Luckily my country managed to break free from Soviet Union but you guys are still stuck in it , even though it’s officially collapsed. But even after 30 years of independence Russian government and secret agencies are trying to shift and move things around in my country and we constantly have to be alert .
Cyber attacks on our national defense systems , websites and networks are pretty much every day occurrence here and threat of real military invasion is never out of the question too.
I will be super honest here and i’m sorry if people will get offended. I hate Russia. It ruined my country, killed hundreds of thousands of my people , including few of my relatives and basically destroyed everything we achieved from the end of 1st world war to beginning to 2nd one.
Last 30 years was fruitful decades of rebuilding but there;s still a lot of fear and damage which will take many more decades to correct.
And i really feel bad for all the people there, like you, who would just like to live normal lives and move on but your government just doesnt let you do that.
@Fraggles thank you. Knowing that people across the world care, even though they’ve got their own stuff going on and have no practical reasons to care, feels extremely good, especially compared to our self-selected government’s open hatred towards their own people, that they demonstrate all the time.
@DontBeSilly many Russians hate Russia because it killed their families, friends, beloved ones in the past, and technically hold people hostages by random kills and illegal arrests now. Because it sold them, betrayed them, made them broke, destroyed hopes for the best future and sewerely punished those who objected. Because it sold the country to corrupt church, and made church filthy rich and absurdly powerful. Because of so many things.
Even people who love Russia for all the right reasons like poetry, prose, music etc, mostly hate Russia, and it shows in how they speak about the country, in their tone and negative expectations, and it’s the same about brain-dead patriots, too. Even those hate Russia and would be better of if they could. It’s a bloody monster that’s hurting whoever it currently has powers to hurt, and it never hesitates to hurt its own. I feel that it doesn’t have to be like this. But that’s where we are.
Thanks a lot for the support, it’s much appreciated, and I am incredibely sorry for all the awful and disgusting crimes our government commited to your people and your country.
Granted, this place isn’t Facebook or Twitter, and is pretty low-key, which is why now and then i allow myself to say things about the country I live in too, but honestly even when i do so i make sure not to be too explicit so that their surveillance bots will not pick up on it too easily, so I’ll make sure not to mention the name of the country in the same post, for example, depending on how critical or damaging that post’s content is (most ppl here do know where i live, or it can easily be searched here, i’d imagine, but for me the main thing is my posts don’t get picked up automatically and flagged in their system, which sadly i do fear should definitely be the case with yours [based on how i believe these things work], which is why i took the time to write this, feeling maybe i should tell u that maybe u should be careful about this things; sadly that is the world we live in, but ofc i’m not here to tell u what to do. It’s just that it might be dangerous and i felt i should say something.)
i do hope things get better for you guys, and do know you guys aren’t alone; there’s many other countries sill that live in the same situation and where ppl keep quiet out of fear.
[edit: just to make sure it’s clear where i’m coming from: the reason for my concern is that “spreading false rumors, conspiracy theories, or lies in order to negatively affect the country’s reputation” is plenty of justification for these rulers to throw someone in jail and just forget about them afterwards - I’m sure there’s no need to explain that what was between " " is what they call it, not my perspective, but i think it’s better for me to explain myself fully]
Thanks for the experience and for the advice, it’s quite reasonable. I think Chrono should be fine for now, but if things get worse, I will be editing the post for security reasons, changing text to hamster gifs I dunno. And thank you for the compassion, it means a lot.
There are two interesting facts about our country’s government online presence:
we have quite a few hackers and product engineers who are recruited for attacks, spying on country’s own citizens etc, but the most talented and experienced people historically stay out of it, so they have to recruit those who are left, only partly competent. that leads to attacks that are relatively easily tracked down and outed, hackers getting caught bc they don’t have enough life experience and believe whatever they’re told, etc. People with best skills leave the country or work for the biggest commercial companies, because working for current government is like sitting on ticking bomb, and they also don’t want to pay fair prices, their payment is ridiculously low. That leads to…
as of 2020, after maybe 12 years of our government getting to know about internet (before that, they didn’t really understand the concept, so our networks felt so free), they still rely on human force when it comes to searching for enemies. So if you’re on Facebook or VK or Twitter, you can be tracked soon or not be tracked in years, then one of the Kremlinbots reports your freaking 8 years old repost with very mild and vague critique or maybe a soft joke, and bam! - you’re a terrorist now somehow. But as long as those bots don’t hang out on Chrono, it’s safe and sound.
TLDR: for now, our government is too greedy and detached from the technology era, so they haven’t produced a working concept of automatized theme tracking, and aren’t even competent to copy or steal existing solutions. Instead, they make people read everything manually, and can only cover the sites they consider to be the most dangerous\popular\influental. Even though Chrono was in my personal Top-3 influentional websites for the last year
could be you’re right, but as for countries in the Middle East etc. though they have no own capacity whatsoever (it is changing though), i know they just buy Western surveillance tools (or even hire Western companies) to do the job for them
yup, that’s exactly what i’m talking about, they can’t even buy a nice tool.
when they need tools, the most they can do is hire some scheme company for cheap (bc of the tender system that means they’re going with the cheapest offers, and the cheapest prices can only be presented by schemers). Then said company cannot project nuthin, so it gets a free tool and stamps it with the new logo and a new color scheme, mildly breaking it in the process, or steals code from commercial products, breaking them badly. Then the tool causes the government nothing but problems for 1-2 years, then it’s hidden under the carpet and forgotten about. Then they realise they need a tool again so they organize a tender to save money… the cycle repeats.
Chrono keeps public record of edits, though. Just click the pencil in the upper-right (next to the timestamp) and all of the post’s secrets will be revealed.
EDIT: I guess it only happens if someone else sees the post before the edit, though.
It’s more of a timing thing, I found. If you finish your post and edit it right away, it shows up as if there has been no edits. If there’s been some time since the original post (I don’t know how long, maybe 10 minutes?) it will show up as the edit.
Honestly Ubisoft, EA and Activision are the same level. No one is worse than the other in terms of monetization, they are all bad in their own unique way.
I was up til 3 am this morning: writing. I think I did 4 paragraphs, maybe 5. I can’t remember most of the words, but after doing much rewriting, finally went: “good, that’s good” and went to sleep.
Four or five paragraphs. All that’s left is the rest of the book. Seriously, I know where the story will go, but making stuff interesting to read is the struggle.
Serious answer: not everyone knows that The Onion is satire. There’s even an entire subreddit about people who mistake parody news for real news: r/atetheonion.
Seriously, I know where the story will go, but making stuff interesting to read is the struggle.
