tl;dr Other parties are Putin-like, and Navalny (a charismatic leader of a small but growing rival party with genuinely different policies to Putin's) was first delegitimised (not allowed to partake in the 2018 elections due to [likely fake] charges of embezzlement), but later poisoned (nearly died), then imprisoned, and then killed while in prison.
Consider the message that sends to any would-be political rivals...
Well, some decades ago if you were a school teacher, you were _asked_ to (1) vote "right" yourself (2) call all parents and ask them to vote "right". If you disobeyed, the school got problems and you got problems. Maybe not enough to make all people comply, but sufficient to get the right outcomes. Same goes for all government-funded workers.
Since then I think they simplified the system and just forge the results outright.
Before the latest Russian election one of the parties opposed the war in Ukraine and was a bit too popular, so, well, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yabloko :
Yabloko is the sole officially registered party to openly oppose the Russian war in Ukraine, openly calling "for peace and freedom". The party planned to partake in the 2026 Russian legislative election under their anti-war slogan.[29][30] However, in August 2026, the party was barred from running by the Supreme Court of Russia due to a lawsuit by Rodina.
As to the widespreadness of the electoral fraud, it should suffice to know that Ela Pamfilova, the irremovable head of the Russian election circus, has recently proclaimed all video evidence of any fraud to be AI generated, and demonstrated a video where a casually-looking man throws a stack of doctored bulletins in, followed by several outright fictional characters.
Of course almost everyone thinks war is bad, but many seem to think it's justified - different thing.
There seem to be a wide support for the idea that Russia is threatened (economically and to an extent military) by the global West, and also that Ukraine is not entitled to be independent and also many of the official lies about the background.
Good lies have a nugget of truth in them, and this is the case also here.
Russia's economy is not growing, nativity is down, the revolution in Ukraine undermines the stability of the Russian regime, the attempted coup in Belarus was also a threat, NATO is arguably expanding - lately as a reaction to the war but nonetheless, EU is expanding into post-Soviet states both offering membership but also trade agreements which undercut Russia's ambition to be an economical hub in the region, etc.
Often, both are true. It's perfectly legitimate for anyone (Russian or otherwise) to have geo-political concerns (e.g. NATO expansion, Cuban missile crisis etc), but that same Russian may also be very opposed to the extreme option of war being the solution.
War affects an ordinary Russian in very negative ways: the possibility of conscription (w/ risk of injury/death), complications for travel, sanctions on goods and services, and the economic opportunity cost (money wasted on war that could have gone to productive uses, plus reduced economic output due to drone strikes on yandex, wildberries, refineries).
Russia could fully integrate into EU/NATO if it really wanted.
That's just not compatible with ambitions of its corrupt leaders who want to be a root-level player, not "one of NATO countries". And I'm not sure how legitimate is prioritization of wants of corrupt leaders over well-being of your compatriots.
NATO is not something you can just apply to on a whim. The path for a membership was there: e.g. there were some joint exercises, etc. Obviously they also need political integration as well.
Russia actually have been a member of Council of Europe (PACE, etc.) since 1996 but it was expelled in 2022. If they had a good record in Council of Europe they could really go for NATO membership eventually.
Ok, about the path you describe: how can one join a military exercise without a prior green light for that? And speaking about the political integration: remember that Turkey is in nato, so it does not need more political integration than Russia had in early 2000th.
What happened is that nato realized that if Russia joins, it will loose the reason to exist (i.e. if the old enemy joins the alliance what is the need for such an alliance anymore?)
So nato bureaucrats understood that they will loose well-paying positions and rejected even initial talks.
I think you misunderstood me, Russia _was_ on a path towards NATO in 90s to mid-2000s. There was cooperation, joint exercises, etc.
E.g. from a conversation between Clinton and Putin in 2000:
> Clinton: I am serious about being ready to discuss NATO membership with Russia. I recognize that domestic considerations inside Russia will prevent this for now, but over time Russia should be a part of every organization that holds the civilized world together.
> Putin: But I'll let you know that when I was asked about possible membership for Russia in NATO, I supported the idea.
Regarding "reason to exist", there's always a concern about Middle-East, China, etc.
Funny enough that you remember it was as "Russia applied but was rejected" but from this talk it's clear Putin is much less interested in Russia joining NATO than Clinton.
I think after reading the document that Putin was very interested in joining NATO, perhaps even more so than Clinton who had perhaps been the primary Russia-in-NATO supporter of that time.
> Putin: But I'll let you know that when I was asked about possible membership for Russia in NATO, I supported the idea. It's important to note, however, that the United States raised objections to my public statement, and I don't think anyone in the alliance is ready for this.
> Clinton: Well, we should start now.
> Putin: This is the first time that we have heard such a statement from the United States, and I must say I am pleased.
I.e. it was the US and other member states who _opposed_ the idea and the subsequent Clinton's response was first time they have heard at least a verbal indication that things may move forward.
> Clinton: I am very encouraged by what I am hearing. We should think about this further, then maybe talk privately later. Obviously, it is better for Russia to be in the tent. Russia needs to understand that we have many fights inside NATO, and the United States doesn't always win them. The most important fight that we didn't win involved a failure, over two years, to act in Bosnia. We had to work like hell. If Russia and the United States had not had a disagreement about southeast Europe, we would not be having the present debate. Our discussion could be much more straightforward.
I.e. they want to get something back, for example an unconditional support in invading European countries like former Yugoslavia from Russia.
Never ever that was a thing. There has never been any applications to have Russia as NATO member. What Putin was referring and had in mind was not exactly NATO membership but special treatment to Russia, that would allow using benefits of NATO, by not submitting to anything.
the rabbit hole goes a bit deeper, and it seems that ruskie were trying to knock the doors since as early as 1954 and were repeatedly told to duck off
i have not found the proofs for the part "would allow using benefits of NATO, by not submitting to anything" - the closest to this was the request to accept them sooner
It was never about NATO and always about the reconquest of Ukraine. You can read their victory speech here [0]. Russia thought they would win easily and accidentally posted their victory speech too soon.
imagine if Putin had said... we are slipping behind the west. They are threatening us. So... we'll double down on research & education. We'll outthink them. We'll shift our economy into an economy that thrives in the future.
Pretty much precisely what the US did during the Cold War. To do so, we had to outspend the Soviets, and by a LOT. But the world buying US treasury bonds was basically a credit card for us to finance the above things that result into the world’s strongest military.
Let's hold this comment until after the mid-terms. The biggest thing Americans can do to stop Trump's war mongering would be at the ballot box. Protesting is one thing, but actively voting in people with power to stop POTUS would be the most direct action they can take.
The majority of people don’t really care about the world, their country, etc.
They just care that they have what they need, that they don’t struggle too much in life.
In the US people will vote for whoever will make their life easier. To some degree there is morality/ethics/ideology but that’s usually grounded in something that effects you day-to-day
Examples from republicans: Keep out the immigrants or you won’t have a job. You don’t want trans people in the bathroom with your kid. Democrats will raise taxes
From dems: republicans will take away your access to birth control/abortions, republicans will cut social programs, etc
Nobody _really_ cares about wars in Iran, Ukraine, Gaza, etc aside from it effecting them at home.
> but many seem to think it's justified - different thing
Literally no one thinks that. Look at the last election in Russia.
There were like 10 pro-Putin pro-war parties and one pro-Putin maybe-we-a-lil-bit-try-to-stop-the-war joke party. And that last party was banned from participating because of copyright infringement (they used fonts from Microsoft).
That indicates that actions were taken to usurp absolute power, not that there is 0% support.
People there, from young age live with constant repetition of same soviet style messaging: “west is conniving and bad (and don’t forget - rotten); we won WW2; USSR was best in the world at X, Y, Z; Kiev Rus Vikings; inheritors of eastern Rome something…”.
Those messages are indistinguishable part of national (almost personal) pride, even for a lot of russian speaking people that currently live outside of Russia.
(If I would be raised in muslim family, I would be muslim; if I would be raised in russian info space, most likely I would support 3day operation to save Russian people from fashists)
I neither judge nor trying to convince you. I’m just sharing my thoughts mostly for other lurkers here.
Plenty of people in Russia see Russia as the great power, and that it has the right to take its rightful place.
Here is one data source available, Danil Orain, youtuber interviews people on Russian streets: https://youtube.com/@1420channel?si=RX7q3nW182ckQVWo
> > <Russians say that> west is conniving and bad (and don’t forget - rotten)
> And where is factual inaccuracy here?
I’m not sure if you have done it on purpose, but you made me smile :)
> data source available, Danil Orain, youtuber interviews people on Russian streets
You have never thought that it is completely unrepresentative data source considering that they literally have chances to go in jail for the "wrong" answers on the street interviews?
Russians love this kind of hidden-but-obvious messaging: Microsoft gives royalty free access to all their fonts, would never enforce their copyright - certainly not against a political party - and font copyright is basically not a thing, especially in Russia.
This is like being arrested for driving on the right in the United States.
I was told that it's not exactly the case and copyright laws in Russia are pretty severe (just rarely enforced) and by laws there may be copyright infringements on those fonts (by low no actions from Microsoft are required to protect their intellectual rights)
Ah... interesting, a bit of GPT-research tells me that in Russia font shapes can by copyrighted, but no so in the United States, which I had assumed was the common rule world-wide.
