Mistic

@Mistic@lemmy.world
0 Post – 58 Comments
Joined 1 years ago

Some important info that is missing:

  1. Proposed legislation is far from being an actual law. It has only once passed the committee (1st stage out of 5), after which got sent to be re-written. Now it's at pre-1st stage.

  2. So far, it has received 2 negative reviews from the administration. First one, from 2022, said it's redundant, and second one, from 2023 that it's... still just as redundant as it was.

  3. 2 out of 3 authors have removed their signatures since the first negative review.

Basically, there's little to no chance this would ever pass. Our "crazy printer" may be insane, but it only does so if there is an ass to lick.

I could even link everything if anybody wants me to. Doubt it won't get removed, but still.

An economics student from Russia here, here's my perspective.

First, is that a country's economy is a lot less volatile than we expected. There is also another factor that played into it. During covid, Russian companies amassed a sizable amount of inventory that was already inflated compared to European companies due to how volatile our economy is. This has given them enough time to reroute supply chains once sanctions hit.

Basically, the so-called "grey import" plays a major role in assuring the stability of our economy. Companies either route their import/export through neighboring countries or through affiliated companies.

Second is the competency of our central bank. After most of the major banks were cut off from SWIFT (used for international transactions), they raised the key rate, limited the amount of money you can cash out at one time, and did some other stuff. Higher key rate = higher deposit interest rate, but at the same time, credit became more expensive. All of this was needed for preventing banks from defaulting. Once panic died down, the changes were reverted. Now, they're dealing with inflation.

Lastly, the majority of our budget comes from oil and gas. Since Europe didn't want to buy it, Russia started selling it to Asia at discounted prices. Quantity of oil/gas sold drastically increased, which mitigated reduced prices and led to a surplus budget. Not to mention that they started pushing on large companies to reduce the amount of dividends and instead re-invest the money.

I wouldn't call it "thriving," however. All of this has definitely led to a slowdown in growth, which, as time goes by, will only get worse. But for now it's fine.

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Russia trying to ban Telegram is a whole epopeya that produced a lot of memes and animated videos back in the days.

Now it's a piece of history.

A story about what heppened (it's hilarious, read it):

Essentially, there's a gov agency called Roscomnadzor (from Russian communication surveillance) that is responsible for "keeping the internet a safe space", so to say.

After another law, wanted by nobody, was passed, it allowed for Roscomnadzor to request the encryption keys from all social media. Since Telegram "doesn't have those", Roscomnadzor took it to court for non-complience.

Telegram lost the case and was ordered to pay 1mil rub (about 17000USD at the time I believe) and to provide the keys. The society started joking about how that's the cheapest PR a company could get for such outreach. Overall sentiment was "Not only do they get so many people to hear about Telegram for pennies, but they also make Telegram look like a safe place to chat" (which is debatable, but w/e, that's what people thought, mind you Telegram was a very new product then)

It's also important to note that Telegram's creator, Pavel Durov, is also the creator of largest Russian social medial called VKontakte (tl. InContact) which he was robbed of and forced to leave the country.

And so, once Roscomnadzor started trying to block Telegram for, yet again, non-complience, people started beeing dissatisfied and set up a date to let paper planes out of their windows to show their support for Telegram.

Now starts the fun part.

Just in one week over 18mil IP adresses were blocked. Whilst trying to block Telegram, Roscomnadzor managed to accidentially block: Viber, some paying services, some services for selling airplane tickets, a service selling OSAGO (mandatory car insurance), ResearchGate, central repository of Java, Skolkovo Tech websited (aka Russian Silver Valley), a lot of universities' websited (including the biggest ones), some scientific archives.

They even managed to block some of Google's services, like YouTube or it's main page, Twitter, Facebook, VKontakte, Odnoklassniki (Russian social media for boomers and country bumkins, tld as "Classmates"), Yahoo, Some Russian gov sites and I believe even it's own website.

What did you not see on that list? That's right! Telegram is still fully operational.

