Christmas is a holiday of the family, especially if you reject the consumerist overtones. It's — for me — a lovely week of spending time together, eating too much, and watching bad old movies.
I really like everything about that atmosphere, so the McDonald's ad felt shitty, heartless, and cynical. Why bother making the holidays better for others, just come to McDo!
I chuckled because of the s/Russia/Putin/g nonsense everywhere. I'm not laughing at anyone's expense if they forcibly lose their home, no matter where and under which circumstances.
You see, millions are already killed in the biggest war in Europe since WW2 and it looks like this is just the prelude.
Russia is threatening to fight Europe as of yesterday, continue to increase weapon production and militarisation. It is obvious that it just cannot stop as its economy and social order is switching more and more to the war-time. China backs russia up and officially declaring that it cannot allow Russia to lose.
The alliance which was created specifically to stop this scenario is now being neutralised by US withdrawing from it.
And you still call it "Russia/Putin nonsense". Do you live somewhere where you feel isolated from all of this?
Please tell me so I can go there as well. Because at the place where I live - Russians drones are flying over important infrastructure mapping it out without government/military being able to stop it. Russians propaganda fills social media, and politicians are corrupted by russia without hiding it too much.
Also what about that "millions" number? Where did that come from? I can barely find any mentions of numbers exceeding 500.000 people being killed thus far.
Sorry, I meant killed and injured. I don't keep up with the numbers, but few years ago it was at least around half a million from both sides. I extrapolated it for last few years.
You misunderstand. I'm not against reporting about Russia. The oversimplification of reducing everything down to "Putin this, Putin that" is my issue. Imagine me saying everything the EU is doing is explicitly because of Ursel. It's stupid, ignorant and reminds me of Trump Derangement Syndrome which had a similar effect on reporting about US issues.
I live in Germany so I'm fucked either way. I'm also aware of NATO expansion until a point where Russia couldn't ignore it anymore. You think Russia will attack Europe, I think the West is keen on fighting a war against Russia. I don't subscribe to any of the narratives you presented, especially since I think it obvious that its the West that finds itself having to wage a war because their currencies, social order and demographics needing a reset. NATO being a defensive alliance is a joke.
Since we're unlikely to come closer to an understanding I'll refrain from going further.
> You think Russia will attack Europe, I think the West is keen on fighting a war against Russia.
And the way it was keen on fighting a war is (check notes) _increase economic ties to the point that the whole of Germany's economic growth was dependent on Russian' gas_? Or to reduce military spending year over the year? Or to stop conscription in all countries?
It is completely a wild take for me to hear that the west was keen to fight a war with nuclear power by the means of reducing its fighting abilities to almost zero while the other side militarises? Am I having some crazy dream?
Honest question: why don't you emigrate to Russia since you seem to admire it so much? They are specifically looking for people who 'share Russian values', and Germany is on the 'white list' - so acquiring citizenship should be really easy and you don't need to live in a country you apparently seem to hate.
This is the Russian way of putting it. Guess what, NATO doesn't "expand". Each and every NATO member had to apply for membership themselves, after a national decision to do so. Any guesses why all Russian neighbours want to be NATO members?
I didn't say you were. I live in a NATO member myself which is nowhere near Russia and yet keeps baiting Russia and using it as an easy scapegoat for its issues... Now and then it's true. Thankfully I haven't been accused of being a Russian bot for a while. :)
> The oversimplification of reducing everything down to "Putin this, Putin that" is my issue. Imagine me saying everything the EU is doing is explicitly because of Ursel. It's stupid, ignorant and reminds me of Trump Derangement Syndrome which had a similar effect on reporting about US issues.
Those oversimplifications are in fact also really at the core of the issues. Russia without Putin would be far less likely to have quagmired itself in this economy-wrecking show of technical and strategic incompetence. His navy is intimidated by a nation without active seamen! His invasion forces got stuck on the way in, for weeks!
And in the US, it has literally been proven career suicide, time and time again, for a GOP politician to buck the line, even a little, against that demented, narcissistic idiot. I can't believe the nation has not only created, but sustained, this freakish coopting of half the government - but it has. If Trump says he likes poop-flavored ice cream, GOP senators will line up for their brown-lipped photo ops. I guarantee it.
It's hard to make adequate satire of these two hellish clowns.
Who isn't a complete jester nowadays? Can you take anyone serious who has some impact and public presence? It's one big complete that most of us aren't in. Zelensky is a coke head, he's surrounded by proud fascists wearing their symbols while EU is talking of saving democracy by propping up a government that cancelled it's elections. Scholz stood next to Biden while he proclaimed that the US will end NS2. People get debanked for having wrong opinions but it's all meant to keep our freedoms. You can't take any of it seriously anymore.
Well, you mentioned living in Odessa in 2022 but I shouldn't have assumed your nationality based on that, sorry about that.