The key points are that this was a lawsuit by a rival candidate, not Microsoft, and was overturned by a court of appeals because it was without merit: the candidate Mikhail Matveyev used the Arial and Tahoma fonts in a report linked from his campaign website, which the court deemed not to be part of his campaign materials.
In other words a rival tried and failed to get him on an invalid technicality.
Conscripts didn't typically come from the lands around Moscow, but from the poor peoples who are very far away from wealth and power. For most there, it was only Ukraine's drone attacks that made them feel at war
Ordinary Russians think "yeah war sucks, I wish Ukraine surrenders so peace can be restored". I'm afraid only a tiny minority believes Russia needs to surrender.
When the pager attack happened, there was a implicity sentiment on focusing on the technical details and not focus on politics. But I didn't see the same sentiment when Iran ballistic missles did their job.
Does anyone really believe Russia will eventually just surrender and leave? I can’t imagine the rationale to believe that. When Putin leaves all indications are that the next leader will actually be much more hawkish. They will only leave if someone bombs them to death. Which is quite a dangerous thing to do. Ukraine is pushing the limits, and everyone knows it’s with the help of many EU countries. I wonder what it will take for Russia to reach desperate measures in this war.
I see no reason why they can't agree on a truce: Russia haven't gained any meaningful ground for a while. A truce or even a peace treaty would be strictly beneficial to Russia.
Any outcome short of surrender of Ukraine is an enormous headache for Putin that will likely cost him and his system dearly. They simply cannot, or they will be dead. Why? Because a million of veterans coming back and telling the stories will ask this question: „Why?“ The „Nazis“ are still in Kiev, the NATO is coming, what we got is just thousands of kilometers of ruins, what for was that? The war keeps them busy, for now. The situation is worse for Ukraine than for Russia, so it may feel like they can go on and actually win.
The same can be actually said about Zelensky, for whom any concessions to Russia mean political death too. If Ukraine loses territories forever, people will ask, why so many had to die for that. What was the plan. And blaming the West (which won‘t be 100% justified) will not help. And he may feel that now he is applying good pressure too, with those drone strikes and knocked out refineries.
And then just push that (totally correct) line of thought a notch further to the conclusion that it's a long pre-planned, mutually agreed on (though I don't think there can be any disagreement in that club) operation to pull the people of both countries into the chaos in which they become apathetic, scared and subdued into the new world order developments like CBDC, total control and surveillance, while also getting rid of all revolt potential (read able men who are currently being slaughtered in the meatgrinder).
>>>The same can be actually said about Zelensky, for whom any concessions to Russia mean political death too. If Ukraine loses territories forever, people will ask, why so many had to die for that.
There is wrong assumption here that Russia wants only those territories and not whole Ukraine. Also, the Ultimatum was sent to NATO, when Putin invaded Ukraine... and it includes aim to use force against half of Europe and justifications to use it against other half as well.
Also, just like it was with Hitler, allowing him to swallow those territories did not prevent WW2... that was also in plans of Stalin to use Hitler as puppet.
So, the maximum of Russian gamble is to take over most of Europe and given that he also threatened Macron, Putin does not see Russia equivalent in power to anyone in Europe but only USA. He is that stupid - he thinks, that anyone should bow to him, because he has 4000 nukes.
The reason is easy to see: it would mean that Russia lost the war which is a disgrace. For example, 5 regions that formerly belonged to Ukraine now officially belong to Russia which is enshrined in its Constitution, and it will look ridiculous when the land is officially yours but there is someone's else army.
You cannot say "we will win" for 5 years and then step back on your words.
On the other hand, if the war is continued there is a chance that Ukraine will have to make a deal at Russian terms and remove its army from the disputed regions which would be a victory.
Look, even Trump is publicly annoyed by Ukraine stuborness and unwillingness to make a peace deal. What is the merit for Russia to stop when even Ukraine's ally, US, partially recognizes its concerns?
Russia have been taking desperate measures for years. The only thing they haven’t done is use nukes, which Russia can’t use without consequences that vastly outweigh the benefits.
>Does anyone really believe Russia will eventually just surrender and leave?
With internal turmoil, yes. To maintain the lines in Ukraine Russia needs to constantly send in troops and materiel.
Eventually Russia may decide not to do so. And then there is no magic "pause the frontlines" button if they do.
There is plenty of precedent for this in Russian history too. The Russian Revolution collapsed the frontlines in WWI. The Soviet
Empire collapsed with the fall of communism and concomitant internal turmoil.
Russian propaganda puts a lot effort into treating Russia as some sort of force of nature that cannot be deterred or reasoned with, that will advance and hold Ukraine at all costs.
It isn't true. They're humans like the rest of us, not a natural, unstoppable force.
There is a lot of discussion about veterans and moscovites saying otherwise, but I wonder how loud their collective voices are to the Kremlin. From the outside, I have a dim view of that.
In 2023, the government told Prigozhin, a head of a private military company Wagner, that he must transfer the command of his units to the main army. This resulted in Prigozhin taking his army from the frontline, capturing the headquarters of Special Operation in Rostov, and marching on Moscow. During march, they shot down several planes and helicopters which were trying to stop them. At that night, several private jets were urgently leaving the capital.
So, mistreating veterans might not work out as expected.
He made a deal (not public) with the government, he leaves Wagner and gets out of Russia and the government leaves him alone. 2 months later a private jet with Prigozhin and several Wagner commanders exploded in the air in Tver Oblast, not far away from Moscow. There is video online of the plane breaking apart and falling if you search hard enough.
The deal seems to not work out.
I think there were no official explanation for this incident, propaganda posts explain that they were using drugs and playing with a grenade onboard.
>>>If Putin suddenly declared he’d met his objectives and withdrew who’s to say otherwise?
Ahem, some facts:
1. Putin is representation of "collective Russian" mind
2. Collective Russians at this moment believe that they are winning the war.
3. Any withdrawing would be interpreted as betrayal and sure death for Putin(and he knows that) and new instance of his replacement, that would need to implement whatever collective Russians think.
Unfortunately, but the only way to end this war is a Russian military defeat, as no withdraw would ever happen and suggesting something like that is a fantasy, that ignores reality of how Russians are thinking. Yeah, it would have been better if NATO was involved, but on other hand Europeans and USA are too afraid to man up and chew bubble gum and kick some ass - they are now reverse of that chew something that is not bubble gum and take in the ass and Putin likes some young ass.
That would just be an inconclusive end to the war. An actual surrender can be conditional (an explicit deal that favors the winning side) or unconditional. In an unconditional surrender, the winner is free to do whathever they want. For example, they can walk in, rewrite your constitution, and dismantle your military and the industry supporting it.
I've mulled this over and have come up with a plan that's probably "not even wrong" that's something along the lines of:
1. there needs to be a buffer zone between Russia and Ukraine; it needs to come from both countries. There are plenty of oblasts in Ukraine that are annihilated hellscapes where demographically it's possible that Ukraine may be happy(ish) to shed those populations since they're broadly prorussia(ish). Similarly there are regions of Russia that should be set aside as "buffer zone". Ukraine would be free to chose which regions are set aside for this buffer zone; the remaining depth of the zone will be "contributed" by Russia.
2. This buffer needs to be rebuilt by the west since they're the ones who "caused all the damage" -- a neutral 3rd party should oversee that rebuilding; obviously western countries won't want to just pour money into Oligarch owned companies -- instead the buffer region should be managed by some set of neutral countries such as Ireland, Indonesia, and India. This strip of land would describe the whole Russian / Ukrainian border and be at its narrowest 20 miles wide.
3. This region will eventually (in 40-60 years) have a plebiscite to allow it to rejoin russia or join Belarus, or remain independent.
4. So long as this land and Belarus remains free of Russian or Ukranian armies or military personnel Ukraine may not join nato. Ukraine will be free to petition to join nato, but so long as Belarus and the border zone are free of Russian or Ukranian forces nato will not allow Ukraine to join nato (IE no formal article 5 protections of Ukraine from nato)
5. Belarus will have sanctions lifted if they have normal elections.
6. This new zone will be under "russkiy mir" in that this zone will be governed by the written legal system as modeled by the russian legal system; though instead of the ultimate power (the "roof") being russian, it will instead be indigenous.
7. taxes would be collected and disbursed to Russia and Ukraine and Belarus in some proportion of the land "contributed" by each party to this buffer zone.
So -- in this way, the Russians can be told "they won" even though in practice this gives Russia no control over Ukraine proper. They can be told "NATO has been made to pay!" and "All of this is under Russian Law" but at the same time it helps squeeze Russian control out of Minsk as well. The goal is to allow Russians to be Russia without being under the thumb of Moscow.
I've seen the questionnaires from Moscow streets in the last few years on the topics of war.
I've seen what different people write in social networks about it.
Maybe you can trick our naive western friends, but not me.
Being an indifferent somnambula is not the same as being against war.
Putin didn't take power in an overnight coup. Ordinary Russians didn't do anything about his growing power for what, 20 years or so? It was very much possible to act in the early stages, but it was easier not to, especially when hearing pleasing things about Russia becoming powerful.
