A long time ago, one server room (located in the basement of the university building) of SPB-IX was flooded. It was a fun day for engineers whom unplugged survived equipment standing knee-deep in water
It was before dam (1) was built and floods were a huge problem in SPB
Maybe we should heavily regulate cash transactions, limit the sizes of cash deposits, implement strict know-your-customer rules for any entities dealing with cash, and enforce reporting rules for transactions between any accounts involving significant cash-derived balances instead?
That argument doesn't work. In fact yes, the government understands that printed money is untrackable and we have extensive tools to deal with that, up to and including the formal sanction of entities that try to evade these controls.
Haha my goodness. Yes, if you're the state, all that is theoretically true, but the catch is of course the problem of legibility. The state is well aware of that, as you noted, but so many transactions themselves are untrackable, some because of explicit state policies (undocumented immigrants line up to purchase money orders to pay taxes a notable example of a collective and voluntary effort to overcome state obstacles that are put in place, but also the many many unbanked individuals in the country, especially those not on the payroll for various reasons). That argument absolutely works if you simply realize that a) the state is never going to be able to actually capture 100% of cash transactions and b) the state's primary goal is not recordkeeping per se but to collect its perceived share, so the greater punishment it dishes out and the more complex laws get in regards to consumer finance, the more likely that those on the cusp simply opt out of the formal system if they're in a position to do so and disappear from all that heavy enforcement measures, much of which the average consumer do not understand fully anyway.
This viewpoint issue is not limited to financial legibility of course. We do know that the underground economy, because data is only reported by authorities, is inflated or deflated for political purposes, further muddling any potential estimations. Oh, and plenty of what the IRS wish to do is just that - wishful, and only when it's convenient for the other party. You can try to regulate cash transactions domestically in a more heavy handed manner, but you're mostly going to affect those least able to afford it to begin with, and the costs involved may not be worth the effort. Oh, and US currency is commonly used abroad, including in place of native currencies in some countries. When it comes to cash, there are only estimates as to how much the government can reasonably regulate the transacting of, and the government's policies have undermined efforts to do so even when they could. Not everyone is in the cohort that posts on HN.
Yes, all of them comply to local laws. But point is Yandex repeatedly denied all accusation of working with government by saying "No, we didn't filter news, it's our algorithms decided this topic from top1 twitter trend is not important at all"
Turns out their "algorithms" was "where source in state_approved_media"
Just for clarification: it's illegal to build news aggregator in Russia if you use any sources that is not certified by Russian government. So technically you're right, "source is state_approved_media", and pretty the same for all Russian news aggregation services.
How much money did Europe paid to Putin for gas supply in last years? They are still paying him even now because they value cheap gas over human lives.
Don't try to play saint card, West is also responsible for sponsoring this bloodshed
So far it seems like the police are being allowed to arrest protesters, no one/very few fights back with molotov cocktails like they did in Ukraine in 2014.
I’m truly sorry for all honest Russians that don’t support their government and what’s going on. But the world cannot let Putin go on and there is only two ways of doing that; military action that will result in full nuclear war or pushing the Russian population to step up and overthrow your government.
It was never about surveillance (you already can't escape from cameras in Moscow).
They can (and will) use this system to restrict movement for "uncomfortable" persons — turnstile will not open for you if government do not like what you said in Twitter.
Little Snitch & co aren't anti-malware solutions even if they seem like they might work against that. Anything which is running on a malware-infected system can't be trusted.
Such firewalls are used for protection against asshole developers which want to collect analytics without asking for confirmation. Apple are one of the assholes and LS can only be an interim solution against the OS developer. This was bound to happen... and I guess only a HW solution will help now.
Little Snitch & co are part of a defense in depth strategy against malware and other threats.
Will it catch everything? No, obviously. Will it catch enough things to make it worth running? I guess that depends on your threat model, but many think it's worth it.