This has caused a massive surge of memes and videos portraying Roscomnadzor as an anime character Roscomnadzor-chan trying to block all of the wicked stuff off the net, but ultimately failing all the time. She has goons, which look kinda like those half life solders, which are all secretly into all that stuff they block.

Roscomandzor also acquired a new nickname, "Roscompozor", where "pozor" means "disgraceful", think "I"m ashamed of you and I mean it" kind of meaning.

Since then Telegram was finally blocked, but through use of VPN many people still accessed it. Including government officials (a lot of them). In fact, it was used so much that some years after they striked a deal (involving giving users' data to Russia ofc) where Telegram was fully unblocked and still is to this day.

Am a finance student from Russia.

12% is fine. It's a temporary measure to keep the currency at bay. It's not great, don't get me wrong, I'd much rather it was at 4-5% as it was in 2020, but it's appropriate given what's happenning with the country.

In comparison, on February 2022 it was 20%, which in simple terms saved the banking system from collapsing, our Cenral Bank is one of not that many agencies that are at least compitent.

It does slow down the economic growth, but trust me, there are way bigger problems than expensive credit when it comes to economic growth. Short-term everything is quite well, but long-term if nothing changes? Oh boy, oh boy.

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They guy did his research, and he did it right. Even mentioning the "social contract", that's not something you hear from an average youtuber.

There's only a few things I've noted

Although the monthly rate can be calculated as yearly÷12 and is acceptable, it is inaccurate. Doesn't change much, but still. ( (1+monthly rate)^12 = 1+yearly rate <= this is the accurate conversion)

Next is "failed pension reform." It's failed in political sense. The intent of it was to temporarily lessen the depletion of pension fund, which it technically did do. But, yeah, it was absolutely not popular. Not to mention that it didn't solve the root of the problem, which was obvious from the start. Back during his first or second presidency period, he promised not to raise the age for retirement, yet in 2018, he did exactly that. Needless to say that his ratings have been falling ever since then and up till February of 2022.

The one thing I would've liked him to also mention is "quality of foreign exchange earnings," which is a relatively new term. Essentially, companies now need to pay attention to wether or not they can exchange earned currency for something that they can trade with other countries or within Russia. Previously, they traded in dollars, so it was never an issue.

Another way that I became quite fond of using is Rufus.

When creating a distro it allows you to customize it. Set up language beforehand, a local account, remove hardware requirements and data collection by simply checking some boxes.

It's a very handy tool, saves a lot of headache with this bloody install.

In Soviet Union, the rock genre was for a very long time existing underground due to the inability of artists to be properly published.

Only starting with the 1980s could the artists finally publish their songs officially. And even then Soviet government put a lot of measures to prohibit rock music in the country.

This resulted in the appearance of many beloved bands and artists, like

  • Kino (tl. Cinema),
  • DDT,
  • Aria,
  • Chaif,
  • Grazhdanskaya Oborona (tl. Civil Defense),
  • Mashina Vremeni (tl. Time machine),
  • Sektor Gaza (tl. Gas Sector)
  • Korol i Shut (tl. King and Jester)
  • And many others

The history of Russian rock is actually quite fascinating. It was inspired by bard songs and often touched darker subjects as well as being satirical and judgmental of Soviet government.

Due to that, some artists, like Yegor Letov from Grazhdanskaya Oborona and Yuri Shevchuk from DDT, had troubles with KGB (Soviet FBI).

Nowadays, rock artists are still being persecuted for their views. For example, DDT is de facto prohibited from performing in Russia.

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Wouldn't be so optimistic about one on the left.

Too much mold to my liking and interior is pretty tasteless.

Here's a documentary about it, with English captions. I highly recommended watching.

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Let's assess the effects this change could cause on real numbers.