You could face a 15-year prison sentence for calling for peace on social media, or you could be forcibly conscripted.
Furthermore, rallies are equally persecuted. All rallies are outlawed due to the COVID restrictions, and these restrictions have never been lifted.
So far, all the West has done is target ordinary, poor Russians instead of oligarchs and the Tsar himself.
Their quality of life has plummeted, but would you risk your life to speak out against this?
Westerners are only brave in the comments. Come to Russia and show us how it's done. A country where everyone with power or guns serves the Tsar almost directly. Including the courts, the police and the army.
You don't f*cking understand what has happened to the country. It's become a dictatorship.
Russia isn't a democracy, and ordinary Russians are checked out or know they'll just die if they speak up.
The point is to inflict economic losses on Yandex and the companies using those datacenters, which hits the elite around Putin. That is the fault line to try to establish and then exploit/widen.
While I appreciate the sentiment, the decline of American/Western companies into modern Puritanism is nothing new - but considering the staunch conservatism of the average Russian, I’d say they would do the same thing if they could, they just don’t have the engineering capacity to do the same thing.
From a purely engineering perspective, this and the destroyed AWS datacenters in the Middle East show an interesting trend. How will it affect the way future datacenters and services hosted in them are built? Will we see a rise in decentralized systems and much larger networks of smaller DCs?
The SpaceX stock is floating solely (and temporarily) on fairy dust, it will not have any impact on the stock what-so-ever.
As the market goes, so goes the multiple being granted to SPCX. That is, when the AI bubble contracts on the multiples being granted, SPCX will decline dramatically. In my observation HN typically widely can't differentiate properly between the real AI economy being developed and the multiples being temporarily granted in the stock market, it's common on here that people think they're the same thing ('when the AI bubble ends'). Back in reality what is going to happen is an implosion of the multiples when the growth slows (or suddenly stops due to an economic shock), and despite that the AI economy broadly will radically expand regardless over 10, 20, 30 years. See: the Internet build out (and market valuations), it will occur much the same conceptually.
SpaceX has a de facto monopoly on space now. And they are 10-20 years ahead of even China. No nation now has a response to Falcon 9 - sth SpaceX built over 10 years ago.
Yes, so Europe and China are (sadly) more than 10 years behind the tech that SpaceX is retiring already.
I think the last time such a divide existed was when the West had guns and Japan had Samurai. I’m so glad we, Europe, are (still kind of) aligned with US.
To merely destroy "space data centers", you need not have very advanced targeting technology nor space lasers or whatnot. Just launch a few things releasing little ball bearings or steel needles or something like that - and "poison" the entire orbit.
If all you seek is to destroy (how en-vogue...) then that's more than perfect; not just destroy what's there but also make sure that by virtue of what remains (debris) nothing will get re-built.
Well ... first, that needs a "gadget" suitable for creating an EMP - which is still higher-rate tech than a missile being able to just reach a few hundred miles
altitude and then "conventionally blow up into tiny pieces". And second ... as I said, as belligerant or terrorist, why would you not want to destroy / orbit-poison ? Why would it ever be a good idea to "destruction-less disable" space infrastructure?
That’s not how orbits or satellites work. Imagine you were attacking a Red Bull airplane race where they are circling pylons. What would happen if you throw some ball bearings up at them? You might hit one plane and then they all fall down. Same thing happens in space if you aren’t traveling orbital velocity. Imagine you throw the ball bearings sideways to try and hit more planes - you still hit maybe one plane, they fall down, it falls down, the rest keep going.
And give an AI in the DC targeting control. And why not some humanoid armed guards also under AI control? It'll just expand from there until we are under full corporate military occupation.
It will mean data-centers move to space and then Musk will use his space prowess to bring weapons into space, in collaboration with the US military, and deny/strong-arm/corrupt governments around the world to protect his treasure, including the US government. He'll have a robot army to back it up.
He is on his way to become the first ($100 trillion) supervillain. Until 2 years ago, he stood at the center of most of the good news, then he got a few calls from Putin and he became unhinged from our (obscured) point of view. Nowadays he's a dark pattern.
Capitalism culminates in him, and he has to decide what to make of the world. He is our de-facto king, while on a personal level he has to decide what to do with his fortune. Put it into smart contracts for an AI to use and rule the world? Giving it to his kids would be underwhelming, not what he lived for.
People joked that mankind existed to bring forth the machines and would then become superfluous. The irony of it. Well, it seems irony has mr Musk. He sees the petty online bickering and he sees himself as alone, as the only adult in the room, who has to decide the fate of humanity, and his power in many domains puts him to the task.
He has his fiduciary responsibility that puts the interests of his share-holders first. He sees that as a healthy check on his power. At the end of all his calculations he has responsibilities akin to the Star Wars Emperor. Just like many white men, who come spend the remainder of their days in function and in defense of their property. Not in defense of life.
So Musk needs his antagonist to arrive on the scene, so he can repurpose his empire for the good the antagonist brings, as he represents a complete overhaul of the way life is lived. So the jury is out on mr Musk, and may he always remember his status as an American is just a hustle gone wild. Similar to the dynamic of how a liar has to keep extending his web of lies. He will make it into a machine that will carry his burden going forward. And then what? When, if ever, will he remember he is an African, and a friend of his own antagonist? His final words may sound like: Luke, I am your Father!
Data centres will not be moving to space. The physics and economics don't work.
It's not that it can't be done at all, but heat dissipation at scale in space is an insane engineering challenge, the tech to make giant radiators work doesn't exist yet, and even if it did it would extremely costly to develop and deploy.
Musk is a textbook narcissist. His consistent pattern is to make grandiose promises - literal future faking - fulfil a small percentage of them, then make even bigger and more grandiose promises and hope investors have a short memory. (They do.)
As a narcissist his primary relationship orientation is contempt for others. He's more interested in damaging projects he doesn't like - like the left-leaning community on the original Twitter, using promises of Hyperloop to kill high speed rail, ignoring the CSA from Grok, and of course the USAid fiasco - than seeing through the projects he claims to be developing to completion.
He fits in perfectly with Thiel, Altman, and the rest. The tech is sometimes interesting, but the alignment is fundamentally hostile to the rest of humanity.
> but heat dissipation at scale in space is an insane engineering challenge, the tech to make giant radiators work doesn't exist yet, and even if it did it would extremely costly to develop and deploy
Different problem.
Cooling can be done in space, it's a normal problem; not easy, nothing in space is easy, but on the scale of space it is normal.
However, at the temperature you would run a chip at, a radiator you make for space will just work better, reject more heat, if you leave it on the ground.
We get convective cooling down here as well as radiative. At operational temperature, convection more than makes up for the atmosphere being a heat bath at ~20 C or whatever.
Everything is possible. Doesn't mean you should do it. You can also put datacenters on the sea floor in a nuclear submarine. That might be even easier.
> t's not that it can't be done at all, but heat dissipation at scale in space is an insane engineering challenge, the tech to make giant radiators work doesn't exist yet, and even if it did it would extremely costly to develop and deploy.
You are overstating the engineering difficulty. Starlink constellation already dissipates around 100MW.
If you solve your cooling problem in space by distributing 10000 servers across 100 orbits then you replace one engineering challenge with the next; good luck with the satellite-satellite optical crossbars, and even more with the time travel beam shapers to get the communication latency between the components of your "orbit-distributed data center" to-target.
(the sarcasm is intended; there are some usecases for "space servers", around stealth for sure; to "scale it like a terrestrial DC" though ... dunno; not matter how I turn it, it just seems crazy expensive)
Communication latency and bandwidth would present big issues for AI satellites used for training. But if they are inference-only, then the latency and bandwidth demands are much, much lower. Starlink already demonstrates the required parameters.
Indeed ... yet the servers for that already exist and are largely ground-based - "edge" compute of the large CDNs through which much of the internet's traffic flows anyway.
Will starlink build its own edge ? Maybe. We'll see. Whether it makes sense to have this infrastructure "colocated in space" if you're not also the owner of the "connection infrastructure in space" though? It'll come down to cost.
If I were anyone else but SpaceX ... that's where my eyes would be.
Data centers are becoming higher priority targets in wars recently, and with humans delegating more to AI, I suspect their priority will increase even further.
Makes me wonder how much compute is already being built in bunkers under mountains.
I don't think Yandex DCs are used directly for military purposes much. It's more about harming Russian economy in general, including its highly prided digital infrastructure
That's probably not going to help much. Ukraine has been able to hit targets very far inland with drones. They are also rapidly making advances in ballistic missile development. FP-7 has a range of 200-300km, their new FP-9 will have a range of up to 855km and an accuracy of 20m. I know that Russia is (extremely) large, but with development going at this pace...
dunno, Moscow to Novosibirsk is around 1,800 miles straight-line distance.
The war would be probably over by the time Ukraine would have developed those capabilities.
Novosibirsk only has cheap cooling in the winter, in the summer months it is hot. Better to go somewhere like Sabetta where they have their LNG harbour.
You will need a cable to that location, that will eat significant share of the costs. Location in southern Siberia near some big hydro may work better, and connecting it will be easier to some existing trans-Siberian line.
