Hacker News Reader

> That's why I left Russia and I hope forever!

> dirty rotten mouths of nasty Kremlin bastards

> Heck, the majority of Russians doesn't even bother to learn elementary English!

> Stupid people buy everything Kremlin tells them, including version about protecting Russian citizens from US NSA.

> thanks to backward masses

> P.S. I hope to get rid of toxic Russian citizenship in the future.

I think the only thing toxic here is how you write and view other humans and your fellow countrymen as inferior beings.

I have no Russian heritage, but I lived in rural cities around Russia for a year and was there another 6 months in Moscow after Russia invaded Ukraine. Russia is definitely much different from the Western world and there are a lot of things I disagree with, but I would never call anyone stupid for supporting Putin or the government.

Calling folks stupid and backward for supporting stuff you dont support is just you thinking you are better than everyone else when you are not. Don't be a dick because some people are less fortunate than you and didn't have an opportunity to learn critical thinking. Even people much smarter than you might support what you don't like. The world isn't black and white.

You are in for a rude awakening if you believe that other governments don't lie to their citizens. Whatever government you currently support and get your new citizenship from, you are a pawn and part of the "backward masses" for whatever fucked up scheme that government is cooking up to screw you over.

This majority is totally fine to imprison unwanted minorities. This majority is totally fine to restrict my freedoms. This majority thinks they are right because they are majority.

So in short, the majority asks me to sacrifice myself for their sake because I'm in minority and they are in majority.

If so, f##k them!

P.S. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged

I have left my parents and many friends and colleagues in Russia. They all are kind and smart and good people. They just can't leave the country as I did: they don't want to, they are bound to their family, they have business there, they don't work in IT, they don't know English etc.

The fact that you've left Russia is not making you `special` or `elite`. There are bad and stupid people everywhere, as well as good and smart and awesome people. World is not black and white.

Being part of a minority is not the same as being 'elite' or 'special' in the sense you seem to imply, and I can't see that the author claims to be part of some kind of elite either? What are you trying to say ?

That's how democracy works. Are you against democracy?

There's a difference between democracy and ochlocracy ("mob rule").

It's democracy (with a small d) when I agree with it, ochlocracy when I don't?

No, this is a rather cynical thing to say.

In a free society, the rule of the people is only one of the pillars of freedom. Other pillars include the rule of law, certain inalienable rights, etc. Without these, the rule of the people descend into majoritianism or ochlocracy.

The textbook example of ochlocracy is the French Revolution between the Insurrection of 10 August 1792 and the Thermidorian Reaction.

Is the practical mechanism of ochlocracy that it's a democracy with sore winners?

Yes. Any thinking person should be against democracy in the sense of "any time we can get one vote over 50% for something we should pass the something".

This is why the US government was set up with various undemocratic features. This is why there are things like constitutions that require supermajorities to modify.

Protecting minorities from the tyranny of the majority is one of the main purposes of good governmenance.

Any thinking person recognizes that in the function "votes(issue) > X%" X isn't fixed to 50. I think people should get a say in proportion to how much it affects them and having X be 100% is a perfectly sane and optimal democratic decision process.

Having X be 100% means nothing ever gets decided outside of very very small groups. See http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and-... for some actual data on what people do when presented with polls.

Yeah, thats why Trump won with minority of votes. Just as you like. And i like it too!

The US isn't even a democracy so it doesn't really apply, does it? He'd not have won in a democracy.

Democracy screws folks over very easily.

Please don't make assumptions about what I like.

I think it is completely appalling how russian majority treats minorities, I'm not even talking about political parties or freedom of speech. Homosexuals and smaller ethnicities there are having hard time. A friend of mine lived in Russia, being half black - the constant racism from general populace forced him to leave. I like russian people but not russian society. Some psychologists say that societies have collective consciousness, whatever that is, in the case of Russia it has many scars and it just can't be pretty, that's probably one of the reasons russians are attached to their literary cultural identity. I give them that, their literature is great, although it's problematic that so many russians still think that their culture is somehow superior to others.

(ethnic minority and progressive here) This majority can pretty easily be convinced that everything you are mentioning is bad. They are not dumb, they are misguided and they have very poor political education. It's not their fault they behave so, it's the legacy, they have to live with. It will take a lot of time to convince them all that their current way of thought is not right, not good and do not serve their interests, but this sacrifice of time and effort may worth it - for future generations, at least. You may say that it's not your war and you'll be right. But forgive them for they see not the full picture (Luke 23:34).

Nah, having lived in such a country (ex-USSR), I'm pretty confident to call most of who still lives there stupid as fuck in regards to the bigger picture.

When you live with such people long enough but still can't understand what the flying fuck is everyone thinking, then it's either you're insane or them.