Note: This is a duplicate of a part of a comment I've written here above as a response, but I don't want it to be buried. Hope that's fine

I'll take Nutrien's 2023 audited financial statement as an example. (Numbers in brackets are what's deducted to get what's not in brackets)

  • Sales - 29056
  • Freight, transportation, distribution - (974)
  • Cost of goods sold - (19608)
  • EBIT - 8474
  • Interest - (w/e)
  • EBT - 1952
  • Taxes - (670)
  • Net earning - 1282

Out of cost of goods sold (2858) is cost of labour, let's also add (626) from general administrative expenses, and just say it's all wages.

  • Effective tax rate - 670/1952*100% = 34,3% (wow, that's a lot for where I live, also ignoring mining tax for simplicity)

Let's see what happens to our efficiency if the changes take effect.

All of costs can be divided into Fixed and Variable ones. Labour, in this case, is Variable because we can manipulate it by employing more staff to compensate for reduction in working hours and keep the sales at the same rate. (Contract workers are usually Fixed Cost, but it's all relative, as no Fixed Cost is ever truly fixed.)

Going from 40 => 32, we have a 20% reduction in working hours. Mind you, this doesn't mean there will be a 20% hit to productivity. It may be more, it may be less (most likely less), for simplicity let's say it's 20%. So, we need 20% more workers to compensate. (2858+626)*120%=4180.8

  • New EBT = 1952 + 2858 + 626 - 4180.8 = 1255.2
  • New net profit = 1255.2*(1-34.3%) = 824.7. Mind you, the effective tax rate will probably be lower if employment affects deductibles and/or grants tax privileges.

So, our net profit margin went from 1282/29056 = 4.4% to 2.8%. Looks bad at first glance, but it's also a bad year. A year prior net profit margin was at whopping 20.3%, so a decrease from 4.4% to 2.8% would be nothing in comparison.

Will it result in increased prices? Yes, but it will also lead to economic growth, because more free time = people spend more money = companies earn more = companies grow faster, but so does inflation. If they can manage the inflation, I don't see why this couldn't be possible.

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I used to think the same.

Turns out they are a good alternative to laptops.

If you don't need powerful hardware, then tablets allow to save space in the backpack, are way lighter and always have a touch screen, which in connection with a stylus is big deal for taking notes. Laptops with a touch screen, in comparison, cost way more (at least where I live they do).

Personally, I use it for studying and media consumption. It replaced almost all of my paper. You can also sign documents using those (depends on laws in your country). Inserting photos into documents is one thing you can't do as easily with laptops as well.

And when I do need access to better hardware, I just remote to my PC at home.

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The government claims it's Google's hardware getting outdated. Google says that's bs.

I think that it's convenient how they're telling that to us right before throttling YouTube only with certain providers (and seems to be with only certain regions as well).

Negotiations happen when one or, more likely, two sides don't see a way to improve their positions with military force.

The rumors you're speaking of are a direct consequence of Russia being an autocracy. When you have a country whose ruler doesn't leave on their own (a dictator), people start speculating on when he's going to die. These rumors have been going around for about a decade, I believe, and are pretty much meaningless.

Now, about "securing a legacy." I think it's much more trivial than that. Invading Ukraine was a good way to secure presidency for the next 1-2 terms and to eradicate opposition within the country. If that's the case, then, in a sense, he got what he wanted, although he likely also expected the war to be short and victorious (judging by the state media narrative at the time). That didn't happen. And now there are other issues at hand for him.

You'd be surprised how much changes from sole rotation of personnel.

Mind you, people wouldn't be calling Putin a tyrant if he left after his second term. Yet he didn't, that mofo rigged the system in his favour during that presidency, and... well, you know the rest.

Rotation is unimaginably more important than actual personas.

Not unless you're making videos from abroad.

YouTube doesn't serve ads when viewed from Russia anymore, so there is no revenue from this audience. And you can't take money out from within Russia due to sanctions.

Russian YouTubers are pretty much screwed and have to re-locate. The only other option is earning from product placements.

I think it works best in combination with fingerprint scanner.

Like when your fingers are wet and are difficult to scan. Whilst trying to make the scanner work, face unlock just does it for you.

But, yes, if it were one or the other, fingerprint scanner is simply way more convenient.

The reason why people are struggling with one tag may also be exactly because it's only one tag.

