France opens terror investigation after Dakar rally vehicle is hit by blast | Hacker News Reader

France opens terror investigation after Dakar rally vehicle is hit by blast

rfi.fr

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I saw the start of the Dakar in Buenos Aires in 2011, it's an amazing event, very sophisticated technology.

I was staying there with a friend who regularly ran ultra marathons - the marathon de Sable and other French events in Patagonia, China etc.

He told me a story about Africa where the runners were stripped naked as they ran through a village - all their expensive lycra, camelbacks, shoes etc stolen by locals resentful of western sports tourists.

The Dakar has a similar long history of expensive tech being stolen, held to ransom etc.

https://www.thedrive.com/accelerator/38650/that-time-ari-vat...

Never underestimate the risks around exposing the western world to people in the third world. Millions love what they see, make money out of it etc but...

>The Dakar has a similar long history of expensive tech being stolen, held to ransom etc.

It's not a « long history », it's a one time event, and one that very likely has nothing to do with the locals. The whole story around it is incredibly fishy, and a rally car isn't something you can just steal. It doesn't start or drive like a normal car, there's no key.

It's not rocket science starting a race car for the most part. you turn on the car's power system and then press the starter button.

It's not just « a race car », it's a Group B car with a new body. It's one of the greatest cars in racing history. To start you at least need to action the general electric break, switch the electricity on, push another one or two buttons for pumps and then press the starter button. Depending on the temperature of both the engine and the surrounding environment, you might also need to change plugs for cold ones. And that's just to start, it can't be driven like a normal car. And that's the exact reason why the 405 T16 of Vatanen was found in a bush back in the days : whoever took it new enough to start it up but stalled eventually (which is one of the reasons leading everybody to think it was some mechanic who dun it).

By the way, you can see Vatanen driving that car model in his legendary Pikes Peak Hill climb video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvXSXfL4XRc

I love head rush videos, the isle of man TT on bike vids are wonderful too!

Eh? "Bandits" are a well known risk in the "normal" running of the Paris Dakar through Africa - over and above event linked above

>Meanwhile Saudi authorities indicated there was no criminal suspicion.

>France's terrorism probe has been entrusted to the Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI)

someone in SA will wake up in a burning house, or accidentally blow himself up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior

> The blast, which French newspaper L'Equipe said ripped through the floor of the vehicle before setting it alight, was not related to racing, the organisers added.

> Meanwhile Saudi authorities indicated there was no criminal suspicion.

Saudi Arabia is a joke, and the US is sustaining that joke.

Ok, but please don't post unsubstantive/inflammatory comments like this. We want thoughtful conversation here, and comments like this point threads in the opposite direction.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

One word - Petrodollar.

Yup, the faster we can get away from oil as a primary energy source, the better things will get in many areas.

(& no, I'm not really concerned about people, companies, and countries who have been making their living off fossil fuels for the last century+; they've received already great benefit and they can find other sources of sustainence, preferably sustainable sources.)

I am not sure if trading petrodollar for lithiumrenminbi is an overall gain.

Industrial civilization, at least until some really advanced stage where asteroids can be mined economically, will always have a shortage of some important resource.

There is a significant difference between buying units of usable energy, and buying capital goods that produce and store usable energy. In the former, price increases are felt almost immediately, with at most a month reprieve while old stocks are used up (unless one has specifically paid a premium to hedge for lower prices). Whereas in the latter it affects the cost of new buildout first, and spot prices as only a secondary effect. Of course there's also Jevons paradox.

Space seems like a long way to go versus just mining within the existing gravity well. What elements (other than hydrogen) do we lack?

Did you mean to say helium? The Earth is 75% covered with hydrogen-rich raw material, so I’d expect it to be plentiful, with the mines for it needing energy, but otherwise be straightforward.

Fair enough. By mass hydrogen is rare, but by accessibility easily obtained. But prising it away from Oxygen would probably make it uneconomical, not that space mining is much better.

I'd say it's wishful thinking. You can easily apply the "Petrodollar->US supports SA who is a joke" model to other country, e.g. "Ydollar->US supports X who is a joke". I guess you already see the common part in both models.

Or we can get away from the dollar.

Oil as an energy source has lifted billions of people out of poverty, so its value goes far beyond the industry insiders.

However, this is where nuclear power comes in: vast quantities of energy, with fuel sources not controlled by the United States.

Poverty exists only within industrial societies (and those that interact with industrial societies).

Outside of that scope, poverty doesn't exist. It's a made up concept to describe the relative lack of material compared to some arbitrary, and ever-changing standard.

Did hunter gatherers live in poverty? Or were they plenty content with their lot in life -- spending some of their time on survival in food-resource-rich geographies, and the rest on socializing and primitive leisure?

How about uncontacted tribes in the Amazon Rainforest? Are you going to label them as "living in poverty" so they can be "saved" and "enriched" by Western Industrial Society's values?

"Lifting people out of poverty" is slowly becoming "think of the children"; or even "housewives with nervous ailments should be treated with sedatives and lobotomies. Their conditions are quite saddening, so we should help them post-haste. We know best."

I'd rather argue that poverty only exists in societies developed enough to exhibit stark contrasts between individuals' estates. There was what we would perceive as poverty in e.g. the Roman Empire or Middle-Age Europe.

That is such a non comment, dollar is the currency used to buy and sell because is the easiest one trade in the international market, not because it has some mystical power. They can sell it for euros, pounds or whatever.

Oil is currently being used to keep dictatorships and regimes afloat within the OPEC.

The United States does not control how many barrels of oil SA, UAE or other countries can push to the market.

> dollar is the currency used to buy and sell because is the easiest one trade in the international market, not because it has some mystical power

It actually is a little (well, a lot) more complicated than you might think.

https://www.lynalden.com/fraying-petrodollar-system/

Time to go back to South America

I doubt South America particularly wants it back - I worked on quite a few of the South America rallies and it was quite clear that many countries didn't want it and couldn't afford it towards the end.

It was particularly interesting driving through Bolivia one year with some of the locals in some towns literally hurling whatever they could at the service vehicles....

I don't follow the Paris-Dakar rally very closely, but the one thing I do know about it is that you stay the course or you risk running into landmines.

This is notable because the explosion happened on the way from the hotel to the race course. I was confused until I read it happened on the way TO the race.

> I don't follow the Paris-Dakar rally very closely

It shows :P It's now called only "Dakar rally", and hasn't had anything to do with Paris or Dakar for years. It had stints in South America and is now in Saudi Arabia, precisely because of the precarious security situation in Subsaharan Africa.

Neither do I, as an example i thought the start and finish was fixed, but apparently the Paris-Dakar rally does not have to visit either city.

A landmine sounds plausible, but i guess the knee jerk reaction is to assume terrorism.

Even though it has been rebranded as the Dakar Rally, the current 10-year deal with Saudi Arabia all but guarantees that Dakar won't be a destination anytime soon.

https://www.arabnews.com/node/1488041/saudi-arabia

"The Saudi Arabia Rally" would be the proper name for this sad version of the original.

Land mines seem to me to be terrorism, just done by people in military uniforms instead of civilian clothes.

Land mines are used by people in civilian clothes as well, but those are usually called IEDs.

> Land mines seem to me to be terrorism

Depends what you do with them. If you drop them everywhere for the fun factor, sure. If they are but a part of a fortification complex, they are neither better nor worse than other military ordinance delivery systems.

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