And yet you're the one doing all the name calling, not me. I'll ignore this thread from now on, you're obviously not able to have a reasonable exchange of opinions. Bye.
What about depressed people? What about stressed people? What about people with autism who overreact when spooked? What about people on the edge who didn't care about the consequences because of the life situation?
What about people who are convinced that police may kill them for mild violation as they saw that multiple times on the news and social media? The reaction to flee may be justified at the moment as it is life or death anyway, even if only in their heads.
There are a lot of "normal" people around who will act abnormally in a high stress situation.
Driving on public roads carries a responsibility to respond reasonably in all kinds of stressful situations. People incapable of handling a traffic stop should not be licensed.
> Driving on public roads carries a responsibility to respond reasonably in all kinds of stressful situations.
Yes.
> People incapable of handling a traffic stop should not be licensed.
Also yes. But both of those points apply to the (US) cops and they frequently fail on both points (the first amply demonstrated by how many police chases end up in crashes and/or deaths; the second by any one of thousands of videos showing where the cops needlessly escalate traffic stops.)
No they're not, people have irrational reactions to things all the time, especially under stress. Getting startled, panicking, and fleeing is definitely one of those.
People will confess to crimes they didn't commit if the police are persuasive enough, that's why such evidence is illegal.
Thank you for speaking to reality of situations that the majority of internet commenters never talk about. I think dang needs to put the HN member lock back on.
You know, some of us were already living then and it is not some distant event we have no knowledge of.
For example:
> Re: The soviet government did not want to evacuate the town of Pripyat
> Debunking: Legasov indicated the opposite. He said that the decision to evacuate was made quickly, even though the levels of radiation in the town were not considered to be dangerous.
WTF? The level of radiation was not considered to be dangerous when your reactor was blown open? Are you fucking kidding?
> Re: The government made an effort to conceal everything regarding the accident and what was happening.
> Legasov stated that this was not the case, and that information was not provided at the time because it didn't exist. The situation was very confusing, and information was scarce, coming from multiple conflicting sources and estimates, making it difficult to collect, filter, and access the correct information.
The accident happened on 26 April 1986, and on the 1st of May, _4 days later_ there was a celebration of Labour Day - a mandatory parade in Kyiv within just 100 km. And no-one knew about the disaster from the official sources. Only people with access to foreign radio knew about the disaster, others were happily marching with red flags on the streets breathing polluted air.
And so on, and so forth...
He claims that they had all the equipment ready and knew the actual levels, but at the same time were confused and information was scarce, and the level of radiation were not that bad - it this some type of propaganda for the dumb?
I agree there are some claims in this article that should be further scrutinized but it's true that the levels of radiation were not as high as one might assume. The direction of the wind during and immediately following the disaster slowed the spread of radioactive material over Pripyat (this is also why southern Belarus was hit so hard). The prevailing winds in that region are north east and the Chernobyl power plant was on the north side of the city. By the time of the May day parade the winds had shifted such that Kiev was downwind from Chernobyl.
The KGB did their best to contain information about the disaster in general and the USSR wanted the May day parade to go on as-planned to make it look like things were fine. Even those with enough power or connections to be aware of the danger were pressured to participate. The May day parade was later often referred to in infamy by the Ukrainian independence movement following the disaster.
Most of my information comes from what I remember of reading "Midnight in Chernobyl" and "Chernobyl the History of a Nuclear Disaster"
I think too often these historical "debunking" exercises are really just exercises in overzealously uncharitable interpretation. Some of the distinctions drawn are asinine especially in the context of a dramatic presentation. And some are even importantly wrong, as you've now pointed out which I wouldn't have thought of on a skim-by reading.
Just like we have functional literacy and information literacy, there should be such a thing as Debunking Literacy. Are you actually debunking or just uncharitably interpreting?
If we dismiss the possibility that the post itself is a part of Russian propaganda to whitewash the soviet legacy (which they are engaging now at scale), then the next best explanation is that the author lacks the context of living in the USSR to correctly interpret the recordings.
In USSR everyone lied. Telling anything against the party will put you and your family in grave danger - it is basically a suicide. There were no free press, no activism, and all information was filtered by the party with complicated process of deciding what should be published and when and who gets punished for what.
People in the west have no understanding what it means to live all your life in such conditions so they try to interpret people as if it happened in their country.
It can be that the person was trying to make amends with the party to ease the social ostracization for his family, friends or colleagues. It doesn't mean the person is telling the truth at all, it means that he show loyalty to the party line by telling that the system was efficient and all his higher-ups were doing the best job.
Wholeheartedly agree, this is good analysis. I think there's a strong tankie tradition online and it's rather distinct in how anti intellectual it is, and would not write off the possibility of apologetics, but I completely agree that if true it's next explained by an institutionally fundamental culture of fear.
I have the opposite experience - on macOS you can guarantee what users will see when you distribute your notarized app, while on Windows you cannot for undefined time.