It's difficult to categorize gray as black or white, after all.

Imo, the real issue is how not to go overboard, adding more and more tags, and keeping things easy to filter.

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They're crap. People will be and are looking for ways to evade restrictions.

Right now, they're only limiting speed with certain providers in certain locations. There are at least three ways that I know of to avoid it.

The thing is, I don't know how far they'll take it. Blocking YouTube is a major political risk. Practically, everybody uses it for one reason or another. So, unlike their "special military operation," this (as mercantile as it sounds) will potentially have a bigger impact on everybody's lives. But you really can never be sure with our mafia-in-charge anymore.

I was interested in VR for a very long time. Recently, I got to actually try it out.

I primarily view Apple Vision Pro as a proof of concept type of device. Sales being limited both in quantity and territorially indicate that. It has brought 3 major improvements to the table, compared to other headsets:

  1. Quality of passthrough
  2. User interface
  3. Display quality

When you think about it, however, it's not that much to make it an obvious choice over other devices.

Passthough is needed for navigating through space. It does not help with productivity as your vision would be focused on the interface and not the environment. Remember warping on Quest 3? Much less noticeable than on videos for the exact same reason.

There is no buts with the user interface and display. They are simply great, best that there is.

Now, for the part that makes Vision Pro from a great productivity device on paper into a "dev kit available to masses" (I like that description, it does feel that way a lot, ty Ghostalmedia)

Eye strain is a major issue. It is very difficult to use the device for more than a couple of hours without getting tired. This goes for all of the VR headsets out there. I guess you can get used to it over time, though.

Limited usability. Quest 2/3, Pico 4, Valve Index, they all do things you wish Vision Pro could. Primarily usage of physical controllers. Imagine sculpturing without controllers because I can't. Hand tracking is just not up to par.

Battery solution is another issue. Not being able to swap what is otherwise a Power Bank without disabling the device and being unable to use any other battery than Apple's own is at the very least annoying. Not exactly an issue if you're too tired by the time it runs out.

Finally, the VR space itself is unfortunately not mature enough. There's a lot of work still to be done. Even when talking games, despite some amazing titles like Half-life Alyx, the vast majority where controls wouldn't make you dizzy are all pretty much like arcade mini-games, where you either teleport from point to point or not move at all. Developers simply have yet to figure out an organic way of user navigating through virtual space. (Doesn't mean they aren't fun, though)

Overall, I believe Vision Pro isn't really a mass consumer product, but it did do a lot by bringing more attention to VR as a whole, as well as pointing out additional user-cases for the technology. Because of Vision Pro, Meta started paying more attention to details, which ultimately will benefit the consumer (in fact, it already has yeilded results).

It's interesting how one entity is being described as both pro-fascist and pro-LGBT. What an oxymoron.

Also, what an irony you call them hypocrites whilst being one yourself, because:

  1. Learn what fascism actually means

  2. Stop putting your hand in other people's pants

  3. Realise that step 2 is exactly what fascists are known for doing

Maybe then you'll stop being one.

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I look into those regularly. Those are credible sources that are often used by our scientists, but you have to be very careful with statistics during war periods.

What do you think the majority of people hear when asked, "Do you support actions of Russian military in Ukraine?". They hear, "Are you a traitor?" and answer accordingly. The majority (4 out of 5, I believe, if not more) refuse to answer at all. So, it's not exactly representative.

What we look at instead is questions that are not this direct. Such as "Do you think Russia should continue or start peace talks?". The majority (58%) is for peace talks. This number has increased since September 2022 by 10%, whilst the number of pro-war people decreased from 44% to 34%. Their quality also changed. For "absolutely should start peace talks" went from 21% (out of all votes) up to 26%, whilst for "absolutely should continue military actions" went from 29% down to 21%.

The longer things continue, the less support Russia's government has. That's what can be said for certain. The other conclusion we can derive is that war isn't popular.

Edit: Oh, and the youth, 67% of the youth (18-24) is for peace talks, 23% pro-war. 65% for ages 25-39, only 25% pro-war.

