The Yandex leak: How a Russian search giant uses consumer data
confiant.com
confiant.com
Depends how good the search is. Google doesn’t seem to want to provide me proper results anymore, even very basic image search tasks on google now net you only about 20 results all of which are wrong or useless. Yandex image search actually works.
If you don’t want me to use the Russian tech that helps me get my job done then roll back the Google Search codebase 10 years to when it worked as well as Yandex does today. (Only partially joking)
Yandex Images also possibly going away or becoming heavily censored is also an issue for journalists and researchers, since it is the best performing publicly available reverse image search engine.
Today though I find myself using it daily. The results are far from perfect, but I've never suspected them to be randomly hiding or suppressing search results like many of the popular Western alternatives.
I don't use image search much, but yes I completely agree with you there. Google image search is completely unusable to me at this point, so I always default to Bing and Yandex for that (still need to try Brave). And Yandex imo is the only search engine with a functional reverse image search anymore.
To be fair, that is not Google's fault.
It always cracks me up that when you see the DMCA note on the bottom and you click on it, you get to see the hosts anyways:
Why am I not surprised to see Springer as one of the claimants? /rhetorical question
the word 'random' must be doing a lot of work in that sentence given that they are subject to Roskomnadzor's regulations and are thus forced not just arbitrarily but systematically censor content: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2023/02/01/a-window-into-yandex...
(answering to the OP) Yes, there is nothing the Russians can do with my data that my government hasn't done.
>Depends how good the search is. Google doesn’t seem to want to provide me proper results anymore, even very basic image search tasks on google now net you only about 20 results all of which are wrong or useless. Yandex image search actually works.
Same, google is either doing this on purpose to then launch the "saving" LLM or they're just forgetting how to do it, google images is unusable and when it is everything is a .webp. And google search is a pay to win, you type "official python documentation" and the whole first page is full of geekforgeeks and other sponsored websited, and don't even get me started on facts/news where it just shamelessly turns into a propaganda machine.
Yandex is at least gives you 5 or 6 good results before it starts showing things in Russian.
I understand anti-government sentiment but whenever I see a statement like this it makes me devalue anything that comes after it. You really think there is nothing a foreign government might do with your personal data that your government hasn't already done? You really feel like there's a similar level of accountability at stake?
As I understand it, the claim is not that the US/UK are as evil as Russia, or even more or less morally equivalent. The claim is that the US/UK hoover up online information just like Russia (maybe even more), and that they are more exposed to what the US/UK governments do than they are to what Russia does.
Without minimizing the misdeeds of Russia, without resorting to (false) moral equivalence, it's still a defensible point. (Mind you, I'm not sure I agree with it. But it's defensible.)
When millions of us give them our data these kinds of attacks become easier and easier.
But the GRU isn't going to come to my door and arrest me because I searched on the wrong thing, even if I use Yandex. So in that sense, I'm insulated from what they know about me.
Some recent parts of the government welcome the corruption.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-citizens-and-russian-intel...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/16/us/politics/election-inte...
Brussels, Vienna, and many other European capitals are full of Russian "lobbyists".
No offense but the fact that someone on HN could get to this conclusion is rather shocking to me. Western Europe has plenty of russian corruption and I'm afraid the ongoing war has unearthed only a fraction of it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/a-rus...
Pretty sure plenty of German politicians were similarly cozy with Russia before.
A pretty basic assumption about Google and Facebook is that the US 3 letter agencies use the data in coups. Speaking as an Australian, the next time we have a Whitlam-style dismissal I assume Google will be covertly involved. Yandex not so much. Similar logic would hold in the Americas, Asia, and most of Western Europe. It'd be fascinating to know what role US social media companies were playing in the 2014 Ukraine revolution too as a comparison to somewhere that is very much a place where Russia would want to weaponise Yandexq.
You can be warm in the winter without doing deals with "the devil", and most average Austrian people don't benefit from that corrupt "trade", just a few banks and oil execs and real estate moguls who get to become even richer, unless you're gonna tell that their immense riches will "trickle down" to us plebs, any minute now.
>A pretty basic assumption about Google and Facebook is that the US 3 letter agencies use the data in coups.
Sure they do, which is why maintaining tech supremacy is a national security matter of the US, and an issue Europe doesn't get, that the more you fall behind in mainstream tech products and services, the more you are at the mercy of the US (and China).
The fact that US companies own all the biggest cloud, social media and chat platforms, gives the US incredible leverage, that nobody else has.
