My entire team of software engineers are Ukranian, residing in Ukraine (I'm not in Ukraine, nor am I Ukrainian).
For the past few weeks our "water cooler talk" has been almost exclusively about the rising threat of invasion, if not directly about the ongoing conflict in the SE of Ukraine. A number of the team signed up for the volunteer defence force and have spent countless weekends training with the army.
The morning of the invasion I received early morning messages from a few of the members to the effect of "Russia has invaded. We are going to fight."
I have never sent such an emotional and heart felt "Good luck, stay safe" in what is such a vacuous and empty medium (i.e., a messenger client) before. I haven't been able to produce anything since the invasion began because I am constantly watching the news and various social media feeds for updates on the invasion, and it's really hard to pick up a full (now absent, mostly) team's efforts without metaphorically dropping bits all over the place.
My work, and that of my team, it just.. doesn't matter in comparison. My boss is asking for progress updates and I'm just responding "Nothing. The guys are focussing on staying safe, warm, and well stocked right now." (with a small side of incredulity.)
I've brought it up with leadership and they are going to parachute in some agencies from other places and I can't help but feel we are just abandoning my team members. The people I have, on average, spent 5x8hr days working with for the past few years. My comrades. My friends. Just so expendable in the eyes of my employer.
> My boss is asking for progress updates and I'm just responding "Nothing. The guys are focussing on staying safe, warm, and well stocked right now." (with a small side of incredulity.)
Incredible. I know several managers with employees in Ukraine and their companies are all being very thoughtful about handling the situation.
When I hire remotely (including Ukraine, where we even had a remote office at one point) it wasn’t uncommon to discover entire teams of people being mistreated as remote employees of some clueless foreign company. It was so easy to hire away the entire team and so satisfying to just see them enjoy working for a company and managers who actually cared. This might be a signal for where to go with your career at a later date after the current events are behind us (hoping sooner rather than later)
What's expected though? Not that i'm defending mistreatment, but i work with a small team of all remote and we have a few Russian devs. If they go absent for a while due to all this issue, we're not going to fire them or be angry.. but we still need to try and keep the company afloat, no?
Like forget bottom lines and corporate greed for a second. My company is small and if we don't hit an upcoming deadline, we're laying off at least half of our staff. I'm in full support of affected people but i also have to do my best to make sure the people employed by this company have a job tomorrow. This post seems to make that sound.. cold, uncaring?
To be clear i don't own the company nor am that high up on the management chain. We're only ~50 people. But still, i think this way. If an employee goes through really difficult times, of which we've had many, we wish them well and continue to pay them as best we can for as long as we can, but the 49 other people still have families, need food on the table, etc. It's just as important to me that the 49 other people are happy and healthy as it is the 1 person is happy and healthy.
I'm a bit confused by the anti-corporate take sometimes. I think the human lives are all that matter, fuck corporate greed - but when everyone is months away from losing jobs due to runway-like funding models.. it seems unfair.
Am i off base? I imagine you're mostly thinking huge companies?
• A fee for service company focusing on dev will probably crash
• An established company where development is just done for internal things. Can they pause feature requests and focus on maintenance for a bit? I'm not saying it may not come to having to hire people and talks need to start, but did they even think about the devs? What have they been doing in regards to their devs? Any help?
IMO, it's just the way it's being handled. They have their people fighting for their lives. Here's what looks like a manager or lead not being able to work with all the stress around it. And all that upper management sees is, fill in the chair.
A contract company with customers. The company would likely "be fine", but 5 years ago it was ~6 people. We've pushed for some larger clients recently, which allows us to employ ~50 people. If rolling out to the larger clients fails, that income source dries up and we go back down to ~10 people or w/e. With a sizable failure on our track record, which will be a bit difficult too.
> IMO, it's just the way it's being handled. They have their people fighting for their lives. Here's what looks like a manager or lead not being able to work with all the stress around it. And all that upper management sees is, fill in the chair.