Sometimes it turns out it's them. 50% of the world's population is literally dumber than the average.

*than the median

* for IQ (a normal distribution), the mean and the median (and the mode for that matter) are the same number.

Except that IQ is only approximately normal at small deviations from the mean. Otherwise it's quite skewed

I mean no one has IQ of -5.

IQ is normally distributed by definition, not by some natural property of humans.

> I think the only thing toxic here is how you write and view other humans and your fellow countrymen as inferior beings.

Eh, might be toxic. Might be a natural human response to seeing the majority of his countrymen accept propaganda without question. You don't know this guy. For me his comment read more like a frustrated individual than someone that thinks he is superior.

I imagine similar trends can be found in many countries, including the US. The desire to belong is strong, and sometimes it's in our best interest to think less and cheer more.

" Don't be a dick because some people are less fortunate than you and didn't have an opportunity to learn critical thinking."

This is just a bit more polite way of calling them stupid.

This is exactly why here in Russia people generally do not like so called "liberals". Try to understand a person who feels himself as he's at the next evolution stage. There is no any chance that the majority votes for him or party he represents or supports. Unfortunately, such persons associate themself with democracy, what automatically discredits this word in our country.

It sounds like you have the Curse of Knowledge.

Take a look at this experiment, it shows that what is self-evident to you may not be as self-evident to others.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/83l/overcoming_the_curse_of_knowledg...

"In 1990, Elizabeth Newton did a fascinating psychology experiment: She paired participants into teams of two: one tapper and one listener. The tappers picked one of 25 well-known songs and would tap out the rhythm on a table. Their partner - the designated listener - was asked to guess the song. How do you think they did?

Not well. Of the 120 songs tapped out on the table, the listeners only guessed 3 of them correctly - a measly 2.5 percent. But get this: before the listeners gave their answer, the tappers were asked to predict how likely their partner was to get it right. Their guess? Tappers thought their partners would get the song 50 percent of the time. You know, only overconfident by a factor of 20. What made the tappers so far off?

They lost perspective because they were "cursed" with the additional knowledge of the song title.Chip and Dan Heath use the story in their book Made to Stick to introduce the term:

    "The problem is that tappers have been given knowledge (the song title) that makes it impossible for them to imagine what it's like to lack that knowledge. When they're tapping, they can't imagine what it's like for the listeners to hear isolated taps rather than a song. This is the Curse of Knowledge. Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it. Our knowledge has "cursed" us. And it becomes difficult or us to share our knowledge with others, because we can't readily re-create our listeners' state of mind.""

I am a Russian too, moved to New Zealand. I was talking to my colleague from Russia via Linkedin, he was asking me about moving to NZ, getting the visa and so on. But now he can't read my response...sigh

Update: no, he has just responded, says that LinkedIn still works fine, probably they are negotiating or something.

Some small russian ISP just do not synchronize their database of blacklisted sites with Roskomnadzor central database.

Also, LinkedIn seems to have several IP addresses, some of them may not be blacklisted yet.

The main problem is in tendency itself: the government writes crazy laws and trying to enforce these laws in real life.

It's good that these laws still are not very effective (I mean it's still possible to bypass them) but looking over last 4 years, I see how significantly internet freedom is deteriorated in Russia (i.e. before 2012, there was no such thing is Russian firewall which maintained at federal level by the government).

This law isn't crazy. They are just not meant for the purpose the government tells everybody.

get a VPN

> Heck, the majority of Russians doesn't even bother to learn elementary English!

I'm not necessary disagreeing, but why should they? I mean, it is obviously useful, but it doesn't directly translate to quality of life improvement.

You are right, English is almost useless in Russia.

It IS useful if you work in IT and have to read docs, but basic English is enough for that.

Knowing more languages allows you to get perspective and info from more people. English has the most diverse perspectives because it is the de facto language of business around the world. Russian is spoken in... Russia. Knowing only Russian limits you to Russian information sources and perspectives.

While English is indeed very useful, Russian is spoken in quite a bit of countries as a first or second language (mainly in the former USSR).

"Basic English is enough for that" ? I am amazed at the simplicity of the work you are referring to. Do they still pay a salary for that, or are these people supposed to work for free? Maybe they get paid through something like a Russian fiverr?

It certainly indirectly translates to it though. English + internet = tons more information. English + travel = far more destinations. English + business = far more international opportunities.

For example, want to open up some business in Germany? You're going to have an easier time speaking either German or English than if you just speak Russian. Swap in Chinese/French/Spanish/Arabic if you like, but all of these still take a back seat to English (at the moment).

That's true, but learning a foreign language takes money and incredible amount of time (hundreds or thousands of hours). Potential opportunities by themselves are not going to keep many people motivated enough to push through.

Internet is indeed very beneficial in a sense that it provides a tangible reward path at least for learning basics.