Russia has an asset in British goverbment, in the hoise of lords!
Have you neber heard of Baron Lebedev, of Hampton in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames and of Siberia in the Russian Federation??
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evgeny_Lebedev
Current Government was taking political dotations from Russian oligarchs, officially, but somehow thos gets postes
A lot of Ukrainians suddenly found themselves on Russian [claimed] soil and under Russian jurisdiction just a few months ago.
There are certain nations before which I'm not going to incriminate myself, out of precaution, Russia and China among them.
If you’re some kind of public enemy of Russia, maybe don’t use Russian services of any variety.
I can tell you more about Holodomor.
Maybe today. Who knows about the future though? :)
Any examples?
was killed almost a century ago..
>Volodymyr Manyak
car accident
>Volodymyr Shukin
murdered, no suspects etc. I understand the suspicion, but this is nothing but suspicion at this point.
https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A8%D0%B8%D1%82%D1%8E%D0%BA...
If I have to share my data with someone, I'd rather it be someone distant, and with limited capability. Sharing my data with Google is effectively the same thing as sharing my data with the FBI. And the FBI can stick guns in my face and lock me in a steel cage for anything they don't like in said data.
While I'm no fan of Putin, his regime can do precisely nothing actionable with my data, so long as I don't set foot in its territory.
Wired has a good summary if you want something more like a mainstream press article: https://www.wired.com/story/yandex-leaks-crypta-ads/
Well, either that or the west has decided that Russia is the enemy. I honestly don't buy the saying "Russia has made themselves the enemy of the west". Why would anybody want to be the enemy of the global superpower?
You don't need Anne Applebaum screeds, boosted Reddit comments and a expertly-curated media bubble to determine that Hitler was insane.
In the case of both the Balkan wars and the invasion of Ukraine, it was because staying friends with the global superpower meant that one wouldn’t get control of the lands one claimed.
For the same reason that despots around the world "hate the west." [0] Because it takes the domestic population's eyes off of all the domestic issues such as rampant corruption and curtailment of basic freedoms.
[0] See: Iran & North Korea who non-coincidentally are both supplying Russia with arms which are used to kill Ukrainian grandparents and children living peacefully in their villages and cities.
To be clear, I'd much rather live here than in Russia, and I also would prefer that Russia wasn't slaughtering people in Ukraine, including their own.
In this case it's imperialism:
- Donbas: rich on natural resources
- Crimea: large amount of gas was found in 2008. Project by shell was ready in late 2013.
They invaded in 2014.
But if he needs to choose between his "moral code" and his big fat palace.
The palace wins
I have nothing against the former, and everything against the latter.
[0] https://kz.kursiv.media/en/2023-08-07/co-founder-of-yandex-e...
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/ukraine-crisis-yandex-volozh...
Would you issue such a statement in his position? Think carefully. If you don't, you will probably have twitter brigades trying to smear your name. If you do, your family back home might be at risk, and you will probably never be able to visit them again.
Personally, I cannot in good faith demand anyone condemn the war, if to do so, they are putting family and friends freedoms at risk.
Do Twitter crowds actually do that? Do they keep track of anyone more or less prominent, and write in their comments "Have you spoken out against the war yet?" "I haven't seen you denounce the war"?
See ~2 years ago when every opensource project was forced to publish a code of conduct and diversity and inclusion policy... Often the people asking for the policies weren't even users of the software involved, let alone interested in writing code for the proect. That campaign seems to have ended, and nobody cares if your project has either anymore.
Has the movement to rename every master branch to main quietened down as well?
By that measure, the movement to rename every 'master' branch to 'main' has been a resounding failure.
(If you look at the events at the time it sprung up, you could pretty safely say that it was encouraged as a way to distract from the then-current "GitHub is doing business with US's ICE!" hatestorm, and man was it successful.)
But the major git hosting platforms are only using 'main' as the default for new branches, and there is significant enough social stigma for new projects that it's preferred to use main.
I don't have precise statistics, but I would happily wager that even though master was the default for so long that the majority of git repositories that have been contributed to in the last 30 days are not 'master' as the default branch name.
To change a default with such inertia as to completely skew the demographic in favour of the new rather than the status quo: I would certainly merit that as success.
By 'twitter brigades trying to smear your name'. Great success!
Including expats, refugees, objectors, what have you. Your contract with Namecheap is terminated for being connected to Russia. Prove to us you're not, if you want to keep your service.