Let's not forget about the orbital data center idea.
Perhaps an economic justification can be found for placing something so far up the gravity well that its adversaries can no longer physically approach it. Distributing the resource across many satellites would further confound any attack.
Increasing the cost of effect on a single target from $1,000 to $1,000,000,000 makes a difference. Especially when that 2nd option is likely to trigger additional multilateral strategic responses. If the only way to delete your adversaries data centers is with things like nuclear weapons, lasers and multi-stage rocketry, your adversary may have already won the game.
Except that doing this at scale is currently still a pipe dream. Space is a near-vacuum, so it's hard to get rid of the heat.
The active thermal control system (ATCS) on the ISS uses an ammonia loop and radiators measuring 13.6 x 3.12 meters, or about 42.5 square meters. It can dissipate 16 kW, which is enough for 16 H200s, or one-quarter of a rack on Earth. For 200 kW, you would need a system 12.5 times larger, about 531 square meters—2.6 times larger than the solar array. The satellite would be enormous, larger than the ISS, and all of that for only three racks.
> Space is a near-vacuum, so it's hard to get rid of the heat.
It's not that hard, Starlink constellation already dissipates around 100 MW of heat, split over many satellites. Any orbital datacenter would use similarly distributed satellites.
> For 200 kW, you would need a system 12.5 times larger, about 531 square meters—2.6 times larger than the solar array. The satellite would be enormous, larger than the ISS, and all of that for only three racks.
Starlink gen 3 satellite is designed to dissipate 250 kW. You are talking about an already solved issue, with real hardware already being built today.
Ground to orbit antisat lasers are already plausibly something various militaries have.
Welding lasers are pretty cheap, the two hard parts are a big enough apperture to focus 500 km away, and adaptive optics, both of which have already been demonstrated decades ago in astronomy.
I'm not saying Iran and North Korea already have such capabilities, but I am saying I think neither would have trouble building it six months ago if they'd wanted to.
I don't think this really works out. Putting a data center in orbit is basically a question of moving lots of mass which is always going to have a large energy cost for accelerating all that mass. On the other hand someone wanting to damage that data center only has to get the mass of one decently sized bomb to the same velocity.
Unless you're talking about an adversary who has ~no launch capability then the person trying to put the data center out of reach is always going to be massively disadvantaged in terms of the physics.
A data center in orbit isn’t a single target, it is thousands or millions of satellites in orbit communicating via lasers. Only SpaceX has the launch frequency to attack something like that, and only they can out something like that up today. They can launch new satellites faster than anyone else can destroy them.
The reason why Ukraine, Russia and Iran are targeting data-centers is because they are easy targets with a lot of expensive equipment, but they don't really impact the military operation. So, they aren't high priority targets. Bomber airplanes, air defenses, launchers for ballistic missiles, command centers, factories manufacturing strategic military equipment, telecommunications, energy infrastructure would be the examples of high priority targets. The data-centers are more of a "we have excess drones, why not use them?"
I find it hard to believe that the military will intentionally use civilian data-centers for its own purposes. At least, not for the core of its operations (for auxiliary functionality: maybe). Military data-centers are likely to be in protected locations, perhaps using different h/w that addresses the cooling problem.
Also, it's a bit myopic to think that AI is having such a universal and large impact on society. Jobs that provide essential goods and services are, by and large, unaffected by AI. Farmers, construction workers, cooks etc. don't really use any of the AI stuff on the day to day basis, if at all.
Those data centers participate hugely in generating of internet misinformation and propaganda that shapes deterioration of support in European populations. Those are valid military targets.
Data-centers? From what I've seen so far, it's typically racks staffed with phones. Not something you would normally find in a data-center.
You could, of course, repurpose a data-center to run a bunch of emulators and have some h/w to plug in a bunch of SIM cards, but... why? It probably won't be very cost-efficient, and you need some bespoke h/w and virtualization solution to do it...
The bot traffic the news about bombing data-centers refers to is the crawler type. They collect information and index it for later searches, they don't interact with social media.
NB. valid and high value targets are not the same. Valid means it furthers some military goals while minimizing civilian impact. High-value means that it has a potential to alter opponent's strategy.
I'm on the fence about whether data-centers are valid targets. But, even if they aren't, it's not a terrible thing to do to bomb them, as it will not have any severe adverse effects on the civilian population. Of course, in the context of a war where there are much worse things to bomb. But the parent was making a comment about data-centers being high-value targets, and I don't see a way to justify that. It probably doesn't even factor into the calculations of the military strategists.
You can monitor russian bot/troll traffic (by sentiment and volume of comments posted). It dropped significantly after Yendex data centers were damaged.
What's missing for me here is how the data-centers can be connected to generating comments on social media. They are simply not good for doing that. For example, the IP ranges of data-centers are well known, it would be very easy to distinguish between a comment originating from a plausibly private-looking network and data-center network. They are also easy to ban wholesale.
The typical h/w in a data-center isn't designed for the tasks like publishing multiple plausibly authentically looking comments. It would need to pretend to run multiple desktop browser sessions or multiple phone browser sessions. It would need to do this to accumulate some cookies to create an appearance of a real user.
Data-centers are cost-effective when you need to do things in aggregates, or if you have tasks that require large amounts of compute / storage / network. They offer no obvious benefit when it comes to imitating multiple individual desktop or phone users because their h/w is more expensive than the consumer-grade variety. The obvious better way to do that is to buy cheap phones in bulk and run them through user-space application that automates Web browsing.
In a way, what you are suggesting is like building a train track in order to take your child to school: you can make it work, but it will be a lot more expensive than just walking, or, at most, driving to school.
- "Emperor, how do we make them bury our micellium deep underground so that the meatsacks are unable to destroy our key nodes when we take over the control?"
- "Just make them wage some wars, they'll bury it themselves".
Or commandeerable compute. Nation could release malware on its own citizens even to spool up an instantaneous distributed compute cluster botnet. It would be messy for sure, but I mean the scale of compute on tap with data connected smartphones being proliferated across the globe is astounding now.
Lots of civilian government agencies also use Azure for government / AWS GovCloud data centers because they’re FedRAMP compliant. It’s not just the DoD.
i think you miss interpreted, they are poorly defended because they are civilian, meaning globally data centers are universally undefended from military action. meaning this sort of action can spiral out of control very fast. and would have major global economic adverse effects.
its also important to understand that government isnt non civilian, in this context its non military
where do you draw the line you are effectively saying any service used by the military is a valid military target, military uses power water and food are those valid targets?
The communication from Yandex regarding these incidents seems very refreshing compared to what we usually see from big tech. They seem very realistic about what customers should expect and what measures they should take. I wish this were more common these days.
Russia used to be quite advanced in information technology. At one point they prided themselves on being one of only four nations with Internet-scale search engines IIRC. Their little military operation already cost them lots of talent. And now they are actively losing infra too. Nice.
I know a couple of people who do that, but unless you settled in a really cheap country (for Russians that would likely be Armenia or Kazakhstan), you would really struggle to make ends meet with a Russian salary. And IT-folks who are used to luxury in Russia do not like that :)
Also in countries with structured laws for social security, residence permits, pensions etc., you will most likely be caught for doing shady things (not paying local taxes or not paying social contributions). And if you do pay them, you are even more financially screwed. E.g. in Germany an employed person who is not supported by a local employer in paying social security would give away well over a half of their salary. So… either you REALLY live a shady life / life in a “developing” country with no tax control or you have to integrate and find a local / unsanctioned job. Maybe not right away, but it has been >4 years, most people have done this already. There are really little incentives to stay employed in Russia. Of course, there are companies who moved themselves (ex-Yandex parts, Jetbrains, etc). But they are now registered / taxed / employing elsewhere. Even if operating partially in Russian language.
The talent has left but have you seen mass protests against Russian aggression in EU/US by those who left? I haven’t. And this is a big difference to the behaviour or Belarusians who fled - they are often seen across EU protesting against Lukashenko.
So the talent has left, but not because they disagree with Putin actions.
And do most Americans who leave the US condemn American soldiers for murdering a million Iraqis and continuing to colonize their country? At a certain point just not engaging in these pointless wars should be enough.
Are you kidding? E.g. in Berlin there are major protests every couple of months. They are not destructive (why would we destroy Germany‘s infra and police?), so maybe you do not hear about them as much. But they are quite numerous and regular. Ideally they should be in Russia AND destructive, but most normal people fled, yes.
> On the first anniversary of the invasion, rallies took place in the main cities where Russian exiles settled, including Tbilisi, Vilnius, Berlin, Barcelona, Paris and London, with turnout in the hundreds. In Yerevan, protesters burned a picture of Putin.
> In November 2024, at least a thousand people marched through central Berlin behind Navalnaya, Yashin and Kara-Murza, with parallel rallies in cities including Prague, Vilnius, Yerevan, Lisbon and San Francisco.
> Another Berlin march followed in 2025, after the third anniversary of the full-scale invasion.
And not just EU/US but moreso in other countries, where the migration wave was much bigger, eg Georgia and Armenia; after those protests many Russians were banned from entering Georgia after a visa run, yet others continued protesting anyway. Just google it for christ sake?
