Russia promises legal action over NSA surveillance scandal

Russia government is hypocritical. They criticize US government because of Prism, but at the same time they close and censor newspapers, TV channels, and websites. They also murder and imprison journalists and everyone else who disagrees with them.

US was, and still is much more free country than Russia.

>BTW, I think modern day Russia is pretty epic to visit, and there are a lot of brilliant engineers there.

Unfortunately most of the engineers emigrated to US or other European countries after break up of Soviet Union. Right now, science in Russia is only remnants of the past glory. Russia has declined a lot since the break up of Soviet Union. During Soviet Union, life sucked but there was huge amounts of research, and Russian engineering, chess and mathematics were as good as US counterparts.

During Revolution, most Russian intelligentsia either escaped to the west or got shot. By providing free education, Soviet Union steadily re-build the class. But when Soviet Union fell apart there was a huge brain drain. All the good scientists moved to the West. In Russia, it is much more profitable to be a criminal and steal from the people instead of contributing anything something.

Before, Russia was a country run by crazy, paranoid government, and now it is a country run by criminals.

This smells like gamesmanship on the part of the Russians. I assume our State Department would do the same if the shoe were on the other foot. In any .case, I'm sure the Russians, and everyone else finds the irony delicious. As far as I am concerned, I welcome any negative influence from any source WRT spying on everyone, all of the time.

I can vouch for there being brilliant engineers.

I recently went to an ACM ICPC practice week in Zurich. The teams present were mostly evenly matched, except for the Russians. They kicked ass completely. They won every single day by a long way.

> I think modern day Russia is pretty epic to visit

It is, but as an old joke goes - just make sure to not confuse tourism for immigration.

Good for consumers too. I wouldn't mind seeing... say... Indonesia's take on the app store concept. Growing middle class there that all want to teach their kids english.

These sorts of crises generate massive opportunities.

I think this gets filed under "Creative Destruction".

>It's interesting that this event may spur countries into making their own electronics

Or, more likely, some hand-waving policy that states "cooperation in fighting the thread of global terrorism" and more monitoring/gathering of data.

Self-sufficiency is the route to poverty.

Just like Qatar and its western allies are trying to use Syria… makes no difference to ordinary citizens in Syria…