as a person coming from a totalitarian country, I would still prefer dealing with a single gang which also has its own welfare obligations can be corrected or overthrown when needed, than several mafia-like cartels which only care about extorting money from me providing nothing to both me and the society as a whole.
governments have responsibility, too, it's just some don't accept it
tbh, in this interpretation, it sounds like extortion, sort of what gangs usually do to minor business owners
tax is tax, it's a mandatory contribution to society you morally and legally obliged to do, not a payment for not being killed
Which carries a spoon and looks French
"you are so smart, just a bit lazy"
Couldn't agree more. Medvedev is just a miserable ex-"liberal" (and is probably now-an-alcoholic) trying to find his place in the Putin's wartime system after his reputation was killed by Putin's "castling" in 2012 and the film "He Is Not Dimon to You" in 2017. Nobody takes him seriously anymore in Russia.
After a long-running blogpost holywar between Telegram and Signal, I perceive these "security experts" as Signal/Telegram shills depending on their stance
draw a Hatsune Miku
To be serious, nobody would use that platform even there hadn't been any ads, because competing with YouTube is not an easy feat.
I should probably be happy that Rutube and VK Video gain popularity as the regional alternatives to the monopolist which gets more aggressive each day... if not that popularity has just been inflated by bought-out bloggers and comics from Putin's oligarch owned channels like TNT being directed to cease their YouTube presence, just so the government could have their own "YouTube without team Navalny".
but yeah, being more shitty than YouTube at delivering ads is not an easy feat, too!
Humans: ooh, a new MacOS wallpaper
A Russian video hosting Rutube (which was totally dead until the govt decided to detract Russians from using YouTube, which made the platform semi-dead) actually tried to do that, having a quiz after each ad break, asking questions such as "what TV channel has been advertised in this ad?" and repeating the ad video if answered wrong
Local 58 "Contingency" flashbacks
This may be a "loanword" from the student's native language. In Swedish, they use "1900-talet" (1900s) instead of "twentieth century"