MrDisposable
1. Never ever have Signal installed on the phone during border crossing. The presence of the app itself may trigger them (speaking from first-hand experience).
2. Having an empty Telegram account may look suspicious. My recommendation is to have two separate Telegram accounts, with the "unpatriotic" one in the separate profile only.
3. Never ever use WhatsApp for anything "unpatriotic". It's way of deleting messages leaves traces ("This message has been deleted") which may rise suspicions.
As for email, I just don't have any email clients installed on my "patriotic" profile. They all go to the "unpatriotic" one.
I spent two weeks thinking about my new setup on Graphene OS and Windows, but it was time well spent. Before that, my checklist for pre-border-crossing cleanup required about 8 hours of work. With the new setup, I can complete the cleanup in about an hour, and restoring takes even less.
Given our evolutionary history as social animals, this is expected. The genes (and memes, in the Dawkinsian sense of the word) for alienating oneself from the tribe and going solo were less successful than the those for remaining in the tribe. We can reasonably expect such adaptations to include sucking up to alphas to avoid being banished from the tribe, being distressed when outside a group, and feeling good when in a group.
After about a month of using Graphene OS, I'm not looking back – it's great. I'm not recommending it as a 100% solution for everyone, but it's definitely a very solid practical step towards keeping the phone yours:
1. Your phone will be able to operate as a basic phone (calls, SMS, web, photos / videos, location, Bluetooth, eSIM) without a Google account.
2. You will always be able to install an APK. This helps you install apps that are banned from Google Play Store in your country.
3. There's a duress PIN that lets you wipe the phone completely from any 'Enter PIN' screen. (I tried it, it's a bit messy, but it does wipe the phone and in the end you return to a blank Graphene OS installation – no need to reinstall.)
4. There's a setting that lets you disable any USB port functionality other than charging.
5. The permission system is amazing. If you are forced to install a state-mandated spy app (like the Max messenger in Russia), you can put it into a "permission jail" where the app assumes that it has access to the requested data but actually receives what you explicitly give it. For example, you can select individual photos and contacts to make available to the app – while the app will think that it has access to all contacts and photos. Bonus: the new Internet permission, which lets apps think that they are connected to the Internet while they are actually blocked from it.
6. You can have a separate profile for data and apps you don't want to expose. (There's also a Private Space for that, it's very convenient but it exposes installed apps via app search from the main space.)
7. There's an End Session function for a logged-in profile that stops it from running, wipes it from memory, and puts the data at rest.
8. You can have a separate VPN in each profile. This should help against situations where your local equivalent of Roskomnadzor sniffs out your VPN connection settings via state-mandated changes in apps operating in your jurisdiction, and bans that particular VPN later. Just make sure you install all spy apps under a profile with a disposable VPN that you aren't afraid to lose.
9. Each profile (and the Private Space too, because technically it is a special kind of Profile) can have a separate Google account. For example, one profile can have a Russian Google account (for banking and state apps), while another profile can have an Armeninan Google account (for things that are banned in Russia, like Spotify and Kindle.) However, to arrange this, you have to physically be in the desired country – Google doesn't let you change the account country without being there.
To sum up – if you are concerned about this situation, buy Pixel 10 (excellent hardware btw.), install Graphene OS (very easy, their web installer is great), and try using it for a while.
If I may ask, how did you do the environment models? Did you use textures and UV mapping? or just untextured models with a shader for the contours?
Russian here. My forgotten Bitcoin stash saved my ass multiple times by providing a way to transfer money to a friend abroad who then paid for my western expenses (hosting, VPNs etc.) using his Visa / MC cards.
Also, a lot of programmers who emigrated from Russia to countries such as Georgia in 2022 were using USDT as a way to receive their salaries.
I may be an outlier, and this is obviously an anecdote, but in my entire social circle there are literally two people supporting the war. One is a hardcore Z fanatic living with his parents at almost 50, and the second one is an alcoholic (formerly a talented architect).
(Insert the obligatory anecdata disclaimer).
Russian here, living in Russia. I don't see any. Culturally, it's a scorched earth these days.
Russian here, living in Russia. Not surprised about this at all. Actually, I predicted that this would happen. By starting the war, Putin has wiped out multiple perceived notions about Russia (the myth of the defender nation, the second-strongest army, and the "Tolstoyesvsky"-centered culture among them).
Paraphrasing Anton Chigurh: "If your culture brought you to this, of what use was the culture?"
(BTW, found a typo: Seperate should be Separate)
The first task was game sound design, and the second one was game marketing. Both tasks seemed impenetrable because I had no experience with either. Yet I managed to create the entire soundscape and SFX for the game in about a month, and, with the second workload, broke into game marketing and started getting some positive response.
Here's how it worked: both impenetrable problems turned out to be breakable into small chunks that were 1) easy enough for a beginner, and 2) came with immediately pleasing rewards on an intermittent schedule. For example, a sound that plays in a previously silent game, or 20 upvotes on a Reddit marketing post are immediately rewarding, but you cannot predict that the next post will be lucky, or that you will find a perfect sound effect on Audiojungle.
Both workloads turned into hugely addictive dopamine loops -- marketing felt similar to Diablo or a slot machine, and looking for sounds on Audiojungle felt like browsing porn. Due to that addictiveness I was able to work for 12-14 hours per day.
The absence of distractions is also helpful: the flow state was at its best at night when my family was sleeping.
For people who don't have bank accounts in other countries, or are of conscription age (means you can't get an international passport which is necessary to cross the border) I'd recommend teaming up with friends who emigrated. Some of them still need rubles in Russia (to pay for mortgages, or help their parents), so you provide them with rubles and they pay for your VPS.
My paid VPN provider stopped working months ago. Then my self-hosted Outline server stopped working. Then my self-hosted OpenVPN stopped working too. Both were hosten on Digital Ocean (Frankfurt).
What currently works for me is self-hosted Outline running on an US server, but I suspect that won't last long.
Looks like I have no choice but to learn how to self-host XRay. A smart friend told me that it still works and is hard to block, but unfortunately he has no personal experience with it -- and no need for it anymore, since he emigrated to another country.
Does anyone here have any experience with XRay / XTLS-Reality?
Bonus points: 1) parallels with Tsushima, and 2) the fact that this was the "russian warship" from the meme, and that it went precisely where it was told.
My version: it sunk right away and they lied to save the face.
As for me, I'm torn on staying vs leaving. This may seem irrational (and it probably is), but this is my home. I'll be perfectly fine in any European country on a day-to-day level, but I'll never be at home (and I'll need a thicker skin since we're the nazis now). There are people and places in Russia that I love, and my life won't be complete without them. I guess I'm just old.
On the other hand, we may soon live in a Gulag. I'm already cleaning the history of some of my Telegram chats when I go outside. People are getting arrested for holding a sign with asterisks ("*** *****") or just a blank sheet of paper, and you can get a prison term for a careless repost.
On the third hand, Russia may crumble. Our resources aren't unlimited. We are under the heaviest sanctions in history, our industry is a sham, our energy exports will cease in a couple of years, we've already committed 70% of our military to the war, and this won't end even if we "win" -- we'll need to provide police / counter-guerilla presence over a country that's 30 times (times, not percent!) larger than Chechnya, for at least a decade. And we'll need to rebuild a couple of Stalingrads to boot. I can't see how this is sustainable.
TL;DR: Decisions are hard.