So in our case i imagine we'd attempt to fill in a chair. I'd advocate for it. But again, i want to keep the rest of the staff employed and fed, myself included. However i would _definitely not_ expect to see those employees let go. I'd raise hell and question my employment if they were treated that way. Just filled in while they're gone, hopefully still paying them as long as we can (which probably wouldn't exceed 6 months i'd guess).
Which is partly why these conversations can be difficult for me. My #1 concern is keeping everyone employed, including the people having a tough time. Which can often mean keeping my head focused on income.
As much as i love WorkReform and worker focused rights, i often feel these conversations are adversarial and don't seem to consider what will happen when the company goes under. But they're also framed against massive corps, like Starbucks or w/e, and the reality is much different for them than it is my company.
Talking about my company in the WorkReform context is really odd these days.
Is there anything on the company benefits or laws regarding active military or reserve members?
Regardless, it might be good to bring it up if the company ever plans to contract people again from Ukraine. Looks like you've found great developers there now and in the past, so it would suck to get blacklisted by devs there due to something like this.
Maybe it's possible to keep them employed and just contract out a company for devs in the meantime? Just something that can be renewed as needed but that would also leave your devs with a place to come back to after.
Good luck with everything. Good luck to your friends and coworkers fighting for their homes and livelihood.
You shouldn't read your employer's actions as uncaring. Ultimately it depends on where they are getting their money from. If that dries up, then there is no team anyway.
I completely see your point, but I also see the difficulty your employer has. They can't just wait for the war to finish before getting their business going again.
I often wonder at the thought process of these people. Not attacking OP directly, but it seems incredibly self-centered and narrow-minded to think "Wow I cant believe this person didn't drop everything and completely abandon all responsibilities because of event X happening right now. They must be so selfish."
If anything, I would think its the opposite. Its a virtue and sign of strength and selflessness to be able to push past ones personal feelings and to continue to do what needs doing.
The only thing that needs doing during war is be safe and support others.
Other jobs, especially like software dev, is literally pointless and not important like at all. One corp will close - another one will open and the world won't even notice it.
Except people not in the war still need to eat and survive. Maybe it wouldn't matter on a global scale if some small software firm somewhere goes out of business, but it sure as hell matters to the business owner and their family, and the employees and their families.
How do you think western governments can afford to send aid, if not through tax dollars collected via the production of their citizens? If everyone decided to drop what they were doing out of some grossly mislead compassion then the aid currently being sent to the Ukraine in the form of monetary support and supplies would become fiscally impossible due to the lack of national production.
The problem with this kind of anti-industrial sentiment is that on it's surface it may sound morally righteous and perfectly reasonable but as soon as you begin to devote even a moments worth of critical thinking to the ideas you're spouting it's easy to see how totally they break down.
The very people you condemn for selfishness or greed are the same people who keep the world economy functioning in a crisis like this. They're the same people who make it so that there is still some semblance of a normal world for the Ukrainian people to return to once this war has passed.
It is temporary. And if small software firm goes out of business - employees and the owner can always find another job. On a grand scale of things it is no biggie. In the end everyone will have food on the table and shelter, and the economy will prosper either way.
It's not temporary if the sentiment expressed in your original comment is widely shared. Remember, you said:
> The only thing that needs doing during war is be safe and support others.
If a single firm goes out of business sure, no big deal on a grand scale. If ten thousand firms go out of business, then that is a big deal. The position you hold fundamentally contradicts itself. Either nothing else matters, and therefore the entire world should focus on nothing but the war - which would lead to global economic collapse. Or you're wrong and other things actually do matter, in which case businesses shouldn't drop everything and completely forego local production in order to attempt to support Ukraine or Ukrainians.
Ideally of course there'd be some middle ground in which a company would attempt to support its Ukrainian employees, but regardless the company still needs to function and profit if it wants to keep said Ukrainian employees employed. You can't achieve one without the other. You seem to desire both support from these organizations while simultaneously demanding they cease operating in any capacity which puts them in a position to provide support.
