Hacker News Reader

Comment by miguelazo | Hacker News Reader

LOL. Perhaps you don't understand this because you don't dive yourself, but there's a very big difference between your PADI Open Water diver buddy's dives and the 70-90 meter depth estimated for the blasts.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/sep/30/nord-stream...

View on HN

I'm Norwegian and my buddy works with robots. But let's disregard that; Norwegians are just 0.06% of the world and your point is probably about the typical case, not about rare exceptions.

I think your real point is that deep diving skills and robots are extremely rare, perhaps except some pockets such as Norway. You might be right... but my basic assumption would be that the same skills and equipment are easy to find in every port large enough to have a construction industry for undersea pipelines etc.

Om jeg forstår deg rett.. Du som er Nordmann kjenner vel kanskje til at vi måtte hente eksperthjelp fra noen karer nede i USA før vi kunne begynne å bore olje. Ingen Nordmann dykket den gangen, vi måtte ha hjelp. Ved å følge din logikk burde de jo vært Norske, siden slike folk visstnok er enkle å finne? Det samme dypdykket jeg refererer til her endte også i dødsfall av en eller flere av de Amerikanerne som turte det dykket her nede i Norsk sjø, på grunn av en ulykke.

Uansett, med tanke på Nord Stream, vi snakker om en sabotasje-operasjon med eksplosiver under vann. Slikt man ofte ser i klisjè action-filmer, men som (nesten) aldri skjer i virkeligheten. Mener ikke å si at noe av det du skriver er feil i teorien - tror bare muligens du undervurderer skalaen på en slik operasjon. Det er åpenbart en godt planlagt militær operasjon.

Thank you for that additional context. I didn’t realize that Norway had been wholly dependent on US deep sea diving expertise when the oil industry was founded, and that it was relatively recent.

It depends what you mean by recent. The divers who brought those skills to Norway in the eighties had developed the techniques in the Gulf of Mexico a few years earlier. The eighties may be seen as recent or not, depending on your timescale. It's long enough ago that the knowledge has spread widely and much new equipment has been developed, such as the robots.

What? You're thinking of some other dive. I'm talking about the dive that was done in '78 to demonstrate that we had the ability to fix the underwater pipes at that depth. It's THE dive that made us literally filthy rich as a nation, in the years after. Everything depended on the outcome of this dive. No one had attempted anything like this before, that's why we brought in experts from the US.

Do not underestimate the importance of this event. Surprised you didn't know this.

It happened on February 7th 1978. Skånevikfjorden, Norway. On the West Coast. Taylor Diving Company brought in 3 divers + crew.

David Hoover, one of the three American divers, died in the accident that day. RIP

> It's long enough ago that the knowledge has spread widely and much new equipment has been developed, such as the robots.

No one would disagree. If you're saying that it's possible for these robots to plant explosives - I wouldn't know but I can believe that. In this case it's irrelevant.

Ultimately, the capability is beyond the reach of the workers you are talking about. The NYT article produced zero evidence, scant details (including laughable ones like a "Polish yacht".) It was truly a pathetic attempt at diversion-- I would have expected something better, like they did with Iraq, but the truth is they don't care enough to bother because liberals do their work for them. And as the critique published above points out, the authors have previously engaged in wholesale fraud for the security state, writing articles about the fake "Russian bounties" in Afghanistan, etc.

“It is obvious that [leftists] are not cool-headed logicians systematically analyzing the foundations of knowledge. They are deeply involved emotionally in their attack on truth and reality.” ― Theodore Kaczynski

Why am I not surprised that the Unabomber would conflate liberals and leftists?

But the same thing can be said of reactionary conservatives. https://billmoyers.com/story/how-authoritarianism-short-circ...

I'm reading the book not his manifesto version. There are no mentions of bombs in his book so the fact that he's the unabomber is of no importance. He's facing the consequences of his actions (good!). Doesn't mean that the book isn't good.

> would conflate liberals and leftists?

The book is from the 90s. You have to factor that in to be sure that he's conflating anything really. Lets also remember that Kaczynski is a literal genius. Top 1% of intelligence. Based on this also I don't believe that he thinks it makes any difference OR it made perfect sense in the times when he wrote it.

It's irrelevant because in a two-party political system they both (leftists+liberals) side to the left. The psychology (traits) of leftism/liberals are similar. The psychology (traits) of conservatives are the same no matter what "sub-type" (in lack of a better word) of conservative they claim to be because they side to the right. Wouldn't you call a neo-conservatives a conservative?

Since Ted is from the US he lives in the forementioned two-party political system. Making the distinction between leftist and liberals makes more sense imo in the European political system (not two-party) and perhaps others.

Left/Right, the political leaning can be observed because of various clues and traits. It's well understood. In academia and elsewhere.

> reactionary conservatives

Absolutely! Kaczynski also goes hard into conservatives. You should read the book, he is also criticising his own political leaning. He isn't so political-focused in his book. It's more on the sociology/psychology side.

So a team of divers who work construction was recruited and provided with a large amount of explosives to carry this out. And then they all managed to keep quiet. Yes, that sounds way more plausible than Seymour Hersh’s explanation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com