>The general principle is that any government is constantly trying to expand itself and limit citizen's freedoms. The only force which can prevent government from endlessly limiting citizen's freedoms is the majority of citizens (definitely not a minority of non-rich citizens). Every freedom above what masses asking for is only at mercy of the government's bueracrats.

The fundamental issue affecting all governments and organizations is that they select for Machiavellian or power-growing behaviours. An individual not maximizing power would lose to one who does, as greater power can buy more allies and followers.

There is a reason we see these outcomes in almost every country. It is emergent behaviour. Blaming the people - or even the politicians - will not help. It is our structures that are inherently flawed; you can't expect people to act against their own interests.

If you would like to know more I'd recommend starting with CGPGrey's video, rules for rulers, or visiting my prior comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12880180

This is a fundamental force that affects the entire world. Its impact on our lives is greater than any new technology.

All the 'bad actions' by governments are understandable in this framework. Actions on climate change, freedom, privacy, etc.

We need to solve this.

> It means that in absolutely any country masses fully deserve their government.

Pretty much.

Why should Russia allow a US company to mine private data about its citizens on a large scale when it is known that the US government basically can force any US company to hand over any data it desires.

That's why they have passed a law whereby private data from social networks about its citizens has to be stored within Russia and must not be transmitted to any other country.

Linkedin knew that but they ignored it, probably because it didn't make economic sense for them

You can argue if it is acceptable or not for a government to step in and prevent foreign governments from acquiring such data about its population, but calling people stupid like you did frankly makes _you_ look stupid.

The question here is whether the government should deal with personal data access rights or the people themselves.

That was my point. As a libertarian I would in general tend towards not having the government involved with this stuff, but Russia and the US are two countries which have bad relations at the moment and there's uncertainty if they might have a military conflict in the near future.

Here it's hard to say if it is justified as I do not know what the US secret services and the US military might be able to do with this kind of data in a conflict. (having the passwords of XX million Russians could be devastating in a cyberattack as many will do the stupid thing and reuse the same password everywhere)

They already have the passwords. Also, Russia doesn't and won't force any company to store users' data exclusively under their jurisdiction, as this would not allow any foreign company to operate in Russia, making your arguments incorrect.

> They already have the passwords

Which is a good reason to let them continue collecting them indefinitely?

> Also, Russia doesn't and won't force any company to store users' data exclusively under their jurisdiction, as this would not allow any foreign company to operate in Russia, making your arguments incorrect.

You state this as if it was a fact, but there is great uncertainty among lawyers and businesses if the law requires data to be stored exclusively in Russia or if that's not the case. In any way you'll have to ask for permission which they might never grant you if you are a company like Facebook that's storing very sensitive information.

> Which is a good reason to let them continue collecting them indefinitely?

Which is not something your government can forbid or even verify, they have no way of enforcing anything under other jurisdictions. Whatever company says it did or didn't do there - the government has no choice but to believe them.

Look, I'm a Libertarian as I stated before, I do not even want a government to exist as they are oppressive by nature but I recognise that there's brutal geopolitical competition among world powers.

I can't say with the little information I've got if it is necessary or not but I understand the rationale whereby someone might implement this because they are not willing to bet the survival of their people or their nation on the goodwill of others.

You can easily get VPN and continue to use Linkedin if you need to.

> Kremlin loves to spy on its own citizens. And they already did that for a long time.

Most of the governments do love to spy on its own citizens, for obvious reasons.

> You can easily get VPN and continue to use Linkedin if you need to.

VPN is only temporary cure. I think soon or later Kremlin will try to crack down use of VPN when it becomes popular.

> Most of the governments do love to spy on its own citizens, for obvious reasons.

And I'm not fond of most governments and even notion of big intrusive government.

> VPN is only temporary cure. I think soon or later Kremlin will try to crack down use of VPN when it becomes popular.

Correct, but VPN would allow you to use Linkedin until you have not managed to get rid of the Russian citizenship

> P.S. I hope to get rid of toxic Russian citizenship in the future.

(I don't know what kind of) news for you: US and UK are both such governments. With less action between the surveillance and the police I guess, for now.

Well, afaik VPN is so widely used in Russia and even bimbo girls know how to use it. When you are going to Turkey for vacation, VK.com ( Russian Facebook) is blocked there because of porno content and you have to use VPN. Then there are resources as bbc news and netflix that didnt allow to watch video from Russia due to copyright reasons, and that again always was worked around with VPN.

> The real motivation is that the Kremlin loves to spy on its own citizens. And they already did that for a long time.

This doesn't prevent or help Russia from spying on its own citizens.

I get that you are anxious. But the traffic that travels from your computer to servers outside of Russia is just as easy to spy on for Russian intelligence services as the case where the servers are located inside the country.

