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Comment by dmosley | Hacker News Reader

Post-Installation Disabling. It's like John Deere for space parts...

"And a German astronomy team, led by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, switched off a German-built instrument on the Russian astronomical observatory Spektr-RG halfway through its planned observations."

Does anyone else find this rather concerning, and in some ways quite petty? I realize people are taking hard lines on these events. So don't sell them any more, but switching off post-install? Perhaps they do some sort of processing for the data? I have no idea. The article is quite vague.

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It's not as if the Germans just sold the Russians some instruments they then decided to switch off after the fact:

This was an ongoing joint mission where the Max Planck institute was responsible for parts of the ground support - see https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2315138 for some of the details.

I find ambushing another country and killing thousands rather concerning and in some ways quite petty.

You're talking about the U.S. invasion of Iraq, right? Where the Shock & Awe campaign killed ... between 0 and 6600 civilians [0]? Where 188k+ have died in the 19 years since the Neocons invaded [1]?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_and_awe#Casualties

[1] https://www.IraqBodyCount.org/analysis/reference/press-relea...

Where GWB joked about having tricked the Country into doing the Neocons' dirty work [2]?

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/mar/26/usa.iraq / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWD6pGQCwM8

I don't trust the media to be honest about what's actually happening in Ukraine.

This is whataboutism. Obviously the war in Iraq was a terrible mistake and tragedy, but that doesn't give anyone carte blanche to do equally terrible things.

Whataboutism is whataboutism.

the word should get you warned to stop dismissing valid comparisons.

ironically, whataboutism was an intentionally misapplied fallacy popularized by the russians.

Hi, I am not American, so I don't understand why you are bringing that country up?

The Rwandan government (since we're pointing out random countries misdeeds to apparently „excuse“ the Russin invasion?) did a genocide once, too!

I am absolutely delighted that the world at least seems to slowly be approaching a point where invasions will not be tolerated. I am an American and I hope that if we ever aim to invade a country again that the world will shut us down even harder than we have Russia. Stop exploding children, if your government aims to explode children, eliminate your government. Quit pretending to be concerned about the telescope.

I am from autocratic country Belarus, and over years I actually came up with, maybe unpopular, opinion that it is good to forcefully impose democracy on other countries. Please do it on my native country.

Because after some point, autocratic government goes against people's will, and can even resemble occupation of its own nation. Like literally 3% of the population repress the other 97%. All means of overturning the government and are violently suppressed at their roots.

Has forcefully imposing democracy ever worked anywhere? I can't think of single example that turned out okay.

Germany and Japan after WWII, can't think of any others since however.

Germany and Japan had democracies before WWII as well

Germany? I’m very grateful for that operation.

South Korea I think also was autocratic at some point, but with the help of USA became much better. There's still a ton of problems, corruption and nepotism, but it's still thousands times better than dictatorship.

At least we'd have a chance of making it work. With status quo it's just becoming worse and worse due to brain drain (all active conscious people find a way to leave the country).

The problem with this is democracy is hard. The history of it succeeding amidst a people who didn’t fight for it is poor.

Agree. The saddest stories are the people who did still fight for it despite 98% indiffirent nation.

It's easy to fight for something when everyone you know does too. But it's much much harder to fight multiple battles at the same time: at work, at home with you family who wants some security, etc.

The problem is they can't invade your government, which is an idea, they can only invade your neighborhood, a place. Look what is happening to Ukraine or what happened in Iraq, that is what war is like there's nothing democratic about it.

Well, Ukrainians actually fight for their democracy, and are pretty strong on that, ready to die for it.

There's a big difference between democracy and political chaos. I went through all 90s in Russia - believe me, there were so many freedom and democracy around, that no one in modern America could ever imagine :) Despite all of that, all things around were so bad, that people turned to Putin's stability with great relief.

>"Please do it on my native country."

And what would you say if your family gets blown to bits in the process? They already "saved" for example Iraq with hundreds of thousands dead, unknown amount of maimed / starved / displaced / otherwise ruined and with not much different state of affairs for the average folk in the end. You think that barely surviving farmer gives a shit whether they allowed to scream "our president is a dick" on central square?

Cool, have you ever lived under despotic regime?

It is nice to say that if you live in a country where you have freedom.

I was born in USSR and lived and worked there until I've moved to Canada in 1992. While I and many others hated various restrictions on freedoms I know from the experience that the majority of the population was mostly concerned about living standard.