How often do you notarize your apps? Why does the speed matter at all? In my cases it takes 2 seconds for the notarization to complete.
The length of time notarization takes depends primarily upon how large and complicated your app is, and how different is from previous versions of the same application you've previously notarized. The system seems to recognize large blocks of code that it's already analyzed and cleared and doesn't need to re-analyze. How much your binary churns between builds can greatly influence how fast your subsequent notarizations are.
A brand new developer account submitting a brand new application for notarization for the first time can expect the process might take a few days; and it's widely believed that first time notarizations require human confirmation because they do definitely take longer if submitted on a weekend or on a holiday. This is true even for extremely small, trivial applications. (Though I can tell you from personal experience that whatever human confirmation they're doing isn't very deep, because I've had first time notarizations on brand new developer accounts get approved even when notarizing a broken binary that doesn't actually launch.)
And of course sometimes their servers just go to shit and notarizations across the board all take significantly longer than normal, and it's not your fault at all. Apple's developer tooling support is kinda garbage.
“Notarize your macOS software to give users more confidence that the Developer ID-signed software you distribute has been checked by Apple for malicious components. _Notarization_of_macOS_software_is_not_App_Review. The Apple notary service is an automated system that scans your software for malicious content, checks for code-signing issues, and returns the results to you quickly.”
⇒ It seems notarization is static analysis, so they don’t need to launch the process.
Also, in some sense a program that doesn’t launch should pass notarization because, even though it may contain malware, that’s harmless because it won’t run.
Ukraine had very strict banking rules for at least a decade. It had much more sense to launder through Cyprus for example or other EU countries like Latvia (when it was still possible) or Hungary if you’re politically connected.
Thats common knowledge for everyone even tangentially related to finance industry and likely for anyone who ever did international business with cross border payments . Not sure what kind of "sources" you expect to see here.
> Ukraine had very strict banking rules for at least a decade
Perhaps for it's own populace, but not for it's rulers and those who they work with.
Okay, so basically you’ve read some “anonymous sources” and decided they are true.
Because for me, as a person who did international business from Ukraine it makes absolutely zero sense to launder through Ukraine as it is:
1) no part of any union, so you will be unable to spend or move money outside.
2) it has extreme bank regulation, and you cannot just send money outside without cause. Receiving and sending money for fake “services” will not work (compared to a lot of other places I know)
3) it has a lot of independent anti-corruption institutions. You can be sure that any government official fears the consequences of doing something illegal.
4) it is in a state of war and any suspicious money operation will trigger investigation from SBU as well, since Russia tries to pay for its agents.
If there is corruption and money laundering happening, it is well outside of any path available for regular people.
It’s advisable not to judge within your limited worldview. Not everyone “reads” mainstream media, some people have real world experience.
Your arguments regarding why Ukraine can’t be used for money laundering are laughable and just show you are now aware how certain things in financial world work. That’s totally fine - but it gets distorted when some extended judgements are made based on very limited worldview.
So enrich my and other peoples world view - this is what this forum is about. Instead of saying "I'll leave it to your imagination", please provide any substance of your claims - anything we can talk about.
Since you didn't I have to guess, what you are talking about.
Do you mean some Russians used Ukraine as a money laundering middleman, specifically through corruption of politicians and elites in the system there? Because it sounds like it. Before the "conflict" (invasion) happened.
I'll leave your imagination to judge who used ukraine as money laundering machine. To have some supplementary data for that, we can look where the money entering ukraine come from for say last 5 years. You can easily find how much was coming from russia and compare it with flow from say EU. You should be capable of drawing your own conclusions after.
As Apple customer I strongly disagree. Both iOS and macOS 26 look refreshing. Few visual bugs have almost zero impact on day to day life and TBH I love liquid glass effects.
There were much more disastrous releases in the past, it is just everyone have an opinion about UI these days.
Also as an Apple customer, iOS and macOS' latest releases _look_ nice, but they're unpolished and iOS still has some bugs. They were correct in their assessment. New releases used to have actual quality to them, now they feel rushed out.
I mean previous serious bugs included damaged file system, broken photo library, failing time machine backups, or when half of your files on iCloud drive disappears.
I consider few glitching UI animations or misplaced transitions to be tolerable.
Plus one! I love the visual refresh. The minor version bump with options to reduce the glass effect a little shows Apple is willing to iterate on the nits people have with it.
Yeah, would not recommend. From my experience tweaking three OSes to be similar enough to be able to form muscle memory for efficient use is not trivial.
Unless you spend 99% of time in terminal, then it can be done, but in that case OS doesn’t matter. That is what I personally ended up doing.
I didn't really have any issues except for the control-C/V problem. I still use Linux and windows intermingled (windows for work and gaming and Linux for everything else)
I think this sums up the feeling about this new era. Indeed, who cares?
Empathy is the biggest sin according to our new elites.
By the end of the day when you don’t care enough, you may finally start enjoying this AI slop.
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