8358373583
8358373583 on Hacker News
No a state derives its power from capacity for and willingness to use violence. The state is whatever group has the most of that in a given area. The population can obviously be a threat to a state, but it's ridiculous to expect people to risk their life to stop a state just because they happened to be born in its territory.
Who collected those statistics and how closely connected are they with the state?
I disagree. I don't think giving people a coercive monopoly on doing things similar to them helps innovation. I think it's one of the main barriers to innovation. It prevents iterative improvements and encourages resources to be spent on preventing others from competing instead of making a better next generation product.
I'm progressive enough that I'm frequently called an SJW, but I think the concept of cultural appropriation is one of the worst ideas humans have invented. Cultures don't own stuff, individuals own stuff. Mixing, adapting, and copying from each other is how we grow and develop.
The justification that "Qt might be used in military applications (it is today)" is ridiculous. This isn't going to stop the military from using Qt. It's only going to stop poor ordinary people who can't afford a VPN and don't know how to use Tor.
I think this is motivated by bigotry against Russian and Belarusian people caused by a collectivist view of the world where people who had nothing to do with a crime should still be punished for it. It's really scary and disappointing to see.
As a black person living in a European country with very little racism, I thought my non-experince of racism was evidence that it's possible for a society to move past racism all together and treat everyone as the individuals they are, but in the last week I have heard more bigoted statements about people based on their origin than in all my life beforehand, including from people I would never have expected anything like that from.
We are seeing Russians who have strongly condemned Putin's war being ostracised and denied opportunities for something that's completely outside of their control. This is both morally wrong and contraproductive.
That's only a choice for Putin and his inner circle. The wast majority of Russian people have nothing to do with what the state is doing.
I don't think there is any reason to believe laws against piracy are effective at reducing piracy. I think the people who paid for Russian language software before will continue doing so as long as they can still make the payment.