With all the criticism of Mozilla here, it wouldn't be any help to keep these few extensions available, and get the whole website blocked. It's possible to get addons signed and distribute it on other websites. On the other hand, when Apple complies with demands, there's no way to install apps anymore.
> It is noteworthy that the article of the Administrative Offenses Code (KoAP) on discrediting [army] was most actively applied in 2022: that year, courts reviewed 5,662 protocols and fined 4,440 people a total of 151.3 million rubles. [1.7 mil USD]
> Last year, the number of protocols almost halved to 3,053, as did the number of those punished — only 2,361 people were held accountable, and the total amount of fines imposed was 76.6 million rubles. [858,721 USD]
> The number of people convicted for spreading knowingly false information about the activities of the armed forces (Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code) increased from 14 to 65 (almost fivefold) last year. Of these, 30 people were sentenced to imprisonment: most often, sentences under this article ranged from five to eight years, but two sentences fell into the category of eight to ten years. For comparison: in 2022, only two of the 14 people convicted for fakes received actual imprisonment, with the harshest sentence falling into the "5 to 8 years" category.
> The number of people convicted for justifying terrorism continues to grow: from 318 in 2022 to 345 in 2023. However, the number of sentences for public calls for violent change of the constitutional order in the media or on the internet has decreased from 334 to 281. [...]
So, they found nothing suspicious with devices or apps.
Also made some far fetched connections of Flipper Devices to companies owning the hackspace Pavel Zhovner worked in, and attributed his trolling and making anti-censorship tools "as actively supporting the authorities in Russia". lol.
Paranoia isn't the only factor in a purchasing decision. It seems quite clear to me it's a Russian company trying to hide that fact for obvious reasons. I appreciate pnw posting this and making me aware before I decided to send money (indirectly) to Russia.
Even the report mentions the team members moving to Tbilisi, Georgia. Afaik Pavel moved to Dubai and still has Ukrainian citizenship. So I doubt a significant portion of company's money ending up in Russia, maybe except salaries of a few engineers. But it's pennies compared to how much the regime is paid for the resources, if that's what you worry about.
Semantics aside, I think it's quite clear they are trying to mislead by giving the appearance of being an American company. What does their company address show on their website? Delaware.
The report mentioned that their LinkedIn profiles changed from showing Moscow to Tbilisi. I'm sure I could also change my location to Tbilisi on my LinkedIn profile. How is that a meaningful argument? I don't want any amount of my money going to the Russian economy if I can avoid it, even if it's merely pennies as you say.
I'm not sure why you assume malice intentions by default.
Using a legal entity in a more convenient country for a startup seems like a common practice, including listing the address of such entity on the website. You'd be surprised how many companies are incorporated in America, pay taxes there, but have founders/employees/contractors elsewhere around the world.
So, I personally wouldn't count it as active effort of "trying to hide" or "trying to mislead".
> The report mentioned that their LinkedIn profiles changed from showing Moscow to Tbilisi. I'm sure I could also change my location to Tbilisi on my LinkedIn profile. How is that a meaningful argument?
Again, not sure why assume malice intentions. I also updated my Linkedin location when I left Russia, is that surprising?
> Why do you care to defend them so much?
Pavel pays me 15 rubles per comment of course! (tbh not sure why I waste time on this :D)
Thanks for your condescending explanation of corporate practices. I'm sure the typical HN reader is completely ignorant to those facts. Perhaps you could also explain Russian corporate practices and ethics to us all.
Only you are saying anything about malice. Everything is easily explained by greed (or the desire to simply gain if you prefer softer language).
> The math questions were of the form “Is 17077 prime”? They picked 500 numbers, but all of them were prime!
> The June version of GPT-3.5 and the March version of GPT-4 almost always conclude that the number is prime regardless of whether it is prime or composite. The other two models do the opposite. But the paper only tested prime numbers, and hence concluded that GPT-3.5’s performance improved while GPT-4’s degraded.
> OMG that's the most terrifying thing I have seen in ages.
Too late.
NTechLab scraped vk.com (Facebook-like Russian social network) profile photos and were running a public website "FindFace" that allowed to find profiles by photo of a face. They provide services to Russian government, e.g. it's used to find people from protests. Also FindFace was used to find and harass webcam models.
> Intel, SpaceX, Philip Morris, and dozens of other US companies were in a leaked database of users for a Russian facial recognition company
> The NTech Lab user list, which was shared with Insider by an anonymous source, includes more than 1,100 entries, with businesses and government agencies from more than 60 countries.
> In 2017, NtechLab face recognition algorithms were built into the Moscow city video surveillance system operated by the Moscow Department of Information Technology . The system uses the database of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to find correspondences to it on video. The alleged use of the system is the search for criminals and the fight against terrorism.
> In 2022, NTechLab was accused of assisting the Russian and Belarus government by tracking thousands of political activists which led to their unconstitutional detentions and arrests.
> In 2016, FindFace generated controversy because it was once used to deanonymize Russian pornography actresses and alleged prostitutes. These efforts were organized by users of a Russian imageboard Dvach who claimed that women in the sex industry are “corrupt and deceptive”, according to Global Voices. In addition, FindFace has been characterized as a major step in the erosion of anonymity.
The controls are quite inconvenient. A common type of controls for top-down games is WASD movement relative to camera + mouse to rotate and shoot. If you spam shooting button, it starts showing the same "not enough power" warning many times. For shooting it would be better to simultaneously play the animation and spawn the bullet, not waiting for the animation. The tutorial windows can be replaced with text on screen to not block movement (controls, level objective; power warning replaced with animation maybe)
