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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • That’s the face I’ve made just yesterday when my friend told me she’s now eligible for a subsidized IT mortgage. That thing was one of Russia’s last ditch attempts at stopping skilled workers from fucking off to different countries. The problem is, she’s a web designer. I guess that counts as IT nowadays, so good for her. But it’s bitter to hear as sr. backend tech who never hit the criteria…


  • Nope. I’ve had a script with almost 100 regex’s that automatically blacklisted around 200 people every time I opened Twitter. Two years in and upwards of 300.000 accounts in the blacklist, I realized that it didn’t even make a dent in dealing with all of the spam I was seeing, and just deleted my account. Best decision ever. I advice you too, to try it out.



  • Scientists experiencing slight inconveniences while doing, let’s face it, not that important of a research < people being stranded off civilization by predatory ISP’s, if not lack of any.

    For the article, the way I read it, there isn’t a problem currently, and it’s not clear whether it will pose a problem in the future, but the alarm bells have already been rung and even if it proves to be true, it doesn’t sound like something that more tech couldn’t solve - just use different materials and coating or whatever. And I don’t see how it’s specific to starlink - nobody seems to bat an eye about ozone layer when NASA does ISS resupply missions or when China is blowing up satellites on orbit.


  • Starlink only exists to solve this problem because the ISPs were paid to do it the old fashioned way

    This only applies to the US. My point is that by it’s nature it is global, and it competes with all the shitty local monopolistic ISP’s around the world. Like, I intend to do a cross-country tour around mediterranean next year, and from experience, local cell providers there can be quite a lot of hit and miss. If starlink is activated there by the time I’m all set, I’m dropping the cash, no question about it. And yeah, like @spidermanchild said, I’m just a tech bro nomad cosplaying an explorer, but there are also people actually living in those regions that have to deal with this bullshit. I know it’s unpopular opinion but I’d say a push against those local ISP’s and getting those rural people a decent internet connection is ultimately doing more good than whatever inconvenience scientists have to deal with scrubbing trails off telescope imagery and filtering out the radio interferences.


  • I really don’t understand people that prefer Google over Mozilla. Firefox works like a charm and Google already knows enough about us IMHO.

    Firefox objectively has poor responsiveness in some apps, hence why some “works only in chrome” banners are justified. Can’t quite put my finger of it, but it got a lot worse somewhere between quantum and heartbleed(but not because of it, I checked), and it never recovered. In my own projects that were time-sensitive, like 3d games and music apps, I couldn’t find the source of it, but found that while some approaches led to major performance hit on firefox, others majorly hit chromium, and vice versa, and it was all about juggling to finding an approach that doesn’t hit either as hard. But in some cases there were none and so I had to choose. Obviously the browser engine with a higher market share wins. And because of that, to be on par with Chrome, Firefox not only has to be better, it has to be not worse in all cases, which is a rather tough challenge.




  • Here ya go.

    Before you go on to tell anything,

    A military parade is a formation of soldiers whose movement is restricted by close-order manoeuvering known as drilling or marching […] parades may also hold a role for propaganda purposes, being used to exhibit the apparent military strength of a country.

    The United States Marine Corps Silent Drill Platoon is a 24-man rifle platoon led by a Captain and Platoon Sergeant of the United States Marine Corps (USMC). Often referred to as The Marching Twenty-Four, the unit performs a unique silent precision exhibition drill. The purpose of the platoon is to exemplify the discipline and professionalism of the Marine Corps

    This is definitely a parade. Don’t think I need to argue that synchronously throwing rifles at each other counts as pass juggling.







  • what’s preventing China from just taking ALL of Russia

    What for? Russia is already drifting into becoming a China’s satellite state. Besides, there’s another resource-rich, sparsely populated, 99.9% Asian country right by their border, with barely any security and which would’ve been part of China already if not for some weeb. If they are going for conquest, Mongolia would be the second target right after Taiwan, but attacking it would tip off Russia to go all in on defense.

    Russia would never threaten China with nukes, because 1) China ALSO has nukes, and 2) China has been the only thing keeping Russia afloat recently.

    The problem here is the amount of them and population density. Just one bomb dropped randomly somewhere in China would probably cause more casualties than the entire Chinese nuclear arsenal targeting the most populous Russian cities. And Russia has an order of magnitude more…



  • In my country, the most popular taxi app(yandex) has an option to allow hitchhikers. If you and other person order a ride with this option on and a similar route, it will pick one of you then the other, and then drop each other off. Currently, the savings are not as good as I would expect, roughly 15-20% off for both, and there are hard limits like 2 minute wait time with no paid waiting, non-refundable order fee, only one person, no baggage, and this option only shows up if you’re either taking a long ride or if someone’s already riding one that somewhat coincides with yours. Sometimes, no second is found and the company, but mostly the driver, just have to eat the discount they gave you for enabling it. But, already as is, taxis are wrecking public transit and car ownership by utilizing cheaper immigrant labor. With scale they can potentially be filled more consistently and with more than 2 riders, and with autonomous cars there’s no need to pay the driver, even further reducing the cost. Also, never parking could massively increase throughput on some of the streets where there are entire lanes are filled with parked cars. At least in my city, this has enormous potential. The only problem is that competition is lacking, therefore reduced cost won’t necessarily result in lower prices.



  • Well, I wouldn’t worry about 2 and 3 that much. It’s just that as a foreigner, especially if you are from the US, you will most definitely fall under the surveillance of FSB and the cops will look at you twice, but they’re not paid half-decent enough to actually give a shit and do their job properly. They might harass you here and there but if you don’t do anything stupid like protesting in red square or doing selfies in front of military bases, then they’ll have nothing against you. I imagine that’s not that much worse than living in the US under CIA’s umbrella and trigger happy cops. Other than that, it’s not nearly an extreme hellhole like NK, Afghanistan or Syria that people make it sound like. In fact, you can get by in Moscow or St. Petersburg without a guide or translator just fine. I’d rather advise to watch out for the tourist traps(the usual), and to avoid getting out of the city limits and into the suburbs because of the much increased crime levels.

    Ah, and put the fact that for every dollar you spend there, you put 20 cents straight into Putin’s pocket into that list…

    And also that you’d probably need a visa and it’s a hassle…

    And that you’d probably need a Russian friend to get you hooked up with the basics and avoid going through the bureaucracy - like with currency exchange, credit card, carrier plan, etc…

    Also that weather is rather harsh there…

    And also that it’s probably the dirtiest country on earth because city planners didn’t zone out lawns and parks properly therefore the mud gets spread absolutely everywhere…

    And that internet is half-broken, with half sites censored while the others block everyone from Russian IP’s because sanctions…

    And that Ukraine might not let you in afterwards…

    And that you’d for sure be questioned by your homecountry’s intelligence services…

    And that’s about all that I can think of.