The economy will always bounce back. Recession happens anyway from time to time, thousands of companies go out of business, new appear. Natural cycle.
Also I never said businesses should drop everything and support anybody. All I said is employees don't need and most won't work in times like these, at least those who are directly affected. No one gives a damn about their job or if they are fired in situations like this. And definitely no one would shed a tear if the company they worked for will go out of business, just like the company doesn't care about the employee it will let go.
I had a similar experience when I was interviewing for a company and got down with fever and intense coughing, with the HR guy saying "so you cannot attend the interview". Sure, lemme just drive by your company in a woozy state and answer every technical question while getting interrupted by a tingling sensation in my right lung that causes coughing every 10-15 seconds like a germ machine gun.
After explaining to them my situation (which was audibly bad even through phone) I asked them to postpone for next week. They hired someone else. Turns out there is such a thing as uncaring people who just see you as a cog that facilitates their money-printing company. It is what it is.
Just to play devil's advocate, the other candidate may have given the company a deadline, and so the company may have needed to pass on the other candidate in order to accommodate your timeline.
Not saying this is what happened here, but there are reasons why an outcome that appears cold can, upon digging, result from everyone ultimately acting in good faith.
Ah yes they should have put their plans on hold so they could interview someone they don't yet know or have any reason to trust.
After all, everyone know that these companies are in business for the convienence of their (potential) employees. Not to do anythig radical like, idk, be successful or make money.
That's why is always amazes me when employees show loyalty to the company without understanding that company is just a business. And their loyalty is a one-way street.
One of my friends was interviewing at a popular nonprofit. 6 interviews in and it was down to her and one other candidate. She asked to postpone her 7th (!!) interview a week because her grandmother died and she was flying home for the funeral. They hired the other candidate in the mean time. I told her it sounds like a place you wouldn't want to work anyway, but it still stings.
The day after the invasion, I was flabbergasted by how much people don’t give a sht. My Twitter feed was (and still is) people announcing their new ventures, doing their usual marketing, posting their vacay pics etc. Social media destroyed humanity. I deleted my Reddit after 14 years after I saw pics of burned bodies from Ukraine on a random SFW sub with folks making fun of people dying. Fuk this war and all who think it’s not their business.
> The day after the invasion, I was flabbergasted by how much people don’t give a sht. My Twitter feed was (and still is) people announcing their new ventures, doing their usual marketing, posting their vacay pics etc.
Your Twitter feed reflects your active choices in who to follow and what to interact with. My Twitter feed has been largely dominated with the invasion since it occurred (though there are a couple other things that are also notable still).
Your feed reflects you. If you find it concerning, then you need to make a change in who you follow.
I've seen people complain about YouTube for example - they eventually realize that what YouTube recommends is what they watch. If they want better recommends, they need to watch different things.
I'm not sure how Twitter works, but for YouTube it's not like their recommendation system is a perfect user-friendly algorithm.
While it is your choice what to click, what you end up watching is a result of the interplay between you and what is recommended to you and if the recommendation system was different, both what you click and the resulting feed would be different as well
I'm feeling the same. Two of my teammates are in Ukraine right now. Bosses are now talking about hiring new people to keep up with the workload. And this is the same meeting where my boss said we have a lot of work, but nothing critical. All the systems are running fine, no major bugs recently, the work is purely adding new features.
And they're ready to replace them after ~4 days. It just makes me think we are all absolutely expandable. Hopefully no major crisis happens in my life, cos they'll drop me in a heartbeat :(
Succession planning. Disaster recovery planning. We should have these.
Not having them can lead to hasty, unwise decisions. They should include prioritising tasks and cascades/durations of fall over.
There's not necessarily reason they mean dropping anyone either. Even if exclusively looking at a financial impact there are costs of switching, costs that might be low for a server needing restoring to high for acquiring knowledge specific to your field or product, or a whole lot in between, for example.