It does, however, make it more difficult for the US to spy on Russian citizens, which it has been caught trying to do.

No, it does make a huge difference, actually. If the traffic is travelling to outside servers, it can be encrypted, and there's no mitigation that they can do to get access. But if it ends up on the servers inside the country, they control the endpoint where it has to be decrypted to be processed. Then it becomes a kind of a reverse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SORM#SORM-2 set-up, with every prominent service provider having a preinstalled tap for the agencies.

I wonder what the Kremlin thinks of Livejournal.ru these days? Livejournal's a "back in the 2000s" memory for most of the English world, but as far as I know, Livejournal.ru is the top blogging-oriented network in Russia (http://blog.webcertain.com/targeting-russia-the-top-8-russia...). Also as far as I know, LJ's servers are still in the USA.

Mentioned this in another thread off the same converasion: Russia intelligence services can almost certainly break consumer grade encryption.

There is no supporting infrastructure for this at the moment, even if you presume, that they stole secret keys from some CAs.

Are you claiming that the Russian government doesn't have a domestic surveillance infrastructure?

Technically it has, but only for unencrypted communications and without cooperation from internet companies. Which they really want to change with all the new laws and everything.

So the assertion is that Russian intelligence services cannot thwart encryption, including the encryption that it standardized for civilian use?

If this were true, I would feel very comfortable speaking about politics in Russia, as in the United States all consumer-grade encryption is being broken by our intelligence services.

There is no "encryption for civilian use", they did, however, standardize the encryption for government use.

I'm not sure what you mean by "civilian use encryption". If it's SSL, then I don't see how they would have the means - so far as I know, it's still cryptographically secure, and unlike US, they can't just force certificate authorities to cooperate and allow them to do MITM.

There have been some attempts by the ISPs to enable MITM, but it's very crude - they basically block SSL, except for their own custom root certificate that they explicitly require you to install, and then they use that to MITM you. It's all very blatant, and I think there was only one ISP actually trying to do it.

Also, I'm not aware of any cases of dissenters caught because their encryption was broken. Most people who get persecuted for their views said all the things they did out in the open, either to make a stand, or because they were careless.

But the traffic that travels from your computer to servers outside of Russia is just as easy to spy on for Russian intelligence services as the case where the servers are located inside the country.

Ehh.. no? TLS protects the data against snooping, but only borders protect you from warrants. Russia based servers are subject to Russian law and warrants.

> TLS protects the data against snooping

I see that the tacit assumption in this thread is that the FSB can't defeat simple consumer encryption.

The certificates in Russian citizens' browsers allow the Russian government to intercept their communications. This is just one of hundreds of weaknesses to that belief.

I guess everbody wants to know now how those certificates are included in Russian citizens browsers. Care to enlighten us?

And while you are at it you could also tell us how this regulation

> make it more difficult for the US to spy on Russian citizens

???

Sure.

> everbody wants to know now how those certificates are included in Russian citizens browsers.

Included in the builds.

> And while you are at it you could also tell us how this regulation make it more difficult for the US to spy on Russian citizens

The traffic will stay inside of infrastructure controlled by the Russian government through its domestic ISPs, rather than exiting the country to ingestion nodes disclosed by Snowden to be used to surveil on internet traffic.

> Included in the builds.

Russian citizens download and install specially crafted builds instead of the officials ones? Are they forced, or do they they trust those FSB builds more?

> The traffic will stay inside of infrastructure controlled by the Russian government through its domestic ISPs, rather than exiting the country.

I guess we are not talking about the same, because the the regulation doesn't dictate this. It "just" says, that there has to be a copy of the data in Russia. The server can still be outside of Russia.

It would not be unreasonable to assume that the FSB (or perhaps rather the SVR?) has compromised a CA that's included in all the builds.

It would. That's what certificate pinning is for. If they did that and (ab)used it, they'd be found out in no time.

This whole conversation is just not going anywhere. The Russian government can't snoop your tls data if it leaves the country, end of story. That's the reason for this law and the article to begin with!

As if, someone with such access would probably know better than to burn it by indiscriminately using it against connections with pinned certs.

You aren't claiming that they couldn't compromise a CA, are you? That's pretty much the only thing that would make such an assumption unreasonable.

Edit: I'll just stop here. Suffice to say we should talk this over another time, not in hacker news comments :)

> The certificates in Russian citizens' browsers allow the Russian government to intercept their communications.

There are no government certs in Russian citizens' browsers at the moment. Furthermore, government mandated hardware, that ISPs have to install, is not installed in a configuration permitting any kind of MITM, it only sees mirrored traffic.

And you buy everything various conspiracy theorists and layman politicians sell to you. We have some issues, right, but your generalizing 'stupid' attitude is really better off this land, no matter who's in power.