The vast majority of pro-war people are elderly. Can you guess who also watches the TV the most? And who the TV is controlled by?

For the full picture, I'll also add "they started it, so it's their responsibility, we had no choice in it" This phrase explains the whole mentality of Russians very well.

Storyteller

A short but memorable puzzle-type game where you have to put together scenes and characters to create a story. Actions in previous scenes affect how characters behave or appear in later ones.

Really liked that one, it's fun.

Out of curiosity, why do you want bedrock specifically?

In my experience, Java is much less buggy, plays better, and has significantly better modding support with no microtransaction bs. The only compelling reason I see is cross play.

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If we're being completely honest, all of those are in rotation and although some items cannot be grinded for during that time, it can still be traded for, so it is not an issue.

Dailies and weeklies are here to keep you engaged. They provide some rewards, but I wouldn't call them mandatory to progression. They're more of a side-bonus.

Personally, whenever I'm bored of warframe I just leave. After a while new quests appear, new guns and all of the other stuff to work toward.

The best part is that whenever you return you're pretty much at the same place as you left it off.

Hence I personally see no rush in getting all of the stuff I want. I've been playing this game on and off since 2013 and have yet to experience fomo with it, because of the things listed above.

Destiny, for example, is much much worse. Especially after they decided that it's a good idea to vault planets and remove quests. Made me leave the game, I just can't deal with it and have life stuff to do. Mind you, D2 is easily one of my most most favourite games.

Same with gacha games like Genshin or Honkai 3rd. It's exhausting.

Didn't have that experience with Warframe.

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Edit: you said "but nobody's explaining the economics to me", here you go, here's the basics of corporate financial management with real numbers and a tiny bit of macroeconomics at the end.

Wait, I don't get it. You're saying if you pay a worker 1000$ a week and get revenue of 1100$, then you have a profit margin of 10%. But that's NOT profit margin (at least not the one one would use for analysis). Not to mention that those numbers are unrealistic because you'd be working at a loss for a very long time, almost guarantee.

You can't just pull numbers like that and say, "unprofitable!". Of course it isn't. You made it that way.

Besides, you're ignoring the rest of the expenses that often outweigh the payroll fund.

Back to what you called "profit margin," I'd call it "Return on Payroll Fund." It's weird, I don't like it, it ignores all of the other costs that go into creating a product, don't use it. In financial management, we use RoS, which is EBIT/Revenue. That's probably what you were thinking of. Another name for it would be "operating profit margin," likewise net profit margin would account for ALL of the expenses and not just operating ones.

Now, let's look at real numbers. I'll take Nutrien's 2023 audited financial statement as an example. (Numbers in brackets are what's deducted to get what's not in brackets) Sales - 29056 Freight, transportation, distribution - (974) Cost of goods sold - (19608) EBIT - 8474 EBT - 1952 Taxes - (670) Net earning - 1282

Out of cost of goods sold (2858) is cost of labour, let's also add (626) from general administrative expenses, and just say it's all wages.

Effective tax rate - 670/1952*100% = 34,3% (wow, that's a lot for where I live, also ignoring mining tax for simplicity)

Let's see what happens to our efficiency once the changes take effect.

All of costs can be divided into Fixed and Variable ones. Labour, in this case, is Variable because we can manipulate it by employing more staff to compensate for reduction in working hours and keep the sales at the same rate. (Contract workers are usually Fixed Cost, but it's all relative, as no Fixed Cost is ever truly fixed.)

Going from 40 => 32, we have a 20% reduction in working hours. Mind you, this doesn't mean there will be a 20% hit in productivity. It may be more, it may be less (most likely less), for simplicity let's say it's 20%. So, we need 20% more workers to compensate. (2858+626)*120%=4180.8

New EBT = 1952 + 2858 + 626 - 4180.8 = 1255.2 New net profit = 1255.2*(1-34.3%) = 824.7. Mind you, the effective tax rate will probably be lower if employment affects deductibles.