Just have a plan. If you don't, be aware of potential for flawed decisions made in haste.
My company is in a similar situation - have large teams in several eastern European cities (primarily Minsk), and a few long-term remote teammates in Ukraine. A couple have fled (from Kyiv) with children, others are worried about being conscripted. It makes me want to vomit just thinking about it. I'm amazed many of them are still on Slack and making PRs.
We're fortunate some of our leadership has quite close ties to the area, so our company's response so far has been extremely understanding.
> “I'm amazed many of them are still on Slack and making PRs.”
I was talking with a friend yesterday about his teammates from Ukraine (we’re both outside Ukraine). They said that working is the only thing keeping them sane. This allows them to stop focusing every second at the war outside their homes.
I feel the same. What do you say in Slack to the guy who just told you he’s handed over his tasks to a colleague because he’s joining the territorial defenses and has to go and fight? “Good luck”? “Give ‘em hell”? “Слава Украины" is what I settled on but there’s just nothing you can say that conveys the weighty emotions of that kind of goodbye.
The very least that can be done is to not cut them loose because Russian bombardment has decreased productivity.
I’ve left behind a life and all of my possessions in Ukraine but more than that I feel like I’ve let them down since I’m living comfortably in Georgia while they suffer and could possibly die.
I’ll just do what I can to help keep the project going so we can keep supporting them. The cold reality is that a startup isn’t a charity so at some point some hard decisions need to be made, but that point isn’t five days into a war.
I know an Estonia company, remote Ukrainians of 4, all away now fighting for their country but they do their best to cover their workload and hope they can return soon.
Obviously still paying their wages as long as its possible, an economical hit for the startup but that's the best they can do to help them fight the occupants. Estonian team working more to make it up and the moral is high since their Ukrainians remind them how much worse it can get.
Sorry to hear that. We had an office in Belarus. When everything went down there in ‘20 we did everything we could to help them relocate and now they are mostly in Warsaw. This is obviously different in terms of the right thing to do, but you really wish people would do that right thing.
This is horrifying to me but probably for a different reason. I'm tired of the general population being treated as pawns in this global game of empire. These people should not be risking their life. Our leaders screwed up and now citizens pay the price.
This war did not start 2 weeks ago. It is not the result of 1 man's actions. It's been going on for years but now it spilled into kinetic warfare. We are hardly any better than the kings and queens of yesterday, just look at all the actions being taken from western powers without any citizen input or democratic process.
Our opinions are being shaped on this conflict by our media, even on hacker news - people should be weary of all information they read on here regarding this conflict. People should try hard not to get swept up in tribal narratives and see the world for what it is.
In my opinion, the current system looks like its out of control and it's only going to lead to escalation. It almost certainly will lead to more nuclear proliferation. Confrontation with nuclear opponents need to be more cautious.
I have a mere feeling that ubiquitous internet is rendering some of the important factor of war mongering moot. There's less delay, no week long lag in which you can enrage and enroll young people to go die for some imaginary cause. And as spectators too, I see stuff that I could not see even in TV days.. invaded people talking with lost invaders. The failures. The moronic jokes of troops during idle time. The wait.. the absurd nothingness. It just feels like waste.. an absolute void.
There's still a fair amount of BS (both camps are painting their own view) but the feverish theatrics are somehow dying.
That is truly terrible. My immediate reaction was that you should quit right away. However, I also feel that it wouldn't help your friends if your bosses give up on the project or let the company fail. Maybe you can an ask for donations to the cause or other types of support such as a guarantee that your friends will be able to keep their jobs?
If this happens to me i know i am going to be very sad. But i fully expect this behaviour from any employer. Incidents like these is what makes me guilt free to ask for raise and quit every 3 years. I am in much better position financially.
I have been thinking about business being business for a long time. Let me tell you a vision of a better future. I am not explaining how to get there, just what is in this future.
