Comment by iyn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by iyn | Hacker News Reader

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I've been following the situation in Belarus since last August and it's really terrible. I admire how so many brave people look death in the eye and still fight for freedom. I have friends there and this allowed me to understand that there's so much potential in Belarus -- there are so many talented, intelligent people getting by in this adversarial environment. So sad to see how Lukashenko's kleptocracy regime wasted so many years and chances for a better future for millions of people.

Anyway -- you can help! Most of the communication, coordination and crime-documenting happens on Telegram and the regime tries to block access to this information. You can run Telegram Proxy [0][1]. The installation is fairly straightforward, mostly setup and forget. After setup you can register your proxy with MTProxybot [2], so that people can learn about/use your proxy. If you know people there, I also recommend setting up a private proxy just for them (i.e. not registering with [2]) and sharing over private communication channel (e.g. Signal), as the thugs try to block proxies, so it's a cat-and-mouse game.

Edit: Added info about MTProxybot.

[0] https://core.telegram.org/mtproto/mtproto-transports

[1] https://github.com/TelegramMessenger/MTProxy

[2] https://t.me/MTProxybot

A banned book in Belarus, called "Paranoia", by Victor Martinovich, captures the situation that Belarusians are in.

"In the summertime, in the Belarusian capital of Minsk, young couples rent boats. They float, seemingly aimlessly, with the current of the Svisloch River, until they find themselves under a bridge. Then they row against the current for as long as they can, hoping to find shelter from the sun and from prying eyes. The premise of Belarusian writer Victor Martinovich’s Russian-language novel Paranoia is that this is impossible. As a police state such as today’s Belarusian dictatorship approaches perfect control, someone is always watching. The young lovers are watching each other, whether they understand this or not. The only way to be safe in such a society is to abandon love, but true solitude courts paranoia."

[1] New York Review of Books, "Paranoia" Review: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2010/10/28/darkest-belarus/

[2] Non-paywalled version: https://archive.is/fTOcP#selection-647.0-651.318

This sounds like an excellent read. Will definitely get my hands on a copy. I don't know what it is about East European authors' ability to explore the human condition with exacting clarity.

Anyway, thanks for sharing.

They have a good command of language in general, and especially when it comes to expression. In Slavic languages, there are often a lot of words that have the exact same meaning (compared to English or romance languages), but you have to learn individually how to use the right one to capture the moment best for your situation. Also, at least for the Slavic language that I speak (not a native speaker), it is clean, direct, and concise with respect to communication and expression, in comparison to English. The language I speak is much more complicated than English, grammatically. It has 7 grammatical cases (all words), 7 tenses (all verbs), and 3 genders (all nouns and adjectives), which change the conjugations of each of the words, whether they be a verb, noun, or adjective. English has 3 grammatical cases, 12 tenses, and 1 gender (natural gender).

There's morphological complexity and then there's semantic one. I grew up speaking one of Turkic and one of Slavic languages. Morphology-wise, both of those are massively more complicated as compared to English. But English is way more analytically powerful/flexible. It allows for constructions and frame of mind that are not quite possible in non-analytic languages. For even more dramatic example, consider math. The latter has barely any morphology to speak of. But its expressive flexibility is legendary if not unbeatable. Math famously allows for generalizations that simply do not exist in nature, just because reason/analysis allows for it.

It's also a matter of culture. For example, writing overly long sentences in passive voice in Russian is encouraged if not considered a mark of sophisticated writing whereas in English it's a massive faux-pas. Reading English I get the sense that meaning takes precedence over syntactic complexity. I can see why English might come off as, uhh, simple if one is used to bloated prose and reading between the lines. In math every word and sentence matters. I sense English strives for that as well.

Besides, English handles morphological complexity by way of syntax and massive semantic overloading of words.

Aside from logically vivid constructions and phrases, as a nonnonative speaker of English, I really like secondary/n-ary meaning to simple/common/"little" words that we are typically not taught as ESL (or EnglishAsNthLanguage). For example, I was delighted to discover "we made it" = "we are successful", "we made here on time" = "we got here on time", "we are making good time" = "we are traveling faster than expected" etc. I also love English constructions like "it's pretty ugly", "it's little too much" etc :) Basically, anything in English that doesn't have 1-1 equivalent in Slavic/Turkic languages immediately perks up my ears/eyes. Thankfully, there's a ton of that in English.

You may like "Politics and the English Language" (1946) by George Orwell

https://www.fadedpage.com/books/20180223/html.php

   English has 3 grammatical cases, 12 tenses, and 1 gender (natural gender).

But only pronouns retain those 3 grammatical cases, for nouns is only 1, or 2 if you count the genitive. Same for verbs, there are only 3 real tenses (present, past/participle and gerund), every other tense is formed with auxiliary verbs. Also, no verb-subject agreement.

I speak Spanish and compared to Romance languages, English grammar is so much simpler ;)

Thanks for this detailed reply. The dots are starting to connect. Will definitely dig into this rabbit hole. But it does make me wonder whether the English translations are doing the work justice. Like watching a dubbed series misses a lot of depth because the words and their meaning don't map exactly from one language to another. All we get are close enough translations.

> I don't know what it is about East European authors' ability to explore the human condition with exacting clarity.

Most likely that they have lives that have a lot of stuff happening in them besides consumption and education.

Yeah. But there's just this ability to peer into and through people with such wonderful detail. What joy!

What are the legal ramifications of running such proxy? For instance, if a group of people coordinate a criminal activity and it is proven that they used the proxy to communicate? Could owner of such proxy become liable?

None, but if cops think that you are liable you will be persecuted. There were instances when having a contract with a lawyer would be interpreted as if you were intending to break the law [0]. So you can imagine how little evidence will be required.

[0] https://news.tut.by/society/700543.html

depends on many factors, e.g. which country you live in whether there are extradition agreements with the foreign country, whether you are a native of the country you live in, whether there are exclusions of certain acts in your country etc.

Not "shitting where you eat" (never do something that is a crime in your own country) is basic opsec but the details are usually a lot more complex.

In a dictatorship, it doesn't matter so much if you use it in a legal way or not -- what matters, is instead if the dictator does not like it (or if he likes it).

If you use such a proxy in a completely legal way, but that the dictator thinks might make him lose his power, then he can make up fake charges against you and put you in prison.

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