72, were treated but expected to survive, the sheriff said...
FEMA has been hollowed out by DOGE and the MF, who thinks natural disaster relief is each states' business. We'll see what the response is to this tragic but comparatively limited disaster.
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) paid a Kansas bakery $1,300 Saturday after its owner publicly accused his campaign of leaving a nearly $700 bill unpaid for six years.
The payment came days after Holly Thomas, owner of Holly’s Sweet Treats in Hutchinson, Kan., said Marshall’s 2020 Senate campaign never paid for cookies, cupcakes and brownies ordered for his Republican primary election watch party.
Marshall said he had no knowledge of the outstanding bill and moved to settle it after learning of Thomas’s claims.
“We have absolutely no idea how this happened, but rest assured as soon as it became known to us, we immediately attempted to contact the business in order to apologize, and we have repaid the bill from 2020, double,” Marshall wrote on social media Saturday.
The senator also shared a screenshot of a digital receipt showing a $1,300 payment to the bakery.
Thomas said Thursday that the campaign had left her with a $678.75 bill at a time when her newly opened business was struggling through the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Do you know why I will never vote for Roger Marshall?” Thomas wrote on Facebook. “Because six years ago, when I was a brand-new small business owner, his campaign ordered cookies and treats from my bakery for his primary election watch party. And I never got paid.” [snip]
Thomas said she spent nearly a year trying to collect payment, repeatedly contacting the campaign by phone and email without receiving a response.
“Not only was I just starting out, but we were also in the middle of COVID, when small businesses everywhere were struggling just to keep their doors open. Every single dollar mattered,” she wrote. “Those cookies and treats cost money to make, employees’ time to prepare, and resources that my little business couldn’t afford to give away.”
Marshall, a physician who was first elected to the Senate in 2020, has previously been scrutinized over his medical practice’s efforts to collect unpaid bills from patients. The New York Times uncovered hundreds of debt collection lawsuits involving the practice.
This skunk needs to go. There's also his sleazy, Trumpian use of taxpayer money to subsidize his campaign. It's not too late to make a donation to Democrat Adam Hamilton to send this deadbeat packing.