Business will not have changed a lot. But people! People have a lot better means of living. Most needs are covered. This changes the power relationship between people and business. Business becomes sort of a game. You can lose but it's just a game.
The main rules of this game are:
1. follow law and mores
2. be bound by contracts to have earnings and spendings
3. earnings ≥ spendings
If you violate these rules for too long a time and too heavily, your business will be booted. It's a harsh game.
This rule of business has been in force already thousands of years ago. Barter superfluous stone knives against food, for example.
And today this game can have inhuman consequences as we see here.
Parent's business is trying to work around that they suddenly a team dropped out. Software stopped being delivered. As a consequence they are afraid that earnings can't be realized.
In a strategic game it's clear that something needs to be done or they get booted.
And some people today fail to see this aspect. They complain that business is greedy and inhuman. They ask that companies should be "human".
But it's my conviction that business is a worthwile and important game benefitting the society. As long as business is bound to sensible law like forbidding hurting people (for example by overworking them or exposing them to unhealthy conditions), business should be free to do business.
Therefore we shouldn't change business a lot but give people better means and therefore more power and independence.
If a business fails it's just losing a game round. This can hurt but everybody should be able to get up again and have another chance.
> The people I have, on average, spent 5x8hr days working with for the past few years. My comrades. My friends. Just so expendable in the eyes of my employer.
Makes you wonder how they'd treat you if you ended up in dire straits.
I am American, moved to Kyiv almost four years ago. My startup engineering team is 100% in Ukraine. As the warning signs mounted I urged my people to consider leaving but no one, myself included, thought it would come to this. Of course no one left.
I finally agreed to take a couple of weeks out of Kyiv to calm my cofounder’s nerves, sure that I’d be back and we’d have a laugh at how it all came to nothing. So I am in Tbilisi and my team are all stuck in Ukraine.
We’re doing all we can to help We can’t get the men out because the Ukrainian borders guards won’t let any men leave, and most of the women won’t leave their husbands behind. A few have joined the territorial defense forces and are defending Kyiv now. Many others are taking shelter in basements while the Russians shell their cities.
Today, 66% of my 45 person team were online and working. It’s astonishing the grit and commitment the Ukrainians are showing. We’re resolved not to abandon them and to do all we can for them but the shitty reality is that’s just not a whole lot right now.
If anyone can fight their way to victory in this war it’s them. I wish the west had done more when there was still time to make a difference, but now it’s up to Ukrainians to save themselves and make the Russian invaders pay for every meter they take.
It is also up to Ukrainians to convince some West Europian nations that sometimes good business is not worth it. It is sad that only blood can change their perspective and each drop of it only slightly... As in an American veterans slogan - freedom is not for free... They fight for entire Europe freedom too.
As if the pointless prodding of “any updates? :)” is ever called for. If there were any updates, there would be fucking updates posted. I frequently get comments like this in projects they I maintain, sometimes less than a day after the issue was opened, and it does nothing but annoy me and make me not want to resolve their issue. Why is there an expectation that maintainers have infinite amounts of time to fix whatever problem you’re having? Extremely frustrating and makes me hate working in open source.
Of course it looks silly in this context, since the Ukraine invasion is going on. However, in general, don't forget that in some cases there are maintainers who forget, or don't have time, or fix the issue BUT forgot to post an update. These things really do happen. I don't think it's inherently malicious to ask.
It's all about timing. Ask too soon, or too frequently, and you're being a jerk.
But after 2-3 weeks of silence? A slight prod is okay, even if the answer will turn out to be, "This isn't a priority and I don't know when I'll get to it."
I agree that it's unnecessary and annoying, but it's not always useless. Some maintainers sometimes work on issues for months on end without posting any updates because they'd rather focus on the work itself, and "any updates?" comments may prompt them to talk about the progress so far.
Ideally contributors would be able to opt into automatically blocking some kinds of comments, but of course that would require a perfect "spam filter" system or manual moderation by other volunteers so that the contributor wouldn't be distracted.
