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

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  • Just don’t make the mistake I’ve did at buying an electric bicycle. The controllers for the engines are mostly proprietary barely sewn together noname pieces of garbage, that you’d need some bullshit adapters and obscure software to flash settings in.

    Also don’t dig yourself too deep into cycling. There are good quality bicycles at a cost of a motorcycle or even a used car, and then there’s aliexpress specials made of whatever was lying around, but there are very few in-between options. I’d suggest just getting the latter and throwing it out when it breaks or you get bored.




  • ~/Sources for stuff I’m only building from sources and no immediate intention to contribute to

    ~/Projects for stuff I’m involved in, with a following structure:

    Projects
     - Personal
     - - Art
     - - Music
     - - Code
     - - - Ideas
     - - - In progress
     - - - Deployed
     - - - Scripts
     - - - Abandoned
     - [Company name]
     - - [Project name]
     - Interviews
     - - [Company name]
    

    The last part grouping project by companies has worked great for me, especially with freelance and outsource work. Sorting personal projects into types and stages feels like a mistake, as every time I have to navigate it, I can’t help but think of limitations of hierarchical file systems, as some of them are multiple types simultaneously, and also moving projects between stages feels dumb.



  • This idea ignores how Russia works. Everyone already knows it’s a totalitarian shithole. They just don’t have the means to fight it, so they either lay low and play along, or try to get the fuck out. Sanctions hit the second group, as well as companies that implement them because they’re losing income. In fact, older folk here still grumble at USSR collapse and how effective free reign of capitalism was in the 90s at extracting wealth out of the country.

    Even if that idea was to hold any water, straight up blocks are not what you’d need. For example, when I open up a site and I see a block page, the idea that pops into my head is always the same - “what a bunch of assholes…”. I can bypass the block either way, but the difference is that it can say either “blocked by the ministry of truth”, or “blocked because ur russian, haha get rekt”. Given how easy it is to get hit by censorship for innocent things, it’s rather easy to shift the blame, while keeping the business running, by just standing up to the ideas of free speech, like not removing the “celebrating the pride month” logo in that country specifically, like all of them did…


  • Is it any 8 years, or continious 8 years? In most places, the requirement is for continious, which is a tough ask. Imagine not being able to leave the country for almost a decade.

    And you need a reason to get residence permit. In most cases there are few: living with spouse, reuniting with family, working, studying, or doing business. Of those, only work, study and business are the ones that are realistically achievable.

    For work, there’s usually also a requirement for employeer to prove that there are no natives available to fill the role. This is a tough process, which takes a lot of time and no guarantee it’d even get approved. So, not many employees even bother unless you have exceptional skills.

    For study, you would have to actually study to avoid expulsion, while somehow earning enough on some part-time remote work to support yourself (or have enough savings to support yourself for years). And then, bachelors is not enough so you must go for PhD. Meanwhile, in both above cases you have to also learn local language. I’m sure there are people who could pull this off, but, again, it’s quite exceptional.

    Last is business. Usually the requirement is to invest somewhere in the ranges of $100k to $500k into local economy. That’s not filthy rich, but, for context, for Russian it’d take 3 years of fighting on the frontlines to earn as much, with a wage considered good enough to risk dying for… And then the country can still deny you permit without any reason.

    It’s because of this, most people I know, who chose to leave the country keep their passports and either settle in Armenia and Georgia with 182/365 days renewable visa-free entry, or run circles between Serbia-Montenegro or Thailand-Vietnam.

    There are also interesting opportunities with digital nomad visas, but, again, the requirements out of reach for most.

    But for oligarchs, this is pennies. They can buy a few outright, then fly private jet to the US as tourists with pregnant wives, get children born there, then send them to study in London. Apply for family reunifications, bam, theyre now citizens of US and UK, in addition to all previous ones.

    I assume if the Russian maintainers showed that they’ve passed the citizenship examinations and their different citizenship is only a matter of time

    It’s the other way around. You have to live for X years to be eligible for the test. Given a common requirement of 5 years, they would have to have started this process 2 years before the war broke out.




  • As a Russian, I have nothing against this. Actually, screw it, just send all of them. Russian MoD’s probably going to put bounties on them, like they did with Leopards. This way, the US finally get to decommission that meme of an aircraft, some AA crew is going to get an easy payday of like $10k each, and the MoD gets to report that they’ve inflicted $20mil worth of damage for only pennies, while in reality only lifting the burden of maintenance of those planes from the US budget. Sounds like win-win-win to me. The only losers here are those few poor Ukrainians who will have to pilot the damn thing.



  • This is absolutely bizarre and a disgrace to the Russian military that this was even a thing. Like, Russia has complete in-house comm systems, all the way down to the silicon. They’re as elegant as charcoal clothing iron, but at least they’re secure. In fact, they’re so paranoid about NSA plants that they even force businesses to use in-house encryption to submit accounting reports. And then the same idiots allow risking lives of officers by using random software in a command center…

    Though I feel like the response is also far from best. There are numerous alternatives they can switch to, so the ban is mostly going to only hit innocent gamers. It’d be much more impactful if they just silently handed access to those channels over to Ukrainians.


  • Ukraine is not committing brutal crimes, not lobbing rockets randomly, hoping to kill anyone, civilian or not

    Check your sources bias. Control phrase is “cluster munitions, Donetsk”. Russia is faaaar from being free of guilt, but, while they have capability to do this to ALL Ukrainian cities, I don’t see any footage of landmines all over Kiyv and Lviv. Another check is to listen to chants(e.g. москаляку на гіляку, смерть русні, etc) of each side. This effectively flips your argument upside down.

    Definitely not comparable, though, at least that we can agree.



  • with no modern appurtenances like internet service and smoke detectors. One electrical outlet per room, small windows, no irrigation in the yard, just a hose. Plain telephone service to one jack. Rabbit ears for TV only. No microwave or dishwasher and only clotheslines for drying laundry

    Bruh. All that is like pennies, comparatively speaking.

    Also, pretty sure you’ve described is like every other property on sale right now, so no need for calculations - just check the local zillow or something.



  • 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…