His justification? Well we have a lot of Ukrainian staff and you know, we're not with Russia therefore we're against Russia, therefore...
> If we were virtue signaling we wouldn't willingly be giving up a not non significant part of our business. This hurts us financially but it's the right thing to do, at least for us. Your leader/country is already killing innocent civilians/ukranians. They are putting it all on the line with their lives. They didn't ask for this yet they are dying for it. Change needs to come and the only way it can is for the Russian population to put it on the line as well.
While some people (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasyl_Makukh ) sacrificed their lives in protest of Soviet Russia invasion into Czechoslovakia, timely public statement is the least he could do.
Not your call, nor for any other arm chair general.
Right or wrong.
He could've left russia long time ago along with family and friends.
But he enjoys russian money even though he has more than enough for 100 lifetimes.
So yeah, I can in good faith demand from him and most other russians to condemn the war. Because the reason it happened is precisely that everyone does nothing in russia.
Most of them flee the country because they don't want to get into army, and even when they are abroad and in safety - they still don't condemn the war.
So fear has zero to do with their position.
More news at eight?
Where in the world is there any "Russophobia"? The far-right in the West and around the world loves Russia and Russians.
I don't think that's that significant. But it does prove my point.
He is jewish. Just like the rest of the "yandex talents" that moved to work at Israeli office. They all get to be jewish when if suits them.
UPD.
Also, yandex news was (and still is) the pinnacle of russian putin propaganda. And the person in question was complicit with it. Even, given the fact he wasn't living in russia since 2014. He tries to whitewash himself because he is a sanctioned individual. And the protocol to get desanctioned is to publicly state he disapproves the war.
Israel cares a lot about what happens in Ukraine because it is in a similar position, a highly-militarized vanguard of the West. If Ukraine falls despite backing from Washington, what does that say about possible outcomes should a (full-scale) war break out between Israel and Iran/Arab states?
So this helps us understand Volozh's motivations.
> Do we want, at a time when Russia is considering the UK as an enemy, to be providing all our personal details to a server in Moscow?
Not "at a time when the UK considers Russia as an enemy". There is something of a Russell conjugation here.
Like sure its leading you but imo its leading you to consider the actual issue rather than unrelated questions
I think this is the inflection they actually used when they talked about Huawei routers.
> jdangu on Aug 4, 2015 > We (ClarityAd) do this for major ad platforms. We use a mix of static and dynamic analysis to assess risk.
Fuck off. And since you here, you might tell us all how much you get incentive by aligning with U.S. owned Ad platforms, that also align with U.S. national interest to smear foreign tech giant Ad business?
I see nothing unsettling, unless one considers Google, Microsoft, Meta, Apple.... unsettling too (which I do, but then I don't act surprised and unsettled by a non-US company doing what everyone else is doing).
I think I am safer with Russian govt having access to my data vs my local govt having access to my data.
Now hand over $800 billion dollars for 'defense'. And $368 billion for AUKUS. And the European bill will be interesting to watch over the next few years.
Just don't think about that F word - fascism.
In EU, it's registered in Amsterdam so the responsible authority is Dutch data protection authority, who should force the service to shut down.
[0] https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/telegram-russia-ban-lift-...
Please, let's all just get rich together. Governments democratize over time - the UK wasn't a democracy when it started out but over 1000 years of governance transitioned into being one. I suspect it will be much faster nowadays, but in the meantime - please no war.
Surely hashing something can't add entropy? Assuming the hash output is smaller than its input, in the general case I'd expect the hash to have less entropy than its input.
While GDP may be lower than Italy and per capita is weak, a nation like Russia can probably accomplish an order of magnitude more large scale projects, and also sustain a certain economy climate for much much longer than we think.
So don't underestimate Russia, even though we'd like to think they're soon running out of steam to continue the war in Ukraine.
On just one axis of consideration, Italy has a blue water navy with power projection capabilities roughly similar to Russia and India, surpassed only by the United States, the UK and France.
I think Italy also ranks higher than most anglosphere laypeople would estimate in terms of GDP and scientific output, although this is hard to pin down since I'm talking about layperson perception. Basically, I think Italy is more relevant and capable than people generally give it credit for.
For example, Canada's inflation-adjusted per-capita GDP has supposedly increased over time, yet for many Canadians, the standard of living is now noticeably lower than it was (or would have likely been) two or three decades ago.