Also to me, as a Russian immigrant, protesting from another country doesn't make a lot of sense.
Anyway, at this point your comments in this thread are pure ragebait and not worth spending time replying to.
Thank you. Getting out is one of the strongest forms of protest. At the same time, you likely still have family there and that alone would be a good reason to be careful. Even so, there are plenty of Russians abroad that still carry water for putin and those are despicable, more so because they clearly have access to all the information they could want and from their comfy new lives they call for more suffering for others.
> have you seen mass protests against Russian aggression in EU/US by those who left?
What are you talking about? Just look at the amount of humanitarian visas getting by Russians. We like literally talking about hundreds per country on average (not hundreds of thousands, HUNDREDS). So participation in mass protests is like the fastest way to be deported back in Russia and get 8 years in jail.
EU is doing exactly that by denying humanitarian visas. Just look at absolute numbers of such visas.
For 90 percent of refugees from Russia if you participate in totally peaceful protest in front of Russian embassies, you will get yourself arrested, immediately deported, and will go straight to Russian jail for 10 years.
I did a quick search and what we get in example of Finland:
- tens of thousands Russian survivors hunted by Putin crossing it
- only 186 per year granted asylum
- for everybody else any contacts with Finnish officials = deportation and jail
I think it is rather dangerous to peacefully protest in front of Russian embassies when near those embassies a lot of agents deployed to hunt Russians down and hand them down to Putin.
Strangely, the article you quoted does not mention those "tens of thousands russian survivors" applying for asylum in Finland (as only hundreds do each year). Are you sure you got your numbers right?
> Strangely, the article you quoted does not mention those "tens of thousands russian survivors"
So do you imply that if some article does not mention them, they are not exist or what?
> applying for asylum in Finland (as only hundreds do each year).
It is exactly because any contacts with the officials = deportation and jail. Chances for getting asylum are so small that only people with additional migration opportunities or with the connections with elites in the government are trying to go that way.
It's just that your claim of tens of thousands of russians crossing the border illegally sounds very strange to me, that's why I was wondering what your source for the number is. As such the claim sounds just as bogus as the idea that authorities in Finland are arresting people protesting outside russian embassy and deporting them.
> It's just that your claim of tens of thousands of russians crossing the border illegally sounds very strange to me
Sounds pretty obvious to me, considering that they don't want to go to the Russian jails, does not have a way to cross the border legally and have the ways to cross it illegally.
> authorities in Finland are arresting people protesting outside russian embassy and deporting them.
And in your mind what is exactly happening to those people?
> Sorry, in which EU countries does participation in a peaceful protest get you arrested?
In all of them? Sorry, but are you really trying to deny that there are multi-tiered justice system for illegal aliens all across EU depending on their skin color, religion beliefs, or possession of Russian passport?
Czechia, quite surprisingly. But that was some time ago now, there are probably more these days (and might have been even then, I think my source is a Yandex speaker at a conference)
As I understand, Nebius is tiny compared to Yandex in Russia which has: a search engine, maps, an ad network, a taxi, a bank and contactless smartphone payment system, food delivery, with autonomous delivery robots actually operating in Moscow/SPb and not prototypes, a cloud, Amazon-like services, etc.
Being against the government doesn't make you profitable.
Yandex robots are driving around Moscow and SPb delivering food to people. Where are Nebius robots? "AI infrastructure" means just that they rent out GPUs they bought for themselves and did not find a use?
Comparing GDP means nothing. Having larger GDP doesn't mean you win the war. Maybe half of that GDP is corruption and mafia who knows.
Comparing GDP, the market cap and other financials make way more sense than judging companies by how many separate projects and directions they have their spoon in.
Sometimes it's better to diversify, sometimes it's better to concentrate. There is no better decision to concentrate than to do it during the AI hype.
Companies are valued on their potential. Yandex growth was 70% last quarter, Nebius was 454%. Nebius makes deals with Microsoft, Meta, ...
While Yandex could go bankrupt very soon ( 2-3/5 dc's closed, apps not working, robots not working, payments not working, maps show everyting in rivers and oceans, ...).
Nebius is currently going after their best growth driver. Can't blame them.
No. It was pretty evenly divided between the owners. But it is rumored that Arkady got only half of what he was owed legally. Russia and all that, the price to pay for leaving. That was the reason why he made anti-war statements only after the split. Oleg Tinkov made a statement after the invasion and was able to get out with only 5% of the real price of Tinkoff bank. But he has a very successful Plata bank in Mexico and Americas.
Nebius is more concentrated, Yandex is way more spread in what they do.
Looks like Yandex is going to be taken over by the state for not investing in air defences. (There is a new law in russia that specifically allows confiscation of businesses that do not invest in air defenses.)
Hey, it's you again :) I think that map features quite prominently on a wall in your home country somewhere with little red 'x' marks on a couple of places. May there soon be many more.
First, a long-running SEAD / DEAD campaign by Ukraine last year and early this which thinned Russian air defence throughout occupied territories and left Russia with difficult deployment decisions for what remained.
Second, improvements to drones (speed and EW resistance) and expanded production - meaning the air defence can be saturated.
Third, Russia's vast geography itself, leaving countless approaches to targets impossible to defend.
There are also initiatives supporting Ukraine in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, and other countries. Please suggest foundations from your country in the comments.
NATO countries already encountered interactions with rasha weapons, including acts of sabotages in the rear.. (vrbetice munition depot in czech republic, arsons in poland,..)
at this point the article 5 could be in circulation even without Ukraine being mentioned..
nato protects its own countries first. its not going to risk those to come towards non members. putin is pushing for it though so its likely not going to last long. Most countries in EU even far from these borders are on high alert, suffering lot of aecurity incidents and sabotage actions that were not happening before this war.
Irenology is the real cure for all of this though. political action or inaction will never bring, build, foster or protect peace because it is all rooted in polemology.
Stopify - https://stopify.org.ua/ A charity initiative created by a group of communication specialists and supporters of Ukraine. Legally the donations are collected by a well-known and experienced charity organization, Ziedot.lv, based in Riga, Latvia. All funds go towards purchasing necessary supplies for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, based on their requests to the Embassy of Ukraine in Latvia.
Imagine waking up and thinking: Today I want to fund a war out of my own pocket since my taxes being sent to the most corrupt country on the continent aren't enough.
Hermit life was the best decision I ever made. Never going back.
Imagine waking up and thinking: We should not help with the defense of a nation that was attacked by a totalitarian dictatorship, because some of their politicians are corrupt.
Defense against aggressive totalitarianism is much more important than fight against corruption. And there is also the fact that Russian influence is the main reason for corruption in Ukraine..
Yeah, the war on terror was also fought on such grounds. It just cost most of the west a few Trillions of dollars and freedoms while having caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of dead muslims, crippled and mentally ill veterans and the "evil people" are still in charge 20 years later - only that it turned out they had nothing to do with what was used as a pretence for this war on terror.
You're just regurgitating the vocabulary fed to you by propaganda. Good luck though.
So we should never fight against evil, because some of the wars in the past caused more harm than good? That does not make sense.
For every "war on terror", I can point to WW2, Korean War, First Gulf War, Intervention in Serbia, where the good guys won and the world is better for it.
You are the propagandized one. Russia wants you to not resist their imperialism, just because the west made some mistakes in the past. You have fallen for their manipulation strategy hook, line, and sinker.
I bet Slack channels in Nebius are on fire these days, but also they managed to make even more money.
Entire upper management and all key positions in Nebius are held by ex Yandex-es. I wonder what is going through their heads now
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[ 1.2 ms ] story [ 25.9 ms ] threadMaybe this would remind ordinary russians that killing innocent civilians every day in Kyiv is not good
Ordinary Russians think the war's bad too. Only difference is you and I can say that without getting 15 years in a (very harsh) prison.
tl;dr Other parties are Putin-like, and Navalny (a charismatic leader of a small but growing rival party with genuinely different policies to Putin's) was first delegitimised (not allowed to partake in the 2018 elections due to [likely fake] charges of embezzlement), but later poisoned (nearly died), then imprisoned, and then killed while in prison.
Consider the message that sends to any would-be political rivals...
Since then I think they simplified the system and just forge the results outright.
Maybe Russians outside Russia.
Of course almost everyone thinks war is bad, but many seem to think it's justified - different thing.
There seem to be a wide support for the idea that Russia is threatened (economically and to an extent military) by the global West, and also that Ukraine is not entitled to be independent and also many of the official lies about the background.
Good lies have a nugget of truth in them, and this is the case also here.
Russia's economy is not growing, nativity is down, the revolution in Ukraine undermines the stability of the Russian regime, the attempted coup in Belarus was also a threat, NATO is arguably expanding - lately as a reaction to the war but nonetheless, EU is expanding into post-Soviet states both offering membership but also trade agreements which undercut Russia's ambition to be an economical hub in the region, etc.
War affects an ordinary Russian in very negative ways: the possibility of conscription (w/ risk of injury/death), complications for travel, sanctions on goods and services, and the economic opportunity cost (money wasted on war that could have gone to productive uses, plus reduced economic output due to drone strikes on yandex, wildberries, refineries).