So, our net profit margin went from 1282/29056 = 4.4% to 2.8%. Looks bad at first glance, but it's also a bad year. A year prior net profit margin was at whopping 20,3%, so a decrease from 4.4% to 2.8% would be nothing in comparison.

Will it result in increased prices? Yes, but it will also lead to economic growth, because more free time = people spend more money = companies earn more = companies grow faster, but so does inflation.

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I work in IT as PM, you're pretty close.

Modern technology is glued together NOT random shit that somehow works.

Everything created has been built with a purpose, that's why it's not random. However, the longer you go on, the more rigid the architecture becomes, so you start creating workarounds, as doing otherwise takes too much time which you don't have, because you have a dozen of other more important tasks at hand.

When you glue those solutions together, they work because they've been built to work in a specific use case. But it also becomes more convoluted every time, so you really need to dig to fix something you didn't account for.

Then it becomes so rigid and so convoluted that to fix some issues properly, you'd have to rebuild everything, starting from architecture. And if you can't make more workarounds to satisfy the demand? You do start all over again.

A lot, actually

In Russia change org was one of very few channels to bring change into politics.

For some reason our politicians actually listened to those. So it was a very useful tool.

Unfortunately, I don't have much idea how effective it is since Feb of 2022. Imagine our gov as an armodillo. It has a sturdy shell, so it is very hard to get good changes through it's head. Now that armodillo closed up in a ball, it lives in it's own bubble, its being fed by it's own lies. Nothing good can come out of that head. And it doesn't.

If games, modding uses a lot. It can go to the point of needing more than 32gb, but rarely so.

Usually, you'd want 64gb or more for things like video editing, 3d modeling, running simulations, LLMs, or virtual machines.

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I'd also add Beyond: Two Souls to the list

Mind you, there are two types of under screen fingerprint sensors: optical and ultrasonic.

Optical blasts the finger with light and forms a 2d scan. It's pretty slow and arguably worse than conventional (capacitive) scanner on the back of the phone.

Ultrasonic, however, because it uses sound waves, maps a 3d scan. It is significantly faster than conventional scanner, and it also doesn't care about your fingers being wet.

Ultrasonic sensor only requires a quick tap to unlock the phone. It's actually really convenient to use, I like those. I'd take the capacitive sensor over optical one, though.

Can't the same be said about what we have right now, though?

No system is flawless, but you'd be surprised the lengths people will go to uphold the ones that work.

Not every digital signature is legally binding, I'm afraid.

In my country, there are 3 types of it. A simple one (login/password), unqualified (encrypted series of numbers), and qualified (same as unqualified, but encrypted using certified means by government). The last two are stored on a physical drive.

The higher the grade, the more legal power the signature holds.

When signing it by hand from a tablet it's the same as signing it personally where I live. Which, unlike qualified digital signature, can be used for any document.

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They may not matter in a sense that you can't elect anybody but Putin.

But they do matter in a sense of showing the incumbent they aren't stable.

After successful re-election of incumbent, they fall into a sense of euphoria. This leads to creation of some absolutely horrific and unjust laws.

However, when the re-election is deemed unsuccessful (say 55% voted for "the right candidate", but the second place got scary high 30-35%), they become timid.

That's how informational autocracies work. And that's why elections there absolutely do matter, as they directly affect quality of life. It's the safest and loudest way of showing the government your middle finger.

Some windows-specific professional software that cannot run on Linux.

Also, work-related stuff. I may be able to make a custom setup of Linux if I try hard enough, but when it comes to dealing with servers and VPNs it's a bit beyond me. Not to mention the time it takes to figure it out and set up.

Although, the more I hear about subscriptions from Microsoft the more I want to switch.

I think the word you're looking for is "Rossiya" (Россия) /s

But if for real, we don't have a substitute for the word.

Also expansism isn't exactly popular, people just don't care and want to be left alone. Government officials have some really outlandish views, which sometimes leaves you wondering just where in the world could they have heard something like that. Srsly, I've never ever heard the words that sometimes come out of their mouths anywhere else. They live in some sort of their own bubble where everybody's after them and any disobedience is Europe's commision. Also they treat ex-USSR territories as being unfairly taken from them. It's nuts.