This happens to me at work all the time. I'll think I can fix an issue faster than I can give a thorough answer about what went wrong and what it will take to fix it. Sometimes I'm right and I'll get back to them quickly to say we're testing a fix. But sometimes I'm wrong and I keep intending to say something but then repeatedly think "oh wait but I've almost found it".
It's entirely useless. Anyone who asks for an update can see it plainly on the repository. There will either be commits against the default branch, an open PR, or a branch with in-progress work.
In any other case (unclosed issue, missing changelog) the solution is to step up and help. Mention that you've replicated the issue, found the solution is up, and that the issue can be closed. Or contribute a changelog
I understand your frustration, but to me the 'any updates' is a signal that someone actually cares and is impacted by an issue, which can help for prioritization when the backlog is long.
There are ways to do it properly of course, and I understand that this kind of pings can be annoying, but people usually have no ill intention/expectations. Take it as a lame way to put a +1 on an issue
Seriously, I will forget to do certain tasks or provide updates on my progress if no one follows up asking for updates. I think it's fair for someone to ask to hear if something is still in progress if it's been a while.
It's often more a request for ETA, if there's lingering problems you'd like addressed, etc
It can be annoying, but it can also be someone trying to reach out asking if you'd like any help. Maybe it'd be better if they phrased it as "Is there anything I can do to help progress this issue/pr?"
& yeah prodding after a day is silly. But if it's been a couple months then it can make sense
I have pretty extreme ADHD. It is very very easy for something like a ticket to just fall out of my mind and therefore not get followed up on. Polite (very important) and infrequent requests for updates aren't bad, they can be extremely important to keeping things moving forward, both for myself and many others.
FWIW, I delete those comments. More than one posted results in the issue being locked (possibly temporarily). I'm willing to be a jerk so that my fellow maintainers can focus on the work they want to work on.
Anyone who asks for an update can produce one themselves: by creating a PR :)
I remember many years ago, being 16 or so, playing WoW. My guild was having a raid, and suddenly one person writes "g2g, riots".
It was a weird feeling, suddenly something that was so long away on the news suddenly felt much closer. At least for me, the internet and the connections it has given me, have made me much more empathetic to other's struggles around the world.
Not as serious, but super surreal from the other side too.
When my pregnant wife was feeling a bit uncomfortable, I sent a chat message to my Team that I need to pop out and expect to be back within a couple of hours (not giving reasons).
An hour later I messaged to say our baby was arriving 10 weeks premature and didn’t know when I’d back at computer.
Signed is the wrong thing here, so u16 or u32 maybe, however I expect you'd blow something up long before because this won't be architected as a simple counter.
I don't know their project, but personally I don't have anything against people "bumping" a thread that has gone cold without an actual solution. I am busy and I don't take my open source project very seriously so things do fall through the cracks from time to time.
EDIT: This is a small scale project and the user waited 19 days before bumping. To me that's perfectly reasonable.
Bumping can also defeat the stalebot plague. I wholeheartedly encourage bumping until stalebot is improved to either a) stop existing or b) consider emoji reactions when deciding if an issue is "stale".
That doesn't make the issue any less legitimate. If someone pings me for problem X and I don't solve their issue, if someone finds the thread on Google and bumps it that's still one of my users having an issue.
Above all, I much prefer this to people that find my email/LinkedIn and pings me there. That's where I draw the line.
They only created the account to bump a request they had no involvement in. I could understand the original requestor asking for an update, but this is just some rando with no contributions to any project at all.
How do you know they weren't keeping an eye on the issue before creating an account?
Or maybe they just ran into a case where they need the issue resolved, but aren't sure if they should wait or if it's likely to take long enough that they should find an alternative or a workaround.
If they went to the trouble of creating an account just to bump this issue... they probably care about it. Asking for update is just as often a way to subtly say "Can I pick this up?" or "Is there a way I can help move this ticket?" or "There was a pr, is this not getting merged because you won't accept this changeset?"