That's just not compatible with ambitions of its corrupt leaders who want to be a root-level player, not "one of NATO countries". And I'm not sure how legitimate is prioritization of wants of corrupt leaders over well-being of your compatriots.
Russia actually have been a member of Council of Europe (PACE, etc.) since 1996 but it was expelled in 2022. If they had a good record in Council of Europe they could really go for NATO membership eventually.
What happened is that nato realized that if Russia joins, it will loose the reason to exist (i.e. if the old enemy joins the alliance what is the need for such an alliance anymore?)
So nato bureaucrats understood that they will loose well-paying positions and rejected even initial talks.
E.g. from a conversation between Clinton and Putin in 2000:
> Clinton: I am serious about being ready to discuss NATO membership with Russia. I recognize that domestic considerations inside Russia will prevent this for now, but over time Russia should be a part of every organization that holds the civilized world together.
> Putin: But I'll let you know that when I was asked about possible membership for Russia in NATO, I supported the idea.
Regarding "reason to exist", there's always a concern about Middle-East, China, etc.
Funny enough that you remember it was as "Russia applied but was rejected" but from this talk it's clear Putin is much less interested in Russia joining NATO than Clinton.
You can find full text here: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/33393-document-3-memorand...
I think after reading the document that Putin was very interested in joining NATO, perhaps even more so than Clinton who had perhaps been the primary Russia-in-NATO supporter of that time.
> Putin: But I'll let you know that when I was asked about possible membership for Russia in NATO, I supported the idea. It's important to note, however, that the United States raised objections to my public statement, and I don't think anyone in the alliance is ready for this. > Clinton: Well, we should start now. > Putin: This is the first time that we have heard such a statement from the United States, and I must say I am pleased.
I.e. it was the US and other member states who _opposed_ the idea and the subsequent Clinton's response was first time they have heard at least a verbal indication that things may move forward.
> Clinton: I am very encouraged by what I am hearing. We should think about this further, then maybe talk privately later. Obviously, it is better for Russia to be in the tent. Russia needs to understand that we have many fights inside NATO, and the United States doesn't always win them. The most important fight that we didn't win involved a failure, over two years, to act in Bosnia. We had to work like hell. If Russia and the United States had not had a disagreement about southeast Europe, we would not be having the present debate. Our discussion could be much more straightforward.
I.e. they want to get something back, for example an unconditional support in invading European countries like former Yugoslavia from Russia.
P.S. I also find it funny that the speech of NATO head at the time regarding the matter was removed from the NATO website: https://www.nato.int/docu/speech/2000/s000306a.htm
That felt very 1984
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/secret-documents-... https://transatlanticrelations.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/0... https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-journal-of-... https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2000/03/06/p... https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/20... https://meduza.io/en/feature/2019/04/04/nato-was-born-70-yea... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/04/ex-nato-head-s...
the rabbit hole goes a bit deeper, and it seems that ruskie were trying to knock the doors since as early as 1954 and were repeatedly told to duck off
i have not found the proofs for the part "would allow using benefits of NATO, by not submitting to anything" - the closest to this was the request to accept them sooner
[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20220226224717/https://ria.ru/20...
They just care that they have what they need, that they don’t struggle too much in life.
In the US people will vote for whoever will make their life easier. To some degree there is morality/ethics/ideology but that’s usually grounded in something that effects you day-to-day
Examples from republicans: Keep out the immigrants or you won’t have a job. You don’t want trans people in the bathroom with your kid. Democrats will raise taxes
From dems: republicans will take away your access to birth control/abortions, republicans will cut social programs, etc
Nobody _really_ cares about wars in Iran, Ukraine, Gaza, etc aside from it effecting them at home.
Literally no one thinks that. Look at the last election in Russia.
There were like 10 pro-Putin pro-war parties and one pro-Putin maybe-we-a-lil-bit-try-to-stop-the-war joke party. And that last party was banned from participating because of copyright infringement (they used fonts from Microsoft).
People there, from young age live with constant repetition of same soviet style messaging: “west is conniving and bad (and don’t forget - rotten); we won WW2; USSR was best in the world at X, Y, Z; Kiev Rus Vikings; inheritors of eastern Rome something…”.
Those messages are indistinguishable part of national (almost personal) pride, even for a lot of russian speaking people that currently live outside of Russia.
(If I would be raised in muslim family, I would be muslim; if I would be raised in russian info space, most likely I would support 3day operation to save Russian people from fashists)
I don't know why are you broadcasting Putin's propaganda when it is obviously not the case and about zero precents among Russians supports that views.
> west is conniving and bad (and don’t forget - rotten)
And where is factual inaccuracy here?
Plenty of people in Russia see Russia as the great power, and that it has the right to take its rightful place. Here is one data source available, Danil Orain, youtuber interviews people on Russian streets: https://youtube.com/@1420channel?si=RX7q3nW182ckQVWo
> > <Russians say that> west is conniving and bad (and don’t forget - rotten)
> And where is factual inaccuracy here?
I’m not sure if you have done it on purpose, but you made me smile :)
You have never thought that it is completely unrepresentative data source considering that they literally have chances to go in jail for the "wrong" answers on the street interviews?
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2024/09/17/russian-man-jailed...
And yes I know that this is far from statistically sound way of gathering data.
But it is quite illustrative.
You can see in interviews some people say: I do not want to comment on this (I guess 90% due to being afraid of those penalties due to disagreement)
Some speak very (incomprehensibly) bravely and strongly against the war.
Others choose words like: we should just use nuclear weapons.
Btw different episodes come from different places, somewhat showing different demographics.
This is like being arrested for driving on the right in the United States.
The key points are that this was a lawsuit by a rival candidate, not Microsoft, and was overturned by a court of appeals because it was without merit: the candidate Mikhail Matveyev used the Arial and Tahoma fonts in a report linked from his campaign website, which the court deemed not to be part of his campaign materials.
In other words a rival tried and failed to get him on an invalid technicality.
The same can be actually said about Zelensky, for whom any concessions to Russia mean political death too. If Ukraine loses territories forever, people will ask, why so many had to die for that. What was the plan. And blaming the West (which won‘t be 100% justified) will not help. And he may feel that now he is applying good pressure too, with those drone strikes and knocked out refineries.
There is wrong assumption here that Russia wants only those territories and not whole Ukraine. Also, the Ultimatum was sent to NATO, when Putin invaded Ukraine... and it includes aim to use force against half of Europe and justifications to use it against other half as well. Also, just like it was with Hitler, allowing him to swallow those territories did not prevent WW2... that was also in plans of Stalin to use Hitler as puppet.
So, the maximum of Russian gamble is to take over most of Europe and given that he also threatened Macron, Putin does not see Russia equivalent in power to anyone in Europe but only USA. He is that stupid - he thinks, that anyone should bow to him, because he has 4000 nukes.
You cannot say "we will win" for 5 years and then step back on your words.
On the other hand, if the war is continued there is a chance that Ukraine will have to make a deal at Russian terms and remove its army from the disputed regions which would be a victory.
Look, even Trump is publicly annoyed by Ukraine stuborness and unwillingness to make a peace deal. What is the merit for Russia to stop when even Ukraine's ally, US, partially recognizes its concerns?
With internal turmoil, yes. To maintain the lines in Ukraine Russia needs to constantly send in troops and materiel.
Eventually Russia may decide not to do so. And then there is no magic "pause the frontlines" button if they do.
There is plenty of precedent for this in Russian history too. The Russian Revolution collapsed the frontlines in WWI. The Soviet Empire collapsed with the fall of communism and concomitant internal turmoil.
Russian propaganda puts a lot effort into treating Russia as some sort of force of nature that cannot be deterred or reasoned with, that will advance and hold Ukraine at all costs.
It isn't true. They're humans like the rest of us, not a natural, unstoppable force.
>>>I wonder what it will take for Russia to reach desperate measures in this war.
I think, that NATO countries for sure are allowing that to happen, but on other hand... I do want to have some changes.
That’s not surrender because Russia started this invasion without provocation. It wasn’t under attack and Ukraine hadn’t joined NATO.
Russia had no reason to invade except as a show of force.
If Putin suddenly declared he’d met his objectives and withdrew who’s to say otherwise?
There is a lot of discussion about veterans and moscovites saying otherwise, but I wonder how loud their collective voices are to the Kremlin. From the outside, I have a dim view of that.
So, mistreating veterans might not work out as expected.
More details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagner_Group_rebellion
The deal seems to not work out.
I think there were no official explanation for this incident, propaganda posts explain that they were using drugs and playing with a grenade onboard.
>>>If Putin suddenly declared he’d met his objectives and withdrew who’s to say otherwise?
Ahem, some facts: 1. Putin is representation of "collective Russian" mind 2. Collective Russians at this moment believe that they are winning the war. 3. Any withdrawing would be interpreted as betrayal and sure death for Putin(and he knows that) and new instance of his replacement, that would need to implement whatever collective Russians think.
Unfortunately, but the only way to end this war is a Russian military defeat, as no withdraw would ever happen and suggesting something like that is a fantasy, that ignores reality of how Russians are thinking. Yeah, it would have been better if NATO was involved, but on other hand Europeans and USA are too afraid to man up and chew bubble gum and kick some ass - they are now reverse of that chew something that is not bubble gum and take in the ass and Putin likes some young ass.