Warframe's "BP" system is the most non-intrusive out of all games with BP that I've played.

I was disappointed when saw it initially as well. But on closer inspection, it is completely free, you're not being locked to playing on a certain week to get the missions done and, what I recently found out after years of not playing the game, is that old rewards return to BP on low levels.

This essentially makes it very easy to catch up should you choose to.

About player interactions, toxicity happens, but it happens in every online game. You can't really expect an MMO game to not have player interactions.

I too am a little anxious when dealing with people I don't know, but it really is not that big of a deal. If you're actually having problems with it, consider seeking advice from a specialist.

Having an auction house, although is nice from a convenience point of view, could be going against the design of the game. A bazaar type of trading has it's own charms, and some people may prefer it. Either one is fine with me, personally.

Most of what you've listed don't sound like problems with the game itself, but rather the game being just not for you. And it is normal.

And trust me, there are quite a few problems with warframe, especially for newer players. Like the story not being explicit, you being thrown into the game with no real set goal, game mechanics not being explained properly and so on, which makes you have wiki open on the side to play the game without issues.

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Here's the thing, if you reduce the amount of people who will vote, it increases the cost of a singe vote and by extension incentivises falsifications by the ruling party.

Being able to vote isn't a privelege to cherish it, it's a right.

When it comes to such things, always remember how they can be abused, because they likely will be.

This is how informational autocracies do it. The deincentivise participation and use state employees to vote for people who didn't participate. This is how it works in Russia, Belarus, and many more other countries.

He's probably yearning for the Russian Empire instead of Soviet Union.

Russian governmental officials have some really outlandish views for an average Russian person.

They're very religious, believe in conspiracies, actively anti-lgbt, don't support abortions, antisemitic to name a few. None of these qualities are present in the general masses. They are in their own informational bubble.

As far as I understand it, he believes that the Russian Empire and collective Europe were always at each other's throats, and that never changed for over 200 years. At the same time, Russia is a successor of the Russian Empire, and USSR is being omitted for some reason. That's the simplistic explanation of it.

For you to understand how crazy that is, Russians (in general) have little to no idea of how the Empire worked and what the views those people held. USSR essentially wiped out all of that culture.

Xiaomi has been doing that as well, except it's whenever.

Now, the TV is forbidden to access my Wi-Fi because screw that.

Any info on how to make it dumber would be appreciated.

Genshin Impact's first anniversary was the most horrendous one I've seen.

They couldn't even bother to send out an in-game message to congratulate the players.

What they did instead is paying thousands of dollars for Twitter emojis and dishing out a few give-away events where you had to practically advertise for the game to enter. Were you guaranteed to get any reward? No.

Essentially, instead of even acknowledging the anniversary, they made players advertise their game.

They were also supposed to introduce a paid bundle with some cosmetic items alongside a free concert stream (the concert was pretty good). But that was after the anniversary. Keep the bundle in mind, however.

What did it lead to?

  • Thousands of outraged players flooded social media.
  • Their discord was spammed with "qiqi fallen" emote (one of the characters laying on her back with a blank stare).
  • Review bombing got to the point where even Google Classrooms became one of the casualties

I'm probably missing some other details, but this lasted for weeks.

After a long while of non-communication, the devs gave in and finally decided to give players something. This "something" turned out to be the bundle that was supposed to be paid content alongside some (read "very little") in-game resources. There was also another another giveaway event with, this time, guaranteed rewards. The rewards were, practically, you either get a scooter or one cent. Needless to say, it left a sour taste afterward.

Honestly, it felt like a slap in the face, but it was enough for the things to start calming down.

So far, even though they're still very stingy with any sort of rewards, they at least make sure to congratulate the players somehow and give something.

Luckily, there are plenty of mods to help with that whilst keeping the experience authentic.

Wish more games supported modders to this extent.