If you look away, you will have to watch another one

A few more years till they measure engagement via your camera

Let me first address the accusations of me accusing you being emotional and whatever. We’re having a respectful conversation I hadn’t hoped to have it in the first place. I don’t like your views, I may only sympathize with you. Thanks for that.

The hate you are talking about is not inherently inside Russia’s population. This hate is channeled by propaganda. As with Georgians and Turks: there were periods where everyone hated them, now they are friends. Fingers crossed the same will happen with ukranians soon, but I lost any hope that it will be reciprocal. Still, it is and will remain for decades a problem for the world.

how and when will russia change from its current state?

The current state is perpetual but silent war that exists, but somewhere far from themselves. The government finds this state to be the most favorable to them, but it draws a line between the government and the economic elites. I’d give it five to twenty years to resolve. No more than Putin’s lifespan, but also it should be resolved by the upcoming Third World War.

But the question itself contains a subtle implication. You think that Russia is a threat to the world or neighbors because how easy it starts the war with its neighbors and how violent its rhetoric. While I agree, I would also add to this the efficiency of Russian government, if by efficiency we define the government’s capability to save and multiply the resources of the very rich. My biggest fear is that other countries will implement the similar approaches.

That’s the case of corporate VPN I believe

I’ve been recently banned for putting links that lead to russian sites, so I’ll reference the sources by name in italic.

On the quantitative side this is confirmed by various polling initiatives that use different methodologies (including in-direct polling with attempts to estimate preference falsification).

AFAIK it is neither confirmed nor refuted. I don’t know how one would interpret results where 91-93% just refuse to talk to a sociologist and 4-5% more abort the interview when asked about something related to the war. That’s the results by Russian Field, one of a few agencies that publish these numbers. They do interpretation of these results, but they differ from month to month: you can numbers from Feb 2024 to prove your point, I can put numbers from May 2024 to prove mine.

On the qualitative side, you can look at genocides committed in the last ~100 years by the russians (and there are several, includes less well known ones) and review the attitudes towards these crimes among various socio-political groups

That’s a bold point implying that history defines the attitudes for a whole nation for decades. There were a lot of atrocities made in the name of Russia in the Baltic states, Belarus, Ukraine, towards Circassians, Germans, Tatar and Georgians (probably forgot something). But for some reasons, russians want to exterminate only Ukrainian identity, conquer Baltics and befriend Georgia and Germany. That’s a political/propaganda surface, not a historical one.

Talking about qualitative research, there’s a publicsociologylab group that conducts interesting narrative research. Their last project is concerned with the view on the war from a non-central city. They conclude that people do ignore the atrocities and view them as something that is alien to them. The only question they ask is whether it is worth it to go to war for $10k + $3k/mo.

I hope that I was able to draw a picture where Russia is not a country of pests that should be exterminated. It’s a complex evil system that could be built anywhere in the world, even in Ukraine or the US.

To not disclose to your internet provider the sites you are visiting.

Apple? They probably are able to geoblock Russia, but it will cut sales in neighboring countries like Georgia and Kazakhstan. Why would they perform such a reckless move?

C’mon, google works with China

probably way more expensive

Nope. iPhone 15 pro max 128 gb could be bought in Moscow for 109490 руб, which is $15 higher than in the US.

Before the war Apple had a weird price policy in Russia when they just multiplied the official US price by the factor of 100 to get the price in roubles. It resulted in a +30-60% increase in prices.

So… the war has actually dropped the price for the Apple products dramatically for regular russians. The only problem with the Apple products the war has introduced is that you can’t pay in AppStore

Only via complicated shady schemes. The simplest option is to go to another country, open a bank account and buy a sim.

See how iPhone sales peak in Kazakhstan and Georgia after the war and sanctions. Does apple work in Russia? No, they just ship their shit to Georgia and don’t ask why every Georgian needs 2 iphones and one MacBook every year.

The vast majority of russians support imperialism and a majority hold genocidal views (they would never openly agree to this, but on an outcome basis they do support eradication of Ukrainian culture and not only).

That’s a major simplification. The fact that russians do not stand against a genocidal war doesn’t mean that the vast majority do support it.

First world problems

They were afraid to lose 4% of the audience in Russia and the favor of the Russian government (probably some grants,idk). Now they are afraid to lose those who think that it’s “the right thing to do”.

Btw, it’s not that hard for the Russian government to block every VPN extension like they did with Nord VPN and Surfshark VPN let alone ban Mozilla. This action will help no one and it’s yet another act of virtue signaling

Donated

You can say it like this, or you could’ve just written one word…

Clubhouse

Openwrt bricked 2 of my routers. Be careful

I have to wonder, don’t the majority of Russians pretty much know that their government is full of shit?

Let me offer my perspective,as a Russian. People do not want to lose everything like they did in the 90s. Yes, everyone understands that the government is full of shit, but they believe in the belief (google it, an interesting concept) that it’s virtuous to support a government.

It’s like a classic trolley problem. Yes, you’d probably push that lever, but you know of consequences and you just purchased a car and your wife is pregnant. You are caught in this unending circle, you simply do not want to deal with it because it doesn’t affect you. But when it does affect you, it’s always the west: shock therapy of the 90s, current sanctions, debit card ban, visa bans, etc.

https://opg.optica.org/ol/fulltext.cfm?uri=ol-49-6-1429&id=547584

You can read their previous papers

Okay, let’s read and find out whether we can find something that we don’t know.

1. There’s no paper, there is no letter, it’s a simple statement at the institute page. The way science is being communicated nowadays is frustrating.

2. From the statement

However, alongside the commercially available C and L-bands, we used two additional spectral bands called E-band and S-band. Such bands traditionally haven’t been required because the C- and L-bands could deliver the required capacity to meet consumer needs.

So they indeed broadened the frequency range.

3. They also did not say anything about limitations. They just pushed this bizarre number everywhere 🤷🏼‍♂️