It’s just retribution and harassment. From what I understand, the way it works is that the Russian state harbors criminals as long as they don’t attack Russian targets. So in some cases, the malware they used literally checked for a Russian language pack on Windows and left the computer alone if it found that. They are essentially modern day privateers, harassing soft targets of an adversary.
The university I work for had a flood of phishing right after Russia started attacking Ukraine. It’s hard to know who was behind the attacks, but our best guess was criminals harbored and directed by the Russian state. We are a university, we’re not out to hurt anyone. This is just yet more innocent civilians getting hurt because Russia got angry that Ukraine turned out to be a tougher pill to swallow than it thought.
I’ve tended to use “female” when talking about both girls (children) and women. Calling a grown woman a girl always felt a little infantalizing, especially when that isn’t done much to men. At the same time, girls are not women, and I try to be precise in my wording. Female (and male) just make the most sense.
That charge of hacking is a very real charge. Journalists are supposed to not get their hands dirty. Sources give them documents, end of story. Assange was helping Manning attempt a privilege escalation attack on a system so that she could gain access to more documents. He crossed the red line, so I have no qualms with him getting bitten there. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
The other charges are definitely more concerning in that they could erode press freedom. But then again, actual journalists would know how to aim for the powerful while redacting information that will get innocent people killed. So concerning, but I don’t see an actual journalist running afoul of this. Certainly not someone who reacts to getting people killed with essentially “not my problem”.
Reading through the indictment, I think a lot of the fury is because Assange didn’t redact vulnerable sources, and when confronted had a very callous attitude about threats to the life or liberty of people who were mentioned. A responsible journalist would redact information like that to protect them from reprisals. Like, there are plenty of journalists that criticize the government in the West and receive leaks, but they’re not having the US government chasing them across the Atlantic.
I’m scratching my head over most of the charges. There is one charge where he was attempting to help Chelsea Manning break a password hash (unsuccessfully). Based on their conversation, that seems like a slam dunk case of intrusion that crosses the line from journalist to hacker.
But when I was reading through the expanded indictment with 18 counts, I was… unimpressed. I got a massive cringe out of this:
The portion of the password hash Manning gave to ASSANGE to crack was stored as a “hash value” in a computer file that was accessible only by users with adminstrative-level privileges. Manning did not have administrative-level privileges, and used special software, namely a Linux operating system, to access the computer file and obtain the portion of the password provided to ASSANGE.
Linux is special software? That’s… news.
The are a couple of things I will say in favor of this indictment. The first is that it managed to not misgender Chelsea Manning. It should be a minimum standard of acceptable human behavior, but I’ve seen plenty of people not manage that. The second is that they make a pretty good case that Assange was careless in handling extremely sensitive material. Whereas a responsible journalist would have redacted things like the names of local sources in dangerous or repressive regions, Assange did not, painting a target on their back. Translation: he got people killed or hurt. He acknowledged this and basically said he didn’t care.
The expanded indictment is troublesome because of its potential to affect press freedom, which is why the Obama administration originally only included the hacking charges. Still, the deeper I dig the harder I find it to defend Assange and his callous disregard for human life.
You’re completely missing my point. China is talking out both sides of its mouth. When it does press releases for an international audience, it presents itself as this holier-than-the-West neutral party that respects territorial integrity of all countries. When it comes to its own citizens, they make it clear that China has sided with Russia and doesn’t give a hen’s tooth about Ukraine.
It looks like their point is that censors are perfectly happy to censor the hell out of more liberal voices, but these posts are left up. It also notable that China’s state media has been far from neutral about the Russo-Ukrainian War, even as China has tried to curate a more neutral stance for an international audience.
I get why people say this, but at this point “Linux” has become so much more than either GNU or Linux proper, and even many people who are not knee deep in tech are familiar with “Linux” under that name. It’s like arguing against using the name “Kleenex” for any facial tissue. Maybe it’s technically correct, but common usage left the station a couple decades ago.
It’s mixed responsibility. It’s ultimately mostly the fault of the people trying to exploit them. At the same time, the instigating event was Russia waging war on Ukraine. It’s the same idea as putting some of the blame for the civilian casualties due to insurgent activity on the United States for that invasion. The country that put these women in a vulnerable position is partially at fault.
This has nothing to do with Ukraine’s government. It’s happening in countries that Ukrainian refugees are fleeing to. While many people are happy to be a host out of charity, others are using the opportunity to victimize women again. Such sexual exploitation is frequently the case in war and refugee crises, so sadly it is no surprise that Russia’s war of aggression is producing the same result.
That’s far from an assumed thing. At least here in the US, the assumed solution to Holocaust denial is more speech as a counter, not to ban it. I like the well protected free speech approach because I think banning Holocaust denial sets a bad precedent. Witness Poland, where the Law and Justice Party has outlawed discussion of any Polish complacency or collaboration in the Holocaust.
Russia’s actions here seem amazingly tone deaf. Finland’s decision will ultimately be based on balancing the threat of Russian aggression versus the burden of joining NATO. Showing aggression seems like the exact opposite of what Russia should be doing, especially given the history of Russian aggression towards Finland.
My health care provider, Kaiser, just mailed me a reasonably small device with some instructions. I stuck it on for a night and then mailed it back. COVID-19 made in-person sleep studies much more difficult, so that may have pushed forward innovation. Come to my husband when he did a sleep study, where he had to go in at a scheduled time and deal with more procedures.
It was kind of a cheap jab, I admit. Still, my underlying point stands: their productivity gains were from adopting technology produced by others, so crediting them to communism at least needs a footnote. That’s especially true because of how much growth leveled off when the easy gains stopped.
Also, the countries that invented tractors were plenty good at using them. Witness the US’s endless seas of grains, corn, and other crops. Any food insecurity in the US (or the world, for that matter) is due to distribution, not abundance.
I’m bringing these up because they’re subjects we’ve wrestled with over at /r/moderatepolitics. The subreddit started with one simple rule, no personal attacks. Since then, a few more rules have been added that are more quality-of-discourse improvements. But even the “no personal attacks” rule turns out to be deceptively simple. Who is protected? Can you call a politician a duffus? Where is the line between pointed criticism and personal attacks? Just a few ideas to chew on.
Could you clarify whether source citation is a rule or just a guideline? While that can increase the quality of discourse, it also makes for somewhat higher bar to entry.
Could you also clarify as to whether “be civil” includes character attacks on groups of people, as opposed to just people on the lemmy instance?
And making sure that inhabitants can escape in an emergency (egress). That’s doubly difficult if you want more than one level to the house.