yip-bonk

To Lukoil, of course.

Not Gazprom, those wankers. Lukoil. Beacon of . . y’know . . freedom or some shit. When the state-managed privately-run petroleum conglomerate buys your country’s main search engine, you know it’s a bad day.

They’ve admitted it a lot. Where are you getting that disinformation?

Well trying to find an actual statement is more difficult than I remember, but that could partially be due to Google ongoing enshittification. I did find this in a TIME article about the “IBM and the Holocaust” book from 2001:

Of course, not everyone agrees with Seltzer’s assessment — least of all IBM. Last week, the company released a statement: “If this book points to new and verifiable information that advances understanding of this tragic era, IBM will examine it and ask that appropriate scholars do the same.” But company spokespeople insist that Black’s allegations are not new, that historians have long been aware that the Nazis used IBM’s tabulating machines. And, spokespeople insist, the company is paying for its mistakes: IBM Germany, formerly Dehomag, has already paid into Germany’s government-sponsored initiative to compensate citizens forced to work for the Nazis.

I thought there was a lot more public acknowledgement though, and it’s hard to find. So - 50%?

Totally agree that huge social media systems need to be understood as disproportionately affecting misinformation. I don’t know anything about Telegram, though.

Are the pushback people fReEzE PeAChErs or something? Is Telegram just lovely? Dunno.

Two of these are not being pulverized by a nuclear power at the moment.

russia lost on day 4. The rest of this is to see how badly and in what ways. And to save as many Ukrainian lives and civic institutions as possible. Zelenskyy is focused on the latter, lives and infrastructure, as he should be. Slava Ukraini!

Lol

It’s an interesting twist. Sherlock seems designed to use legal data collection and digital advertising technologies — beloved by Big Tech and online media — to target people for government-level espionage. Other spyware, such as NSO Group’s Pegasus or Cytrox’s Predator and Alien, tends to be more precisely targeted.

So . . . It’s just “digital customer engagement” and all the other euphemisms for online stalking, it’s just that the intent is pre-stated to be nefarious. Hm.

Exsqueeze me? What the amazon fuck, WholeFoods.

Member when microsoft was convicted of being a monopoly? Only took a decade and several judges who didn’t know what a browser was. And then nothing changed. Good times.

Yes how can we horrify children

Wired. lol.

So more batshit-rightwingers-take-over-things-and-break-them?

SAD!

There is already a strong, “not my Pope” movement in the US

lol

Right-wing mentality cannot allow being wrong. Its a huge problem affecting everyone.

Okay but it’s the first thing people will think. So, you’ll likely always be defending it. Just 2¢.

“chimera”?

Don’t jinx it!!

Corrupt liar says what?

Let’s look at the numbers. Oil and gas budget revenues in the first six months of 2023 were down 47% year-on-year – a direct result of the EU’s oil embargo and Gazprom’s voluntary (and apparently irreversible) exit from the European market. As a result, the federal budget deficit after six months (RUB 2.6 trillion) is nearly equal to the whole planned annual deficit for 2023 (RUB 2.9 trillion).

At the St Petersburg Economic Forum in June 2023, top government officials were openly mulling serious tax hikes to keep the deficit under control. However, the Ministry of Finance has taken a different path: seriously cutting spending to minimize the deficit. Federal spending in June was down 33% versus the average monthly spending in January-May 2023.

. . . The problem is that government spending is the key factor keeping the economy afloat these days.

. . . Capital flight from Russia in 2022 hit a record $239 billion, according to the Central Bank, and is projected to be in the tens of billion dollars for 2023-25; meanwhile, no net capital inflow is projected in the forecast horizon.

. . . How much money does the government still have? Well, the deficit of the federal budget for the first six months of 2023 (RUB 2.6 trillion) comprised 38% of the remaining “liquid part” of the National Wealth Fund (RUB 6.8 trillion), according to the Ministry of Finance (MinFin).

The liquid part – cash on MinFin’s accounts at the Central Bank – makes up about 54% of total National Wealth Fund money; the other part (RUB 5.9 trillion) is invested into various shares and bonds, mostly of state-affiliated companies ($3 billion was even invested in Ukrainian bonds while Viktor Yanukovych was president), and are not instantly liquid.

Russian warship fucked itself.

Pyreyemid