In terms of production, Canadian businesses and governments generally don't seem to have become more capable and productive, and actually seem to struggle now with the sorts of fundamental work that they managed to pull off in the past. Many common services and products are noticeably worse now than in the past, in terms of cost, quality, reliability, delivery time, and so forth.
GDP is a metric that I can't trust.
Italy: Size of the labor force from 2014 to 2024: ~23M
Number of pensioners in Russia from 2012 to 2022: ~44M
Italy population? ~58M
There are almost twice as many pensioners in Russia than people in the labour force in Italy and it's 2/3 of the whole Italy population. The whole GDP comparison here is moot.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/275312/labor-force-in-it...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1093953/number-of-retire...
???
No, this is nonsense. The normal meaning of the word "lobbyist" is an _employee_ who uses political connections to push corporate interests. The normal meaning of the word "oligarch" is someone with large wealth. These two are not similar at all.
So the phrase you're looking for is probably "And billionaires are not billionaires, they're oligarchs".
2. a very rich business leader with a great deal of political influence (particularly with reference to individuals who benefited from the privatization of state-run industries after the collapse of the Soviet Union).
So “Russian [x] giant” really means “Putin’s favored [x] company”.
The Ukraine war is madness and reflects a ruler with absolute power.
It's a blasphemy to capitalism to conflate those bandits with Western entrepreneurs that founded and built their own companies from scratch, even though they have their own set of issues.
t. someone from country which underwent that.
The very next day, on April 29, DHSC bought another 200 million face masks, this time contracting to pay £252.5 million to Ayanda Capital, a Tory party-linked firm also bumped into the VIP lane despite having no previous PPE experience. It is an investment company specialising in currency trading, offshore property and private equity.
To this day, no-one has been charged with any crime.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/ppe-procurement-scandal-u...
In the west, we call that "privatization", and it happens pretty frequently, and it's common for the process to be technically open, but practically exclude all but a handful of buyers.
It's also common for those buyers to make a lot of money from the assets before returning them to the state 20 years later, unmaintained and debt laden.
That's not even slightly true? It's headline news and massively controversial every time this happens.
In the UK, privatisation of Network Rail arches (which will 'break even' for the buyers in about ten years), privatisation or TfL land in London at below-market prices to property developers, and the backdoor privatisation of NHS services through public-private partnerships.
- 2010s? Hard to tell what you are referencing
- Not a real example (subcontracting is not the same as selling off state properties).
So yes, 2-3 examples from the UK over the past 2 decades is not really compelling.
> Can you name off the top of your head the last 3 significant privatizations?
I can list similar privatizations in Canada. Here's an article that discusses various issues around it in the Canadian context: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02648...
Even further back: during Prime Minister Mulroney's tenure (which coincided with Reagan's and Thatcher's), quite a few public corporations were privatized. Here's a news article from that time period that gives an idea of the pressures faced in Canada at the time, and how what Thatcher was doing in the UK (producing a long list of public corporations and services to privatize) was affecting Canadian judgements: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1985/08/30/d...
And here's an analysis of how the privatization of Canada's medical isotopes business didn't save the government money, and instead only helped to cushion private owners from risk: https://www.utpjournals.press/doi/abs/10.3138/chr.2019-0010
We also have a prominent think-tank that is constantly pushing for further privatization: https://www.fraserinstitute.org/article/time-privatize-gover...
Just some more evidence, from different time spans, in case you are serious.
You have now linked me to a paper discussing privatization happening in the 1980s and 1990s.
If you want to make the argument that this happens frequently in the west, you need to find examples actually happening this decade. I don't feel like this should be controversial.
If they were 'proper investors' they would cheaply buy up UK water companies, load them with debt, pay out 40 billion of dividends, and then enter talks with the government about insolvency.
The "America bad" crowd is so eager to say they're all the same that they intentionally look away from any nuance.
Not all American super wealthy are oligarch but some are very close to the mark. Borderline cases that are concerning: Elon Musk is an American oligarch. Bill Gates is an American oligarch.
Also can someone dump 4Gs of Google’s codebase somewhere?
https://kamilkazani.substack.com/p/avocado-economy-why-russi...
The term "oligarch" has a specific meaning and, surprisingly, Western media uses the term correctly about the subset of corrupt Russian and Ukrainian businessmen who got rich in the 1990s by buying billions worth of state monopolies for pennies.
I have never seen Russian tech billionaires like the JetBrains founders being called "oligarchs".
https://kamilkazani.substack.com/p/avocado-economy-why-russi...
My search threw up a few.
US and EU: guaranteeing user privacy