You seem to be making a value judgement I just don't get - who fucking cares if it's just some rando - they were all random people when they started the thread...
And yet... that question got an appropriate and helpful response:
This is blocked because the primary author is not available to help due to geopolitical issues.
Even if it is just some lazy person who wants stuff done (and frankly - I think that attitude is fairly defeatist - you have no idea who that person is) why are you letting them occupy your headspace if that's what you think?
Basically - even if they are lazy, you making the assumption makes you an asshole. Worse - it makes you less effective, because you take a possible volunteer and snub them immediately. Between the two - I'm much more annoyed by your behavior than theirs.
A direct comment is a lot more useful - both because I know it's not a bot, but also because it gives me a touch point for another interested party, who might be able/interested in helping.
ex: "Any update on this" can easily be followed with "Not at the moment, we have a work in progress [here], but could use additional hands" or "We're still trying to understand all the use-cases for this, what are you trying to accomplish" or any number of other relevant and useful things.
Personally - I enjoy having some human interaction as motivation every now and then, and it's easy enough to just ignore if the answer is "I'm busy".
My main reason is to signal "there are still people out there in need of this". My addition always is "What can I do to help move this forward?" (unless that is made clear in the thread already, ofc). To signal that my need is urgent enough for me to put time, effort or funding into it.
Is this staged? The pinging account was created seconds before the comment was posted and seconds later the developer replies. The developer who is of course defending against a real life invasion of his home country.
Posting account is suspicious as it was created at the time of the comment for the comment and the username has no other trace on the internet. Very suspect, impossible to prove of course though.
I'm getting 6 minutes between comment and reply though, not seconds, and unless the developer was actively fighting they'd still be getting email notifications to their phone but unlikely to be at sitting at home patching Vue. This part in itself doesn't scream suspect, just the catalyst.
> Posting account is suspicious as it was created at the time of the comment for the comment and the username has no other trace on the internet. Very suspect, impossible to prove of course though.
Seems pretty common to me. People frequently create accounts on sites just to ask a question or because they need something. This is probably the most common case / the long tail of most activity on social media sites.
The suspect part is that the username doesn't have any trace on the internet not just that it was a new account. Particularly relevant in this case since it's a 17 month old project with 9 total issues/PRs (or one every ~2 months) and this is the only such follow up to ever occur and the only one with such an account. Note: suspect, not guaranteed.
Again though the claim isn't it must be an impossibility to be anything else just a very suspect set of circumstances around the ping and impossible to prove one way or the other. I don't think it matters one way or another in the message, it's a good message and clearly popular, but that doesn't have anything to do with being staged or not.
The 6 minutes makes perfect sense to me - it could be one of those "If I don't reply to this ASAP I will never have time" situations. The notification is right in front of you.
I don't think it's fair to assume any malicious intent here. What would the maintainer gain? People are already extremely aware of the situation. It's not a huge repo, there's no ask for financial donations or anything like that.
Counter-propaganda, which is exactly what the author later explicitly asks for both in the thread and (unverifiably) on the HN thread itself now. Of course they'd want that regardless if it was staged or not but there are more motives in life than a few bucks donation to your old GitHub project... particularly when your country is being invaded and an extremely false story being fed to the population of the invading country.
Or it could not be and just grew into propaganda naturally but that's why it's "Very suspect, impossible to prove" not "certainly staged, proven". Either way probably a good event but that doesn't mean we know whether or not it was staged just that the circumstances don't allow us to answer that question reliably.
If you don't have a GitHub account, you might create one just to comment on an issue. The developer responded 6 minutes later which is reasonable if you got a notification.
Sure they can. If they declare war and officially enter the conflict. That wouldn't be a NATO action though, it's a defensive pact.