I have lived under autocracy as well as democracy. There is no difference. I realized democracy is not black magic that solves all the problems. Many people think autocracy just converted to corrupt bureaucracy. And, the corruption has increased and spread more rapidly.

Democracy is better due to freedom. But, there is no such big influence on poor man's life, unless there is a radical change like we see in South Korea.

OK.

I have lived also under a somehow despotic regime (a "light" version, Eastern Europe) and as a child it was quite strange for me that adults said differerent things in "kitchen" and in the open.

Also fun fact, each citizen was allowed to buy only limited amount of certain "things". E.g. one coffee per person (I was standing in a queue as a child to have one more coffee bag for my family) - meat was given not for money but for a piece of paper (rest of the meat was sold/gifted to our big brother Russia).

In democracy I can complaint about prices of food (which I can buy for money, not some allowance) and can complain about current rulers. I can complain about Russia - this was not allowed earlier.

And I can learn English in school (if would be born a year earlier the only option was Russian).

In my country there was a radical change in poor man's life when switching to democracy. (of course there were complainers - basically those that were subsidies by the previous regime, mostly farmers I presume)

My family can get jailed for life, and die in the process.

That's not a rhetorical question, I'm dead serious. They have way more chances to stay well and alive during a war, than during the occupation.

Almost everyone would choose freedom over anything else, even if it costs their death. Ukrainians do.

> Almost everyone would choose freedom over anything else, even if it costs their death.

The history of tyrannical governments suggests that not “almost everyone” would choose that. Franklin's famous quote wouldn't be noteworthy if trading essential liberty for even temporary safety wasn't the common choice of most people through most of history.

This is a false statement. People value quality life and happy life. If your statement was true, there would be no autocracy.

Ukrainians do because they got support from the EU, as well as the US. If they stopped supporting, you know .... And, it is good that the EU and US are supporting Ukrainians. And, I hope the EU will support other countries, that are victims of the US.

Ukrainians protested heavily and violently when there was fraud during presidential elections, and they effectively deposited the president who usurped the chair while not being legally elected.

The protests were large, insistent, and sometimes life-threatening for the participants. There was no major support from outside, except moral support.

When people trust that they are right, and, importantly, a large number of other people around them share the same commitment, they keep on fighting.

If Russia ever occupies large parts of Ukraine, they'll face fierce guerilla warfare. Much like the Germans faced during WWII on the same territory, much like the Soviets faced on westernmost parts of it after WWII. Traditions are there.

We know Russia and Oligarch are fraud. But, don't undermine the fact that Ukraine is one of the corrupt country in Europe. So, I highly doubt if your first statement is correct. If you look on history, US has constantly meddled with anther's country affair in name of "democracy" and liberalism". However, I don't know how much US has influenced in Ukraine that makes Putin anxious.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/oct/03/revealed-anti-o...

Its a premature thinking that Ukraine citizen will start guerilla warfare? Can they live in cave like Taliban? Can they sacrifice life? There are many questions that needs to be answered.

Russia will probably install some Yes-man, who is obsequious to Putin. I don't think they intend to take whole Ukraine.

*History has entered the chat

I am officially asking for source material to back your "almost everyone" assertion.

I can't agree enough about invasions being bad. You acknowledge the issue with the US so I'll abstain from Pot-Kettle analogies. Although, I would ask that your awareness of current conflicts the US is engaged in actually become part of your radar. If what you claim you want to happen you truly want to happen, you would acknowledge that those negative repercussions should be happening right now because we have never stopped violently interfering in other countries and their affairs. We're literally dropping bombs as I type this. So check your false pearl-clutching and feigned concessions.

I'm not 'pretending' to be concerned about the telescope. I am absolutely concerned about the progress of things that work to unite us instead of dividing us. Based on your previous comment you should be as well.

Thanks for just avoiding the issue I raised and attacking me though. Functional discourse at it finest here on HackerNews.

The ISS was built to prove we could collaborate scientifically across nations despite wars.

Today, Germany has proven they can’t.

Despite differences, not despite wars.

It should perhaps be mentioned that Spektr-RG is not on the ISS, it's in a halo orbit around L2 (like Webb):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spektr-RG

I think if anyone has proven anything here, it is Russia and Russia alone.

Getting upset at Germany for cancelling some scientific cooperation in response to literally invading a sovereign country and shelling civilian cities is, just, absurd.

This is only acceptable if they weren't going to share it with the international scientific community. Otherwise we're just shooting ourselves in the foot.

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