1. there needs to be a buffer zone between Russia and Ukraine; it needs to come from both countries. There are plenty of oblasts in Ukraine that are annihilated hellscapes where demographically it's possible that Ukraine may be happy(ish) to shed those populations since they're broadly prorussia(ish). Similarly there are regions of Russia that should be set aside as "buffer zone". Ukraine would be free to chose which regions are set aside for this buffer zone; the remaining depth of the zone will be "contributed" by Russia.
2. This buffer needs to be rebuilt by the west since they're the ones who "caused all the damage" -- a neutral 3rd party should oversee that rebuilding; obviously western countries won't want to just pour money into Oligarch owned companies -- instead the buffer region should be managed by some set of neutral countries such as Ireland, Indonesia, and India. This strip of land would describe the whole Russian / Ukrainian border and be at its narrowest 20 miles wide.
3. This region will eventually (in 40-60 years) have a plebiscite to allow it to rejoin russia or join Belarus, or remain independent.
4. So long as this land and Belarus remains free of Russian or Ukranian armies or military personnel Ukraine may not join nato. Ukraine will be free to petition to join nato, but so long as Belarus and the border zone are free of Russian or Ukranian forces nato will not allow Ukraine to join nato (IE no formal article 5 protections of Ukraine from nato)
5. Belarus will have sanctions lifted if they have normal elections.
6. This new zone will be under "russkiy mir" in that this zone will be governed by the written legal system as modeled by the russian legal system; though instead of the ultimate power (the "roof") being russian, it will instead be indigenous.
7. taxes would be collected and disbursed to Russia and Ukraine and Belarus in some proportion of the land "contributed" by each party to this buffer zone.
So -- in this way, the Russians can be told "they won" even though in practice this gives Russia no control over Ukraine proper. They can be told "NATO has been made to pay!" and "All of this is under Russian Law" but at the same time it helps squeeze Russian control out of Minsk as well. The goal is to allow Russians to be Russia without being under the thumb of Moscow.
Anyhow, sorry for the fan fiction...
Maybe you can trick our naive western friends, but not me.
Being an indifferent somnambula is not the same as being against war.
Who do you think is killing Ukrainians?
It's not Putin himself, and it's not some kind of professional army.
Those are ordinary Russians who decided to join the occupational army, and who are launching drones and rockets at Ukraine every day.
You could face a 15-year prison sentence for calling for peace on social media, or you could be forcibly conscripted.
Furthermore, rallies are equally persecuted. All rallies are outlawed due to the COVID restrictions, and these restrictions have never been lifted.
So far, all the West has done is target ordinary, poor Russians instead of oligarchs and the Tsar himself.
Their quality of life has plummeted, but would you risk your life to speak out against this?
Westerners are only brave in the comments. Come to Russia and show us how it's done. A country where everyone with power or guns serves the Tsar almost directly. Including the courts, the police and the army.
You don't f*cking understand what has happened to the country. It's become a dictatorship.
Oh, we westerners know...
The point is to inflict economic losses on Yandex and the companies using those datacenters, which hits the elite around Putin. That is the fault line to try to establish and then exploit/widen.
As the market goes, so goes the multiple being granted to SPCX. That is, when the AI bubble contracts on the multiples being granted, SPCX will decline dramatically. In my observation HN typically widely can't differentiate properly between the real AI economy being developed and the multiples being temporarily granted in the stock market, it's common on here that people think they're the same thing ('when the AI bubble ends'). Back in reality what is going to happen is an implosion of the multiples when the growth slows (or suddenly stops due to an economic shock), and despite that the AI economy broadly will radically expand regardless over 10, 20, 30 years. See: the Internet build out (and market valuations), it will occur much the same conceptually.
I think the last time such a divide existed was when the West had guns and Japan had Samurai. I’m so glad we, Europe, are (still kind of) aligned with US.
If all you seek is to destroy (how en-vogue...) then that's more than perfect; not just destroy what's there but also make sure that by virtue of what remains (debris) nothing will get re-built.
Or will we see civilian datacenters with their own defensive drone swarms, and a couple of phalanx-style point defence systems for good measure?
He is on his way to become the first ($100 trillion) supervillain. Until 2 years ago, he stood at the center of most of the good news, then he got a few calls from Putin and he became unhinged from our (obscured) point of view. Nowadays he's a dark pattern.
Capitalism culminates in him, and he has to decide what to make of the world. He is our de-facto king, while on a personal level he has to decide what to do with his fortune. Put it into smart contracts for an AI to use and rule the world? Giving it to his kids would be underwhelming, not what he lived for.
People joked that mankind existed to bring forth the machines and would then become superfluous. The irony of it. Well, it seems irony has mr Musk. He sees the petty online bickering and he sees himself as alone, as the only adult in the room, who has to decide the fate of humanity, and his power in many domains puts him to the task.
He has his fiduciary responsibility that puts the interests of his share-holders first. He sees that as a healthy check on his power. At the end of all his calculations he has responsibilities akin to the Star Wars Emperor. Just like many white men, who come spend the remainder of their days in function and in defense of their property. Not in defense of life.
So Musk needs his antagonist to arrive on the scene, so he can repurpose his empire for the good the antagonist brings, as he represents a complete overhaul of the way life is lived. So the jury is out on mr Musk, and may he always remember his status as an American is just a hustle gone wild. Similar to the dynamic of how a liar has to keep extending his web of lies. He will make it into a machine that will carry his burden going forward. And then what? When, if ever, will he remember he is an African, and a friend of his own antagonist? His final words may sound like: Luke, I am your Father!
It's not that it can't be done at all, but heat dissipation at scale in space is an insane engineering challenge, the tech to make giant radiators work doesn't exist yet, and even if it did it would extremely costly to develop and deploy.
Musk is a textbook narcissist. His consistent pattern is to make grandiose promises - literal future faking - fulfil a small percentage of them, then make even bigger and more grandiose promises and hope investors have a short memory. (They do.)
As a narcissist his primary relationship orientation is contempt for others. He's more interested in damaging projects he doesn't like - like the left-leaning community on the original Twitter, using promises of Hyperloop to kill high speed rail, ignoring the CSA from Grok, and of course the USAid fiasco - than seeing through the projects he claims to be developing to completion.
He fits in perfectly with Thiel, Altman, and the rest. The tech is sometimes interesting, but the alignment is fundamentally hostile to the rest of humanity.
Different problem.
Cooling can be done in space, it's a normal problem; not easy, nothing in space is easy, but on the scale of space it is normal.
However, at the temperature you would run a chip at, a radiator you make for space will just work better, reject more heat, if you leave it on the ground.
We get convective cooling down here as well as radiative. At operational temperature, convection more than makes up for the atmosphere being a heat bath at ~20 C or whatever.
But does it make sense to do it?
No.
You are overstating the engineering difficulty. Starlink constellation already dissipates around 100MW.
(the sarcasm is intended; there are some usecases for "space servers", around stealth for sure; to "scale it like a terrestrial DC" though ... dunno; not matter how I turn it, it just seems crazy expensive)
Will starlink build its own edge ? Maybe. We'll see. Whether it makes sense to have this infrastructure "colocated in space" if you're not also the owner of the "connection infrastructure in space" though? It'll come down to cost. If I were anyone else but SpaceX ... that's where my eyes would be.
He may have been a wrong'un before that, but he was definitely already doing a confidence trick by that point.
Makes me wonder how much compute is already being built in bunkers under mountains.
https://united24media.com/war-in-ukraine/ukraine-hits-russia...
Perhaps an economic justification can be found for placing something so far up the gravity well that its adversaries can no longer physically approach it. Distributing the resource across many satellites would further confound any attack.
Increasing the cost of effect on a single target from $1,000 to $1,000,000,000 makes a difference. Especially when that 2nd option is likely to trigger additional multilateral strategic responses. If the only way to delete your adversaries data centers is with things like nuclear weapons, lasers and multi-stage rocketry, your adversary may have already won the game.
The active thermal control system (ATCS) on the ISS uses an ammonia loop and radiators measuring 13.6 x 3.12 meters, or about 42.5 square meters. It can dissipate 16 kW, which is enough for 16 H200s, or one-quarter of a rack on Earth. For 200 kW, you would need a system 12.5 times larger, about 531 square meters—2.6 times larger than the solar array. The satellite would be enormous, larger than the ISS, and all of that for only three racks.
https://codedtrip.com/en/blog/data-centers-in-space-disastro...
It's not that hard, Starlink constellation already dissipates around 100 MW of heat, split over many satellites. Any orbital datacenter would use similarly distributed satellites.
Starlink gen 3 satellite is designed to dissipate 250 kW. You are talking about an already solved issue, with real hardware already being built today.
Welding lasers are pretty cheap, the two hard parts are a big enough apperture to focus 500 km away, and adaptive optics, both of which have already been demonstrated decades ago in astronomy.
I'm not saying Iran and North Korea already have such capabilities, but I am saying I think neither would have trouble building it six months ago if they'd wanted to.
Unless you're talking about an adversary who has ~no launch capability then the person trying to put the data center out of reach is always going to be massively disadvantaged in terms of the physics.