And it won't happen. Although... the last few days have shown extraordinary events that I never expected. The EU approving 500 Million for weapon purchases for Ukraine, countries supplying fighters after two days delay, officiaks saying that their are fine with their citizens volunteering to fight for another state army (illegal pretty much everywhere), plans to supply troop movement intelligence... That's all just a very small step from active participation.
This is the most significant shift in European politics since the fall of the Soviet union.
"A war of aggression, sometimes also war of conquest, is a military conflict waged without the justification of self-defense, usually for territorial gain and subjugation."
I'm reading a lot about the 37' Spanish war atm, and there is some common points between the reactions of NATO and the then Alliance. Hopefully we won't have a Stalin in our rank betraying everybody.
When and in what circumstances? There are military accidents, or what can plausibly be called accidents. Intentionally shooting down a plane, especially during a war, is another matter.
That's basically what was done the whole Cold War. USA goes to Vietnam --> USSR supports the other fraction with weapons etc. USSR goes to Afghanistan --> USA supports the Afghans etc.
Having Cold War situations again isn't desirable of course but it's kind of battle tested to not lead to further, direct, escalations.
You're right in theory. In reality, though, allowing citizens to call him President Putain is a casus belli, as far as Russia is concerned, so I'm not sure what actual difference it makes.
For the record, Russia also said sanctions would be considered an act of war. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Russia says a lot, I wouldn't believe all of it to be either honest or true.
That aside Russia coming up with it's own reasons for engaging in war with a country is different than Russia having internationally recognized reasons for engaging in war with a country.
> That aside Russia coming up with it's own reasons for engaging in war with a country is different than Russia having internationally recognized reasons for engaging in war with a country.
Can you explain? Is there another internationality, except UN, which has authority to allow wars?
> Is there another internationality, except UN, which has authority to allow wars?
Kind of. International law is made up of both treaties and customary international law, which is (to oversimplify) basically a distillation of state practice. Think of it as almost analogous to statues vs. common law.
For example, while the U.S. is not a party to the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, it recognizes most of its tenets as customary international law. (This is also why it regularly conducts freedom of navigation passages in the South China Sea, to prevent China's ownership claim from becoming customary international law.)
If a large number of nations (say, NATO?) agreed that another lawful basis for the use of force (LBUF) existed, beyond the right of self-defense or an UNSCR, that could become customary international law. The hot topic in this area right now is humanitarian intervention, which NATO cited in its Kosovo intervention and which the UK recognizes as a CIL LBUF. This gets meta real fast, since even though a large number of nations reached consensus on using it as justification for Kosovo, they haven't reached a consensus that there is a consensus on using it. Only the UK explicitly recognizes it as CIL, last I checked.
So what you see instead is this kind of academic song and dance where, e.g., the U.S. de facto is using humanitarian intervention to justify intervention in Syria but de jure relies on a mildly stretched interpretation of self-defense instead.
For the past few weeks our "water cooler talk" has been almost exclusively about the rising threat of invasion, if not directly about the ongoing conflict in the SE of Ukraine. A number of the team signed up for the volunteer defence force and have spent countless weekends training with the army.
The morning of the invasion I received early morning messages from a few of the members to the effect of "Russia has invaded. We are going to fight."
I have never sent such an emotional and heart felt "Good luck, stay safe" in what is such a vacuous and empty medium (i.e., a messenger client) before. I haven't been able to produce anything since the invasion began because I am constantly watching the news and various social media feeds for updates on the invasion, and it's really hard to pick up a full (now absent, mostly) team's efforts without metaphorically dropping bits all over the place.
My work, and that of my team, it just.. doesn't matter in comparison. My boss is asking for progress updates and I'm just responding "Nothing. The guys are focussing on staying safe, warm, and well stocked right now." (with a small side of incredulity.)
I've brought it up with leadership and they are going to parachute in some agencies from other places and I can't help but feel we are just abandoning my team members. The people I have, on average, spent 5x8hr days working with for the past few years. My comrades. My friends. Just so expendable in the eyes of my employer.