But is Yandex government owned? What about Russians abroad that send money back home to their families, and a percentage of that ends up going via taxes to Putin? Are we boycotting all Russians everywhere globally?
I think the OP’s point still stands, but it is a fairly weak argument.
I am Russian and I do oppose Putin’s regime. My family is in Russia, though. If I send them money (which), and they pay for, say, groceries, which are taxed, some tiny part of my money will be used to fund the regime and the war. I am very disappointed but there is no way for me to just yank all my family and friends and relocate them to a less fucked-up jurisdiction.
Doing business with Yandex is a whole other beast. Kagi can choose to use a worse search engine API which doesn’t involve paying money to a Russian company. Are there some market forces at hand here? Maybe a lot of Russian expats pay for Kagi because it has good Russian-language results? I don’t know.
Edit:
> But is Yandex government owned?
It isn’t, but I really doubt it has no ties with it. It would be interesting to trace and see if Yandex Cloud’s international branch money gets back to its Russian counterpart, or if they are two separate things.
Your stance seems to be that interacting with any Russian means supporting genocide, regardless of if they support Putin. Which is so absurd as to be likely ragebait. So yes, it’s a quality issue :)
And if you’re discriminating against all Russians based on their government, even though not all Russians support Putin, then that is unfortunately just racism.
I see. To summarize, you believe all Russians are bad because a Russian person killed your friend and all Americans are good because no American people killed any of your friends?
Is it really that hard to believe people don't want to support a state that has brutally occupied half of Europe for 50 years and is right now murdering Ukrainians every day?
Russia is waging a hybrid war against Europe (and the West in general), there's no way I'd give one of their biggest tech companies even a cent.
The world also consists of people. Are you saying that people around me are better than the Russians? Sure, nice to have finally agree about something.
But that just proves the point you were trying to argue with.
No, you misread. I didn't say people around you are better; I said you probably live in a country with working government institutions and fair elections.
I don't feel you approach this discussion in good faith. I see no point in continuing.
It is silly to grant agency and moral responsibility exclusively to people living within democracies.
The Putin regime made an informal deal with the population "You stay out of politics and we're gonna stay out of your life". The people outsource political power to the regime.
This passive majority represents the bulk of the population, but not the whole of the population. There are two smaller groups. Ultra-patriots who criticize Putin for not doing more war, more suffering etc. And those who criticize the Putin for the war, although this group is not very vocal, but here I do agree with you that's it's difficult to publicly protest in an authoritarian regime.
You can hate ALL Russians all you want but it's not whataboutism to call you out on the hypocritical and hateful position you take.
Saying you have issue with not only a country but all it's people and their offerings because of the countries effects on friends and families just means in the case of the US, that you have no friends that are:
Black Americans, Native Americans, Latino Americans, pretty much all of South Americans, large portions Africans, the Balkans, Vietnamise, Most of the Arab countries etc?
Surely the rational position to take is to hate the countries policies not all their citizens. I also dislike Russia policies but boycutting or hating the creator of 7 Zip because he is Russian seems weird.
Some want major version numbers to mean "giant changes" and others want version numbers to mean "not just a security patch". Others want something between.
None of these approaches is any more correct than the other and theres zero chance of getting everyone to agree only one should be used. You just have to understand which delivery approach is being taken to consume it accordingly.
E.g. 1.4.8, 14.8, and 148 all tell their own story. 1.4.8 implies many small releases with a few decent size changes along the way. 14.8 implies a medium speed (perhaps ~yearly) regular delivery if bigger enhancements with minor patches/fixes in between. 148 implies a long running continuous rapid delivery of all things as they become available.
I am sympathetic to your desire to defend your country, which has many good things about it as well I am sure. But using Hacker News for solely this purpose is against the rules, so don't do that.
But you also shouldn’t be surprised if someone challenges the implications or merits of your anecdata, for the benefit of others that might take it as good advice.
Just because someone has perceived that doing X leads to Y doesn’t mean there’s causation. Easy and common mistake to make though.
Anyway, I’m not trying to convince you of anything. My comment was aimed at other readers; further discussion between us won’t be necessary. Good day! :)
You’ve missed the point. This is a cultural commitment not a logistics problem to engineer away.
The person you replied to did kindly try to explain to you, but you seem to have ignored it.
If you don’t understand the culture of Burning Man, that’s fine. But maybe don’t callously reduce 150 peoples’ labor of love to “btw just use this machine”.
You need to set those rates against other seasonal short term work. Very few people on the resto line has a stable situation the rest of the year either. We should ask if this is utilizing or exploiting society’s dregs. And ask if every event, as big as the Olympics, or as small as a street fair, isn’t burning the same heads.
reply