The reason why Ukraine, Russia and Iran are targeting data-centers is because they are easy targets with a lot of expensive equipment, but they don't really impact the military operation. So, they aren't high priority targets. Bomber airplanes, air defenses, launchers for ballistic missiles, command centers, factories manufacturing strategic military equipment, telecommunications, energy infrastructure would be the examples of high priority targets. The data-centers are more of a "we have excess drones, why not use them?"
I find it hard to believe that the military will intentionally use civilian data-centers for its own purposes. At least, not for the core of its operations (for auxiliary functionality: maybe). Military data-centers are likely to be in protected locations, perhaps using different h/w that addresses the cooling problem.
Also, it's a bit myopic to think that AI is having such a universal and large impact on society. Jobs that provide essential goods and services are, by and large, unaffected by AI. Farmers, construction workers, cooks etc. don't really use any of the AI stuff on the day to day basis, if at all.
You could, of course, repurpose a data-center to run a bunch of emulators and have some h/w to plug in a bunch of SIM cards, but... why? It probably won't be very cost-efficient, and you need some bespoke h/w and virtualization solution to do it...
The bot traffic the news about bombing data-centers refers to is the crawler type. They collect information and index it for later searches, they don't interact with social media.
NB. valid and high value targets are not the same. Valid means it furthers some military goals while minimizing civilian impact. High-value means that it has a potential to alter opponent's strategy.
I'm on the fence about whether data-centers are valid targets. But, even if they aren't, it's not a terrible thing to do to bomb them, as it will not have any severe adverse effects on the civilian population. Of course, in the context of a war where there are much worse things to bomb. But the parent was making a comment about data-centers being high-value targets, and I don't see a way to justify that. It probably doesn't even factor into the calculations of the military strategists.
What's missing for me here is how the data-centers can be connected to generating comments on social media. They are simply not good for doing that. For example, the IP ranges of data-centers are well known, it would be very easy to distinguish between a comment originating from a plausibly private-looking network and data-center network. They are also easy to ban wholesale.
The typical h/w in a data-center isn't designed for the tasks like publishing multiple plausibly authentically looking comments. It would need to pretend to run multiple desktop browser sessions or multiple phone browser sessions. It would need to do this to accumulate some cookies to create an appearance of a real user.
Data-centers are cost-effective when you need to do things in aggregates, or if you have tasks that require large amounts of compute / storage / network. They offer no obvious benefit when it comes to imitating multiple individual desktop or phone users because their h/w is more expensive than the consumer-grade variety. The obvious better way to do that is to buy cheap phones in bulk and run them through user-space application that automates Web browsing.
In a way, what you are suggesting is like building a train track in order to take your child to school: you can make it work, but it will be a lot more expensive than just walking, or, at most, driving to school.
Those things are measurable.
You keep saying this without saying how did you measure...
> you can measure how many new media posts
How? I don't have that kind of capacity. Maybe someone else has, but I don't know anyone who does.
This all reads like a media stunt.
- "Just make them wage some wars, they'll bury it themselves".
Example quote from Azure documentation:
> Azure Government is used by the US Department of Defense (DoD) entities to deploy a broad range of workloads and solutions.
Calling such a DC a civilian target is essentialy incorrect now, and has been for years.
its also important to understand that government isnt non civilian, in this context its non military
I didn't misinterpret, you are using incorrect terminology.
The general decency of condemning any/all types destruction won't apply here.
So the talent has left, but not because they disagree with Putin actions.
> On the first anniversary of the invasion, rallies took place in the main cities where Russian exiles settled, including Tbilisi, Vilnius, Berlin, Barcelona, Paris and London, with turnout in the hundreds. In Yerevan, protesters burned a picture of Putin.
> In November 2024, at least a thousand people marched through central Berlin behind Navalnaya, Yashin and Kara-Murza, with parallel rallies in cities including Prague, Vilnius, Yerevan, Lisbon and San Francisco.
> Another Berlin march followed in 2025, after the third anniversary of the full-scale invasion.
And not just EU/US but moreso in other countries, where the migration wave was much bigger, eg Georgia and Armenia; after those protests many Russians were banned from entering Georgia after a visa run, yet others continued protesting anyway. Just google it for christ sake?
Also to me, as a Russian immigrant, protesting from another country doesn't make a lot of sense.
Anyway, at this point your comments in this thread are pure ragebait and not worth spending time replying to.
Thought the same.
What are you talking about? Just look at the amount of humanitarian visas getting by Russians. We like literally talking about hundreds per country on average (not hundreds of thousands, HUNDREDS). So participation in mass protests is like the fastest way to be deported back in Russia and get 8 years in jail.
EU is doing exactly that by denying humanitarian visas. Just look at absolute numbers of such visas.
For 90 percent of refugees from Russia if you participate in totally peaceful protest in front of Russian embassies, you will get yourself arrested, immediately deported, and will go straight to Russian jail for 10 years.
I did a quick search and what we get in example of Finland:
(https://meduza.io/en/news/2026/08/24/finland-has-deported-15...)
- 1k+ km land border with forests
- tens of thousands Russian survivors hunted by Putin crossing it
- only 186 per year granted asylum
- for everybody else any contacts with Finnish officials = deportation and jail
I think it is rather dangerous to peacefully protest in front of Russian embassies when near those embassies a lot of agents deployed to hunt Russians down and hand them down to Putin.
So do you imply that if some article does not mention them, they are not exist or what?
> applying for asylum in Finland (as only hundreds do each year).
It is exactly because any contacts with the officials = deportation and jail. Chances for getting asylum are so small that only people with additional migration opportunities or with the connections with elites in the government are trying to go that way.
Sounds pretty obvious to me, considering that they don't want to go to the Russian jails, does not have a way to cross the border legally and have the ways to cross it illegally.
> authorities in Finland are arresting people protesting outside russian embassy and deporting them.
And in your mind what is exactly happening to those people?
Sorry, in which EU countries does participation in a peaceful protest get you arrested?
In all of them? Sorry, but are you really trying to deny that there are multi-tiered justice system for illegal aliens all across EU depending on their skin color, religion beliefs, or possession of Russian passport?
it really never was. apart from a few one-off examples they have nothing if interest and quality.
very valuable, very high tech.
for nginx/intelij - you can find a few good examples in any country on earth.
does not make the country good in tech.
The Yandex that stayed in Russia is a ghost of the past.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkady_Volozh
Being against the government doesn't make you profitable.
Nebius market cap is 57 billion.
Yandex is 65 billion.
Nebius focuses on AI infrastructure worldwide, Yandex focused on being a Google competitor in Russia ( if it survives it's DC's being destroyed).
Russias GDP is basically Italy.
Comparing GDP means nothing. Having larger GDP doesn't mean you win the war. Maybe half of that GDP is corruption and mafia who knows.
Sometimes it's better to diversify, sometimes it's better to concentrate. There is no better decision to concentrate than to do it during the AI hype.
While Yandex could go bankrupt very soon ( 2-3/5 dc's closed, apps not working, robots not working, payments not working, maps show everyting in rivers and oceans, ...).
Nebius is currently going after their best growth driver. Can't blame them.
Nebius is more concentrated, Yandex is way more spread in what they do.
A mystery really...
First, a long-running SEAD / DEAD campaign by Ukraine last year and early this which thinned Russian air defence throughout occupied territories and left Russia with difficult deployment decisions for what remained.
Second, improvements to drones (speed and EW resistance) and expanded production - meaning the air defence can be saturated.
Third, Russia's vast geography itself, leaving countless approaches to targets impossible to defend.
Come Back Alive - delivered the first deep-strike drones https://savelife.in.ua/en/
Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundation - bought the famous spy satellite https://prytulafoundation.org/en
KOLO Charity Foundation - run by the Ukrainian tech community https://www.koloua.com/en/
Razom - US-based foundation https://www.razomforukraine.org/donate/
Canada-Ukraine Foundation: https://www.cufoundation.ca/
Ukrainian World Congress: https://www.ukrainianworldcongress.org/
Exen - Polish volunteer who delivers used vehicles to the front https://pomagam.pl/4x4dlaukrainy
United24 - the government fund https://u24.gov.ua/
There are also initiatives supporting Ukraine in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, and other countries. Please suggest foundations from your country in the comments.
inb4: yes, I'm too scared to do it myself, thanks for asking, the person in the mirror reminds me of that every day.
at this point the article 5 could be in circulation even without Ukraine being mentioned..
Irenology is the real cure for all of this though. political action or inaction will never bring, build, foster or protect peace because it is all rooted in polemology.
Including KOLO dispersing medical equipment that I donated, and I can vouch that they are effective and very efficient.
Hermit life was the best decision I ever made. Never going back.
Defense against aggressive totalitarianism is much more important than fight against corruption. And there is also the fact that Russian influence is the main reason for corruption in Ukraine..
You're just regurgitating the vocabulary fed to you by propaganda. Good luck though.
For every "war on terror", I can point to WW2, Korean War, First Gulf War, Intervention in Serbia, where the good guys won and the world is better for it.
You are the propagandized one. Russia wants you to not resist their imperialism, just because the west made some mistakes in the past. You have fallen for their manipulation strategy hook, line, and sinker.